by Day Keene
Dix sweated as he hadn’t sweated for years. As he now saw the situation it could be one of three things.
Brady was a sharp independent operator with a wire into his own organization who had made a lucky strike.
He was a member of a New York mob who’d heisted the money in an attempt to discredit him and take over his organization.
He was one of the inner council, using his job as a translator as a cover and he, Lew Dix, had been found out and marked for death by the inflexible law of omerta and the theft of the money was merely the first pointing finger of the black hand that was slowly closing around his throat. Dix beat his flabby fist on the padded dashboard of the car. One way or another, he had to know.
He flicked his cigar out the rolled down window and watched it die in a shower of sparks as it bounced off the pavement. “Where is Daly now?”
“With Linda Lou,” Morgan told him. “She didn’t want to do it. In fact, she was downright reluctant.” He added, wryly, “But we managed to convince her it was to her best interest to ride out to Stamford with Daly and make a positive identification.”
“And did she?”
“So Daly said on the phone just before your plane landed.”
“Where was he calling from?”
“A drugstore in Stamford, a few doors from the tavern where Brady is drinking.”
“And that’s where we’re headed now?”
“It is.”
“Then why don’t you drive faster?”
Morgan told him. “Because I don’t want to be picked up for speeding. After that business in the warehouse I would just as soon not have any contact with the local police.”
THIRTEEN
BRADY WAS CAREFUL not to drink beyond his capacity. He couldn’t afford to get drunk. All he wanted to do was blot out the scene with May.
He finished his highball and ordered another, sipping it slowly to make it last at least an hour. Then he ordered a third highball. He would watch the eleven o’clock newscast and then go home. There was nothing else he could do tonight. Despite the unpleasant scene with May and the Damocles-like sword of Alice hanging over his head, if he wanted to keep the money, and he did, his life on the surface had to continue on its normal, dull, level plane. He couldn’t risk any suspicion. He had to be plain James A. Brady, commuter. In the morning he would figure out something.
The barman paused in front of him. “Sort of quiet in here tonight, eh?”
“Quiet,” Brady agreed with him. At that moment the newscast came on. There’d been a big fire in St. Louis. Gamel Abdel Nasser and his Arab Nationalists were still raising hob in the Middle East. A Broadway showgirl was marrying a wealthy Texas oil man. The longshoremen were threatening to strike again. A cab driver had been beaten to death in an abandoned warehouse on Bleecker Street.
Brady started to get off his stool. He froze half on and half off as a picture of the murder scene was flashed on the picture tube and the telecaster’s words imprinted themselves on his consciousness:
“The dead driver, Mike Scaffidi, had driven for Allied Cab Company for the past ten years and was considered by officials to be one of their most valuable owner-drivers. Police from the Charles Street Station who first answered the call believe Scaffidi, known as a ladies’ man, may have been beaten to death by the boy friend or husband of one of his neighborhood conquests…”
The lump in Brady’s throat grew larger as he studied the picture on the screen. The dead man sprawled on the cement floor of the garage was definitely Mike Scaffidi. And the dead man had taken a terrific beating before he died. His bloody face was criss-crossed with wounds that looked like they’d been made with a knife or possibly the sight on the end of a gun barrel.
The newscaster went on:
“However, Detective Sergeant Joel Hooper and First Grade Detective Sam Manson, attached to Center Street Homicide, are investigating a theory that Scaffidi’s murder may be connected with a blonde girl carrying a red plastic raincoat and recently released from Bellevue Hospital who is known to have made inquiries about the dead man’s whereabouts shortly before the time of death as established by the medical examiner’s office…” Brady held his breath as he waited for the newscaster to continue, but the picture changed and tomorrow’s weather was being discussed.
Noticing Brady’s half-extended glass, the barman asked, “A nightcap, Mr. Brady?”
Brady shook his head. “No, thanks. I’ve had my quota.” He picked up his change and stood, undecided. This could not be coincidence. No matter how far you stretched it, coincidence wouldn’t stretch that far. A blonde carrying a red plastic raincoat. A dead cab driver beaten to death in an abandoned warehouse. Whoever had killed Scaffidi had to be looking for Brady.
On impulse, Brady entered the phone booth in the tavern and dropped a coin in the slot and dialed his own phone number.
May answered the phone. “The Brady residence.”
“This is Jim,” Brady told her. “Don’t ask me why. Don’t ask me any questions. But this could be very important. I have to know. Did anyone but Mr. Harper phone the house and ask for me today?”
May sounded puzzled. “Not while I was home. Why?”
Brady ignored the question he’d asked her not to ask. “Are Jimmy and Alice home? Ask them.”
There was silence at the other end of the wire. Then May said, “They say no. But Alice says that the young man who was here this afternoon selling magazines to put himself through college asked her a lot of questions about you. Why? What’s this all about, James?”
“Put Alice on,” Brady said.
The fifteen-year-old girl’s voice was as sullen as her eyes had been during supper. “Yes?”
“This magazine salesman,” Brady said. “What kind of questions did he ask about me?”
“Where you worked. How much you made. And what you did for a living. And how long we’d lived here and where we lived before. Just questions.”
