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

by Frederick Nebel

  Leaving the cab, Cardigan said: “Hang around. I’ll be right out.”

  He passed between two green lights and entered the station-house door. A lieutenant wheezed out a matter-of-fact greeting. Cardigan spoke through cigarette smoke, leaning comfortably with both arms on the desk. He got what he wanted and swung out to the taxicab, climbed in.

  The city swallowed him and he turned up again, fifteen minutes later, on a downtown curb where an east wind pushed river smells up a dark street. When the taxi moved off, he dug his hands into his overcoat pockets and got under way. The street was not noisy. The sound of the departing taxi’s engine echoed hollowly in the narrow street; and when it had died down the sound of a not distant El train crashed over the roof tops. After that there was only the sound of his footfalls, or a cough from an open window, or the squeal of cats.

  Where two streets and a crooked alley wedged into a kind of triangular plaza, there was the distinct sound of pool balls striking. Cardigan, hitting the plaza on the north side, gave it the once-over. It was very dark, dismal—with a few window lights here and there looking like yellow moths. Across the plaza, at the mouth of the alley, was a gaunt brick house of five stories. From the street-level floor of this house issued the neat smacking of pool balls. The house itself was by way of being a beacon in an otherwise tattered, down-at-the-heel district. Crossing the cramped plaza, Cardigan could make out big letters on the broad plate-glass windows. The windows were painted a solid blue three fourths of the way up. The big letters said: “THE FRIENDLY CIRCLE ROOMING HOUSE AND RECREATIONAL PARLOR.”

  It was a dump.

  Cardigan, opening the door, pushing in, prodding the door shut with his heel, was aware of noise, smells, and about two dozen arguments. There were many strata of tobacco smoke, lazy, sluggish, swamping drop lights that glared without benefit of shades. Two pool tables; round card tables and other tables; scarred oblong ones, littered with papers, magazines, the heels of men who reclined in battered chairs. There was dust. There was the smell of the unwashed. There were bromidic legends tacked on the leprous walls. There was a high pulpit-like desk at one side where a fat man with a pitted face and a nose like a Brussels sprout, sat beneath the only shaded light in the place. Behind him was a rack of keys. Above him was a big sign: “Beds—Ten Cents and Up. Rooms—Fifty Cents and Up.”

  A man in a rushing, passionate voice was explaining his ideas of government. He had greasy stubble on his face and looked like a phantom. Others listened, nodded, burning-eyed—wild-looking men, foreigners. Cardigan found that his entrance created no interest. He moved through the sluggish layers of smoke. Some of the men had blackened eyes, bruised jaws. He remembered there had been a riot at Union Square the other day. Cops had been stoned—and the cops had got tough. Cardigan reached the desk.

  “Plainclothes?” asked the fat lump there, bilious-eyed.

  “Guy named Wiggins. Where is he?”

  “Ain’t he here?”

  Cardigan said: “Is he?”

  “You cops take a chance dancing in this place alone.”

  Cardigan shrugged. He did not say he was not a cop. The fat man was craning his neck, roving his eyes around the crowd.

  “I don’t see Wiggins,” he said. “He’s got a room upstairs. Maybe he’s upstairs.”

  “What’s the room?”

  “Three ten—third floor.”

  CARDIGAN turned and made his way through the crowd to the broad stairway. He climbed on worn boards. The first floor looked like a dormitory. There were cots in endless rows. A few men lay on them all dressed, without covers. He took the next stairway up. Three drop-lights made a dim glow in a long, bare corridor. He found a scarred door with tin numbers nailed on it. He palmed the knob and turned it and the door opened and he walked in, closed the door.

  A man sat up on a cot that creaked. His face looked like yellow parchment and his hair was mouse-colored. He wore a flannel shirt, trousers, and his eyes were abnormally large, protuberant; his ears stuck out from his head and looked like dead shells.

  He cried in a hoarse whisper: “Who’re you?”

  “You’re Wiggins, aren’t you?”

  “What d’you want here? Get out of here!”

  “What the hell are you scared about?”

  Wiggins cringed. “I ain’t scared! Just what right you got busting in here?”

  “Where were you at nine tonight?”

  Wiggins’ fingers crept to a blue bruise on his jaw. He rasped: “Here! Downstairs!”

