He took the card and read the name out loud. “Samuel J. Klausen.” And the card number: “L-1310077.”
When he left, he had the grace to throw a “Thanks, Hal” over his shoulder.
I felt smug.
* * * *
My smugness vanished when Randall called me at the library the following noon. “Is this the resident library expert?” he greeted me.
“It’s too late for compliments. Did you arrest Mr. Samuel J. Klausen?”
“No way. He was a washout, Hal. He’s no more a murderer than I am.”
I was disappointed but not surprised. “Not even a blackmailee?”
“Oh, yes, he admits to being blackmailed. He broke wide open when I told him we’d found his fingerprints on the money in the library book.”
“Did you find his prints?”
Randall coughed. “We found fingerprints, yes. We didn’t know they were his until he admitted the blackmail payments.” Randall coughed again. “Anyway, he readily admitted he was paying off somebody in hundred-dollar bills concealed in library books—but until we told him, he didn’t know it was Fenton. He claims he didn’t know Fenton from Adam’s off ox.”
“Did he tell you how the book thing worked?”
“About the way we worked it out. A year ago, Klausen got a print of a very compromising photograph in the mail, no return address, then a phone call from a man threatening to send the picture to Klausen’s wife unless he paid him hush money. When Klausen agreed to do so, the man asked him if he had a library card, and set up the library-book pay-off system.”
“What did Fenton have on Klausen?” I asked curiously.
“None of your business.”
“Excuse me,” I said. “Is it any of my business why you’re so sure Klausen didn’t kill Fenton, despite his denials?”
“Klausen has a cast-iron alibi for Monday evening when Fenton was shot.”
I clicked my tongue against my teeth. “Too bad. Cast-iron, you say?”
“Klausen was making a dinner speech to a gathering of insurance brokers in Baltimore, five hundred miles away, when Fenton caught it. We’ve checked it out.”
“That’s pretty cast-iron, all right,” I said. “So what’s next?”
“Back to the drawing board, I guess. Unless you’ve got some more brilliant suggestions.”
“Let me think about it,” I said.
“Nuts to that. I do the thinking from here in. You just give me the library jazz when I need it, O.K.? So here’s something to start with. Suppose Fenton was blackmailing somebody else besides Klausen, which seems fairly likely, and using the same library-book method of collecting his money? Would he use the same books he did for Klausen, or different ones?”
“Different ones,” I said promptly. “Even if he didn’t screw up his timetables, our people would think it was queer if he reserved the same books for himself more than once.”
“Check. Now here’s another little thought for you. Did you happen to notice, Hal, that none of the eight books we brought in from Fenton’s house was overdue?”
He whistled a few bars from “Tea for Two” under his breath, while he waited for me to realize the full enormity of my oversight. Then, “You did tell me, didn’t you, Hal, that you were calling on Fenton last Tuesday to collect an overdue book?”
I abased myself. “Yeah, I did. And Lieutenant, I’m sorry. I guess finding the money in Mushroom Culture drove everything else from my mind, including that overdue book.”
“Well, well,” Randall said softly.
I said, “You want me to go out and jump off a bridge or something?”
“Not just yet.” The more apologetic I became, the more cheerful Randall sounded. “Not till you tell me the title of that overdue book.”
“Hold on,” I said. “I’ll look it up.” I checked my overdue lists. “It’s a book called The Honeycomb of Silence by somebody named Desmond.”
“Another one I’m just dying to read,” Randall cracked. “So I’m on my way right now out to Fenton’s house to find it. It might tell us something if we’re lucky.”
“You want the name of the person who borrowed it before Fenton?” I offered.
“Not till I find the book.” He hung up with a crash.
I got back to the library after my afternoon calls about five-thirty. There was a message on my desk to call Randall. I called him and he said, “I’ll take that name now, Hal.”
“You found the book?”
“Between the back of the TV set and the wall. It obviously slipped down there after Fenton took the money out of it, and he forgot to return it to the library. Hence, it was overdue.”
