The Screaming Mimi Read online

  “A what?”

  “A Screaming Mimi. Girl’s name – M-i-m-i. A rather obvious pun, of course, on the screaming meamies, if you know what they are.”

  “Intimately,” said Sweeney. “And, if I may, I’m going to change my mind; I would like to meet this Mimi, Mr. – Is Raoul your last name?”

  “Reynarde, Mr. Sweeney, Raoul Reynarde. If you’ll pardon me just a moment–”

  He walked over to the remaining customer to tell her it was closing time. Sweeney followed her to the door and waited there until Reynarde had turned out the lights. They walked a block and a half east on Division Street and up two flights of stairs to the apartment.

  “I can’t ask you to stay long, Mr. Sweeney,” Reynarde said, as he flicked on the light inside the door. “I – ah – have a guest coming. But we’ll have time for a drink. May I make you a highball?”

  “Sure, thanks,” said Sweeney. “But where is Mimi?”

  “On the mantel yonder.”

  Sweeney’s gaze, which had been roaming about the beautifully furnished – if a bit feminine – apartment, came to rest on a ten-inch-high statuette over the fireplace. He crossed the room and stood looking at it.

  He saw now what Reynarde had meant. Definitely there was a virginal quality about the slim nude figure, but that you saw afterward. “Fear, horror, loathing,” Reynarde had said, and all of that was there, not only in the face but in the twisted rigidity of the body. The mouth was wide open in a soundless scream. The arms were thrust out, palms forward, to hold off some approaching horror.

  “An exquisite thing,” said Reynarde’s voice from across the room, where he poured drinks at a little mahogany cabinet that was complete down to an ice-cube unit. “It is made of a new plastic that can’t be told from ebony, unless you pick it up. The dull gloss is the same as ebony’s, to the eye. If that figure were what it looks to be, hand-carved ebony, and original, it would be worth a lot of money.” He waved a hand around the room. “Most things you see here are originals. I prefer them.”

  Sweeney grunted. “I don’t agree with you there. I’d rather any day have a Renoir print than an art school original. But that’s a matter of taste. Could you get me one of these?” Reynarde’s voice came from just behind Sweeney.

  “Your drink, Mr. Sweeney. Yes, I can get you a Screaming Mimi, or I think I can. The company that makes them – a small concern in Louisville, Kentucky, of all places – may possibly have some left. They generally make a few hundred of an item like that. But if you really want it, I may sell you that one. Although it has been on my mantel, it is still virginal.”

  He laughed. “Or I can, if you think that makes it second hand, return it to the store and sell it to you from there. One advantage of being a dealer, Mr. Sweeney; I need never grow tired of an art object or bit of bric-a-brac. Often I keep objects from the store here until I tire of them and then exchange them for others. I think that I am growing a little weary of the little lady by now. Your health, sir.” Sweeney drank absent-mindedly, without taking his eyes off the statuette, emptying the glass at a single draught.

  He said, “Before you change your mind, Mr. Reynarde–” He put his glass down on the mantel and counted twenty-four dollars out of his wallet.

  “How,” he asked, “did it get named? Is that your name for it, or the company’s?”

  Reynarde pursed his lips. “I don’t believe I re– Oh, yes. The name came from the company that made it, but unofficially, as it were. The salesman told me that the catalogue code number for it is SM-1, and someone in their office with a sense of humor decided the SM stood for Screaming Mimi.”

  “Who did the statuette? The original, I mean.”

  “That I do not know. The company is the Ganslen Art Company. They make mostly bookends and chess sets, but they do some work in small statuary, often surprisingly good at the price. Shall I wrap the figure for you?” Sweeney chuckled. “Put pants on Mimi? Never. I’ll carry her naked through the streets.”

  “Another drink, Mr. Sweeney?”

  “Thanks, no. I think Mimi and I must be going.” He picked up the statuette gently.

  Reynarde said, “Sit down, Mr. Sweeney,” and himself sank into an overstuffed chair, although Sweeney remained standing. He said, “Something interests me, Mr. Sweeney, despite the fact that it is none of my business at all. Are you a sadist?”

