The Long escape

by Dodge, David, 1910-1974

  I spread it flat on the blotter and read each entry with slow care. Number six was my baby. Clear and shining and

  filled with promise. I read the words aloud, with only my ears to hear them.

  "William L. Snyder, 3309 West Grace Street."

  Grace Street. Three blocks from where Benbrook spotted me and began to run.

  I dug out the phone book, looked up a number and called it. Mrs. Benbrook has retired; there's been a death in the family. I'm so sorry to hear that, but this is very important, please call her to the phone. The hell you won't, brother! Get her on the wire before I pull you in for barratry!

  Three minutes later an extension receiver went up. "Who is this?" Connie Benbrook, and angry too.

  "Paul Pine, Mrs. Benbrook. I "

  "Well, you certainly have a nerve! Bothering me at a time like this."

  I said, "Does the name William L. Snyder mean anything to you, Mrs. Benbrook ?"

  It surprised the anger out of her. "Who? Snyder? I don't . . ." Her voice died out, then came back sharp and clear. "You mean Bill Snyder, Myles's friend at the steel company?"

  "That's the guy."

  "Why, Bill's in Europe—^has been for a month. I have no idea when he'll be back. Why do you ask ?"

  "Just a routine check, Mrs. Benbrook. Sorry I bothered you. Good night."

  I laid the receiver back with care, took a quick and stiff drink, put the bottle away and went over to the filing cabinet. From the bottom drawer I took an underarm holster and my Colt .38, put them where they belonged and my suit coat on over them and my trench coat over that. Ready for big game, with a smile on my lips and a song in my heart.

  I was halfway to the office door when I heard light fast feet

  HALO FOR SATAN 179

  crossing the reception room, I opened the door and there was Lola Wirtz.

  She was dressed in the same outfit, the plastic raincoat glistening in the light from the office fixture. No smile, blue eyes serious and direct. "I was worried, Paul. I called and called and you didn't answer your phone."

  "I was out. You're here just in time, Mrs. Wirtz. I have wonderful news for you—I think."

  Her nostrils flared perceptibly under a quick breath. "What do you mean? Have you—have you . . . found him?"

  "Possibly. I'm on my way to make sure."

  "I'm coming with you!"

  "I like family reunions," I said. "Come on then."

  The theaters had just let out and there was a crowd at the parking lot waiting for cars. We waited almost twenty minutes before the Plymouth was brought down and turned over to me.

  I took Michigan Avenue to the Drive and the Drive straight north to Addison before turning west. Lola Wirtz sat stiff and erect next to me, her eyes straight ahead, the fingers of both hands tight on the bag in her lap. The rain was a light mist now, just enough of it to make my windshield wipers necessary.

  She was alone with her thoughts and I didn't try to break in on them. I rolled down a window an inch or two and sniffed at the night air and was pleased with myself.

  Forty minutes of not sensational driving got us to the thirty-three hundred block on West Grace Street. It was a street of better than modest homes, brick mostly, with plenty of trees and shrubs here and there.

  And there was a big black sedan parked in front of 3309.

  I drove slowly past. There were lights in what I judged to be the living room, but the blinds were down. It seemed to

  be six rooms, maybe seven, all on one floor and set back from the street at the end of a shrub-lined walk. There was no one sitting in the black car and no one seemed to be standing around outside anywhere.

  I parked on the same side of the street fifty or sixty feet farther west. To Lola Wirtz I said, "I'm wondering about that car. You stay here until I see if he has company."

  She nodded without speaking. I got out and closed the door, being careful not to slam it, and walked back to the black sedan and peered in through the rain-smeared glass. .-Empty all right. I leaned against it and rubbed the point of my chin with my thumbnail and thought about going up there and ringing the bell.

  While I was thinking about it, the lights in the living room winked out and a moment later the front door opened. I stepped quickly back and flattened myself against the sedan's , opposite side.

