'Good morning, Sergeant. What's the trouble?'
'Good morning, Lieutenant.' The Sergeant bent over his desk a bit conspiratorially. 'Captain Wise is waiting for you in your office. He's been there nearly half-hour ...'
'I know,' Clancy said cheerfully, is he alone?'
'Doc Freeman's with him,' the Sergeant said, happy that his news had been received so equably.
'Good.' Clancy grinned at him. 'Get Kaproski and Stanton, will you? Tell them to bring their reports into my office. We've got work to do.'
He walked down the corridor, a soundless whistle on his lips accompanying the rhythm of his springy step. He stepped into his office, scaled his hat neatly onto a file cabinet and sat down at his desk. He tilted his head pleasantly in the direction of his visitors.
'Good morning, gentlemen.'
'Where've you been?' Captain Wise said evenly. 'You said eleven.'
'I was unavoidably detained,' Clancy said easily. 'I had to go down and pick up some teletypes from Los Angeles, and then I went over and had a brief chat with the Rossi boys. They're not going to ask for release on bail, by the way -'
Captain Wise frowned. 'Why not?'
'They're dead anyway, and they know it. With us they figure that maybe - and it's a long maybe as they well know - they might conceivably have a chance. With the Syndicate they haven't a prayer, and they know that, too. So they were pretty co-operative. Anyway, I ran into Chalmers while I was there and we had a little talk. He asked -' He paused as Stanton and Kaproski came into the room. 'Hello, boys. Drag up chairs and sit down, if you can find room.' He waited until the two had arranged seating, and then continued.
'As I was saying, Chalmers would like our report to give the D.A.'s office all the ammunition they need to convict the Rossi boys on first degree, but without making Mr. Chalmers look too bad. Mr. Chalmers, I might mention, was a real gentleman this morning - sweet as pie. However, I told him that how the final report depends on you, Captain.' He looked across the desk at his superior. 'On how you want the report to read. We're all here, so we can get started.'
'Listen to him!’ Captain Wise's martyred eyes begged for understanding from the others. 'How I want the report to read!'
'Tricky,' Doc Freeman said with a sad nod of his head. 'That's the word for Mr. Lieutenant Clancy. Not to mention the word "dirty." I waste a whole evening schlepping around with him, and then when I take a measly two minutes to go to the toilet ...'
'Yeah.' Captain Wise turned back to Clancy. 'What report? I don't even know what this is all about. You blow right after that business at the dock ...' He held up his big hand. 'Sure, I know you were tired. And sure, I know that was Johnny
Rossi we picked up on the pier; and sure, Pete Rossi had the shotgun stashed in his suitcase at the airport. And sure, I believe they killed the Renicks - whose bodies you finally got around to telling us where they were. But I should try to explain it to somebody else? When I don't know for myself what happened?'
Clancy grinned. 'I'll excuse you, Sam, but not Doc. He was in on the thing from the beginning; he should have seen the light.'
'Who, me?' Doc Freeman snorted derisively, it took you long enough, and you're supposed to be a detective. Me, I'm no detective. I'm a doctor. Which reminds me - I've got work to do. So let's get on with it.'
'Yeah,' Captain Wise agreed, it's almost lunchtime. Let's get going.'
'That also held me up,' Clancy said almost absently. 'I stopped and had a second breakfast on my way back...' He saw shocked frowns beginning to form on the two faces across from him.
'All right,' he said quietly. 'I'll tell you the story. From the beginning. Doc can confirm the part he knows, and Kaproski and Stanton have their reports. I'll put the whole thing together and see that you get it later, Sam. Captain.'
'So don't talk so much,' Captain Wise said. 'And say something.'
Clancy paused to tuck a cigarette between his lips and light it. He flipped the match into the ashtray on his desk, picked up a pencil, and began to twiddle it.
