The Complete Casebook of Cardigan, Volume 1: 1931-32

by Frederick Nebel

  “You don’t mean to tell us you’re going soft,” Katz droned.

  Cardigan’s fist struck the desk. “Damn it to hell, Katz, don’t be a smart aleck! I’ve had a dead guy fall in my arms. I didn’t particularly like him—but he was a harmless, no-account reporter! I saw his wife and kids this morning and— You know, this is a lousy business we’re in. A guy sees too much that isn’t pretty. We’re all wise; we’re all hard. Until something gets right up close against us. You’ll find that out, Katz. Or maybe I’m just a sentimental Mick—hell knows.” He shuffled papers. “Go on, you eggs. Scram!”

  The trio looked at one another. Blaine wore a thoughtful stare. Katz smirked and arched his eyebrows. Hennessy stroked his jaw and made a whistling mouth but didn’t whistle. They went back into the large, adjoining room.

  Shaggy-haired, leather-faced, Cardigan went through his mail, a hard party at odds with himself.

  Miss Gilligan opened the outer office door, said, with a slight apologetic bow, “Detective Sergeant Bush, sir.”

  Cardigan glared. “I’m busy!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The door closed.

  Half a minute later it opened.

  “How busy?” Bush said.

  Cardigan threw down a pencil, leaned back, creaked his swivel chair, folded his big hands on his hard flat stomach. “There’s a law,” he said, “against throwing out a cop.”

  Bush’s hard jaw jutted as he took slow, studied steps across the floor. Haas, his partner, followed, closing the door quietly and saying nothing in a blank-faced way.

  “There’s lots of law,” Bush grated. “There’s a law that’s beginning to wonder just how Akeley was bumped off last night.”

  Cardigan said, “By means of guns in the hands of unknown assailants. What’s so tricky about that?”

  “There’s a trick to every trade, Cardigan. Even yours.”

  Cardigan stopped rocking in his chair. Two hundred pounds of him remained motionless, and his eyes steadied on Bush. “Your move again, Bush.”

  Bush sat down. “Maybe yours.”

  “I’ll make one, fat-head. You’ve got a nerve trying to crack wise with me when I know you’re friendly to Ackerman and Gould and that whole crowd in the county; when just a month ago you stood aside while Ackerman tried to bribe me to keep my mouth shut.”

  “This is murder, though, Cardigan,” Bush said, “and I woke up this morning with a bright idea.”

  “Like hell you did. Somebody gave it to you. A bright idea would give you cataracts, Bush.”

  Bush sneered. “Where’s that Seaward dame?”

  “Be here any minute. Why?”

  Bush grinned unpleasantly. “We’re wondering about that phone call last night. It was damned funny about that. You get a call and then you take Akeley outside and he gets bumped off. Ain’t that funny as hell?”

  “That call was cut off.”

  “So you say. Who’s to check up on you?”

  Cardigan darkened. “You dirty—”

  “How?”

  Hate burned in Cardigan’s eyes. “You dirty louse, you can’t afford to try that on me! I didn’t take Akeley out!”

  “Toddy says you offered to drop him at his paper.”

  “But after he said he was leaving too.”

  Bush shook his head. “Toddy didn’t hear that.”

  Cardigan’s “Oh” was half muttered. For a long minute his brown jaw hung motionless, his eyes stared vacantly at Bush. His lips moved. “Toddy forgot, eh?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “I know what you said.”

  Bush leaned forward. “You were the only one who saw two men running away after the shots were fired. The thing is, was there two men?”

  Red color began to creep over Cardigan’s face. “You mean to sit there and tell me—”

  “I’m not telling you anything.”

  “No?” roared Cardigan. “You’re telling me that I put Akeley on the spot—that’s what you’re telling me! Why, you lousy—”

  “Enough o’ that!” Bush barked.

  Cardigan’s face was contorted. It was dull red in color, and the look in his eyes was malignant. Cords bulged on his powerful neck and red seemed to streak his eyeballs and the corners of his mouth bent downward.

  Haas moved from one foot to the other and his hand strayed to his right hip and remained there. His face remained white, expressionless, doughy. Out of the corners of his eyes he watched Bush. And Bush watched Cardigan. A glassy shimmer was in Bush’s eyes; his lips were pursed in a fixed, forced smile that had in it nothing of humor. His chunky neck had hard, tight rolls of fat on the nape.

