“Miss McMurphy,” she finished for me. “And like hell you’ll be frank!”
I looked at the curtains and decided that maybe the wind was blowing through from the rear of the house somewhere—and making them move. I said: “Are you interested in my hundred—or not?”
“You’re damn tootin’ I am!” she replied, and put a lot of feeling into the words. “But you’ve got to play straight.”
I nodded. “I’m not going to hurt Ella Bock,” I said. “Maybe I know as much about all this as you do—maybe not. One thing is sure, I’ll know if you’re lying.”
She looked pained. She stopped rocking from side to side, shoved some stringy hair back on top of her head.
“Ask the two questions,” she said. “If you don’t like the answers—hang on to your coin.”
That sounded fair enough. I asked the first one.
“The woman is around forty, sharp face, nose—features. Has blond hair—black underneath the chemical. Dopey eyes. She yelled when Mike Donelly grabbed her. You called her Ella Bock, but that isn’t her name. I want to be sure we get the right person.”
The fat one smiled a little. “You ain’t asking questions,” she told me.
I grinned. “The woman was living here with Wirt Donner, wasn’t she?” I asked.
The landlady started to rock again. She nodded. “Yeah,” she replied.
I asked the other one right away. “What’s her real name?”
The landlady hesitated. “Virgie Beers,” she said. “And that’s the truth.”
I smiled. “That’s where you got the ‘Bock,’” I said. “What’s the first name for—Virgin?”
I let her have the laugh. She had her whole body in it.
Hell, no!” she came back. “Virgie—Virginia. Virginia Beers.”
I handed her two fifties—and she swore a few times as she fingered the bills. Then I took out a third fifty.
“I’m not going to hurt Virgie, Miss McMurphy. You gave me two answers, and I trusted you. I handed you the money. Now I want you to trust me. Give me Virgie’s address in Pittsburgh. If she’s there when I get there—I’ll mail you the fifty.”
The landlady eyed me narrowly. “When’ll you get there?” she asked.
“Tomorrow,” I replied.
She got up with an effort. “I’ll write it down for you,” she said.
“Never mind—I’ll remember it.” I watched her eyes get to be little slits. “I’ve got a nice memory.”
“It’s a steel-mill town,” she told me. “Duquesne.” She spelled it laboriously. “The number is Seven thirty-six, Second Street. It’s about forty minutes outside of Pittsburgh.”
I nodded. “Want to tell me anything else—for nothing?” I asked. “I’m broke.”
“Virgie’s a good kid,” she said. “She ain’t forty—like you said. Virgie’s all right. She ain’t got no breaks, that’s all. I wouldn’t want to see her hurt.”
I waited. The landlady looked as though if she got started she might go on. She was frowning.
“Red was framed,” she said. “I guess you know that. Say, who are you working for—Babe?”
I didn’t like the tone of her voice. She was getting suspicious now. In a couple of minutes she might begin to figure she’d made a mistake.
“Babe who?” I asked.
She tightened up. “Donner had a friend named Babe,” she said. “A male. He had dough. I figured he might be sore.”
I told her that maybe I was working for Babe, and that there would be fifty coming from Duquesne in a couple of days if she’d given me a good number. She brightened up a little—said that was all she knew, anyway. We headed for the door.
“Where did Donner get shot?” I asked her.
“In the stomach,” she said, and opened the door.
I told her that I meant in what part of the house, and she said she’d been sleeping and didn’t know about the shots. And that her feet were hurting so bad she thought she’d take a nap right away.
I told her that was a good idea and went down the steps. Donelly came across the street, grinned at me.
“Just luck,” he said cheerfully. “Did you get the information?”
I started to tell him something that wouldn’t mean much—and he widened his eyes on my face.
“You’ve been fighting again!” he said. “Is that nice? What’ll your grandfather up in Boston say?”
“He won’t mind,” I answered. “He’s been broad-minded since his hundredth birthday.”
Donelly looked up the steps of the boardinghouse.
“Anybody home?” he asked.
I shook my head. “I tried a long while—but I couldn’t get in.”
