Milton nodded.
“And the letter you were to deliver. The second of two letters. You had already delivered the first to Mr. Coyle's place on Santee. Tell us about it, Milton.”
“Well,” the little bum said hesitantly, “I had these two letters. And ten dollars.” His eyes brightened. “The fellow gave me ten dollars and said one letter was to go someplace on Santee—the place you're talkin' about, I guess. Then there was another letter. That was to go to a big apartment building, where your cops picked me up.”
I was itching to question him, but Garnett silenced me with a look. “All right, Milton. That's good. Now about the man, the one that gave you the ten dollars. What did he look like?”
Milton blinked. “A man. That's all.” Bigger than me, I think.”
“How much bigger?”
He frowned and shook his head. “... I forget.”
“Was there anything about him that you noticed especially? Did he wear glasses? A mustache? Was there anything special about his clothes?”
Milton closed his eyes, bewildered. “... I forget.”
Patiently, Garnett tried another tangent. “All right, Milton, you're doing fine. Now do you remember what the man said when he gave you the letters and the money?”
With sudden brightness: “He said not to spend the money until both letters were delivered.”
“And did you do as he asked?”
Milton gazed down at his shabby shoes. “I guess I didn't... Well,” he whined, “it's a long ways from Horner to Santee. A man works up a thirst.”
“Didn't you see the police officer near the door of Miss Kelly's apartment?”
“Miss Kelly?”
Garnett sighed and explained who Miss Kelly was, and Milton brightened again. “Oh sure, I saw the cop, Lieutenant, but I wasn't hardly drunk at all. I don't know why he picked me up. Why did he pick me up, Lieutenant?”
Even Garnett's patience was beginning to wear thin. His gaze was colder as he fixed it on the boozer. “You know why you were picked up. Like you said, you weren't that drunk.” He leaned across the table and said quietly. “All right, Milton, now we're through playing. Now we're going to get some questions answered, one way or another. Is that clear?”
Milton looked uneasy. “... I don't know what you want, Lieutenant.”
“Straight answers, Milton. Like you take your muscatel. Straight. Or maybe you'd like to sweat under the lights. You ever spend fifteen, twenty hours under the lights, Milton?”
The little bum swallowed. He wiped his sweaty face on his sleeve and said, “Can I sit down, Lieutenant?” Garnett indicated a chair at the end of the table and Milton collapsed. We waited five, ten seconds while he took himself in hand. Then:
“That cop at the Palmer, when he grabbed me he liked to broke my arm. First time in my life I ever wore a pair of cuffs. So I knew it was more than just another drunk beef. I knew it had to be somethin' about them letters, but honest, Lieutenant, I never knew what was in them. I just delivered them, like the man said.”
“Ah,” Garnett said, like a man who had just finished off a thick steak. “We're back tothe man again. Tell me about him, Milton. Straight, remember.”
“You won't believe me, Lieutenant. That's why I never told you before. He was a bum. Just a bum, like everybody else on the Street. Like me, I guess.” He lifted his head and peered down the table at our faces. “See, I told you. You don't believe me.”
“Go on,” Garnett said, so quietly that it was almost a whisper.
“That's about all. I was standin' on the corner at Horner and Third, and up walks this bum and says how would I like to make ten bucks. I tell him not to bother me, I'm busy, but then he goes in his kick and peels off the ten and I know he means business.”
“Peels the ten off of what?”
“A roll. A big one.”
“A Street bum. Pulls out a fat roll and pays you ten dollars to deliver a pair of letters. Doesn't that sound a little foolish?”
“I kept tellin' you,” Milton whined. “You wasn't goin' to believe me. But that's the way it was. Go to these addresses, he says. Slip the letters under the door, careful like, so nobody'll see. Then he hands me the ten. You think I'm goin' to ask a bunch of questions and maybe lose all that money?”
Garnett nudged him back on the path. “Theman, Milton. What did he look like?”
The little drunk screwed up his face. “Tall, almost as tall as the sergeant there, but not as heavy. A long, lanky drink of water. Looked like a clodhopper or somethin'.”