“And you told him?”
“Yes.”
“What did he look like?”
“Young. Good looking. Typical Ivy League.” The girl went on, spitefully. “And what’s more, he liked me.” Brady cradled the phone and supported his weight by his shoulders as he slumped against the wall next to the phone. Whoever had killed Scaffidi was looking for him. The lost tag had been found. They knew where he lived.
He was reluctant to leave the phone booth and he hated leaving the tavern. Outside, the street was semideserted. There were the usual lights in the railway station but most of the stores were closed. There were few people on the walk and little vehicular traffic. No one seemed to be interested in him. He walked past an expensive black limousine parked at the curb to reach his own car, glancing sharply at its occupant as he did so. At least he had nothing to fear from him. He was merely a flabby-faced elderly Italian chewing on a black cigar. Brady couldn’t see the driver but the limousine was undoubtedly chauffeur driven and the elderly Italian a big shot from one of the mansions rimming the golf course. He was probably waiting for his wife and family to arrive on the theatre train from Manhattan.
His whole body was trembling so badly Brady flooded his engine trying to start his car and had to grind on the starter again. When he did pull away from the curb he pressed too hard on the accelerator and the car jack-rabbited down the street before he could get it under control. When he did, he paid more attention to his rear vision mirror than to the street in front of him. Now he was out in traffic and there were several cars behind him but he had no way of knowing if any of them was following his car. All he could see was headlights, one pair identical with another.
He circled the business section, then instinctively turned down the street where he habitually turned and drove to his own street.
As he neared his own house he could see there was a light in the living room. There were also lights in the bedroom he shared with May and the den. Both May and Alice must be up waiting for him. He started to turn into the driveway and didn’t.
Instead he drove on slowly. He couldn’t stand another scene with May tonight. Judging from the tone of Alice’s voice over the phone she was in a mood to exact her revenge because he’d scorned her somewhat immature charms.
He angled up the next side street and circled back the way he had come, then down an arterial highway to its juncture with the Merritt Parkway and turned south on the Parkway to Manhattan.
It should be a good proving ground. The night traffic on the Parkway was light. If he was being followed, if someone wanted to kill him, there wasn’t a better place to crowd his car off the road. He had to know. He couldn’t spend the rest of his life looking back over his shoulder and shying away from shadows. On the other hand, if Lew Dix or his boys should stop and question him, what could they prove? That he’d lost the tag off his brief case in Scaffidi’s cab.
Brady made certain the baggage claim check for the brief case with the money in it was in his pocket. Then struck by a sudden thought he fumbled through his change until his fingers found the key to the Grand Central Station locker where he’d left the new brief case. And if they insisted he had the money he could give them the key and they could open the door themselves and find the empty brief case, minus a name tag.
He stopped to pay a toll and drove on. So far no one had tried to stop him. No one had tried to crowd him off the road. It could be he was running away from the men who had tortured and killed the cab driver. It could be he was running away from a shadow, that the young man who’d questioned Alice had really been just what he’d said he was, a young man working his way through college.
Brady wiped his face with the sleeve of his trench coat. Either way he was gambling for a fortune, a chance to get off the treadmill. With a bank roll of two hundred thousand dollars he could live like a king in Paris or Madrid or Rome. He could even open his own import-export company.
He passed through a second, then a third toll stop. There was more traffic now. If the driver of any of the cars in the stream of headlights behind him was concerned with him there was no evidence of it.
When he reached Manhattan most of Brady’s fear left him. He no longer felt so alone. There was something eminently comforting about the tall buildings and normally heavy flow of traffic. Manhattan never went to bed. Manhattan was always awake and alive.
His self-confidence and belief in his own ability to take care of any situation that should arise returned as he drove down one of the off ramps of the Skyway and east to Eighth Avenue and parked in front of a brightly lighted bar and grill.
Brady felt slightly sheepish. He’d spooked. He’d seen the picture of a dead man on a television screen. He’d heard a routine newscast and had taken off like the devil had been after him. So Mike Scaffidi had been murdered. Metropolitan Homicide was on the job. And the Center Street boys were smart operators. The chances were that whoever had beaten Scaffidi to death was already in custody.
He locked his car and entered the grill and as he sat at the counter he realized after ordering coffee, that he was hungry. So he ordered a steak, french fries, a side order of onion rings and rolls.
When the counterman brought him his coffee, a passing thought amused Brady. He could afford six steaks if he wanted them. He had a lot of money. He had all the money in the world.
He had two hundred thousand dollars.
FOURTEEN
LINDA LOU SAT very small and still between Mr. Dix and Morgan as Morgan braked the big, black car to a stop across the street and three or four buildings down from where the car they’d been following had parked.
She could barely see through the slit in her puffed right eye. Her arms still ached from the twisting Morgan had given them. Her stomach hurt where Daly had kicked her. She wished now that instead of trying to recover the money she’d told the whole story to the two detectives who had questioned her in the hospital and asked them to protect her. Now that it was too late she knew that all the pretending in the world wouldn’t get her out of the mess she was in. She’d seen Morgan and Daly kill a man. They’d forced her to identify the big man who’d gotten into the cab. They intended to kill him as soon as they recovered the money. Once they had the money, they’d kill her. She was a witness against them.
