by P. J. Lozito
“I do know,” agreed Corrigan.
“You should also know I helped a radio patrol chasing that felon last night.”
“Yeah,” grumbled Corrigan, “you would. Good alibi, cops.”
“One was that Pat O’Hara, a highly decorated patrolman,” confirmed Allred, looking up as he pretended to search his memory for the other name.
“You’re usually at home or here, conspicuously working late, whenever the Silver Manticore is prowling around,” Corrigan declared, “Always.”
Allred was silent.
“I spoke to Patrol Car Eleven. They definitely place you in the North Beach neighborhood Manticore struck last night. Quite a brazen stunt you pulled. Guess you thought they wouldn’t recognize you.”
“I expect most cops know me from my law-and-order stance in the Examiner,” stated Allred.
“Yeah? Well, you’ve made it quite clear you want the Manticore brought to justice,” noted Corrigan. “You ran a nice, crisp photo of him on the front page a while back.”
“One of the few in existence,” proclaimed Allred proudly. “Shutterbug of mine caught him unawares, with one those newfangled stereoscopic cameras. We had to run it ‘flat,’ of course.”
“So why didn’t a criminal like the Manticore go after that photog in reprisal?” Corrigan mused aloud. “The shot was credited, even.”
“Maybe…”
“Maybe only a real criminal would do that,” suggested X-8 coyly.
“Well, it was one of my lady photographers. Going to be the next Antoinette Hervey. Manticore’d be a real heel to menace a dame.”
“A likely story. Who was that doing the vocal impersonations last night, the kid Wynn who ‘helped’ break up Luciferro’s gang?”
“Bob Wynn is dead,” stated Allred. “I can’t imagine what you’re driving at.”
With a sigh, Corrigan produced a notebook from an inner pocket. Flipping it open one handed, he checked notes.
“You’re slipping,” Corrigan continued. “You make about as much noise as smoke,” he blew out some of his own. “But even you can’t be in two places at once.”
“What the devil do you mean by that?” Allred demanded. Nervous for once, he fidgeted with the magnificent fire opal on his left hand. Corrigan didn’t notice him depress it, engaging the crystal set that signaled his man Burberry. Somewhere, in an office not listed in any directory, an alarm rang.
“I called your place last night,” continued Corrigan.
Allred settled back in his chair, “Oh? Oh, was that you?”
“Used one of our old coded greetings and didn’t get recognition back.” He paused, “It wasn’t you I spoke to.”
“Naturally, my houseboy took the call,” sputtered Allred.
“The Filipino. On his night off?”
“How would you know Bako’s …?”
“I’m investigating you, is how I know.”
“Well, Bob Wynn is dead I tell you.” Investigating? Allred didn’t like the implications.
“That official?” put in Corrigan.
“You saw the police report, I presume.”
“Oh, I read it,” admitted the government man. “Even viewed a grave marked ‘Robert Wynn’ in Wildwood Cemetary.”
“Well, there you go. We think it was a vengeful member of Luciferro’s gang went after him for helping the Examiner break the story.”
“Not much was left of the gang. Wynn was in that silver mask fighting Luciferro’s bunch. The kid’s a push note, the spirit ‘n’ image of you. Then he fakes his death and you took over as the Manticore. Net gain: a look-a-like alibi. Come clean, Brent, that’s our tradecraft. He’s your cousin—it’s in your file.”
Corrigan was sharp, thought Allred, but would never guess that Professor Scott, Louise’s father, had administered the “Living Death” to Wynn. This physic from Hanoi Tsin’s immense pharmacopoeia, found among Luciferro’s effects, slowed bodily functions, mimicking the big sleep. At the City Morgue, the group--Allred, Bako, Scott, and cabbie Evan White--had substituted a criminal the Silver Manticore had brought to justice, reviving the cataleptic Wynn. Miss Scott served as lookout.
Corrigan blustered, continuing: “Wynn was known to be involved in breaking up Luciferro’s gang with help from some reporters. One of ‘em now takes your shorthand,” his head indicated the outer office. “Republic Pictures even made a serial out of the incident. Mysterious Dr. Lucifer, my eye! I hope no one guesses that mechanical man is real.”
