Cellini Smith, Detective

Chapter 1 DAWN came to the Luxembourg Gardens reluctantly. And for good reason. Even in the soft, gray light there could already be seen the Gardens' anatomy of rubble, ash-heaps, tin cans, all the useless and unwanted castoffs of a metropolis with their pungent and offensive odors. The very name Luxembourg Gardens was the product of its inhabitants' sardonic wit, for this was one of those hobo jungles tolerated by the police on the rim of most large cities. The homes of these modern, mechanized nomads were located deep in the center of the Gardens. The word Sunkist was stenciled on many walls of the queer, squat structures, for they were built mostly of orange crates and the roofs were weird patterns of patched blankets. Somewhere a clock chimed the half-hour between five and six and at last something stirred. It was a stoop-shouldered old man carrying a stick, with a pointed nail on the tip, and a burlap bag hitched over his back. He stumbled over debris, eyes trained to the earth, and every so often the nail impaled something and transferred it to the bag. The work he did made not the faintest difference, yet there he was every morning. Who he was, why he appeared every day at that particular place, and who paid him was one of those mysteries that nobody ever bothers to solve. Why he did not come stabbing with the pointed nail at a time when the light was better and when the sun would warm his old bones, was a problem that interested none. The old man shuffled along, muttering to himself, when something he saw stopped him short. It was a man lying on the ground, spread-eagled on his back, a felt hat tilted over the face. The old man's mutterings became shriller as he contemplated the intruder with irritation. "Stewbum... Whiskey... Drunk." More indignant and fouler words followed. Unusual debris that could not be transferred by the pointed nail into the burlap bag always angered the old man. He passed on, but retraced his steps as an idea occurred to him. He extended one of his feet in measurement against the sole of the intruder's. The size wasn't too far wrong. Bag and stick were dropped. Aged, trembling fingers undid the laces with caution, unaware that the intruder was no sleeping drunk but a lifeless corpse. Soon, the old man sported a pair of gray, perforated suede shoes on his feet. His lips smacked with satisfaction, he picked up the tools of his trade and, leaving his own midnight-mission shoes by the figure, resumed the stabbing, erratic routine over the terrain of the Luxembourg Gardens. The gray spread and the first yellow streaks of a rising sun were discernible before a poorly dressed man cut across the Gardens with rapid, purposive steps. He strode by the figure lying on the ground and his steps faltered only for an instant as he recognized Opportunity's rare knock. His hand reached down, swept off the hat covering the man's face, and transferred it to his own head. Then he resumed his beeline for the free sinkers and coffee at the Salvation, the richer by one pale brown kelly. Now it was light enough to distinguish two approaching men, still some yards away. They came, probably, from the Skidrow section of town. The chimes of the clock, heralding a new, sunny, Southern California day, had come from that direction. Down that way could be seen the tall office buildings, the Union Station, a slaughterhouse, and the Hall of Justice. One of the approaching men, a small, tightly knit one, was saying: "Curly, take it from me that stocks are sucker stuff. Even the preferred issues. The only thing to do is to sock your dough away in annuities." Curly nodded thoughtfully. He was bald and, like his smaller companion, clad in the ill-assorted hand-me-downs that hobos accumulate. "I guess you're right, Wart. But I still like the idea of first mortgages on business property. It's—" His words trailed off as he noticed the body on the ground. "Look, Wart, a lush." They walked over and grunted as they recognized it. The little Wart said: "That's Danny Meade!" "It sure is. And they cribbed his duds." They stared down at Danny Meade's youthful, petulant face. "Of course, them expensive duds he wears is worth taking," Curly added. "Uh huh," said Wart. "And he always carries too much dough to be sleeping off a jag out here." The two hobos looked at each other as the identical temptation presented itself. Further words were unnecessary. Wart kneeled, carefully slipped his hand inside Danny Meade's jacket, and felt for the pocket. Suddenly, he leaped back and stared at the stain on his hand. "Holy mother of hell," said Wart softly. "That's blood." "It ain't ketchup," concurred Curly. The two hobos discussed Danny Meade's good points as they stripped necktie and alligator belt off the body and assured themselves that nothing further of value remained on it. Curly got rid of the piece of twine that held up his pants, girdled his waist with the belt, then stuck two grimy fingers deep into his cheeks and emitted a shrill