  The click of high heels came along the walk, almost running. I waited until I heard the car-door handle turn, then I stuck my head around and said, "Good evening, Mrs. Ben- ii brook." I

  It was a hell of a thing to do. She went three feet into the air with shock and let out a sharp yelp that startled me. She reeled back and might have fallen if I hadn't caught her by one arm.

  "Relax," I growled. "You're among friends."

  "Paul!" She began to shiver uncontrollably. "You knew when you called me, didn't you? You knew he w'as here?"

  "It seemed likely. And my bringing up Snyder's name that way got you to thinking along the same lines I had. Why did you come out?"

  "I It doesn't matter. He's not in there now—if he

  ever was to begin with. I went through the entire house. Even the basement."

  I said, "What's the matter with you? You're so scared you can hardly talk."

  "You . . . startled me."

  "You were scared before I even spoke to you. What did you find in there?"

  "N-nothing. I told you that. Nothing at all. He's gone."

  "I'll bet you forgot to look in the broom closet. Let's both try."

  "No. I'm going home. It was a mistake for me to come here at all."

  "Come on before I belt you one."

  It sounded tough and it was meant to sound tough. She

  must have believed I meant every word of it too, for she

  went along the walk and up on the porch with me and no

  argument. The door was unlocked and I pushed it open, into

  jl darkness.

  "You know where the switch is," I said. "Turn on the 'lights."

  She reached around the door frame and an overhead light

  ' went on. It was a long wide hall that ran all the way back

  i to a closed door, with other doors on either side along the

  ! way. The woodwork was in ofif-white enamel and there was

  gray wallpaper with a thin red stripe. A telephone stood on

  a small stand near a wide archway leading to the living room.

  I closed the front door. "Very nice," I said. "So far anyway. Now let's try the living room."

  She didn't move. She seemed to be listening to something [not meant for human ears. I reached out and prodded her arm through the sleeve of her white coat and she turned her ' head and looked blankly at me.

  "The living room," I said.

  Tears began to squeeze out of her brown eyes and roll along her cheeks. She didn't look twenty-eight any more. Maybe she never again would look twenty-eight.

  "He's dead, Paul."

  "Uh-hunh. Number four. Where?"

  "In there," She didn't point but I understood. "On the f-floor."

  "You do it?"

  She put a shaking hand against the base of her throat. Her eyes were wild. "No, no! I wouldn't—I found him "

  "Show me."

  It ended up I was the one to find the light switch just inside the archway. Two bulbs glowed behind a pair of matching shields of frosted glass high on opposite walls. A long narrow room with gas logs in a small fireplace flanked by crowded bookshelves, a russet couch against one wall, lamp tables, two easy chairs, a built-in radio—all in blond wood.

  Stretched out on the gray carpeting, face up, looking much too large in that position, was the twisted figure of a man.

  He was fully dressed, except for a coat, and there was a trickle of blood along the left side of his face and a small pool of it soaking the carpet under his neck. A blue-edged hole about the circumference of a nickel pencil showed where a bullet had gone through his temple and into the brain. A .25 hand gun would have left a hole like that.


  I knelt and put a hand against one cheek. Cooler than life but not yet as cold as old death. Dead not more than an hour and maybe much less.

  I stood up and nodded for no particular reason. "How long were you in here, Mrs. Benbrook ?"

  "Less than five minutes." She said it quickly as though

  knowing in advance just what my first question would be. "Did you bring a purse with you? A bag?" That confused her. "It's in the car." "Why did you come out here right after I called you ?" She shuddered and closed her eyes. "Must we stand here with this—this body in front of us, and discuss things ? Have

  you no "

  "Don't give me that," I said nastily. "You could sit on his belly and eat your breakfast. You're tougher than the sides of a battleship and we both know it. Why did you come out here, Mrs. Benbrook?"

  She turned abruptly and went back out into the hall and sat down on the small chair next to the telephone stand. I followed her out and leaned against the wall and waited for my answer.

  When she showed no indication of giving me one, I said, "Let me tell you. You figured on getting that manuscript yourself. As Myles Benbrook's widow you'll come into a fortune. But owning a fortune wouldn't keep you, or anyone else, for that matter, from reaching out and picking up an-' other fortune if it was very easy to do.

