To celebrate Dashiell's first birthday today, here is the story announcing her birth. Can't believe it's been one whole trip around the sun. We love you, Dashiell!
— Jeff
Late on Delivery
By Jeff Suess
At two o’clock a man entered my office and offered to pay me two hundred bucks just to pick up a package.
He wore a dove gray checkered suit with a red overcheck and a red tie, black shoes and a black fedora with a red band. His beard was trimmed, his hands were clean, and, if I’d looked, I’d bet he had washed behind his ears. He said his name was Suess.
“What’s in the package?”
He shook his head. “I’m not sure exactly. I can tell you what I think it might be.” He leaned forward and steepled his fingers. “Let me tell you a story,” he said. “Have you ever heard of the Ivory Elephant?”
“Did he bury the field in the third race?”
“It’s a figure, a bejeweled Japanese ivory figure in the form of an elephant dating back several centuries to the Kamakura period. Its worth, of course, is immeasurable. When President Taft was on his tour of Asia in 1905, the figure was lent to the United States as a goodwill gesture, but it disappeared on its way back to Tokyo.”
He sat back, and then, as though it were related, he said, “You may know that I am married to Kristin Suess, the singer.”
I leaned forward, betraying my interest. On the bookcase I had a phonograph of her singing Puccini’s Turandot. “I hadn’t made the connection. She’s performing in Australia somewhere.”
“In Sydney,” he said, surprised that a gumshoe knew opera. “Nine months ago my wife was contracted for a year-long engagement. I had to remain here to handle our affairs, of course, but I encouraged her to go. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity. While there, knowing of my interest in antiquities, she made some inquires regarding the Ivory Elephant. Then, six months ago, I received this.”
He handed me a folded Western Union telegram made out to an address in a small town in the Central Valley called Modesto.
HAVE MADE TREMENDOUS DISCOVERY ALL MY LOVE
KRISTIN SUESS
SYDNEY AUSTRALIA
After I had read it twice for any clues, I handed it back to him.
“What was the discovery?”
“She never revealed what it was in her letters. Until last week.” He folded the telegram and slipped it into his inside coat pocket. “I received a notice that a package will be arriving by ship from Australia on November 6th.”
“That’s was last Saturday,” I said.
“It was,” he said. “The ship has been delayed over a week, to arrive tomorrow afternoon.”
“Who sent the package?” I asked.
“There was no name listed. But it has to be my wife. I know no one else in Australia.”
“And you think the package is this elephant.”
“It must be. So you can see why I need you.”
“The only elephants I see are pink ones,” I said.
“If this package is what I think it is, retrieving it could be dangerous,” he said gravely. “You’re more familiar with the dark criminal world than I am. I don’t know who could be after the package. Agents, gangsters, samurai.”
I pulled out the top left drawer of the desk and extracted a bottle and two glasses. A little something extra would help me swallow this dizzy tale. “Thirsty?”
“No, thank you.”
I poured two fingers for me, and swallowed it down, feeling it singe all the way down my throat.
“All right, Mr. Suess. I’ll be there tomorrow.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it,” I said.
Evidently he was expecting me to be a harder sell. “I thought you’d want a cut of the package.”
“I’ll take the trunk,” I said. I cleared the bottle and glass from my desk, back in the drawer. “No, it’s a simple pickup. That I can do.” And I wasn’t in the habit of turning down easy money. If he wanted to pay me two bills for a delivery, I’d take it and sleep just fine at night. “What’s the name of the ship?”
“The Ranaee, spelled funny.”
He spelled it and I wrote it down and he gave me fifty dollars as a retainer and a number to reach him when I had the package.
When he had gone, I cornered Velda at her desk doing some filing with an emery board. “Criminy, sweatheart, you’re supposed to weed out the screwballs.”
“Love you, too, Sam.”
***
The next morning I had breakfast at Cara’s Café. The waitress poured me coffee without asking.
“What’ll I do for you?” She had a strong Finnish accent.
I ordered sausage and two eggs.
“Hard-boiled?” she asked.
“No, soft centers today. A change is in the air, Tepu. Something big,” I said.
“Give you two sausages,” she said.
The cable car took me as far as the Ferry Building and I walked along the Embarcadero until I spotted the rusted hull of the H.M.S. Ranaee poking over the roof of Pier 31. The passengers had already disembarked. A priest helped a woman in a heavy coat load a canvas bag into the trunk of a yellow cab. Watching two gray suits on the gangplank trying to figure out which direction was the way off the ship brought to mind Laurel and Hardy and a piano. The Port Authority pointed me to a woman named Heidi at the cargo hold checking off an invoice as a grizzly sailor in a knitted cap unloaded crates marked LUM Delivery.
