by Dan Marlowe
“And here I thought Connor was a wheel.”
“In his own circles, possibly; I can tell you explicitly that as far as the operation over there was concerned, far from being a wheel, Tim Connor was a very small gear.”
Johnny settled back in his chair. “So you've warmed me up. Roll the cameras.”
“Fair enough. The public stenographer bit is a blind, of course. The main purpose of that office is to serve as a briefing center for the people assigned to the special jobs which come out of my office here.” Helen Sanders looked down momentarily at the glowing tip of her cigarette. “The girl there now will have to go, incidentally. I made it a practice not to interfere with Ed's pets, but she attracts entirely too much attention.”
“You still haven't said anything,” Johnny pointed out when she paused.
The voice was crisp. “I say I'll pay two hundred a week and expenses to a man who can follow specific directives and who can procure the people to carry them out.”
“That's a good week's pay. Anything illegal?”
“There shouldn't be. Ed was inclined to trim his sails a little too closely in that respect. When you have a mind as devious as mine, illegality becomes an unnecessary luxury.”
He considered the clear blue eyes in the candid face. “I haven't heard anything yet I can hang a nail on, Mrs. Sanders.”
“I'm sure you're giving me credit for a little common sense. Before I reach the point of no return with you I want a reaction. I think you understand me. You asked if it was illegal, and I said no. If you asked if it was ethical, I might feel it necessary to tell you that a clear two hundred a week buys up a few ethics. My late husband had ethics. I prefer a bank account.”
This woman left no snagged threads at all; Johnny made one more try. “How about a for instance on a directive, Mrs. Sanders?”
For an instant he thought she was going to refuse, and then she changed her mind. “All right. Follow me closely, now; this is a little complicated. Some time ago a jeweler came to me-in my business I get referrals all the time-with a story of having been tricked by his partner. I checked and found out his story was true. I always do check, because over the years I've found that countermeasures such as we specialize in rarely result in an official protest if there has been an original wrong. Too much dirty linen would be exposed.”
She knuckled a hand and scrubbed it briskly in the other palm. “I thought about it for a week. Then I had Ed Russo contact Tim Connor and three unemployed actors, one of them a woman. I set up a timetable for them, and for once they followed it perfectly. On a day like today, for example, the woman was sent to the jeweler where the wrong was to be righted, and she purchased an expensive watch of a type uncommon enough that the jeweler could not in reason have very many in stock. This watch was taken to a man who does work for us, and the expensive moment was removed and a very cheap movement substituted. The tampered watch was then returned to the woman. Three or four days later, in the early morning a man of the group went in to this same jeweler and bought an identical watch. This, too, was taken to our man, the expensive movement removed and the cheap movement substituted. An hour after the first man left the store, the second man went in and bought up all the watches of that style which were left in the store. Because of the price and style of the item there shouldn't be too many; regardless, it is his job to see that he gets them all, from counters, vault and windows. Hard on the heels of his departure the first man came back and returned the watch he had bought earlier the same morning, only now of course it contained the substituted cheap movement. On a returned item the store's watchmaker will automatically check the merchandise as a matter of course, but where is the watchmaker who will take the back off the case and check the watch movement inside?”
Helen Sanders smiled as Johnny leaned forward in his chair, trying to follow her story. “In the meantime, Tim Connor had contacted a man he knew on the District Attorney's Racket Squad. Tim told this man that he'd bought an expensive watch for his girl, had had trouble with it, had taken it to another jeweler, and that the second jeweler had told him that it had a cheap, inferior movement in it and that he'd been rooked. The Racket Squad man naturally said let's go and see this crooked jeweler. Tim led his little party on the scene and accused the clerk of selling his girl a doctored watch. The clerk denied it, naturally, and called out the watchmaker, who took the back off the case of the woman's watch and was confounded by what he found. The Racket Squad man moved in and demanded to see all other watches of that type in stock. They could only have one; the returned one which also had a cheap, inferior movement. Try explaining it to a Racket Squad man some time.”
Johnny blew out his breath. “Lady, when you said you had a devious mind it was the understatement of all time!” He thought back over it, step by step. “Foolproof. A perfect frame.”
