Top Assignment

by George Harmon Coxe

  ‘The victim had callers, Lieutenant’, the detective said. ‘One this afternoon and two tonight … Tell him’, he said to the woman.

  ‘About which one?’

  ‘All of ’em’, Neilson said. ‘What did the one this afternoon want?’

  ‘I don’t know. I was sweeping down the stairs and he went past me and knocked on this door. I didn’t see him leave.’

  ‘Describe him.’

  ‘Thin, medium height, dark-haired, well dressed.’

  ‘Anything unusual about him?’

  ‘Not that I noticed.’

  ‘That’s the only visitor she had today?’

  ‘She could have had a dozen without me knowing it. I’ve got my own work to do. Ten rooms. No help most of the time. There’s hardly time to—’

  ‘Okay, okay.’ Neilson cut her off. ‘What about tonight? What time was that?’

  ‘About nine. Maybe a few minutes after. There was this knock on my door. It was two men, but one of them stayed back and I hardly got a glimpse of him. The other said he was a friend of Mrs. Kovalik and asked what room she had. I told him.’

  ‘What did he look like?’

  ‘Big. Tall, anyway. Short brown hair and glasses. He had sort of an accent.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ she said, still truculent.

  ‘Well, did he sound Spanish, German, Russian—’

  ‘German, maybe. How would I know? The other man was shorter and heavier, but that’s about all I could tell.’

  Neilson said all right and dismissed her. He said she was to wait in her room because they’d want to talk to her later.

  Palmer waited until the door closed before he spoke of the two men who had brushed by him in the downstairs vestibule. He said they sounded like the same two men, but he could add nothing to the description already given by the landlady. When he had answered all the questions Neilson could think of, he said:

  ‘Look, Lieutenant, I’d like to get back.’

  ‘Back where?’

  ‘To the office.’

  ‘Hah!’ said Neilson. ‘You’re in this. We’re going to want a full statement from you and—’

  ‘Sure’, Palmer said. ‘But you’re going to be busy here for a while and I’ve got to write a story. When I finish I’ll come down to Headquarters or wherever you say.’

  He turned towards the door as though the matter was settled, taking advantage of Neilson’s momentary indecision. When there was no attempt made to stop him, he kept right on going.

  Riding up in the lift to the city room, Larry Palmer knew that the excuse he had given Neilson about writing a story had little foundation in fact. For the Bulletin was fussy about overtime, avoiding it whenever possible for budgetary reasons. The days of long hours and unlimited expense accounts he had heard the old-timers talk about were no more; now, except on special occasions, you finished your shift and some other man—in this case Labine—took over whether you wanted to follow through on a story or not. But this, he hoped, might be one of those special occasions, and when, approaching the desk, the night man jerked his thumb towards the corner office and said Kelly wanted to see him, he felt his hopes expand.

  Walter Kelly, the managing editor of the Morning Bulletin, was a stocky, round-faced man with a florid complexion and not much hair. He wore a worried look when Palmer opened the door and he sighed audibly as he leaned back and removed the half-smoked cigar from the corner of his mouth.

  ‘Sit down, Larry’, he said.

  Palmer took the chair at the end of the desk. He watched Kelly place the cigar in the big glass ashtray and then examine the newspapers, which had been folded to quarter-page size. He looked at the picture in which Ethel Kovalik’s face was circled; he looked at the more recent edition with the day’s story. Finally he picked up the glossy print from which the first picture had been reproduced.

  ‘It looks,’ he said, ‘as if we might have a little trouble on this one. Suppose you start at the beginning and tell me what you can.’

  Starting with his interview with Ethel Kovalik, and this time leaving out nothing that he could remember, Palmer told the story. It took perhaps fifteen minutes and during that time Kelly made an occasional note but no interruptions. When he had heard it all, he let the room get quiet before he spoke.

  ‘I’ve talked to Mr. Austin.’

  Palmer became instantly attentive because Frederick Austin was the publisher.

