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

by Frederick Nebel

  “Leave it. His brother’ll take care of the bill.”

  The man brought it up, and Cardigan took it and carried it into the apartment. A long white sheet of paper, a laundry list, fell to the floor. He picked it up, brushed it off and said: “Twelve shirts in one week. Hell, that’d last me damned near a month! And eight pairs of socks. He must have spent all his time changing clothes.”

  He read the list—

  Shirts w. col. att. 6

  Shirts Full Dress 6

  Undershirts 5

  Drawers 5

  Pajamas 3

  Handkerchiefs 25

  Socks 8

  Cardigan said, “Well, they’ve lost a good customer,” and slipped the list in under the string that encircled the box. He turned toward the door. “I want to make a phone call.”

  Downstairs, he looked in the telephone directory for the number of the Acme Electrical Supply Company. He dialed it. “Harry Pape there?… Oh, Harry. This is Cardigan. Listen, how’s to hop right over here to Two-twelve Ellington?… O.K., kid. Come right up to the top floor.”

  HE WAS turning away from the instrument when the hall door banged open and Collianti came in followed by Nagle, McGorum and Weiskopf. Cardigan leaned back against the wall and fished around in his pocket for a cigarette. Collianti’s white-silk muffler made an almost luminous glow against the flat black of his overcoat. He stopped and looked hard and steadily at Cardigan and said, finally: “Well, hello, rat.”

  “You recognize your own kind, huh?”

  “Listen to me—”

  “You listen to me!” Cardigan cut in, suddenly savage. He flung his unlighted cigarette at Collianti’s feet. “I’d’ve been out of this if you hadn’t smeared your big trap on the telephone last night. I’m in it now, fella. And I’m going to make those words of wisdom you dropped in the press this morning sound like pre-election prophecies. Listen, Collianti—you’re not scaring me. You’ve tried to cramp my style ever since I opened our branch agency in this burg. You’re not big enough, bub. Even your own kind hates your guts. You know what they think of you in Little Italy?”

  Collianti’s face was dark, treacherous. He broke a strained, crooked smile across it and said to one of the cops: “An Irish heel and not O’Sullivan. Let’s go up, boys.”

  The three uniformed cops glared at Cardigan, and Weiskopf said, “How’d you like the sleigh ride last night, buddy?”

  Cardigan rasped, “Ah, nuts!” and strode out to the street and down to the next block. He hung around in the doorway of a cigar store. Five minutes later, he saw Collianti and the cops come out, get into a car and drive off. He walked back to 212 and, as he reached the doorway, Harry Pape, the electrician, drove up in a flivver.

  “What’s new, Jack?”

  “That’s what I want to find out,” Cardigan said. “Bring your kit along and see if maybe somebody else had the same idea I have.”

  Chapter Four

  Cardigan Calls It Killing

  CARDIGAN strode into his office a little before noon and Pat said: “Chief, Treadwell just phoned and asked you to call him back. Somerset Six-two-eight.” She looked at him.

  “Ring it,” Cardigan said and sailed on into his office. He hauled a pint of rye out of a desk drawer, took a hefty drag straight from the neck and almost choked. He slammed the bottle down on the desk, got red in the face from coughing, and wound up by sneezing. The parts of his cigarette lighter still lay on the desk. He scooped them up, went to a window and tossed them out.

  “Mr. Treadwell’s on the phone,” Pat said.

  He wiped his mouth with a handkerchief and picked up the telephone. “Mr. Treadwell?… Well, I think I’ve got something but let it simmer a while…. You did, eh?… When’d he draw it?… That’s something, too. I mean, that’s something! It’s a lot!”

  When he had hung up, Pat said, “What’s something?”

  Cardigan was staring keenly, brightly into space. “Amos Treadwell just discovered that two days ago his brother yanked four hundred bucks out of the bank. Savings account. All he had in it. There was no dough found when Jerry Treadwell was found dead—except maybe ten bucks in his pants.”

  “Robbery?”

  “It don’t reason, Patsy.” He looked at her abruptly and said with good-natured contempt: “Robbery? Hell, no! I’m beginning to think there was a plan about this. I’m beginning to think it was a murder. Murder planned. A game. The way some of those guys plan a chess game way ahead—” He paused and looked curiously at Pat Seaward.

  “What now?” she asked.

