"Well," Rickey said, "hold onto your hat for this one. The catering firm that did the birthday party? It burned down last night. The owners, who both lived on the premises, were killed and the building is a total loss"
Lash said nothing. He stared at the little vial of Margaret Dell's blood for more than two minutes. He was powerfully enraged, and working hard to keep it under control. Someone was going to have to pay for this, he resolved. He would find out who did this and he would make it stick. Absolutely.
*****
That evening, the phantom reporter struck again. Another mysterious "scoop" appeared on the front page of the Banner under Jack Caldwell's byline. It was a fairly detailed account of the robbery and murders. The only thing was nobody remembered seeing the reporter anywhere near the jewelry store. Another leak?
As if that weren't vexing enough, J. Tyler Amsterdam was at it again. He suggested, in a front page editorial, that the robberies and murders committed by the "spacemen" might have been in retaliation for the destruction of their "spaceship." This was where the thing veered sharply away from any genuine facts. Lash knew full well that the military had taken no such action. The Governor of New Jersey and the Secretary of War both denied the Banner's allegations. Amsterdam, of course, began crying "cover-up."
All of this was very intriguing to Lash, in light of certain suspicions that had begun to grow at the bottom of his mind.
*****
Two hours later, Lash went down to police headquarters to compare notes with Casey.
"I'm glad you're here," the detective said. "We had a sketch artist do a portrait of the human bandit. Look at this and see if it reminds you of anybody." He handed Lash a large sheet of drawing paper.
Lash studied the pencil portrait. It had that unrealistic quality that all such police sketches had, but it looked familiar just the same. After a minute, it hit him.
"Damn," he said, "Maxwell Heath."
"It sure looks like him," Casey said. "Crazy, huh?"
Lash just nodded. Maxwell Heath had been one of the supreme big wheels of organized crime in the Big Apple just a few years ago. New York's answer to Al Capone, but unlike Big Al, Heath beat every single rap the cops tried to pin on him.
The sketch was a remarkable likeness. But there was a problem with the identification: Heath had died two years ago in a suspiciously unsuspicious house fire in Queens.
"This whole business doesn't make much sense," Lash observed, handing the sketch back to Casey. "First the bank, now this. Men from outer space, led into a life of crime by a dead mobster? Frankly, this whole damn business has most of the earmarks of a publicity stunt."
"Huh?"
"A publicity stunt. It's awfully theatrical, don't you think?"
Casey looked puzzled. "What the hell is it publicizing? A movie?"
"Of course not. And I didn't say it is a publicity stunt, just that it looks like one." The scientific sleuth had an idea that was growing more concrete by the minute. But he was not yet prepared to share it.
"Remember what that reporter told us at the hospital?" Lash asked the detective. "He said he hadn't been allowed to talk to any of the victims. None of the reporters had."
"Yeah, that's right. So?"
"So, the Banner ran an 'exclusive interview' with one of the witnesses, under Jack Caldwell's byline."
Casey narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. "That's right... So how did he know? We kept those people isolated. Maybe it was one of the doctors or nurses?"
"Maybe," Lash said with absolutely no conviction. "We need to have a little chat with Jack Caldwell. And we don't need to treat him with much courtesy, if you get my meaning."
"Fine with me," said Casey, glancing at his watch. "I've got to meet with the mayor in ten minutes. Go down to the Banner yourself and see what you can come up with."
But Lash had no luck that day. A receptionist in the lobby of the Banner building-- a trim, dark-haired woman in her thirties-- told Lash that the reporter was out of town on a story. She would not give him any details.
"Well, what about Mister Amsterdam?" Lash pressed. "Can I see him?"
"Are you a policeman? Do you have a warrant?"
"No and no. Why do I need a warrant to talk to your publisher?"
"Mister Amsterdam is very busy and cannot be disturbed."
