Jade Venus

by George Harmon Coxe

  “Look,” Murdock said. “I’m getting a little bored with you, Bacon. If I hadn’t come here this afternoon you wouldn’t have found Lorello yet, would you? You wouldn’t have found him for another day, probably. You’ve got that much of a start because I wanted to talk to him. I talked to him last night because I had an idea he might possibly have been the messenger that brought word out from Bruno Andrada. I didn’t get too much satisfaction out of him at the Silver Door and I waited outside. The trouble was when he came out, someone in a big sedan picked him up and I didn’t get to talk to him.”

  He paused, his mouth a little grim and his voice still patient. “George Damon owned the car that picked him up. I’ll tell you how I know and I’ll tell you what happened last night when I came to see him. But I don’t want to be snarled at and I’m not going to argue with you. I don’t care a damn whether you’re sore or not. I’ll tell you or I’ll go down to the district attorney’s office and—”

  “You’ll tell me.”

  Murdock waited. Bacon’s neck was red again. He walked in a tight circle and he was thinking hard now by the look of his face. He chewed on air and screwed his mouth around and came back. For another second he glared; then, grudgingly it seemed, he grinned.

  “Okay,” he said. “Sure I’m sore. I’m a little suspicious too. You weren’t here alone more than fifteen minutes this afternoon—unless you’re lying. But you found that letter. Why didn’t you search the desk first? Logical place to start for a letter, wasn’t it? Go ahead. Let’s hear the story, but be sure and answer that when you tell me.”

  Murdock told him. He explained that Gail Roberts had first mentioned Tony Lorello’s name as having called on Professor Andrada. He told how, when he had been photographing Roger Carroll’s canvases, he had. heard someone come in and go out again and how he had gone to the window and seen Lorello hurrying down the street.

  “I found out where he worked and I went there last night to talk to him and I managed to get Louise Andrada to go too, in case she’d seen him at the house. She had. She identified him. So I talked to Lorello.”

  “You didn’t tell me about Lorello,” Bacon said. “I mean, his walking in on you and backing out at Carroll’s place.”

  “Does that come under the head of holding out?”

  “Skip it,” Bacon said. “If I’d’ve been smart I’d have found out Lorello called on Andrada—not that it would have made much difference. Go ahead, tell me more.”

  So Murdock told him the rest of it. He said he had come in to search the rooms and explained how he got in. He said he spent a half an hour searching the desk without finding anything and had been about to move on to the bedroom when he heard someone on the stairs. He explained how he had gone out the back way and what had happened after that.

  Bacon called to his fingerprint man. “Get that bulb in the floor lamp,” he said. “Murdock’s prints’ll be on it. Maybe someone else’s. Orsatti—Feeney,” he said to his plain-clothes men. “Take a look out back. Give the stairs and the alley the once over.” He gave his attention to Murdock.

  “The light was on—I mean the bulb was screwed in—when you turned it on this afternoon?”

  “Yes.”

  Bacon thought it over. “You can’t be sure you heard one man or two come up the stairs?… Two, probably. It doesn’t look as if Lorello was killed outside. I thought he might have been plugged in a car or somewhere and the killer brought him home and dumped him—he’s skinny enough to be easy to carry.”

  “If that was the case,” Murdock said, “the killer would hardly have bothered to find out that the bulb was unscrewed in the floor lamp. He’d have unlocked the door, dumped him, and beat it.”

  “Lorello brought someone home with him,” Bacon said. “When the switch didn’t work, he knew which light was out. Within a couple of minutes of that time someone pushed a gun against his chest and pulled the trigger. Close, to help deaden the explosion. Then, before he could get out, you come back up the front stairs and knock at the door.” Bacon shook his head and sighed. “Boy, are you lucky.”

  “I’ve been thinking the same thing.”

