by Keene, Day
“Do you remember a guest named Wilma Stanis?”
“You mean that broad the police think got stuffed into a furnace by some high-school teacher?”
“That’s right.”
“Yeah. Sure. I remember her. Why?”
Lathrop laid a ten-dollar bill on top of the racing form. “What can you tell me about her?”
The bell captain put the bill in his pocket. “You’re not a cop, that’s for sure. And they’ve been all over the place all day. What do you want to know about her?”
“How did she conduct herself while she lived here?”
“Like a lady.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Just that.”
“Didn’t she ever have any guests?”
“You mean did she ever run short and make her rent on her back?”
“That’s one way of putting it.”
The bell captain shook his head. “Not her. Not that we don’t have a few babies living here who are willing to be sociable.” He shook his head. “But not Miss Stanis. You could have knocked me over with a fifth of Three Feathers when I read she had a police record and a two-hundred-grand sock-full of ice. What’s your angle? You a private eye or an insurance man?”
“No,” Lathrop said. “Nothing like that. I’m just the high-school teacher the police suspect of stuffing her into the furnace.”
There was a small Chinese restaurant not far from the corner. Lathrop sat at the counter between a blowzy brunette and a drunk and drank two cups of black coffee. He felt better, much better, after his talk with the bell captain. Not once since this thing had begun had he heard anyone make a derogatory remark about Wilma’s morals. She might have used him as a hideaway but she had obviously been trying to go straight. All fingers pointed in that direction. And if she wasn’t, and had never been a pushover, it stood to reason that she had cared for him when she had accepted his proposal, that she had been trying to build a new life and had done so successfully until the two men who had slugged him in the parking lot had caught up with her.
The missing jewels were another matter. It was logical to assume she had them. But why she had kept them, or where, was beyond him. Then there was another matter. How had the two men located her? For some reason Lathrop thought of Vladimir. The blond youth was the type of man who would sell his own sister for a dime, if the dime went into his pocket. His seeming concern for his feeble-minded sister could be a pose.
“You can look but don’t try to touch her. If you do, so help me, God, I’ll kill you.”
It had sounded theatrical at the time and a little out of place. Then there had been Vladimir’s behaviour at Central Bureau. Vladimir had talked to him openly about Wilma’s police record. Still, at Central Bureau he had denied knowing she had one. There were also Vladimir’s bi-weekly calls on Wilma to consider. Lathrop doubted if they were inspired by fraternal affection. It was much more likely he had been bleeding her for what he could under the threat of exposure.
On a hunch Lathrop asked the Chinese back of the counter, “How much is standing rib roast a pound?”
“I beg your pardon?” the counterman asked in flawless English.
“How much is standing rib a rpound?”
“I think we pay around sixty cents. Wholesale, that is.”
“How much would it be retail?”
“Seventy, possibly seventy-five cents.”
Lathrop considered the information. Seventy-five from ninety-eight cents left twenty-three cents, a small amount in itself but capable of building to a substantial sum when multiplied by six or seven and added to by a five-cent overcharge on every can of beans or tomatoes or corn or peck of potatoes that Wilma bought. He had never paid much attention to Wilma’s household account. When she said she needed so much for groceries or other household necessities he had given her what she had asked for without question. If Vladimir had been blackmailing her she could easily have held out ten to fifteen dollars a week, in addition to the money he had given her for clothes.
Lathrop ordered a third cup of coffee.
“Are you making a survey of some kind?” the counterman asked him.
“You could call it that.” Lathrop’s mind raced on. Vladimir dressed and looked like a small-time poolroom shark. He had been very indignant about Wilma breaking into the big time. But even petty chisellers could be ambitious. What if Vladimir had known about the jewels? What if he had contacted the remnants of Raoul Contini’s mob and had offered to finger both Wilma and the jewels for a share of the missing diamonds?
