Top Assignment

by George Harmon Coxe

  Gladys Flynn came in three or four minutes later with Lynch and the precinct sergeant, Palmer’s coat buttoned about her neck, and the gown and négligée trailing. Her face was stiff, white, and tear-stained, but the green eyes looked hot and dry and they deliberately avoided the floor area where the examiner was busy. When Neilson saw how she was dressed, he said she had better go in and get some clothes on.

  ‘We’ll have to ask you some questions, Mrs. Flynn’, he said. ‘And it may take quite a while … What about the car, Sergeant?’ he said when she had disappeared into the hall.

  ‘Bloodstains, all right’, the sergeant said. ‘And what looks like a slug hole in the back of the front seat. I’d say it went in at an angle.’

  ‘Does it figure, Doc?’ Neilson said.

  ‘It figures.’ The doctor stood up, adding that there was nothing more he could do here. ‘Two bullets. One apparently hit a bone, because it’s still in him, and the other passed through the chest under the arm from right to left, front to back. I’ll send the boys in for him if you’ve finished with your pictures.’

  Neilson asked how long a man would live with such wounds, and the doctor said he could not say until there had been a post mortem and probably not then.

  ‘It would depend a lot on the individual’, he said. ‘If I didn’t already know he came up here under his own power I’d say he might have lost consciousness almost immediately. Is it your theory that he was shot in the car?’

  ‘I’d say somebody leaned in the right front window and let him have it’, the sergeant said.

  ‘He probably had the motor running’, the doctor said. ‘Maybe even had the car in gear. When the slugs hit him it would be instinctive for him to get out of there. He might not have known how bad he was hit; probably didn’t.’

  ‘Then he probably didn’t have to drive too far’, Neilson said.

  ‘I wouldn’t even say that.’

  Two white-coated ambulance attendants with a stretcher and a blanket came in shortly after the doctor had gone, and presently there were only the stains and the chalked outline on the rug to indicate what had happened. By the time the photographer had taken two more shots of the immediate area, the sergeant had gone about his precinct duties and Gladys Flynn was ready.

  She wore a dark knitted dress which contrasted sharply with the paleness of her face, which had been washed but bore no make-up. She sat down at one end of the divan at Neilson’s direction and then, under his prodding, told the story that Palmer had already heard.

  For him there was nothing new in the information she offered and so his mind went back, reviewing the things that had happened and the things he knew. For all of this there was no apparent solution, nor even any answer beyond the obvious fact that Leo Flynn had held the key to many things.

  By instinct and training he had been a chiseller, an easymoney man, who pursued his shady activities with no more scruples or compunction than the average man accepted his daily job. He had blackmailed in a small way some of those who had purchased his false birth certificates. He might have done the same thing to the waiters, Henkel and Muller, since it was likely that they had been customers for such certificates in the past and were therefore in some jeopardy if Flynn decided to go to the authorities. It seemed even more likely that he had indeed been on Martin Street the night before and knew, or suspected, who had killed Ethel Kovalik.

  How, then, would his death affect John Destler and Janet Evans?

  He found no answer to this because just then the door opened and Waldo Banton came in accompanied by a detective. Neilson, who had just finished with the woman inspected him with narrowed eyes and waited.

  So did Banton after his dark gaze had made a slow inspection of the room and its occupants. He wore a grey flannel suit that had been recently pressed, and a grey felt, which he removed when he saw the woman. When he was ready he looked back at Neilson, his broad, blue-jowled face impassive, his powerful-looking body at ease.

  ‘Hello, Banton’, Neilson said when he got no further reaction.

  ‘Hello, Lieutenant.’

  ‘You know why you’re here?’

  ‘Your man said there’d been some trouble.’

  ‘Somebody shot Flynn tonight. He died over there on the floor.’ Neilson glanced at the chalk marks and when he continued his voice was deceptively casual. ‘We’ve been doing some checking on people who knew him. When did you see him last?’

  ‘I haven’t seen him all day.’

  ‘Where were you tonight?’

