Pulp Crime

by Jerry eBooks

  “This might interest you, Lieutenant,” the man said “if you’re still wondering about Satterlee. The night attendant just tells me that a lady called last night about midnight and asked if any lost packages had been turned in. She couldn’t remember which cab she took, but I figure it was Lubelle’s. The address checks—a Mrs. W.F.K. Lemming. She seemed pretty anxious to find the package, but we haven’t got it. That make up anything for you, Lieutenant?”

  “That sounds fine,” Dolliver said.

  He felt considerably better. He finished his sandwich, gulped his coffee, and went out. He used his own car to drive to Woodham Park.

  The maid who opened the Lemming’s door for him wore a tight black dress, a wisp of white lace apron, and had a small, intelligent face. She was not too alarmed when Dolliver palmed his badge and requested an interview with Mrs. W.F.K. Lemming. Her eyes ranged his solid, muscular figure with approval.

  “I’ll see if she is in, Lieutenant.”

  “She’s in,” Dolliver said.

  Her smile was brief and wise. The arched Gothic doorway gave way to a foyer the size of a moderate chapel, carpeted with a thick chenille rug. The Lemmings apparently went for tradition, complete with suits and medieval armor and heraldic plaques over the vast stone fireplace. There was a long living room, a circular flight of carpeted stairs, a narrow corridor with casement windows. The early afternoon sun shone golden through thick evergreen trees. There was a trace of incense in the cool air.

  EVELYN LEMMING turned quickly from her window when the maid ushered Dolliver into her sitting room. She was tall, blond, and immaculately groomed in a tailored gray suit. Her lips were red and sulky, her face was pale, and her hazel eyes showed lack of sleep. She twisted a handkerchief nervously between long and sensitive fingers, and waited until the maid was gone. Her voice was harsh, striking a jarring note with her statuesque beauty.

  “It’s not every day that a police detective pays me a call,” she said. “In what way can I help you?”

  “Perhaps we can be of mutual assistance,” Dolliver said gravely. He smoothed his sleek dark hair. “I understand you lost a parcel last night.”

  Quick, eager interest lit her eyes. Her hand reached out.

  “Have you got it?” she breathed.

  “Unfortunately, no. Something happened to the taxi driver who, presumably, had your package last.”

  Her eyes slowly widened. “Something happened—to her?”

  “What was in the package?” Dolliver asked.

  She didn’t seem to hear. “What happened to the taxi driver? Please! You must tell me!”

  “She seems to have committed suicide,” Dolliver said.

  “That’s not true!” the blond woman snapped instantly. “She—”

  “Yes?” Dolliver asked gently.

  “I mean, it doesn’t seem possible,” she ended lamely.

  All the color drained from her face. She turned suddenly toward a low tabouret and poured rye from a cut-glass decanter. The glass clicked irregularly. She drank in a hurry, then looked at Dolliver, who shook his head negatively.

  “I’m so frightened,” the woman said.

  “What was in the package?” Dolliver repeated. “You can trust me. If you have nothing to fear, nothing to hide.”

  “But I have,” she said. “I’m terrified.”

  “Of what?”

  “My husband. His jealousy.” She sat down suddenly, staring at Dolliver’s neat blue tie for a long moment. Her hands were limp in her lap. “If the taxi driver is really dead, then I suppose it will all come out, anyway. I have been indiscreet. I wrote letters. I loaned some of my husband’s famous jewelry—the pearls, the ‘Tears of the Gods.’ It was blackmail, and I had to pay to get my letters back. I succeeded last night.

  “It seems incredible, doesn’t it, that I should have forgotten the package in the cab? Yet I did. I telephoned the cab company, but the girl hadn’t returned to the garage then. I waited, and called several times. The last time they said the cab had returned, but the driver had vanished.” Evelyn Lemming turned her wide eyes toward Dolliver’s patient figure. “Did she really kill herself?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Dolliver.

  “Then?”

  “I think it was murder. Who was the man with whom you were—er—indiscreet?”

  She looked frightened again. “Must my husband know?”

  “Not necessarily. I shall try to help you.” He waited, her eyes searching his grave, brown face. “Who was the man?”

