Point of Contact

by J. T. Edson

  Twelve

  ‘Vellan just called,’ McCall told Alice and Brad as they logged on watch for the third day of the Morgan-Hagmeyer investigation. ‘He’s leaving on the ten-thirty east-bound train out of the Southern Pacific depot. Reckons he couldn’t get on a flight today.’

  That won’t leave Jed much time to test-fire the Smith & Wesson,’ Brad ejaculated. ‘I’ll—’

  ‘J already did,’ McCall interrupted dryly. ‘Some of us start work early in the morning.’ He eyed the clock on the wall, its fingers showing one minute after eight. ‘It’ll be ready for you to give him at the depot, looking just like it did when he left it in the locker.’

  ‘I’ll bet Jed’s firing a few .38 Specials through it, as well as the “maggies”,’ Brad remarked.

  Although chambered for the powerful .357 Magnum bullets, the revolver would also handle the lighter .38 Special rounds. There might, however, be variations in the marks left on the bullets of different calibers; a point which would have been taken into account by the head of the Firearms Investigation Laboratory. [xix]

  ‘You’d win,’ McCall admitted. ‘What’ve you pair got in mind for the rest of the watch, what’s left of it?’

  ‘Wrap up some of the paper-work first,’ Alice replied.

  ‘Then go see Mrs. Hagmeyer again, visit a few more informers and see the witness who saw the prowler. There might just be something there if we can get to it.’

  ‘It’s a long shot,’ McCall agreed. ‘From the address, I’d say she lived somewhere at the back of Hagmeyer’s place. Call in if you’re out that way.’

  Going to their desk, Alice told Rafferty that she could not marry him as she had been spoken for by Larsen and Valenca, then sat down to read the reports that had come in overnight. Two more F.B.I. probables had been cleared by their local police, but Ortega had learned nothing from the Mexican quarter. While Brad telephoned some of his informers, Alice started to type out a report on the case as far as it had gone.

  ‘Nothing on a combine war,’ Brad told his partner as she finished typing. ‘I’ve asked them to see if they can find anybody who knew Hagmeyer when he was here after the war.’

  ‘If there’s a tie-in with Tap Morgan, it must have been made then,’ Alice agreed. ‘R. and I. haven’t any make on him, Hagmeyer I mean. It can’t tie in from back then, Brad—Or can it?’

  ‘It’s not likely,’ Brad admitted. ‘But what is likely about this whole case?’

  One of the F.I.L.’s staff entered, carrying Vellan’s briefcase. ‘It’s just like when you gave it to us,’ he announced. ‘We used our own bullets, so there’s no way he can tell we’ve been firing it.’

  Alice glanced at her wristwatch. ‘We’ve just got time to see Mrs. Hagmeyer before we go to the depot,’ she decided. ‘Let’s give it a try, Brad.’

  Visiting the exclusive private sanatorium where Judith Hagmeyer was recovering ‘from the shock of her husband’s death’, the deputies found her in a less disturbed frame of mind. She stuck to her story that, although she would inherit his money, Hagmeyer would have been more profitable to her alive. Nor could she give a definite date for when her husband was last in Gusher City. The nearest she could manage was to say that it had been towards the end of Jack Tragg and Phineas Hagen’s fight to free the city from organized crime.

  ‘Which would make it about ’48 or early ’49,’ Alice said as they drove to the Southern Pacific Railroad’s depot. ‘A lot of folk were buying trunks about that time.’

  ‘Sure,’ Brad agreed, for the term implied that criminals were packing their belongings and taking a hurried departure from an unfriendly area.

  Parking the Oldsmobile, the deputies walked in silence to the depot. Brad looked at the steps leading to the main entrance. It had been there that he had seen the chalk outline where Tom Cord’s body fell when struck by the professional killer’s lead. A man did not lightly forget such a thing.

  They had cut things very fine, for the east-bound train was already in and most of its passengers aboard as Alice and Brad walked along the platform. Showing surprise that the law had kept its word by returning his property, Vellan came to meet them. After he had checked that his property was intact, Alice had him sign a receipt for the brief-case and its contents.

  ‘You should learn to keep your mouth closed,’ Brad advised. ‘Stool-pigeons have been calling in for days telling us about you acting as messenger boy between the Syndicate and that Mexican mob.’

