Deadly Image

by George Harmon Coxe

  The words on the frosted-glass panel said Earl Geiger, but there was no clue as to his occupation, and when Casey stepped inside he found himself in a tiny anteroom that contained four pieces of secondhand furniture—two chairs, a settee, and a round table—all in cheap simulated maple. The door to the adjoining office was thrown back and Casey moved into the opening and took a quick look around.

  A battered flat-topped desk stood at an angle near one corner of the room and Geiger sat behind it, his view from the lone window featuring a blank wall that was either part of an air shaft or some setback on the adjacent building. There was another straight-backed chair, an imitation leather customer’s chair, well cracked and dusty looking, a bookcase that held six volumes and stacks of papers and magazines, and a closet, the door of which was part-way open. At the moment a copy of the Racing Form was spread out before Geiger and this reminded Casey of Sam Delemater as he wondered if all private detectives were horse players in their spare time.

  Geiger himself appeared to be in his middle forties, not short but carrying a pod that made him seem that way. What hair he had was gray-brown and nondescript, the light-brown eyes beneath the ragged brows seemed somehow to have a built-in evasive look, and the abundance of broken capillaries in his blunt nose gave it a permanent crimson tint. Now the brows lifted and a lopsided smile disclosed uneven teeth before he said:

  “Well, well. Old man Casey himself.”

  Casey said: “Hi, Earl,” and leaned against the doorframe while he tried to find one good reason why he had bothered to come here at all. Still not knowing just what he expected to prove, but aware that he had to offer something, he said: “I was down getting a shot of a crane that tipped over in that excavation down the street. I thought I’d stop in.”

  Geiger had slipped a wrinkled, plaid sport jacket over the back of the straight-backed chair. His collar was unbuttoned and his striped tie had food stains on it. He considered the statement, leaned back in his chair, and began to rock gently back and forth as the springs sounded a protest with the shifing weight.

  “Sure, sure,” he said, the smile still fixed. “Front-page stuff, hunh? So what else is new?”

  Having struck out with his opening remarks, Casey took another conversational cut. “I saw you at the Melody Lounge, last night.”

  “I was there.”

  “For how long?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Did you see me?”

  “I saw you.” Geiger grunted. “You yakked a while with Marty Bates and then this blonde society-type number comes up and you waltzed out with her. Quite a dish, hunh?”

  “I’m interested in another blonde,” Casey said and showed Geiger a copy of one of the head-and-shoulder prints he had sent to Delemater.

  Geiger looked at it, nodded approvingly, and tossed it back across the desk.

  “Not bad. Who is she?”

  “She was sitting at the end of the bar, opposite you. You must have noticed her.”

  “If I did I don’t remember. Hell, the bars are full of young broads looking for free drinks.”

  The annoyance was growing in Casey now and was directed not so much at Geiger as at himself. He had no proof that Geiger was involved in any way with what had happened to Don Farrington. He was afraid to mention Farrington’s name, lest it might in some way arouse Geiger’s curiosity, and he didn’t want to question the detective too closely. This left him with very little to say, but because Geiger’s attitude served only to increase his annoyance, he moved on impulse to the half-open closet and pulled the door out far enough to see the small darkroom that the detective had improvised there.

  Geiger sat up in his chair, his resentment showing. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “Looking around.” Casey moved back and leaned against the doorframe. “You taking many pictures lately?”

  “When it’s worth my while.”

  “But not last night.”

  “You saw what I was doing last night. Did you see any cameras? … What the hell is bugging you anyway?”

  “A friend of mine got in a little jam last night and that blonde could be mixed up in it. Sam Delemater’s working on it. He may stop by later.”

  “Delemater?” Geiger laughed and showed his crooked teeth again. “Hell, Sam Delemater don’t even speak to me.”

  Casey took a small breath and tried to keep his frustration from showing. He wanted to say something that would jolt the detective’s insolent smugness but nothing came to mind and in the end the ringing of the telephone saved him.

  “Yeah,” Geiger said as he lifed the instrument. “Speaking. Who? Yeah … What?”

  There was a long pause and with it came a change in Geiger’s manner. He was still listening to what was being said at the other end of the wire but his mouth slowly tightened and dipped at the corners, the brows bunched, and it seemed to Casey that the light-brown eyes had a startled and somewhat worried look.

  A moment later he yelled: “Wait a minute!” and clamped his palm over the mouthpiece. “Look, Casey,” he said, leaning back in his chair, the telephone against his chest. “I’ve got an important call. Why don’t you breeze?”

  “I’m in no hurry.”

  Geiger cursed under his breath and spoke into the telephone. “Listen,” he said. “I can’t talk now. Let me have your number and I’ll call you back.” He picked up a pencil that lay in the open fold of the Racing Form and jotted a number in one margin beneath some other penciled notations that had already been made.

  “Okay,” he said. “Yeah.” He hung up, leaned back in his chair, and gave Casey a challenging, humorless grin. “Go ahead, hot-shot. Stay as long as you like.” He picked up the pencil again and gave his attention to the Racing Form. “Just be quiet, hunh? I need a couple of winners today and it’s time I got some bets down.”

