Ellery Queen's Eyewitnesses

by Ellery Queen

  “Run him—see if he was in any trouble or had a rap sheet.”

  “Yes, sir.” The patrolman reached for his radio.

  A man was hurrying up to them. He was middle-aged and well dressed in an expensive business suit. His shoes were shined and his tie was a model of good taste. He turned his attention at once to the sergeant. “Excuse me, I’ve been on the phone,” he said. “My name is Phillips, I’m the general manager of this building. Tell me how I can help you.”

  VIRGIL TIBBS AND THE FALLEN BODY 255

  “You know what happened?” Opper asked.

  “Yes, unfortunately. I presume it had to come at some time, but this is the first such—tragedy—we’ve ever had.”

  As the two men were talking, Virgil Tibbs stepped over to the building directory and looked over the posted entries. When he came back, he had a question of his own. “Mr. Phillips, I notice that only the first thirty-two floors of the building appear to be occupied. Can you tell us about that?”

  Phillips noted the police ID now clipped on the outside of Tibbs’s coat, then responded. “Yes, that’s true, although we don’t advertise that fact. You see, the higher floors, while very desirable from a tenant’s point of view, haven’t been finished yet. Frankly, we found that rentals were way below our expectations while the building was going up, so the builders decided to hold off on the expense of completing the upper floors until there was a demand for the space. In that way, they could be finished to suit the wishes of the tenants who lease them.”

  “The whole building is air-conditioned,” Tibbs said.

  “Yes, of course. There’s a great deal of glass, you see.”

  “My point is, Mr. Phillips, do the windows open or are they all sealed shut?”

  Opper looked at Tibbs and clearly approved the question.

  “Most of the windows are sealed shut. A few do open, because the tenants wanted them that way.”

  “On a building this high, isn’t that dangerous?” the sergeant asked.

  “Yes, so we designed them as casement types and set the handles so that they will only open a little way.”

  “Could a determined man squeeze his body out of the opening?” the sergeant continued.

  Phillips hesitated. “That would depend, of course, on the man. Offhand, I would say that it would be very difficult.”

  “Do you have a list of the personnel who work in this building?”

  “No, you’d have to get that from the individual tenants.”

  “Do you know a Robert Williamson? About forty-five, medium build?”

  “No, not as far as I know.”

  Virgil took over. “Mr. Phillips, suppose someone wanted to get onto one of the higher floors, even though they’re unfinished. Could he do that easily?”

  Phillips was prompt and emphatic with his answer. “I don’t think he could do it at all. Since there are no tenants, the stairwells are blocked off above the thirty-second floor. The elevators are all in, but only one of them will go above the thirty-second floor, and it takes a key to operate it.”

  “You have the key, of course.”

  “Yes. Do you want to go up there?”

  “First, can you tell us offhand whether or not any of the windows on the north face of the building above the occupied floors can be opened?”

  “I’m almost certain they are all sealed. I can have it checked.”

  “How about the roof?”

  “The maintenance people go up there regularly, and our resident building inspector. He works for us; his job is to keep a continual check on the building structure and all its systems. A building of this size—”

  “I understand,” Tibbs cut him off. “Now, sir, if you please, we’d like to see the roof.”

  At that point the patrolman who had been checking on the dead man reappeared; Sergeant Opper stepped aside to hear his report. As he did so, he motioned Tibbs to join him.

  “No wants or warrants,” the patrolman said. “Several traffic violations—nothing heavy. I also checked with Orange County sheriffs and they gave me a little more.”

  “Good work,” Opper said.

  “Williamson was apparently wealthy, but the source of his funds isn’t known. He was hospitalized about a year ago; he fell down and cracked some ribs. In the course of treating him, they found some evidence of illegal narcotics use.”

  “How did they get hold of information like that?” Tibbs asked. “That’s privileged.”

  “I know, sir, but they still knew about it, don’t ask me how. Apparently he wasn’t hooked or anything like that, but he had some kind of medical history of narcotics. No action was taken at the time.”

