Anything But Saintly

by Richard Deming

  The old man’s grin widened. “Sure you did. You asked if either one had left. But then we got to talking about beer and whisky, and when we finally got back on the subject, you only asked about Jake. So I told you about Jake.”

  “Okay, now I’m asking about Artie. Did he leave the place too?”

  Dinny pursed his lips. “That’s an awfully thirsty question.”

  “We’re not going to play that game again,” I said definitely. “We’re investigating a murder. I want a straight answer.”

  His eyebrows jumped upward. “A murder? Artie bump somebody?”

  “Just come up with the answer.”

  He pursed his lips again, then shrugged. “I guess a drink wouldn’t mean nothing anyhow. I can have all I want long as I’m behind the bar. Yeah, Artie had me take over the bar and left right after Jake did.”

  Bingo, I thought. There went Little Artie’s alibi. “How long was he gone?”

  Dinny ruminated, finally said, “Half-hour, about. Come back about one-thirty or a few minutes after.”

  Ten minutes to Kitty’s apartment, ten minutes’ drive back. That left ten minutes to commit murder. I said, “He mention where he was going?”

  “Sure. To the bank.”

  “Where’s he bank?”

  The old man shrugged. “You got me.” Then his face lit with inspiration and he turned to punch open the cash register. “He put the deposit slip in here.”

  Lifting the coin receptacle, he rummaged beneath it and triumphantly brought out a duplicate deposit slip. “Manufacturers’ Trust,” he announced.

  “Let me see that,” I said.

  He passed the slip over. It was dated the previous day and listed a deposit of seven hundred and sixty-two dollars in cash, plus a number of checks.

  Max Cole came back in at that moment. He said, “What’s up?”

  I showed him the slip. “Artie left here yesterday afternoon right after Jake did and was gone about a half hour. But it seems he still has an alibi. He made a bank deposit at Manufacturers’ Trust.”

  Cole examined the slip. “Manufacturers’ Trust. That’s at Benton and Coyle, right en route to the Desmond girl’s apartment. He could have made both in a half-hour.”

  Anderson said dubiously, “He’d have to cut it pretty fine. It’d take the teller at least ten minutes to count up that much money. And usually you have to wait in line for a while.”

  “We can settle that easily enough,” I said. “Let’s take a run over to the bank.” I handed the deposit slip back to the old man. “Does Artie always bank on Thursday, Dinny?”

  Dinny scratched his head. “No, now that you mention it. Usually he goes on Friday. Thursday’s payday at most of the plants, and he cashes lots of checks Thursday night. So he’s always short of cash on Friday.”

  Anderson and I exchanged glances. “Sounds like an excuse to get out of the place, doesn’t it?” the lieutenant said.

  “Uh-huh. Let’s see what they say at the bank.”

  At the Manufacturers’ Trust Company we were referred to an assistant vice president named Norman Tyson. When we had explained what we wanted, Tyson went off to the bookkeeping department to find out which teller had taken Little Artie’s deposit the previous day.

  When he came back, he said, “Halliday at window four. I’ll take you over to explain what you want.” Then he cleared his throat and said, “Ah—gentlemen, will it be necessary for all three of you to question him? Couldn’t two of you wait here at my desk?”

  Not wanting to disturb the decorum of the bank, we agreed to this. Cole and I waited as Harry Anderson went along with Tyson to be introduced to the teller at window four.

  Max Cole glanced at a wall clock, took out a small bottle and popped a couple of pills in his mouth.

  “How can you take pills without water?” I asked.

  “If you had to take as much medicine as I do, you’d learn,” he said with a martyr-like satisfaction. “You can’t always get at water when a dose is due.”

  I was on the verge of asking what these particular pills were for, but decided against it. I was afraid it would bring on a clinical description of whatever disease they were designed to combat.

