The Little Guy That Couldn't, Actually Could.
by John Charles Weeks and Fergus Truslow
Hello dear reader. If you read the first story in this book you now know a little bit about me. I used to be a Police Chief. I am old, a little short tempered, I can still shoot straight and deadly, and I think my own sweat doesn't stink (I am trying to be a little family friendly here).
Just a second. There's a knock on my door.
"Come in. It's open."
"Hello Chief Bates. I'm John Weeks, I can't wait to get started on your biography."
"Time is wasting sit down and get your pen and paper ready."
"No sir. There's no paper involved in this. Everything will be recorded and transcribed; because when we set up this interview you told me you want your story to be written word for word. Am I right Chief?"
"DON'T CALL ME CHIEF!" I like that little hurt look on your face Weeks. It's okay, you can call me chief. I just love saying that. It is a reference to the Superman 'funnybooks' of the 1940s and 50s. Clark Kent worked for the Daily Planet newspaper and the Editor in Chief, Perry White, always screamed that line at cub reporter/copy boy, Jimmy Olson."
"I know that Chief!" Weeks affirmed.
"Good. Then you might understand what I am going to say next. You'd better; because I don't want to waste a good quote. Your readers are going to want to know what kind of a detective I am. I don't have any Watson to embellish my cases and the truth is most cases are boring and as simple as one of those connect the dot puzzles in a kid's book.
I was a chief and also a detective. But, to quote pulp fiction detective Nick Carter, 'I am not a storybook detective with a highball glass in one hand (Nick Charles, The Thin Man) and a Chinese Proverb in the other, (Charlie Chan) nor can I tell you from the ashes of a man's cigar (Sherlock Holmes) that he had kippered herring for breakfast and hit his grandmother over the head with an axe!': I hope you got the references."
"Chief, I watch Turner Classic Movies all the time. I am up on my Charlie Chan, my Nick Charles, and of course my classic Holmes."
"Good man Weeks. We may get along alright. Let's get to it. I am 85 years old and though I am in the prime of life, I know I can't last forever. I want to leave something behind. I don't mean money and such. I guess I don't want to be forgotten. So, I want you to be my biographer. You will be my Watson. But you have to write down everything. I don't care if it is not interesting. I want the readers to know everything. So turn on your recorder. Here goes."
My name is Rick (Richard) Bates. Luckily for me, I was born in 1930 and nobody made jokes about the name Richard back then. And at school, when I was called Master, it did not provoke the snickers which it would for a school child in today's world.
"For many years I was a police officer, and later the Chief, of a municipal force in a small Cape Cod town. I am not really a bad guy, but I certainly am not a good guy. I have done things I wouldn't want my Mother to know about. Hell, my Mother did things she wouldn't want me to know about! I have shot some suspects that I could have taken in alive. I have accepted a few gratuities during my career. Back in the 1950s and 1960s almost every cop on Cape Cod took gifts.
It was the time of Camelot. You know! John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Jackie Kennedy! The whole Kennedy clan gathered on Cape every Summer. They were a wild bunch. The old man, the rum runner - Old Joe. I don't want to say too much because they can probably still make trouble for me, but: 'rumor has it' that the old man used to have so much pull that there were standing orders issued to all cops on Cape Cod, that if a Kennedy got into trouble, you were immediately supposed to drive him home and keep your mouth shut and your notebook closed!
I am stone cold sober right now, so I don't want to say any more about that. It's early afternoon, so I think I will just have a Mimosa. Want one?"
"No thanks Chief, I am going to be taking notes even though the machine is recording you; because there are certain things I will want to ask you about later."
"Okay Weeks. I will have one for both of us. You know I never drank until I hit 75 years old. Now I am making up for lost time! Well, actually, I drank as a teenager. We all did. All of us boys in the neighborhood would get together near the Police Station. We would go over to the drug store and get some fountain Coca Colas and then add rum to them and stand in front of the police station chatting up the cops who walked in and out! They never caught on to us; or if they did, they left us alone because we didn't make any trouble.
