Try to sneak out, and the guards wouldn’t appreciate your motives. She calmly walked down the steps of the back porch and approached the uniformed policeman who was on guard.
“Lieutenant Latimer is taking me down to help identify a suspect and I’m to meet him out here. Where’s his car?”
Her unofficial standing as the “Loot’s” girl doubtless helped. The cop did not question her story, but pointed the car out to her.
After fifteen minutes and two cigarettes, she began to wonder if her plan had miscarried. Could Ben have gone some other way? But just as she stubbed out the second cigarette, he appeared and climbed in behind the wheel.
“Hello,” she said.
He turned on her. “Felicity Cain—” he began with formal fury.
“Oh, but please, Ben! I’m going nuts cooped up in that house. Let me ride down with you and talk to you. I’ve got to do something.”
He turned the ignition switch. “Who’s arguing?” he snorted. “I’ve been spending the last fifteen minutes hunting for you. You’re the closest of anybody to your grandfather and know most about these Fist notes. I want you with me when I quiz Vitelli. Where’ve you been hiding?”
“Here,” said Liz meekly. “And it’s a fine thing,” she added ruefully, “when a girl can’t think up a really smart lie without having it turn into the truth!”
Ben didn’t answer. He swung the car out of the driveway and pressed down hard on the accelerator. They went humming along the paved road out in front, under the dark, leafy branches of trees.
“It seems so strange to be going at fifty,” Liz observed.
“You cost me fifteen minutes,” Ben grunted. “Then Ryan decided to tell me you were in this car. Vitelli may not wait for tire conservation.”
Liz laughed. Already her spirits were beginning to improve.
“Fifty used to be nothing and already it feels like zooming with a Pratt-Whitney,” she said. “Funny how quickly you get used to things. Like Jeff Carey who just came back from Iowa and said, ‘And you know what? At night the streets there are all lit up!’ He sounded awed. But I wonder if you can ever get used to it?”
“Used to what?” Ben prompted.
“Used to murder. If it was murder,” she added hastily.
“It was murder, all right. No bottle was found within possible heaving distance of that window.”
“Oh. You got that report already?”
“Yes.”
“And the other report?”
“What other—oh, yes,” Ben said slowly. “I got that, too.”
“And nobody was found hiding anywhere in the house?” Liz began to grow frightened. Could someone in the family be a murderer?
Ben surmised what she was thinking and tried to reassure her. “Of course no search is absolutely conclusive.”
Liz was distressed. “Don’t, Ben. It’s kind of you to try to soften the news, but I understand what it means. A killer among those you trust and love—that’s horrible!”
Ben’s voice was officially dry. “No one entered or left that house since Hatch arrived. There is no one in it now but the members of the household. And Hatch was murdered.”
“In all the questioning did anything come up that might be useful in finding out who’s guilty?”
“Not a thing.”
“Not from Sherry, either?”
“Why Sherry?”
“I just wondered what you discussed.”
“Interesting girl,” Ben mused aloud. “Damned interesting. She didn’t have anything helpful on Hatch, but we talked quite a bit. Somehow she makes me see lots of subjects from a new point of view.”
His voice trailed off. Liz was silent, too, as they drove on through the tree-lined streets. Finally a brightly lighted hospital loomed up before them.
They got out of the car and went in.
“There’s nothing we can do to save him,” the intern of the ward said. “Internal hemorrhage. He’s going fast.”
“Can he talk?” Ben demanded.
“I think he can. But he hasn’t so far. Lafferty’s in there with him.”
Ben greeted the moon-faced FBI man in the ward as an old colleague.
“Hi! Fine service I get from the Government, shooting up the man I need for questioning. What do you think I pay taxes for?”
Lafferty shrugged. “Don’t blame me, Latimer. It was his idea. And one of my men is down the hall, in just about as bad shape.”
“Vitelli won’t talk?”
“Try what you can get out of him. I’ve sent for Belcore to help out.”
“Good.”
Liz kept looking at the man in the bed. This whole terrible night had revolved around men in beds. That was the leitmotiv. And they had all smiled—Graffer with the peaceful smile of tired age, Hatch with that frightful contorted smile of strychnine and this man with a blend of cunning and triumph which was fully as horrible.
Ben said, “Vitelli!”
The man gave no sign of hearing. He just went on smiling.
“You’re going to die, Vitelli. And you know why? Because you can’t trust the Fists. Because they aren’t yours any more. One of them turned you in to the Feds.”
Vitelli lay impassive, content.
“Yes, one of them snitched,” Ben went on. “Here’s your chance to get even. Spill what you know, and they’ll all land in prison. And you’ll die in peace.”
Vitelli shook his head with slow pleasure.
A dapper long-faced man with keen button eyes came into the room. He was dressed in a single-breasted, rather worn suit of dark clothes. His black eyes sparkled as he saw the man on the bed, and his black mustache twitched happily.
“Lieutenant Belcore, you know Lafferty, don’t you?” Ben said. “And this is Liz Cain.”
For the first time there was a response from the man on the bed. He lifted one feeble hand and made a scornful gesture with his thumb and fingers.