  ‘So that’s how you kn—’ Vellan began. ‘It might mean something to you, but that went right by me.’

  However he knew what Brad meant. Since his release, and during his incarceration, he had wondered how the law came to know so much about his business. Suddenly he remembered that he had been indiscreet in several places. If he wanted to avoid recriminations—a mild name for the Syndicate’s methods with transgressors—he must lay the blame elsewhere. The best way to do it was to insist that the leak came from the Mexican side.

  ‘Just so you don’t get any wrong ideas,’ Brad drawled. ‘If you do, I’ll come to New York to pick you up personally.’

  ‘All aboard!’ boomed a voice.

  Gripping his brief-case, Vellan swung on to the steps and entered the day-car. The deputies saw him take his seat, then look deliberately away from them. Waiting until the train pulled out, they walked from ,the depot and returned to the Oldsmobile.

  ‘I’ll bet Vellan hopes that nobody asks what went wrong here,’ Alice remarked as she slid behind the steering wheel.

  ‘Sure, his bosses won’t be happy when they hear how he blew it for them,’ Brad agreed. ‘At least, we’ve steered him away from Louise Quitty.’

  ‘Cen Con to Unit SO 12!’ said the radio.

  ‘Unit SO 12 by!’ Brad answered, scooping up the transmission microphone.

  ‘Report your position,’ the dispatcher requested.

  ‘Leaving Southern Pacific depot on our way to Upton Heights.’

  ‘Go “Code Three” to the Shaftesbury Hotel on Grant Street. Investigate reported “man-down”. “Code One?”’

  ‘“Code One”,’ Brad replied. ‘Any further details, Cen Con?’

  ‘Same M.O. as on Morgan-Hagmeyer killings. Nothing more known.’

  ‘We’re on our way,’ Brad said. ‘Over and out.’

  Already Alice had clicked on the roofs red light and started the siren raising its growling roar. Before Brad had hung the microphone on its hook, Unit SO 12 was racing through the streets in the direction of the Shaftesbury Hotel. They were going to investigate another killing, which is what a ‘man-down’ call meant. ‘Code One’ asked if Brad had understood the message and his repetition implied that he had. Answering such a call demanded that they went ‘Code Three’.

  Sliding the Oldsmobile behind one of the assembled official cars, Alice stopped it. As she joined Brad on the pavement, Crossman of the Mirror came up.

  ‘Is this another Dumdum Killing, Miss Fayde?’ the reporter asked, using the tag his paper had given to the two deaths.

  ‘We wouldn’t know, having only just arrived,’ Alice answered, locking the car’s door.

  ‘But you have the Dumdum case?’ Crossman insisted.

  ‘I didn’t know there was a Dumdum case,’ Alice countered and walked by.

  ‘Don’t ask me,’ Brad drawled as Crossman opened his mouth. ‘I’m the junior partner in the team.’

  Passing through the crowd, the deputies identified themselves and entered the lobby of the Shaftesbury Hotel. They were not surprised by the number of police officers present, nor the scowl of dislike fired their way by the manager.

  Built by gang-land money in the bad old days of the city’s oil-induced growth, the hotel had the needs of criminals in mind. It had offered facilities for hiding stolen property fitted in many rooms. Following a lead during the Colismides’ case, Alice and Brad had discovered the secret. That had caused several unsuspecting roomers to be caught in possession of a variety of incriminating articles
. Although there had been a number of vacant rooms after the raid, the hotel soon filled them. Possibly honest, law-abiding citizens occasionally lived at the Shaftesbury, but mostly its clientele had underworld connections.

  There had been little opportunity to discuss the Central Control message. Driving a powerful car at speed through the city was sufficiently exacting without added distractions.

  So the deputies had formed no preconceived theories and arrived with open minds.

  A big, buxom woman who looked like a middle-class house-wife out shopping came from the desk. A grin of welcome played on her lips. She was Sergeant Rachel Winters and owed her promotion to the deputies’ discovery of the hotel’s secret.

  ‘We’ve got a guy in the manager’s office,’ Rachel said. ‘He tried to run out and caught a slug in the leg.’

  ‘Is he the one who did the shooting?’ Alice asked.