“Got a pickup for Mr. Suess,” I said.
Her eyes narrowed behind her glasses. “Funny, mister.”
“What’s the joke?”
“That’s the one we can’t find,” she said.
“It’s missing?”
“Forty-seven packages were signed in at Sydney, but forty-six were unloaded here,” she said.
“Did you count again?”
She peered over her glasses with a librarian’s glare.
“All right. It’s missing,” I said. The package was gone—if it had ever been here. Did anyone know it might have been a priceless elephant? With what Suess was paying me, I could ask a question or two. “Did anyone sign for it when it came on board?”
She scrutinized the sender’s signature. “I can’t make out the name.”
It was scribbled in black ink. The first letter may have been a K.
“Anyone have access to the cargo hold?”
“The crew.”
“Who’s the skipper of this crate?”
Captain Sheridan was a lanky Aussie with the unkempt hair of someone who’d been away from civilization for three weeks.
“You Sheridan?”
“Yeah, mate.”
I showed him the Photostat of my license. “Got some cargo missing and want to speak to your crew.”
The captain called the crew that had access to the cargo hold onto the bridge. They weren’t too happy about being hauled up there, but Sheridan got them singing. None reported seeing anyone suspicious, no passengers where they shouldn’t be. And none of them recognized the initials on the invoice.
“Got a passenger manifest I can take a gander at?” I asked.
“Sure thing.” The captain handed me the list and I read through the names.
K. Armstrong
E. Cedarblum
J. Evvard
K. Krajewski
K. Schidel
C. Schimke
E. Seibel
J. Stroh
A. Weixel
One name stuck out: Krajewski. That sounded phony as a three-dollar bill. I memorized the address.
“Thanks for your time,” I told the captain.
“Cheers, mate. Come by the pub after you find your package.”
***
On Bryn Street in North Beach, nestled between a Catholic church and an Italian market, was Shad’s Gym. It smelled of olives and sweat. In the ring, a kid sparring with a trainer grunted with each hit and my muscles tensed in sympathy. Sitting on top of a table in trunks and a towel, nursing a swollen eye with a half mask, sat a brown-skinned boxer called Kid Morpheus.
“Saw you go four rounds with a southpaw at the Yosemite Athletic Club last year,” I said.
“How’d I do?” he asked with a grin. One canine stuck out from his lip.
“More bark than bite,” I said.
“Sounds ’bout right.” His features we’re pretty expressive for a mug that had been pummeled as much as his, so I knew he was suspicious of me. I gave him the low down about a package picked up by mistake by someone named Krajewski.
“Don’t know no Krajooski,” he said, as if he’d read the name instead of heard it.
“No one has come here in the last few hours?”
“Just you.”
“Maybe when you were getting the shiner,” I said.
He shook his head, and his brown eyes hardened to steel pebbles.
I held out a card with my name and address but he didn’t take it. “If anyone does come by with a package—”
“I told you, I don’t know her.”
Her. K. Krajewski was a woman.
“Listen, pal. I know people at the D.A.’s office. Sure, they probably wouldn’t come running if I yelled boo, but if I tell them you’ve been taking dives in the ring, they’ll listen and they’ll share that with the gaming commission. Who’s the woman? Where is she? Is she still here?”
He worked his jaw as though chewing on his answer.
I tried again. “Where—”
I didn’t see him move but he must have hopped to his feet because his fists somehow reached me. While I was distracted by the left jab, the right hook caught me blind and it was lights out.
I shouldn’t have criticized his bite.
***
“You okay?”
An invisible hammer rang on my forehead again as I sat up. I was on the gym floor. Dried blood was stuck to my lip and my face felt askew.
“Sorry I hit you.”
Kid Morpheus held his hand out to me. His eyes told me he was sincere so I accepted it and with a powerful tug he yanked me to my feet.
“You’re a shamus,” he said, fingering the card I had dropped. “Thought you were— Thought there were two of you,” he amended.
“I am seeing double,” I said.
“She said someone might come by.”
“Who? Krajewski?”
He nodded.
“Who is she?”
Morpheus shrugged in that manner that said he wasn’t going to say. And I was in the wrong weight class to press him.
“Man named Suess hired me to pick up a package,” I said. “It wasn’t there, and your right hook tells me that Miss Krajewski knows something about it.”
His brows knit. I had never seen anyone’s face actually do that. “You’re really working for Suess?”
“I am. A simple delivery.” No use going into the whole back story.
