by Cain, Paul
“I haven’t time to tell you about it, now. Take my word for it that the Law will be here in a split-jiffy to arrest your brother for the murder of Bruce Maccunn and a half dozen or so innocent bystanders. Let’s go first and talk about it afterwards… .”
Sallust did not move. His eyes moved swiftly to his sister once, then back to Green. He muttered: “No.”
Green stared at him blankly. “No? No what?”
Sallust shook his head a little. “I returned three days ago,” he said gently, “from the better part of five years in prison, I was as I believe you call it, framed. I was accused by lies, tried by lies, convicted by lies… .”
He cleared his throat and straightened in the chair, gazed very intently at Green.
“I know you very slightly, Mister Green. I have been led to believe at one time or another that you are in some way sympathetic to our cause, but I have just returned from a painful five-year lesson in misplaced trust. I do not know what you are talking about, now, but I know that I have done no wrong and I shall stay exactly where I am.”
It was entirely silent for a moment and then Paula’s voice rang softly, tremulously: “Perhaps you’re making a mistake, John. Mister Green is—” She stopped.
Green put his hand up and rubbed the heel of it slowly down the left side of his face. His eyes were fixed more or less vacantly on a small turkey-red cigarette box on the table. Very suddenly he went forward and as Sallust sprang to his feet, Green’s arm moved in a long looping arc, his knuckles smacked sharply against Sallust’s chin; Sallust crumpled and fell to his knees, clutched blindly at the chair, went limp.
Paula was too surprised to scream, or move; she stood with her hands to her mouth, her great eyes fixed on Green in startled amazement.
Green mumbled, “Sorry,” shortly, stooped and swept Sallust’s slight figure up into his arms and moved towards the door. “Come on,” he grunted over his shoulder, “and make it snappy.”
She followed in stunned silence; at the door he turned and jerked his head at her coat and she took it up from a chair and put it on like a somnambulist motivated and moved by something unknown, something irresistible.
The bleak Greenwich Village street was deserted; Green carried Sallust across the glistening sidewalk and put him in the car, hurried around to climb in behind the wheel. Paula stood hesitantly on the sidewalk; the cold air had brought back her momentarily dimmed senses and she reflected that it was not too late to scream, reflected further, after glancing up and down the street, that it was more or less useless. She got into the car and closed the door, put her arm around Sallust and waited.
Just east of Eighth Avenue, Green slowed and pulled over to the curb to allow two speeding police cars to pass, then turned and watched them skid to the curb outside the building where the Sallusts lived.
He grinned at Paula. “My timing wasn’t so hot,” he observed. “The Law was about three minutes less efficient than I figured.”
She turned from watching the men swarm out of the cars and run into the house. Her inclination to scream was definitely gone; she tried to return his smile.
“What is it all about?” she whispered. “I don’t understand… .”
“Neither do I yet.” He let the clutch in and the car rounded the corner, whirred north on Eighth Avenue. “I’m sorry I had to resort to that to get your brother out, but I thought he got a raw deal before and I want to do what I can to prevent his getting another one. After five years on the inside he shouldn’t mind a sock on the jaw if it saves him even one night in the cooler.”
Green’s apartment was on East Sixty-first; the elevator boy helped him with Sallust, who was beginning to stir and moan feebly; Green explained that he was very drunk and when they reached his apartment on the top floor they put Sallust on one of the divans in the huge living room. The elevator boy went away.
Green turned to Paula. “He’ll be all right in a little while,” he said. “The main thing is that he’s not to show up outside of this place until certain matters—I’m not quite sure what, yet, so I can’t tell you about them—are straightened out. Do you trust me enough to help, and to see to it that he stays here?”
She nodded.
Green smiled slightly. “Your word?”
She nodded again, returned the faint shadow of a smile.
He went towards the door.
“I’ll be back or give you a ring as soon as I can. Make yourself at home. If you get hungry or thirsty try the icebox.”
He went out and closed the door.
