Death Wears a White Gardenia
Page 7
"O.K.," said Joe Swayzey quietly, "you got the layout. O.K., smart guy. Now where's the suitcase? Where's the shimmies and nighties I'm supposed to stole. Tell me that? If I left a suitcase in that place where you found the stiff, who took the suitcase out? There's one for you."
"Tell 'em, boy," crowed the Inspector. "You tell 'em."
Mary Carner sprang toward Whittaker's telephone. "Get me Miss Manton, silk underwear. Peggy? Mary Carner speaking. Did you check your stock on silks morning? You did. Anything missing? Not a thing!" She put down the receiver slowly and went back, her brow corrugated.
Mr. Swayzey's worried manner dropped from him like a cloak. He straightened his necktie and hitched forward his overcoat collar. He smiled.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he said suavely, the English inflection returning with each spoken syllable, "I thank you for the trouble you've taken to establish my alibi. And now, I believe I may bid you good morning."
"I'm afraid not," said Chris Whittaker soberly. "Somewhere in this store there may be an empty tan cowhide suitcase, and we'll want you on hand if it's found. Stay with him, Mazur." He wrinkled his forehead suddenly and intensely. The others in the room could fairly see the idea struggling to get through. "Wait a minute, Joe," he said. "Where you getting your snow these days? Levin's in Atlanta, Garrison's in Leavenworth, O'Hara's in Europe. Who's selling you the stuff?"
"Listen, wise guy, you know I ain't touched the stuff in two years. You know I took the cure. I been out of that racket for years."
"All right, you don't have to tell us. We can find out without you."
"Go ahead. Have a good time."
"Take him outside, Mazur. Keep him handy."
"I say," Judge Hodges got to his feet excitedly as the door closed upon Swayzey and the detectives, "you don't think McAndrew was in a narcotics racket, do you? You don't think this is going to turn into a Federal case?"
"One guess is as good as another, right now," Chris answered him. "A good many professional store thieves, you know, are dope fiends." He went on: "They're psychopathic cases and they're cokes. You fellows in the police department don't have any idea of the enormous criminal problem we struggle with in these stores. You think that on the rare occasions when we call Reilly in from the corner to make an arrest that's the only time we catch a crook. But that's far from the fact. The total thefts from New York stores in one year mount up to two per cent of their combined sales. That's in the big money, my friends. Who lifts the stuff? All kinds of people—college graduates, professional men and women of high standing, poor devils out of work, even ministers of the cloth. And of course the professionals. Ninety per cent of all those we catch red-handed are amateurs, stealing for the first time and don't know why in hell they did it. Just saw the stuff, wanted it, got the idea that it was easy to get away with, and grabbed. We don't, as a rule, even bother arresting those. I get 'em in here, talk to them like a Dutch uncle, call the Mutual Protective to see if there's a record on 'em, and check up their faces with the picture gallery over there, and if there's no record I get them to sign a confession, saying they stole from us, and won't ever set foot in our store again. And as a rule they don't try it again. No more than five per cent of them ever try it again. We figure they're just nuisances, expensive nuisances—because the store has to keep a big staff to watch for them. But it's the other ten per cent—the professionals—that give us the jitters. If those guys used the gray matter they waste figuring out how to put something over on us, on something worth while, they'd make Einstein look like a kid in the kindergarten. The stuff they pull!" He mopped his brow. "A grand piano walked out of one store. Walked. Sure. Just like as if it had feet. A couple of guys in working clothes came into the piano department, just like they'd been sent for, and carried it out. And nobody stopped 'em. In a store with a thousand employees, you wouldn't expect clerks to know every porter, would you? I personally caught a lad who went in for Oriental rugs. Room size. Lifted 'em on his back and carried them out the door, tags and all. I caught him but not 'til he had walked off with a few. I nabbed another guy who specialized in antique tapestries. Slashed 'em out of frames, rolled 'em up and carried them off, under his coat. You think it can't be done? The hand is quicker than the eye, my friends. At least it was 'til we ran a publicity story in the papers that we were exhibiting a rare and costly tapestry. It was a special invitation to that baby to come and get it. He did. I stationed myself in that department from nine to six for a week, and nailed him. And women's stuff. Say, Mary here once caught a female with a dozen chiffon dresses in her bloomers, another with a half a dozen of our best silk dresses swinging from her waistband. Sure it was a special waistband. It stretched all right. She folded 'em over in half, stuck 'em in the waistband and swung 'em around to the rear. And to look at the dame, you'd only think she had a big rear end—a pair of overgrown hips. But that's what we look for. That's what we keep our eyes open for. People whose clothes are too bulky—women who wear capes, or carry big muffs. We put a thousand dollar broad-tail coat on a dummy last week, and I'll be damned if half an hour after the store opened Mary didn't catch a gal in a phone booth, wrapping that coat around herself, under her own raccoon.
