Deadly Image

by George Harmon Coxe

  She was on her feet as he finished, and he had to lengthen his stride to keep pace with her. When they reached the lobby he asked if he could drop her off. Still moving toward the entrance with her head high and her back stiff, she said she had come in a taxi and was quite sure the doorman could find her another.

  16When Casey had locked his car in the Express parking lot, he started for the sidewalk with one thing in mind: to make enlargements from the negatives Marty Bates had left with his wife, and see if they confirmed the hypothesis that had been developing in his mind. So intent was he with his thoughts that he did not notice the two men who were standing on the curb until they turned and stepped close, flanking him from either side. As they leaned on him he stopped, at first startled and then indignant. It was then that he felt the gun in his side.

  “Hold it!” they said. “Stay cool!”

  The pressure of the gun stiffened Casey’s muscles and held him immobile as his mind groped for some answer. He swallowed and tried to loosen up. He turned his head from one to the other but the light was bad and the hat brims shadowed their faces. One was about his height, but with a lean, rawboned look; the other was shorter and huskier.

  “What the hell is this?” he demanded, not recognizing either of them.

  “You’ll find out,” they said. “Over here!”

  They turned him and then they were walking toward a long black sedan parked fifty feet from the corner. As they approached, a rear door opened and the face that took shape in the darkness belonged to Jake Powell.

  “Get in, Casey,” he said. “Watch him, Al. He can move fast if he wants to. You drive, Eddy.”

  Powell moved over on the seat. When Casey felt the gun nudge him, he bent his head and ducked inside. The husky man opened the front door and slid in behind the wheel and now Al showed the gun and sat down next to Casey, drawing back in the corner so he would have room to maneuver if he needed it.

  For a few seconds, as the car rolled away from the curb, Casey looked at Powell, a sturdy, black-browed man whose balding head was covered by a black felt hat. He still had no idea why he was here and he was too puzzled to feel any great sense of alarm.

  “I don’t get it, Jake,” he said finally. “Two hoods and a gun? Why?”

  “You don’t know?”

  “Am I a mind reader?”

  “Think hard.”

  “I’m thinking.”

  “You got that picture you called me about?”

  “Ohh,” Casey said as light began to dawn on him. “Sure.”

  “Good. So I’ll tell you why we brought the gun. You’ve got a reputation for having a pair of fast and heavy hands. With the gun, the odds are better. Before I take that picture away from you, we’re going to work you over.”

  “You’re kidding,” Casey said, really meaning it.

  “By the time we finish you’ll think twice before you try a stunt like this on anybody else.”

  “Now wait.” Casey sat up and began to sweat. He could feel the drops start to trickle down his breastbone, and his alarm and growing concern came not so much from the threat of violence as from the thought of what might happen to Marty Bates’s more recent negatives which now rested in his inside pocket. The fear of losing them was very real and sickening to contemplate; he could also feel the latent anger in Jake Powell’s manner and new it was genuine. “I can explain everything.”

  “You didn’t call me a while ago just to pass the time of day, and while we’re taking our little ride I’m going to tell you about that picture. It came in the mail about a year and a half ago. I didn’t know who sent it for two days, but it rocked me plenty and—”

  “Now listen,” Casey said, trying to interrupt.

  “Shut up!” Powell said and at the same time Al nicked Casey’s head not too gently with the muzzle of the gun. “The picture rocked me,” Powell repeated as though there had been no interruption. “Because my wife and I had decided on a divorce and practically agreed on a settlement. What she didn’t know was that there was another woman in the picture, and I was afraid if she found out she’d nick me for another twenty or thirty grand. I’d be over a barrel and I knew it.

  “So a couple of days go by,” he said. “I get this call from Marty Bates. He wants to know if I got the picture and I tell him yes. He says if I want any extras they are a hundred dollars a dozen, with the negative included.”

  He paused to inject a few words of profanity.