Hardly daring to breathe for fear of calling attention to herself and being punched again, she clung to her one small consolation. At least neither Daly nor Morgan had abused her as a woman. They boasted they didn’t like women that way. Nor did Mr. Dix have any further interest in her. On the long ride in from Stamford he hadn’t felt her once. The flabby old man was frightened. All he could think of was the money.
Glancing in the rear vision mirror she saw Daly park his rented automobile and hurry down the walk. When he reached the car he opened the door and got in.
“What do you think?” he asked Mr. Dix.
Dix thought for a moment. “Frankly, I don’t know. I thought when the guy first took off he was scared. Now I just don’t know. He could be leading us into a trap. We could walk in there and try to waltz him out and find ourselves in the middle of a lot of heat.”
“That’s the way I feel,” Daly said.
Morgan lighted a cigarette. “Well, we can’t just sit here. On the other hand, we can’t just go in and blast him. There are too many witnesses for one thing. For another, if we do that we might as well kiss the money goodbye. We’ve got to get him out of there so we can talk to him.”
Linda Lou tried to repress a shudder and failed. She had seen Morgan and Daly “talk” to Mr. Scaffidi.
Sensing the movement beside him, Morgan looked sideways at her. “How about the girl?” he asked. “Why don’t we send her in? She could tell him she wants to make a bargain with him and she’s willing to go to a hotel with him to bind the deal. Anything, to get him out of there.”
From the back seat, Daly said, “It’s an idea. But I still think we should have stopped the guy on the Parkway.”
Dix took the cigar from his mouth. “With you boys as hot as you are and the whole highway crawling with cops? They’d have been all over us so fast we wouldn’t know what was happening to us. I counted five patrol cars on my way in, not including two parked at toll stations. You have to think these things through. That’s why I’m still alive and top dog while most of the other boys are dead.” He returned his cigar to his mouth. “Yeah. Sending Linda Lou in may work. Judging from the way he’s operated so far, Brady is much too smart to fall for the hotel bit. But he will be curious to find out what her gizmo is.”
Daly protested, “But can we trust her?”
Morgan lifted his hand from the wheel and slapped Linda Lou so hard that fresh tears spurted to her eyes, then he doubled his hand into a fist and drove it into her unprotected abdomen. “Yeah. I think we can trust her,” he said. “She should know by now what will happen to her if she gets out of line again. How about it, Linda? Do you want to go in the restaurant and try to waltz the guy out for us? Or do you want Daly and I to work you over again right here in the car?”
“No, please,” Linda Lou begged. “Please don’t hit me again.”
Morgan handed her a clean handkerchief. “Then stop bawling and put on fresh make-up and go see what you can do with Brady. Tell him how clever you think he’s been and that you want to throw in with him. The guy acts to me as if he’s fed up with the bag he’s shacked up with and the prospect of a quivering little piece of juicy quail should interest him, even if he knows there’s a gimmick. Tell him you want to play on his side. Tell him anything. But get him out on the street.”
Her slight body numb with pain, still gasping for breath, Linda Lou opened her purse and after wiping away her tears, she did what she could with lipstick and compact. It wasn’t much. There wasn’t anything she could do about her swollen eye or puffed lips. Not that she cared. She didn’t want to be pretty. All she wanted right now was to get out of the car. And once she was out she knew what she was going to do. No gawd-damn big sonofabitch, no three gawd-damn sonsofbitches, could treat her this way.
Some people claimed that Crackers could be mean. She’d show these three spaghetti-eating bastards just how mean one Cracker could be. She’d talk to Brady all right. She’d warn him who was waiting outside and tell him to call his own gang and blast Mr. Dix and Daly and Morgan right off the street. And after she’d warned Mr. Brady she’d go to the police and tell them the whole story, including who’d killed Mr. Scaffidi.
Daly was still dubious. Leaning his arms on the back of the front seat, he said, “I still don’t like it. What if she tips the guy? What if she blows the whistle?”
Dix slipped Morgan’s spare gun from his coat pocket and pressed the muzzle of it firmly against the girl’s temple. It felt good to be holding a gun again, after so many years, to know the surge of power it gave a man. “Linda isn’t going to tip anyone or blow any whistle, are you, Linda?” he asked quietly. “Because Linda knows what will happen to her if she does. Don’t you, Linda?”
Linda Lou returned her compact and lipstick to her purse. “Yes, Mr. Dix.”
The old man opened the door of the car on his side and got out and helped her onto the walk. “We’ll give you five minutes,” he told her. “Then, trap or not, witnesses or no, we’re coming in and blow Brady out if we have to.”
Linda Lou straightened the seam of her stocking. “Yes, sir. Whatever you say, Mr. Dix.”
She walked to the rear of the car and waited on the curb until a short stream of taxicabs and private cars passed. As she stood there, a drop of rain fell on her face. It was going to rain hard again and soon. When the street was clear she crossed to the opposite curb and opened the door of the bar and grill and sat on a stool at the counter beside Brady.