Hannegan, surprised, but quick on the uptake, moved over and snapped a steel band about the wrist of the arm I held.
Day thundered: “What you think you’re doing, Moon!”
Still cramping Sheridan’s arm, I dog-trotted him over to Claude Banner’s chair, spun him around to face me and pushed him into Banner’s lap. Banner let out a large, “Whoosh!” as three-hundred odd pounds smashed down on him, and before either knew what was happening, I snapped the other end of the cuffs to Banner’s wrist.
Sheridan struggled from his seat to stand erect.
“That makes four packaged up for you,” I said to the now speechless inspector. “The fifth is a lady.”
Crossing to Mrs. Rand, I stood over her, looking down. “Your fat friend was remarkably careful not to implicate you. But no one else knew I was headed after Joe Alamado.”
Warren Day shrieked in my ear: “Who’s Joe Alamado?” His narrow nose was a pale bull’s-eye in a beet-red face.
“I thought Mrs. Rand wouldn’t have passed on the message I left for the police,” I said. “He’s an employee of Sheridan’s and hers.”
Reaching down, I hooked an index finger around the ribbon of her thick-lensed glasses and jerked them off her nose. The pupils of her weak, watery eyes were contracted to dots.
“We’ve, got two murderers,” I told inspector Day. “Claude Banner killed his wife, Mrs. Rand murdered Vivian…”
“I knew the whole setup was phony when they started pinning the second murder on you,” Warren Day told me over rye highballs at my apartment. “Not that I thought you above murder, but using cyanide was too smart for your lame brain. You’d simply have broken her neck.”
Hannegan put in: “How’d the dope racket work?”
I said: “All five helped operate the ring. Mrs. Rand’s husband committed suicide when he went broke in 1929, and the narcotic trade has been her source of income ever since. Norman Sheridan and Mrs. Rand directed operations, Claude Banner handled the smuggling through his frequent business trips to Mexico, and Joe Alamado was the distributor. Harry was general flunky.
“Whether or not Mrs. Banner was part of the ring is unimportant now, but when she discovered her own daughter was an addict, she blew her lid and threatened to expose the whole deal. In an attempt to pacify her, the gang rigged up a quiet cure for Vivian. But I spilled the beans that the treatment might not work, and wasn’t what Dr. Yoder recommended.
“Vivian didn’t know that her whole family was involved in narcotic trade, but she did know Alamado was the distributor, and she knew her aunt was also a morphine addict. So the gang wanted her where they could watch her in case she broke under the cure and started making accusations. After Mrs. Banner left the Rand home that day, she laid down the law to Sheridan and her husband that Vivian was either going to be committed to a sanitarium, or she was going to the police. So Harry, Sheridan and Banner simply took her for a ride, dumped her body in the river and rigged alibis for each other. Afterward Banner caught his plane.”
“I follow all that,” Hannegan said. “But how’d you know Banner was the one who pulled the trigger?”
“Simple psychology. Sheridan was too smart to do his own killing, and Harry didn’t have the guts.”
Warren Day said: “I still don’t see why Mrs. Rand killed her niece. She must have been nuts.”
“Next thing to it,” I said. “She was full of dope, and her thinking wasn’t quite sane. After Vivian’s unsuccessful attempt to get morphine from Joe Alamado, she went back home, locked herself in her room and began brooding about the next day. Alamado had promised her a supply if she phoned him at noon, remember. Vivian had been off even medicinal doses for two weeks and was bearing up pretty well, but the idea of actually getting a shot worked on her mind until she couldn’t stand to wait the night through.
“Vivian knew her aunt had a supply, because she’d swiped a shot during her treatment. I nearly caught her in the act, though I wasn’t aware of it at the time. But when Mrs. Rand found Vivian all hopped up, she knew I’d ask embarrassing questions, so she deliberately let Alex Carson in to visit Vivian, hoping he’d get the blame. Her ruse worked, and I ordered Alex to stay away.
“The night Vivian died, she called in her aunt, demanded a shot of morphine and threatened to tell me Mrs. Rand was an addict if she didn’t get it. Norman Sheridan had repeatedly warned Mrs. Rand to be careful with me around, and in her drug-punchy mind she thought if I discovered she was an addict, I’d follow through and learn all about the drug ring and the murder of Mrs. Banner. To quiet Vivian, her aunt promised to bring her a shot during the night. But she knew she could never explain to me how Vivian got the shot, so when she brought the needle, it was filled with cyanide instead of morphine.
“After administering Vivian’s last shot in the arm, she had Harry lean a ladder against the house, left her connecting door ajar with the key in it, and calmly went to bed.
“Neither Claude Banner nor Norman Sheridan knew she planned to kill Vivian until she phoned them next morning and told them what she had done. Both blew their lids, but there was nothing they could do but try to cover for her. She got hold of Sheridan in time for him to ad lib a quick plan to sidetrack me from getting to Joe Alamado. Once Sheridan showed his hand, he was cautious enough to want to dispose of me quick, but one of his partners phoned and talked him into waiting.”
“That was Claude Banner,” said Warren Day. “Banner convinced Sheridan they could pin Vivian’s murder on you, but only if your subsequent death seemed accidental. He suggested a car accident, as though you smashed up trying to escape. And, of course, if Sheridan had put a bullet in you, it wouldn’t have looked very accidental.”
“How’d you tumble to Mrs. Rand?”
“I saw her eyes without their thick glasses. At the time I knew there was something strange about them, but it didn’t register until I thought about it later. Then I realized her pupils were contracted just as Vivian’s had been.”
Day said: “They might have gotten away with it if Sheridan had won his phone argument with Banner.”
“You sound disappointed,” I said.
Mixing himself another drink, Day spread thin lips in a hurt smile. “You misjudge me, Manny. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to you.” He sampled his drink and nodded, “Not as long as you keep stocking this brand of rye.”
A Shot in the Arm Page 6