“At the last name he checked off. Rose Sweeney. It’s just down the street.”
They left the body in the care of the technical men with their cameras and plastic bags and went in search of Rose Sweeney. She proved to be a buxom woman of forty or so, with graying hair and thick, round glasses that gave her the look of a startled owl. Her apartment was cluttered with the flotsam of a lifetime, piled here and there on tables as if she’d just moved in. Through it all, she seemed to feel her way as she directed them to dusty chairs.
“Yes,” she said in answer to their first question, “that nice Mr. Mercer was here for his money just about an hour ago.”
“Did he seem upset, nervous?”
“No, just quiet. More quiet than usual, I’d say. I gave him the money—four dollars—and he left right away.”
“Did he always come at the same time?”
She blinked her eyes and nodded. “Every other Tuesday morning, first thing. Right after he calls on Mr. Tydings down the street. What’s the matter? Is something wrong?” She looked from one to the other, seeming to smell the odor of panic they’d brought with them to her cluttered apartment.
When they left Rose Sweeney, Leopold sent Fletcher to check on the apartment houses across the street while he continued down the block to the little clapboard cottage owned by Mr. Tydings. In its day, when the area had prided itself on horse-drawn carriages and a good view of the river a few miles below, the cottage had probably been a little gem set among the larger homes. Now, with the area racially mixed, with Polish and Irish and Negro and Puerto Rican workers living in what had originally been the Italian section of town, the cottage had taken on a shabby appearance.
And George Tydings himself was no less shabby. He needed a shave, and his pale thin hands shook with the effects of some early-morning drinking. The bottle, cheap vodka, was still visible on the kitchen table. “What is it?” he asked tiredly. “What’s all the trouble?”
“There’s been a shooting,” Leopold told him, getting directly to it. “The insurance man—James Mercer. I understand he called on you earlier this morning.”
“Sure. He was here. I paid him my money and he left.”
“Nothing unusual?”
“He seemed the same as always.”
“And you saw nothing through your windows?”
“Not a thing.” He wandered back out to the kitchen, seeking his bottle. Leopold watched him weave carefully around a low bookcase that partially blocked the kitchen door. While Tydings poured himself a drink from the bottle, Leopold glanced at the ragged paper-bound books that filled the case. But there was nothing unusual—mysteries, science fiction, a few modern novels by Roth and Bellow and Updike, a book on ventriloquism, and another on bricklaying. In a mystery novel that would have been a clue, and Leopold found his mind concocting strange combinations—a voice from inside a walled-up tomb, with some sort of Poe-esque twist at the end. A ventriloquist kills his wife, then—
“Want a drink?” George Tydings called from the kitchen table.
“Too early in the day,” Leopold said. “You a bricklayer?”
“Huh? Oh, the book. I was going to put a barbecue pit in the back yard. Never got around to it. Neighborhood’s going to pot. So why bother?” He came back in, moving again around the awkwardly placed bookcase.
“Live here alone?”
A nod. “Since my wife left me. She fooled around with the milkman—would you believe it, the milkman?—and I finally tossed her out. Lost my job last week, too.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
Tydings seemed suddenly sad and sober. “Had a good job, too. I went to college for two years. Wouldn’t believe it now, would you?”
Leopold let himself out the front door and walked around the back of the cottage, through weeds and grass coming alive with the rains of spring. There was no barbecue pit. He walked farther, to a rear alley, and followed it behind an apartment building to the alley where Mercer’s body had been found. Sergeant Fletcher was there waiting for him, but by now the body had been taken away.
“Find anything, Captain?”
“Probably nothing. Check on a man named Tydings, especially on a wife who’s supposed to have left him recently. And while you’re at it, do a check on Rose Sweeney.” He glanced down at the alley pavement where the body had been lying. “How about you? Anything?”
“Maybe,” Fletcher answered. “You should talk to him.”
“Him? Who?”
