by Frank Kane
The dank, damp air of the morgue seemed to permeate through the walls into the medical examiner's office. It was furnished only with a large, varnished desk, a row of filing-cabinets, two hard wooden chairs, and a row of framed diplomas on the wall.
A thin woman with painfully prominent front teeth stood filing sheets of paper at one cabinet near the door. She looked up as they entered.
“Doctor Travin in?” Liddell asked.
“He's in the building,” she acknowledged through her buck teeth. “He's kind of busy right now. Was he expecting you?” She pushed a wisp of graying hair out of her face, tucked it untidily behind her ear. She had a yellowish complexion that seemed to go with the dankness of the room.
“I didn't have an appointment but I think he'll see me,” Liddell told her. “Tell him it's Liddell.”
The woman sighed, dropped her papers on the desk top, wiped her hands along the sides of her thighs, slammed the cabinet drawer. “I'll see if he can come out. Have a seat.” She stalked out of the room, muttering to herself.
Liddell sprawled on a chair, watched while Muggsy scrambled up on the corner of the desk, let her heels hit the sides. After a moment, the door swung open. The woman's complaining voice preceded her into the room. “... but I tell you he's not in a hurry. You ought to finish that case now, doctor. Captain Holmes wants that autopsy report today.”
“Will you stop living my life, Smitty? That guy in there can wait. He waited for three days for us to fish him out of the bay. He can wait another ten minutes to find out why he ended in the bay.” The medical examiner walked in, his face dark with annoyance. When he saw Liddell and Muggsy the annoyance drained out of his face, washed away by a slow grin. “Muggsy Kiely, by all that's holy.” He walked over, grabbed her extended hand, wrung it. “You're a sight for sore eyes.”
The thin woman behind him sniffed audibly.
Doc Travin didn't even turn around. “I'll call you when I need you, Smitty. This is personal business.”
The woman's bloodless lips flattened into a thin line, a dull flush gave her face a few uneven smears of color. She stalked to the door, slammed it behind her.
“Damned old maid,” the medical examiner muttered. “Only reason I keep her around is because when she starts to look good to me I'll know I've been spending too much time with floaters.”
“Haven't changed a bit, have you, doc?” Muggsy grinned at him.
“Not even his jokes.” Liddell nodded. “Don't you get to say hello to me at all, doc?”
“I'm afraid to. Every time I say hello to you it means trouble.” He walked over, shook hands with Liddell, pulled the other chair over, dropped into it with a sigh.
“Keeping you busy, doc?” Muggsy wanted to know.
“Not too busy. Only reason I was out front they brought in some guy that's been in the bay for a couple of days and all of a sudden they're in a hurry for a report. What the hell, he's not going any place.” Doc Travin was small, chipper, with a thatch of untidy white hair that belied the youthfulness of the grin that split his face from ear to ear. “Never mind that. What brings you two out this way?”
“I just came for the ride. And to see you,” Muggsy told him.
“That'll be the day.” He looked at Liddell curiously. “Something going on out here?”
“Just routine, doc. I'm on a case and I wanted to pick up some background on it.”
“Out here? What's the case?”
“I've been retained to find out what happened to Matt Merritt. His daughter isn't satisfied with the verdict.”
The medical examiner scowled, dug a battered briar from one pocket, a pouch from the other. “He committed suicide. What's there to find out?” He ran the bowl of the pipe into the pouch, packed with his index finger. “What are you really out here on, Johnny?”
“The Matt Merritt case,” Liddell told him. He fumbled through his pockets fruitlessly, caught the cigarette Muggsy tossed him, stuck it in his mouth, lit it. “What makes you so sure it was suicide, doc?”
“It couldn't be anything else,” Travin told him flatly. He scraped a long wooden match on the sole of his shoe, held it to the pipe, sucked in a lungful of blue smoke. “Even you can't make it out as anything but suicide.”
“You've been wrong before, doc,” Liddell chided him.
