Broadway's My Beat, from Times Square to Columbus Circle, the gaudiest, the most violent, the
lonesomest mile in the world.
Broadway's My Beat, with Larry Thor, Detective Danny Clover.
November night slips down on Broadway, a gust of blackness, and at once Broadway is a neon-lighted
revival meeting that screams for the joy and the salvation.
Then the happy trumpet yells and makes the music of the night time.
Heads into the darkness, drifts and dies.
From my window at headquarters I watched it.
Watched a man detach himself from it, turn and stand for an instant in the sallow pool
of light from a street lamp and consider it.
Turn again and up the steps, and in a little while open my door, because you've been told
of seeing me.
Come in.
You know all about me, don't you?
Not a thing.
Who are you?
What do you mean, not a thing?
I'm Mr. Bryant.
And?
Well, you know about me, about my wife.
Why, you think I was in here yesterday?
Tell you people a bunch of lies?
You talked to someone else.
I didn't know a thing about you.
My wife.
She didn't come home.
She hasn't come home, Mr. Clover.
I see.
You reported the day ago.
Yes.
Clara went out the other evening.
I waited for her.
Billy's been waiting.
Billy?
Three and a half, going on four.
The second one, really.
Our first child didn't even get born.
Why did you come to see me, Mr. Bryant?
The man in the other office told me.
Please find, please find Clara, Mr. Clover.
She's gotta come home, Mr. Clover, because...
The man in the other office said to show you the letter.
Here, open it and read it.
As you see, the man who wrote the letter says he knows where my wife is.
He says his name is Shorty Dunn.
And he says, come to the Apollo Hotel.
What does that mean?
And bring money.
That's strange.
It says come to the Apollo Hotel, but it's written on Mission House Stationery.
And bring money.
That's why I came to the place again.
Though I am worried about my wife, I have my head about me.
You, the police, you find the car and she'll come home to us, then.
You fellas are good.
Find her.
Suddenly the spill of words stopped flowing from him.
It became a moan, became the further helpless.
Its component part, defiance and shame.
This was the universal currency of man who must beg, refuse hunger, to bother to eat,
to bring her to her dignity, to blot out this sudden emptiness.
I told him I'd check on him, try to find his wife for him, talk to the man who had written
the letter.
He accepted the alms I had given him, went away.
The Apollo Hotel stands on the corner of the Bowery and sells men's sleep at 50 cents a
night.
You walk up a flight of stairs, the grit under your feet streaching your presence.
And at the landing of death, moist with a sweat of hands, we'll have bargained across
it.
In back of it, the man with the green eye shade, the broken, restless fingers, the bender
of sleep.
Go away, we'll full up every bed in the house.
I want Shorty dumb, is he here?
You talk like you've got a right to want somebody.
Police.
Yeah, I know.
You know how I know?
Because I'm sensitive to the sound feet make on my stairs.
Without looking up, I can tell he's at a rummy, a wino, a bum, a cop.
You want Shorty, huh?
Yeah.
Imagine that.
Shorty finally made it.
Somebody wants him.
Come on.
Bed twelve.
It's stressing, ain't it, policeman?
The way a man comes in here for four bits worth of sleep and something won't let him,
it bothers him.
You'd be astonished how it bothers me.
Yeah.
Bed twelve.
Shorty done.
Hey, Shorty.
Hey, wake up.
Today I'm in the hospital.
You're in the hospital.
Shorty done.
Hey, Shorty, hey, wake up.
Today a miracle to see you got a visitor.
Asleep.
Shorty?
Well, what do you know about that?
I can't hear you, Timmy.
Look at him, like a baby.
The jackknife in his heart finally brought it to him.
Yeah.
You wanted him, policeman.
Take him away so I can sell his bed all over again.
That's how it was that a sir was created in the Apollo Hotel.
Bowery Winow was murdered and a respectable housewife disappeared.
What element is common to both?
Consider now the letter to Mr. Bryan written on Mission House Stationery, 10th Avenue.
Go there.
And the man is standing there smiling and waiting for you to come to him.
My name is Paul Foster.
You're welcome here.
Thanks, sir.
I'm Danny Clover, police.
I hope there's no trouble.
I'm trying to get some information about a man.
So many men come in here for hot me or shoes.
Friendliness when we feel it will be accepting.
A newspaper little thing, sometimes even a job.
Mostly we try to give away dignity.
I know.
You people do wonderful things.
Thank you.
What man did you want to ask me about?
Shorty Dunn.