  “Me?”

  “You. I am curious because of the appeal that statuette has for you. The thing is an orgy of masochism; it would appeal, in my opinion, only to a sadist.” Sweeney looked at him thoughtfully. He said, “No, I’m not a sadist. I can see your point about the appeal of the figure; I don’t know the answer. The instant I saw it, I knew I wanted to own it, but I haven’t the slightest idea why.”

  “Its appeal as an object of art?”

  “No, not that. It’s well done, cleverly executed, but it isn’t great art.”

  Reynarde pursed his lips. “Perhaps some subconscious association?”

  “It could be,” Sweeney said. “At any rate, thank you and I must be going.”

  Reynarde walked to the door with him and bowed slightly as they parted.

  As the door closed behind him, Sweeney wondered why he had wanted the statuette. And why, in particular, he had resented Raoul Reynarde’s probing into his reason for wanting it. He looked at the statuette in his hand, and shivered a little – mentally if not physically. It was neither pretty nor sensuous. Damn it, Reynarde was right; it would appeal only to a sadist, or to someone who had some abnormality in him.

  And yet he, Sweeney, had paid over twenty-four dollars of good money to take it home with him. Was he punch-drunk?

  No, he wasn’t. The fog inside his head was lifting, definitely. And through the fog, he almost had a glimpse of something that might have been the association Reynarde had suggested. Then the fog came down again.

  Well, it would come back. Sweeney sighed and started for the stairway. Coming up the stairs was a plump, beautiful young man with blond curly hair. They passed in the hallway, and the young man looked curiously at the statuette Sweeney was carrying but made no comment. He rang the bell of Reynarde’s apartment.

  Sweeney went on down the stairs.

  Outside, and the dark night was bright with lights, the air hot and humid. Sweeney walked west on Division Street and then south on Dearborn.

  He wondered how long he could keep going like this; how long he would have to keep going before he could eat and then sleep. The nausea was back with him now. Food was a disgusting thought, but it was a hurdle to be taken, a hurdle that had to be taken.

  Eventually.

  At Chicago Avenue he turned half a block west and went into a small clean restaurant and sat down at the counter.

  A man in a white apron that made Sweeney think of a surgeon came up on the other side of the counter and stood there. He stood there staring at the black statuette Sweeney had placed on the counter in front of him.

  “Mimi,” Sweeney said, “meet Joe. Joe, meet Mimi. Or is your name Joe, Joe?”

  The counterman grinned uncertainly. He said, “It’s close. Jack. What’s wrong with the little lady?”

  “She is screaming,” Sweeney said. He felt as though he wanted to, himself. “Jack, could you get me a very special dinner?”

  “Such as what? If we got what it takes, we can make it.”

  “Bread,” said Sweeney. “Two slices of white bread, plain, without butter. Not too fresh, but not really stale. With the crusts left on. On a white plate. I think maybe I could eat that. The bread, I mean, not the plate. Can you do it?”

  “I’ll ask the cook. Coffee, too?”

  “Black,” said Sweeney. “In a cup.”

  He closed his eyes and tried to concentrate on something to keep from thinking about the smells of the restaurant, but all he succeeded in doing was concentrating on the smells. When plate and cup rattled on the counter in front of him, he opened his eyes.

  He took a sip of the scalding coffee
and then began to nibble on one of the slices of bread. It was all right; it would go down and stay down.

  He was almost through with the second slice when the waiter came back. He stood leaning against the ledge, looking at the statuette. He said, “That thing sort of gels you, when you look at it. It gives you the willies. Where’d you get it?”

  “From a fairy,” Sweeney said. “How much do I owe you?”

  “About fifteen cents. Say, know what that statue makes me think of? The Ripper.”

  Sweeney almost dropped his cup of coffee; he put it down carefully.

  The waiter hadn’t noticed. He said, “I mean, a woman being attacked by the Ripper. No dame is that afraid of being raped or something. But a crazy guy with a knife in his hand coming after her – and she’s back in a corner maybe–” Sweeney got up slowly. He fumbled a five-dollar bill out of his wallet and put it down on the counter. He said, “Keep the change, Jack.” He grabbed Mimi firmly about the waist and went out.

