“What call was that?”
“From this guy who said he was a reporter for the Morning Blade. Got me out of bed about nine yesterday morning. Usually I don’t get up till noon, see, because I work the four till midnight shift. I was half dopey with sleep, or I might have tumbled something was fishy at the time, but I never thought about it until this morning when the phone got me out of bed again and some woman asked what radio program I was listening to.” He smiled with relish. “Bet the Hooper people scratch me off their phone list. Then when I got to thinking about this reporter’s call, I dressed and came right over.”
“Well, get to it,” the inspector said impatiently. “What’d he want?”
“Just getting background for a human-interest story on the Lancaster case, he said. Wanted some dope about the witnesses. Asked how long I’d run a cab, whether I was married or not. That kind of stuff. When he was finished asking about me, he said kind of casual-like, ‘Let’s see, you’re the third witness I’ve called. Thomas Henning — that’s the doorman, Manville Moon, the customer who saw it, and you. What was the name of that fourth witness again?’ Being half asleep, I said, ‘You mean Miss Moreni, the lady who runs El Patio?’ and he said, ‘That’s it. Forgot the name for a minute.’ Then he thanked me and hung up.”
All three of us were glaring at him by the time he finished. Day and Hannegan continued to look at him, but I swung my glare at the inspector.
“So you put tails on the witnesses,” I said bitterly. “If the killer approached either of them, all you had to do was grab him. But being so scientific-minded, it never occurred to you he might make use of a modern invention like the telephone.”
Day’s nose was whitening at the tip when he swung it at me. “It never occurred to you either. You knew what the setup was.”
Not deigning to answer, I jerked his desk phone from its cradle and gave the police switchboard Fausta’s apartment number. When it had rung for three minutes without answer, I hung up and tried the bar phone downstairs. Since it was only ten A.M. and El Patio did not open till noon, I was not surprised that it took another three minutes before I got an answer there. The voice that finally answered sounded like it belonged to a colored porter.
“Fausta around?” I asked. “No, suh.”
“Is Mouldy Greene there?”
“Back in his room, maybe. Want I should look?”
“Get him to the phone fast,” I snapped. “Got that? I want him right now.”
“Yes, suh,” he said in a startled voice, and I heard him drop the receiver on the bar.
Another two minutes passed before Mouldy’s belligerent voice said, “Who’s in such a rush?”
“Moon,” I said. “Where’s Fausta?”
“Oh, hello, Sarge.” His voice turned friendly. “Ain’t she showed up yet?”
I felt my stomach turn over. “Showed up where?”
“Wherever you was supposed to meet her.”
“Look, Mouldy,” I said desperately. “Try to get this the first time I say it. I wasn’t supposed to meet Fausta anywhere. The guy who killed Lancaster knows she was the fourth witness, and if a fake call came for her, it was from him.”
“Huh?”
“For cripes’ sake, get your brains together, Mouldy. A killer may have hold of Fausta.”
“A killer? Just a minute, Sarge.” There was a dull clunk as the phone was laid on the bar.
“Mouldy!” I said. When there was no answer, I yelled, “Mouldy, you Goddamned moron!”
There was still no answer, and I sat there with the phone glued to my ear a full two minutes, frustratedly glaring from the inspector to Hannegan to Caxton and then starting the circuit over again. I was almost ready to hang up and start driving toward El Patio when Mouldy returned. And by then I was so mad I couldn’t speak.
“Hadda talk to Romulus a minute,” he said calmly.
“He’s the porter who answered the phone. About an hour ago the bar phone rang and Romulus answered. Some guy said he was you and he’d been trying to get Fausta’s apartment, but something was wrong with her phone. Then he told Romulus to tell Fausta to meet you at the Sheridan Cocktail Lounge at ten o’clock. She called a taxi and left here at nine thirty.”
14
I was too amazed by Mouldy’s unexpected coherence to speak for a moment.
In the same calm voice he said, “I guess you’ll want to do it, but if this guy bumps Fausta, I get to kill him, Sarge. Okay?”
