No time like the present, I thought, and turned Wainwright up in the book. I put through the call, and after the second or third ring a stately voice said, “This is Mr. Wainwright’s residence.”
“Is that Mr. John Stevens?” I asked.
There was a pause, the voice said cautiously, “Stevens speaking. Who is that, please?”
“My name is Malloy. Mr. Stevens, I would like to talk to you about an important and private matter. It has to do with the Crosbys. Can you meet me some time tonight?”
Again that pause.
“I don’t understand.” It was an old man’s voice, gentle, and perhaps a little dull-witted. “I’m afraid I don’t know you.”
“Maybe you have heard of Universal Services.”
Yes, he had heard of Universal Services.
“I run it,” I said. “It is important to me to talk to you about the Crosbys.”
“I don’t think I have any right to discuss my last employer with you,” he said distantly.
“I’m sorry.”
“It won’t hurt you to hear what I have to say. After I have explained the position you may feel inclined to tell me what I want to know. If you don’t there’re no bones broken.”
The pause was longer this time.
“Well, I might meet you, but I can’t promise…”
“That’s all right, Mr. Stevens. At the corner of Jefferson and Felman there’s a cafe. We might meet there. What time would suit you?”
He said he would be there at nine.
“I’ll be the guy wearing a hat and reading the Evening Herald,” I told him.
He said he would look out for me and hung up.
I had nearly two hours to wait before I met him, and decided to pass the time at Finnegan’s. It took me a few minutes to lock up the office. While I was turning keys, closing the safe, and shutting the windows, I thought about Nurse Gurney. Who had kidnapped her? Why had she been kidnapped? Was she still alive? Thoughts that got me nowhere, but worried me. Still thinking, I went into the outer office, looked around to make sure the place was bedded down for the night, crossed the room, stepped into the passage and locked the outer door behind me.
At the end of the corridor I noticed a short, stockily-built man lolling against the wall by the elevator doors, and reading a newspaper. He didn’t look up as I paused near him to thumb the bell-push calling the elevator attendant. I gave him a casual glance. He was dark skinned, and his blunt-featured face was pock-marked. He looked like an Italian; could have been Spanish. His navy-blue serge suit was shiny at the elbows and his white shirt dirty at the cuffs.
The elevator attendant threw open the doors, and the Wop and I entered. On the third floor, the elevator paused to pick up Manfred Willet who stared through me with blank eyes and then interested himself in the headlines of the evening paper. He had said he wanted secrecy, but I thought it was carrying it a little far not to know me in the elevator. Still, he was paying my fee, so he could call the tune.
I bought an Evening Herald at the bookstall, giving Willet a chance to leave the building without falling over me. I watched him drive away in an Oldsmobile the size of a dreadnought. The Wop with the dirty shirt cuffs had collapsed into one of the armchairs in the lobby and was reading his newspaper. I walked down the corridor to the back exit and across the alley to Finnegan’s bar.
The saloon was full of smoke, hard characters and loud voices. I had only taken a couple of steps towards my favourite table when Olaf Kruger, who runs a boxing academy on Princess Street, clutched hold of me.
Olaf was not much bigger than a jockey, bald as an egg and as smart as they come.
“Hello, Vic,” he said, shaking hands. “Come on over and get drunk. Haven’t seen you for weeks. What have I done?”
I pushed my way towards the bar and winked at Mike Finnegan as he toiled under the double row of neon lights, jerking beer.
“I’ve been to the fights pretty regular,” I said as Olaf climbed up on a stool, elbowing a little space for himself with threatening gestures that no one took seriously. “Just didn’t happen to see you. That boy O’Hara shapes well.”
Olaf waved tiny hands at Finnegan.
“Whiskies, Mike,” he bawled, in his shrill, piping voice. “O’Hara? Yeah, he shapes all right, but he’s a sucker for a cross counter. I keep telling him, but he don’t listen. One of these days he’s going to meet a guy with the wind behind him, and then it’s curtains.”