"Now this Swayzey, he belongs to a special class, that takes even more daring chances. We call 'em prowlers. They take out suitcases full of stuff—and they steal only on order from the fence that disposes of their stuff. They're tough because they work after closing time, when everybody's in a hurry to get out, and no one's keeping a good eye on things. It takes a special brand of nerve to do what they do. And most of them, like English Joe, get that nerve from coke."
"But Chris," Mary interposed, "Magruder says he let Swayzey out about half past five. We have evidence—at least I have—that McAndrew was alive in the store much later than that."
"He could of come in again, couldn't he?" the Inspector suggested. "A smart guy like that could've come back."
"Maybe," Mary answered. "But that's not the way prowlers work. Why, tell me, did you ask him about the gardenia in his buttonhole?"
Inspector Heinsheimer took a white envelope from his pocket, extracted the crushed blossom, and placed it on the desk. The gardenia, there was no doubt, was as dead as its last possessor. Its ivory tint and texture had turned to ugly mottled brown. Only in the tightly curled petals at the heart was there a suggestion of beauty. The green leaves and stem which had made it a proper embellishment were gone. A desperate hand had torn the flower free. "People's Exhibit A," the Inspector said. "Found in the clenched hand of the late Andrew McAndrew. Death, whoever he was, wore a white gardenia."
Mary picked the flower up, turned it over on her palm. "That's very interesting. Very," she said slowly, "because Evelyn Lennon told me that McAndrew gave her a corsage of gardenias before he sent her home last night. You found this in his hand, you say? Could he have possibly had it on his own person. I mean, when he bought Evelyn the corsage, do you think he might have picked up a boutonniere for himself?"
The Inspector shook his head. "We'd have found the stem in his button-hole. We didn't. No stem. No leaves nowhere around. The other guy had the flower."
"The store executives wear boutonnieres," Mary Carner said slowly. "But they all wear white carnations. Everybody that has any contact with the public."
"Your pal Whittaker made the same remark," the Inspector answered.
Officer Reilly put his head in at the door. "Doctor Martin wants to leave now. He wants the body sent down for autopsy. Is it O.K.?"
"O.K. You're keeping the two women in there?"
Reilly nodded. "They're pretty broke up over him," he said.
Through the half open door Mary Carner caught a glimpse of the two women whom Andrew McAndrew's sudden death had left desolate. The narrowness of the anteroom placed them by necessity in close proximity, but they were no longer glaring at one another. They seemed in fact to be altogether unaware of each other's presence. Evelyn Lennon's hands lay unclasped and limp in her lap, and her cha
lk white face was abandoned to despair. Celia McAndrew still held her head high, but her pale eyes were red rimmed and her gloved hands twitched over the ball of a handkerchief. Her thin lips moved constantly but no sound came from them.
CHAPTER IX
John H. Blankfort walked past the two women without turning his head, and strode into the little room where the detectives and the district attorney sat. His festive morning coat and striped trousers brought an atmosphere of importance into the drab room. His face was pale and seemed even more harassed looking than it had been when he had opened the store that morning. Chris Whittaker and the District Attorney rose at once, the latter with outstretched hand and friendly smile, the former with apology on his lips.
"Mr. Blankfort, we're sorry to trouble you at this time," Chris said smoothly. "You know Judge Hodges, I believe. This gentleman is Chief Inspector Heinsheimer of the Homicide Bureau."
