“You ought to have told me,” he said bitterly. He sipped and wiped his lips with one of those fringed things they give you in apartment houses for napkins. “But you didn’t swipe them. The girl told me.”
“Aw well, hell,” I said. “A guy never gets to do anything in this country any more. Always women.”
“She likes you,” Randall said, like a polite FBI man in a movie, a little sad, but very manly. “Her old man was as straight a cop as ever lost a job. She had no business taking those things. She likes you.”
“She’s a nice girl. Not my type.”
“You don’t like them nice?” He had another cigarette going. The smoke was being fanned away from his face by his hand.
“I like smooth shiny girls, hardboiled and loaded with sin.”
“They take you to the cleaners,” Randall said indifferently.
“Sure. Where else have I ever been? What do you call this session?”
He smiled his first smile of the day. He probably allowed himself four.
“I’m not getting much out of you,” he said.
“I’ll give you a theory, but you are probably way ahead of me on it. This Marriott was a blackmailer of women, because Mrs. Grayle just about told me so. But he was something else. He was the finger man for the jewel mob. The society finger, the boy who would cultivate the victim and set the stage. He would cultivate women he could take out, get to know them pretty well. Take this holdup a week from Thursday. It smells. If Marriott hadn’t been driving the car, or hadn’t taken Mrs. Grayle to the Troc or hadn’t gone home the way he did, past that beer parlor, the holdup couldn’t have been brought off.”
“The chauffeur could have been driving,” Randall said reasonably. “But that wouldn’t have changed things much. Chauffeurs are not getting themselves pushed in the face with lead bullets by holdup men—for ninety a month. But there couldn’t be many stickups with Marriott alone with women or things would get talked about.”
“The whole point of this kind of racket is that things are not talked about,” I said. “In consideration for that the stuff is sold back cheap.”
Randall leaned back and shook his head. “You’ll have to do better than that to interest me. Women talk about anything. It would get around that this Marriott was a kind of tricky guy to go out with.”
“It probably did. That’s why they knocked him off.”
Randall stared at me woodenly. His spoon was stirring air in an empty cup. I reached over and he waved the pot aside. “Go on with that one,” he said.
“They used him up. His usefulness was exhausted. It was about time for him to get talked about a little, as you suggest. But you don’t quit in those rackets and you don’t get your time. So this last holdup was just that for him—the last. Look, they really asked very little for the jade considering its value. And Marriott handled the contact. But all the same Marriott was scared. At the last moment he thought he had better not go alone. And he figured a little trick that if anything did happen to him, something on him would point to a man, a man quite ruthless and clever enough to be the brains of that sort of mob, and a man in an unusual position to get information about rich women. It was a childish sort of trick but it did actually work.”
Randall shook his head. “A gang would have stripped him, perhaps even have taken the body out to sea and dumped it.”
“No. They wanted the job to look amateurish. They wanted to stay in business. They probably have another finger lined up,” I said.
Randall still shook his head. “The man these cigarettes pointed to is not the type. He has a good racket of his own. I’ve inquired. What did you think of him?”
His eyes were too blank, much too blank. I said: “He looked pretty damned deadly to me. And there’s no such thing as too much money, is there? And after all his psychic racket is a temporary racket for any one place. He has a vogue and everybody goes to him and after a while the vogue dies down and the business is licking its shoes. That is, if he’s a psychic and nothing else. Just like movie stars. Give him five years. He could work it that long. But give him a couple of ways to use the information he must get out of these women and he’s going to make a killing.”
“I’ll look him up more thoroughly,” Randall said with the blank look. “But right now I’m more interested in Marriott. Let’s go back farther—much farther. To how you got to know him.”
“He just called me up. Picked my name out of the phone book. He said so, at any rate.”
“He had your card.”
I looked surprised. “Sure. I’d forgotten that.”
“Did you ever wonder why he picked your name—ignoring that matter of your short memory?”
I stared at him across the top of my coffee cup. I was beginning to like him. He had a lot behind his vest besides his shirt.
“So that’s what you really came up for?” I said.
He nodded. “The rest, you know, is just talk.” He smiled politely at me and waited.
I poured some more coffee.
Randall leaned over sideways and looked along the cream-colored surface of the table. “A little dust,” he said absently, then straightened up and looked me in the eye. “Perhaps I ought to go at this in a little different way,” he said. “For instance, I think your hunch about Marriott is probably right. There’s twenty-three grand in currency in his safe-deposit box—which we had a hell of a time to locate, by the way. There are also some pretty fair bonds and a trust deed to a property on West Fifty-fourth Place.”
He picked a spoon up and rapped it lightly on the edge of his saucer and smiled. “That interest you?” he asked mildly. “The number was 1644 West Fifty-fourth Place.”
“Yeah,” I said thickly.
“Oh, there was quite a bit of jewelry in Marriott’s box too—pretty good stuff. But I don’t think he stole it. I think it was very likely given to him. That’s one up for you. He was afraid to sell it—on account of the association of thought in his own mind.”
I nodded. “He’d feel as if it was stolen.”
