“How’d you figure that out?” Sheffield asked without seeming to be much interested.
“Well, you’ve been here every night for the past two weeks. Maybe that had something to do with it.”
“Smart fella. ’Orace,” he said to the barman without looking at him, “give my friend a drink.”
“Right-o, sir,” the pop-eyed barman chirped. “W’ot will hit be, Mr. Cardigan?”
“Beer and Swiss-on-rye and I’ll put the mustard on.”
“Right-o, sir.”
SHEFFIELD continued to brood over his drink. He was a man who might have been forty or sixty and was fifty-three. His hair was a peppery gray fuzz atop a domed head and beneath it his face looked battered and warped as though it had weathered a thousand storms. His skin was crisscrossed with wrinkles, it looked tough as leather. He was not a big man.
Cardigan said: “What are you looking down-at-the-mouth about?”
“I’m troubled.”
“That’s what you think.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean if you think you’re troubled now, you’ll probably pass out over what I tell you.”
“Oh, I don’t know. I’m troubled enough. It’s about some nut came to see me today. And about Napoleon.”
“I know; you’re drunk.”
“No, Jack. I’m just troubled. This nut came to me and wanted me to collect all the statues I possibly could of Napoleon. All of them. All of the statues. Offered to pay me a ten-percent commission on the price I’d pay for each one.”
“Maybe he’s crazy about Napoleon.”
Sheffield shook his head. “No, he hates the guy.”
“Listen, are we talking about the same thing.”
“I’m talking about Napoleon and this fellow not liking Napoleon and wanting me to get all the statues I can, with a cut of ten percent on each buy.”
Cardigan called the barman and said: “Horace, how many has he had?”
“Drinks? ’Im. Mr. Sheffield? ’E’s only ’ad four.”
“Did you hear the Napoleon story?”
Horace dropped his eyes, wagged his head dolefully. “Hit is sad, eyen’t hit, sir,” he said, and went down to the other end of the bar to get the Swiss-on-rye from a waiter.
“It’s the truth, Jack,” Sheffield insisted.
“O.K., O.K.,” Cardigan said, humoring him. “Skip it and tie your ears onto this. Symonds committed suicide.”
Sheffield had been on the point of continuing his story. He stopped, turned his head slowly and regarded Cardigan with dull, uncomprehending eyes. Cardigan’s sandwich and beer came down the bar and he spread the mustard liberally.
“It’s a lie,” said Sheffield.
“Only he didn’t commit suicide.”
“Ah, I knew it. Knew it was a lie.”
“But he’s dead.”
Sheffield put his drink down. “Somebody’s drunk around here and if it’s me, I’ve been holding it from myself a long time.”
Cardigan said: “It looks like suicide and Keenan says it’s suicide but if it’s a suicide I’m an Eskimo with bells on. If you can keep your face out of that drink long enough, I’ll tell you about it.”
“It doesn’t make sense, but go ahead anyhow. I like the way you murder our native tongue.”
CARDIGAN related everything up until the time he left young Symonds’ room. Sheffield raised his drink and for no apparent reason it fell from his hand, crashed on the bar, and he said: “My bum hand, Jack. Goes limp on me sometimes. Make me another, ’Orace,” he called out, and then to Cardigan, “The way you tell it, I’ll lay my money on Keenan. Where do I come in for all the trouble you anticipate?”
“Just before I came over here I met Tully Pomeroy. He was going in the rooming house. Somebody’d phoned him. He’s going to pull a quick one. He’s going to turn around and sue the agency for a hundred grand—false arrest of Jake Mulvaney. Sop that in your frappé.”
Sheffield leaned on the bar. “Does that half-wit think he can get away with a gag like that?”
“Listen, Sam. He’s no half-wit and if he plays his shots right he’ll get away with it. He’s got everything on his side. The Mulvaney angle’ll be thrown out of court. No matter how much the jury thinks, up to now, that Mulvaney’s guilty; if it’s hammered down their throats that the state’s star witness committed suicide on the eve of the day he’s to testify on the stand, they’ll bring in a verdict of not guilty. Then what? Then Pomeroy comes back at us with this false-arrest gag. And of all the cockeyed jokes, he’ll have the police department on his side. He’ll have Keenan and all the other crackpots that believed in the beginning that Symonds was guilty. Not because these cops are crooked—I don’t believe they are—but because they’ll have to testify. It’s a beautiful set-up—for Pomeroy. If you don’t think it is, you’re twice as a drunk as I think you are.”
