“Why hello, Sergeant,” he said. “Come on in.”
I walked into the room and shut the door behind me.
“Drink?” he asked. “I have a little bourbon and I can phone for ice.”
“No thanks,” I said. “I’m on duty.”
“Oh? You mean this is an official visit?”
“Uh-huh. The Katherine Desmond murder. You knew she was dead, of course.”
He looked puzzled. “Katherine Desmond? I’ve never even heard the name.”
“Better known to you as Kitty,” I said. “The call girl who rolled you the night before last.”
His face assumed an expression of shock. “She’s dead?”
“It’s been in the papers and on the air for two days.”
“I haven’t been reading local papers or listening to news reports,” he told me. “I’ve been busy with the convention.”
“Not that busy,” I said. “You missed at least one of the meetings.”
He frowned. “What do you mean by that?”
“My partner and I stopped by here at 11:30 A.M. yesterday to return your money. There was a meeting in the Rose Room from 10:30 to 11:30, but you weren’t at it. You also weren’t in the bar or in your room.”
He flushed slightly. “I don’t know what you’re getting at, Sergeant, but I’m beginning to resent your tone.”
“You’re going to like it less as time goes on,” I informed him. “How did it happen? Did you spot her crossing the lobby just as you were heading for the meeting?”
“How did what happen?”
“She was coming from a second date, in case you wondered,” I said. “She got home from yours at two A.M. and phoned in that she was available again. Her procurer sent her right back to the Leland, to a different room. This date lasted all night, because she didn’t get home until well after eleven A.M. She must have walked across the lobby just about the time you fellows were gathering for your meeting.”
He said in an angry tone, “Would it interest you to know you’re not making the slightest sense?”
“You understand everything I’m saying,” I assured him. “Naturally you couldn’t accost her in the lobby and risk a scene in front of your colleagues. So you followed her home. It was you her apartment-mate heard quietly descending the stairs just as she left.”
He merely looked at me with his lips clamped into a straight line and his nostrils flared.
“It was probably lucky for Doll the phone rang just as she got to the front door. If she hadn’t paused to see if it was for her, she probably would have run smack into you. And in your mood I suppose it wouldn’t have bothered you to knock off one extra woman. As it was, you had time to retreat down the steps and hide beneath the stairs.”
He continued to remain silent.
“This was your mistake,” I said, pulling the sympathy card from my pocket. “You had already recovered the money, because you took it from her bag after you strangled her. When I phoned you at two P.M. and you learned that I’d collected the five hundred too, it bothered you. I suppose that essentially you’re an honest man, even though you are a killer. So you went to a bank, got a five-hundred-dollar bill and mailed it along with this card to Kitty’s apartment-mate. The murder hadn’t even been reported on the air at that time, so I assume you got the girls’ names from their lobby mailbox. And of course you knew the address.”
All the time I was speaking, Harold Warner’s gaze remained fixed on the card in my hand. He finally found his tongue. “You’re throwing some awfully wild accusations, Sergeant,” he said thickly. “You’d better be able to back them up. I happen to be one of the biggest men in Houston.”
“We’ll back them up,” I told him. “You amateurs always leave a trail a mile wide behind you. And you were too drunk to be thinking clearly. You were drunker than a skunk when I talked to you on the phone. I suppose you needed a few fast ones to settle your nerves after strangling a woman.”
He said in a tight voice, “You haven’t produced one shred of evidence yet.”
“I’m getting to it. You thought that printing the address and the message on the sympathy card would disguise your hand, but it didn’t fool our handwriting expert.” Producing a slip of paper from my pocket, I threw in a whopping lie. “This is the receipt you gave me when I turned over the money. I just came from the office of Al Gould, our handwriting man. He says you printed the message on that card and he won’t have a bit of trouble proving it in court.”
That jolted him. His face turned pale.
I said, “You probably bought the sympathy card right here in the hotel drug store. The clerk will recall who bought it. And how many people do you think walk into banks and ask for five-hundred-dollar bills? You probably were the only guy in town who bought one from any bank yesterday. We’ll find the bank and the teller won’t have any difficulty remembering you. He’s bound to recall a customer who came up with a request like that.”
He blinked and licked his lips, his gaze shifting from the sympathy card to the receipt. Since they seemed to bother him, I put them back in my pocket.
“Listen, Sergeant,” he said in a suddenly earnest voice. “Couldn’t we adjust this matter in some way?”
“What way did you have in mind?”
“Well, a policeman’s salary can’t be very big. And she was only a whore. A dishonest one at that.”
I smiled at him. “It was the dishonesty that threw you, was it? You hated the idea of her making you a sucker. You wouldn’t have reported it otherwise. Most guys would have been too embarrassed and would just have taken the loss. But you weren’t going to let any call girl make a sucker out of you. You were sore.”
“Can you blame me?” he asked. “I wasn’t going to let some two-bit tramp make a fool of me.”
“You certainly didn’t,” I agreed. “But did you have to beat hell out of her and then kill her?”
His face darkened. “She laughed at me. When I demanded my money back, she told me to go to hell. Then she laughed at me. A lousy little tramp like that.”
