FUGITIVE IMPOSTER by Fredric Brown, Selected and Introduced by Toni L. P. Kelner Step Right Up! I love carnivals. I can’t wait to climb onto the rides, with their sheen of danger, without real risk, and I allow myself to be lured into throwing darts and tossing basketballs, even when I know the games are rigged. Most of all I soak in the strange world of bright neon, loud music, and screams of joy and fear, amazed at the strange new world that has suddenly appeared, complete with its own language and rules. Fredric Brown’s mystery stories are a lot like carnivals. There’s the sense of danger that comes with a good mystery; the realization that no matter how hard I try to figure out the puzzle, Brown has rigged a climax that I’ll never see coming; and the exploration of a whole new world in every story. Take “Fugitive Imposter.” It starts with an apprentice undertaker working the night shift at a funeral home, and that’s a world as bizarre to me as any alien planet. For danger, he throws in a murderous bank robber, and then he ends with one of the twists that Brown was famous for. It’s pure carny! Now my comparing Brown’s mysteries to carnivals is no accident. Some of his best-known stories and novels are the Ed and Am Hunter series, many of which are set in carnivals.The Fabulous Clipjoint and its sequels were as fascinating to me for the world of the carny as they were for the plots, and I wanted to learn about carnivals from the inside, not just as a townie. Not that I ran off to join one, but I did start hunting up articles and books about carny life. That led me to write my carnival mystery short story “Sleeping With the Plush” (published right here in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine in May 2006). It’s not an accident that my carnival proprietor is named Brownie, either. Of course, one place where Brown’s stories outshine real-life carnivals is their staying power. A carnival disappears after just a few days, but he left behind an enormous body of work, which means that if Brown is new to you, you’ve got some great rides ahead. So step right up, climb on board, and stay seated until your mind stops spinning! * * * * FUGITIVE IMPOSTER by Fredric Brown Dead bodies are just clay and you get used to being around them after a while and it doesn’t bother you. But they aren’t much in the way of company, no matter how used to them you get. That’s why the night shift at an undertaker’s place is just about the loneliest job there is. By one o’clock I’d finished all the work there was to do. Cleaned and swept the place and polished the arterial tubes and trocars and what not, and uncrated the two new coffins that had come in. And all that that left me to do was to sit down and wish I had someone to talk to that could talk back, and wish that the last three months of my apprenticeship were over so I could get my assistant’s license. And, as usual for that time of night, I was getting sleepier and sleepier, and wondering why people didn’t have the consideration to do their dying always in the daytime, so there wouldn’t have to be a night watch... The bell rang. I jumped and my eyes jerked open, and I noticed first that the clock had moved ahead half an hour in the last minute. So I must have dozed off. As I headed for the door, I buttoned my coat and straightened my tie. Undoubtedly it was a customer, and when you’re going to be an undertaker you’ve got to learn to look dignified in front of the customers—the live ones, I mean. The instant I unlatched the door and opened it, a guy stepped through and jabbed a gun in my ribs. Then he looked me over and grinned a nasty grin and put the gun back in his pocket. I guess he decided he wouldn’t need it to handle me—and I guess he was right about that. He was a big bruiser, a head taller than I and with shoulders like a gorilla. He had cauliflower ears with hair growing out of them. And he had little, vacant-looking eyes. Just by looking at him you could see that he might be able to do dirt to a grizzly bear, but never to an equation in algebra. Obviously he was an ex-pug. And if I’d never understood what being punch-drunk meant, I understood it when I looked at him. He reached back of him and pushed the door shut, and said in a hoarse, raspy voice: “Open the door, fat boy.” I took a step back, maybe two steps, and gawked at him. How could I open the door, when he had just— His face started to get ugly, and he pulled back a huge fist. “B-but you just sh-shut it!” I stammered, retreating another step. That cocked fist looked as big as a barn. I knew if it hit me I’d land so hard I’d bounce. He relaxed a little. “Not that door. The car door,” he growled. “Get going.” Mine was not to reason why, just then. Keeping a watch out of the corner of my eye on Cauliflower Ears, I edged to the door of the reception room and started back for the garage doors. He stayed right with me. I pressed the button and the doors slid silently open. A big gray sedan came through them and gunned down the ramp to a point where it was out of sight of the doors. “Shut ‘em again,” said Cauliflower Ears. As I pressed the switch, the doors slid back into place. I heard the door of the gray sedan open and slam shut, and a tall slim man, well-dressed almost to the point of foppishness, came walking up the ramp. I recognized him right away from the pictures the newspapers