  Tyson and the lieutenant came back. Anderson said, “Sounds good. The teller says Artie came in a few minutes after one. There was no one waiting in line, so he got right to the window. He had the deposit slip, money and checks all in a night-deposit bag. He told the teller he had a couple of errands to perform, and would be back for the slip later. So he didn’t have any wait at all. The teller says he came back and picked up the slip around one-thirty.”

  Max Cole said, “There goes his second alibi.”

  Thanking Norman Tyson for his time, we left the bank.

  Back in the F car, Anderson said, “Looks like Artie is our boy, huh? He set up one alibi, then covered with another in case the first fell down.”

  “Well, there’s one other possibility,” I said slowly.

  “What?”

  “That his trip to the bank was legitimate, and that he just set up the other alibi to avoid trouble after Jake Stark told him Kitty was dead.”

  “Yeah,” Cole put in. “Except that old man says he normally banks on Friday.”

  “How about running me back to headquarters?” I suggested. “There isn’t anything else we can do until Little Artie and Nick Bartkowiak turn up.”

  At headquarters we separated in the hallway where the Homicide squadroom is one way and the Vice squadroom the other.

  Harry Anderson said, “Thanks for the assist, Matt. You were a big help.”

  “Don’t mention it,” I said. “Don’t take any wooden pills, Max.”

  “If you had to pay my medicine bill, you wouldn’t joke,” Max Cole said gloomily.

  By the time I got out of Captain Spangler’s office after posting him on developments, it was nearly noon. I decided that it was time to phone Carl Lincoln and give him the news that he had to come back to work that afternoon.

  When I called him at home, Carl said he was just having breakfast.

  “It must be nice to be a drone,” I told him. “I got four hours sleep and logged in at eight-thirty this morning.”

  “You did? What in the devil for?”

  I told him what had happened after we separated last night, and brought him up to date on developments that morning.

  Carl said, “Whew! The things that happen while I’m quietly sleeping.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “But now your vacation is over. You can check in at one P.M.”

  “Today?” he objected. “After working so late last night?”

  “You only put in four or five hours last night, and you were off in the afternoon.”

  “Split shift,” he said. “Some deal. What’s the schedule for this afternoon?”

  “I thought we’d work the factory district for streetwalkers.”

  “Oh joy,” he said sadly. “See you at one.”

  CHAPTER 23

  Carl and I spent the early part of the afternoon doing what we were paid to do for a change—looking for streetwalkers. Afternoon may seem a peculiar time to hunt for them, but it isn’t. Unlike call girls, who ply their trade mostly by night, streetwalkers seem to work twenty-four hours a day. Of course they actually don’t; it’s different girls working the same district at different hours which creates the impression they’re on around-the-clock duty.

  There are certain sections of town where normally you can find streetwalkers at any time of the day or night. Their technique varies according to the hour, but you can find them if you know where to look. After nightfall they merely stroll along the streets carrying the insignia of their trade, the shoulder-strap bag, and awaiting the beep of car horns. During the day, they are more prone to move from bar to bar, merely glancing in and walking on if there are no male customers, entering and looking over the crop if there are. If the prospects don’t seem very promising, they immediately walk out again; if business is likely, they sit at t
he bar and sip a beer, awaiting the opportunity to approach the man they have their eye on when the barkeep isn’t looking.

  We headed for the factory district, parked our F car and moved in different directions to make a tour of the bars which tolerated hustlers. The weather was just as hot and gritty as the previous day, and it seemed that our excuse for not working yesterday morning had been valid. There were a lot of people in the bars, quite a number of them women. But if any of them were hustlers, they were taking the afternoon off, for neither of us got a single approach. At two-thirty we met back at the car, gave up and returned to headquarters.

  I left Carl in the Vice squadroom and went over to Homicide to find out if there had been any result as yet from the all-points bulletin we had put out on Little Artie and Nick Bartkowiak. I met Lieutenant Harry Anderson and Max Cole hurrying out the door.

  “What’s up?” I inquired.

  They paused and Anderson said, “A squeal just came in that Nick Bartkowiak is back at the Falcon Amusement Company. We’re just going over to look at him.”