Lash showed signs that he might be prepared to create a substantial disturbance of his own right there in the lobby, if he didn't get some answers. The receptionist sent for the building's security guards. Soon, he found himself flanked by two bruisers in cheap uniforms who escorted him out of the building. As they passed a dark alcove, Lash thought he saw a familiar face in the gloom. Whoever it was ducked quickly back out of sight.
The person had looked a lot like Amsterdam.
*****
J. Tyler Amsterdam, who started the New York Banner in 1917, had been known to create news where none existed. His commitment to the truth was nonexistent. His commitment to profit was absolute. "I don't mind the truth if it sells papers," he once famously quipped, "but I'm not married to it." The remark was made at a private dinner party. Unfortunately for Amsterdam, one of the guests happened to be the famous columnist Dorothy Parker; the quote appeared in one of her newspaper pieces the following day. But the "expose" harmed Amsterdam not one bit. Rather, it cemented his reputation as an audacious, admirable scoundrel-- the kind of fearless, daring entrepreneur that made this country great.
Words like unethical, immoral, and psychotic never came up.
Lash drove to a respectable, though not posh, section of the city. Consulting the mailbox, he found the name and apartment number he wanted-- 3G, CALDWELL, JACK-- and went upstairs in the self service elevator. He knocked at the door of number 3 and waited. There was no answer. Lash removed a small lock pick from his jacket pocket and went to work on the door. In less than a minute, he was pushing it open.
The room was in disarray. He pushed the door shut, switched on a light, and surveyed the disaster area.
On the wall above the sofa, in the middle of a square area where the paint was a bit brighter than the rest of the walls, he saw a safe. It was standing wide open. Walking over to take a closer look, he saw that it was empty. He examined the door closely and found no evidence that it had been forced. Glancing down, he spotted something. There, in the space between the sofa and the wall, was a single sheet of paper. He pulled the sofa away from the wall and retrieved it.
Moving over to a small table and switching on the lamp, Lash examined the paper. It appeared to be a draft of a news story. In fact, it was a story about the jewelry store robbery. It seemed to be the same draft that had appeared in the Banner the the following morning. Then Lash noticed something that gave him a start. The penciled date at the top of the page was the day before the robbery.
Lash thought it likely that Caldwell had guilty knowledge, and possibly some personal involvement, in recent events.
He caught a whiff of something odd. It was just a suggestion, really, not an identifiable odor. Some odd kind of change in his sinuses, something vaguely metallic. At that moment, the door banged open.
He found himself face-to-face with a gaggle of green-faced spacemen!
Chapter Six
THE CRIMINAL
Four of them piled into the room, aiming their peculiar weapons at Lash. Damn if the guy at the hospital hadn't been right. Those did not look like masks. The "flesh" was undulating in a most disconcerting manner.
Ducking, Lash took a swing at the one in the lead and was astonished at just how wide of the intended mark it went. He almost lost his balance, and as he struggled briefly to maintain it, one of the creatures snatched the paper from his hand. He made a grab for it, but once again he missed. Something funny seemed to be going on with his depth perception.
He was startled, but not at all surprised, when a human figure stepped into the apartment.
Max Heath.
The deceased crime lord-- or his doppelgänger-- was holding
a pistol that appeared to be of earthly manufacture. He pointed it at Lash's head.
The investigator raised his hands in a gesture of surrender and backed up a step or two. He knew that Heath was unlikely to accept his surrender, but that was okay, because he had something up his sleeve.
Literally.
He twisted his shoulder in a strange way, and a derringer sprang from a little gadget in his sleeve. He caught it in his hand, whipped the weapon down, and fired a shot at one of the intruders. The "creature" gave vent to a very earthly sounding curse as the bullet nicked his shoulder. Balling his gloved hands into fists, he advanced upon Lash, his intent unmistakable.
"Get back here," snarled Heath. He drew a bead on Lash and fired. The shot missed and whanged off of the steel safe door. The ricochet caught one of the spacemen in the leg. He, too, demonstrated his fluency in earth profanity.
