Later, Popilado insisted that he had told her about the sleek ex-vice-cop—including the fact that Mills had been booted off the Force, had gone to running policy slips for a while, had finally hooked up with Paddy Harrigan.
She did not seem to know that Paddy Harrigan’s business was ‘mu’ parlors, nor that, in the past two weeks, his thirty-odd joints had suffered their first really alarming attacks in years from a mysteriously enlightened Narcotic Squad. Nor could Popilado be reasonably expected to blab that sort of talk, or tell her about the astounding spectacle of nearly a dozen of Paddy’s employees now howling in the Tombs. And positively, he was not throwing any gratuitous warnings around that Mills himself ought to be lying low, lest he, too, be wanted downtown.
Not that Mills didn’t know it, judging by his appearance while he was in the Shanghai. He’d had a hunted, pinched look in his bony face and there was a redness about his hollow eye-sockets. He had only stayed about fifteen minutes—long enough to round up the girl and negotiate with Popilado for the loss of her services.
No, Popilado had dropped her a friendly hint because he felt sorry for the babe. If she ignored it, it was not up to him to draw diagrams. There was no health in big mouths, not in this district, at least. And he was definitely not the girl’s guardian.
HE WATCHED the pair emerge onto the street below, both wearing blue raincoats. They loitered toward the curb, looking expectantly across the shining black street. Leroy Mills’ black Packard and—as they thought—chauffeur, were parked across and down the street a few rods. Actually, the chauffeur was gone, and never did show up again. Presently Mills put his fingers to his mouth, whistled shrilly.
The aimless man appeared now.
From Popilado’s perch, high up in the dance-hall’s window, he could look down and across at the savings-bank on the northwest corner. Popilado could just see around the edge of the grimy, black building, a few feet up the Avenue. He saw the aimless man, muffled against the wet, loitering down the Avenue, almost at the open corner.
It was when this individual actually reached the corner that the tall, powerful, hunched man emerged.
The aimless man stopped suddenly, head jerking up. Simultaneously, the bank’s slot-like little black doorway gave forth the tall, quick-moving, hunched man. The aimless man was not ten feet from him, could not possibly have failed to see him clearly, even in the guttering street light.
The whole gruesome business was over in seconds.
The hunched, tall man, catlike, was at the curb in three noiseless strides. He had eyes only for Leroy Mills across the street. He stepped down into the gutter. His voice was a low snarl, “Mills!” and the ex-vice-cop’s head jerked around, fingers still at his mouth.
The tall man called softly: “Something for you—stool-pigeon!”
Mills gasped, faltered. One hand flew out desperately in a warding-off gesture and he stumbled backwards. He choked hoarsely, “Paddy! Paddy—wait, for God’s…” then whirled wildly and tried to dive back at the stairway.
Flame and roar poured from the tall hunched man’s hands.
Evidently he had two automatic pistols. He stepped into the roadway, guns pounding out flame, right, left, right, left, reports hammering the silent street. Leroy Mills was blasted sideways, flung squealing to the cement, a welter of frantic legs and arms.
The girl behind him screamed and tried to run.
She was caught by a slug, still screaming and slammed viciously against the window of the store adjoining. In the next split second another wild slug exploded the plate-glass beside her. Leroy Mills, sobbing hysterically, an ear hanging by ribbons, tried once again to fling himself toward the stairway, scrambling on his knees. Two bullets smashed into the back of his head, pounded his face down on the sidewalk at the girl’s feet. Two racking, thunderous reports pinned the girl’s throat to the bronze window frame and her screaming was abruptly choked by the surging cascade of her own blood. She gagged, clutched at her throat, sobbed once and pitched twistingly down across the body of the dead ex-vice-cop.
Up till then the aimless man had seemed frozen almost at the killer’s elbow, literally paralyzed. Now he fled.
He made a choked sound, whirled and dived back for the shelter of the corner. The slick pavement betrayed him. His foot slipped and he stumbled to one knee, snatched at his falling hat.
He caught it before it reached the ground but something white dropped from it. The flurry of motion brought the tall murderer spinning around. The fleeing witness juggled the hat, got it crushed in one hand, and beat the cursing tall man’s hasty bullet around the corner by a hair’s breadth.
