by Craig Rice
“You’ll be working for me as well as for yourself,” the big gambler said. “So I should pay half the expenses.”
Malone murmured something appreciative, and politely refrained from glancing at the folded bills before slipping them into his pocket.
Twenty-four hours. No, it wasn’t much. Maybe some remote Pacific isle would be a pleasanter place than Guatemala to spend his declining years.
CHAPTER 6
After a little consideration, Malone decided to take a chance on riding a taxicab. Even if the driver did know him by sight, and a remarkably large number of drivers did, there was a far better than even possibility that he would be a good guy and a pal and refrain from as much as mentioning the headlines in the morning papers.
He happened to draw an unfamiliar one, however, and gave the address of Tommy Storm’s apartment.
Halfway there he looked at the compensation Max Hook had slipped him and told the driver to stop at a liquor store. Not only did he dislike the idea of returning to Tommy Storm empty-handed, but he wasn’t going to ask a strange cab driver to change a hundred-dollar bill, not on a morning when he was doing his best to remain inconspicuous.
The store’s lone clerk was leaning on his elbows, reading an early edition of an afternoon paper when Malone went in. But it was too late to turn around now.
“Yes, sir,” the clerk said, straightening up and smiling.
Malone made a second stop at a florist’s for an armful of roses. There he met an equally gratifying but unflattering lack of recognition.
At the corner of Walton Place the cab became momentarily involved in a traffic jam. The cab driver took advantage of the pause to comment on the murder of Leonard Estapoole, the fact that from all accounts, Leonard Estapoole had been going around asking for it, but that it was a terrible thing just the same.
Malone agreed with him that it was, indeed, a terrible thing.
The traffic jam melted and the cab moved on. The driver went on to remark that he, for one, didn’t believe that lawyer had had anything to do with it. “That John J. Malone, if he was that sore at anybody, he wouldn’t bother with murder. He’d think of something else, something real smart.”
“You know him?” Malone asked timidly.
“Know him!” the driver said, stopping expertly in front of the remodeled mansion. “I should say I do know him! What a guy—and what a spender! Why, the tips that guy gives—!”
Malone tipped him a dollar and fled up the steps, telling himself that the front-page newspaper photograph had evidently been even worse than he’d thought.
Inside the shelter of the apartment, he looked at Tommy Storm thoughtfully. She’d been properly appreciative of his small offerings, and had installed him in the most comfortable chair, with a drink and an ash tray at his elbow. What was more, she had tactfully refrained from asking questions about where he had been and what he had done, and what he intended to do next. He decided that before too long he would follow up the small offerings with something more substantial, preferably from Van Cleef and Arpels.
There was nothing that could be done immediately. It was going to take a little time for the carefully planted tip to reach the proper ears, for Frank McGinnis to be picked up at his hotel, for Marty Budlicek to come down from Waukesha and give his clinching testimony, and most of all, for Frank McGinnis to be properly coaxed into breaking down and telling everything.
Meantime, here he was, he reminded himself, in a cozy little nest, with spring sunlight streaming in the windows. He had a king-size breakfast under his belt, a gin-and-beer at his elbow, and a cigar in his hand. In a little while he wouldn’t have anything in the world to worry about, at least for twenty-four hours. He had cash money in his pockets; of course eventually he’d have to earn it, but eventually was not right now. And he had time to kill with an unusually delightful little blonde.
He knew he should relax and be content. But he also knew that he couldn’t do either one.
He got up and began to prowl around the room, restlessly and aimlessly. Too many distinct and different things were wrong, not the least of them being Helene’s unaccountable disappearance.
And what had to be accomplished in the next twenty-four hours suddenly loomed up as an almost insurmountable problem. Someone had lured the late Leonard Estapoole to his office through the kidnaping of his stepchild, killed him, taken the dangerous folder of papers—always assuming that Leonard Estapoole had had it with him—and arranged what should have been a foolproof frame. That it hadn’t been successful, Malone thought modestly, was entirely due to a hunch, quick thinking, and some rare good luck.
It was a double frame, he meditated, and built to fit him as snugly as a pair of storm windows. First, the murder of Leonard Estapoole. Then the planting on him of the kidnaped Alberta Commanday. And finally, the little business of knocking him out and parking him in a West Madison Street hotel. That last was to have tied everything very nicely together. The clerk at the hotel wasn’t going to remember him, and the “friend” who had brought him in just wasn’t going to be found. And in any case, there would be the question of just what time he had arrived at the hotel.
The purpose of knocking him cold and tucking him securely away for the rest of the night had been not only to keep him from providing himself—however unknowingly—with an alibi, but, since the original frame hadn’t worked, to keep him from removing the body of the late Leonard Estapoole and the accompanying evidence for a second time, and more permanently.
So, he concluded, it was a damned good thing that he was alert, quick thinking, agile, sagacious, and well nigh brilliant. Industrious, too, he added modestly.
“Another five minutes of this,” Tommy Storm observed amiably, “and you’ll owe me for a new rug.”
He smiled at her warmly and sat down.
