“...Beneath a spreading chestnut tree,” said Sweeney hoarsely, “the village smithy stands. The smith, a mighty man is he, beneath the spreading chestnut tree. A rose by any other name would waste its fragrance on the desert air, and all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. And when the pie was opened, they all began to sing...” Every muscle of his body ached. He marveled, with what was left of his mind, at how Yolanda could stand there – incredibly beautiful, incredibly naked – and not move at all. Catalepsy, of course, hypnosis, whatever you called it, it was hard to believe–
“Alas, poor Yorick!” said Sweeney. “I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent – uh – The owl and the pussycat went to sea, in a beautiful pea green boat...”
It got lighter, slowly. It was nine o’clock in the morning before there was a knock at the door. An authoritative knock.
Sweeney raised his voice, with as much effort as it would have taken him to raise a piano. It was a hoarse croak.
“Bline? Come in with your gun ready. The dog will jump one of us.”
The dog, growling, had moved to a position where he could watch both Sweeney and the knocked-on door. But the door moved and Sweeney didn’t, and the dog jumped at Bline, in the doorway. But Bline had been warned; his coat was wrapped around his forearm, and as the dog leaped and closed its jaws on the coat, the barrel of Bline’s pistol tapped the dog’s skull.
“The mouse ran up the clock,” Sweeney was saying in a voice that wasn’t much above a hoarse whisper; “the clock struck one – Thank Heaven you finally came, Cap. I knew you’d see holes in Doc’s story when you had time to think it out and that you’d come looking for Yolanda and get to her the same way I did. Listen, Cap, I have to keep on talking and I can’t stop. She isn’t even looking at you and doesn’t know what’s going on except that if I stop talking– Walk up on her from that side and get the knife–”
Bline got the knife. Sweeney, still mumbling hoarsely, slid slowly down the wail.
And then it was late evening. Godfrey was there on the park bench and Sweeney sat down beside him. “Thought you were working,” God said.
“I was. But I broke such a big story Wally let me talk him into getting off a while without pay. A week, two weeks, or whenever I get back.”
“You sound hoarse, Sweeney. Did you spend a night with that dame you were raving about?”
“That’s why I’m hoarse,” said Sweeney. “Listen, God, this time I left money, quite a bit of money, with my landlady. But I held out three hundred. Do you think we can get drunk on three hundred bucks?”
God turned his shaggy head to look at Sweeney. “If we want to badly enough. If you want something badly enough, you can get anything you want, Sweeney. Like spending a night with that dame. I told you you could.” Sweeney shuddered. He pulled two flat pint bottles out of the side pockets of his coat and handed one of them to God.
SATAN’S SEARCH WARRANT
Big Ben Hayden woke up, but wanting to scream. Two ghouls, each taller than a house, had been fighting each other to decide which of them would eat Ben for an hors d’oeuvre, while he had crouched, unable to escape, in a blind alley. A grinning ghost, holding a huge gong in one hand and a thighbone in the other, was refereeing the bout and even now was hammering the gong to indicate the end of the first round. Or had been hammering it until Ben woke up.
His eyes now open, Big Ben sighed with relief at the sight of familiar and friendly things; the luminous dial of his alarm clock on the table next to the bed; beyond it the outlined pane of the window with heavy rain beating hard against the glass.
But something was still ringing. Ben reached out to shut off the alarm clock, then remembered that he hadn’t turned it on and that anyway its dial said eleven o’clock and that he’d gone to bed only an hour ago. The phone then; he reached across the clock and knocked the phone off the table. Then, with appropriate remarks, he got out of bed, turned on the light, and picked up the phone.
“Ben Hayden talking,” he said.
“Cap Rogers, Ben. Listen, can you come down to the station right away? We’re in a jam.”
Ben’s eyes went to the window. In the glass he could see the reflection of himself, a mountainous figure grotesque in awning-stripe pajamas. And, symbolically, the driving rain was beating hard against the reflection. Buckets of cold and unpleasant wet rain.
He said, “Aw, Cap. I just got to sleep and you want me to come down there? On a night like this!”