Helen Sanders nodded. “All purchases are for cash, strictly. Phony names, except for the woman complainant, and phony addresses. It's an expensive operation, but the man who wanted the job done paid fifteen hundred dollars for it. Paid it cheerfully. He didn't know how it was done; he didn't care. He saw the result.” She looked at Johnny across the desk. “Well?”
“Let me sleep on it. I'll call you.”
“An amendment. I'll call you.” Helen Sanders rose and stubbed out her cigarette vigorously; there was an air of quiet competence in everything this woman did, Johnny reflected. She smiled at him again, the sudden, bright smile which made her appear so much younger. “I think we'll get along, Johnny.” She sobered then, considering him. “There is one change I'm going to make in the operation. Ed Russo used to come to this office for his instructions. I find that a needless involvement. You will in the future receive your instructions from a third party who will be connected with both offices, but will appear in neither.”
“You mean you're installin' an overseer? I might not like that.”
“You won't have any trouble with the overseer.”
“I could feel different about it.”
“You won't. When you learn who it is.”
He considered her carefully. “The overseer know about this? How's he gonna feel about it?”
Helen Sanders' smile was crisp. “I'll have to admit he warned me not to approach you. He felt you were-shall we say-unstable? On the other hand, I need a man with your seeming flair for direct action. The decision I reserved for myself, of course.” She moved out from behind her desk. “We've talked enough, until you give me your answer. I think we're all practical people. I risked only one thing, actually, in approaching you. An outright 'no' might have made it necessary to transfer the operation to another hotel. A hotel is a perfect cover for all-hours and all kinds of comings and goings. It would have been inconvenient, but it was worth the risk to get the right man.”
Lady, you just think you only risked one thing, Johnny thought. He felt a rising excitement gnawing at him as he stood up to confront Helen Sanders. He had to get out of there… he needed time to think “I'll call you in the morning,” Helen Sanders was saying firmly as she walked with him to the door. Absently he noted that she had a nice way of moving; she must be forty, forty-five, but she was sure giving it a battle.
He reached the street without being fully conscious if he had used the elevator or the stairs. He looked for a drugstore and a phone booth, and then changed his mind. He started to look for a cab and changed his mind again. He set out for the hotel at a steady pace, his mind churning.
He nearly walked past the foyer entrance as he plowed along; he turned in and went directly up to his room. Sassy jumped up from a kittenish sprawl to greet him; he ruffled her fur absently for a moment, kicked off his shoes and stretched out on the bed. He stared up at the ceiling for a long time.
He roused himself finally, stretched and walked over to the window. He was surprised to find it dark outside. He drew the shade to three-quarter length and returned to the bed. With hands locked behind his head he resumed his critical inspection of the ceiling.
; When he stirred finally his left arm had fallen asleep; he rubbed the circulation back into it and picked up his phone. “Ring eight-fifteen, Edna,” he told the operator when she came on the line. He listened to the insistent brrrrtt.
“Mike? Johnny. You got time to run down to my room a minute? Looks like you're gonna be my new boss, so I ought to start gettin' in right.”
“You mean she-”
“After what you told her she did it anyway. A whim of iron, that lady. Come on down and let's talk it over.” He replaced the phone gently, looked around the room, rose from the bed and extinguished the room light. Back at the bed he sat down on its edge, letting his eyes gradually accustom themselves to the room's darkness. He felt a sharp sting in his ankle; Sassy was diligently exercising her claws on it. Johnny reached down, picked her up and put her in his lap; even in the darkness he could make out the white puffball of the kitten's figure as she settled down contentedly.
Johnny sat and listened to the quiet in the room, his eyes on the thin pencil of light under the edge of his door. Beside him the phone rang, and he jumped; in his preoccupation it was a jarring, unexpected sound. He picked it up hurriedly. “Yeah?”
“This is Edna, Johnny. There's a lady here to see you. A Mrs. Barnes.”
“Tell her-tell her I'll be down in a few minutes, Edna.”
