by Craig Rice
“Well, then,” Jake said, a little easier, “Helene went tearing off to Chicago a day or two ago. Some old school friend wanted her to fly back for some kind of special party or something. But she was very mysterious and funny about it. You know Helene.”
Yes, indeed, he did know Helene, and he knew exactly what Jake meant.
“She didn’t come back yesterday,” Jake said, “and I haven’t heard from her. And I tried to reach her and I couldn’t. She hadn’t been seen at the apartment or anywhere else. I called everyone I could think of, and nobody had seen her. Then I tried to call you and I couldn’t find you either, and so I sent a wire to you, and where is she, Malone?” It was an anguished gasp, coming over thousands of miles of wire.
“At the moment,” Malone said, “I don’t know. But don’t worry.” What could have happened to Helene? “I’ll find her,” he promised. And repeated, “And don’t worry.”
“You always say that,” Jake said bitterly. “I’m flying to Chicago. Today. Right now. Right this very minute.”
“Better get dressed first,” Malone said, and hung up.
For a few minutes he sat scowling. It was a very slim chance that Helene might be mixed up in this. Even so, it was enough to worry him. Somebody had to worry, he told himself. And even if Helene weren’t in any way involved in the current problem, she was still missing and, handicapped as he was, he had to start looking for her.
That brought him back to the idea he had been working on since before breakfast. He smiled at Tommy and said, “And now, I’ve got things to do.”
“Whatever they are, you’d better shave first and take a bath,” she told him. “Unless you want to add a vagrancy rap to murder and kidnaping. There’s a razor and things in the bathroom.”
It was an excellent and expensive razor, and so were the rest of the shaving things. Malone looked them over thoughtfully and decided it would be more polite not to remind his hostess that she was all alone in the world.
Half an hour later, not only did the world seem to be a far better place, but he felt almost able to face it. Tommy Storm looked him over critically.
“Outside of the fact that your clothes look as though you’d been sleeping under some stranger’s sofa, you’ll do,” she reassured him. “But what are you going to do about the cops?”
“Avoid them,” Malone said grimly. “Until I can throw them a fish, that is.” There was some fine meaning there, he felt, if he could only take time to explain it.
“Of course,” she said, “you can always wear pink sunglasses or a green beard or something. Unless you can think, quick and offhand, of a better disguise.”
“I can,” he told her cheerfully. “Far better. I’m going to disguise myself as an innocent man.” He smiled at her.
She smiled back. “Malone. I’d like you to spend a night here.”
He stared at her.
“Last night,” »she said. “All of it, and practically all of today.”
He went right on staring.
“And don’t say what you were going to. You were going to say that I couldn’t do that. Well, I can. And I will.”
He finally managed to say, “It may not work. And perjury—” “Not only my reputation,” she said, still smiling, “but my neck, too. All right, Malone. You were here.”
He felt that anything he could say now would be not only inadequate, but probably downright silly. He straightened his tie again, did his best to brush off his hat, and paused at the door to tell her he’d be back, alive and well.
“Don’t ever forget, Malone,” she said slowly, “that I’m on your side now.”
CHAPTER 5
Malone thought that remark over as he went down the steps into the bright sunlight. There was something about it he didn’t quite understand. Understand or, for that matter, like. It hinted just a little at circumstances he didn’t know about yet and would probably learn about under unhappy conditions.
Probably, he tried to console himself, he’d reached that stage of nervous anxiety where everything seemed ominous and threatening. Tommy Storm’s remark had meant nothing more than simple friendliness. Just as Helene’s disappearance had nothing to do with the murder of Leonard Estapoole.
The little lawyer did his best to sell himself that idea, and then reminded himself that right now he had better concentrate on the important task ahead of him.
There was always the chance that a corner cop would recognize him, or a passing prowl car would pick him up. But that was the chance he had to take. He walked to the Drive slowly and leisurely, wearing an air of great unconcern. There was no point, he reasoned, in avoiding the main thoroughfares. If he was going to be picked up, well, he was going to be picked up.