  ‘When tonight?’

  ‘Any time.’

  ‘At the hotel. Either downstairs or in my suite.’

  ‘You’ve got a Cadillac convertible’, Neilson said and gave the licence number. When Banton confirmed this, he said: ‘Did you lend it to anybody tonight?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Could anyone have borrowed it without your knowing it?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’d have to check.’

  ‘So will we,’ Neilson said, ‘because it was seen parked out front here around two o’clock.’

  ‘Who says so?’

  ‘Palmer.’

  Banton took time to inspect Larry before he replied, his tone still unperturbed.

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘You didn’t come up here looking for Flynn?’

  ‘Not me, Lieutenant.’

  Neilson considered the man, and then turned to the woman on the divan, the tightness showing in his mouth but his voice controlled and reflective.

  ‘How long was it, Mrs. Flynn, after your husband collapsed that you heard the knock on the door?’

  Gladys had been watching Banton and now she spoke without shifting her gaze.

  ‘Maybe a minute’, she said. ‘I couldn’t be sure.’

  ‘After the knock someone spoke, right? A man? And what did he say?’

  ‘I think he spoke Leo’s name and said: “Open up!”’

  ‘Like: “Leo! … Open up”, or: “Open up, Leo!”’

  ‘The last one, I think.’

  ‘Would you recognize the voice if you heard it again?’

  ‘I—I don’t know’, she said, and this time looked at Neilson.

  ‘Suppose you try. Give us a little demonstration, will you, Waldo? Just step out there into the hall and close the door. Speak up so we can hear you.’

  Banton’s mouth twisted, but his eyes remained opaque and fathomless. He shrugged and turned towards the door. Seconds later his voice came distinctly through the closed panel.

  ‘What do you think, Mrs. Flynn?’ Neilson said when Banton reappeared.

  ‘I don’t know.’ She looked at Banton again and then away. ‘Maybe if I hadn’t been so scared and panicky—’

  ‘Well, is there any similarity?’ Neilson said, his patience wearing thin.

  ‘I suppose so. I just wouldn’t want to swear to it.’

  Neilson let his breath out in an audible blast. ‘All right’, he said. ‘Let’s all go down to the precinct house and get something down on paper.’

  ‘Now?’ Gladys said.

  ‘Right now … You, too, Palmer’, he said.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  C ONSIDERING THE FACT that it had been nearly four o’clock before Larry Palmer had been able to get to bed, it rather surprised him to find that he felt reasonably refreshed when he woke shortly after nine on Friday morning. The day was overcast at that hour, with a cool breeze sweeping in from the east, and he shivered slightly as he closed the window and then went across to the door to get his copy of the Bulletin from the outer hall.

  Because he lived close in town, his paper came from the last half of the press run, and when he saw the story on Leo Flynn’s murder together with two of the photographs Reece had taken, he knew the Bulletin had been sufficiently impressed with the story to replate. This pleased him until he remembered that it had been luck and circumstance that had given him a part in that story rather than any special ability or ingenuity on his part. He was still o
n a special assignment that might now be concerned with two murders instead of one, but the solution, in spite of his own activities, seemed as remote as ever.

  He did not, however, dwell on this for long. By the time he had finished his usual breakfast, he was ready to start out again, and though he had it in mind to report to the office first, he did so by way of a long detour that took him past the Destler house in Jamaica Plain. When he saw a police car was still parked in the block, he understood why and drove back into town and left his car in the lot next to the loading platforms.

  At that hour there was no one in that part of the city room devoted to the morning editions, but there was a note on his desk that told him to see Kelly, the managing editor, as soon as he came in. Now, walking towards the corner office, he was filled with a mild sense of trepidation lest his assignment be abruptly terminated for some reason as yet unknown.

  Kelly apparently had no such idea in mind. As a matter of fact, his good-morning was genial and he seemed well pleased as he tapped a copy of the Standard and announced that on the Flynn story the Bulletin had scored a clean beat on the city edition.

