The Hardboiled Mystery Megapack

by John Roeburt

  Now the portly detective looked critically at his partner. “You can’t really suppose murder motivated by a two thousand dollar profit!”

  Devereaux said slowly, “I can suppose Aldo’s motive in identifying the thing out of the marsh. His brother’s corpse is a gold strike. Two thousand dollars like two hundred thousand. Climb those tenement stairs and see for yourself.”

  “Max Toller made similar identification of the ring,” Solowey said pointedly. “And independently…not in concert with Aldo Starziani. Toller even entrained to the Harvard Lab to view the remains.”

  “Anders sent him. For what help it might be to Dr. Kingdon. The structural comparison of the thing out of the marsh and Rocky Star. The structure, and the physiology. Anders figured an ex-trainer would know the physical Rocky Star better than anybody else.”

  Now a frown settled on Devereaux’s face. “Toller eludes me. I can’t get a perspective on him. He’s a guileless child, he’s a prize psychotic. His explanation for the shrine is pat, incredibly yet believably too. It’s sentiment, quixotic and eccentric and self-abnegating; it’s creature worship of a chum who grew to be his God. Toller even somehow compels you to believe that. He mixes even parts of necrophilia and candor…and when he’s finished, you’re bored, but you’re also brimming at the eyes. He’s set up an irresistible nostalgia. Kids on the old block, the bathos and pathos of it. You’re with him to some extent vicariously…you’ve got the same acute remembrances yourself. It’s ‘Mother Machree’ sung to an Irishman in his cups. It’s your throat choking up over an album in the attic…”

  Solowey laughed, “And you said you lacked a perspective on Max Toller!”

  Devereaux shook his head. “But he doesn’t add up to anything for me. There’s more to a man than just an oddness. Nor can I finally accept Toller for the caricature he pretends.” The detective saw Solowey’s rapt interest and continued, “Toller has deep-down substance. I have this feeling about him. It takes a substantial and ordered man to meet those staggering rental bills Toller assumed when he decided to keep up Rocky’s apartment. A madman cannot make out hacking New York. Not for long anyhow. The job has stern requirements. It’s competitive, and arduous. A driver needs sharpness, coordination, a strong constitution and a certain calm.” He looked squarely at Solowey. “I’ve checked Toller’s garage record. He’s a steady worker, a top booker, and a responsible driver.”

  “He functions,” Solowey commented wryly. “Ergo, he is an integrated man.”

  “An unbalanced man cannot function,” Devereaux insisted doggedly. “Please let’s not split philosophical hairs. My simple point is: Toller isn’t all harum-scarum, only a lunatic sentimentalist, as we’ve made ourselves believe. The man has capacities, he has fibre, he has ingenuity…”

  A shout came over the restaurant’s loudspeaker. A page system it was, for the personalities lingering in the Network’s backyard.

  Solowey made patent translation of the tidings. “Paging Johnny Devereaux.” He smiled. “The whistle has blown, and your Never-Never Land beckons.”

  Devereaux arose grimly. “Comes option time, I’ll make history,” he promised with clear meaning.

  “Folly and fortune,” Solowey said. “They march together. Men who live by their sights beg alms in the public square.”

  “Good I provide you with so much amusement,” Devereaux said. “Now, my formula for you to work off some of that killing fat. The strychnine that dispatched Hobie Grimes. Extend from Brooklyn into the Five Boroughs. Spill over into New Jersey and Connecticut. And into Delaware and Pennsylvania. Druggists, chemists, pharmaceutical supply houses. Find the poison’s source and its buyer… Astonish me with a feat of investigation.”

  “Your formula to make me a stick,” Solowey said smilingly. “But the check, in the scope and cost you propose, is even now being made by the New York Police.”

  Devereaux said, “We’re functioning independently right up to the finish. Assign all the men it needs. Per diem operatives—a gold doubloon every sundown.” A smile crossed his face. “Squander my theatrical bribe, I’ll get the illusion I’m really routing crime upstairs in Never-Never Land. I’ll be more able to suffer the greasepaint.”

  They moved abreast across the restaurant floor. At the cashier’s counter, Devereaux turned off to climb the short staircase that led to the back door of the Network building. Solowey continued straight along, to the door that opened into the side street.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Part 1.