  ‘He’s worried about this. It may be just one of those lousy coincidences that happen now and then, and it may not be. He thinks that, for tonight at least—assuming you have any kind of a lead or anything to work on—you should stick with this. Now, have you a lead? Anything at all?’

  Palmer thought it over before he nodded, not too enthusiastically. ‘Two possibles’, he said and produced the slip on which he had copied the names and addresses he had found in the dead woman’s pocket book.

  Kelly read the names aloud: ‘Leo Flynn … John Destler.’

  He pushed the slip towards Palmer and then leaned back again, cradling his nape in locked fingers, his gaze fixed on the ceiling. After ten seconds of this his lips pursed and he nodded faintly.

  ‘I haven’t got it yet’, he said finally. ‘But there’s something familiar there … Destler’, he said. ‘Some sort of scandal at City Hall, I think. I’ll tell you what.’

  He snapped erect in his chair, all business now and his eyes intent. ‘See what you can get from the morgue—or better yet, ask O’Neil. That’ll be quicker and he can probably give you enough to get you started. Take this picture down to the studio’—he quickly cropped the photograph with a pencil to include the faces of Ethel Kovalik and the man with the glasses—‘and get it blown up a little more. Run down Flynn and Destler and see if they can tell you anything.’

  He shrugged. ‘Of course the cops’ll be checking on those names too, but you can never tell; you might get lucky. Take a photographer with you when you’re ready, just in case.’

  ‘What about Lieutenant Neilson? I’ve got to make a statement some time and he said—’

  ‘The hell with Neilson! You’re working for the Bulletin. When you finish with us you can go see him. If he calls up here, I’ll tell him so.’

  When Palmer had told an office boy what he wanted, he crossed to where a plump-bodied man with thick grey hair sat at a desk, glancing through the early edition. He was the only man in the room who wore an eyeshade; he also wore elastics on his shirt sleeves. His name was O’Neil, a re-write man now and close to sixty, a newspaperman most of his life, about whom it had often been said that he could get a better story simply by picking up the telephone than the average reporter could as an on-the-spot observer.

  There was some truth in the assertion because O’Neil knew almost everyone, and the men in the best position to help out on a story were friends of long standing: the higher-ups in the state and local government, the division captains, the county sheriffs, the state-police commanders. Now, seeing Palmer stop beside his desk, he glanced up and pushed back the eyeshade.

  ‘Hello, Larry’, he said. ‘I understand the Bulletin’s got a beat.’

  ‘Reece’s pix, yes’, Palmer said. ‘Not the story.’

  ‘They keeping you on it?’

  ‘For tonight anyway.’

  ‘Good boy.’

  ‘I’ve got a couple of names I’d like to check with you’, Palmer said, and explained where he had got them and what Kelly had said.

  O’Neil nodded slowly and began to fill his pipe. After a moment he began to speak, his soft voice contrasting with the noises of the city room so that Palmer had to lean close to hear him.

  ‘Destler worked for the city,’ he said. ‘For twenty or thirty years, I guess. Bureau of Records finally. A little guy, harmless-looking. A bachelor. No family. Never in trouble until he was arrested about three years ago—you can check the dates in the library—for making out phony birth certificates. Leo Flynn took the orders and D
estler supplied them. The blanks were right handy in his office, so was the seal. What they call certified copies for people who’ve lost or misplaced their own. A lot of business that way nowadays because you can’t hardly move or get a job or go abroad without one.’

  He stopped to light the pipe, continued to speak past the stem.

  ‘The trouble was that copies Destler made were not for citizens but for others, refugees mostly who were either here illegally or in on the wrong kind of visas. They needed these certificates for work permits. Quite a neat racket, hunh?’

  ‘How did Flynn fit in?’