The red-faced dick nodded. “You came out without any trouble, though,” he said. “See you later!”
I said I hoped not and went over toward Broadway. Thirty minutes later I was in Jersey—and in another hour I was flying over that state. The transport plane was heading for Pittsburgh. I knew the city—and I knew Duquesne. A steel-mill town not boasting much about its population of twelve thousand foreigners and two thousand Americans.
The fat landlady had said something that helped a lot. And she hadn’t been paid for saying it. She’d asked me if I were working for “Babe.” And Ben Garren had told me, as we listened to that voice coming over the radio in his flat, that Cherulli had been playing Babe Mullens—“a big nice-lined moll.” She had come out of Harlem, he’d said—“to the glitter spots.”
I sat back in the wicker chair, closed my eyes, listened to the beat of the three engines, and thought back. Things were clearing up a bit. But not too much. My guess was that Dot Ellis had come up the river to see me for a real reason. Cherulli wasn’t dead when she’d come up—but maybe she’d had a hunch. She’d had something with her—and Ben Garren had got it. Something important. That was the way I figured it. Herb Steiner thought I’d got whatever Dot had, but he hadn’t thought it until after Garren had been pumped out. He hadn’t stayed close enough to me coming down the river.
Wirt Donner had told me about this blond woman, up in the Big House. I hadn’t been guessing when I’d sprung the question on Miss McMurphy. And Virgie Beers had gone over to Ben Garren’s flat—pretty quickly after Donner had been finished. Virgie knew things—and I wanted to chat with her. If I got close enough—we’d chat. There was an even chance.
2
There were floodlights on the field outside of Pittsburgh when the transport plane landed. Red flames streaked up into the sky from the plant stacks. Red smoke hung low. The air was heavy, thick with steel grime. I caught a cab for the Seventh Avenue Hotel. It wasn’t the best in the city—nor the worst. After some food I went down to the editorial rooms of the Post-Dispatch.
They’d moved them up a few floors since I’d worked on the sheet, seven or eight years ago, but they were just as dirty as ever. I walked between a lot of cigarette-scarred desks holding ancient typewriters, saw Phil Dobe look up from the city desk and spot me.
“Holy Jesus!” he shouted. “It’s Mal Ourney!”
We shook hands. Phil had been a feature writer when I’d worked the hotel beat. He was older and heavier, and his teeth were pretty bad. Otherwise he hadn’t changed.
“When’d you get out?” he asked.
I told him. He grinned at me, swore fervently.
“What a dumb newshound you would have turned out to be!” he stated. “Taking two years for a tart who was so rotten she tried to grab graft coin from the wop she was livin’ with—and who got the works!”
I stared at Dobe. He had small, dark eyes and a barrel chest. He spoke right out, and he said what he thought. He wasn’t always right, but he was always sure.
“What graft coin—and what wop?” I asked.
Phil Dobe took his eyes away from me and shouted at a redheaded reporter who was dropping cigarette ashes over the keys of a typewriter and working hard with two fingers. The city editor was howling about the deadline—they were getting right u
p on it. He looked at me again.
“Where you been?” he stated. “You mean you don’t know about the two hundred grand?”
I shook my head. Dobe pointed toward the telegraph desk. He shouted across the noisy room.
“Oh, Red—give Ourney the Cherulli follow-up, will you?”
I went over to the telegraph desk and a redhaired gent in a blue shirt and a yellow tie handed me some yellow stuff just off the machine. It had a New York dateline. The idea was that Babe Mullens claimed that someone had grabbed two hundred thousand in cold cash from Cherulli, before he’d been rubbed out. She suspected a lot of people. And she wasn’t making any secret of it. Dot Ellis got most of the publicity. Ben Garren came in for some, and so did Wirt Donner. My name wasn’t mentioned, and neither was Herb Steiner’s. The Babe claimed that Cherulli owed her fifty thousand. She was yelling wide open to get it.
I read the stuff twice, handed it back to the redheaded gent, and walked around to the city desk. The fire alarm banged out, and Phil Dobe swore.