Blankfort took the District Attorney's hand for an instant, shook it dispiritedly, smiled wanly, and dropped into the vacant chair beside Whittaker's desk. His body sagged into the vague lines of exhaustion. He turned first toward Mary Carner and spoke to her with censure in his tired voice. "Young lady," he said, "please be more tactful next time you have messages to convey."
I'm sorry, Mr. Blankfort, we thought it most urgent that you be informed at once..."
"I should have heard soon enough. God," he took out a handkerchief and mopped his brow. "I couldn't have failed to hear. It's all over the store. The place is buzzing with it. Thank heaven I got the Governor's wife out before she heard about it."
"John," the District Attorney's voice was sympathetic, "I want you to know that I thoroughly understand your situation and am anxious to cooperate with you in every way I can. You and I have been friends a good many years. You'd not believe it, gentlemen, but Mr. Blankfort and I used to play handball together at the City Athletic Club gym, oh, long ago, of course, gentlemen, when I was much younger. He chuckled. "He took the championship from me—at least twenty years ago, when he was a stripling. Youth must be served. But I've never resented it. We've been very good friends. Mrs. Hodges is very fond of Mrs. Blankfort. How is your good wife, John?"
"Very well, thank you," Blankfort answered with evident irritation.
"That's fine. That's fine," the District Attorney babbled on. "You know, John, that I'd like to make this thing as easy for you as possible."
"Oh, yes, I suppose so," Blankfort's weary voice was almost rude. He wiped his brow again. "God, I'm tired. I've so many things on my mind today." He jerked himself suddenly, like a man pulling himself from bed at the sound o£ an alarm, and turned to Whittaker. "Well, what do you want of me? What can I do? You seem to have help enough. I saw half the police department outside. What do you want of me?"
"There isn't much you can do in the investigation, except give us authority to get full cooperation from everyone here," Whittaker began soothingly. "I was chiefly thinking of the store angle when I sent Mary Carner upstairs with that message. I hoped you would personally speak with the editors of the newspapers...."
"You haven't told them yet, have you, Graham?" Blankfort shot his question at the District Attorney.
"Not yet. But there's no doubt they'll hear about it. Any minute now they'll be on our necks. A murder in a department store is a murder. Quite the same as a murder in a bar-room or a brothel. There's little doubt the newspapers will be interested in it."
"Under ordinary circumstances," Blankfort's voice took on an ironic tone, "a department store might not wish to keep a murder out of the papers. It might even be considered good publicity. Put us on Page One. But this time," his voice dropped; it had a cajoling note in it, "this time, it would be a catastrophe to have this in the papers. Today at any rate. We're hoping to smash all our records for sales, to make up for months of bad business today. We've had the Governor's wife here to give the place a little prestige. Lord," he almost gasped as he said the words, "they'd tack my speech onto the end of a murder story."
"I'm very sorry, John...."
"You're sorry. You're sorry. What good is your being sorry unless you give us a break? Keep this out of the papers for twenty-four hours. Lay low on it, Graham, for a day. That's all I ask. Surely that isn't asking too much?"
The District Attorney squirmed.
"You don't understand my position or you'd not ask that," he whined. "For two years the papers have been pounding me and hounding me. If they found
out that I had withheld this story....You don't understand, John, or you wouldn't ask me...." He turned his head from side to side like one seeking a way out. His gaze rested on Inspector Heinsheimer's watchful face. "After all," he finished, "it's the police department's responsibility. Heinsheimer can break the story even if I agree not to—don't you see, John? I haven't the final say. Or the papers will probably pick it up by themselves. You can't hold up a thing like this."
"Nonsense." Blankfort interrupted. "Nonsense. I know these things as well as you do. If the papers pick it up themselves, all you need tell them is that a man dropped dead of apoplexy, heart failure or some such, here last night and his body was found today. It isn't murder till you call it that."
"It's murder all right," the Inspector said. "It was murder last night, and nothing we know now has changed that...."
The buzzing of the telephone broke in upon his voice. Whittaker picked it up eagerly. "Yes, Mr. Blankfort's here. Tell him what? Tell him that Mr. Chase is here to see him. Mister H. G. Chase?"