  Cardigan gazed around the room. “What was the idea of making that grandstand play yesterday in front of the Hotel Gallice?”

  The charred eyes blazed. “I’ll do it again!” Wiggins cried. “I’m a citizen! I got rights! Them dames come over here, take all our dough—”

  “Since when did you have dough? Did you ever do a stroke of work in your life?”

  “Ah-r-r, you’re one o’ them too! I told her what I thought of her. I guess she’ll remember it.”

  “She was good enough to ask the cop to let you go.”

  Wiggins jumped up, shaking. “What the hell do you want here?”

  “I’m trying to piece together a puzzle. I’m trying to find a connection.” He suddenly grabbed the man, tapped the man’s pockets lightning-fast, tossed him away, picked up the coverless pillow, threw it down again. The man cowered in a corner.

  “O.K.,” Cardigan said. “I just wondered if you were heeled.” He turned, twirling a broad blue garter on his forefinger. He had taken it from beneath the pillow. “Nice,” he grinned.

  “Gimme that!” cried Wiggins. He leaped like a cat, clawed at Cardigan’s hands.

  Cardigan bounced him onto the bed. “I’d like to meet the lady,” he said. He tossed the garter back to Wiggins. He was groping in his mind, feeling his way, determined to leave no stone unturned. “Put your shirt on.”

  “I ain’t going!”

  Cardigan showed a row of dangerous teeth. “Get your shirt on, sap!” He towered, his eyes dark and threatening, his shadow massive on the wall behind. He leaned forward, showing a big brown fist.

  Wiggins scampered off the bed, flew to a corner, shrank there. “I ain’t!” he cried. “I ain’t going!”

  Cardigan took three slow, heavy steps, caught Wiggins by the throat, lifted him off his feet, held him up and shook him. Wiggins grinned at him. It was a crazy, maniacal grin—and in it Cardigan read a wild, fierce challenge. In that split minute Cardigan knew that this man would not obey. He unloosened his fingers. Wiggins fell to the floor and lay there making idiotic sounds. It was business Cardigan didn’t like. He stood for a long minute, pondering, while the figure panted at his feet. He looked down.

  “I’ll find her,” he said in a low voice. “I don’t need you, Wiggins. I’ll go out and find her myself.”

  He said no more. He turned and left the room, went downstairs and stopped at the pulpit-like desk.

  “Was Wiggins in here at nine tonight?”

  The fat man nodded. “Yeah.” He pointed. “See that big bird over there with the red beard?”

  Cardigan nodded.

  The fat man said: “Him and Wiggins got in a fight. They were arguin’ since about eight o’clock and then they got in a fight. Over the Roosian situation. They always argue. I been trying to figure out should I pitch ’em out.”

  “Thanks,” Cardigan said.

  HE went out into the street, crossed the dark deserted plaza and dropped down into a shallow areaway. It was damp and cold but from it he could watch the rooming house. A stray dog came down in search of scraps, yowled and scampered off when Cardigan moved. A few minutes later the door across the way opened; a figure slipped out and scurried past the alley in frantic haste. Cardigan gave it a head start, then rose out of the areaway, felt his way rapidly along the dark house fronts and caught a glimpse of the figure sloping beneath a pallid street light. He heard the frantic rap of heels. For seconds he followed this sound alone. Then there was a brief instant durin
g which the figure sped past a lighted store window; then darkness again and then a momentary glimpse of the figure slanting beneath a street light. Alleys made shortcuts. Cardigan followed. He didn’t bother with his gun. He somehow felt that this man was not a gunman. By profession perhaps a petty thief, a purse snatcher in crowds—stealing just enough to buy hop. A pitiful wisp of humanity. Maybe not even a petty purse-snatcher. Cardigan didn’t know. The cops called him a nuisance. When he really got hopped up he criticized the government and created a disturbance, but he had no penal offense against him. Maybe he was a beggar.

  In his haste, Wiggins fell. His heels rasped the pavement and he whined petulantly as he went down. But in a moment he was on his feet again—and running, skipping, through the dark streets, the back alleys. Until presently he fell against a wooden door and beat upon it with his fists. It opened and the house swallowed the man, and Cardigan, flattened in a nearby doorway, heard the echoes of the slammed door peter off in the silent street.