  ‘He says not and he didn’t have a Luger on him,’ the sergeant replied. ‘The doctor’s working on him. He’ll keep until you’ve been up. It’s on the first floor, you can’t miss it.’

  Riding the automatic elevator to the first floor, Alice and Brad found that Rachel had spoken the truth. Two local detectives stood talking to a cameraman at the third door to the right across the passage, while four patrolmen guarded the stairs and windows at either end of it. Unlike in most hotel buildings, the occupants of the other rooms kept their doors closed and showed no interest in the activities of the police—at least not openly.

  ‘Hi Alice, Brad,’ said Sergeant Dave Bulpin and pointed to the two empty cartridge cases at the right side of the door.

  ‘It’s one of yours.’

  ‘What do you know?’ Alice asked.

  ‘A maid saw the door open a crack and went to ask if she could make the bed,’ Bulpin explained. ‘When she looked inside, she came screeching down the stairs and into the lobby. Made so much noise she brought two harness bulls off the street. They used their heads. One rode the elevator and the other used the stairs. When the elevator doors opened, a feller saw the bull and started to run. Met the other one on the stairs and grabbed for a gun. He was unlucky, the bull shoots Distinguished Expert and licked him to the shot. Nailed him in the leg.’

  ‘What kind of gun?’ Brad wanted to know.

  ‘A Colt Cobra,’ Bulpin drawled. ‘Which he didn’t fire those cases there through it.’

  ‘I thought maybe we’d got our man,’ Brad grunted.

  ‘He could be. The bulls looked into the room, then they called us and said we should have you along. It just goes to show that we read your bulletins now and again.’

  ‘And we love you for it, Dave,’ Alice smiled, knowing the patrolmen had drawn the right conclusions on seeing the empty cases, having read about the two killings in the Sheriff’s Office information bulletins. ‘Is there any more?’

  ‘Scene of crime shots,’ Bulpin replied, taking them from his jacket pocket. ‘The M.E.’s in there. Room’s rented by one Tomas Cortez.’

  ‘It’s Tomas all right,’ the other detective went on. ‘I know him from when I worked with V. and G. He’s a dice mechanic.’

  ‘A dice mechanic,’ Alice sighed. ‘That’s all we need for a victim. Why couldn’t he be a moonshiner, or in the stag show business?’

  ‘You deputies always want it easy,’ Bulpin told her.

  A white-coated young medical examiner came from the room. ‘It’s the Hagmeyer kill all over again,’ he said. ‘Approximately the same time of death, and very similar injuries.’

  ‘Start asking the questions from the other roomers, will you please, Dave?’ Alice requested. ‘Can we go in, doc?’

  ‘Feel free, I’m through,’ the M.E. answered. ‘I’ll have my men come up and fetch the body.’

  Going into the room, the deputies looked at the body. Middle-sized, lean, wiry, it had been hit twice in the chest. An obvious Mexican, he had been killed while wearing only a pair of pajama trousers. To the left of the door was a chair and a short-barreled Smith & Wesson Chief’s Special revolver lay on it. Brad turned his eyes from the gun to the door.

  ‘It’s got a chain bolt,’ he said. ‘That means he must have known who he was opening to.’

  Further proof of that came as they crossed to the bed. From all the signs, only one person had slept there. Cortez’s clothes hung on the back of the chair by the bed, or across its seat. Partially concealed by the shirt, undershirt and fancy-patterned shorts was a wallet. Alice put on her cotton gloves and picked it up.

  ‘Look at this, Brad,’ she breathed, showing her partner the interior of the wallet and the thick wad of money it held. ‘They’re all hundreds, from what I can see. No wonder he had the gun.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ Brad agreed. ‘And it’s even more sure that he knew whoever he opened the door to.’

  ‘He’d have to know them real well,’ Alice confirmed. ‘With a bank-roll this big, I wouldn’t even open up to you in a drum like the Shaftesbury.’

  ‘Which isn’t complimentary, boss-lady, even if I did look just a teensy mite at Zippy Sharon last night,’ Brad drawled. ‘But I know what you mean.’

  ‘I just hope that somebody looked as hard at the killer as you looked at her!’ Alice sniffed, then figured she had raised sufficient hell on that point the previous night. ‘Somebody must have seen the killer this time.’