“Name’s Kansas Johnson—lives across the street. He was next on the collection list, but Mercer never got there.”
Johnson was standing tall and silent in the street with one of the uniformed patrolmen. “You Kansas Johnson?” Leopold asked.
“That’s me.”
“What did you see?”
“Nothin’.”
Leopold turned to Fletcher. “Well?”
“He had a fight with Mercer last month when he came to collect. Punched him in the jaw.”
Johnson shifted his feet. “Not hard. I just tapped him. He came up behind me in the street and grabbed my shoulder. I didn’t know who it was at first. Hell, I paid him the money and said I was sorry.”
“And you didn’t see him today?”
“No, sir.”
Leopold sighed, then turned to Fletcher. “You’d better get a full statement from him about the incident last month. Then see what else you can find around here. I’m going back downtown.”
It was mid-afternoon when James Mercer’s widow arrived with her brother to identify the body. She was a handsome woman with faded blonde hair and what was still a good figure. Leopold questioned her briefly. It was a part of the job he never liked.
“Mrs. Mercer, did your husband have any enemies?”
“None. Everyone liked him.”
“Did he say anything about a fight he had with a man named Kansas Johnson a few weeks back?”
“No. He didn’t tell me much.”
“Do you have any children?”
“A son away at college.”
The brother cleared his throat. “Mrs. Mercer is highly distraught, Captain. Is all this questioning necessary?”
“I’m sorry,” Leopold agreed. “That will be all. If you will just identify the body—”
Later, when Leopold was alone again, Tommy Gibson strolled into the office. “I guess you’re in on the big bandit hunt too, Captain.”
“If the bandit did it.”
“It sure looks like him from where I stand. Fits him like a glove.”
“Except how did he know Mercer was collecting?”
Tommy Gibson dropped into a chair and lit a cigarette. “What the hell! He knew Mercer, or he followed him. I don’t know! I just know I’d bet my badge it’s the rainy-day bandit.”
“Look,” Leopold tried to reason, “would Mercer be the type to jump a man with a gun?”
“Sure. Why not?”
“Last month a fellow named Johnson punched him and apparently Mercer didn’t hit back. He doesn’t sound like the sort to go after a man with a gun.”
Sergeant Fletcher came in then, his coat dripping from the renewed rain. “I think we’ll need an ark to get home tonight,” he grumbled. “Hi, Tommy.”
Leopold leaned back in his chair. “What’s the report?”
“I’ve got lots of info, but none of it’s much good. The fight between Mercer and Kansas was strictly a one-punch affair, a misunderstanding. Nothing to it. And Tydings’ wife really left him. She’s living in Boston.”
Leopold nodded. “Anything else?”
“The woman, Rose Sweeney—she’s legally blind.”
“What?”
“Oh, she can see a little with those thick glasses—shapes and things—but the neighbors claim it’s bad enough to get her a pension for being blind.”
“Then she might not have seen the killer if he was right behind Mercer.”
“Probably not,” Fletcher agreed.
Leopold didn’t like it. “
What about the bullet?” he asked.
“A .38. It could have come from the type of gun the rainy-day bandit always carries.”
Leopold knew the type of gun. He kept one locked in the glove compartment of his car, though he’d never had to use it. “Anything else?”
“Nothing much. Except that he wasn’t killed where we found the body.”
Leopold wasn’t sure he’d heard correctly. “What?”
“He wasn’t killed there. Not enough blood. And the soles of his shoes were dry. He was shot somewhere else and dropped there.”
“Oh.”
“What do you think, Captain?”
Leopold reached for a cigarette. He rarely smoked these days, but he needed one just then. “I think that pretty much rules out the rainy-day bandit.”
Tommy Gibson grunted agreement. “It might rule out robbery as a motive, too.”
“He’s right,” Leopold told Fletcher. “A robber wouldn’t bother moving the body.”
“So where are we?”
