“You’re coming with me, Mac.”
“But where?”
“Son, I’ve sort of shown you the ropes, like, around this department. You know all about the vice squad and the chem lab and the ballistics department and the burglary division and God knows what else. But there’s one section you never saw before tonight.”
“And that’s where we’re going?”
“On the nail, Mac. We’re now headed for the Chula Negra café, sometimes known as the Screwball Division, L.A.P.D.”
MacDonald got the picture as a rapid walk took them up North Main Street to the Chula Negra. A scandal and political shakeup in the department a dozen years ago. A captain who was in it up to the neck but pulled enough wires to get clear. A lieutenant who took the rap.
Nick Noble, the lieutenant’s name was. He’d broken more big cases than any other man in the department, and half of them some completely screwball setup that usually has the police rocking on their heels. Like the university professor who objected to the existence of one-eyed beggars, and took measures accordingly.
Nick Noble’s wife was sick when the shakeup came. She needed an operation badly. She didn’t get it. Broke, disgraced, a widower. …
“It’s no wonder he took to drink,” Finch said, “but it’s hell he had to do it the way he did.” Nick Noble was a wino, the lowest and soddenest kind of drunk that even the Skid Row of Los Angeles can exhibit. Nobody knew where he lived or what he lived on. Nobody knew anything except that he hung out at the Chula Negra and that he could still think.
The one thing that interested him beside his cheap sherry, the one hold life still had on him, was the fascination of his old profession. And he could still give cards and spades to any man in the department when it came to the freakish, the outrageous, and the unbelievable.
Nobody bothered to consult Nick Noble much any more save the old-timers of Finch’s generation. The younger men trusted mostly to the laboratories or, like Barker, to their own fists and maybe a rubber hose. “Not that you can’t crack ninety-nine of your cases with a lab or a hose,” Finch added. “But the hundredth one needs a man like Nick Noble, and Mac, this looks like the one in a hundred.”
The Chula Negra didn’t run to barflies or juke boxes. It catered to nothing but the single-minded eating and drinking of the local Mexicans. Finch walked over to the third of the ramshackle booths and, motioning MacDonald after him, slid in.
MacDonald had expected a fat and bloated hulk. But alcoholism makes some thin, and Nick Noble was one of these. He was a wizened man whose sharp nose seemed trying to push out of his dead-white skin. His hair and heavy eyebrows were white too, and his eyes so pale a blue as almost to match them.
There was a water glass half-full of sherry before him. He took a long swig and made a swipe at his nose before he saw the officers. “Herman!” he said softly, and looked sidewise at MacDonald. “Friend?”
“Friend. Lieutenant MacDonald, homicide.”
“Glad,” said Nick Noble, and struck again at his nose. “Fly,” he explained. “Stays there.” There was no fly.
“I’m afraid,” Finch began, “it’s up to you again, Nick.”
A pale light glittered in the dead blue eyes. “Give,” said Nick Noble.
Finch gave.
Nick Noble finished another glass of sherry while Finch talked, and chased the invisible fly away from his nose six times. That nose seemed to grow sharper as he drank, and his pale eyes paler.
“Through?”
Finch nodded. Nick Noble leaned back and rested his head against the flimsy partition. A film glazed his eyes. He was silent so long that young MacDonald frowned and looked from the empty glass to Finch. But Finch shook his head.
Finally Nick Noble spoke. “Questions.”
“O.K., Nick.”
“Man on Skid Row. Lige Marsden. Occupation?”
“None, unless you count standing on street corners passing out pamphlets.”
“Pamphlets for what?”
“Kingdom something.”
“People for the Kingdom?”
“Check.”
The pale eyes glazed again. MacDonald remembered the minor sect. The priest’s housekeeper had mentioned it. Strange sort of anarchic idealism—civic disobedience as a religious principle. Denial of all rights of authority.
The eyes opened, and Nick Noble asked another question. “Dentist. No name?”
“Not yet. In a minute I’ll phone back and check.”
“Find out all about him. Especially Draft Board.”
“Draft Board?”
“Was he a member?”
Finch nodded. “What else, Nick?”
“Nothing.”
MacDonald started. “Aren’t you interested? Aren’t you going to—?”