  “Probably the patient gave permission to have his chart seen,” Opper said, “without realizing that the narcotics data was on there. Anyhow, it explains a lot. He could have dropped acid sometime back when it was still popular. Then, without warning, he went off on another trip)—you know it works that way. Somehow he got to the roof and, like a lot of others, thought he could fly.”

  “Let’s go up to the roof,” Tibbs suggested.

  VIRGIL TIBBS AND THE FALLEN BODY 257

  On top of the building the height was terrifying anywhere near to the edge. The rooftop itself had many pieces of equipment installed—huge air ducts, antennae, and housings for elevator machinery. A sharp wind reminded all three men how high they were.

  When Tibbs looked up, the movement of the clouds overhead gave the illusion that the building was leaning. After he recovered himself, he walked carefully across the cement to the comparatively low parapet, judged the wind once again, and then began a meticulous examination of a section of the protective wall. He spent so much time doing it that his L.A.P.D. colleague began to show impatience. “Find anything?” he asked.

  Tibbs looked back at him. “No,” he answered, “and I’m strongly reminded of the dog in the nighttime.”

  “The dog did nothing in the nighttime,” the sergeant responded.

  “You have just increased my admiration of the L.A.P.D.,” Tibbs said. “You know your Sherlock Holmes. If you’re through, let’s go back down. This place is a little awesome.”

  When they were back on the ground floor, Tibbs noticed a coffee shop set in one corner. After thanking Phillips for the trip to the roof, and the rest of his cooperation, Tibbs suggested that the L.A.P.D. sergeant join him for a cup of coffee. Sergeant Opper, who understood completely, accepted and saw to it that they were seated in a secluded booth. “Now, what have you got?” he asked after their order had been taken.

  “You’ve got one of two things—accident or homicide. At the moment I like homicide better.”

  Opper was careful. “From the condition of the body, the victim came off the roof, because he wouldn’t have landed that hard from a lower floor. At least I don’t think so; I’m no expert on jumpers.”

  “He didn’t jump,” Tibbs said. “The PM may show a percentage of drugs in his body, and a careful check should be made for past acid use—that’s the most likely thing if it was an accident. But this may help you a little—he definitely didn’t come off the roof.”

  Opper was thoughtful. “If Phillips is right, none of the windows on the unoccupied floors open. We haven’t checked yet for a broken pane.”

  “In a way we have. If Williamson had broken a window in order to jump, there’d be some glass on the sidewalk. Your man out there might have been hurt, or some innocent pedestrians. No, I’m sure he didn’t break a window.”

  “How certain are you that he didn’t come off the roof?”

  “You felt the wind up there. Despite it there was some dust on the roof. It wasn’t disturbed where he would have had to have gone over. And the parapet was unmarked.”

  “Plus which, of course, just anybody couldn’t get up onto the roof without a key to the special elevator. And Phillips, the building manager, had never heard of the dead man.”

  “Which leaves only one possibility,” Tibbs said. He stopped then and waited wh
ile the coffee was served.

  “He couldn’t have fallen out of the sky,” Opper mused. “You can’t get out of modern aircraft the way that—what was his name?—did. Over the English Channel, wasn’t it?”

  “Helicopter,” Tibbs said, and stirred his coffee.

  “Someone would have seen it.”

  “Twenty years ago, yes, but not now. Police and media helicopters fly over the city at low altitude all the time and they’re commonplace. The fire department has some too. The point is, no one notices them or hears them any more, except under unusual circumstances. They don’t look up just to see them fly by.”

  Sergeant Opper drank some coffee while he thought. “All right, he could have come out of a helicopter; and come to think of it, some of them don’t even have doors, or the doors are very easily opened.”

  “True.”

  “But the pilot would have reported it.”

  Tibbs smiled, not very much, and it was a little grim.

  “All the helicopters operating in the greater Los Angeles area have a special frequency for talking to each other: it’s one two two point nine five. If it had been an accident, then the pilot would have gone on the air immediately, knowing that all the law-enforcement helicopters airborne in the area would hear him. But he didn’t. That’s why I think it was a homicide.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Yes. Helicopters can fly at almost any speed they like, up to their maximum. They can turn on a dime, hover, and do lots of other things.”

