Top Assignment

by George Harmon Coxe

  ‘There’s no mistake’, Palmer said. ‘You bought the certificate from a man named Leo Flynn. I got your name from a list he had, and all I want to find out is—’

  ‘Not me, sir.’ Antoya shook his head, but fear showed in his eyes and his mouth trembled. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. Must be some mistake.’

  ‘All right’, Palmer said, deliberately ignoring that raw fear he had seen. ‘Would you rather talk to the police?’

  That did it. The shoulders sagged and the head bowed. He stood that way for several seconds, and when he finally replied, his voice was husky, as though it took a tremendous effort even to speak.

  ‘I’ve been afraid of it’, he said.

  ‘You don’t have to be afraid of me’, Palmer said. ‘All I want to know is how long you’ve been paying Flynn, and how much.’

  ‘All I wanted was to stay here’, the man said. ‘To have a job so I could raise a family and give the kids an opportunity to grow up as Americans.’

  He glanced over his shoulder, his gaze still haunted, and Palmer said: ‘Let’s go outside a minute.’

  Antoya stepped back into the flat and said something to his wife while Palmer waited on the front steps. After that the story came quickly as the big Negro told how he had come from British Guiana three years previously on a visitor’s visa. What he had seen here was enough to make him want to stay permanently, and a friend had told him where he might buy a birth certificate.

  ‘I paid a hundred and fifty dollars,’ he said, ‘and I thought that was all until Mr. Flynn came round here about a year ago and said I’d have to give him part of my salary or he’d have me sent back. Twenty-five a month’, he said. ‘I’ve been thinking to move to some other city, but somehow I didn’t quite get around to it … Mr. Flynn got killed, didn’t he?’ he said. ‘I read it in the paper. What happens now?’

  For a moment Palmer could think of no reply. He could not forget the list that Henkel and Muller had stolen, but he did not want to worry Antoya about it unnecessarily, even though he realized that if they came here Antoya still could not go to the authorities without revealing his true status.

  But as a reporter, Palmer was interested in facts rather than impressions. His own reaction to the man’s story—that it was both honest and sincere—was not quite enough. He did not think Antoya was a Communist, but that was not the important thing. Such a man, pushed into a corner by continued blackmailing, and with no recourse to the law, had the provocation to kill. The motive was there. Antoya could have killed Leo Flynn—

  ‘I suppose you were in bed last night around two o’clock.’

  ‘No, sir. I was working.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The night shift. For nearly six months now. Midnight to eight.’

  Palmer studied him a moment and then asked for the name of Antoya’s employer. He jotted it down. Thanked him.

  ‘If you’re telling the truth,’ he said, ‘I don’t think anything will happen, Mr. Antoya. You won’t have to worry about me, but if anyone should bother you, if anyone tries to do what Flynn did, play along until you can get in touch with me.’

  ‘I’ll do that, sir. I surely will.’

  A telephone call from a corner drugstore verified the fact that Antoya had indeed been working the previous night, and during the next half-hour Palmer satisfied himself about the next two names on the list.

  He did not have to drive far, for both lived in the South End, and in much the same circumstances. In each small flat there was the sound of children and the smell of dinner cooking at the end of the day’s work. In one case the man was swart and black-haired, his accent carrying a Spanish connotation. A factory worker and, like Antoya, quiet and afraid as he told a similar story of tribute paid. The third man was white and fair-haired, a mechanic he said, from a part of Germany that was now Poland.

  Both had reasonable alibis that were substantiated by others, and when, finally, Palmer came back downtown he went into a tavern for a drink he badly needed. While it was being served he stepped into a telephone booth and consulted the directory. When he was sure only one Alvord Chapman was listed, he had an idea that the last of the four names he had to check might prove the most difficult of all.