had been carrying. His face was just as smoothly handsome as the photographs had shown it. But the pictures hadn’t shown the character of the eyes set in that handsome face. They were fisheyes—and the eyes of a dead fish at that. Cold and gray and utterly expressionless. The man walking up the ramp was Duke Hall. Bank robber. Cop-killer. The man who had killed five men and one woman in the course of half a dozen bank robberies within the past two years, who’d shot his way out of an ambuscade last week in Michigan, leaving one policeman dead and two others wounded behind him. Duke Hall, who had bragged he could hit any given button of a policeman’s coat at fifty feet, but that he never aimed at a button high up because the cop would die too easily. Duke Hall, the most wanted, feared and hated criminal in the country. Duke Hall, here in Fenimore Brothers’ Funeral Parlors! I didn’t know what it was all about, and I couldn’t even guess. But I felt myself getting cold all over, starting at the base of my spine and working up and down from there. He was looking at the gorilla standing beside me. “Is Pudgy here the only guy around, Punchy?” he asked. His voice was as cold and gray as his eyes. The gorilla started to grin. “Funny, Duke,” he answered. “He’s Pudgy and ya call me Punchy. Pudgy and Punchy.” He broke into a hoarse guffaw. The killer’s voice cut like a whip. “Case this joint, you half-witted ape! How do you know he’s alone here?” He took a step toward the ex-pug and there was death in his face. Punchy whirled, his face white as a sheet, and headed back for the parlors. But humor overcame his fear; I heard him chuckling to himself before he got to the first door. He walked oddly—came down hard on his heel with each step, and then lifted his foot without any spring to it, like someone on stilts. Then my eyes came back to Duke Hall and I saw he was looking at me. I didn’t like the look. “Pudgy,” he said, “we want to buy some meat.” I don’t know whether it was what he said or the way he said it or the way he looked. But I didn’t answer. Because I couldn’t. “About a hundred and fifty pounds of it, Pudgy. Five or ten pounds one way or the other is all right. We want it in a cut about five feet eleven inches long. Cold meat will do.” “Y-you mean you w-want—” I stammered. “You look like a very smart guy, Pudgy. You get the idea right away. That’s what I want. A stiff. Only better if it isn’t stiff yet. See what I mean, Pudgy?” He leaned back against the fender of Fenimore Brothers’ best touring car, and lighted a cigarette. He watched me over the flare of the match. Ice over flame. The big guy showed up again in the doorway. There was a lopsided grin on his face. “Lots of people here, Duke,” he said. “But they won’t bother us none. They’re all croaked.” He guffawed again. Duke’s glance flicked toward him and he stopped in the middle of a laugh. “Take us to the office, Pudgy,” Duke told me. “Or some room without outside windows. You look like a smart guy and that’s to the good if you don’t try to be too smart. You can do more good if you know just what I want and what I want it for. Can’t you?” I managed to unlimber my neck enough to nod, even if I didn’t know what he meant. Then I led the way toward Mr. Fenimore’s office. My legs felt like they were made of rubber. I fell into a chair, and Duke Hall sat on the edge of the desk, not facing me. I was glad of that. Cauliflower Ears leaned against the closed door. “Look, kid,” said Duke Hall. “You know who I am, don’t you?” “Uh—yes.” “They know I’m here in Elkhorn.” He didn’t have to explain who “they” were—I knew, of course, he meant the cops. “There’s a cordon around the town. A dozen of ‘em bunched together on every road out. And I’ve got to get through tonight.” His voice was as flat and expressionless as though he were talking about the weather. “They know my car. I could get another, but they’re stopping all the cars. See?” I saw. Beyond his unemotional statement of fact, I began to get the picture. There wasn’t a policeman in the country wouldn’t risk his life to get the cop-killer, Duke Hall. Outside there, on the roads, they were waiting. Some openly, some in ambush. Yes, the countryside would be hot all right, since the police knew Duke Hall was in town and suspected he was going to try to run the gauntlet. There’d be Tommy-guns waiting out there, and tear-gas bombs, and maybe even barricades. And all the state cops would be converging on Elkhorn, and even whatever Feds were near-by. Duke Hall was Big Time, with capital letters. “They’ve even got lookouts in the fields,” Duke went on. “There’s only one way I can get through tonight, Pudgy. They’re gonna find me dead, see? And open the roads again.” I began to see, a little. But how could— “Highway 41,” he went on, “is blocked at the Bender Road. A mile this side of there, there’s a barn. When that barn burns down in an hour or so, they’ll see the flames and some of them will investigate, see? This car that they know I’m using will be hidden near it. And there’ll be a charred stiff found in the barn that will be taken for me. A couple bottles to show I got drunk hiding out in the barn, and—” “But can’t they tell that—” He nodded. “Yeah, but they’ll think so right away. When they get that stiff back to the morgue and begin to check Bertillions, sure. But that’ll be tomorrow.” It looked possible. Not