“Interested? Oh yes. Pretty problem. Pattern. Thanks, Herman. Proof tomorrow.”
Finch grinned. “Don’t mind him, Mac. He can’t help grand-standing.”
“No grandstand. Murders tie together. Motive for time not quite clear yet. Only one murderer possible.”
MacDonald half-rose. “You mean we can—?”
“Tomorrow. Don’t rush it.”
“But if there’s a murderer loose—Damn it, Noble, our main job isn’t catching criminals; it’s preventing crime. And if …”
Nick Noble smiled faintly at Finch. “Young,” he said. Then to MacDonald, “All right, boy. No danger. No more murders. Not possibly. Check tomorrow. Now phone, Herman.”
When Finch came back, his grin spread from ear to ear. “Criminenty, Nick, you can always pull a rabbit out of the sherry bottle. You’ve done it again, you son of a biscuit-eater.”
“What did you find out?” MacDonald demanded.
“Ballistics check. Same gun killed all four of’em. And that means the times are phony. Whole damn ‘struggle’ at Westcott’s was probably just to make that clock look plausible. But where Nick comes in with the Noble touch is this: The dentist’s name was Dr. Lyle Varney, and he was on his local Draft Board. In fact, he was chairman.”
Nick Noble nodded. “Good. Go home. Tomorrow, boys, I’ll show you your murderer.”
Half an hour and one sherry later, Nick Noble entered the lodging house on East Fifth Street. His slight figure, his pale worn features, his shabby once-respectable suit all seemed to belong there. The clerk didn’t give him a glance. They come and go.
There were two corridors on the second floor. From the end of one came laughter and clinkings. Two rooms at the end of the other were dark, silent. Nick Noble’s white hands fiddled for an instant with the lock of the last room. He went in, closed the door, and switched on the light.
The room was any one of a thousand others. All that distinguished it was the absence of ashes and beer bottles and the presence of blood on the floor and the bed. And the pamphlets.
There was a stack of these left undistributed, a stack that reached from floor to table level. Nick Noble picked up the top one and leafed through it. He set it down, then picked it up again, found a page, and reread the heading over a prophetic article:
THE NUMBER OF THE BEAST AGAIN
Nick Noble said “Six” three times, and his eyes glazed. He stood motionless. Then his eyes came alive. He put the pamphlet back, and nodded.
There were steps far down the hall. Nick Noble switched off the light. The steps came as far as the next door and halted. Then they moved on. The door of the dead man’s room opened. The beam of a flashlight coursed around the walls, clicked off. The door closed.
Nick Noble crawled out from under the bed. He swatted at the fly that wasn’t on his nose and thereby knocked off the cockroach that was on his sleeve. He heard the door of the next room open and shut. He listened, but there was no click of the light switch.
He left the dead man’s room without a sound. He paused before the next door, the door to the room of Barker’s prisoner. A light came and went in the crack under the door. He drew back to the hinge side.
The door o
pened in a minute, covering him. Through the crack he saw a man coming out, a man he had never seen before. He carried a flashlight in one hand and something heavier in the other. This man set them both down on the floor and fished a tool out of his pocket, the same tool that Nick Noble had used on the other door.
The strange man closed the door. Nick Noble moved with agility. His hand was on the automatic on the floor when the stranger’s right connected.
This time Nick Noble’s eyes were glazed somewhat longer.
He was still in the hall when he came to. He felt his way into the dead man’s room and doused his head with stale water from the pitcher. He switched on the light and peered into the cracked mirror. The blood had clotted by now, black on his white skin. He looked closer. That was a heel mark on his cheek. His thin lips set tight.
Lieutenant MacDonald, reporting for duty next morning, was greeted by Finch. “For once, Mac, old Nick slipped up. He said no more murders. They found Padrino early this morning.”
“Padrino?”
“That’s right. Maybe you wouldn’t know. He runs a bigtime gambling setup. Roulette and the works. Official-like, we don’t know about him here. But he was shot sometime between one and three and his watch was broken and set to 7:06. Bullet checks, too.”
MacDonald gaped. Finch frowned as he loaded his corncob.
