Before I cut my motor, I shouted: “I got my gun out this time.”
And I had. I wasn’t going to take any more chances with that wild little man. His hand was sticking out of the car window when I walked up to it. The rain pattered on the money he held out.
“What’s that for?” I said furiously.
“The fine,” Luce said. “It’s all I have with me. Eighty-seven dollars.”
I was so sore I had to restrain myself from taking a poke at him. I said: “Stick it in your pocket. You’re coming in if I have to drag you all the way by your collar.”
“Please!” he begged. “Please take the money, or give me a ticket.”
His voice was the kind that would melt a stone; his watery eyes were blinking like he was about to burst into tears. I should have felt sorry for him, maybe, but all sorts of ideas were crowding my mind.
I said: “Why are you trying to bribe me with more dough than your fine would be? Why are you so anxious to risk your neck and your friend’s to get away from me? Who’s he, anyway?”
“I told you—my friend. He’s drunk.”
“I’d like to ask him about it,” I said.
I gripped the handle of the rear door.
“No!” Luce whimpered: “Please don’t disturb him. He’s sleeping. He—” The rest was a moan.
I had the door open and was shaking the drunk’s shoulder. His hat fell off the back of his skull, and I could see that he had thick yellow hair that curled up the nape of his neck.
“Wake up!” I said. “Come on, snap out of it.”
The drunk did not budge a muscle. I started to take my hand from his shoulder. My palm brushed the back of one of his hands. That hand was colder than the freezing rain.
I took a quick look at Luce. He was bent over the wheel, doing something there. I transferred my gun to my left hand, dug my fingers into the back of the man’s hair, and lifted the head.
I’m supposed to be hardened, but I let out a yell. The black hilt of a small kitchen knife protruded from his throat.
Then the sedan leaped. I was taken off guard like the greenest rookie. The door slammed my shoulder and spun me to the middle of the toad. The ice took my feet out from under me; the whole two hundred pounds of me hit the ground.
I got to my knees, skidding, and threw a shot after the car careening crazily with the back door flapping open. But the car had made distance, and I was dazed by the fall. Even before I shot, I knew the slug would miss by a mile.
Mad? Mister, I was shaking all over when I got to my feet. That little guy had made a fool of me twice. And that was the least of it. I had found a murderer; had caught him cold with the victim’s body, and I’d left him in possession of the car and victim and merely tagged after him for speeding.
I could see the Skipper’s face when he heard that, and it was as unpleasant a sight as that corpse with a knife in its neck.
That was why I didn’t radio in an alarm for John Luce and his blue car. I wanted a chance to redeem myself.
I didn’t catch sight of the sedan. My patrol car was doing everything but flying, but that little man was in a mighty big hurry himself. Now I understood why.
Then I was out on Route 202 again, only farther north. I swung into the highway without breaking speed. He had been heading north when I had first spotted him. Besides, anybody who was trying to shake a New Jersey cop would hop over into New York.
The state line didn’t stop me. This was murder, and I was in a hell of a spot. And then I saw that I was really in trouble, because I’d lost him completely.
I headed back to my own state, still not using the radio, desperately hoping for a break. And I got it—the only one.
Where Route 59 crosses 202 a short distance above Suffern, I spotted the two-tone car turning east toward Nyack. Evidently Luce planned to take the ferry across to Tarrytown and drive down to Manhattan on the New York side.
To my surprise, Luce stopped at once when I gave him the horn. For the third time I parked behind him and strode over to the other car. The dead man was no longer in the back seat, of course.
“Did I do anything wrong, officer?” Luce asked, trying to look as innocent as a newborn babe and not doing a good job of it.
“Cut it out!” I snapped. “Where’s the body?”
He gave me a weak, tight smile. “What body?”
I opened the back door and got all the way into the back seat. My gun was out. I said: “If you try any funny stuff, I’ll shoot.”
“You’re a New Jersey policeman,” he said. “This is New York. You have no jurisdiction here.”
“That’s right,” I agreed grimly. “But that’s my worry. Your worry is how to explain the blood on this seat. New York won’t have much trouble finding the body. The body and the blood in your car and my testimony will make an airtight case.” He swung around behind the wheel and stared at where I pointed at the rear seat. The kitchen knife, buried deep in the fleshy neck, had pretty well plugged up the hole. But there’s always a lot of blood in those wounds, and quite a bit had poured out on the seat and soaked into the material.
John Luce went to pieces. He couldn’t take any more. He dug the fingers of both hands into his cheeks.
“I—I didn’t notice. His face covered the blood. So many things I overlooked.”
“You overlooked plenty,” I agreed. “Getting rid of that body won’t do you any good—not after I’ve seen it. But most murderers aren’t clever. They get panicky; their minds stop working.”
He stared at me. “You think I—No—no! I didn’t kill him. My boy didn’t either. I know that now. I—”
He choked off the rest, realizing that he’d said too much.
“What’s this about your son being the murderer?” I asked.
“Son?” He huddled close against the window, a small, middle-aged man completely crushed. “I didn’t say anything about my son.”