sure, of course, but the kind of a gambling chance a guy like Duke Hall would be willing to take. Duke was looking at me, and when I glanced across at his companion by the door, he seemed to read what I was thinking. “Punchy’s local talent,” he said. “I picked him up here to help me. The cops don’t know he’s with me, so we won’t need a stiff for him.” He stopped talking and for a full minute only the ticking of the clock filled the office. Then Duke Hall looked at me and said, “Well?” and I realized that it was my move. I guess it was because I’d been so scared that I hadn’t realized while he was talking where I’d fitted in. I had to furnish the corpse. And if I didn’t or couldn’t, it didn’t take much figuring on my part to know where I stood with a killer like Hall. I saw Duke signal to Punchy, and the big gorilla began to move across the room toward me. I began to talk fast. “There’s six of them in the morgue, Mr. Hall,” I told him. “But I don’t know. Three of them are women and that wouldn’t be any good, naturally. Then there’s Mr. Cordovan, but he—no, that’s no good. And Mr. Rogers is a dried-up little old shrimp and I don’t remember the other one’s name, but he—he’s a lot heavier than I am. And that’s all there—” The big gorilla was back of my chair now, and I didn’t know what he was going to do. I tried to twist around to face him, but Duke Hall’s gray eyes held me like a cobra’s hold a bird. I’d never known until then what it meant to be scared stiff. “How tall are you, Pudgy?” Duke asked quietly. At first I couldn’t get my throat to work. Then I swallowed. “F-five feet six,” I managed to say. I thought maybe I was getting away with it. But Duke’s eyes didn’t waver from mine. “You’re lying, Pudgy. You’re five-eight, at least. And lying down a couple or three inches isn’t that much. And if it was a really good fire that didn’t leave much but a skeleton of you, Pudgy, maybe—” Almost as though I had eyes in the back of my head, I could visualize the grin on Punchy’s face as he put his hands around my neck. “Okay, Duke?” he asked. And laughed as he began to tighten his grip. I managed to holler, “Wait!” squeakily before those tremendous hands had tightened too much to let my voice out. I saw Duke signal, and the pressure relaxed. He looked at me and said: “Well?” I said, “Listen—” to stall an instant. My mind was going like mad. I didn’t have an idea, but I was trying to get one. I was going to die if I didn’t get one. These boys weren’t playing. Maybe I’d die later no matter what I could pull out of the hat now, but that was later; this was now. Maybe they’d try to use me for an understudy for the corpse they wanted, but I didn’t think so. Probably they’d try another undertaking parlor or else pick up a guy off the street that fitted closer. But that didn’t matter to me. They wouldn’t go off and leave me alive to call copper. Unless I came through with something, I was as good as dead. “I—I was stalling,” I told him. “We got a corpse that will do.” I felt Punchy take his hands away from my neck, and I went on. “He’s about five-ten, and I’d guess about your build. And he hasn’t any embalming fluid in him, because he’s going to be cremated tomorrow. I don’t know how embalming fluid would act in a fire.” “Show me, Pudgy.” My legs almost gave way under me when I got up. I took them back to the morgue and opened the gray casket that was still on the dolly. Duke Hall stood looking down, sizing up the build and appearance of the corpse. “Swell,” he said. “Same color hair and everything. Just so the face gets charred, it’ll be a dead ringer.” He reached down and prodded the flesh of one of the folded hands. “Rigor mortis, though.” “Probably wearing off by now,” I told him. “No embalming fluid. I think fire’ll break it, anyhow.” I took hold of a trouser cuff and lifted a little and the leg came up. “Yeah, wearing off.” Duke turned and called over my shoulder to Punchy. “Hey, help the kid put this stiff in the car. That black touring car out there.” The gorilla was stronger than I; I had him take the shoulders and I took the feet and we got the corpse into the touring car. I saw Duke giving the car and the license plates a close once-over to be sure there was nothing that would mark it as a mortician’s car. We’d got the body doubled up in the back seat when he finished. “Okay,” he said. “Pudgy here will drive this car and I’ll go with him. You, Punchy, follow us with the gray sedan. When we get there I’ll show you where to park it so it’ll look hidden but where the cops will find it when they go to the fire.” The streets ahead of us, and then the road, stayed empty. But Duke had me stick to thirty miles an hour so there’d be no chance of us attracting attention. The ex-pug and I carried the body into the barn and put it on a pile of straw in the corner. Duke watched all the details. I remembered one he almost forgot. “How about a gun?” I asked him. “They’ll expect to find one on the corpse.” He reached hesitantly toward a shoulder holster, and then reconsidered. “You, Punchy,” he said. “Put yours in one of the guy’s pockets.” Punchy started to protest, then caught Duke’s eye and grinned instead, and obeyed. Then Punchy and I waited in the touring car while Duke touched off the straw with his cigarette lighter. He came running up and got in the driver’s seat beside me. We just made it. As we turned