Talmage Powell

An Occasional Rat

1

St. Petersburg was exactly what I wanted, warm, lazy, clean. So far the first couple days I stayed under rover, sleeping late and sprawling on the white beach at Gulfport all afternoon. I eyed the blondes, watched the ripples chase each other across the warm blue waters of Boca Ceiga bay, and looked sleepily into the distance, where the keys ringing in the bay were darker humps of blue against the peaceful horizon.

Then the third afternoon I got to seeing things. The pelicans were Liberators and Flying Forts; the wheeling gulls were Corsairs — or screaming, diving Zeros. The white beach and lazily nodding palms brought a burning vision to my mind of a tiny dot in the Pacific, an island no one had ever heard of until a few guys — I among them — had bought the island from the little yellow monkeys of Japan with blood and sweat and angrily whining lead. That afternoon I decided to go back to work.

Howard Conklin, my partner in what we believe fondly is a private detective agency, had wired me that he was leaving the agency in charge of “Morge” while he was out of town. The wire had caught me in Texas, enroute to St. Pete, and now, catching an antiquated street car, I began wondering what “Morge” was like. Howard Conklin — in keeping with his grumpy, silent nature — had told me nothing of the new dick, who had been hired to replace me not long after I had been inducted.

Sam, the colored gent who ran the elevator, got one eye open long enough to register amazement when I walked in. I had to tell him how many Japs I had sent to their ancestors while he ran the creaking elevator to the fourth floor. I left his chuckles behind me, walked down the corridor.

It was a nice feeling that waved over me as I stood before the office door. The old stand. I read the legend on the door three times: “Conklin and Frazee. Private Investigations.”

I opened the door. A girl at the desk in the far side of the room looked up at me. I closed the door slowly, not saying anything, just looking. She was everything you think a Florida blonde ought to be, trim, neat figure in a gay print dress, soft, oval face, a cloud of hair like golden sunshine, ruby red lips.

She said, “Yes?”

“I’m Frazee. Is...”

“Frazee!” She didn’t squeal it, but it had that effect. “My! Hamilton Frazee in three dimensions!” Her laugh had a nice quality indeed. “You look just as Howard Conklin said you would! That overstaffed, bald-pated, but very likable jerk has told me so many fibs...”

It sank in slowly, “You... You’re Morge!”

My tone caused her to look hurt. Her face fell. “Is it that bad?”

I forced a smile. “It’s fine, but Conk should have told me.” She was smiling again now, and I stumbled over words. “That is. I didn’t know. Sort of a shock...” What the devil had Conk been thinking of? A dame hired as a private shamus!

She enjoyed it hugely as my tongue got tied up. “Of course it’s a shock, Frazee, to find me here. But back when Conk hired me, the manpower situation was at its very worst. Conk was desperate for someone to take office routine off his shoulders. I answered the ad he ran in the paper. When I told him I had worked for the Peterson agency in New York five years ago, he gave me a try. I must he doing okay — I’m still here.”

Her smile was infectious. Grinning. I offered my hand. “I’m glad to meet you, detective Merge.”

“The first name is Millie,” she said. “And the last name is pronounced ‘More-gay’, not ‘Morgue’, despite the spelling.”

With a gay sort of seriousness we shook hands, and I found myself wondering why the devil I hadn’t headed for the office the moment I hit St. Pete.

At that instant, the door behind me opened. It was Lieutenant of Detectives George Bailey. He drew up in surprise at the sight of me, a grin wreathing his hanging, homely face. “Frazee! You dirty bum. I’m glad to see you!”

“That goes double!” Amid his hearty guffaws, we shook hands warmly. George Bailey was really a right guy. He had a neat place out at Pass-A-Grille, almost in the shadows of the swank hotel where the elite stayed at twenty bucks a day. We’d had a lot of fun in that eighteen foot boat of Bailey’s. He lived, I knew, above the limits of his income, but if he accepted a spot of cash from a straight playing gambling joint now and then and kept the buzzards and crooks out, that was okay by me. And I could see nothing wrong in his dropping Conk and myself a little information, as George had done in the past, for a small cut of the fee. A lot of our business came across six mile Gandy causeway from Tampa. A lot more of it came from the elderly, retired folk to whom St. Pete was a haven. These people invaribly were reticent, shunning publicity, and such business was like digging for oil-rich when you struck, but never flowing right in your front yard. Tips from George had caused the oil to flow on more than one occasion.

George quieted after a moment, wiping laughter-tears from his eyes. He sobered. “Conk around?”

The luscious blonde package at my elbow sat down at my old desk and said, “Conk’s gone to Clearwater. Wouldn’t say for what.”

“Close-mouthed, eh?” Bailey said. “Conk’s like that. Have you seen him, Ham?”

I shook my head. “What’s up?”

Bailey frowned. He tilted his hat and ran his fingers through his thinning hair. “Maybe nothing. But maybe a lot. There was a prowler in John Rayfield’s house last night. Conk tell you anything of it?”

I whistled softly, again shaking my head. Mention of Rayfield caused me to sit a little straighter on the edge of Conk’s desk.

Back during the Florida boom, John Rayfield had made a pile. He’d pulled out just before the crash and set out to make himself a power behind the throne. With his moolah and fine sense of organization, he’d just about succeeded. Half a hundred charges, ranging from blackmail to murder, had been brought against him, and dismissed for lack of evidence or the failure of the memory of a witness.

“Conk’s told me nothing,” I said. “He’s written me exactly one post card and one telegram since I went in service, and I haven’t seen him since the day I was inducted.”

Bailey mulled that over, helping himself to a cigarette in the half-empty pack on Conk’s desk.