It was pure coincidence, he mused, that she was a girl-friend of Hammond Estapoole. Lots and lots of blondes undoubtedly were. It was likewise nothing in the world but coincidence that she’d just happened to be in West Madison Street at that hour of the morning. She’d just been going home from a very late party somewhere in the suburbs, and maybe her taxi driver had gotten lost. And the fact that she’d stopped for a newspaper at that particular corner was, without question, one of the happiest coincidences of his lifetime.
Her offering him a ride, and her inviting him in for breakfast, had been nothing more than perfect hospitality and the deed of a very good Samaritan. No, there was nothing even remotely suspicious, let alone sinister, about the situation, and even if there had been, this was no time to worry about it. Besides, she was smiling at him right now. Malone sighed happily.
The sun was just getting around to setting before Malone began to wonder about the unexplained remark she’d made. “Don’t ever forget, Malone—I’m on your side, now.” What had she meant by that? But this was obviously no time to bring it up.
Spring twilight was settling down comfortably over the gardened back yard seen through her windows when she went out for the evening papers. Malone took one look at the front page and began to breathe easier.
Everything had fallen into place perfectly and according to plan. The astute police, acting on an undisclosed source of information, had brought one Frank McGinnis, who gave his occupation as “broker” and his age as thirty-four, in for questioning. The night elevator operator of Malone’s office building had been located near Milwaukee at the home of his brother, Joe Budlicek, where he had been preparing to hurry back to Chicago, having realized that he had been practically a witness to murder.
Now under police protection, Marty Budlicek had told of taking Leonard Estapoole up to Malone’s office floor very late in the evening, and of taking Frank McGinnis up a little later. McGinnis had come down again, but not Estapoole. He positively identified McGinnis. No one else had entered or left the building after John J. Malone had gone out about eleven o’clock, in the company of Lieutenant Daniel von Flanagan.
Von Flanagan had explaine
d his presence to the press with the statement that he and John J. Malone were old friends, and that the visit had been of a purely personal nature.
Faced with the elevator operator and his story, Frank McGinnis had then given up. Yes, he’d gone to Malone’s office. He had been following Leonard Estapoole. He’d been hearing about the anti-everything information Leonard Estapoole had dug up at his own expense, and he wanted to get his hands on it. Murder, though, had been the farthest thing from his mind.
His idea had been simply to hold up Leonard Estapoole, get the papers or whatever else he had, tear up anything pertaining to himself that might be included, and peddle the rest among his friends and, as he put it, business associates. For that reason only he’d trailed Leonard Estapoole right to John J. Malone’s private office. But the solid citizen and sterling character had made a dive at him unexpectedly and, as the newspaper quoted it, in a threatening manner. He’d grabbed up the first thing he could reach—a bronze Buddha paperweight—and thrown it in self-protection.
He hadn’t even known Leonard Estapoole was dead until he read about it in the newspapers.
It was, he maintained stoutly, purely self-defense.
And that was that.
Malone put down the paper, yawned, and said, “Frank McGinnis takes an even worse newspaper picture than I do.” He stretched, reached for a cigar, and added, “I’d better go right down and go to work as his attorney. Clearly, self-defense. And at the very worst, obviously manslaughter.”
Tommy’s violet eyes widened another fraction of an inch. “You’re really going to do just that?”
“He seems to need a good lawyer,” Malone said. “In fact, he needs the best.”
On a sudden impulse, he picked up the telephone, dialed police headquarters, and asked for von Flanagan. The voice that came out of the receiver was an indignant roar.
“Malone! Where the hell are you? Where the hell have you been?”
“I’m right here,” Malone told him cheerfully. “I’ve been here right along. What’s this about a murder in my office? Where were the police? What do we pay taxes for?”
For a moment, the receiver threatened to melt in Malone’s hand.
“I’ve been trying to reach you since this morning,” von Flanagan finally calmed down enough to say coherently. “Your hotel—your office—Joe the Angel’s—”
“Simmer down,” Malone said. “Simmer down. You just tried the wrong places, that’s all. Fact is, it got a little late out last night, after I left you. So today I’ve been catching up on some lost sleep, while you let murders go ahead and happen right in my office.”
“Damn it, Malone, where are you?”
Malone asked with his eyebrows if it was all right to reveal where he was, and Tommy Storm answered with her eyes that it certainly was and to go right ahead. He said into the telephone, “I’m in Tommy Storm’s apartment on Walton Place.” “Get right down here,” von Flanagan snapped at him. “Right away. No, wait, Malone.” He paused. “Meet me in your office. And I mean fast.”
“Fifteen minutes,” Malone said and hung up. He grinned wickedly at the telephone and said, “In just about the time it takes for him to look up the number in the telephone book, he’s going to call right back.”
Roughly two minutes later, he did. “Malone?”
“Yes?”
“I just thought—Oh, never mind. I’ll tell you about it when I see you.”
The receiver clicked dead again.
“A skeptical and cautious character,” Malone said, almost gaily. “Well, at least he’s convinced now that I’m really here.”
“I hope you know what you’re going to do, Malone,” Tommy Storm said, a shade apprehensively.
“So do I,” Malone said. He looked thoughtfully at the telephone. There was one thing he’d better check on, just to be on the safe side. He called Ma Blodgett.
