by Kane, Henry
“Did he get his money back?”
“Within two months. Then later on, he got into trouble, he got disbarred, he went broke, and he sort of passed out of my sphere of things.”
“Did he know about Roger’s letters?”
“Yeah. We had a giggle about them a few times.”
“Let’s bring it up to date now, eh?”
“Sure. About three weeks ago, Nolan dropped into the club. He was loaded. He’s a trouble guy, a muscle guy. He got into an argument with a customer and he belted him. The guy went back on him and Nolan slugged him with a bottle. That’s bad for business, bad for my license. The guy was hustled out and patched up. Nolan wound up in my dressing room where I had him sleep it off.”
“Muscle guy,” I said. “Sister, that bird is begging for it.”
“Every hard guy, sooner or later, catches up with a harder one. It hasn’t happened to Nolan yet.”
“Hasn’t it?” I said.
“Anyway, after a snooze and about a gallon of coffee, he straightened out, and he began to beef to me about how he was broke and how tough things were for him. Then he had a bright idea. I could help him.”
“How?”
“That blackmail thing—but without blackmail.”
“Now isn’t that a cute one! How’s it work?”
“He asked me to co-operate. He said I couldn’t get into trouble because it wouldn’t really be blackmail.”
“What would it be—really?”
“A gag that figured to produce some dough—for him.”
“How?”
“Like this. I was to get in touch with Roger and pretend I was going to hold him up—just as I did. But I wasn’t going through with it. My job was to speak my piece and let it lie there, period. Then, according to Nolan, Roger would come to him, and Nolan would be the hero—for a price. Like that, it wouldn’t cost me anything, I’d be returning a favor to a guy who helped me out once—and Nolan would be able to pick up some dough he needed badly.”
“Only instead of going to Nolan, Roger came to me.”
“So it seems.”
“You think he was giving you straight goods?”
“Right now, I don’t know. That guy’s a deep one. I thought it was straight goods at the time he sprung it. What do you think?”
“I don’t know either. But I’m gonna know. Thanks, Anabel. I’m getting out of here.”
Her hand came up to my neck and a fingernail scraped gently at my hair. Her eyes were lazy as she tilted her head upward. Softly she said, “What’s your hurry, Lover?”
It was rough—but I thought of Aldridge in the can, Root in the morgue and Dodge in the hospital. It was rough—but it would have to keep. I bent down, moved her head away, and kissed the back of her neck. “It’ll have to keep,” I said, and I stood up.
She looked at me. She didn’t move, lying cat-like stretched on the divan, topside down and long and curved and lovely and graceful. Then one leg came up, bent at the knee, long and tapered, waving slowly in the air, the arch of the foot high, the toes pointed. Her lips rounded into the shape of a kiss and one eye closed slowly.
“It’ll keep.”
I was at the door when she called: “Will you be in touch?”
“Where’ll you be?”
“Right here.”
“I’ll be in touch.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
CHAPTER 12
In the pokey, I talked with Roger Aldridge while Parker hovered nearby. Parker, always the gentlemen, stayed out of earshot. I gave Aldridge the letters and he gave me back an incredulous stare. He read them, re-read them, said, “You’re a wizard.”
“There are no copies,” I said. “What you’ve got—is all there is.”
Aldridge looked toward Parker. “Lieutenant,” he called.
“What?” Parker joined us.
“May I have my checkbook, Lieutenant? And a pen?”
Parker’s eyes went from him to me, then the eyes narrowed and he smiled, and he sucked at his cheek. “Always making money, these private eyes. Even in jail.” He spread his arms at a uniformed officer, bowed, said, “Service, please. Mr. Aldridge’s checkbook.”
“You kiddin’, Lieutenant?”
“I don’t kid, young man. I lost whatever was left of my sense of humor when I was promoted to this job.”
“Yes, sir, Lieutenant.” The young man saluted and departed.
Parker looked at me hard, shrugged, grinned helplessly, and went back to out of earshot, unwrapping a cigar on the way.
