“You remember Miltgreen, Kastner,” he said casually. “He’s the guy who lost his pants. He’s also the guy who bombed my office, took a few shots at me this afternoon, and cut Blinky Tooper’s throat.”
Miltgreen struck like a snake. He picked up the catsup bottle off the table and hit Kastner between the eyes with it. The bottle broke, and Kastner went sprawling in a welter of artificial gore.
Dodd kneed the table out of his way with a jangling crash and lunged forward in a driving tackle. Miltgreen tried to draw a gun from his hip pocket and sidestep at the same time, and one of Dodd’s swinging arms caught him and brought him down, but it didn’t keep him down.
Miltgreen was as lithely muscled as a snake. He squirmed out of Dodd’s grasp, hit him three times with a bony, rock-hard fist and then stuck his thumb in Dodd’s eye.
Dodd yelled in agony and rolled away, trying to draw his own gun. Miltgreen came up to his feet and ran for the door. He didn’t get far. A waiter behind the short order counter picked up a filled water carafe and threw it with force.
The carafe hit Miltgreen in the back of the head and burst like a bomb. Miltgreen slid ten feet on his face and hit the wall and stayed there in a crumpled pile.
Dodd got up, feeling his eye tenderly. “I’m sorry, Jack,” he said. “I had no idea this monkey would start a riot like that. I figured he’d just wilt on us.”
“You’ll pay for the damage,” said Siegal, and it wasn’t a question.
“Sure,” Dodd agreed.
“It’s O.K., then,” said Siegal. “Meekins wants you to call him. You can do that when you call the cops.” He raised his voice. “Everything is all over, folks. Just sit down and mind your own business. Wash that catsup off Kastner before he comes to, Joe.”
Dodd dialed the number of the police station on the phone beside the cash register. “Send a radio car to Siegal’s Restaurant,” he said, when a voice answered. “And give me the locker room.”
“This is the locker room,” said Meekins.
“What do you want?” Dodd asked.
“Dodd!” Meekins yelped. “Where you been? I tried every place in town. Look, I got something red-hot for you! Me and Hennessey was talkin’ about this deal, and he remembered that Blinky Tooper was once hauled in for selling phoney lots in a phoney cemetery and he had a partner then that looked something like this bird Miltgreen.”
“Hennessey!” Dodd shouted. “That fat lame-brained rum-dumb! And you too! Why don’t either one of you get your smart ideas before I have to bat my brains out figuring the answers myself?”
“Well, we didn’t know... What? Did you say you had the answers? What are they, boss? I’m going nuts here with nobody but cops to talk to.”
Dodd said: “It all goes back to Sparkling Falls, South Dakota. Blinky Tooper holed up there after he knocked off the rich widow, Blanche Trilby. He had dough from her jewelry, so he bought the town paper. What would you think he would do if he had a printing press and a knowledge of chemistry?”
“I dunno, but he’d make himself some crooked dough if it was possible.”
“That’s what he did. Cooked up some counterfeit money — and the plates to make it with, I figure. The printing press should have tipped me off right away. He also made friends with this constable, Harold Stacy. Stacy got the same reward poster Hennessey did. He’d be just dope enough to notice the resemblance to his old pal Elwin Tooper and take the notice around and show it to him for a laugh. Blinky knew then that things were getting a little warm. He figured to check out — permanently. If people thought he was dead, no one would be looking for him.”
“Blinky was always a smart one,” Meekins observed.
“Yeah. So he went to work on Harold Stacy. Blinky could toss out a very smooth line when he wanted to. He told Harold Stacy how Blinky and I were great pals — always clowning and playing elaborate practical jokes on each other. They got the undertaker in with them and faked a suicide for Blinky. Blinky probably paid off heavy — in funny money. The idea was that they were going to ship the non-existent body to me and Blinky was going to ride along disguised as a woman and then hand me a hearty laugh.
“Blinky used the name of Blanche Trilby because he wanted to be connected with her — after he was supposed to be dead. Then the police would stop stirring around on her murder.”
“Well, what was in the coffin?”
“All the counterfeit money he could pack in there and the plates to make more. He picked Miltgreen to handle things at the cemetery — figuring to pick up the coffin from Miltgreen, after I had paid for the funeral, give Miltgreen a couple of bucks and a pat on the back and walk off whistling. But Miltgreen didn’t think so. Some way he found out what was in the coffin — probably opened it. He wanted a cut — about ninety-five per cent. He had Blinky right behind the eight-ball. Blinky couldn’t squawk even a little bit or all his elaborate scheme for dying and disappearing would blow off in his face.
“So now Smarty Blinky was struck with Miltgreen. But Blinky’s brain was still hitting on all cylinders. He wrote me that note. He knew that would make me hop like a flea on a griddle. He knew, also, I would start something, and Blinky hoped that would scare Miltgreen into a more reasonable frame of mind.
“But friend Miltgreen didn’t care. He’s a lot tougher character than he looks or acts normally. He dressed up in Blinky’s phoney woman’s outfit and chucked that bomb into the office to scare me into a more reasonable frame of mind.”
“He ain’t got no wife or kids, by the way,” Meekins put in.
“Lucky for them. In the meantime, back in Sparkling Falls, this Harold Stacy, dumb as he is, began to realize that he had bitten off something with a pretty sour taste. He headed for Bay City, leaving my number with a friend of his. He intended to get in touch with me and find out about this joke. But he went to the cemetery first and Blinky or Miltgreen found him and carted him off to the joint Blinky had prepared as a hideout. They told him he was in this with them, and he couldn’t get out. He drank himself dumb trying to figure what to do. And then you, you fat-head, told Miltgreen where I was when I was telegraphing.”
“No, I didn’t!”
“So,” said Dodd. “Then I’ve got another bone to pick with that butterfly-brained Hennessey. Miltgreen found out, anyway, and took a couple of shots at me. He missed, so he went over to my office to try again.
“He waited in the lobby, dressed in his woman’s outfit. Then he saw me pick up Kastner outside. Kastner looks so much like a cop nobody could miss.
“Miltgreen chucked his woman’s clothes into the alley. Only he didn’t have any pants on under the skirt, so he had to make up a story about Blanche Trilby holding him up. He did it well, too. I took it in — then. I was still after Blinky. I’ll have to give the guy one thing. He tried to call me and warn me when he found out Miltgreen was really after me. Miltgreen found that out, too. Anyway, he was tired of me running around. So he framed up a nice ending by killing Blinky and dressing Harold Stacy in the woman’s clothes and leaving him in the joint with Blinky’s body. Harold Stacy was one step off the D.T.s, and he could take the rap.”
Suddenly Meekins said: “Dodd, I just remembered something. I heard a while back that the Postal Union Telegraph Company slapped a suit on you today for malicious mischief.”
A waiter tapped Dodd on the shoulder. “Here’s a paper you dropped.”
“Thanks,” Dodd said absently, taking it. “Meekins! Did you say malicious—?”
“Yeah. They claim you caused one of their plate glass windows to be busted. The guy that’s got the process to serve on you is too lazy to go hunting for people. He just dresses like a waiter and hangs around Siegal’s Restaurant—”