off the main road into a hiding place for the touring car, the sky was beginning to turn red behind us and we could hear the roar of motorcycles and police cars as several of them converged toward the burning barn. But back among the trees where we parked, the car was safely out of sight. A fire engine sirened past us, whizzing out from town. Duke looked up at the bloody sky to the west of us, and nodded in satisfaction. “Take ‘em half an hour to put it out, and that’s more than plenty of time.” He leaned back against the seat and lighted another cigarette. “I’ll give ‘em an hour more to find me in that barn and find the car by it, and call off the cordon.” “Jeez, Duke,” Punchy told him. “You’re a smart guy, all right. How’s about the kid, here. Do we—” “He’s smart, too,” said Duke Hall. “Damn near too smart, at first. But he dug us up the right corpse, so maybe we’ll give him a break. We’ll let him drive us through.” He turned toward me. All the car lights were off, of course, and I couldn’t see his eyes, but I could feel them. And I could remember them. I knew right then that when the getaway was finished, they’d knock me off. If they let me out, it wouldn’t be long before I could get to a telephone. Unless they fixed me so I couldn’t. In spite of what I’d done, there was still a swell chance of that happening. But you can’t stay in a state of jitters forever; you get calluses. I wasn’t so much afraid anymore. After that moment when Punchy had those hamlike hands of his around my neck and started to squeeze, I don’t think I’ll be so much afraid of anything anymore. We heard the fire engine clanging back into town, and we heard other cars, too, but from where we were we couldn’t tell which way they were going. None of us talked. Duke smoked one cigarette after another. Punchy didn’t smoke. Every once in a while he’d laugh aloud, or start to, at some joke of his own. Duke would turn around and glance at him and the sound would break off abruptly. I had plenty to think about. I wondered a little what Mr. Fenimore would say about my giving Mr. Cordovan’s corpse to Duke Hall. But I guessed he wouldn’t say much; I really didn’t have any choice. And Mr. Cordovan had wanted to be cremated anyway, and he was getting his wish, only a few hours sooner. And as he didn’t have any relatives, the only squawk could come from the crematory for the business they lost. The sky began to turn a little gray in the east now, where we could see between the trees. Duke Hall looked at his wrist watch. “Almost four,” he said. “Let’s go. You drive, Pudgy. Stay under forty till we’re well out of town. I’ll take over then.” I slid the car out onto the road. Now within five minutes I’d know whether my stunt had worked or not. But even if it had, I might end up with a bullet or two in me. Duke Hall held his hand near the lapel of his coat. I tried to make up my mind what I could do if anybody tried to stop the car. If I stopped it, Duke Hall would shoot me. If I didn’t, someone else would. A swell spot. The Bender Road intersection was coming up ahead. I let the car drop to thirty. Duke turned his head to look at me, but I pretended I didn’t notice. I let the speed drop to twenty-five. Duke growled: “Hey, don’t—” Then a couple of blue-clad figures stepped onto the road ahead of us. A car that had been parked out of sight swung out onto the road and I could see a Tommy-gun muzzle ready at the back window. One of the blue-clad figures had a hand raised for us to stop. His other hand rested on the butt of the holstered gun on his belt. But the gun wasn’t drawn. They didn’t know yet that we weren’t okay. I heard Duke swear luridly and saw his gun leap from its holster under his coat. He brought it up to fire through the windshield. With his marksmanship, I knew every shot would find a policeman target. I pushed all my weight on the brake, suddenly and hard. Even at twenty-five miles an hour, that’s a jolt. Duke went forward and the windshield broke, but it wasn’t a bullet that broke it; it was the gun itself smashing through the glass. I heard a yell from Cauliflower Ears in the back seat as he fell forward and thumped against the back of the front seat. But I knew he wasn’t armed. I’d braced myself against the steering wheel when I’d smacked the brake home, and I’d been ready for the jolt. I threw my weight sidewise against Duke and got both my hands on his arm as he was trying to raise the gun again. He clubbed at my face with his free hand and I saw stars, but hung on. Then the car was at a dead stop and there were coppers with guns on all sides of it. One of them jumped to the running-board and yanked the gun out of Duke’s hand—and it was all over. As they pulled us out of the car I recognized Chief of Police Jerry Harrison and he recognized me and said: “Charlie! What the hell are you doing with—” I spilled the story, and he grinned. “Charlie, you’re going to get a slice of that reward! Or rather, those rewards. There are a dozen of them waiting to be claimed.” He chuckled. “So Duke thought we’d think that was him back in the barn, huh?” I nodded. “I told him we didn’t have a corpse that would do, but he was going to make me pinch-hit for one. I figured that a body with two artificial legs would be better than that—from my point of view if not his.” Copyright ©1941, 1969 by Fredric Brown; reprinted by permission of the Estate.