He lighted the fag and said, “I may be causing you a wild goose chase, Frazee. But I’d run down and see Rayfield. Conklin might already be on the case. He dropped around headquarters this morning, asking about the burglar in Rayfield’s house.” Bailey’s eyes narrowed. “If you ask me, Conk was showing too much interest in the incident. But I couldn’t get a thing out of him. He just asked the circumstances and left.”

I turned to Millie Morge. “But I thought Conk had been out of town several days. His wire that caught me in Texas...”

“He came back,” she said. “He was out of town four, five days ago — when he sent you the wire — came back early this morning. He read the paper, saw the item of the prowler in Rayfield’s house. He left here, evidently going to headquarters then, and about an hour later phoned that he was going to Clearwater.”

I studied Bailey. I had the feeling that something big was growing to the breaking point. There was really no telling where Conk was. He could be in Clearwater, he could be right here in St. Pete. He worked in devious ways that usually got results despite their unconventionality.

I said, “Rayfield phone the cops, Bailey, about the burglar?”

Frowning, he crushed out the cigarette. “That’s the funny part of it. The cop on the beat out there last night heard gunfire in Rayfield’s house. The cop ran to the house, burst in the front door. But if he expected kind words from Rayfield for charging so heroically to the rescue, the cop was disappointed. Rayfield gave him a tongue lacing, swore no one had been in the house. Rayfield claimed he’d been cleaning a gun and it had gone off. But would a man be cleaning a gun at three in the morning, dressed in his pajamas, his hair tousled, and his eyes bright from waking from a deep sleep?”

“The cop noticed all that?”

Bailey nodded. “He also noticed muddy footprints at the edge of the carpet. Rayfield finally admitted someone had been in the house, but swore it was only a tramp. He told the cop to go home and forget it. Since it was Rayfield talking, we haven’t pushed our noses in much. But it might be profitable for you, Frazee.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll mosey out that way. If I smell out a fee, we’ll cut you in.”

“Sure, Ham. Drop out to the house soon. I’ve been hoarding some choice Scotch.” He left the office like a good-natured elephant that’s greedy and overpowering in its selfish strength, yet that’s big enough to admit unblushingly that the flaws are there.

I eyed Millie Morge’s blonde loneliness. I’d been thinking about dinner, soft music, but now I sighed heavily, clamped my Panama on my head. “You can scoot along home now, if you like,” I said. At the doorway I paused. “In case this business should pan out to be nothing, where can I phone you?”

With a laugh containing just the right amount of coquettishness, she gave me her address and phone number. I left the office.

The sun had slipped in the glittering waters of the Gulf when I alighted from a cab in front of John Rayfield’s house. It was the sort of house you’d expect a man like him to own. Crisp, bright stucco, a broad lawn, well-kept palms nodding languidly.

A lean butler answered my sing, took my name, and disappeared in the house. He returned short moments later, nodded to me. “Mr. Rayfield will see you.”

The interior of the house was rambling, expansive, the furniture bright and square and modern. The butler pulled a door open and I entered John Rayfield’s study.

He rose, shook hands with me. He was tall, even taller than I, well-groomed, with a deceptive quiet, lazy air about him that was belied by his thin, shrewd face and piercing dark brown eyes. He nodded his proud head, which was beginning to gray faintly, toward a cream-colored, leather-upholstered chair.

“I’m glad to see you, Frazee. I guess you’ve got some tall tales of war to tell.”

“A few,” I waited until he sat down behind his massive maple desk. A soft breeze, rising with night, gently rustled the pastel drapes behind me. I said, “Has Howard Conklin been around this way, Rayfield?”

His pearl-like teeth gleamed in a thin smile. “Conk made a nuisance of himself, asking about the so-called prowler in my house last night.”

I leaned my elbows on my knees. “I’ve known you fairly well for three or four years, Rayfield. I’ve done you a turn or two...”

“You were well paid,” he reminded.

I nodded. “You know,” I continued, “that I can keep my mouth shut. Was there a prowler?”

I didn’t like the way his face changed, darkening, becoming more saturnine. “Conk was after the same dope.” His gaze bored into me. “What are you two after, Frazee?”

I mulled over a half a dozen possible answers, decided on the truth. “I don’t know what Conk is up to. I’ll be frank with you, John. I...”

“...Want to work for me,” he finished. He shook his head. “I don’t need your help, Frazee. But I’ll tell you what I will do.” His long, nervous fingers flicked the edge of the desk blotter. “I’ll give you a hundred dollars to stay away from me, believe nothing you hear about me. To leave me strictly alone and mind your own damn business!” Voice hardening, he rose to his feet as he finished the sentence.

My pulse had gained tempo. I said, “I’m afraid I can’t...”

He was around the desk in a flash. “The hell you can’t. Look, Frazee, you and Conk stick your noses where they shouldn’t be too damn much.”

“We’re trying to smell out work, Rayfield.” I added quietly: “Is that a threat?”

His face was white about the nostrils. I had the sudden feeling that John Rayfield was scared, plenty. After a moment, he said, “No, it isn’t a threat. But it is an offer. I... I’ll make it two hundred. Here,” his hand flicked to his pocket, “take a hundred on account. When you see Conk, tell him to keep away from me and anything that breaks near me.” He forced the hundred dollar bill in my side coat pocket. “I’ll give Conk the other hundred, Frazee.”

He ushered me to the door. He and the butter were a smoothly working team. Before I knew it. I was politely but firmly shown the way out and the front door closed behind me.

I stood on the walk a moment, telling myself I had slipped. I’d been away too long, lost the touch. Before my induction. Rayfield wouldn’t have got rid of me so easily. Then I shrugged, decided to head back to the office. A little bug stirring unpleasantly in my mind kept telling me something was up, something screwy that caused Rayfield to want to hire Conk and me to stay off the case, if case it was. Perhaps I could find something in Conk’s files in the office which would enlighten me.

