by Otto Penzler
The deputy licked his lips with the tip of a pale tongue that seemed, somehow, to be utterly cold.
“The penal code don’t say so, brother.”
Ken Corning frowned.
“The penal code says lots of things—so does the Constitution.”
Don Graves said: “Yeah,” and made as though he’d turn away.
Corning raised his voice.
“Well, listen, about bail. If you’ll suggest to the magistrate that bail be reduced to a thousand dollars cash, I think she can raise it.”
Graves turned back to Corning, stared lid— lessly at him.
“You heard what the magistrate said: ten thousand bucks cash, or twenty thousand bond.”
Coming’s rage flared up.
“A hell of a bail that is. You’d think the woman was guilty of a murder or something. If you don’t know that these cheap dicks are sticking their palms out right and left and shaking down the people that run the little speaks, you’re just plain crazy! You keep riding me around, and I’ll take this jane before a jury and see what twelve men in a box have to say about the way you’re getting so damned virtuous in York City all of a sudden.”
The lidless eyes remained hard and peering.
“Go ahead,” said Graves.
“I will!” snapped Corning.
Graves spoke as Ken Corning was halfway to the door.
“Tell you what I will do, Corning.”
Corning paused, turned.
“Take her into court right away, plead her guilty as charged, and I’ll ask to have a minimum sentence imposed.”
Corning asked: “Fine or imprisonment?”
“Imprisonment,” said Graves. “To hell with a fine.”
Coming’s retort was emphatic. “To hell with you!” he said, and slammed the door.
Helen Vail had the afternoon papers for him when he walked into his office.
“News?” she asked.
He grinned at her, took the papers, touched her fingertips as he took them, and suddenly patted her hand.
“Good girl,” he said.
“Why?”
“Oh, I don’t know. You just are.”
“How about the case?”
“I don’t know. There’s something funny. You’d think the woman had done a murder or something. And Graves, that billiard ball guy with the snake eyes, told me he’d let me cop a minimum sentence if I’d rush her through the mill and make a plea.”
Helen Vail’s eyes were sympathetic.
“You mean send the woman to the pen because she slipped one of these dicks a little dough?”
“Exactly.”
“What’d you tell him?”
Corning grinned.
“That, precious, is something your little shell-like ears shouldn’t hear.”
And he walked into the inner office, taking the papers with him. He sat in his swivel-chair, put his feet on the desk, turned to the sporting page, browsed through the headlines, turned back to the front page.
The telephone rang.
He called out to Miss Vail: “I’ve got it, Helen,” and scooped the receiver to his ear, holding the newspaper in one hand, the telephone in the other.
The shrill, piping voice of Sam Parks came over the wire.
“Listen, is this Corning, the lawyer?”
“Yes.”
“Okey. This is Parks. I was in to see you this morning about my wife. Listen, I know why they’re trying to give her the works. I can’t tell you over the telephone. I’m coming over. You be there?”
“Come right away,” said Corning.
“Yeah!” shrilled Parks excitedly, and banged the receiver into place. Ken Corning hung up, turned to the paper. There was a frown creasing his forehead. He looked at his watch. It was five minutes to four. Street noises came up through the open window. The afternoon was warm, the air laden with the scents of late summer.
Ken’s eyes drifted unseeingly to the front page of the newspaper. Why should so much stir be made over the matter of a commonplace woman in a third-grade speakeasy giving some money to an officer who held out his hand for it? Why should a raid be made on a place where the officers hadn’t collected enough information to know who was running the place, and had let the husband slip through their fingers?
He stared at the newspaper, let his forehead crinkle in thought, and tried to fit the ends of the puzzle together.
Minutes passed.
The clock on the city hall boomed the hour of four, and the big gilt hands crept around until the minute hand marked the quarter hour.
There was the sound of a truck backfiring in the street,
Something came trebling up through the window, the scream of a child, or of a very frightened woman. Then there was the sound of rubber tires, skidding into a turn on pavement, the shout of a man.
There was a second silence, and then the noise made by many voices, the sound of feet running on cement. A siren wailed in the distance.
Ken Corning, lost in contemplation, did not interpret the significance of those sounds until the siren had become a scream, until the clanging bell of the ambulance sounded almost directly beneath his office window, and until the door of his private office opened and Helen Vail stared at him.
“There seems to have been a man hurt,” she said.
Ken Corning put down the paper and went to the window. Helen put her hand on his shoulder as they leaned out. Corning was conscious of the touch of her hair against his cheek, the pressure of her hand on his shoulder. He slid his right arm out, around her waist.
They looked down upon the street.
There was no traffic. Such vehicles as were on the street were stalled. Men swarmed about like busy ants, moving in seething disorder. An ambulance was backing towards the curb. A uniformed officer was clearing a path for it. Stalled cars, their motors running, belched forth thin smoke films which made the air a light blue color.
A black circle of men were not moving. They were grouped about something which lay on the sidewalk. From that form there was a dark stain which had welled along the cement until it trickled in a thin, sluggish stream into the gutter.
The man was big and fat. He was lying on his back.
