The James Michael Ullman Crime Novel

by James Michael Ullman

  Jaraba uttered another obscenity and paused for a breath.

  Forbes said, “Ralph, nobody knows more than I do what I’ve done. But if that’s all you have to say—”

  “No, it’s not all.” The candidate walked over to him. “I want to know if you think there’s a chance I’ll be mixed up in this more than I am already.”

  “You?”

  “Sure. You were my fair-haired boy. And Helen worked for me before she worked for you. Even helped run our last campaign headquarters three years ago. Whoever killed her, the minute he’s arrested the press will remind people of my connection with both of you. If the police don’t find who killed her soon, they’ll dig back into her private life. Question people at my newspapers, my campaign workers, my staff. You knew her as well as anyone. She ever say anything about screwing anyone else on my payroll? Because if she did, I want to hear it now before I open one of the dailies and find more dirt on the front page.”

  There was a lot Forbes was tempted to say in reply. All he did say was “Ralph, you can go to hell.” When Forbes and Axburn left, Jaraba was conferring with his public relations man, drafting a statement emphasizing the deep regret with which he was accepting Julian’s resignation as editor of the Hoodlum Directory. Julian would remain, as always, a close personal friend, but in view of the circumstances surrounding the tragic death of his secretary…

  Outside Axburn nodded to a tavern. “Ordinarily,” he said, “I never drink until the sun sets. But this morning I could use one.”

  Four printers perched at one end of the bar. Forbes and Axburn took stools at the other end, and after the attorney downed a shot of rye he said, “Funny about politics. It brings out the best in a man—or the worst. And Helen’s murder showed Ralph up for what he is, didn’t it? He had every right to be angry, but he didn’t have to handle it that way. No compassion whatsoever, not even a decent word for poor Helen Gerlach.”

  “Nice candidate you’ve got.”

  “Yes, but it’s too late for us to dump him now. You know the old political saw: He may be a son of a bitch, but at least he’s our son of a bitch. Anyhow, I think he’ll calm down and apologize later. Understand, he’s not as wealthy as people think. He has a lot of bank loans on his newspaper chain, and he’ll have to commit a large part of his personal resources to elect himself governor. I’m afraid it’s warped his perspective.”

  “Sorry about that. And where were you,” Forbes asked dryly, “when I was at headquarters last night? And for a while the police thought I killed Helen?”

  “I sent Irv. He’s our best criminal lawyer. I haven’t handled a criminal case in years.” Axburn paused. “Don’t worry. I’m not running out on you. You have other friends who’ll stand by you too. But don’t begin feeling too bitter about this either. I won’t deliver a lecture, but after all—”

  “I know.” Moodily Forbes twirled his glass of beer. “It was inexcusably bad judgment.”

  “Stop brooding. Your friends will understand it. Your troubles with Elaine. Then running into a girl like Helen a year after Elaine’s death. And hell, Jaraba’s no monk himself. He may have a wife and family, but he ran with a pretty fast crowd during his years as a legislator in Springfield. I know, I was there. But he had a point. However the investigation into Helen’s death turns out, it could affect his campaign. So if you have any thoughts about the murder, I’d like to hear them.”

  How much, Forbes wondered, should he tell Axburn? No, not about Eric yet. Axburn was running Jaraba’s campaign, it would put him in a difficult conflict-of-interest situation. He would be in that spot later anyhow if the police learned about Eric, but why force him to a decision now?

  “So far,” Forbes said, “all I know’s what I read in the papers. But there’s something else I’d like to discuss. Ethics be hanged, I’ll tell you this much. Walter St. Clair, our mutual client, wants me to find a girl—Iris Dean—a waitress and sometime prostitute. He claims she befriended him in a platonic way, she’s vanished, and he just hopes she’s all right. But I don’t like the way the case is shaping up. The girl’s sister disappeared too, from an apartment in New York, and now I’ve lost touch with St. Clair. Last time I talked to him he said he was going to St. Petersburg, Florida. He mention the trip to you?”

