The Wench Is Dead

  I’m called Howie—or The Professor. I’m on Skid Row in L.A. because I want to know what it’s like to be a bum—from the inside. But I didn’t know I’d fall for a part time hustler named Billie the Kid. I didn’t know I’d get mixed up in two killings, and that the cops would pin them on me…

  Fredric Brown

  The Wench Is Dead

  Copyright © 1955 by Fredric Brown

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter I

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Also By Fredric Brown

  THE WENCH IS DEAD

  —BUT THAT WAS IN ANOTHER COUNTRY, AND

  BESIDES, THE WENCH IS DEAD.”

  —Christopher Marlowe

  The Jew of Malta

  Chapter I

  A FUZZ IS A FUZZ is a fuzz when you waken from a wino jag. God, how much muskie had I drunk? I remembered chipping in on a second gallon of the stuff and Blackie coming back with it, but after that I drew a blank; that’s when research had stopped.

  I rolled over on the cot and sat up so I could look through the dirty pane of the window at the hockshop window clock across the street.

  Ten o’clock, said the clock. Get up, Howard Perry, I told myself. Get up, you B. A. S. for bastard, rise and shine.

  Hit the floor and get moving if you want to keep that job, that all-important job that keeps you drinking and sometimes eating and sometimes sleeping with Billie the Kid when she hasn’t got a sucker on the hook. That’s your life, you B.A.S., you bastard. That’s your life for this one summer, this lovely-lousy Los Angeles summer, this down-and-out-on-skid-row summer you wanted to try and are trying. This is it, this the McCoy, this the way a wino meets the not-so-newborn day. Man, you’re learning.

  Pull on a sock, another sock, torn shirt, pants with empty pockets, get ready to go over to Burke’s and wash a thousand dishes for six bits an hour and a meal or two a day—only you get hooked there because you don’t eat much; winos don’t and you’re playing the role to the hilt. Anyway, you don’t get hungry.

  Of course I wasn’t a wino, not really, nor an alcoholic of any other kind. This was only for a couple of months and alky doesn’t get you in that short a time, not when you’ve been a normal drinker all your life. I’d have no trouble snapping out of it.

  And there were only a couple of weeks to go. In three weeks I’d be back in Chicago, back teaching in high school, back wearing clean white shirts. B. A. S. would stand for Bachelor of Arts in Sociology. Back working evenings for a master’s degree that would give me a better chance to move up to teaching in college instead of high school. Using this summer’s experience as background for writing the thesis that would help get me that degree. Research project.

  Well, not completely that, if I was honest about it. Along with sociological interest I couldn’t deny that some plain, garden variety curiosity had helped me make the decision to do what I was now doing.

  Back in Chicago, I’d acquired that curiosity naturally. I’d been doing part-time social service work along with my teaching, and my beat had been West Madison Street, a district about like this one in Los Angeles. Bums, winos, alcoholics, panhandlers, junkies, B-girls, chippies. Those were the people I had to work with and had tried to help. But always as an outsider, a pariah. Because I was what I was—to them, a stuffed shirt—I could never get close to them, never find out what they were like inside, what made them tick. Case histories on paper are mostly lies and even when they’re true as far as basic facts are concerned, they fail to tell the really important things.

  I couldn’t play bum or wino in Chicago, naturally; I knew too many people there.

  So here I was. Fifth Street, Los Angeles, California. A skid row like any skid row. A wino like any wino.

  Learning fast. And it wasn’t costing me anything except my time and even that wouldn’t be lost if I got material for a thesis out of it. And I thought I could, although I wasn’t sure yet just what it would be. That would be decided after I was back home, back in my own life, and could look back with a sense of perspective on the life I was living now.

  Meanwhile, here I was and I’d played fair and was still playing fair. No money belt, no concealed assets, no ace in the hole to pull me out of any jam I might get into. I’d left Chicago in June wearing my oldest clothes and with nothing in my pockets except a razor and few other necessities that any bum carries when he travels. No money, not a penny.

