The Screaming Mimi Read online

  He said, “Yeah, we’re still holding him. We could have salted him away before this, but returns are still coming in. Every once in a while we tie him in to a fraud charge and get it off the books.”

  “I’d like to talk to him,” Sweeney said. “Tonight.”

  “Tonight? Look, Sweeney, can’t you wait till regular hours tomorrow? It’s after seven o’clock and–”

  “You can fix it,” Sweeney said. “I’ll grab a taxi and be there quick.”

  That is how, within half an hour, Sweeney was sitting on the warden’s desk and Sammy Cole sat on a straight chair a few feet away from him. They were alone in the office.

  Sammy Cole was recognizable from the newspaper picture of him Sweeney had seen shortly before, but barely recognizable. He still had black hair but it was cut too short to be curly. His face was ruggedly sullen instead of ruggedly honest.

  “I told ‘em,” Sammy Cole said. “I told ‘em every Goddam thing. I spilled my guts because I’d like to see whoever bumped Lola take the hot squat. There was the off chance it did tie in with something she’d been doing, see? So I spilled my guts and what does it get me? Enough raps so when I get out, if I get out, I’ll be peddling pencils.”

  “Tough,” Sweeney said. An envelope and a pencil came out of his pockets and he wrote “Want a drink?” on the back of the envelope and showed it to Sammy Cole.

  “Jesus,” said Sammy Cole, not at all irreverently. It would have been ambiguous to anyone listening in on a bug, but Sweeney took the half pint bottle, still two-thirds full, that he’d bought earlier at the drugstore out of his hip pocket and handed it to Sammy Cole. Sammy Cole handed it back empty and wiped his lips with the back of his hand. He said, “What you want to know?”

  “I don’t know,” Sweeney told him. “That’s the trouble; I don’t know. But I got to start somewhere. When’d you see Lola last?”

  “That morning – almost noon, I guess – when she went to work.”

  “To work? Were you that far down, Sammy?”

  “Well – yeah and no. I was working on something that would have come through big. I was tired of hand-to-mouthing on the short-con stuff. What I was doing would have got us Florida for the winter, and a real stake. Laugh it off, but I was going to turn straight. For Lola. She didn’t like the grifts. So she was keeping us eating while my deal came through.”

  “Was she tied in on the big deal?”

  “No. That was strictly me. But we worked out a little racket for her that brought in peanuts. A hundred or so a week for a few days’ work. That’s what she was on that day.”

  “Where? What was it?”

  Sammy Cole wiped his lips again and bent sidewise to look questioningly in the direction of Sweeney’s hip pocket. Sweeney shook his head and spread his hands.

  Sammy Cole sighed. He said, “A gift shop on Division Street. Raoul’s Gift Shop. That was her first day there, so I dunno much about it except what she told me, from applying for the job the day before, and what little I saw when I dropped in at six. That was part of the racket. This Raoul is a faggot.”

  “How would that tie in with a racket for Lola, Sammy? Unless you came in later?”

  “Naw, nothing like that. I just mentioned it. All there was to the racket was Lola’d get a job selling stuff somewhere, preferably a place where she’d made a few big sales, not dime store stuff. Small store, usually, where she’d be alone when the boss went out to eat or something and left her alone a little. She’d drag down on some sales – ten bucks, fifty bucks, whatever the traffic would bear. We played extra safe because she wasn’t on the blotter and I wanted to keep her off. I’d drop in later at a time we’d set and she’d slip me the moolah. She never had it on her for more’n a few minutes; she’d stash it somewhere after she dragged it down and get it just a minute before I was due to come in. It was safe as houses. Soon as she saw a mooch beginning to look suspicious at her, she’d do a fadeout; never worked anywhere longer’n a few days. Then she’d lay off a while and – well, you got the picture.”

  Sweeney nodded. “And she got the job at Raoul’s the day before. How?”

  “Newspaper ad. We had good references for her; that was my department. Job was in the morning papers. She got it in the afternoon and was to start at noon the next day.