“Yes. Now that trust deed didn’t interest me at all at first, but here’s how it works. It’s what you fellows are up against in police work. We get all the homicide and doubtful death reports from outlying districts. We’re supposed to read them the same day. That’s a rule, like you shouldn’t search without a warrant or frisk a guy for a gun without reasonable grounds. But we break rules. We have to. I didn’t get around to some of the reports until this morning. Then I read one about a killing of a Negro on Central, last Thursday. By a tough ex-con called Moose Malloy. And there was an identifying witness. And sink my putt, if you weren’t the witness.”
He smiled, softly, his third smile. “Like it?”
“I’m listening.”
“This was only this morning, understand. So I looked at the name of the man making the report and I knew him, Nulty. So I knew the case was a flop. Nulty is the kind of guy—well, were you ever up at Crestline?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, up near Crestline there’s a place where a bunch of old box cars have been made into cabins. I have a cabin up there myself, but not a box car. These box cars were brought up on trucks, believe it or not, and there they stand without any wheels. Now Nulty is the kind of guy who would make a swell brakeman on one of those box cars.”
“That’s not nice,” I said. “A fellow officer.”
“So I called Nulty up and he hemmed and hawed around and spit a few times and then he said you had an idea about some girl called Velma something or other that Malloy was sweet on a long time ago and you went to see the widow of the guy that used to own the dive where the killing happened when it was a white joint, and where Malloy and the girl both worked at that time. And her address was 1644 West Fifty-fourth Place, the place Marriott had the trust deed on.”
“Yes?”
“So I just thought that was enough coincidence for one morning,” Randall said. “And here I am. And so far I’ve been pretty nice about it.?
??
“The trouble is,” I said, “it looks like more than it is. This Velma girl is dead, according to Mrs. Florian. I have her photo.”
I went into the living room and reached into my suitcoat and my hand was in midair when it began to feel funny and empty. But they hadn’t even taken the photos. I got them out and took them to the kitchen and tossed the Pierrot girl down in front of Randall. He studied it carefully.
“Nobody I ever saw,” he said. “That another one?”
“No, this is a newspaper still of Mrs. Grayle. Anne Riordan got it.”
He looked at it and nodded. “For twenty million, I’d marry her myself.”
“There’s something I ought to tell you,” I said. “Last night I was so damn mad I had crazy ideas about going down there and trying to bust it alone. This hospital is at Twenty-third and Descanso in Bay City. It’s run by a man named Sonderborg who says he’s a doctor. He’s running a crook hideout on the side. I saw Moose Malloy there last night. In a room.”
Randall sat very still, looking at me. “Sure?”
“You couldn’t mistake him. He’s a big guy, enormous. He doesn’t look like anybody you ever saw.”
He sat looking at me, without moving. Then very slowly he moved out from under the table and stood up.
“Let’s go see this Florian woman.”
“How about Malloy?”
He sat down again. “Tell me the whole thing, carefully.”
I told him. He listened without taking his eyes off my face. I don’t think he even winked. He breathed with his mouth slightly open. His body didn’t move. His fingers tapped gently on the edge of the table. When I had finished he said:
“This Dr. Sonderborg—what did he look like?”
“Like a doper, and probably a dope peddler.”I described him to Randall as well as I could.
He went quietly into the other room and sat down at the telephone. He dialed his number and spoke quietly for a long time. Then he came back. I had just finished making more coffee and boiling a couple of eggs and making two slices of toast and buttering them. I sat down to eat.
Randall sat down opposite me and leaned his chin in his hand. “I’m having a state narcotics man go down there with a fake complaint and ask to look around. He may get some ideas. He won’t get Malloy. Malloy was out of there ten minutes after you left last night. That’s one thing you can bet on.”
“Why not the Bay City cops?” I put salt on my eggs.
Randall said nothing. When I looked up at him his face was red and uncomfortable.
“For a cop,” I said, “you’re the most sensitive guy I ever met.”
“Hurry up with that eating. We have to go.”
“I have to shower and shave and dress after this.”
“Couldn’t you just go in your pajamas?” he asked acidly.
“So the town is as crooked as all that?” I said.
“It’s Laird Brunette’s town. They say he put up thirty grand to elect a mayor.”
“The fellow that owns the Belvedere Club?”
“And the two gambling boats.”
“But it’s in our county,” I said.
He looked down at his clean, shiny fingernails.
“We’ll stop by your office and get those other two reefers,” he said. “If they’re still there.” He snapped his fingers. “If you’ll lend me your keys, I’ll do it while you get shaved and dressed.”
“We’ll go together,” I said. “I might have some mail.”
He nodded and after a moment sat down and lit another cigarette. I shaved and dressed and we left in Randall’s car.
I had some mail, but it wasn’t worth reading. The two cut up cigarettes in the desk drawer had not been touched. The office had no look of having been searched.
Randall took the two Russian cigarettes and sniffed at the tobacco and put them away in his pocket.
“He got one card from you,” he mused. “There couldn’t have been anything on the back of that, so he didn’t bother about the others. I guess Amthor is not very much afraid—just thought you were trying to pull something. Let’s go.”