When I was able to speak I choked out, “Okay.”
“Meet you at the Sheridan,” he said, and hung up.
As I started for the door Warren Day said, “Wait a minute, Moon. What happened?”
I stopped with my hand on the knob. Over my shoulder I said, “Your killer used my name as a lure, and Fausta may be dead by now. If you want to help rectify the results of your clever trap, start phoning cab companies to find out who made a trip from El Patio to the Sheridan at nine thirty.”
Pulling open the door, I passed through and slammed it behind me without waiting for a reply.
In the time it took me to cross the street and climb into my Plymouth, Warren Day must have started a couple of plain-clothes men on my tail, for as I pulled away I noticed a blue sedan swing into a U-turn from in front of headquarters and fall in behind me. I had not seen the men come out of the building — as a matter of fact had not even noticed the blue sedan as I rushed past it — but in my rear-view mirror I could see the car contained two men and there was no doubt in my mind it was a tail.
I decided to give them a ride for their money.
The Sheridan is a good four miles from headquarters, most of the distance requiring travel through the city’s most congested district. Nevertheless I made it in five minutes flat, leaving a stream of curses in my wake and at least two traffic cops with apoplexy. I was too busy driving to check whether or not the blue sedan was able to stay with me, but apparently the driver was an expert, for as I slowed down just short of the Sheridan, it pulled next to me and the man next to the driver waved me over to the curb. Surprisingly I had passed not a single radio car or motor cop during my entire trip, so the blue sedan had been alone in its chase. I could hear sirens begin to drone in the distance, however, which led me to believe at least one of the traffic cops I had emotionally upset had gotten to a phone.
Figuring I would be unable to find a parking spot closer to the Sheridan’s front door anyway, I pulled into a loading zone just across the street from the hotel and climbed out of the car. The blue sedan double parked next to me and emitted its spare passenger at the same moment.
The sedan bore nothing to identify it as a police car, but the man who got out immediately flashed a badge. He was a middle-aged heavy-set man with a bull neck and a face nearly as flat as Mouldy Greene’s.
“If Inspector Day set you on my tail, he didn’t tell you to get in my hair,” I snapped at him. “Check with Day later, if you want, but don’t try to stop me now.”
One or two passers-by had stopped to gape at us curiously. The bull-necked man paid no attention to them, but held his coat wide so they could not fail to see his badge, and suddenly drew a short-barreled gun with his other hand.
“Get in the back, Buster,” he ordered.
“Now wait a minute,” I said. “I’m on my way to prevent a murder witness from getting killed. Come along if you want, but if you delay me, Warren Day will have your scalp.”
There was a click as the hammer of the short-barreled gun drew back. And a sudden thinness about the man’s lips warned me he would have no compunction about squeezing the trigger.
A trigger-happy cop, I thought with a sense of shock. The guy wants an excuse to shoot somebody.
Opening the sedan’s rear door, I got in the back.
As the heavy-set man climbed in next to me, still holding me under his gun, I said, “Don’t blame me if you end up walking a beat.”
“All right, Slim,” my arrester said to the thin-faced man behind the wheel,
and the sedan moved away with a purr of power.
It was not till then that I got it.
“Oh,” I said, glancing down at the cocked gun. “I forgot you could buy tin badges in a dime store.”
“You catch fast, Buster. Just hold still now.” His left hand reached across and patted me beneath the arms and at the waist. “No artillery, huh?”
“I didn’t realize anybody was gunning for me,” I apologized. “I’ll start wearing some tomorrow. What did you do with Fausta?”
The heavy-set man looked me over thoughtfully. Finally he asked, “Miss Moreni?”
“You been setting traps for any other women named Fausta?”
We were rolling sedately along in the direction of Midland Park. The car stopped for a red light at Mason Avenue and my rear-seat companion continued to regard me thoughtfully.