The elevators had stopped for the night. I walked up, went down the corridor, keyed the door of our office open. Then I stopped dead and clutched the door jamb.

I’d been looking forward a long time to a reunion with Conk. But not like this. He was lying in the middle of the floor. He was still bleeding a little where the bullet had hit him high in the cheek and angled upward into his brain.

2

I closed the office door, and raging anger took the place of the hard lump of grief in my throat. Trembling, I shuffled closer to the man who had been my best friend. Crazy things registered in my seething mind; the way his eyes seemed to be staring straight into eternity; the ticking of the watch on my wrist. I looked at the watch. Seven thirty three, and the second hand kept crawling around. Time kept moving; the blurred sounds of traffic down on the street drifted up to the office. I was aware of it all — but Conk wasn’t.

I brushed my hand across my eyes, looked about the office. Conk was lying in the midst of the wreckage of our files. Papers rustled over the floor. It had been a thorough search — too thorough perhaps to have been successful. Every place we kept papers had been exhausted in a quick but efficient search. Even the pockets of Conk’s short-stout gray suit had been turned wrong side out.

I picked up Howard Conklin’s battered straw hat, which had rolled a few feet from his body. Before his wife had died a couple years ago. Conk used to bide a five spot under the band of his hat every now and then, beer money. It had been a silent joke between Conk’s wife and myself, for she knew of his hiding place. Yet she never revealed it, letting him have the pleasure of thinking right to the end that he was snitching a fin for drinks like a small boy swiping a piece of pie. She’d been that kind of woman.

Sweat-stained, sharply creased, a paper folded several times was nestled under the hat band. Blurred in spots and interspersed with (rude doodles, a few short items of memoranda had been jotted sloppily:

“Find Burt Morgan first.” Then doodles, while Conk had been thinking. “After Burt Morgan, logical to contact John Rayfield.” A string of dollar marks. Then: “What was the real cause of the fight between Burt Morgan and York Rayfield — John Rayfield’s son — in a bar five years ago? May have bearing on case. No one seems to know why they were scrapping.”

The hat slipped from my fingers. I folded the paper, put it in my inside coat pocket. I looked at Conk’s slightly parted lips and a chill rippled over me. With Rayfield, his son York, and Burt Morgan all mentioned on that paper, I knew my hunch had been right. This was big; too big for Conk. Too big and too crazy for me. Conk had memoed: “Find Burt Morgan first.”

But Burt Morgan had been dead for five years...

I was reaching stiffly for the phone when the door opened. Lieutenant George Bailey was already here. His face ash gray, he crossed the room, said heavily: “I got a call not ten minutes ago, Ham. But I didn’t think you’d ever do it.”

“I’d ever do it...!”

Gone now were his comradely insults, his jovial reference to me as a dirty bum. “Folks said Conk was knocking down on you while you were gone. It that the kind of evidence you found?” He indicated the littered floor.

Around the dryness in my throat, I said thickly, “I always knew Conk was as honest...”

“And I guess it hurt like hell when you found he wasn’t,” Bailey said heavily. As he moved closer, the toe of his blocky black shoe bumped the overturned waste-basket. Without taking his eyes off me, George stopped, reached in the receptacle. When his hand came out, he was holding a gun by the tip of the barrel in his fingertips to keep fingerprints intact. I knew the gun was the murder weapon, and it was mine.

Then Bailey pulled his own gun. “I’m sorry as hell, Ham. But friendship can’t count now. I guess... I got to take you in for murder.”

My fingers dug against the top of the desk. “I wouldn’t be this crude, George,” I said hoarsely.

His eyes wavered. Etched on his face were lines of pain and distaste for his task. “I wish I could believe that you’d not mess around the scene of a crime, Ham... if you did commit it. But who knows what a man will do when he’s insane from anger? If you found that Conk, your closest friend, had been rooking you all this lime...” His voice trailed off and after a throbbing moment he added: “I got to take you in, Ham. Or turn in my shield. I must believe what I don’t want to believe — that Conk came back to the office. You’d been going through the files. There was an argument, and you jerked your gun out of your desk drawer.”

That sort of testimony from a cop, no matter how unwillingly given, would cook me — but good. I had returned from the hell of war only to find the blood of my best friend staining my own doorstep.

In a blur of motion I swept up the inkwell in my sweat-slick palm, dropping to one side of the desk. It was an invitation to suicide Biley’s gun blasted and the bullet tore padding from the left shoulder of my coat. Before he could fire again, the inkwell had smashed him between the eyes. Ink blinded him, and blood and ink mixed in swiftly-running ribbons down his heavy face.

As he staggered back, I closed in. My stomach knotted in anticipation of a bullet. I hit him hard on the cheek; his feet tangled; he reeled back toward the window. Twisting his gun with one hand, I hit him again. His head slammed back against the steel window sashing. He went limp, slid slowly to the floor.

It had taken only seconds. I stood breathing hard a moment, dropped Bailey’s gun in my pocket, and dragged him to the closet across the office. The tiny cubicle wasn’t large enough to hold him outstretched, but I made him as comfortable as possible, closed the door on him and locked it.

I left the office. Thinking that someone might have heard Bailey’s shot, I went to the rear of the corridor, down the service stairs. I emerged in the alley hack of the building, walked down it with my shoulders hunched. I had a big night before me, and thinking of it, the skin crawled unpleasantly along my spine. It was as plain as the nose on the face of a transparent ghost — Howard Conklin had discovered something from Burt Morgan’s past which was worth sugar. Conk had tried to cash it in. It had been dynamite.