'Here's the story,' he said quietly. 'Let's start out in Los Angeles with the Rossi brothers -
'The Rossi brothers are tapping the Syndicate till and putting the money away in different foreign countries, laying up against the day when maybe the law will break up the whole profitable organization. Or against the day when they might want to retire, which the Syndicate often frowns upon. Or maybe they just couldn't stand seeing all that long green passing through their hands without getting itchy fingers. I don't know; but in any event they were doing it. From what I heard from Porky Frank last night, they must have been doing it for some time. Well, as it must to all men, intelligence eventually came to the accounting section of the Syndicate. They began to wonder what happened to the law of probabilities out on the west coast all of a sudden - their take from that area wasn't at all what it should have been, according to their mathematical wizards. They started checking. And the Rossi brothers awoke one fine morning with a fistful of trouble about to graduate in their direction.'
'Just tell it,' Captain Wise said sourly. 'Don't sing it.'
Clancy grinned at him cheerfully. 'Well, just about that time a new manicurist came to work at the beauty parlor of the Drake Hotel - which is where Johnny Rossi lived - and one day she's called up to his suite to give him a manicure, and in the course of polishing his pinkies she laughingly happens to mention that he's the spitting image of her husband . ..'
The others were listening intently. 'That was the teletype picture?' Captain Wise asked.
'That was the picture. I found myself looking at the man we had talked to at the Farnsworth Hotel.' Clancy shrugged, his smile fading. 'Of course I should have been able to see through the deal even without the picture, but I didn't. Well, let's go on -
'So a patsy is born. Mr. Johnny Rossi gets himself a wonderful idea. He sits down with his big brother Pete and says something like this: "Here's the answer to our problem. All we have to do is arrange for all the blame for the shortages to be laid at my door - and then have me knocked off. The pressure will be off you, and I'll be in Europe with the dough when you finally make it." The "me" to be knocked off, of course, being Mr. Albert Renick, innocent used-car salesman and husband of our manicurist.
'So he arranges another manicure as soon as possible, and while the girl is trimming his cuticles he says to her, "Say, I'd like to meet your husband. I may be able to put something in his way ..."'
Stanton couldn't help but interrupt. 'And she was stupid enough to think a hood like Rossi was handing out premiums?'
'I don't say she was stupid,' Clancy said. 'Let's say she was inexperienced. Anyway, she couldn't see any harm in introducing her husband to the big-shot living in the best suite in the Drake Hotel, with money to burn. And once Rossi had Mr. Renick all alone, he made him a simple proposition: either go along with an impersonation, and get a lot of money and a trip to Europe out of it - or face the possibility that his wife might suffer an acid mud-pack ...'
Captain Wise was studying the now serious face across from him.
'How much of this can you prove, and how much of it is pure guesswork?' he asked curiously.
'I can prove enough of it,' Clancy said flatly. 'I had dinner with Porky Frank last night and the latrine-o-gram circuit has been working overtime since this thing broke. By the way, if they ever make Porky president of A.T. & T., I'm putting every cent I've got into it...' He stared at them somberly. 'And I also managed to squeeze a fact or two out of the Rossi brothers.'
His fingers tapped the envelope he had brought into the room. 'And I've also heard from Los Angeles. I'm sure she had no idea of the pressure put on her husband, but she did know she wasn't supposed to say anything about Rossi's beneficence. And she didn't - around the beauty parlor, or to any of her neighbors.
But she couldn't help telling her father and her mother that she and her husband were getting a trip to Europe for a job her Albert was doing for a guest at the hotel. After all, a tri
p to Europe, even by freighter, was a big thing in her life ...'
He crushed out his cigarette, waited for comments, heard none, and went on.
'So they all came to New York, and Mr. Renick was thoroughly coached in his part. Of course, it wasn't like memorizing Shakespeare, because all he was supposed to do was say nothing. All he had to do was look like Rossi, which he already did. And the thing was in operation: Operation Patsy.' He stared at them. 'Ann Renick, all excited, had already gotten their passports out on the west coast, and as soon as she got to New York she called and made their reservations - which she thought she and her husband were going to use, but which Rossi knew he and his blond short-but-stacked girl-friend were going to use ...'
'You mean,' Captain Wise said slowly, 'that she was scheduled to be knocked off in any event?'
