An overage cop named Mike Sullivan was on sentry duty in front of the barred entrance to ward sixteen. He sat tilted against the wall in a straight-backed chair reading a detective magazine. I thought Mike had long ago retired, since he had walked a beat in my neighborhood when I was in grammar school, and on more than one occasion I had felt his night stick across the seat of my pants for stealing apples.
As I approached, he looked up from his magazine and said in a pleased tone, “Hello, Manny.”
“How are you, Mike? Thought you’d retired.”
“Next month,” he said. “Ain’t this a fine detail to end with after thirty years?”
“Somebody’s got to do it.” I handed him my pass. “If I’d known you were back here, I wouldn’t have gone through all the rigmarole of getting this.”
He raised his eyes from the scribbled note. “You wouldn’t have got in without it. With only twenty-three days to go, I ain’t breaking any regulations.”
Drawing a key from his pocket, he unlocked the door and followed me through it, carefully relocking it from the inside.
The room was clean and airy, and except for the barred windows and door, looked like any other sick ward. Of the dozen beds arranged foot to head alongside the inside wall, only two were occupied. One contained an old man with red-flecked eyes and the rasping cough of a chronic alcoholic. Percival Sweet occupied the second bunk beyond his.
With the head of his hospital bed cranked up to form a back rest, the ex-pugilist sat half erect, his spine cushioned against a pillow. One eye was swollen shut, a piece of sticking plaster bridged his nose, and the rest of his face was a mottled purple and yellow. As we neared the bed, he drew thick lips back over large yellow teeth in a snarl.
“How you feeling, Percy?” I asked.
“None of your damned business!”
I clucked my tongue. “It’s not my fault you’re a washout as a hood. Why don’t you try another profession?”
He glowered at me without making any reply. I sat on the vacant bed next to his and let my feet dangle.
“Don’t they have nurses in this ward?” I asked Mike.
“When they want a nurse, I have to get one. I got them trained not to ask between regular rounds.”
Feeling in my breast pocket, I found I had just four cigars. “All right to smoke in here?” I asked Mike.
He shrugged. “The patients do, when they got tobacco.”
I handed one of the cigars to Mike, tossed another over Percy to the old man, who caught it with the skill of an inveterate butt sniper, and offered a third to Percy. In the back of his eyes disdain fought an heroic battle with tobacco hunger, but lost. He accepted it surlily, as though doing me a favor.
After setting fire to my own cigar and Percy’s, I tossed the match folder onto the old man’s bed. Mike used one of his own matches.
Percy leaned back and greedily drew his lungs full of smoke, then let it roll slowly through his nostrils.
I said, “You’re out of smokes, eh?”
He drew again on the cigar without answering.
I said, “Of course you won’t need smokes where you’re going.”
A deepening of creases between his eyes was the only evidence of attention to my last remark. I pretended absorbed interest in my cigar ash while I let him think it over. For a full minute the room was silent as Percy turned my remark over in his mind, Mike and the old vagrant concentrating on nothing but their cigars, and I amusing myself by swinging my feet.
Finally Percy rose to the bait. “Okay, shamus. Where am I going?”
“The name is Moon,” I said. “With a mister in front of it.”
He raised his eyebrows, winced as though the facial expression hurt and let his face go blank again. “I’ve heard that gag about you. You like to work guys over who don’t call you Mister.”
“Not guys,” I said. “Just hoods. Guys can call me anything they want.”
“So suppose I tell you to go to hell? You gonna work over a hospital patient in front of a cop?”
“There’s always the chance you’ll beat this rap,” I said. “Then I’d look you up. Of course your chance of beating it is pretty slim, so you wouldn’t be risking much.”
He studied a smoke ring he had blown until it disintegrated, then asked, “Where am I going, Mr. Moon?”
I raised my eyebrows, mutely implying he knew very well where he was going. “To the gas chamber, of course.”
“For assault and battery?” He let out a laugh intended to be derisive, but it wavered slightly at the end.
