Bare Trap

by Frank Kane

  “I’m still going out on the six o’clock plane,” he told her flatly.

  Muggsy stuck her tongue out at him, grinned. “Sticks and stones will break my bones but lies will never hurt me.”

  “You don’t think I am, eh?”

  “No.”

  He reached into his pocket, pulled out an airline ticket. “Take a look, baby.”

  Muggsy pouted. She made room on the edge of the couch, patted it invitingly. “You’re mean. I told you I was ready to apologize for suspecting you of doing some fancy cheating with that blonde.”

  “You should.”

  She nodded. “I do. I’m firmly convinced you weren’t doing any fancy cheating. Just the good old-fashioned kind.” She watched while he disentangled himself from his chair, started toward her. “I’m only kidding. I know you’re upset about what she’s going to get. But forget it, Johnny. She had it coming.”

  “Sure she had it coming. I just wish it could have been postponed until after that trip she was going to take to New York with me.”

  “Why, you — ” Muggsy hit him with a pillow. He continued to advance on her menacingly. She hit him with the other pillow.

  They wrestled on the couch; she bit his ear.

  He missed the six o’clock plane.

  Also the midnight, eight o’clock, and six o’clock plane the next evening.

  If you liked Bare Trap check out:

  Green Light for Death

  Chapter One

  JOHNNY LIDDELL carefully stripped the cellophane jacket from a cigar, bit off the sealed end, spat it onto the floor. He stared unblinkingly at the girl stretched out before him. Her hair was as thick and coppery as he had remembered it. There were a few more lines crisscrossing under the eyes than there had been in the old days, but the lips were still full and inviting. As she lay there now, her lips slightly parted, she showed the perfect little teeth he had always admired. She was uncovered to the waist, her small, perfectly molded breasts bared to the searching yellow light.

  “That her?” Detective Sergeant Happy Lewis sounded slightly bored with the formality.

  Liddell nodded. He jammed the cigar into his mouth, clamped his teeth savagely into it. “What’s supposed to have happened to her?” he wanted to know.

  The homicide man signaled to the morgue attendant. Liddell watched without comment as the attendant drew a rough canvas sheet over the girl’s face, slammed the oblong metal drawer into place with a clang that reverberated through the whole morgue.

  “Don’t have to worry about disturbing the other guests.” The morgue keeper showed the yellow stumps of his teeth in a grin. “They’re real sound sleepers.” He looked from the homicide man to the private detective expectantly. When nobody gave him any encouragement, he shuffled off toward the office in the rear, muttering under his breath.

  “Well?” Liddell persisted. “What’s supposed to have happened to her?”

  Detective Sergeant Lewis shrugged. “What usually happens to a dame like that? She either jumped or fell off the end of the pier.” He pushed his fedora back on his head, wiped his forehead with the side of his hand. “Got enough of this?”

  Liddell scraped a long wooden match on the sole of his shoe, applied it to the end of the cigar. “It was neither,” he said flatly.

  “It was neither what?”

  “It was neither accident nor suicide,” Liddell asserted. “Nancy Hayes had too much sense to walk off the end of a pier. She had too much guts to jump off.”

  “She didn’t call herself Nancy Hayes up here,” the homicide man told him wearily. “Up here she was Nancy Martin. And she either jumped or fell.” He stared moodily at Johnny Liddell. “If you were to try to make something else out of it, I think maybe you ought to have a talk with Connors first. He’s the police chief up here. He don’t like for private dicks to come into his territory upsetting things and making trouble.”

  Liddell nodded, exhaled a feathery tendril of dirty white smoke ceilingward. “That’s how Connors feels about it. How about you?”

  Lewis studied the private detective’s face for a moment from under his eyelids, then dropped his eyes. “Like I said, Connors is the chief. How I feel ain’t important.”

  “She was a nice kid,” Liddell indicated the metal drawer. “You would have liked her if you knew her. I’d hate to think somebody could pull a stunt like that and get away with it. Wouldn’t you?”

  Detective Sergeant Happy Lewis looked unhappy. “Maybe,” he admitted cautiously. “But Connors still calls the turn around here.”