  “He didn’t know how long you’d be knocking or who you were. He couldn’t run the risk of using the front stairs then because there was a chance you’d be hanging around outside by the street entrance and spot him coming out; so he took the back way. I don’t know what it is that watches over guys like you that stick their noses in spots like this but—”

  “You think I like it?” Murdock’s tone was sultry. “I used to have a job taking pictures. I had to take them where I found them, because you can’t fake a picture like you can a story. This time I come to town to find a picture. I haven’t found it and I’m not getting much help from you. I’m going to keep looking—”

  “Sure, sure,” Bacon said. “All I was going to say was this: You know what would have happened to you if you’d called to this guy in the alley last night? If you hadn’t stopped when and where you did? If you’d opened the alley door and run into him in the back hall or stairs?”

  “I know.”

  “It’s a wonder you didn’t try to follow him. That would have been just as good. Then Doc Mason would be down in the alley telling us how long you’d been dead.”

  Bacon sat down and watched his fingerprint man. He got out a cigar and put it in his mouth without bothering to cut off the end. He began to chew on it while he reexamined the letters Murdock had given him.

  “How’d you know it was George Damon’s car that picked Lorello up last night at the Silver Door?”

  “I memorized the numbers. I phoned a fellow at the office and asked him to check. I called back after I’d phoned you.”

  Bacon tapped the letters. “You found these so soon this afternoon because you’d searched the desk the night before, huh?”

  Murdock remained silent. Bacon sighed again. “Well, who the hell am I to cry about it? You got more than we got so far, I’ll admit it. Of course, maybe you know a lot of things you’re not telling. Anyway, I can see why you like George Damon.”

  He was silent awhile. So was Murdock. Sergeant Keogh came in and talked about his investigation of the other tenants but what he had to say had little value. Bacon accepted the statement with resignation and disgust.

  “At least I knew enough not to expect anything,” he said. “Italians never know, see, or hear anything about a murder.” He got up and went to the back door. He gave further directions to his men. “When Orsatti comes back,” he said, “tell him I’m waiting in the car.”

  The police sedan was parked back of the State House and they walked up the hill and climbed in.

  “You know how much these letters you found are worth, don’t you?” Bacon said.

  “Yes,” Murdock said.

  “They’re not worth a damn. They’re copies of letters, obviously. You know for sure now that you were right about Bruno Andrada and George Damon and the hookup between them. You know your hunch about the Jade Venus is right and you know Tony Lorello was the guy that brought word to Damon so Damon could move. But as for hanging anything on Damon—”

  “I know.” Murdock slumped down in the seat. He felt tired and hungry and discouraged and he knew how right Bacon was. “All Damon has to do is deny that he ever saw the letter. The only guy who could prove he saw the letter, the guy that delivered it, is dead.”

  Bacon slammed his fist against the seat cushion. “Why, damn it, Murdock, unless we get Erloff or Leo or the maid or that other character we picked up—unless we get them to talk, we haven’t got a thing on Damon. We don’t know any more about the murder than we did before.”

  “I know one thing,” Murdock said stonily. “Damon hasn’t got the Jade Venus. Not yet, he hasn’t.”

  “Yeah,” Bacon said. “If he had, he wouldn’t have sent that truck to clean out Carroll’s place. He didn’t have it, and he couldn’t be sure Carroll hadn’t painted something else over the Jade Venus, and he had to find out.”


  Bacon paused, continued without enthusiasm. “I guess we’ll talk to Carroll again. I guess I might talk to George Damon—if it’s okay with the D.A. But first I think you’re going to tell your little story to the D.A. yourself.”

  “First, I’m going to have some lunch,” Murdock said. “You can come along and I’ll pay for it, or I’ll go it alone. But first, I eat.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  NO CANARIES SING

  IT WAS FOUR O’CLOCK before Murdock finished answering questions at the district attorney’s office, and nearly another hour before Bacon was ready for George Damon. Yates, one of the district attorney’s bright young men, came along and Bacon held his little conference in a room down the hall from his office.

  There was more room here, with a long, golden-oak table, a half-dozen chairs, and a smaller table and chair over in one corner. A police stenographer took over this corner and Keogh stood by with a couple of men in the next room to act as messengers and everyone was getting a little impatient when Damon came in at five o’clock.