“So, that’s how the service gets intelligence now?
From the matinees,” Allred countered. “Even Fox Movie Tone News would be better. Why should I turn to banditry?”
“Right,” agreed Corrigan. “You’re already rich.”
“I suppose I finance this crusade,” conjectured Allred, “with proceeds taken from crooks so that I stay rich?”
“Well, some people seem to think the Manticore is a modern Robin Hood,” pointed out Corrigan. “Remember when we had you planted in Russia and you flew to Shanghai?”
“In 1916, right after I transferred out of Codes and Ciphers with you,” offered Allred, taken somewhat aback by the quick change of subject.
“No codes in that mission. It was against Dr. Hanoi Tsin and his Fi- San bunch. You encountered a Japanese operative while there.”
Allred maintained his composure but it was not easy. Admit nothing.
“The Silver Manticore’s now hassling Hanoi Tsin’s Chinatown operations, shooting up the underworld dives he recruits muscle from. I guess that’s your houseboy driving the getaway car. That is, if he’s not too busy hunting down the best lamb chop for you.”
“I should hire you to write for me,” decided Allred. “I’d branch out to fiction magazines except for the paper shortage.”
He nodded toward a posted sign bearing the message by his desk: WASTE PAPER IS A WEAPON OF WAR! MADE INTO CARDBOARD CONTATINERS FOR FOOD, AMMUNITION, SUPPLIES, IT CARRIES THE WAR TO OUR FIGHTING FRONT—AND THE ENEMY. SAVE PAPER—AND SAVE LIVES BY HELPING TO SHORTEN THE WAR!
“Yeah? Well, no one’d believe this stuff,” Corrigan growled. “Switching identities with a corpse, hiding a Jap at your place…”
“Didn’t I just finish telling you Bako is from the Philippines?”
“Oh, I bet he has ‘proof,’ too. Funny, a sleuth I contacted there couldn’t square the description of Gani Bako with your houseboy.”
“You take the word of some foreign keyhole-peeper?”
“Jo Gar is the most highly respected detective in the Philippines. Now, that Japanese operative who contacted us for asylum in ‘39? He would only go with you, his old pal from Shanghai in ’16. Of course, we’re interested in this man.”
“If I recall, his knowledge of kata kana was invaluable,” bluffed Allred.
“So, we get you into Japan. Falsified documents: you’re a journalist on assignment just like when you were there with the Babe. A plane is stolen. You land in Hawaii. The defector dies of slow acting poison his belligerent superiors slipped into his morning tea.” Corrigan smiled, “How convenient.”
“I couldn’t help that,” protested Allred. “I was just supposed to get him out, not be his royal food-taster.”
“Honolulu cop, Chang Apana, with all the kids, swore to the whole thing. You come home with a ‘Filipino’ houseboy.”
“Why waste a trip?” pleaded Allred, hands thrown wide.
“You pulled a fast one, Brent,” Corrigan stated. “Did you know someone disturbed the Potter’s Field plot of a ‘Japanese’ named Kyoto over to Hawaii?”
Allred hid his shock. So Hanoi Tsin is on to us. Better get word to Bako when Burberry calls in, he decided.
“All Hanoi Tsin has to do is connect you to once having posed as Kentov. It’ll be all over,” declared Corrigan. He consulted the notepad again, briefly. More cigarette smoke was expelled, as he uttered: “Kentov himself is at large.”
“Any idea where?”
“No, the commies expelled h
im from the Soviet Union after they found he was an American undesirable stinking up their workers’ paradise jail.”
“He’s probably bomzky,” Allred muttered.
“Forget him. But you better know that I know a lot of stuff disappeared from Luciferro’s various hideouts.”
“Why would I care?”
“One item was a flivver same make and model as yours.”
“I got mine used,” claimed Allred, languidly.
“You have the paperwork?”
“Bako spotted it for me on the street, knowing I was in the market for a car,” declared Allred. “My old Scarab was falling apart.”
“Got a canceled check?”
“He paid cash.”
“What, out of the household money?”
“Like you said: I’m rich. He carries enough to pick me up the occasional used jalopy.”
“What’s a rich guy like you doing with a used car anyway?”