Aldridge said, “How’d you get them?”
I brought him up to date.
He said, “You’ll destroy them, Mr. Chambers. We can’t do it here. Burn them. I know I can depend on you.”
“They’re as good as burnt right now.”
He was silent for a few moments. Then he said: “What do you think Jonathan had in mind?”
“A big touch—and a quick one—for turning up the letters. You offered me fifteen thousand. He might have topped that by ten.”
He scratched at his mustache. “I don’t know. In a case like this, he wouldn’t have left it to chance. Three weeks have already gone by. If he had wanted it—he could have, somehow, arranged it. That occur to you?”
“And how.”
“What do you think, then?”
“I don’t know. You’re the guy that says he uses the rapier rather than the bludgeon. Up to now, it’s been strictly bludgeon.”
“And completely unlike him.”
The man came with the check book and pen. Aldridge wrote a check—to me—for fifteen thousand dollars. I looked at it. I said, “It should be fourteen. You’ve already paid me one.”
“Whose money is it?”
“Yours.”
“Let it stand.”
You can’t hate a guy like that. I put the check away and the letters. I said, “For a guy booked for murder you’re taking it real cool.”
“I didn’t kill him. I’ve told the truth. I’m not worried. I’m a great believer in the efficiency of the police. They’re making a mistake, but they’ve made mistakes before that have been rectified. But I do wish Warren Dodge had got in touch with me. Have you found him yet?”
The guy had enough worries. I said, “No. But I will.”
“Will,” he said. “Why in heaven’s name should anybody force my uncle to change his will in order to bolster my share?” He brushed a finger at his mustache again, ran the finger up along his cheek and dug it into his temple.
Suddenly, I knew where I was going. I said, “Do you happen to know the phone number of Dodge’s secretary? Mamie …?”
“As a matter of fact, I do. Mamie Miller. Lives with her sister. Let me think now.” He closed his eyes, remembering, then he gave me the number.
Parker came to us. “Okay,” he said. “We break it up now.”
Dowstairs, I called Mamie. I asked her to meet me in the lobby of the Flatiron Building, it was important. I hung up and called Jonathan Nolan. He wasn’t home.
CHAPTER 13
Mamie took me up to Dodge’s office. We put on the lights and I went into the library. I said, “I’m going to do a little studying.”
“Studying? Here?” Her face constricted in bewilderment. “Why?”
“Because there’s a law library here. I’m playing a hunch. I’m bouncing bludgeons against rapiers, and playing a hunch.”
“Hunch?” she said.
“In my business it’s part of the standard equipment. Hunch, sixth sense, experience, unconscious urge—it’s got a lot of names, and none of them actually makes sense.”
“Bludgeons?” she said. “Rapiers?”
“Figures of speech. In a cockeyed kind of way, I’m trying to get the guy that got Mr. Dodge.”
That made her decidely happier.
I said, “How is he?”
“I call the hospital each hour, making a real pest of myself. So far, each time, the report is ‘Fair.’ ”
“Could be worse.”
“Yes. I’ll go outside now and let you work.”
I pored over books like a kid giving a workout to pornography. I knew what I was looking for, and I knew where to look, but this wasn’t my racket and it took time. I got close a couple of times but not close enough. I checked each reference and the books piled up on the library table like a football heap on an autumn gridiron and then—bang—I had it right on the head. I closed the book and folded it under my arm and went out to Mamie. I said, “Sweetie, we can blow the joint now.”
“Blow?” she said. “Joint?”
“I’ll take you home. And thanks for the use of the hall. And I’m borrowing this law book.”
Dear old Mamie. She said, “Oh. You’ll have to sign a receipt.” She sat down at the typewriter and tapped out a receipt that had more clauses than Donald Root’s will. I signed it and she put out the lights, and we got out of there, and downstairs, I shoved two fingers into my mouth and shrilled for a cab.
