“He feels bad,” O’Malley explained to me, “because DiPalda is his grandson.”
We went back to the station-house, but we stopped for supper on the way, so Domenico beat us to it. He was in the captain’s room when we got there, and the very pretty girl who had spoken to us outside Domenico’s was watching the closed door anxiously.
“This guy inside spill anything?” O’Malley asked the desk lieutenant.
“I’ll say. I don’t know what happened to him but he come here talking plenty.”
* * * *
O’Malley went into the captain’s room. I waited. There was a lot of activity around the station-house. After a while O’Malley came out again and we both waited. Finally an officer came in bringing a suitcase. Then another one came with a watch and some clothes. Then a whole group of cops came in bringing three sullen men. One of them was the big man with the pinpoint mustache who had spoken to us about his “friend” Domenico.
“Soboni, Oscani, Morino,” the lieutenant checked them off.
“Well, saps,” O’Malley said to them, “you let life out of several parties; how you going to feel when it happens to yourself?”
“I don’t get this, O’Malley,” I complained.
“Why not? You was along with me. This Domenico knew something and was afraid to tell it, so I figured the way to make him talk was to make him still more afraid of something else. Then, at the show, I seen that mind-reader lady. This Joe DiPalda is a fine kid and is studying to be a doctor and is engaged to that girl Philomena; and the old man is crazy over both of ’em. When this killing happened the first thing Domenico done was to get his grandson out of the place, so the boy wouldn’t even get the blot on him of police questioning.
“I never seen DiPalda, but some other cops give me a description of him and told me where he was. I fixed it with the mind reader to describe Joe as the one that done the killing. I figured that would make Domenico talk.
“Domenico knew the file and button was a plant, but he was scared about the mind-reading. I guess he thought I believed DiPalda was guilty and that we planted the evidence because I was determined to convict him. There wasn’t nothing Domenico wouldn’t risk to keep his grandson from being charged with murder; so he beat it to the station-house. When he got here he couldn’t prove his grandson wasn’t guilty without telling what he knew. Domenico didn’t see who done the murder. What he seen was Oscani and Morino coming down the stairs afterward with Cosimo’s suitcase. Those two always palled with Sobini, and Domenico figured the three of ’em was the murder mob. They had pawned Cosimo’s things.”
“It was a remarkable piece of psychology, O’Malley, and you ought to get big credit for it.”
“Say, I hope it don’t get mentioned outside the station-house. Would I want to get known as a guy that planted evidence? I got troubles enough in this police department without that!”
THROUGH THE CABIN WINDOW
Originally published in Collier’s, July 29, 1933.
“This murder happened on a coal barge,” said O’Malley. “The dead guy’s name is Captain Solan. One guy lives on these boats and so they call him ‘captain’ and he has a deckhand to help him. Solan’s deckhand’s name is Alshuler. Well, Alshuler says he was uptown to spend the evening and he come back about midnight and the captain was in the cabin, dead. His head had been beat in with an iron bolt. You can’t never find out about these waterfront killings because too many times they get done by someone that never even seen the guy before; if you do find out it don’t get you nothing because generally nobody cares if the guy got killed or didn’t. This Solan’s wife was dead and he didn’t have no relatives. Alshuler says he never wrote no letters.”
“Have they any idea as to the motive?”
“Right now they think it was robbery. The captain had a couple of bond coupons in his pocket. They was due to be paid yesterday, the first of the month. Well, that was Sunday so he couldn’t cash ’em, but he couldn’t have sold the bonds without the coupons, so he must still have had ’em. They can’t find no bonds.”
“Who do they think did it?”
“Some people think it was Alshuler.”
We went to see Captain Solan. He had been a big man with white hair, between sixty and seventy years old. He had a Statue of Liberty tattooed on one forearm and a warship on the other. Under the statue were the letters C. S. and under the warship J. P.
“What do you suppose the letters stand for, O’Malley?” I inquired.
“C. S. might stand for Charles Solan. I don’t know about J. P. Well, we got to see Alshuler, but he won’t tell us nothing.”
We went to headquarters and saw Alshuler. He was a weasel-faced little man with shifty eyes.
“You told everything you know about this homicide?” O’Malley asked him.
“Sure. Because I don’t know nothing. I was uptown and I come back. That was at midnight. I looked in the cabin and the captain was dead and so I called the cops.”
“You and the captain ever have any trouble between you?”
“No; we never had no trouble.”
“He’s not telling all he knows, O’Malley,” I decided.
“You’re right in that, but they got another witness.”
The other witness was named Tadden. He was a good-looking young fellow, twenty-two years old, with an honest face.
“You tell us exactly what you told them other cops,” O’Malley directed him.
“Well, I work on a barge. Our barge was tied up outside of Captain Solan’s. A little before midnight I started to go home and I had to cross Solan’s barge to get to the wharf. So I glanced in at Solan’s window and he was in the cabin. He was washing his hands.”
“You know this Captain Solan pretty well?”
“Sure.”
“You ever knew of him having trouble with anybody?”