Downstairs, he admonished the night clerk. “There’re a man and woman in my apartment and I want them to stay there. I think they will, but if they get tough call Mike and let him handle them.”
The clerk nodded; he was accustomed to more or less curious orders from Mister Green. Mike was the janitor, a husky Norwegian who had performed odd jobs of a strong-arm nature for Green upon more than one occasion.
Green turned in the doorway. “And if they make any telephone calls, keep a record of who they call and what they have to say.”
The clerk nodded again. Green went out into Sixty-first Street and walked to a drugstore.
At eighteen minutes after two the phone on Blondie Kessler’s desk jingled cheerily for the tenth time in twenty-five minutes.
He whirled from his typewriter, picked up the receiver and yelped: “Hello.”
Green’s voice hummed silkily over the wire: “How many more identifiable pieces have they dug out of Tony’s? And how’s that red-hot Kessler theory coming along?”
Kessler scowled sourly into the transmitter.
“That Kessler theory is holding its head up and taking nourishment very nicely, thank you!” he barked with elaborate irony. “We found a chunk of the fuse with a foundry label on it, a place in Jersey—”
Green interrupted: “Don’t tell me. Let me guess… . Sallust used to work there, or anyway, he used to live in Jersey, or maybe he went to Jersey once to visit his aunt.”
Kessler snorted: “All right, all right. I say Sallust is a cinch for this job, you say not. I’ll bet—I’ll bet you fifty dollars.”
Green snapped: “Bet.”
Kessler cackled shrilly. “The clincher is that Sallust and his sister took a powder about a minute and a half before the boys in blue swept in. Their next-door neighbors heard them go out and from the timing it looks like it was a tip.”
Green sighed. “Maybe I’m the bedbug, after all,” he murmured. “And how about my first and most important question—what else have they dug up?”
“Nothing more that they could make sense of. They’ve got a lot of arms and legs that might have been Gino or Costain or who-have-you.” Green’s voice droned on: “I’m still curious about whether Gino and Costain got to Tony’s before the fireworks. Has anybody tried to locate them?”
“Uh-huh. Gino was supposed to leave for Boston on a late train, after he went to Tony’s. A business trip according to his wife. She don’t know whether he reached Tony’s or whether he made the train or not. She’s going nuts. Then I reached Costain’s girl and she said Lew started for Tony’s about midnight, said he was going to stop by a couple places first. She hasn’t heard from him since. She’s jumping up and down and yelling and screaming, too, and calling me back every two minutes.”
There was silence for several seconds, then Green’s voice concluded dreamily:
“Don’t forget, Blondie, that Lew Costain has, or had, more enemies than any other picked dozen highbinders in this town. Maccunn had one, or at least you’re trying to hang his chill on one. Whether Costain reached Tony’s or not, he was headed there, and in some strange way that seems more important to me than the fact that Sallust wanted Maccunn’s blood. With all due respect to the Kessler theory, of course… . And don’t forget the fifty… .”
The phone clicked, an electric period.
Kessler looked like he was going to take a large bite out of the transmitter for a minute, then he hung up slowly and turned back to his typewriter with enormous disgust.
Harley, the City Editor, was working feverishly, trying very hard not to whistle. He, for one, had hated Maccunn as a slave driver, and now it looked like he’d be moving into the big oak-paneled office on the seventh floor and be writing M.E. after his name.
He looked up as Kessler hung up the receiver, yelled: “Anything new?”
Kessler shook his head. “Nothing new, only that guy Green is losing his mind.”
Solly Allenberg, short and fat, was sitting in his cab near the corner of Forty-ninth and Broadway, when Green crossed the street to him.
Allenberg stopped short in the middle of a yawn and his face lit up like a chubby Christmas tree.
“Hello, Mister Green,” he croaked heartily. “Where you been keeping yourself?”
Green leaned on the door.
“I’ve been around,” he said. “How’ve you been doing, Solly? How are the kids?”
“Swell, Mister Green, just swell. The wife was asking about you just the other night. I told her—”
Green interrupted quietly: “Lew Costain’s been murdered.”