  “I’ll go along,” I said. Then the oddness of his words struck me. “What do you mean, look at him?”

  “He was deposited on the front steps,” Anderson said. “In good old prohibition-day gangland style. He’s full of bullets.”

  “I’ll be damned!” I breathed. “Little Artie?”

  “Presumably,” Anderson said. “No one witnessed the deposit. Seems Biffy Jagoda stepped out for a breath of air and stumbled over the body.”

  Max Cole said, “Little Artie must have gone nuts to pull a stunt like that in this town.”

  Obviously the little man had. He must have been insane with rage to do anything so arrogantly reminiscent of the 1920’s gang-warfare days. In St. Cecilia you simply didn’t openly execute racket rivals any more and dare the authorities to do something about it. Because what the authorities did, no matter who you were, was arrange to have you strapped in an electric chair.

  Anderson said, “If you’re coming along, let’s get moving.”

  “I guess I’ll skip it,” I decided. “I wanted to put the arm on Nick personally, but I’m not much interested in viewing his body. Any word at all on Little Artie’s whereabouts yet?”

  Anderson shook his head. “The tavern’s staked out, in case he shows there. Incidentally, I told communications to cut the Vice hot-shot speaker in on the circuit if any word comes in, so you’ll know about it as soon as we do. Let’s roll, Max.”

  They hurried on down the hall in the direction of the elevator. I returned to the Vice squadroom, told Carl what had happened, then went in and reported the news to the captain.

  Spangler sounded relieved to hear that Nick Bartkowiak was dead. I suspect he had had some second thoughts about his vow to push for the man’s conviction on conspiracy charges, and while he probably would have followed up, it simplified matters that the whole thing was now of merely academic interest.

  He said, “Well, now that it’s all over, I guess you can confine yourself to vice-squad duty.”

  “We’re still not sure that Little Artie killed Katherine Desmond,” I said. “I’d kind of like to continue working with Homicide until that case is cleared up.”

  The captain frowned at me. “They have competent people over there, Rudowski. Bartkowiak’s apprehension and conviction was a legitimate interest of this division because he tried to have you killed. But I can’t see that either this dead girl or Little Artie are any of our concern.”

  “If Artie killed her, I was indirectly responsible, Chief. I’d like to follow it.”

  “Then do it on your own time,” he said shortly. “After your regular hours.”

  I decided if he was going to be so G.I., I’d get technical too.

  I said, “I really didn’t have to come in this morning, so I figure I have some time coming. Things are dead anyway. We spent an hour and a half in the factory district this afternoon without turning up a single hustler. All Carl and I are doing is sitting around on standby. Suppose I devote this afternoon to the case?”

  “I suppose that would be all right,” he said a trifle testily. “But in case of emergency, you’d better let Lincoln know where to reach you in a hurry.”

  Back in the squadroom I sat down to brood for a while. It seemed more and more likely that Little Artie Nowak had killed the Desmond girl, particularly since he had just flamboyantly demonstrated that he wasn’t averse to murder and that he possessed an extremely violent temper. He must have been in an insane rage to pull the Bartkowiak kill in the exhibitionistic manner that he had. His temperament certainly matched that of Kitty Desmond’s killer, because only a man in violent rage could have beaten the girl so unmercifully before strangling her to death.

  The trouble was that we didn’t actually know. It was only a strong probability. And I didn’t feel like simply sitting around waiting for the hot-shot speaker to announce that Artie had been apprehended.

  Rousing myself from my reverie, I said to Carl, “I’m going out for a while.”

  “Where?” he asked.

  “I’ll be at 125 Ormond Place, apartment 2-B.”

  He frowned at me. “Isn’t that where the Desmond girl was killed?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Are you still stewing about that? I thought you had it all figured out that Little Artie killed her.”

  “There are still a couple of loose ends, and we’re only sitting anyway. You can phone me if anything comes up.”

  “What’s the number?”

