The Last Express

by Baynard Kendrick

  Maclain tapped the edge of the curb with his cane. “Is the traffic too thick for you to walk with me over the approximate route he followed, Sergeant Rindermann?”

  “It’s pretty thick, Captain Maclain,” said Archer, “but I’ll damn soon thin it out.” He beckoned to a patrolman across the street, who came up on the run.

  While their rubber-coated escort diverted the curious drivers of passing cars and trucks, Schnucke, Maclain and Rindermann paced off the two short blocks to the scene of the explosion. The captain stood for a moment in the street, mentally picturing the wreckage which lay there the night before. “Right,” he ordered Schnucke and carefully paced off the distance to the sidewalk. Again he stood still, swept off his hat and mopped his brow, which was damp with perspiration and rain. A crowd of small boys began to form about them, and Sergeant Archer brusquely ordered them away.

  “You said this morning, Sergeant Archer,” Maclain observed finally, “that a taxi with Michelin tires passed Zarinka’s car.”

  “That’s right.” The sergeant glowered at the boys, who had stopped a safe distance away.

  “Yes,” Rindermann put in, “we know that much anyhow.”

  “I’d like to know more,” Maclain suggested. “Was Zarinka’s car stopped or was it moving when the taxi went by?”

  “It was stopped,” Rindermann told him decisively. “That’s easy.”

  “And the taxi turned to the right into Canal Street?” Rindermann nodded his head approvingly.

  “Not bad, Captain,” said Sergeant Archer. “I suppose you figure if Zarinka’s sedan was stopped for a red light and the taxi went on through, that it must have turned to the right. I don’t know whether they have the same rule in other cities or not—that cars can make a right turn on red.”

  “It’s interesting,” Maclain agreed, “but not exactly the point I had in mind. Did you notice anything unusual, Rindermann, in the course of Zarinka’s driving from his parking place to here ?”

  Rindermann’s eyes went back down the street and resurveyed the line of their walk. Mentally he measured the distance to the opposite corner of Centre Street from where they stood.

  “By God,” he exclaimed, “why did he turn to the right just before he stopped? Is that it?”

  “That’s it, all right. Since the taxi went by him after he was stopped, it’s obvious he didn’t turn in to allow it to pass.”

  “Then why do you think he turned in?” Archer demanded slowly.

  “Why do people generally pull in to the curb?”

  “I get you,” said Sergeant Archer. “To let somebody else out of the car.”

  “The officer on this beat saw someone in the car, as I understand it?”

  “That’s right,” Archer affirmed. “The man crossed the street and got in the car some time before Zarinka, but Galligan didn’t see him get out and doesn’t know whether he was in there when Zarinka got in.”

  “I think we can take that for granted.”

  “Captain Maclain’s right,” Rindermann put in.

  “If we go back over it, it’s pretty clear. The man got in the car and waited for Zarinka. He didn’t get out between the time the car left the curb and its stop for the light at Canal Street—but he did get out there.”

  “That doesn’t prove he was the killer,” Archer protested.

  “No,” Maclain shook his head, “it doesn’t prove he was the killer, but it narrows things down. Your hunt now is for a man who knew Zarinka and Zarinka’s car, and a man whom Zarinka knew himself. There’s also a possibility that he lives on Long Island or on the route Zarinka would take on his way to Forest Hills.”

  “You’re bucking all the evidence, Captain Maclain. The department’s combing Brooklyn—from Myrtle Avenue to Stillwell—for anyone who might have had it in for Zarinka. Have you forgotten what he told Galligan about the Sea Beach express?”

  “Not at all, Sergeant. If the man who killed Zarinka lived on the Sea Beach line and intended to take the subway here at Canal Street, I don’t believe he would wait around for Zarinka to drive him the short distance from where the car was parked to the station here.”

  “The inspector doesn’t believe that either. He thinks the man got in Zarinka’s car to talk to him, and I think the same thing.”

  “And I don’t,” said Maclain. “That man didn’t get in the car just for the purpose of talking to Zarinka. Since he knew it was Zarinka’s car, he knew also where Zarinka was working. If he had wanted to talk to him, he could have gone upstairs to the Homicide Bureau and seen Zarinka there.”