  He had been conditioning himself for the interview ever since he stopped at City Hall. What he had learned there surprised and disturbed him, and now, armed with this information, he drove out to a modern building in the Kenmore district and rode to the top-floor apartment. Here a maid answered the door, listened to him with some doubt, and finally asked him to wait in the foyer. A minute later Chapman appeared wearing dress trousers, a cummerbund, and a black tie. For a moment when he heard Palmer’s request a frown grooved the tanned forehead and the blue eyes were doubtful. Finally he said:

  ‘We’re going out to dinner, but—Isabel hasn’t finished dressing … Come in.’

  The sight of the tray and drinks on the coffee table reminded Palmer of the time he had called on Leo Flynn, but there the similarity ended.

  For Chapman was drinking Scotch-on-the-rocks, and the living-room was twice the size of the Flynns’ and the furniture, if no more comfortable-looking, was five times as valuable. Practically every piece was an authentic antique, mostly in maple and cherry—the tables, the ladder-backs, the wing chairs, the knee-hole desk, the long, rather stifflooking sofa. From some other room Isabel Chapman’s voice drifted faintly.

  ‘Who is it, darling?’

  Chapman stepped to the doorway and called back to identify their caller.

  ‘Did you tell him we’re going out?’ she replied.

  ‘Of course, dear. Don’t worry. I’ll be ready when you are.’

  ‘I’m sorry’, Palmer said. ‘I wouldn’t have come if I didn’t think it was important.’

  ‘That’s all right, Larry.’

  ‘How much time do you think I have?’

  ‘If I know anything about it’—Chapman glanced at his strapwatch and grinned—‘about a half-hour. She hasn’t started to put on her war-paint … Oh, will you join me?’

  Palmer could have used another drink, but his sense of propriety prevented him from accepting the hospitality of a man he was about to attack. He said no thanks and Chapman shrugged.

  ‘So what’s this all about?’ he asked.

  Palmer swallowed and took a small breath, and then he told the story of the list, explaining what it consisted of, who had it, what happened to it, and what he had been doing the past couple of hours.

  ‘Your name is on the list’, he said when he finished.

  Chapman put his glass down, the tanned, good-looking face grim now and the eyes cold and suspicious as he touched his blond moustache with the knuckle of his index finger.

  ‘What’s your interpretation?’ he said.

  ‘You bought a birth certificate from Leo Flynn’, Palmer said. ‘It had to come from this city. There was a date opposite your name, apparently the date Alvord Chapman was supposed to have been born—April 10, 1920.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘A quick check of the telephone book shows listings for two hundred and eighteen Chapmans, not counting business firms. Add a few that might not have telephones and you might get two hundred and fifty. Throw out the spinsters, widows, and bachelors, and how many families would you figure might have a child born in any given year?’

  ‘How would I know?’

  ‘I think ten per cent would be generous.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Which would mean roughly twenty-five children born a year named Chapman—at the most. That’s less than one in two weeks, so it would be a coincidence if anyone named Chapman was born on a particular day.’ He hesitated and when Chapman made no reply he said: ‘This afternoon I checked the original records. No birth to a family named Chapman was listed on that date; the nearest one was April 16.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘There isn’t much further I can go’, Palmer said. ‘That birth certificate you have is a phony. I don’t
know yet why you specified that particular date, but I think Leo Flynn was blackmailing you in a small way—he didn’t have the nerve to get too tough—and I think that was why you had to keep him on as a salesman even though he didn’t earn his drawing account. Until today Flynn was the only one who knew your birth certificate was false—Destler, the man who made them out, never did know where they went—and now Flynn’s dead.’

  Chapman’s gaze was stony and his mouth was mean. ‘You want to step into Flynn’s racket, is that it?’

  Palmer flushed and felt the quick thrust of anger. He kept purposely silent until he could control it. By that time a change had come to Chapman. The mouth and its moustache relaxed. He blew out his breath. His voice was suddenly sheepish and his shrug was eloquent.

  ‘I’m sorry’, he said. ‘I shouldn’t have said that. I guess the jolt was a little more than I could take.’ He leaned forward and began to fix another drink. ‘Just what is your pitch? Are you after a story exposing me and the others on that list?’

