Роберт Беллем - Pulp Frictions

It was one of my own suits!

I said: ‘What the hell!’ and jumped for the guy. I grabbed him. Only it wasn’t a him; it was a her. It was the blonde bimbo, Constance Calvert.

She fought at me. She said: ‘Damn you! Let me go!’

‘Like hell!’ I told her. ‘How long have you been out of my place?’

‘I... I just got out. I found a suit of yours and put it on. Why did you take my clothes?’

Before I could answer her, I heard brakes squeaking. I turned. There was Dave Donaldson driving up in my jalopy. He jumped out, saw me holding the blonde dame. He said: ‘What—?’

‘Put the nippers on this girl, Dave,’ I told him. ‘She’s hard to hold.’

Dave slipped the cuffs on her. Then he said: ‘Turner, I’ve got news!’

I said: ‘What kind of news?’

‘Well, in the first place,’ Donaldson growled disgustedly, ‘Mrs Sanston had a perfect alibi. She’s been playing bridge with friends all evening. Hasn’t been outdoors. That eliminates her as a suspect. But down at headquarters I found out something damned interesting. Billy Sanston had been married before. His first wife’s name was Nancy Norward. Ever hear of her?’

I said: ‘Good God! Nancy Norward was the girl who died down in San Diego on a party with Skinny Arkle.’

Dave said: ‘Yeah. Now do you see the set-up? Sanston must have nursed a grudge against Arkle all these years. To get even he played around with Kitty Calvert, Arkle’s wife. Then, finally, he bumped Arkle off and decapitated the body. Maybe Kitty found out about it, so he had to kill her too. Then when we busted in on him in Kitty’s boudoir he committed suicide. There was no other way out.’

I said: ‘Dave, maybe you’re right. It all checks up pretty well. Except one thing. Why was Arkle’s severed head sent to me?’

‘I don’t know that,’ Donaldson grunted. ‘And there’s one other goofy point, too. The medical examiner’s report says that the bullet was fired into Arkle’s noggin after he was dead! The condition of the tissues, or something. Look — here’s the report.’

He handed me a sheet of paper. I let him hang onto Constance while I took the paper to a street-light. It was the usual formal report of the medical examiner — the description of the bullet-wound, condition of the flesh, colour of the hair and eyes, so many fillings in the teeth, and the way the head had evidently been sliced from the body itself. I read it over once. And then, suddenly, I had the answer.

I jumped back towards Donaldson. I said: ‘Quick! Get in my hack! We’ll take this dame with us. And we’ve got to move fast!’

Dave said: ‘Where the hell are we headed?’

‘Pasadena!’ I told him. ‘The Pasadena Hospital!’

It took us just thirty minutes to make the trip, and I thumbed my nose at a dozen stop-signs on the way. I jerked all the tread off my tyres skidding to a stop outside the Pasadena Hospital, and I grabbed Donaldson’s arm. ‘Come on!’ I yelled.

‘What about this dame?’ He pointed to Constance Calvert.

‘Leave her here in my hack. She’s handcuffed.’ I shoved Donaldson into the hospital and we went up to the desk.

There was an elderly woman on duty. I said: ‘I want to see a record of the deaths in this place during the past three days.’ Dave Donaldson flashed his badge for authority.

The woman dug into her records, handed me four or five cards. I found the one I wanted. It said: ‘Rodney Arkellmeister. Age 48. Male. White. Entered hospital in dying condition. Pneumonia. Unable to talk. Died two days later...’ Then it gave the date of death and all that stuff.

I whirled on Donaldson. ‘Get it?’ I said. ‘Rodney Arkellmeister! That was Skinny Arkle’s real name before he came to America from Jugoslavia.’

Dave said: ‘You mean Skinny died a natural death? Then who the hell cut off his head and put a bullet in it? Who sent the head to you?’

Before I could answer him, I heard a scream from outside. A woman’s scream. I said: ‘What the hell—!’ and jumped for the door. I saw a car parked behind my coupe. There was a guy leaning in my hack. He was choking Constance Calvert.

I said: ‘Damn! He must have been lurking around my apartment-house! He heard me saying we were coming here! He followed us!’ And I hurled myself at the guy.

He heard me. He turned. I saw a roscoe in his fist. It vomited flame. A slug zinged past my skull. I whipped out my own automatic, thumbed the safety, squeezed the trigger. I sent three slugs into the guy’s guts.

Even before he fell I yelled out to Donaldson. I said: ‘There’s your killer. It’s Skinny Arkle!’

Dave said: ‘You’re crazy! How can a headless corpse get up and walk around—?’

By that time I was kneeling over the fallen man. I turned him over. It was Skinny Arkle, all right. I’d have known his face anywhere. Especially after seeing the decapitated head drop in my lap earlier that night, in my apartment.

Donaldson stared. He said: ‘Good God!’

I reached down, shoved my fingers in Skinny Arkle’s mouth. I twisted — and pulled out his false teeth. I said: ‘Well, that proves it, Skinny.’

Arkle glared up at me. His eyes were beginning to glaze. He said: ‘Damn you—!’

I said: ‘I see the whole thing now. You were the murderer, Arkle. You knew your wife, Kitty Calvert, was intimate with her director, Billy Sanston. You got proof of your suspicions from your wife’s Chink maid, Violet Chang. You gave her your cheque for five hundred clams for telling you the low-down.’

Skinny Arkle gurgled in his throat and vomited a little blood from his punctured guts.

I said: ‘By sheer luck, your brother had just come to visit you from Jugoslavia. Your twin brother! You and he were identical twins; looked exactly alike. I saw a picture of you two in your scrap-book a while ago.

‘It showed you and your twin as kids back in the old country. You looked alike even in those days.’

Dave Donaldson said: ‘I’ll be damned!’

I went on talking to Skinny Arkle. ‘When your brother got to Hollywood, he was already stricken with pneumonia. You knew he was going to die. You saw a swell chance to murder your chiselling wife and her lover without being suspected of the crime. So you had your brother brought here to Pasadena — to a hospital. He died here. You arranged his burial somewhere — then you exhumed his corpse and cut its head off, put a bullet in it as a blind. That was the head you sent to me!’

Arkle said: ‘Ar-r-r-gh—!’

‘You sent your twin brother’s severed head to me, knowing I’d call the cops and notify them you’d been murdered. Then, tonight, you put a ladder outside your wife’s boudoir and climbed up. You shot her and threw the gun on the bed alongside her, to make it look like suicide. Maybe you’d have shot Billy Sanston at the same time, but he’d gone into the next room.

‘Then when Donaldson and I broke in, you saw that Sanston would be accused of murdering Kitty Calvert — and probably convicted. So you sneaked down the ladder, satisfied. But a moment later, Billy Sanston escaped. So you shot him with a second gun you had on you. You shot him as he got into his Cad. That made it look as if Sanston, too, was a suicide.’

Donaldson stared at me. ‘How the hell did you guess?’

I said: ‘I knew, the minute you showed me the medical examiner’s report of that severed head. It mentioned several fillings in the teeth. And I knew that the real Skinny Arkle had false teeth! He used to take them out and fold up his face, in the movies! Then I remembered that cheque-stub I’d seen in Arkle’s book — a cheque made out to the Pasadena Hospital. I realised the truth. Arkle had done the killings, and now he’d probably try to escape by going back to Jugoslavia on his dead brother’s passport.’