  Pat walked in saying, “Good-morning—” and stopped short. Then she said: “Something tells me I’ve walked in on a conference.”

  Bush looked at her. “No, lady. You’re part of the conference.”

  Pat pursed neatly carmined lips. “How lovely!” But a wily look was in her eyes.

  Cardigan rumbled: “Don’t take these guys seriously, Pat.”

  “What we want to know,” Bush said, “is about that phone call last night, Miss Seaward.”

  She said: “What about it, sergeant.”

  “Cardigan here got a call in that speak. Toddy Moore, the bartender there, said it was a woman. He gave the phone over to Cardigan and Cardigan said the party was cut off. We began to wonder about that. So we poked around the neighborhood and found a call was made at a few minutes to eleven from a cigar store a few blocks away. The guy in the store remembered a woman had made it and you were easy to describe.”

  Pat looked at Cardigan, then looked at Bush. “By which I am supposed to infer—what?”

  “A couple of minutes after you phoned Cardigan walked out with Akeley and Akeley was rubbed out. The cops that came around didn’t see you. You didn’t show up at the scene of the murder, yet you made a phone call only a few blocks away.”

  He stopped talking, hunched his chunky shoulders up alongside his ears, locked his fingers in front of his chest and leaned hard with his elbows on the arms of the chair.

  “We checked up,” Bush went on. “The phone call was made from that cigar store to the speakeasy. Cardigan says he saw a couple of guys running away—but that’s only what he says. Nobody can check up on him because nobody else was in the street. Why did you make that call?”

  Pat said: “I wanted to have some words with him. I was cut off. I couldn’t get the connection back.”

  “So you left the cigar store.”

  “Yes. I left the cigar store and started walking toward the speakeasy when I heard shots. I got far enough to see the chief standing on his feet and another man lying on the sidewalk. It was no place for me so I about-faced and left. I walked over to the Hotel Andromeda, hung around in the lobby for half an hour and then left.”

  “Where’d you go then?”

  “Out to the chief’s apartment, to see him and see what happened. I got out there about midnight.”

  Bush nodded slowly and wore a mocking smile. “In other words, you had plenty of time to ditch a gun on the way.”

  “I would have, yes, if I’d had a gun I wanted to ditch.”

  Cardigan growled at Bush: “Two guns did it, lame-brain. A forty-five and a thirty-eight.”

  “She has two hands, hasn’t she?”

  Pat smiled. “Isn’t this all jolly!”

  “So now maybe, Bush, you can tell me why we would have put Akeley on the spot,” Cardigan said.

  “It may take us some time to find that out, but what interests us now is the trick about the phone call and this woman leaving the scene of the murder. Cardigan fired two shots—he says at two guys—but he could have fired them as a stall. It was pretty shooting that did Akeley in, miss, and we mind the time you came down to the pistol range at headquarters and shot the eye right out of the target.”

  Cardigan kicked his chair back and stood up. “You’re all wet, Bush. You’re nuts to try pulling a stunt like this. Akeley was small
change to me.”

  Bush stood up. “We’re taking the woman to headquarters.”

  “You’ll want me too, then,” Cardigan muttered.

  “No.” Bush shook his head. “We want the woman first. We’ll get you when we want you.”

  Cardigan went around the desk and gripped Bush’s arm. He scowled malignantly. “You get this, you cheap gumshoe: you try any rough stuff on her and I’ll beat the living hell out of you!”

  “We heard,” Bush said, “that Akeley was trying to get something on you for this paper. Something crooked about the recovery of them diamonds from Burt White.”

  “Oh…” Cardigan’s voice was a hoarse whisper. “Oh, I see. I get you, Bush. So McClintock’s been putting ideas in your head. Oh… I see. Sure, I thought you were acting abnormally bright this morning. I knew it couldn’t be original.”

  Bush colored; blurted: “You can’t make a monkey out o’ me, Cardigan!”

  “Why the hell should I pick on monkeys?”