  “Therefore?”

  “Therefore I think that Williamson was dumped out of a helicopter just at the point where it would appear he had jumped from the building. Remember, a good helicopter pilot can maneuver his machine with great precision, even in a wind.”

  “One objection, Tibbs, and it’s a strong one. Williamson would have struggled. He would have grabbed onto something. He was a well set up man and the pilot had to keep flying. Unless there were other people in the chopper. Even then, throwing a man out against his will would take a lot of doing. I wouldn’t care to try it.”

  Tibbs nodded. “Let me put together a theory—you can check it easily enough. The man had traces of narcotics use, but he wasn’t hooked. That suggests someone who handled the stuff, but who was too smart to use it himself. That’s supported by his evident wealth with no obvious source for the money—you can check that too. If I’m right so far, then we’re talking about some very ruthless people who are engaged in one of the most profitable forms of crime known.”

  Opper took out his inevitable notebook. “I’ll check with our narcotics people. If they knew Williamson, or of him, you’ve got something.”

  “Do you want the rest?”

  “By all means.”

  “I don’t think the fall killed him. Or if it did, he was unconscious when he was tossed from the chopper. Suppose he was given a shot and taken out. Then he was dumped from the chopper so that he would appear to have jumped from the building. No one saw the helicopter for the reasons already given.”

  “Father Brown’s postman.”

  “Exactly. Getting rid of an unconscious man, or a dead one, could be done without too much trouble. The cause of death would be so obvious that extensive tests probably wouldn’t be run.”

  “Not everybody has a helicopter,” Opper said.

  “And that’s the point where your investigation should begin. If you’ll allow me.”

  Opper got up. “I’ll call you tomorrow,” he promised.

  MR TIBBS:

  WHILE YOU WERE OUT SGT OPPER OF LAPD CALLED YOU. HE SAID CORONER DETERMINED CAUSE OF DEATH OD HEROIN, NOT FALL(???) CHECK WITH SHERIFF’S ARGUS PATROL AND FIRE DEPARTMENT CONFIRMS NO MESSAGE RECEIVED ON 122.95 AT TIME OF INCIDENT. HE SAYS ONLY A MATTER OF TIME UNTIL CHOPPER ID’ED. CASE DEFINITELY HOMICIDE, MANY THANKS YOUR COOPERATION, LETTER COMING TO CHIEF MCGOWAN RE YOUR HELP. HE ALSO SAID NARCO HAD FOLDER ON WILLIAMSON.—MARGE

  (Hey, Virg, what the hell happened, anyway?—M.)

  Nan Hamilton

  Too Many Pebbles

  Lieutenant Sam Ohara, Robbery-Homicide, sat at his desk brooding over the photographs of Ricky Zalba, deceased, sprawled on his back like a discarded ragdoll. Police flashbulbs had preserved every grisly detail in sharpest outline, but the photographs added little to what the Lieutenant had observed on the scene at six o’clock that morning. The body lay, arms outflung, half on a driveway and half on the damp earth of a vacant lot. A blood-tipped switchblade was frozen into the right hand, while the left hand seemed to claw for life in agonized desperation.

  The lab reports contributed what he had already surmised. Zalba’s skull had been fractured, his larynx and chest crushed. It was almost as if he had been run over by a car. But there were no abrasions, his expensive sportscoat was not torn, and there were no tire marks. The only unusual marks near the body were two deep parallel indentations in the earth.

  Lieutenant Ohara studied the pictures again and noted the measurements. The upper indentation was five inches long by one and one-quarter inches wide, the lower one was four and three-quarter inches long by one and one-half inches wide. They had been driven into the ground to a depth of almost two inches.

  The remaining information was sparse. The body had been discovered by a milkman at 5:30 A.M. A canvass of the neighborhood shortly afterward had turned up no witnesses. The final notation on the lab report was a little more helpful. They had discovered a derivative of sesame oil on the victim’s left hand, and shattered glass and metal fragments under the victim’s heel that might have been the remains of a woman’s watch.