  “I wouldn’t worry too much about Connors. I’ve got an idea he and I are going to be good friends before this is over.” He tapped a thin film of ash off the end of the cigar. “That is, of course, unless he’s got some angle in trying to hush up this case.”

  “Hush up what case?” The homicide man pinched his long thin nose between thumb and forefinger. “Maybe I forgot to tell you. There is no case. The dame either jumped or fell off the end of the pier.”

  • • •

  Chief Connors sat behind an oversized, varnished desk and eyed Johnny Liddell with no sign of enthusiasm. He reached out for a pack of cigarettes on the corner of the desk, selected one on the basis that it was less rumpled than the rest, hung it from his lips.

  “So you’re a private detective, eh?” His eyes dropped from Liddell to the credentials on his desk. He riffled through them, snorted, shoved them back across the desk. “Anything on your mind?”

  Liddell picked up his papers, rearranged them, shoved them into his breast pocket. “Thought I’d check in with you before I went to work.”

  “We don’t like peepers up here in Waterville, Liddell.” The chief’s deep voice didn’t belong to his thin frame and washed-out eyes. “I understand that you came up here to do a job for the Martin dame.”

  Liddell nodded.

  “Well, whatever kind of a caper she was setting up, it fell through.” Connors scratched a paper match across the strip on the box, applied it to his cigarette. His colorless eyes never left the private detective’s face. “So I suppose you’ll be catching the next train back to town. I’ve got one of the boys arranging your reservations. Like that you won’t be delayed.”

  Liddell grinned, dropped into an old armchair, draped his leg over the arm. “There’s no hurry, Chief. I was figuring on staying around until you broke the case.”

  Chief Connors’ eyes flicked from the private detective to Detective Sergeant Lewis and back. “Maybe you ain’t heard. There is no case. It was an accident or a suicide.”

  “So I’ve been told. But it wasn’t either. Nancy was murdered.” Johnny Liddell rolled his cigar from one corner of his mouth to the other. “If you’re not going to break the case, I intend to.”

  “Maybe there’s more to this than I know, Liddell.” The chief’s deep voice grew dangerously soft. “Maybe you know some things that we ought to. You’re so sure it was murder, suppose you break down and let us in on it.”

  Liddell grinned, shrugged. “Just guessing, Chief.” He indicated the homicide man with a toss of his head. “If you’ve got any ideas about tying me into it, your boy here can tell you that I was on the train when Nancy got it.”

  “Nobody said you were in on it, Liddell,” Connors growled. “But seeing as how she was your client, maybe she told you something. Maybe she was getting you up here to put the shake on somebody, eh?”

  “I haven’t seen or talked to the kid in years,” Liddell told him. “Last time I saw her she was hoofing in an upholstered sewer on 47th Street.” He took the cigar from his mouth, studied the wet end, pasted a loose leaf back with the tip of his tongue. “I’ve been working out of the Coast office for Acme for years. I kind of lost touch with her.”

  “She was your client.”

  “Technically. Day before yesterday she called the Acme home office. Spoke to the boss down there. Guy named Steve Baron. Asked him where she could get in touch with me. Said it was very important.” He stuc
k the cigar back in his mouth. “You can check all that.”

  “We already have.” Chief Connors leaned his elbows on the desk. “Go on. What’d she want? What was so urgent?”

  Liddell shrugged. “I don’t know — yet. I didn’t get to talk to her. Whatever she had to tell me, somebody arranged that she didn’t get around to it.”

  Chief Connors snorted cynically, leaned back in his chair. He stared at the private detective through a thin veil of cigarette smoke. There was a faint wrinkle between his eyes that could have been either disappointment or relief. “Who’ve you seen since you got into town?”

  “You ought to know,” Liddell grunted. “I arrived at a fleabag this town laughingly calls a hotel about two hours ago, gave my name to the clerk, and for all the action I got you’d thing I yelled Bingo.” He rolled the cigar to the other side of his mouth. “For guys who are so sure the kid either jumped or fell, you’re wasting the time of a lot of homicide men.”

  The expression in the chief’s washed-out eyes remained unchanged. “Just routine. Regular check on the deceased’s friends and relatives. Found a telegram from your office saying you’d arrive at the hotel tonight. Thought you might give us some reason why she did it so’s we could close the case.”