  “Maybe he didn’t want to be seen himself,” Rindermann suggested. “Miss Burberry was working there, too, until just before Zarinka left.”

  Maclain got his bearings by tapping the curb with his cane, ordered Schnucke forward, and started slowly up Centre Street toward headquarters. “That’s a good idea, too, Rindermann. So far this afternoon you and Archer have helped me clinch two things: Paul Zarinka’s murder was premeditated. The killer waited for him in the car under the pretext that he wanted Zarinka to drive him home—perhaps to Long Island—perhaps to drop him en route. He either knew beforehand, or found out after he talked with Zarinka in the car, that Zarinka wasn’t going directly home. He got out, and as he left the car, dropped the hand grenade quietly on the floor in the back. That gave him sufficient time to get away.”

  “What excuse did he give for getting out?” Archer wanted to know.

  Maclain raised his cane and pointed in the direction of the B. M. T. subway station. “There’s his excuse, Sergeant. He said he’d take the B. M. T. Paul Zarinka’s last statement must have been of tremendous importance to him. Desperately wounded, it looks as if he tried to tip off vital information to the police. He must have said the few words uppermost in his mind before he died. If a man normally rode home with him to Long Island or was dropped on the way, a change in the procedure would have attracted Zarinka’s attention. Deviations from the norm stick with us, Sergeant, but the normal is easily forgotten! My contention is that Paul Zarinka mentioned ‘the Sea Beach Subway—the last express’ because it was uppermost in his consciousness at the time of his death—uppermost because the killer left Paul Zarinka’s car with the statement that he was going to take it, a thing he normally never did.”

  Archer stood silent, rubbing his chin, then hurried for a few steps to catch up with Maclain before he remarked, “That’s a type of reasoning that comes hard to me, Captain, but you may be right—and I’ll not overlook it. Have you thought the man might have left anything else in the back of the car along with the grenade ?”

  “The mice? I hope not.” Maclain’s forehead wrinkled. “If the man who got out of Paul Zarinka’s car left those mice there, I’ve wasted an entire afternoon.”

  “Then you know what the mice are for?”

  “I told the D. A. this morning what they could have been for.” Maclain smiled. “Zarinka could have used them to warn him of poison gas.”

  “In his car?”

  “Hardly, Sergeant. I think before this case is finished all of us will be underground.”

  “There’s a cheerful outlook!” Sergeant Archer clipped the end off a bad cigar with a thumbnail and flipped the piece of tobacco into the gutter. “Where will you find poison gas around New York ?”

  “Just where I said,” Maclain told him firmly. “Underground.”

  Chapter Ten: THE WORD FROM MADONNA

  About the only way in which Benny Hoefle ever played fair with the public of New York was to give them a decent dinner and a good floor show in his Hi-de-Ho Club in Greenwich Village.

  Some pretty good tax experts from the Department of Internal Revenue had raised eyebrows inquiringly at the amount of income shown by the garish, awninged resort on Sheridan Square; but, since Benny cheerfully paid his large income tax, it was not part of their duties to delve into the intricacies of his low food costs and the exorbitant prices charged his guests. Actually, Benny Hoefle found the Hi-de-Ho a grand front
, for among his other activities he was an organizer of no mean ability.

  Whenever he felt himself sicken over the gouging hands of the government he sat back and formed a mental picture of Alcatraz. This enabled him to draw his tax check with a satisfied grin.

  The Hi-de-Ho Club itself was a modernistically redecorated hang-over from the speak-easy days. It offered a lobby done in black and white checks, and a better-than-average dance floor set like a square yellow diamond in a center of chrome leather chairs with plumbing arms and legs.

  At the rear of the restaurant was a stage boasting a crinkled curtain of silver which looked tarnished in the daylight. Since the activities of the club were for the most part confined to electric-lighted hilarity, the tarnish made little difference, and the music of Willie Weiser’s orchestra which occupied the stage was usually hot enough to keep the curtain up and at a glowing red.