  ‘Luck’, Palmer said. ‘If I hadn’t lived a block and a half away when Gladys Flynn ran out on the street last night, we wouldn’t have had it.’

  ‘So what do we care how we got it?’ Kelly said. ‘What I like about it is that Mr. Austin’s getting something for his money. He’s got you on this pet assignment of his and you’re the lad that cracks the story.’

  He paused, his gaze good-humoured and reflective. ‘Who knows, maybe that luck’ll keep working for you. Have you got anything else? Do you figure the two killings hook up?’

  Palmer said he thought so, but did not go into detail. He said he had made a lot of notes and wanted to collate them and look for discrepancies and possibly for leads he might have overlooked or forgotten.

  ‘I think it all ties back into the birth-certificate racket’, he said. ‘Ethel Kovalik is murdered. She has two names written down in her pocket book. One was Flynn and now he’s dead. The other’s John Destler.’

  ‘Maybe you’d better keep an eye on him then. If you need help, Mr. Austin might go for a private detective to give you a hand.’

  ‘There’s a police car already watching the house.’

  ‘Well—’ Kelly said and then reached out as the telephone rang. ‘Yes’, he said. ‘What? Oh, just a minute … For you’, he added with obvious surprise.

  ‘Larry,’ Gladys Flynn said without preliminaries, ‘I’ve got to see you. Right away, you understand. Can you come?’

  ‘Sure. Where are you?’

  ‘Home.’

  ‘I’m on my way.’

  The living-room of the Flynn apartment was untidy and stale-smelling when Larry Palmer walked in fifteen minutes later. A scatter rug had been thrown over the chalk marks the police had made, but the room seemed to have been otherwise untouched. Cigarette butts filled the ashtrays, the grey rug was scuffed and dirty, and here and there traces of dusting-powder could be seen.

  Gladys wore a trailing green housecoat and held a halfconsumed highball in her hand as she waved him towards the divan. Her hair had been pinned up without regard to style. She’d touched up her face a bit, but there was a hardness to it now and her green eyes seemed restless and unnaturally bright. When she had taken another sip of her highball she asked if he would have a drink and he said it was a little early for him. She did not urge him, but sat down and took a cigarette from a crumpled package.

  ‘I have to talk to someone,’ she said, when he had given her a light, ‘and you’re elected. You’re working on that Ethel Kovalik thing, aren’t you?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know if there’s any connection between what happened to her and Leo, but there are some things I can tell you, and maybe you’ll know if they’re important.’

  ‘Maybe’, Palmer said.

  ‘At first I felt so numb and beat-up I couldn’t even understand what happened. I still can’t believe Leo’s dead and I didn’t want to think about it, and then I did think. All I want now is to make somebody pay for what he did to Leo.’

  Palmer said he understood how she felt, and she denied this. ‘No, you don’t’, she said bitterly. ‘You think you know the kind of guy he was, and part of what you think is right. But you didn’t know how it was with us. I knew what he was. He had a streak of larceny in him and he was lazy and weak, I guess, but he was good to me and I loved him. I’ve been around ever since I was fifteen and I guess I know what men are like. There was never anything vicious about Leo. He’d get loud and he’d bluff, but that’s all it ever was—bluff.’

  She had more to say along the same line and Palmer let her go, the picture developing until he thought he understood how it was with these two people who were realists in their relationship with each other, who thought very little about the future but were content to enjoy for the present the best that each had to offer. Out of all this came the knowledge that it was Gladys who was the stronger of the two, and now that she was alone, the desire to fight back was both instinctive and determined.

  ‘But that’s not what I asked you to come here for’, she said. ‘There are some things I want to tell you, and one of them is that I think Waldo knocked on the door last night. I was married to him, you know. Years ago out on the West Coast. I got to know his voice pretty well.’

  Remembering what she had told the police, Palmer said: ‘But you won’t swear that he’s the one who called.’

  ‘Did you actually see his car like the lieutenant said?’

  Palmer said no and explained where and when he had seen the grey convertible.