“Second!” he muttered. “Up in the Hill district. Oh, Danny—hop up and if it’s a prosty joint we’ll get a funny box on it.”
A copyreader I’d never seen before went on using his pencil and observed that if it was that sort of a joint Joe Burns might be getting his hair singed. Dobe grinned and said that even though it was Joe’s day off he wasn’t up in the Hill district. He was over at the News-Press trying to kid Cryson into giving him a two-dollar raise and a job. It wouldn’t work because Dobe had got to Cryson first and had told him that Joe was sober only three days a week. He was damn good when he was sober.
Dobe tilted back his chair and looked me over.
“Two hundred grand is a lot of coin,” he stated. “What you doin’ with it, Mal?”
I swore. “It’s a lot of money—even if Cherulli never had it,” I stated. “But where does the story come in—for you?”
The city editor grunted. “That wop was one of our most respected citizens, about five years ago. You don’t remember him, Mal. He was managing that heavy—Dinah Reese. Reese got the Dinah from dynamite. He slugged Cherulli out one day, and that started him peddling the liquid stuff. Made coin and pulled out. Tried the racket in New York. He was lucky.”
I nodded. “Until a couple of days ago—he was,” I stated.
The city editor grinned. “Why the honor?” he asked. “Looking for a job?”
I shook my head. “How about a gal named Virgie Beers?” I asked. “Ever hear of her?”
Dobe grinned. “It’s a hell of a name,” he stated. “And I’d remember it—but I don’t. What about her?”
I shook my head. “Not for publication,” I told him. “Virginia Beers, it is.”
The city editor shook his head. “If you’re going to kill her, let me send a photographer along,” he urged.
I grinned. We were both thinking. Dobe got there first.
“Maybe you figure she’s got the two hundred grand?” he suggested.
I laughed that off. “I don’t figure Cherulli ever had it,” I stated.
“The hell you don’t!” Dobe wasn’t grinning. “I’ve been reading the papers, Mal. You’re mixed up in this like juniper-juice in alcohol. You get around.”
That sounded familiar. I told Dobe that I was just trying to do a gal a good turn, and that it wasn’t important.
“Sure,” he agreed. “Keep it up and you’ll get the Eagle badge. How about drinking with me tonight, after ‘thirty’?”
I shook my head. “Maybe tomorrow night,” I told him. “I’m hitting the hay for—”
A phone bell rang and Dobe lifted a receiver. He listened for thirty seconds, said “yes” once and “no” twice, hung up. He grinned at me.
“Murder in Duquesne,” he stated. “Cheap stuff—down the hill. Too close to the mill. All the officials live up high. This one was on Second Street.”
I tried to look dumb. Dobe reached for a cigar. Second Street—Duquesne. I asked a question.
“Male or female?”
Dobe grinned. “Female,” he stated. “District man’s on his way out there to try and swipe a picture. Probably some plant hunky got a cinder in his eye and came home off shift. Got out the ax and chopped up the wife. That’s the way it’s still being done, Mal.”
I nodded. “See you tomorrow,” I told him. “I’m going to bed.”
Dobe said that maybe I was.
Outside the newspaper office I figured the quickest way to get to Duquesne would be in a cab. I hailed one. The driver looked so much like the bird that had driven Dot Ellis on her last trip that it gave me the jumps.
“Riding in cabs bothers me,” I told him. “Give me a break—and miss things by more than a foot.”
“I ain’t killed a guy for three months,” he told me. “And then it was his fault. He was drunker than me.”
I nodded and told him to take me to Second Street, Duquesne.
6
MILL TOWN
On the way to the mill town I decided a few things. One was that Babe Mullens had talked big figures. The other was that there had been a steal of cash—big cash. But not two hundred thousand. Maybe fifty grand—maybe seventy-five. It had been Cherulli’s coin, or he had been passing it along. Someone had grabbed it. Then the killings had started. And finally Herb Steiner had figured me so dumb that I’d pack the coin in a bag.
I didn’t like the last thought so much. Didn’t figure that Steiner would rate me that way. But I was pretty sure that Lentz had known some coin was missing when he’d sent for me. And Steiner had been down to the Headquarters office, too.