I took Mamie home first, and then I had the cabbie drive me to 35th Street, and we stopped at a cafeteria, and he waited while I went in and used a public phone and called Nolan, and got no answer. Mr. Nolan was out having himself a good time, but he wasn’t going to have a good time for long. I went back to the cab and said, “10 West 35th.”
It turned out to be a four-story house with a remodeled front, an open downstairs door, and no elevators inside. I trudged up two flights to 2 E, rang the bell for just-in-case, and then used Mel’s key to invite myself in. I flipped a light and locked the door behind me. I laid down the law book and did quick exploring. There were three rooms: a bedroom with an extra wide bed; an ample kitchen and a large living room with good furniture, a liquor cabinet with a lot of bottles, and high bookcases along the walls with a preponderance of law books. I moved a chair so that it faced the door, switched off the lights, sat down and let myself get angry.
I didn’t smoke. I didn’t want him to open door and get a whiff of tobacco. I sat very still and grew rigid, waiting. I thought about a son of a bitch who used a girl for a patsy and put her in a spot where she could do time for attempted extortion. I thought about a burning cigar thrown at the face of a stranger. I thought about a guy grabbing a fallen man’s hair and rapping the back of his head against a stone floor. I thought about the back end of a heater crashing into the skull of a man past seventy. I thought about murder, putting a bullet into the head of an invalid trapped in a wheel chair … and then there was footfalls in the corridor outside the door, and a key in the lock, and I was standing up, waiting for a guy that was good with his mitts, that had been an amateur champion and a professional pug, a guy with big shoulders and a lot of power and a guy that would stop at nothing.
The door opened and I hit him.
The left caught him in the stomach and he bent over face forward, and the right caught him with all my strength square on the nose, and I could hear the break of bone under the impact of the blow. But he didn’t go down. He rushed me and kicked his knee hard to my groin, and I fell against him, and we both fell against the door, closing it. We struggled against the closed door, his knees punching up viciously, always toward my groin. It was too dark to see, but I didn’t stop swinging, and then a fist caught me on the point of the chin and I flew back and fell to the floor.
He clicked on the light.
I could see him coming at me now. He plunged forward in a flying leap, and yet, in one second you noticed the craziest things. At the very moment that you saw the blood on his face and his nose blue and twisted, you noticed too that he was wearing the same suit as yesterday, and you saw the watch chain across his vest and the dangling gold boxing glove. He was flying toward me, but the heel of my shoe cracked against his eye and he fell sidewise, and now I was on top of him, a knee in his belly and my fists rapping at his face. But he was strong and somehow, his hands came up and clutched at my throat, and his thumbs pressed in against my Adam’s apple, and I wheezed for breath and I fell off him, but I twisted out of the grip of his hands.
He was up now, near the liquor cabinet. He grabbed at the neck of a bottle, smashed off the base against a corner of the cabinet, and he was coming at me, the ragged-edged bottle a murderous weapon. I was on one knee like a runner starting for a sprint. He came at me and I jumped, and I caught the wrist of the hand holding the bottle, and we struggled again, panting, tight to each other, the jagged bottle waving above us, a weapon of many daggers. Sweat popped from both of us, and hand trembled against wrist, and then I swept the hand down and the bottle slashed at his ear, and it slit the ear where it was attached to the head, and the blood came down in a red sheet and it must have frightened him, because the grip on the bottle loosened, and I shook it out of his hand and it fell to the floor, crashing to pieces. He turned just as I wheeled, and my left caught him on the nose again in a full pivot, flat-smashing-soggy-wet, and he stood still like a stricken animal, shaking his head. I had him down to size now. He ripped open his jacket and I saw the holster, and he was fumbling for the gun but he didn’t have a chance. It was like chopping down a tree. I kept banging fists at his face as his hands hung loose and he shuddered; then he stumbled and fell flat on his back, spread-eagled and unconscious, blood gurgling from his mouth.
