He stopped there and leaned back and crossed his legs on the second try. I tried to keep an expression of polite boredom where he could see it.
”Seems a girl was killed over in a LaSalle Street walk-up early part of this year,” Blauvelt said. “Helen somebody—or other.”
“Ellen, Chief,” Les said from the doorway, sounding proud. “Ellen Purcell.”
“That was it,” Blauvelt said. “What made it important, she was pushed the same way the Conrad dame got it—a stocking around her neck. So Les, on his own time, mind you, went over there and had a word with the landlady. She remembered all about it, clear down to some details she’d forgotten during the original investigation. Reason for that, seems some cop was around in plain clothes earlier the same day talking about it. She said he was kind of a nice-looking man, six feet maybe, good build on him, dark hair parted on the side and a small dent in the bridge of his nose.”
“Wearing green socks,” I said, “a gold crown on his lower right bicuspid and answering to the name of Pine.”
“She forgot to mention them first two,” Blauvelt said equably, “but she had the name right. She also said you asked first for a girl name of Fremont—she wasn’t sure of the first name until Les asked her if it was Laura. Then she was sure. Said you got interested in the Purcell murder when she told you the girl that did the job was named Louise Fairchild.” He pointed the stem of his pipe at me. “Same initials as the Fremont girl—and the same description.”
I said wearily, “One thing about Les, Captain: he won’t stay a sergeant long. Not Les.”
“He will if I can swing it,” the captain said. “You don’t think I’d let loose of him, do you? Tell you something else he come up with out there last night. He found out the Purcell kid worked at a night club. Course you know about that. The old bag told you.”
“It took some prying,” I said. “I made the sergeant’s job easy for him. You might remember that, while you’re remembering things.”
Blauvelt cupped the pipe bowl in his hand, rubbing it gently, the dreamy look still in his lion’s eyes. “The Tropicabana,” he rumbled. “Now ain’t that a honey! The same identical joint where Mary Conrad earned her cakes. And Mary knew Laura Fremont too, the way one pervert knows another. So now it turns out Laura Fremont was living with Ellen Purcell—and I mean living with!—killed her during a lovers’ quarrel, let’s say, then yesterday gave Conrad the same treatment to keep her mouth shut. How do you like it, boy?”
“I’m crazy about it. They’ll probably make you Commissioner.”
He folded his heavy fingers around his knee and squeezed gently. “Course none of this surprises you none,” he said expansively. “You ain’t dumb, Pine. You’d hold out on me every time you thought you could get away with it, and you run to a very unbright line of chatter. But you ain’t dumb; I give you that. You put two and two together, like they say, and came up with the same answer—the girl you was hired to find is a pervert and a murderer.”
I lighted a cigarette with all the enthusiasm of a drowning man taking a drink of water. Les cleared his throat delicately and scraped a nostril with a thumbnail. The room began to smell of pipe tobacco.
“Reckon I’ll have to find her myself,” Blauvelt observed. “Can’t have her going around killing any more women. Tell me how much you got on where she is.”
I shrugged. “I’m as far away as the day I started. Farther, in fact.”
“Uh-hunh.” He nodded heavily. “Them that could’ve told you, she killed.”
“They were killed,” I said. “I don’t know who killed them.”
His face took on lines of reproach. “Well now, it must’ve been Fremont. It don’t figure any other way. You ain’t going to try and cover up on her, are you? A dame like that F”
“I don’t cover killers, Captain. Didn’t I tell you that? Not when I know they’re killers.”
“Are we supposed to wait around until you make up your mind if she’s the one?”
I didn’t say anything, just kept on looking at him and not flinching. His sleepy eyes turned even sleepier.
“Look, Pine, you don’t want to try and be tough, do you? I don’t advise it.”
“I’m not tough,” I said hotly. “I wouldn’t know how. I’m doing my job the only way I know how to do it. I have no solid idea where Laura Fremont is. All I can do is make guesses and test them out. It’s not the best way but it’s my way and it’s not copyrighted.”
“And you got nothing to tell me?”
