by Craig Rice
“Is this Marcus?”
“My name’s not Marcus. It’s Pop Warner. Like the football coach—except I ain’t never been near a college.”
“Goddam it, I want to talk to—”
“Okay, Zalek. Hang up.”
Something prodded DuBois in the back; a single point from which cold pimples radiated out in all directions. He was afraid to turn around.
“It’s all over, Zalek. The whole damned racket. If you want to stay alive, just come out of that booth and walk along quietly with me.”
“Who—who the hell are you?”
“John J. Malone is the name. And you being a fugitive from justice—a little matter of jumping a five-thousand-dollar bail bond—I can kill you right here on the street and get away with it. Especially since I was the guy who got suckered out of the five grand. That gives me a personal interest on top of a legal advantage. So how about it?”
“We can talk it over, can’t we? I came back to pay you.”
“That’s a goddam lie,” Malone said cheerfully, “But we can talk it over. Let’s go.”
As DuBois backed carefully out of the phone booth, John J. Malone resisted the urge to peel the wrapper off the cigar he was using as a gun and shove it into his mouth. Instead, he kept it in his side pocket along with his hand as he hailed a cab with the other one….
An hour later, von Flanagan, brooding over a gin and beer in Joe the Angel’s bar and speaking to no one in particular, said, “When I get my hands on that little shyster, I’ll separate his head from his neck. He walks out. Just like that, he walks out and leaves me standing there with my face hanging out. Just let me have five minutes with him and I’ll teach him all about the majesty of the law.”
Joe the Angel approached from the rear of the bar. “He’s on the phone. He wants to talk to you.”
Von Flanagan approached the phone as though it were the knife he planned to use to remove Malone’s heart.
“You little bastard!”
Malone ignored the insult. “Von Flanagan—how would you like to be a big man?”
“Just tell me where you are. You ruin a man’s day and then call him up and—”
“A big man,” Malone repeated. “How would you like to smash a spy ring all by yourself and get a promotion?”
“What the devil are you talking about?”
“Just what I said. There are a few more little details to be taken care of. But I need some help from you.”
“What kind of help?”
“One of your boys to stand guard duty for a while.”
“Where are you?”
“Let’s stick to important things. Are you interested in my proposition?”
“What else do I have to do?”
“Nothing—except stay there at the bar and put them on my tab ’til I call you.”
“You’re a damned, sneaky little—”
“Never mind that. I’m giving you a chance to make a big bet with nothing to lose. You just send me a man and sit tight. Yes or no?”
Von Flanagan thought it over. Either way, he would eventually catch up with Malone and nothing would be lost. But if he waited and watched, he might get a chance to earn his own promotion by putting Malone himself away for a few years. This was an attractive prospect.
“Okay. I’ll send Scanlon. Where are you?”
“In my hotel room. Get him over here in a hurry.”
Malone put the phone down and turned his attention back to André DuBois, who was seated, sullen and hunched, on the edge of his bed.
“It’s the craziest damned idea I ever heard of.”
“You didn’t tell me how you got on my tail,” DuBois growled.
“That doesn’t matter,” Malone said. “As I understand the gimmick, you had Helene Justus brainwashed and conditioned to bring the stuff out of Walden.”
“You’re real sharp.”
“But what is she supposed to bring out?”
“I told you—the formula.”
“I mean—how—in what form? Was she going to walk out with a roll of blueprints under her arm or something?”
“Don’t be an idiot. Probably written down on a piece of paper.”
“Probably—but you don’t even know?”
“I left it up to Marcus. I had to. My job was to see that she was conditioned for the job. She wasn’t going to be hurt. She wouldn’t even have known she was doing it.”
“You said there was a dry run today.”
“Under authentic conditions—exactly the way it would be handled when the formula was sent out.”
“Who handled the dry run? Marcus?”
“Who else?”
“How?”
“I don’t know.”
“For a guy running an operation, you know remarkably damned little about how it works.”
“Marcus and I were handling it together.”
“You’re handling an operation with a guy you don’t even know?”
“He wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Malone regarded DuBois with clinical interest—as though he were interested in strange fish and this was a new kind. “You’ve been suckered, son.”
“Sure! So the Conover dame blew the thing.”
“Uh-uh. She just got smart and headed out. You’ve been suckered by Marcus.”
“How, for crissake? I’ll be there for the payoff—or I would have been.”
“I don’t know how he worked it. Not exactly. I can think of five different ways he could have done it. One thing I don’t make is this Pop Warner bit. Who’s Pop Warner?”
“He’s the messenger at Walden.”
“How do you know?”
“Fargo told me about him. I used Fargo to get the inside picture of how Walden works.”
“You know what was wrong with you? You got too cute. You used too many people. You’re some kind of a nut, son.”
DuBois’ eyes became slits. His muscles tensed. Malone gripped the cigar in his pocket and poked its tip menacingly against the cloth of his jacket. “Why do you think Pop Warner answered on Marcus’ phone?”
“How do I know?”
Malone was about to reply that it might be a smart idea to find out, but at that moment there was a knock and Scanlon appeared.