Sheffield’s wrinkled lids dropped lower over his eyes. He mused aloud: “Tully Pomeroy, the crookedest shyster in the state, with the cops testifying for his client.” He sighed. “I never thought I’d live to see that.”
“You won’t, if I can help it.”
“How can you stop it, kid?”
Cardigan made a fist. “I’ve got to, Sam. I’ve got to follow my hunch and I’ve got to prove that Symonds didn’t snatch that bankroll and I’ve got to prove it before the case of the state against Mulvaney goes to the jury. If I don’t—hell, man, the agency can’t afford it!”
“Don’t yell so. It’s all right for you to get sore and all steamed up, pal, but as far as I can see, from what you’ve told me, it looks like suicide. Keenan’s a nasty man, but he’s on the level—”
“Keenan may be on the level but he’s a fat-head at heart and all he can think of now is getting even with me. And anyhow, I didn’t finish.” He pulled out of his pocket the straight-stemmed briar pipe with the oddly shaped bowl and laid it on the bar. “I picked that up down in the yard under Symonds’ window. It’s his pipe. I know it because I used to see him smoking it.”
“How long was it down in the yard?”
“Not long. There was tobacco in it and I took the tobacco out and the heel was still wet. I blew through the stem and I blew out moisture. The tobacco that was in the bowl was that stringy kind that packs in tight and that’s why it didn’t fall out. And it was almost full.”
“He could have thrown the pipe away.”
“The way I’ve seen that guy smoke and cuddle that pipe, he wouldn’t have thrown it away.”
“How’d it get in the yard then?”
“It was knocked there, out of his hand or out of his mouth, during a struggle.”
SHEFFIELD smiled bleakly. “You told me yourself the door was bolted on the inside and that no ladder was used. Don’t let that hunch run away with you. A hunch never holds in a court of law, Jack.”
Cardigan was exasperated. “Damn it to hell, there are other things! Listen—that line that strangled him was greased. I’ve seen any number of suicides, guys that hung themselves, but I never yet saw a guy that greased his own line. Now picture his bedroom, minus the flatfeet, the press and the other guys. Before he turned in, he took out a clean shirt and hung it over a chair, put the collar buttons in the neckband and cufflinks in the sleeves. The shirt was clean—never worn; you could tell. There’s the little table beside the bed. On it’s a glass of water and his alarm clock, set to go off at six thirty A.M. He was in bed and got out or was dragged out. After I came in out of the yard—and after I met Pomeroy—I found the woman that runs the rooming house and she said that at ten, only an hour or two before he was supposed to have died, Symonds came down and knocked on her door. She was in bed and she called out and asked what he wanted and he said could she have breakfast for him at seven instead of seven thirty.”
Sheffield shrugged. “You’re building up nicely, Jack, but you’re overlooking that letter he started to write to this girl named Laura.”
Instantly Cardigan looked dismal. “Yea
h, I know. That’s the one catch.”
“It ought to be Pomeroy’s trump card.” Sheffield raised his glass and smiled dreamily at it. “Tough, tough. It’ll be the first case Pomeroy ever beat me in.”
“You sound licked before you start.”
“I am. You’ve handed him a golden egg, Jack, on a golden platter…. Now about this fellow and the statues of Napoleon—”
Cardigan growled: “You and Napoleon! I’m going home.”
He slammed out of the Bearcat, walked three blocks and swung into a telegraph office, where he wired his New York office the whole details. Instead of taking a cab, he walked to his hotel, his hands thrust deep in his overcoat pockets and his thoughts wallowing in gloom. Sheffield was right. A hunch was worthless in a court of a law. He knew it himself but hated to admit it.
Chapter Three
White Guy
THE morning was bright, windy, with cottony clouds galloping in the sky. The wind hummed on the broad avenues, boomed and clapped in the narrow streets and sent odd bits of newspaper skating and skyrocketing. Men’s hats blew off and women had trouble with their skirts. The faces of traffic cops were beet-red and newsboys drummed cold feet on the corners.