  A minute later he walked on, spotted the house and counted the number of houses to the next corner. He went around the corner, found a board fence and scaled it, dropping into a yard. Moving through the darkness, he counted the houses and paused when he neared the rear of the house through whose front door Chink Wiggins had entered. It was three storied with a network of fire-escapes in back and the only light that glowed was one on the top floor, beyond a window whose shade was drawn down.

  Cardigan put his hands on the rough metal of the fire-escape, took a few upward steps. He climbed in fits and starts, putting his feet down cautiously. He did not stop at the lighted window on the third floor. He went on up to the roof and then stood for a long moment among the dim shapes of chimney pots. The yard was a black well below and a damp breeze puffed from the river. Moving carefully, he found a roof entrance to the regions below—a door with a lock that answered to the fifth skeleton key he used.

  Blackness yawned below, but he felt around with a foot, found a step. The narrow staircase was steep. He closed the door and went down slowly, making sure of each step before resting his weight on it. Then he was at the bottom. A door there opened at his touch and he found himself in a lightless corridor. The darkness enabled him, however, to place instantly the location of a door by the thin horizontal sliver of light visible where door did not meet flush with threshold.

  Toward this Cardigan moved. For an instant he felt indecision of spirit, as though a large question mark had appeared in his brain to doubt, clerically, his movements. But he brushed it aside with a rough mental gesture. And then he asked himself why Chink Wiggins, yesterday, had chosen Marta Dahl as his particular target of abuse. A man who haunted the back alleys, the tawdry squares and shoddy streets of the lower city—why had he gone far afield, to Park Avenue, to abuse Marta Dahl in a public demonstration?

  Cardigan stopped at the door. He heard the troubled whine of Chink Wiggins’ voice. He noiselessly tried the doorknob and found that the door was locked. He waited until the whine abated a bit. Then he knocked. Instantly there was silence. Then a woman’s voice, hushed, close to the panel. “Who is it?”

  “A detective,” he said in a low, casual voice. “Better open it, little one.”

  “W-what’s the matter?”

  “Open it, I said.”

  A bolt clanked. The woman opened the door on a crack but Cardigan punched it wide open and walked right in saying: “Now that’s nice, that’s nice, Chink!”

  Wiggins almost fainted on the window sill. He had opened the rear window and now he crouched motionless in it.

  Disgusted, angry, Cardigan snapped:

  “Well, get in or out. If you go out, you won’t have to walk down but you’ll be a mess when you reach the yard.”

  Wiggins backed into the room. Cardigan strolled to the window, closed it with a bang and yanked down the shade. The woman had closed the door. She wore heavy red lounging pajamas—the blouse was Russian, with a stand-up black collar, embroidered in gold. She had hair black as jet, smooth as an otter’s back, with straight bangs in front. Her eyes were black coals, her mouth a red gash in an oval face, her fingernails were lacquered red. She looked exotic, hard, cruel, beautiful.

  UNLIKE the outside of the house, unlike the neighborhood, the room was large, spacious, with heavy Oriental rugs, teak-and-ivory statues and ivory figurines; bronze lamps with parchment shades, severe mirrors, a cloying odor of perfume—an air of luxury and lavishness without foundation, a kind of stage set, a rare nightmare in a lean-flanked, hungry fag-end of the great city.

  Wiggins didn’t like the silence. He began blubbering and his lips got wet but no words came out—only flip-flopping little sounds.

  “Oh, cut it out,” Cardigan growled.

  He was making certain at the time, that broad sliding doors at the front end of the room were securely shut, and he did not look at Wiggins. Swift, silent, Wiggins palmed a heavy bronze paperweight. Fear, fright, drove him to it. He hurled the thing. But Cardigan’s eye had beaten him to it. Cardigan raised his hand. The bronze weight made a loud slap in his palm, his fingers closed over it for an instant. Then he hefted it.

  “Throwing things like that,” he complained, and set the thing down on the long mahogany table. His grand unconcern struck terror to Wiggins’ heart and Wiggins slumped into a chair like a balloon suddenly deflated.

  The woman had not moved.

  Cardigan eyed her. “I’ve walked into something that I get a swell kick out of.”

  Only her lips moved in a face that was like a mask. “What am I supposed to say to that?”

  He picked up the paper-weight, grinned, said: “Catch!” as he tossed it lightly at her.