He waited impatiently in the short pause before Edna's voice came back on the line. “I don't see her in the lobby. She came on the house phone before when you were talking, and I couldn't connect you. Could she have gone upstairs? I didn't-”
“Listen, Edna,” Johnny said rapidly. “Find her, or have someone find her for you. Hold her in the lobby. I'll be down shortly.” He hung up quickly and waited for the telephone noise to die out in his ear so that he could again concentrate on room sound. His eyes again picked up the line of light under the door, and he settled back on the bed. He stiffened as his ear picked up a faint, alien sound, and his unwinking stare focused on the line of light as he waited for it to widen in indication that the door had been silently opened.
The line remained constant, however, and the noise repeated itself, direction indistinguishable in the darkness. Johnny wrenched his eyes away from the light at the door and stared blindly around the room. He became conscious suddenly of the kitten on his lap; the small head was turned at right angles toward the window. Johnny tensed; he could picture the pink nose wrinkling as Sassy tested the air — had she felt a current of air from the window being raised slowly and almost quietly from the outside?
He bounded from the bed, carrying the kitten with him; he flattened himself against the end wall, out of line with window and bed. Over his shoulder he strained his eyes back to the door, but the thin line of light remained stationary, and then in the middle of his breath of relief the night around him erupted in gunfire.
He couldn't count the sharp explosions; in the small space the noise was deafening. Blue flame pierced the window shade, which jumped crazily in the blur of shots. Johnny found himself on his knees as he listened to the slugs tearing up his mattress, and then his ears tingled with the quiet. On his belly he snaked across the floor; he reached up and grabbed the bottom edge of the smoldering shade and yanked it completely off the window. He tightened against another fusillade, but there was silence. He could smell the shade burning at the edges of the bullet holes, and he ground out the creeping edges of fire with his palms.
He rose cautiously and angled a look out at the fire escape. There was no movement in the night; he leaned forward by slow degrees, and verified that the fire escape was empty. A flutter caught his eye; he strained to make out the object-paper? — which stirred lightly in the after-sundown breeze as it appeared to be caught on the iron handrail.
His eyes swam from the intensity of his stare, but he could see no details on the flapping material. In stockinged feet he went lightly to the closet and fumbled out two coat hangers. Back at the partially raised window he listened to the silence in the outside world. It was not silent in the hotel; already he could hear noises in the corridor. He had to move and move quickly.
He set himself, and in one quick lunge reached out the few feet with the extended coat hangers, trapped the lightweight material on the handrail between them, and pulled it back into the room. His fingers told him it was cloth; in the darkness he could make out no details, and he wanted no light in that room. Hurriedly he put on his shoes, shoving the cloth in his pocket. He opened his room door carefully and eased out into the corridor. Once out he ran for the fire door, paying no attention to the curious heads in the open doorways.
On the first landing he stopped and pulled the piece of cloth from his pocket; he looked down for an instant at a patch-pocket, apparently torn from a black-and-white checked jacket, and jammed it back in his pocket. He raced down five flights of stairs, caroming off walls on the sharp turns. He burst down off the mezzanine through the lobby, and in the foyer he saw them, between the inner and outer glass doors.
Mike Larsen whirled as Johnny rushed in, his lips a dark gash in his white face. His staring eyes were locked blindly upon Johnny's face; at his elbow Lorraine Barnes' hypnotized glare was fixed rigidly on the ugly, black automatic in Mike Larsen's right hand.
CHAPTER 15
“GLAD you got the gun away from her, Mike,” Johnny-said casually to the little tableau.
Mike Larsen's voice was harsh. “We've gone a little bit beyond that foolishness, Johnny. A little bit beyond.” He looked at Lorraine Barnes, and Johnny looked, too. For the first time since he had known her the iron facade was cracked; her eyes were enormous. She swallowed, hard, and her voice was breathless.
“He said… Mike said-”
She swallowed again, and Johnny anticipated her. “That he'd killed me? His intentions were fine.” He looked carefully at Mike Larsen, who moved back two paces, the negligently held gun equidistant between Johnny and Lorraine. Johnny wondered how long they could stand there a dozen feet from the street without interruption.