“Von Flanagan sent me,” he said.
“Sure,” Malone said. “For an easy assignment. All you have to do is see that this guy stays put. Just park yourself by the door and wait ’til I get in touch with you. No problem.”
With a sigh, Malone took his gun out of his pocket and lit it. DuBois stared venomously, but Malone didn’t mind at all. He was thinking of five thousand dollars he’d never retrieve.
“Where you going?” Scanlon asked suspiciously.
“To see a guy about a bag of confetti,” he said. “If you have trouble with this joker, shoot him in the leg So long …”
Malone left.
Five minutes later, he was on a phone and connected to another phone in City Hall—talking to a man named Leibowitz. Leibowitz was not happy to hear from Malone. His tone of voice as he said, “Jesus—how bad can a guy’s day get?” implied that Malone was far, far down on his list of nice people.
Malone was not disturbed. “Davey,” he said cordially, “I know you’d like to do me a little favor. I want the address of a man named Warner. They call him Pop Warner—”
“How would I know? Never heard of him. I never want to. I’m sorry I even heard of you.”
“He’s a messenger at the Walden Chemical Research Laboratory, an old guy.”
“Why call me? I’ve got no way of finding his damn address.”
“You’re too modest, Davey. You have lots of resources. The tax rolls—election registrations—car licenses—union membership lists.”
“Go to hell!”
“Okay, Davey. But maybe Molly would have it.”
“Molly! Have you gone off your rocker? How would my wife know—?”
“She might be able to get it from Cherry Hi
ll—that little stripper down on South State Street.”
“You bastard! You’d stoop that low to get something you want?”
“Davey! You’re jumping to a lot of conclusions. By the way, how is it these days with you and Cherry?”
“Call me back in half an hour,” Leibowitz grated.
“I’m in a rush, Davey. Make it fifteen minutes….”
Chapter Thirteen
The man who called himself Marcus was confused, angry, and a little frightened. Not too frightened yet, because he had confidence in himself. He’d planned well, spurred on by the tremendous satisfaction that he was adroitly using those who believed they were using him. The true situation had amused and delighted him. But now, with the completion of a foolproof plan inches from the tips of his outstretched fingers, strange things had begun happening.
People were disappearing; fading away into thin air. It had begun with a piece of plain bad luck on his part, but he hadn’t been responsible for the rest of it; not for everybody disappearing.
First, Helene Justus had driven away into oblivion. Then a call from DuBois that had been relayed to him had sent him searching for DuBois—not openly, but there were ways—and he’d found that DuBois had disappeared. Not only that, but the Conover woman had faded out of the picture also. Where was everybody going?
His first thought was of a double-cross—or rather, a triple-cross; he was handling the double-cross part of it himself. Had Justus and Conover and DuBois gotten together in a deal to knife him in the back? It hardly seemed believable. If so, Terminal would have had to be in on it, too. That bunch of bumbling incompetents just wasn’t smart enough, nor would Terminal participate in such a deal. He would have nothing to gain. All he wanted was the material, and he’d okayed Marcus’ counter-plan. There would be no point in his switching back.
But most important of all—what had happened to Helene Justus? Marcus had to decide on a method of procedure. He couldn’t roam around at loose ends. He decided, therefore, that there was no connection between the disappearances of DuBois and Conover, and that of Helene Justus. So the thing to do was to concentrate on the place where the money was. The blonde pigeon.
Maybe someone was lying.
Marcus decided to find out what had happened to Helene Justus….
“Yeah,” the old man said, “Pop Warner—like the football coach, except I ain’t never been near a college.”
“You’re in trouble,” John J. Malone said.
“Me? I don’t want no trouble.”
“None of us do. But sometimes we walk right into it.”
Pop Warner had a kitchenette apartment in an old building on Washington Boulevard just east of Austin Avenue. “Lived here for twenty-five years,” he said. “Never wanted to go any place else. This is fine.”
“When did you start doing espionage work?” Malone asked.
“Huh?”
“When did you decide to try being a spy?”
“Are you crazy or something?”
“The whole caper has collapsed. I’m part of a crew going around picking up the pieces.”
“You’ve got the wrong man. I don’t know anything about spies. I run messages at Walden Chemical. You’re looking for some other Warner. My name’s Fred. They call me Pop. Like—”
“I know. Like Pop Warner, the football coach. But what about Helene Justus?”
“Who’s she?”
“She went to work at Walden this morning.”
“Oh, the new girl. Sure. I know her. She just started today.”
“That’s what I said. What did you do to her?”
“Me? Nothing. I took her some work and picked it up. I told her the ropes, kind of.”
“Where’d you get the work you gave her?”
“Where I get all of it. From Biddy Penrose.”
Malone saw no reason to believe the old man was not telling the truth. But he decided also that this was a good time to accuse him of lying.
“Okay. Get your hat and toothbrush. You’re going with me.”
“Where to?”
“To jail. You may be there a long time. I told you. The whole thing’s blown up. They want the truth.”
“But I don’t know nothing about nothing!”