  I’d ridden freights to get here and if I didn’t manage to bum my meals I missed them. I made it in a week and that told me I had two months to spend here; I’d allow two weeks for the trip back in case I’d been lucky the first time.

  When I hit Los Angeles and found my way to Main Street I not only looked my part but I felt it. I was duly and hungry; that Dishwasher Wanted sign in Burke’s window looked good and since then I’d had grub when I wanted it and six bits an hour for seven hours a day to keep me in wine and cigarettes. I’d headed for Main Street because it had used to be the tenderloin of Los Angeles and I’d thought it still was. It was still bad but I’d found there was a worse district, the five or six blocks of Fifth Street just east of Main. So I was living there, although I still kept my job at Burke’s around the corner on Main.

  Maybe I was being a pantywaist holding onto that job. Maybe I should have gone whole hog and tried to get by without working. But sleeping in doorways was a little farther than I wanted to go—this little airless crackerbox of a room was bad enough—and I’d found out quickly that panhandling wasn’t for me. I lacked the knack. Besides I didn’t want to risk getting vagged and maybe spending most of the time in jail. No percentage in that.

  I dipped water from the cracked basin and rubbed it on my face. Ran a comb through my hair. Shaving would have to wait until I’d had a drink to steady my hand. Probably cut my nose off if I tried it now. Or maybe if a mirror showed me I didn’t look too bad I could wait till evening so the shave would be fresh in case I’d be sleeping with Billie.

  The cold water in my face had helped a little, but not much. I still felt like hell.

  There were a couple of wine bottles around and I checked to make sure they were empty. They were. I looked under the bed to make sure I hadn’t kicked a bottle back there. I hadn’t.

  I got a cigarette going.

  What does a wino do when he wakes up broke (and how often does he waken otherwise?) and needs a drink? Well, I’d found several answers to that. The easiest one, right now, would be to hit Billie the Kid for a drink if she was awake yet, and alone.

  I went downstairs and across the street, Fifth Street, to the building where Billie had a room. A light housekeeping room and one a hell of a lot nicer than mine, but then again she paid plenty of money for it. Mine set me back three bucks a week.

  I rapped on her door softly, a little code knock we had. If she wasn’t awake she wouldn’t hear it and if she wasn’t alone she wouldn’t answer it. But she called out, “It’s not locked. Come on in.” And she said, “Hi, Professor,” as I closed the door behind me. “Professor”—or maybe it was a little nearer to “Perfessor”—she called me, occasionally and banteringly; of course she didn’t know I intended really to be one as soon as possible after I got that master’s degree. It was my way of talking, I suppose. I’d tried at first to use poor diction, bad grammar, but I’d given it up as too tough a job after a few days, before I’d met Billie. Besides, I’d learned that Fifth Street already had quite a bit of good grammar. Some of its denizens had been newspapermen once, some had written poetry; one I’d met was a defrocked priest who now made drinking his religion. I said, “Hi, Billie the Kid.”

  “Just woke up, Howie. Wha’ timezit?”

  “A little after ten,” I told her. “Is there a drink around the place?”

  “Jeez, only ten? Oh well, I had seven hours. Guy came with me when Mike closed at two, but he didn’t stay long.” She sat up in bed and stretched, the covers falling away from her naked body. Beautiful breasts she had, rounded and firm, pink nippled. Nice arms and shoulders. Slender and supple body.

  Not too pretty a face, but then I don’t particularly go for pretty faces. Dark eyes, half black and sleek in a page-boy bob that fell into place as she tossed her head. Twenty-seven, she’d told me once and I believed her, but she could have passed for several years younger than that, even now without make-up and her eyes still a little puffy from sleep. Certainly you’d never have guessed that she’d spent five years as a B-girl, part-time hustler, fairly heavy drinker.