'Of course,' Clancy said, almost impatiently. His face lost its pleasantness; a certain remote toughness crossed it as he remembered the happy, pretty girl in the apartment on West 86th Street. The idle pencil in his fingers was held rigidly. 'She was just as much a patsy as her husband. They certainly weren't going to leave her around to scream, when she discovered that instead of a romantic, moonlit trip to Europe, all she had was a dead husband.'
He paused. The others remained quiet. He forced himself to relax, wiping the memory of the dead girl from his mind; to continue.
'But Renick, after he checked into the Farnsworth, went and called his wife at the friend's apartment where she was staying. This was strictly against orders, of course - but he did. He didn't tell her where he was, or even what he was doing; he simply told her that he was settled, and everything was all right, and did she get the tickets, and how was she, and so forth. And it was lucky for us that he did call, because otherwise we would never have gotten onto the whole thing. We would have been stuck with a dead Johnny Rossi, and that would have been that. And the next day we would have been stuck with a dead Mrs. Ann Renick - no connection. And we'd have been looking for Mr. Renick for the murder of his wife for the next hundred years.
'But he did call his wife, and that call gave us our first lead. My feeling is that he was sorry about the whole thing, but he was scared to try and blow the deal. Rossi's threat must have been pretty potent. And while he knew he was into something pretty dangerous, there wasn't much he could do about it at that point - he might as well go through with it and try and pick up some change. And a boat-trip to Europe he knew his wife wanted very much. But happy he wasn't.'
'Do you suppose that gut-ache was faked?' Kaproski asked. 'Because he was scared, or because Rossi told him that staying there until early morning would satisfy the deal, and he didn't like us coppers hanging on him everywhere he went until Tuesday?'
'Maybe. Or maybe he actually had a gut-ache.' Clancy shrugged. 'Maybe Doc can tell us when he slices him up. I'm sure he knew from the beginning that playing alibi for Johnny Rossi wasn't the healthiest thing in the world, but he was in a bind ...'
He suddenly grinned. 'Or maybe he just didn't want to play gin rummy with Stanton anymore. I don't know. In any event he had waited too long; the deal was rolling. Rossi showed up and blasted him, hurried over to his brother's hotel to duck the gun, and then went beddy-bye at the New Yorker…’
‘Why didn't he go over and blast the girl at the same time?' Captain Wise asked.
'Because she didn't have the tickets yet. He didn't want to be tied up in the ticket deal in any way, manner, form, or shape. It would have been an unnecessary risk. The only reason he threw in a trip to Europe in his offer was to have them get his tickets for him. The tickets were supposed to be delivered to her in the morning. He came around to pick them up and finds she's occupied. By listening at the door he hears that her guest is none other than a Lieutenant of police ... Well, he isn't going to hang around, and he can't wander the streets, so he goes home to the New Yorker.
'But she shows up there - she wants to know what the score is. She doesn't like the idea of a policeman telling her that Johnny Rossi was shot, not when she's sitting there facing him, and her husband is God-knows-where. I don't know how Rossi calmed her, or what story he fobbed her off with, but at least she walked out quietly for the time being and went home. And he was right behind her - or he might even have gotten there before her, while she was riding around the park trying to make up her mind how much of Rossi's story to believe. And that was that.
'He killed her, picked up the tickets and the passports - he was probably searching as much if not more for the passports as for the tickets - and cleared out. And that night he started to put the final steps of Operation Patsy into motion by catching the boat. Only we caught him instead.' He laid down his pencil. 'And that's the story. Any questions?'
'Just a million, that's all,' Captain Wise said. He stared at Clancy thoughtfully as he formulated his thoughts. 'Why get involved in a couple of murders? Why didn't he simply take off and blow?'
'Because you don't blow from the Syndicate,' Clancy said patiently. 'Not after robbing them of money. They can't let anyone get away with a thing like that, or others might start to get ideas. Run?' He shrugged. 'Sure you can run. But like Joe Louis said about one of his opponents: "He can run but he can't hide." They knew they couldn't hide from the organization. Not for long. But if Johnny Rossi was dead and buried? Who's going to look?'
'All right,' Captain Wise conceded. 'But even if the switch was their best bet, why come all the way to New York to work it? Why not do the whole thing out on the coast?'