“What do you mean, clodhopper? A farmer?”
Milton made a painful effort to remember. “No... at least I don't think so. The kind of clothes he had on was just somethin' to cover him up, you know what I mean? Maybe it was somethin' in his face— he had queer-lookin' eyes. Not much color.”
“How about the way he talked? You notice anything there?”
Milton licked his dry lips and tried to keep his thoughts in line. “The way he talked... I forget, Lieutenant. He just talked, that's all.”
“He didn't have an accent?”
Milton shook his head. “I don't remember it if he did. But now that you brought it up, maybe there was somethin' a little funny about him. It wasn't a clodhopper he reminded me of so much; it was a Holy Joe.”
Garnett looked at Lavy, then at me, and finally back to Milton. “You mean he might have been a preacher?”
“Who said preacher? Holy Joe. You see them all the time on the Street, poundin' a Bible at all hours.”
Lavy leaned across the table and spoke for the first time. “A nut,” he said. “Some kind of religious nut. Is that what you're saying?”
Milton looked down at his hands. They were shaking. He looked up wearily and said, “Sure, I guess that's what he was. A nut. Did I tell you what funny eyes he had? Not much color. Ain't that the kind of eyes nuts have?”
There was a moment of silence, then Garnett called for the jailer to take Milton back to his cell. Before I could object, Garnett said, “I've seen it happen too often. From here on out, he would just say what he thinks we want to hear.”
I came half out of my chair. “But we can believe everything he has told us up to now?”
“Sit down, Coyle. I didn't say that. There's nothing really bad about Milton; he wouldn't lie just for the sake of lying, but sometimes he's not sure just what is real and what isn't.”
“He was lying about the man who hired him to deliver those letters. It's impossible to erase all traces of accent, in a lifetime, even. Much less fifteen years.”
The lieutenant held his pipe to the light and carefully inspected the bowl. He took an English-type reamer from his watch pocket and, with the delicate skill of a neurosurgeon, began shaving away the layers of cake. “You are absolutely sure,” he said at last, “that the man we're after—the man who hired Storch to kill you—is a German. More precisely, he is the husband of the woman that you and your tank crew are supposed to have killed. The father of the little girl. If not that, then surely a very close friend or relative of the woman and little girl.”
I heard myself saying, “Yes. Absolutely sure.”
“With no proof at all to back you up. You are a very intuitive man, Mr. Coyle.”
“Save your sarcasm for the skid-row bums, Lieutenant.
Garnett finished the reaming operation. He put the tool away and blew the shavings out of the bowl. He ran a cleaner through the stem, then unscrewed the stem and cleaned the shank. At last he reassembled the pipe and began filling it with finely shaved Cavendish. “Please accept my apology, Mr. Coyle. I forgot for a moment that I was talking to a taxpayer.” He glanced at Lavy. “I'm going to be up a while. Why don't you go home, Sergeant?”
Lavy shrugged. “I'll just stay around, if you don't mind. That rummy made me look a fool today; I figure I've got some making up to do.”
Garnett sighed and looked at me. “Don't you agree, Mr. Coyle, that you taxpayers get a good deal for your money, after all?�
��
The place on the northwest corner of Horner and Third was called Monty's. In front was a liquor store, one of those places that specialize in whatever has the most alcohol for the cheapest price.
The three of us got out of the squad car and the frowsy citizens began to scatter. The liquor store was empty of customers by the time we were on the sidewalk.
Garnett grinned. “All right, Sergeant,” he said to Lavy. “You work the other side. Hit the joints, the booze shops, the flops, the missions. Use the description that Milton gave us. If you come up with anything...”
Lavy nodded, patted his hip pocket to make sure that his police special was in its place. Then he caught a green light and hustled to the other side of the street.
A bald, hawk-faced little gaffer was glaring at us through the smeared plate-glass front of the liquor store. Garnett kneed the door open and we went in. “Lieutenant,” the little proprietor whined, “what you tryin' to do, ruin me? You have to park your car right in front of my joint?”