“Nowhere,” Leopold admitted. “Start checking the usual angles—wife, brother-in-law. And go talk to that Rose Sweeney again. Whatever happened, it was after he left her apartment.”
It was raining harder when Leopold headed home, a little after nine.
At eight o’clock the following morning it was still raining although the weather forecast was optimistic for the afternoon. Leopold had left his lonely apartment early, as was his habit when working on a difficult case. Fletcher had a wife and children to occupy him at home, and Leopold didn’t mind doing a bit of the legwork at times like this. He was well aware that only a political expediency had brought him the rank of captain in the first place. In another time, another city, he would have ranked no higher than Tommy Gibson’s lieutenancy.
But there were certain privileges that came with the rank of captain. If they didn’t extend to a free car wash at the headquarters garage, they did include a police radio installed under the dashboard of his own car. Now, flipping it on through habit, he heard a routine report of a robbery in progress. “All cars, all cars! Masked man observed entering all-night diner at Fifth and Lakefront. Proceed with caution. May be rainy-day bandit.”
Leopold glanced at the street sign and realized he was only four blocks from the scene. He gunned the motor and raced down a side street.
The pavement on Lakefront was slick from the rain as he turned into it on two wheels, almost overturning. He slowed his speed as the diner came into view, then saw the masked figure dart from the doorway. The man saw and recognized him, and now he broke into a run, heading across a field.
Leopold skidded the car to a stop and jumped out, tugging at his service revolver. “Stop or I’ll shoot!” he shouted into the morning air.
The masked bandit turned and brought up the familiar nickel-plated revolver. But then suddenly he slipped on the wet grass and the gun roared harmlessly into the air. Leopold knelt and fired once and thought he’d hit the mark, but the bandit scrambled to his feet and was off and running again. Leopold fired once more and missed, then saw a police car pull up on the side street and two officers joined in the chase. It seemed for a moment that the masked man was trapped. They had backed him against a rain-flooded creek that was surely too wide to jump.
But again he fooled them. He launched himself across the water with a flying leap as Leopold and the officers all fired. The three bullets might have been made of putty. The bandit glanced back once, then vanished into the woods beyond the creek.
Leopold shouted at the nearest officer. “Captain Leopold, Homicide! Get back to your car and call for help. Try to head him off on the other side of the woods. We might have a chance of catching him.”
“The guy’s a damned phantom!”
“That’s the reputation he’s got,” Leopold said, brushing off his trousers under the raincoat. “You were just shooting at the rainy-day bandit.”
“I’ll be damned!”
“But I think he dropped something when he fell.” Leopold headed back for the spot in the grass and after a moment’s searching found it. “His gun!” He picked up the revolver carefully, hoping for prints but knowing it was probably useless.
“Think that’ll help identify him, Captain?” one of the officers asked.
“I don’t know. But at least it’ll tell me whether or not he killed a man named James Mercer.”
Fletcher phoned in just after lunch. “Hey, Captain, the sun’s shining out here!”
Leopold grunted. “Where are you—Florida?”
“Would you believe Centerville?”
“I’d believe anything. But why Centerville?”
“Checking on Mercer’s brother-in-law. He lives over here. He’s clear, though. He was in his office all morning till his sister called him about the murder.”
“It was worth checking anyway. When you come in I’ll tell you about my shoot-out with the rainy-day bandit.”
“You got him?”
“No.”
“Oh.”
“But I’ll tell you about it.” He hung up and went to look out the window, seeking some break in the clouds to the west. After all, Centerville wasn’t that far away.
“Captain?”
“Yes, Tommy.”
Lieutenant Gibson placed a typed report carefully on Leopold’s desk. “It’s the ballistics check on the bandit’s revolver.”
“Same gun that killed James Mercer?”
“No. Nothing like it.”
When Gibson didn’t move away from the desk, Leopold turned from the window. “Then what’s the trouble, man? Why are you standing there like that?”
“It’s just that—well, I think you must have gotten the weapons confused, Captain.”