We talked boxing for the next half-hour. There was nothing much else Olaf could talk about. While we talked we ate our way through two club sandwiches apiece and drank three double whiskies.
Hughson, the Herald’s sports writer, joined us and insisted on buying another round of drinks. He was a tall, lean, cynical-looking bird, going bald, with liverish bags under his eyes, and tobacco ash spread over his coat front. He was never without a cigar that smelt as if he had found it a couple of years ago in a garbage can. Probably he had.
After we had listened to three or four of his long-winded, dirty stories, Olaf said, “What was that yarn about the Dixie Kid getting into a shindig last night? Anything to it?”
Hughson pulled a face.
“I don’t know. The Kid won’t talk. He had a shiner, if that means anything. One of the taxi-drivers on the pier said he swam ashore.”
“If he was thrown off the Dream Ship, that’s quite a swim,” Olaf said, and grinned.
“You two guys talk to yourselves,” I said, lighting a cigarette. “Don’t mind me.”
Hughson hooked nicotine-stained fingers into my breast pocket.
“The Dixie Kid went out to the Dream Ship last night and got into an argument with Sherrill. Four bouncers are supposed to have tossed him overboard, but not before he’s supposed to have socked Sherrill. There’s a rumour Sherrill’s going to bring an assault charge. If he does, the Kid’s washed up. He’s over his ears in debt now.”
“It’s my guess Sherrill will bring a suit,” Olaf said, shaking his bald head. “He has a mean reputation for that kind of thing.”
“He won’t,” Hughson said. “He can’t afford the publicity. I told the Kid he was safe enough, but even at that, the little rat won’t talk.”
“Who’s Sherrill, anyway?” I asked as calmly as I could, and crooked a finger at Finnegan to refill the glasses.
“You’re not the only one who’s asking that,” Hughson told me. “No one knows. He’s a mystery man. Came to Orchid City about a couple of years ago. He took a job selling real estate on commission for Selby & Lowenstein’s. I believe he made a little money; not much, but enough to buy himself a small house on Rossmore Avenue. Then, somehow or other, he got himself engaged to Janet Crosby, the millionairess, but that didn’t last long. He dropped out of sight for about six months, and then suddenly reappeared as owner of the Dream Ship: a three-hundred ton schooner he’s converted into a gambling-den which he keeps anchored just outside the three-mile limit. He has a fleet of water taxis going to and fro, and the members of the club are as exclusive as an investiture at Buckingham Palace.”
“And gambling’s not the only vice that goes on in that ship.” Olaf said, and winked. “He’s got half a dozen hand-picked girls on board. It’s a sweet racket. Being three miles outside the city’s limit, he can thumb his nose at Brandon. I bet he makes a pile of jack.”
“What foxes me,” Hughson said, reaching for the whisky I had bought him, “is how a heel like Sherrill ever found enough money to buy a goddamn great schooner like the Dream Ship.”
“They say he floated a company,” Olaf said. “If he had come to me and offered to sell me a piece of that ship, I’d have jumped at it. I bet whoever owns shares in her makes a packet, too.”
I listened, thinking what a marvellous thing it was to meet two guys in a bar and hear the very thing I wanted to hear without even asking.
“That ship sounds fun,” I said casually. “I wouldn’t mind being a member.”
Hughson sneered.
&nb
sp; “And you’re not the only one. You haven’t a hope. Only guys in the White Book stand a chance. Every member is hand-picked. If you haven’t got dough Sherrill doesn’t want you. The entrance fee is two hundred and fifty dollars, and the sub works out at five hundred a year. He caters for the big boys, not the proletariat.”
“What kind of a guy is Sherrill? “I asked.
“One of those smooth Alecs,” Hughson said. “Handsome, slick, tough and bright. The kind of heel women fall for. Curly hair, blue eyes, big muscles, and dresses like a movie star. My idea of a genuine, top-drawer, son-of-a-bitch.”
