The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Original)

by Unknown

  I said: “Only what I told you. I’m as sure as I sit here that Longstreet deliberately got himself arrested. That was his sole purpose in picking a scrap at the Jefferson. And when he couldn’t needle me into filing counter-charges, he slugged Blake. You have to conclude he was building an alibi. Why else would he try to get in jail?”

  “No reason else,” he agreed reluctantly. He looked at his watch. “Six forty-five. Nearly ten hours I questioned that guy.”

  “Learn anything at all?”

  He shook his head. “Only that he’s got a motive. The best there is. Money.”

  Reswapping his cigar butt for the one he had originally, he struck a match, then shook it out without lighting up and dropped the dead stick on the floor. “Ninety percent of the stock in Rex Amusement Corporation was owned by three guys. Willard Longstreet, George Carmichael and Marden Swope. Ostensibly Swope is president, but actually they were equal partners. They had some kind of a business contract leaving their stock to the surviving partners. So Longstreet inherits half Carmichael’s interest in the business. On top of that Carmichael carried a fifty-thousand-dollar insurance policy with Willard Longstreet as beneficiary.”

  “How much of a business is it?”

  “Tremendous, according to Longstreet. They handle coin machines, juke boxes, cigarette vendors, pinball games and one-armed bandits.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “One-armed bandits, eh? Illegal, aren’t they?”

  “Not for private clubs. There’re a hundred and fifty private clubs in town, according to Longstreet. About a hundred own their own machines, and Rex Amusement Corporation supplies the others for forty percent of the take. The clubs average about twelve machines and take in about fifteen hundred a month each. I did some arithmetic and the company’s share comes out to over a quarter million dollars a year. On top of that they service the machines owned by clubs for fifty dollars a month per club. Just that part brings in sixty thousand dollars a year, and two men can handle the servicing. And all this is only one phase of the business.”

  He stopped and stared bitterly at his dead cigar, probably thinking about an inspector’s salary. “No wonder Longstreet can say ten thousand dollars like you or I would say ten cents.”

  I rose. “You through with me?”

  “Yeah. Go on home to bed.”

  At the corridor fountain I mouthed a swig of water to clear the fuzz from my tongue before going back to Longstreet’s cell. There, in the center of the hall, I found a uniformed cop seated on a chair facing the cell door.

  The sun had risen, and light streaming through a small, barred window set high in the wall showed me Longstreet stretched flat on a drop-down bunk, his right wrist and right ankle cuffed to the wall as Warren Day had ordered.

  “Allowed to go in there?” I asked the cop.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Lieutenant Hannegan’s orders.”

  “Can I talk to him?”

  The cop scratched his head. “The lieutenant didn’t say anything about talking through the bars.”

  Longstreet turned his head in my direction. “That you, Moon?”

  “Mister Moon.”

  “O.K.… Mr. Moon. Why the formality?”

  “I like to keep murderers in their place.”

  His tufted eyebrows rose. “That doesn’t include me.”

  “We’ll still keep it ‘Mister.’ I’ll apologize if you turn out innocent.”

  He pursed his lips in an expression of grudging acceptance. “Taking my proposition, Mr. Moon?”

  “Maybe. What is it?”

  “Simple enough. Solve Carmichael’s murder within twenty-four hours and I’ll pay ten thousand dollars.”

  “Why twenty-four hours?”

  “I want it solved before I leave here.”

  I considered this answer from all sides without growing any wiser. My prospective client was a man hard to understand and, I suspected, not anxious to be understood.

  “Why don’t you leave now?” I asked. “All you have to do is post bond.”

  Gazing up at me blandly, he handed me one of the screwiest answers I have ever gotten from a client. “Want to catch up on my sleep.”

  For a moment I watched him speculatively, forming new questions in my mind. But having a hunch that even a thousand well-phrased questions would get nothing more from him about why he stayed in jail, I changed tack.

  I said: “Suppose I take the case and you turn out to be the murderer?”

