The Complete Casebook of Cardigan, Volume 2: 1933

by Frederick Nebel

  “As if I care. I nailed her when she was a kid and didn’t know any better. She didn’t frame the judge, Cardigan. I got around that. I was up to her flat one day last week and I picked up something she clipped from the newspaper. About the judge. It was an article about his habits, and one of them was about how for many years the Elmo Company sent him a box of cigars regularly on the fifteenth and the end of the month. It gave me an idea—turn left here—it gave me an idea and I sent for a box of cigars. I took the wrapper off and used a chemical to removed my address. I steamed off the address sticker and monkeyed around some typewriter stores and wrote in the judge’s. I used a chemical, too, to take off the postmark. I burned the cigars out of the box and fitted in the bomb so it would go off when the box cover was pried up.

  “Well, it worked, didn’t it? Seeing a package from the cigar company arriving around the time one always arrived, the judge was caught napping. Even Beth didn’t suspect. Not at first. After the fireworks, she knew. So she went down to the office early this morning and did away with the genuine box that arrived in this morning’s mail. Not because she likes me. But she was scared. She’s nuts about the kid. She’s funny that way. Women are saps, Cardigan.”

  Cardigan said: “You seem proud of yourself.”

  “Why not? I did a neat job. I learned a lot of things in the big house, copper. I learned that when a cop gets too wise there’s only one thing to do.”

  “You also talk like a hop-head.”

  “I learned about that, too, in stir,” he laughed. “I know a nice alley down here in a condemned part of town. No cops around and no people. Only cats—and cats don’t talk. And the woman will never talk. Because she loves the kid and the kid don’t know her old man’s a murderer. Ain’t that cute? I can use Beth for a lot of jobs now, Cardigan—because I hold a lot over her. She’d die for the kid.”

  “You hop-heads always give me a pain.”

  “In a minute, boy, I’ll give you a big one you’ll never get over. Here’s the alley. Turn into it.”

  Cardigan growled: “Now look here, Fitch. Don’t be a bum. Give me a break—”

  “You’ll be better dead, buddy.”

  Cardigan’s face was gray, muscles bulged at the corners of his mouth and his tongue, his throat, felt dry. He knew he couldn’t talk himself out of this. He saw the man was too far away for any quick trick to be effective. He licked his lips, and then he sneered, snarled: “Go ahead, you yellow heel, cut loose!”

  A GUN banged twice and Cardigan closed his eyes but felt no pain, no shock. He opened his eyes and saw he was still standing. But he saw that Fitch was writhing on the ground. He started, looked up the alley. He broke into a fast run and at the mouth of the alley he saw Beth Tindale leaning weakly against the wall, a smoking gun in her hand.

  “I—I couldn’t let him do it. I—I couldn’t—”

  He snatched the gun from her hand. “Beat it! Get out of here! Hit that alley across the street and fade.” He shook her. “You hear me! Beat it! I’ll take care of this! Go on!” He shoved her and she turned and staggered across the street and entered the alley beyond. She turned around. He waved to her and then motioned for her to hasten on.

  He hurried back to where Fitch was writhing on the ground. Somewhere a police whistle shrilled.

  Cardigan leaned down and said bitterly: “Listen, Fitch! A cop’s coming!”

  “Save me! Get me to a hospital—”

  “Hate to die, huh? Listen, you rat. When that cop comes I’m going to stand over you and if you don’t tell him you killed Judge Barron I’m going to kill you—”

  Two cops came running down the alley. Cardigan held up his hands and said: “Here he is, boys!”

  “Who?”

  “Fitch.”

  He stood over Fitch with his hand bulging in his pocket. Fitch writhed and screamed. “A doctor! A hospital! Get me—get me to a doctor! I—I killed Barron! I—I can’t stand this pain! Go get me a doctor—a doctor! Why are you all waiting around? I told you, didn’t I? Didn’t I say I killed Judge Barron? A doc—doctor—” He choked, threshed on the ground.

  One of the cops said: “The judge said something about a guy named Fitch.”

  “You heard what Fitch said, didn’t you?” Cardigan asked.

  “Sure.”

  “And you?” he flung at the other cop.

  “I ain’t deaf.”

  “Swell. Now get an ambulance.”