  “No. I haven’t heard from him since early Friday morning, when he phoned and asked for the name of a reliable private investigator. But just what did St. Clair tell you about himself?”

  “That he’s a retired civil servant. And he’s retained your firm to represent him in a patent litigation.”

  “The patent part’s true,” Axburn said slowly. “But he’s not a retired civil servant. He’s an old confidence man. Did time in three state prisons and has an arrest record dating back to the 1920s.”

  “St. Clair?” Forbes blinked. “My Walter St. Clair? Now, what’s a top-line law firm like yours doing with a three-time loser for a client?”

  “Ordinarily we wouldn’t have touched him. But he claimed a firm was trying to take advantage of his criminal record to steal his invention. We checked, we think he’s right. His last term in prison he invented a new kind of can opener. In fact, the warden arranged for St. Clair to make the first models in the prison machine shop. He’ll be our star witness.”

  “How much is the patent worth?”

  “Not an awful lot. And I’ve warned him, if he gets into another jam we’ll drop him as a client and his chances of ever winning that suit will be practically nil. As it is, the company he’s suing has been trying to delay trial for as long as possible. St. Clair has no heirs. They’re probably hoping that because of his way of life he’ll die in the meantime.”

  “Way of life?”

  “He’s a heavy smoker and drinker. And he patronizes prostitutes. Iris Dean, you said, was a sometime prostitute.”

  Forbes shook his head. “It’s hard to believe.”

  “It’s all on the record. His last arrest was as a patron of a disorderly house in Peoria two years ago. He lived in Peoria with a brother until the brother passed away. The judge let him off with a fine.”

  “I see.” Come to think of it, the look St. Clair had given the girl sun-bathing in Lincoln Park had seemed to express a more than academic interest.

  “As much as you can,” Axburn went on, “I’d appreciate your keeping me informed. Frankly I’m worried. He’s stayed out of trouble since his last prison term, but before that—well, he was mixed up in some pretty devious schemes. How old is this girl?”

  “Twenty-three. Here.” Forbes gave him one of the photos.

  “I’ll be damned. She’s quite attractive. Mind if I keep it?”

  “Hell, show it around. Not that you’d know anyone who knew her.”

  “Don’t be too sure.” Axburn slipped the photo into his pocket. “Julian, I know how much you were counting on getting out of the private investigation business. And I’m afraid things might go pretty hard with you for a while now. Some clients may drop you because of this. I’ll keep throwing you all the business I can. And if there’s anything else I can do—”

  “Just one thing. Tell me, out of all the lawyers in the Chicago telephone book how’d St. Clair come to pick your firm?”

  “I don’t know,” Axburn replied. “He walked in one day and asked for me. The girl wanted to shunt him off to a junior, but he wouldn’t talk to anyone else.”

  * * * *

  Yes, Walter St. Clair. Where was he now?

  Forbes called the office from a booth in a gas station and got a report on that from Curley.

  Item One: St. Clair had left no messages with the answering service.

  Item Two: St. Clair was not in his apartment. Nobody answered the phone. Curley had then phoned other apartments in the same building and learned a remarkable fact. Nobody had seen St. Clair in or near the building since Friday night, when he’d apparently given a shor
t but noisy party.

  “Friday?” Forbes scowled. “Hell, that’s the day he hired me. Are you sure?”

  “Positive. But here’s Item Three. I don’t think he’s in Florida either. The number he left is a phone in a bar, all right, but the bar’s not at O’Hare. It’s on Morse Avenue up in Rogers Park. And planes for Florida don’t take off from Morse Avenue, it’s too narrow.”

  “Run out there then,” Forbes said. “The old crook—I just learned he’s a felon, three falls for confidence game. Stay with it as long as you can tonight, all day tomorrow if necessary. Meanwhile, I’ll get some sleep and then start looking for Iris. We’ll keep in touch through Rose and the answering service, but I don’t want to see you again until you’ve found St. Clair or exhausted every possible lead to him.”