  “Would I hire you if I were?” he asked. “I could get out of here in ten minutes by posting bond. And with my alibi I could bust Warren Day right out of a job if he booked me for murder. He knows it, too.”

  I thought this over and saw the logic of it. “All right. I’ll go along. But I can’t work in the dark. I want better answers than you gave the inspector.”

  He glanced at the guard. “Not with a cop listening in.”

  I turned to the cop, who was silently taking down everything we said in shorthand.

  “Oh, a spy!” I said. “Run down the hall where you can watch without hearing. I want a confidential talk with my client.”

  His head moved back and forth sidewise. “The lieutenant said keep my eyes on him.”

  “Gonna make me get a lawyer?”

  “Yep.”

  “I’ll be back in a minute,” I told Longstreet.

  Warren Day was still in his office, morosely puffing on an actually lighted cigar.

  “Thought you went home,” he said.

  “Been talking to Longstreet. He’s willing to tell me things if you move the big-eared cop from in front of his cell.”

  “Yeah?” His eyes narrowed. “You take his ten-thousand-dollar proposition?”

  “Depends on what he has to say,” I evaded.

  “If I move the guard, will you tell me what he spills?”

  I shrugged. “That’s up to him. He has the right of confidence as my client, if I listen to him.”

  Day shook his head. “No sale. Go home and go to bed.”

  I took out my check book. “You said five hundred, didn’t you?”

  The Inspector’s nose, which was the barometer of his blood pressure, whitened at the tip, indicating that he was irked. When the whole organ paled, it meant he was boiling.

  “You post bond,” he said, “and I’ll charge him with murder!”

  Spreading the check book on his desk, I reached for his desk pen. He slapped aside my hand.

  “Put it up, damn you! I’ll give you five minutes.”

  He slammed back his chair and made for the door. By the time we reached Longstreet’s cell, the inspector’s nose was dead white.

  “You!” Day growled at the guard. “Post yourself at the end of the hall and keep your eye on this excuse for a private detective. He gets five minutes. If he passes anything through the bars, shoot him. Kill him and I’ll make you a sergeant.”

  He wheeled and marched back to his den.

  “You certainly get your way around here,” Longstreet said admiringly. “How’d you swing that?”

  “Stow the blarney,” I said. “We’ve got five minutes. Spill it fast.”

  With his free hand he fumbled at his shirt front and drew out a locket on a chain.

  “See this?”

  I nodded.

  “A girl gave me this when I was seventeen. Twenty-seven years ago. It’s the only thing in the world I got any sentiment about.”

  “Your wife?”

  “I’m a bachelor.” He paused to peer down at the locket as it lay on his chest. “This locket got me a local reputation. Ask my partners … or the one who’s left, Marden Swope. Ask our secretary, Marie Kincaid. Ask anybody knows me well. They’ll all tell you when I swear on this locket, it’s God’s own truth. I’d cut off my nose before I’d tell a lie on this locket.”

  “All right,” I said. “Get to the point.”

  He put his hand over the locket. “On the memory of her who gave it to me, I swear I didn’t kill Carmichael.”


  “I’m deeply impressed,” I said. “We have three minutes left.”

  “Ask anything you want.” He pushed the locket back in his shirt.

  “Leave it out,” I suggested.

  His brows went up. “You’ll get the truth. I don’t necessarily lie when I’m not holding the locket.”

  I glanced at my watch. “Why was Anton Strowlski after you?”

  “Anton who?”

  “The rod man brought in with us,” I said impatiently. “The only reason you started that brawl was because you saw Anton in the mirror and wanted cops on the scene fast.”

  He shook his head. “Never saw him before.”

  I looked through the bars at him in vexation, and he gazed back at me blandly. “Why’d you deliberately get yourself thrown in jail?” I asked finally.

  He blew out his lips, there was a sound of released suction, and he used a thumb to push his plate back in place. “What makes you think I did that?”