There's nothing I can tell you that's darkening about Shorty.
Of course I can show you a written record on him.
He's been rehabilitated about seven times, which is about normal.
When did you see him last?
Last night.
Very late.
We had no bed for him.
He slept at the Apollo Hotel.
I'm glad he did.
I give him a half a dollar to find himself a bed.
I'm glad he used it for that.
He was found stabbed to death.
To death.
It's gotten so that when I hear of death, well, the lives of these men are repeated.
They're dying.
I don't know what to say anymore.
He wrote a letter before he walked out of here, didn't he?
That's right, he did.
He told me it was very important.
I give him the stationery and enough stamps to send a letter of special delivery.
Do you know anything else about him?
Not much.
There's a bar down the street, Golders, it's called.
Shorty swept out and whatever else needed to be done in places like that.
You might try there.
Stabbed to death.
To pity.
Hi, looker.
And I speak as a lady who's had lookers look at her before.
You're Goldie.
The one and only.
Since call me that because I got a heart of gold and teeth of man.
So it's left a mark.
This pure gold.
My darling to some lucky gents.
Goldie, I...
You want to marry me, looker?
I've been searching for the likes of you.
He told me at the mission how Shorty Dunn worked here sometimes.
Goldie.
Shut up, love you.
Listen, that was our song, so it is in mind.
Will you take her with you to that?
He's dead, Goldie.
Murdered.
You didn't need to tell me that, I knew about it.
The gents brought me word.
They lap up my beer and give me the world.
Tell me about him.
Your relative?
Police. Danny Clover.
That makes you relative.
Shorty was an old friend of yours?
My fiance.
These days he stood right there at the bar rail just where you're standing.
Proposed to me, unbended and me.
But you didn't marry him.
Shorty, that no good.
I take it back.
I bite my tongue.
There were a lot of nice things about Shorty.
Like what?
Like the way he'd buy me a little present sometimes from the empties I gave him to sell.
He worked for you, you paid him?
That wasn't worth relative.
To Shorty it was a labor of love.
I had to force my empties on him.
That's how he lived.
Bought a place to sleep, something to eat.
Why am I, Shorty, had other sources of income?
Like what?
Like Joe, the junk man.
Shorty sold them things he found in the trash cans.
You'd be surprised at things people throw away, you love it?
Where do I find Joe?
Over a night by the river.
Have one on the house, Danny.
I'll go to those in the back when you crash.
Your name, Joe?
Who are you?
You're pretty late, aren't you, Joe?
It's almost eleven o'clock.
They make junk at all hours.
They stay here to sort it out.
Now who are you?
Danny Pulver, police.
Is that junk?
On your feet, Joe.
I'm busy.
On your feet.
Stand up.
I want to talk to you.
Better.
They give you eleven o'clock jollies this way?
People got to stand when they talk to you?
Want to talk in your backyard or mine?
Talk.
Did you know Shorty Dunn?
Did I know him?
I know him.
He's been murdered.
So?
You know anything about it?
Look, to me Shorty was bottles.
He brought bottles and I paid him.
All it means to me that Shorty is dead, that I'm going to have to find someone just as good
with bottles.
That's all, huh?
What do you want from me?
What I got here is junk.
And who brings it here is junk.
Where did Shorty hang up?
A question.
He held out his hand on corners.
Who knows what corners.
He slept in doorways.
He slept at the mission house.
He slept in those tenements over there.
Over where?
Two of them, right over there.
You can see them if you stand on your toes and look over the fence.
Deserted.
Condemned.
And our tenements get like people get.
Is it Danny?
Over here, Muddlin.
If you hadn't answered I wouldn't have known it was you.
Shape, shadow, something left over.
Let's go.
Are you looking for something, Danny, in this tenement?
That's why you called me?
Uh-huh.
If it's not asking too much.
Something that will help me find Shorty Dunn's murderer.
The bomb?
Something he may have left.
He slept here sometimes, a man told me.
Look for it, Muddlin.
Okay, Danny.
You take these rooms.
I'll go down the hall.
Yeah.
Danny, come here, I found something.
Not what you expected, huh, Danny?
No.
She was strangled.
See the glass?
Shows up the marks on her throat.
I'd say she's been here a night, maybe more.
Anything else?
Yeah, there's a purse I found laying beside her.
Open it.
Yeah.
A compact, lipstick, tissues, a wallet, no money.
A picture of a little boy.
Identification card says Mrs. James Bryan, 1946, worst 146.
In case of accident, notify James Bryan.
