by Jerry eBooks
“Where’s the body, Castle?” he rasped, while I caught a glimpse of Detectives Hartley, Wheeler, Mulligan and a lot of others who were gazing around the mirror-lined compartment with interested optics.
“Body?” I must have been still shaken from what I’d seen. Even to my own ears the question sounded slightly infantile.
“Didn’t you phone me half an hour ago and tell me to come up here?” Mullin barked. Color, the same shade as his winter underwear, tinted his rock-pile pan. “If this is a gag, you’re going to get smacked straight in the kisser! You’ve been in my hair too long and too often these past months. I’ve been waiting for a chance at you. If this is it, I’ll laugh.”
“I guess you mean the late Mr. Gail,” I interrupted. Mullin’s remarks were all that was needed to tonic me back to normality. “Walk right in. You’ll find him in the second room beyond. He’s waiting for you.”
“C’mon,” the Captain growled to his faithful followers.
He flung me a look full of scorch and stamped through the door. Libby drew an uneven breath and began to pry my arm away.
“Why didn’t you tell me you had telephoned him?” she asked, her arched brows drawn together.
“I didn’t, because I didn’t!”
“You mean—”
Before she could finish Wheeler cat-footed back to the foyer and pointed a finger at me.
“Inside, Castle. The Captain wants to talk to you.”
“Wait here and don’t move an inch, whether I’m gone two minutes or ten years!” I said to Libby, and followed Wheeler back to the room where Gail had grown his wings.
Mullin’s men were all over the place, like a flock of bees. Hartley was going through the dead man’s pockets, Mulligan was measuring off distances with a pair of feet that looked like tractors. A couple of others were wandering in and out of Dance Bowen’s pink-and-gold bedroom as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Every time they opened its door the memory of a subtle perfume crept out.
“Let’s hear all about it, Castle,” Mullin growled.
He planted his body solidly on its short, thick legs and twisted his mouth into a sneer. His cold, fishy eyes raked me over like a fork going through the remains of a spaghetti dinner.
I didn’t like the glint in his gaze, the sneer, or the way he got his words out. Somehow I had the impression he believed I was on the hook, at last.
“What do you want to know?” I held my temper and gave him one of my best smiles. “You know me, Captain. Always cooperative. Always looking out for your interests. Always your little pal in any emergency. But you’re slightly in error. I haven’t telephoned you in over six weeks. Lucky me, eh?”
The sneer faded a trifle. “Yeah? Then who buzzed the tip-off to come up here, and said he was Castle of the Orbit?”
“That,” I murmured, “is something your superior investigating ability will have to solve. The young lady who’s with me,” I went on, with patent-leather smoothness, “is Miss Hart, as you probably know. She happens to be a friend of Dance Bowen, the lady who usually lives here. We came up to call on her, after stopping at the theater and finding she hadn’t been there this afternoon. The door was open and we walked right in—to this.”
I tossed a nod at the still figure Hartley had finished with.
Mullin digested what I told him. He didn’t believe me. I could see that. It was too lumpy for perfect palatability. He snorted like a horse in a bag of oats, wiped his hand across his chin and gave me a brand new leer.
“You dream by day as well as night. Okay. We’ll talk to your girl friend in a minute. Get over there and pipe down.” He asked Hartley, “How does it look, Larry?”
“Twenty-two. Through the jugular. Here’s the gun.” He handed Mullin the handkerchief-wrapped Woodsman. “The kind of shooter they use for paper targets. Oughtn’t to be hard to trace. This fella’s been cold seven or eight hours at least.”
Mullin unloaded the usual directions. He wanted the superintendent brought up, the rear-admirals we had seen prowling the lobby. He wanted the medical examiner in a hurry. He wanted his fingerprint expert. He wanted service with a large S.
After that he gave me his official attention again.
“Get that dame in here,” he directed Wheeler. “Just a minute,” I put in. “If there’s any questioning her, you’ll do it outside. She’s not like you—used to corpses all over the place.”