At the mention of that name the detectives lifted their heads, like circus horses at the sound of the band. Blankfort rose at once, his eyes again strained and weary. "Have him wait in my office," he instructed. "I'll be right up.
Inspector Heinsheimer struggled to his feet. "I'd like to come with you," he said. "I'd like to meet Mr. Chase."
"No," said Blankfort coldly. "I see no reason for it. That's not your business. The financial affairs of Blankfort and Company are not yet matters for police interest."
"The hell you say," Inspector Heinsheimer's mouth dropped open. "Gee, he's a touchy son of a gun," he exclaimed as the door slammed behind Blankfort.
"You would be too," said Chris Whittaker, "if the banks were running you ragged; the public refusing to spend any money and someone took a notion to murder your credit manager in the middle of your biggest day in fifty years."
"Yeah," said the Inspector. "H. G. Chase. Yeah, H. G. Chase. Who's that guy? He turns up in McAndrew's waste-paper basket and John Blankfort's office. And who in hell's he? And what's he to do with this?"
"Probably nothing. Blankfort gave us a lead on him," Mary Carner suggested thoughtfully. "'The financial affairs of Blankfort and Company are not yet matters for police interest.' He said that. Chase is connected with a bank, apparently. This business, you know, may soon be taken over by the banks. They've loaned it a lot of money all through the depression. They've been growling because business hasn't picked up. Didn't you know that? Blankfort has plenty to worry about."
"Mebbe. Mebbe. But what did McAndrew have to do with Chase? That's what I'd like to know."
"Let's forget about Chase for a minute," Chris Whittaker suggested. "I want to know what Mary's bright mind makes of this little book here. We found it on Andrew's body." He put down in front of her the small black leather book. It was a small book such as would fit into a wallet or purse. Its pages were ruled, and on each line of the first three pages was an entry with its date. Mary read down the first page.
I.C.C. 4,000 2/5/35
S.L.N. 1,500 4/21/35
N.M.G. 3,200 4/30/35
J.R.G. 750 5/19/35
R.L.A. 2,500 6/30/35
G.D. 2,000 7/14/35
So the book ran—initials, numerals, dates, down to the first of March in 1937.
"It's the sort of record," Mary said slowly, "that a man would keep of loans or payments he had made, or possibly of earnings. I mean earnings from a secret source, such as Evelyn Lennon's rather meager inform
ation and Mrs. McAndrew's expensive clothes would indicate."
"Exactly," said Chris impatiently, "but what sort of business?"
"Well, it might be legitimate business investments. It might be stock market. Some people have been making money on the market, I've heard. I wouldn't know for sure, though. And it might be horses, or gambling, or narcotics, as Chris suggested a few minutes ago."
"Possibilities. All possibilities." Inspector Heinsheimer raised his brows. "These initials may represent some sort of a racket, and narcotics may be the answer as well as anything else. McAndrew's locked desk may have the answer."
"You two and Miss Carner go on up and search the office," the District Attorney suggested. "I'll wait here. It's about time Captain Haines called back. I'll interview the women again—their alibi witnesses ought to be here soon. You'll find me here when you come down. Don't take too long." He sounded indulgent. "I don't know what you'll find upstairs. The key to this murder, I have little doubt, is waiting right in that anteroom. One of the ladies—maybe the one who got the white gardenias—maybe the one who got the Persian lamb coat."
CHAPTER X
Chris Whittaker and Inspector Heinsheimer sat on the desk in Evelyn Lennon's little cubby hole while the finger-print man carefully spread his powder over McAndrew's desk and telephone and chair, and recorded the prints. They ran through the letters that had come in McAndrew's morning mail and found little to interest them therein. A bank had reported adversely upon the credit of an applicant for a charge account. A customer complained that she was still charged for merchandise returned and credited. There were three customers' checks for small amounts sent back by banks with protest stamps. An irate woman announced that she was withdrawing her account from the store because they had failed to deliver to her on time a dress she had purchased for a wedding. They dismissed it all as unimportant and irrelevant.