His brown eyes found mine. “There’s a couple of European types, she said. Looking for the package. Thought you were…”
He honest to God started to blush.
“She say who they are? Why they’re after the package?”
“Nuh uh.”
“You know what it is?”
He shrugged again.
“Where is she?”
He shook his head and clammed up.
“Nice chatting with you, champ.” I rubbed my sore jaw to make sure nothing was loose. “You still got it, by the way.”
“If you find her,” the boxer called after me, “you help her. You keep that package safe.”
Fall had turned the sky gloomy and the leaves to brown, and a couple of possible European spies were also looking for the package. I had just had my bell rung and that was probably why I was starting to think the package might actually be the Ivory Elephant.
***
The trail had gone cold. No one had answered at the number Suess gave me, and I was out of luck. So I called in a favor.
Detective Douglas was all right for a bull. He claimed I was a bad influence on him, but he did what I asked and gathered the passengers from the ship down at the Hall of Justice.
“What’s this all about, Sam?” Douglas hated wearing a tie and tugged at it as though it were a noose.
“Looking for a lady,” I said.
“Aren’t we all.”
Together we interviewed them one by one. Dr. Kolia was a zoologist specializing in big cats. He told us all about his studies of the endangered Tasmanian tiger but nothing about the woman known as Krajewski. Probably because she didn’t have whiskers.
Some of the boys escorted Kassandra Schidel in themselves, a raven-haired debutante in a striking deep scarlet bias-cut gown. She politely answered questions for an hour but we were no closer to finding the package or the woman.
We struck gold with Father Bishop. He remembered a pretty blond woman traveling alone, and had helped her hail a cab. A kicked myself, remembering that I had seen them at the dock. That was her. I remembered a canvas bag—maybe the package. After more grilling, that was all the padre could remember.
Douglas brought in an artist, a kid named Jeremy, who the department had hired to sketch the rogue’s gallery. He drew the woman from the priest’s descriptions, then tore off the page and handed me the sketch.
He’d added a caricatured body to the face and a cartoon wolf whistling at her, but I immediately recognized the diva from her press clippings—Kristin Suess.
I kept that item to myself for the time being.
“Sorry about that,” Douglas said. “Kid thinks he’s a cartoonist.”
He had even signed it: JERM.
“Detective, excuse me,” Father Bishop interrupted. “I remember the young lady asked the driver if he traveled across the bay.”
“Train station’s in Oakland,” Douglas said.
“That was hours ago,” I growled. “She could be anywhere.”
Everything was hinky about this Suess business, but I didn’t want the heat all over them until I knew more. The train could be going to Modesto, in the Central Valley. Or Timbuktu for all I knew.
“Can you spare some boys to help me check the trains?” I asked Douglas.
“I can spare me,” he said.
We ran into the City Attorney in the lobby and, while Douglas signed us out a car, I asked for some legal advice on the sentence for smuggling a priceless Japanese artifact.
“What are you into, Sam?” he asked.
“Just asking, Murph. Don’t worry.” His name was Lance but he answered to Murph for some reason.
“Depends,” he started, tapping his vest, “on what international laws were broken. We could be talking a serious stint if anyone gets hurt. Are you talking about a client?”
Douglas honked from the curb.
“Got to run, Murph. You still golf?”
“Every day I’m not here, plus Sunday.”
“I’ll catch you on the course,” I said.
“If you’re not in Alcatraz,” he said.
***
We showed the sketch around to the porters and ticket takers and hit pay dirt with one that recognized her purchasing a ticket to Chicago with a transfer to Cincinnati, then New Orleans. The City of San Francisco line traveled weekly, and was due to pull out of the station in ten minutes. Douglas went to stall the engineer while I used my retainer to buy a ticket.
On board, I enlisted the conductor, a tow-headed kid named Kevin, to search car after car, but we took too long and the train jerked forward. I saw Douglas on the platform watching the train pull away. Maybe he would radio ahead to the next stop in Colorado, but for now I was on my own.
The search turned up nothing until I spotted a case marked with tags from Australia on a baggage rack. There was an empty seat in the passenger car, so I took it.
The other three passengers were all women. I politely doffed my hat and fiddled with it in my lap while I silently took stock of the three of them.
A pair of them was a couple of older women that brought to mind my own mother. Through conversation I determined they were mothers-in-law of a couple in Ohio, off to visit their baby grandchild. Pamela, shorter and slightly younger, knitted what I eventually deduced were booties to the rhythmic rocking of the train. Jenny, the maternal grandmother, practiced fingering positions for playing lullabies on a ukulele.
