The Complete Casebook of Cardigan, Volume 4: 1935-37

by Frederick Nebel

  The assistant manager snorted. “Pure theory!”

  “You call it that and I call it common sense. And here’s a little more common sense.” Cardigan turned to Green. “You figure that after that hot shower she felt faint, so faint, in fact, that she didn’t have time to put on her mules. That might make sense, Abe, except for the fact that she had time to put on her pajamas. A woman don’t go into a bathroom to bathe wearing pajamas. She takes them off in the bedroom and puts a robe and mules on, and after she’s bathed she puts the robe back on until her body’s completely dry.”

  Green pulled at his lower lip thoughtfully. “Maybe you know more about women than I do. But what are you trying to make out of it—suicide?”

  Pentmater snorted again. “Suicide! Pah!”

  Cardigan tossed the apple core into a wastebasket.

  Doctor Chadwick shook his head earnestly. “I absolutely hold out against the suicide theory. I’ve seen this woman almost daily. I know the signs of suicide. She had none of them.”

  “Of course, of course!” cried Pentmater; and to Cardigan indignantly, “I’d appreciate it if you would stop letting your fancy run away with you!”

  Cardigan gave him a dark, disgusted look.

  Pentmater spluttered, “And I must remind you again that you are here in the interests of the Burley Hotel—though one would hardly know it.” He whipped out a perfumed handkerchief and patted his lips excitedly.

  Cardigan snapped, “It happens that I knew Madge McMann when she was Madge Cassidy, and that I bounced her on my knee when she was nine and I was twenty. I knew her old man and her old lady, and her old man gave me my first job and her old lady mended my clothes and took care of me when I was sick.”

  Pentmater looked cold. He said, “That has nothing to do with your duty to the management.”

  “Oh, it hasn’t? Well, let me tell you something, fancy man. You and the management can go plumb to hell if you think I’ll shut up just because I happen to be pinch-hitting here tonight for our man, Googan. I know my duty here, and it don’t include keeping my mouth shut when I feel I ought to talk.”

  Pentmater stood back on his heels, made a petulant gesture. “I’ll speak to the manager. I’ll have you removed.”

  “Speak to him, sister. And stop in the flower shop down in the lobby and buy yourself a daisy chain.”

  “Ha, ha, ha!” guffawed one of the cops.

  “Hey, you,” reprimanded Abe Green. “Cut it.”

  Pentmater pranced out indignantly, turned and came back to shake his finger hotly at Cardigan. “You’ll see! There!”

  Abe Green tried to be reasonable. “Well, look, Jack. Now if this gal was an old friend of yours, it don’t figure—I mean, you trying to make suicide out of it.”

  “Did I say anything about suicide?” Cardigan shouted.

  The third-assistant manager appeared and said, “Mr. Pentmater, I’ve come to report that Plavy, one of the porters, has disappeared.”

  “Well, what of it, what of it?”

  “He had a passkey. The head porter said that Plavy started up to this apartment with a package about ten minutes before Mrs. McMann fell from the window.”

  Abe Green’s eyes opened wide.

  Chapter Two

  The Missing Porter

  THE bar was down in the basement of the Burley—a small, clubby hangout, with paneled walls dressed in sporting prints. At eleven that night Cardigan drifted in and Bottles Hannahan, the bartender, folded a newspaper, took off his eyeglasses, and rubbed his carroty nose.

  “Tough, that had to happen, Mr. Cardigan.”

  “Double rye, with water on the side.”

  “She used to come in here, that is, before she took sick, and she was a fine young lady. Not like some o’ these dames that come in and get plastered from A to Zowie.”

  “She was the top,” Cardigan said dourly.

  Bottles sighed and wagged his fat bald head. Then he said, “When will Mr. Googan be back?”

  “Couple of days.”

  “I hear he ate somethin’.”

  “A bad banana, he said.”

  Bottles looked professionally concerned. “I knew a gal once was crazy about bananas, Mr. Cardigan. She come from Iceland and I met her at a friend’s house. She never seen bananas in Iceland and she was crazy about them. Only the first time I seen her eatin’ them I thought she was nuts. She didn’t eat them the way we eat them.”