  Yet it seemed that nobody had seen the killer. Helped by the detectives, Alice and Brad questioned all the occupants of the hotel. None could, or would, offer any help. Even the roomers on the first floor displayed complete ignorance of the affair. At the early hour when death had struck Cortez down, the rest of the hotel had been asleep. The rooms had such efficient sound-proofing that it was unlikely the shots would have been heard even by Cortez’s immediate neighbors.

  Alice and Brad felt inclined to believe that nobody on the first floor had known about the murder. If one of them had made the discovery, he would have either informed the manager so that the body could be removed from the building or searched the room, taken the wallet and fled.

  Nor did the hotel’s staff offer any greater assistance. One of the qualifications of employment required by the management was the ability to avoid witnessing the movements of the roomers. The manager claimed that the desk was only manned from eight in the morning to eight at night. None of the cleaning staff arrived before eight. All the entrances to the building were left unfastened throughout the night, a fact confirmed by the beat patrolmen. Checking the register, it was found that Cortez had moved in two weeks earlier. The desk clerk declared that the victim had received a few letters, but had neither made nor received any telephone calls. To the best of the clerk’s knowledge, he had had no visitors and nobody had made inquiries about him.

  Interviewing the wounded man as he lay on a stretcher in the manager’s office, the deputies found that their case had not ended. He cursed his luck and insisted that he knew nothing about the murder. Pressed for proof, he admitted that he was wanted for armed robbery in North Texas and had been planning to escape across the border. Coming face to face with the patrolman in the elevator, he had panicked and run. When he met the second officer, he had assumed they were after him, so went for his gun.

  Once again Alice and Brad were inclined to believe that they heard the truth. If the man had been guilty of Cortez’s murder, he would not have waited so long before deciding to leave the hotel.

  ’ S.I.B.’s experts made their usual thorough examination of the death room. All they achieved was to prove that Cortez had been alone the previous night and did not appear to have entertained visitors in the room since his arrival; the only fingerprints they found belonging to the victim and the maid who had discovered his body. They had found a number of crooked dice and two letters. Both had been forwarded from his last address in San Antonio. The first was from a crooked gambling equipment supply house, describing their latest products. Written in Spanish, the other offered him employment with a percentage of the profits by a group of busin
essmen in Fort Worth.

  At half past three Alice and Brad conceded defeat. They had questioned all of Cortez’s neighbors again. Under pressure, a few of them had claimed his acquaintance. Even they insisted that, while amiable, he kept himself to himself and did not mingle. If they knew of his friends, male or female, outside the building, they did not tell the deputies. Once more the mysterious killer had come and gone, leaving no trace other than the two ejected cartridge cases.

  ‘Call them off, Dave,’ Alice advised Bulpin when he came to ask if she wanted anything further. ‘We’ve searched the building from top to bottom, spoken to everybody in it and the folks who live around. Damn it all! What’re we dealing with, the invisible man?’

  ‘Either him or the Vanishing American,’ Bulpin replied. ‘One of the bulls asked me to tell you that Cen Con’s just been trying to raise you. Jack Tragg wants you back at the Sheriff’s Office as soon as you can make it.’

  ‘Wrap things up here for us, Dave,’ Alice said. ‘Brad and I’ll be on our way.’

  Thirteen

  Ever since the newscasts announced that the ‘Dumdum Killer’ had struck again, the Department of Public Safety Building’s telephone switchboard had been inundated with calls. Some of the callers demanded to know what the hell the law was doing to prevent more killings. Others insisted that they would be on the list of victims and must be given individual protection. Ten people offered names of suspects who they assured the operator must be the ‘Dumdum Killer’. Four men and a woman confessed to the murders. One man called to say that he was a victim they had not yet discovered. Each of the calls received attention, even though the peace officers knew that in ninety-nine per cent of the cases nothing would come of their efforts. Every deputy or detective answering such a call knew that to ignore it might mean missing the multiple murderer.

  Ever alert to the state of public feeling, Sheriff Jack Tragg knew that steps must be taken to avoid panic. He had no wish for innocent delivery-men or chance-passing travelers to be shot by frightened citizens. So he had offered to make a statement over the local radio and television networks at six-thirty that evening. Before doing so, he intended to learn everything about the case and make whatever arrangements he considered necessary.