“Terrible,” I said. “And you one of the biggest men in Houston. Let’s go.”
“Go? I was just going to write you a check. Say a couple of thousand dollars?”
“Save it for your defense,” I said. “You’ll need it. Stick out your wrists.”
I took out my handcuffs and he glared at them. His voice climbed high with sudden rage. “You’re not taking me anywhere! I’ll kill you first!”
He took a step toward me and lashed out with a right that caught me flush on the chin. It was a pretty hard blow, but I have a pretty hard jaw. It rocked me a little, but I didn’t see stars.
Dropping the handcuffs, I sank a left into his belly, then floored him with a right to the jaw. He lay on his back staring up at me dazedly.
“You’d better stick to fighting girls,” I growled at him. “You’re out of your class with men.”
I put the cuffs on him while he was still lying there.
After so little sleep the night before, I planned to hit the bed early. At a quarter of ten I had just stepped from my second shower that day and was putting on my pajamas when the phone rang. It was Jolly.
“I looked up your number in the book,” she said. “Do you mind?”
“Of course not. How are you?”
“Fine. I just finished listening to the nine-thirty news. I called to congratulate you on catching Kitty’s murderer.”
“Thanks.”
“It was on about Artie and Nick Bartkowiak too. That was the first I’d heard about that, and it kind of shook me up. Wasn’t it terrible the way Artie killed Nick and then got killed himself?”
“It’s two less racketeers in the world.”
She didn’t exactly laugh, but she made a little noise signifying amused agreement. “That’s one point of view, I suppose. So Little Artie didn’t kill Kitty after all. How’d you get onto that man?”
“Luck mostly.”
“You’re being m
odest. Artie’s death lets me off the hook, Matt.”
“How’s that?”
“I told you about the lingerie shop I’ve had my eye on. Artie wouldn’t let me quit the racket, but there’s nobody to stop me now. Somebody will eventually take over in his place, of course, but it will take some time to reorganize, and this seems a good time to bow out.”
“It probably is,” I agreed.
“Are you glad?”
“Of course. That’s a funny question to ask.”
“Well, I didn’t know whether you’d care one way or the other.”
“I do,” I assured her. “I think it’s a wise move.”
She was silent for a minute, Then she asked tentatively, “Will you phone me sometime, now that I’m reformed?”
“Sure, if you’d like.”
“You never would have, if I had stayed in the racket, would you?”
“Probably not,” I said honestly.
“But now it can be different?” she asked in a wistful voice.
“A lot different. You’ll be a respectable businesswoman.”
She was silent again. Presently she said, “Would you like to see me sometime?”
“I’d like it very much.”
“I’m going to be home tonight. Why don’t you drop over?”
I thought of my bed and how tired I was. Then I thought of Jolly’s figure. “Um,” I said. “I might just do that.”
“Right now?”
“I have to dress. I just put my pajamas on. Soon as I can get there.”
“I have to take a shower,” she said. “I may still be in it when you get here. I’ll leave the latch off the door so you can walk right in. Apartment 2-C.”
“Okay.”
“If you hurry, you can wash my back,” she said softly, and hung up.
I hurried.
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Tweak the Devil’s Nose
1
There are two reasons I like El Patio Club as an occasional dining spot. It serves the finest food within a fifty-mile radius, and its proprietress is Fausta Moreni.
It is also the last place in the world you would expect to witness a murder, though this was not a factor in my preference when I passed up three alternate dining places I like in favor of El Patio on the July evening Walter Lancaster was assassinated.
Actually it had been the scene of a murder once before, but that was back in its days as a gambling casino, when its atmosphere was more conducive to homicide. Since Fausta had taken it over, eliminated the gaming tables and built it a reputation based on food, it had become the quietest supper club in town.
El Patio was originally named, I imagine, by someone who liked the sound of the words but knew no Spanish, for there is nothing within sight of it even faintly resembling a courtyard. It is a huge gray stone building of two stories, from the outside resembling a prison. But inside it is magnificent. Three enormous rooms run nearly the width of the building from front to rear. As you enter through the heavy bronze double doors (a holdover from its casino days when the place sometimes had to be barricaded against invading cops) you find yourself in a cocktail lounge so glittering you automatically brace yourself to pay double the normal rate for drinks.
To the left of the cocktail lounge an archway leads to the ballroom, where a five-dollar cover charge gets you a table, authorizes you to watch a floor show so sedate it would pass the scrutiny of a Methodist convention, and permits you to dance on a floor actually large enough to accommodate the usual crowd. It is the only night club I have ever been in which offers the twin innovations of entertainment, without smutty jokes and naked women, and sufficient room to dance.
To the right a similar archway leads to the dining room, billed by Fausta as “The Dining Place of Kings” ever since a deposed monarch stopped for a sandwich when he was motoring through the city a few years back. It is the dining room which brings Fausta her fortune. Not that she loses on either of the other rooms, for both draw as well as can be expected in a town which does not particularly go for night-club life. But seven nights a week the dining room is packed to the walls.