“Right away, you lummox,” said the telephone receiver firmly. “Look, this is a real storm. There’ve been wrecks all over own and two houses have blown down and the force is going nuts. And the homicide men all went out on a lead on the Yaeger business and then this Elkins thing comes in.”
Yawning widely, Ben looked at the window pane again and tan deliberately averted his eyes from it. “Aw right,” he said.
“I’ll get dressed and be in as soon as I–”
“Hey, wait,” cut in Rogers. “Come to think of it, you don’t need to come here. I’ll give you the dope and you can go right around to the Wescott Apartments from your place. It’s nearer.”
“That crooks’ nest,” Ben grunted. “Which of ‘em murdered which?”
“Remember Billy Elkins?”
“The slab-happy little dip? Hell, I thought he was in jail.”
“Released this afternoon. He’s slab-happy now. They just took him in to the morgue. Found him at the bottom of the airshaft at the Wescott. But it wasn’t murder.”
“No?”
“Don’t look like it, anyway. There were some sheets fastened to a bed in a vacant furnished apartment on the sixth. Looks like he was shinnying down those sheets to burglarize the apartment below. Paul Durban’s apartment.”
“Funny,” said Ben. “Didn’t he used to be a sidekick of Durban’s? Work for him, too, once in a while?”
“Yeah. Look, you can get the details when you get there. We’re putting it on the blotter as accidental death while attempting a felony. But you go ‘round there and make a nuisance of yourself, just in case. Talk to Paul Durban, and to Rafe Murro, and to Hoberg. They all live there.”
“Billy Elkins had a wife, didn’t he? What’s about her?”
“You find out,” said Rogers. “So long.” Ben put the receiver back on the hook and shivered. Trying not to look out the window, he dressed, putting on his oldest suit. He hesitated a moment before putting on his suit coat, wondering whether to strap on his shoulder holster, weighing the pros and cons of whether to pack a gun. The cons won: the darn thing would get wet and he’d have to take it apart and clean it when he got home.
He didn’t phone for a cab because there was a stand around the corner. That was his first mistake, as he discovered as soon as he stepped outside. Before he reached the corner, he was soaking wet, and when he got there, there weren’t an cabs at the stand.
Big Ben ducked his head into the wind and started grimly to walk – almost to swim – the six blocks that would take him to the Wescott Apartments. He couldn’t get much wetter, anyway. There was a label in his topcoat that said Waterproof, but that label was a snare and a delusion on a night like this.
The rain drove into his face and neck like water squirted from a hose; it ran down inside and outside his collar, and even seemed to creep up his trouser legs from below. He walked with a squashing sound because the overshoes he had optimistically put on kept the water which had run down inside his shoes from running out again.
But, eventually, he got there. He stood in the lobby a moment to catch his breath, and then rang the janitor’s bell. The lock on the inner door clicked and he went in. A sleepy-looking little man in a bathrobe peered out a door at the end of the hallway.
Ben identified himself, and then asked, “Who found the body, and when?”
“Mrs. Craddock heard it hit,” said the janitor. “About half-past nine. She lives in 2-A, and she was in the bathroom then and heard a heck of a thud out in
the airshaft. So she opens the window and looks down, and there he is right under the window, only a floor down. The airshaft goes down almost to ground level.”
“She’s the one who phoned the police?”
“I guess so; I didn’t even know till they got here. Nobody tells me these things. But if a radiator starts to leak, or a washer on a faucet gets loose, then–”
“Yeah,” said Big Ben. “How many apartments open on the airshaft? Have windows on the airshaft, I mean?”
“All of ‘em. There are four apartments on each floor, see? And they’re all laid out alike, so all three rooms of every apartment has windows on the outside. All the bathrooms have win dows on the airshaft in the middle, and only the bathrooms. The airshaft‘s in the middle, and all the bathrooms have windows on–”
“Yeah,” said Ben. “You mean the bathrooms have windows on the airshaft. Let’s see – there are seven floors and four apartments to a floor, so there’d be twenty-eight apartments, and twenty-eight bathroom windows on the airshaft, huh?”