Sliding off the bed, I picked up my hat. “Well,” I said briskly, “just dropped in to see how you were taking it. I have to hand it to you. You’re certainly a cool guy.” I started to move toward the door.
“Just a minute!” Percy called.
I stopped and half turned toward him. The creases between his eyes had deepened to pull his expression into an uncertain scowl. He watched me uneasily, half suspicious that I was merely throwing out bait.
When he didn’t speak, I said, “Well?”
“Just what in hell are you talking about?”
I let my eyebrows climb again. “The Lancaster killing, of course. Have you bumped so many guys, you don’t know which one you’re taking the count for?”
From his expression it was hard to determine whether he was disturbed or not. His mouth tightened and his visible eye became more wary, but that was all.
“What’s your rush?” he asked. “Sit down for a minute.”
After frowning at my watch, I shrugged, returned to my former seat and waited for him to resume conversation. Before saying anything, he studied my face for a while.
Eventually he asked, “What about the Lancaster killing?”
“Hasn’t anyone from Homicide been here yet?”
He shook his head, still watching me suspiciously. “Just one regular cop this morning.”
“I thought they’d have been here long ago.” Checking my watch again, I turned on an astonished expression. “It’s two hours since Barney Seldon broke. I wouldn’t have come over, but I thought you’d surely know about it by now.” Suddenly I looked concerned. “Maybe I better shut up before I tell something Inspector Day doesn’t want let out.”
At mention of Barney Seldon, Percy’s face had become expressionless. “The boss broke, huh?”
I nodded. “If I were you, I’d get a smart lawyer and shift the blame right back on him. If you establish that you were just following orders, and the planning was all Seldon’s, you might get off with life.”
“Life, huh?”
His face was still without expression. I waited for him to say something more, but apparently his conversational mood had passed.
I said, “Is ‘huh’ your favorite question?”
He gave me a sardonic grin. “You got a nice technique, Mr. Moon. If I knew anything about the Lancaster job, I’d probably take the hook. But the night Lancaster stopped a slug I never left my room in Maddon, Illinois, after seven o’clock.”
“Got any witnesses?” I asked.
“You got any that I did?”
I slid off the bed and stuck my hat back on my head. Gesturing to Mike, who had stolidly taken in our whole conversation without a flicker of interest crossing his face, I again started for the door.
Just as I reached it, Percy called, “Hey, Mr. Moon!”
I looked back over my shoulder.
“Thanks for the cigar,” he said derisively.
12
The rest of that day was as unrewarding as my visit with Percy Sweet, which made it a fairly normal day for leg work. The days you turn up anything new during routine investigation are rare, most of your time being consumed in gathering negative knowledge: that is, by a process of elimination ruling out one possibility after another.
After leaving City Hospital, I made four more calls, none of which added to my knowledge of who killed Walter Lancaster, or why. The first was to headquarters, where I mollified War
ren Day by signing formal charges against Percival Sweet and Barney Seldon.
The second was to the Jones and Knight Investment Company, where I learned from Matilda Graves she had been unable to unearth anything whatever about Willard Knight’s personal financial transactions. I found Harlan Jones in, but he seemed as remarkably uninformed about his partner’s private affairs as was the secretary-bookkeeper.
My third visit was to Willard Knight’s home, where I bullied Mrs. Knight into letting me go through his private papers. And again I drew a blank. If Knight ordinarily kept personal financial records at home, he had removed them along with himself, I decided.
Although from our previous conversation I was reasonably sure Knight did not make a habit of confiding anything at all to his wife, I asked her if she knew what stocks he owned. She didn’t. Then I asked her for a picture of her husband, only to learn Lieutenant Hannegan had beat me to the request and the only two photographs she had of him were now at Police Headquarters.