There was instant relief in her voice when she recognized his.
“Good thing you called, Malone. She came back.”
Malone swore softly into the telephone.
“All the way from Howard Street,” Ma Blodgett said. “Just a little while ago, she came back. Now she won’t go again.”
This time, Malone swore with more enthusiasm. “I’ll take care of her,” he said at last, wondering just how. “Keep her there until I can tend to it.”
“Can’t do anything else,” Ma Blodgett said, and hung up.
The little lawyer unwrapped a cigar and scowled at it. “I’m still a kidnaper. How the hell do you get a kidnap victim to go home when she won’t go?” That was a problem to be dealt with later, though. Right now, other things were immediate and pressing. And the bruise under his eye was beginning to throb again, and even his bones were complaining with weariness. He sighed, and poured himself another gin.
If Tommy Storm was going to volunteer any information, right now was the time for her to do it. He waited. She didn’t.
“Well,” he said at last, and hesitantly, “thank you for the hospitality. And the alibi.” He finished his gin, set the glass down hard, and said explosively, “Damn it all, what did you mean this morning—that you were on my side now?”
“Just exactly that.” She put her cigarette out, looked at it, and nervously lighted a new one. Suddenly she looked up at him. “All right, Malone. I told you the girl Lee Merchant married was my best pal. Let’s say I heard a rumor around town you might be in some kind of a jam, last night or this morning, and thought I’d keep an eye on you and see if you might need a helping hand. You did. So shall we leave it at that, Malone?”
He looked hard at her for a moment. “Yes. Let’s leave it at that.”
There were any number of questions he wanted to ask. For instance, there was the matter of Hammond Estapoole. But none of his questions seemed to be quite the proper etiquette, under the circumstances, and he was thinking of considerably more than a mere business of infringing on hospitality.
But he’d be seeing her again, and not too much later, either. And in the meantime it wouldn’t be against the rules of perfect behavior to pick up a little discreet information here and there. He mentally measured her wrist for something suitable in the way of a more complete “thank you” and was on his way.
CHAPTER 7
A pale and frightened relief elevator attendant told him, in a quite unnecessary whisper, that the police were waiting for him in his office. The police and, he added, quite a lot of other people.
The other people included a white and anxious Maggie, a worried-looking Marty Budlicek, and a professionally dour Frank McGinnis. Malone paused at the door and took a quick glance around the private office.
There were chalk marks on the floor where the late Leonard Estapoole’s body had been. The little lawyer glanced at them and then glanced away delicately. The head, he observed, had been in the exact spot where he had adroitly spilled the gin. Whoever had reset the scene last night had done a very expert and exact job, and Malone admired it. Only one detail was missing, and that was the little bronze Buddha, evidently taken away as evidence.
“No reporters?” he said pleasantly, coming in.
Von Flanagan mopped his brow with a slightly soiled and damp-looking handkerchief. “This here is private,” he said. He looked unhappily at Malone. “This isn’t just a nice, quiet, simple little murder, Malone. This is a big murder. This guy Estapoole was a very important personage. Everybody has been on my neck this morning. Everybody. And where have you been all this time? Sleeping.”
“I was tired,” Malone said. He relit his cigar. Somehow he managed to catch Maggie’s eye for a smile, and to signal Marty Budlicek with an assurance he didn’t come anywhere near feeling.
“But it happened right here in your office,” von Flanagan said accusingly.
“Is that my fault?” He gave von Flanagan an indignant glare. “Where were the police while this was going on? I ought to sue the city. Look at that rug!”
Before von Flanagan could catch his breath a
nd think of an answer, Maggie said, “Malone, I didn’t know what to do. I went into your office to leave some papers on your desk—I don’t know exactly what time it was—”
“Nine forty-six,” Officer Scanlon said.
Malone beamed at him approvingly. “Nice to see you again. You too, Klutchetsky. How was the bowling?”
“Fair,” Klutchetsky said.
“Damn it,” von Flanagan began angrily. “We’re here on business—”
“Malone,” Maggie went on fast, “I found the body. And—well, I didn’t know what to do. And I didn’t know where you were. So I called the police.”
“Quite right,” Malone said. His eyes met hers in a long look of silent appreciation for the time she’d spent trying to reach him before she called the police. “Always call the cops when you find a body, Maggie. That’s one of the first rules of the book.”
He tossed his hat inaccurately toward the hatrack, and sat down behind his desk, taking full command of the situation. “But it’s too bad you weren’t able to reach me, and I regret it. This young man should have had an attorney with him right at the beginning. Then he wouldn’t have been bullied and browbeaten into making a confession under duress.”
“He did no such thing,” von Flanagan said furiously. “Nobody laid a finger on him. Nobody said anything to him.” He drew in a long, slow breath. “However, confronted with the incontrovertible evidence of an unimpeachable witness placing him at the scene of the crime, he made a voluntary confession.”
Malone said admiringly, “Wow!”
“And besides,” von Flanagan said, in a very cross voice, “you’re not his lawyer.”
“I am now,” Malone said calmly. He looked reassuringly at Frank McGinnis and said, “Don’t worry about a thing.”