See You at the Morgue

by Lawrence G. Blochman

  He was thrown flat against the side of the cab. He clung frantically to the taximeter with one hand as he caught his balance.

  A street light shone through the window, and he saw Vivian cowering in one corner, saw the gun in Roger Dunne’s hand. He yelled, “Drop that, Dunne!”

  Dunne twisted half around, swung the gun toward Barney. Vivian screamed again, flung out her arms, grabbed. The gun exploded. The other window became a clanking cascade of broken glass.

  Dunne jerked his hand away from the girl. Again the gun exploded.

  The taxi careened, jumped the curb, stopped.

  Barney pulled the door open, caught Vivian as she tumbled out. He steadied her, pushed her toward the Overlook Arms. He said, “Don’t look, Viv. Run to the office, and don’t look back. I’ll come to you as soon as I can.”

  The taxi driver said, “Who the hell’s going to pay for the busted—Jesus Christ! He sure did—” And immediately got sick on the fender.

  With siren howling, the car containing Kilkenny, the lieutenant, and Dr. Rosenkohl came speeding down Central Park West, stopped at the sight of the taxi perched on the edge of the sidewalk with the driver doubled up over a fender. The three men jumped out.

  “Hello, Weaver,” Kilkenny said. “What—Good Lord, he did a good job of it, didn’t he? Or did he do it himself?”

  “He did it himself,” Barney said.

  “What about the other shot? I heard two shots.”

  “The first was a miss,” Barney said. “Somebody jogged his elbow.”

  “That was a good hunch I had of coming along,” said Dr. Rosenkohl. “I told you you might have another customer for the medical examiner’s office.”

  The taxi driver, wiping his mouth on his sleeve, joined the group. “Who’s going to pay for the damage to my cab?” he complained. “The busted glass, and the upholstery full of blood—”

  “If it’s group B blood,” said Dr. Rosenkohl, “you can bill the City of New York.”

  “It’s group B, all right,” Kilkenny said, “or it wouldn’t be where it is now.”

  XXX

  IT was several hours before Detective Kilkenny and Dr. Rosenkohl got down to the loft building that housed the Roger Dunne Studios. Other detectives had been there before them, however—in time to prevent the weepy-eyed Miss Morse from destroying the Dictaphone record she had just finished playing back.

  They seated Kilkenny before the machine, inserted the stopples in his ears, and allowed him to listen to the voice of a dead man telling his story.

  “If I’m not back by eight, Annabelle,” said the voice of Roger Dunne, “I shall never come back. So follow these instructions to clear yourself of a crime of which you have no knowledge but of which you may be accused as an accomplice.

  “First, take from the files and destroy all letters we have sent to furriers in the West, offering to sell platina fox pelts. These furs were stolen from Henry Frye, and the police may assume that you, taking dictation of these letters, knew they were stolen.

  “I make no excuse for this dishonest transaction which is the cause of all my troubles. I needed money, that’s all. I needed money to buy my freedom from Penelope, I needed money for you, my darling, and the meager profits of the business these past years were not enough.

  “I entered a combine with Pierre Laurence and his brother Boris Pilozor. We might have cleared forty thousand dollars apiece, at least—which you will admit is a temptation. But Laurence decided it was not enough. He was going to use those furs to blackmail Henry Frye into letting him marry his daughter. He was going to leave me out in the cold. That is why I returned to Penelope’s apartment yesterday. Yesterday? It seems ages ago. At any rate I found Laurence there, tried to argue with him—then lost my temper. How well you know that temper, darling! I shot him with a little gun that I knew Penelope kept in her night table.

  “I hadn’t gone there with murder in my heart and once I had killed Laurence, I was contrite and panic-stricken. I wiped my fingers with a handkerchief of Penelope’s. I hid in the vacant apartment across the hall, where we had stored the pelts. I was there I don’t know how long, listening to people come and go. I knew Laurence’s body had been found, and that the police were on the way, because I could hear the sirens. When my ex-convict brother-in-law, Grove, made his way into my hiding-place, I strangled him. I had to. I was lost if he betrayed me. I am probably lost anyhow, but I did not know it then.