It was a distinct possibility. Vladimir had been in a position to make an impression of Wilma’s house key. If she had awakened to find him in the flat at one o’clock in the morning, it was unlikely that she would scream. It was much more likely she would have attempted to reason with him, in her anxiety to keep both her family and her past hidden. Vladimir could have persuaded her to go with him and have a talk with the two men. Then, on their way out, he could have stopped to drop the ring and bobby pins and slippers in the fire box and have encountered Nielsen making a late tour of his fires.
There were flaws in the theory, a lot of them, but it was worth investigating.
Lathrop realized the blowzy blonde was talking to him. He looked sideways at her. “I beg your pardon?”
“I said, how about it?”
“How about what?”
“You haven’t been listening to a word I’ve been saying.”
“I’m afraid I haven’t.”
He paid his check and left the restaurant. He might have something, or nothing. At least it was better than beating his head against a wall.
Huddled in the doorway of the restaurant against the cold wind sweeping a Utter of old newspapers and other debris up the neon-lighted street, Lathrop considered going directly to the police. He was tempted. But the police might laugh at him. Worse, they might detain him. Harris had warned him he might be picked up any minute and before he was arrested and charged with a crime he hadn’t committed, he wanted to retain a lawyer to define and represent his rights. He wanted to talk to Vladimir.
It wasn’t a nice feeling, this not knowing if he was a wanted man. Lathrop glanced furtively up, then down the street. If the police were looking for him it wouldn’t be safe for him to take a cab to Ramsey’s house. If the cab dispatchers had been alerted, as soon as the driver made his trip call the dispatcher would call the police and a squad car would be waiting in front of the lawyer’s house.
Lathrop tried to remember where his car was. So much had happened it was difficult for him to list events in their chronological order. But, to the best of his recollection, he hadn’t driven anywhere since he had returned from the Stanislawow house to find a yellow Buick usurping his usual parking space. Since then he had ridden in police cars or taxis. His car should be parked a quarter of a block from the house.
He walked east through the cold to Sheridan Road, took the first bus that came along and transferred at Diversey Avenue. No one paid any attention to him. It took him an hour to reach the square. The windows of his flat were dark but there were lights on both the first and the third floors and a thin plume of smoke was curling from the chimney. At least the police had allowed the new janitor to build a fire.
His car was where he had left it. He got in and attempted to start it. The car had stood in the cold so long that it started reluctantly but once the motor turned over it gave him no further trouble.
Lathrop thought a moment before moving the lever to Drive. If he remembered correctly, the Fair Oaks section of Oak Park adjoined the Chicago City limits on the south side of North Avenue, west of Austin Boulevard. He started off.
He drove carefully, making certain to stop at all traffic lights and through streets. Twice he thought he was being followed but both times the car behind him turned down a dark side street.
North Avenue was cleared of snow but the pavement was slick with ice. As he passed Austin Boulevard he was tempted to drive to the M
ercer Street address and have a showdown with Vladimir. However, he wanted to talk to the lawyer first. He wanted to be certain someone knew of the theory he’d conceived. Besides, if what he was assuming was correct, Vladimir wasn’t going anywhere. He was stuck with the character he’d assumed, that of the loving but oh-so-innocent brother.
1521 Fair Oaks Avenue proved to be an attractive field stone and timber house in a neighbourhood of equally high-priced homes. The upper floor was dark but there was a light behind the drawn drapes of the mullioned windows of the living-room. Here, except for the precisely shovelled walks, a few sled tracks and a path gouged by the rolled snowball of a half-finished snow man, the recent fall of snow was unbroken.
Lathrop parked behind another parked car at the kerb, under an ancient oak tree whose leafless limbs reached across the street to mesh with the limbs of the trees growing out of the far parkway. The moon was as cold as the night and the light filtering through the bare branches cast odd patterns on the snow.
Lathrop got out of his car and stood a moment looking at Ramsey’s house. It was a hell of a time of night to call on an attorney. He closed his door and took two quick steps through the snow and stopped as the door of the car behind which he was parked opened and a familiar voice said, “We thought you might be headed for here. After you passed Austin we were sure, so we came on ahead and waited. Where you been since the cops let you go, Lathrop? Our butts are sore waiting for you to show at the three-flat. Then when you did show, there were too many cars around for us to do anything about it.”