  * * * *

  A few minutes after noon Forbes carried a suitcase into the lobby of the Dijon Hotel. He wore gray work clothes and a peaked cap. Dark glasses shielded his eyes and he affected a slight limp.

  Alone behind the desk, Lucille squared her bifocals and watched his approach with vague interest.

  “I’d like a single,” he said, putting the bag down. “I don’t know how long I’ll be. I’m an electrician. Special job, the skyscraper they’re building on Michigan Avenue. I’ll pay a week in advance and if I learn I’ll be in town long enough, maybe we can adjust to your weekly rate.”

  “I’m sure,” Lucille said, pushing a registration card toward him, “something can be arranged. It’ll be very convenient, won’t it? You can walk to work.”

  “That’s what I had in mind.”

  He signed in as R. T. Jaraba, of Omaha, Nebraska. The Dijon’s lone bellboy, an ancient, wrinkled little man named Otto, took Forbes to his room, which was on the third floor. Otto gave such a convincing performance, wheezing and laboring with Forbes’s bag and then bustling around turning lights on and opening doors, that Forbes tipped him a dollar.

  He slept until five, when Rose awakened him with a prearranged phone call.

  “Where’ve you been?” she asked cautiously. “You said you’d call as soon as you got into town.”

  “Sorry.” He yawned. “I couldn’t sleep on the bus, so I conked out here. Heard from Bill?”

  “No.”

  “Well, it’s pretty late. You better go home. I’ll try to make it to your office sometime tomorrow.”

  He hung up. Let anyone eavesdropping at the switchboard try to figure that out.

  He donned the same suit he had worn at the Dijon during his first visit, adjusted his hat and took the stairs to the fourth floor. The corridors smelled musty, and the shadowy passageways leading to clusters of rooms and apartments were illuminated by low-wattage bulbs.

  Iris’s old room, 403, was at the end of one of those passageways. No light glowed from under the door, but a television set in an adjoining room was tuned to a Cubs baseball game.

  Forbes rapped on that door. The knob turned and a gray-haired old lady peered out from behind the latch chain. He smiled, reached for his wallet, flipped it very quickly and said, “Sorry to disturb you, ma’am. I’m a police officer. Sergeant Lewandowski, from Missing Persons. And if you have a moment, I’d like to ask a few questions about Iris Dean.”

  The old lady talked freely about Iris and gave him the room numbers of three other guests on the floor, long-time residents like herself, who also might be able to help.

  How odd, the Dijon’s guests told Forbes, Iris’s leaving so suddenly. Not so suddenly, though, when they thought about it. Over the weekend she’d been taking things from her room—bags and boxes—nobody knew where she went with them. But not a word to anyone until Tuesday, when Otto came for her suitcase and she said she was going to Las Vegas, where a boyfriend had found her a wonderful job.

  Which boyfriend? Nobody had seen any of her boyfriends. It was known she had many. She’d been overheard talking on the phone with them, making dates to meet elsewhere, but she’d never entertained men in her room, or ever been seen in the lobby or outside the hotel with a man.

  There’d been one special boyfriend, though, the one she took trips with. She’d be gone two or three days at a time. That had started late last summer. The trips stopped over the winter, but this spring she’d been gone again for a whole week. Long ago a maid had once asked Iris about those trips. Iris had just winked and replied, “You know how it is, honey. A special man, we like to get off by ourselves.”

  Other than that there was little else the guests knew about Iris. She was a night person, who worked while they slept and slept while they were out. They hardly saw her in the hotel except in the lobby sometimes, where she would sit in a corner and read The Wall Street Journal. They all had vague recollections of the sister though. A quiet little blond child, Carmelle had visited Iris in Chicago last June after graduating from high school in Indiana; then she’d gone on to New York. But the sister hadn’t stayed at the Dijon, she’d roomed elsewhere.

  But wasn’t it peculiar what happened after Iris checked out of the hotel? The source of that statement was the last guest Forbes interviewed, a lean, balding man named Stevens, who clerked in a bookstore. He occupied the other room adjoining Iris’s, and he’d been out when Forbes had knocked at his door the first time.