  “Marco Pino,” she said in a whisper. “You’ve heard of him. The famous dress designer. The famous devil!” she spat viciously.

  “How much did you pay him for the letters and the pearls?”

  “Fifty thousand,” she said.

  “Do you think he sent after you to recover them and continue the blackmail?”

  “I don’t think so. He isn’t the type.”

  “Did you ever head of a girl named Sally Burgess?” Dolliver said.

  Mrs. Lemming’s eyes were blank. She shook her head, took another drink, this time sipping it slowly.

  “You’ll try to keep your promise to me, Lieutenant? I don’t know what would happen if William—if it were even suspected that Marco and I . . . It was all really innocent, you know. He trapped me, made it look bad.”

  “Of course,” said Dolliver.

  He turned to leave, his smooth dark eyes settling on a colored photograph of a man and a woman. The woman was Evelyn Lemming. The man with her was much taller than she—well over six feet and proportioned accordingly. He nodded toward the photo. “Your husband?” he asked mildly.

  “Yes.”

  Dolliver went out thinking that Mr. W.F.K. Lemming was certainly big enough. . . .

  DOLLIVER was being followed. He first noticed the small drab coupe when he waited for a light at Spring Street. It pulled up alongside him, its sides liberally spattered with creamy mud. The prim little girl seated behind the wheel gave him a quick, wide-eyed glanced, then looked away.

  At Fifth and Pine he was still being followed by the girl in the coupe. He turned right, then left, and the other car did the same. He doubled back once more, just to be sure, and the coupe followed him brazenly. At a small lunch-cart he pulled up, got out leisurely and went in, straddling a stool and ordering coffee. The girl came through the sliding door as the counterman put the cup down before him.

  She was small, neat and dainty, with a trim, attractive figure that was not hidden by the severe lines of her orange boxcoat. Her face was piquant under a wide-brimmed sailor hat. She looked at him once, sharply, and then crossed directly toward him on high heels, taking the adjacent stool. Her voice was soft and shy.

  “Aren’t you Lieutenant Enoch Dolliver?”

  “That’s why you’ve been following me, isn’t it?” he said.

  Her eyes watched the counterman.

  “Sally sent me,” she said in a whisper. “I’m Vera Poole.”

  Dolliver remembered that this girl’s name had been on Sally Burgess’ telephone pad.

  “I’ve spent all day looking for your friend Sally,” he said.

  “I know,” the small girl said. “But she’s afraid. This man is following her, and she’s afraid of him. She thinks he killed Lubelle.”

  “What man?”

  “She doesn’t know. She’s only glimpsed him once or twice.”

  “Why doesn’t she come to me at Headquarters, then?”

  “She is terrified, Lieutenant, honestly. She’s at my place now, but I doubt if she’ll remain there alone. She wants you to meet her this evening. She thinks she can help you.”

  Dolliver studied the girl for a moment. She seemed sincere, her blue eyes wide with natural excitement.

  “What makes Sally think that Lubelle was murdered?” he said gently.

  “She says Lubelle never drank coffee. She wouldn’t tell me much, but I gathered that she really found Lubelle before anybody. She said she went in there and found the
place full of gas and had to run away because the murderer came back.”

  “The big man,” Dolliver suggested. His eyes became opaque with sudden skepticism. “It sounds a little queer.”

  “You must believe me,” Vera Poole said earnestly. “She is terrified. She thinks the big man knows she saw him and wants to kill her.”

  “What was that about the coffee?”

  “Lubelle never drinks coffee,” the girl said again. “And Sally insists she saw some on the kitchen range when she ran through. She thinks that means the big man was there for a while before he killed poor Lubelle.”

  Dolliver’s face was dark and smooth. “Does Sally have the package that was left in Lubelle’s cab?” he said suddenly.

  “I—I think she has something. It’s in her purse. She won’t let go of it, though. Honestly, I’ve tried to reason with her all morning, but she insists she’ll only give it to you. She wants to meet you at the corner of G and Merrivale Streets. She wants you to come about six.”

  “Why not now?”

  “I don’t know. She said at six.”