“Something happen to Miss Moreni?” The way he asked it made me think he actually didn’t know. There was a note of doubtfulness in his voice, and had it not been for the cocked gun pointing unwaveringly at my stomach, I might have gotten the impression he was upset at the thought of anything happening to Fausta.
As the car moved forward again, he said, “Speak up, Buster. What gives with Miss Moreni?”
It was my turn to regard him thoughtfully. “You really don’t know?”
“Buster, we sat in front of your apartment house since six A.M., and we’d have grabbed you when you came out at eight if Slim hadn’t gone to sleep when he was supposed to be watching.” The driver interspersed an irritated grunt. “By the time he woke up, you were pulling out of the garage and there was nothing we could do but tail you. Ever since we been parked across from Police Headquarters. We don’t know from nothing about Miss Moreni.”
Wryly I thought that if Warren Day’s early morning call had not gotten me out of bed four hours prior to my usual rising time, I might still be peacefully sleeping at home instead of being taken for a ride by a couple of hoods. Then I also had to admit to myself I wouldn’t have known about Fausta’s danger. Not that knowing about it seemed to be doing me any good.
I asked, “Why are you interested?”
His expression grew irked. “I’m going to ask once more, Buster, then put a slug in your guts. What’s with Miss Moreni?”
It did not seem to me that suppressing the story was worth a slug in the guts, for though I completely failed to understand his interest in Fausta, I couldn’t see how his knowing about the fake call she had received would put her in any more danger than she already was in.
I told him.
By now we were driving through Midland Park, presumably in search of a quiet spot where they could dump my body, or give me a going over, or do whatever else they had in mind. My stocky seatmate surprised me by suddenly ordering the driver to turn around.
Nosing onto a bridle path, Slim expertly backed the car and headed it back the way it had come.
“Hold it,” the heavy-set gunman said before the car started forward motion again. Then to me, “All right, Buster. Out you go.”
I looked at him without understanding, but when he waggled his short-nosed revolver at me, I opened the door on my side and climbed out.
“Push it shut again.”
Pushing it shut, I stared at him through the window.
“Keep your nose clean, Buster.” As the car shot forward, I heard him say, “Back to the Sheridan. And don’t spare the horses.”
They had left me approximately a mile inside the park on the road going past the Art Museum. However, ten thirty A.M. apparently was not a good hour for art lovers, for not a person or a car was in sight in any direction. I started to walk.
I am sufficiently used to an artificial leg so that it is rarely a handicap any more, but I will never become an expert hiker. Walking as fast as I could, it took me fifteen minutes to get to the edge of the park. And then, of course, there was no cab in sight.
Directly across from the park’s main entrance on Park Lane was a huge cut-rate drugstore. The sidewalk in front of the store also happened to be an express bus stop, and I mentally tossed a coin to decide whether to use one of the drugstore’s phones to call a cab, or take a chance on a bus coming along within the next few minutes. The expresses only ran every twenty minutes.
Inside my head the coin came down tails for the bus. One stopped five minutes later.
When I got off the bus across the street from the Sheridan, my watch told me it was exactly thirty-two minutes since my heavy-set friend had abandoned me in the park. I saw no sign of the blue sedan, but my Plymouth stood where I had left it in the loading zone, unchanged except for a bright pink ticket attached to the windshield wiper.
Somehow it failed to amuse me to discover the police were still diligently on the job ticketing parking violations while Fausta possibly was in the hands of a killer.
A crowd was gathered on the sidewalk outside the Sheridan, and a uniformed cop tried to stop me from entering the Lounge.
“Sorry, sir,” he said in the mechanical manner of one who has been repeating the same phrase over and over. “There’s been an accident and the bar is closed.”
Just beyond the cop I saw the straw-hatted figure of Warren Day, an unlighted cigar in his mouth thrust upward at an angle as he peered down sourly at a sheet-covered figure lying on the floor. I was conscious of a number of other people wandering around the barroom, but Day was the only one I really saw before my eyes touched the motionless figure, and after that I couldn’t even see him.
I said, “I’m with Inspector Day,” and when the cop didn’t move aside at once, put my hand against his chest and pushed.
