After glancing around, the lieutenant said, “I guess everything’s under control. I’m going inside.”
And casually he stepped out into the glare of the spotlights and started across the street. Clamping down on his unlighted cigar, Day immediately followed.
I hesitated for a moment. Then, hoping that Alberto was occupied at the moment in peering out either the side or back windows instead of the front, I started across briskly.
I kept my eyes fixed on the upper windows, noting both were raised a few inches from the bottom and expecting to see a gun barrel protrude from one or the other at any instant. It could hardly have taken more than thirty seconds to cross the street, but the time seemed to drag interminably.
I was halfway across before I realized Mouldy Greene was right by my side. I realized it when he suddenly asked, “What’s there to whistle about?”
As a kid I had lived for a time in a neighborhood near a cemetery, and I recall that whenever I had to traverse that particular block at night, I always whistled “Yankee Doodle.” Now, with something of a shock, I realized I was whistling “Yankee Doodle” through my teeth.
Cutting it off in the middle of a bar, I snarled at Mouldy with unnecessary savagery, “I’m whistling past the graveyard.”
Either Alberto wasn’t at the front windows when we crossed, or I had overestimated his probable resentment at my fingering him, because no shot came from above. I breathed a sigh of relief as we passed through the tavern’s front door.
Inside I discovered the tavern consisted of a single long room with a bar running lengthwise from one end to the other. An electric grill at the far end seemed to be all the kitchen the place possessed. Near the front door was the phone booth from which Alberto had presumably called, and the rear wall contained three doors. Over one a sign read “Rest Rooms.” The second I assumed was the rear exit, for the third door was open and I could see a stairway going upward as far as the first landing. That was as far as the stairs could be seen, because at the landing they made a ninety-degree left turn.
With both elbows on the bar to steady himself, a uniformed cop covered the stairway with a riot gun. Another cop, a pistol in his hand, waited to one side of the stairway door. In the far corner, well out of the probable line of fire, a middle-aged man who was apparently the tavern owner sat at a table nervously sipping at a beer.
“Any sound from up there?” the lieutenant asked the cop with the riot gun.
Without removing his eyes from the stairway, the policeman said, “Not a peep, sir. You sure he’s up there?”
“He has to be. There isn’t anywhere he could have gone.”
He started toward the stairs, but I stopped him by calling, “Lieutenant.”
When he turned to look at me, I said, “I’ve had a couple of dealings with this boy, Lieutenant. I also know more about the background of this situation than you do. I think if I talked to him, I might be able to advance some arguments for giving himself up that you wouldn’t know about.”
He eyed me for a moment, then glanced questioningly at Warren Day. The inspector looked me over moodily.
Finally Day said, “If you just want to talk, Moon. From the foot of the stairs. I don’t want you going up there and getting shot.”
“I’m not anxious to get shot,” I told him.
Since my experience of walking into my flat and being confronted by Alberto’s gun, I had been carrying my P-38. Now I drew it, clicked off the safety and approached the foot of the stairs.
“Listen, Al,” I called. “The place is surrounded and you haven’t got a chance. But we’re more interested in the guy who hired you than we are in you, Al. Give yourself up and turn state’s evidence, and the cops will give you every break possible. We want Walter Ford’s killer more than we want you.”
When there was still no sound, I called in a louder tone, “If you’re willing to put the finger on Ford’s killer, I’ll even talk Fausta into dropping the kidnap charge, providing you haven’t harmed her. So far all you’ve done is winged a cop. Shoot it out and you’re either going to get killed, or kill somebody and end up in the gas chamber. Give up and I’ll guarantee to do everything possible to get you a light sentence.”
All the answer I got was more silence.
A little impatiently I yelled, “How about it, Al?”
The answer came suddenly and unexpectedly. Apparently he leaped like a cat from the top step to the landing, for one instant the landing was vacant, and the next instant he was crouched there as though he had materialized out of thin air, the twin of the Colt Woodsman I had taken from him gripped in his hand and centering on my head.
