“We are the law, ma’am,” the officer said. “Your car will be made good; we have to look for narcotics concealed in the most unlikely places.”
“I gotta right to make a phone call.” Dr. Freemartin found his voice. “You haven’t got a thing on me. I’ll get my lawyer in Pittsburgh and I’ll sue you. I’ll give you such a suit for false arrest as you never saw in all your life. Ruining my professional standing…”
“Take him inside where it’s cooler,” Mike Shea said.
The fifth man got out of the car.
“There’s just one thing wrong with this picture,” he said.
“There’s plenty wrong,” Freemartin shrieked, “as you’ll find out when I make my phone call. I know my rights!”
“You’ll get your rights, Freemartin.” The officer removed his glasses. Dr. Freemartin jumped as though he had had a foretaste of the electric chair. “Crusher and the others at your snake-pit sang sweeter than Hartz Mountain canaries. You better hand it over.”
“Gawd! Inspector Connolly!” Mrs. Feeley shook her head in bewilderment. “No wonder they said you wasn’t home.”
“As I said, there’s something missing. Where’s the tall lady, Miss Tinkham?” the inspector said.
Dr. Freemartin opened his mouth to speak, then thought better of it.
“She just stepped out for a minute,” Mrs. Rasmussen said.
“Get on the box,” Inspector Connolly said. “Get one of the prowl cars to pick her up; you got the description.”
“Upstairs. Everybody,” Mike Shea said.
Mrs. Feeley and Mrs. Rasmussen sat on hard oak chairs and watched Dr. Freemartin, white and tight-lipped, as the police went through his wallet and then removed him to another room to search his person. When they brought him back, Mrs. Rasmussen opened the clasp of her big handbag. She looked at Dr. Freemartin.
“We took this off’n him.” She watched his hands opening and closing in his lap. His eyes bored through her. She handed his long knife to the police officer standing near her. Freemartin slumped back in relief.
“Wisht you’d go over all of us,” Mrs. Feeley said. “Kinda take a load off our minds.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Inspector Connolly said. “I trusted you from the beginning, but I wish the boys would find the other lady. Maybe she can shed some light on the situation. Our men have found nothing so far. I’m sorry, Mrs. Feeley, but they’ve got to take the car apart bolt by bolt…”
“Gawd, Inspector, you can’t! Our beautiful blue coach! It’s murder, that’s what it is!” she said.
“We’ll get you another one,” he promised. “We know he had about three hundred thousand dollars worth of narcotics with him when he left. It is bound to be somewhere in the car, unless he disposed of the stuff along the way. You assure me that he was never out of sight of at least one of you during the whole trip.”
“He wasn’t!” Mrs. Rasmussen said. “Ol’-Timer, he knows jewy-jits an’ all them things, an’ he never even let him go to the toilet alone.”
“You can say that again,” Dr. Freemartin snarled. “This is going to cost every living one of you. I’ll get a judgment against every dime’s worth of property you own; you haven’t a thing on me and you can’t hold me. You have no evidence to base your claim on…”
No one said anything. It was beginning to look as though the Vice Squad of Pittsburgh and the Police Department of San Diego, not to mention the federal men, had been taken on a snipe hunt.
“What did you find?” Freemartin pressed his advantage. “You went over me with the X-ray—even looked in the soles of my shoes—you couldn’t find anything in my luggage…”
“Yah!” Mrs. Feeley shouted. “That fifty-four-piece suitcase o’ yours: a greasy deck o’ cards an’ a pair o’ dirty socks.”
“Not even a sleeping pill on me! You better release me before the whole lot of you look even more foolish than usual! Search the car till you’re black in the face. Go ahead. You won’t find so much as an aspirin tablet.”
“I could certainly use one at this point, washed down by a glass of frosty brew.” Miss Tinkham walked in poised and unruffled. “What are you paying a pound for junk these days, Mrs. Feeley?”
“Junk?” One of the policemen got up quickly.
“That is all that is left of our once luxurious equipage.” Miss Tinkham smiled sadly. “Doctor Freemartin, you look a trifle down in the boots.”