“Any idea why Janet Crosby broke the engagement?”
“That girl had sense. I don’t know what happened, but it’s my guess she saw the red light. All he was after was her money, and I guess she realized that before it was too late. Any girl who marries a runt like Sherrill is heading for trouble.”
Olaf, who was getting bored with this conversation, said, “Do you fellas think the Dixie Kid would make a show against O’Hara? I gotta chance to match him, but I’m not sure it would be much of a fight.”
For the next fifteen minutes we argued back and forth about the Dixie Kid’s merits, then looking at the clock above the bar I saw it was time I got moving.
“I’ll have to leave you guys,” I said, and slid off the stool. “I’ll be around at the gym one of these days. See you then.”
Olaf said he would be glad to see me any time, and would I give his best respects to Paula.
Hughson said to tell Paula he dreamed of her most nights. I left them buying more whisky.
As I crossed the room to the exit I spotted the Wop with the dirty shirt cuffs sitting at a table near the door, still engrossed in his newspaper, and as I pushed open the double swing doors, he casually folded the paper, shoved it into his pocket and got to his feet.
I walked swiftly to where I had parked the Buick, got in, started the engine and drove down the dark alley. From somewhere in the rear another car engine roared into life and a set of parking lights swam into my driving-mirror.
I drove along Princess Street, keeping my eye on the driving-mirror. The car following me was a Lincoln. The blue, anti-dazzle windshield prevented me from seeing the driver, but I guessed who it was.
At the bottom of Princess Street I turned right into Felman Street. The traffic was thinning out, and I drove fast, but the Lincoln had no trouble in sitting on my tail. Ahead of me I could see the red neon sign of the cafe where J had arranged to meet John Stevens. Just before I reached the cafe I pulled sharply into the kerb and braked hard. The Lincoln was following me too closely to do anything but drive straight on. It went past, slowing down.
I nipped out of the Buick and dodged into a dark shop doorway. The Lincoln had pulled into the kerb fifty yards ahead. The Wop got out and looked down the street without attempting to conceal his actions. He was quick enough to spot I had left the Buick, and he walked towards my parked car, his hands buried deep in his coat pockets.
I stepped back into the shadows and watched him glance into the empty car, look right and left, and then walk on. He didn’t seem disconcerted when he couldn’t see me, but continued on down the street just like any Spick out for an airing.
I watched him out of sight, then crossed the street by way of the subway and nipped into the cafe.
The wall clock facing me as I entered showed five minutes to nine o’clock. There were only about half a dozen people at the tables: a blonde Bobbysoxer and her boy, two elderly men playing chess, two women with shopping-bags, and a girl with a thin, pinched face at a corner table, drinking milk.
I picked a table away from the door and sat down, opened the Evening Herald and spread it on the table. Then I lit a cigarette and wondered about the Wop. Was he another of Salzer’s playmates or was he a new angle in this business? He was tailing me all right, and making a very bad job of it. Either that or he didn’t care if I knew he was after me. I had taken a note of his car licence number. Another little job for Mifflin, I thought, and that reminded me. I turned to the sports pages and checked the races. Crab Apple had won her race. Well, that was all right. Mifflin wouldn’t mind checking the car number now he had made a little money.
On the stroke of nine the double glass doors pushed open and a tall old man came in. I knew he was Stevens the moment I saw him. He looked like an Archbishop on vacation. He came towards me with that stately walk butlers have when they come in to announce dinner is served. The expression on his face was slightly forbidding, and there was a cautious, distant look in his eyes.
I stood up.
“Mr. Stevens?”
He nodded.
“I’m Malloy. Sit down, will you? Have a coffee?” He put his bowler hat on one of the chairs and sat down. Yes, he would have a coffee.