  Chapter Four

  Fancy Frame-Up

  CARDIGAN crossed the ochre-colored tiles of the Roxbury Hotel and entered the elevator. It let him off at the eighth floor and he walked somberly down the corridor, put his hand on the doorknob of 808 and pushed the door open. He hovered in the doorway like a dark cloud that presages bad weather.

  McClintock half reclined in bed, the coverlet littered with newspapers. He had on loud pajamas and the room was filled with a haze of cigar smoke. A bottle of gin and glasses stood on a small table.

  “Well, as I live and breathe bad air—the old mastermind himself! Come in and try finding a chair. You’ll find it stuffy in here but I was born in a stuffy room and it’s said that first impressions linger. Take a drink—gin—bell-hop gin. Two drinks and bells ring in your ears and your corpuscles hop. What do you think of the Chinese situation?”

  Cardigan took a slow backward kick at the door and slammed it shut. He caught hold of the back of a chair, dragged it across the room and thumped it down beside the bed. He sat down, parked his heels on the edge of the bed and thrust his hands into his topcoat pockets.

  “So you go lousy on me, huh, Mac? It takes a Mick to double-cross a Mick every time.”

  McClintock got off a hearty, raucous laugh and tossed a paper half across the room with great gusto. “The Chinese situation is yellow with age, Cardigan. Ah! A bon mot! Ah—China! Land of romance! Temple bells! Do they have temples in China?”

  “Lay off, Mac,” Cardigan muttered. “Lay off. That was a sweet one you pulled when you put ideas in Bush’s head. You want to be careful. Ideas hit Bush like bad liquor. He might even get concussion of the brain.”

  “Bush is a fine, upstanding policeman.”

  “Sure, to put over a deal like yours you’d have to pick the only rat in the department. You rats run together, don’t you?”

  “Language, Cardigan! Language!”

  Cardigan’s voice rushed out: “You can’t get away with a trick like that, Mac! You can’t hang that job on Pat Seaward and me!”

  “But what a story!”

  “You told Bush that Akeley was trying to get something on me. You know that’s a stinking lie!”

  McClintock sat up, squinted one bitter eye, hitched up one corner of his hard-lipped mouth. “I went to you last night, you dumb ox, and offered you seven-thousand bucks to come across with some info that would put us on the right track and give us a chance to use the biggest headlines in the plant. But no—you got up on your high horse. You were holding out in the hopes of getting a bigger slice from the guys that bumped Akeley off.”

  “That’s a dirty lie!”

  “So you pretend! I came out straight with what I was after. I tried to bribe you in a straightforward way, on the up-and-up and no ace from the bottom. And you gave me a verbal kick in the pants. All right. Now—” he shook his finger at Cardigan “—I go you one better. I’ll get what I want. I’ll get it for nothing! I won’t pay a cent for it! I’ll plaster you and the jane in the swellest frame you ever saw. I’ll make you squawk to get you and the jane out—and there won’t be any dough in it. I’ll get a knock-out legal battery. I’ll get this story and to do it I’ll rake your hide over the coals till you yell ‘Uncle!’ I’ll get the straight about the recovery of those diamonds. I’ll get the straight about Ackerman and his affiliations with Gould and that gambling crowd. That’s what I’ll do, my dear sweet Mr. Cardigan—you bum!”

  “You’ll drag in Bush. He didn’t buy that new Lincoln on a cop’s salary.”

  “To hell with Bush. I’ll use him till I squeeze him dry and then to hell with him. Bush means nothing to me. You mean nothing to me. The jane means nothing to me. The only thing that matters a damn is whether or not I get that story. And, big fella, I’ll get it! So help me God, I’ll get it!”

  Cardigan dropped his heels from the bed, reached over and yanked sheets and blankets to the floor. McClintock twisted. His hand shot beneath the pillow, came out gripping a heavy automatic. His lips snarled over his teeth and he cackled raucously.

  “No you don’t!” he rasped. “Get back, big fella, or I’ll blow you to hell!”

  Cardigan hung poised over the bed, scowling. “I guess you would, Mac.”

  “Sure. Why not? You broke into my room. ‘Famous city editor kills private detective in self-defense.’ A big stick on the right and the good old name of McClintock prominent in every paragraph. To make it more dramatic I’ll say you pulled a gun on me. What a story that would be! And I’d like to make it one, Cardigan—I’d like to make it one. Make a grab at this gun—and give me a break.”