  Casey did not linger. He knew now that his fishing expedition was a bust. He had popped off, and exposed himself to Geiger’s counterattack of indifference and ridicule, and he had learned exactly nothing. There was no evidence to suggest the detective knew anything about Don Farrington except the tenuous link with his reputation. Geiger did investigative work for certain lawyers with minor reputations and little professional standing. His speciality, if he had one, was checking on errant mates for jealous and suspicious husbands and wives, mostly wives. The darkroom seemed proof that he also took pictures but this in itself meant nothing, and when Geiger continued to study his Racing Form Casey turned and went away to nurse his somewhat humiliating defeat with profane but silent phrases.

  He was still muttering when he reached the sidewalk, and after a few steps he stopped at the curb to light a cigarette. As he waited there, still thinking about Geiger, he caught a slanting glance at a woman who was swinging erectly along the sidewalk in his general direction. Something about her appearance and the way she carried herself set her apart from the other pedestrians and when he turned to get a better look he recognized her.

  She was taller than most women, rather too slender for Casey’s taste, with a thin, finely drawn face, a determined cut to her chin, and a haughty, superior look. The tailored dark-red suit she wore had not come from a rack in some women’s apparel shop and the bag she carried looked expensive. Her name was Louise Mayfield, née Farrington, and she had her brother’s dark hair and eyes and the smooth olive skin.

  She was about twenty feet from Casey when her glance touched his and he waited to see if she would recognize him and speak. Then, just as suddenly, nothing changing in her face, her eyes were front and center and her stride was unchecked as she passed him. She continued this way for another twenty or thirty feet before she hesitated and finally stopped to inspect the number over the doorway Casey had so recently left. A moment later she had entered and he stood there gawking while his mind grappled with thoughts he found hard to accept.

  For another minute or two he stood where he was, oblivious to the others who passed him; then he flipped his cigarette
into the street and moved slowly back to the entrance. Because he could not yet believe that Louise Mayfield could be calling on Earl Geiger, he inspected the building directory in front of the stairs, to find that the second-floor tenants, in addition to Geiger, were a dealer in rare coins, a stamp collector, two lawyers, and a tax consultant. The third floor was occupied by some outfit calling itself the Bronson Direct Mail Service.

  “All right,” he said to himself as he again started for his car, “so she must have gone to see Geiger. So maybe Don told her what happened. Is she the one that called Geiger while I was in his office? How could she know about him or where to find him?”

  There were no answers to any of this but when he found he could see the front of the building from his car he made himself comfortable behind the wheel and focused his glance on the doorway. He did not have long to wait. Without actually consulting his watch, he thought it might have been four or five minutes before the woman reappeared and, with the same purposeful, chin-up stride, started toward him.

  A taxi was parked on the other side of the street just short of the corner and now, oblivious of the passing traffic, she jaywalked over to it and opened the door on the street side. The driver, who had been slouched behind the wheel reading a newspaper, quickly tossed it aside and when Casey saw that the flag was down he realized that the cab had been waiting for her.

  Still thinking hard and getting nowhere, but not yet ready to move, Casey turned on the engine, which in turn activated the tubes in the two radios. The company set was silent, as it usually was, but the police radio took up its familiar chattering as the dispatcher at headquarters talked to various radio cars to give them instructions and periodically report the time. Casey was still absently watching the sidewalk, his dark eyes full of thought and his brow furrowed, when he saw Ralph Jackson swing on by his car. The trumpet man looked very sharp in his dark gray slacks and shaggy, medium-gray jacket. His sleek black hair had been carefully combed and he moved like a man without a care in the world until, approaching Geiger’s entrance, he too began to slow down. When, after a moment’s inspection, he disappeared into the doorway, Casey gave up.

  “All right,” he said as he put the car in gear and tagged at the wheel. “To hell with it. Suppose you start earning your salary and let Delemater worry about Geiger.”

  5Casey had finished developing the films he had taken in Sommerville and at die excavation, and he was in the printing room making enlargements when Marty Bates breezed in and appropriated the single stool the room offered. There was nothing in his customary disheveled appearance to indicate any concern over what had happened to him the night before, and his greeting was brash and irreverent.

  “Hi, Case,” he said, “I’m sorry I had to put you on the spot with Saxton. Not sore, are you?”

  “Not now,” Casey said. “How about you?”

  “I’m okay.”

  “Saxton said he had to lean on you a little.”

  “Sure. But you know me. I’m a congenital coward. Somebody twists my arm, I cry. I tried to stall and I made a lot of fuss, but when they began to bear down I had to tell them about you. I hoped maybe they’d take off and I could give you a ring and tell you they were coming, but Saxton left a couple of his goons with me and there was nothing I could do. What happened at your place?”

  “I tried to stall too,” Casey said. “Saxton wouldn’t buy it. When he said somebody was still leaning on you, I figured I’d better give up.”

  “I guess it’s a good thing for me you did. Do you know what was in that filmholder?”

  Casey said yes and went on to explain how Saxton had forced him to develop the two films.

