“I see. Well, you can hold the figure for the moment. First, get on with what happened. How’d he happen to shoot your partner?”
“I think he just got rattled. He was backing toward the door with the deposit bag in his hand when Andy suddenly appeared from the back room. Andy didn’t even know a holdup was in progress. I imagine he came out to take over the front because he knew I would be leaving for the bank at any minute. But he opened the workshop door and stepped out so abruptly, he startled the bandit. The man shot him and fled.”
Typical, I thought sourly. It’s that kind of skittishness that makes cops regard armed robbers as the most dangerous of all criminals. They’re all potential murderers.
I asked, “What did this jerk look like?”
“He was about forty years old and kind of long and lanky. I would guess about six feet tall and a hundred and seventy-five pounds. He had a thin white scar running from the left corner of his mouth clear to the lobe of his left ear, and he had a large, hairy mole here.” He touched the center of his right cheek. “His complexion was dark, like a gypsy’s, he had straight, black, rather greasy hair and a rather large hooked nose. I would know him again anywhere.”
“I guess you would,” I said, surprised by the detail of the description. Witnesses are seldom so observant. “How was he dressed?”
“In tan slacks, a tan leather jacket and a tan felt hat with the brim turned down in front and up in back. And oh, yes, on the back of the hand he held the gun in—” He paused to consider, then said with an air of surprised recollection, “His left hand, now that I think of it—there was the tattoo of a blue snake coiled around a red heart.”
“You are observant,” I said, then gave Phil Ritter an inquiring glance.
“We put the description on the air soon as we got here,” Ritter said. “Mr. Bruer didn’t mention the tattoo or that the bandit was left-handed before, though.”
“Better go radio in a supplementary report,” I suggested. “Maybe this one will be easier than the run-of-the-mill. The guy certainly ought to be easy to identify.”
I was beginning to feel a lot more enthusiastic about this case than I had when the lieutenant sent me out on it. Generally you find almost nothing to work on, but here we had Fred Bruer’s excellent description of the bandit.
According to figures compiled by the FBI, eighty percent of the homicides in the United States are committed by relatives, friends or acquaintances of the victims, which gives you something to work on, but in a typical stickup kill, some trigger-happy punk puts a bullet in a store clerk or customer he never saw before in his life. Most times your only clue is a physical description, usually vague and, if there is more than one witness, maybe contradictory. Too, you can almost bank on it that the killer was smart enough to drop the gun off some bridge into deep water.
While Phil Ritter was outside radioing in the additions to the bandit’s description, I asked Bruer if he had noticed what kind of gun the robber used. He said it was a blue steel revolver, but he couldn’t judge what caliber because he wasn’t very familiar with guns.
I asked him if the bandit had touched anything which might have left fingerprints.
“The two cash registers,” Bruer said. “He punched the no-sale button on each.”
Ritter came back in, trailed by Art Ward of the crime lab, who was carrying his field kit and a camera.
“Morning, Sod,” Ward greeted me. “What sort of gruesome chore do you have for me this time?”
“Behind the rear counter,” I said, jerking a thumb that way. “Then dust the two cash registers for prints, with particular attention to the no-sale buttons.”
“Sure,” Art said.
He set down his field lab kit and carried his camera to the rear of the store. While he was taking pictures of the corpse from various angles, I checked the back room. It was a small workshop for watch and jewelry repairing. Beyond it was a bolted and locked rear door with a key in the inside lock. I unbolted it, unlocked it, pushed open the door and peered out into an alley lined with trash cans behind the various small businesses facing Franklin Avenue.
I wasn’t really looking for anything in particular. Over the years I had just gotten in the habit of being thoroughly nosy. I closed the door again and relocked and re-bolted it.
Back in the main room I asked Sergeant Ritter if he had turned up any other witnesses from among nearby merchants or clerks before I got there.
“The barber just west of here and the pawnbroker on the other side both think they heard the shot,” Ritter said. “As usual, they thought it was just a backfire, and didn’t even look outdoors. Nobody came to investigate until our squad car got here, but that brought out a curious crowd. Nobody we talked to but the two I mentioned heard or saw anything, but we didn’t go door-to-door. We just talked to people who gathered around.”
I said, “While I’m checking out this barber and pawnbroker, how about you hitting all the places on both sides of the street in this block to see if anyone spotted the bandit either arriving or leaving here?”
Ritter shrugged. “Sure, Sod.”
I called to Art Ward that I would be back shortly and walked out with Sergeant Ritter. Ritter paused to talk to his young partner for a moment, and I went to the pawnshop next door.
The proprietor, who was alone, was a benign looking man of about seventy named Max Jacobs. He couldn’t add anything to what he had already told Phil Ritter except that he placed the time he had heard what he took to be a truck backfire at exactly a minute after nine. He explained that his twenty-year-old nephew, who worked for him, hadn’t showed up for work, and the old man kept checking the clock to see how late he was. It was now nearly ten, and the boy still had neither appeared nor phoned in, and his home phone didn’t answer.
“What’s your nephew’s name?” I asked.
“Herman. Herman Jacobs. He’s my brother’s boy.”
“Mr. Bruer next door know him?”
