Madball (7 page)

Laboriously and painfully he lifted his head and looked around. The whisky bottle stood on the footlocker. No cap on it but there was half an inch of whisky still in it. Groaning, he threw back the covers and crawled the length of them until he could reach the bottle. He downed the drink. It was horrible tasting and for a full minute he wasn't sure whether it was going to stay down but it did.

By the time he was sure of that he was shivering, for he was wearing only shorts and the air was cool. He pulled on clothes, dug out a hat, slicker and galoshes from the foot locker, and went to the chow top for eggs and coffee to make him feel human again. It helped, but not much. He'd have to cut down on his drinking, he decided. Almost every night this season he'd gone to sleep either drunk or not too far from it. Almost every night? He tried to think of one single night when he hadn't had at least a few drinks, and he couldn't. That much drinking couldn't be good for him. At that rate, he'd never live to see sixty. But why the hell did he want to see sixty? What had sixty ever done for him?

Gloomy morning. He looked around the chow top for someone to talk to. But there were only four others there. The Quintanas but with Leon looking so sullen it was obviously not a good idea even to say hello to him. And Dr. Magus knew better than even to look at the wife of so psychopathically jealous a man as Leon; he was really over the borderline. The other two people were Barney King and Maybelle. But they were sitting together and seemed engrossed in one another and he didn't feel he should butt in. He slogged through mud and rain back to the mitt camp. Days like this he wondered why he bothered to exist at all.

And when he felt that way there was only one answer.

He slogged through mud again
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the rain was slackening
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over to Pop Wilson's trailer. Pop ran a little private liquor store, strictly for the carneys because he didn't bother about a license. His main stock was smoke, in unlabeled pint b
o
ttles, and it was powerful stuff. But for those who were finicky, he also kept on hand-at slightly more than regular prices, since he had to buy it retail himself
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a case or two of standard brand whisky. Dr. Magus had drunk the smoke often enough but today he didn't feel up to it. He felt finicky. He bought a fifth of the finest and oldest whisky Pop had, Seagram's Seven.

Back in the mitt camp he had himself a drink of it and this time, with a breakfast under his belt, it tasted all right. And it took away the cobwebs and he sighed with contentment and lay down again with his hands clasped behind his head, staring up at the canvas top.

What was it, he wondered, that had bothered him about Mack Irby? Certainly it wasn't surprising that he'd been killed and rolled when it had been all over the lot that he was coming back from the hospital loaded with dough from an insurance settlement. Even if whoever had killed him had guessed that the bulk of it would be either in non-negotiable form such as traveler's checks or stashed away somewhere, he'd know Irby would probably carry a fair amount in cash too, as he had. Unless he was pretty stupid the killer could hardly have expected a bigger cash windfall than he got, although he could have hoped the whole thing might be in cash. There were some plenty tough boys on the lot, particularly among the rideboys and the roustabouts; no doubt any one of several of them would gladly have knocked Irby in the head for something over two hundred dollars.

So there wasn't anything mysterious about Irby's being killed. Money had to be the motive, because Dr. Magus felt pretty sure that Irby hadn't had any enemies among the carneys. He'd been a pretty tough boy himself and he hadn't made friends easily but he'd minded his own business and hadn't antagonized anyone either. It couldn't be over a woman. He'd gone straight to Maybelle, and Maybelle had been playing the field since Charlie Flack's death; nobody had any proprietary interest in her now, or had had since Charlie Flack. If Charlie was still alive and Irby had
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but Charlie wasn't alive so why consider that?

No, Irby had been killed for the money he had on him.

Then what bothered him about it?

***

He decided that it must have been the way Mack Irby had acted that night when he'd dropped into the mitt camp. He'd acted naturally at first. But then he'd called the shot on where Irby was heading and whom he was going to see there, Maybelle. Just a good guess based on observation; back when Maybelle had been Charlie Flack's woman he'd noticed, a few times, the way Irby had looked at her. It was easy to guess that, after seven weeks' forced continence in a hospital a woman would be Irby's first thought and that, now that Charlie wasn't in the way, the woman would be Maybelle.

But a mentalist trains himself to watch reactions. It's his stock in trade in giving readings and he comes to do it subconsciously even when he isn't working.

And Mack Irby had reacted big, just a few seconds after that prediction. Fear. Naked fear and a sudden hurry to get the hell away from there. His story that he had to see someone else first before he looked up Maybelle had been strictly from a sudden rush to leave.

Could it have had anything to do with Maybelle herself? Not any way that Dr. Magus could see. And certainly it hadn't been Mack's conscience because he was doing some posthumous poaching on Charlie's preserve. Mack and Charlie hadn't been that close, and besides seven weeks is a long time. Even Charlie wouldn't expect Maybelle to be faithful to him after he was dead and buried.

And anyway, that reaction had been more than surprise or conscience. A man who's told fortunes for twenty-two years gets to know facial expressions and muscular reactions, gets to know them so well he can't be fooled on them, even the minor ones. Without being able to read emotions from physical reactions, he couldn't possibly give a mark a cold reading and make it good.

Fear. That had been Mack Irby's reaction.

It certainly hadn't been physical fear, no possible reason for it. So it could mean only one thing. That lucky shot had made Mack Irby suddenly afraid that Dr. Magus could read his mind, and there was something in his mind he was desperately afraid to have read.