Solly’s thick mouth fell open slowly. “Murdered? What the hell you talking about?”
Green’s head bobbed up and down.
“He was at Tony Maschio’s tonight when the firecracker went off—he and Gino… .”
Solly said: “I was just reading about it in the paper, but it didn’t say nothing about Mister Costain.”
“They hadn’t identified him when they snapped that Extra out.”
Green reached past Solly and clicked down the taxi-meter flag. “Let’s take a ride,” he suggested—“only let’s take it inside, where it’s warm and where we can get a drink.”
Solly tumbled out of the cab and they crossed the slippery sidewalk and went into the Rialto Bar. They both ordered rye. Green studied Solly’s reflection in the big mirror behind the bar.
“How long have you been working for Lew?” he began. Solly hesitated and Green went on swiftly: “Listen. I knew him pretty well, liked him. I intend to find who rubbed him out and you can help me, if you will… .”
Solly gulped his drink. “Sure,” he blurted—“I wanta help.” He glanced at his empty glass and Green nodded to the bartender to fill it up.
“I never really worked for him,” Solly went on. “He was scared of cars—scared to drive his own car in town. He got the batty idea two, three years ago I was a swell, careful driver, so he’s been riding in my cab most of the time since. Whenever he’d light anywhere for awhile or go home an’ go to bed or anything like that, he’d tell me an’ I’d pick up what I could on the side. He paid me a flat rate of a sawbuck a day no matter what the meter read an’ some days he wouldn’t use me at all, so it worked out swell.”
“Did you take him anywhere tonight?”
“Uh-huh.” Solly drank, nodded. “I picked him up at his apartment a little after midnight an’ took him to the corner of Bleecker an’ Thompson Street. He said he wouldn’t need me any more tonight.” Green tasted his rye, made a face and put a twenty-dollar bill on the bar.
Solly said, “Don’t you like it, Mister Green?”
Green shook his head and edged the glass along the bar with the side of his hand until it was in front of Solly.
Solly regarded it meditatively. “I’ll be damned,” he said, “a swell guy like Mister Costain getting the works like that… .” He picked up the glass.
Green was lighting a cigarette. “Who did it?”
Solly shrugged. “There is a lot of guys who never liked him, because they didn’t understand him. He was—uh—ec—” Solly stopped, tasted his fresh drink and tried again: “He was ec—”
“Eccentric?”
Solly bobbed his head.
Green persisted: “But who hated him enough and had guts enough to tip him over?” Solly drained his glass, then closed one eye and looked immeasurably wise. “Well, if you ask me,” he said quickly, “the guy who had plenty of reason to, an’ maybe enough guts to, was plenty close to home… . Did’ja ever meet a fella named Demetrios—something Demetrios? A Greek—tall shiny-haired sheik with a big smile?”
Green shook his head.
Solly leaned closer. “He worked as a kind of bodyguard an’ all-around handyman for Mister Costain. Mister Costain liked him… .” Solly’s voice dissolved to a hoarse stage whisper. “I happen to know that Demetrios an’ June Neilan, Costain’s girl, was like that”—he held up two grimy fingers pressed close together—“right under Costain’s nose.”
Green’s brows ascended to twin inverted Vs. “That’s a good reason for Costain to hang it on the Greek,” he objected, “but not the other way around.”
“Wait a minute. You don’t get it.” Solly’s face split to a wide grin. “I happen to know this Demetrios has tried to let Costain have it in the back a couple times, only it went wrong, an’ Costain didn’t even tumble to who it was. I happened to be in the right place at the right time.”
“Why didn’t you tell Costain?”
Solly stared hard at his empty glass.
Green smiled faintly. “Did Demetrios pay off?”
Solly nodded sheepishly. Green rapped on the bar and the bartender filled both glasses.
“It’s just like it always is,” Solly croaked philosophically. “Costain was crazy jealous of everybody except the right guy, an’ distrusted everybody except the guy who was holding the knife.”