Mullin flung me a look, shrugged, and went back to the foyer. I edged in behind him and put a finger over my mouth to let Libby know that she wasn’t to talk. Being a bright little gal she caught quick.
“Castle tells me you’re a friend of Miss Bowen,” Mullin began, not quite as tough as he usually was. “What did you come up here to see her about?”
“That’s a personal matter.” I could have kissed Libby for the way she said it.
Captain Mullin grunted. “Yeah? Known her a long time?”
“Not so long.”
“Ever hear her speak of a party named Stangl—Kenny Stangl?”
Libby glanced at me from the corner of one eye. “I—I don’t believe I have. Why?”
If I’d been taking the questioning myself, I couldn’t have handled it any better. Mullin shrugged a pair of shoulders made to order for piano moving and swung around on me.
“I want you and the lady for further questioning, later, Castle. Keep her on tap. You’re not fooling me. You know something and you’re going to try and play it yourself. You’re going to try and be Johnny Smart, get a scoop for your rag and show me up as some kind of a dummy who couldn’t find a horse in a kitchen. Okay. We’ll see about that. Go on now, powder. The both of you!”
“You know my office phone number Captain,” I murmured, and led Libby out to the elevator.
We didn’t say anything until we got to the street. Mullin’s array of prowl cars had put the usual crowd on the pavement in front of the apartment house. I snaked Libby through the throng and over to Central Park South.
“Who was he, Johnny?” she asked in a low, tight voice. “The man on the floor, I mean. You said ‘Mr. Gail’. Not the one Dance was going around with?” When I nodded, her mouth opened. She had teeth like pearls. “Who—”
“Mopped him up? Frankly, I wouldn’t know. But I do know this. A gunny named Stangl has been after your friend for something she had. The Bowen babe got scared and gave it to you to keep for her. Stangl got himself liquidated early this morning and Cracky Morgan, the boy who’s been following you around, has an active interest in the affair. So,” I told her, “the intelligent thing to do is for us to get over to Flowerland and into the safe. I have a hunch that the package Dance left with you will answer a lot of questions when we open it up.”
“But you wouldn’t do that!” Libby exclaimed.
“With murder striking all around us? That’s the first thing on the docket! And to make it as speedy as possible, here comes an empty taxi. We’ll take it.”
Fifteen minutes later we were in Libby’s office on the second floor of Flowerland. The dance pavilion had been almost exclusively taken over by the Navy. From the regions below we could hear the deadly thump of one of the three bands that played there from noon until closing without a breakoff.
I looked around the Hart sanctum. Not a bad place to grind. Big desk with some posies in a sixteen-ounce highball glass. A lovely view of the Acropolis framed on one wall, and a scattering of comfortable-looking leather chairs. But my entire attention focused on a small safe in one corner.
“Hilda’s gone home,” Libby said. Hilda was her slightly moronic assistant, the dame who mispelled the letters she typed. “She’s shut the safe.”
“Then we can’t open it?”
“Don’t sound so alarmed. Of course I can open it. I’m the only one with the combination. But”—she turned and faced me—“is it the right thing to do, Johnny? Shouldn’t we give Dance’s package to the police and not get mixed any deeper in it? We’ve already lied, you know.”
> “Ease your conscience,” I told her. “We don’t pull punches when murder’s on the stalk. Suppose you let me handle this. After all, I draw my laundry money from a newspaper that expects loyalty from its slaves. So be a nice little gal and click off the numbers. I’ll take the entire responsibility.”
Libby drew a breath and moved her sweetly sloping shoulders.
“All right, master. If you say so. But when Olga comes back and asks for her package, what will I say?”
“Who?”
” Olga. That’s Dance’s real name. Olga Barron. I forgot to tell you.”
Libby had pulled a chair around and seated herself in front of the safe. She began to mark off numbers from memory, talking as she twirled.
I didn’t say anything. I did a lot of thinking. Olga Barron. The name stuck in my mind like a burr to a spaniel’s ear. I was still chewing it mentally when the little safe’s double doors swung open and Libby reached a slim, graceful hand into its interior.