  Dolliver nodded. It was close to four then. He paid the check and returned to his own car, watched the girl drive off, and decided against following her. He turned into town again, looking for the dress designing establishment of Marco Pino, blackmailer.

  CHAPTER III

  FATAL RENDEZVOUS

  MARCO PINO’S was not an ordinary dress shop. It was a super establishment, with entertainment on the side for super customers at just a few minutes before closing when Dolliver went in through softly swinging doors and up a short ramp. A string quartet played muted waltzes. There was a spray of fresh orchids in a cloisonné vase at the far end of the room, flanking a door and two Sheraton chairs. Light came from behind blue-tinted mirrors.

  A woman approached him with soundless steps over a long carpet, her smile and appearance gracious. Her hair was tinted a blue white, though her face was young and smooth and composed. Her dress was something you noticed as an afterthought to her figure.

  She spoke meticulously. “Can I help you?” Her upturned hand was an invitation for him to follow.

  “I’m looking for Marco Pino,” he said. “It’s a personal matter.”

  The white-haired woman looked at him with deep purple eyes and smiled a little.

  “Of course,” she said. “This way, please.”

  An open door revealed a little amphitheatre in which several women and an interested, though embarrassed man, watched a model exhibit something pink and lacy. Then they were in a small, neat office and a tall, muscular, gray-haired man stood up from behind a desk. His tanned face was blank, his eyebrows arched a trifle. He had a mustache and white teeth.

  “This is our Mr. Lathrop,” the whitehaired woman said. “Your business, you said, was a personal matter with Mr. Pino?”

  Mr. Lathrop’s teeth and smile were both false.

  “Mr. Pino is a very busy man,” he said. “Let me help you, Mr.—”

  Dolliver was patient. “Lieutenant Enoch Dolliver. From the Homicide Department, Police Headquarters.”

  The woman paused in the doorway and said something softly, which Dolliver did not catch. The big gray man still looked blank.

  “Homicide?” he said. He turned his head carefully to look at the woman in the doorway. “You can go, Jackie.” He waited, then swiveled his blank eyes to Dolliver. “Come this way, please.”

  He led the way through two more offices, both empty, then pressed a button and stepped through a sliding door.

  “A man from the police to see you, Marco. Mr. Dolliver.”

  “Beat it, Lathrop,” the man inside said. He stood up as Dolliver came in. “Sit down, sir.”

  He was small and exquisite, in a red satin dressing gown and a white Ascot scarf. His face was like old ivory, his hair a crinkled raven. He smoked a cigarette that gave off a queer, pungent odor, and his eyes were pinpointed through their formal smile. There was a long drawing board under a wide window, and a scatter of sketches of women in various states of attire done on thin tissue paper. There were ink stains on his quick, thin fingers. His voice was a harsh whisper, as if he suffered from a throat ailment.

  “It would be useless to deny that I am ignorant of the purpose of your visit, Lieutenant. I have just received an hysterical message over the telephone from Mrs. Lemming. May I begin by placing the entire matter in its proper perspective? I deny any blackmail attempts on the lady.”

  Dolliver’s eyes were flat and dark. “I don’t like blackmailers,” he said. “I’m glad you’re not one.”

  Marco Pino smiled his ivory smile. “It is true she wrote me silly letters. It is also true that I returned them to her last night.”

  “For which she paid you fifty thousand dollars,” said Dolliver.

  “No. She paid me nothing. I returned them to her as a gift.”

  “She says it cost her fifty thousand dollars,” Dolliver repeated.

  Marco Pino’s smile was a little strained. “Then she lies. I do not know what her game is. But she lies.”

  “What about the pearls—the ‘Tears of the Gods’?”

  The dainty man pursed his little mouth, studied his little finger nails, and gave Dolliver a quick little smile.

  “I returned those, too. She had given them to me as security for certain monies she borrowed from me. She was an inveterate gambler. On occasion when we went out together—which I do not deny—I financed her losses. What money she gave me last night was merely to redeem the security she had left with me—the pearls.”

  “Then she did pay you fifty thousand last night?”