  The cop pointed. “Hell, look—he don’t need an ambulance any more. See? Take a look at his eyes now—”

  “I’ll go phone H.Q. and the morgue,” the other cop said.

  “Yeah,” said Cardigan. “And call Hagin too.”

  “Hagin?”

  “Hagin. Tell him a draper from New York by the name of Cardigan wants to hang something dark on his eye.”

  Me—Cardigan

  Chapter One

  The Hanging Texan

  CARDIGAN put a quarter in the slot-machine, tugged at the crank. The cylinders spun and some aces showed and eight quarters clattered into the scoop. He whistled and went over to the bar and said to Alex: “O.K., handsome; Scotch and Perrier and so help me it’s my last…. Why don’t you answer the phone?”

  Alex pulled at a beefy ear, spun a bottle of Scotch. It slapped with a neat, wet sound in his palm, and thumb and forefinger oozed the cork out silently. He clanked in ice and the glass slid across the wet bar, stopped against Cardigan’s hand. Alex opened a pot-bellied bottle of Perrier and the water fizzed up, over.

  “I hate to hear phones ring,” Cardigan said.

  Alex was mournful. “What you doin’ now dese days?”

  “Over at the Hotel Gascogne batting for the house dick. His grandmother—or aunt—or maybe it was his wife—died out in Okmulgee. Go ahead, be big-hearted; answer the phone.”

  Alex sighed. “I had a wife once. She died in a foreign country too. Glasgow…. T’ ’ell wit’ de phone. It’s some blonde achin’ I should be her pay-check. It pains me de way dey go weak kneed over me.”

  “It must be those pretzel ears. I knew a girl once—she had a weakness for bowed legs. But she wound up by marrying a knock-kneed guy. It wasn’t her fault; she was cross-eyed.”

  “Phooey!” Alex said disconsolately, and spat. He turned around and eyed the telephone darkly, then made a jab at it, unhooked it and barked: “Whatcha want?” He blinked. “Oh, I getcha…. Yeah. Hang on.” He reached the instrument across the bar. “You, Jack.”

  Cardigan said into the mouthpiece: “Me—Cardigan…. All right, have it your way: I—Cardigan. And don’t that make me sound like I just used talcum!… Go ahead, precious, shoot…. Who said so?… They are, eh?… Act important till I get there.”

  He hung up, swallowed the last of his drink. “Be seeing you, Alex.”

  “What’s up?”

  “Some guy was tired of it all.”

  HE slapped open the door. Cold winter air of a dark starlit but moonless night struck him, flooded him. He inhaled deeply, yanked his battered fedora well down, jammed his hands into the pockets of his baggy old ulster. He stretched his legs in a brisk walk up Lexington. Nine o’clock traffic hooted and blared about him. Pedestrians tussled at Forty-second Street, and automobiles, getting a northbound green light, scooted across the intersection with a clashing of gears, a grinding sound of motors.

  He walked north, turned east, nodded to the liveried doorman in front of the Gascogne, elbowed his way through the heavy swing doors and struck his heels across the vast dim-lit lobby. Many people drifted about; some hurried. There was dance music in the Peacock Room. A page boy shrilled. Hotel life went on.

  The third assistant manager stopped him, said in a low voice: “It’s in Fourteen-twelve.”

  “Alone?”

  “Yes.”

  The third assistant manager shifted his eyes. “Miss Seaward just came down. She’s in the office.”

  “Thanks.”

  Cardigan went down a corridor back of the desk, opene
d a door marked “Private” and was shrugging out of his overcoat as he kicked the door shut.

  “Thanks for hanging around, Pat.”

  Pat Seaward puffed a cigarette. “I thought you said you’d be gone only ten minutes.”

  “I know….” He hung his hat on the costumer, headed back for the door. “Who’s the shamus on the job?”

  “Doake.”

  “Coming up?”

  She made a face. “I—I’d rather not. It must be something I ate.”

  “See you some more.”

  He went around to the elevator bank, caught an up-bound car and rode to the fourteenth floor. There was a party going on in one of the suites. A waiter was wheeling a tray loaded down with food. Cardigan palmed the knob of the door of 1412 and pushed into a small foyer. An open arch was at the left.

  “There he is now,” a voice said.