(‘No-,’
“No other women you know of that might lead you to the Fremont dame?”
“No.”
He leaned forward and shoved out a forefinger at me the size of a salami. “Let me ask you something—what the lawyers call a hypothetical question. Let’s say you was to find somebody who knew where Fremont was hiding out. Let’s say this somebody told you she was going to turn the information over to the cops instead of giving it to you. How would you feel about it?”
“Oh, hell,” I said in disgust. “Why the long way around? Put it out where we both can see it and get it over with.”
“That’s not an answer,” he said with the true dignity only a big-bodied man can put across. “You got a way of handling things and I got a way. This is mine.”
“All right,” I said, trying to stay calm. “I’d tell her to go to the nearest police station and speak her piece. What did you expect, that I’d try to buy her of?”
He sank back and put his pipe in his mouth. In that mouth it looked like a junior-grade toothpick. His sigh was like something out of last night’s Windstorm. Everything about him said the first act was over, the audience had put out its cigarettes and got rid of the empty pop bottles and was back in the seats for act two. Les pried himself off the door molding and came over to lean on the back of Blauvelt’s chair and watch me out of X-ray eyes.
“The gun you was packing yesterday,” the captain said mildly. “A .38 as I remember. Colt, wasn’t she? You won't mind if I was to look it over again?”
I gave him the fishy eye. “Somebody been shot, Captain 3’”
“In this town—” he sighed—“somebody’s always getting shot. You wouldn’t believe how many a day. Guy’s wife burns the toast—bang! Dice don’t hit the alley wall twice in a row—bang! How about the gun, Pine?”
“I could tell you it was in the repair shop,” I said. “Or I lent it to a friend who left for Burbank, California, this morning.”
“Or it fell down a sewer.” He puffed smoke from the corner of his mouth. “I wouldn’t believe that one either. I got no paper to say you have to. That was a mistake, I guess.”
I got up and went into the bedroom, took the gun out of its underarm holster and brought it into the living room. I put it down on the coffee table between us and sat down again and said nothing.
Blauvelt made a vague gesture and Les was over to the gun like a cocker spaniel after a stick. He had it apart quicker than I could have set the safety catch. It was a pleasure to watch him. He smelled the muzzle and the breach and his ears seemed to quiver. He went to the nearest window and held the gun up to the light and squinted into the barrel and managed not to lick his chops. He said nothing. He didn’t have to. He came back to the table and put the gun together with no waste motions, set the safety and laid the works in one of Blauvelt’s square paws.
“Clean,” Les said. “Too clean. Done very recently, maybe inside an hour or two. No dust and it stinks of fresh oil. Uses Remington .38 Short Colt cartridges; lead.”
Blauvelt didn’t say anything. I didn’t say anything. Les went around behind the chair again and rested on his laurels.
I moved my toes inside my shoes and waited. There was some silence. Finally Captain Blauvelt leaned the gun barrel against one of his knees.
“Rogers Park got a call this morning,” he said, watching my necktie. “Some janitor sees a woman sitting in a Buick sedan about six o’clock. Hour or so later she’s still there; same po
sition and everything. He goes over to see if she’s sleeping maybe. She’s asleep, all right—a bullet in her head and no gun in sight—”
“I see,” I said, interrupting him. “No gun, so you thought of mine. That follows.”
“She was identified,” he said, not hearing me. “A Mrs. Bonnie Field O’Flynn, night-club owner. Or her husband owns it, that is. Guess which night club.”
“Why stop now?” I sneered.
“Yeah. We got it at Sheffield on the teletype. I arranged for Les to go out and see O’Flynn. He gave us quite a bit of information, Pine. Seems his wife had a private talk with a private dick last evening at the club—after the private dick talked to him first. He’s kind of sore at you, brother. And he’s plenty tough.”
“He’s a handful of nothing,” I said. “He bluffs easy. A hangnail would put him to bed for a week.”
He shook his head, almost sadly. “He thinks you shot his wife. Says he’ll swear you threatened to kill her because she was going to turn certain information over to the police. You’re in a spot, pal.”