  They’re open till nine in the evening and she was to work noon to nine, lunch hour four to five.”

  “How come you didn’t just arrange to meet her outside, during lunch hour?”

  Sammy Cole looked at Sweeney contemptuously.

  “Lookit the angles,” he said. “First, she’d have to walk out with the moolah on her, and that’s taking a chance. Second, if he sends her out four to five, then the pansy’s taking off at five, probably. Her best time to do a little business, on her own, would be from five to six, and I get there at six. If the pansy’s still gone, good; if he’s there, she can still slip it to me. I buy something for two bits and she slips the dough in the paper bag with it. It’s safe as houses.”

  “And you got there at six?”

  “Sure. She wasn’t there, and I figured something was on the off beat. I phoned the flat and a cop answered so I hung up quick and stayed away. Not that I guessed what had happened – whatever the hell did happen. But I figured she’d got caught on a larceny rap and I’d be better off on the outside, to try to get her out of it. Hell, I was nuts about the dame. I’d have raised some moolah somehow to get her a shyster and bail her out. I’d’ve knocked a guy over if I had to, to get her out. And they still think maybe I killed her. Jesus.”

  “When’d you find out what really happened?”

  “Morning papers. I’d holed in a hotel. I near went nuts. All I could think about was getting the son of a bitch that did it and chopping him up into hamburger, slow. But I didn’t know how to go looking for him without walking into cops, and 1 wasn’t going to be able to do a Goddam thing if I did that. So all I could figure was to keep under cover till the heat was off. But I guess I was too upset to be careful enough. They got me, and by the time I get outa here, the guy’ll be dead of old age.

  “So, Jesus God how I hate a cop, but just the same I did all I could for ‘em. I spilled my guts to ‘em, just on the off chance something we’d been doing would give ‘em a lead.”

  Sammy Cole slumped tiredly down in the chair and sighed. He looked up and asked, “Got a fag?” Sweeney handed him a package of cigarettes and a book of matches and said, “Keep them. Look, Sammy, if you hadn’t been picked up, what would you have done when the heat was off? Where’d you have started?”

  “With the faggot, Raoul. Maybe he had something to do with it and maybe he didn’t, but I’d have picked his petals off one at a time till I was sure.”

  “What happened at the gift shop? Did he catch her dragging down on a sale, or what? He must have fired her if she went home, and she was found in the areaway outside your flat.”

  Sammy Cole said, “That I wouldn’t know. The cops ask me questions; they don’t tell me. All I know is what’s in the papers and they don’t give me any papers. You can get papers – and stuff – in stir, if you got money. But I’m broke flat.”

  Sweeney nodded and took a ten-dollar bill out of his wallet and handed it across. He said, “You get no dough out of me, pal, if you were hinting. Say, would Lola maybe have put the bite on some merchandise? Rings or something?

  Some gift shops have lots of small stuff that’s valuable.” Sammy Cole shook his head definitely. He said, “That I’ll guarantee; she didn’t. I drummed that into her. Too many angles, too easy to get caught, too easy to have stuff traced back to you, and too hard to get more’n a twentieth of what the stuff’s worth anyway. Not even a ring or a pair of earrings for herself; I drummed that into her.”

  “What was the long-con you were working on? Could that have tied in?”

  “Nope, it couldn’t. I didn’t spill that because I was working with a guy, and I wouldn’t rat on him. The cops couldn’t rubber-hose it out of me beca
use I’m no stoolie. And anyway, it couldn’t have tied in with what happened to Lola because neither the guy I was working with or the guy we were working on knew her or knew she was alive. And she didn’t know them or much about them. I mean, I’d told her what the game was, but not the details or the names. See?”

  “Okay, Sammy. Thanks,” Sweeney said. “I can’t do you any good, I guess, but I’ll keep you posted. So long.” He surprised the con-man by shaking hands with him and went out of the warden’s office, nodding to the turnkey who’d been standing outside the door.