Danny.
Huh?
Isn't it Mrs. Bryan who was reported missing, the one her husband?
Yeah, that one.
She was here all the time.
What do you know about that?
What do you know?
You were listening to Broadway's My Beat, written by Morton Fine and David Friedkin,
starring Larry Thor as Detective Danny Culver.
There's a time on Broadway when the street has not yet come into its own.
The empty hours, the useless hours between dawn and noon.
Broadway scrubs its sidewalks, tries to sweep the hours away to pile them in a gutter.
In your eyes, the unlighted neon checks the sleeping masses of the spectaculars and longs
for the time of darkness.
But the daylight clings.
You must find a way of rejecting it, a kid.
Brush it up.
Because what kicks are there when the sun shines down?
Except this item, maybe.
The item in the paper you picked out of the trash bin.
Missing woman found, it says, in condemned tenement, murdered.
And this one, derelict, stabbed to death in Flophouse.
A cold jacket in the nighttime?
Sure as well.
And at headquarters, a man comes in, oozing with information.
You know that because he tells you.
I'm oozing with it, Danny.
Oh, the bits and pieces I got for you.
You'll give them to me.
Naturally, but piecemeal.
First, Detective Muggleman has even now picked up Mr. Mayan.
They are on their way to the morgue to identify the deceased.
Well, tell me the rest of the way there, huh, Detective?
If you promise, they'll let me keep up with you.
I promise.
Second, on the person of the deceased Shorty Dunn was found $20,
undoubtedly from the purse of Mrs. Clara Bryan.
Go on.
Thirdly, our boys have checked with the manager of the Flophouse.
He tells them a guy he could never describe bought a bed at his hotel,
registered as Joe Jones.
Took for a while, next to Shorty.
Got up, walked away.
Nobody knows where, nobody cares.
Well, that does, huh, Danny?
Well, what else?
Hey, Danny, not so fast.
What else is fourthly?
A list was found in Mrs. Bryan's purse.
It appears to our experts to be a shopping list.
It so appears to me also.
You've got it?
Well, naturally.
Give it to me.
I had so intended.
Eh, it's not necessary for me to go in with you, Danny, into the morgue.
It spoils my day.
You can go back.
I'll take you to the morgue, Danny.
Sir?
No, I can't.
Not to me.
I will.
The spectacle of death on a flat, lit by a single bulb.
The chill wind that's built into the morgue rocked the light gently,
and they appeared each in his turn.
A dead woman, her husband, stark.
It needed another quality, not another spectator.
I left.
Now there was a list.
Mrs. Bryan had intended to visit four places,
a 10-cent store on a side street off of Broadway,
a lending library close by,
a place called Milgritt's Beauty Shop,
and the Dr. Johnson.
Whether she had gotten to these places,
or in what sequence, I didn't know.
I had to find out.
Yes, sir?
Something I can do for you?
My name's Clover, Mr. Libby.
I'm from the police.
Police?
That's right.
Why?
I mean, why are you here?
As a customer or...?
No, police.
I want some information.
I'd be glad to, but what information would I have with the police?
Did you know Mrs. Clara Bryan?
The woman who was murdered?
Yes.
She was in here the other night, the night before last.
What time was that, Mr. Libby?
Oh, I couldn't tell you that. I don't know.
What did she buy?
Well, you can't expect me to remember that.
Every item I have in the store, 10 cents or 25 or a dollar.
Keep a tab from your cash register of your sales.
Oh, yes.
Get it from the day before yesterday.
All right.
Here you are.
Did you see every item, 10 cents or 25?
Hmm?
There's a sale for $4.98.
The last item on the tab.
Oh, the toy bear, the mechanical bear.
I bought a shipment for Christmas.
I remember now.
Mrs. Bryan bought one for her Billy.
That's her son.
Then she must have been your last customer.
She must have been.
I closed at seven, but I don't have any idea how near to closing time she left.
Not any idea.
Yes, sir.
Book, get well caught.
You run this place alone.
Hold it a bit.
Susan Tide.
I asked you.
I got another one coming over.
Susan Tide.
In the nose.
Every fall, I clock work.
You'll pardon me while I take my
You asked me something.
If you ran this place alone.
That's right. Absolutely right.
All alone.
That matters.
Then you knew Mrs. Clara Bryan.
Not as well as I would have liked.
Ever seen her?
I mean before.
Shouldn't have happened to Clara.
No.
You've got a point there, mister.
Yes, sir, you've got a point.
You've got a point there, mister.