Lieutenant Belcore invoked the body of Bacchus and sketchily outlined the possible ancestry of any man who could make such a gesture to a lady. Vitelli replied briefly, using a few hoarse, labored words.
His tones were harsh and rasping. He had little breath to give it. But underneath the rasp could be detected a voice which had once been slow and oily and cold.
Liz knew a good deal of the man from her grandfather. She knew how he had perverted the original liberal, revolutionary tendencies of Italian secret societies into a personal racket for himself. It used to be said that Vitelli had tears in his eyes whenever he collected protection money. The payment had robbed him of the pleasure he could have derived in punishing non-payment.
Twenty years in prison had not changed Vitelli. His voice was the vocal horror that was to be expected from a man of his stamp.
“What did Vitelli say?” Ben asked Belcore.
Belcore looked at Liz. “It was not necessary to translate.”
“Ask him what good he expects to get out of being stubborn?”
But Vitelli had propped himself up on one elbow and was speaking unprompted. His words were a deadly flow of some new acid that froze even as it burned. And the light in his little eyes was that of wicked exultation. The words went on monotonously until a sudden spasm of coughing interrupted them. The blood on his mouth was even redder than his lips.
“What did he say?” Ben asked.
“He said he is glad Miss Cain is here. He says he wants her to know that her grandfather took twenty years out of his life but that payment has been arranged and will be made. He asserts the plans are all perfected and the collection may take place this very night. Now he does not care if he dies; it is all fixed.”
Ben whirled to the bed. “What plans? Who’s doing it? You can talk English if you want to. Spill it, Vi
telli, or we’ll round up every relative you’ve got in North Beach and give them the works.”
Another fit of coughing shook Vitelli. Liz turned her eyes away as the blood gushed forth. There was a ghastly rattle in the wounded man’s throat, but he managed to speak once more, and for the first time in English.
“Go to hell!” he said.
His defiance still sounded in the room when his breathing finally stopped.
Those were the last words of Angelo Vitelli.
CHAPTER X
It was not until the doctors and nurses had been called and certain formalities were finished that Ben Latimer gave full expression to his inward disgust.
He took a rapid turn up and down the room, his broad shoulders very straight and stiff, his eyes grim and hard, then stopped and spoke tersely to the waiting FBI agent.
“That fellow died like just what he was—a sewer rat,” he said. “But at least, with rats you know exactly where you stand. They don’t beat around the bush. They don’t pretend.”
“Knowing that doesn’t help us,” the FBI man complained. “It’s too bad he didn’t talk. I’ve an idea he might have been able to give us some very useful information. He probably could have told us where to pick up the rest of his mob. Now it’ll take months and months of hard digging.”
Lieutenant Belcore twisted his hat around in his hands. He looked a little tired and annoyed. His voice, too, carried a distinct note of weariness.
“Not much you can do with fellows like Vitelli. They usually resent other mobsters muscling in on their people.”
“I just wonder what, if anything, Vitelli knew about the killing of a certain shipyard worker,” Ben mused. “If the war were still going on you might be tempted to label it as sabotage.”
Belcore frowned. “I wish we could truthfully say all these rats were fascist tools,” he went on. “It is hard to realize that some men who helped fight for liberty are as bitterly against the law.”
He paused briefly, then glanced sharply at Latimer.
“You mentioned a shipyard worker, Lieutenant. You remember that homicide case last week in my North Beach territory?”
“I left it up to Verdi,” Ben admitted. “Nothing much you can do when an unidentified drifter gets his skull cracked. Routine takes its course.”
“Well, he is no longer unidentified. You will get the full report tomorrow, but I thought you might like to know. And he was no drifter. He had a good paying job at Marinship.”
“So?”
“A check-up on fingerprints at all the plants revealed a lot.” Belcore nodded. “Your unidentified man is named Homer Hatch.”
Ben’s face went through contortions such as are seldom seen even in a hospital. “Homer Hatch!” he repeated. “And at Marinship. It couldn’t be the same!”
He took from his pocket an identification card and handed it to the Italian, who whipped out a notebook and compared its number with what was written there.
“I don’t know where you got this card,” Belcore said. “But it’s the same Homer Hatch.”
Ben whistled. “This is one for the book, boys. I’m investigating two separate murders, and both corpses are the same man!”
Liz tried to talk on the way back, but she was rebuffed by a growl. Not until they were almost home did Ben break his silent pondering.
“I’ve been trying to find a pattern in this damn thing,” he apologized gruffly. “Sorry if I barked at you.”
“And have you found a pattern?”
“The hell of it is, I’ve found at least three. They go like this. The Cain Homer Hatch, our Hatch, the poisoned Hatch, is a phony. So what follows from that? Why should anybody be posing as a murdered shipyard worker? The answer is simple.”
Ben cleared his throat. “Pattern A. Our Hatch was a labor saboteur. He killed the real Hatch to take over his job and raise hell at Marinship. Someone in the house is his confederate who arranged for him to make his headquarters there. He and the confederate quarreled and the confederate disposed of him. Objections?”