“After he took the money out of it,” I repeated. “So it was another of Fenton’s pay-off books?”
“Shut up and give me the name of the cardholder before Fenton. And let’s hope he doesn’t have an alibi like Klausen’s.”
I read him the name and address from the master file card: W. G. Crowley, 1722 Plumrose Street.
* * * *
I knew everything had worked out all right because on Tuesday of the following week, Lieutenant Randall called and offered to buy me a dinner at Al’s Diner, provided the total cost of my repast didn’t exceed a dollar and twenty-three cents.
At Al’s Diner, he was seated in a back booth waiting for me. He had a look of work-well-done on his face and a beer on the table before him. “Sit down,” he invited me expansively, “and join me in a beer. I hope you don’t want a salad with your hamburger, however. Salads are thirty-five cents in this joint.”
“Never touch them,” I said, sliding into the seat across from him. “But I’ll take the beer.” He signaled to the waitress. When she brought my beer we told her we’d order dinner later.
I took a sip of my beer and said to Randall, “Did you snaffle W. G. Crowley?”
He nodded.
“And he’s your murderer?”
He nodded again. “Murderer, bank robber, dope pusher. And also, I’m sorry to say, an ex-cop.
I stared at him. “Are you serious?”
“He used to be a member of the narcotics squad of the Los Angeles Police Department, under a different name—his real one—James G. Crawford. He’s a security guard at the First National Bank here. And that’s where the bank-robbery charge comes in. The guy had the nerve to steal the hundred-dollar bills he was paying Fenton from his own bank! How do you like that for resourcefulness?”
“If he’s all that resourceful,” I suggested, “he’s probably resourceful enough to walk away from your murder indictment too. You did say he was Fenton’s killer, didn’t you?”
“No question about it. Open and shut, as the TV cops say. And don’t worry, we’ve got him hogtied. He’ll never walk away from anything again.”
“Good,” I said. “What do you mean again?”
“He was suspended from the LAPD, charged with pushing the dope that his own narc squad appropriated in raids. And before the grand jury could come up with an indictment, he jumped bail and left town permanently. Disappeared. Now he’s a bank guard here in town calling himself Crowley.”
“And you’re certain he killed Fenton?”
“With his very own police positive,” said Randall. “The .38 he carries under his arm every day as a guard at the First National.” Randall held up a hand as I opened my mouth to speak. “And how, you are about to ask,” he said, “do we know that? Well, we found three of his fingerprints under the flap of the book about honeycombs. And the same three prints on one of the hundred-dollar bills in Fenton’s money belt. And the same three prints again among those on the butt of Mr. Crowley’s gun. Isn’t that enough?”
“Not enough to convict him. And you know it.”
His yellow eyes emitted a gleam of satisfaction. “Well, then, how about this? Our ballistics boy tells us the bullets taken out of Fenton’s body were fired by Crowley’s gun. And Crowley has zilch in the way of an alibi for the time of Fenton’s murder. And he also, of course, had a g
ood solid motive for killing Fenton.”
“What did Fenton have on him?” I asked.
“Probably just the knowledge that Crowley was really Crawford, the indicted, dope-pushing LA cop who disappeared without leave. Fenton could have landed him in jail for quite a spell by disclosing his whereabouts to the LA police.”
I said, “I don’t get it. If that was the case, what was Crowley looking for when he searched Fenton’s house? All he needed to do was kill Fenton to protect himself.”
“I’ve got two theories on that.” Randall said. “One: he was trying to make the murder look like what we originally thought it might be—the work of a casual prowler. Or two”—Randall’s unblinking sulfur-colored stare was amused—“maybe Crowley was thinking of taking over Fenton’s customers, and collecting a little blackmail money for a change instead of paying it out.”
He paused and I said, “The first theory might be possible. But what gave rise to the second? Your overactive imagination?”
“We found something interesting in Crowley’s apartment,” Randall replied.
Dutifully I asked, “What?”
“The negative of the compromising photograph that Fenton used on Klausen,” Randall said, “all neatly labeled with Klausen’s name and address.”