  Cardigan straightened, his jaw red and heavy, dull hatred smouldering in his eyes. “I’d like to meet you in a dark alley some night, Mac.”

  “So would I. I’d plug you in the back and make a big story out of that too.”

  Cardigan went to the door, put his hand on the knob. “Be seeing you again, Mac.”

  “Swell!”

  Cardigan walked heavily down the corridor. He cursed and kept cursing deep in his throat till the elevator doors opened.

  He went across to police headquarters and found Pat downstairs in one of two detention rooms. The room was clean and bright. Down the corridor were the women’s cell blocks. A matron left Cardigan at the door and Cardigan entered the room.

  “Didn’t you bring flowers, chief?”

  “Hello, Pat.” Cardigan sat down on a chair, put his big hands on his knees and looked at her. “Good kid,” he murmured.

  “So this is McClintock’s doing.”

  Cardigan nodded his shaggy head. “The rat…. What happened, kid?”

  “Nothing much. I took your advice and didn’t take Bush seriously. I kidded the ears off him. He got all hot and bothered and now he’s waiting for Inspector Knoblock to show up. What should I say?”

  “Stick to your story till I look around. This guy McClintock burns me up and I’m going to hurt him. I’ve got to get these guys red-hot that bumped Akeley off. This is no time to spring names at random. After all I’ve only got suspicions—no facts. That bum McClintock will never get this story—never. He’s framed us and I’ll pay him back with interest. How do you feel?”

  “Fine and dandy.”

  “You’re a brick, Pat. You’re the berries. Give me till tonight to crash this frame. You’ll never spend the night here, kid.”

  She said: “Bush wasn’t so dumb. He didn’t want you because he knows you. He knows he wouldn’t get a murmur out of you. But he thinks I’ll weaken. And he knows that if they make this case seem bad enough for me—you’ll be Irish and bust down and—”

  “That’s correct up till there, Pat. But Bush really thinks he’ll nail us for this job because that great brain McClintock talked him into believing it. Bush’ll work his head off—what head he has. McClintock’s the brains in this. Bush is just a babe in his hands. McClintock engineered this.”

  “Don’t worry about me, chief. Only if I have to stay here you’ll have to run
over to my hotel and get me a nightie.”

  He stood up. “You won’t stay here, kid.”

  He walked to his hotel, entered the writing room, sat down and wrote three pages of dark, crisp script. He addressed the envelope to himself at the agency office and took it down to the post office. He sent it by registered mail and slipped the receipt into his vest pocket.

  MR. ULLRICH, Senator Ackerman’s right-hand man, was a rolypoly fat man with cheeks like red apples and bubbling, twinkling eyes. He had a big-toothed grin in a small mouth and tried to minimize the impression of avoirdupois by bounding around on his toes. The impression one got, however, was that Mr. Ullrich was an over-animated elephant.

  “Well, well, well, Mr. Cardigan! How do you do, how do you do, how—”

  “How do you do,” said Cardigan.

  Ullrich’s office was paneled in dark wood. The desk was a massive, carved piece out of some museum. Ullrich had bounced and bobbed from the desk and gripped Cardigan’s hand. Cardigan shook it, but not with enthusiasm. He had a dark, steady eye on Ullrich and the set of his face was not pleasant.

  “This is a lovely day, Mr. Cardigan! It’s wonderful to be alive on a day like this, to see and feel the sun—”

  “Akeley’s family, for instance.”

  “I beg pardon?”

  “I suppose Akeley’s wife is just doing a dance and raving about the beauties of nature too.”

  “Akeley…. Oh, yes! Oh, my yes! Oh, you mean that poor chap who was murdered last night. Horrible!”

  “Any minute I suppose you’ll bust out and cry.”

  Ullrich affected a hurt look. “My dear Mr. Cardigan—”

  “My dear Mr. Cardigan my dear sweet aunt’s eye! I didn’t come here to have you pull a burlesque on me! You’re Senator Ackerman’s mouthpiece. You be his ears too. And listen.” His voice dropped. “Listen, Mr. Ullrich.”

  “Yes?”