  “Yes.” Stevens’ fingers drummed on the arm of his chair. Until now he’d been co-operative, but Forbes had sensed a growing wariness in him. “Thursday morning I heard someone in Iris’s old room. I thought it was a new guest—a man. I didn’t see him, but when he left he slammed the door and was talking to himself. Swearing something awful. On my way out I mentioned it to Harry the manager. You’ve talked to-Harry, haven’t you?”

  “Briefly.”

  “I asked what kind of a maniac he’d put in next to me. Harry gave me a funny look and said it wasn’t a guest, it’d been a plumber. Hell, I hadn’t heard anyone banging on pipes. Then Harry asked me questions, some of the same ones you asked. I asked what was going on. He said he’d had a call from a collection agency. That Iris owed a store a lot of money, they wanted to find her.” He paused. “Is that who reported her missing? I never heard of the police doing a collection agency’s work before.”

  “No,” Forbes said. “It was a relative.”

  “The little sister?”

  “Yes.”

  “The hell you say.” Stevens settled back, a thin smile crossing his face. “You never did let me get a good look at your identification. You just waved something in front of my face. Real policemen don’t do that. You’re not from Missing Persons. You’re from the collection agency yourself, aren’t you.”

  “All right.” Trying to make the best of a sticky situation, Forbes ventured a sheepish smile in return. “I’m a skip-tracer, but—”

  “Get out. You’ve got some nerve. I can understand Harry’s co-operating with you, I’m sure he’s been stuck with enough deadbeats himself. But you—how you can justify your existence is beyond me. Debt collector. Hired minion of the power structure, trying to pawn yourself off as a policeman. Boy, the next time I see Harry I’ll…”

  Forbes got out of there fast and hurried downstairs to his own room, where he began stripping off his suit, shirt and tie. That was the end of Sergeant Lewandowski of Missing Persons. The sergeant had had a short but productive career.

  The trips—were they really liaisons with a boyfriend? Very likely, although there was only Iris’s very casual remark to a maid to support that contention.

  And when Iris left the hotel for two and three days at a time, where’d she go? But more important, if Stevens could be believed, was Harry Houser’s apparent interest in Iris. The collection agency story had been a lie. If a collection agency had been looking for Iris, Helen would have learned about it immediately through the routine channels.

  That raised the question: Was the hotel manager’s interest in Iris personal, or had it been induced by som
eone else? It was too early to reach a conclusion, but Stevens’ story of a man rummaging through Room 403 strongly suggested that someone else was also looking for Iris Dean.

  The night clerk, a plump, pimply faced youth, nodded disinterestedly as Forbes dropped off his key. Julian wore work clothes and was limping again. He would change to another suit at his apartment.

  As Forbes turned to leave, Harry Houser walked into the lobby from the street. Forbes brushed right past him, but Houser didn’t even look up. He was reading the Green Diamond edition of the next morning’s Sun-Times and seemed fascinated by every word of a story headlined:

  DRUG CACHE FOUND HIDDEN BY JARABA AIDE’S SLAIN SECRETARY.

  CHAPTER 6

  Gus Ladislaw, owner, manager, impresario and bouncer at Gus-A-Go-Go, chewed on a dead cigar and yelled, “You’re the guy whose secretary got killed, ain’t you? I seen it in the papers. Well, I’m sorry about that, no kidding. And don’t even tell me why you want Iris, I don’t wanna get mixed up with other people’s troubles. I suppose she stiffed someone. But come on.”

  Forbes followed him to a rear table, where Ladislaw sat with his back to the wall. He didn’t look at Forbes. He was short and bald, fiftyish and heavy-set, with a pasty complexion and a nose that had been smashed countless times. His black-rimmed eyes focused up front, where four hairy youths in Edwardian costumes supplied a deafening beat to which a bikini-clad girl wiggled her backside at a rowdy audience. There’d been no point trying to fake it as a police officer or anything else with so world-wise a night creature as Ladislaw, so Forbes had told him right off who he was and what he wanted to know.