Jacobs looked puzzled. “Of course. Herman’s worked for me ever since he got out of high school.”
That was a silly tack to take anyway, I realized. The jeweler had described the bandit as around forty, and Jacobs’ nephew was only half that age.
“Following the shot, you didn’t see or hear anything at all?” I asked. “Like somebody running past your front window, for instance?”
The elderly pawnbroker shook his head. “I wasn’t looking that way. When I wasn’t watching the clock, I was trying to phone Herman, that good-for-nothing bum.” There didn’t seem to be any more I could get out of him. I thanked him and headed for the door.
“How’s poor Fred taking it?” he asked to my back.
Pausing, I turned around. “Mr. Bruer, you mean? He’s still a bit shaken up.”
Jacobs sighed. “Such a nice man. Always doing good for people. Ask anybody in the neighborhood, nobody will tell you a thing against Fred Bruer. A man with a real heart.”
“That so?” I said.
“Only thing is, he’s such an easy touch. Gives credit to anybody. Now, Mr. Benjamin was another proposition entirely. I don’t like to speak ill of the dead, but there was a cold fish.”
It intrigued me that he was on a first-name basis with the surviving jewelry-store proprietor, but referred to the deceased younger partner as Mr. Benjamin. Perhaps he hadn’t known the younger man as long. I decided to ask. “Have you known Mr. Bruer longer than Mr. Benjamin?”
He looked surprised. “No, of course not. They opened for business together next door about ten years back. I met them both the same day.”
“But you were on friendlier terms with Mr. Bruer, was that it?”
“Now how did you know that?” he inquired with rather flattering admiration for my deductive ability. “Yes, as a matter of fact. But everybody’s a friend of Fred. Nobody liked Mr. Benjamin very much.”
“What wa
s the matter with him?” I asked.
“He was a vindictive man. When he had a little spat with somebody, he was never satisfied just to forget it afterward. He had to have his revenge—like his trouble with Amelio Lapaglia, the barber on the other side of the jewelry shop. Last time haircut prices went up, Mr. Benjamin refused to pay, they had an argument and Amelio threatened to have him arrested. Mr. Benjamin finally paid, but he wasn’t content just to stop going there for haircuts after that. He did things like phoning the police that Amelio was over-parked, and the health department to complain that he had no lid on his garbage can out back. Actually I think Mr. Benjamin stole the lid, but Amelio got fined for violating the health laws.”
I made a face. “One of those. I’ve had that kind of neighbor.”
“I don’t think even Fred really liked him, although he was always making excuses for him. I doubt their partnership would have lasted so long if they hadn’t been brothers-in-law,” he added matter-of-factly.
I gave him a surprised look. “They were brothers-in-law?”
“Sure. Mr. Benjamin is—was married to Fred’s baby sister. She’s not a baby now, of course. She’s about forty, but she’s twenty-one years younger than Fred. She was just an infant when their parents died, and he raised her. She’s more like a daughter to him than a sister. He never married himself, so Paula and her two kids are all the family he has. He’s absolutely crazy about the baby.”
“The baby?”
“Paula had another baby just a couple of years ago. She also has a boy around twenty in the army.” The phone at the rear of the pawnshop rang. As Mr. Jacobs went to answer it, I wondered if anyone had bothered to phone the widow that she was a widow.
The pawnbroker lifted the phone and said, “Jacobs’ Small Loans.” After a pause his voice raised in pitch and he said, “Where are you, and what’s your excuse this time?” There was another pause, then, “That’s supposed to be an excuse? You get here fast as you can! You hear?”
He slammed down the phone and came back to where I stood near the door. “My nephew,” he said in an indignant tone. “He stayed overnight with a friend and overslept, he says. More likely he was in an all-night poker game and just got home. Good for nothing, he’ll be, all day.”
I made a sympathetic noise, thanked him again and left.
The young cop was still guarding the entrance to the jewelry store when I went by, but the crowd of curious onlookers had thinned considerably. It wouldn’t disperse completely until the body was carried away, though, I knew. There are always a few morbid people in every crowd who will hang around forever on the chance of seeing a corpse.
Down near the end of the block on this side of the street I spotted Phil Ritter coming from one shop and entering another. At his apparent rate of progress it looked as though it wouldn’t take him long to finish both sides.
Amelio Lapaglia was cutting a man’s hair all the time I talked to him. He had been cutting hair when he heard what he assumed was a backfire too, he said. He hadn’t noticed the time, but it had to be just after nine, because he had just opened for business and had just started on his first customer.
His customer must have heard the shot too, he said in answer to my question, but neither of them had mentioned it.
“Aroun’ here trucks go by all day long,” he said. “You hear bang like a gun maybe two, three times a day.”
He hadn’t noticed anyone pass his window immediately after the shot, he said, but then he had been concentrating on cutting hair.
I didn’t bother to ask him about his feud with the dead man, because it had no bearing on the case. He certainly hadn’t been the bandit.
When I got back to the jewelry store, Art Ward had finished both his picture taking and his dusting of the cash registers. He reported there were no fingerprints on either register good enough to lift, which didn’t surprise me.