“You know as well as I do that no new cars are being made,” Allred stressed.
“Touché! Okeh, the one I’m referring to is bulletproof, with trick license plates and with bulletproof cellular rubber tires,” stated Corrigan. “Super-charged, silenced engine.”
“Why, it’s fantastic, pure OVRA stuff,” put in Allred.
“Right, the OVRA. Mussolini exiled an old Camorra hand named Emilio Luciferro because of his harsh methods. He was known to use one of those ‘special protection cars.’ He left penniless. The Chinese doctor offered him a place on the Cabal of Seven,” Corrigan wet a thumb and flipped a page.
“Oh, bullets; I like this. Bullets we dig out of the Manticore’s victims match guns we’ve traced to Luciferro’s men. Men in custody. It doesn’t make sense unless someone is using their blasters. Reminds me: the Manticore favors the same side arms you did on the job: four-fives. I checked. It’s in your file.”
Allred studied Corrigan, committing the details of his mistakes to memory.
“You know what? I even consulted the dictionary, to find out what exactly a ‘manticore’ is,” said Corrigan.
“A fabulous beast,” supplied Allred. “Part lion, part man, with a scorpion’s tail that shoots spikes. Three rows of teeth. The whole bit. I should think every schoolchild knows that.” Absently, he toyed with a razor sharp letter opener. No, he couldn’t kill this man.
“Hrmph! Not hardly. What’s more, I know the SFPD rounded up every one of the dago’s men. None of them got away to kill Bob Wynn.” The last comment was punctuated with a hand slamming Allred’s desk.
“We don’t use words like that around here, Mister Corrigan. We don’t pound on desks, either. If you persist, I shall have to ask you to leave.”
“All right, Brent, all right. I apologize to desks and Italians everywhere. I’m just a bull-headed Irishman myself.”
Allred massaged the bridge of his nose, “Of the six-hundred thousand people in this town, why me?”
“Simple. Let me show you something before your 4F building guard escorts me out,” he stated reaching into a pocket. “Maybe this will convince you what I know,” Corrigan said, suddenly calm. “I found it at Casa Del Gato last night.”
He held it up a cufflink between thumb and forefinger. It bore the initials “B.A.”
CHAPTER SIX
BRENT ALLRED
Brent Allred swallowed hard.
“I just saved you a trip to the Magnin Brothers. On second thought, I’ll hang onto to this,” stated Corrigan triumphantly.
The newspaperman looked wistfully as the visitor swiftly pocketed his cuff link. Allred suddenly realized he was beaten.
“I’d like to call my lawyer,” he intoned soberly.
“No need for that gag, Brent. I’m not here to put you in cold storage. Besides, this is one case Mason would lose.”
“You even know who my lawyer is,” Allred found himself blurting out. “Oh, sure, you’re investigating me.”
“Let’s just say I noted him moving from Los Angeles to here. Look, I want you to continue what you’re doing,” Corrigan said reassuringly. “You run a newspaper; the heat’s on in Europe. We’re even drafting kids from Puerto Rico again. Our boys are malnourished; some are unfit. They’d rather eat the M&Ms in their K-rations instead of the spiced ham.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes, and the German scientists are five years ahead of us: synthetic rubber, infrared visors, something called a ‘jet engine.’ Bad enough Hitler can pepper London with ‘buzz bombs.’ He’s made advancements over those doodlebugs.”
“Really?”
“You know planes. What do you think of wings angled back thirty-five degrees to prevent shock waves created during high-sped flight? They’ve got ‘em. We have to have an edge over Germany. Otherwise they could win this.”
Allred knew from what his operative Lt. Sarah McClendon of Congress’ newly approved W.A.A.C.’s told him, this was true. His old Texas girlfriend would make a fine Examiner reporter upon re-entering civilian life.
“We need you and what you know about Hanoi Tsin,” Corrigan emphasized. “We’ve got this project…”
“‘We’?”
“Uncle Sam. You can be his guest if it comes to that.”
“I’m a little too old and out of shape to be pressed back into service, Chris,” declared Allred.
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I can clear this up for you. Casa Del Gato is one of the few bars selling Baltyka Beer.”