  Cardigan downed his drink, said, “What d’you mean?”

  “Well, the poor gal never had seen a banana in Iceland and—well, I guess you couldn’t blame her. But, honest, when I saw her eatin’ the skins and chuckin’ the insides away, I says to meself, ‘Montmorency, this dame is nuts.’” He sighed sadly. “But she just didn’t know, Mr. Cardigan. She thought the inside o’ the banana was the pit and that you was supposed to chuck it away and eat the yeller part.”

  Flush McMann came slowly through the doorway and put his elbows on the bar, stared vacantly at his hands. “Scotch,” he said. He was a big man, burly, in evening clothes. His hands were big, white, solid. His lips hardly moved. The point of his heavy jaw had a small cleft in it. His eyes were blue, droopy, dead-looking.

  Bottles set a bottle and a jigger down in front of him and said in a hushed voice, “Yes, sir, Mr. McMann.”

  Cardigan turned and leaned with his back against the bar, his elbows hooked on it, one heel hooked on the rail. His voice came low, regretful. “Sorry, Flush.”

  McMann turned his head slowly, rested his dead eyes on Cardigan. “Hello, Cardigan,” he muttered, and poured himself a drink; downed it fast and poured another, and stared brooding at his hands.

  Cardigan said, “Ever see that porter, Plavy?”

  McMann shook his head slowly, seemed preoccupied with other matters.

  Cardigan turned round to face the bar. “Did they tell you I figured she didn’t fall?”

  “Yeah, they did,” McMann said in a thick, sunken voice. He said somberly, “She’s dead. That’s all I can think about. I can’t think about anything else—how, or why, or anything.” He threw the drink down his throat. “She was getting well, too,” he muttered bitterly.

  Cardigan said, “I’d like to get my paws around the throat of the guy that did it.” He drank, set down his glass. “I think I will.”

  “You stay out of this, Cardigan,” McMann said dully, his eyes fixed on space. “She was my wife, and the guy’s my meat. The cops’ll get him, and when they get him I’m going to walk right into the police station, pull a gun, and let him have the works.”

  “If I get to him first, Flush—I’ll hold him for you.”

  McMann paid for his drinks, turned and walked slowly, somberly, out of the bar.

  “He’ll do it,” said Bottles. “He don’t say much, but he’ll do it, Mr. Cardigan.”

  CARDIGAN left the bar five minutes later and when he reached the lobby he saw Abe Green turning away from the desk.

  “Checking up?” Cardigan asked.

  Green shrugged. “Just routine. You got to eliminate all possible chances. I just checked up on McMann to satisfy the inspector. The inspector never liked him. Flush checks okay. He came in the hotel here at eight, went up to the apartment and came down again at eight-twenty and went out. He left word here that his wife was sleeping, but that if she wanted him, or if the doctor wanted him, he’d be at the Orion Club. So I checked up at the Orion and Flush was there from eight-thirty till ten, when we phoned him about her death.”

  “Got a soft spot in your heart for Flush, huh?”

  “We were kids together, Jack, and I was a little guy and Flush used to fight my fights for me.” He wagged his head. “I was sorry, kind of, when he took to gambling.”

  Cardigan went on to his small office at the rear of the lobby and in a little while Meyer, a Cosmos op, walked in.

  “Okay,” Cardigan said. “You carry on here, Lew.”

  “You fell into some hot stuff, eh?”

  “Feet first, b
o.”

  “Well, I hope you don’t sink in it over your head. Is there anything I should know about this layout?”

  “Just the usual routine. Googan used to go through all the corridors at two A.M. with the time clock, so you might as well stick to custom. Try all doors and if they’re unlocked, knock and tell whoever’s inside to lock his door. Finish up in the basement, then check the vestibules for lush workers. And if you see a tall, fancy guy with pink cheeks and an oh-so-lovely walk, he’s the assistant manager, Pentmater. If you feel like hitting him—don’t, because I’m in bad as it is.”

  “Did he burn you?”

  “He gets in my teeth like corn on the cob.”