  “The nerve of that little bastard,” he added. “He makes the proposition like it was some two-bit business deal. I know I can beat his brains out, but when I calm down I figure it isn’t worth it for a hundred bucks. I’ve got to be sure that picture doesn’t get around, so I pay off and then I warn him. I tell him that if he or anybody else ever tries to collect again I’m going to lean on him hard.”

  “Yes, but—”

  Again the gun jarred his head, and Powell said: “I didn’t figure you for this kind of caper, Casey. You don’t have that kind of reputation, but it isn’t going to make any difference now. I’m going to get that picture and then I’m going to teach you a lesson—you and any other newspaper guy who might get the same kind of idea. When we finish you can go ahead and file a complaint if you think it’ll do you any good. It just happens that these two friends of mine are from out of town, and without a witness I don’t think you can make any charge against me stick for five minutes. That picture doesn’t bug me any more. You can send a hundred of them to my ex-wife if you want to, but that’s not the point.”

  “I’ve got the point,” Casey yelled in an effort to get some attention. “I’ve got a whole envelope full of pictures like that and if you’ll tell this monkey to take the gun out of my ear I’ll show you.” He moved very slowly as he spoke, reaching down to take the larger envelope from his pocket. “Turn on the dome light and take a look.”

  Whether it was Casey’s demand, his tone of voice, or simple curiosity, Powell leaned forward and flipped on the overhead light. Casey started to go through the negatives and prints he took from the envelope. When he found the one of Powell, he handed it over. The man examined it, both front and back. He looked at Casey.

  “What are those others?” he asked suspiciously.

  “More of the same.”

  “Where did you get them?”

  “I thought you’d never ask,” Casey said. “Somebody put two slugs in the back of Marty Bates’s head around six o’clock tonight. He’d left this envelope with his wife a couple of months ago. Lieutenant Logan and I went over to break the news because I’m a pretty good friend of hers. After Logan left she produced the envelope, not knowing what it was because it was sealed.”

  By the time Powell had digested the news, there was a change in his manner. His shadowed eyes stared at Casey from beneath the hat brim and there was an odd wonderment in his tone rather than anger when he finally spoke.

  “This is the truth? I mean about Bates? In the back of the head?”

  “Just like those other cheap hoods who got paid off by somebody this year. The kind of thing Tony Saxton could arrange, or maybe you. When I saw these negatives and prints,” he added, “I had an idea Marty might have been doing a little business on the side but I had to be sure. That’s why I called you. So why don’t you tell this guy up front to go around the block and take me back to the Express. Tell him to drive carefully, too. If he does, maybe I’ll forget the whole thing.”

  Jake Powell was impressed and possibly concerned. He spoke quietly to the man called Eddy, who made his turn at the next intersection. After a silent second or two, Powell said: “What are you going to do with the rest of those pictures?”

  “Get rid of them,” Casey said. “Burn them probably. Most of them don’t mean a thing to me and it wouldn’t make any difference if they did.”

  “Okay,” Powell said. “So I was out of line. A guy gets mad enough, he makes mistakes. This looks like one of mine. But I hate blackmailers, especially cheap ones.”

&nb
sp; Casey knew it was over. He had a little scare, but the other envelope was still safely in the inside pocket and that was the only thing that mattered. He made himself comfortable on the seat and watched the passing scene, his breathing regular and his pulse again steady. Nothing more was said until the car stopped at the Express building. Al opened the door and got out, standing off to one side, and Casey turned to Powell before he slid from the seat.

  “Do you want to come upstairs and watch me cut these negatives and prints into little pieces?”

  “Not me,” said Powell. “I spoke my piece and I’ve wasted enough time. If you want an apology, you’ve got it.”

  Casey did not bother to reply but got out of the car and headed for the entrance, not even glancing at the man called Al. When he came into the studio, a young photographer named Haskell was slouched in a chair reading a paperback novel. He glanced up long enough to grunt a greeting and as Casey started for the darkroom he thought of something and stopped.