It was, incredibly, the only bullet left in the tall man’s guns. He leaped sideways to get a fair shot, steadied, pulled triggers—and got only clicks. He swore luridly, dived instantly in pursuit, stuffing the guns in his pockets—and was gone around the corner. Popilado neither heard, nor saw, beyond that.
Nor did anyone else—as far as the police, who were on the scene in seconds, could discover.
THEY scoured the dingy apartment houses up the dark, gleaming Avenue with grim, deadly thoroughness—but the killer and the eyewitness might have dropped into a hole in the ground. More and more radio cars responded, as, presently, the unexpected possibilities of the killing became apparent.
This was a golden opportunity to burn Paddy Harrigan for murder—burn him on eyewitness testimony. Any cop would have given a year’s pay to clinch that. Most of them had seen one or more of the minors and adolescents to whom the smiling, powerful-framed leech catered—seen them in station-houses or hospitals—and the picture was not pretty. With Harrigan’s organization staggering under the blows of the Narcotic Squad—which, incidentally, had moved on information supplied by Leroy Mills—Harrigan’s power was seriously threatened. His long-established political wires might not support him if the pinch came. It was a rare chance to fry the fat from his big body—if that eyewitness could be produced.
The Homicide Squad literally poured men onto the job.
Not that anyone cared about the dead stool-pigeon or his light-o’-love as personalities. There was no one to worry about their fate—at least no one influential enough to badger the police—save on Paddy Harrigan’s account.
Then a surprise cropped up.
The white item that the fleeing eyewitness had dropped from his hat, was found by a newspaper reporter, one Joey Blossom. It was a small, shiny booklet, the size of a playing-card, known as a police roster. It contained the private phone numbers of all ranking police officers, and its possession was limited strictly to police lieutenants and their superiors.
It was a supremely embarrassing discovery, seeming to indicate that the witness who had fled was a gold-braid officer. It became increasingly embarrassing ten hours later, when a check-up had been made. No ranking officer was missing or dead. No witness had come forward. Eighteen police officers had lost their official copies of the booklet and each had a more or less iron-clad alibi for the time of the shooting. As a lead to the now admittedly missing witness, the booklet petered out and died. But as a burr under the seat of the Department it grew more uncomfortable every hour.
THE reporters let four days pass before it was mentioned in print. Then, when Lebaron, the Homicide ace in charge of the job, reported absolutely no progress, it was published as part of a piece by Joey Blossom.
He was a frail, whimsical, worldly-wise youngster with soft dark eyes like a woman’s and a deeply lined, ingratiating face. For four years he had been trying to cure a cough with whiskey—a cough that everybody else knew could not be cured that way—and he weighed barely a hundred pounds. Yet because it was he who had discovered the booklet, he was temporarily dean of the police reporters.
In his signed story in Friday morning’s Courier—which appeared at nine Thursday evening—he jolted the case in more ways than one.
…high time that the public knew that this mysterious vanished witness dropped a certain booklet in his flight—a bo
oklet commonly possessed only by police officers, although no police officer has come forward to claim it.
I have today come into possession of certain evidence which makes the above doubly important. Together with eight or nine reporters, I was in the pressroom at Headquarters this afternoon when a tip was passed in. The tip is unimportant; it turned out to be false. But it sent us all up to Lebaron’s office on the second floor. In an attempt to get an inkling of what was transpiring within, someone opened the door, spilling several of us inside. The office was full of detectives of the Narcotic and Homicide Squads.
We were promptly—and not without protest—escorted back out into the hall. There was considerable confusion in and around the door of Lieutenant Lebaron’s office and in that confusion somebody dropped this bit of evidence, presumably from a pocket. When the scuffle was over, I picked it up.
I am not quite ready to reveal what it was, but, by the time you read this, I may be. I will disclose this, however. I believe that it will establish a certain surprising person as having been in the very near vicinity of the shooting of Leroy Mills and Doris Larsen, a short time before the actual killing. This person has, as yet, remained completely mum about his presence there. This person may be the mysteriously silent witness. This person positively was in Lieutenant Lebaron’s office this afternoon!
