You Can't Catch Me

by Lawrence Lariar

  CHAPTER 20

  Champ Crowley’s Apartment

  4:35 P.M.—July 19th

  Champ Crowley sat alone in his living room. Leach’s boys had left a half hour before my arrival and the little jockey was in no mood for further patter. His pasty face was a shade lighter than the pea green lamp alongside his chair. He jabbed a fresh cigarette in his mouth and lit it nervously. He gave me his intimate opinion of the guardians of the law in two syllable words, none of which could be found in Webster’s unabridged catalogue of lexicography.

  “Leach!” he spat. “A good name for the crumb, isn’t it? He’s got a long nose, too long for his own good, for my dough. I don’t mind answering their half-wit questions about last night. I told them all I knew and I told it to them straight. But have they any right to try to break me down about my racket? I ask you, where do they come off grilling me about making book?”

  Champ showed me his softening mood by dragging out a bottle and sharing it with me. I had an angle to explore with him. I had a pitch and I was thankful that I could still sell myself to him as ‘Art Seton’, an out-of-town friend of Sidney Wragge. Izzy’s suggestion for keeping Wragge’s death out of the public press might pay off for me here. Champ Crowley could be made to talk about Sidney, if he thought Wragge still lived and breathed. He would clam up and go sour if he knew the truth. Right now it was tough to bring Crowley around to discussing Linda Spain.

  “Jesus, Sidney will blow his top when he finds out about this,” I said sadly. “He was nuts about that girl.”

  “That’s right, you got to feel sorry for Sid.” Champ shook his head at a fleeting memory. “I like the boob. Maybe that’s why I feel so bad about Linda.”

  I leaned over him confidentially, struggling with obvious discomfort, so that he could see the effort it was taking to bend me his way in a burst of man-to-man camaraderie. “Listen, Champ,” I said, “on the level, do you think maybe it was Sidney who knocked her off last night?”

  “Jesus!” he gasped, pulling away from me. “You know something, I never thought of that angle.”

  “I didn’t either. Mostly because Sid’s a pal of mine.”

  “Sid doesn’t throw his weight around.”

  “Maybe he could if he got jealous, Champ.”

  “Nuts,” said Champ with finality. “He couldn’t have done it, Art.”

  “You sound positive. You think one of her other boyfriends knocked her off?”

  “I don’t know,” Champ speculated, taking his time to run through his memory for an answer. “Listen, she didn’t have any real steadies but Sid.”

  “A queer dame, all right,” I said. “Terrific, but a little bit missing upstairs, maybe. How long did you know her, Champ?”

  “She’s been in this place, let’s see now, about six, seven months.” He took his time with the line, diddling with his glass and giving me a slow and significant roll of his eyes. Caution clouded his face, the sharpening look tightening his jaw as he stared at me curiously. He could be getting mad behind those eyes, but he would never explode because he had full control of his emotional machine. He had weathered the storm of suspicions before, and knew how to handle them. He put his glass down deliberately and leaned across the table, so close that I could smell the liquor on his breath. “What are you trying to promote, Seton?” he asked quietly. “You hinting that maybe I stepped in there last night and knocked her off?”

  “Relax, Champ,” I said, lightening it up a little. “You’re clean in my book. I was just wondering about Sid, though. He might think the other way. Sid can get tough if he feels in the mood.”

  “Tough?” the little jockey enjoyed the idea, chuckling over it, an obviously zany picture in his mind. “He’s as soft as a tub of butter inside.”

  “Maybe yes, maybe no,” I said doubtfully. “I’ve heard stories about him, Champ. Crazy stuff that’s hard to believe.”

  “What kind of stories?”

  I took a minute out for a histrionic bout with my conscience, losing the first round and leaning closer to Champ. “I hear he made himself some pretty nasty enemies lately.”

  “That’s tough to swallow,” Champ said. “Who could hate the fat boy?”