My tongue felt a little better—but it was pretty swollen. My face wasn’t so bad. Steiner had been tricky—and I’d have to get him right the next time—or not at all.
The cab was getting outside of Pittsburgh, climbing the grade beyond the Pennsylvania Station. I could look around and see the sky tinted with red—and smoke drifting. There were mills along the rivers, close to the city.
I had about fifty minutes to think—and at the end of that time, as the cab neared Duquesne, it hadn’t done me much good. The Duquesne plant showed down the river as the cab crossed a bridge, then followed along near the bank. Things became murkier—smoke drifted out from the mill, toward the town that sprawled up the hill. The driver jerked his head and asked me what part of Second Street. I thought of the address Miss Mc-Murphy had given me—736.
“Where’s the police station up here?” I asked.
The driver didn’t know, but a fat cop standing on a corner a few squares along gave us the dope. It was almost eleven o’clock, but the town looked busy as we crossed the main street, which ran up from the plant—up the hill. The mill worked three shifts, and the workers going on the job in an hour were out and stirring. They were a tough-looking bunch.
The police station was two blocks up the hill, and just off the main street. I paid too much money, told the driver I wouldn’t need him anymore, and went into the station. A lean-faced cop sat behind a low rail and frowned at me. He was smoking a corncob pipe, and the room was filled with odor.
“I’m Higgins, from the Post-Dispatch,” I told him. “Murder on Second Street—and we got the address garbled, down at the paper.”
He took the stem of the corncob from between a flock of pretty good teeth, spat with noise, and muttered something I didn’t get. Then he spoke more clearly. “What kind of a murder?”
I grinned at him. “That’s what I came up to find out,” I said.
“Yeah?”
He put the pipe back in his face again, picked up a magazine, and started to read. I told him that I knew Duquesne was a steel-mill town, and that the officials didn’t like newspaper men. I told him that he might never have seen me before, but that I wasn’t a cub reporter getting my first story. I said that if he didn’t want to talk I’d take a look at the blotter. He set the magazine down and leaned forward from his chair.
“I’ll give you ten to one you won’t look at no blo
tter!” he snapped.
I was getting sore, but I didn’t show it. My bluff wasn’t going so good—I didn’t know who was who in the town and couldn’t play it that way.
“What the hell’s the idea?” I demanded. “Did the paper keep your face out of the pages the time you went after a hunky with nothing but a gun and a blackjack in your hands?”
He got up from the chair, tossed the magazine to one side, and put two big hands on his hips. He was big and hard.
“Get moving out of here!” he snapped. “I’m Kellar—and no paper men tell me what to do and what not to do!”
I looked at him a little and decided he was right. A short, fat fellow came in through the door.
“Where’s Jim?” he asked the copper. “Up at the Widow’s place?”
The copper swore at the short man, and I went outside, walked toward the main street, went into a combination poolroom and cigar store, and picked out a pale-faced man who seemed to be running things.
“Is the Widow still sleeping at Seven thirty-six Second Street?” I asked, smiling.
The pale-faced one grunted. “Widow Gunsten?” he muttered. “Her place is at Seven thirty-four, ain’t it?”
I nodded. “Knew it was up there somewhere,” I said. “Thanks.”
It took me five minutes to get out to 734 Second Street. The street was narrow, dirty. Mill smoke drifted over it. Mill sound reached it clearly. The clatter of rolls grinding white-hot, thick ingots into thin ingots. The hiss of steam—the clang of overhead cranes. The street was filled with sound.
Seven thirty-four was an ore-stained, frame house, small and sagging. I went past it, looked at 736. There wasn’t much difference in the two, except that the place whose address Miss McMurphy had given me was set back a little farther from the cracked sidewalk. It didn’t have a yard—there was just some dirt in front of the house. There was a light in the back—the front rooms were dark.
I walked back to 734. The place was lighted up like Roxy’s theater lobby. Every room had a light. The front was open, and behind dirty, stained shades I could see the outline of figures. I went toward the front door—a man came out and stood on the porch, lighting a cigarette.
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