series of whistles. The notes cut through the early morning like a call to arms. IT WAS not long before hobos began to appear from the orange-crate houses. They usually slept in their clothes. Relief showed through the stubble on their faces when they discovered that the clarion did not mean a police raid. They hurried over to Curly and Wart and the questions on their lips remained unspoken when they saw it. They crowded the body, gazing down at their dead companion with sleep-heavy eyes. There were a few mumbled, pointless curses, but the majority knew that you can't argue with the dead. They scratched at their underwear and said that it was tough. Poor Danny was kind of young to get it. He should have known better than to try sleeping off a binge in the open. You've got to be on the road a long time to stand that kind of wear... The Monk pushed into the center. He was a former road-circuit preacher of ambiguous denomination. His figure was tall, his face a hawk's, the hands were horny and powerful, and the eyes a zealot's. He stabbed a knuckled finger at the dead Danny Meade. "Sinner! You have your reward!" "Cut the mularky for now, Monk." It was Dusty who spoke, the leader of the hobos and Mayor of the Luxembourg Gardens. He was in his early forties, with shrewd, sharp features— the shrewdness of any man capable of living a lifetime without doing an ounce of work. The Monk grabbed Dusty by the shoulders. "You're dead yourself! All of us. The living dead!" He stalked off. Dusty wiped the spittle from his face. "Where's the Kid?'' "He ain't here," replied a mule-eared hobo called Link. "Fine. It wouldn't do him any good to see his side-kick stiff. Let's get Danny inside." Curly shouted a whistle of warning. "Don't touch nothing till the shams get here." "Shams?" Wart couldn't resist a touch of the dramatic. By way of reply, he reached down and flung wide the dead man's jacket. As if from one man, there was a hissing intake of breath when they saw the crimson spread over the shirt. Faces became taut and hard, and tendons stood out on necks as rage grew in them. This was more than death; it was murder. The portentous silence was broken by a warning sound from Curly. "It's the Kid." A boy, hardly more than seventeen or eighteen years of age, broke through the circle. "What's going..." The words died on his lips as he sighted the inert form on the dirt, "Danny!" "Easy does it," said Dusty. The Kid's fingers felt over his own face and lips and came to rest on his neck where they tightened as if trying to choke himself. "Danny!" "I told you to take it easy," Dusty cautioned again. As Mayor of the hobos he didn't relish the idea of having to repeat an order. "Danny! Danny! Danny!" The Kid kept calling to his murdered friend more loudly and stridently each time. Soon, it became a meaningless shriek of hysteria. In a tired voice, Dusty said: "That's all we need now." He stepped in, his shoulder and arm moving in a graceful arc, the Kid's head snapped back, and he slumped to the ground. The hobos disregarded the unconscious boy. Their minds were dominated by two questions. Why was Danny Meade murdered and by whom? A man called Pogo, because of a peculiar bouncing gait, arrived with a ragged sheet and covered the body. "What do we do now?" It was Link who spoke. "I guess we gotta call the cops." Dusty sounded reluctant. The knights of the road squirmed uncomfortably. One of the basic axioms that ruled their life was always to avoid the police. It seemed strange actually to go seeking them. "Why don't we just let somebody else find Danny?" asked one in khaki pants. "Why ask for trouble?" The Kid was sitting up by now, somewhat embarrassed by his display of hysteria. His voice was still a little wild as he said: "You're damned right we're asking for trouble! All we can get. I'm not going to see Danny rot here just because you don't like cops." "Easy, Kid," said Dusty, "or I'll clip you again. Sure we'll call the cops. We got to." Khaki-Pants and three others waved to their fellow tramps and began walking away. Dusty called: "Where you going?" "To the yards," replied Khaki-Pants, "and we're hopping the first rattler out. We ain't gonna get our prints took. Not with our records we ain't." "No one leaves till we find out who shot Danny Meade," said the Mayor of the Luxembourg Gardens. His voice contained no hint of threat. Khaki-Pants and the other three turned, without hesitation, and made for one of the teetering shacks. They knew it was safer to fight the law of the land than the law of their kind. The Mayor nodded approvingly and set out for the Hall of Justice with long, easy strides. DUSTY returned some twenty minutes later in a glory of sirens and speeding department cars. He crossed the Gardens toward the sheeted body with a big man at his side and others of the squad behind. When they reached the body, one of them uncovered it and the big man said, to no one in particular: "I'm Ira Haenigson, Detective-Sergeant of Homicide." He was in sight of