  ‘Flynn got picked up trying to sell one and implicated Destler. Turned state’s evidence and got six months suspended, while Destler was handed two years. According to Flynn, Destler talked him into soliciting customers—and they weren’t too hard to find—but my idea, knowing Flynn, is different … Flynn’, he said, ‘is one of those smart characters who hate work. A lazy precinct drifter, a City Hall bum, who ran a little handbook and did errands for the big boys. The point was, he had connections and knew a lot of people, and I think he saw a chance to make some easy money. All he needed was somebody with access to the right blanks and the seal. Destler apparently was the only one in that department he had a chance with, so he picked on him and in the end Destler fell for it. I think he did fourteen months of the two years, and that’s the last I heard of him. Does that add up to anything?’

  ‘It could’, Palmer said. ‘Ethel Kovalik had their names. The racket has been out of business for nearly three years, so she must have got the names from somebody in New Jersey, maybe someone who bought a certificate in the past.’

  ‘That makes sense’, O’Neil said. ‘Maybe, not knowing it’s too late, she wants to buy another certificate for herself or somebody else.’

  He might have said more, but just then the desk called across to him. ‘Here’s one for you, Ed. Take it on line three.’

  O’Neil reached for his headset. ‘Good luck, kid’, he said. ‘If I can help any, you know where to find me.’

  Palmer thanked him and hurried down to the studio. A new print, still warm from the drier, was waiting for him, so was a photographer named Wilson, a sandy-haired man in his late forties who was slow, easy-going and, as a rule, had little to say unless the subject was photography or fishing.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE NUMBER Larry Palmer had jotted down under Flynn’s name proved to be a smallish but modern apartment building that very nearly backed up to the ancient brownstone where he himself lived in a remodelled second-floor apartment. An automatic lift took him to the third floor, but there was no answer when he pressed the button recessed in the door of apartment 3-B. He told Wilson about it when he climbed back into the company car, and with that the photographer offered his first bit of information.

  ‘You could try the Bond’, he said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘His wife works there in the floor show. A big number, built, with red-blonde hair. Gladys Flynn.’

  ‘Oh’, said Palmer. ‘That Flynn.’

  ‘You know her too, hunh?’

  ‘I met her a couple of weeks ago when I was in there with somebody from the office. MacKay, I think.’

  ‘He’d know her.’

  Palmer turned down the police radio which had been blasting from the speaker and turned the corner in the direction of the Bond Hotel, remembering now that it was here that Ethel Kovalik had first seen the man she was afraid of—Henkel. And then he thought: Suppose Flynn sold Henkel and his friend Muller birth certificates before the racket collapsed?

  ‘What does Flynn do now?’

  ‘Anything he can, I guess’, Wilson said. ‘Hangs around the race tracks when they’re running, the dogs at night, or at the Bond. Usually eats dinner there. He always seems to have some cash on him, but the only job I know of is selling those foreign cars for Chapman Motors. Of course that wife—if that’s what she is—of his works too, so that helps.’

  He grunted softly, as if in amusement. ‘She’s quite a gal. I understand she used to be married to Waldo Banton. That was years ago on the West Coast.’

  ‘The Banton that owns the Bond.’

  ‘Owns part of it anyway.’

  Palmer tried to get the loose ends tied up in his mind and found the process confusing. Banton had been married to Gladys years ago and now she was Leo Flynn’s girl. Gladys worked for Banton. The two waiters Ethel Kovalik said she was afraid of came from the Eastern Zone of Germany and also worked for Banton, at least indirectly …

  He was still groping when he parked the car in front of the Bond, a transient hotel of no great distinction and noted throughout the city for two things: an excellent and moderately priced businessman’s lunch, and a night club that offered dancing, a chorus line of sorts, and one or two floor-show acts, usually well-known names who came for limited engagements.

  ‘Do you want to come in?’ he said to Wilson.

  ‘Not unless you need me’, said the photographer and, tipping his hat over his eyes, stretched back on the seat.

  The headwaiter of the Orchid Room was tall, bald, and smiling; he also had a good memory for names, and since Palmer had been coming here occasionally, he now bowed in recognition.

  ‘Good evening, Mr. Palmer.’

  ‘Good evening, Louis.’ Palmer took the photograph from his pocket and unrolled it. ‘Do you have a waiter here named Henkel?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Has he got a pal named Muller?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Both waiters? Do they work for you? Are they on duty tonight?’