  The cat-yellow eyes fixed balefully on Devereaux, and Toller set the large grocery bag down on the stone rest of the building front. The play in his face was of a man waylaid, forced into a ruffian encounter by an outlaw. The A.M. hour was two. A black night, with an oppressive sky that lay heavy and low with no dilution of color. An atmosphere of migraine charge. And a raw, insinuating cold to it, to sting and swell the vessels of the nose, to weight the body with moistures until the joints ached with the overload.

  Mid-street, a line of taxi-cabs formed a steel hedge far down to the corner intersection that was Eleventh Avenue. It was the early morning feed-back into the garage that stood across the street. A mummer’s hour, deeply solemn, with the drag of death. The men were one face now, the Pietros, the Cullums, and the Kazmaiers. Papier-mâché, ash in color, and eyeless. Their differences were gone; the novelty of nose, that finer attribute that made a Swede over a Spic, the stiff Presbyterian spine and the round-shouldered Jew. All refined and composed in the ten-hour forage in the City jungle. Only one face now, one man; in a massive equality, in a massive ruin.

  Toller said resentfully, “Hound me at my place of work, I’ll tear up my license.”

  Devereaux said, “Where else can I find you?” He pressed the question. “Where do you live, by the way? Nobody’s yet been able to find out.”

  The mouth formed a bare grin. “Never mind where. I like company by invitation, mister.” Toller stooped as if to recover his grocery bag. “I’ve done a night’s work. My bones hurt and my sinuses are killing me. Let’s make a date for some other time. I’m off Thursdays.”

  The detective shook his head. “I’ve been here on the street since 1:00 A.M.” He looked down at the grocery bag. On top were cans of fruit juice, a can of meat, bacon in wax paper, and a carton of eggs. “Take me home for breakfast. Or be my guest.”

  “I don’t feel sociable,” Toller said. His head thrust, to see down to the corner. “There’s a beanery open. We’ll have a quick coffee.” The taxi-driver lifted his grocery bag, and then said as if constrained to explain it, “I shop groceries before checking in. All-night dairy up on Columbus Avenue. He lets me owe him. I pay him by the month. Not that I like cooking for myself. I got that kind of stomach. Eat out, I’m dead. I’m swilling Serutan like it was milk. Come on, if we’re going.”

  Part 2.

  The coffee stood untasted. Devereaux lighted a cigarette and passed the pack to Toller.

  “I’ve got my own brand,” the taxi-driver said.

  A few minutes later, Toller said, “We stall around here, I’ll fall asleep. Don’t for Chrissakes sit reading me, like I’m a book.”

  Devereaux smiled austerely and began his interrogation. “There have been a few happenings since that night we toured your old block.”

  “Yeah, there have been,” Toller agreed somberly. He held an arm up for Devereaux to see. A black mourner’s band was sewn to the sleeve.

  The detective resumed his study of the taxi-driver. Toller’s long thin face was sallow; the nose seemed larger than it was. The cheeks lumped where the bone was, like raised welts. There were pockets under his eyes as if sleep, if ever sleep, was a troubled time for the taxi-driver.

  Devereaux said, “A mourning band for Rocky?”

  Toller’s eyes made answer, and the detective said, “Sew one on the other sleeve for Hobie Grimes.”

  “Hobie was nothing to me.”

  Devereaux said, “Hobie was murdered.” He watched Toller’s eye
s, wondering at the lack of surprise.

  Toller said, “The newspapers only said dead, mister. Dead by poison. And now you say murdered. But I’m not surprised. Murder’s how I think about it too.”

  The detective felt a quick elation. Toller, for the first time, was daring out from a deep retreat. The substantial Toller was moving to one side of the only odd Toller.

  Devereaux said eagerly, “Who would murder Hobie Grimes?”

  The answer when it came was exasperating. Toller was a cautious deviser of conundrums. “The same party that murdered Rocky,” he said.

  “I give up. Who?” A long pause later, Devereaux said, “You’re trying to back away from it now. Why, Toller?”

  Toller said slowly, “Maybe I’m taking a lesson from Hobie.”

  Devereaux seized upon it. “Hobie telephoned me the afternoon of his death. Something on his mind he finally wanted to tell.” The detective’s stare held Toller. “It’s on your mind too, Toller. You know what Hobie never got to tell. I guess it to be the name of Rocky’s murderer.”

  Toller said, “I tell it to you, I’m with Hobie. We weren’t such good company for me to want to look him up.”

  “I’ll protect you,” Devereaux promised. “I’ll keep you out of it.”