  Again an automobile almost ran him down as he cut diagonally across Chicago Avenue.

  The fog was gone. He knew now what his hunch had been and why he’d wanted the Screaming Mimi. He should have got it when Reynarde had said the figure would appeal to a sadist; he would have got it then if his mind had been clear.

  But it was clear as gin now. An hour or two before she’d been killed, Lola Brent had sold a Screaming Mimi.

  The fact that she’d dragged down on the sale had nothing to do with her death, but the fact that she’d made that sale had.

  The purchaser had been an insane sadist who had waited outside and followed her home. It had been a break for him that she’d been fired and had gone straight home, where he could close up on her in the seclusion of the areaway. Would he have tried to kill her anyway, during her lunch hour, if she’d stayed on the job?

  His mind was clear now, but his body felt like hell.

  He walked faster. He could sleep now, and he had to sleep.

  He had to get home before he fell down.

  CHAPTER SIX

  In the morning, it was Friday. It was almost Friday noon.

  Sweeney woke and lay a while in bed, and then swung his feet out onto the floor and sat there a while. His head didn’t ache. Outside of that he couldn’t have found much to say for himself. The room seemed to be filled with an invisible fog. But he got his eyes focused on the clock and saw that it was eleven-forty. He’d slept about twelve hours.

  On top of the radio-phono, on the half that didn’t lift up, stood a little ten-inch-high black statuette. It was the figure of a naked girl, her arms thrust out to ward off a ripper, her mouth open in a silent, eternal scream. Her body, which would have been beautiful relaxed, was subtly distorted, rigid with terror. Only a sadist could have liked it. Sweeney wasn’t one; he shuddered a little and averted his eyes.

  But it woke him up, seeing the Screaming Mimi. It woke him up to nightmare.

  It made him want a drink; it made him think nostalgically of the sodden state of non-thinking in which he’d been only two days ago – a day and a half ago. It made him wish he was back there again.

  And why not? He had plenty of money. Why not go out, right now, and have a drink and another?

  Heat in waves came in at the open window. His body was wet with sweat. He was breathing hard.

  He stood up, making an unconscious gesture of pushing back the heat and the fog, and got a bathrobe out of the closet. He went down the hail to the bathroom and sat on the edge of the tub while it filled with cool water. Almost cold water.

  Getting into it woke him. He took a deep breath and sank down into it, clear to his neck, letting the coldness of it draw the heat from his body and feeling the mist clear from his mind.

  Warmth, he thought, is what man wants, what he lives for, what he works for, until he gets too much of it – and then coldness is a wonderful and refreshing thing. The thought of lying in an ever-cold grave, for instance, is a horrible thing in winter; in summer –

  But that was maudlin. Like thinking of Lola Brent, the ex-chorine who had loved a con-man so much she’d taken to the grift herself, to help him. And she’d sold a small black statuette to a man who’d looked from it to her –

  Sweeney swore. What did it matter to him, that a fading ex-pony was six feet under now? She’d have been there sooner or later anyway; five years from now, fifty years.

  Death is an incurable disease that men and women are born with; it gets them sooner or later. A murderer never really kills; he but anticipates. Always he kills one who is already dying, already doomed.

  Actually, he never hurts the one he kills. The hurt is to whoever loved him or her, and has to keep on living. The man who’d killed Lola Brent had hurt Sammy Cole more than he’d hurt Lola.

  If he, Sweeney, really came to hate Doc Greene and wanted to hurt him badly –

  He sat up in the tub. What if–?

  But no, that was silly. Sure, someone could have hated Doc Greene enough to want to get at him by killing Yolanda – but that left the other murders out of it; Lola Brent, Stella Gaylord, Dorothy Lee. A human being (a sane human being; but then, what is sanity?) couldn’t conceivably hate four men enough to kill the women they loved.

  And besides, it left out sadism and Mimi, and the Screaming Mimi was the key.