I waited for it to come out with Dance Bowen’s package.
It came out empty.
Libby looked up at me with a strained, blank, water-clear expression in her starry, dark eyes.
“It’s gone, Johnny! I put it right here and—and it isn’t here now!”
“Sit tight till you hear from me again,” I said. “I’m going back to the office.”
Bill Jamison had gone when I made the Orbit’s office. His destination, I was told, was the Armitage Arms. That made it all right with me. Mullin had loosened up evidently. Or maybe Bill, with his ear to the ground, had picked up the rumble.
I went down to the newspaper morgue, the place they keep the old clippings and such. Stan Holden, who used to be in charge, was somewhere in the Pacific. A girl had taken his place. She wasn’t a fireball, but she had some intelligence. Enough to get me the file of clippings I asked for.
I sat down there and did some quick and earnest reading. I blessed my retentive memory. Because, when I finished and handed the file back, I figured I was one up on Fred Mullin. The Captain, never having been in the newspaper business, didn’t know what I knew.
Which was plenty!
Back at my desk I phoned Libby at her place. She had tried to get in touch with Hilda, to dig some kind of information on Dance Bowen’s missing package, but with no luck.
“Hilda’s mother told me she’s gone to a party in Brooklyn,” Libby said. “That’s a big place, Johnny. I guess we’ll have to wait until tomorrow.”
“You stay in tonight,” I advised. “Knit me a sports jacket, or something. But keep your doors and windows locked.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m heading home to think about it. Then I’ll probably go down to Headquarters and gossip with Friend Fred. Don’t worry about me. I have the faculty of taking care of myself.”
She made some remark I didn’t like and rang off.
I tapped out a short piece to keep the promise I had made Ziggy that morning. About his gym. Then, making sure I didn’t. have a shadow bobbing after me that wasn’t my own, I went on home.
CHAPTER IV
Johnny Rings a Bell
My three rooms and bath were half a block from the Big Blaze, a rock’s pitch from the well-known Winter Garden. A quiet place in a quiet foxhole. Once upon a time the building had been a livery stable and on damp days you didn’t have to be told. But it had the virtue of being a central location, having a low rent and only one flight of stairs to scale.
The hall was anemically lighted by a low-powered bulb. The landlord was tight as a new girdle, but it didn’t matter. Long experience put my key in the lock like it had eyes. I opened the door and walked in.
To find I had company!
He sat in my dime-sized living room, dumping cigarette ashes on my moth-eaten rug. He had helped himself to a couple of cold bottles of beer and was looking over my collection of Varga prints. I didn’t mind those things so much. What I did object to was the snub-nosed automatic on the table beside him, and the fact that he still had on his felt hat.
Cracky Morgan took a long pull at the beer glass, put it down and daintily dabbed the froth from his rosebud mouth with a silk handkerchief large enough to cover a circus.
“You ought to get your front door lock fixed, Castle.” His voice was low, quiet, with a faint lisp in it.
“Yeah,” I said. “Seems so. Comfortable? How about a chair for your feet or a cushion for your head?”
The slanted eyes took me in slowly but thoroughly. I didn’t discount my danger. I knew what Morgan was capable of. Reaching for the snub-nose and using it would be part of his day’s work.
He got up, helped himself to his gun and walked over to me. I stood perfectly still while he patted around my person with a thin, bony hand decorated with nicotine-stained fingers. He found I wasn’t rodded and put his own shooter away.
“Sit down, Castle,” he said. “I want to talk to you.”
“Thanks for calling Homicide and telling Mullin to go up to Twelve D. It saved me a nickel.”
His little mouth grinned crookedly. “That’s okay. Think nothing of it. The doorman at the Stuyvesant overheard you asking the doll where Dance lived. I thought it might be a good idea to wind that up altogether and in one piece.”
