He tapped my chest lightly with a finger. “You’re doing as Uncle Hank tells you. I’m driving you back to your hotel. Get yourself some shut-eye. There’ll be plenty of time for the police. They’ll get to you before you know it and it’s better to talk to them when your head is clear. They’ll ask questions. They’ll be after both of us before long. I’ll call you in the morning.”
He drove me back to the hotel.
CHAPTER 7
The telephone jerked me into consciousness early in the morning. I turned on the light and saw that it wasn’t quite seven. I tried to rub the sleep out of my eyes.
It was Hank. “Did I awaken you, General?”
“What do you want, or must I insult you?”
“I want you, General. And a couple of other guys down here want you, too.”
“Where?”
“Police Headquarters.”
I felt my eyes snap open and the sweat broke out on my hand. “You there already?”
“I’m not at the races.” His voice sank to a whisper. “Have yourself a cold shower and a half dozen cups of black coffee on the way downtown. You’ll need them.”
I said, “Is it bad?”
“Oh, no—it’s heavenly. Inspector Trum and I have just finished a breakfast of toasted kidneys, fried scones, caviar canapés and a dish of rigor mortis. You must come over.”
“I can’t wait,” I said.
“Neither can Inspector Trum. Get moving, General.”
I took a long, cold shower, dressed quickly and went down for my breakfast. I ordered a newspaper and found the story of last night’s murder on the second page. There was the usual provocative copy in the first few paragraphs, but the prose thinned down to nothing but a review of Lecotte’s career after that. He was a Frenchman, an art critic, an author, and a great hand with the ladies. He was handsome, debonair, a playboy and a great art merchant. He left no heirs.
There was a short quote from Police Headquarters: “Already two suspects are being rounded up for questioning by the police. One of these is an ex-servicemen, recently discharged from the army, who disappeared mysteriously shortly after the crime was committed.”
I braced the coffee cup in my hand. The prospect of being interviewed by the police unnerved me. They would ask me many cold and scientific questions, and I would have to tell them all about Paula Smith.
My mind had already accepted the fact that Paula was somehow involved in the murder of Lecotte. She had run out of the club at a bad moment. She had left just at the time when somebody walked back into Lecotte’s office and put a dainty knife in his back. I checked myself: nobody knew who the redhead was. I didn’t know, certainly, and even if I told the police that she was Paula Smith they couldn’t believe me.
A thousand and one other angles suddenly presented themselves to my weary brain. How could I be sure that Lecotte was killed just before the redhead ran out? Lecotte may have walked into this office earlier than usual. He might have been stabbed while Hank and I were talking to the blonde doll.
Inspector Trum’s office was alive with the smell of fresh coffee and stale cigars. Hank MacAndrews sat in a large leather chair, sipping from a container and munching a cruller. He was at ease in the chair. He might have been a detective himself, sharing breakfast with his superior officer. He got up with a grin and introduced me to Trum.
He said, “Don’t let his hatchet face scare you, Jeff. The Inspector is an old friend of mine.”
Trum sat hunched over his desk. He was a lean man, with a face carved in simple planes, sharp and bony. He looked up at me out of gray blue eyes, at once friendly and alert. He waved a long arm at a chair and I sat beside him.
Trum said, “Relax, soldier, and tell me all about it.”
I glanced at Hank and he winked at me and said, “All of it, Jeff. The Inspector will want to hear about Paula Smith.”
I began my story. I started back in basic training and brought him up to date, including every detail of my conversation with Lucy, my theories and my stupid deductions. He listened to me without interrupting, tapping a slow rhythm on his desk blotter with a yellow pencil.
When I finished, he said, “I’ll ask you what I just asked Superman here, Keye. Why didn’t you return to the club after your visit to the Franklin apartment? You boys did an awful lot of traveling early this morning. You went damned near every place in town except back to The Frog. Why?”
I said, “I don’t know, really.”