  She twisted, raised her hands to cover her face. A small gun clattered to the floor from one of her broad blouse sleeves. She hissed, dived—but Cardigan’s big foot landed on the weapon. He grabbed her, spun her away, picked up the gun, unloaded it.

  He was grinning, but not pleasantly. “I thought so,” he said.

  She was mask-faced again, unemotional. Her voice was flat, toneless, measured. “What do you want?”

  “I’ve found this out,” Cardigan said. “That punk there lives at a cheap flophouse but he lives there only as a blind. A cheap punk wouldn’t have an in to a place like this. I’m going to turn up something, little poker face, and you’re going to help me. So is Mr. Wiggins.”

  “And what do you think you will turn up?”

  “I’ve a strong suspicion that I’ll turn up Marta Dahl.”

  Expressionless, the woman said: “You make riddles.”

  Cardigan went toward her with lowering brows. “When I told that bird over there that I was going out to find a woman, he left the flop-house like a bat out of hell and came straight here to warn you.”

  She mocked him with her flat voice. “Warn me about what?”

  “That I was coming after you. Listen, sister; you can hand me all the crap you want, but I had this scatter figured out the minute I came in here. I’ve got you figured out. This place is lousy with hop. It’s a hideout for the needle and the pipe and the sniffers. Wiggins is a contact man for the cheap trade. But this place right here—this room with all the fancy trappings—is a joy house for the swells.”

  “If all this is true,” she said, calmly, “what connection has it with Marta Dahl?”

  “That’s a riddle you’ll answer before you paint your lips again, honeybunch. There is a connection. I feel it in my bones. Wiggins didn’t just wander up to Park Avenue yesterday. He—”

  WIGGINS was on his feet, livid. He cried: “You leave her alone! You hear me, leave her alone! I went up there because I wanted to! I went up there to kill Marta Dahl!” He screamed it out; panted on: “But—but I didn’t. So—so I got some friends—friends like me, that hate the rich, that hate these foreigners who come over here and take our dough back home. I got in a fight at the flophouse and Red hit me and I went to my room. But I didn’t stay there. I had it all planned. I sneaked out, met m
y pals—” He stopped and shook an arm at Cardigan. “You leave this girl alone! I did it! Me and my pals! And you’ll never know who them pals are! You won’t!” he screamed.

  He braced his arms on the table, his breath came hoarsely from his twitching mouth and his eyes rolled. Cardigan felt that he was looking at a madman, at a man whose brain was cracking, at a man whose brain was plagued by a dread disease.

  He said: “Why did you come here?”

  “To say good-by to—her. I knew you was after me. I wanted to say good-by. I—I killed that chauffeur. Me and my pals did away with Marta Dahl! I always hated her on the screen. She was rich, she took our money, hoarded it. Me—me—I did it!” He grimaced toward the woman. “I’m sorry I come here. But you was always good to me. I wanted—wanted to say good-by.”

  His eyes dropped from her face, bulged on space. He turned, sagging, and went toward the window. He pulled up the shade, opened the window. He turned and cackled.

  “I’m going, mister. You know what to do.”

  Cardigan drew his gun. His brows were bent, his eyes glittering, his mouth tight.

  Wiggins threw a leg over the window sill. His face was deathly gray but the crooked, unreal smile lingered. “I’m the guy you want, mister, but there ain’t no cop taking me in for a shellacking—and I stick by my pals. Go ahead, shoot.”

  Cardigan was grim. “I’ll give you till you get halfway down, Wiggins, to think it over.”

  Wiggins climbed out, disappeared. Cardigan, watching the woman, backed to the window, closed it, drew down the shade. “Now we can talk,” he said.

  “About what?”

  “About who really killed that taxi driver and kidnaped Marta Dahl.”

  “You heard, didn’t you?”

  “I heard a poor little hophead. I saw a poor little hophead try to talk me into killing him. I’m not a killer, sister. The sap’s in love with you. You’ve held him in the hollow of your hand. You’ve supplied him with hop, kidded him, fooled around with him till he’s nuts—till he’d die for you. There are guys like that. But he didn’t pull this job. He knows all about it because he knows you. No papers would have it yet. It’s not news yet. But he knew the details. The sap, sister, was a fall-guy that I didn’t let fall. I want Marta Dahl.”