  Suddenly, Cardigan was calm, a little grim, and he said very deliberately: “This was murder. I’ll bank anything on it.”

  “Or an accident.”

  He shook his head. “No. Not an accident.” His eyes shimmered and a cool smile tugged at his lips. He turned and swung his legs out of the office. The door banged behind him, making the ground-glass panel shudder, and a piece of paper fluttered off the desk.

  Sitting back in a cab, he put a cigarette between his lips, left it there, unlighted, for several minutes because he was deeply preoccupied. Finally, he lit it, and held the live match till the flame licked at his fingers. He dropped the match abruptly, and swore. He sat well forward, his elbow lounging on his knees, his big head rolling with the motion of the cab. He watched the store windows struck by sunlight, flash by. He leaned back again, cuddling cigarette smoke deep in his throat, inhaling, letting it flow out again. The cab stopped in front of police headquarters.

  The lieutenant at the desk said, “Hello there, Cardigan.”

  “Hi, lieutenant. Collianti around?”

  The lieutenant pointed upward and said, “I think.”

  UPSTAIRS, on the second floor, Cardigan pushed open a door and Collianti looked up from a flat-topped desk. Collianti had a look like a blow delivered upward from the hip. He didn’t say anything.

  Cardigan sat on the desk and said, “Did you know that Jerry Treadwell drew all the dough he had out of the bank the day before he died?

  “So what?”

  Cardigan looked at his cigarette. “I don’t remember that you found it on him, or in the apartment.”

  “That’s right.”

  “A guy draws four hundred out of the bank, his last cent, and commits suicide next day. That makes sense, doesn’t it?”

  Collianti leaned back and clasped his hands behind his head. “You’re getting fifty bucks a day, Cardigan. I don’t blame you for hippodroming it.”

  Cardigan said: “I want to look at the exhibits on the case. The stuff you picked up.”

  “We didn’t pick anything up. Old Treadwell found that hunk of letter—a reporter copied it.”

  Cardigan picked up the telephone and called Amos Treadwell. “You still got that letter you found?… Sure of that? Wait a minute.” He lowered the phone and said, “He said he gave it to you.”

  Collianti shook his head. “He’s screw-loose.”

  To Treadwell, “Collianti says ‘no,’” he said. “He’s sitting right here…. Yeah…. Yeah…. O.K.” He hung up and looked at Collianti. “He still says he gave it to you.”

  “The guy was rattled. He probably don’t remember.” He kept looking steadily, darkly at Cardigan. “He didn’t give it to me.” He got up, flexed his arms and strolled to a window, which he closed.

  Cardigan spent more than a minute gazing at Collianti’s smooth, well-tailored back. At last he said, “No fooling, Gig, I’m going to hang murder on somebody pretty quick.”

  Collianti turned and said curtly, “It’s still suicide to me. You can’t sell anything here, Cardigan. Air yourself. I got an appointment.” He scowled impatiently, thrust his hand into his pocket and jangled loose change.

  CARDIGAN went around to Treadwell House and in the store found Amos Treadwell. “You say you gave the letter to Collianti. He says you didn’t,” he said, watching Treadwell’s deep-set gray eyes.

  Treadwell looked upset. “I’m not the one to call a man a liar, bu
t—but I’m sure I gave it to him. I found it, you know. It was I who found it. I showed it to him. He took it. I’m quite sure he didn’t give it back to me.”

  “But you wouldn’t swear to that, huh?”

  Treadwell grimaced. “Naturally, at the time, I was confused and, of course—”

  “I get it.”

  Treadwell lowered his voice. “What have you found out?”

  “I’m doing fine, maybe. But I still can’t figure out how a guy in his right mind would light a match, with the smell of gas there the way it must have been.”

  “Do you think you’ll find the woman?”

  “For a while, I thought I might. With the letter.”

  Treadwell colored. “I gave Collianti the letter! I must have given it to him!”

  “Keep your shirt on. I’m going to an address now.”

  THE address was a small hotel, the Lennox, on the North Side. Cardigan went up to the third floor, tramped down a narrow corridor and banged his knuckles on the door of 315. Al Nielsen opened it and his pale wooden face, above a black silk robe, looked ghostly.

  Cardigan said: “I know, you’re wondering how I got here. Well, I knew where you lived an hour after I left the Gold Club last night. Just get up?”