I leaned against a wall and waited for the fire to go out of my lungs. Then I went to him and bent to him and looked at each end of the watch chain and found what I expected. One vest picket held a watch, the other a sharp-bladed gold knife. The knife sparkled clean—Mr. Nolan had done a good job of cleansing it—but nothing was going to help him. I reached into my own pocket for the tuft of red carpet out of Donald Root’s apartment. If a clincher was going to be necessary, this would be the clincher. I tucked the tuft deep into the knife pocket, returned the knife, put the watch back in the other pocket, stood up and went to the phone. For the second time in two days I called my doctor in an emergency, but this was some one else’s emergency. I got through to him and I said, “Doc?”
“Yes …?”
“Pete Chambers. I need you bad. Emergency.”
“Again?”
“Trouble, doc. Can you make it?”
“If it’s an emergency …”
“It’s an emergency. 10 West 35th. Apartment 2 E. As fast as possible. Brother, am I going to get a bill this month.”
“Brother, you just said a mouthful.
Nolan slumbered raspingly as I made more phone calls. I called Anabel and I told her to come a-visiting and to come quickly. Then I called Parker at Headquarters. I said, “I’ve got your murderer.”
“Which murderer?”
“Donald Root.”
“Wrong number. I’ve got that murderer.”
“No you haven’t. Come on up here.”
“Where?”
“Jonathan Nolan’s apartment. 10 West 35th. 2 E.”
“That the other nephew?”
“That’s right.”
“We’ve been trying to contact him.”
“I’ve got him for you. Reclining and resting. Right here.”
“See you, young feller.”
“The faster the better. And bring Root’s will with you.”
“Bye, now.”
While I waited I eavesdropped on Roger Aldridge’s correspondence. You think of Roger Aldridge, prim with blue-grey temples and a white mustache and an affected enunciation, and you read the incandescent letters that show the man inside the man and it gives you a chuckle.
I built a bonfire in an ashtray and cremated Roger’s indiscretions and opened a window and flicked the ashes to oblivion. Then the bell was ringing. It was Doc with his little black bag. He saw his patient at once, opened his bag, and went to work on him. “What happened to this guy?” he muttered. “Get his head caught in a concrete-mixer?”
“Doctors and their corny cracks,” I said. “How is he?”
“Pretty bad.”
He stitched his eye, took four sutures bringing the ear back to the face, and stu
ffed plugs into a nostril. He said, “This baby needs a hospital.”
“He come to yet?”
“He’s semi-conscious.” He took a hypo out of his bag.
I said, “What are you going to do?”
“Give him a jab.”
“I want him conscious, Doc.”
“He’ll be conscious but woozy.”
“Woozy’s all right with me, as long as he stays with us and knows what’s going on.”
Doc said, “Give me a hand.”
We lifted him to a couch and Doc gave him the needle. Then the bell was ringing again, and our first visitor was Anabel Jolly in a mauve suit and glistening nylons and mauve shoes and a black net blouse right up to the neck, and then Parker piled in with a pair of burly cops.
I pointed at the couch. I said, “There’s your murderer.”
Nolan leaned on one elbow and observed us groggily.
Parker glanced at the patched-up face, and said, “What happened?”
“Concrete-mixer,” Doc said.
Parker said, succinctly: “Uh huh.”
“The bullet in the ceiling,” I said. “That gave it to me right away. I don’t care how hard you tried to convince me, Lieutenant, you weren’t happy with that bullet in the ceiling.”
Parker said, “If you’ve got a story, let’s have it.”
“Miss Jolly’s got a story first.”
“Who’s Miss Jolly?”
“The lady in the purple suit. You’ve got the floor, Anabel.”
Miss Jolly told her story.
“That,” said Parker, “implicates him in a blackmail deal. It doesn’t make him out a murderer. He was looking for a big touch and a fast one.”
“Wrong,” I said.
“Why?”
“Because this guy was looking for more than two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. He was reaching for the jackpot. Plus.”
“Plus?” Parker said. “Plus what?”