“He wasn’t the kind that ever caused no trouble. There was no harm in the old boy except he bored you stiff talking about when he was in the Navy.”
“When you seen him through the cabin window did you speak to him?”
“No; I just went on to the wharf.”
“O. K. Then what happened?”
“When I was about half a dozen blocks up the street I met Alshuler on his way back to the barge. That’s all.”
“How long would you say it would have been from when you seen the captain to when Alshuler would have got back to the barge?”
“Maybe fifteen minutes.”
“Well, O’Malley,” I said, “that doesn’t leave much time for the murder to be done by anyone but Alshuler.”
“You think he done it?”
“I’ve thought so from the first minute I saw him.”
“You might be right. So now we got more trouble—we got to go look at the barge.”
The barge was in the East River. Several barges were tied up abreast and the one we wanted was next against the wharf. As Tadden had told us, anyone who wanted to get ashore from one of the others had to walk across its deck. There was a pile of long iron bolts on the wharf like the one Solan had been killed with, which we had seen at headquarters, and a uniformed cop was sitting in an armchair on the deck. When we went down into the cabin, the cop followed us.
I didn’t like the cabin very well. There was blood over everything and papers were scattered all around.
“The plain-clothes guys that were here ahead of you searched this place,” the cop informed us.
There was a picture of a very pretty woman on the cabin wall, who, we decided, must have been Solan’s wife. We examined all the papers but found nothing of importance. Some of the papers related to a steamship company that Solan had once worked for, and others, before that, to his service in the navy. There was a photograph of two youngsters in the naval uniform of enlisted men.
“Would you think the tallest o
f these guys was Solan?” O’Malley asked me.
“He looks like it.”
He put the picture in his pocket. “Where did Alshuler sleep?” he asked the cop.
The cop showed us and O’Malley searched that place too. I sat on the bunk and watched him. Then I felt something lumpy in the mattress of the bunk and I turned the mattress over and felt in it. It was a package wrapped in oilskin, which contained ten bonds, and two of them were the ones from which the coupons had been cut that had been found in Solan’s pockets.
“Here’s your case, O’Malley,” I declared exultantly. “Alshuler killed the old man and took the bonds and hid them. Probably he’d had some drinks uptown. When he got back and looked in the cabin he saw Solan handling the bonds. He stepped back on the wharf and got the iron bolt and killed the old man and took the bonds and hid them. Then he called the police.”
“If he done the murder he’d ought to have had some blood on him.”
“He changed his clothes and dropped the other ones overboard before he notified the police.”
We went back into the larger cabin.
“You act like you was washing your hands,” O’Malley directed me, “while I go up above and see if I can see you the way Tadden said.”
I went and pretended to wash my hands. It was a tiny window and close down to the deck.
“Could you see me?” I asked when he came back downstairs.
“Sure I could see you. I could see your hands and arms and shoulders and part of your body and a little of your chin. I couldn’t see no more, though.”
We took the bonds to headquarters and gave them to the inspector and he sent for Alshuler.
“What have you got to say to this, Eddie?” the inspector asked.
Alshuler studied us with his weasel face and shifting eyes, and seemed to think. He looked like some small, bloodthirsty, cornered animal.
“Sure I took the bonds,” he said at last, “after I found the old man dead. He didn’t have no folks and they belonged to me as much as anybody, and I knew where he kept ’em. I suppose you think I’d ought to have left ’em for you cops.”
“Smart lad!” the chief informed him.
We went outside.
“You made quick work of that case, O’Malley,” I congratulated him.
“Yeah. I didn’t hear the inspector say I was taken off of it, so I guess I’m still on it, and I’d like to find out some more about this Captain Solan.”
“What’s to find out?” I asked. “He was in the Navy and then with a steamship company and when he got old he got a job aboard a coal barge.”
“Yeah, I guess I won’t find out no more than just that,” he answered.
* * * *
We parted and I didn’t see him for a couple of days and then I met him walking along Spring Street.
“Anything more about Solan?” I inquired.
“No; not about him. His life was like you said. But now I got to take a little sea voyage down to the lower bay.”
I went along. A police launch with a couple of plain-clothes men and a uniformed officer was waiting for us and we put-putted down the harbor to the lower bay, where a dingy tramp was rolling at her anchors in the tide.
“You got a man aboard named James Park?” O’Malley asked the skipper.
“We have.”
A seaman took us down below to where a big, white-haired man was lying in a bunk.
“Get your coat on, Jim,” O’Malley said to him. “We want you.”
He got up and put on his coat. A Statue of Liberty was tattooed on one of his forearms and a warship on the other. Under the statue were the letters J. P. and under the warship C. S.
We took him to headquarters and Park and O’Malley went into the inspector’s room but I stayed outside. After a while the two came out together.
“Park killed him. You tell it, Park.”
“Why,” Park explained, without much hesitation, “I and this Charlie Solan, from boys up, were pals. We went into the Navy together and figured we’d stick together all our lives. We did everything together and got tattooed alike, with our two initials put on both of us. Then I got married. That didn’t seem to make any difference; Charlie and me and my wife all went around together. Then he shipped on a freighter and I never heard from him again.