  ‘They are on duty, but they are not here’, Louis said with some exasperation. ‘When they do report, I will fire them, as I have done before, but they will not stay fired. The next day they will be working for Frederick, in the dining-room, until they annoy him too much and then he will fire them. It will then be my turn to hire them again.’

  ‘Why do you have to hire them at all?’

  ‘Partly the union, Mr. Palmer, and partly the front office. For some reason there is pressure from that point. Not that they are not competent, you understand. But they are trouble-makers and impertinent and too damned independent.’

  Palmer pointed to the man with glasses in the photograph. ‘Is that one of them?’

  ‘That is Kurt Henkel.’

  Palmer put the picture away, a new depression settling upon him when he thought of Ethel Kovalik and the story which neither he nor Brooks had quite believed and which had proved to be only too true.

  ‘Thanks, Louis.’

  ‘They are in some trouble—I hope’, said Louis and might have said more had not some customers approached at that moment.

  Palmer stood back to wait until he had a chance to ask about Leo Flynn and his wife, and then, as Louis started to lead the party to a table, a hand fell on Palmer’s arm and fastened there. When he glanced round, Alvord Chapman was grinning at him.

  There were six in the party—all in evening clothes—and four of them were following Louis to a floorside table. Chapman’s wife stood apart to wait for him, and now he pulled Palmer towards her.

  ‘Oh, Isabel’, he said. ‘This is Larry Palmer from the Bulletin. The one who took the pictures for the Sunday section down at the yacht club.’

  Isabel Chapman was a slim, striking-looking woman with prematurely grey hair which made a startling contrast to her sun-tanned skin. Her maiden name, Palmer knew, had been Allyn, and her background was socially impeccable as well as financially sound. She had been married three times, and at thirty-five her well-boned face was still unlined, though at the moment it held a look of hauteur and displeasure, as though she thought her husband had already had one drink too many and indulged him only because she did not want a scene. Her smile was small and automatic and her cultured voice controlled as she nodded and said how-do-you-do.

  Palmer said: ‘How do you do, Mrs. Chapman?’ and then he was moving with them, propelled by Chapman’s grip.


  ‘We stopped in for the late show and a drink. Like you to join us.’

  His insistence embarrassed Palmer as much as the woman’s disapproving glance. ‘Thanks,’ he said, ‘I’d like to, but—’

  ‘Nonsense’, Chapman said. ‘You can have a quick one, can’t you?’

  With that Palmer made no further argument because it suddenly occurred to him that he was being offered a convenient opportunity to learn a little more about the man he was looking for: Leo Flynn.

  They were at the table then and Louis was helping the women get seated and explaining to one of them that the floor show would not be on until eleven thirty: Chapman introduced the others, two couples who seemed a little older but bore the same social stamp of respectability, the men prosperous and well fed, the women attractive and expensive-looking rather than pretty.

  ‘Larry’s having a quick one with us,’ Chapman said, ‘because I owe him one for getting my picture in the paper.’

  Palmer did not bother to explain that Chapman’s statement of responsibility was more exaggerated than true. The idea of doing a rotogravure page typifying the activities of some of the area’s better-known clubs and sports figures had come from the Sunday editor. The sports editor had set up the appointments and Palmer had merely gone along with a photographer to get the names and a paragraph or so on the principals. As finally made up for the coming Sunday edition, the page offered pictures of some of the leading golf amateurs and tennis players, the M.F.H. and his pack of hounds at a north-shore hunt club, a prominent polo quartet, two poolside shots of some shapely society maidens.

  That Chapman’s picture was included was due to the fact that his sloop had piled up the most points in some inter-club regatta, and he was shown with his two-man crew. Now, when he bragged of this in his good-natured way to his companions, one of them, a man whose name Palmer did not get, kidded back, saying that the Bulletin would have been better advised to take its pictures at the Magnolia Yacht Club.

  ‘What’s so special about Al’s little old sloop?’ he demanded.