Morgan had been before my time in St. Pete. Five years ago he had washed off his boat in Boca Ceiga Bay — yet Conk had been hunting him. The rest of the affair was just as crazy. But there was one tangible item I could put my finger on — John Rayfield.

Twilight was turning to darkness as I stepped out of the cab in front of Rayfield’s house. I paid the driver, went up the walk, squinting in the heavy gloom.

I wiped sweat from my palm on my trouser leg, curled my fingers about the front door knob. I turned it slowly.

There was no one in the hallway, no sound in the house, and I eased inside. Rayfield’s study door was open a few inches. A light was on in there. The luxurious pastel carpet deadened the sounds of my footsteps.

He was hunched over his desk, scanning papers, and he didn’t notice me in the doorway for a few seconds. Then as if sensing my presence, his head jerked up. His eyes were startled as he saw me, and he gripped the edge of the desk as if to spring erect.

I stepped in the room, closed the door. My right hand was in my coat pocket, touching the gun I’d taken from Bailey.

“I told the butler you weren’t to come back in here,” he began.

“Don’t blame the butler, Rayfield. I didn’t ring.”

He looked at my hand in my pocket, my face, and his eyes hardened. He sat down slowly. “What do you want?”

I reached in my trousers pocket with my free hand. I tossed the hundred dollar bill he had forced on me on his desk.

“I’m turning down your invitation to stay out of the case, Rayfield.”

He looked at the bill, his lips tightening, then up at me.

“You’re making a mistake. People don’t buck me long.”

“I know,” I said. “You’ve got a bunch of tough guys on your payroll. But none of them are here now.” I sat on the edge of his desk. “I’m not here to strong arm you, Rayfield. I just want a friendly talk about Burt Morgan.”

He came alive then, his eyes, the high color in his narrow, sharply-featured face; the skin across his knuckles went white under sudden tension. It made the room suddenly close and unpleasant, reminding me what I was letting myself in for by tangling with Rayfield.

He tried to sound casual. “What do you know about Burt Morgan?”

“Nothing more than common knowledge. I know that he was on his way from Gulfport to Pass-A-Grille, alone in his boat, when a sudden squall blew up and washed him overboard in the middle of Boca Ceiga Bay a little over five years ago.”

John Rayfield rose. At the window he turned to look at me again, caught me watching him warily.

“I know also,” I said, “that you and Burl Morgan were once business partners.”

He nodded slowly. I wondered if he knew that Howard Conklin was lying dead on the floor of my office at this moment unless Bailey had got loose and taken Conk’s body away. I watched anger, indecision flit over Rayfield’s lean face. Then he said abruptly, “I don’t want you picking up hearsay, Frazee.”

“That’s fine.”

“During the land boom,” he went on, “Burt Morgan and I made a pile of money. We dissolved the partnership shortly before the crash. I had sense enough to see the crash coming and pulled out. Morgan didn’t.”

“He went broke?”

“Practically, I didn’t see much of him after that for awhile. Sometime later it looked as though Morgan was getting on his feet again. He sold a chunk of beach property to Roxlin Hotels — the big Northern chain — and made a pile of cash. I don’t know the details, but it seemed he lost the money he made on that deal. Morgan was broke when he was washed off his boat in the bay.”

“You tell a nice tale, Rayfield. But there’s one little hole. Where did Morgan get the money to buy the beach property that he resold to Roxlin Hotels?”

“How the hell should I know?” He leaned across the desk toward me. “You shouldn’t forget that you’re a guest in my house, Frazee.”

“I’m not forgetting — anything. I’m thinking that something smelled in that deal with Roxlin Hotels. I’m thinking that Howard Conklin got a whiff of the odor.”

He controlled his rage with an effort. “Have a drink, Frazee, and be on your way!”

“No thanks. I can drink later. I’ll be on my way when you tell me who that prowler was in your house last night?”

I thought for a moment he was going to jump me, but he sat down quietly and said, “That’s none of your business.”

“Was it Howard Conklin?” I said. “Was Conk prowling around, trying to get some dope on your past dealings with Burt Morgan?”

His voice throbbed. “You’re all wet, Frazee. Glad you stopped in. Phone me sometime.”

“But I’m not leaving until I learn...”

A latch clicked behind me and York Rayfield tautly nervous voice said, “You’re leaving now, Frazee.”

I turned slowly. York was standing in the doorway. He had his father’s sinewy slimness and slight, shrewd face. But there was something lacking in York’s features which his father’s contained — a cautiousness, a ruthlessness tempered with deliberation. York’s petulant, spoiled mouth quivered with his quick, explosive anger. He came toward me, the gun in his hand centering at a spot between my eyes. It gave me a distinctly unpleasant feeling, for I knew York was the type to shoot first and consider the wisdom of the action later.

“I’m not as subtle as my father, Frazee,” he said. “I’ve been listening in the next room. We like you — but you’ve worn out your welcome. Now gel the hell out of here.”

I heard the desk drawer slide open and knew that John Ray field had reached for a gun. The gun in my own pocket felt very inadequate now.

Sweat popping from my pores made my skin feel sticky. With as much grace as possible, I shrugged, looked from the gun in John’s hand to the weapon in the hand of his son. They said nothing, and the room was very still. I tried a mocking little how that didn’t quite come off and left the room.

York followed me to the door. “Don’t get ideas about coming back here, Frazee, until you’re invited!” He slammed the door in my face, and I stood in the hall fighting down blind rage, convincing myself that discretion really is the better part of valor. I was working for Conk now, and to save my own hide. To work effectively I had to keep a whole skin and stay out of the hands of the police.