***

Dr. Magus had seen that reaction before, quite a few times, in his years as a mentalist. Make a lucky hit on some statement to a man who has an important guilty secret, and you can watch it dawn on him that maybe you really can either read his mind or discover things about him clairvoyantly
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doesn't matter which way he figures it
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and he starts to sweat. You can almost smell his fear. Dr. Magus remembered one time, fifteen maybe twenty years ago in Akron, when he'd been giving a reading to a mark, an Italian, and he'd made some statement about the mark's past, he didn't even remember what it had been, but he'd seen and felt that sudden fear and then there'd been a short-barrelled little .32 revolver aiming across the little table between them and the mark was saying, "You know too goddam much. Maybe I better-" But before Dr. Magus could even start fast-talking his way out of it, the mark stood up, jammed the gun back in his pocket and rushed out of the mitt camp as though his tail was on fire. It had scared the devil out of Dr. Magus and for a while after that he gave pretty poor readings, sticking to broad generalizations, to avoid lucky hits. He still did that whenever his instincts told him that the mark across the table from him could be a dangerous criminal.

But he'd never thought of Mack Irby as a dangerous criminal. There'd been larceny in his soul, sure, but almost all carneys have that.

Nevertheless Mack Irby had had a guilty secret and a damned important one. It could hardly be a killing, unless it was a very old one or had happened between seasons, during the winter Irby had been with the Wiggins & Braddock shows for three
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no, four seasons now and there hadn't been a killing with the carney
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except one that had happened in a knife fight between two jigs
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in that length of time.

Except Charlie Flack. For a moment he toyed with the possibility that Mack Irby had somehow engineered that auto accident and had killed Charlie so he could get Maybelle. But he couldn't have; the details of the accident had been clear and there'd been witnesses. The other driver had been speeding and on the wrong side of the road and, if Dr. Magus remembered rightly, had been drunk besides. If there'd been anything off-beat about that accident the insurance company would never have made so quick a settlement with Irby. And besides, Irby himself could all too easily have been killed; he wouldn't have taken so wild a gamble that he'd survive and Flack wouldn't. Usually, the seat beside the driver is more dangerous in a smashup than the driver's seat; it just happened that Irby had been lucky and Flack hadn't. So that idea was out completely.

But what then? No kind of petty larceny would get a reaction like that from a man as tough as Mack Irby. If it wasn't a killing it would have to be something big, something that involved real money, like a payroll robbery or a bank robbery.

And didn't he, now that he thought of it, remember reading in the newspaper of some town they'd been playing two or three months ago about a bank robbery in some town nearby? Two men, or had it been three, getting away with quite a wad of cash?

He tried to pin down the memory, and couldn't. He read so many newspapers, always the local papers of the town they were playing or going to play next. Surprising how many helpful little items a mentalist can find in a local paper.

But he hadn't thought of Charlie or Mack in connection with the robbery at that time. If they'd been away from the lot that day somebody with the carney would have known they were gone and might have connected ... No, carneys don't read newspapers. Billboard and Variety yes, but not newspapers.

Bank robbery?

Mack Irby, tough though he had been, just couldn't have been in that kind of a league.

Wait a minute.

Charlie Flack could have pitched in that kind of a league. He remembered now that early in the season when Charlie had joined the carney, he'd guessed Charlie to be something more important than he seemed to be. There'd been something about him, a hard wariness in his eyes, a tenseness in his body, that had said this man is dangerous. Charlie had never come for a reading but if he had he'd have got the broad generalization treatment.

And Charlie hadn't really been a carney, although he'd known some of the ropes and some of the lingo. As though maybe Maybelle had coached him. Not that he hadn't fitted beautifully into the job Maybelle had got him with the model show, as inside man. A bouncer's job, really, in there to watch that none of the marks got out of line and tried to go over or under the rope that held them back a safe distance from the stage on which the girls posed. Things like marks getting past that rope could lead to a clem that would wreck the show, maybe the whole carney if it spread. And a clem can spread like a flash fire and be just as destructive. So Charlie's had been an important job and he'd handled it perfectly. Despite the fact that he hadn't been a big man he'd been one who could say, "Back there, you," quietly but in a voice that would get quick and positive results with the toughest or the drunkest marks.

What had Charlie been before he'd joined the carney? Dr. Magus remembered his first guess
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that Charlie was a red hot, a moderately bi
g
time gangster or robber, either on the lam or holing in with the carney between jobs.

And he and Mack Irby had become close friends.

So even though Irby had been small time up to then, Charlie Flack, with the guts and the experience Irby lacked, could have taken him in on something big. A jackal would not be afraid to help pull down big game if he had a lion to lead him.

Dr. Magus had another drink, but a short one. He might be on the verge of figuring out something and he wanted to get just a slight edge and hold it. His mind worked best that way.

Or, he wondered, was he kidding himself, reading more into Irby's reactions Monday night than there had been?

Well, there was one person who could confirm part of his guess. Maybelle had known Charlie Flack before he'd joined up; it was probably because of her he'd come here, or at any rate she was the reason he'd chosen this particular carnival. She'd know something at least about what he had been. She might even know whether he and Irby had pulled a job together, although he doubted that.

It would be easy to get out of her whatever she knew and she wouldn't even suspect he was doing it. Maybelle believed in fortune telling and had told him Monday night that she'd like to have him give her a reading sometime. He could look her up now on the excuse of wanting to compare notes on how the police lieutenant had taken their story. And once they'd finished that topic she might suggest the reading herself. If she didn't he could easily enough lead her into it in such a way she'd still think it was her own idea and never in a thousand years suspect him of wanting to get rather than to give information.

He hated the thought of having to go out again in the rain, a steady drizzle now, and the mud. But he sighed and again donned the galoshes and the slicker.

He stepped out, deciding to start his search at the chow top since she'd been there half an hour before and might still be there. But luck was with him and he didn't have to search after all. Sammy was going by. He called and Sammy came over.

"Sammy, do you know Maybelle?"

"Yes, Mr. Magus."