No one noticed him. A fine thing, he thought, almost indignantly. Here a man, wanted as a murder suspect—an important murder suspect—with his picture all over the front page, could go strolling about in broad and sunny daylight, with absolutely no one giving him a second glance. He made a mental note to bring the subject up with von Flanagan the next time they met.
A traffic cop reproved him mildly for starting against the lights when he crossed the Drive. Outside of that, no one spoke to him. He continued on his way and finally turned into a tall apartment building whose address was known from coast to coast, and not too politely.
The elevator operator, who doubled as a bodyguard, greeted him cordially with, “Swell morning, Malone,” and no mention of a little trouble in the morning papers. As usual, the elevator made no stops until it reached the floor that had been occupied for fifteen years by the man who owned a number of varied enterprises, including a profitable string of gambling establishments and, just to make everything homelike, the building itself.
As always, Max Hook welcomed the little lawyer like a long absent friend, and, as always, Malone paused to look around the big room and admire and be amazed at the product of the latest in a long series of interior decorators. This one had gone in heavily for Early Colonial, and Max Hook, a pinkfaced mountain of fat behind the battered, roll-top, golden oak desk that had come with him from back of the Yards, didn’t look as though he liked it.
“Having a little difficulty?” the big gambler asked very casually as Malone sat down.
Malone took out his third cigar of the day and began to unwrap it slowly. “You might call it that. What happened?”
“You ask me?” Max Hook said with faint surprise. “You probably know as much about it as I do.” He took out a violet-tinted, gold-tipped, and probably perfumed cigarette and lit it delicately. “The Commanday kid. Family hasn’t said a word. Nothing about it in any of the newspapers, either. But you know, and I know, and the police and a lot of people and smart operators know that the kid was snatched. She’s been missing since day before yesterday.”
Malone said nothing. If Ma Blodgett had done her stuff promptly and properly, the Commanday kid wasn’t going to be missing long. In fact, she was quite possibly home by now. But there was no point in telling Max Hook everything that he knew. Not at this stage of things, anyway.
“So you got picked as go-between,” Max Hook said. “Why you? Because some of the dirt old man Estapoole had dug up, and had agreed to turn over to you, involved some of your clients.”
It was more of a question than a statement. Malone said nothing, rolling his cigar around in his fingers.
“And because somebody had to be framed,” Max Hook went on, “and you were a likely prospect. Old man Estapoole was laying for you, and everybody knew it. So it would look logical for him to turn up dead in your office. Suddenly dead, not planned ahead dead. And with the stuff he was to turn over to you missing.”
Well, that answered that question. Malone began to feel a little better about not searching Leonard Estapoole’s body when he had the chance. “For a man who hasn’t left his apartment in ten years,” he said admiringly, “you get around.”
“I have sources,” the big man said modestly.
Malone nodded acknowle
dgment. “The question in my mind,” he said, “is not just why I was picked as the go-between, but who picked me?”
“I know,” Max Hook said. His voice was soft with sympathy. “A guy hates to think some other guy would deliberately frame him like that. I mean, if a guy murders another guy, well, that’s that, but if a guy goes out of his way to frame another guy, that’s bad. Unless,” he added with false cheerfulness, “it was accidental.”
They tacitly left it at that. Malone finally lit his cigar and gave a quick account of what had happened during the night, beginning with the appointment, made by Leonard Estapoole himself, and including the well-timed visit of von Flanagan and his two aides. He omitted only the details of Alberta Commanday’s being planted on him because that angle required a little more private thought, and of Tommy Storm’s rescue because he considered that purely his own business.
“So you see,” he concluded, “sometime during the night someone came back to the office and moved everything back the way it was. Leaving me what might be lightly termed a fugitive from justice. Or maybe a fugitive from injustice. I don’t know.”
“Tough,” Max Hook said. Then he looked at Malone expectantly and waited.