I went down the hall, closed the front door softly behind me. Turning left on the sidewalk, I glanced back at the house. And my heart bounced right up in my throat, as I barely caught the shifting shadow at the rear corner of the house in my vision. It was a shadow denser than the shadows of night, and after that one instant that it had been in my gaze, I wasn’t sure that it was even there.

Without breaking stride, I walked on up the sidewalk. I reached a hedge at the next lot, dropped behind it. I wormed my way around until I was crouched in the shadow of the hedge at the corner of Rayfield’s lawn.

I saw the dark form again, dimly, like a piece of the pineapple palm at the back corner of the house detaching itself.

With night a cool breeze had begun to ripple overland off the Gulf. But I was sweating. That skulking form ahead of me in the night had no reason to be there. I was certain that it was not John Rayfield or his son York.

Army training in scouting stood me in good stead. And the memory of Conk with the life blasted from him and the police on my neck as soon as Bailey broke out of my office and put in an alarm didn’t hurt any. I felt capable of hiding in the shadow of a blade of grass.

Inching my way forward I neared the palm, until its fronds stood out distinctly against the dark blue night sky. I edged to the palm. And the prowler was gone.

I heard the soft thud of a footstep behind me, whirled, off balance as the dark figure hit me. I had felt capable — but my adversary had gone me one better. While I’d been scouting him, he’d wormed his way behind me in the cloak of darkness.

We fell, he on top, thrashing. He was set, organized, and it gave him an advantage. He hit me twice with a gun barrel before I could get my fists clenched.

I heard a hoarse whisper several feet away in the darkness: “No, Burt!” But the gun barrel crashed down on top of my head and all the strength drained from me.

Against the pattern of stars and pain whirling in my bursting brain, I thought: “He got the drop on me because there were two prowlers in the night, one of which I never saw. Burt the dead man who has just knocked me coocoo. The other, the one who whispered and whom I saw from the street, is much too blonde and lovely to be doing this sort of thing, Millie Morge.”

I felt very sad that Millie was mixed in this. But it was too much trouble to think or feel. I shouted against the pain in my head, but actually emitted only a retching, gasping groan. Then I went to sleep.

3

I regained consciousness with a peculiar, bitter taste in my mouth. I sat up dizzily and as my senses cleared realized I had passed out with my mouth open and my face pressed against the grass. I spat out flecks of grass, which doesn’t taste nearly so nice as it looks, and grimaced.

One massive ache rode my shoulders in the spot my head should have been. I stood, getting faintly sick with the motion. It was still night, deeper night, and the moon had risen, a huge silver orb such as Florida alone can know.

I made my way quietly around the side of the house. I had other things on my mind at the moment besides Rayfield. In my present condition I didn’t want to argue with him, anyway.

Half an hour later I entered the sort of place for which I was looking, Bayside Tavern, crowded to the rafters with its lights very low. A cop would have had to rub shoulders with me to have seen me in there.

The fat, bald bartender served me three generous slugs of rye. They had no effect on my keyed-up nervous system except to put a spark of pain-free life in my throbbing, expiring head. I turned from the bar, and from a booth in back put in a call to a pal in New York. I was remembering Millie Morge’s statement that she had worked with the Peterson Detective Agency in New York five years back. The call was almost an hour getting through. Two more ryes saved me from being a nervous wreck under the black tension of waiting.

I came out of the booth finally, and something inside me had died. She was a very beautiful blonde bundle; and a very convincing little liar. No Peterson agency had been operating at the time she had claimed. She was a fraud, having worked her way into the Conklin and Frazee agency for some ulterior reason. She was neck deep in murder, and I knew I was going to hate to say the things I must say to her.

Her apartment was in a three-story, six apartment, stucco building facing the drive that ringed in Mirror Lake. I was fifty feet from the place when a woman came down the white stone steps, turned down the sidewalk. She paused to cross the street, turning her head, and the light from a street lamp fell full on her face. It was Millie. She started toward the taxi stand on the next corner.

My cab was running with darkened headlights when hers, a block ahead, stopped before a white, non-imposing bungalow on Tangerine Avenue, eighteen blocks south of Central avenue, the main stem. The house was set well back from the street with two bedraggled palms in the sandy front yard.

As I alighted from my cab I saw her, in the moonlight, glance about and hurry up the walk. I cut across the vacant lot next to the house, plunging through waist high weeds. She was fumbling in her handbag when I reached the edge of the porch.

She whirled, a small cry bubbling up in her throat.

I said, “Peterson didn’t give you such a hot recommendation.”

She was almost buried in shadows, but I could see her sag, as if with fatigue. She said nothing as I stepped close to her. The house hadn’t been occupied in some time, evidently. Sand lay in tiny ridges on the porch, gritting softly but harshly under my feet.

“You were going to unlock the door,” I said.

I could feel her gaze on my face. She started to say something, laid her hand gently on my arm, and I shook it off. “Find your key.”

Her trembling hand rattled the key in the lock. The door opened with a scrape of rusty hinges.

“You first,” I said in a whisper. “I’ll be right behind you. Carry on as if I weren’t here.”

She hesitated until I thought she was going to refuse. Then she took a step forward; I held her arm, straining my eyes in the darkness. We came to a door and she tapped on it lightly. She said aloud, “It’s Millicent.”

She stiffened as a key grated in the lock. Light spilled out as the door opened, outlining a tall gaunt, elderly man, powerful in a rawboned, seasoned way. He jerked back at sight of me and I had a glimpse of a lean, deeply-line face, eyes that had known misery, and cotton white hair.

Millie said, “It’s... that is, be followed me. This is Frazee.”