  She’d married, she’d told me, at nineteen, a man who worked for a manufacturing jeweler. Three years later he’d left for parts unknown with a considerable portion of his employer’s stock, leaving Billie stranded and with a mess of debts.

  Wilhelmina Kidler, Billie the Kid, my Billie.

  Any man’s Billie, alas, if he flashed a roll. But oddly I’d found that I could love her a little and not let that bother me. Maybe because it had been that way when I’d first met her abou
t six weeks before; I’d come to love her—the little I dared let myself love under the circumstances—already knowing what she was, so why should it bother me? What she saw in me I didn’t know and didn’t care.

  “About that drink,” I said.

  She laughed and threw down the covers, got out of bed and walked past me naked to the closet to get a robe. I wanted to reach for her—lousy as I still felt from the hangover—but I didn’t; I’d learned by now that Billie the Kid was never amorous early in the morning and resented any passes made before noon.

  Serious passes, that is. I could get away with a light slap on the part of her body made for slapping, as she went by. That I did.

  She paid no attention to the slap. She shrugged into a quilted robe and padded barefoot over to the little refrigerator behind the screen that hid a tiny kitchenette. She opened the door and said, “God damn it.”

  “God damn what?” I wanted to know. “Out of liquor?”

  She held up over the screen a Hiram Walker bottle with only about half an inch of ready-mixed Manhattan in it. Manhattans were Billie’s favorite drink; she almost always kept a bottle or three of the ready-mixed land on hand. Which suited me fine because most of my drinking was muscatel or sherry, sweet wines, and Manhattans are sweet too. It’s okay to switch back and forth between sweet drinks but if you switch between sweet and dry ones neither of them tastes right.

  Billie said, “As near out as matters. About half a drink. Honey, would you run upstairs and see if Mame’s got some? I think she has. Had some yesterday afternoon, anyway.”

  Mame is a big blonde who works behind the bar at Mike Karas’ joint, The Best Chance, where Billie works as a B-girl. A tough number, Mame. She awed the hell out of me.

  I said, “What’s wrong with the store? Or are you broke too?”

  “I’m not broke, but Howie, if you get it at the store it won’t be on ice. And Manhattans aren’t worth a damn if they ain’t cold. You know that.”

  “I know that,” I said. “But what if Mame isn’t up yet and I wake her? She’ll murder me.”

  Billie laughed. “She’ll be up by now; she was off early last night. Wait a minute, though, I’ll phone her. That way, if she is asleep it’ll be me that wakes her and not you.”

  “Swell,” I said.

  “And if you want that half a drink in the bottle while I’m phoning, help yourself.”

  “I can wait,” I said.

  She made the call and nodded. “Okay, honey. She was up, and she’s got a full bottle she’ll lend me. Scram.”

  I scrammed, from the second floor rear to the third floor front. Mame’s door stood open; she was in the doorway paying off a milkman and waiting for him to receipt the bill.

  She nodded to me. “Go on in. Take a load off. I’ll be with you in a sec.”

  Even standing aside in the doorway, she almost filled fit; there was just room for me to get past her. I went inside the room and sat in the chair that was built to match Mame—overstuffed. I ran my fingers around under the edge of the cushion; one of Mame’s men friends might have sat there with change in his pocket. It’s surprising, I’d found, how much change you can pick up just by trying any overstuffed chairs or sofas you happen to sit on. No change this time, but I came up with a fountain pen, a cheap-looking one that had obviously come from the dime store. Mame was just closing the door and I held it up for her to see. “In the chair. Yours, Mame?” It was too cheap a pen to hock or sell so I figured I might as well be honest about it.

  “Nup. Keep it, Howie. I gotta good pen. A Neversharp. A lush give it to me over the bar one night for two bucks in drinks.”

  I said, “Maybe one of your friends might miss it.” I didn’t want the damn pen.

  Mame shook her head. “Nup. I know who lost it all right; I seen it in his pocket last night. His name was Jesus, and the hell with him.”

