Killer with a Key

by Dan J. Marlowe

  "Maybe she went out to a movie to cool off," Mike suggested. "That apartment gets like an oven sometimes."

  "Yeah," Johnny agreed absently. The unanswered phone reminded him of another caller who had been unable to reach Lorraine--Roberta Perry. Lorraine hadn't been back to the office since the murders, still you couldn't catch her at home. So where was she spending her time?

  He followed Mike out through the foyer. The sporty little MG was on the restricted side of the street; Mike fished a press card out from under the lowered visor as he got under the wheel. "That's for the cruisers," he told Johnny. "The beat man knows the car."

  "Must be nice to be a big shot." Mike Larsen laughed as he started the motor; Johnny listened to the rough roar of the engine and raised his voice to make himself heard as their quick start snapped his neck. "Take it easy in this spittoon, now; I could shot-put this thing across the street."

  Mike stopped for the Seventh Avenue light and turned to look at him. "I took a look at Russo's client in the bar. Knew him the minute I saw him. Name's Connor, with an o, not an e. Tim Connor."

  Johnny nodded. "Russo called him Tim. What's his action?"

  Mike gunned away from the light, beating a cab to the one-lane-wide passageway between the parked cars beyond Broadway. "His action is a little complicated. When I began to think about it Connor and Russo made an interesting combination. I've always wondered how Russo took the kind of living off that balcony that kept him in two-hundred-dollar suits. Maybe I know now."

  "Nothing legal, I hope?"

  Mike caught the light at Eighth Avenue and thundered into a sweeping right-hand turn; the little car sounded like an engine-testing block as they set sail up the left-hand side of the one-way street. "You could get a debate on that. This Connor is tough, but he's slick, too. It's a combination you don't get too often. He's made it pay off." He settled back in the bucket seat, and the MG skimmed north. "You know this town, Johnny; if you spread a little money around, public relations-wise there's nothing you can't do. Connor came up with a refinement."

  Mike Larsen took his eyes from the street ahead long enough for a quick side glance at Johnny. "His particular variation on the theme was simple. Instead of building the client up you tear the competition down. The way Connor worked it out it was bad news for the competition."

  He slowed in mid-block to catch the change from red to green at Fifty-fourth, accelerated and made a left turn on a wheel and a half as he darted between the curbed cars. Johnny unclenched his hands with difficulty; this Mike really used a car.

  The MG flew west; Mike had to raise his voice above the muffled roar of the motor. "Like this, Johnny. You and I each own a restaurant, on opposite corners of the street. You're a smart operator, and I'm a shmo. You hire my best waiter away from me, and my hostess, and my chef. All of a sudden you've got the customers and I've got the ulcers. I'm a shmo, see, but now I'm mad."

  He swung the little car into the curb, and Johnny looked up at the familiar weather-stained brick building. Mike sat with his hands loosely on the wheel as he continued. "I'm mad, so I make a couple of phone calls. Someone puts me in touch with Connor, and I tell him the story. He says, okay, Pop, how mad are you? How much do you want to spend? I say the hell with the money--let's see a little blood. So in a couple of days a well-dressed couple come into your place at the height of the dinner hour, and during the meal the woman suddenly becomes embarrassingly, deathly ill, without ever getting away from the table. In a roomful of people her escort accuses you of serving tainted food. And three nights later it happens again."

  Mike's fingers drummed hollowly on the steering wheel. "And that's only the beginning. You've been doing the right and usual thing by all the visiting fire department boys and health inspectors, but all of a sudden now you pick up two kitchen violations from the health department. Runs to a little money to get the citations lifted. Then a piece of brass walks in from the fire department with a little bad news. Seems as though the guy you bought the place from put in that partition over there without an alteration permit. It's a fire hazard--got to come out, pronto. So it ruins the looks of your whole place? Things are tough all over. Who pays for it? You do."

  He lifted his hands from the wheel as he looked over at Johnny. "Connor doesn't appear personally too often. He holds himself out for the big ones, the boffolas, or the ones that take a little finesse. He's got a stable of half the unemployed actors and actresses in town. He has a stiff payroll, but he makes a nice living."

  "Seems to me the trick would be to stay alive to enjoy it."

  Mike shrugged. "How do you prove that kind of stuff? Regardless of what you suspect? You can't prove a thing."