The third was a young ginger-haired nurse named Marie from Canada. She had familiar features, but I had seen Kristin Suess on the sleeve to her record and photographed in newspapers—she had a rabbit-like quality and a smile that lit up her face that the nurse didn’t have. The nurse had traveled to Europe and Australia and South America—which was how she had gotten the Australian tags many years ago, she explained with a slight French-Canadian accent.
Jenny was strumming “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” when an attractive blonde girl in a dark blue uniform and cap offered us sandwiches and cakes from a refreshment trolley. I declined but the older women bought some for the long trip. Distracted by the attendant, I nearly missed the couple of suits that passed by our compartment. I felt a tingle down the back of my neck.
It was Laurel and Hardy. The Boys had found their way off the ship. Only they didn’t look funny anymore. They were square and blond and hard, of European stock, with something even harder poking through the lining of their coats.
One of them suddenly turned his head to the side and we locked eyes. The corner of his mouth curled up. They knew where the woman was, where the package was.
I jumped up and rammed into the trolley. It blocked my exit. I shoved the cart and the attendant aside, drawing complaints from the older women and one tried to jab me with a knitting needle, but I forced my way out to the corridor and shouted after the goons:
“Hey Stan! Ollie!”
They turned and pulled heaters from their coats. There was nowhere to go, so I dropped to the floor. Someone screamed. One shot each in my direction and they turned to bash through the door to the next car. I got to my feet and sent a bullet over their heads, and at the moment one spun around to return fire, a silver tray, flung like a discus, connected with his nose and he fell back against his partner. In a moment the conductor was on top of them, pinning their arms back.
“Who threw that?” I asked.
The young attendant grinned. “I did,” she said and tipped her cap back to reveal her youthful face.
“That’s quite an arm.”
“Stephanie,” she said, and her grin widened.
There was no use borrowing trouble, so instead I helped the conductor rope up Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum and spilled the whole scenario for him. He peeled back his conductor jacket and flashed a badge.
“A G-man?” I said. “This boxcar is full of surprises.”
“We intercepted coded transmissions from Europe. We’ve been following these two, and they’ve been following you,” he said.
“And I’ve been leading them straight to her.”
“Straight to who?”
“Never mind,” I said. “European agents, eh? All this for a package. Why they want it so bad? What’s in it?”
“Some MacGuffin—nonsense about a Japanese elephant figurine. Nuts!” he said. “There are no elephants in Japan!”
The two grandmothers complained about the mess and Kevin escorted the spies to a holding area until they could be dropped off in Grand Junction. The danger was over but I still didn’t have the package—whatever was really in it. That nagging feeling got me thinking. The goons did seem to know where they were going.
“What’s the next car?” I asked the attendant. “The door’s locked.”
“That’s the luggage car. No passengers allowed.”
I offered her the puppy dog eyes that always get me in trouble. “Need to see if my stray bullet hit anything. Think I could go see?”
It cost me the price of a crumb cake but she let me in. The compartment was stacked with leather cases like columns. My gun came out for support. There were plenty of places to hide—inside a trunk or behind a wall of them. My ears perked at a muffled groan. To the right. I maneuvered the maze carved out of the luggage and came from behind the spot. The same moment I heard a sharp cry, I stepped out, my gun pointed ahead.
It was the face from the album sleeve, her hair matted, her skin shiny with sweat. She sat on the ground against a trunk for support, her knees up, forming a tent of her violet linen gown. Her husband, no longer dressed dapper, was kneeling at her side, wearing a brown worsted suit, his sleeves rolled up, a look of fear in his eyes.
Next to her a canvas bag was open wide, a stuffed animal raccoon poking out.
And I knew what the package was.
“What is this?” I demanded.
“Let me explain.” Noticing the pistol Suess raised his arms.
“You knew where she was. The package was bogus,” I said.
Gulping down heavy breaths, she grunted and closed her eyes, worn out. The heavy coat had kept her secret. The tremendous discovery, nine months ago.
“It was all bunk.” Suess slumped against a trunk and wiped his sweaty forehead. “I’m not an investor. I don’t deal in antiques. I’m a writer of pulps,” he said. “I write adventure stories for Black Mask and I was sharing a tale with Kristin. Her mail was intercepted by European agents and they thought it was all real. The Ivory Elephant, the endless riches. Then they went after her in Australia. They tried to grab her. So we cooked up this story about the package and hired you to retrieve it, hoping they’d go after you instead of her.”
“And it worked, except I was after the mystery woman Krajewski and led them straight to you.”