Liz hotly vented her scorn. “Plenty. Nobody in our house would be the confederate of such a man!”
“Leave personalities out, Liz. Under the proper circumstances, anyone can be and do anything. That’s something you learn on the Force. Can you suggest other objections?”
“Yes. There wasn’t time for them to have a quarrel. Hatch was killed almost as soon as he got there.”
“I don’t know about that,” Ben said. “Ten minutes is enough to provide a motive for murder. Suppose he was backing out on the plan, threatening to give it away. That might be plenty to make somebody want to kill him. But let’s go on to the next.”
“All right,” said Liz. “Let’s hear it.”
“Pattern B. First part same as before, but no confederate. Instead somebody in the house recognized Hatch for what he is and wipes him out. Objections?”
Liz shook her head. “That’s even weaker. Why murder him? If someone recognized him as a phony and probably a saboteur, why not just turn him over to the authorities?”
“Suppose you didn’t have enough evidence but wanted to keep him from doing damage?”
“His working in a defense plant under false identification would be enough to hold him, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes, I guess so. Well, Pattern C. We still have the original Hatch killed by a subversive element for their own dastardly purpose. And our Hatch is a private eye or an undercover Fed taking his place to try to track down his murderers. But they get him instead. Objections?”
“That would still mean that somebody in the house was a fifth columnist. And that isn’t possible.”
“Isn’t possible? After you’ve heard Garvey shooting his mouth off about saving the world for the British Empire and the rest of his line?”
“Just because a man talks that way doesn’t mean he’s a traitor. Roger couldn’t really do anything that would injure the war effort.”
“Any other objections?”
“Yes. Two that apply to all these ideas. One, they all depend on the mere chance that the Housing Bureau sent Hatch to our house. Isn’t that hanging a lot on coincidence?”
“Coincidences happen,” Ben said. “I’ve got to work on what might have occurred, Liz, not on what we both would like to be true.”
“All right.” Liz’s voice became crisp. “This is no sentimental objection. How did the murderer give Hatch—I suppose we’ve got to go on calling him that—how did he give him the strychnine? Under any of your patterns, Hatch would have good reasons for being wary. If Hatch was acquainted with the murderer, he’d know better than to take a drink from him. If the murderer spotted him without being recognized, Hatch would surely become suspicious if a total stranger wandered into his bedroom and said, ‘Here, have a drink!’ ”
Ben thought a while. Then he said “Thanks.”
“Did I help any?” Liz asked.
“Frankly, no. I’d been making all those objections to myself. But I wanted to see if they were obvious or if I was being professionally over-cautious. They’re obvious all right, and valid. Especially the last. Furthermore, until I can figure out how Hatch was persuaded to drink that strychnine, I haven’t got a case.”
The car chugged slowly up the cobbled hill. The night was moon-bright and peaceful—the sort of a still night when it is almost impossible to believe that not many months ago shells were falling on distant islands across the sea while the world was locked in a violent war.
Ben must have been thinking along those lines, too.
“War and hate—they seem impossible under such a moon,” he said.
“I know. Peaceful nights like this are too good to last.”
“No more peace in a minute. We’ll be back at the house. There’s nothing I can really accomplish
until I check on Hatch’s identity tomorrow. Yet I’d like to get the rest of these stories straightened out tonight if I can. I never saw a case with so few leads of any description.”
The night’s peace was indeed too good to last. It was shattered now by a half dozen shots.
The car leaped ahead with a jolt that almost threw Liz from her seat. Then as it swerved to the curb by the house, a black figure darted in front of its headlights. There was a squeal of brakes, another jolt and the car stopped. The person lying on the street in front of it was still, too.
Liz leaped out of the car almost as quickly as Ben did. She was beside him as he bent over the figure.
“Thank God for good brakes,” Latimer muttered. “I barely nudged him. But he’s bleeding badly—and not from what the car did to him either. It’s a bullet hole.”
Liz shrank back. “Who is it?”
Ben turned the figure face up. Roger Garvey’s fine handsome features gleamed pallidly in the moonlight.
“Oh!” Liz gasped and shuddered. “It’s the Fist again. He was right. He predicted this. So they got him, too!”
Ben looked up to see Sergeant Verdi approaching. He rose angrily to his feet.
“Well, what goes on here? The house full of police and the murderer still gets away with another try? This one’ll live, I think, but that’s no thanks to you.”
“Aw, we’re doin’ our best.”
“Nix on the alibis, Verdi. But I hope to God you’ve got the killer this time. If you haven’t, it’s back to a beat for you. All right, Sergeant. Who shot this man?”
“I hate to tell you about it.”
“Come on! Who shot him?”
Sergeant Verdi looked glum. He swallowed. “Er-ah, I’m sorta afraid it was me.”
Ben stared at him. “You! What’s that?”
Verdi gulped again. “He’d been hitting the bottle pretty hard and he kept carrying on about how he had to get the hell out of this house or they’d bump him next. So at last he tries to make a break for it. Ryan tackles him in the hall, but he wrenches himself loose. Then I yells for him to stop or I’ll shoot.”
“So?”
The Big Book of Female Detectives Page 131