“A little after that my wife left me and I couldn’t ever find out why or where she went. I never connected her and him, and I didn’t see him again for about twenty years. Ten days ago I got into New York on that tramp from Rio de Janeiro and in the harbor I saw a man on a barge that looked like him. I figured to look my old pal up and was mighty glad to see him; but when I found him, there was my wife’s picture looking at me on his cabin wall.
“That was the first I knew that when she left me she had gone to him. I taxed him with it and he told it plain enough. It was all old stuff to him, but to me it was like it had just happened. It all come over me how them two had made a fool out of me for twenty years, and so I knocked him off. I’m glad I did.”
They locked him up.
* * * *
“That’s all very well, O’Malley,” I objected, “but how did you find this out?”
“Well, this crime didn’t look right to me from the first. I couldn’t think a little sneaky guy like that Alshuler would knock off a big guy like Captain Solan; and if he did, he wouldn’t have sent for the police; he’d have lit out. The hardest kind of crime to solve is one where there’s a plain reason who did it and why it was done, but the real reason and person is one that nobody ever thinks of. Tadden was honest in saying he seen Solan on the barge just before Alshuler got there; he thought he did. But that didn’t hardly leave time for the murder to take place if Alshuler didn’t do it.
“Then I looked at you through the cabin window washing your hands and I could only see a part of you. So maybe Tadden hadn’t really seen Solan but someone he thought was him, and that guy would be the murderer and he was washing the blood off of him when Tadden seen him. Of course I didn’t have no hunch that the two had been tattooed alike, which was what fooled Tadden; but he must have seen somebody about Solan’s age and in some ways like him. The only way to find that guy was to dig up Solan’s past life.
“We found some papers showing where he’d been and a picture of two young guys in navy uniform, one of whom was him. I asked around among a lot of old seafarin’ guys who the other one was and he turned out to be named Park. So then I traced down Park. If he was anywheres near New York last Sunday he was open to suspicion, and I found he’d got in New York a week before from Rio de Janeiro. So then we pinched him. . . .”
“It was a wonderful piece of police work,” I commended him, “and Alshuler owes you a lot of gratitude. You certainly saved him from the chair.”
“I won’t get no thanks from Alshuler. That kind of guy wouldn’t think he owed nothing to nobody even if you made him police commissioner.”
SPILLED PERFUME
Originally published in Collier’s, September 30, 1933.
“Now we got a hotel murder,” said O’Malley. “These are some people named Mr. and Mrs. Wester, of Philadelphia, and they come to the hotel. So a bellhop showed them to Room 1215. Then the next morning the maid come to do up the room and she knocked and got no answer; so then she went in. The guy was on the bed with his head knocked in.”
“Where was his wife?” I asked.
“They don’t know what become of his wife. The last they seen of her was the afternoon before when she went out to do some shopping.”
“Is that all they know about it?”
“I don’t know yet what they know. Here’s the hotel.”
It was a big hotel. Everything was going on as though nothing had happened. We found two plain-clothes men in the hotel office.
“You boys know anything about this case?” O’Malley asked th
em.
“Sure. We got wires from Philadelphia. This Wester had a grocery in Philly. Well, he wanted to get married, so he advertised for a wife, and a woman answered. So he used to go week-ends to see her in Atlantic City. But she didn’t want to live in Philly after they got married, so he sold his store for fourteen thousand dollars. Yesterday morning he wired his friends that they got married. This was his wedding trip.”
“He didn’t get a very long one. Did he have the dough on him when he come here?”
“We don’t know about the dough. What we got to do now is find his wife.”
“What do you know about the lady?”
“Nothing. None of his friends had ever met her.”
“What does she look like?”
“The hotel says she wasn’t very big and had black hair. That’s all they know.”
“You boys got a life job if you’re going to try to find her with no more than that. There’s five hundred thousand dames in this town that answer that description.”
They had a photograph of the man as he had been found. He had no coat or vest on. He was a big man with sandy, straight-up hair.
“Well,” O’Malley said, “we won’t find out anything but we got to go look at the room.”
* * * *
An assistant manager of the hotel went up with us. A floor-clerk at a desk faced us when we got out of the elevator. All the odd-numbered rooms were to the right of the clerk’s desk and the even ones to the left. There was a uniformed officer in Room 1215. A man’s suitcase was open and some of his things were on a dresser. His coat and vest were hanging in a closet.
“How was this?” O’Malley asked the officer.
“The medical office thinks the bird was asleep when he got knocked off. They think what done it was a hammer. They didn’t find no hammer. He was all right just before his wife went out to do her shopping because this room called for cracked ice and a bellhop brought it up and the wife said don’t make any noise because her husband was asleep. The bellhop seen him and he was just asleep; he wasn’t dead. The wife went out only a couple of minutes later. The door was locked and the room key was on the dresser. The door locks itself when it gets shut.”
The Detective O'Malley MEGAPACK Page 11