“Not this time, my boy.” He tamped the tobacco down in the bowl, burned his finger, swore under his breath.
Liddell grinned. “That's what you said the last time, doc.”
“Is this guy pulling my leg, Muggs?”
Muggsy shook her head. “He's really working for the Merritt kid, doc. She doesn't believe the old man killed himself.”
Travin scowled. “That's the craziest damn thing I ever heard.” He pulled himself out of the chair, brought a bunch of keys from his pants pocket, selected one, crossed the room to a metal cabinet. He used the key to open it, pawed through a file of large envelopes, selected one tied with a red ribbon, pulled it out of the file. He peered nearsightedly at the typed notation on the left corner, nodded, brought it back with him.
“I shouldn't be breaking this stuff open for you without a court order, Johnny. But this is one argument I'm going to win from you.” He tossed the envelope into Liddell's lap.
Johnny took a last drag on his cigarette, dropped it to the floor, ground it out. He untied the envelope, pulled out a batch of official photographs, riffled through them. Twice he stopped to examine a picture at great length. Muggsy hopped off the desk, stood behind his chair, looked over his shoulder.
“Did quite a job on the top of his head, eh?”
The medical examiner grinned around the pipe. “They always do when they stick the gun in their mouth and pull the trigger.” He pulled the pipe from between his teeth, pointed with the stem. “No sign of a struggle of any kind, you'll notice.”
Liddell nodded glumly.
“All right, then,” Travin crowed triumphantly. “Now you tell me that he let somebody walk up to him, stick a gun in his mouth, and not even struggle.”
“You've got a point,” Liddell conceded. He riffled through the pictures again, frowned, selected a long view of the room showing the ceiling. “The Homicide boys must be getting pretty neat, doc. Can't even see where they dug the slug out.” He handed the picture to the medical examiner.
Travin peered at it, looked up. “I don't get it.”
“Neither do I, Johnny,” Muggsy put in.
“The ceiling. Didn't they have to dig the slug out of the ceiling?”
“Oh. No, the slug didn't go into the ceiling.” Travin put his pipe in his mouth, ground his teeth on the stem. “So what?”
“So nothing. Where did the bullet go?”
“I don't think they found it. It was probably spent by the time it went through the top of his head, fell to the rug, and got kicked around in the confusion.”
Liddell flipped the rest of the pictures onto the desk, stared at them morosely. “Sounds like you've got a good case for suicide, all right.”
“Airtight.” Doc Travin gathered up the photographs, returned them to their envelope. “Hope I haven't spoiled a case for you.”
“We get paid to dig, so I'm digging. That's the motto of the Johnny Liddell Agency. Service with a smile.”
“Smile, hell. You laugh right in their face.”
Travin returned the envelope to the file, locked the cabinet.
“Now what, Johnny?” Muggs wanted to know.
“Damned if I know. This one's really got me spinning. Say, what do they use around here to revive a guy that's on the verge of collapse, doc?”
“Spirits of ammonia.”
“I might have known.” Liddell groaned. “I'll take my collapse to more hospitable surroundings. The nearest bar, for example.”
“Wait'll I get my hat.” The medical examiner grinned. “You should have your physician along to make sure they give you the right dosage.”
Chapter Five
That evening, Johnny Lid
dell dropped Muggsy Kiely at her apartment on Central Park South, headed the convertible downtown to the room he maintained at the Hotel Abbott. He turned the car over to the uniformed doorman, flipped him a quarter, walked to the lobby entrance.
The Hotel Abbott was an old weather-beaten, grimedarkened stone building that nestled almost anonymously in a row of similar stone buildings on East 31st Street. A small metal plaque to the right of the entrance was the only clue to its identity.
The lobby was large, noisy, seemed bathed in a perpetual pink light, the reflection of a huge neon sign to the right of the entrance that identified The Cowl Room—Cocktails. The easy chairs spaced throughout the lobby were filled with men whose perusal of their newspapers seemed undisturbed by the hum of conversation and bustle of activity.