Naturally, Headquarters roared. Within an hour a statement was issued by Lebaron, saying that he, personally, had checked on every one of the men who had been in his office at the time mentioned. Not one of them were within miles of the Shanghai at any time close to the time of the shooting. Joey Blossom was called on the carpet.
He was called—but he did not come. Presently half the Force were looking for him. His own office began bombarding Centre Street with threats, pleas, demands and, finally, lawyers. Joey had not called his city editor as promised. He had not come in at bonus time, when he had money coming. He had not shown up at an important scheduled interview. Something had happened to him.
By Friday afternoon, extras were hitting the streets, screaming everything but blunt accusations at the police, demanding Grand Jury action. Not till then did the reluctant message start out over the police teletype—Missing: Joseph D. Blossom, reporter, age 29, weight 105, height 5-7….
And not till evening did the Marquis—who had no interest or connection whatever with the situation—find it squarely in his lap.
CHAPTER TWO
“Enter”—the Marquis
HE WAS in McCreagh’s slot-like ticket agency at ten o’clock, at the flat desk in the rear that was the Broadway Squad’s unofficial headquarters. He had a cradle-phone to his ear, trying anxiously—and vainly—to comprehend one of the cryptic messages that habitually poured over these phones day and night. Big Johnny Berth-old was crouched over a second instrument, and furiously jiggling the hook.
A husky, half-whispering voice was telling the Marquis hastily: “I dunno anything about it personally, see, but this friend of a cousin of mine—he just left on a train. I happened to see him in the station on account I’m taking a train in about two minutes myself and I thought you’d oughta know before I went, see? This friend of a cousin of mine, like—he says tell you to try the Café Villa. I gotta run now—to make my train. S’long.” The receiver banged up in the Marquis’ ear.
He cradled the phone with one small, black-gloved hand, looked inquiringly at Berthold and the big shaggy blond giant sagged, cursed, slammed up his receiver. “Nuts! Didn’t have time.” He tossed back the white scratch pad on which the Marquis had scribbled: Diego—trace it.
“What’d he want, anyhow?” Berthold growled.
“I think he’s gone batty,” the Marquis said—and looked up to see the committee of two coming down the narrow shop.
“What the hell?” Johnny Berthold muttered. “Reporters.”
The Marquis sat still, a small blocky figure in tailored black—round, weathered-pink face and China-blue eyes dull. He recognized the runty, belligerent youngster in shabby clothes as Voss, red-headed general-assignment man for the Courier. The tall, meticulously tailored, fawn-headed man in fawn clothes, hat, and spats, with the languid, droopy manners of a matinee idol, was Blaisdell, regular police reporter from the Press-Dispatch. Blaisdell’s yellow-amber eyes stared at a point above the Marquis’ head as he idled in the wake of the younger, bespectacled Voss.
Voss put red-freckled knuckles on the desk and said: “We represent a committee, Marty. We’re putting it up to you to get Paddy Harrigan—and find out where Joey Blossom is.”
There was a moment’s silence. The Marquis’ eyes were curious. Big Johnny Berthold growled in his throat: “That’s all, huh? You don’t want no cream on it?”
Voss’ hot brown eyes jerked sourly at him, back to the Marquis’ dull blue ones. “We figure Paddy Harrigan and that mystery witness must have made some sort of a deal. Joey got wise to the witness—so Paddy picked him up. You can find Paddy.”
“Anybody can find Paddy—through his lawyer.”
“We don’t want him found—through his lawyer.”
Berthold exploded: “Who the hell asked you what you wanted—”
The yellow-eyed Blaisdell looked up at the ceiling and said from the side of his mouth: “Pipe down, Goliath—till you hear it all.”
Voss drove at the Marquis: “We’re getting the run-around at Headquarters and you know it. It begins to smell like one of those things.”
“One of what things?”
“Where the whole damn Force goes to the front for a crooked cop. That’s all right, too—unless something happens, or has happened, to Joey Blossom. Then, by God, the stuff’s off.”
“You think this witness is a cop?”
“We know damn well it is—one of those pups at Headquarters. That’s why we’re here.”