  “I hear he’s in with a bad bunch.”

  “Are you serious?”

  I shook my head thoughtfully. “I’m not kidding, Champ. And from what I hear, neither are they. I met a character who told me Sid was tied up with the Monk Stang outfit.”

  “Stang, the hood?” The jockey’s face was a caricature of unfeigned astonishment. It was no act. He leaned away from me and elevated his eyebrows and stared at me. He gave me the full strength of his penetrating optics, searching me for a clue to my purpose. I played it straight and with a deadpan sorrow. I sold him my worry. “That sounds fantastic,” Champ whispered. “What the hell would he be doing with a bigtime mobster like Monk Stang?”

  “Running errands for him, from what I hear.”

  “Errands? What kind?”

  But there was no point to any further pursuit of the subject. I had reached the end of the road with Champ Crowley. The clock had run out on our friendly exchange, and there were other fish for me to fry. I picked up my hat and set it on my head.

  “Who knows what his job could be?” I asked myself. “I was just as surprised as you when I heard about it, Champ. I just hope Sid’s clean on this deal, or he might get himself into a bad fix.”

  He escorted me to the door, clucking sympathetically. He had picked up much of my emotional upset and seemed genuinely concerned about Sidney Wragge now.

  “Poor Sid,” he said. “It’s going to be a big bang if he walks in and finds out about Linda. I didn’t read anything about her in the morning paper. I wonder why?”

  “The city dicks might be playing it smart,” I said. “They figure they can trap the killer by keeping mum about it. I wish to hell I knew where to locate Sid. He might get himself into hot water if he comes waltzing up here. That’s why I want to find him, Champ. I could save him a big headache.”

  “Let me know how you make out,” Champ Crowley said at the door.

  “You can count on me,” I said.

  And when I walked away from him, he looked as though he believed me.

  CHAPTER 21

  Spud’s Midtown Snack Bar

  6:00 P.M.—July 19th

  I had covered a lot of ground since the sun burned my eyes awake on the rug in Linda Spain’s living room. I was hungry enough to beat it inside the first beanery I found on my walk across the town. I sat alone in a small booth complete with gravy stains, tortured upholstery, and a good view of the street through the greasy window. I ordered some simple fare and sat there doodling sketches on the paper napkin before me. And the drawing came straight from my subconscious, hesitant at first, but strong and bold after a while, the first formative lines of the face of Sidney Wragge.

  The waitress brought the soup and I abandoned my sketching for a try at deep and important thought. Nothing came to me. I stared through the murky window. The range of my focus stretched the length and breadth of the window, a giant screen for the activities on the street beyond. It was a stage, an oblong frame of animation, against which the traffic played and the pedestrian tide ebbed and flowed. I sipped my soup and gazed absently at the slice of New York life. A truck pulled up, discharged his cargo and slid away full steam. The noise of an organ grinder filtered through to me, and then he was passing, across the street, an aimless entertainer who turned his tune lazily as he walked. From somewhere on the river a tug hooted and tooted, the sound of the whistle ululating in the distances.

  Then I saw the man in the green hat.

  You look at a street and the people are all casual wanderers, appearing and disappearing beyond the frame of the window. They came and went, in one side and out the other. But having gone, they did not return. That was the gimmick. T
hat was the clue to the man in the green hat.

  I saw him first as part of a group, across the street. He was walking slowly, reading a newspaper as he strolled. He faded out after that, to the right, lost to me. But he returned. And this time the newspaper was down. He swung it at his side, casually, slapping it against his shanks in the attitude of a man who walks with no purpose.

  It was when he appeared the third time that he began to register. Now he sauntered close to the shop window across the street. He bent to examine the display in a tiny stationer’s. He leaned against the window and flicked his eyes my way, an instant’s pause, but enough to catch my eye. He was a bad actor, an obvious tail, a watcher who lacked the skill and sensibility of a seasoned operator. He crossed my range of vision once again, walking westward now. I lit a cigarette and sipped my coffee and watched the window for his return. He was doing things to my stomach. He was ruining my lunch, tightening my gut with a growing anger.