fifty, heavy with sloping shoulders, and was comfortably padded with fat. He was usually benign and kindly— but that fooled nobody. The department men set about their tasks with casual efficiency. Haenigson carefully picked his way over the rubbish and viewed the body from all sides. He said: "Roll her over." The body was turned, face down, and now they could see another wound in the nape of the neck. Ira Haenigson scanned the faces of the hobos and took in the Luxembourg Gardens. "One of you?" he asked. Dusty nodded. "He's been roading it only about six months. The Kid here knew him best." The detective-sergeant's eyebrows arched toward the boy. "Let's have it, son." The Kid's face was white and his hands could be seen trembling inside the pockets of his greasy windbreaker. "Danny Meade come from the East. I picked him up in Virginia. He was pretty green then and I showed him the ropes. He said his old man had dough, but he was sick of hanging around home. Both of us was coming out here, so we stuck together. We rolled in a couple of months ago." "Mmm." Haenigson tugged at his lower lip. "That's not much, son." "Danny never told much of anything about himself." "And what about you?" asked the Homicide man. "You're kind of young to be bumming around on the loose. What's your pedigree?" The Kid's mouth clamped tight. There was an instant of hesitation, then, without warning, he whirled and raced for the far end of the Gardens. A beefy cop standing by Haenigson asked: "Want him?" "Not now, Boggs. Pick him up in the afternoon and bring him around." A medical examiner who had been prodding the body stood up and said: "It looks like he got it some time last night." "Where was he shot first?" asked Ira Haenigson. "In the heart or the neck?" The medico shrugged. "We'll find out when we steam him open. It's funny, though. He was shot by something, but those holes are too long and narrow. Who ever heard of rectangular bullets?" Haenigson looked disinterested. "Who killed the poor slob?" he asked. The tramps said nothing. The cop named Boggs went around taking down names and when he was finished Ira Haenigson repeated the question. Dusty said bitterly: "If we knew that, you'd have two bodies here instead of one." "Why are his shoes off?" "Those ain't his," responded Wart. "His got stolen." "Uh huh." The Homicide man kneeled to feel the dead man's clothes. Though they had seen much wear, they were of excellent material and tailoring. "How is it that a bum like this wears such good clothes?" "He was no bum," Link said sharply. "He was an honest-to-God tramp like the rest of us." There was a chorus of agreement from the hobos. "He couldn't be no bum," added another triumphantly, "because he was a college man." "A member of the peerage, I'm sure," murmured Haenigson. Dusty pointed to a young man who had just joined their group. "Ask the Professor. He'll tell you." Unlike the others, the Professor was well groomed, well-clothed, and looked as if he'd taken a bath recently. "I'm certain Danny Meade attended a university at some time," he said. Ira Haenigson eyed him. "Your clothes are pretty good, too." The Professor fingered his horn-rimmed glasses nervously. "Oh, I'm not one of them. I'm just doing research on the hobo as a social and ethnographic phenomenon for my doctorate." "He's studyin' us," said Dusty with a hint of pride. "That's just ducky," approved the Homicide man. "Now, you ethnographic, phenomena, stick around because I'll probably want to see some of you this afternoon." He nodded to a couple of men who had arrived with the meat wagon and they set the body on a stretcher. "Ain't you going to look around here first?" asked Dusty. The detective-sergeant nodded sagely. "You mean I should look for clues, don't you? With a microscope." His voice became sympathetic. "Listen, boys, I understand how you feel about it. We feel pretty much the same way but for different reasons. We don't like a killer loose but you can't expect us to upset the whole department on account of a crumb getting himself knocked off." "You mean you won't do anything about it?" Dusty's voice was hard. "Of course, my friend. I couldn't stop the normal department routine if I wanted to. But remember I only have two hands." The hobos pressed in closer. Pogo snarled: "Copper, you wouldn't do anything for us if you was an octopus." Boggs moved in front of the Homicide man, shielding him from the aroused tramps. Reasonably, as if trying to understand the detective-sergeant's position, Dusty said: "Couldn't you just kind of start working on this like other cases and maybe you'll be able to solve it very easily?" The hobos were a compact, threatening mass by now. Ira Haenigson sighed. He said: "Boggs, solve the murder." BOGGS reached out and grabbed the first shirt front he could reach. It was Link. He slapped the hobo heavily over the face and asked: "Did you kill Daniel Meade?" Without waiting for reply, Boggs continued to slap the face, sending it back and forth, as though the