I gave her a little push, closed the door behind us. The man moved away from me as I pulled Bailey’s gun. The blinds were drawn in the room, taped tightly at the edges to the window sills to allow not a pin-point of light to escape outside. It was a makeshift domicile at best, a narrow cot, a small table littered with magazines, another table cluttered with wax wrappings from sandwiches, coffee cup and electric perculator.

I said, “You should have been more careful and taken the gun from me when you clouted me one on Rayfield’s lawn.”

“We didn’t know it was you, Ham,” Millie said brokenly, “until we had already... already clouted you one.”

I looked at the man. “How does it feel to come to life after being washed off your boat five years ago, Morgan?”

He looked at Millie; she caught his gaze and said, “All right, Frazee, he is Burt Morgan.”

“And you’re his daughter?”

She nodded. “I... I’m Millicent Morgan.”

“Sit down, Morgan,” I motioned with the gun and he obeyed, “and we’ll talk about Howard Conklin’s murder!”

Morgan whitened, half rose. “Conklin... murdered...”

“That’s right,” I said. “And maybe I should tell you I can be unpleasant as hell when I want to.”

Gray-faced, he slumped back in his chair, suddenly becoming a drooping tired old man. “I guess you could be,” he said thickly. “But there’ll be no need for that.”

Millie began to smoke nervously. I said, “That’s good. I want it from the very beginning, from the time you and John Rayfield were business partners. All the answers, Morgan, beginning with your first bankruptcy,”

“You seem to know a good bit about it already.” He twined his fingers, looked at them, up at me. “But you know only what you’ve learned from Rayfield. He didn’t tell you, naturally, why I went bankrupt — that he stole me blind, while I trusted him. Our partnership dissolved; I tried one last gamble; and the crash hit me.”

“Than came the deal with Roxlin Hotels,” I said.

“You have been learning things,” Millie said. She rose and faced me. “Ham, I feel terrible about Conk, honestly. And I feel awful that dad struck you on Rayfield’s lawn. But we didn’t know who you were, creeping up on us like that. But you can put the gun up now. I... I guess we did wrong in not taking you in our confidence in the very beginning.”

She watched as I dropped the gun in my pocket. Maybe I was playing the fool, letting my head be turned by the vision of her face, the nearness of her, but neither she nor her father made a move toward me.

She eased back in her chair. “Yes, Roxlin Hotels. Dad sold them a piece of beach property.”

“It was the thing, I hoped,” Morgan said, as if he were recalling a nightmare, “to set me back on my feet.”

“But where’d you get the money to buy the beach property?”

His face like a statue sculptured out of ashes, he looked at me unflinchingly. “The beach property was stolen.” The way he faced me like that raised my estimation of him a few notches.

“It isn’t as bad as it sounds, Ham,” Millie said. “But it was wrong, yes, and we’ve paid plenty.”

Morgan laughed harshly. “Paid isn’t the word!” He looked up at me. “When Roxlin wanted to buy the property, Frazee, they contacted me to act as agent — I had a couple of friends in the Roxlin company. I had trouble locating the owner of the strip of property they wanted to buy, but from Bailey, who lived near, I discovered that the owner was a recluse, an old miser named Blodgett. Blodgett was seriously ill when I saw hint and wouldn’t talk business. Roxlin’s offer had a time limit. I went back couple days later to see Blodgett. Later that night. Blodgett died without a single relative or heir...” He choked off.

“I can understand,” I said, “how you felt. It was the chance of a lifetime to recoup. You forged a bill of sale to the property, dating it the last night you saw Blodgett. There was no heirs or relatives to contest it.”

“Yes,” Morgan said hollowly. “Early the next morning I went back to Blodgett’s. At that moment not a soul knew the old man was dead. The doctor drove up on a routine call just as I arrived. We went in, discovered Blodgett dead.” He rose, nervously beat his fist in his palm. “The plan hit me in that moment. Can you imagine anything crashing into your brain, Frazee? That’s the way it was. From the moment I saw Blodgett lying dead I knew that I hadn’t the strength to resist it. I got a letter from the dresser with Blodgett’s signature on it as the doctor worked. Later in the day I forged the hill of sale with the signature.”

“Then,” I said, “somebody found out.”

“John Rayfield!” he breathed harshly. “Somehow Rayfield found out, plunged me light into hell. I paid. And paid. York, John’s son, must have known of the hold his father had over me. He — York, that is — began to force his attentions on Millicent. But rather than have her marry him, sacrifice herself for ray mistake, I faked the accident in Boca Ceiga five years ago.”

Millie touched my forearm. “We slipped away from St. Pete then. Ham, and my father, under another name, has slaved for the past five years, wanting to have money to make amends somehow. He intended to come back here and tell people he’d been suffering from amnesia from a head wound in the boating accident five years ago.”

“Then why this?” I asked. “Why go in hiding?”

“I wanted to get Rayfield,” Morgan’s face twisted, “and get him good. I intended to stay under cover, work quietly, until I did get him. But Howard Conklin saw me one night. Conklin was in St. Petersburg before you came here, Frazee. Conklin knew of the affair, recognized me. He knew it would be worth plenty to me if he got the full dope on the blackmailer.”

“And Conklin got it,” I said. I looked at Millie. “Conk’s actions caused you to start working for him?”

She nodded. “We weren’t sure — until I had worked with him awhile and got to know him — that Conk wouldn’t try a few years of blackmail himself. I wanted to be near him, know what he was doing and finding out.”

“Your father, then, was the prowler in John’s Rayfield’s house?”

Morgan said heavily, “Yes. I wanted to see his files, his account books. If I was going to have to fight fire with fire to live decently again, I wanted enough dirt on Rayfield to keep him off my neck.”