At fifteen past nine Cardigan came round Tremont into Baxter Street, the wind ballooning his ulster and whistling past his ears. He passed beneath the booming canvas marquee of the Axminster Arms, hit the heavy swing-door with his shoulder and banged his big feet across the quiet, luxurious lobby; passed the mosaic desk and entered one of three elevators. It lifted him smoothly to the seventh floor and he walked down the corridor and pressed a small white button alongside the door numbered 717. It was opened by a mulatto with slicked-down ebony hair, who bowed Cardigan in before the big cop had time to say a word. He took Cardigan’s hat and overcoat and gracefully ushered him down a narrow foyer and into a large and elegant living room, filled with period furniture.
“Mr. Pomeroy will be in directly,” said the mulatto, dropping his soft, expressionless eyes, then retiring.
Cardigan didn’t sit down, he was too impatient, too restless. He paced up and down taking sharp drags at a cigarette and in a minute or two Pomeroy came through a door at the far end of the vast room. He was a big-bodied man dressed in striped trousers and a black swallow-tailed coat, wing collar and black-and-white-striped tie. His hair was thick, black, bushy; his eyebrows tremendous. His face was florid, heavy-jowled, and his mouth seemed set on one side of it.
“Hello, Cardigan,” he said in a booming, hearty voice, flung a big hand toward an easy chair. “Sit down, sit down. Sorry as hell to get you over so early but I wanted to see you before I went to court.”
Cardigan sat down, unsmiling, and Pomeroy walked on to the end of the room, turned and came back and went past Cardigan and then stopped twenty feet away, where he swiveled heavily and suddenly jammed a cigar between his teeth. His voice came loud, heavy, as though he were addressing an audience in a great hall.
“I had a talk with Mulvaney,” he boomed. “You may not know it, Cardigan, but Mulvaney’s a nice lad, a great lad, a lad with a big heart. Do you know what Mulvaney said? When I told him I was going to sue your agency in his behalf for a hundred grand, why, he didn’t think much of it. He said, ‘Mr. Pomeroy, all I want is to be cleared of this charge. I don’t want to pick on those people.’ Now there’s a white guy for you, Cardigan—white as they make ’em.”
He lit his cigar and took another pounding turn round the room and again stopped far off, suddenly, and held up a fat, rigid forefinger. “But maybe I’m not a nice guy, Cardigan. Mulvaney was broke when I took his case, didn’t have a cent. I took it because I hate to see an innocent man persecuted. It’s taken a lot of my time, a lot of my money, and, I tell you, I’m not as easy-going as Mulvaney. Besides, I can’t afford to lose money. I took the case, I say, to save an innocent man,” he roared, “but now that I’ve got a chance to make some money, I think Mulvaney ought to sue you fellows. Owes it to himself—to me! I know I’ve got a case. I can not only sue you fellows for a hundred grand—I can get it. I can summon a battery of witnesses that you fellows could never hope to laugh away—Lieutenant Keenan, Sergeant Brotski, Inspector Ness, half a dozen patrolmen. By God, I can even summon the man who at present, in this trial, is my distinguished opponent. I refer, Cardigan, to State’s Attorney Moffat!”
HE paused, his big head hauled way back, his round eyes wide with wonder at the possibilities that lay before him. Then, suddenly, he picked up a chair, carried it across the room and placed it very close to Cardigan. He sat down, lowered his thick eyelids, smiled out of the side of his mouth and laid his hand on Cardigan’s knee.
“Maybe I am, after all, a bit of a white guy,” he said in a voice suddenly rich with oil. He leaned forward. “Now I haven’t peeped to the papers yet about what I intended to do. I haven’t given them an inkling that I intend to sue you fellows. Cardigan,” he said in a soft, salubrious voice, “I’m going to give you a break. A break, my boy. You don’t want this in the papers. You don’t want to get a lousy reputation. You don’t want to run smack up against a judgment of a hundred grand, do you?”
Unsmiling, Cardigan said, “No,” in a dull, wary voice.
Pomeroy smacked him on the knee. “Of course you don’t! So I’m giving you a break. Cardigan”—he lifted his forefinger—“we can settle this thing like gentlemen. All I want is some small change to pay for expenses incurred in this most unfortunate trial of Mulvaney. All I want, Cardigan, is forty thousand dollars—and everything will be dropped.” He sat back and nibbled thoughtfully on his cigar.
Cardigan said: “I only work for the agency. I can’t promise you anything.”