“The point is,” Malone said, “I’ve been framed. And now the only way I can be free to get places and do things is to frame someone else.” He caught Max Hook’s beginning of a scowl and added quickly, “With his consent, of course, and with suitable compensation and protection.” The protection he could manage, the compensation was something he’d have to worry about later.
There was a long and intent silence. Then Max Hook said slowly, “It’s important to me, too, to get a-hold of that stuff old man Estapoole had dug up. There’s a list of nice little business places of mine in there. All nice, quiet little places. I always like to have things nice and quiet. I wouldn’t want to have the managers and the customers bothered, or anything like that. So naturally, Malone, I’d like that list.”
“Easy,” Malone said, with impressive and wholly false confidence. “Just a little business of finding out who took it from Leonard Estapoole’s body, and getting it back.”
There was an even longer and more pregnant silence. At last Max Hook said, “It’s worth a little investment on my part to get it back. I think that other little matter can be fixed up very easily for you, Malone.”
The little lawyer sighed with relief and said, “The rest can be left up to me.”
It took a little time and a little doing. George La Cerra, better known to Malone as Little Georgie the Cherry, came in with a tray of bottles, glasses, and a box of cigars, offered Malone his sympathy and wished him luck, took a few orders from Max Hook, and went away again.
Max Hook mixed himself an appalling-looking pinkish concoction, tasted it, looked at it, poured it in the wastebasket, threw the violet-tinted and gold-tipped cigarette in after it, said, “The hell with that,” ignored the box on the table, accepted one of Malone’s cigars, and poured himself gin with a beer chaser.
“Old man Estapoole was getting to be a real pest,” he said, amiably and sociably. He went into a lengthy and colorful description of the various ways in which the murdered man had been making himself a pest and a menace to good business. Then, with a little encouragement from Malone, he launched into a discourse on the Estapoole family.
Carmena, it appeared, was not only a doll, but a real living doll. For an ex-model and an ex-chorus girl from the old Rialto, the little girl had done right well for herself. Old man Estapoole had been married before, too. No family, though, except a niece and a nephew.
“Another pest, the nephew,” Max Hook said. “Owes dough to at least four of my joints. Never got tough with him because of his uncle, and he knows we wouldn’t. Now, things are going to be a little different.” He said that with a certain grim satisfaction that sent a slight shiver down Malone’s back. “Does all right with the dames, though. He’s a good picker, like his uncle was.”
Malone nodded, only half interested. He recalled that the name of Hammond Estapoole did turn up with unsurprising frequency in the gossip columns.
“Understand the latest one’s a real cutie blonde,” Max Hook said, turning his glass around and around in his hand. “Name of Tommy Storm.”
Malone sat absolutely still and said absolutely nothing. He was beginning to be convinced now that something was extremely wrong, and he didn’t have the faintest idea what it was. The fluffy-haired blonde’s coming along that morning had seemed to be providential, now it was seeming more and more to have been deliberately providential. He had no idea how she had fitted herself into his private puzzle, and even less hope that he was going to like her reasons when he found them out. But the big point was that, at this moment, she constituted his one and only, alibi.
And just how much Max Hook knew about it was another thing he couldn’t figure and didn’t think ought to be brought up in conversation, not right now.
Then Max Hook dropped another casual remark. “Speaking of blondes, what’s going on with Helene and Jake Justus?”
Malone thought over answering that one, too. He finally said noncommittally, “They’re at a dude ranch in Wyoming,” and wondered what Max Hook had in mind.
“Oh,” Max Hook said. He paused. “Funny place for a guy like Jake Justus.”
“Partly business,” Malone said, and let it go at that. What business was Jake’s own affair and none of Max Hook’s. At least it was one thing that had nothing to do with the murder of Leonard Estapoole.
Before he could do much worrying about that, or anything else, Little Georgie came back with a handsome, dark-haired man in a Hollywood style suit whose color came dangerously close to being purple. Malone recognized him as Frank McGinnis, first cousin of Harry (Swiveleye) McGinnis, and occasional business associate of Mike Medinica.