  Who could be on my tail? I resisted the impulse to bound out of my chair and cross the street to him. Instead I cased him carefully. He appeared for my examination, but this time I had my mental index wide open for filing him away. He was a middling-sized character, as faceless as a good tail should be. He was wearing a business suit, a double-breasted item of light brown. He had on a reddish tie, knotted tightly. But it was his greenish felt that stamped him and typed him and made him easy for me. And he wore glasses, heavy and of a darkish tortoise shell. I paid my check and slid out into the street.

  At the corner he was watching me from under the awning of a drugstore across the street. He made a big production out of reading his newspaper. I turned uptown, feeling my short hairs prickle in the instinctive reflex to pursuit. I played it deliberately dumb, giving him ample time to keep me in sight as I led him across town. It did my heart god to work him a little. He was not built for walking fast. He would puff and pant soon. The Rivington was across the park and he dropped back when I started under the trees, the proper procedure for following a man through the wide open spaces. When I emerged on the west side, he was far behind and mopping his fevered brow, a laughable figure far down the lane. I paused to sit and light a cigarette, allowing him to heave into view and freeze behind a tree.

  Then I crossed the street and entered the lobby of the Rivington.

  Toni greeted me with mixed emotions.

  “Where have you been all this time?” she asked petulantly. She allowed me to kiss her, but there was nothing in it of her old heat and friendliness. “I’ve been going nuts in this dump.”

  “You haven’t gone out?”

  “Where in hell would I go?”

  “I’m only asking,” I said. “Because it could be bad business for you to leave this place.”

  Her window faced the street, so that I had a bird’s eye view of the area from the edge of Central Park to the entrance below. The man in the green hat must have taken his lessons in investigation from a mail order school. He should have flunked out and gotten a refund. He was standing across the street, leaning into the shadows of an apartment house alley. He was as obvious as a hound dog over a bone. His hand was up to his overheated face and he was mopping more sweat as he squinted up at the Rivington.

  Toni joined me at the window.

  “Did you come up here to look at the view?” she asked.

  “You guessed it, Toni. Your window is hot.”

  “What’s hot about it? I’ve been staring out of it all day and all I saw was yellow taxis.”

  “Stare some more. Something new has been added.”

  I lifted her phone and called the office. Izzy must have been waiting for my call.

  I said, “I’ve got news for you, Izzy. Things are looking up.”

  “It’s about time,” Izzy said. “And maybe I’ve grabbed a small lead, too, Mike. The Sidney Wragge set-up begins to stink to high heaven. The layout at the Kimberly Building is out of this world, for instance. The dump rents their offices furnished. All the paper stuff down there was meaningless. Wragge rented that dump with the flies loaded. The janitor reports him only a casual visitor to his office. He was in there for maybe four months, but he only came to work about once a week, on the average. I tried to find out why, but I couldn’t quite make it. The set-up just doesn’t make any sense at all. The way I figure it, Wragge only went there to sit and think.”

  “Anybody on the floor know him?”

  “A blank in that direction, too. And almost as blank at his apartment. His lease coincides with the rental of the office in the Kimberly Building, almost to the day. But nobody in the flat saw much of him except the janitor. Seems as though Sidney made a bit of book for the janitor.”

  “It fits,” I said. “He also took small wagers from a druggist up on the corner. Where are you headed next?”

  “Back to his flat, Mike. I think I may dig something out of the tenants there. I like the apartment for background on him. I’ve got a small idea, but it may be the opening we need.”

  “What is it?”

  “It won’t make sense over the phone. But I want you to come down to his flat right away. Where are you? Can you come now?”

  “Not quite,” I said. “Somebody put a tail on me, Izzy.”

  “When?” Izzy’s voice cracked a bit with excitement. “This I like. Who sent him?”