“They haven’t got a thing on me. Not one bit of evidence. You have to produce a corpus delicti. You’ve got to get the goods on me before you can hold me. You’ll regret this day’s work…”
“Miss Tinkham.” Inspector Connolly came forward.
“Dear me, Inspector.” Miss Tinkham held out her hand. “Fancy seeing you here! It would seem to an innocent bystander that an impasse had been reached.”
“Miss Tinkham,” Mike Shea said, “my men have been scouring the town for you for the last thirty minutes. Who brought you in?”
“The loveliest taxi driver,” Miss Tinkham said. “The most personable young chap imaginable.”
“How’d you know where to come?” Mrs. Rasmussen said.
“Wasn’t you scared when you found us gone?” Mrs. Feeley said.
“Why don’t you cut the conversation and let me out of here?” Dr. Freemartin shouted. “I want advice of counsel.”
“My advice to you is ‘SHUT UP’!” Mrs. Feeley said.
“Well put,” Miss Tinkham said. “When I had finished my errand, I asked a traffic policeman if he had seen a car answering the description of ours. He had seen the arrest, and told me where I would find you. A cab seemed a justifiable extravagance.”
“Now, Miss Tinkham,” Inspector Connolly said, “it looks like we’ve had a wild goose chase…”
“Aw, we cured him o’ all that,” Mrs. Feeley said.
“Yes, Inspector?” Miss Tinkham looked very demure.
“As I say, it seems we’ve been bilked out of what we were looking for. There is one point I wish to check again. Was Freemartin, except for hygienic reasons, out of your company at all during the trip?”
Miss Tinkham took her time.
“Yes, Inspector,” she said at last.
“When?” Mrs. Feeley and Mrs. Rasmussen bellowed in chorus.
“Why, the night he was alone in the cabin at the Blue Grotto. The night Uremia decamped with the strolling players.”
Freemartin gazed at Miss Tinkham venomously.
“Gawd, we forgot!” Mrs. Feeley was frightened. “Honest, Inspector!”
“Could he, do you think,” Inspector Connolly said, “have disposed of two one-pound tins of heroin in the pure form at that time?”
Again Miss Tinkham meditated.
“It is entirely possible,” Miss Tinkham said.
“Do you think he made any contacts at that time? Could he have passed it on to a confederate?”
“Sir.” Miss Tinkham drew herself up haughtily. “Although I came from Ohio, my sympathies are entirely with the martyred South! No, Inspector,” she smiled. “He did not turn the booty over to another. He confided in a lady.”
“That’s always a mistake,” Mike Shea said.
“Not in this case,” Miss Tinkham said. “His choice was excellent. She is silent as the grave.”
“Gawd, Miss Tinkham, don’ play cat an’ mouse no longer,” Mrs. Feeley said. “I’m near dead o’ curiosity myself.”
“Show us,” Inspector Connolly demanded.
Miss Tinkham shook her head. She opened her purse and handed a small square of cardboard to Inspector Connolly.
“I won’t,” she said, “but I know someone who will.”
“A pawn ticket.” Inspector Connolly handed it to Mike Shea.
“Pick it up. Now.” The policeman next to him took the ticket and started out the door. There was the sound of something falling.
“Wretched creature.” Miss Tinkham turned to look at Dr. Freemartin in an unconscious heap on the floor. “I supp
ose that right to the very last he thought I was holding out for a cut.”
“Can’t we have a beer?” Mrs. Feeley moved on the hard seat of the oak chair. “Ain’t The Tropic still near here?”
“I owe you a lot more than a few beers,” Inspector Connolly said.
“Why don’t we just go on to the Ark?” Mrs. Rasmussen said.
“If it’s all the same to you, ma’am, I’d rather buy you your supper this time. You treated last, remember?”
“Yeah,” Mrs. Rasmussen grinned, “I guess you’re right. It was in The El Casablanca when we inherited the chicken.”
“My head is still revolving,” Miss Tinkham said, “and so long as Old-Timer has our poor, disheveled car parked in front of the police station right in front of a No Parking sign, I think we are safe in accepting.”
The three ladies, Old-Timer and Inspector Connolly filed into the nearest bar and grill.
“Begin at the beginning,” Miss Tinkham said.