Trum glared at Hank. “This soldier talks like a lawyer, MacAndrews. You been feeding him suggestions?”
Hank examined the ceiling and said nothing.
I said, “We decided that we could come down here and report to you early this morning and it would be time enough.”
“Time enough!” He elevated his bushy eyebrows and scowled. “Time enough for what? The police like to act quickly on a murder case, Keye. Your boyfriend here knows that. Homer Bull would rap you over the head with an axe if you pulled that ‘time enough’ gag on him.”
Hank said, “Homer Bull is a gentle man.”
Trum muttered an evil word. He leaned over the desk looked at me. “How do I know that one of you mugs didn’t kill Lecotte? How do I know but that you decided to bump him off and pulled this gag just to set yourselves up as a pair of cute boys? One of you could have done it and the other could have gone along for the ride. It’s happened before. Safety in numbers, eh, MacAndrews? You remember the murder out on Long Island last year?”
“We don’t know Lecotte,” Hank replied. “We never heard of Lecotte. Only thing I ever had against him was his lousy art exhibits down in that cellar slop joint. Why should we kill a guy we don’t know? We’re nice boys, Trum.”
“Naturally. You don’t know Lecotte and you don’t know this Paula Smith dame either. You also don’t know the Mrs. Franklin you met this morning up at her apartment. You just know from nothing except that you saw Lecotte in the alley with a knife in his spine and you heard a phone ring and decided to trace the call and waltz around the city looking for a phantom.” He slammed a hand down on the desk. “What do you think your friend Homer Bull would say to all this, MacAndrews?”
Hank woke up. “Homer would probably say what he usually says, that the great Trum is acting like a cop in a grade B melodrama. Also that Trum is a good guy, but a little weak in the head sometimes. He would tell me that he likes Trum and admires his methods on simple cases, but when a hot item lands on his desk, Trum likes to think he can solve it by yapping at everybody who enters his office. Bull would probably tell you to take a bromide, relax, and send a man over to the Franklin apartment to check.”
Trum controlled the explosion in his face. “I sent a man over there a half hour ago! He should be back any minute.” He turned to me. “MacAndrews tells me you waited in the Franklin apartment a long time. How long?”
“Maybe a half hour. Maybe longer.”
“How can you explain waiting there so long when you were only working on a hunch? How can you explain entering a strange apartment on a hunch?”
“I can’t,” I admitted. “A hunch is a hunch.”
“I suppose Bull would ask me to believe all this,” Trum sighed. “You must have been pretty psychic, or downright positive, to enter a place the way you did.”
“It was a hunch,” I repeated, feeling foolish.
“And you had never been in that apartment before? Never met this Paula Smith person?”
“Never.”
“Never spoke to her on the phone?”
I shook my head and felt the heat rise in me. “I admit I acted on impulse, Inspector. I told you that before.”
Trum shrugged. The buzzer sounded on his desk and he pressed a button and shouted, “Send him in.”
One of his detectives walked in. He said, “Nobody home up there. The place is clean. Everything except the furniture is out of there.
”
Hank got out of his chair quickly. He said, “You must have been in the wrong apartment.”
The detective shook his head. “6-C was the number, wasn’t it? Nothing in it but the furniture.”
Trum’s sharp eyes pinpointed concern. “What about the rug, Hardeen?”
Hardeen shook his head. “There isn’t any rug in that living room.”
Trum said, “No rug, eh? No tenant, either? Did you see the superintendent, Hardeen?”
“I brought him with me. Thought you might want to talk to him.”
Hardeen brought in the janitor. He stood in the center of the room squeezing an old felt hat in his hands. He was nervous enough to work his tongue out on his lower lip.
Trum said, “Sit down, Pop. Sit down and tell me all about it.”
The old man put himself down on the edge of a chair. “What do you mean?”
“You let these two men in last night, didn’t you?”
“They woke me up. I was sleeping when they rang.”
“At what time?”