Mike must have wondered, too. He glanced out to the sidewalk; he's made up his mind, Johnny thought suddenly. He's over most of the shock; he's going to play the hand out. Mike's voice confirmed this in the next breath; he spoke almost normally. “Outside. My car's across the street. Be careful. Both of you.”
Like an automaton Lorraine Barnes pushed through the outer glass doors. With the unwinking eye of the gun upon him Johnny followed and, on the sidewalk, breathed in the summer night's dry heat.
“Over there,” Mike Larsen said quickly. He stood with his right hand thrust under his left armpit. “Second in line.”
Second in line was not the MG; Johnny half turned in inquiry before his eyes caught the dull silvered spot on the dark sedan second in line where once there had been a door handle. He followed the sleepwalking Lorraine to the sedan, now just one more of a number of things all pointing in the same direction.
Mike tossed the car keys to Lorraine; he looked up and down the thinly peopled street. He watched Lorraine, but never so closely that a good measure of his attention wandered from Johnny. “Open it up and get under the wheel.” He waited for her to comply; his voice was tight, and there was a sheen on his forehead as he addressed Johnny. “You now. Delicately.” He smiled, almost pleasantly. “In my mind you're already dead, you know.”
Johnny inched in the front seat beside Lorraine, doubling up his left leg and sitting on it. He could feel the car springs settle as the rear door slammed, and Mike's voice came again strongly, the relief in it evident. “Down to Ninth, Lorraine, and turn left.”
Johnny turned his head carefully until he could see the back seat and Mike sitting with the gun in his lap. Mike looked almost jovial; he was pleased with himself. “That was my first really poor move, Johnny, upstairs just now. I panicked when you called me, because I realized that you knew. I'm glad it misfired; this gives me a chance to do the thing right.”
“You're runnin' out of chances, boy,” Johnny said softly. “Fast.
” He stared at the man in the back seat. “How could I have missed it?”
“Because I was able to throw just enough sand in your eyes as we went along,” Mike replied comfortably. “I told you just enough about Connor to keep you from going to someone else.” He paused as Lorraine Barnes made the left turn onto Ninth Avenue. “Left on Forty-fourth right here.” He returned his attention to Johnny. “And I told you that Lorraine was having an affair with Sanders to forestall the possibility of your wondering if she was having an affair with me.” He leaned forward slightly. “Down to Second Avenue, Lorraine, then right to the tunnel.”
“Tunnel?” Johnny caught himself. When Mike had directed them east on Forty-fourth Johnny had assumed their destination to be the warehouse alley where Ed Russo had died in the rain. The tunnel… He looked at Mike. “We goin' out to the boat?”
“We are indeed. I realized belatedly that I can't stand the discovery of two more bullet-riddled bodies on the perimeter of our tight little circle. No… a boating accident is indicated.”
Johnny's voice was husky. “There'll be an accident all right, Mike, but it's gonna happen to you. I'll leave you out there for good.” His voice rose; he half surged up in the seat in the violence of the emotion that gripped him. “I'll leave parts of you all over Long Island Sound-” He broke off as the gun in Mike's lap rose up and considered him carefully.
“I wouldn't,” Mike said quietly. “I have remarkably little to lose.” He smiled thinly. “We'll have to put up with each other, until the boat ride.”
Johnny seethed internally. He thought of the battered pier where the boat was moored, deserted even in the daytime. Somewhere out there on the dark water he was going to find a way to turn the tables, and when he did it was going to be the end of the line for Mike Larsen.
“I was sorry about Ellen, you know,” Mike said conversationally.
“Sorry!” Johnny said gutturally.
“Sanders was just an obstacle in my way,” Mike continued, unperturbed. “Bobby Perry was a vicious little blackmailer who possessed a little dangerous knowledge. Ed Russo was getting close to adding two and two together, since he had knowledge that you didn't. I regretted none of them.” His voice rose sharply. “Nonentities, sluts, bullet-bait!” With a visible effort he brought his voice back under control. He sounded properly regretful. “Ellen, though, was the factor which jiggered my little equation all out of shape.”