  “Promises are easy.” Now Toller hesitated and his face showed an inner struggle. His lids fell, as if he thought best in his own dark.

  When the taxi-driver returned from deep within himself, the hang of his features, and the pallor, was more than before. As if decision had only come of resignation. Toller said, “You find me dead, have the City bill Marco for my burial.” He added quickly, “Don’t pound at me, mister. You’ll get answers without questions.”

  Toller sampled his coffee and spit it out. “I don’t know how much Hobie knew. I don’t know as much as Hobie knew. What I do know, Hobie himself told me. And not directly, man to man, like I’m here talking to you now. It was more than a year after Rocky had disappeared. I’d dropped in to see Hobie, to ask my usual question: What did he hear from Rocky? I found Hobie sitting on the floor, with empty whiskey bottles standing around like bowling pins. And Hobie with the screaming meemies, crying and talking to himself. This was Hobie Grimes, remember, the malted-milk man who started camp meals with the Lord’s Prayer.” Toller stopped, to light a cigarette and then stamp it out.

  “I found a chair and sat down to watch the show. I listened to Hobie’s talk. I poured myself a drink. I got drunk, and lay down on the floor with Hobie.” The taxi-driver met Devereaux’s gaze steadily, “What I know, I learned that night. Only I could never be sure of it, considering how I learned it. In the morning, I sobered up before Hobie did. I got out before Hobie woke up. If Hobie knew I’d been the night with him, I don’t know. He never mentioned it.”

  “What was Hobie’s talk?” Devereaux asked.

  “That the word had gone out on Rocky. Murder, by order of Marco. For Rocky’s welshing on the hundred thousand dollar payment. That’s what Rocky’s disappearance meant to Hobie. To Hobie talking out in his cups. And Hobie himself was caught betwixt and between. The watch was on him, and the quietus. He’d already had a sampling of what could happen if he coupled Rocky with Marco out loud.”

  “Hobie’d been beaten by Marco’s thugs?”

  Toller nodded. “I thought I was saying that. Beaten, and more than once. It was part of Hobie’s nightmare there on the floor.”

  Devereaux said thoughtfully, “All this a year or so after Rocky’s disappearance, you say. Then for some years now, you’ve known that Rocky was dead.”

  Toller shook his head. “I said I could never be sure of it, considering how I’d heard it. Hobie was talking scared…ranting it.” Now the voice shook a little. “And then, I didn’t want to believe it about Rocky. The heat was on and Rocky ran away somewhere, I told myself. He wasn’t hanging around, a sitting duck for Marco’s boys to shoot. Rocky was smart; he’d fought up out of a sewer… The Champ could take care of himself! I tried to keep Rocky alive in my mind like that. I kept his place up. The Champ would be back, he was taking his time coming back. He’d get word to me someday…”

  A moment later, Toller said, “When no body turned up, I was sure Rocky’d won over Marco. I had that hope… Murder, there’s a body. I kept repeating that to myself like a prayer, mister. Murder, there’s a body. Sooner or later, a body turns up. You kill a guy, but you don’t erase him!”

  Devereaux waited for the pitch of emotion to subside. Toller was shaking, all through him. The anguish seemed real, but somehow too wild. Too much for tragedy, refurbished by memory. The anodyne of time, and the blessed sublimation—Where was it, Devereaux wondered. Toller’s grief was alive, close upon him now, as if he was standing over the corpse in a first sight.

  Devereaux said, “You rationalized it, out of sentiment. Love for a childhood chum. You rejected the truer thing: that Rocky had been murdered. Hallucination and fact, you lived somewhere between the two. All right for so much. But in my gauge of you, you’re withal a shrewd, practical fellow.” The detective smiled slightly. “I’ve thrown away my original dogma about you, Toller. That you are wholly mad. I got that impression the night we rode around. But in later thinking it over, I came to another conclusion. That you were odd, but crafty too. That you’d handled me beautifully. You parried my questions in point, you told me a charming fable of youth. And then when I tried to corner you, you left me to the taxi-cab.”

  It brought an involuntary and fleeting grin to Toller’s face. Devereaux continued, “I repeat: a shrewd, practical fellow withal. In that light, I insist that the more reasonable side of you did accept the fact of Rocky’s murder. Early, and at once.”

  Toller seemed to think about it. “I accepted it, and I didn’t. I knew it was true, and I wished it wasn’t. I’m a sane man, and I’m-crazy. My head’s hard, and soft. So all right. Why are you making a big thing out of it!”