Another place we used to hang out was by the Catholic church, just down the block from the police station. There would be three or four of us, all sipping our Rum and Coca Colas and the Priests would walk by and gab with us.
One afternoon, I was feeling pretty lightheaded when Father Murphy walked by. His red face kind of hinted to me that maybe the good Father himself had been having a few spirits. We talked for a few moments about the great slugger Ted Williams of the Boston Red Sox.
"Father, I have to go home now," I told him, "but I was wondering something. Could I ask you about it?"
"Certainly, Master Bates, ask anything you wish."
"Well Father, I was wondering how you get to join the Holy Name Society?"
"Well it's easy enough, my boy, all you have to do is swear a lot!"
Father Murphy laughed so hard at his joke that he almost passed out. We had to help him into the rectory.
Within a few months time, the thrill of the secret drinking in front of the Police Station and the Church, began to fade. I drank less and less frequently, to the point that by the time I reached the legal drinking age of 21; I had sworn off the stuff. I had my last drink somewhere around my 20th birthday and then didn't have another for about 54 years.
Elizabeth Taylor. I loved her. Elizabeth Taylor! She drank Mimosas. It was her favorite drink. I guess that's why I am having one now. If I have enough of them, I will tell you some real dirt on that Kennedy clan.
Long before I became a cop I was a fan of the racing dogs and the horses. I used to bet the dogs at the Taunton and Raynham tracks in New England and then go to the Florida tracks for the winter.
I got a job on the security team of the Taunton Dog Track. That was how I eventually got into the police department. But before that I worked security at the tracks and also as a private detective.
I even did a stint as a house detective. It was just after the Second World War.
I had a strange case involving a jockey at Hialeah Race Track, near Miami. The guy had lost his nerve after being badly injured in a 12 horse spill.
He hadn't been on a mount in more than two months. A lot of the railbirds were saying that he would never ride again.
I was the house detective at the Carribean Hotel at 3737 Collins Avenue in Miami Beach. One afternoon, I saw the jockey talking with the desk clerk and I wandered over to listen.
"Chipman? Room 1128." the desk clerk said. "Who is calling please?"
"D' Argonne - Eddie D' Argonne," the jockey said. His palms were sweating and and his face was twisted up into a knot. He looked as nervous as a 16 year old trying to get served in a bar.
"D' Argonne?" the clerk repeated, "Oh, yes." The polite smile of the desk clerk broke off at the edges into a sneer. He recognized Eddie by the carrot thatch on his head and the freckles on this face. And everybody around town knew the story of the jockey who turned coward after a fall in the middle of the field at the Hialeah Derby.
The little guy said nothing, but looked at the floor and turned away, walking toward the elevators, as the clerk stared at him with an air of smug superiority.
I wasn't sure why Eddie wanted to see Van Chipman, but I was curious. Since the accident, Eddie had not ridden in one single race, but I had heard a rumor that Chipman, who owned 'Mom's Ride', the favorite in the next day's feature race, had booked Eddie as his jockey. Why would Chip
man hire a jockey who had lost his nerve, to ride the race favorite?
I saw Eddie enter the elevator and I signaled Johnny, the red jacketed operator to hold the doors until I could get in. There were only three other passengers besides myself and the jockey,
"How yah doing today, Mr. Bates?"
"Good Johnny. Floor eleven please."
Then Johnny turned his attention to Eddie.
"Well, now, if it ain't Mr. D'Argonne!" he whispered, letting a sly grin slide across his greasy fat face. "Where you working these days?"
Eddie's face blanched as he looked at Johnny. His normal five foot one height dropped by about three inches as he said, "I am at the Naval Hospital. I'm a civilian employee. Still in training though."
"Whaddaya do at the hospital? Hand out horse liniment?"
The other riders snickered.
"That's enough out of you Johnny," I snapped. "Eddie was one of the best jockies in the game. Lay off!"
"It's okay Sir," Eddie said. "He's just angry with me because he was a stable boy at Hialeah until I caught him stealing sponges and chamois skins from my boss."