THIRTY
Old Nosey poked her nose an inch outside the front door, sniffed carefully as if there might be an early violet blooming, looked up and down the street with a raking glance, and nodded her white head. Randall and I took our hats off. In that neighborhood that probably ranked you with Valentino. She seemed to remember me.
“Good morning, Mrs. Morrison,” I said. “Can we step inside a minute? This is Lieutenant Randall from Headquarters.”
“Land’s sakes, I’m all flustered. I got a big ironing to do,” she said.
“We won’t keep you a minute.”
She stood back from the door and we slipped past her into her hallway with the side piece from Mason City or wherever it was and from that into the neat living room with the lace curtains at the windows. A smell of ironing came from the back of the house. She shut the door in between as carefully as if it was made of short pie crust.
She had a blue and white apron on this morning. Her eyes were just as sharp and her chin hadn’t grown any.
She parked herself about a foot from me and pushed her face forward and looked into my eyes.
“She didn’t get it.”
I looked wise. I nodded my head and looked at Randall and Randall nodded his head. He went to a window and looked at the side of Mrs. Florian’s house. He came back softly, holding his pork pie under his arm, debonair as a French count in a college play.
“She didn’t get it,” I said.
“Nope, she didn’t. Saturday was the first. April Fool’s Day. He! He!” She stopped and was about to wipe her eyes with her apron when she remembered it was a rubber apron. That soured her a little. Her mouth got the pruny look.
“When the mailman come by and he didn’t go up her walk she run out and called to him. He shook his head and went on. She went back in. She slammed the door so hard I figured a window’d break. Like she was mad.”
“I swan,” I said.
Old Nosey said to Randall sharply: “Let me see your badge, young man. This young man had a whiskey breath on him t’other day. I ain’t never rightly trusted him.”
Randall took a gold and blue enamel badge out of his pocket and showed it to her.
“Looks like real police all right,” she admitted. “Well, ain’t nothing happened over Sunday. She went out for liquor. Come back with two square bottles.”
“Gin,” I said. “That just gives you an idea. Nice folks don’t drink gin.”
“Nice folks don’t drink no liquor at all,” Old Nosey said pointedly.
“Yeah, I said. “Come Monday, that being today, and” the mailman went by again. This time she was really sore.”
“Kind of smart guesser, ain’t you, young man? Can’t wait for folks to get their mouth open hardly.”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Morrison. This is an important matter to us—”
“This here young man don’t seem to have no trouble keepin’ his mouth in place.”
“He’s married,” I said. “He’s had practice.”
Her face turned a shade of violet that reminded me, unpleasantly, of cyanosis. “Get out of my house afore I call the police!” she shouted.
“There is a police officer standing before you, madam,” Randall said shortly. “You are in no danger.”
“That’s right there is,” she admitted. The violet tint began to fade from her face. “I don’t take to this man.”
“You have company, madam. Mrs. Florian didn’t get her registered letter today either—is that it?”
“No.” Her voice was sharp and short. Her eyes were furtive. She began to talk rapidly, too rapidly. “People was there last night. I didn’t even see them. Folks took me to the picture show. Just as we got back—no, just after they driven off—a car went away from next door. Fast without any lights. I didn’t see the number.”
She gave me a sharp sidelong look from her furtive eyes.
I wondered why they were furtive. I wandered to the window and lifted the lace curtain. An official bluegray uniform was nearing the house. The man wearing it wore a heavy leather bag over his shoulder and had a vizored cap.
I turned away from the window, grinning.
“You’re slipping,” I told her rudely. “You’ll be playing shortstop in a Class C league next year.”
“That’s not smart,” Randall said coldly.
“Take a look out of the window.”
He did and his face hardened. He stood quite still looking at Mrs. Morrison. He was waiting for something, a sound like nothing else on earth. It came in a moment.
It was the sound of something being pushed into the front door mail slot. It might have been a handbill, but it wasn’t. There were steps going back down the walk, then along the street, and Randall went to the window again. The mailman didn’t stop at Mrs. Florian’s house. He went on, his blue-gray back even and calm under the heavy leather pouch.
Randall turned his head and asked with deadly politeness: “How many mail deliveries a morning are there in this district, Mrs. Morrison?”
She tried to face it out. “Just the one,” she said sharply—“one mornings and one afternoons,”
Her eyes darted this way and that. The rabbit chin was trembling on the edge of something. Her hands clutched at the rubber frill that bordered the blue and white apron.
“The morning delivery just went by,” Randall said dreamily. “Registered mail comes by the regular mailman?”
“She always got it Special Delivery,” the old voice cracked.
“Oh. But on Saturday she ran out and spoke to the mailman when he didn’t stop at her house. And you said nothing about Special Delivery.”
It was nice to watch him working—on somebody else.
Her mouth opened wide and her teeth had the nice shiny look that comes from standing all night in a glass of solution. Then suddenly she made a squawking noise and threw the apron over her head and ran out of the room.
He watched the door through which she had gone. It was beyond the arch. He smiled. It was a rather tired smile.
“Neat, and not a bit gaudy,” I said. “Next time you play the tough part. I don’t like being rough with old ladies—even if they are lying gossips.”