“Well, well,” I said, “For an ex-cop, Crowley was pretty bright, wasn’t he?”
“You can’t insult me tonight,” Randall said comfortably. “Finish your beer and let’s order.”
“Not yet. I still don’t get it.”
“Get what?”
“How Fenton knew that Crowley was the fugitive Crawford.”
Randall shrugged. “What difference does that make? Accident, I imagine. Fenton just happened to see Crowley in the bank one day probably, and recognized him.”
“You mean Fenton knew him in Los Angeles?”
“Maybe. Or at least knew what he looked like.”
“All right. My next question is the real puzzler to me. How did you find out that both Crowley and Fenton came from Los Angeles? You didn’t know fact one about Fenton or Crowley the last I heard.”
He gave a negligent wave of his hand. “Just good solid routine police work, sonny. After Klausen pointed us toward Los Angeles.”
“Klausen!” I said, confused. “He pointed you toward LA?”
“Didn’t I mention it?” Randall was complacent. “The—ah—indiscretion for which Klausen was being blackmailed by Fenton occurred at a convention Klausen attended last year in Los Angeles.”
“Oh,” I said.
“LA gave us a rundown on Fenton too. They’d had him up out there for extortion once, and for peddling porno films twice, and he walked away each time without a scratch. A very cagey fellow. Incidentally, his Los Angeles record showed that he worked summers while he was in high school at the public library.”
I finished my beer. “Very, very neat, Lieutenant. May I offer my congratulations? And we may as well order now.”
As he signaled for the waitress, he seemed so pleased with himself that I couldn’t resist saying, “All the same, you’d never have got to first base on Fenton’s murder, may I modestly point out, if I hadn’t found that money in Mushroom Culture.”
“That’s not necessarily so,” said Randall judiciously. “But it’s possible you’re right, of course.”
“Wherefore,” I said, “may I please have a tossed salad with my hamburger?”
Randall grinned. “Well—O.K. Just this once I guess I can throw caution to the winds.”
“And speaking of financial matters,” I went on, “what are you planning to do with that five hundred bucks you found in Fenton’s money belt?”
“In default of any known relatives or heirs, I thought I’d turn it over to the Police Benevolence Fund.”
“You can’t do that,” I said. “At least not all of it.”
“No?” He bristled. “Why not?”
“Because part of that money is mine.”
He looked at me as though I’d lost my mind. “Yours? What do you mean, yours?”
“Now whose memory is failing?” I said. “Didn’t I tell you last Tuesday that Fenton owes me an overdue fine of two dollars and twenty cents on The Honeycomb of Silence?”
THE JACK O’NEAL AFFAIR
Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, May 1979.
You’d think that chasing down missing and overdue books for the public library would be pretty dull and unexciting work, wouldn’t you? Most of the time, it is. But occasionally my job gets me into situations that are very far from dull and unexciting, believe me.
Like the Jack O’Neal affair.
It started off like any other call to collect an overdue book. The address was 1218 King Street. King Street’s in the East End, a couple of blocks south of the Crossroads intersection, in a still-decent but deteriorating neighborhood of sixty-year-old houses. Number 1218 seemed to be better cared for than the houses that flanked it on either side. Its small lawn was neat and close-cropped and the house had been freshly painted quite recently.
I parked my car at the curb, walked up the short cemented driveway to the house, and rang the bell. A white-haired, pleasant-faced woman answered the door.
I said. “Is this the O’Neal residence?”
She gave me a big smile and said, “Yes, it is,” and waited for me to explain myself.
“I’m Hal Johnson from the public library, Mrs. O’Neal.” I showed her my identification card. “I’ve come to collect an overdue library book that was borrowed five and a half weeks ago by John C. O’Neal. Is that your husband?”
She shook her head. “My son,” she said. “Jack. I’m sorry, but he’s not here right now, Mr. Johnson. He’s at work. Then she added with a note of pride, “He’s a city fireman, you know.”