“Call your boss, if you want to.”
“I don’t want to, but I’ll have to.” He stood up and went across the room to a telephone.
“Don’t use that one, Cardigan,” Pomeroy said, rising and beckoning. “That’s a house phone. I’ve got a private outside wire in my study.”
He led Cardigan into the foyer, down the foyer and into a smaller but no less luxurious room. Pointing to a dial phone, he said: “You’ll get a better connection.”
Cardigan called New York and in three minutes had George Hammerhorn on the wire. He said: “I’m here in Pomeroy’s apartment, George. You got my wire?… Well, Pomeroy says that for forty grand he’ll quash his intentions…. How do I feel about it? I’m calling to see how you feel about it…. What would I say? Why, I’d tell Pomeroy to go plumb to hell…. O.K., George,” he said, staring at the number of the phone—Western 3300.
He hung up and turned to Pomeroy and said: “Well, counsellor, I guess you can go plumb to hell.”
For a moment Pomeroy acted like a man trying to regain his balance. He regained it. His thick face was very hard and savage and there was no mercy in his bulging eyes. “You guys will eat dirt for that!” he spat.
“You offered us a proposition and we turned it down. What the hell are you beefing about?”
“You’ll beef, guy, when you fork over a hundred thousand! By God, I’ll crucify you!”
“For a guy that expects to get a hundred grand,” Cardigan said derisively, “you sure don’t look happy.”
“I made you a white proposition—”
“I’m not color-blind,” Cardigan ripped in, his eyes snapping. “I know a shakedown when I see it and don’t think those fancy pants and that go-to-hell collar you wear turns red to white in my eyes. I suddenly don’t like you, Mr. Pomeroy. To hell with you and good day.” He turned on his heel and strode out of the study, down the foyer. He snatched his hat and coat from the mulatto and put them on as he went down in the elevator.
WHEN he strode into Sam Sheffield’s office twenty minutes later, Sheffield and his secretary, Miss Olds, were standing in front of the window pointing down into the street. First Sheffield cried, “Beaver!” and then Miss Olds cried, “Beaver!” and this went on for several minutes. Cardigan flung down into a big chair and the noise caused S
heffield to turn around.
“Oh,” he said. “Didn’t know you’d come in.” And to Miss Olds, “What’s the score?”
She consulted a card. “Sixteen for you and twenty for me. You owe me forty cents.”
Sheffield sighed and gave her four dimes and she went out into her own office. The attorney scratched the fuzz on the top of his head and said in a confidential voice: “Sharp-eyed, that girl. I’ve yet to win. Good game, though. She was four up on me that time. You ever play Beaver?”
Cardigan made a face.
“Oh, it’s a good game, Jack. We use the northeast corner of Center and Sixth. The first one that sees a man with a beard yells ‘Beaver!’ and you count up—”
“Would it interest you to know, Mr. Sheffield, that Pomeroy offered to call it quits for forty grand?”
Sheffield’s entire face seemed to close up and for a long minute he stared at the wall, curiously, suspiciously, as if he expected to find something there. Then he brought his eyes down upon the desk, ran them over a collection of papers, nibbled at his lip. He shook his head.
“That doesn’t fit in,” he half whispered.
“Fit in with what?”
“Well”—Sheffield leaned back, his eyes still puzzled—“I was over to Symonds’ room this morning—just out of curiosity. There was a cop stationed there and we sat around and chatted about one thing and another and after a while I picked up a book, a novel, and began thumbing it, you know how you will. Well, I thumbed it to a place where there was a letter, and after a while, when the cop wasn’t looking, I shoved the letter in my pocket.” He drew a letter from the desk drawer and scaled it across the desk. “I took the liberty of opening it.”
Cardigan stared down at the address on the envelope—Miss Laura Harrod, 92 Spruce Street, Strafford. He withdrew the letter and spread it before him. It was dated yesterday and read—
Dear Laura: It seems useless for me to go on like this any longer. I’m only kidding myself. I know how you feel about it, and God bless you for it, but I feel that sooner or later someone will find out and I’d rather tell them now than wait and have them find out later. I hope I won’t weaken between now and tomorrow morning. I can’t stand the suspense any longer. I feel it’s the only way out and I hope it won’t hurt too much.
The Complete Casebook of Cardigan, Volume 4: 1935-37 Page 2