Johnny's face turned as crimson as Eddie's hair and not another word was said until he announced, "Eleventh Floor" and Eddie and I got out. I wished him good luck and walked off in an opposite direction from Van Chipman's rooms. I stopped to check with Rollins, the other House Detective who was stationed at the entrance to the East Wing. A famous Hollywood actress had booked the entire wing for a party that she was throwing for a company of United States Marines, just back from action in the Pacific. The party was going well and the Leathernecks were acting like gentlemen so I headed back to Chipman's room, number 1128. I tiptoed to the door and set up an observation post.
The rooms at the Carribean all had transom windows above the doors, so I had rigged up a mirror device to monitor suspicious rooms. The transom window was open at a 45 degree angle, so I could see and hear everything that went on in the room.
Besides Eddie, I saw two other men. One of them was Chipman. His hand swept across a little dinner table where he was seated and dropped a napkin on something that sparkled in the light. The other guy was a blond Marine, not much bigger than the jockey. He got halfway out of his chair in one move, and his right hand went to the sleeve of his left.
"Well, well," Van Chipman's suave voice said. His eyes were cold as pale stones in his dark, soft face. "If it isn't that bootin', kickin' jock, Eddie D' Argonne."
"I had to talk to you, Van," Eddie said.
"Mr. Chipman," said Chipman.
"OK. Mr. Chipman. Listen, Mr. Chipman. I gotta know why you bet five grand against Mom's Ride -your own horse-in the third race tomorrow?"
While I was watching the drama unfold in room 1128 I was thinking I'd seen that blond Marine somewhere. He wore the shoulder patch of a South Pacific unit and the service ribbons to go with it. His thin face with the soft blond hair around it struck something in my memory like a warning bell.
As I was turning this over in my mind, Chipman picked up a broiled lamb chop and took a bite out of it with even white teeth. "One thing at a time, little man," he chuckled. The blond Marine never took his cold, washed-out blue eyes off Eddie. He sat there and watched.
Chipman's eyes showed his enjoyment. The Jockey was a sort of floor show for him while he ate. He put down the chop bone, picked up another crisp, juicy chop and sank his teeth into it.
"I don't mind telling you why, really," he said, chewing. "I'm betting against my own horse, because you're up in the saddle, and you're a gutless hasbeen!"
Eddie seemed to shrink , but instead of getting weaker; he appeared to be squeezing down like a coil, getting stronger and ready to spring. He clenched his jaw and bunched his fists. He took a step forward.
"Chipman.......," he growled.
"You see," Chipman grinned. "I only own a fourth of 'Mom's Ride', and the other owner will race him come hell or high water. I want to buy the rest of that horse cheap. He'll sell after you lose tomorrow. A yellow-belly jockey can't win races."
"I am going back in the saddle tomorrow and I'll win! I'll boot him home!"
"Will you? I'm a sort of a connoisseur of cowardice. I think you'll remember how it feels to be out in front of a big field when something goes wrong and you have to hit the dirt. You'll hear the thundering of those hoofs and . . ."
The boom of traffic drifted up to the hotel windows from the street
below. To Eddie it was like hoofs pounding, thundering at him, and he was down smelling the dirt, tasting it again, knowing what he was going to get.
"Damn you!" the words stuck in Eddie's aching throat and came out in a kind of dry sob. "You dirty, crooked-"
Eddie picked up the napkin off the table and threw it at him. Then realized what he had done. A blaze of blue-white light lay there where the napkin had been. Diamonds! And what diamonds! The smile faded off Chipman's face in a wink. The lines on his face went the other way-up and down. The Marine shoved back his chair. A thin-bladed stiletto came out of his sleeve, but the look on his thin face didn't change. It had been there all along, and now it fitted. I remembered now. Once at West Palm, somebody had pointed him out. I didn't know they took cons in the Marines, I thought. They don't, the answer came off my own tongue in a mumble.
"Never mind, Smitty. Don't dirty up the floor. It's not necessary," Chipman purred.
"Not necessary?" Smitty's voice was falsetto. He didn't take those washed-out blue eyes off Eddie, and he didn't put away the stiletto.
"He'll play ball," Chipman said sharply.