“Good heavens!” said the voice of Helen Vail, “it’s the man who was in the office.”
Ken Corning swung from the window. He reached the doorway of the private office in three strides, and gained the stairs. He went down them two at a time. He reached the sidewalk as the men were loading the stretcher. He pushed his way through the crowd. Men muttered comments, turned and stared at him, growled warnings to watch what he was doing. Corning paid no attention to them.
He reached the inner circle, saw the stretcher bearers heaving against the weight of the bulk that they strove to place in the ambulance.
Parks had been shot twice. To all appearances he was dead. The bullet holes welled a red trail which dripped from the stretcher. The eyes were half open and waxy. The skin was like discolored dough. The hands trailed limply at the ends of dangling arms.
One of the stretcher bearers spoke sharply.
“Give us a hand here, some of you guys!”
Ken Corning pushed through the circle as two of the spectators swirled forward. A uniformed officer also bent to give a lift. Corning asked a question: “Who saw it? How did it happen?”
Men stared at him with blank curiosity. He was hatless, wandering about asking how it had happened, and men regarded him as a part of the incident which had broken into the routine of their daily life. They watched him with that expression of impersonal curiosity with which fish in an aquarium stare at spectators who press against the glass tank.
On the fifth repetition of the question, a man gave an answer.
“I saw it. He drove up in an automobile and parked the car. He started walking along the street. The guy that shot him was in a roadster. He pulled right in to the curb, and he didn’t drive away until he was sure the guy was dead. The first shot smacked him over. He shot
again when the guy was on the cement. I seen him twitch when the second bullet struck!”
Corning led the man to one side.
“Drove up in a car, eh? Which car?”
He indicated the line of parked machines.
The witness shrugged his shoulders. “I ain’t sure. I think it was the flivver over there. I remember that it was a car that had a smashed fender. You know, there wasn’t no reason why I should notice him until…”
“Yes,” said Corning, “I know. Now you want some advice?”
The man looked at him with curious eyes.
“Huh?” he asked.
“Get away from here and don’t tell your story to a soul. Go to headquarters, get the homicide squad’s office and ask for Sergeant Home. He’s on the square. Tell your story to him, and ask that your name be withheld. Otherwise, if you got a good look at the man that did the shooting, you might find yourself parked on a marble slab. Killers don’t like witnesses.”
The man’s face paled. “Gee,” he said; then, after an interval: “Gee whiz!”
He spun on his heel, started walking rapidly away. From time to time he glanced over his shoulder.
His tip gave Ken Corning the chance to be the first man to examine the light car with the bent fender.
He looked at the registration certificate which was strapped about the steering post of the car. That showed the machine was registered in the name of Esther Parks, and the address which was given was the same address as that of the place which had been raided when the woman was arrested.
Ken felt of the seat. It was still warm.
He noticed an afternoon newspaper lying on the floorboards. He picked it up. There was nothing else on the inside of the car to give any inkling as to who had driven or owned it. Ken felt in the flap pocket of the right-hand door. His groping fingers encountered a lady’s handkerchief, a pair of pliers, the cap from an inner tube, and a bit of pasteboard. He pulled out the pasteboard.
It was red, bearing the insignia of the police department. It was, he found when he deciphered the scrawled lines which were placed in the printed blanks, a ticket for parking within fifteen feet of a fire hydrant on Seventh Street, between Madison and Harkley. The time was checked at three-forty-five, of that day.
Ken pocketed the ticket and walked around to the front of the car, inspecting the dent in the fender. There was but little paint left upon the nondescript car which Parks had been driving. That little paint had been cracked and chipped where the fender had crumpled. And, on the tip of that crumpled fender, was a spot of bright red enamel, evidently taken from the car with which the flivver had collided.
Ken examined the front of the springs, the radiator, found further evidences of a collision, further bits of red paint. The accident had evidently been very recent.
Aside from those things, there was nothing to indicate anything whatever about the occupant of the car, or the errand upon which it had been driven.
Ken walked to the curb, looked at the crowd which was commencing to move along under orders of the uniformed police. The traffic was moving now, crawling past at a snail’s pace, horns blaring. An officer, accompanied by a woman, moved along the parked lane of cars, inspecting them.
Corning felt that this woman had seen the fat man emerge from a machine, but couldn’t identify the machine. Ken let himself drift away with the scattering spectators. He walked around the block, and back to his office. He climbed the stairs, smiled at Helen Vail’s white face.
“Was it … ?”
He nodded, passed into the inner office. She came and stood in the doorway. Ken smoothed out the newspaper he had taken from the car Parks had driven. He spread it out.
A knife had cut away a section of the front page.
“Was it because he came here?” asked Helen, mustering her courage.
Ken Corning reached for the other afternoon newspaper he had been reading when the sound of the shots had interrupted him. He nodded absently as he spread the two front pages out on the desk, one over the other.
The paper from the death car showed the page of the other paper through the opening where the knife had cut. That which had been cut out was a picture with a small paragraph or two below it.
Ken looked at the picture.