“I don’t know. It’s my job to open the front door for people. I used to look at the clock once in a while, at first. Now I don’t bother. It’s just a job—I do it automatic.”
“Did you see these men leave?”
He shook his head. “I went back to bed.”
“Who came in after them?”
“Nobody. They were the last.”
“I see,” said Trum. “Then all the regulars—the tenants—have keys to the front door?”
“That’s right.”
Trum moved out from behind his desk and walked over to the bookcase. He picked up a paper covered volume and flipped the pages. He put down the book and faced the old man. “Who rented the apartment?”
“A Mr. Franklin, about two, three months ago.”
“He sign a lease?”
“We got no leases. We rent the places furnished, a month at a time. We don’t ask questions about leases because nobody expects us to.”
“What did this Mr. Franklin look like?”
The old man’s eyes were watering. “He was—well, I guess you’d say he was a medium sized man. I didn’t see him except that once. He dropped his rent under my door after that.”
“You saw him just once?”
The old head nodded slowly. “Just the once.”
“And he was a medium sized man, eh, Pop? You took his money and never even looked at his face? Was he young or old? Was he bald? What was he wearing—a potato sack?” He stood over the old man and held his jaw out, scowling horribly.
The old man said, “I don’t remember.”
“What about the woman up there? Mrs. Franklin?”
“I never met her. There are lots of women in the building I never see.”
“You were never in the apartment?”
“Only before they got there. I cleaned it.”
“Describe it to me.”
“Describe it?” The old eyes searched the floor, absently. “It’s like all the others. It has living-room furniture and—”
“How about rugs? Was there a rug in the living room?”
The old man looked up at Trum and smiled for the first time. “Sure there was a rug there. All the apartments have got rugs.”
“Fine,” said Trum, and leaned against the desk. “And what color was the rug?”
He shook his head. “The rugs are different in each place. You can’t expect a man to remember a thing like that.”
Trum paced the room, swallowing his frustration. He sat down at his desk. I caught Hank’s eye and it was loaded with confusion. He walked over to Trum and whispered something in his ear. Trum looked at him glumly and then waved him away.
Trum said, “You say you were asleep right after you let these two men in, eh, Pop? You didn’t hear them go out?”
“I didn’t hear anybody go out. I fell asleep and when I woke up it was seven o’clock.”
Trum nodded to Hardeen and he got up and stood alongside the old man. Hardeen said, “You want his prints?”
“The works,” said Trum. He looked at the superintendent. “I’ll be talking to you again, Pop. If I were you I’d stay close to home for the next week or so.”
The old man swallowed and nodded.
Trum turned to Hank, his mouth a hard line. “Well, Boy Scout, what do you make of that fairy tale?”
“I make this: somebody got out of that apartment in a hurry last night. I also make this: whoever called Lecotte called from that apartment and then beat it. I add it up to this: whoever made that call was tied up with the murder of Lecotte.”
Trum snapped: “Did it ever occur to you that I have a damn good lead to this deal? I might hold both of you for the murder of Lecotte. It could fit the fairy tale you’ve told me.”
Hank got up slowly and leaned both hands on Trum’s desk. “Don’t try to frighten Boy Scouts like us, Trum. You know damned well that you wouldn’t be fool enough to arrest us.”
“And why not?”
“Arresting us would put you in our Boy Scout troop—you’d be operating against your better judgment—you’d be the big bad wolf in this fairy tale.”
Trum didn’t laugh. “Very funny. If this soldier here were a civilian, I’d be tempted to hold both of you. As it is, I’m just as tempted to let him go and keep you here, MacAndrews. After all, a soldier who’s been away from New York for two years or so doesn’t come back and commit a murder on his first day home.”
“Why not?” I suggested. “I might have discovered that Lecotte was making passes at my girl friend. I might have—”
Trum waved me away. “Not a chance. But, MacAndrews here—his deal is possible. Knowing Homer Bull might give him a certain type of courage. You know—the unsuspected detective’s assistant gag, MacAndrews?”