  “Mame, you sound downright sacrilegious. Shame on you.”

  She laughed. “Hay-soos, then. A Mex. And Jesus was he like a cat on a hot stove?”

  She walked around me over to the refrigerator but kept on talking. “Know what happened? He told me not to turn on the lights when we come in. Then he walks over to my front window and stands looking down like he’s watching for the heat. Looks outa the side window too, one with the fire escape. Makes sure it’s locked—it always is—when he sees there’s that fire escape leading to it. Pulls down all the shades and comes back and checks I locked the front door behind me before he says okay, to turn on the lights.”

  I heard the refrigerator door close and she came back with a bottle, but instead of giving it to me she sat down across from me to go on with the story.

  “Was he a hot one,” she said. “Just got his coat off—he threw it on that chair, and that’s when the pen would of fell outa his pocket—when there’s a knock on the door. Know what he done?”

  “Lammed by way of the fire escape?” I hazarded.

  She looked at me admiringly. “Howie, you’re a damn good guesser, you are. Grabs up his coat and goes out that window ’thout even waiting to put his coat on, just carrying it.”

  She chuckled. “Was that a flip? It was only Dixie from the next room, knocking to bum some cigarettes. So. If I ever see Jesus again, it’s no dice, guy as jumpy as that. So keep the pen or throw it away.”

  “Maybe he had reason to be jumpy,” I said. “Maybe somebody was after him.”

  “All the more reason I wouldn’t want to tangle with him.” She looked at the bottle. “Want a drink here, Howie, before you go back down? I don’t mean outa this; I’m lending Billie a full bottle. But I got another bottle with some still in it.”

  It sounded like a good idea to me. I’d waited a long time for that first drink and my head was throbbing again. I should have taken Billie at her word instead of being noble about that last half inch in her bottle.

  “Sure,” I said. “If you’re having one with me.”

  “I don’t drink, Howie. Just keep the stuff around for friends and callers. But don’t let that stop you having one.”

  I did let it stop me, though. I wanted a drink but I’d waited that long and I could wait a few more minutes till I was with Billie again.

  When I stood up a moment later, Mame handed me the bottle.

  Billie had put on a costume instead of the robe, but it wasn’t much of a costume. A skimpy Bikini bathing suit of black satin. It didn’t cover much of Billie but it certainly set off her white skin.

  She pirouetted in it. “Like it?” she asked. “Just bought it yesterday.”

  “Nice,” I said. “But I like you better without it.”

  “Pour us drinks, huh, Howie? For me, just a quickie.”

  “Speaking of quickies,” I said.

  She picked up a dress and started to pull it over her head. “If you’re thinking that way, Professor, I’ll hide the family treasures. Say, that’s a good line; I’m getting to talk like you do sometimes.”

  I went back to the kitchenette, opened the bottle, poured the drinks.

  “And speaking of quickies,” Billie said as I handed her a glass. “What kept you so long up at Mame’s?”

  “Not that,” I said. “Mame got talkative. Here’s to you, Billie.”

  We each took a sip. I felt better right away. It’s funny about that sudden effect of the first sip of a pickup drink when you’re hung over. Must be psychological because it starts to work on you before there’s time for a physiological reaction.

  I remembered something. “Billie,” I said, “correct me if I’m wrong; I thought that was a bathing suit you were modeling for me. But you put a dress on over it. Is it lingerie?”

  “It’s a bathing suit all right, Howie. Only I’m going out to the beach today, Santa Monica. I won’t be going in the water though, so I can just wear the suit under the dress. Say, why don’t you come along?”

  “I’m not the idle rich, my darling. I’ve got to wash a dish.”

  “That damn dishwashing job. Howie, if you’ve got to work—”

  “I’ve got to work,” I said. “And there’s one thing to be said about Burke as an employer. He may not pay munificently but he pays every day. Otherwise there’d be some dry, dry evenings.”