  ‘You did buy that certificate?’

  ‘How the hell can I deny it?’

  Palmer nodded. He said he wasn’t after a story. He was on a special assignment and he wanted to find out who had killed Ethel Kovalik or Flynn or both.

  ‘You have it pretty nice here’, he said and glanced about the room. ‘You wouldn’t want to lose it.’

  ‘You can say that again.’

  ‘In theory at least, a man might kill to protect himself.’

  ‘As a last resort, yes,’ Chapman said, ‘but only if Flynn’s demands had become impossible. They never were. He had a hundred a week from me—charged to the company and deductible—and he earned about half that. He was satisfied.’

  He chewed on his lip and said abruptly: ‘Look here, Palmer. You say you’re not interested in exposing me. All right, I believe you. I guess I have to believe you. But to make you understand how it was, and why I have that certificate, I suppose I’ll have to tell you the rest of the story … I guess there’s time’, he said and glanced at his watch again. ‘Why did those other people on that list buy certificates?’ he asked.

  ‘Because they were refugees.’

  ‘So am I. And not even Flynn knew that. All he knew was that I was willing to pay for that certificate.’

  Palmer just stared at him, unable in his sudden bewilderment to accept the statement. Then he was listening to the story of a man who had been born in a small German town, who had gone to school in England for two years in his teens and had come home before the war broke out to serve in the German army, fighting as an infantryman until captured and then sitting out the war as a prisoner until he had escaped shortly after the armistice.

  ‘My name is Franz Hoffman,’ he said, ‘and I went home like thousands of others who didn’t know what had happened to their folks. It was only a small town,’ he said, ‘supported by a factory which made precision instruments. When I got there, the factory was flat and the town nothing but rubble from the bombers. I knew my father had died early in the war, and now my mother and sister were gone, both killed in the same raid.’ He looked at Palmer and then at his glass. ‘You have to understand that there was nothing for me there and no use in staying. So I started in the other direction, through the south of France and into Spain.’

  He took some more of his drink, his gaze remote and focused far beyond the confines of the room on something he alone could see.

  ‘There’s no point in boring you with the details. I finally got a job on a broken-down tramp ship that was heading in the right direction. I jumped it at Tampico, and it was easy enough to get across the border as a wet-back. After that it was a cinch because I had the right colouring and with those two years as a schoolboy in England the language came easy.’

  He said: ‘I worked on ranches and farms—wherever I could without having to show a social-security card. Finally I got the break I’d been waiting for. I was working with a gang in Colorado. I had a bunkmate named Alvord Chapman, about my age, been in the army, a drifter with no family like me. We were coming back from the fields, a bunch of us in a truck, when it ran off the road. Chapman was killed. I went through his things because I was his bunkmate, and there was this social-security card in his name … That’s how I got to be Alvord Chapman.’

  The simply-told story was believable and Palmer knew such things could happen. There was only one thing that still bothered him and he started to say so.

  ‘But why did you have to—’

  ‘I’ll tell you.’ Chapman glanced at his watch and spoke more quickly. ‘With the social-security card I was able to get factory work. In Detroit first. I saved money, and always liked boats—I did some sailing in England—so I hung around the waterfront weekends, taking a line here and doing an odd job there. Then one summer I made friends with this businessman who had a forty-eight-foot cruiser. He wanted it taken to Florida that autumn. He had a captain, but he needed another hand, so I grabbed the chance.’

  He gestured with his glass and now his grin came. ‘Once I got to Florida, I was in business. I worked in boatyards and marinas. I got a job as captain on this and that boat and finally I landed a berth on a deep-water ketch. We took it to the Bahamas and Cuba, and finally the owner wanted to bring it back to Connecticut, partly up the Inland Waterway and partly outside. He was loaded anyway and he had a party of six aboard and Isabel was one of them.’

  He said: ‘She had money, social position, and too much time on her hands. She’d been married twice, but she was restless and I guess she needed somebody like me to be the prince consort. Anyway, that’s how it happened, and we’re all set to be married when she announces we have to go to Europe for our honeymoon.’