Yet oddly enough the club is out of the way and inconvenient to reach. Isolated in the center of a three-acre patch of ground at the extreme south edge of town, and on a secondary highway, you would hardly expect it to draw the crowds it does, for though its location was logical for a gambling casino, it is about as poor as can be imagined for a night club. But in this case the old adage about a better mousetrap worked out. Customers—not the fickle night-club crowd which makes new clubs boom the first month and then suddenly deserts for a new attraction, but a solid clientele which sticks year after year—book reservations weeks in advance and come from as far as fifty miles away to keep them.
I had no reservation, however, for when you start out for dinner as late as I did this particular night, you are not likely to have trouble finding a table anywhere. It was just nine thirty when I drove between the two stone pillars marking the entrance to El Patio’s drive. The drive, which runs past the club’s front entrance, then angles left alongside the building to a parking lot at the rear, separates El Patio from a heavily treed parklike area some hundred yards square. This area offered excellent cover to the assassin.
Had the taxi driver who pulled into the drive immediately ahead of me behaved as drivers familiar with the place do, possibly I would not have been involved in the murder at all, but apparently he was a new driver and did not know procedure. Instead of continuing back to the lot, turning around and returning to the entrance with his nose pointed toward the highway, he slammed on his brakes in front of the steps leading up to the bronze doors, jumped out and left his cab in the center of the drive, blocking traffic both ways.
Behind him I slammed on my own brakes just in time to avoid collision, then accidentally let my toe slip off the clutch, which caused the car to jolt forward and gently clang bumpers. This happened because I operate both foot pedals with my left foot, my right being an intricate contrivance of cork and aluminum below the knee.
Shortly after the war the Veterans Administration gave me a specially built Olds in return for the leg I left overseas, a sedan with the foot brake on the left and with an attachment which caused the clutch to disengage when the brake pedal was pushed halfway down. But when I finally traded it in on a 1951 Plymouth, I could not afford the special attachments. Consequently when I brake, I turn my left foot sidewise, hitting the brake with my heel and the clutch with my toe. I have gotten pretty good at it, but this time I slipped.
The cabbie, a cocky bantamweight with a strut like a Prussian sergeant major’s, stopped halfway up the steps, ran down again and anxiously stared at his undamaged bumper.
Then he inquired belligerently, “Whyn’t you learn how to drive?”
“Whyn’t you learn how to park?” I countered, mimicking his tone. “Pick either side of the drive you want and I’ll take the other.”
“Yeah?” he asked. “I gotta customer, Bud. I’ll move when I finish loading.”
As he started up the steps again, I got out of my car, swung open the driver’s door of the taxi and climbed in. The motor was running, and I had pulled the cab forward and to the right so that it was flush against the shrubbery edging the driveway before the cabbie realized what was happening.
“Hey!” he yelled, starting down again.
By the time he reached me I was out of the cab and had slammed the door. Near the left rear fender he stopped me by planting both hands on hips and halting directly in my path. He was only about five feet six and weighed possibly ninety-nine pounds, but his chin was thrust out and his expression said he could handle any two guys my size.
Grinning down at him, I tried to step around, but he moved his body to block me again. At the top of the steps I was conscious of the uniformed doorman watching this maneuvering with interest, and I began to grow a little irked. I suspected if I tried to push the bantam taxi driver aside, he would swing
on me, and I had no desire to fight a man half my size. At the same time I do not enjoy being shoved around even by midgets.
I was saved from a decision by the big bronze doors opening and a man in white Palm Beach stepping out. Immediately the doorman clapped his hands and called, “Taxi for Mr. Lancaster!”
As the man descended the steps the little cabbie said darkly, “I’ll see you again, Buster,” and moved to open the rear door of the taxi.
I grinned at him again, took a step toward my own car just as the white-suited man passed between me and the cabbie, then half turned to glance back at the man as something familiar about his appearance struck me.
At that moment a gun roared so close to my ear it started bells ringing in my head.
The taxi driver, whose back had been turned while he opened the door, twisted around to gape at his customer. All three of us—the doorman, the taxi driver and I—stood transfixed as the man in white slowly spun around and collapsed on his face. The cabbie recovered first. He gave me a horrified look and dived in front of his cab out of the line of fire.
It did not occur to me at the moment that he thought I had fired the shot at him, missed and hit his customer.
As the little cabbie tried to dig a hole in the gravel drive, I swung toward the bush from which the shot had come. It was a dark night, I was unarmed and I had no intention of trying to grapple with the gunman, so I made no attempt to rush after him. But I did listen, and I could hear the rustle of fallen leaves as someone moved hastily toward the highway.
Swiftly I ran toward my car, leaped in and threw it in reverse. My intention was to back the approximately fifty yards to the drive entrance, swing my lights along the edge of the parklike area where it touched the highway, and attempt to get a glimpse of the gunman when he reached the road. But I was foiled by another car swinging into the drive just before I reached the stone pillars.
Braking, I attempted to honk it out of the way, but the driver failed to get the point and simply sat there. Finally I jumped out, shouted, “Emergency! Back out and let me pass!”
Anything But Saintly Page 16