Frank McGinnis had had the situation explained to him and was willing to go along with the gag, for suitable compensation to be supplied by Max Hook, and a legal document telling the whole story and promising absolute protection, to be drawn up and signed by Malone and kept in Max Hook’s safe. But only, he made very plain, for twenty-four hours, or less. The longest he’d ever been in jail was one day, and he didn’t want to spoil his record.
Well, twenty-four hours was better than nothing, Malone reminded himself. If he couldn’t straighten things out in that time, he could always go to Guatemala and, he reminded himself sternly, he might as well.
“You’ll be picked up at your hotel on a tip,” Malone explained to Frank McGinnis. “The elevator operator in my office building will recognize you. Then you’ll break down and talk. Von Flanagan then will promise you the world and an all-expense luxury-liner round trip to Mars, if you talk. He’ll want to know who hired you.”
“Who did?” Frank McGinnis asked.
“Nobody,” Malone said. “This was a free-lance operation. You’d heard that Leonard Estapoole had all this dirt he’d dug up, and you wanted it. You wanted to get anything about you that just might be in his collection, and you knew you could peddle the rest, very profitably, to your pals and elsewhere. Are you following me so far?”
“Every inch of the way,” the handsome man said cheerfully.
“You’d heard that Leonard Estapoole was meeting me, at my office. You got there sometime after midnight—not much after. Nobody was around. He was evidently waiting for me. There was an argument, and he put up a struggle—not much of a one. You bashed him on the head. Maybe you didn’t mean to hit him so hard. Maybe you didn’t think he was dead. I leave that to you. Anyway, you got the envelope, went home, and completely destroyed it. Got it?”
“Got it,” Frank McGinnis said. He grinned again.
There was a brief three-way discussion as to whether the twenty-four hours should begin right now, or when the cops arrived to pick him up on the tip that would be artfully planted by Little Georgie. Malone and Max Hook outvoted him, and the deal was made.
“Just act natural,” Malone said.
Then there remained the minor matter of sending Little Georgie up to Waukesha to contact Marty Budlicek, who was probably thoroughly confused and worried by now. Again there was a little matter of compensation, which Max Hook handled on a slightly smaller scale than Frank McGinnis’.
The instructions were simple ones. Marty Budlicek had taken Leonard Estapoole, or someone closely resembling him, up to Malone’s floor shortly after midnight. A while later—he would be very vague about times—he’d taken up someone closely resembling Frank McGinnis. Frank McGinnis had come down a little later. He, Marty Budlicek, had gone off duty and gone to sleep. Today he’d taken the day off and he and his wife had gone to visit his brother in Waukesha. But when the morning papers had come out, he’d realized that he ought to come straight back and tell the police what he knew, like a good citizen.
“You’d better make sure he rehearses it,” Malone told Little Georgie. “It’s pretty complicated for Marty.”
Just to make everything secure, he telephoned Marty Budlicek in Waukesha and told him everything, what and whom to expect, and just what to do.
“Anything,” the anxious Marty said. “Anything you say, Malone. But listen a minute, Malone—”
Malone said he didn’t have a minute right now, and whatever it was, it could wait.
He hung up the phone, crushed out his cigar, started to unwrap a fresh cigar and said, “Twenty-four hours isn’t much, but it’ll have to do. So don’t worry.” He poured another gin-and-beer, and prepared to be on his way.
“Who worries?” Max Hook said. But he added, “Do you know what you’re going to do?”
Malone didn’t have the faintest idea in the world, and wasn’t going to say so. “Sleep,” he said, and blinked drowsily.
He could use a little compensation himself right now, he considered. As long as the police were looking for him, there wasn’t any way for Maggie to get money to him, and none for her to get to him even if there had been a way. Only yesterday she’d reminded him of the pitiful condition of not only the bank account, but of the Emergency Fund. There was always Joe the Angel, but getting to him was out of the question now too. And he was damned if he was going to ask Max Hook.