  A little tickle stirred faintly in the recesses of Johnny's mind. Who-- He reached for the door handle. "I've got to get inside, Mike." He said it slowly; his mind was still on Mike's parable. Who had said-- The tickle died; he had lost the thread. He swung open the door and lifted himself up on the sidewalk.

  "You doing anything in the morning?" Mike asked abruptly. "Let's get out on the Sound for a couple of hours."

  "In the morning?" Johnny echoed doubtfully.

  "Blow the stink of the town off ourselves," Mike urged him. He grinned a little self-consciously. "I'll give you another inducement. I've been trying to make up my mind to talk to you about something. Maybe out on the boat I'll be able to forget I'll be betraying a confidence."

  Johnny nodded. "Seven-thirty?"

  "Good. I'll pick you up." Mike waved and roared away, and after staring after him for a moment Johnny ran lightly up the worn white stone steps. He nodded to the uniformed man at the information desk just inside the door and turned left and strode briskly along the oil-darkened wooden floors of the station house. At the old fashioned head-high desk he looked up at the uniformed sergeant.

  "Killain to see Lt. Dameron."

  The sergeant nodded and picked up the phone. He replaced it with the two syllables of Johnny's name still hanging in the air. "Second door on the left."

  Detective Rogers was at the opened door; he stood aside to let Johnny enter and closed the door behind him. The cramped, dark room seemed crowded with chairs and with men; the air was stale and blue with cigarette smoke. Johnny ran his eyes quickly around the seated semicircle--a grinning Cuneo, a fat detective with round eyes whom Johnny knew only as Owly, a man he didn't know at all, Jimmy Rogers standing behind him and Lieutenant Dameron behind his littered desk.

  Johnny looked carefully at the big, apple-cheeked man with the cropped iron-gray hair and the hard gray eyes who sat plunged into the depths of his swivel chair. The entire room was illuminated by a single gooseneck lamp on the desk. "Kindergarten class, Joe?"

  The big man's lips moved; it could have been a smile. "You might call it that. I guess you know everyone here except Ray Hawkins."

  Johnny inclined his head in the direction of the cadaverous, rumpled man on the outer wing of the seated men and received fifty per cent acknowledgment. Ray Hawkins had baggy, dark brown pouches under his eyes, and directly above them the eyes themselves looked like two hard-boiled eggs. "Ray works out of here, too," the lieutenant said. "He and Owly caught the squeal on Sanders, which makes 'em high men on this totem pole." He squashed out a cigarette in his ash tray and removed a fresh one from the pack in his shirt pocket. He leaned back in his chair when he had it lit, the solid-looking face expressionless. "Show him what we have for him, Jimmy."

  From behind him Detective Rogers pushed into Johnny's hand three or four double-spaced typewritten sheets, stapled together; the red-line-left-margined legal-sized crisp stationery was doubled back to a prominent signature on the right-hand side of the upmost sheet, trailed on the lower left by additional signatures.

  Johnny looked at the prominently isolated signature, and a cold little wind blew down his back. Victor Barnes. His voice was harsh. "What's this thing supposed to be?"

  "Forgot you couldn't read." Johnny's eyes swiveled; Ted Cuneo was smiling at him. Unpleasan
tly. The lean detective was obviously delighted to explain. "It's a confession, Killain. Signed. And witnessed."

  A pulse hammered in Johnny's temple. "Confession to what, you damn hyena?"

  The smile disappeared; Cuneo stood up. "You know what. To the murder of Ellen Saxon. I had a talk with your boy."

  Johnny's eyes flicked back to the papers in his hand. The signature of the first witness was Theodore Cuneo. The confession fluttered floorward as Johnny's hands balled; his chin came down on his chest, and his weight advanced to the frontal arches. His voice sounded as though it originated outside the room. "You dirty little wart, Cuneo!"

  "Head him off, Jimmy!" Lieutenant Dameron rapped out the order, and Jimmy Rogers dropped both hands down on Johnny's rigid right arm.

  "Stop it, Johnny!" Detective Rogers' tone was sharp as his feet left the floor; something in the urgency of the sandy-haired man's voice penetrated Johnny's red haze and halted the independent action of the right arm upon which the detective's weight rested. Jimmy Rogers was looking at Ted Cuneo, and his voice was curt. "I could let him go, Ted."

