Silent Are the Dead

by George Harmon Coxe

  Casey got up with her and looked at the traveling-clock, realizing he’d have to go. He told her so.

  “Yes, I suppose so,” she said, glancing at the clock. She held out her hand and pressed his firmly. “You’re right, of course. About Jim, I mean. It’s just that I feel such a beast sometimes.”

  “I don’t think you should,” Casey said. “Well—”

  She opened the door. “All right, Anna,” she said and then, to Casey: “Good-by, Mr. Casey. I’ll not forget your kindness—ever. And I’m sorry I’ve made you so much trouble.”

  “Nosey guys like me have to expect trouble,” he said, and found his throat a little thick. “Good-by. I hope you’ll be very happy.”

  Chapter Nineteen: A FINE MORNING’S WORK

  WHEN CASEY STOPPED IN LOGAN’S OFFICE the following morning on the way to work, he found the young lieutenant just putting on his coat.

  “Ah, my friend,” he said. “And how are you this bright and cheerful morning?”

  Casey blinked and dropped on the nearest chair. He screwed his brows down and eyed Logan aslant. When the lieutenant began to arrange things on his desk to the accompaniment of a soft whistle Casey gave up.

  “What is this?” he said. “You been eating those vitamin pills?”

  “It is a bright and cheerful morning, isn’t it?”

  “Maybe you got this case all wrapped up,” Casey said.

  That stopped the whistling. Logan looked at him. “There you go,” he said. “Always belittling.”

  “Give out,” said Casey. “And where are you going?”

  “I thought I’d call on Mrs. Stanford Endicott shortly.”

  “Oh-oh.” Casey grinned. “So that check I gave you was something.”

  “It was indeed.”

  Casey sighed. “Now wait,” he said. “Relax. Quit talking like Philo Vance. This is old Casey, the guy that gave you the lead. Keep it simple and unaffected.”

  “Okay,” he said finally. “In this business a lot of things can happen in a very short time—thank God—and some of the leg work we’ve been doing is starting to shape up. First, Nye was killed—according to the M.E.—between one and two o’clock the night before last. By the same gun that killed Endicott. And while we’re sweating our ears off trying to break an alibi Bernie Dixon said he had, a little old guy by the name of Cafferty who has been walking himself bowlegged for thirty years out of the Milk Street station comes up with the crusher.

  “Cafferty, now, is a good cop. Dumb, you understand, but reliable. He’s standing on a corner holding up the side of a building around 1:05. He’s sure of the time because he called in at one—which is a break for us—and this was about five minutes later. All right. He’s standing there when he hears a car take the corner pretty fast. The tires are squealing and that wakes him up. He lets the building stand there by itself and steps to the curb, and the street light gives him a gander at the car and who’s in it. Guess who?”

  “Dixon.”

  “And Harry Nye.”

  Casey grunted. “Dixon’s lawyer’ll have something to say about Mr. Cafferty’s eyesight before he gets through and don’t you think he won’t. Night. Two guys in a coupé—”

  “Okay,” Logan cut in. “But he got the number. He identified the car and he’ll swear that Dixon was the passenger because he was riding on that side. He says the driver was Nye, but he won’t swear to it. But Dixon. Listen, when an old-timer like this Cafferty makes up his mind he’s seen something, you can keep him on the stand four weeks and you’ll always get the same answer. That’s why they call us stubborn cops.”

  “It ain’t enough,” Casey said.

  “Nye had a secretary,” Logan said, as though he had not heard. “Name of Taber. Florence Taber. She phoned me yesterday afternoon after she’d read about what happened in the papers. She phoned me from the Statler.”

  Logan put on his hat, adjusted the angle of the brim carefully. “Nye had called this Taber up the night he was killed. He said he wanted her to get a room at a hotel—she lived alone—and stay there until she heard from him. He said he had to see Bernie Dixon and there might be some trouble and that’s why he wanted her out of the way. If anything happened she was to get in touch with me—She did.”

  “That all she knows?”

  “That’s almost enough. Nye was scared. He had to see Dixon but he figured he was safe since he’d have the girl as an ace. If Dixon got tough, he’d tell him that he’d already tipped off the girl as to who he was going to see, figuring that would make Dixon lay off.” He shrugged. “Whether he didn’t get a chance to tell Dixon, or whether he told him and Dixon thought he was bluffing—or didn’t give a damn—we don’t know.”