  Cardigan picked up his lop-eared fedora and rolled out of the office. His blue serge suit could have done with a pressing and his soft white collar was out of line. The black tie he wore looked more like something that somebody else had thrown there as a joke. He wore no vest, his coat was unbuttoned, and his shirt was taut across his heavy chest and pinched in behind his broad belt.

  He went down to the basement and cornered the head night porter and said, “What about this guy Plavy? How long’s he worked here?”

  “About six months.”

  “Where’d he come from?”

  “His last place was the Hotel Seaboard. He worked a year there. Came here with good references.”

  “How old was he?”

  “Oh, about thirty.”

  “I don’t remember seeing him. What’d he look like?”

  The head porter pointed to a large glossy photograph nailed to the wall. “That was taken last month by the hotel. It shows all us porters. He’s second from the left.”

  “This guy?”

  “Yeah. He was swell at drawing people with his pen—quicklike.”

  “Pretty husky,” Cardigan said.

  “Yeah, he is.” The man indicated some drawings. “Those’re his.”

  “Did the cops get his address?” Cardigan asked.

  “Oh, sure.”

  “I’ll take it, too.”

  The head porter gave it to him.

  “He married?” Cardigan asked.

  “No. He lives alone.” The head porter wagged his head in a mystified manner. “I can’t figure it out, no kidding. The guy was liked by everybody in the hotel. He was never late, he did his job good, and never made any trouble at all. He just must have gone nuts all of a sudden—you know, how a guy will.” He scratched his head. “And what’s more, he had his porter’s uniform on and nobody—the bellhops, doormen, me or any of the other porters—nobody seen him go out. How the hell did he get out?”

  “What was in the package he took up?”

  “It was from Mr. McMann’s tailor. A suit, I guess. You know, one of those big cardboard boxes.”

  “There was no cardboard box in the apartment.”

  “Hell, he couldn’t have carried it out—somebody’d have seen it.”

  Cardigan nodded to the photograph on the wall. “You have incinerator shoots on each floor. He could have put on the suit—he’s about McMann’s build, according to the picture—and dumped the box and his own porter’s outfit down the chute.”

  “Hell, I never thought of that.”

  “Did the cops?”

  “They didn’t say anything about it.”

  CARDIGAN went to 1404 and found McMann brooding over a bottle. By the look in McMann’s eyes, he was pretty drunk. Cardigan said, “What kind of a suit was that one you had coming from the tailor?”

  “Light gray, pencil stripe,” McMann mumbled soddenly.

  Cardigan looked in the clothes closet. “It’s not here.”

  “Didn’t come, I guess.”

  “It’s what Plavy was bringing up. I figure he put it on in here in order to walk out without being noticed.”

  “Oh,” mumbled McMann dully.

  “What was the tailor’s name?”

  “Vincent Bush’s the trade name.”

  Cardigan looked in the clothes closet again, saw the name Vincent Bush on the labels of a couple of suits hanging there. He turned and said, “Better lay off the bottle, Flush.”

  McMann made a feeble, heavy gesture of not caring. “I got to stay tight for days,” he said thickly.

  Cardigan muttered, “I understand, Flush,” and left the apartment. When he reached the lobby Pentmater, the assistant manager, was bickering with the clerk at the cashier’s window. Pentmater turned suddenly away with an expression of brittle petulance and almost smashed head-on into Cardigan. Instead of apologizing, he snapped, “A fine house officer you turned out to be!”

  “I’m not a house officer. I was just batting for Googan.”

  Pentmater rasped, “What’ll I do? I was to tell McMann tomorrow that if he didn’t pay up we’d have to ask him to leave.”

  “What does he owe?”

  “Six hundred and ten dollars. And he owes Dr. Chadwick over three hundred!” He bounced on his toes. “What am I to do?”

  “Wait’ll he sobers up.”

  “Pah!”