  "So let him go." Detective Cuneo's tone was bitter, and his features were brick red. "A real wise guy. Let him go." He darted a sullen glance at the silent lieutenant. "Christ! How does a burn-up like him live so long?"

  Detective Rogers snorted. "If you'd been with me a little bit earlier tonight you'd have a better idea."

  Ted Cuneo scowled, hesitated and finally sat down again. Jimmy Rogers released his hold on Johnny's arm and stepped back. Johnny looked around again at the varying expressions in the semicircle, and finally he nodded. "Okay, boys. I read you now. Too many blips on the radar for a minute. You don't think it's legitimate, either. I'd never have gotten within a thousand yards of a confession like this if you thought it was worth a quarter." He took a deep breath, and his eyes came back to Cuneo. "Vic Barnes is my friend. I'd just like to find out you went in there and roughed him up, you needlin' little moron--"

  Ted Cuneo soared up out of his chair and landed crouched forward, feet apart. His face was scarlet. "Just let me catch you spitting on the sidewalk, even, Killain!"

  Johnny cut across the shrill vehemence. "Don't try it alone, man. Not ever."

  Lieutenant Dameron's big hand crashed down on his desk as papers flew. "That's enough of that! You're no privileged character, Johnny. Keep a civil tongue in your head."

  Johnny shifted from his eye-to-eye exchange with Cuneo and stared at the apple-cheeked man behind the desk. "So how come he confessed to something he didn't do, Joe?"

  The lieutenant's voice was patient. "He called out to the turnkey and asked for a stenographer, said he wanted to dictate a statement. We sent one in, and he did. You saw it."

  "With no pressure at all? Did he have any visitors?"

  "No visitors. And no pressure, despite our comedian here." Cuneo flushed a dull bronze. "Entirely voluntary."

  "Voluntary, hell! If he didn't have visitors, he was reached some other way. A message, a note, maybe. It could still be in there with him. Why don't you guys get off your butts and shake down--" The cumulative dead-pan stare from around the group finally penetrated his intensity. "All right," he said shortly. "You already did it. So what'd you find?"

  Lieutenant Dameron lifted a small green blotter from his desk; beneath it was a crumpled, torn-off corner of brown wrapping paper. "Don't touch it, Johnny."

  Johnny walked around the desk and looked down at the crudely lettered penciled message: your wife is next,

  BARNES.

  "Came in on his supper tray, he says." It was Detective Rogers' voice; Johnny was still staring down at the note. "Folded into his napkin. I talked to Finnegan, in the cell block. Barnes has been having his meals sent in. I've already been across the street." He shrugged elaborately. "Nothing."

  "Of course you realize you could be telling him something he already knows, Jimmy," Ted Cuneo said morosely.

  Johnny ignored him. "Vic thought Lorraine would be safer if he confessed. Which is what whoever sent the note wanted him to think."

  "This Lorraine." Lieutenant Dameron's hard gray eyes bored up into Johnny. "I know she hasn't told us all she knows yet. I don't think you have, either." Johnny was silent, and added color crowded up into the red face measuring him. The big man bit his words off between tightly compressed lips. "Has Lorraine Barnes told you anything she hasn't told us?"

  "How should I know what she told you? Do I get to read the transcript? You got to come crying to me because you can't run your business?"

  The hands on the desk top knuckled slowly. "Three people have died. The interrelationships are complicated; the lives of more might be threatened, yet to satisfy a whim of your own you're prepared to sabotage justice. If I ever find out that you withheld information--"

  Johnny's neck swelled in its suddenly too-tight collar. The desk creaked as his weight crowded it. "Ahhhh, bag it, Joe! Sabotage justice! If I had one-tenth the information you do-nothings had I'd be so close to that rotten weasel you could smell him sweatin' from here. And when I found him--" His clenched fist smashed down on the desk; a stapler jumped up in the air, tottered on the desk's edge and fell to the floor. The room was very quiet.

  Lieutenant Dameron stood up behind his desk. His voice was level, positive. "Your attitude proves my point for me. I thought I'd give you one more chance; you've had it. I'll put what I've got to say now in the form of an order." He leaned forward as he emphasized each word. "You stay away from everyone connected with this case in any way, shape or form. If I find you've contacted anyone like you did the Perry girl I'll get you off the street if I have to get a law passed."