Hank held his nose delicately. “Now you’re talking straight out of the movies again, Trum. Are you’re holding me?”
“Not yet. I’ll let you know when I want you,” Trum said. “For the time being I’ll just watch you.”
Hank threw me a wink and I got up. I said, “I’d still like to find Paula Smith.”
Trum laughed out loud. “Take your troubles to the Missing Persons Bureau, soldier.”
I said, “It’s an idea.”
Hank said, “But not good.”
“You’ll find out some day that I’ve got a couple of good ideas up my sleeve, MacAndrews,” said Trum.
Hank paused at the door. “If you mean that you’re putting a man on me, you’re wasting the taxpayers’ money again.”
Trum shrugged. “I’ve wasted it before, MacAndrews. It’s a habit with me.”
“A bad habit,” said Hank, and we walked out.
CHAPTER 8
We took a cab to The Pen and Pencil and sat at the long table where all the cartoonists eat every day. For a little while we chewed the fat with Henry Boltinoff and Adolph Schus and the great and gusty George Wolfe. The respite was good for my soul, but Hank nudged me off to a small table so that we could talk seriously.
We had a Manhattan, a steak and a good slice of apple pie. We sat over the coffee for a long time. The search for Paula Smith had grabbed hold of Hank, too, and he was full of many theories all of which he outlined with great care.
Hank was a simple soul. He had a fine head for comic strip plot and a fine hand for the art that goes with it. He had trained his imagination to think along certain lines, but this was because of his association with Homer Bull. He was Bull’s good right hand in all extra-curricular work and had proved himself invaluable on many occasions. He confessed, however, that all stimulus, all direction came from Homer Bull.
Hank was the messenger boy, Bull the despatcher.
We sat near the long window facing Forty-Fifth Street. Hank stared across the street, wa
tching a short man who leaned against the wall in the sunlight and puffed a fat cigar. The man was wearing a derby hat, and a black topcoat, too long in the sleeves. From where we sat, his face was a simple oval with a mustache.
Hank scowled. “That Trum is a louse at heart, Jeff. I don’t mind being tailed—I’ve been tailed before. But why did Trum have to put a Bellick on my tail?”
“A Bellick? What is a Bellick? A detective?”
Hank made a face at his coffee. “Bellick is no detective. Bellick is a Bellick. To understand a Bellick you’ve got to know more about police business. There are two kinds of detectives on any force. Type Number One is the smart kind. Trum probably has a dozen men of this type and he saves them for all jobs that require small doses of basic intelligence. These are the boys who come to you in the dead of night, ask you questions and draw conclusions. They are operators. They move with skill and sometimes daring. They work together, think carefully, move slowly in all directions until the pinch is ripe. Most of them are intelligent citizens, well dressed, muscular and not bad to look at. These are the lugs that detective story writers use as patterns for their fictional supermen.”
“And Bellick?”
“Ah, Bellick is another type, General. Bellick is a tail. Bellick is a machine. There are many, many Bellicks in every police office. They are a personal insult to any upstanding criminal, these Bellicks. Observe how well hidden he is out there in the sunshine, warming his fins under our very noses. He might just as well be in here with us having a cup of coffee.” He got up and went to the door. “Hey, Bellick! Come on over here and get in out of the shadows!”
Bellick came across the street at a half trot. His simple face was loaded with surprise as he approached Hank. He grabbed Hank’s hand eagerly.
“Well, well, well,” he said. “Imagine me bumping into you, MacAndrews. Well, well, it’s a small world, like they say.”
“Tiny,” said Hank. “Fancy meeting the great Bellick right here in New York City. Just passing by, I suppose?”
Bellick rolled the cigar in his mouth. “I am just getting a short walk after my lunch. This I always do, every day, regular.”
The Girl with the Frightened Eyes Page 8