Lieutenant Dan Barker was filling out his report on the latest sweating of the bum he had arrested. He yelled admittance when he heard a knock on the door.
A uniformed sergeant came in. “Old screwball here insists on seeing you, lieutenant. Got a minute?”
Barker glared distrustfully at the slight old man behind the sergeant. “All right,” he growled.
Nick Noble came in quietly. When the sergeant was gone, he said his name. “Maybe you’ve heard of me.”
Barker’s expression changed. “Hell, yes. You’re the wino the old-timers tell the tall stories about. What’s on your mind?”
“Tried to see Finch or MacDonald. Out. You had the other case. Talk with you.”
Barker eyed the heel-bruised old face suspiciously. “O.K., friend. What’s the angle?”
“All solved. All the cases at six after seven. No use for me—credit better go to the force.”
“You’ve heard there’s another one?”
“Yes. That, too. Want to hear?”
Barker shifted in his chair. “Why not?”
Nick Noble pulled a bottle from his coat pocket and filled the water glass on the table with sherry. “Drink? Sorry. Forget regulations. Well: Look at murders. Pattern. Leave out Padrino now. Just yesterday’s. Three deaths timed mechanically. Fakes. One death time accidentally. Your case. Time true.”
“So where does that get you, friend?”
Nick Noble made an attempt on the fly. “Look at men. Three represent authority. Priest, authority of church. Judge, authority of law. Dentist, authority of state. Draft Board. Guessed that. Likeliest kind of authority for professional man. Other man, no authority. Your case. People of the Kingdom. Hates authority.”
Barker grinned a lazy grin. “So still what?”
“Look at time. Six after seven. What’s that to six?”
“Huh?”
“What’s five minutes of seven to six?”
“Six fifty-five.”
“And seven sharp?”
“Oh. I get you, friend. Six sixty.”
“And six after seven.”
“Six… sixty-six.”
“Six sixty-six. Number of the Beast. Apocalypse. Tied up in all prophecies. Great number with People of the Kingdom. Beast means State, Church, everything they despise.”
Dan Barker’s heavy body squirmed. The chair creaked. “Smart stuff, friend. What next?”
“Easy. Your man’s the murderer.”
“The jerk I’ve got in the can? Hell, he killed Lige Marsden all right, but he didn’t kill the others.”
“Not him. Lige Marsden. Your corpse. Only motive. Nobody could want to kill him and the others, but he’d want them dead. Other times faked, his real. Crazy gesture in suicide, same time as the phonies.”
“Balls! How about the gun?”
“Your prisoner. Hid it in his room. Chance for quick money. Worked with a fence. Won’t admit it now; scared of murder rap.”
Lieutenant Barker leaned back and eased open the drawer in front of him. “Pretty good, friend. Damned smooth. And crazier’n hell. How about Padrino? Marsden didn’t crawl out of the morgue to kill him.”
“I know. Why I’m here. No use hounding a dead man. Live murderer now.” There was no flicker in Nick Noble’s pale blue eyes as he added, “What did Padrino have on you, Barker?”
Barker’s hand rested on the open drawer. “You’re drunk.” His voice was cold with contempt.
“Marsden had to be murderer,” Nick Noble went on. “So somebody else killed Padrino. But it fitted the time pattern. Not the authority pattern. So pattern faked to shift guilt. Who knew time pattern? Finch, MacDonald, and you.”
Barker’s hand slipped into the drawer. “Balls. Cops don’t murder, friend. Might as well pin it on MacDonald or Finch.”
“Cops murder crooks who might talk too much. Lieutenant Becker, New York. And it wasn’t Finch or MacDonald I saw coming out of a room on East Fifth Street.”
Barker’s hand came out of the drawer. It wasn’t empty.
Nick Noble sat still. “Keep your head, Barker. You can’t kill me here at headquarters.”
“Balls,” said Detective Lieutenant DanBarker levelly. “Everybody knows you’re a dipso. The worst kind: a wino. You’ve been brooding all these years about getting booted off the force. You came in here and raised hell to get revenge. I had to defend myself.” His trigger finger was tense.
“You were afraid of noise last night when I saw you steal the gun. Besides, you thought I was just another bum, and what was my word against a lieutenant’s? Different now.”