“You cut Gail down?” I suggested. “No, Castle. No mowing in that quarter. That was somebody else. Why should I shoot that bird? He never done nothing to me. I only croak crossers and the like. I know you wouldn’t do nothing like that, Castle,” he added softly. “That’s why you’re coming clean with me.”
“On what score?”
“A certain little package Dance left with your babe. I happened to be tailing the Bowen number at the time and seen her flutter into Flowerland and leave it. With me that’s all right. She was trying to keep Kenny away. The only trouble is I’ve got to get that little package, Castle. I need it—bad.”
I shook my head. “No good, Morgan. I had the same idea. But when my thrill opened the strong box the package was gone, like the wind. Funny, I’d half a notion you had it.”
Under droopy lids, Cracky’s eyes began to wear a shine. He fixed them on me and his hand played with the top button of his coat, an inch or two from the shoulder sling where he kept his cannon.
Finally he removed the hand, upended the beer bottle, swished the lather around in the glass and emptied it.
“Who got the little package, Castle?” he said. “Your guess is as good as mine. Until the girl who closed the safe up tonight gets back on the job in the morning we won’t know. She’s at a party in Brooklyn. Who did get it? Not Stangl, because he was written off in an alley. Not Howard Gail. He finished on a moss-green carpet in a lovely living room. Not you, because you’re here—looking. Not Miss Hart whom you’ve been trailing around all day, and not me. Who does that leave?”
He caught the idea, and cursed under his breath.
“The Bowen frail! She hears Stangl is off the list and goes back and gets them! I’m a dope. I should have figured that angle.”
“The only difficulty,” I couldn’t help but put in, “is where Dance Bowen happens to be at the moment. Looks like she might have gone underground, until all this blows over.”
Morgan buttoned his coat. That made me feel somewhat better. His gaze turned speculative, before his hard face went into cementlike contours.
“Take a word, Castle. I ain’t got nothing against you personal. I even read your stuff in the paper, but I don’t like to be crowded when I’m doing a job. So why don’t you mind your own business and keep out of what don’t concern you?”
“I often wonder,” I murmured. “That’s all.”
He started for the door, stopping before he was half-way to it. His ears went up like a rabbit’s. So did mine. From the street, through the half-open window, we both caught the same sound.
The eerie wail of a police car’s siren, fading out as the vehicle ground to a stop at the curb below.
“How do I get out of her
e? Quick—name it!”
“Fire escape. This way!”
I hustled him through my bedroom and through the window.
“Thanks, pal,” he said. “Be seeing you.”
I shut the window and was back in the living room as knuckles beat out a knock on the door. Opened, Hartley and Wheeler marched in with all the fizz and sparkle of two pallbearers.
“The Captain wants you, Johnny.” Hartley coughed. “Get your hat. We’re taking you for a nice ride downtown.”
Wheeler went over and peered into the beer bottles. He looked disappointed, but didn’t say anything. I did some fast thinking.
“Be right with you. I’ll have to change my shirt and wash up a little. Help yourself to the smokes boys. All the popular brands scattered around.”
I turned the key quietly in the bedroom door and went right on, through the same window Cracky Morgan had left by, down the same fire-escape and through a wilderness of back yards that finally tossed me out near Sixth Avenue that I can’t remember is the Avenue of the Americas.
I got a cab there and a few minutes later climbed out of it at the mouth of the Stuyvesant’s stage door cut-through.
It was ten minutes before curtain time. The company were all in their dressing rooms, stage hands were roaming around behind the lowered asbestos. Suspenders warmed a whittled-down chair, barring all progress without his confirming nod. He gave me recognition without moving from his seat.
“You around again? Last time you showed me a pass card. What have you got now—a clacker?”
“Something better than a badge.” I opened my wallet and let him get a glimpse of the green. Thumbing out a ten-spot I folded it into a small square and held it poised between thumb and forefinger. “How much wise stuff does this buy tonight?”
“Depending,” he yawned. “Miss Brown didn’t show up?” Suspenders nodded. I went on, “She must have another address other than Armitage Arms. Or wouldn’t you know?”