  “The finding of Tony’s body in the apartment with the furs would put me in the power of another man, Boris Pilozor. He was the only one who knew that I was connected with the stolen furs and had a key to that apartment. He had been phoning me all evening, leaving his number in code. I determined not to let him betray me. I went to meet him. I found that the death of his brother, which he learned by the papers, had determined him to make a clean breast of the matter. He told me, when I saw him, that he had just telephoned Frye saying that he was on his way up to see him. He never went, because I strangled him and left him in the alley.

  “Then I began to worry about Vivian who took the phone messages from Pilozor. She remarked on the fact that the man who left different names—they were codes for his phone numbers—seemed to have the same voice. I was afraid she would connect me with him, perhaps even succeed in solving the simple code. I tried to kill her, too. I disguised my voice and made an appointment for her to meet her fiancé, who I knew was hiding from the police. I tried to push her in front of a subway train. I failed—but I escaped.

  “They may say you were my accomplice in this, because I used your address for an alibi last night. I knew I was being followed. I came to your house. You were asleep. I walked through and out the back way. After I had done my evil deeds, I came back through the garden. You were still asleep. I kissed you, and went out the front way—where the detective was still waiting.

  “Tonight I am going again to try to silence the Sanderson girl. She has not told them anything yet, because the police are not yet on the right track. They must expect to learn something, however, for they are holding her. I have just learned where she is, and I will make a final effort to protect myself. It is wicked, I know, but I must do it. I am in too deep now for anything else. If I succeed, I shall return and we will take counsel together. If I fail—

  “Good-by, darling.”

  Detective Kilkenny pulled out the ear pieces and said, “Well, I was pretty close, Rosie. Yesterday I could have sworn that Dunne was a right guy. And today he turns out to be a wrong number.”

  “A very wrong number,” Dr. Rosenkohl agreed.

  The detective buttoned his coat. “I’d like your opinion on a very important matter, Rosie,” he said. “What do you think about a glass of foaming lager before we turn in tonight?”

  “It’s kind of late,” Dr. Rosenkohl said. “I think I’ll mosey on home. And before I forget, Kenny, why don’t you come down for dinner tomorrow? We still eat at noon on Sundays. Ma says to be sure and invite you because she’s making kreplech soup, and you always used to like it.”

  Kilkenny looked at his watch. “I guess I can make it,” he said, “although I’ve got a lot of sleeping to do, and besides I wanted to go to Mass in the morning. I haven’t been since way last June, the time I shot the squarehead that killed Sergeant Michaels, and I want to go tomorrow because it would have been my old lady’s birthday. She’d have been sixty-two.”

  XXXI

  PENELOPE DUNNE SAT in her apartment, looking with exquisite sadness into the night. It was late, and all the electric advertising signs on the jersey shore had gone out. The blackness was relieved only by the line of eerie blue-green windows in the oil refinery, and the occasional string of street lights curving over the brow of the Edgewater hill like a diadem. She was already dressed in black, and seemed completely conscious of the fact that mourning was becoming to her.

  Barney Weaver, standing at the window, waiting for Vivian to come in from the kitchen where she had been brewing coffee, reflected that Pen
elope seemed to be grieving singularly little over her triple loss—an ex-husband, an ex-lover, and an ex-convict brother, all in twenty-four hours. Studying the composed lines of her face, Barney decided that she was probably thinking of the new wardrobe her enforced mourning would entail, and wondering which dress she would wear to each funeral.

  “I can’t get over how wonderful Mr. Frye has been in all this,” Penelope was saying. “When I read about his wanting to take the blame to protect Tom Norfolk because he saw Tom here and thought he’d done it, why I just had to send him a telegram telling him how wonderful I thought it was. He sent me those flowers tonight, when he heard about Tony and Roger. They’re beautiful. I must telephone in the morning to thank him. I’m going to tell him that he ought to take a trip until he gets over the shock of everything.”

  “Think the warden will let him take a trip?” Barney asked.