We walked straight through and left him fuming. Behind the liquor store there were four snooker tables and two for pool, but not a customer in sight. Garnett glanced at the back door, still standing open, and grinned vacantly. At the second table a rack boy was shaping up the balls. Clouds of smoke hovered over the tables, rolling like the thunderheads that come down the eastern slope of the Rockies in the springtime.
Garnett looked at the rack boy and said, “You. Come here.”
The “boy” was somewhere in his late sixties. Garnett said gently, “I'm looking for a man, Pop. Maybe you can help. The fellow I want is tall, about the size of Mr. Coyle here, but not as heavy. A lanky sort of fellow, maybe a farmer. Eyes kind of funny. Pale. He looks like the Street, but we don't think he really is. The way he talks might be funny—you know, like a Holy Joe.”
The old man peered intently at our faces. “This fellow, he done somethin' bad?”
“We just want to talk to him, Pop. You know where he is?”
“Nope.” He turned and spat on the floor, then shambled back with his rack.
I looked at Garnett. “Is he lying?”
“I don't think so. Let's go up front and talk to Monty.”
Monty Striker was the hawk-faced owner of the liquor store. He was still whining about the squad car parked in front of his place, and Garnett said mildly, “Shut up, Monty,” and repeated the description that Milton had given us.
Monty absorbed the lieutenant's question and considered it carefully, the way a diamond merchant might consider a rare uncut stone. Then he shook his head. “He ain't been in my joint, Lieutenant. Either he's new on the Street or he ain't no boozer, because sooner or later all the alkies wind up here. See that wine over there, the twenty-three per cent stuff, sixty cents a fifth? That's what my customers buy; nobody on the Street can match that price...”
“The man we're looking for,” Garnett said. “The description rings no bell at all?”
Monty considered again and shook his head again. “He must be new; I thought I knew all the bums on this Street. Tall and lanky ones I know. Farmer types and Holy Joes and just plain nuts. You get to see some queer ducks down here—I know them with eyes like a snake's and the souls of buzzards, but I don't peg the fellow you're talkin' about.”
The lieutenant took out his pipe and caressed the brown bowl with his thumb. “If you should pick up anything...”
“I'll let you know,” Monty said quickly, and began easing us toward the door. “About that car, Lieutenant...”
Out on the sidewalk Garnett looked at the sedan. He got in and drove it around the corner and parked it in front of an all-night movie house. “Now you know what it's like to play policeman,” he said when he got back. “You want out of the game?”
“Sometime within the next forty-eight hours the killer's going to make his play against Jeanie. If we don't catch him first.”
He looked at me but said nothing. Across the street, Lavy was starting up a dingy stairway toward one of those half-number hotels that thrive on all the Horner Streets of the world. Garnett glanced at his watch and said, “There's a lot of dirt to stir up. We better get started.”
It was midnight when we reached the corner of Eighth and Horner, which was the end of the line. Nobody knew the killer. Or if they did they weren't saying. All we had to show for our trouble were sore feet and short tempers. And Jeanie, if the killer played the string all the way out, had four less hours to live.
Garnett took out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead. He looked at his watch and grunted.
“There's something about you, Coyle,” he said wryly. “I don't think I've had a dozen hours' sleep since I first ran into you.”
I gave him a narrow look. “Don't let me keep you up, Lieutenant. There's nothing much going on—just a girl about to be murdered.”
We were standing in a yellow pool of light under a corner street lamp, waiting for Lavy to catch up with us on the other side. The Street behind us, all the way to Second, stretched out only half-alive, half-breathing, waiting. We had made all the wine joints, the hole-in-the wall eating places, the missions, the walk-up flophouses and the walk-down bathhouses. Nobody knew the killer. Every time a head shook “no” the knot in my stomach pulled a little tighter.
Garnett walked over to a corner call box, unlocked it and checked in with the night shift at headquarters. He came back, and I said, “Is Jeanie all right?”
“Miss Kelly's fine. The policewoman has been calling in every hour.”
“Is that all they said?”