  I watched Toni react to my dialogue about the tail. She came alive at the window, her fingers twitching on the drapes as she stared down into the street. She began to gnaw on her lip, slid away from the window and crossed the room, pausing in her restlessness to lift an ashtray and carry it toward the john. She passed me on the way, close enough so that I could catch a fast squint at the ashtray. It was loaded. The mind of an investigator operates through the stimulus of his vision. You open your eyes and the light hits against the wall of your intellect and the little things come into focus and become clear and challenging. All the minor items loom large and important in the filing cabinet brain of the man who searches. You stare around a room and let it speak to you in the silence. You listen for the voices that sometimes shout from a match box, or a cigarette butt, or the way two cushions are placed on a couch. And in this little pause, something in the room was banging away at my inner ear. Something important.

  But Izzy was saying, “What the hell happened to you, Mike? Fall into a sewer up there? I just asked you when you spotted the tail?”

  Toni was back at my side again. I held her hand and eased her into a chair alongside me. She seemed to be quieter now, calmer.

  I said, “He showed himself when I left Champ Crowley’s place. But he might have been on me longer. He might have been on me last night, for all I know.”

  “Grab him and find out,” Izzy almost commanded. “He may be a key to something we need. Or do you want me to come up and do it while you play games with the doll?”

  “Not on your life. This character is for me.”

  “Good boy. Who do you think sent him out, Mike?”

  “He leaves me cold.”

  “He could be one of Leach’s boys,” Izzy suggested.

  “Not this boob. I don’t know Leach’s staff, but if he trained his boys to move the way this jerk operates, Leach needs help with his squad. This one is much too square for a city dick. The guy’s obvious, a private op for my dough.”

  “Get him!” said Izzy. “And when you find out who sent him, meet me at Wragge’s flat.”

  “Give me an hour,” I said. “I’ll be there.”

  CHAPTER 22

  The Rivington Hotel

  7:43 P.M.—July 19th

  “Forget about him, Toni,” I said.

  “Is that supposed to make me develop amnesia?” she asked.

  “I’ll get rid of him soon—and permanently. You’ve got nothing to worry about, I tell you.”

  But she was hell bent for worry in a big way, a dramatic way, c
omplete with a flurry of nervous energy that sent her out of control. She was hypnotized by the window. She stood there, making sorry faces at the landscape beyond. She was petulant and capable of anger and hard words in a crisis like this. It did something to her face I hadn’t noticed before, promoting her beauty in a strange way, so that I felt like playing with her, suddenly, to take her mind off the street.

  “Pull the shade down if he worries you,” I said.

  “It won’t help.”

  “Maybe I can help?”

  She leaned into me and buried her head in my chest. “I’m all mixed up, Mike.”

  “Break it down for me and I’ll rub it out, Toni.”

  “It’s this room, I guess. It gripes me. It keeps reminding me of what might happen if this thing ever breaks into print—about me, I mean.”

  “Show business?”

  “That’s it. It’d ruin me.”

  “You won’t find it in the papers.”

  “I won’t?” She came alive now, sighing with relief. “You kept it out?”

  “Not quite. But the police don’t want it released yet.”

  “Isn’t that unusual?”

  “They’re playing it smart,” I said. “Because the fat man’s girl friend was murdered last night.”

  Toni shivered and sank into the easy chair. “That’s awful, Mike. What does it mean? What does the whole stinking mess mean? Who was the girl?”

  “A burlesque doll—name of Linda Spain. She was knifed.”

  “Horrible. The poor girl. Who would do it?”

  “They thought I did it.”

  “You?”

  “I was there, Toni.”

  Now she was angry and impatient again. “The fools! Why should they suspect you? Can’t they see that you were dragged in by the heels? It doesn’t make sense, Mike.” And she stared at me incredulously, the light of sympathy warming her big eyes. “How in hell can you take it? How can you keep your head?”