  “Um,” Casey said. “Or else Nye told him to lay off or the girl would go to the police, and Dixon killed him, figuring he would go to the girl and see that she kept her mouth shut—and then he couldn’t find her, not knowing Nye’d told her to hide out— Not bad. It don’t prove anything but—”

  “It does to me,” Logan said. “Let’s go see Mrs. Endicott.”

  The Filipino boy who opened the door of the Endicott apartment told them Mrs. Endicott was not up yet and tried to convince them that he dared not disturb her. Logan pushed in, saying he was of the police. “Just tell her Lieutenant Logan is here,” he said. “Tell her I have to see her. I’ll wait.”

  They went into the living-room and sat down. Logan was impressed. He looked carefully about him, lit a cigarette, and leaned luxuriously back in his chair. “Not bad,” he said. “A guy could have a lot of fun in a place like this.”

  They had to wait about a half-hour before Louise Endicott appeared. She was wearing a long black house coat with a sort of train and Grecian lines. It went well with her full-blown blondness. She would have been beautiful if it hadn’t been for the annoyance in her eyes and the sullen droop of her painted lips.

  “Good morning,” Logan said cheerfully as he and Casey rose. “I’m sorry to disturb you but—”

  “What is it you want?” Louise Endicott cut in, sitting down on the divan.

  “Casey tells me that you were with Mr. Dixon at the time your husband was killed,” Logan said.

  “Really?” Louise gave Casey an icy stare. “I don’t remember.”

  “That would be between eight and ten—eight-thirty and nine actually. Casey says you sent the houseboy out at eight.”

  “I told Mr. Casey not to quote me,” Louise Endicott said. “I’m afraid I don’t remember anything about it.”

  “We’ve been going through some of the records in Harry Nye’s office.” Logan was still polite, unconcerned. “There were some carbon copies of reports he had made about you.”

  Casey sat up. Louise Endicott leaned back and looked bored.

  “You and Mr. Endicott were on the verge of separating, weren’t you?” Logan asked.

  “I don’t see how that concerns you,” Louise Endicott said. “As a matter of fact if those charges against him were true, if he was sent to prison for receiving stolen bonds, I should have divorced him in any case.”

  “These reports,” Logan said, “were made to your husband. They concerned the movements of yourself and Mr. Dixon. They indicate that your husband was suspicious of you and that he had evidence enough to sue on his own account. Of course this happened before he was arrested.”

  Louise Endicott yawned to show she wasn’t interested. Logan reached in his pocket and brought out two slips of paper. “Do you know anyone named Adele Dixon?”

  “No.”

  “No? Then you didn’t know that Mr. Dixon has been paying her twelve hundred a month for the past several years?”

  Louise Endicott stared at him. She wasn’t thinking about yawning now; her blue eyes were bright and narrow as they watched Logan move up to her and hand her the slips of paper.

  “Those are photostatic copies of one of his checks,” he said. “Front and back. We checked with the Traders’ Trust and then with Adele Dixon to find out wh
at the relationship was.”

  He held his hand out for the photostats. He went to his chair and sat down again, eyeing Louise Endicott steadily, saying nothing.

  Casey watched him; he liked to see Logan work, when it was on somebody else. After a while he said, “Mr. Endicott was going to divorce you—until he got himself in a jam. And then you say you were going to divorce him. But you didn’t figure on marrying Bernie Dixon, did you?”

  Louise Endicott’s face stiffened inch by inch and little by little the color seeped away.

  “I guess he told you he couldn’t marry you. He told you he was already married and—”

  “That’s a lie!”

  “He’s been married to Adele Dixon for ten years,” Logan said. “She wouldn’t divorce him and— I don’t know, I’m only guessing, but I guess he could have divorced her on grounds of desertion if he’d wanted to—or maybe he couldn’t.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “About Adele Dixon? Why, that came straight from New York, Mrs. Endicott. I got that in black and white. She was his wife. Is his wife. And he was playing you for a sucker. He had no intention of marrying you. He was going to stall you until he got tired of the arrangement and then—”

  “You’re a dirty liar!” Louise Endicott jumped up. The house coat fell open to show a pink thigh and she flipped it about her angrily. She grabbed a cigarette from a box, tapped it so hard it broke. She threw it in the fireplace and took another. She got a light and sat down again, her color high, jaw rigid.