  The private detective grinned. “Now that goes to show you how suspicious some people are. Here I was thinking you were just keeping me on ice so’s I couldn’t get to talk to anybody.”

  Chief Connors looked hurt. His eyes rolled up toward the ceiling. “Now why should we want to do a thing like that?”

  “I thought maybe you might be afraid I’d frighten off the murderer before your boys had a chance to collar him,” Liddell told him blandly.

  Chief Connors’ eyes stopped taking census of the fly-specks on the ceiling. “We don’t look for murderers in a suicide, Liddell.” He looked over at Detective Sergeant Happy Lewis with what approached distaste. “Just to prove to you how co-operative we really are, I’ll let you in on something. We know it wasn’t an accident.”

  Detective Sergeant Lewis looked uncomfortable. He rubbed the heel of his hand over the faint stubble on his chin, squirmed.

  “It seems we have a real honest-to-god detective on the force,” Connors continued bitterly. “Go ahead, Lewis. Tell Liddell how you discovered it was suicide. Maybe he can arrange for you to get a job peeping through keyholes.”

  A faint flush crept up from the homicide man’s collar. He turned to Liddell. “I didn’t think it could be an accident,” he said defiantly. “I told the coroner why and he agreed with me.”

  The chief dropped his cigarette to the floor, stamped it out. He applauded sarcastically. “Go ahead, Sherlock. Tell him the rest and save him the price of a correspondence course.”

  “I was there when we fished her out of the drink,” Lewis continued without looking in the chief’s direction. “She was naked. All her clothes were piled on the pier.”

  “And the m.e. was willing to consider it an accident?”

  “He didn’t see the body until it was in the morgue,” the sergeant explained. “I guess he took for granted it was fully dressed when we fished it out.”

  Liddell nodded thoughtfully. He transferred his gaze to the police chief. “But your office was willing to write it off as an accident anyhow, eh Chief?”

  “Why not?” Connors growled. “What’s the sense of branding the girl a suicide? Call it an accident and let thepoor girl rest in peace. Besides, what’s the use of looking for any scandal?”

  Liddell failed to be impressed. “Just like it wasn’t an accident, it wasn’t suicide.” He tossed the soggy butt of his cigar in the general direction of the wastebasket. “It was murder.” He ignored the chief’s angry growl, continued, “No doll who’s worked herself up to the state where she’s going to knock herself off takes the trouble to call in a private eye the day before she does the job.”

  “Look, Liddell,” Connors’ voice was low, loaded with menace. “I tried to reason with you. You’re stubborn. Okay, I’ll put it on the line.” He pulled himself out of his chair, walked around the desk, and stood facing the private detective. “This is my town. I don’t want any private peepers coming up here fouling things up. We got enough on our hands right now without any phony murder cases. Don’t start something you can’t finish.”

  Liddell nodded. “That’s good advice, Chief. Anything I start I’ll make sure to finish.”

  “It could be you’ll find Waterville’s a very bad town to start stirring things up in, Liddell,” Chief Connors told him.

  The private detective slid his leg off the arm of the chair, let the chair slam back on all fours with a suddenness that made Connors jump to get his toes out of the way. “Thanks for the advice, Chief.” He took his time about getting up, stood facing Connors. “Of course, if you were to make it impossible for me to look after the interests of my client, I might have to go higher.”

  Connors bared his teeth in a smile that fell far short of his eyes. “I wouldn’t make it impossible for you to do anything, Liddell,” he purred. “But there might be some people in this town who wouldn’t give a damn for your higher authority.”

  Liddell thought it over for a moment. “You’re telling me there might be someone in town who might try to stop me from proving Nancy Hayes was murdered?”

  The chief shrugged, the phony smile frozen on his face. “That’s not all they might try to stop you from doing.”

  “What else could they stop me from doing, Chief?” Liddell seemed unimpressed.

  “Breathing.”

  Read more of Green Light for Death

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  Text Copyright © 1952 by Frank Kane

  Cover Art, Design, and Layout Copyright © 2012 by F+W Media, Inc.

  All rights reserved.

  Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author's imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.

  eISBN 10: 1-4405-3993-6

  eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-3993-0