  A clock in the outer corridor told him it was eight-fifteen, and he stood in front of the jail, watching both ways, until a cab came along and he hailed it.

  “Division Street,” he said. “We’ll have to look up the address on the way north; I forgot to get it. It’s a gift shop named Raoul’s.”

  The taxi driver laughed. He said, “I know the joint. The guy tried to make me once. He’s a queer. Say, you ain’t–” he looked at Sweeney.

  He said, “No, you ain’t,” and turned back to the wheel.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Sweeney stood looking into the window of Raoul’s gift shop.

  Presumably he was staring at the array of merchandise in the display; mostly he was watching over the low partition at the back of the window. Two customers, both women, were within. With Raoul, the proprietor, that made the feminine complement of the shop one hundred per cent. No one would ever have to wonder about Raoul.

  Sweeney studied the window and saw that it was not, in the fashion of many gift shops, cluttered with junky bric-a-brac and cheap miscellany. The items displayed were few, and good. There were foo dogs from China, thunderbirds from Mexico, costume jewelry that was in good taste if a bit blatant, a pair of brass candlesticks of exquisitely simple design; there wasn’t a single thing in the window that Sweeney could have taken exception to – except possibly the prices, and they weren’t shown. His opinion of Raoul went up several notches. One of the women inside made a purchase and came out. The other was obviously browsing and Raoul, after apparently offering to help her, relaxed gracefully against the counter. Sweeney went inside. The proprietor, smiling a proprietary smile, came forward to meet him. The smile turned to a slight frown when Sweeney said, “From the Blade. Like to talk to you about Lola Brent,” but he walked with Sweeney to the back of the shop, out of earshot of the remaining customer.

  Sweeney asked, “She got the job when? The day before?”

  “Yes. Several came in answer to an advertisement I put in the paper. Your paper, the Blade. She had excellent references from a gift shop in New York; I didn’t guess they were fraudulent. She was well dressed, had a pleasing personality. And she was free, ready to start work at once. I told her to come in the next day.”

  “And she did, at noon?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what happened? You caught her dragging down on a sale and fired her?”

  “Not exactly. I explained it all to the police.” Sweeney said, “I could get it direct from them, but I’d rather not. If you don’t mind too much.” Raoul sighed. He said, “From twelve until a little after three we were both in the store. There weren’t many customers and I spent most of the time acquainting her with the stock, the prices, telling her things she should know about the business. At about a quarter after three I had to leave for a short while, on a personal matter. I was gone a little over half an hour. When I returned, I asked what business she’d done while I was gone and she told me that only one customer had been in the store and that he had bought a pair of six-dollar bookends. That was the only amount that had been rung up on the register. But then I noticed that something else was missing.”

  “What was it?”

  “A figurine, a statuette, which had been priced at twenty -four dollars. It had stood on the shelf over there.” Raoul pointed. “It just happened that that particular statuette had been standing a bit askew and I had straightened it shortly before I had left on my errand. Shortly after my return, I chanced to notice that it was no longer there. There had been three figures on that shelf, and now there were only two, with the two moved closer together to avert leaving a conspicuous gap between them. So I asked Miss Brent if she had moved the statuette and she denied knowledge of it.” He sighed gently. “It was embarrassing, of course. I knew she could not be telling the truth, because – just as it happened – I was certain it had been there when I left.”

  “It couldn’t have been shoplifted?”

  “Hardly possible. The figure was ten inches high and, although slender, the arms of the figure were extended forward; it would have been a difficult object to conceal under a coat, and it would not have gone into a pocket at all. It was not the sort of object that is chosen by shoplifters, I assure you. Besides, Miss Brent had told me that only one person had been in the store. There was no doubt in my mind at all, Mr. – ah –”

  “Sweeney. You accused her of having sold it and kept the dough.”

  “What else could I do? I told her that I had no desire to prosecute, and that if she would permit me to search her thoroughly back in the stock room, I would permit her to go, without calling the police.”

  “You found the money on her?”