“You said ‘my boy.’ That means your son, doesn’t it?”
Luce twisted around to me then. He looked so tired that it didn’t seem possible that he could stay in one piece.
“I did everything wrong,” he moaned. “But everywhere there were people. Listen! Bill didn’t do it.”
“Bill’s your son?”
He grabbed my arm, leaning over the seat. “Bill didn’t do it. I knew it couldn’t be Bill, even in those terrible moments after I found the body in the car. You’ve got to help me.”
“My job is to help,” I said quietly. If I brought him in with a full confession, I’d be sitting pretty in spite of everything. “Suppose you tell me about it from the beginning.”
He nodded slowly. “Yes. There’s still a chance to do something, if I can make you see the truth.”
“Sure.”
John Luce said: “This morning I left the house at eight-twenty as usual to take the subway downtown to the office. I’m an accountant. Bill had left the car in front of the house overnight. I had a set of keys and I got into the car to drive it to the garage.
“On the corner I stopped for a red light, and it was only then that I happened to glance back and saw the man lying on the back seat. I knew by the coat and hat that it was George Maddock”
“Who’s he?”
“George Maddock is a radio agent. My son Bill is a radio announcer.”
“Oh, sure,” I said. “Bill Luce.”
“Yes. Well, when I saw Maddock in the back of my car, I thought he was drunk. I called to him, and when he didn’t answer, I reached back and shook him. There was something about him that frightened me. I got out of the car, opened the back door, and lifted his head.”
Luce closed his eyes; his voice dropped. “The first thing I saw was that knife sticking so horribly from his throat.”
“And you did
n’t call a cop because you figured your son Bill had done it.”
He was silent for long seconds. “I’m not sure. The thing is, I recognized that knife right away. It came from our kitchen. I recalled that my wife was slicing limes with it while I was mixing drinks for Bill’s guests.”
“And you knew that Bill had used the car last.” I was becoming interested. “Go on,” I said. “Keep talking.”
“You don’t understand,” Luce said. “It’s true Bill drove Maddock and Monroe Gibbs to our apartment from the radio station. He intended to take the car to the garage later, but by the time the others left he was too lazy to bother. Bill is a fine, ambitious boy, but he is lazy about some things. He didn’t even bother to lock the car doors. If he had—”
“Is this Monroe Gibbs you mentioned the radio singer?”
“Yes.”
“Gibbs has a summer home near here on Ramapo River.”
“I know,” Luce said. “I guess in back of my mind that’s the reason I came this way across the Lincoln Tunnel instead of heading upstate. Because I felt that was the only way to save Bill. What would the police think when they found our kitchen knife in Maddock’s throat, his body in the car which Bill used last? And I knew that sooner or later they would also find out about that fight the men had.”
“What fight?”
“It really wasn’t much,” Luce said quickly. “I mean, it was chiefly between Maddock and Gibbs. Maddock was one of those blond, handsome men who played around with a lot of women. It seems that he had been seeing too much of Gibbs’s wife, and Gibbs had found out about it. Maddock was Gibbs’s agent as well as Bill’s, and Bill brought them both up to the apartment to make peace between them.
“Well, it didn’t work out at all, because Gibbs got madder by the minute. And when Bill tried to pacify him, Gibbs flared up. Gibbs said: ‘You should be on my side, Bill. Or don’t you know about Maddock and Helen?’ And Bill went white around the mouth. I guess it was the first he’d heard—”
He broke off with a gasp. He wasn’t very bright about such things, and I guess his mind was pretty foggy with strain. “Who’s Helen?” I asked.
“She’s nobody. Nobody at all.”
I said: “She’s your son’s girl friend. Bill found out then that Maddock was doing the same thing to him as to Gibbs. And Bill didn’t like it one little bit, did he? He probably went downstairs with the two men when they left.”
“But he came up in a minute,” Luce blurted.
“Enough time to get Maddock into the back of the car to talk things over and then stick the knife in him. That’s what you thought when you found the body. You figured that if you could dispose of the body somewhere and get rid of the knife, the police would have a tough time pinning the murder on your son.
“But you can’t dump a dead body in Manhattan in the middle of the day without being seen. You decided to get into the country and shove the body out on a seldom used road. But even on the Jersey side there were too many people and too much traffic. You got panicky. You started speeding to get away from the crowds.” Luce rested his head in his hands and looked at me in horror.
“No!” he said. “Perhaps at first I couldn’t think straight, but then I did. Bill wouldn’t kill a man, so it had to be Monroe Gibbs. Gibbs had more provocation than Bill; he’d had time to plan it.
“And then I remembered something. I remembered looking out of the window before I went to bed. Bill was upstairs then; I heard him in his room. And I saw Gibbs in the street lighting a cigarette. He was standing at the car when he struck the match, and he must have been looking into the back seat.”
“You’re the only witness,” I said, “and you’re Bill’s father.”