"Hell, let's get out!" Heath shouted. Lash wondered vaguely why the man hadn't taken another shot at him. He surely would have hit his mark this time.
Lash rose to his feet and stuck his head out into the hall. The marauders were not there. He thought of trying to give chase, but decided against it. He felt unwell in a strange way he could not identify. He was very thirsty and his fingers and toes were tingling.
He sat down on the sofa, picked up Caldwell's telephone and dialed police headquarters. He had the switchboard girl get word to Casey that there was something fresh on the Caldwell problem and he should make haste to this address.
When Casey got there, Lash told him what had happened.
"But you know," he said after he had related the events in detail, "I think they wanted me to get away."
"Why?"
"I have no idea. Maybe so I could help spread their story. Or maybe they thought they could get me to believe the spacemen scenario, which might make their lives a bit easier."
"You're sure it was Heath?" Casey asked.
"Of course not. I'm also not sure the crew he brought with him were spacemen. But the whole gang looked authentic. The guy looked and sounded like Heath, alright."
"Well," Casey pointed out, "that's not as crazy as men from Mars."
"You have a point. But it looks like we have both."
*****
Lash felt better after a good eight hours of sleep.
No sooner had he finished dressing than he heard someone knocking on his front door. More like banging. He rushed into the living room and pulled the door open.
"Hey, go easy on this door!"
"Look at this crap!" Casey growled, handing him a newspaper.
The Banner had outdone itself this time. The front page was given over to one of the most ludicrous tales Lash could remember ever seeing in print. This was an "exclusive." A letter sent to the paper by Max Heath.
Lash's eyebrows went up.
"Go ahead and read it," the detective said. "It just gets better and better."
The writer of the bizarre letter claimed to be from none other than Maxwell Heath himself. He explained that he had first met the Martians back in 1897, during the wave of phantom airship sightings that had swept the country. Further, he asserted that he had remained in contact with the spacemen, and that they had rescued him from the fire that should have killed him and taken him back to their planet to live.
Heath had recently decided, the letter continued, to return to earth and reclaim his "rightful throne" as the King of the New York criminal underworld. His friends had given him equipment, a spaceship and a crew.
"This is too much," Lash said after he had read the letter through twice. "Even the Hearst papers would stop short of this! Casey, do you buy a word of this nonsense?"
"No. I dunno. I guess not. But it's a pretty weird story for someone to make up. If you were trying to fool somebody, you wouldn't make up a story as crazy as that. Who would do such a thing?"
Lash smiled. "Somebody familiar with the reasoning you just used," he said. "Somebody who knows you're going to think that very thing. So simple and so unexpected. You're not dumb enough to see through it."
"Huh?"
Lash smiled. "Whoever concocted that tale knows a bit about human psychology. I think it is very unlikely that Maxwell Heath is not only alive, but some kind of... alien contactee. If you were from outer space, would you bother with a man like that? No, this is all just too absurd."
"Well, yeah," Casey said. "I won't deny, though, that it had me going. Plenty of other people, too, by the way. The Banner's circulation has at least doubled because of it. The crazier a story is, the more people are panting to eat it up."
"And there you have it!"
"Have what?"
"If we can't find Caldwell," Lash said grimly, ignoring Casey's question, "I say we go to the top."
"Oh, I've tried that already," Casey said with evident disgust. "Went down to the paper, just like you did, and I got the same runaround. I can't get anybody to issue a warrant. Nobody wants to touch it. Amsterdam has the fix in. Hell, he's always had a fix in. He might as well own City Hall."
"I'll tell you what, Casey," Lash said. "I have more work to do on the stuff I've collected. Let me work on that for a while, and I'll get back to you. Maybe I'll know something new by then."
*****
Lash had been at work on his samples for several hours and had made a breakthrough. Finally, some progress, something encouraging. Now, if only he could get hold of Jack Caldwell. He had a number of very pointed questions for the reporter.
He was moving down the hall, on the way to the study to speak with Rickey. There came a frantic banging at the front door just as he walked past it.