  “You had this shift a couple of nights ago when Marty Bates came in to develop some films, didn’t you?”

  “Yes,” Haskell said. “I told him he couldn’t use company paper or supplies, but he said all he wanted to do was use some developer and hypo long enough to process a few negatives. I thought it was okay, so I told him yes.”

  “Sure,” Casey said, continuing on his way. “Just checking. If anybody from upstairs should happen to call you, you don’t know where I am. You haven’t seen me.”

  Casey made a four-by-five print of each of the six negatives Marty Bates had put in the little envelope. He did not bother to give them the full treatment in the fixing bath because he was not interested in their permanence. He was able to get them all on the ferrotyper at one time and when they were dry he studied them carefully before he arranged them in the sequence in which he thought they had been taken. By now he had a reasonable idea of just what Marty Bates had done and he was convinced that it was Bates who had made the twenty-five-hundred-dollar appointment with Donald Farrington for eight o’clock that evening.

  When he went back into the anteroom, Haskell was romancing some girl on the telephone and Casey moved over to his desk. The recently processed prints were now in his pocket and he put the two envelopes with the negatives into the center drawer, which was the only one that would lock. Haskell was sitting on the base of his spine with his heels cocked on the table, a faraway look in his eyes. When Casey saw that he was still soft-talking the girl and would probably do so for some time, he reached for the telephone on his desk and asked the operator for an outside line. He dialed the number of Sam Delemater’s hotel and asked for his room. He could hear the hotel operator ringing but there was no answer at the other end and she finally told him that Mr. Delemater must be out.

  The news was disappointing because he knew that there were at least a half-dozen bars that Delemater frequented from time to time. A glance at his watch told him that it was after ten thirty and, not expecting anything, but not wanting to give up unless he had to, he dialed Delemater’s office number. To his surprise, the answer came almost immediately, and he said: “Sam? Casey.”

  “Hi,” Delemater said cheerfully.

  “Don’t tell me you’re still working.”

  “Certainly I’m working,” Delemater said. “I’m not on any thirty-five-hour week like you newspaper characters. Sam Delemater is a very industrious and hard-working man. Hours mean nothing to him. The only thing that counts is a job well done.”

  “Cut it out,” Casey said. “Where’s that blonde? Haven’t you found her yet?”

  “I’m in the process of finding her right now.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I’m sitting here, with all the tracks closed and no chance to get down a bet, waiting for a long-distance call. It could come any time. Why don’t you stop by?”

  “All right,” Casey said. “I will.”

  17The building where Sam Delemater had his office was a four-story structure just around the comer from Washington Street, a modest building recently remodeled and offering a single automatic elevator. Casey, swinging in from the street and finding the car waiting for him, pushed the button marked 3 and when he stepped out he went along the hall to the next to the last door on the left. The lettering on the frosted-glass panel said Samuel Delemater. There was no clue as to his occupation but in the lower right-hand corner were the words Enter here, and Casey did so.

  The doorway to the adjacent office stood open and Casey moved through the anteroom and stopped there to glance about before he focused on the man behind the desk. The office itself had a cluttered, untidy look and its furnishings—two chairs, a filing cabinet, a water cooler, and a bookcase, which showed more magazines and papers than it did books—looked as if they had always been secondhand. The flat-topped desk which was so often littered with the Racing Form, Morning Telegraph, and Scratch Sheet, not to mention the sheets of copy paper that were covered with Delemater’s penciled calculations, looked unusually neat at the moment. In addition to the letter box at one side, there was only a scratch pad, and Delemater was working on it as he sat there, his hat tipped to the back of his head and a look of concentration on his solidly rounded face.

  “Come in,” he said, sparing Casey no more than a glance. “Grab a chair. I’m figuring out how I did on the day.”

  Casey opened his jacket and sat down. “Results are all in, hunh?”

  “Yep.”

  “How many bets did you make altogether?”