  I "And this manuscript seemed to fill the bill. My guess is 11 that Benbrook told you all about the thing the day Wirtz first I came out to call on him. But it's only a guess and not important because you heard enough about it since then to know i that Wirtz had it and it was incredibly valuable.

  "So, when I called you tonight, you did some quick think-, ing and came up with the same answer I had : Raymond Wirtz Iwas hiding out here. Your first thought was of the manu-j script and how to get hold of it. And the answer was right • there waiting for you. All you had to do was run out here, :tell Wirtz that unless he gave you the thing, you would turn Jhim over to the police. The possibility of his killing you to

  prevent that was remote, for you knew him well—^you told me that yourself. You knew him to be a quiet, unviolent man who probably had killed no one and never would. Besides, by this time, with bodies falling all around him, Raymond Wirtz was probably sick to death of that manuscript and might drop it in your lovely hand the minute you held it out in front of him.

  "So, out you came, ahead of me. Either you walked in . . . How did you get in ?"

  Without looking at me, she said, "When no one answered my ring, I tried the door. It was unlocked."

  "Uh-hunh. Well, either you walked in and found Wirtz dead on the rug or you put him there before you walked out. It's none of my business anyway, but it is police business and you'll be asked. Many times and many ways."

  "I didn't kill him, Paul." She turned her face to me, a face haggard and tear-stained and full of fear. "You mustn't tell the police I was here. I couldn't bear . . . Don't tell them, Paul. I'll pay you. I'll pay you anything you ask!"

  I said sourly, "Where would I spend it? This is my fourth , corpse in three days. Par, Mrs. Benbrook, is one in a lifetime—if that. And each time I've had to stand in front of the Homicide boys and spread my empty hands and shrug my bent shoulders. This time, though, my hands aren't empty— I've got somebody to give them. You, Mrs. Benbrook."

  No more fear in her face now. Fury, the kind of fury that would put claws at my throat in the next three seconds. Hatred, the kind of hatred that pulls triggers. The jungle looked at me out of those wild brown eyes and I stepped back one step.

  A knock at the door.

  The fury and hatred in that once lovely face disappeared under a new wave of fear and she was out of her chair like

  HALO FOR SATAN 185

  a shot and ready to run down the hall when I grabbed her arm. She turned on me, then, but weakly. All the strength was gone out of her.

  I said, "Where you going to run to—Sioux City? Get a grip on yourself, for Chrisakes."

  I left her standing there and went along the hall to the front door. It was Lola Wirtz, wonder in her face and a ; question on her lips. "Is—is everything all right, Paul?"

  "Is anything ever right in this business ? Come on in out of the rain."

  She looked at Connie Benbrook standing near the phone, tears on her cheeks and terror in her eyes. "I don't want to ; intrude. . . ."

  I took her by the arm, got her over the threshold and closed the door. I said, "You won't like this, but I'm pretty sure it won't bust you wide open. There isn't going to be any family reunion, Mrs. Wirtz."

  Behind me I heard Benbrook's widow make a small noise in her throat. Two widows in two days. You meet such interesting people.

  "What do you mean, Paul?" Not worried, not frightened, just puzzled.

  "Your husband is dead."

  She closed her eyes, swallowed, opened them again. That was all. They come and they go, and besides he was too old for her. She had said so.

  'T can't believe " Voice clear enough but it did falter.

  "How do you know that ?"

  "He's in the living room. On the floor."

  "Murdered?"

  "Uh-hunh." I wondered bitterly if there was any other way to die.

  "May—I see him?"

  "It's your husband, all right. Airs. Benbrook, here, identified him."

  She looked at the older woman again and her jaw hardened just enough for me to notice. "How could she do that? I don't know her."

  I said impatiently, "Do you want to look at him or don't you? I've got a phone call to make."

  Her eyes flashed at that. "The police ?"

  "That's it. I bet they cheer me from the housetops." The words were sour against my tongue.