"Since you've cut yourself in on this deal," Chipman remarked in suave tones, "take a gander at that chair over by the window."
It was a big easy chair and the reason I hadn't seen the guy in the grey suit before was that he'd been slumped way down, passed out. His face was a pale, dirty yellow.
I watched as Eddie put his hand to the guy's forehead. A glass on a side table gave Eddie an idea. He poured a couple of drops into his hands, rubbed them together and sniffed.
"Mickeyed," he whispered.
"Just a little bad ice in his drink," Chipman said cynically. "We want you to get rid of him for us." Eddie faced them, his lungs working hard for air. Van Chipman was grinning. Smitty stood there with his shiv glittering palely under a floor lamp.
"Just leave him on a bench in the Plaza, Eddie. Take him out
the back way."
"What if I don't?"
"Pick him up."
Instead of picking the guy up, Eddie pulled open the unbuttoned shirt. the guy's stomach was a dirty yellow color!
Eddie took a step toward Chipman. "You dirty rats!" he yelled. "I'll
see you in hell first!"
Smitty came gliding across the floor with his stiletto balanced like a toy.
"You lifted those diamonds from the movie queen throwing the party in the other wing!" he snarled. "You've got a record a mile long. You are Jewel thief and killer!"
With one hand Eddie tipped the dinner table over in front of Smitty as he closed in. With the other he grabbed a wine bottle and swung on Chipman. It caught him a glancing blow. He went down. Smitty was weaving around the corner of the messed-up table like a blond weasel, with the cold-looking shiv in his grip.
"You're no Marine!" Eddie sneered.
Smitty shook himself, blinked his pale eyes, and dived. With one hand, little Eddie clamped down on his knife wrist and with the other he smashed hard to the mouth. Blood spattered. Smitty whimpered. He Whimpered! The cold-blooded little killer didn't like being pushed around by a jockey 20 pounds under his own weight. Eddie slammed home a couple of hard rights. The stiletto clinked on the floor. A left straightened him up. Another right put him away for keeps.
Chipman was up and snarling like a mad dog while he fumbled in a desk
drawer. He swung around with a little black automatic.
Eddie saw, his fa
ce twisted with the thoughts that were in him and he knew he was done for, but he rushed in anyway.
He charged across that room at Chipman feeling like a giant inside. A gun shot crashed against the walls, stunned Eddie's ears, but he didn't feel hurt. He kept going, wondering if it didn't hurt to be shot like this.
Then he saw Chipman drop his gun and crumple into a chair.
"Sorry I left you hanging for so long Eddie," I said to the little jockey. "But it took me longer to break down the door than I expected."
He looked up and saw me standing in the doorway, a whiff of cordite spilling from the business end of my gun.
"These guys swiped some diamonds," he began.
"Yeh, yeh, I heard the whole thing. I followed you to the door and listened outside. Eddie, I saw everything. There's no question about your courage at all. You were a tiger and you tamed two monsters."
"And I got a race to ride tomorrow and Mom's Ride and me are going to be in the winner's circle."
" Eddie," I said, I am going to put a 'fin' on you; maybe even a 'sawbuck'. Listen pal, how did you know the guy had slipped a mickey to the Marine and swapped clothes with him to get into the movie star's suite?"
"Watch this," he said. Walking past Chipman, who sat groaning in a chair. He pulled back the mickeyed man's shirt and pointed at his belly. "Yellow as gold!. It's the atabrine (synthetic quinine) that they take for malaria in the tropics. I work at Naval Hospital. I have seen a lot of Marines look like that when they first come back."
"Good luck in the race tomorrow: I said to Eddie as he walked out of the room: and I swear to you Mister Weeks, that for a minute - Just a few seconds mind you, that little jockey was six feet tall.
"Good story Chief. Let's have another," said Weeks.
"Wonderful idea," replied the Chief. "I am going to have another. Another Mimosa. And then a nap. Come back next week, Same time. We will talk some more."
The End
This story was a semi-posthumous collaborative effort of John Charles Weeks based on a theme of the late Fergus Truslow, a pulp writer from the early 20th century.