  A billboard dominated each side of the canopied entrance, one of them given over to the talents of Willie Weiser’s aggregation, and the other displaying pinkly the seductive curves of the glorious Miss Amy Arden, costumed in a brevity commonly reserved for emergence from the bath.

  Amy’s talents might never have placed her in the spotlight of a Broadway revue, but, they were sufficiently good drawing cards to keep her on Benny’s payroll at $75 a week. With the aid of Willie Weiser’s windjamming cornetist to cover an occasional sour note, she could put over a torch song which saltened up the slightly alcoholic eyes of her listeners.

  Her tap dancing was loud enough to cover irregular rhythm, and her voice and pedal dexterity together were worth at least $10 a week. The other $65 she earned honestly by making the hardened house electrician gasp with admiration every time he threw a spot on the powdered whiteness of her figure.

  Amy, propped up in a bedful of pillows in her apartment on West 18th Street, was nakedly bathing in the blast from a whirring electric fan. Outside the rain fell steadily and straight, undisturbed by the faintest breeze which might relieve the mugginess of the room. The two front windows were open wide, allowing the sound of passing traffic four stories below to filter noisily in.

  It was past 4:00 in the afternoon and dismal in the room. Amy had just finished her breakfast of pineapple juice and coffee without cream—a combination which she detested but clung to through professional fear of untimely fatness.

  She was not due in the Hi-de-Ho until seven o’clock. She lighted a cigarette, patted the pillows into a cooler position, and settled back against them to absorb her daily diet of culture from the Morning Star, a tabloid which made things clearer to its many readers by profuse illustrations.

  On the front page was the picture of a man. For a long time she lay back as if in a trance, holding the paper stiffly with both hands against the disturbing breeze of the fan. Smoldering brown eyes, looking black in the print, stared into hers. The cynical curve at the end of the mouth seemed to be laughing at her confusion. Beside her, on the ash tray, her cigarette burned untouched as she tried to connect the dancing headlines with the face below. BOMB BLAST WIPES OUT D. A. Automatically she snuffed out the cigarette which was burning a paper match and sending up acrid fumes. The breeze of the fan had turned cold.

  She put the paper down, slipped from the bed and turned it off, watching the whirring blades with a hypnotic fascination until they became distinguishable and stopped. The noise from the street below began to beat against her. She gently lowered the windows, returned to the bed and read the short text under the picture on page 1, turning to its continuance on page 3 with a kind of horrible somnambulism. When she reached the end she turned back as though she had never seen it before and read it through once more. She left the bed and stood at the bureau for a long time, looking at the girl in the mirror, wondering why iotous platinum-blond hair grew dark at the roots; how a mouth which looked aged and drawn could surmount the contour of such firm girlish breasts.

  The buzzer in the kitchen was ringing insistently, short, emphatic rings, followed by the sustained impatient buzz of finger on button. The hands of the small clock on her bureau, telling her it was nearly 5:00, brought her to herself. She snatched up a light negligee, slipped her roseate-toenailed feet into straw sandals, and, with a gesture of ridding herself of a loathesome burden, flung the copy of the Morning Star under the bed.

  She pushed the button in the kitchen to click the door downstairs and admit her insistent visitor, lighted another cigarette, and sat down in a wicker armchair, listening for the sound of footsteps on the stairs.

  The clock hands crept to 5:02. She began to think that someone had made a mistake and rung the wrong apartment when the door she was watching opened without a preliminary knock.

  When it closed, a slender youth in a belted raincoat was standing inside the room, watching her with round filmy eyes which held an expression of pleased surprise at her appearance. He threw the raincoat open, disclosing a suit so light it approached pinkishness.

  Neither of them spoke. Her figure grew smaller, huddled into the confines of the chair; her expression set itself unblinkingly with the fascinated terror of a bird. Wordlessly her visitor crossed to the bureau, took a comb from his pocket and slicked back his blond hair, grinning at her reflection in the mirror. A perfectly manicured hand brushed her toilet articles to one side. Lightly and effortlessly, he hoisted himself to the bureau and sat down in the space he had cleared, kicking his tiny feet in a soft tattoo against the drawer.