  “Well, you asked,” Cardigan said, and went across the lobby to a telephone booth and made a call. When he heard Abe Green’s voice at the other end, he said, “Abe, this is Jack. You guys have probably been looking for a guy in a porter’s uniform…. Well, try this one. Try finding a guy wearing a light gray suit with a pinstripe and a label reading Vincent Bush inside the inside pocket…. That’s the tailor’s name. Plavy took a suit up to the apartment, but it’s not there and neither is the box it was in. My guess is that he put the suit on and chucked the box and his own outfit down the incinerator chute…. Don’t mention it. Always glad to help a white cop.”

  He shoved out of the booth, lit a cigar, and sat down and thought things over for five minutes. Then he rose and shouldered his way out the side door. He paused for a moment to look at the spot where Madge McMann had lain on the sidewalk. His lips flexed, tightened. He scowled and walked over to Park Avenue and stood and watched the cars stream past. Southward, he could see the rows of lights stretch away, and the pale immensity of the Waldorf-Astoria—and beyond it the motor tunnels leading to the ramp. He frowned down at his cigar.

  A cab pulled up and the driver said, “Taxi?”

  “Yeah,” Cardigan said, and pulled open the door.

  Chapter Three

  48 in the Shade

  THE Orion Club was in a quiet street on the upper West Side, near Central Park West. The building was three-storied, granite-faced, and had a large cathedral door. The door opened into a heavily carpeted foyer furnished in antiques and with several oil paintings on the walls. A couple of men stood around in tails and one of them came forward as Cardigan entered.

  “You must be in the wrong place,” the man said.

  “This is the Orion Club, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Then I’m in the right place.”

  “But evening clothes are required.”

  Cardigan twisted his hat and thrust it into his pocket. “If you think I’m going to go home and put on evening clothes, mister, just to talk to Steve Shade—” He broke off with a laugh, then said, “Where is he?”

  The man dropped his affected formal manner and asked, “Who wants to see him?”

  “An old playmate, Jack Cardigan.”

  “Listen, pal, if you’re hitting the boss up for a loan, there’s no use, because—”

  “Get going and tell him I want to see him. If you guess as bad as that all the time, what a sucker you must be on the races.”

  The man glowered for a moment, then turned on his heel and left the foyer. Cardigan strolled around the foyer pretending to take an interest in the oil paintings. The muffled sound of string music came faintly through the heavy inner door. The perfume of women who had been in this foyer still lingered. In a couple of minutes the door opened and the man who had gone to carry Cardigan’s message returned and said curtly, “This way.”

  Cardigan followed him down a wide-paneled co
rridor, beyond which men and women could be seen eating and drinking at tables. He turned and went up a circular staircase at the heels of his guide, crossed a wide, polished corridor, and was led into a large, elegantly furnished room.

  “Okay, Bert,” Shade said, with a gesture.

  The man who had brought Cardigan turned and left the room, closing the door quietly.

  Cardigan hooked his hat on the top of a carved Spanish chair, knocked ash from his cigar into a beaten copper tray that sat on the heavy dark desk behind which Shade lounged indolently.

  “From rats to riches, eh, Steve?” Cardigan grinned.

  “What’s funny about that?”

  “Nothing. How are your games doing these nights?”

  Shade looked at the cork-tipped cigarette he was smoking. He was a lean man of about forty-five, with thinning sandy hair, a hollow-cheeked face, rusty, dry skin, a pair of pale, perfectly blank eyes. His lips were flat and bloodless and there was thin sandy hair on his bony wrists.

  He said dryly, “If you came here to talk about my business, Cardigan, the answer is this—my business is my own business.”

  “What do you think of Madge McMann?”

  He shrugged. “Tough. I never met her, so don’t expect me to bust out in a rash of flowers.”

  “Know Flush pretty well, don’t you?”

  “In the business I’m in, why shouldn’t I?”

  Cardigan was wearing a thin, amused smile. “Came here a lot, didn’t he?”

  “I guess he did. How often, I don’t know.”

  “Who was getting the gravy, you or Flush?”

  “I don’t know off-hand. Couldn’t have been much either way, or I’d know.”

  Cardigan said, “I just stopped off at the Agency office and found we’re handling the Triple State Insurance Company and I phoned one of the directors and he said Madge McMann was insured for thirty thousand dollars.”