  Half heard voices in the hallway broke his concentration and Ohara sat back in resigned exasperation as he caught the words.

  “This where I’ll find Lieutenant O’Hara?” Evidently Reagan, the desk sergeant, was breaking in a new recruit. Bob Wiseman from Vice, next door, was helping things along.

  “The Irishman, O’Hara? He’s in there.”

  Seconds later a sandy-haired patrol officer glanced past the Lieutenant and around the otherwise empty room. Ohara looked up.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m looking for Lieutenant O’Hara. Sergeant Reagan asked me to drop off this file.”

  “I’m Ohara.” The Lieutenant stood up, an impressive six feet tall with football shoulders.

  “But you’re a Jap—” Ohara’s smooth ivory face was very still and his black eyes were hard. “I mean”—the young officer stammered his confusion—“you’re not Irish, sir. . .are you?”

  Ohara’s eyes relented. “Nope. Ohara is a good old Japanese name. We just don’t use the Irish apostrophe.”

  The patrolman looked miserable. “I’m sorry, sir.”

  “Don’t be. Reagan likes to have his fun.” Ohara took the manila folder and put it on his desk. The officer, still flushed with embarrassment was almost out the door when Ohara remarked, “Arigato gozaimashita,” and then erased the patrolman’s startled expression when he added, “Just ‘thank you,’ in Japanese.”

  The little scene played out, Ohara sat down recalling how he had bristled the first time the boys had pulled it on him. As a third-generation Japanese-American, he was still sensitive to slurs. But he had come to realize the rough camaraderie in it and now went along good-naturedly with the department joke.

  He recognized, too, that his sensitivity was a by-product of his background. He had come out of high school with the typical American imprint—a good athlete and as fond of hamburgers and hot dogs as of sukiyaki. He was too young to remember the internment camp during World War II, but he’d heard his parents and grandparents talk about it.

  He spoke better Japanese than most Japanese-Americans simply because his family had always used both languages interchangeably.

  Ohara had learned early in life that when you are one of the so-called “quiet” minorities, your only chance is to be better than good, or else take what’s left. So after his service in Vietnam he’d used his GI bill for a Masters in Police Science
and had eventually joined the L.A. Police Department.

  He picked up the photos again and stared at the puzzling indentations. The answer was there, he was sure, but he couldn’t grasp it. He considered the victim. Zalba’s four-page rap sheet for assault and narcotics violations offered possibilities. But it wasn’t that kind of killing, not that straightforward. Absently, Ohara looked at his watch. He was off duty and should be leaving, since he’d promised his wife, Peggy, that he would be home in time for an early supper.

  Their son, Jim, was in his first football game and wanted his parents there.

  Gathering the pictures and reports, Ohara put them into his desk, wondering how he was going to tell Peggy that he could not go to her grandfather’s birthday celebration tomorrow. She would be very disappointed. He hated to miss it himself, since Grandfather Takahashi, Black Belt Aikido Master, had been his teacher in that powerful martial art. In fact, it had been in Takahashi’s Aikido class that Ohara had (literally) fallen for his wife, Peggy.

  As he got into his car in the parking lot, he decided to stop in and see his old teacher, though nowadays he thought of him as Ojiisan (grandfather). It wasn’t too far to the small house in Crenshaw and before long he pulled up in front of the neatly fenced yard and went through the gate, taking the pebbled path around the house to the back. Ohara knew Ojiisan would probably be enjoying his quiet Japanese garden at this time of day. And he was, looking like a picture of old Japan in his favorite dark kimono, which seemed so right with his ascetic face and erect bearing.

  Ojiisan greeted his favorite pupil with a welcoming smile. They exchanged the polite inquiries of civilized conversation and turned to admire the master’s prize collection of bonsei trees. Ohara marveled that although the old man would be seventy-five tomorrow, he looked a vigorous fifty. He always enjoyed his company but today, despite the peace of the small garden, Ohara could not control his restlessness. His mind kept probing his puzzling new case. He must have let his accumulated tension show, for Ojiisan drew him finally over to the rock-bordered fishpond.