“You drove off Sunday night. Monday morning we knew about the theft of the two pounds of heroin from that private snake-pit and drunk-tank where Freemartin worked. He just held his séances there to keep the vice squad off him. Freemartin was the supply man for the syndicate. He was doing fine with his other rackets on the side.”
“He sure is gonna start a new life where he’s goin’ now.” Mrs. Feeley grinned. “He was a sad-lookin’ sack when they drug him off.”
“They’re going to put teeth in the law at last,” Inspector Connolly said. “Many states are agitating for the death penalty for dope-peddling. The ruining of so many youngsters has brought the whole nasty thing to light. That’s how I happened to wise-up to Freemartin. I knew they were peddling the stuff to the youngsters at The El Casablanca.”
“The acrid odor of that smoke,” Miss Tinkham said. “Those glassy-eyed youngsters.”
“The zombies,” Inspector Connolly said. “Heavy fruit syrups with a teaspoonful of rum to cover the taste, and three ounces of elixir phenobarbital for the spike. The state chemist told us that that was to break them in easy. Then the big kicks.”
“How could those children, bobby-soxers, teenage and under,” Miss Tinkham said, “afford the stuff?”
“That’s the vicious part. Miss Tinkham,” Inspector Connolly said, “They offer it to them free at first, to build up a taste, an addiction. Then they will steal, lie, cheat, or kill—anything to get money to buy the stuff. It’s sickening. They have the racket so developed that they even have youngsters as peddlers, selling it right in school to the other kids. The federal men proved it by going up and buying it from them.”
“But where was you?” Mrs. Feeley banged her beer glass. “When we phoned you, where was you? All we could get outa you when them gangsters was after us was only that there message you left with your wife: ‘Don’t let him outa your sight, an’ keep goin’!’ We was scared spitless!”
“I was following you, trying to take Freemartin off your hands as soon as we knew for sure he had stolen the heroin. I tried to catch you till I caught up with that truckdriver—what’s his name? David Linwood? He told me the meeting was off on account of the change in his plans.”
“Dave?” Mrs. Feeley’s face hung out like a pea-coat sleeve.
“David?” Miss Tinkham turned over her beer glass. “Why, the hoodlums threatened him, followed him with a Tommy-gun. He very cleverly threw them off his trail.”
“Right outside of Indianapolis,” Inspector Connolly said, “I questioned him about you, and when he told me your plans were changed, the federal man and I took a plane and waited for you in San Diego. We couldn’t have followed you if we wanted to, not in the same car anyway. It was a brand-new one, but the engine went sour on us right after we got gas in Indianapolis. We never knew what happened to it.”
“And you probably never will,” Miss Tinkham said.
“Dave thought you were gangsters. He came to warn us, and we left in the night after telephoning your house. One thing puzzles me: how could you have known where David was and what route he would take? If it is not a professional secret, how did you catch up with the truck?”
“Very simple, Miss Tinkham. I took the license number of the truck when I went out of your cabin. The next afternoon I telephoned the Registry of Motor Vehicles, they put me in touch with the owner of the Smash-M Trucking Company, and inside of half an hour I had the number of the other truck and a complete picture of the route he would take to St. Louis.”
“So it wasn’t no hoods, after all?” Mrs. Feeley was disappointed.
“Might have been,” Inspector Connolly smiled. “But how did you figure out what he had done with the dope, Miss Tinkham?”
“It was the night Uremia decamped. We put Aphrodite in his cabin as a consolation prize, just an infantile sort of joke. He saw the possibilities. I noticed Aphrodite was unsteady on her base. When I examined her bottom, I found it had been tampered with. The hatpin struck tin at once, so I felt reasonably sure he had hollowed out part of the plaster.”
“Did he try to make off with her at all during the trip?”
“I was very nervous as we drove along the Border country,” Miss Tinkham said. “He could have easily taken her, unarmed as we were…”
“But Ol’-Timer had stole his damn ol’ bush knife off him,” Mrs. Feeley laughed, “an’ he didn’t have no weepon either!”
“What made you think of the pawn shop, Miss Tinkham?” Inspector Connolly said.