His eyes widened. “You have to protect us,” Suess said.
That’s what the boxer had said.
Protect the package. Protect the baby.
She was distressed. This was hard enough work without someone pointing a gun at you. I put the gun away. “Jeff!” she cried. “It’s coming!” Her husband comforted her, told her she was doing great. She cried out again, harsher this time. That was more than I could take. Kristin Suess, the voice of an angel, screaming in pain.
“I’ll get someone,” I said.
“No!” Suess stopped me. “There are men—”
“Took care of them,” I said. “I met a nurse in the next car.”
He let me go and I returned to the passenger car. The grandmothers were kinder to me when I told them a baby was coming. The nurse grabbed her bag and followed me.
I led her through the baggage compartment to the couple on the floor. Kristin grimaced and tightened. It was even hard for me to see her this way.
“It’s me,” I said, when Suess positioned himself to protect his wife. “This is Marie.”
Initially I took his reaction as crude, but Suess stiffened and his eyes expanded, looking behind me. I felt the barrel jab in my ribs.
“Step over there,” the nurse commanded. Her accent was gone. I moved beside Suess and slowly turned around, arms up. In the dim lighting the ginger color in her hair was masked and I recognized her. The debutante from the Ranaee. In her hand she held a revolver.
“What do you want?” Suess asked.
“The package,” I said. “They’re all after the package. Were you with those goons?”
She laughed. “Dummkopfs,” she said.
“All right, you win,” I said. “The package is right here.”
Suess goggled at me. “What are you doing?”
She looked at the rows of luggage and frowned. “Where is it?”
“In the bag.” I pointed my finger at the canvas bag. Keeping the gun trained on me, the girl reached for the bag and slid it closer to her. If Suess did anything but let me handle this, we were sunk.
The girl blindly felt around inside the bag and pulled out the raccoon toy. Her eyes brightened.
“Is this is it? Is it inside?” She squeezed the stuffed animal, then ripped the seams with her fingers and tiny beads rained down onto the floor.
“Stop that!” Suess protested. “That’s for the baby!”
Paying no attention to the situation, he grabbed for the toy. Her gun leveled at him and I grabbed it. The gun went off. Kristin screamed. I wrestled the piece from the girl’s grip. We slammed into the luggage together and fell to the floor. I twisted her around so that my knee dug into her back.
“That’s enough,” I growled. I slipped the piece in my coat pocket and used my tie to bind her hands behind her back.
“Where’s the Ivory Elephant?” she said, squirming to get a glimpse.
“Never existed,” I said. “The kid’s a writer, made the whole thing up.”
She stopped fighting. “You’re lying.”
“Not a bad story, actually,” I said. “Had me going for a minute.”
I flagged down the G-man conductor and stowed her with the other chumps. When I came back to the baggage car, I found Suess attempting to quiet his wife. A bullet hole was blasted out of the trunk a few inches from Kristin’s head, but that wasn’t why she was screaming. Her whole body was clenched like a fist.
It was time.
“She’s not going to make it to the next station,” I said. I took off my coat and rolled up my sleeves and knelt at her feet. “Get some hot water,” I barked at her husband. “Ask the attendant. And get some towels.”
“What are you doing?” he asked instead of complying.
“What I was hired to do,” I said. “Deliver the package.”
Half and hour later a beautiful baby girl was born into the world. It was gruesome and slick and wonderful, and when those pipes started crying it was the most heavenly sound in the world.
Her mother held her to her chest. Her dad stroked the sparse hairs on her head.
Sometimes gumshoeing was a crazy racket.
The next morning, we pulled into Union Terminal in Cincinnati, a fancy new half dome in Art Deco that looked like a Crosley radio. The Suesses saw me off on a train back to Frisco. The Queen City had always been their real destination—a good burg to raise a family.
Holding the baby, Kristin hugged me and promised me tickets when she next sang at the War Memorial Opera House. Suess said he’d wire me the money but I told him to keep it. For the baby.
“What are you going to call her?” I asked.
Kristin exchanged a look with her husband. “We couldn’t have done it without you,” she said.
“You did all the hard work,” I said.
“Just the same. We’d like her to remember what you did for us. For her.”
“Going to name her Sam?” I said.
“That’s not a name for a girl,” Suess laughed. “What’s your middle name?”
I boarded the car and waved farewell as the train pulled away to the west and I couldn’t stop grinning the whole trip.
Dashiell Ranaee Suess. Born November 16 at 1:43 A.M. Weighing 7 lbs. 3 oz., 21 inches long.
Welcome to the world, kid.
The End