“Are you going to try to tell me you developed a taste for it in Russia, you go to the Casa often and could have lost your cuff link there anytime? I doubt that very much.”
“That just happens to be true,” held Allred.
“It also happens to be true that if I put you in a lineup wearing a fedora, an overcoat and a bandana draped over your mush, the bartender from Casa Del Gato will pick you out. You can hide your face but not your build, not the smooth way you move, not those peepers.”
Down went the letter opener, “What is it you want exactly? You aren’t here to have me sipping pruno in Alcatraz on such flimsy evidence.”
“First off, I’m the one that’s ‘too old and out of shape’,” Corrigan indicated his paunch with a resounding clap to his own stomach. “But you’re the physical culture enthusiast. All that fish and rice you eat helps, too. Also in your file.”
Allred considered all this; he hadn’t realized his file was quite so expansive.
“Like I said, keep working against the Fi-San, the Cabal of Seven and Hanoi Tsin; that man is dangerous and a lunatic. You have some grudge against Hanoi Tsin and you’re the best man for the job.”
“What does Washington say about him?” asked Allred.
“Aw, I can’t get anyone back at WDC13 interested in this, this Oriental boogie man,” Corrigan stammered, waving his hands for emphasis.
“And China says…?”
“I’ve made polite inquiries at the Chinese Legation. They’ve ridiculed the idea of the Fi-San and never heard of a ‘Dr. Hanoi Tsin.’ Forget asking them about an international crime cartel called the Cabal of Seven.” Corrigan’s hand sliced air. “China is our ally. He told me not to irritate them.”
“‘He’?”
“That man,” Corrigan nodded in the general direction of the White House.
“That leaves your informants.” Allred, now interested, asked: “What do they say?”
“According to my sources, Hanoi Tsin’s trying to find someone.”
Allred could guess who that someone was: Ling Chan.
“It’s a guy named J.C. Clellan Lowe. Ever hear of him?”
“No,” Allred answered, surprised. Now who the hell was Lowe?
“But that explains his lieutenants’ recruitment rush,” pondered Allred, eyes narrowing. “Uh, according to copy Mike Axelrod has been filing, that is,” Allred picked up and waved sheaves from his ‘In’ box. It was really one of Waldo Lydeckers’s columns but he hoped Corrigan wouldn’t check.
“You’ve c
ut Hanoi Tsin off at every turn here: this time it’ll be New York’s Chinatown,” Corrigan eyed the copy.
Allred considered that. “You mean this Silver Manticore has. From what I hear, there’re sections of New York I’d advise even Hanoi Tsin to stay out of.”
Corrigan grinned and continued, “Point is we can’t go in there and detain four thousand people just to get him.”
“Oh, and I suppose my mastery of Chinese dialects makes me the natural choice?” prompted Allred.
“You’re right on time. There’s a person in New York knows some floy-floy Hanoi Tsin doesn’t want out. The doctor means to silence him.”
“Or her?” asked Allred.
“Him or her,” conceded Corrigan. “Permanently.”
Allred studied his old friend. All the angles covered, just like when they’d worked together. A nailed shut case.
“So, you want to temporarily re-instate me, send me to New York, gunning for Hanoi Tsin, who’ll be hiding out in Chinatown while he looks for someone else?” put together Allred. “It’s been a long time since G-9 killed anyone for the government.” That’s it, Allred, thought, don’t admit to being anything but a former assassin.
“I don’t want you to go there. I want you to move there,” barked Corrigan. “Lock, stock and gun barrel, your whole operation as is.”
Allred’s face fell.
“Won’t be able to officially add you to the payroll, but I can get you whatever you might need: depth charges, flamethrowers, gas grenades, you name it. Should be able to swing you at least a ‘B’ or ‘C’ rating to go with your forty-eight little rationing points, too,” Corrigan filed his fingernails with the letter opener.
“Sure, as long as it’s temporary,” gulped Allred.
“Here, put this away. Someone’ll get hurt with it,” Corrigan handed Allred the letter opener. The latter swept it into a drawer, face now impassive.
“Oh, you’ll be working with Doc Wylie,” Corrigan stated. “And with an Englishman who’s fought Hanoi Tsin named Sir Dennis…”