  He wore a dark-blue coat, fitted and a little tight across the waist and shoulders. He had a light-gray felt hat and carried light-gray gloves in one puffy, manicured hand. His opaque little eyes saw all there was to see in the first moment as he entered and his waxed mustache dipped on one side in what might have been a smile.

  “Umm,” he said. “Quite a gathering. Hello, Bacon—Yates.” He glanced at Murdock but did not speak. “Maybe I should have brought a lawyer after all.”

  “You can call one if you like, Mr. Damon,” Yates said. “But I hardly think that’s necessary. We just want to straighten out a few little things.”

  Damon pulled out a chair and when he had unbuttoned his coat and thrown it back he sat down, putting his hat on the table and the gloves on the hat. He took out a long, black cigarette holder and began to insert a cigarette.

  “Well, let’s get at it,” he said.

  Bacon nodded to Keogh, who opened the door to the adjoining room and spoke to someone inside. Presently he stood back and Arlene, the Andrada maid, came in, followed by a sullen-looking man with a swarthy, thick-lipped face and arms that seemed unusually long for the rest of him. Keogh stood the two against the wall and Bacon looked them over.

  “Do you know this man, Arlene?”

  He indicated Damon and Arlene looked at him a moment and shook her head. She wore a red-print dress with a wide white belt now and there was a lot of make-up on her round little face. Her dark hair was fuzzy and her mouth was sultry, but she was pretty, in a cheap, provocative way—if you liked them short and plump.

  “No, sir,” she said.

  “Ever see him before?” Bacon asked.

  Arlene hesitated. Her glance touched Damon and she let it slide by. “Yes, sir. He came to the house the other day to see Mr. Andrada.”

  “Didn’t you get his name?”

  “Yes, sir. But I—I’ve forgotten.”

  Yates spoke up. “Isn’t he the man who got you your job at the Andrada house?”

  Arlene stared over his head and said, “No, sir.”

  “We know how you got the job,” Bacon said. “And it won’t do you any good to lie about it.” He and Yates had some notes in front of them and Bacon glanced at his. “The maid that worked at Andrada’s before you was named Mabel Lamson …”

  Murdock listened and was impressed. For what Bacon had to say was simply another example of what a big-city police department could do once the wheels were moving. In the space of hours, and while he was working elsewhere, Bacon’s men had not only found the name of the maid Arlene supplanted, but how the supplanting was done.

  “Mabel Lamson is now working as a hostess in a restaurant over on the Avenue. She gets twenty dollars more a week than she got at Andrada’s, plus meals—though I wouldn’t be surprised if the job folded shortly. She liked to play Bingo on her nights off when she was at Andrada’s and she met a fellow one night who knew of this hostess job. He told her he could probably fix it if she wanted it, providing she would put in a good word at Andrada’s for another friend who was a good maid and looking for work—”

  “Well, what of it?” Arlene flared. “A girl has a right to get a job any way she can, hasn’t she?”

  “Sure,” Bacon said, “and we’ll know more about the details later. I just wanted to show you it’s pretty silly to think you can lie to us—and get away with it. Do you know what the penalty is for kidnaping? Twenty years to life—if you’re lucky. That’s probably what’s going to happen to Cassaldo, here, and to Erloff and Leo. That’ll be the easiest thing that can happen to them.”

  Arlene’s red mouth was pinched and her cheeks were white. “But I’ve already told you,” she said. “I don’t know anything about it. Eddie”—she indicated the glowering Cassaldo—“is a friend of mine and I stopped to see him this morning and you and your—”

  “All right,” Bacon said. He turned to Cassaldo. “I’m not going to ask you anything about your part in kidnaping this man”—he nodded toward Murdock—“because we’ve got you cold, Cassaldo. He was in your place, in a room you said he wasn’t in, and we’ve got his fingerprints to prove it—on the window pane. You’re washed up unless you talk. You and Erloff and Leo.… Do you know this man?” He pointed to Damon. “Ever see him before?”

  Cassaldo shook his head.

  “Answer me!”

  “No, sir. I don’t know him.”