My fourth visit was back across the river to Carson City, where I spent the rest of the afternoon in the morgue of the Carson City Herald. When I finished I had a chronological record of Walter Lancaster’s public life, including all the welfare fund drives he had headed during the past twenty years, all the speeches he had made and the community projects he had engaged in, but none of it pointed to anything interesting. If he had ever been involved in anything unsavory, his influence had been great enough to keep it out of the papers.
At six I quit for the day, had a leisurely dinner and went home to shower and dress for my date with Fausta.
When I arrived at the apartment over El Patio, I found Fausta prepared for an evening of riotous gaiety. Her gown, an affair of flaming red which sedately hid her legs clear to the ankles, was not quite so sedate from the waist up. It had no back, no shoulder straps, and so little front she would have been arrested had she appeared in it on a stage. Since obviously it was held up solely by chest expansion, and would embarrass us both the first time she exhaled in public, I balked.
“Some kind of jacket go with that?” I asked tentatively.
“No, I’m all ready.”
“We’re not going to a burlesque house,” I told her. “Go put some clothes on.”
“Why must you always act like a father when I wear a pretty dress?” she asked irritably. “Do you think my skin ugly?”
“I’ve never seen lovelier skin,” I assured her. “Or so much of it in public. I’m just trying to keep you out of jail.”
“Pooh! You are jealous that other men will look at me.” With her nose in the air she swept out of the apartment and down the stairs.
Since the stairs led down to the same hall where the office was, we had to traverse the whole length of El Patio’s dining room to get out of the building. I let her get ten feet ahead of me in the hope people would think I was a casual customer instead of Fausta’s escort when we ran the gantlet, but I could have saved myself the worry. Nobody looked at me anyway.
Every eye turned as Fausta passed, however, the male eyes in frank but startled admiration, and the female in outraged envy. With some surprise I noted a number of feminine diners wore gowns as scanty as Fausta’s, but for some reason — possibly because her flesh was such a creamy tan and what little of it was covered promised to be so much more interesting than the ordinary woman’s — Fausta managed to appear more nearly naked than any of the others.
At the front door Mouldy Greene said, “Hey, that’s a pretty rag you got on, Fausta.”
Fausta smiled at him, I pushed open the door and the ordeal was over.
As I helped her into the car she grinned at me. “You are such a Puritan, Manny. Most men would drool over my pretty gown, but all you do is look disapproving.”
Rounding the car, I slid under the wheel. “I like your dress,” I said. “Particularly the bottom half. But don’t come around for sympathy when you get pneumonia.”
“With the temperature eighty-five? Where are we going?”
“I planned making the rounds. A drink here, a drink there. Maybe a floor show later on. But in that gown I think I’d better take you to the Coal Hole.”
“That dark place?” Fausta asked indignantly. “I want to go to the Plaza Roof.”
So we went to the Plaza Roof. After that we went to the Jefferson Lounge, the Casino Club and the Barricades. About eleven thirty we drifted into the Sheridan Hotel.
By then I was used to every eye turning at Fausta when we entered a door, and it no longer bothered me because I realized Fausta’s striking beauty covered me with a cloak of invisibility. No doubt everyone who looked at her was aware she was escorted, for had they not been aware of it, every free male in the place would have converged on her the moment she entered, but I don’t think anyone’s eyes left Fausta’s nearly bare torso long enough to note what her escort looked like. My invisibility suited me fine.
The Sheridan’s head waiter stopped us just inside the door to inform us in a regretful voice there were no empty tables. He spoke to me, but his eyes remained on Fausta’s shoulders.
“We will sit at the bar,” Fausta decided.
At the bar seven men simultaneously vacated their stools for Fausta. Rewarding them all with a sweeping smile, she chose the center one. I decided to stand, and after a moment six of the men reclaimed their seats.
After ordering a rum and Coke for Fausta and a rye and water for myself, I turned to look over the house. Almost instantly I spotted George Smith and Isobel Jones at the same table we had used the previous evening, their heads bent together in such earnest conversation, they were oblivious to everything around them. When neither glanced up, I shrugged and turned back to face the bar.