"Damn it, Casey!" he yelled, turning and grabbing the doorknob, "I have a bell, you know."
He undid the lock and yanked the door open.
When he saw who was there, he didn't say a word. Instead, his jaw dropped.
He was looking at Jack Caldwell.
Chapter Seven
WALKING DEAD
"Hello, Mister Mountain," Lash said. "My name's Mohammed."
"Huh?"
Caldwell was pale, sweaty and trembling. He didn't appear to have shaved for at least a day. Lash had never seen the newshawk in such a state.
"You look... Caldwell, you better sit down. What's going on?"
Lash led him by the arm to the sofa and gently pushed him down onto it.
"I got away," Caldwell said. "I mean, I slipped out of... I was supposed to stay in hiding, but... Jeez, Lash, I never thought he'd do anything like this. That wasn't the deal at all."
"Rickey!" Lash shouted. "Bring this man something to drink! And I don't mean water!"
To Caldwell, he said, "Stay right here!" He dashed back into his laboratory.
Rickey came into the living room with a tumbler of whiskey. She handed it to the trembling reporter. At the same moment, Lash came barreling out of his lab.
"Here," he said, "take this. It'll calm your nerves." He handed the reporter a yellow capsule. Caldwell looked suspicious, but he took the capsule and gulped it down, chasing it with a prodigious swallow of whiskey. He coughed for half a minute after that. Finally, he regained a measure of composure and spoke.
"Listen, Lash," Caldwell said. "I may not have much time. They can... Oh, God, I don't..."
"Calm down, man!" Lash said sternly. "I can't help you if I don't know what you're talking about."
Caldwell nodded. "I shoulda come to you long ago. I thought about it. I couldn't go to the cops because... Well, I just didn't dare to. I... Listen, I don't have anything in writing, not with me. They thought they destroyed all my notes and stuff, but there's a locker at the Port Authority bus terminal. What you do is..." He began to cough.
"Don't worry, Jack," Lash said. "I think things will work out where you are concerned. And if they don't... Well, I'm sure you always knew you might have to pay a pretty steep price."
The reporter nodded. Then his eyes rolled back in his head and a tremor ran through his body. The tremor ceased, and small trail
s of blood ran from Caldwell's eyes and nose.
At that moment, Rickey walked into the room. She took one look at Caldwell and let out a yelp.
"Oh, Jesus!" she exclaimed. Looking wildly around the room, she bent over into a low crouch, scuttled quickly to the window, slammed it shut, and pulled down the blinds.
"That... poison ray!" she exclaimed. "They must be out there somewhere, across the street or something. In one of the buildings."
"I don't think so," Lash said calmly. He bent to examine the late Jack Caldwell. The man had bled copiously from the eyes and nose, just like the victims at the bank.
"Damn," he said in a low voice. "I sure hope I'm right. Rickey, call Casey and tell him what happened."
She complied. A few minutes later, there came a loud banging at the front door.
"Come on in," Lash said, throwing open the door and stepping back. "When I have more time, I'm going to tutor you on the use of a doorbell."
Casey strode into the room, followed by a couple of medics. He spotted Caldwell's body and said, "Your girl didn't say this was a homicide! Dammit, I'm going to..."
"Hold up a minute Casey," Lash said. "I need to have a talk with you. All will be made clear-- sort of."
The detective agreed. The talk lasted for two minutes. Casey's entire bearing and manner changed drastically as he listened to what Lash told him. He arranged to have Jack Caldwell's body removed from Lash's apartment and taken to the facility Lash had suggested. Lash, meanwhile, had gone back into the lab to prepare a small package. He gave it to a uniformed officer and told him to get it to police headquarters as fast as he could.
"Okay, Lash," the detective said, "what, exactly, went on with Caldwell?"
"He was poisoned, alright," the criminologist said. "But it wasn't by any ray."
The New Adventures of Lynn Lash Page 6