  “Twelve, I think.” Delemater moved the point of his pencil down the page in half-inch hops. “Yeah, twelve.”

  “How much did you bet altogether?”

  “You mean total? … Let’s see. A hundred and sixty-five dollars, all told. And I win”—he looked up, his grin a little sheepish—“two dollars and eighty-five cents.”

  “Great,” said Casey and chuckled softly. “You ought to spend more time on it … So how about that blonde?”

  “I told you I was expecting a call. I still am.”

  “Who from?”

  “From Buffalo. From this Wanda King who has the apartment where the blonde and Geiger took Farrington. She’s working in a night spot called the Four Deuces.”

  “How did you locate her?”

  “Easy,” Delemater said. “The reason it took me so long was that the guy I wanted was out of town for the day. I couldn’t get him on the phone until about an hour ago.”

  “Who’s the guy?”

  “You probably never heard of him. Neither did I. He’s a smalltime booker.”

  “A what?”

  “The landlady over at the King girl’s apartment said she was a dancer. That means she’s in the entertainment business, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Anybody in the entertainment business that expects to get a job, even a one-night stand, needs an agent.”

  “Oh,” Casey said.

  “Sure,” Delemater said. “Well, I know a couple of good ones in town, so I start with them. They don’t know Wanda King but they can give me the name of other agents and I call them. I work on down the line until I finally find someone who does know Wanda King and knows who is handling her.”

  Casey nodded silently, impressed once more with Delemater’s confidence and resourcefulness as he made a quick mental resume of the man’s past.

  Delemater, who was about his age, had been a cop for quite a while, and a good one. He had made the grade from rookie to the uniform force and on to detective in a relatively short time. He had never been impressed by names, social position, or political influence, and the resulting lack of diplomacy stymied his upward climb. When he realized he could not do the job the way he thought it should be done, he had accepted an offer from a national agency that had a branch office in town.

  A few years of this had qualified him as an all-round operator and he had branched out on his own. Being his own boss suited him because he was essentially a lone wolf. He had tried marriage
once and when it floundered he had gone his own way, always making enough to indulge himself in a modest manner in the three things that interested him most—horses, women, and whisky, in that order. His round face normally carried a bland expression and only the quick gray eyes warned the more observant that, when the occasion demanded, he could be a hard and uncompromising individual.

  Now, not wanting to show that he was impressed by Delemater’s progress, Casey said: “You got all this just by sitting on your duff and using the telephone, didn’t you?”

  “Why not? Farrington’s not paying me for walking four miles a day; he’s paying for results.”

  “And what did you tell this agent?”

  “I told him my name was Sidney Dean. I said I was thinking of taking over a club in Springfield and somebody had recommended Wanda King and how good was she and was she available. He said she was good. And I said, is she working now? And he said she was working at the Four Deuces in Buffalo. I said I’d be in touch with him and—”

  The telephone, as if waiting for its cue, interrupted him. Delemater said: “Ahh—” and reached for it. “Maybe this is little Wanda now … Hello … Yes, this is Mr. Delemater. Put her on … Hello, Wanda? How are you, honey?”

  He covered the mouthpiece with his hand as he listened, and gave Casey an explanation. “She was doing her act when I called before,” he said. “I’ve been waiting for her to take a break.” He took his hand from the mouthpiece and said: “No, you don’t know me, Wanda, but I’ve heard about you … Yeah, from your agent here in town. He says you’ll be back in another ten days or so and I thought maybe I could use you in a thing I’m lining up.”

  He winked, listened, and said: “There’s another girl here in town I might be able to use … Yeah. The blonde that you gave the key to your apartment to. What’s her name? Gloria Vance?” He picked up a pencil. “Wait till I write that down. She doesn’t stay with you, does she? … Oh, the Hotel Warwick, hurah? You know the room number?” He made another notation and said: “That’s great, honey … You do that. I’m in the phone book. Yeah, any time … Bye, now.”