  He didn’t put his shoulders back down into the water; he got out of the tub instead and toweled himself off.

  As he finished, he watched the last of the water gurgle out of the tub, and he wondered – had he just committed a murder? Isn’t a tub of water, once drawn, an entity? A thing-in-itself that has existence, if not life? But then life, in a human body, may be analogous to water in a tub; through the sewerage of veins and arteries may it not flow back into some Lake Michigan, eventually into some ocean, when the plug is pulled? Yet even so, it is murder; that particular tub of water will never exist again, though the water itself will.

  He removed the evidence of the crime by rinsing out the tub, and went back to his room. He put on a pair of shorts and a pair of socks. That would be enough until he was ready to go out, in that heat.

  What was next? Stella Gaylord, B-girl on Madison Street. He might as well take it chronologically. The murder of Lola Brent had been two months ago; the second murder, that of Stella Gaylord, had been ten days ago.

  He put the stack of old newspapers on the chair, where he could reach it from the bed, and propped the pillow up against the footboard.

  Why not music? he thought. It always helped him concentrate; he could, for some strange reason, better remember what he read if he read it against a background of music. It was more vivid that way. The use of music was one thing the movie makers had discovered.

  He studied the shelf of albums, wondering what would go well with the murder of a B-girl. Something vast and mysterious, perhaps. His hand hesitated at Sacre du Printemps

  and moved on. Strauss’ Death and Transfiguration? The Pathetique? No, very beautiful but too corny. His hand went back to Death and Transfiguration. He put the records on and started the machine, then lay down on the bed and picked up the first paper, the one of ten days ago, that broke the Gaylord murder story.

  It was on page one, but in the bottom right corner, six inches of type under a one-column head:

  BODY OF GIRL SLAIN WITH KNIFE IS FOUND IN ALLEY

  Sweeney read the six inches of type and decided that, as far as really important details were concerned, they might as well have let the headline stand alone.

  Oh, there was the woman’s name and address – on West Madison Street – and the place where the murder had occurred – the mouth of an alley off Huron Street between State and Dearborn. The body had been discovered at three-thirty in the morning and, according to the physician who had examined the body, the woman had been dead less than an hour.

  Apparently there had been no robbery committed and – to Sweeney’s amazed amusement – the story stated that the victim had not been attacked.

  Po
lice suspected that a homicidal maniac was at large, although the Lola Brent murder had apparently been forgotten; it was not mentioned.

  The following day’s paper had a picture of Stella Gaylord; it was a poor picture, apparently blown up from a snapshot, and you could tell that she was pretty but that was about all. There was more about Stella, too, including the address of the West Madison Street bar where she’d been working on percentage. She had been last seen alive when she’d left there, alone, at two o’clock, an hour and a half before the discovery of her body.

  And, for the first time, the murder of Stella Gaylord was tied in with the murder of Lola Brent, with the suggestion that possibly the same psychopathic killer had killed both of them.

  The following day’s paper had a few added details, but no new developments.

  Sweeney got up to shut off the phonograph. The sight of the black statuette on top of it reminded him of something he had to do. He slipped on a bathrobe and went out into the hall, to the telephone.

  He got a long distance operator and put in a call to the Ganslen Art Company at Louisville. A few minutes later he had the general manager, a Ralph Burke, on the line.

  “This is the Chicago Blade,” Sweeney said. “Something about one of your statuettes has come up in connection with a murder investigation. It’s an SM-1. Remember it, off-hand?”

  “I’m afraid I’d have to look it up.”

  “Maybe this will help. It’s a figure of a terrified girl; somebody at your place called it a Screaming Mimi.”

  “Oh, yes, certainly. I remember it now. What do you want to know about it?”

  “Could you tell me how many of them you sold – and particularly how many of them you sold in Chicago?”

  “We didn’t sell many, I know. It didn’t turn out to be a popular number at all. In fact, we never got around to listing it in our catalogue. We made a trial lot of one gross and we’ve got most of them left. We gave each salesman a sample six months ago and some of them sold a few. If you want to hold the line a minute I can look up how many were sold in Chicago. Or shall I call you back?”