  “About an hour ago.”

  You night-club guys lead a hell of a life. Can I come in?”

  “Come on.”

  Cardigan rocked into the high-ceiled bedroom, made a neat ringer with his hat on a three-pronged clothes-tree and swiveled so that the skirt of his ulster corkscrewed around his legs. “Not so hot, this place. What do you knock down at the Gold Club?”

  “Two hundred a month.”

  “What’s the matter, got a hangover?”

  Nielsen’s hand was shaking as he poured ice water. “Plenty. Two hundred a month—and hangovers.”

  Cardigan eyed him curiously. “Listen, what the hell kind of an act was Karnehan putting on last night?”

  “It was the checkers. He’s been trying to beat Bricksy for months. He likes games. He likes to figure things out—do a thing the hard way, if it’s fancy, instead of the easy. He’s a swell poker player, but a lousy checker player. So he likes to play checkers.”

  “Why’d he get sore when I made those nice cracks about his wife?”

  Nielsen put the water pitcher down heavily. He took two or three sips of water and stared out the window. His voice was thick. “It was the checkers.” He passed his hand across his forehead. “God, what a hangover!” He threw himself on the bed, face down.

  Cardigan said, “Does his wife ever hang out around the Gold Club?”

  “No more. No.”

  Cardigan turned toward the door. It was then that he noticed a wardrobe trunk, open, in the corner. He walked over to it. It was half packed. He looked over his shoulder at the bed.

  “Going somewhere?”

  Nielsen looked up. “For God’s sake, with this hangover, you ask me questions!”

  “The trunk here—” Cardigan flipped his fingers across the contents of the topmost drawer. A square of cardboard turned up, over, fell to the floor. He bent and recovered it. It was a picture of Karnehan’s wife, a glossy photographer’s proof. He held it up and looked at Nielsen. “Nice.”

  Nielsen got up off the bed, came over and took the photograph out of Cardigan’s hand. He put it back into the trunk drawer, closed the drawer, and went back for another drink of water.

  “Well?” said Cardigan.

  Nielsen said dully, “Well what?”

  “You know Jerry Treadwell was murdered, don’t you?”

  Nielsen spilled some water. He kept his mouth shut, hard, tight, and glared out the window.

  Cardigan said, “I’m now going over and see Mrs. Karnehan.”

  Nielsen banged the pitcher down, whirled and came long-legged across the room. “Stay away from there!” he snapped.

  “Why?”

  “Stay away, I tell you!”

  “I’m going over and—”

  Nielsen’s eyes suddenly blazed and his fist struck out. Cardigan rolled with ease, shifted, and took Nielsen on the point of the jaw. Nielsen landed on the bed, bounced once, and lay back, cold. Cardigan picked up the pitcher of water, emptied it over Nielsen’s face and went out.

  To the bell captain in the lobby, he said: “Better take up another pitcher of ice water to Mr. Nielsen. He’s got quite a hangover.”

  “Sho’ nuff he has, suh. An’ dat’s funny, ’cause Mistuh Nielsen don’t never drink a-tall.”

  Chapter Five

  Murder in the Wash

  THE green-enameled elevator that lifted Cardigan to Penthouse A, in the Warwick Towers, made barely a sound. It stopped gently, its door opened silently, and Cardigan stepped out into a small foyer in which there was but one other door. He waited until the elevator had started down. Then he stepped to the round mother-of-pearl button and pressed it. A minute passed before the door opened. It did not open far.

  A pair of steely eyes regarded Cardigan out of a woman’s broad, large-jawed face. “Who are you? What do you want?” she asked.

  “I want to see Mrs. Karnehan.”

  “Mrs. Karnehan cannot see you,” the woman said, and started to close the door.

  But Cardigan had slipped his foot in. “This is very important. I want to see Mrs. Karnehan.”

  “I said you cannot see Mrs. Karnehan,” the woman snapped. Her mouth made a wide firm line across her face. Her iron-gray hair was pulled tightly to her head and knotted in back. She was a big woman, burly, and her face, to Cardigan, was vaguely familiar. “Take your foot away. You cannot see Mrs. Karnehan.”

  “Lady—” Cardigan pushed at the door. The woman tried to brace herself against it. Her face grew red with the effort and muscles in her neck bulged. She was strong, but not strong enough. Her breath burst out as she fell backward against the wall and her lips trembled with anger, cold fury welling in her eyes.