  A uniformed cop was standing spread-legged, doing tricks with a nightstick. A stocky man with a high haircut and a hard white nape, had the skirt of his overcoat bunched up behind and wedged between hands that were thrust into hip pockets.

  This man said vacantly: “Hello, Irish.”

  “Hello, Doake. What is it?”

  Huys, the manager, gesticulated with plump womanish hands. “Suicide!” His full lips worked hard over each syllable.

  “Hung himself,” Dirigo said. Dirigo was Doake’s companion and sat in an armchair, legs out, thumbs hooked in armholes of his vest and fingers drumming on his chest. “A new way, too.”

  Doake was surly, guttural. “An old guy fed up on this racket called life.”

  Cardigan went past Doake, dropped to one knee, leaned with his elbows on the other. He saw a man in a black suit of some hard, coarse material; a hard white collar; a loud tie. The mustache was long, straggly, wheaty in color; the hair was thin and it was straggly, too. A bony, broad-shouldered man. His face was discolored and all out of shape.

  “Name?” Cardigan said.

  “Henry Attleman,” Huys, the manager, said.

  “Where from?”

  “Fort Worth, Texas.” Huys coughed behind his womanish hand. “As soon as the man from the medical office arrives, settles things— ” He stopped, made a faint little gesture. “You will stay here, I suppose, Mr. Cardigan. I have to go. This must be kept silent. It is not good for the hotel. I am allowing no reporters up. We are friendly with the reporters and if the death is given any notice at all, the name of the hotel will not be mentioned. It is—ahem—not good for the ho— Well, I shall go, then.”

  He went.

  Dirigo rose, stretched, said: “Open and shut. So you’re key-holing for the chateau these days.”

  Cardigan, eyeing the body thoughtfully, said: “For a little while, Dirigo. I’ve got to do a lot of things I don’t like. Tax payers don’t pay me. How’d he do it?”

  Doake took his hands out of his hip pockets, walked across the room and opened the closet door. “He hung himself with the rope from his bathrobe. He made a loop of the rope, put the loop around his neck, went in the closet, threw the loose end over the top of the door and slammed the door shut. Then he just must have let himself sag. The maid came at half-past eight to turn down his bed. She also brought along some paper laundry bags. She turned down the bed and then came to the closet to put the bags in. She opened the door and—bingo!—the guy hit the floor. They called us.”

  “Leave any note?”

  “No.”

  “Maybe he couldn’t write,” Dirigo said.

  Cardigan said: “Swell sense of humor, Dirigo—only it needs a little cleaning up.”

  The man from the medical office came, examined the body, said the man had been dead about three hours. A police photographer took pictures.

  “Got his Fort Worth address?” Cardigan said.

  The photographer said, pointing: “I’ll bet he was hung!”

  Doake said: “Go on, go home. You’re always showing us up.” Then he said: “Lived here a week tonight, Irish. No street address. He has an old wallet damned near the size of a brief-case—it’s over on the desk there. Got some old newspaper clippings—about oil, gold, Mexican border risings—but outside of that nothing to tickle my nose. Twenty bucks—that’s all. I figure he came here, signed at the hotel—manager says this room is six smackers a day—and then went on a spree. Maybe when he came to he found Broadway prices steeper than Texas prices. Maybe he got rolled for his jack in some speakeasy—hell knows. Then he probably got scared—he owes a bill here of eighty bucks. He ate like a horse. Maybe he got scared—or intended doing the Dutch anyhow…. What do you say, Doc?”

  The man from the medical office said: “Suicide, of course.”

  “You’re writing that down, huh?”

  “Absolute.”

  “That suits me. Dirigo, report it’s a suicide. Then ring the morgue. I’ll wire the Fort Worth authorities and see if they can locate any relatives.”

  Cardigan said: “Mind if I hang on to that wallet a while?”

  “Go ahead,” Doake said, glumly.

  Dirigo said: “Better take the dough out, Doake.”

  “I still think you ought to use a good mouth-wash, Dirigo,” Cardigan said; then to the medical-office man: “No signs of violence, eh?”

  “None, Cardigan. Look for yourself.”

  “You’d know,” Cardigan said.

  Doake put in sourly: “The doc and I agree it’s suicide, Cardigan. Both our reports go in like that. I don’t want you going in for a grandstand play just to be wise. For once in your life learn to play ball.”