My own gun was drooping downward at a forty-five-degree angle, and there was no time to bring it up. There was no time to do anything but drop flat on my face.
His small-caliber gun popped just as I started to drop, and the shot was so close I could feel the heat of the slug on the top of my head as it whispered by. As I rolled to one side of the doorway, it popped twice more, gouging splinters from the wooden floor where I had sprawled a micro-second before.
Then the riot gun roared.
It was all over when I climbed shakily to my feet. The young gunman had taken the full blast of the riot gun square in the chest. He was dead before he started to tumble down the stairs.
“I wanted that man alive!” Warren Day screeched at the man who had fired.
The cop looked abashed. “He was shooting, sir,” he said timidly. “He had legs!” Day yelled at him, his long nose nearly dead white. “Couldn’t you shoot his legs?”
“Oh, stop your yelling,” I said, irked at him. “The only way you could have taken him alive was to have me dead. He didn’t want to be alive. He wanted to go down shooting, like a two-bit hero. The officer here just did what he had to.”
Day swung his thin nose at me. “When I want your advice on what to say to my subordinates, I’ll ask for it, Moon!”
“If you don’t want it, don’t practice your Simon Legree personnel policy in front of me then,” I snarled back at him. “Pull it in private.”
We stood glaring at each other, both of us juvenilely taking out our rage at the loss of our star witness on the other, until Mouldy Greene brought us back to earth.
Mouldy asked of no one in particular, “Now how the hell we going to ask him where he hid Fausta?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
MOULDY’S QUESTION MADE us realize we had more important things to do than snarl at each other. With a grunt which I interpreted to mean he was willing to drop the argument, the inspector turned away.
In the hope that we might find some clue to Fausta’s whereabouts in the dead man’s pockets, Day and I searched the body. But the search told us nothing. A cheap new wallet of the type you can buy in dime stores, presumably purchased by Alberto as a temporary replacement for the wallet he had left behind when he tumbled backward out of the cottage window, contained only a few bills and no papers whatever. Aside from the usual trivia you might find in any man’s pockets, such as change, cigarettes, matches and a handkerchief, we found only two items of even faint interest. One was a small but vicious-looking leather sap filled with sand and the other was a tarnished brass key to a Yale lock.
“This might be the key to wherever he hid Miss Moreni,” the inspector said. “He must have her locked up someplace, and this is the only key on him.”
“Fine,” I said. “All we have to do is try every door in the city. Including the inside doors, since there’s no label on it saying it isn’t just a room key.”
“You don’t think very fast, Moon,” the inspector said sourly. He handed the key to the uniformed lieutenant, “Get a house-to-house canvass started, with this place as an axis. You’re looking for a good-looking blonde of about twenty-seven.” He turned his eyes to me. “Know how she was dressed, Moon?”
“Probably in an evening gown,” I said. “We were supposed to go out tonight.”
Mouldy Greene said, “She had on a gr
een formal held up by her neck.”
When we both looked at him, he elaborated, “Just by a kind of cloth dog collar, I mean. No shoulder straps.”
Warren Day turned back to the lieutenant. “That ought to be enough of a description to make her stand out in this neighborhood. My hunch is she’s somewhere nearby as I don’t imagine Alberto would want to go too far for a phone and he wouldn’t want to leave her alone too long, even if he’s got her tied up. You’ve got Thomaso’s description, you’ve got the girl’s and you’ve got a key. I’ll give you two hours to find her.”
“Yes, sir,” the lieutenant said, saluted and left the tavern.
There was nothing more we could do but await the results of the canvass. I went back to El Patio with Mouldy to wait and the inspector went home. Before he left, Day had calmed down enough to be a little ashamed of his previous display of temper, and he made oblique amends by brusquely instructing one of the remaining cops to phone me at El Patio the moment there was any news of Fausta.