“Everybody’s got his own way of suicide, friend. Yours is being too damn smart. So now you’re through.”
The crackle of glass blended with the two shots. The sherry, glass and all, hit Barker in the face just as he pulled the trigger. The glass splintered on the floor. The first shot went where Noble’s head had been. From the floor Nick Noble saw the second shot burrow into Barker’s right hand. Barker’s gun lit in the fragments of glass.
Lieutenant MacDonald stood planted in the doorway staring at his service automatic. Shooting a detective lieutenant was something else he wasn’t experienced at.
A sergeant put the cuffs on Barker and another sergeant handed a notebook full of pothooks to Finch.
“Hot ziggety zag!” said Finch. “That was a sweet trap, Nick. The Screwball Division pulls it off again.”
“Easy. Find the pattern. See what isn’t pattern. That’s all.”
“Horsefeathers! You’re the best blame detective on or off the force, and you know it.”
“Balls,” snorted Barker. The sergeant cuffed him backhanded across the mouth. The sergeant too had more reasons than vanity for wearing a heavy ring.
“I need a drink,” said Nick Noble. He fished out the half-empty bottle. It was wholly empty by the time Finch had finished booking Detective Lieutenant Dan Barker, L.A.P.D., for murder.
FROM DETECTIVE WHO’S WHO
NOBLE, Nicholas, unemployed; b. Rockland, Me., 1896; s. Ethan and Anastasia (Joffe) N.; educ. Pasadena High School, U. of Cal. (not graduated). Volunteered U. S. Army Feb., 1917; Sgt. Signal Corps, 1917; Lieut. Signal Corps (cryptanalysis), 1918. Patrolman, L.A.P.D., 1919; Sgt., 1921; Lieut. (Homicide), 1925; dishonorable discharge, 1930. m. Martha Winslow, 1924 (died 1930). Publications: The New Code of Police Ethics; Crime and Its Patterns; From Bow Street to Bertillon; and other articles in professional journals of criminology, 1924-1930. Earliest case so far recorded (by Anthony Boucher): the 7:06 Murders, 1941. Relig.: none. Pol. affil.: none. Home address: Unknown. Office: Chula Negra café, North Main Street, Los Angeles, Californi
a.
(1942)
QL 696. C9
The librarian’s body had been removed from the swivel chair, but Detective Lieutenant Donald MacDonald stood beside the desk. This was only his second murder case, and he was not yet hardened enough to use the seat freshly vacated by a corpse. He stood and faced the four individuals, one of whom was a murderer.
“Our routine has been completed,” he said, “and I’ve taken a statement from each of you. But before I hand in my report, I want to go over those statements in the presence of all of you. If anything doesn’t jibe, I want you to say so.”
The librarian’s office of the Serafin Pelayo branch of the Los Angeles Public Library was a small room. The three witnesses and the murderer (but which was which?) sat crowded together. The girl in the gray dress—Stella Swift, junior librarian—shifted restlessly. “It was all so … so confusing and so awful,” she said.
MacDonald nodded sympathetically. “I know.” It was this girl who had found the body. Her eyes were dry now, but her nerves were still tense. “I’m sorry to insist on this, but…” His glance surveyed the other three: Mrs. Cora Jarvis, children’s librarian, a fluffy kitten; James Stickney, library patron, a youngish man with no tie and wild hair; Norbert Utter, high-school teacher, a lean, almost asceticlooking man of forty-odd. One of these…
“Immediately before the murder,” MacDonald began, “the branch librarian Miss Benson was alone in this office typing. Apparently” (he gestured at the sheet of paper in the typewriter) “a draft for a list of needed replacements. This office can be reached only through those stacks, which can in turn be reached only by passing the main desk. Mrs. Jarvis, you were then on duty at that desk, and according to you only these three people were then in the stacks. None of them, separated as they were in the stacks, could see each other or the door of this office.” He paused.
The thin teacher spoke up. “But this is ridiculous, officer. Simply because I was browsing in the stacks to find some fresh ideas for outside reading…”
The fuzzy-haired Stickney answered him. “The Loot’s right. Put our stories together, and it’s got to be one of us. Take your medicine, comrade.”
Exeunt Murderers Page 2