unlucky tramp were watching a tennis match. "Come on! Don't deny it! Did you kill him?" Finally, Boggs released the man. "I guess he's innocent," he said cheerfully. "Should I solve some more?" "Never mind," said the Mayor heavily. "We changed our mind. You're right." Ira Haenigson nodded. "I thought you'd see it my way. That was just to get the idea out of your head that you can shove us around. I suppose you think I'm a heel." "Damn right." It came from most of the hobos. "Sure," said Ira Haenigson with sudden bitterness. "It's because I know what I'm up against and you don't. So we'll have an autopsy. So what? So the coroner's jury will announce in a couple of days that Daniel Meade came to his death from revolver wounds in neck and heart fired with homicidal intent by person or persons unknown. It'll sound beautiful. So this sleazy killing is dumped in my lap like six others. Then what? Then I run my kineta off and maybe solve four or five of the most important and I get dressed down because I didn't make the days longer to solve the sixth and I'm still only a sergeant!" He turned and lumbered off, followed by the stretcher-bearers and department experts. The Monk stared after the body of Danny Meade as it was borne away. "Go," he thundered, "and sin with the archangels." Curly hitched up Danny Meade's alligator belt and said: "You got no call to talk of the dead that way, Monk." "You preach to me? You! You swear, drink, wench, and if I didn't have love for my Maker I'd stick your dirty head in a bucket." Dusty upended a box and sat down. "What'll we do?" he asked. The tramps knew what he meant. Link shook his head. His face was still red from the slapping. "Nothing we can do. They ain't going out of their way to find out who killed Danny." "Where's Jeff Davis?" asked another. "Jeff could tell us what to do." But none of them seemed to know what part of the country Jeff Davis was roaming at the moment. "Well, we ain't going to let this thing poop out and do nothing about it," said Dusty authoritatively. "An unsolved killing would be a bad precedent." The tramps were with him. "First," continued the Mayor, "somebody's gotta tell Danny's woman about this." "I will inform Chloe of his death," announced the Monk. "O.K., but I don't want no complaints. Every time you comfort a chippie you make passes." "I have prayed to overcome that weakness." The Monk ran fingers through his matted hair and left for Main Street. "Now"— Dusty looked around— "anybody know who killed Danny or why?" Shoulders shrugged and heads shook negatively. Pogo voiced their thoughts. "We all got plenty ideas, but that don't do us no good unless we can be sure. If the shams don't help us we—" "We need someone with nerve," cut in Wart softly. "Someone who can find out what Alex Bornaman was bothering with a bo like Danny for." The hobos looked uncomfortable. There weren't any volunteers. Dusty asked: "Have you got that kind of nerve, Wart?" Wart shook his head decisively. "I don't think any of us would want to mess, around Alex. Anyway, we need someone from the outside because the murderer might be one of us." "How about the Professor?" asked Link. They laughed loudly, glad to relax the tension. The idea of the Professor talking up to Bornaman was really funny. "Thank you, gentlemen," said the Professor, "but I wouldn't want to become involved. If you don't mind, I'll just stay on the sidelines and observe your antics." "Sure," agreed Dusty, "stick to your books, Prof. You got the muscles in your head." "What you people should do is hire a detective," suggested the Professor. The hobos blinked twice, then grunted approval as the idea took hold. A peeper was just what they needed! The hell with the shams. They'd never do anything anyway outside of strong-arming them. They'd get their own d**k and find the killer and God help the guy when they found him. Then they remembered that a detective needed money and that quieted them. "Why don't you go out and get jobs?" suggested the Professor timidly. The tramps broke into boisterous laughter at the very thought. The Professor took out a small pad and made a note on it. Dusty took off his peaked cap and put it on the ground. "All right," he said, "let's have your dough. All of it." The Professor tossed a dollar bill into the cap with the air of making a scientific experiment, but nobody else moved. "Come on," barked Dusty. "Fork over. You, Link, had eighty cents last night. What did you do with it? And, Curly, you been buying smelly muck for your hair. Throw that mazuma in here instead." "You can't do that to me," complained Curly. "I need hair tonics. How do you expect it to grow out again?" "The hell with your hair!" roared Dusty. "We need a d**k to find out who killed Danny. And how about you, Pogo? You been saving up dough for those mail-order meat-choppers. Let's have it. If we don't clear this up the road won't be safe no more for the Hobos of America." Reluctantly, they dug into their musty, verminous clothing and shelled out.