  Bacon nodded to Keogh, who opened the door and nodded to someone beyond. Erloff and Leo came in and stood next to Arlene.

  Yates and Bacon did some more talking. It didn’t mean much. Murdock knew it didn’t mean much. Bacon hardly expected to get an admission that would do him any real good at this point in the investigation, for it was obvious that these people had been trained by experience to say nothing at all until they had counsel.

  Their fingerprints had been taken and within another day or two the records on the quartet would be complete. But right now all Bacon hoped to do was to plant the seeds of doubt in their minds. To make clear the charges they would face and the penalty the law would demand. Also he wanted to watch their eyes when they looked at Damon sitting there in his expensive clothes and sucking idly on his long cigarette holder.

  If anything, Bacon had less luck with Erloff and Leo than he had with the others. Neither knew or had ever seen George Damon. When it came to the matter of the truck—which had been stolen—and the paintings they had taken from Roger Carroll’s studio, they said nothing at all, not even a yes or no.

  Bacon waved them away. He didn’t look particularly annoyed. He turned to George Damon. “Do you know Tony Lorello?”

  “No.”

  “He played the guitar down at the Silver Door.”

  “I seldom go to night clubs.”

  “Your car picked him up outside the Silver Door last night around one-thirty.”

  Damon pinched his cigarette from the holder. “You must be mistaken.”

  Bacon glanced at his notes and read off a license number. “That yours?… I thought so. And that’s the car that picked up Lorello. Murdock saw it done.”

  Damon turned lazily, studied Murdock in a bored sort of way, and folded his hands across his paunch.

  “Murdock must be mistaken.”

  “Within a half hour or so of that time,” Bacon said, ignoring this, “Lorello was murdered. He was shot once, close up, like Professor Andrada.”

  “You’ve been in Italy, Mr. Damon,” Yates said. “You bought some paintings and things there before the war.”

  “I’ve been there,” Damon said. “I bought very little. At the time the exporting of such things was highly restricted.”

  “But you brought some out,” Bacon said. “By having another picture painted on top of the real one and having the top coat removed when you got them here.”

  Damon just looked at him. Yates frowned. Bacon was getting a little stiff-lipped and new color began to seep up from his collar.

  “I
f you were looking for paintings,” Yates said, “you probably know the town of Venatra.”

  “Venatra?” Damon tipped his head and glanced at the ceiling. “Is that near Naples?”

  “About sixty miles,” Murdock said.

  “I can’t be sure,” Damon said. “I may have gone through there.”

  “But you know Bruno Andrada.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Never even met him?”

  “No.”

  “He was a nephew of Professor Andrada’s,” Yates said. “It’s funny you don’t know him.”

  “What’s funny about it?”

  “He knows you.”

  That got a reaction. A small one. Damon’s eyes came down slightly and stayed that way while he watched Yates fool with the two sheets of paper Murdock had taken from Tony Lorello’s bedroom. Yates handed one to Damon and Murdock saw that it was the top sheet, the one that started: Dear George Damon.

  Damon read it and a vein in the corner of his forehead became visible; nothing else showed in his face. He put the letter aside and his lids were still sleepy-looking.

  “You saw the signature,” Yates said. “And it’s rather obvious from the tone of the letter that Bruno Andrada wrote it to someone he knew fairly well.”

  “Yes,” Damon said. “I remember now. I did meet him once. Where did you get the letter?”

  “At Lorello’s place.” Bacon said. “That one and another one.”

  “Could I see the other one?”

  “For now, no, Mr. Damon,” Yates said.

  Damon touched the ends of his mustache gently and then twisted one point. “How did Lorello get the letter?”

  “We thought you could help us on that,” Yates said. “That’s one reason we asked you to come down. Obviously it was sent to you.”

  “I never saw it before,” Damon said.

  “What you just saw is a copy,” Yates said. “And it is equally obvious that the letter was given to Tony Lorello—when he was in Italy with a U.S.O. unit—to bring to you. You never received it?… Can you think of any reason why Lorello should not deliver it?”