“When we couldn’t reach you in Pittsburgh the last time I telephoned from Yuma, I tried the San Diego office, and they said the Chief of Police was out on a big case. When you began to follow us, I thought it was a California branch of the syndicate planning to hijack the narcotics. We didn’t want all our bother to be in vain, so I popped into the pawn shop with Aphrodite, got a dollar and the pawn ticket for her, just for safekeeping.”
“He thought you were playing along with him,” Inspector Connolly said. “When you maneuvered so that the dope was out of the car when we captured him, he thought you were protecting him for part of the take.”
Miss Tinkham finished her beer.
“No rose without a thorn,” she sighed. “Just to think that darling Aphrodite…”
“Had a false bottom?” Mrs. Feeley laughed.
“Feet of clay,” Miss Tinkham sighed.
“I told you you couldn’t trust them sharpies in New York,” Mrs. Rasmussen said. “Veneer. Marble veneer, that’s all she was. Pasted on plastic of Paris. Fake.”
“She has served her purpose,” Miss Tinkham said. “I am to have her back, am I not?”
“You’ll get her back. We can pick her up now,” the Inspector said. “All they wanted was those two tin cans full of white death.”
“Let’s get her an’ get on to the Ark!” Mrs. Feeley said. “We been away too long now! C’mon, Inspector. We’ll show you the finest house for fun in all the world. It ain’t always nasty-neat, but it’s a grand house for eatin’!”
“Hey!” Mrs. Rasmussen said. “I forgot to give Doctor Freemartin back what was left of his fare! Over a hundred an’ fifty dollars…”
“He won’t have any use for it where he’s going,” Inspector Connolly said. “You’ve earned it anyway.”
Down Island Avenue the happy carload sailed in the Cadillac that looked as though it had lost a battle with a buzz-saw. Mrs. Feeley looked to left and right, pointing out old landmarks.
Old-Timer stopped the car and got out. Mrs. Feeley followed him and looked around.
“We’re trip-dizzy,” she said. “Been away so long we can’t even find the right street. This ain’t it. I feel like the old woman who woke up with her petticoats cut off all round about. We’re on the wrong street. Nothin’ but the remains of a fire here.”
A buxom young woman ran out from the house across the street.
“Mrs. Feeley, Mrs. Feeley,” she cried, flinging herself on the short, fat woman. “Where have you been? Katy and Danny and all of us have h
ad the Missing Persons searching the world for you? We tried to break it to you before you got home.”
“Darleen!” Miss Tinkham shrieked. “Speak plainly! What on earth is wrong? The whole street seems crazy.”
“The Ark! It burned to the ground, can’t you see? Not a stick left standing. Nothing. All the cars except that old trailer over in the far corner. We tried to get you. Your folks in New York were out of their minds with worry.”
“Jesus, Joseph and Mary!” Mrs. Feeley sat down on the curb. “I’m looking right at it like it was there, but I know it ain’t.”
“The piano,” Mrs. Rasmussen said.
“Mrs. Feeley’s lovely, lovely house—our warm hearth!” Miss Tinkham began to weep.
“Your set o’ furniture you brought from the other side,” Mrs. Feeley said to Mrs. Rasmussen. “Your sewin’ machine…”
“How’d it happen?”
“They said it had been on fire for a long time inside before they ever saw it. Late at night. They said it was faulty wiring.”
“Faulty wiring, hell!” Mrs. Feeley said. “We done it ourselfs!”
“Johnny’s at sea,” Darleen said. “There’s plenty of room and you are more than welcome. It’s just a little chance for us to return some of your kindness…”
Mrs. Feeley waved her hand in acceptance.
“Lemme get used to it for a minute. Knocked the props right from under me, that’s what it did,” she said. “Sure no use to cry now…”
“Poor, dear Mr. Feeley, lying there under the bird-bath,” Miss Tinkham said.
“That ain’t the first fire he’s been in,” Mrs. Feeley said. “By Gawd, we enjoyed the Ark to the hilt while we had it. Guess we won’t have to buy that new paint now. Darleen”—she turned to the young woman—“you’re one o’ Mrs. Rasmussen’s disciples, ain’t you? How about a cold beer?”
THE END
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