  I looked in the book under both Desmond and Fenner, but no number was listed. I might have known the girls wouldn’t have had a listed number, call girls seldom do. I called the telephone company, told who I was and said I needed the number on police business. The company won’t give out an unlisted number to just anybody who calls in. They won’t even give it to the phone subscriber, if he happens to forget his own number and is trying to call home. But they will give it to the police on official business. Even then they make sure it’s not just somebody trying to pull a fast one, though. The woman I talked to said it would take a few minutes to look up, and she would call me back. That was to make certain I wasn’t just some joker pretending to be a cop.

  She called back five minutes later and gave me the number. Writing it on a slip of paper, I tossed it to Carl.

  “Have fun,” he told me.

  Doll Fenner answered the door wearing white shorts, a white halter and the same pointed gold bedroom slippers she had worn the night before. She had looked pretty good in lounging pajamas, but in this outfit she was a knockout. She didn’t have Jolly’s abundance of bosom, being a trifle on the small side, but the pajamas had concealed her legs, which was a crime against aesthetics. They were long and slim and milk-white and perfectly tapered, and had a cute little dimple in each knee.

  She didn’t look at all surprised to see me. She gave me an odd little half-smile and said, “Hello, Matt. I had an idea you’d be back alone.”

  Stepping aside to let me enter, she closed the door and slipped on the spring lock. I eyed the lock thoughtfully.

  “Sit down over there,” she said, pointing to the sofa. “Want a drink?”

  “No thanks,” I said politely. “I’m not a daytime drinker.” I sat on the sofa.

  She curled herself up next to me. She seemed to have made a rapid recovery from her grief over her apartment-mate’s death, for her expression was vivacious and her eyes were sparkling.

  “I’ll bet a nickel Jolly doesn’t know where you are,” she said.

  “No, she doesn’t,” I said truthfully.

  She looked at me with a conspiratorial grin on her face. “You’re kind of a rat, aren’t you?”

  “I am?”

  “If you were my man and I caught you making secret visits to another woman, I’d clobber you right between the horns.”

  It hadn’t occurred to me that she would interpret my visit as an attempt to do a little cheating on Jolly. It should have, beca
use I knew the average pimp felt no sense of loyalty to the woman who kept him. Pimps are completely parasitic, offering little in return for their keep except a rather unstable companionship and an occasional beating. It would seem quite natural to Doll for Jolly’s kept man to make a pass at her. I got the impression that it tickled her ego.

  “I’m not your man,” I pointed out.

  “I guess you’re not entirely Jolly’s either, or you wouldn’t be here.”

  “Well, a guy gets tired of the same woman all the time,” I said in an attempt to stay in character.

  She gave me an intimate smile. “I’ll bet you wouldn’t get tired of me.”

  I decided to cut this off before it got out of hand. “You’re too new in the business. You can’t be making as much money as Jolly. I’m used to living in style.”

  CHAPTER 24

  I thought this callous remark would offend her enough to change the subject, but I had forgotten the peculiar inverted psychology of the average call girl. They seem to prefer men who are out-and-out leeches.

  “I’ll be bringing in twice as much as Jolly, once I get going,” she said. “I’ve only been in the racket a couple of weeks, so I haven’t had time to build up a repeat business. Jolly has a list of clients who ask for her personally when they call in. Mine will build up. You watch. Artie’s promised to throw a lot of new business my way.”

  She was in for a disappointment there, because Little Artie wasn’t going to be throwing business anyone’s way. He was going to be too busy trying to keep himself out of the electric chair. I could hardly tell her this, though, for there hadn’t as yet been enough time for Nick Bartkowiak’s murder to be announced over the air, and she would have wondered how I knew of Artie’s troubles.

  I said, “When you can afford to buy Jaguars, let me know.”

  “Gee, you’re a rat,” she said admiringly. “Would you really leave Jolly for a better offer?”

  I shrugged. “A guy would be crazy to turn down an opportunity to improve himself.”