  “No. When she saw that I really meant to call the police unless she confessed and really meant to let her go if she did, she admitted the theft. She had the money, a twenty-dollar bill and four ones, in the top of her stocking. A woman’s repository.”

  “Then you didn’t have to search her. Or did you?”

  “Of course I did. I had missed that particular item and she had confessed selling it, but – since she was admittedly dishonest – how did I know that that was the only item she had sold beside the bookends? I couldn’t inventory the stock. She might also have made, let us say, a fifty-dollar sale of costume jewelry and concealed the money in her other stocking or in her brassiere or somewhere.”

  “Had she?”

  “No. At least I found no money except a few dollars in her purse which I was willing to believe was her own property. She was – ah – a little sullen about being searched, but she was reasonable when she saw my reason for insisting. Also she was not sufficiently naive to think that I wished to do so for any ulterior motive, if you understand what I mean.”

  “I understand what you mean,” said Sweeney. “So it would have been about four o’clock when she left?”

  “Yes. Not later than fifteen minutes after four. I did not notice the time exactly.”

  “She left alone?”

  “Of course. And to anticipate your next question, I did not notice whether she met anyone outside. Naturally, knowing her to be dishonest, I kept my eyes on her as far as the door, but not beyond. I did not notice which direction she went. But of course she must have gone directly to her home, because I understand she was found dead in the areaway there at five o’clock. She would have had to transfer to get there, and go through the Loop; it would have taken at least half an hour from here, possibly longer.”

  “Unless she took a cab or someone gave her a lift.”

  “Of course. The taxi is not too likely, judging from the small amount of money she had in her purse.” Sweeney nodded. “Being picked up isn’t too likely either. Her man was to meet her here in the store at six, but he’d hardly have been around the neighborhood as early as four-fifteen.”

  Raoul’s eyebrows rose a little. “He was to meet her here?”

  “Yeah. To pick up whatever she’d dragged down by then.”

  “Indeed? The police didn’t tell me that.” Sweeney grinned. “The police don’t go out of their way to tell people things. That’s why I wanted to talk to you about this instead of to them. Did Lola Brent, by the way, seem to recognize anybody who did come in that afternoon, while you were here?”

  “No. I’m reasonably sure she didn’t.”

  “What was the statuette? A woman’s figure, I take it, but with or without clothes?”

  “Without. Very defin
itely without, if you understand what I mean.”

  “I guess I do,” Sweeney said. “Even some women, let alone statues, manage to be nakeder without clothes than others do. It’s a gift.”

  Raoul raised his hands expressively. “I do not mean to imply, Mr. Sweeney, that the statuette was in any sense of the word pornographic or suggestive. It was, rather, quite virginal – in a very peculiar way.”

  “You intrigue me,” said Sweeney. “How many ways of being virginal are there? I thought I knew everything, but–”

  Raoul smiled. “There are many ways of expressing a single quality. Of, as it were, getting it across. Virginity, in this case, is expressed through fear, horror, loathing. Virginity – or perhaps I should say virginality–”

  “What’s the difference?” Sweeney asked, and then answered himself, “Wait, I think I get you. One is physical and the other is mental. Right?”

  “Of course. They may or may not coincide. Many married women are virginal, although they are not virgins. They have never really been touched; the physical act alone– And then again, a maiden who is virgo intacta may be far from virginal if her thoughts – ah – you see what I mean?”

  “I do,” Sweeney said. “But we wander from the statuette.”

  “Not far. Would you care to see the statuette? Not the one Miss Brent sold, of course, but a duplicate of it. I ordered two and liked them so well that I have one in my apartment in the next block. It’s closing time now and I assure you I have no ulterior motive, Mr. Sweeney.”

  “Thanks,” said Sweeney. “But I don’t believe it’s necessary. The statuette itself could hardly have anything to do with the crime.”

  “Of course not. I merely thought it would interest you abstractly.” He smiled. “It is, incidentally, known as a Screaming Mimi.”