  Vainly Amy tried to think of something to say and finally blurted out, “You have no right to come in here without knocking, Madonna.”

  His filmy eyes traveled around the room and came to rest on her again with a slight leer. “You better hope I go out the same way.”

  “What do you want?”

  “They found your boy friend in pieces last night.”

  “You’ve taken a lot for granted. Paul Zarinka was never any boy friend of mine.”

  “More than that, perhaps.”

  “That’s a lie!” She wished he were not sitting on the bureau by her lipstick. Her lips pleaded for its protective coloration to hide their whiteness. Somehow she could not grasp that Paul Zarinka was dead, that it was his picture which emblazoned the front page of the Star, that Madonna was perched on her bureau practicing his detestable trick of lighting a match with his thumbnail. Inside she felt cold and gray, for Madonna was not human. Madonna was death, a leering skeleton of destruction in a pinkish suit.

  “I came up to be friendly.” He talked as he always did, filtering words and smoke together through his perfect teeth.

  “Why ?” Her voice sounded unnatural to her. She forced herself to go on. “You’re never friendly for nothing.”

  “Nobody’s friendly for nothing. Have the flatties been to see you?”

  “Why should they come here?”

  “They’ll be here quick enough. You’ll hear them coming up the stairs—puffing and wheezing and slapping their big feet against the carpet.”

  “I’m not afraid. I’ve nothing to hide—and besides, they don’t even know I knew Zarinka.”

  “They’ll find out,” said Madonna.

  “How’ll they find out?” she demanded. “I’ve done nothing wrong. Why should I be dragged into a murder ? Is it a crime to love a man—to—to—” The words refused to come.

  “They’ll find out,” said Madonna. “You better know what to tell them.”

  His tone warned her. She jumped to her feet, clutching the flimsy negligee about her under the insult of his myeloid eyes.

  “Yes,” she said. “You’re low enough to do that—low enough to do anything—even stool!”

  “I’m protecting your interests.” His feet were beating rhythmically in tune with the ticking of the clock. “The D. A.’s coming to the Hi-de-Ho at ten tonight. He’s been informed that you want to talk to him.”

  “By you?”

  “You talk wild, baby. I’m trying to keep you from talking wild tonight—talking yourself into a suicide. You know
too much—about some things—and not enough about what to say when you’re asked. I’m here to tell you.”

  “Suppose I refuse?”

  Madonna picked a nail file from the bureau beside him and carefully cleaned his nails. Ignoring her question, he said, “Dearborn’s going to have a blind dick with him. A man and a dog. You don’t need to worry, because he can’t see you, but they tell me his ears are keen as hell.”

  “But there’s nothing I could tell them.” She shook her head hopelessly. “I don’t know anything about Zarinka, Madonna—before heaven, I don’t! He took me out a few times, that’s all. I can’t be hung for that! That’s not going to hurt anyone!”

  He slid off the bureau like a slim beautiful snake. “You saw a man named Hewitt at the Hi-de-Ho last night.”

  “I don’t know him.”

  “I think you do.” His eyes half closed. “He’s the husband of the dame who was waiting in booth four—the one with all the diamonds. You know her.”

  “I’ve never seen her husband.”

  “I’m clearing your memory,” Madonna told her, “and saving your life. His name’s Howard Hewitt. He’s five foot eleven and dark. His nose is slightly crooked—from a football accident. He’s a pleasant duck—and high tempered as hell when he’s mad. You remember that distinctly, because he quarreled with his wife last night and left the place in a rage—sometime between nine-thirty and ten.”

  “How could I know all that about a man I’ve never talked to?” She roused herself as if from a bad dream.

  “You have talked to him,” Madonna continued relentlessly. “He’s questioned you about his wife—and Zarinka. Given you money to keep an eye on them. I just wanted to let you know, because you’re going to be questioned between shows tonight.”

  “And if I do this”—there was a sob in her voice—“if I lie like this—mix myself up in the murder of a man I really cared for—what then?”

  Madonna walked to the door and, with it half open, turned around and flicked his lighted cigarette into the middle of the carpet.