  ‘Oh’, said Palmer. ‘So that’s how it was.’

  ‘Sure. When Isabel wants something, she has to have it. It was no good taking a cruise or going to California or some place. It has to be Europe. To get there I need a passport, and to get that I have to have a birth certificate. For that my social-security card wasn’t good enough. Luckily I found out where I could buy one, and the date I put down had to be the one on the social-security card.’

  Having heard the story, Palmer did not know what to say next. He was still interested in murder rather than in Chapman’s private life and he said so. The motive was still there.

  ‘I agree’, Chapman said. ‘Isabel’s got the money—all I’ve got is that agency and it’s just now getting into the black—and in a lot of things she’s the boss. A prince consort has a job to do and I guess she thinks I’m doing okay.’ He grinned again. ‘I’m getting to be the well-known sportsman—except to those who think I’m a no-good playboy.’

  All this Palmer believed. Chapman had the sort of offhand manner and superficial good looks that would appeal to many women, and he knew how best to direct his energies. Palmer had an idea that this was not a man who would give you the shirt off his back or be too concerned about the rights of others, but at least he made no attempt to pretend otherwise.

  ‘Either way,’ Palmer said, ‘it’s the sort of thing you like.’

  ‘You know I like it. It’s something I’d fight to keep. If Leo had been crowding me, I might have tried to find some way to keep him off my neck. I say he wasn’t, but that doesn’t mean you believe me. So what happens now?’

  To Palmer this was now a familiar question and he recalled what he had said to Waldo Banton. Banton, and Chapman with his sportsman’s life, the three working-men from the South End—all with the same problem of living in some small fear of what Leo Flynn had known.

  Isabel Chapman’s voice, coming faintly but peremptorily from some inner room, terminated the thought.

  ‘Al! Are you ready?’

  ‘Coming, dear.’

  Chapman stood up. ‘I didn’t hear any answer,’ he said, ‘but I had a thought. If I killed Leo to protect myself, I’d have to kill you now, wouldn’t I?’

  Palmer tipped his head as he considered the question and then he nodded.
>
  ‘I guess you would.’

  ‘And if I didn’t kill him, you’ve got nothing to worry about.’

  ‘Neither have you.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ Chapman put his hand inside Palmer’s arm as they started for the door. ‘I’d like to ask just one favour’, he said. ‘If it ever happens that you have to repeat what I’ve told you, let me know first. I’d like to have time to tell Isabel myself. I’d like that much of a break.’

  Palmer said Chapman would get that break. He said he was sorry he had to crowd the truth out of him, but since he had a job to do he could think of no other way.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  FOR LARRY PALMER, the evening meal was again a solitary affair, and, as before, he made additional notes as he sipped his after-dinner coffee. By now he was convinced that he had been right in promising secrecy to those he had interviewed. For he remembered what O’Neil had said about holding back a story when circumstances justified such a step, and he knew the police had locked files on men who had slipped once and paid the penalty. Here their secrets were safe from prying eyes and potential blackmailers, enabling them to become once again respected members of society.

  Such thoughts of the police took him to Headquarters when he had paid his bill, and he found Lieutenant Neilson looking over some reports in his office. Neilson welcomed him with a grunt and a glance of annoyance. When he turned back to his papers, Palmer sat down unasked and lit a cigarette. After a minute or so of silent stalemate Neilson grunted again and threw down his pencil.

  ‘Okay’, he said. ‘It’s the policy of the department these days to co-operate with the press. What’s on your mind?’

  ‘Just checking to see if there has been any progress’, Palmer said amiably.

  ‘On what?’

  ‘Ethel Kovalik, and Leo Flynn.’

  Neilson’s expression suggested that it hurt him to say anything at all, but he seemed to take some satisfaction in saying that so far they had run up against a blank wall on the Kovalik murder.

  ‘You figure there’s a connection on the two, hunh?’