“Not quite. A police artist has been working with Milton—he's finally got a picture that Milton says looks like the man who paid him to deliver the notes.”
I stopped breathing. A prickling sensation started at the base of my spine and walked straight up my back. “You've got a picture of the killer?”
“Not exactly. It's just a picture of somebody that Milton says... Well, you know Milton. Anyway, they're bringing the picture down here for you to see before they start making copies.”
Across the street we saw Lavy appear in the doorway of a basement flophouse. He crossed with the light and came toward us. Garnett told him about the picture, and the sergeant nodded.
“Maybe it's the break we've been waiting for.”
“And maybe it's something Milton saw in the bottom of an after-shave bottle.”
About ten minutes later a squad car pulled up at the curb with the flasher going but no siren. A young, springy plain-clothes man got out of the car and handed the sketch to Garnett. All of us stood under the street lamp looking at the drawing.
It was a sad, long face with deep lines around the mouth and an eerie blankness in the eyes. The nose was long and slightly hooked; the lips were thin and looked colorless in the drawing. What promised to be a high forehead was covered by the brim of a shabby hat. A face like this one would not be an easy one to love, but it would be just as hard to hate. It was difficult to rake up any feeling at all about the face, except... Garnett was watching me. “Yes, Coyle?”
Something touched a far corner of my mind, then flitted away. The lieutenant moved in closer and prodded. “Do you recognize that face?”
“... No. But for just a moment I had a feeling. You know how it is sometimes—you pick a face out of a crowd and hold it for a minute because there's something about it that strikes a familiar chord. The face itself means nothing. So it must be the eyes. Somewhere or other I must have seen eyes like that.”
Lavy spoke dryly. “We're not being very lucid, are we, Mr. Coyle?”
I recognized the needle, but Lavy was right. The more I talked, the muddier it became in my mind, and I wondered what had made me speak in the first place.
“I'm sorry, that's all there is to it. If that's the killer, I don't know him. Anyhow, we have the picture. Isn't there something we can do with it before time runs out on Jeanie?”
“How many times does the lieutenant have to tell you?” Lavy said. “M
iss Kelly's safe.”
We rode the squad car back to the movie house where the lieutenant had parked. Just as we were getting out, the radio began squawking, and the words “Palmer Apartments” froze me. Garnett grabbed the handset.
“This is Garnett. What's going on at the Palmer?”
Even the dispatcher's voice sounded thin and uneasy. “It's the girl, Lieutenant. Miss Kelly. She's gone. A man got into the apartment dressed as a policeman and took her away.”
For the moment I felt only numbness. I watched Garnett's face go pale, and he spoke again into the handset. “A man dressed as a cop simply walked in and took Miss Kelly away? Just like that?”
“Not quite, Lieutenant.” The dispatcher's words were almost lost in the hissing receiver. “The patrolman on duty is dead. The policewoman is injured; that's all we know from the first report. Shall I keep you informed?”
Garnett was suddenly an old man. But not old enough to stop fighting. He nodded to Lavy, and Lavy piled into the front seat. Garnett and I dumped into the back and the lieutenant yelled, “Don't be afraid of waking up a few bums! Hit the siren!”
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Palmer was ablaze with lights. A uniformed cop with blood on his face and an egg-sized lump on his forehead met us on the walk in front of the apartment building.
Gamett snarled, “You were here when this tiling happened, Calloway?”
The cop swallowed. “Yes sir, I was. Lord knows how it happened. The girl's gone. That ape in the cop's uniform, the one that slugged me and killed Matt Forrester, I guess he's the one that took her.”
Garnett flashed the police artist's sketch. Calloway took one look and sighed.
“That's the one, Lieutenant.”
More policemen and a crew of lab men screamed up at the curb and piled out. Garnett collared a young plain-clothes man. “Morgan, take this back to headquarters and tell them to get started on the copies. Calloway says this is our boy. It might do some good if we get the pictures circulated fast enough.”
Morgan was one of those ambitious young cops with notions of his own, but he was smart enough not to argue with Garnett. The lieutenant turned back to Calloway.
The Long Vendetta Page 8