“Why?”
“Because we know you like them like cholera—and they you. Because we figure you won’t cover one of them up, if you do nail him. And because we know you can get his name—along with what’s happened to Joey.”
“How?”
“By getting Paddy—alone.”
“Tsk, tsk,” the Marquis said. “You’ve been reading the newspapers.”
The redhead scowled muddily. “What?”
“You’ve been reading what reporters call us in print—Cossacks, thugs, outlaws. Why, they’ve even hinted that we strike defenceless killers and hoodlums—actually strike them. No, don’t tell me you’ve missed it. It’s been going on for years. Whenever a cheap penny-a-liner hasn’t anything to print, he takes a crack at the Broadway Squad. We owe a lot to reporters—we certainly do. You were smart to come to us when you’re in a jam. You knew how much we’d do for you.”
Johnny Berthold, translating, spat: “He means—nuthin’!”
The reporters were both red-faced. Voss said grimly: “We didn’t come here to discuss the past.”
“No?”
“No! We came here to remind you of a couple of things. Maybe the papers haven’t given you any breaks. So what? You don’t need them. You’re a little tin god on Broadway. Your word is law—and your overgrown musclemen back it up. You’ve got the hoods in this town terrorized—we I won’t say how you achieve it. When you speak, they roll over, play dead, jump through hoops—or else. You’ve got guys stooling for you that would spit in an Inspector’s face. But it’s because you always keep your word—because your threat is always good. Fizzle on one bluff and your whole damned system is liable to come unstuck. You’re sitting on the lid—just as long as you make everything you say gospel truth.”
HE PAUSED for breath. When the Marquis did not say anything, he changed his tack abruptly. “Now, get this. We’re willing to do anything we can—run errands for you—do any dirty work you hand us. But we haven’t got underground wires to tell us how to grab Paddy—and we haven’t got sadists like big Johnny here to knock the name of that witness out of him—or what’s happened to Joey. We’re taking our hats off to you—admitting you
’re tops—in a case like this.”
Big Johnny snarled: “And we should drop dead of your compliments. Go on—dust! You heard what the boss just said.”
The droopy, fawn-colored Blaisdell sauntered round Voss, delicately rearranged an inkwell. “I told you to pipe down, heavyweight!”
The Marquis’ quiet voice said gently, dryly: “They’re a little slow, Johnny. Look, boys—what I’m trying to tell you is this: I’m not interested. Whatever master-mind thought up getting me into this, is lame-brained. Paddy Harrigan never was fool enough to come into my territory. The shooting—out of which this all grows—was miles away. It’s none of my business. I won’t make it any of my business, because I don’t care a hoot in hell what happens to any reporter. I haven’t any interest in it. Now, is that clear?”
Voss said: “It’s clear enough, you rat. We figured on something like this. So we put you in a little spot.” He jabbed a hand behind him and Blaisdell put a still-damp Press-Dispatch in it. Voss slapped it down in front of the Marquis. “Take a look at the box on Page One, brain-guy—and tell us what we’re to do.”
VETERAN BROADWAY OFFICER JOINS HUNT FOR MISSING REPORTER; MARQUIS ISSUES STATEMENT
Lieutenant Martin Marquis, of the famous Broadway Squad, tonight stated to reporters that he was personally entering the hunt for the missing newspaperman, Joey Blossom. It is believed that the disappearance of the reporter is an outgrowth of the shooting, last Monday of Leroy Mills and….
Lieutenant Marquis wished to be quoted as follows: “Rest assured that there is going to be real trouble—immediately—if Joey Blossom is not back at his desk by midnight tonight. We want to hear—at once—from anyone who knows, or suspects, Joey Blossom’s whereabouts, or any information pertaining thereto. Anyone who comes forward voluntarily with information—even guilty information—will receive considerate treatment. Anyone whom we discover—either now or in the future—to have had knowledge of this sort and to have withheld it at this time, has the promise of my personal attention. I intend to produce Joey Blossom within the next twenty-four hours and establish the blame for his disappearance. I will have another statement for you at that time.”
The Complete Cases of the Marquis of Broadway, Volume 1 Page 21