  “Only to retrieve Mr. Lemming’s pearls. Not as blackmail.”

  “It’s a delicate point,” Dolliver said evenly. “Where are the pearls now?”

  “With Mrs. Lemming, I presume.”

  “She doesn’t have them.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  Marco Pino waved a fluttery ivory hand. “I fail to see where that concerns me. I returned the pearls to her. If she lost them subsequently, I have no further interest in the matter.”

  Dolliver’s eyes were steady. “You may have hijacked them. Your big boy outside may have done a little work last night.”

  Marco Pino looked pained. “You talk as if I were a criminal. If you are charging me with anything, please be specific.”

  “I’m a Homicide detective. The blackmail angle is incidental. I’m looking for information on a murder.”

  THE small man’s mouth opened and shut, and his eyes had a sudden haunted look. He turned quickly away to the drawing table, snuffed out his cigarette with a trembling hand. His whispering voice was unreal.

  “Who has been murdered?”

  “Don’t you know?” Dolliver said.

  “Of course not. Please—who is it?”

  “The taxi driver. The girl who took Mrs. Lemming home. A girl named Lubelle Satterlee.”

  A queer light danced in Pino’s jet eyes. Abruptly he laughed.

  “I don’t know anything about that, Lieutenant.”

  “Did you think it was Evelyn Lemming?”

  “I didn’t know what to think. I know nothing about female taxi drivers, how they live or how they die.” He paused. “It’s curious that it should have been Evelyn’s driver, though.”

  “It’s even curiouser, as Alice says,” Dolliver remarked. “Mrs. Lemming, in her excitement, forgot the letter and the pearls and left them in the cab. Before the driver could return them, somebody killed her and got away with the package.”

  Marco Pino’s laugh was soft and sibilant. “That’s beyond me.” He pressed a small button on his oval desk. “I really can’t help you at all, Lieutenant. It is closing time for this establishment. I must leave, so unless you wish me to accompany you for further questioning—”

  “No,” said Dolliver. He put on his hat carefully. “No, nothing more now. I may be seeing you again, though.” At the door he paused. “Do you happen to
know a girl named Sally Burgess?”

  “Should I, Lieutenant?”

  “It was just a question.”

  “I know a great many women. In my profession, women are always approaching me for special styles and creations. I can’t remember them all. If she was a client, perhaps you can refresh my memory.”

  Dolliver shook his head. “No, I don’t think she bought any dresses from you.”

  He went out, walking alone through the two empty offices. The big blank-faced man was seated at his desk and didn’t get up when Dolliver went by. His hard, flat eyes ranged Dolliver’s figure dispassionately.

  The show room where Dolliver had glimpsed the model was empty. The whitehaired woman wasn’t in sight. An attendant unlocked the front door, and Dolliver walked down the ramp and into the warm street again.

  The corner of G and Merrivale Streets at six o’clock in the evening was dim and shadowed, hidden in the pocket of a ravine. Yellow lights shone in the windows of nearby houses. Dolliver drove slowly up the winding street and parked under the trees. There were vacant lots on three of the corners; the house on the last corner was dark. He left his car and walked up the path toward the front door.

  He was almost there when a queer little alarm jangled in the back of his head. The windows were gaunt and empty, without blinds. The entire house had a vacant and disreputable look. A “For Sale” sign was posted inconspicuously against one wall, yet a car was parked in the driveway—Vera Poole’s familiar, mud-spattered coupe.

  Dolliver crossed the lawn with quickened strides, his eyes narrowed against the thick evening gloom. At ten paces he could make out the girl’s face behind the wheel as she waited for him.

  He was about to open the door when he saw, quite suddenly and horribly, that she was dead.

  Dolliver’s eyes were stark with surprise. His lips went white and thin at the corners. He made a low whistling sound between his teeth.

  “You poor, poor kid,” he said, softly and gently.

  Vera Poole had been strangled to death. Her face was no longer bright, alert, and cocky. Her large eyes stared ahead sightlessly, seeming to glitter in the gathering darkness. Her body was rigid, her legs pressed against the floor and her shoulders tipped to one side as if she had died that way, straining against the strangler’s grip.