I told the lab technician he could go, then went back to give the corpse a more detailed examination than I had before. Aside from discovering that the bullet hole was squarely in the center of his chest, I didn’t learn anything new from my examination.
Then I asked Bruer for the duplicate of his bank deposit slip. After adding the hundred dollars which had been in the registers to the amount shown on the slip, the sum stolen came to seven hundred and forty dollars in cash and two hundred and thirty-three in checks. The jeweler said this represented a full week’s gross receipts.
From Fred Bruer I got the phone number of the doctor who had examined the body and phoned to ask him to mail a report to Dr. Swartz, the coroner’s physician. After that I had nothing to do but wait for someone to come for the body and for Phil Ritter to finish.
While waiting I asked Bruer if he had phoned his sister.
He looked startled. “I—I never even thought of it.”
“Probably just as well,” I said. “The phone isn’t a very satisfactory way to break news like this. She should be told personally. I’ll handle it for you, if you want. I have to see her anyway.”
“You do?” he asked in surprise. “It’s routine in homicide cases to contact the next of kin, even when it’s open-and-shut like this one. What’s her address?”
He hesitated for a moment before saying, “She lives down on the south side, but she’s staying with me in my apartment on North Twentieth at the moment. This is going to hit her awful hard, Sergeant, because she and Andy were having a little squabble. It’s terrible to have somebody close to you die when things aren’t quite right. You have trouble forgiving yourself for having a fight at that particular time.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “I understand.”
I asked for his address and wrote it in my notebook.
A couple of morgue attendants came for the body before Phil Ritter completed his survey, but he returned only minutes later.
“Nothing,” he reported. “Nobody saw the bandit come in here, leave here, or walking or running along the street. If anyone aside from the two next-door neighbors heard the shot, he paid no attention to it and can’t remember it.”
There was nothing more to be done at the scene of the crime. I dismissed Sergeant Ritter and his partner, and took off myself.
The apartment on North Twentieth was on the first floor of a neat, modern brick building. A slim, attractive brunette of about forty answered the door.
I took off my hat. “Mrs. Benjamin?”
“Yes.”
I showed my badge. “Sergeant Sod Harris of the police, ma’am. May I come in?”
She looked startled. “Police? What—” Then she stepped aside and said, “Certainly. Please do.”
I moved into a comfortably furnished front room and she closed the door behind me. A plump, pretty little girl about two years old sat in the center of the floor playing with a doll. A red-haired man in his mid-forties, with wide shoulders and a homely but cheerful face, sat on a sofa making himself at home. He had his shoes off, his suitcoat was draped over the back of the sofa, his tie was loosened and his collar was open. A glass with some beer in it and a half-empty bottle of beer sat on the cocktail table before the sofa.
The man rose to his feet. The little girl gave me a sunny smile and said, “Hi, man.”
I smiled back. “Hi, honey.”
The woman said, “Robert Craig, Sergeant—”
“Harris,” I said. “Sod Harris.” Robert Craig held out his hand. He had a firm grip.
“And this is my daughter, Cindy,” Mrs. Benjamin said proudly, looking at the child almost with adoration.
I smiled at the little girl again and got a big return smile. I could understand how her uncle would be crazy about her. I was a little crazy about her myself, and I had just met her.
Mrs. Benjamin said, “What can I do for you, Sergeant?”
“I’m afraid I have some bad news, ma’am.” I glanced at the child. “Maybe she’d be
tter not hear it.”
Paula Benjamin paled. The red-haired man said, “Let’s go see if your other dolls are asleep yet, Cindy.” He scooped up the little girl and carried her from the room.
Mrs. Benjamin said, “My—it isn’t my brother, is it?”
“No,” I replied. “Your husband.”
Her color returned and I got the curious impression that she was relieved. “Oh. What happened?”
Her reaction was hardly what Fred Bruer had led me to expect. She sounded as though she didn’t particularly care what had happened. I saw no point in trying to break it gently, so I let her have it in a lump.
I said, “The jewelry store was held up this morning. Your brother is unharmed, but the bandit shot your husband. He’s dead.”
She blinked, but she didn’t turn pale again. She merely said, “Oh,” then lapsed into silence.
Robert Craig came back into the room alone. The woman looked at him and said, “Andy’s dead.”
A startled expression crossed the redhead’s face, then he actually smiled. “Well, well,” he said. “That solves the Cindy problem.”
Paula Benjamin stared at him. “How can you think of that now?”
“You expect me to burst into tears?” he asked. He looked at me. “Sorry if I seem callous, Sergeant, but Andy Benjamin was hardly a friend of mine. He had me named correspondent in a divorce suit. What did he die of?”
“A holdup man shot him,” I said and glanced at the woman.
Her face had turned fire red. “Did you have to announce that?” she said to Craig. “Sergeant Harris isn’t interested in our personal affairs.”
Craig shrugged. “You and your brother! Never let the neighbors see your dirty linen. Everybody was going to know after it broke in the papers anyway.”
“It won’t break in the papers now!” she snapped at him.
Then her attention was distracted by little Cindy toddling back into the room, carrying two dolls. Her mother swept her up into her arms.
The Richard Deming Mystery Megapack Page 29