Malone risked a long shot. “Fargo says different. He said you’re the brains of the spy ring.”
“I don’t know nothing about any spy ring,” Pop Warner wailed. “Okay—I did lie a little, but—”
“That’s better.”
“I never meant any harm, though. It’s against the rules to do anything for the men inside.”
“The men inside?”
“Anybody in the restricted area of the building. They’re always supposed to go through the security men. But they don’t like that. They don’t like the security men checking every time they have any business in the unrestricted area. Like Professor Wadsworth says, it’s a lot of goddam nonsense.”
“What do you do for Professor Wadsworth?”
“Not just him. Most of them. Little things—like getting them things they want that they don’t want to wait for requisitions on. Like Wadsworth says, a man can’t get an aspirin tablet without a security man running a chemical check on it to see if it’ll explode. Biddy Penrose helps ’em out that way, too. So I’m not the only one.”
“What did you lie to me about?”
“Well, I gave Helene Justus one envelope that didn’t come through Biddy the way all the steno tapes are supposed to.”
“Where’d you get it?”
“From my locker. Or rather, on top of my locker.”
“Who put it there?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then why did you give it to Helene Justus?”
“I got a call on the hot line downstairs.”
Malone didn’t have the least idea what he was uncovering here—whether the information was of value or not. But it was interesting and he was filing it away as fast as the old man spilled it.
“What’s the hot line?”
“It a part of the intercom system. But a part that’s not used any more if you get what I mean.”
“Oh, sure—but explain it anyhow.”
“Part of the intercom was disconnected. The hot line is supposed to be dead. It runs from a phone someplace in the restricted area to another one down by the oil furnace near where I kill time when I’m not busy. One of the men inside activated it—just that line—so you can hear on it—and when a light lights up I answer and do what they ask.”
“What who asks?”
“Whoever calls. Then they take up a little collection for me and leave it on my locker every week.”
“What kind of things do you do?”
“Oh, little things like sending personal messages they don’t want monitored by the security men. Or bringing something in for them—”
“Or taking something out.”
“Nope. Never. That’s different. If I was caught taking anything out that could be traced back to the restricted area I’d be fired.”
“Did anybody ever ask you to?”
“No. You’ve got the wrong idea. They don’t want me to get into trouble. It’s just little things where they don’t want to be annoyed by security men.”
“Who asked you to give the envelope to Helene Justus?”
The old man grinned. “Somebody that wanted to make a date with her, I guess. She’s a peacherino.”
“But you don’t know his name?”
“You can’t spot a voice over the hot line. I was just told by one of the men to take the envelope off the locker and what to do with it.”
“This Biddy Penrose. Do you think she’s the head spy?”
“Biddy? She’s all right. Tough. Real tough. But she gets the work done. It’s just that she doesn’t want anybody to think she’s human.”
Malone patted his pockets. “Got a match?”
The old man rushed eagerly to a drawer and brought back a pack. He lit the cold stump of Malone’
s cigar. Malone watched his withered old hand tremble.
“Things are no good in Joliet. Jail’s a lousy place to spend your declining years.”
“But I ain’t done nothing.”
“They might overlook you,” Malone said thoughtfully.
“I didn’t know anything bad was going on!”
“I’ll tell you what you do. You hole up here and don’t make a peep. Understand?”
“I’ll do anything you say.”
“Don’t answer the phone. Don’t answer the door. Hide under the bed. Even if the house burns down, burn with it—unless you want a long stretch in the can.”
“You’re—you’re a real nice fellow. I’ll pay you back.”
“Sure—sure,” Malone said, and left….
While Malone was acting in confusion, he felt that he was leading from strength. Divide and conquer. That old cliche pretty much defined what he was trying to do. Separate the enemy. This put him into a position where, while he didn’t know exactly what was going on, neither did they. At the moment he had what bricks he’d gathered, but was in need of some cement to hold them together for inspection as a structure rather than a pile of ridiculous loose ends.
He looked at his watch. The day was fleeting. And his various captives around town might be getting restive. He was sure Vivian Conover would stay put with Ma Blodgett, but Zelak’s continued quarantine depended on von Flanagan. If the big flatfoot got restive, he might call Scanlon off. And without grounds to hold Zelak—Malone had given him none—that fish might get away.
But Malone felt he had to take his chances. There was one more fish he wanted to catch before the season ended. He hailed a cab and headed for the Loop….
He wasn’t too optimistic about finding Barnhall in his office. He would probably, he thought, have to track the headshrinker to his home, but checking the office first was logical. He went in the front door of the building. It was after five and the offices had emptied out, but the night man’s desk had not yet been set up. He took the elevator to Barnhall’s floor, and as he approached the door with all the letters on it, he realized that it stood slightly ajar. That didn’t seem right. Malone approached with caution. But as he came abreast of it, no bullets or hurled objects came flying out nor was there any sound from within.
He entered. The anteroom was small. There was a chair and table with a few magazines strewn over it and an aura of tension as though the ghosts of mentally disturbed patients still waited there for a turn on Barnhall’s couch.