“Hey!” he said, staggering back.
“Take it up with the inspector,” I snarled at him, strode over to the sheet-covered figure and glared down at it.
The inspector watched silently as I fell to one knee and tenderly lifted an edge of the cloth. The body beneath the sheet was as dead as a body can get. Lips were drawn back in a grimace of agony and the face had a faintly bluish cast.
But it was not Fausta. It was a man I had never in my life seen before.
Dropping the sheet, I slowly rose and looked at Warren Day. He simply looked back at me, not even scowling for a change. Then he jerked his head sidewise at a corner of the room.
Turning, I saw one of the most welcome sights I have ever seen. Seated at a table with her back to me, calmly smoking a cigarette, was Fausta, and hovering over her in the belligerent manner of a mastiff guarding a bone was Mouldy Greene.
A half-dozen quick steps took me to the table. Sinking my fingers in her blonde hair, I jerked back her head, leaned over and planted a solid kiss on her lips.
“That’s for nothing,” I growled at her. “Scare me like this again and I’ll beat hell out of you.”
She looked up at me from round eyes, for once startled into quietness. Then she touched her lips where mine had bruised them and a wicked expression grew on her face.
“You kissed me,” she said. “In front of witnesses. Mouldy, did you see?”
“Yeah, I saw. Where you been, Sarge?”
“Later,” I said. Rounding the table, I sat across from Fausta. “Let’s have the story, Fausta. All of it, including who the dead man is.”
Warren Day pulled out a chair and wearily sat down also. His face was so drawn with fatigue, he looked as though he just made it before he collapsed to the floor.
“Yeah,” he said. “Let’s have it. All I’ve been able to figure out so far is the dead guy is one of the waiters.”
15
Fausta’s story was brief and not very enlightening. In response to my supposed request, she had arrived at the Sheridan just before ten, dismissed her cab and asked the head waiter for me. The head waiter informed her Mr. Moon had phoned he would be a few minutes late and left instructions for her to take a table for both of them.
At ten in the morning a table was no problem, for the cocktail lounge was built to accommodate two hundred, there were less than th
irty customers in the place, and half of these were at the bar. Fausta chose the corner table where we were sitting now.
A few minutes later she was quietly smoking a cigarette while she waited, when a waiter set in front of her what seemed to be a rum and Coke, then moved off to another table before she could speak. She looked at it in surprise, then simply let it stand there until she was able to attract the waiter’s attention.
When she finally managed to signal him over, she said, “You have made a mistake. I ordered no drink.”
“It’s on the gentleman at the bar,” he said. “Mr. Moon.” He turned to point out Mr. Moon, failed to find him and said, “He must have stepped to the men’s room.”
Still more puzzled than annoyed, Fausta sniffed the drink, detected the odor of rum and instructed the waiter to take it away and bring her a plain Coke. While she was not in the least suspicious, and assumed I had actually sent over the drink, then disappeared into the washroom and would be along in a minute, the murderer’s simple plot was foiled by his lack of knowledge of Fausta.
Fausta never touched anything alcoholic before one in the afternoon.
The waiter removed the rum and Coke, but apparently decided not to toss it down the drain. Since it had been paid for, he took it into the liquor storeroom and tossed it down himself.
Fausta of course did not know this at the time. Her story ended with the waiter taking away the drink. When customers at the bar set up an excited clamoring a few minutes later, she had no idea what caused the clamor. She did learn from the general conversation someone had been found dead in the storeroom, apparently of a heart attack, but did not connect it with her rejected drink, or for that matter did not even know the dead man was her waiter until after the police arrived.
“We got here fast,” Day said to me wearily. “We were already on our way because of what you said when you tore out of my office. The guy hadn’t been dead five minutes, and the management hadn’t even gotten around to calling us when we took the joint by storm. We weren’t in time to prevent half the customers from taking a powder the minute they smelled murder though. The poisoner with them, most likely.”
Tweak the Devil's Nose Page 11