“Where did Costain live? Some place on West Ninetieth, wasn’t it?”
“Uh-huh. Three thirty-one.”
Green picked up his change and Solly gulped both drinks and they went out and started across the slippery sidewalk towards the cab.
A slight, white-faced man with his coat collar turned up and the brim of his soft black hat turned down as much as possible to cover his face came up to them and said, “Hello, Solly. Hello, Mister Green,” in a soft muffled voice. He took a short snub-nosed revolver out of his overcoat pocket and shot Solly in the stomach twice. Solly slipped and fell side-wise against Green and they both fell; Solly took two more slugs that were intended for Green. The cold magnified the roar of the gun to thunder. The wind whipped around the corner and the brim of the white-faced man’s hat blew up and Green recognized Giuseppe Picelli, Number Three Barber.
Then Green and Solly were a tangled mass of threshing arms and legs on the icy sidewalk and Picelli turned and ran east on Forty-ninth Street.
On the third floor of the rooming house at Three thirty-two West Ninetieth, directly across the street from Three thirty-one, a man sat motionlessly at the window of the large dimly lighted front room. He had taken off the tweed Chesterfield he had worn when he left the Boston train at One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street, and his suit coat; he sat in his deep-pink silk shirtsleeves on the edge of a heavily upholstered chair, leaning forward to peer steadily through the slit under the drawn window shade.
From time to time he lighted a fresh cigarette from the butt of the last, glanced at his watch; these were the sole disturbances to his rigid immobility, his entirely silent vigil.
At two thirty-six the phone rang. He picked it up from the floor with his eyes on the slit, grunted: “Yeah.”
He listened silently for perhaps a minute, then said: “What the hell difference does it make whether Green recognized you or not if he’s dead? … Oh, you’re not sure. They both fell, but you’re not sure”—his tone dripped sarcasm—“Well, you’d better make sure. I don’t care how you do it, you’ve had your orders. Check on it some way and then come on up here, and be careful when you come in.”
He put the phone on the floor, lighted a fresh cigarette.
Demetrios said: “I don’t know nothing about it.
”
Doyle glanced swiftly at the detective lieutenant who had accompanied him. “Well, we figured you’d want to know,” he mumbled. Demetrios pulled his bright-yellow dressing gown more closely around his shoulders, shivered slightly, nodded.
They were in Demetrios’ small apartment on Seventy-sixth Street. He’d been in bed, asleep; Doyle and the lieutenant had pounded on the door for three or four minutes before they’d succeeded in waking him.
The detective lieutenant stood up, stretched, yawned extravagantly.
Someone knocked at the door.
Doyle opened it and Green came in. He nodded to Doyle and the lieutenant, jerked his head at Demetrios.
“I don’t know this gent, but I want to have a little talk with him,” he said. “Will somebody please introduce me?”
Demetrios stared at him unpleasantly. “Is this guy a dick?”
Doyle grinned, shook his head. “Huh-uh. This is St Nick Green. He’s a nice fella. You two ought to know each other.”
Demetrios stood up angrily. “What the hell you mean coming into my house like this?” He whirled on Doyle and the lieutenant. “You, too. You got a warrant? I don’t know nothing about Costain—”
Doyle clucked: “Tch, tch, such a temper!” He smiled at Green. “Don’t mind him. We woke him up an’ he’s pouting.”
Green sat down on the arm of a chair.
“Speaking of Costain,” he said softly, “has he turned up yet?” He turned to Doyle. “Something tells me he wasn’t at Tony’s and that he’s still in one piece.”
They were all looking at Green; Demetrios and the lieutenant with more or less puzzled expressions, Doyle with a broad grin.
Doyle laughed. “You’re a little behind the times, Nicky,” he boomed. “They found what was left of Costain on the New York Central tracks at a Hundred an’ Twenty-first Street a little while ago. No mistake about it this time. He was identified by a lot of papers an’ stuff in his pockets.”
The lieutenant said: “That’s why we woke up his nibs, here. We thought he might know something about it.”