  “Your grief here tonight,” Devereaux said patiently. “No slight intended, but I wonder about it. It’s like the first minutes of bereavement. Yet by your truest knowledge, Rocky’s been a long time dead.”

  “I felt about Rocky,” Toller began, but stopped. The show of grief that was so remarkable to Devereaux was there again. Full in Toller’s eyes, everywhere on his face.

  Soon Toller said, as if in defense of his display, “I’m one day back from the Harvard Lab, mister. I threw up all last night.”

  “You then believe you saw Rocky’s remains?”

  Toller said, “That night we rode around, I didn’t tell you a thing. Why do you think I’m talking to you now?” The cat-yellow eyes had a deep inner gleam now. “You guessed it about me, that first time we met. My fright, over what Marco could do to me. I scare, mister, like anybody else. But I’m talking to you tonight. I mean, Rocky’s talking to you through me. Get Marco. Give him what he gave the Champ!”

  Devereaux said, “You go around my questions. I’d like a more direct answer. I specifically asked: do you believe you viewed Rocky’s remains in the Harvard Lab?”

  “Yes, I do believe it.”

  “How could you know? I mean, other than the ring Anders had you identify.”

  Toller was hesitant now. His face drew for some moments, and then he said, “How did I know it was Rocky? In my heart I knew it. Then there were measurements the Doc had worked out. They fit the Champ…”

  Devereaux said sharply, “Were there special and significant physical markers that could only be Rocky Star?”

  “N-no,” Toller conceded.

  “Then you cannot say the remains were Rocky Star.” Now a stubborn look came to Toller. “You’re trying to mix me up. And I’m damned if I know why, mister. I talk to you, we take off on tangents. You sit there proving to me how sane I am, and then you pick it over. I don’t understand you.”

  Devereaux pressed his lips tightly. His perspective on Toller was unaccountably awry again. The man was ephemeral, with the merest instance of solidity. The detective had a feelin
g he couldn’t shake that this face look at Toller was only a facet of the man and not the total. That Toller was again only revealing himself just so much before darting away into an inky void. Or was he being overly analytical, Devereaux wondered fretfully.

  Now Devereaux felt impelled to say, “You wrap a neat package, Toller. Only thing, I get the feeling I didn’t myself select the merchandise. You don’t let me buy. You sell me.”

  Toller looked perplexed. “Whatever that means, mister.”

  “You dodge around, Toller. You’re in my camera, but you move out of focus before the click. I keep developing blank negatives.”

  Toller said, “Take your thumb off me, mister. I’m squeezed dry.”

  Devereaux shook his head to it. “My thumb on you, but your ring in my nose. You pull me around, Toller. On a guided tour. You show me the sights you want me to see.”

  The taxi-driver said disgustedly, “You make a puzzle out of something simple. You’ve been a cop too long.”

  The detective said, “Something simple. Marco ordered the murder of Rocky Star. Marco ordered Hobie Grimes silenced.”

  “Why is that so hard to believe?”

  “Perhaps because it is too easy to believe, Toller.” The detective looked steadily at the taxi-driver. “Two events, five years apart. The time lag isn’t Marco’s way. I find it hard to believe Marco would be so careless with his own safety. Hobie alive was a constant threat to Marco. I mean, if Marco had actually done away with The Tiger Man.”

  Toller said, “I told you Marco kept on top of Hobie all the time.” He stopped to look hard at Devereaux. “People generally bow down low to Marco. Marco doesn’t always have to kill you to shut you up. Do I really have to tell you! It took five years to crack Hobie. If you hadn’t happened to him, mister, it might have taken fifty.” Now Toller made a gesture, as if impatient with himself. “But here I am selling you again.”

  The taxi-driver rose to his feet stormily. “Wrap your own package, mister. The times we’re together, I have a bad experience. I feel slapped around. You slap me around for the hell of it.” The cat-yellow eyes showed red around the rim; Toller was a man worn beyond ordinary fatigue. “For me, the Champ is dead. I’ve quit hoping. I’ve stopped praying.” Now the mouth disfigured and his tone was heavy with dislike. “Comes Friday, the ‘shrine’ is an empty apartment with a For Rent sign on it. Everything in it goes to auction. I came back from the Harvard Lab, and called up an Auction Room. The proceeds from it goes to Rocky’s old man.”