The Case of the Little Green Men

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER TWOI awoke in the morning from no deep dream of peace, seeing as how I’d spent the evening before at Sam’s Bar drinking up the better part of five of the fifty dollars of my retainer fee. I can’t remember dreams two minutes after opening my eyes, but I had a vague recollection of green characters scooting around my head in saucer-shaped spaceships. Evidently, no matter what Maddigan’s protests, these men from Mars were going to be green to me.

Groaning audibly, I forced myself to sit up and throw my legs over the side of the bed. A shave and a shower helped some. Not much. This was strictly guano for the condors.

I got into shorts, shirt and pants and wobbled my way to the pint-size kitchenette that opens off my combination living and bedroom. Investigation of the aged refrigerator reminded me that I’d forgotten to buy the eggs and ham I was going to treat myself to this morning. There was half a bottle of milk. I tasted it to see if it was sour. It wasn’t, so I put it on the table and got corn flakes, sugar, a soup plate and a cup and spoon from the cupboard.

I put water on to boil for coffee and then located the powdered coffee extract. In spite of years of trying, and the expense of a dozen different types of foolproof coffee pots, adding a teaspoon of extract to hot water is still the nearest I can get to making a decent cup.

After breakfast, I felt a little better. Not much. I told myself nastily that if I’d had any sense I would have refused the job. If I had, I would have been forced into looking for another way of making a living that much sooner and would have left the detective business to those who knew something about it.

As it was, the fifty bucks was going to let me hang on another week, at least. Well, only until the rent was due. I’d never be able to meet even the pittance charged by the Kroll Building, and that would be the end of Lee and Knight, Private Investigations. And good riddance.

I got my shoes and the rest of my clothes on, searched around for my battered felt, finally finding it in the bathroom where I by no means remembered leaving it, and made my way down three flights of squeaking steps to the street.

The brightness of the morning sun had me blinking and squinting. I peered up at the sky in irritation. It was going to be a hot day, plenty hot; lousy weather for a hangover. I walked down Greene Avenue, crossed Seventh Street and entered Tiny’s.

Tiny’s is one of those wedged in little magazine shops that carry all the publications you’ve ever heard of and a multitude more. About eleven feet wide, and three times that long, it’s crowded between the State Theater, the neighborhood movie house, to the west, and Fred ’n’ Beth’s Lunch to the east. As you enter, you have thirty feet of magazine racks on your right, beginning with comics and working on down through westerns, love pulps, sport pulps, digest magazines, true detectives, and on into the recesses. On your left you have about ten feet of pocket books, a popcorn outfit, and then the candy and cigarette counter. Halfway down the room, Tiny sits atop a high stool behind the counter. To his left is the cash register; nestled beside it, a box of the king size cigars he smokes and a carton of book matches.

I squeezed myself through eight or ten kids in front of the comic stands. They gave way passively, unnoticingly, and flowed back into their former positions as soon as my passage was complete. Tiny, as usual, was smiling amiably and smoking a cigar that could have been described as half as big as himself without too much exaggeration.

I was still hanging over, but good. “How can a cash customer get through those kids, Tiny?” I grumbled.

An ex-carny midget who’d got tired of being gawked at by the marks and had carefully saved himself enough money to go into business, Tiny didn’t actually care whether or not his stand made more than just enough to keep him going. The thing was that it hadn’t done him any good; they gawked at him here too. Somehow or other, it seemed to make a difference to him that he wasn’t getting paid for it.

He took his cigar from his mouth and grimaced at me. “Jeb,” he said, “you owe me a dollar eighty-five for newspapers and mags; none of them kids owe me a red cent. The kind of detective you are, I’ll probably never collect the one eighty-five. You can see I’m better off with the kids.”

I get it everywhere. Even the newsboys know I couldn’t trail an elephant through fresh fallen snow.

I brought out some money and handed him his dollar eighty-five. “All right, here you are,” I growled. “You want interest?”

We insulted each other back and forth a while, and then I asked him, “Got any science fiction magazines, Tiny?”

A grimace on Tiny’s already impossibly wizened face was something to see. He snorted, “Science fiction mags, yet. There’s getting to be as many of them as comics; all over the place, couple new ones start up every month. Since the atom bomb an’ the rockets and the flying saucers, everybody’s reading science fiction. Not that I mind, of course.”

He got down from his stool, came around the end of the counter and led me over to a section of his racks. He waved one of his miniature hands. “There you are, Jeb—science fiction—take your pick.”

There must have been a good twenty-five. I ran a hand over my chin and scowled at them. “Which is which?” I asked him.

Tiny hunched up his little shoulders. “They got science fiction mags for everybody, from kids to college perfessors.”

He picked one out and handed it to me. “Now this mag is Planet Stories. It’s pretty strong on action. The guys who read the more serious ones stick their noses up and call it space-opera; you know, wild west stuff. Only the hero isn’t a sheriff in Nevada; he’s a space-man on Jupiter. It’s got a pretty good following, though; one of the oldest mags in the field.”

He picked up another. “This here’s Startling Stories. Guess you could call it the average science fiction mag. It ain’t as slick as one or two of the others, but it’s for—well, you might say maybe a more advanced reader than Planet.”

“All right,” I said agreeably. “I’ll take those. Which of them would the members of the most exclusive science fiction club read?”

“You mean Scylla?”

I eyed him. “How did you know?”

He waved his cigar airily. “Why, Jeb, I been a fan myself for years. Read ’em all. Wish I had time to be more active. Most of them highbrow fans read Galaxy, Mag of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and this here Astounding.” He picked up a digest-size magazine and offered it to me. “Astounding puts a lot of science in its yarns—the editor and most of the writers are engineers and technicians.”

I took up two or three more of the magazines and paid him for the works, saying casually, “Listen, Tiny, what chance do you think there is that the Martians or Venusians have figured out space travel?” I steeled myself, waiting for him to accuse me of being short some marbles. Tiny pulls no punches, especially with his friends.

The little fellow took his cigar from his mouth and pointed it at me seriously. “I’m more inclined to think they’re from Alpha Centauri or some other nearby star.”

I blinked at him. “Who?” I asked.

He said impatiently, “The aliens. I don’t think they’re from Mars or Venus; I think they’re from some other solar system. But I’m willing to argue about it. What makes you think they’re from Mars?”

I stared at him for a long moment, wondering whether he was ribbing me. His wizened little face is so wrinkled that half the time you can’t make out his expression. “Let’s drop that part of it,” I told him finally. “What makes you think there are aliens here on earth?”

He hunched his thin shoulders impatiently. “Anybody could tell you that—anybody with half a brain who’d done any looking into the matter. What do you think these flying saucers are?”

Tiny wasn’t kidding. The wrinkled little runt was dead serious.

I said, “Listen, Tiny, I’ll see you later. We’ll talk about it then. I don’t know enough now to have any opinions.”

He walked off to wait on another customer. “Okay,” he told me over his shoulder, “it was you who brung it up.”