“That’s right. And it was 6-A, over Mrs. Craddock’s that he climbed out the window of.”
“That’d be a bathroom window,” said Ben. “The chief told me the sheets were fastened to a bed. How could he?” The janitor shook his head. “You got that wrong. He took three sheets offa the bed and knotted ‘em together and tied ‘em to the double faucet on the bathtub, just inside the window.”
“Three sheets,” said Ben. “That’d take him down two floors at most. He was trying to get in 5-A or 4-A, wouldn’t you say?”
“Likely, yeah. But that airshaft’s only four feet square. It could have been any of the apartments on the fourth or fifth. He could get down till he had a foot on the windowsill of, say, 5-A, and then step across to one of the other windows. But. yeah, 4-A or 5-A would be the easiest. Paul Durban lives in 5-A.”
“Thanks,” said Ben. “Guess I’ll go there first.” He squashed his way to the automatic elevator and pushed the button to bring down the car. While he waited, he saw the janitor come out with a mop and start work on the big puddle where Ben had stood outside his door. Ben grinned, and called back, “It’s raining out, in case you ain’t noticed.” The elevator car was down now, but Ben thought of something and paused with the door halfway open. “Hey,” he called back. “You remember what time this drizzle started?”
“Started to rain hard about the time the police got here. Let’s see – that’d be a quarter of ten. It came up sudden; come to think of it, it hadn’t rained at all before then, since this afternoon.”
“Oh,” said Ben. “Then it wouldn’t have been raining at all when he climbed out into the airshaft, would it?”
“I guess not. Nine-thirty – yeah, it started just after that.” Ben got into the elevator and punched the button marked 5.
A minute later, he knocked on the door of 5-A.
Paul Durban, sleek in patent-leather hair and a silk dressing gown, looked aghast at the dripping figure on his threshold.
Hle said, “Migod, Hayden, next time you go swimming, dress for it. Come in, but not very far, and please don’t sit down. This furniture is mine.”
“Oh,” said Ben. “They rent these apartments either way?”
“Sure.”
“How come you’re not down at that club of yours tonight?” Ben asked. He pushed the door shut behind him and leaned against it, looking around. This was the one big room of the apartment. Off it to the left was a small kitchen with a breakfast nook, and to the right was the bedroom, from which would open the door to the bath.
“Monday night,” said Durban. “I always take off Monday night, and sometimes Tuesday, too. The place gets along. Glad I did, tonight. With this storm, there won’t be enough business to put in your eye.”
“What time did you see Billy Elkins last?” Ben asked.
“You mean alive? Haven’t seen him since he went to jail a year ago. Since a couple of weeks before that. We had a quarrrel at that time.”
“Um,” said Ben. “Anything serious?”
“Enough,” Durban told him. “I found he’d been doing some petty pilfering at the night club. I’d been keeping him going, off and on, for over a year, every time the sledding was rough for him. Then when he – well, you get the idea.” Ben grinned. “Sure, I get the idea. You knew he was a petty dip, but that was all right as long as he didn’t dip into your till. No honor among– Skip it. Had he tried to get in touch with you since he got out of stir today?”
“Tonight,” said Durban. “A little before nine. I got a call from Tony – he handles things at the club when I’m not there. He said Billy had been there looking for me. When I wasn’t there, Tony said, Billy told him he’d come around here to see me. Tony told him I wouldn’t be home, but Billy was coming anyway. He didn’t believe Tony.”
‘’Um,” said Ben. “But he decided to come in the bathroom window instead of the front door. That was the way you figure it?”
“Seems like it. Anyway, about fifteen minutes after Tony called to warn me Billy was coming, my doorbell rang. It’s a fifteen minute walk from here to the club, so I knew who it was, and I didn’t answer it.”
“So he figured you weren’t home, and it’d be a good time to pull a spot of burglary, huh? But instead of that, you were giving him the runaround.”
“Call it that if you want,” said Durban. “I was through with him. I told him a year ago I was washed up with him and kicked him out. He had a nerve to try to see me at all.” Ben nodded. “Guess you’re right, at that. Well, it seems to make sense. Fifteen minutes or so after he thinks he finds you ain’t home, he plops down the airshaft. How could he have known the flat above here was empty, though?”