  ‘He followed Leo’, she said with conviction.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why?’ she said with some scorn. ‘You don’t need a diagram, do you? The police say Leo was shot in his car and drove here. So whoever shot him must have seen him drive off. He’d want to stop Leo, wouldn’t he? He’d have to follow him if he could, wouldn’t he? To be sure he finished the job before Leo could talk?’

  ‘But why should Banton want to kill him?’

  ‘I can’t tell you that for sure’, she said. ‘But I know Leo’s been afraid of something the past couple of days. He wouldn’t admit it. He wouldn’t talk, but he was jumpy and edgy, and he usually wasn’t that way at all. At least not with me.’

  ‘But that doesn’t mean—’

  ‘I haven’t finished.’ She swallowed the drink and put the glass down hard, the back of her hand ribbed with tendons. ‘Leo had something on Waldo.’

  Palmer said: ‘Oh’ softly and took pains not to let his quickening interest show. ‘Do you know how Leo got that something?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘I told him.’

  ‘Then it was something that happened when you knew Banton on the West Coast … What was it?’ he asked when she made no reply.

  ‘He was in with a gambling syndicate. He wasn’t important, but he was tough and he wasn’t afraid to tackle anything. I didn’t know it when I married him. All I knew was that he was a good dresser and had plenty of cash in his pocket. I was only a waitress and trying to do better. I’d left home because I couldn’t take it any more, and there were too many kids anyway, so nobody gave a damn. I wasn’t old enough to know the score, but I knew if I married Waldo I’d never have to go back. It wasn’t so bad for a while’, she said.

  ‘His name was Bantonowycz then, with the accent on the second syllable. I think he came from Poland around 1936, when he was twenty, but he didn’t have hardly any accent when I knew him, even though he wasn’t a citizen yet. I thought it was pretty swell, staying in bed mornings and not having to worry about where the next dollar was coming from—until the cops came one day and took him away.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Assault. With a dangerous weapon. Something like that. He finally did nine months, and I’d get a cheque once in a while from this mob he was working for. I didn’t like any part of it.
They scared me, the way they looked at me most of the time with guns under their coats. I told Waldo so when he got out, and he said he’d find another job, and then a few months later they grabbed him again for the same kind of rap. He said it was a frame, but that didn’t help him any. He was convicted and given six months, and by that time I’d had enough. I got a divorce while he was in jail and went up north and got a job in a night club. I didn’t see Waldo again until I came east. I’d heard he was doing well and I hit him for a job—I had the experience then—and he gave it to me. I’ve been there at the hotel ever since.’

  Palmer digested what she said and found it consistent with the things he had heard about Waldo Banton. But he still did not see how all this added up to a motive for murder, and he said so.

  ‘So you knew Banton had a record. You told Leo, and you admit he was a bit of a chiseller—’

  ‘Let’s admit it’, she said. ‘He was a chiseller.’

  ‘And you think that’s motive enough for Banton to want to kill him?’

  ‘If he thought he could get away with it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because Waldo’s in love and wants to get married again—or hadn’t you heard?’

  Then Palmer remembered what Wilson, the photographer, had told him the other night about a Mrs. Hardy who had gone to Reno to get her divorce so she could marry Banton.

  ‘You mean Mrs. Hardy?’ he said.

  ‘That’s the one. Maybe not as society as some, but plenty respectable, with a lot of money and a good name. Suppose she finds out Waldo has a prison record. Maybe she’s not going to be so crazy to marry him. Leo might have been fool enough to try to put the bite on Waldo, and if I know Waldo he wouldn’t stand still for anything like that. He might pay a little something for nuisance value, but anything big he’d handle in his own way.’

  Silently admitting that the theory presented possibilities, Palmer was still reluctant to accept it as convincing. Men had killed before to hide their past, but somehow he felt that a man like Banton, who fought his way up to a position of some respectability, would have handled the matter in another way. Interested in the woman’s story but disappointed in its potential, he sought some other answer to Flynn’s death, and once again his mind came back to the man Ethel Kovalik had been afraid of: Kurt Henkel.