A short, fat man stood at the cigar counter, trying with no apparent success to interest the blonde that presided over it with his plans for the evening. She looked over his shoulder, waved to Liddell as he came in.
Liddell winked back, headed for the bank of elevators in the rear, was deterred by a gesture from the immaculate creature behind the registration desk.
“A message for you, Mr. Liddell.” He made a production of removing an envelope from the pigeonhole prominently numbered 625. He handed the envelope across the desk, worked hard at a semblance of an urbane smile that missed by miles. “Your friends were very disappointed that they missed you.”
Liddell nodded, examined the envelope. It bore the return address of the Hotel Abbott. He looked up into the eyes of the clerk.
“They wanted to leave you a message, so I suggested that they use our facilities.” He dry-washed his hands, bobbed his head like a cork in a stormy inlet.
Liddell studied the scrawled Johnny Liddell on the face of the envelope, failed to recognize the handwriting. He ripped open the envelope, extracted a piece of paper. It was blank.
He growled under his breath, ran his eyes down the list of new arrivals, failed to find any familiar names. He flipped back through the pages of the register, seemed satisfied to find that the adjoining rooms and the room across the hall from his were occupied by semipermanent guests.
“Is anything wrong, Mr. Liddell?” the clerk wanted to know.
“What'd these friends of mine look like?”
The clerk looked startled by the sharpness of Liddell's tone. “I—I really don't know. Young men, I'd say. Neatly dressed. I—I didn't pay much attention. I hope nothing's wrong?”
“I hope you get your hope.”
The dry handwash was going full speed now. “I made certain not to give your room number out of course, and—”
“You kidding?” Liddell grinned bleakly. He tossed the blank note paper down on the counter. “It's the oldest trick in the world. When you stuck that envelope in my slot, they got the number unless they were blind.” He scowled at the shaken clerk, strode down to the elevator.
At the sixth floor he looked both ways, satisfied himself that there was no stakeout in the corridor. He walked down to the corridor set at right angles to the main one, found it empty, walked down to his room.
The keyhole showed no signs of having been tampered with, but it didn't take a locksmith to know that the lock couldn't put up a good struggle with a bent bobby pin. He slid his key softly into the lock, turned it. Then, easing the .45 from its holster, he turned the knob, pushed the door open, flattened himself against the wall.
For fully a minute, he stood in the corridor waiting for some sound to betray the presence of one of his “friends” in the darkened room. Then, he slid into the room, snapped the light, and fanned the room with his .45. The room was empty.
He repeated the procedure with the bathroom and the microscopic kitchen. None of the rooms showed any sign of having been entered.
He walked back across the bedroom to kick the door shut, saw a bellboy at the far end of the corridor, watching him with open mouth. He had a sudden inspiration that a brandy wouldn't be amiss, stepped into the hall to talk to the boy.
He had hardly stepped into the corridor, out of range of the bedroom window, when chips of wood and bits of plaster started flying. A sharp splinter of wood snapped against his forehead, drawing blood. Glass shattered, and a picture danced off the wall, smashed to the floor.
A woman screamed hysterically and from some place close a typewriter was spelling out death in a stuttering cadence.
Liddell dropped to his knees, crawled back into his room, kicked the corridor door shut behind him. Conscious that the lighted room set him up like a sitting duck, he blasted the light fixture half off the wall with the .45.
The tommy gun continued its lethal chatter. Liddell could hear the pellets whizzing by like angry bees, chewing pieces out of the woodwork and plaster. He crept to the window, applied a cautious eye to the corner. There was a lull in the shooting, probably to allow the gunman to slide another pan into his gun.
Liddell took advantage of the pause to try to localize the source of the shooting. Directly across the narrow street was a movie house, the old Hotel Clendan, a supermodern office building, and, on the corner, a department store. He settled for the Hotel Clendan.
The flicker of the movie's neon marquee alternately drenched the face of the Clendan in light, then dipped it into darkness. A new sound, the wailing of police sirens converging on the area, split the sudden quiet.