“He could tell that from the mailbox, in the lobby. All but the vacant ones got names on them.”
“Yeah,” said Ben. “Who else lives here in the building had any contact with Elkins, that you know of?”
“Murro,” said Durban. “Rafael Murro, down on the third floor. Murro was Billy’s lawyer when they put him away, last year. Did a good job of getting him off with that sentence.”
“You figure maybe he’d have rung Murro’s bell when nobody answered yours?”
Durban shrugged.
“Well, I’ll ask Murro anyway,” said Ben. “Anybody else?”
“Frank Hoberg. Used to do a little business with Billy, or so I’ve heard. Don’t quote me on it.”
Big Ben didn’t ask what kind of business. Hoherg was a fence: he knew that. Instead he asked, “What about Mitzie, Billy’s wife? Know what she’s doing lately or where she stays?”
“I don’t,” said Durban. “She came to see me just after Billy got sent up. She wanted a job as a cigarette girl at the club, and I gave it to her. She was a good kid and I didn’t figure I should take it out on her just because Billy was a rat. She held the job for – let’s see – maybe eight months, and then quit. I haven’t seen her since?’
“Say why she was quitting?”
“I wasn’t there the night it happened, but she had a blow-up with Tony about something or other. She said she had a better job offered her anyway and walked out.”
“Job or proposition? Or could you guess?”
“I don’t know. Far as I know – up to four months ago anyway – she was still carrying a torch for Billy.”
“Who’d know where she is now?” Ben asked.
“Murro might. As Billy’s lawyer, he ought to know.”
“Thanks,” said Ben. “I’ll go see him. By the way, is blackmail still a sideline with Murro, or has it crowded his law practice into the background by now?”
“I wouldn’t know;’ said Durban. “He never had anything on me. Shall I send the bill for a new rug to the department, or to you personally?”
“Send it to Cap Rogers,” said Ben. “He sent me out in this tonight. And split with me if he pays; it hurts me more than it does your rug. Well, so long.”
Going back down to the lobby, Ben studied the rows of mail
boxes, confirming what Durban had told him – 6-A, above Durban, was vacant – 7-A, above that, was labeled Frank Hoberg. But that couldn’t mean anything in particular.
You couldn’t get into 7-A from the empty apartment below it with knotted sheets; not unless you could do the Hindu rope trick.
He went back in – he’d left the door ajar with a pencil stuck in to keep it from closing – and took the elevator up to the sixth.
Everything in 6-A seemed to be on the up and up. Three sheets had been yanked off the bed. Knotted together, they were tied to the heavy faucet fixture of the bathtub, which was right under the airshaft window. Someone had pulled them back inside, but hadn’t untied them. They were still wet.
He opened the window and leaned out to look down.
Couldn’t see anything down there, but then there’d be nothing to see anyway. The body was taken away and the rain that was now running down the back of his neck had washed away any stains.
He closed the window and went down to 3-B. Rafael Murro let him in without any evidence of pleasure at seeing him.
“About Billy Elkins,” said Big Ben. “When’d you see him last?”
“Few weeks ago,” Murro told him. “At the jail. I kept in touch with him, of course.”
“When’d you see his wife last?”
“Last week, I believe.“
“Where’s she living and what’s she doing?” Murro said, “She‘s staying at the Indiana Hotel – or was then. I don’t know what she’s doing. That’s none of my business.”
“Um,” said Ben. “Not if it’s honest, it ain’t. You didn’t see Elkins today, since he got out? Nor hear from him?”
“No.”
“Know any reason why Bill Elkins would have seen – or tried to see – Frankie Hoberg?”
“No.”
‘’Um,’’ said Ben again. He took off his hat and looked at it, and then put it on again. There was something about this case he didn’t like. It was too simple, too pat. Everything fitted, except that in a building lousy with potential murderers, a guy like Elkins had to get himself accidentally killed.
The Screaming Mimi Page 23