  Cardigan stepped into the entrance hall and closed the door behind him. “Take me to Mrs. Karnehan.”

  But the woman did not budge. Her face seemed to grow larger as it grew redder and her fists were clenched, the skin hard and tight on the knuckles.

  Cardigan turned away from her. He stretched his legs down the entrance hall, went through a small room and came out into a vast living-room whose casement windows overlooked the city. A woman, dressed in a long, flowing dress of pale soft blue, turned from the windows and gently raised her eyebrows. He recognized the woman of the photograph, though in the flesh, now, she looked thinner, almost fragile and very beautiful.

  “Mrs. Karnehan,” he said.

  “Yes?”

  The specter of a smile wavered at her lips and she started toward him. But she had taken perhaps half a dozen steps when she stopped, froze, cowered.

  Cardigan looked over his shoulder.

  The large woman was in the doorway. Her voice, hoarse and straining at her throat, blurted: “Get out! I’ll have the police on you!” She raised her fists and shook them alongside her head. “Get out! Get out!”

  “Hildegarde,” said Mrs. Karnehan weakly.

  Cardigan’s eyes flashed. “Mrs. Karnehan, I want to talk to you about Jerry Treadwell, who died last night—”

  “You!” roared Hildegarde, coming heavy-heeled into the room.

  Mrs. Karnehan put her hand out. A look of terror, of horror, struck down across her face and left it deathly white. She took a step, faltered, then her knees gave way, her eyes rolled and she fell to the floor, making hardly any sound. Cardigan went toward her.

  “Leave her alone!” rasped Hildegarde.

  Cardigan said, “Shut up,” and picking Mrs. Karnehan up in his arms carried her to a divan. As he laid her down he received a blow on the side of the head that shunted him to one side and as he turned he saw Hildegarde hefting her fist.

  She said: “She’s always fainting. I’ll take care of her. And you—you get out!”

  A DOOR banged and there were footsteps, heav
y and light, mixed. Cardigan turned and saw Ed Karnehan come in with Bricksy and instantly the Cosmos op knew why he thought Hildegarde’s face was familiar. She looked like Ed Karnehan.

  She said, “Ed, do you know this fellow?”

  Karnehan had stopped short. His jowls slouched down over his collar and his eyes looked dead, soggy. His lower lip thrust outward and he barked, “What the hell are you doing here, Cardigan?”

  “Seeing your wife.”

  Bricksy came across the room, walking with his knees close together and his toes turned in. He was dressed in a very baggy but costly overcoat and both hands were in his pockets. He wore a faint smile that looked more dangerous than any scowl, and he said easily, matter-of-factly: “Come on, big boy. Out. You know. Out.”

  “Don’t make me laugh, little man.”

  Bricksy pulled both hands out of his overcoat pockets and in each hand was a big automatic pistol. Cardigan looked at Bricksy, looked at the guns, and then gave a short, contemptuous laugh. He walked across the room until he stood in front of Ed Karnehan.

  “I’m going to talk to your wife, Karnehan,” he said. “It doesn’t matter when. Now, when she comes out of her faint, or later. But I’m going to talk to her.”

  Karnehan looked past him and said, “What happened, Hildegarde?”

  “He told her Jerry Treadwell was dead.”

  Karnehan’s heavy eyes swung to Cardigan. “The police said it was suicide. That ought to be good enough for you.”

  Cardigan shook his head. “Not by a long shot. He was murdered. He wasn’t just sitting in that chair. The explosion drove him into it. If he’d committed suicide, the door would have been closed. The door was open. It was back against the wall and deeply pitted on the side that couldn’t have been pitted if it was closed.”

  Karnehan gave a sour laugh. “You make me sick.”

  “I’m glad I do. The light switch is just inside the door. It was turned on when I looked at it. The last print on the button was Jerry Treadwell’s fingerprint, which means he was the one who turned it on. But he got no lights. Know why? Well, that switch worked the chandelier lights. There were three bulbs in the chandelier, each with a switch of its own on the socket. Those three switches were turned off. That’s why he got no lights. That’s why he struck a match. It was dark. Somebody went in the room before Jerry came home and switched off those three bulbs and turned the gas log on.”