To save time I went to the counter, ordered two coffees and carried them over. The Bobbysoxer was staring at Stevens and giggling with the bad manners of the very young. She said something to her boy, a fresh-faced youth in a striped jersey and a college cap at the back of his head. He looked over at Stevens and grinned. Maybe they thought it was funny for an Archbishop to come to a Help-Yourself Cafe or maybe the bowler hat amused them. I put the two cups on the table.
“Nice of you to come, Mr. Stevens,” I said, and offered him a cigarette. While he was lighting it I studied him. He was all right. The faithful family retainer who could keep his mouth shut. He could be trusted, but the trouble would be to get him to talk. “What I have to say is in strict confidence,” I went on, sitting down. “I’ve been hired to investigate Miss Janet Crosby’s death. A certain party isn’t entirely satisfied she died of heart failure.”
He stiffened and sat bolt upright.
“Who is the certain party?” he asked. “Surely it is a little late for an investigation?”
“I’d rather not say at the moment,” I told him. “I agree it is late, but only within the past few days have certain facts come to light that make an investigation necessary. Do you think Janet Crosby died of heart failure?”
He hesitated.
“It’s not my business,” he said reluctantly. “Since you ask me, I admit it was a great shock to me. She seemed such an active young person. But Dr. Salzer assured me that in her case a sudden stoppage of an artery would cause heart failure without previous symptoms. All the same I found it hard to believe.”
“I wonder if you have any idea why Miss Crosby broke off her engagement with Douglas Sherrill?”
“I’m afraid I couldn’t tell you that without knowing who is making this investigation,” he said primly. “I have heard of your organization and I believe it is well spoken of, but I am not prepared to gossip about my late employer unless I know who I am dealing with.”
That was as far as we ever got.
There was a sudden frozen stillness in the cafe that made me look up sharply.
The double glass doors swung open, and four men walked in. Two of them carried Thompson sub-machine-guns, the other two had Colt automatics in their hands. Four dark-skinned Wops: one of them was my pal with the dirty shirt cuffs. The two with the Thompsons fanned out and stood either side of the room where they had a clear field of fire.
The Wop with the dirty cuffs and a little dago with red-rimmed eyes marched across the room towards my table.
Stevens gave a kind of strangled grunt and started to his feet, but I grabbed him and shoved him back on his chair.
“Take it easy,” I hissed at him.
“All right, hold it!” one of the Wops with the Thompson said. His voice cut through the silent room like a bullet through a ton of ice-cream. “Sit still, and keep your yaps shut or we’ll put the blast on the lot of you!”
Everyone sat or stood as still as death. The scene looked like a stage set in a waxworks show. There was a bartender with his hand frozen on the soda pump, his eyes goggling. One of the elderly men’s fingers rested on his Queen as he was moving it to checkmate his friend. His face was tight with horror. The
thin, pinched-looking girl sat with her eyes tight closed and her hands across her mouth. The Bobbysoxer leaned forward, her pretty, painted mouth hanging open and a shrill scream in her eyes.
As the Wop passed her, the scream popped out of her mouth. It made a shrill, jarring sound in the silent room, and cursing, the Wop hit her savagely with his gun barrel across her cute, silly little hat. He hit very hard, and the barrel made an ugly sound as it thudded on the straw of the hat, crushing it into her skull. She fell out of the chair, and blood began to run from her ears, making a puddle on the floor. The kid with her turned the colour of a fish’s belly and began to retch.
“Quiet, everybody!” the guy with the Thompson said, raising his voice.
I could see by the look of these Wops that if anyone made a move they would start shooting. They were ruthless, murderous and trigger-happy. All they wanted was an excuse. There was nothing I could do about it. Even if I had a gun I wouldn’t have started anything. A gun against two Thompsons is as useless as a toothpick against a foil, and I wouldn’t have been the only one to have got shot up.
The two Wops arrived at my table.
I sat like a stone man, my hands on the table, looking up at them. I could hear Stevens breathing painfully at my side: the breath snored through his nostrils as if he were going to have a stroke.
The Wop with the dirty cuffs grinned evilly at me.
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