“This a pinch, Captain?”
“They got the bullet out,” he went on, talking to himself and smiling faintly over how nice everything was fitting today. “Slug from a .38. Lead—and no steel jacket or nothing like that. From a short gun, seems like, else it would’ve gone all the way through and then some. Ballistics is doing a blow-up on it. Ought to have some nice pictures along about now. Then again it might take another twenty-four hours. The lab at Central is short of men, I hear. And they’ll want something for comparison purposes.”
He lifted the gun, hefted it, tapped a forefinger on the barrel. “Think I’ll kind of take this along,” he said mildly. “If you don’t mind, naturally. Les could write you out a receipt for it. He writes a real clear hand.”
“You and your hypothetical questions,” I said.
The gun slid into one of his side pockets while he bent over to knock his pipe ashes into the tray. He stood up, taking his hat off the floor on the way, and ran a hand absently along the rough material of the Chair’s back.
“I don’t think a bullet out of your gun will match the one they took out of her,” he said, “or you’d of got rid of it and said you lost it or it was swiped and that way made me work hard. Or maybe you thought I’d think that. Which would make you even smarter than I figured. Anyway, stick around where I can find you if the time comes to find you. Hear me?”
Les opened the door for him, not quite with a flourish. Blauvelt turned his shoulders enough to get them through without scraping any varnish off the frame and walked along the hall to the elevator, the sergeant two steps behind him.
They were quite a combination. I didn’t laugh at them.
I went back in and closed the door with a kind of tenderness, as if I wouldn’t have the opportunity of closing it many more times, and went over to sit on the couch and finish my cigarette over some thoughts.
The sand was running out. My time was almost up. The minute Blauvelt learned a test bullet from my gun matched the lump of lead removed from Bonnie O’Flynn’s head he’d be out after me and the cell door would yawn wide.
Nobody left now but the rich Mrs. Lawrence Griswold. Eve Shelby Griswold. Throw a bluff at her. Throw it hard enough to loosen a few teeth. There were some facts to throw to give the bluff body. Facts like her good friend Stu Whitney being in this thing up to his neck. You used to work at the Tropicabana, Mrs. Griswold. So did three other dames, all of them tied in at one time or another with Laura Fremont and Grace Rehak—and all of them now dead because of it. Why, you even used to room with one of them, Mrs. Griswold! A cute little Lesbian named Mary Conrad, remember? Thing is, were you rooming with her under the name of Laura Fremont or Grace Rehak? Either way, you'd have something to hide, and that something you’re hiding is why you might have killed her and the other two. Got a nice iron-bound alibi for one-thirty this morning, Mrs. Griswold? You’d better have. Ever been around a certain LaSalle Street rooming house? There’s a gray-haired rail of a landlady out there I’d like you to meet. Uses the word whom like a sword—a sword with two edges.
No doubt about it: Eve Griswold was definitely the one to see. But no phone call first. No percentage in warning her, putting her on guard. Besides, Stu Whitney or Ruth Abbott had probably told her all about me by this time. Way to do it was just breeze out there, talk fast and listen to nobody, and bust right into her boudoir. It wasn’t as if we hadn’t been formally introduced.
It was getting along toward one o’clock according to my strap watch. Lake Ridge was a healthy drive up along the North Shore. Clear into Lake County—millionaire’s row. Got to look right to make the grade up there.
I blew the lint 01? my hat and went out to find a barber shop.
CHAPTER 21
IT WAS about what I expected. Huge estates behind stone walls and ornamental iron and towering hedges, all put up to insure that special brand of privacy which the idle rich appear to value above everything else. In the tall trees birds made the kind of sounds birds make everywhere, but not quite so loud, as if afraid they might annoy some aged moneybags at his midday nap. The district wasn’t laid out in nice even squares the way city blocks are. Out here the boundary lines depended on how much ground you owned, and many of the plots were acres in size.