It showed a man with a square-cut chin, shell glasses, a firm, thin mouth, high cheek bones and a high forehead. Below it appeared the words Mayor Appoints Harry B. Dike as New Head of Water Department.
Corning read the few paragraphs appearing below the headlines of the accompanying news article. Those paragraphs recited the enviable record Harry B. Dike had enjoyed in connection with his own business enterprises and such civic activities as had claimed his time. It also mentioned that Dike was firmly opposed to the granting of contracts and concessions to those who enjoyed political pull, and that, in the future, the water department would be conducted upon a basis of efficiency with all work thrown open to the lowest responsible bidders, although the department would reserve the right to let private contracts.
The article sounded very promising. It gave the location of Dike’s office in the Monadnock Building. The Monadnock Building was on Seventh Street, between Madison and Harkley.
Helen Vail watched Corning as he clamped his hat down on his forehead.
“Ken,” she said, “you’re going out … on this thing, into danger?”
Her face was a dead white. The eyes were starry and tender.
He laughed at her, saw the pale lips stiffen, quiver and tremble into the first sign of a sob, then lift into a half smile. He patted her shoulder, grinned at her.
“Listen, kid, I’m a newcomer here. I’m here to stay. Some of these chaps don’t recognize that fact yet, that’s all. It’s time they did. I’m just going out and let a few of them know that when I hung out my shingle in this town I did it with my eyes open. I planted my feet here, and I’m staying here.”
And he strode across the office, went through the outer door, made time to the street, caught a taxi. “Monadnock Building,” he said, as he settled back against the cushions, “and make it snappy.”
The cab lurched into motion.
“Man shot here a while back,” said the communicative driver. “Raised hell with traffic.”
Corning said: “Yeah,” without interest and the conversaion languished. The cab swung in to the curb at Seventh Street, Corning paid the meter, consulted the directory of the Monadnock Building, found that Dike’s office was on the seventh floor, and took the elevator up.
There was no one in the reception office except a typist who was tapping frantically at the keys of a noiseless typewriter, and a rather stern-faced but pretty secretary who sat stiffly behind a desk in the corner of the room, three telephones in front of her.
Corning walked to her, smiled.
“I’m anxious to get in touch with a man who was to have met me here earlier this afternoon, but I had a puncture and was delayed. He’s a great big man, fat, about forty-eight, wearing a gray suit that’s in need of pressing …”
Her voice was crisply efficient.
“You mean Mr. Parks. He’s been here and gone.”
Corning made a gesture of disappointment, but his mouth clamped shut to keep from showing his elation.
“Mr. Dike’s in?”
“Yes. He’s busy. You haven’t an appointment?”
“No. Can you answer the question? What kind of a car does he drive?”
“A Cadillac. It’s a sedan. Then he had a roadster, a Buick.”
“Thanks. I think I’m interested in the Cadillac. It’s a bright red, isn’t it?”
“It’s red, yes.”
“I’m afraid I’ve got to disturb Mr. Dike. Tell him it’s Mr. Corning, and that I’m in a hurry.”
She shook her head.
“He’s not to be disturbed. You haven’t an appointment, and …”
Corning gained the door to the inner office in a swift stride, without waiting for her to finish the sentence.
&nb
sp; “And I’m in a hurry,” he said, and opened the door.
Harry B. Dike was even more dignified in his frosty appearance than the newspaper photograph would have indicated to a casual observer. The light glinted from the bald reaches of his high forehead. His eyes were steel gray and bored steadily out from behind his shell spectacles. He looked up from a desk which contained a sheaf of papers, stared at Corning and said: “Get out! I’m busy.”
His eyes went down to the papers.
Corning walked across the room.
Dike didn’t look up again. He was moving the point of a pencil along the typewritten lines of a document. “Get out,” he said, “or I’ll call a cop and have you thrown in for disturbing the peace. I’ve canceled my appointments. I don’t want any life insurance, any books or a new automobile.”
Corning sat down.
Dike scowled at him, banged the pencil down on his desk and reached for the telephone.
“I’m Kenneth D. Corning, attorney for Sam Parks, the man who called on you a little while earlier this afternoon,” he said.
Dike dropped the telephone. His eyes widened, darkened, then became fixedly steady in gaze and expression. He said coldly: “What’s that to me?”
“It has to do with your acceptance of the position of Superintendent of the Water Department,” said Corning. “I think it would be far better for you to refuse the appointment—particularly in view of the fact that Parks was murdered about twenty minutes ago.”
The face did not change by so much as a line.
“You mean that you think I had something to do with the murder?” asked Dike coldly.
Coming’s tone was equally cold.
“Yes,” he said.
The two men stared at each other.
“Corning,” said Dike, as though trying to place the name. “A newcomer here, eh? I presume you’re crazy. But if you’ve got anything to say, I’ll listen.”
Corning spoke, his tone dispassionate.
“He made the mistake of coming to you first. I presume he wanted a shakedown. When things didn’t go to suit him here he called me. It was Dwight’s men who put him on the spot. You probably weren’t directly connected with it. You notified Dwight, that’s all. You weren’t entirely surprised to hear of the murder, but you hadn’t exactly expected it.”