  THE body was removed by way of a freight elevator, by way of an inconspicuous side exit. The manager was on hand to see that the removal was effected quietly. A big dinner was going on in honor of Miss Bubbles McFee, blues-singing wit of the musical show Hot Harlem. The manager grinned and was happy when he learned that the police had reported death by suicide. He returned to the festive dinner riding lightly on the balls of his feet, flexing his plump womanish hands. The press promised no more than six lines on an obscure page. “Capital!” he exclaimed.

  Cardigan remained in the large room, sitting on the studio bed. He pushed coarse tobacco into a battered old briar, lit up and puffed, sent his eyes roaming around the room. After a while Pat Seaward came in. She was small, trim, in a dark brown suit, a pert little hat that eclipsed one neatly plucked eyebrow.

  “Took him away, chief?”

  “Yeah.” He was in a brown study, the newspaper clippings idle in his hand.

  “Poor little old man,” she sighed.

  He nodded. “What I was thinking. Poor little old guy comes up to a swanky hotel, lives a week, and then gets a pass on balls. Or maybe he was hit—walked to first base.”

  She put dark pretty eyes on him. “You’re not thinking—”

  “Why shouldn’t I?” He rose suddenly, walked across the room to the lowboy and scooped up a small triangular black box lettered in gold. He opened the box revealing a small triangular-shaped bottle. “You know your stuff, Pat. What’s this perfume cost a bottle?”

  She came over. “You ought to know. You bought me a bottle once—a year ago.”

  “Did I?”

  “You were drunk at the time. Anyhow, it cost thirty-two dollars.”

  Cardigan said: “Attleman never used it.”

  “Nobody’s used it yet.”

  “I know.”

  She raised her brown eyes quizzically.

  He put down the bottle of perfume, crossed to the bed and picked up the newspaper clippings. “These,” he said, “go back ten years. There are six of them and the latest is dated over a year ago. They tell about oil finds in Texas, about a cattle deal in New Mexico, about a nugget picked up in Arizona and about another picked up in Mexico. The funniest thing about all these clippings—Doake didn’t notice it—is that all these clippings concern one man—a man named Henderson—Joe Henderson.”

  “Pal of Attleman, no doubt.”

  “No doubt. As near as I can figur
e from these clippings, this bird Henderson cleaned up seventy thousand dollars in the past ten years. He apparently hung his hat in Fort Worth when he wasn’t on the prod.”

  Pat said: “Oh, forget it, chief.”

  He stared across the room. “Attleman bought that bottle of perfume for somebody.” He went to the lowboy, picked up the box. There was a little white sticker on the bottom. “He bought it at Aliénor’s, on Fifth Avenue. What is it?”

  “Attar of Roses.”

  He smelled it, corked the bottle. He went out into the corridor, returned in a minute and stared at the closet. He said: “The other side of that closet is a shaftway, which means the wall would be doubly fireproof, pretty soundproof. Now wait a minute.” He opened the closet door, entered, closed the door. In a moment he reappeared. “Hear anything?”

  “Just a little sound.”

  Cardigan said: “I yelled.”

  “Chief, what are you driving at?”

  He made another search of the room, the bathroom, reappeared and said: “Attlemen smelled of liquor. He was drunk when he hanged. That waste basket hasn’t been emptied. There’s a box in there that contained a tube of shaving cream, and the paper it came in. There’s no liquor in here—not even an empty bottle. Where’s the telephone book?”

  “What do you want with it?”

  He swung across the room and found the book. “The hotel operator said he made three local calls but of course she doesn’t remember what numbers he called. He may have marked alongside a number, or turned a page down—”

  “What’s that?”

  “What?”

  “That piece of—” She crossed to him, opened the book. “He used a hotel envelope for a marker. Why, chief, he—”

  “Baby!”

  He laid down the open book, picked up the envelope. Scrawled on the envelope was, “Waterman 4-1141.”

  Pat said, shrugging: “That doesn’t help.”

  “Oh, no?”

  He sat down, laid the book on his knees and began running his finger down the lists of telephone numbers on the two open pages. Halfway down the second page he stopped.

  He said: “Here it is. Pompano’s, in East Thirty-sixth Street.”