  Logan gave her a few more seconds of silence; then he said, innocently, “No, Mrs. Endicott. Why should I lie to you? I thought I was doing you a favor. I thought this was something you ought to know.” He hesitated and Casey watched in admiration. He was good, Logan was. When he continued his tone was almost hurt, it was so patient. “I just wanted to show you you were making a mistake about Dixon. I have his wife’s address here, and her phone number. You can call her in New York if you don’t believe me.” He started to reach in his pocket.

  “Never mind,” Louise Endicott said. She was tapping one foot, hugging her breasts, her face tight.

  Logan’s lean face relaxed. He leaned back in his chair. “You’ll only get yourself in trouble, trying to protect him,” he said. “There’s such a thing as perjury, even for a good-looking woman like you. Bernie Dixon wasn’t here the other night between eight and ten—”

  “No, he wasn’t,” Louise said.

  Logan continued instantly: “But you sent the house-boy away?”

  “Yes. Because Bernie phoned and asked me to. He got here just after eight and said something had come up and he couldn’t stay after all.”

  “He went right out again?”

  “Yes. And then he phoned later and said Stanford had been killed and it might look bad for him and that he might have to say he was here for an hour or so. He said he wouldn’t offer the alibi unless he absolutely had to.”

  “Did you ever think he killed your husband?”

  “Why”—the woman’s eyes went wide and her surprise seemed genuine—“no.”

  “What did Dixon say about it?”

  “He said it must be the ones who were mixed up in that—that bond business with him. They were afraid he’d talk. He said he knew how it might look—I mean, people might find out we’d been—friendly—and so he might need an alibi.”

  “I see,” Logan said. He stood up. “Just one thing more, Mrs. Endicott. Did your husband accuse you of any, ah, intimacy with Dixon? Did he let you know he suspected anything?”

  She looked at him a moment, then lowered her lashes. “Yes. He said he’d had this man, Nye, watching me.”

  “Thank you.” Logan said. “Thank you very much.”

  Louise Endicott watched him move to the door with Casey, finally called, “But you don’t think—”

  “We don’t know,” Logan said. “We may have to ask you to make a statement later. If I were you I shouldn’t mention this to Dixon. You’ve been his sucker long enough.”

  When they got out in the hall, Casey said, “Was that nice?”

  “I just wanted to leave her in the right frame of mind,” Logan said. “That is what I call a fine morning’s work.”

  “You were lucky,” Casey said, as they got in the car.

  “Plenty lucky. It was that check. If Adele had been Dixon’s mother or something I couldn’t have got to first base. I still needed luck but I figured if Louise didn’t know he was married—” He broke off, continued thoughtfully. “I think I’ve got the setup, now,” he said. “I can’t prove it yet, but things fit. See if this makes sense. Endicott and Dixon are in this business of peddling stolen property—of all kinds. Back of them are the mobs that do the work, but they’re independent outfits spread all over the East and we can’t help that now. All right. Dixon is probably the guy with the contacts and Endicott is the business man. Nye is probably in it too, but only like you said—a runner.”

  “He worked for both of them?”

  “Endicott, I think. He may have known about Dixon, and after Endicott was knocked off we know Nye contacted the auto store and jewelry guy, so that time he was under orders from Dixon. But up to then I think he was Endicott’s man, otherwise he wouldn’t have made those reports about Dixon and Mrs. Endicott. Anyway, we start with Endicott getting nabbed for the hot bonds. I don’t know if you know it, but the D.A. had him cold on that charge. They got him with his pants down and he knew it.”

  “So?”

  “So he’s got two angles. Fight the case and lose and take the big rap, or cop a plea and get maybe a couple of years. Now follow me. He’s got six hundred grand in a vault. He’s mad at his wife and Dixon and he’s got proof, through Nye, that they’ve been two-timing him. He knows he’s got to take the rap some way. Which way would he do it, assuming these angles of mine are right?”