Liddell's eyes flicked across the windows facing his. The lighted ones he eliminated immediately, concentrated on the darkened ones. Suddenly, as the movie light blinked on, he caught the bright glint of light on metal. He leaned the barrel of the .45 on the window sill, ignored the mounting crescendo of running feet and hoarse shouts in the hallway.
Across the street, a man's leg was thrown across the window sill, was feeling cautiously for the fire-escape landing. After a second, the rest of the body came into view. The man peered down over the railing at the street below, seemed satisfied, started down the stairs.
Liddell waited until the upper portion of the man's body sat on top of his front sight, squeezed the trigger. There was a loud boom in the closeness of the room and for a moment the pounding at the door stopped.
Across the street, the man on the fire escape staggered. He tried to pull the tommy gun he was carrying into firing position. Liddell squeezed the trigger again. The tommy gun was apparently too heavy to lift, slipped from the man's hands. He went to his knees, pulled himself to his feet, tried to get back to the window. The .45 barked again.
The man on the fire escape stiffened, clawed at the rail. His knees folded under him, he toppled over the low guard rail, crashed headlong toward the street below. His body hit the sidewalk, lay motionless.
Six stories below a woman put her hands over her face, flattened back against the building, other pedestrians scattered in all directions.
As Liddell watched, the more hardy witnesses started dribbling back out of doorways, congregated morbidly around the body. From the hotel a uniformed bellboy came out to lead the woman into the hotel lobby.
Then, pulling his head in, Liddell walked to the door, threw it open. The house detective, a normally ruddyfaced Irishman named Collins, stood uncertainly at the sill, gun in hand, staring wide-eyed at the damage the gun had done. Behind him, half a dozen white-faced guests stared over his shoulder.
“What's going on in here?” the house dick demanded. He looked as though he sincerely wished he were some place else. The .38 in his hand was ridiculously toylike by comparison to the .45 Liddell still carried in his.
“Why didn't somebody tell me my room fronted on the municipal rifle range?” Liddell growled. “The manager's going to hear about this.”
“You can say that again,” the house detective breathed.
There was a muffled murmur of voices at the end of the corridor, the pounding of many feet. Suddenly the night clerk burst into view, followed by two uniformed policemen, guns in hand.
“Down here, officer,” the house dick called, making no atte
mpt to hide his relief at the coming of reinforcements. “Here's the guy.”
The first cop's face dropped. Liddell recognized him as the same cop who had taken him in the night before after the shooting outside the drugstore.
“Not again?” the cop growled incredulously. “What the hell are you trying to do, Liddell? Stage a one-man crime wave?”
The night clerk stood outside the room, surveyed the damage sadly. He wiped the thin film of perspiration off his forehead with the side of his hand, groaned.
The cop walked over, took a look, whistled. “They sure chewed you up, didn't they?”
Liddell grinned bleakly. “You ought to see the other guy.”
The cop scowled, held his hand out for the .45. “I did. And he's deader than a mackerel. This wins you another ride down to headquarters. I got a hunch the inspector's going to want to have a talk with you.”
“Funny thing. I have the same feeling.” Liddell handed the gun to the cop, butt first. “We better not keep him waiting.”
The night clerk stood wringing his hands. “But the room? What am I going to do about the room?”
Liddell looked around the scarred and pitted walls, the smashed mirror, the light fixture hanging by a wire. “It does look as though it could stand some decorating. Maybe you'd better move my stuff into another room until it's finished. Something with not quite so much exposure.
* * *
At headquarters, Johnny Liddell was led through a door that read Wilson Deats—District Attorney. Inside, a male stenographer sat at a desk typing a deposition. He looked up as the cop entered leading Liddell.
“This is Liddell. I got instructions to deliver him here,” the cop told him.
The man at the desk nodded, flipped the button on an interoffice phone, muttered into it, hung it up. “They're expecting you, Liddell. Right through there.” He pointed to a door that said Private in gleaming gold leaf.