“Oh,” I said, “that’s what I wanted to be when I was a kid. A fireman. I never made it, though. I—”
She interrupted me. “Yes, Jack’s a fireman. And he really loves the job. It’s his whole world, really. He never showed the slightest interest in getting married or anything like that, can you believe it? He mopes and sulks around here every Friday—that’s his day off—as though he’d much rather be working down at the firehouse. But you can’t work-seven days a week, I tell him, you have to have free time.”
“I need all the free time I can get,” I said, trying to head off any further comment about John O’Neal the fireman. “For instance, if you could just give me your son’s overdue library book, Mrs. O’Neal, I wouldn’t have to make another trip out here for it. You son has forgotten that he has the book. I suppose, although we did send him a postcard reminding him it’s overdue.”
Mrs. O’Neal stepped back and held the door open wider. “Oh,” she said, flustered and apologetic, “please come in, Mr. Johnson. I’ll see if I can find it for you. Jack would forget his head if it wasn’t t fastened on.”
I followed her into a living room that was as neat and manicured as the lawn outside. An expensive television set stood in one corner, next to a built-in bookcase. Avocado shag carpeting stretched from wall to wall. The overstaffed sofa and easy chairs wore tasteful slipcovers in harmonizing prints. The lampshades looked almost new.
“What’s the name of the book?” Mrs. O’Neal asked.
I consulted my list. “War and Peace by Tolstoy.”
“Sit down for a minute,” Mrs. O’Neal said. “I’ll see if it’s in Jack’s bedroom upstairs. That’s where he usually does his reading.” Her voice faded as she ascended the stairs to the second floor.
Instead of sitting down, I wandered over to the bookcase beside the TV set and scanned the titles on the shelves, thinking that Jack O Neal might have absent-mindedly stowed War and Peace there after he finished reading it.
War and Peace wasn’t there. As I turned away, an outsize scrapbook lying horizontally on top of the books on the bottom shelf caught my eye. It had the word ‘FIRES’ lovingly hand-lettered on its cover in old English script.
Evidently the work of Jack O Neal, the fireman who loved his work.
Idly I picked up the scrapbook and leafed through it while I waited for Mrs. O’Neal to return with War and Peace. FIRES was an apt title. The scrapbook contained nothing but clippings from local newspapers describing a number of newsworthy fires that had occurred over the past few years in the city. The newspaper articles were illustrated with photographs of the fires in progress and of the smoking ruins afterward. Most of the fires in the book—only half a dozen—I remembered reading about. A furniture warehouse. The fancy home of a local lawyer. A dry-goods store. A tenement. An Italian restaurant on the North Side that had once been famous for its gnocchi. A florist’s warehouse on City Line.
I heard Mrs. O’Neal’s thumping footsteps descending the carpeted stairs and returned the scrapbook to its place in the bookcase, thinking it was only to be expected that a fireman who loved his work as much as Jack O’Neal evidently did would keep a record of his most dramatic encounters with the enemy. Personally, I was very glad that I hadn’t realized my boyhood dream of becoming a fireman, although it was bad enough to have become a cop. A sissy library cop at that.
“I found it,” Mrs. O’Neal said, handing me the overdue copy of War and Peace. “My, it’s a long book, isn’t it? Maybe Jack hasn’t finished it yet. He isn’t a fast reader.” She shook her head fondly. “But I expect he really just forgot about it, as you say. It was on the floor by his bed, out of sight under the telephone stand.”
“If he hasn’t finished reading it,” I said, “he can borrow it again the next time he comes to the library. So far, he owes us a small fine on it, Mrs. O’Neal. Do you want to take care of that for him?”
“Of course.” She went into the kitchen and reappeared with her purse. “How much is it?”
I told her and she counted out the exact change. “I’m sorry Jack’s caused you so much trouble, Mr. Johnson. He’s so forgetful.” She laughed indulgently. “He even writes notes to himself to help him remember things.”
“I do that myself.” I smiled at her, holding up my penciled list of overdues. “Thanks, Mrs. O’Neal.”
The Library Fuzz Page 20