  “He’d sing,” Casey said. “He has to do time so he takes the two years. He put Dixon on the spot to get even.”

  “Right. With Endicott turning State’s evidence, Dixon would wind up with plenty years. What better way to get even with him for playing around with his wife? Especially when Endicott does himself all the good? He gets a light sentence. He’s got plenty of jack in the vault when he finishes it. His wife doesn’t know it and she’ll probably divorce him and that won’t cost him anything much.”

  “I’ll buy that,” Casey said.

  “You know you will.” Logan grunted softly and stretched his legs. “Endicott made one bad mistake. He was so sore at Dixon and his wife that he told Dixon what he was going to do. When I don’t know. I don’t know if Dixon went to the office to kill him or just went and was told off and shot him then and there. Anyway it was his only chance. Endicott wasn’t kidding. Dixon would take a good stiff rap and he knew it. I figure if this cluck Garrison is telling the truth, that Dixon and Endicott were going at it when Garrison came. Dixon stepped into the next room and when Garrison beat it, he pumped two into Endicott’s vest.”

  “And Austin and I damn near walked in on him. Boy, wouldn’t that have been something?” Casey thought it over and gradually digressed to something else. “And Austin?” he asked.

  “Probably like you said,” Logan replied. “You got the pictures of Dixon. He sent those two hoods he’d been hiding to the office and they tailed you. Dixon knew Austin was with you. When the hoods didn’t get the right plates from the case they swiped, and when they couldn’t find it in your desk, they phoned Dixon. He either rubbed Austin out or they did. Anyway, they stole the film, didn’t they? It wasn’t at Austin’s place.”

  Casey thought it over, and decided to let it ride. Logan didn’t know that he had since got that film holder from Finell. But the theory was still reasonable. Austin might have been killed because the killer believed that he had the holder. Either that or the thing Casey was afraid of—Austin found something in Endicott’s office that incriminated the killer and tried to make a deal. Well, it didn’t matter. Logan didn’t
know Austin was a blackmailer; he wasn’t going to know.

  “What about Nye?” he asked. “You think he knew Dixon was the killer?”

  “Could be. Doesn’t have to be that, though. Nye was the only guy around that could still send Dixon to the pen for the other business. Nye knew about the auto store and the jeweler. If Dixon sent him around to get those guys out of town, and if Nye wanted to talk— Hell, he had plenty of reason to put Nye away.” He sighed. “I only wish I could’ve got to Nye first.”

  “What’re you going to do?”

  “Talk it over with the Inspector. If it’s okay we’ll pick up Dixon on suspicion of murder—we can hold him twenty-four hours anyway—and get a warrant and go over his office and home. He’s our boy.”

  Chapter Twenty: FRONT-PAGE TRAP

  BY 11:30 THAT MORNING the word had gone out to all precincts to pick up Bernie Dixon, and by one o’clock it became apparent that Mr. Dixon was not to be found. At 1:30 Casey telephoned Logan and was informed that it looked very much as if Dixon had gone into hiding temporarily, and at 2:00, Casey and Logan were in the office of MacGrath, the managing editor.

  “All right,” MacGrath said, swiveling his half-smoked cigar to the opposite corner of his mouth. “What’s on your mind, Flash?”

  Casey indicated the telephone. “Tell the girl you don’t want to be bothered for fifteen minutes.”

  MacGrath eyed him curiously a moment, but when casey stared back at him, he gave the necessary order. He looked at Logan. “What’s this all about?”

  Logan shook his head impatiently. “I don’t know. I wouldn’t have come at all only—” He sighed and glanced at Casey. “When he gets mysterious like this, sometimes he comes up with an idea. I could use one. Any kind of an idea.”

  “You think Dixon’s holed up?” Casey asked.

  “Hell, yes.”

  “What’re your chances of finding him?”

  “Damn small. A guy with his dough and his contacts could lay low for months. He probably wants to find out what the score is. If he finds out we got a case he’ll stay low until he gets Nye’s secretary and that cop, Cafferty, taken care of. If he thinks we haven’t, he’ll give himself up. We’ll never nail him for the Endicott job or the Austin one. But the Nye thing is different. We got a couple other little things now. We’ve got a chance on that one.”