The larger of the two men who had attacked him two nights before stepped out of the parked car and walked towards Lathrop slowly.
Lathrop had thrust his hands into his pockets against the cold. He took his hands out of his pockets and made fists of them. “What’s the idea?” he asked. “Who are you?”
The big man came still closer. “That doesn’t matter to you.”
It was so cold under the tree that Lathrop’s words were accompanied by little puffs of condensation. “That,” he said, “is a masterpiece of understatement. I spent eight hours yesterday trying to identify you from pictures in the rogues’ gallery. Where’s Wilma? Where’s my wife?”
There was a faint crunch of snow behind him and Lathrop turned to face the second of the two men. “I thought schoolteachers had to be bright,” the man said. “You must not read the newspapers. Where’s Wilma? Well, I’ll tell you. When you found out she had been a naughty girl before she met you, you blew your top and killed her and put her body in the firebox of your heating plant.”
“You know that’s not so.”
“Sure we know. But do the police?”
It was difficult trying to watch both men. Lathrop backed a step, until he could feel the bole of the oak tree behind him. “What is this? Another merry-go-round?”
The larger of the two men said, “You could call it that. Or maybe we were friends of Wilma’s.”
“Your pal has just admitted that she is still alive.”
“That’s right. As pretty and tight as ever. O.K. Let’s just say we take pride in our work and we don’t like to have a chump wiggle out of a trap. You’re supposed to be in a cell. And moving around like this, you might complicate things.”
“Where is Wilma?”
“In a safe place. And still as stuck-up as ever. But then she always was a snooty little broad. Even with Raoul. And she made him marry her.” The man seemed to relish the prospect. “But when we get through she’ll be as willing as her feeble-minded sister.”
Lathrop was no longer cold. “You keep your hands off Wilma,” he warned the man.
The larger of the two men laughed.
“You bastard,” Lathrop cursed him. He struck out instinctively and had the satisfaction of feeling bone and gristle flatten under his fist.
The blow forced the man back. He stood with his head thrust forward so he wouldn’t bleed on his overcoat. “You son-of-a-bitch. You’ve broken my nose.” He held a handkerchief to his nose and reached into his overcoat pocket with his other hand. “Sap him, Pete. But don’t mark him any more than you have to.”
The man on the other side of Lathrop swung a blackjack and the leaded leather thudded against the tree as Lathrop dodged the blow. “You’ll have to do better than that,” he said.
The man braced his feet. “I intend to. I’m going to beat your brains in.”
“Like you did to Nielsen?”
Lathrop dodged a second blow and got in a hard left and right to the body before the man could back away. He followed them with a punch to the jaw that sent the man sprawling in the snow. But he had momentarily forgotten the man whose nose he’d broken.
The thud of the blackjack knocked his hat from his head and left him entirely conscious but unable to move, paralysed by pain. It was an odd sensation. He saw the man lift his arm again. He heard the blow land on his head, but didn’t feel it. His body stiffened galvanically. His palms scraped the rough bark of the tree against which he was standing as he attempted to hold himself erect. He stood a moment longer looking at the lighted mullioned windows with glazed eyes. Then the tree in back of him tilted at an absurd angle and he slid down the trunk to the ground and lay on the snow without moving.
Chapter Eleven
LATHROP HAD never been more comfortable. He lay relaxed, his breathing slightly laboured, admiring Shirley Stanislawow.
“It’s like I’ve always said,” the buxom barmaid confided. Her voice was a throaty whisper. “Some dames are nuts. They don’t know when they’ve got it made. If your wife doesn’t come back or you don’t find her and you are still in the market and you like your girl a little on the heavy side, it may be we can work out something.”
Lathrop was embarrassed. Shirley shouldn’t be in a public place. He tried to tell her and couldn’t. His tongue was too thick.