The lieutenant managed to make the deadline Warren Day had set, but he only just made it. It took the police almost exactly two hours to locate Fausta. By then it was after one A.M., El Patio was closed, and Mouldy and I were seated at the bar alone when the call came.
It was from the cop Day had instructed to phone me, and all he could tell me was that Fausta had been found tied and gagged in a rooming house, she was unharmed and she was at that moment on her way to El Patio in a squad car.
“You’ll have to get the details from Miss Moreni,” he said. “I wasn’t with the team that found her, and all I know is what the lieutenant told me.”
Fifteen minutes later Fausta came in escorted by two large policemen. Ordinarily Fausta is immaculate, but now her green formal was wrinkled, her lipstick smeared all over her face from the gag that had been in her mouth, and her blonde hair was tumbled every which way.
I am not very demonstrative, particularly before an audience, but after the strain of the last few hours my first impulse was to grab Fausta in my arms and kiss her. I got as far as rising from my bar stool before I noticed the expression in her eyes, then hurriedly changed my mind and reseated myself.
Fausta stopped directly before me, balled fists on her hips, and her lovely brown eyes flashed fire.
“Manny Moon, this is all your fault!” she announced. “If you would get yourself a decent job instead of working at this horrible profession that gets you mixed up with …"
Then she caught sight of herself in the bar mirror and stopped short, an expression of horror growing on her face. Turning her back on all of us, she ran toward the powder room.
When Fausta finally rejoined us, she was as immaculate as usual except for the wrinkles in her gown. Apparently she had calmed Somewhat, but there was still a dangerous glitter in her eyes.
“Just what has been going on tonight, my one?” she demanded of me.
“I thought you’d be able to tell me,” I said mildly.
“I was talking to you on the phone when this man came out of the closet,” she said. “He hit me with something, and the next thing I knew I was lying on a bed in a damp basement, tied up and gagged. Why do you allow such men in your apartment? And what are you going to do about catching him?”
“He’s been caught, Fausta. He’s dead.”
Her eyes grew wide. “You … you killed him, Manny?” she asked weakly.
“A cop killed him,” I said. “He tried to outshoot the cop’s riot gun with a twenty-two pistol. Don’t feel bad about it. He’s no great loss.”
“Who was he?” she whispered.
“A young hood named Alberto Thomaso. Somebody hired him to kidnap you. We think his boss must have been Walter Ford’s killer, but we aren’t sure because Alberto died without talking. Did he tell you anything at all?”
Fausta shook her head. “I did not even see him, except for a flashing glimpse from the corner of my eye just before he hit me. When I woke up, I was tied and he was gone.”
Patrolman Larkins put in, “The lieutenant who detailed us to bring Miss Moreni home said they found her in a basement room over on Third about four blocks from some tavern. I didn’t understand what tavern he was talking about.”
“The one the kidnaper phoned from,” I said.
Fausta said, “That must be the lieutenant who was talking to the landlady where they found me. I heard her tell him the man who kidnaped me rented the room only that morning. The lieutenant said he guessed he picked it because it had a private entrance to the alley and he could come and go without being seen. They found a stolen panel truck in the alley, and they think he used that to take me from your apartment.”
I asked Fausta if she didn’t think we ought to have a doctor look at her to make sure she didn’t have a concussion from Alberto’s leather sap.
“I am all right except for a little headache,” she said. “See the bump I have?”
Turning her back to me, she lifted the blonde tresses over one ear to disclose a small black-and-blue lump. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Is that all?” “I’m very sorry.”
“Fix it up,” she said imperiously.
Fausta knows I regard such antics as kissing a hurt ta make it well as puerile, which was why she demanded the attention. She was merely taking her small revenge for being involved in what, understated, was an unpleasant evening.
I looked at Mouldy, who only grinned at me. The two cops looked politely disinterested.
Rather self-consciously I leaned forward and lightly kissed the bruise.