  Apparently my bothering to have the cop moved to the end of the hall had been wasted effort. I said: “If you won’t answer questions, I can’t help much.”

  He raised tufted eyebrows. “Believe me, if I could tell you a single thing about Carmichael’s murder, I would. But I can’t. If the answer was in me, would I pay you to dig it out?”

  From the corner of my eye I saw the guard start toward us. Longstreet looked up at me without a sign of mischievousness in his suddenly serious face.

  “Believe me, Mr. Moon, my being in jail has nothing to do with Carmichael’s murder. You still with me?”

  “Time’s up,” the guard broke in behind me.

  I said: “I’ll play along for a while,” and left him to catch up on his sleep.

  When I reached the front desk, Sergeant Danny Blake was just coming on duty. His nose looked like a blue turnip.

  “How’s the nose?” I asked.

  He grunted something unintelligible.

  I said: “What happened to the guy brought in with us? Anton Strowlski.”

  Danny thumbed through his log book. “Released on bond at 7:30. I was off then. Go off at 5:00.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE GOLDEN LOCKET

  The night before I had gotten to bed at one in the morning and been routed out at four. I felt like falling in bed for a week, but clues have a habit of disappearing unless you follow a murder trail while it is still hot. From the desk sergeant’s directory I learned the Rex Amusement Corporation was in the Bland Building, and took a cab there.

  The corporation was on the first floor. It had its own entrance, separate from that to the offices on higher floors. The entrance was centered in a long loading ramp for trucks, presumably used for loading and unloading various types of coin machines. An empty, driverless truck was backed against one end of the ramp.

  I found the door unlocked and walked into a huge storage room filled with hundreds of coin devices. Juke boxes, cigarette vendors, pinball games and slot machines stood in orderly rows, arranged so each type was easily accessible. At the far end of the warehouse I saw a door labeled OFFICE.

  Pushing open this door, I found myself in a large, but simply furnished reception room containing only an office switchboard, a typing desk, two file cabinets and a few odd chairs. Centering one wall of the room was a glass-paned door bearing the title M. SWOPE, PRESIDENT. Two similar doors, respectively labeled G. W. CARMICHAEL, CUSTOMER SERVICE and W. H. LONGSTREET, SALES MANAGER, opened in the opposite wall. The wall directly across from the reception room entrance was full of windows.

  A sleek, brown-eyed blonde with nice accessories was beating the typewriter. She gave me a cool smile which meant: “State your business, please. I’m very busy.”

  I came right to the point by flashing the identity card which states I am a private dick and am bonded to twenty thousand dollars.

  “We don’t need a private detective,” she said. “The police are doing fine.”

  I said: “Maybe you don’t, but you’ve got one. One of your bosses hired me.”

  She raised carefully molded eyebrows. “Mr. Swope?”

  “Longstreet.” I took the chair she hadn’t offered and stretched out my legs. “What’s your name?”

  She thought me over before she finally decided to answer. “Marie Kincaid.”

  “You the whole office force?”

  “All that works in. We have ten service men and a crew of salesmen.”

  “Where are they all?”

  “We don’t open till eight.” She raised her eyes to the wall clock and I followed suit. It was ten till.

  I asked: “You been here long?”

  “About five minutes.”

  “I mean have you worked here long?”

  “Four years.”

  “Know about a locket Longstreet wears?”

  She glanced at me quickly, then laughed a tinkly, indulgent laugh. “The swearing locket? That’s what we call it behind his back. He’s a nut on the subject.”

  “Is he serious about it, or is it just a gag?”

  “Oh, he’s serious. I wouldn’t believe his oath on a Bible, but anything he swears to on the locket is pure truth.”

  I got to my feet. “I’ll take a look at the room. It been cleaned up?”

  “Not yet,” she said.