Luce touched my arm, urgently. “I’m not lying. I came this way for a reason. A murderer must be shaken after he kills. He wants to get as far as possible from the crime, especially when it’s discovered. He’d rather not face people. I called Gibbs’s New York home from Paterson. He wasn’t in. I made many calls. I couldn’t get him. He’s got a cabin out here in the country on Brigham Road. Listen! If he’s gone to stay in his cabin in this kind of weather, wouldn’t that prove he’s guilty?”
I laughed.
Luce sank back in his seat. “So you won’t help me after all? I thought if I told you everything, you’d do something.”
“You told me because it no longer mattered,” I said. “Once I saw that murdered man in the car, it was too late for you to do a thing. Gibbs would tell what happened in your apartment; the rest would come out. I’ve got only one job to do, and that’s to take you in.”
“It was too much for me,” he whispered. “I hadn’t even the courage to pull the knife out of Maddock’s throat and throw it away. That might have made a difference.”
I was wondering, then, if he wasn’t a lot cleverer than he looked or sounded.
The fact remained, he could be the murderer better than anybody else.
“You didn’t have time to hide the body where it won’t be found soon enough,” I said. “You’ll save a lot of trouble all around by taking me to where you dumped it.”
He nodded weakly. There was no fight left in him. He slid over and I got behind the wheel and turned the car. In a thin dead voice he told me where to go.
No fight left in him! That’s all I knew about him, mister. Though how could I guess that that meek little guy would only stop battling with the last breath in his body?
He directed me down one of those narrow side roads that are all up and down hill. There was one hill that was especially nasty with a sharp curve at the foot of it and the road like glass. And as I started to turn the wheel, John Luce hit me in the face.
That’s right, mister, he risked his life as well as mine doing what he thought he had to do. He didn’t have much steam in his fist, but it was enough to snap my head sideways. Then he was clawing at my hands, trying to tear them off the wheel. I shoved my shoulder against his chin and knocked him against the door.
But it was too late to do anything about the car. The motor had died, but on that ice the wheels were having their own way of it. The car was off the road and gliding over ice-covered grass, and a tree jumped up to meet us. I had too much to do to watch Luce. I didn’t see him reach into the dashboard compartment for a wrench. I didn’t even see him smack me with it.
I don’t know how long I was out. After a while I was aware of a terrific headache and I opened my eyes. I was slumped on the front seat of the sedan. I tried to get up and I couldn’t. My hands and feet were tied with heavy rope. He must have had it in the trunk of his car.
After a little squirming, I got my head up as far as window-level. The car had missed the tree. It had evidently skidded again, just after I’d been slugged.
I sank down again and tried the ropes. He wasn’t good at that either. I shouldn’t have much trouble getting loose.
“Lie still!” Luce said.
He was in the back seat, leaning over, and my gun was in his hand. There was something in those watery eyes of his that made me colder than the weather could.
“You can’t get away with this,” I said. “You—”
“Keep quiet!” he said, and there was no mistaking that he meant it.
He got a handkerchief out of his pocket and crammed it into my mouth and then tied a dirty rag across my mouth to keep the gag in. After that there couldn’t be any conversation. We stayed like that, me tied up in front and not daring to try to get loose, and he in the back seat with my gun.
After a while the rain stopped, but it got still colder. My muscles froze; my flesh ached and then went numb. And my head was on fire. Now and then I’d hear a car go by, but I couldn’t yell, even if that gag wasn’t in my mouth, because he had the gun. And a car parked off the road was a natural enough object. It didn’t arouse suspicion.
I’m close to two hundred pounds and he doesn’t weigh much more than half that, so he had quite a job, wheezing and panting, while I got a couple of bangs and bruises. But with that deathless persistence of his he finally got me out and dragged me behind the big tree where I’d be hidden from the road.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “If I can, I’ll be back for you. Or I’ll let somebody know you’re here.”
I tried to tell him through the gag that I’d freeze to death. He listened to me as if my mewling meant nothing. His narrow shoulders were bowed, there seemed to be no bones left in his body.
“I’m so tired,” he muttered, “so very, very tired.”
He disappeared and I heard his car start, return to the road, and then drive away. Then I was alone in the cold and dark, except for occasional headlights flashing by.
All afternoon I had known that he hadn’t done a good job of tying me up, but I hadn’t been able to do anything about it. Now, even with my cramped, frozen muscles, I got loose in ten or fifteen minutes. I was lucky he hadn’t searched me and found my handcuffs.
My knees wobbled under me. For a mile I staggered along like a drunk till a light delivery truck picked me up. The driver took me to where I’d left my patrol car. Only it wasn’t there any more.
I stood there in the darkness staring at the empty road, though I should have expected that. Of course they’d sent out a call for me when I hadn’t reported in all afternoon. But I was sure it had been the New York State Police who had come across a New Jersey highway patrol car parked in their state. They’d inquired and then sent it back.
Three times I had let a murderer, or the accomplice of a murderer, make a sucker out of me. And he had my gun too. In other words, I was deeper in hot water than I could have dreamed of in a nightmare.
The Noir Mystery MEGAPACK ™: 25 Modern and Classic Mysteries Page 5