  "What about that manuscript ?"

  I grinned. "Thanks, Mrs. Wirtz. You've saved my faith in human nature."

  At the phone, I dialed Central Station and was put through to Homicide. Overmire was in, all right; without me he probably had little to do.

  My lips seemed stiff as stone. "This is Paul Pine, Lieutenant."

  "Pine ?" Surprise filled his quiet voice. "Now what ?"

  "It's Wirtz this time. Murdered."

  "You just won't learn, will you ? All right. Where ?"

  "3309 Grace. It's a house. I'm calling from there."

  "Don't go away." The crash against my left ear was his receiver going down.

  After a while Lieutenant Overmire left the living room and came back into the hall. He said, "Let's use the kitchen," and we followed him toward the rear of the house and into a large-sized kitchen with ivory walls and the latest in modern equipment, all so clean and orderly it looked like a display window at the electric company.

  There was a red-lacquered dinette set in a roomy breakfast nook to one side of a giant refrigerator. We sat down in there and Constance Benbrook and I lighted cigarettes after I found a saucer for ashes.

  Overmire put his forearms against the table top and fixed his cold eyes on Lola Wirtz. He said, "1 ought to question each of you separately. But you've had time enough to fix up a story you'll all use anyway, . . . Tell me your side of it. Miss North."

  I said, "North is her maiden name. Lieutenant. This is Mrs. Raymond Wirtz."

  "Oh?" His eyes stayed on her. "Why wasn't I told that when we met this afternoon, Mrs. Wirtz?"

  Angry color burned in her cheeks. The anger was for me. "It wasn't important. I couldn't have told you anything about Raymond you didn't already know. We've been separated over a year now and I had absolutely no idea where he was hiding."

  "What are you doing in town ?"

  She told him the story she had given me that night on the way home from Antuni's place. She bore down heavily on

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  the compassion angle and Overniire believed it about as much as I had. He made no attempt to call her on it, however.

  ".'Ml right, Mrs. Wirtz," he said when she was finished. "Now, how does it happen you came out here tonight?"

  "I came out with Mr. Pine
."

  "What time did you get here?"

  "A few minutes after midnight, I guess."

  "You've been with Mr. Pine all evening?"

  "No. I met him at his office around eleven o'clock."

  "The two of you came right out here ?"

  "Yes."

  He nodded once and dug a fountain pen from his breast pocket and a slip of paper from another. He asked her address and wrote it down and put paper and pen away. Then his frigid eyes nailed Connie Benbrook.

  She was her old self again: younger than her years, her face made up and her smile working. She was as confident and at ease as a Mississippi congressman up for re-election. She was a widow with millions in the bank and a smooth story ready to tell: two things every cop would respect.

  "When," Overmire said placidly, "did you get here, Mrs. Benbrook?"

  "Almost exactly at midnight." No hesitation at all. "I noticed the car clock as I turned off the motor."

  "Then you were here ahead of Mr. Pine and Mrs. Wirtz?"

  "Just ahead of them. No more than two or three minutes."

  "What caused you to come out here in the first place ?"

  She had an answ^er for that one, too. A nice smart quick 1 answer, reasonable as you could want. If you were the gullible type.

  "I hold a mortgage on this property. Lieutenant. When Mr. Pine unexpectedly called me around eleven o'clock and

  asked about the man who Hves here, then hung up without an explanation, it . . . well, it worried me. I thought something I might be wrong, a fire or something—so I came right out to see."

  "Umm," Overmire said and looked searchingly at his left thumb. "What did you find?"

  The hand holding the cigarette jerked a little and her ; smile faded. "It wasn't pleasant. I saw that the house was dark and everything seemed to be in order. I found the door I unlocked, turned on the hall light and was already a few steps [; into the living room before I saw the body. I turned on the jl light, recognized the dead man as Raymond Wirtz and ran I out of the house. Mr. Pine was standing just outside the door."

  She made it sound as though I had just slipped Wirtz a I bullet two minutes before and gone out to lurk in the shrub-' bery for more victims.