'Rossi was too well known on the coast,' Clancy explained. 'Renick looked like him, but not to anyone who really knew him intimately. No, New York City was perfect. Boats sailing for Europe almost daily; a city big enough to hide in, and a place where he was relatively unknown except by name and reputation. And he needed a witness, remember. And who better than an ambitious Assistant D.A. who wouldn't ask questions as to why a man like Johnny Rossi would come to New York to testify before a Crime Commission in the first place? And to swear he was the dead man?'
Doc Freeman snorted. 'We would have caught him with fingerprints in the first five minutes!'
'Would you?' Clancy looked at him curiously, if Kaproski went nuts right this minute, and pulled his gun and shot me, would you check my fingerprints to make sure I was me? I doubt it.'
'Well ...'
'I don't think so,' Clancy said.
There was a moment's silence in the small room.
'What tipped you off in the first place?' Captain Wise asked.
Clancy picked up his pencil again and began twiddling it absently, a frown on his face.
'No one thing, I suppose,' he said slowly. 'There were a lot of little things that kept bothering me, nibbling at me; but they'd all go into hiding as soon as I tried to pin them down. For example: why would a man like Rossi offer to testify to a Crime Commission? And why in New York? And who knew he was at the Farnsworth?' He looked at his superior steadily. 'And then there were rumors that Rossi was being hidden by the New York police; somebody had to start those rumors. I think we'll find that Pete Rossi started them himself. Then there was the fact that the man in Room 456 didn't play gin rummy - I'll admit that wasn't a big thing by itself, but it sounded a bit odd for the head of west-coast gambling. It was just another nibble; another itch. And later, when we found he didn't even have a toothbrush with him, or a clean shirt, or a spare pair of socks ...'
'What about that?'
'Well, obviously he never intended to stay until Tuesday, so why had he asked for police protection that long? I don't pretend to know what story Rossi fed this Renick; maybe we'll find out, when and if Rossi tells everything he's got to tell.'
'He'll tell,' Captain Wise promised.
Clancy nodded. 'He probably will.' He thought back. 'And that young doctor in the hospital screwed me up for a while with his idiotic knifing of a dead man, but that really didn't lose us too much time. I couldn't figure out at first why Pete Rossi, after being so insistent on knowing where his brother was
- which I could understand - quietly arranged to go home after he had seen his brother's dead body. Once I saw the whole picture, of course, it became clear. The idea was that the patsy had to be killed - Pete Rossi couldn't leave until he was sure the shotgun blast had been fatal. He knew we couldn't hide the body forever; he knew that eventually Chalmers would insist on knowing where his witness was, even to the extent of getting a writ of habeas corpus - and then the whole story would come out. And I'm sure he felt that if he was back on the west coast when it did, it might be better all around.'
There was a moment's silence. Kaproski cleared his throat.
'Where did the dame buy the tickets, Lieutenant?' he asked, almost wistfully. 'I know it don't make any difference, since you figured out the right boat anyways, but I'm curious. Did I miss up somewhere?'
Clancy smiled briefly. 'I'm the one that slipped up. She bought them at the Ace Travel Agency. She simply picked the first one alphabetically in the book. They're on 38th Street; it would have probably taken us a couple of days to find them. Just because I didn't think of the most logical way for a stranger in town to buy tickets ...'
'Speaking of figuring out the right boat,' Captain Wise said slowly, 'how the devil did you do that? That's the thing that's been bothering me most since Saturday night.'
'Yeah,' Kaproski said. 'Me, too.'
‘It wasn't as tricky as it sounds,' Clancy said. 'Of course the picture of that wedding breakfast gave me the whole play. Once I saw that, the thing became clear. I knew then that Rossi was the one who was planning to travel to Europe, not Renick. And that Renick was the dead man in the hospital, and not Rossi ...'
'The boat,' Captain Wise reminded him.
'I'm getting there. Rossi wouldn't take an American ship; he'd be under our jurisdiction for at least another week - and why take the chance? Nor would he take a big passenger liner; too many people who might recognize him, beard or not. So that brought it down, more or less, to a freighter. And there were only three freighters sailing that night, and one of them was going to South America, and not to Europe.'
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