“Confused?”
“We checked the ownership on the gun—and it’s registered to you.”
“To me!” Leopold snorted. “That’s impossible! I fired at him with my service revolver. It doesn’t look anything like this weapon.”
But Gibson stood firm. “Nevertheless, Captain, the serial number shows the gun’s been registered to you for three years.”
“Let me see that!” Leopold snatched both report and weapon. The gun did look familiar. Too familiar. He wondered why he hadn’t realized it when he picked it up from the grass. “It was stolen from me,” he said quietly.
Tommy Gibson frowned. “By someone in the department, Captain? I hope you don’t mean—”
The telephone rang and Leopold answered it. “Yes? Leopold here.”
“Captain, we just got a trouble call from a Miss Rose Sweeney on Carter Street. She asked for you.”
“I’m on my way,” Leopold almost shouted. Outside, the sun had finally broken through the clouds.
He parked in a puddle outside her apartment, thankful that a patrol car was already on the scene. Rose Sweeney was inside with the officer, tears rolling from behind the thick glasses that covered her eyes. “He tried to kill me,” she sobbed. “I opened the door and he grabbed at my throat!”
“Who was it, Miss Sweeney?”
“I couldn’t see. Just a shape in the doorway. When I started screaming he ran away.”
“Come on,” Leopold told the officer. “I’ve got a hunch.”
He led the way down the street, aware of the sunlight reflecting on the puddles of water, more aware of the curtains moving in windows as the people of Carter Street watched this latest incident. He recognized Kansas Johnson across the way, ducking into an alley between two apartment buildings.
They reached the little cottage of George Tydings just as he was closing the front door. Leopold hit the door with his shoulder and pushed it open. “Hello again, Mr. Tydings.”
“What do you want now? What is all this?”
“A little conversation, that’s all.” Leopold saw the suitcase half packed on the floor. “You weren’t thinking of taking a trip, were you?”
Then Leopold said to the officer, “Move that bookcase aside and see if there’s a bl
oodstain on the rug under it.”
George Tydings took a step backward, and then seemed about to spring on them. But all at once he collapsed into sobs. “All right, I did it! I killed him!”
Leopold cleared his throat. “I must warn you of your rights under the law. You need make no statement until your lawyer is present.”
“What difference does it make? I killed him. I dropped the gun down the sewer in the back alley.” He sat down at the table, looking up at Leopold. “How’d you know about the bloodstain?”
“The bookcase was half blocking the kitchen door. It just seemed out of place on my earlier visit. When I learned that Mercer had been killed elsewhere, a hidden bloodstain seemed at least a possibility. You killed him here, then carried his body out the back door and through the alleys to where it was found. I took the route myself the other morning. Once you’d killed him, you hit on a clever gimmick that almost worked. You knew he collected from Rose Sweeney next, and you knew she was almost blind—could distinguish only shapes. So you went there, pretending to be Mercer, and collected her money. You wanted it to appear that the killing took place after he left your cottage. You’re interested in ventriloquism, so I assume you could change your voice enough to approximate Mercer’s. Besides, she said he was quiet that day. Only you began to worry that she’d recognized you after all, and so you tried to kill her just now.”
Tydings had buried his head in his hands. “You don’t know how it was,” he sobbed.
“I think I can guess,” Leopold said. “You stole the collection money to make it look like the work of the rainy-day bandit, but in reality your motive was quite different. You told us your wife was fooling around with the milkman. It’s not too far-fetched to suppose she was fooling around with the insurance man too when he dropped by. Perhaps he admitted it when you accused him, or perhaps you didn’t need an admission to believe the worst and kill him.”
“Yes,” Tydings mumbled. “Yes.” Leopold wasn’t sure which question he was answering, which guilt he was admitting. But it really didn’t matter any more.
Tommy Gibson came in the following morning while Leopold and Fletcher were having their morning coffee. “You did mighty nice work on that Mercer killing, Captain.”
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