  “Oh, you mean that little affair with the customs? That won’t amount to a row of pins. He’ll pay the fine and penalties, and it will all be forgotten.”

  “I guess you’re right. During prohibition they used to throw a man in the clink for trying to bring in a jug of blackstrap with his dirty laundry, but all Frye did was smuggle in one hundred fifty thousand dollars worth of furs.”

  “I think everybody should take a trip after an ordeal like this,” Penelope continued.

  Vivian came in with the coffee. “Pen, did you hear from Julia?” she asked.

  “Oh, yes. Dear Julia. She’s so thoughtful. She called not long ago. One lump, dear, and just a little more rum in it. No, dear, no cream; it’s fattening. Thank you, Vivian dear. What was I saying? Oh, yes, Julia. I told her she and Tom ought to patch it up. After all, why shouldn’t they? They’re not children, and they know life isn’t all a bed of orchids. They’re both such sweet people. But Julia says she can’t decide whether to take the veil or an overdose of sleeping-tablets.”

  “And Tom Norfolk?”

  “Oh, Tom. He’s leaving for Europe on the Clipper tomorrow. I have an idea he’s going to put on a Graingold campaign. What about you two lovebirds, Vivian dear?”

  Vivian looked at Barney who looked out the window.

  “We’re going back to Academia day after tomorrow,” Vivian said.

  Barney turned to give her a puzzled look.

  “Are you really?” Penelope said. “I knew Barney was going home but he didn’t tell me that you were going with him.”

  “Barney didn’t know,” said Barney.

  “I’ve just this minute decided,” said Vivian.

  Barney ran his fingers through his tousled brown hair. “It seems a shame to leave just when you’re getting a break, Viv,” he said. “Regardless of how you got it, you have an in with the big boys now. You’ve had your picture in the papers, so they’ll put your pictures in their magazines. They were good in the first place, but that doesn’t count. So I’m through being stubborn. We can stay in New York. Doctor Rosenkohl wants to put me to work in the medical examiner’s laboratories.”

  “Does that pay well, Barney dear?” Pen asked.

  “Awful,” Barney said. “Peanuts, practically. But it’s important and useful work, and it interests me. So as long as Vivian wants to stay in New York—”

  “We’re going back to Academia,” Vivian declared. “My scale of values has been badly shaken up these last few days, and I don’t feel quite as metropolitan as I used to.”

  “I wish you could see the work they’re doing in those laboratories,” Barney began. “They—”

  “We’re going back to Academia,” Vivian insisted. “I’ve already resigned my job, and we’re going back to Academia. Did you send that telegram to the Dean?”

  “I told him I’d give him his answer in forty-eight hours,” Barney said.

  The doorbell rang. The Pekinese galloped yapping from nowhere. Penelope said, “Who in the world could be ringing at this hour? I simply won’t see any more reporters tonight. Or cameramen. I look frightful in flashlight photos.”

  “It’s probably just a telegram offering Vivian a commission to paint murals for the ladies’ jail in Greenwich Avenue,” Barney said. He went to answer the bell, with the snarling Pekinese worrying his ankles. For the first time in his life, the little animals seemed more amusing than hateful. In fact, he took a sudden liking to them. He couldn’t think of anything or anybody in the world that he couldn’t like tonight. He opened the door upon a toothy Oriental grin.

  “Prease excuse rateness of howah,” said Matsuki, “butto ammo continuarry ragging behindo since rasto nighto—”

  “That’s all right, Matsuki,” Barney said. “I’ll take care of Ping and Pong tonight. It’s such a grand night that Miss Sanderson and I were going to take a walk along the river.”

  “We are not walking along the river,” contradicted the voice behind him.

  “We are walking along the river,” Barney insisted.

  “We are walking to the telegraph office,” said Vivian with simple finality.

  Table of Contents

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  IX

  X

  XI

  XII

  XIII

  XIV

  XV

  XVI

  XVII

  XVIII

  XIX

  XX

  XXI

  XXII

  XXIII

  XXIV

  XXV

  XXVI

  XXVII

  XXVIII

  XXIX

  XXX

  XXXI