  Opening the door which bore Carmichael’s name, I went in and looked around. Except for a spot of dried blood on the carpet beneath the desk, there was little to see. I wandered around looking at the floor, the desk top, the window sills and the bookcase without finding any cigarette butts of queer oriental brand, any Egyptian scarabs or any of the other highly informative clues detectives are always running into.

  Marie Kincaid came to the door and looked in at me.

  “Know where they found the gun?” I asked.

  She pointed to the floor near her feet. “Right there.”

  “How’d you know?”

  She raised her nose. “I saw it. The police brought me over here from home before anything had been moved.”

  I estimated the distance from the desk to the gun as about twelve feet, which ruled out suicide, as Inspector Day had said.

  “Let’s go over the story you told the cops,” I said. “I understand Longstreet phoned here twice yesterday.”

  “That’s right.”

  “When did the calls come?”

  “The first was at 3:30, for Mr. Carmichael. I plugged him in and they had a terrible argument.”

  “You listen in?”

  Her nose went up again. “I did not! Mr. Carmichael’s door was open.”

  “What was the argument about?”

  “I don’t know. But Mr. Carmichael swore something awful.”

  “Where was Swope at the time?”

  “In his office.” She pointed at his door across the reception room.

  “Hmm. How about the second call?”

  She said: “That came just at five. I had my hat on ready to leave when the phone rang. It was Mr. Longstreet again, for Mr. Carmichael. I plugged Mr. Carmichael in and, through the open door, heard him say: ‘All right. Wait ten minutes and come on over. I’ll be here.’ ”

  “Then what?”

  “I went home. An hour later the police came after me.”

  I asked: “How do you account for Longstreet being able to phone when he was locked in a cell from three o’clock on?”

  Her nose went up a third time. “I don’t. You’re the detective. You account for it.”

  “How do you know it was Longstreet phoning?”

  “She said it was.”

  “What?”

  “She said it was.”

  “Who?”

  “The switchboard operator. She said: ‘Mr. Longstreet calling Mr. Carmichael.’ ”

  I thought this over while I wandered around the room some more. Finally I said: “You told the cops you recognized his voice.”

  “I thought I heard it in the background,” she said quickly.

  I shook my head. “You
told the cops Longstreet himself phoned. You didn’t mention any woman.”

  “The woman wasn’t phoning,” she defended. “She was just a switchboard operator somewhere.”

  “Where?”

  “How would I know? Wherever Mr. Longstreet phoned from.”

  I said: “Did you actually hear Longstreet’s voice at all?”

  “Well”—she hesitated—“I thought I heard it in the background asking the operator to hurry up.”

  I asked bluntly: “Who paid you to change your story?”

  Color warmed the coolness of her cheeks and her brown eyes threw flame at me. “Just what do you mean by that?”

  “I read your sworn statement. You told the cops you definitely recognized Longstreet’s voice, and when your questioner remarked that imitation is easy, you said: ‘After four years, an imitation wouldn’t fool me.’ ”

  “It was the way the police asked questions,” she insisted. “They put words in your mouth. I am sure it was Mr. Longstreet phoning. I’d be sure even without the voice, because when I plugged in Mr. Carmichael, I told him Mr. Longstreet was phoning.” She ended triumphantly: “If it had been anyone else, Mr. Carmichael would have bawled me out afterward!”

  I switched to another subject. “What kind of guy was Carmichael?”

  She examined me so appraisingly before answering, I expected some sort of startling disclosure.

  But all she said was: “All right. If you like wolves.”

  “Married?” I asked.

  “No. Bachelor.”

  “What’d he look like?”

  Her brow puckered thoughtfully. “Tall and lanky. Slightly stooped. Gray hair. Nothing very individual, except the wolf gleam in his eye.”

  “How old was he?”

  “Forty, forty-five. Somewhere in there.”

  “Have any enemies?”

  She shook her head. “None I know of.”

  “Any arguments recently?”

  “Only the one over the phone with Mr. Longstreet.” Some inner thought brought her up short. “Except …” She shook her head in self-impatience. “That wouldn’t count.”