  Johnny felt the hot blood in his face; his arms flexed involuntarily. "You think you're God Almighty, Joe? Go play with your wooden soldiers. Why should I listen to you?"

  "Because I say so!" It was nearly a shout; the bull neck was thrust forward.

  Johnny looked at him. He turned his head and looked at the smirking Cuneo, at the round-eyed Owly, at the grinning Hawkins and lastly at the expressionless Rogers. He turned silently and walked to the door; it shivered on its hinges from the smash with which he slammed it shut behind him.

  CHAPTER 10

  Johnny dropped the empty buckets at the foot of the standpipe at the shore end of the elongated pier and fumbled in his hip pocket for his wrench. He glanced out over the Sound's blue-green chop, already turned brassy in the early morning sunlight, and knelt on the scarred, splintered planking, warm to the touch, as he opened the cut-off valve at the base of the pipe.

  As he filled the buckets he could see Mike in the cockpit of the thirty-foot cruiser dancing heavily at the end of her lines a hundred feet out on the pier. Amidst the small forest of stubby masts and tired rigging in the dingy hulls around it Johnny could make out the semicircled brass lettering on the bobbing stern: Ye Olde Beaste, NYC, NY. Mike had the cowling off the brutish-looking engine and was probing its interior with a long-necked oilcan.

  Ye Olde Beaste was a marine monstrosity. Its beam was out of all proportion to its water line, so that even in a flat calm it floundered like a dish in a bathtub. It made a good fishing platform, but there its virtues ceased. In addition to its disproportionate beam-to-water line difficulties, Ye Olde Beaste's seagoing life was further complicated by its engine. The perverted sense of humor of a former owner blessed with more money than brains had caused him to install in the boat's plumply pedestrian interior a power plant barely short of Gold Cup standards. Its weight guaranteed a stern-heavy sag and a steady shipment of spray aft. The engine was Mike's pride and joy, despite the fact that it was a tricky assignment to keep the monster throttled back to the point necessary to prevent hull and engine from going their separate ways.

  "Catch, Mike." Mike straightened from his loving inspection of the engine; he accepted the filled buckets as Johnny backed down the top rungs of the wooden ladder spiked to the pier piling and swung them off the planking over his head. Mike passed up two empties and sleeved hi
s brow with the forearm of his gray sweat shirt.

  "It's a hot one, boy."

  "Gonna be," Johnny agreed. "We'll catch exercise today, period. This sun's gonna drive 'em too deep for our surface stuff."

  "Ahh, it's a change from the asphalt, anyway. You ready?"

  "Soon's I fill these and get the ice out of the car." Johnny climbed back up on the pier, returned to the standpipe, filled his buckets and re-closed the cut-off valve. He left the buckets and walked off the shore end of the pier to the MG parked in the weeds at the end of the graveled road. He could feel the heat of the planking through the crepe soles of his sneakers, even this early in the morning; at the car he removed from the floor a fifty-pound piece of ice wrapped in a sodden newspaper and swung it up to his left shoulder. He could feel the wet trickle of the melting ice run down his back as he retrieved the buckets, passing one up to the extended left hand which balanced the ice.

  At the boat he set down his liquid burden and passed the ice down to Mike; he heard it thump down into the box as he reached back up over his head and handed down the water pails. He dropped down to the deck himself from the ladder after casting off the lines and fended off from the pilings with the boat hook as Mike started the engine with a deep-throated roar that sent the nearby gulls zooming aloft.

  They crept away from the dock and out into the deserted Sound, and Mike nodded at a sleekly expensive cabin cruiser which contrasted sharply with their own weather-beaten down-at-heels appearance. "I'll own one like that in a year, Johnny."

  Johnny looked at the cruiser and back at Mike. "You plannin' on hitting the sweeps? Besides, you couldn't desert the old lady."

  Mike smiled. "I'll retire the old lady and keep her for a pet."

  Johnny crouched before a compartment door in the cockpit and removed a tangle of gear. Swiftly he assembled two spinning rods and sorted out a double handful of mismatched reels, swivels, lures, leader wire, a battered knife and a rusty hatchet. Beyond the point the breeze freshened; Ye Olde Beaste lumbered through lengthening swells, and the air had a crisper tang. Johnny removed half a dozen bottles of beer from the case in the bottom of the boat and put them in the box with the ice.