Avon Road was a curving length of crushed rock that glistened whitely under the warm sun. Lake Michigan muttered and rolled somewhere close by but out of sight. I passed two cars in as many miles along the road—one a long low station wagon as rakish as a pirate ship, the other a dark-blue town car with a uniformed chauffeur up front and, in back, a matron on her way into town to pick up a mink-lined garbage pail.
The entrance to 1124 was a double wrought-iron gate between fieldstone pillars set in a fifteen-foot hedge of blue-green white pine. Sunlight against the hedge glinted on metal here and there, indicating it was backed up with a stout steel fence. Beyond the gates a wide gleaming concrete driveway curved from view behind another hedge that was not so tall as the first but still tall enough to hide everything beyond it.
There was a strip of gravel between the road and the outer hedge. I swung the Plymouth onto the strip twenty feet below the driveway and got out. There was no sidewalk. Sidewalks were for people who walked once in a while outdoors. I stood there in the drowsy air with the smell of flowers and distant water coming to me and brushed tobacco ash out of my lap and made sure the crease in my hat was what Esquire would quote in the next issue. I smoothed my hair with my hand, put the hat back on and walked over to the driveway and up it to the gate.
No one in sight. A bird sang in one of a row of massive elms beyond the inner hedge. That and the whisper of a breeze among branches and the faraway whit of an electric lawn mower were the only sounds. I looked at a massive milk-white globe on top of' each of the two pillars, at the black spears that made up the gates and at the locked bolt that might have come out of some medieval castle only wasn’t as easy to get by. I was thinking of opening my mouth and sounding OH with a rebel yell when I caught sight of a white push button set in the side of one pillar.
I pushed it. Nothing happened, I heard nothing, no genie oozed out of either frosted globe. Then feet came at a moderate pace along concrete and an elderly man with a seamed outdoor face came around the left post and looked at me through the ironwork.
“This the Griswold estate?” I asked.
“Yep. What’ll it be?”
“Open up,” I said. “I’m late now.”
He didn't stir. “Sellin’ somethin’, mister?”
“You ask everybody who comes along that question?”
“Nope. Just them that look like they’d be sellin’ somethin’."
So much for my best suit and the handkerchief in my breast pocket. I said, “I’m here to see Mrs. Griswold.”
“What’s the name?”
I told him the name. He didn’t leap to unlock the gate.
“She expectin’ you?”
He left me and clumped over to the nearest pillar and took a stand-up phone from a niche there. He gave my name and what I had said to whoever was at the other end. After a while he put the phone back, took a key from his pocket and unlocked a section of grillwork forming a door in the gate itself.
“Follow the driveway,” he told me. He locked up after me and wandered off the way he had come, toward a redwood cottage behind a bank of bushes and climbing vines twenty feet down the hedge.
I tramped along the curving ribbon of concrete, past velvety lawns and molded dark-green hedges and still more lawns, past trees and bushes and flower beds and rose gardens. My legs began to complain at all the exercise they were getting.
Finally the driveway skirted a shoulder of hedge and I was looking across enough lawn to hold a Steeplechase, with the main house beyond that. Architects probably came for miles to see it. Three floors of somebody’s idea of early Norman, with leaded glass and easements and heavy protruding beams, and looking as though it had been old at the time everybody was sore about the Louisiana Purchase. It looked bigger than most state hospitals and about as inviting.
I went up under a porte-cochere and rang the bell and hoped for the best. The door retreated silently and a man in livery, tall and spare with the face of an Indian chief, ushered me into a circular hall that went up two stories to a stained-glass skylight. The tapestries hanging on the walls would either be Gobelin or thrown out. Three suits of armor, complete with early armet helmets and halberds, stood around, looking the size of chessmen in all that immensity.
The man took my hat and got rid of it. “Mr. Pine? Madame is waiting.”
We went through a vaulted opening and along a wide corridor to an elevator standing open and waiting. We rode up to the top floor and I was led along another corridor and around a bend and still another corridor with one wall solid glass overlooking the lake rolling with a ground swell. It looked bright and deadly under the early afternoon sun. Almost at the end of this my guide stopped and opened a door, and I went past him and in.
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