Shirley sucked in her breath as she continued. “I’ve never been married to a high-school teacher. The chances are I never will be. But from where I’m standing, it looks like it would be a hell of a lot better than standing back of a Noble Street bar pouring drinks for a bunch of drunken Polacks.”
Lathrop was even more embarrassed. If Shirley didn’t stop he was going. There was, he decided, a small generator back of the bar, undoubtedly the motor that cooled the beer box and the coils. Its rhythmic beat pulsed in his ear. Then Shirley was gone and he was with Wilma on the night they had been married, Wilma shy and a little frightened, her lips pressed to his as she promised:
“I’ll try to make you a good wife.”
His sense of immediate urgency gone, Lathrop took her in his arms and kissed her. Her lips were soft and sweet and moist as warm wet velvet. The kiss lasted a long time. The pressure of Wilma’s lips became painfully unbearable. Lathrop couldn’t get his breath. No matter how he moved his head, Wilma’s wet lips clung to his. He struggled to free himself and his groping fingers encountered the chrome handle of a car door. The handle depressed under his weight and Wilma, too, was gone as the door opened and Lathrop, his body a dead weight, slipped from behind the wheel and fell heavily to the ground.
The impact of the fall shocked him into semi-consciousness. He lay on the snow sucking great gasps of air into his lungs, still struggling weakly, trying to escape the smothering proximity of the turned-up velvet collar of his coat. Then full consciousness returned and he rolled on his back and stared up at the star-filled sky.
Wherever he was, he was no longer in front of Attorney Ramsey’s residence. He was lying in the open, his view of the sky unobstructed by branches, but with distant towering trees silhouetted against the dark skyline.
His breathing still laboured, Lathrop sat up and cradled his head in his hands. The rhythmic beat that had bothered him still pulsed in his ears, then the metallic click of a tappet permeated the rhythm and Lathrop realized where the sound was coming from. He was listening to the idling motor of his car.
He held his head in his hands a long time, then he got u
nsteadily to his feet and walked to the rear of his car. A length of garden hose was taped to the exhaust pipe, running from the pipe through a partially open rear wing window to disappear over the back of the front seat.
His strength returned gradually. The numbed feeling left his fingers. His tongue shrank to fit his mouth. When he could, he unwound the tape that held the hose to the exhaust pipe, then shut off the motor of his car and opened all four doors. His state of mental shock continued. It had been close, very close. He was supposed to have died. He didn’t know what had saved him, perhaps the memory of Wilma’s kiss groping through the fog of his slowly ebbing life. At least he knew one thing now. When a man died of carbon monoxide poisoning, he died happily.
An impelling need for haste replaced Lathrop’s state of shock. He was on the far side of his car, opposite the wheel. He took two quick steps, meaning to walk around the car, and fell flat on his face in the snow. It was an effort for him to get back to his feet. He still wasn’t out of the woods. He would have to make haste slowly. Not that, except for Wilma’s sake, there was need of haste. He was supposed to be dead. He was supposed to be sitting in the front seat of his car dreaming pleasant dreams; just another statistic, to be found with his face beet red and a silly smile on his lips by the first passer-by in the morning.
Lathrop laid his palms flat on the cold metal of a fender and rested his weight on his arms. The police could believe him, or not. The police could do as they pleased. He knew what he intended to do as soon as he recovered his strength. And this time he’d use a gun if he had to.
As his head began to clear, his thinking grew more concise. Wilma had used him as a hide-out, true. But she’d had some good reason for that. More, there had been some good reason why she had held on to the jewels taken in the Sutton Place stick-up. He’d know why when he talked to her.
The first scene with the blackjack twins, the envelope filled with money, the message he’d been instructed to give to her had been so much razzle-dazzle to set the stage for what was to follow. He still didn’t know how they had got Wilma out of the flat. But if she had left of her own free will they had been waiting for her and the only reason she had left was because she loved him, because she didn’t want him to become involved in her past. They had threatened to hurt him.