But as Fausta and I sipped our drinks, periodically I glanced over at Isobel and George. For a long time they remained unconscious of anything but each other. Finally a waiter stopped to clear glasses from their table and George looked up. His eyes hardened over when he saw me, then moved on indifferently and stopped on Fausta. I saw him give a visible start.
He shook his head at the waiter, said something to Isobel and slid from his chair. Casually he moved toward the lobby entrance. At the same time Isobel rose and started toward us, a wide smile of greeting on her face.
She said, “Hello, Manny,” and Fausta swung around on her stool to look her over.
Possibly it was one too many drinks that dulled my reactions, but George was out of sight into the lobby before it registered on me that Isobel had nicely diverted our attention while he made a quiet exit. Remembering his sudden start when he glimpsed Fausta, it looked very much as though the diversion was for her benefit, and George had no desire to be seen by her.
Rapidly I recited, “Mrs. Jones, Miss Moreni,” then said, “Pardon me. I see a friend,” and followed quickly after George Smith.
Just inside the lobby I stopped and swept my eyes over the room. George stood diagonally across from me in front of the elevator bank.
A few paces to my right was the bell captain’s desk and Johnny Nelson, the Sheridan’s bell captain, stood next to it frowning critically across the room at a bellhop who had allowed his shoulders momentarily to slump a quarter inch. Once I had unscrambled a case that cleared Johnny of a felony rap, so he owed me a favor. I stepped over to his desk.
“Hello, Mr. Moon,” he said.
I said, “Quick, Johnny. Take a look at the man by the elevator.”
Johnny glanced toward George just as the cage doors opened. George stepped in and disappeared to the rear of the car, so that even though the doors remained open as the operator awaited the starter’s signal, he was out of our range of vision.
“See him?” I asked.
“Yeah. What about him?”
“He a guest here?”
“Yeah. Came in yesterday morning. Name’s Roger Nelson.”
“No,” I said. “You must have looked at the wrong man. The one I meant is named George Smith.”
“Oh. I thought you meant
the guy who got on the elevator. Tall gink with a sloppy haircut.”
“I did. Isn’t he George Smith?”
Johnny shook his head emphatically. “Roger Nelson. Reason I remember, his last name’s the same as mine. He’s in room fourteen twelve.”
I thought this over for a minute. “What else you know about him?”
“Nothing. Never saw him before yesterday.”
“Do me a favor,” I asked. “See what the desk knows about him.”
“Sure,” said Johnny. “Wait right here.”
In a few moments he was back. “It’s Neltson, not Nelson,” he informed me. “Roger Neltson. With a ‘t.’ Registered just before noon yesterday. Home town’s Cleveland and firm is Arkwright Typewriter. That’s all our check-in form asks. Is he hot?”
“Not that I know. I was just curious.” I slipped him a dollar and returned to the cocktail lounge.
Fausta and Isobel were still at the bar as I had left them, except that Isobel had also managed to acquire a stool. Isobel was nervously watching the door to the lobby, but when I came through it, she turned her face toward the bar in pretended lack of interest.
Fausta looked at me questioningly, and I asked, “Know a Roger Neltson?”
She looked at me blankly and moved her head in denial.
“Tall, shaggy-haired fellow,” I prompted. “Looks like Abe Lincoln with a shave. From Cleveland and in the typewriter business.”
She continued to look blank. “I do not know such a man.”
Turning my attention to Isobel, I watched her speculatively as she sipped a newly made drink with simulated disregard for our conversation. Feeling my gaze on her, she slid me a glance from eye corners.
“Bourbon and Scotch,” she said, indicating the mixture in her glass. “I’m completely converted.”
I said to Fausta, “Pardon us. I want a few private words with Mrs. Jones,” took Isobel firmly by the arm and led her back to the table she had vacated.
When we were seated across from each other, I glanced back at the bar. Fausta screwed up her nose at me and turned her back.
Tweak the Devil's Nose Page 9