That made sense. And it would also explain why Rayfield had tried to buy me from any interest in the case. If Morgan had found anything, Rayfield hadn’t wanted me digging around and finding it out. But still, there was a lot unanswered. I wanted to know... My thoughts broke abruptly as, simultaneously, footsteps sounded on both the front and back porches. The front door crashed open. Feet echoed in the darkened living room. Millie clutched my arm, Morgan clenched his fists.

Then Lieutenant George Bailey’s voice came through the thin partition. “I’ve got a flashlight in one hand, a gun in the other. This is the cops! Open up!”

I doused the light. There was a short moment of silence; then the house shuddered as Bailey’s weight struck the door. The second time he struck the door panels I was ready for him. I jerked the door open. He lurched in, a bulky shadow in the dark room. From my pocket, I had taken the gun. Bailey made a gagging sound as I swiped him across the side of the head. He hit the floor with a thud. Bailey’s man in back was yelling.

We ran down the front walk as the cop in the rear crashed through the back door. At the police car at the curb, I stabbed through the open window with my hand. The keys were not in the ignition. We were afoot.

“As they say in the movies, scatter men! And the first one caught is a rotten egg. I hate like hell to leave you, Millie, but...”

“Where are you going?”

We were already fading in the darkness. “To throttle the truth out of a Rayfield!”

We burrowed into the cloak of night in different directions in the vacant lots as the cop and Bailey, staggering, reached the front porch of the bungalow. Personally, I stayed away from open lawns, where I would be starkly outlined in moonlight. I knew Millie and Burt Morgan were doing likewise.

4

I wanted rest and food, and my head had settled to a steady, pounding roar as if it had a big Deisel engine inside of it, but downtown, I eased in a busy all night restaurant, went to the booth in back, and began phoning bars. The third call hit the jackpot. “Sure,” Gibney, the bartender at the Blue Mirror said, “York. Rayfield is here, drinking alone, as if he’s waitin’ for somebody. Want I should call him?”

“No. I’m coming down. You needn’t mention, even, that anyone called.”

I could imagine Gibney shrugged his fat shoulders. Matter-of-factly he said, “I won’t tell him you called.”

York Rayfield was turning his glass in his hands, making moist rings on the table, when my shadow fell across him. He looked up, almost dropped the glass. I slid quickly in the semi-circular, maroon leather booth, pressed my hand across his mouth. With my other hand, I jabbed him in the ribs with my gun. His eyes rolled: his body arched away from me.

“I’m a desperate critter, York. When I take my hand away from your mouth, don’t get any fancy ideas about yelling.”

I slid my hand away. Breathing heavily, he straightened his tie with studied nonchalance. “I’ve seen the papers, Frazee. I know how you knocked off Conklin. Every cop in town must be looking for you.”

He looked at me as if he wanted me to deny it. I said, “Well, they can’t burn me but once. Pay your check.”

He wilted, wincing under the pressure of the gun. By the time I had steered him out of the bar, into a cab, and rode him silently to Millie Morgan’s apartment, his breath was rasping and he was trembling all over.

The apartment was empty. York sat down abruptly on the studio couch, his face glistening with a clammy looking sheen of sweat in the light from the small lamp I turned on.

“For the thirtieth time since we got in the cab, Frazee,” he begged, “what do you want?” He fumbled, got a handkerchief, shakily wiped his face. “Say something, Frazee! Damn you...”

I said, “Give, York. I know the whole story. That your father. John, was blackmailing Morgan, that you intended to use the weapon of blackmail to marry Morgan’s daughter, that Morgan faked an accident to get out of it. I know that Howard Conklin saw Morgan. Conk begun working, got dope on your father. Your father killed Conklin because Conk learned the details about the blackmailer.”

“No, Frazee,” he begged. His shirt collar was wilted limply. “You’re right about some of it. I happened to follow Morgan one night. He left a package at a vacant lot. He acted so damn mysterious. I took a look at the package he left. Morgan came creeping up on me just at the moment I discovered the package was a bundle of money. That’s what led Morgan to believe that I or my father was blackmailing him.”

York swallowed drily, went on: “Morgan was insane with anger. He came to my father after that, got kicked out of the house. Later Morgan tried to beat hell out of me in a bar.” Conk had mentioned that on the paper in his hatband I remembered.

“Keep talking,” I said, “or I’ll show you how Morgan must have felt back then, being hounded to death.”

With a suddenness that caught me off guard. York Rayfield darted from the couch toward the door. I lunged at him. And the door burst open and John Rayfield, flanked by two of his thugs, came in the room. I released York, edged back.

“I’m sorry you spoiled our friendship by this sort of thing, Frazee,” John Rayfield said. “York was waiting for me in the bar. I arrived there and Gibney told me York had left with you. It was a simple matter to find the cab driver who brought you here.” John closed the door behind him. His two thugs flanked me.

“Are you going to give me the same treatment you gave Conklin?” I asked.

John shook his head. “Not guilty, Frazee. The papers stated the time Conk was killed. At the moment there were a dozen people in the house with York and me. They weren’t people who work for me, either. They’re big people in town, left my house just a few moments before you paid us your second visit. It’s an alibi you’ll never break, Frazee.”

York broke in to tersely explain to his father how I’d been planning to kill him and dump his body in Tampa bay. John Rayfield looked at me, his eyes blazing.

He said, “Kick Frazee’s meddlesome brains out!”

One of the thugs swung at me. I rolled with the blow — rolled right into a haymaker tossed by the other gent. I hit the carpel so hard the windows rattled.

When I again became aware of living, I was lying on the couch. Millie’s cloud of blonde hair came slowly in focus. She was applying a damp cloth on my forehead and the feel of her fingertips, cool and gentle and soft, was nice. I wanted to dose my eyes again, but I struggled to a fitting position.