  “It was nothing but luck,” Bates said. “I saw this car go off the road and when I got even with it I just leaned out the window and popped the shutter. I didn’t know who it was until the flashbulb went off, and then I decided to grab another for good luck and take off. Are you going to tell your friend Lieutenant Logan about it?”

  “Probably. When I get time. Not that it will do much good.”

  “Yeah,” Bates said and nodded. “The cops have a pretty good idea that Lavelli killed that guy last week and they probably know he did some jobs for Saxton. That picture would prove that Lavelli’s alive and that Saxton probably knows where he is. Without it—what the hell—it’s nothing … Oh,” he said and slid off the stool as some new thought came to him. He put his hand into his pocket and pulled forth some bills. Two of these, which in the half-light of the room looked like a fifty and a twenty, he passed to Casey. “This will finally even up my account.”

  Casey looked at the two bills a moment before he could quite believe what he had heard. He could not remember when Marty Bates did not owe him something. The amount varied, never getting over a hundred dollars and seldom being reduced to twenty. Bates, as though not understanding the hesitation, said:

  “Take it. Seventy bucks. That’s right, isn’t it?”

  “Don’t squeeze yourself, Marty. Give me part of it and let the rest ride.”

  “No.” Bates shook his head. “I’ve got it, it’s yours. I want to get things cleaned up. I’m going to blow this town. I’m going to get me a stake and take off. The place is no good for me any more. I want a new town and new faces and a new job—a chance to straighten up and start even.”

  “What about Ellen?” Casey said, referring to Marty’s wife.

  “She’s doing great. Everything’s been breaking for her since we split up, but I guess she made the breaks at that. I was no good for her. It’s too late for me now and I wouldn’t want to foul things up for her.”

  Casey silently agreed but said nothing and then, as his mind went on, a new thought came to him and he was suddenly very glad that Marty Bates had stopped by. He could see again, in his imagination, the scene at the Melody Lounge when he had walked out with Shirley Farrington the night before, and it occurred to him that Bates might have some information that would help her husband.

  “How long did you stay after I left the Melody Lounge last night?”

  “Oh—I don’t know. Why?”

  “Do you know Don Farrington?”

  “I know who he is. That was his wife that came up to you, wasn’t it? I saw him sitting with her earlier at that table down front. He was stoned, wasn’t he?”

  “Sort of. Did he leave while you were there?”

  “Leave?” Bates hesitated and seemed to fumble with his reply. There was not enough light for Casey to read his expression but he saw the little man shrug. “No. I mean, I wasn’t paying any attention, but I don’t think he did.”

  “He was sitting with some blonde number and Ralph Jackson when I left,” Casey said. “Did the blonde stay?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about Jackson?”

  “He was blowing his horn last time I saw him.”

  “You know Earl Geiger?”

  “Sure. Not well, but I know him.”

  “He was at the bar sitting by himself when I came in,” Casey said thoughtfully. “I think he was there when I left.”

  “He was.”

  “Still sitting alone?”

  “There was some guy I don’t know sitting on the stool next to him but I don’t know if he was with Geiger.”

  “Well, was he there when you left?”

  Bates gave a tug at his hatbrim and buttoned his jacket. “Look, what is this anyway? What’s bugging you?”

  “Nothing,” lied Casey, “but Don Farrington’s a friend of mine and he’s not what you’d call a drinking man. His wife said he seemed determined to tie one on and I wondered if he got home all right and what happened to the blonde.”

  Bates gestured with one hand and let it drop. “You got me. I think they were there when I left but, to tell the truth, I was pretty damn worried about what would happen to me if Saxton found out I took those pictures. And he did.”

  Casey could understand this much and he also knew that further questioning along the same line was not going to
do much good. Something about Bates’s manner bothered him a little but there was nothing definite he could put his finger on and now, glancing at the eight-by-ten prints he had working in the fixing tank, he was reminded of something Saxton had said earlier.

  “You had two cameras with you when you were at the Melody Lounge,” he said.

  “That’s right.”

  “Saxton recognized you. He was waiting when you came home and he said it was late.”

  “That’s right.”

  “He took you upstairs and opened those two cameras and there weren’t any films. Since when do you walk around with empty cameras?”

  The question brought an abrupt change in Marty Bates. He laughed quickly and there was a note of satisfaction in the sound.

  “I’m a very clever fellow sometimes,” he said. “I outsmarted the bastard. I knew if he recognized me he’d be waiting at my place. When I got you to take the filmholder, I thought I’d be okay. Then I thought some more and knew I wouldn’t. I had some other films all right, and I had an idea Saxton might take a look, so I stopped in here.”

  “In here?” Casey said, gaping at the little man. “When?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe one or a little after. Dave Haskell was snoozing in his chair and I asked him if I could develop some films.”

  Bates shrugged again as he went on with his explanation. “Well, you know how I stand with these other sheets in town. Nobody wants me around. I’ve been practically barred from the buildings. But you’ve always treated me okay, so I asked Haskell if I could use one of the developing rooms. He didn’t seem very crazy about the idea but he said he guessed it was all right so long as I didn’t use any of the company paper. I told him I didn’t want to make any prints, just do some developing. So I did.”