That was a mistake, for I might have known she wouldn’t let it drop there.
“That is better,” she said briskly, dropping her hair back in place and turning to face me. “But the gag also bruised my lips.” She looked at me expectantly and I growled, “I’ll fix that later.” “Go ahead, Sarge,” Mouldy advised. “Don’t let us bother you.” “Go to hell,” I said.
“Manny is bashful,” Fausta informed the two cops in a conspiratorial aside. “Would one of you like to fix my hurt?”
“Manny is also jealous,” I announced. “The first Swede or Irishman who takes that invitation will have to gum his food in the future.”
Then, since she was asking for it, I grabbed Fausta’s wrist, jerked her up against me and kissed her right in front of Mouldy and the two cops.
The minute our lips touched I not only lost my inhibitions, I lost my awareness that we had an audience. But just before smoke began to issue from my ears, I was reminded that we did have one.
Mouldy Greene burst into wild applause.
Pushing Fausta away, I said to Mouldy. “You’re a moron,” and walked behind the bar to mix myself a drink.
“Fix a couple of nightcaps for the officers while you are back there,” Fausta said in a deliberately smug voice.
She knows it infuriates me when she turns smug after succeeding in making me drop my reserve.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
ON THE ASSUMPTION that since the killer had become panicky enough to have Fausta kidnaped once, he might try it again, I laid down some rules before I left El Patio.
“I don’t want you to leave the club alone for anything,” I instructed Fausta. “If you have to go out, take Mouldy with you.”
“All right, Manny,” Fausta said agreeably.
The next morning I got up at the unearthly hour of nine for the second day in a row. By ten I was calling at Ed Friday’s office.
The office was in the Russo Building, and while it was furnished expensively enough in a quiet sort of way, there was nothing about it to indicate it was supreme headquarters for several legitimate corporations plus a number of extralegal activities. The gold lettering on the frosted-glass door merely read, “Friday Enterprises, Inc.” and inside there were only two rooms.
The outer room was quite large, probably sixty by thirty feet, and was divided into two sections by a polished brass railing which had a swinging gate in its center. The larger section contained a bank of filing cabine
ts “and a dozen desks behind which clerks and stenographers were working. The smaller section, just inside the door, contained a number of comfortable easy chairs, a sofa, several smoking stands, a table of magazines and a red-haired receptionist behind a small desk.
It also contained Ed Friday’s oversized bodyguard, Max Furtell, who lounged at ease reading a magazine.
The redhead started to ask me what she could do for me, but Max broke in, “I’ll take it, Ann.”
Ignoring him, I said to the girl, “Mr. Friday in?”
Max came erect lazily, grinned at me without humor and moved through the swinging gate toward a frosted-glass door marked “Private.”
Three or four minutes passed before Max again appeared in the doorway of the room marked “Private.” He was still grinning in a humorless sort of way when he crooked his finger at me. He managed to make the gesture deliberately condescending.
From behind the desk Ed Friday’s rubbery voice said, “Good Morning, Mr. Moon. I’m a little busy today, but I can give you ten minutes.”
Pulling one of the guest chairs away from the wall, I put it alongside his desk, facing the edge of the desk, so that when I sat down I could see both Friday and Max. For some reason I didn’t feel like having the bodyguard behind me.
Friday said, “I suppose you’re here about Walter Ford again.”
“Partly,” I said. “Also about Daniel Cumberland and Fausta Moreni.”
Friday looked blank.
“Cumberland was Ford’s partner in a blackmail racket,” I explained. “Seems he was murdered within a matter of hours of when Ford got it. And Miss Moreni was kidnaped last night in a rather stupid attempt to get me to drop the investigation.”
“Kidnaped? Is she still missing?”
I shook my head. “The kidnaper didn’t know calls could be traced to pay phones, and the cops met him as he walked out of a booth. Young punk named Alberto Thomaso. “Says he works for you.”
Give the Girl a Gun Page 13