She watched me with concern in her eyes. “Rayfield?”

I nodded.

She said, “I found you out cold on the floor, just a few minutes ago. I was settling my father in a hotel room for the night, or I would have been here when you came.”

“It’s best that you weren’t. York might have told his father that you had intended to gouge his eyes out with scissors.” I got to my feet. “Rayfield might send the cops here. If Bailey comes, tell him I threatened you, said I’d wring your neck if you raised an alarm while I was here.”

She followed me to the door. “Afraid I’ll be tagged as an accomplice?”

“I wouldn’t want it.”

“Thanks, Ham Frazee.” Her lips brushed my cheeks.

“That was nice,” I said. “We’ll talk it over sometime.” I closed the door softly behind me.

I left the apartment house, made my way around Mirror Lake, down Central, back to the office. I pulled the blinds, turned on the light. The wreckage of our files still littered the floor, but Conk’s body was gone and a couple of exploded flash bulbs reminded me that the tech squad had done its work here.

In my mind the pieces were in place.

I picked up the phone, called headquarters. When the cop at the switchboard answered, I said, “I made a call between seven and seven thirty this evening. It was never attended to.”

He asked me who I was, and I said, “Never mind that. The call concerned Howard Conklin.”

I heard the swift intake of his breath, and I knew the call I was now making would be traced. He said, “There was no such call made at that time. Who are you? Where...” I hung up. I had me a murderer.

A chuckle sounded harshly in the doorway. The murderer was here with me, slipping a passkey from the lock into his pocket. In his other hand was a gun. George Bailey said with mock nostalgia: “Hello, Frazee, you dirty bum.”

“Save the comradely insults, Bailey. I’ll never forgive myself for thinking of you as a friend — when you were the man who eventually murdered Howard Conklin and tried to skid me to the chair.”

“I didn’t want to murder Conklin, Ham. But it was either murder him, silence him, or lose everything I’ve got, everything I live for — all the money and good time — and spend the rest of my active years behind prison bars for blackmailing Burt Morgan.”

“I should have known,” I said bitterly. “All the time we thought you were merely stretching letters of the law — shaking down a gambling joint here and there, tipping Conk and me to cases for a cut of the fee. But the bulk of your coin was blackmail dough.

“You had a couple breaks too, Bailey. For instance, York Rayfield’s actions one night years ago when he followed Burt Morgan, led Morgan to believe that it was Rayfield blackmailing him. You planned to make a break or two for yourself, also. You came here today, questioned Millie and me slyly to learn if Conk had told us anything about his present case. We said he hadn’t, but you still didn’t feel safe. You were afraid of me. You were also afraid to leave the murder of Conklin open to investigation by the whole department. That gave you a doubly strong motive for wanting to plant the blame on me, be on hand to nab me, and close the case in a hurry.”

He smiled mirthlessly. “It will be closed, Frazee. In a few seconds I’m going to blow your brains out. I’ll tell them you resisted arrest, see?”

“You’re an opportunist, Bailey. Just as you took advantage of opportunity in the very beginning — of all persons connected you were the one to know that Burt Morgan was dickering with old man Blodgett for the beach property. For it was you who told Morgan where Blodgett lived! Morgan never would have tipped Rayfield about the Roxlin Hotel deal in advance. They were too great rivals.

“I got the whole picture, Bailey, when Rayfield presented me with a staunch alibi in Millie Morgan’s apartment just before I came here. If Rayfield couldn’t have killed Conk, it meant someone else. Everything then pointed to you. And the master piece of the puzzle came from your own lips! When you entered this office and found me with Howard Conklin’s body earlier this evening you said a phone call, a tipoff, had brought you. You felt impelled to give a reason for your appearance, because you’d really been laying for me to come back here and walk in your trap. But now I know you were lying. No call was made to headquarters at the time you stated concerning Howard Conklin!”

“Yes, Frazee. I was laying for you — just as I was laying for you a few minutes ago when you left Millie Morgan’s apartment and came here. John Rayfield had phoned me that you were out cold in the apartment. When I arrived you were just leaving. I followed you, waiting again for opportunity, not wanting to shoot you on the street, Frazee. I wanted to get you in a corner.”

He raised the gun to fire.

The frosted glass panel in the door showered glass. I caught a fleeting picture of Millie Morgan’s wooden purse, which she had thrown, and I also glimpsed two cops.

As Bailey spun about I crashed into him. The cops hauled us off the floor, and from the way they handled Bailey I knew he was in for a rough Lime at headquarters.

Millie was warm and her perfume made me giddy. “I watched as you left the apartment, Ham. I saw Bailey fall in behind you. I got here just us these two policemen came. They said you’d made a call about a murder case. You’d acted mysterious and the call had been traced. We — the two policemen here and I — listened outside the door while you and Bailey talked just now.”

“We heard enough to burn him,” one of the cops said. He looked at Hailey and added: “When you have a country with as much freedom as the good old U.S.A., you’re bound to have an occasional rat sneak into a place of public trust. But he never lasts long. Too many free people against him. Folks will know when we get through with Bailey that cops don’t like snakes getting their filthy fingers on a shield.”

“You’ll have to drop down to headquarters with us, Frazee. We’re gonna call the D.A. now and get him out of bed,” the other cop said.

“It’s a pleasure,” I said.

Millie and I detoured by way of a restaurant and I had ham and eggs. She drank coffee and watched me stow the grub away. She said, “Gracious, those eggs look awful.”

“Could you cook ’em better?”

She said she could. Maybe sometime she’ll talk herself into another job with Hamilton Frazee. A job cooking for him, among other things.

Content

Talmage Powell
An Occasional Rat

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