Hollow Needle

by George Harmon Coxe

  14

  MIKE QUIMBY HAD quite a place. He had a Congress Street address, and the door on the fifth-floor suite was lettered with his name in full but gave no clue as to his business. Inside the door was a paneled outer office quietly furnished with reproductions of the sort of chairs that John Caldwell had in his home. There was also a settee, a magazine-littered table, a water cooler, and, opposite the entrance, a door to the inner rooms. Beside the door was a low, open window, on the other side of which sat a sleekly coiffed blonde with a magenta mouth and fingernails. She gave Murdock a lingering and rather thorough appraisal when he asked if Mr. Quimby was in, and he got the idea that such appraisal was part of her training, that it was here that each potential client was assessed as to character, occupation, and possible financial worth.

  “Mr. Murdock?” she said. “What company?”

  “The Courier-Herald.”

  He would have provoked no less enthusiasm if he had said the tax collector’s office. What interest she had seemed to evaporate at once, and she turned away to speak into a patented gadget designed to make it difficult for a curious listener to hear what she was saying. Murdock watched her mouth work for a few seconds, and then she turned back to him.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Mr. Quimby is busy this morning. If you care to tell me the nature of your business perhaps I could—”

  Murdock cut her off. He said his business was confidential and would she mind giving Mr. Quimby a message?

  “Tell him I wanted to speak to him about Ross Neely. I thought he might like to hear what I have to say before I turn the matter over to the police.”

  She gave him a little more of that appraisal, then spoke again into the trick mouthpiece. In the end she shrugged and pushed a button, peevishly, as though this had become a personal matter and the judge was prejudiced. There was a click as the adjacent door catch was released.

  “You can go in,” she said, a note of defeat in her tone. “Mr. Quimby’s office is at the end of the hall.”

  Murdock went through the door and into the hall. The left side of this was one large glass partition, beyond which a half-dozen girls operated business machines and three men sat working over desks. On the right was a series of private offices, small ones, it seemed, considering how close the doors were together, and then he was knocking at the wider door at the end of the corridor.

  He went in without waiting for an invitation, and a stenographer in a little glassed-in cubbyhole indicated the open doorway that connected the anteroom with Mike Quimby’s inner sanctum.

  Mike sat behind a seven-foot, flat-topped desk that had been placed diagonally across one corner of the room so he could look out the window and see how things were going in the harbor. There was a lot of dark-green rug on the floor, three leather chairs, a leather divan to match. There were several signed photographs on the walls, and there was a mahogany console at one wall which might have contained either a radio-phonograph or a cellaret. Mike was leaning back in his chair, hands clasped behind his fat neck. He said hello without moving his lips much. He did not ask Murdock to sit down, but Murdock sat down anyway, selecting the chair nearest the window where he, too, could see if everything was all right in the harbor. It was a good view, and he lit a cigarette and made up his mind he could enjoy it as long as Mike maintained his silence. Mike weakened first.

  “What do you want to tell me about Neely?” He had a perpetual hoarseness in his voice, and its tone was a half octave higher than one might have expected, considering his size. That voice was the smallest thing about Mike, who had put on fifty pounds since he left the department, and had taken on a rich floridness around the jowls and nose. “The girl said you wanted to talk to me before you went to the cops,” he said when Murdock made no immediate reply.

  “Does Neely work for you?”

  “No.”

  “Then what do you care?”

  “I’m a curious man, Mr. Murdock,” Mike said, the suggestion of a smile flickering behind his sleepy lids. “I used to know Ross. What’s he done now?”

  Murdock nearly gave up. He almost stood up and walked out right then because he realized now that he had practically no hope of finding out anything of value from Mike Quimby. He was personally convinced that the reports he had seen Harvey Blake hide behind the books in the Caldwell library, and which were later taken from him by a man who hit him in the dark, had been made by Quimby’s organization. He knew that one of those reports, probably the original copy, had been taken from Caldwell’s files in the upstairs study; another copy that had been typed from the original had been taken from Larkin’s desk by Harvey Blake, though Murdock was not sure who had that copy now. It was almost certain, therefore, that a carbon of Caldwell’s original rested somewhere in Mike Quimby’s files, and Murdock had an idea that copy might as well be in Fort Knox for all the chance he had of getting a look at it.

  Then, just as suddenly as the urge to leave came upon him, it went away. He was a man grabbing at straws and he had nothing to lose. He had all the time in the world. Wyman had practically ordered him to stay away from the studio, and he might just as well be heckling Mike Quimby—at least until Mike tossed him out—as anyone else. There was even a chance that Mike might let something slip that would be of some help, though this, Murdock admitted, was strictly wishful thinking.

  “How long have you been retained by the Caldwells?” he asked.

  “Roughly ten years.”

  “From the size of this layout it must have paid off.”

  “Handsomely,” said Mike. “Of course we have other clients.”

  Murdock scoffed openly. “Damned few! Jack Fenner says you’ve been living on Caldwell,” he said, deciding an exaggeration would do no harm.

  “Fenner’s a good man,” Mike replied, unperturbed. “Often wish he was working for me.”

  “Yeah,” Murdock said. “He’d be a good man at getting those confidential reports you made for Caldwell. How long ago did you finish that one on Monica Sutton?” he inquired innocently.

  Nothing happened in Mike’s face except possibly a growing sleepiness in his eyes.

  “Monica Sutton? You must be thinking of some other agency.”

  Murdock took a chance and told what he knew to be in that report. “And you made it,” he said “because you worked for Caldwell, and Caldwell wanted the dope on her because he didn’t like her and he didn’t want his son Donald to marry her.”

  “I don’t get it,” Mike said, a sort of wintry humor in his tone. “You know what’s in the report and why Caldwell wanted it—or so you say—so what difference does it make who did the investigating?”

  “What about the Harvey Blake report? And don’t tell me you don’t know him.”

  “Sure I know him. Caldwell’s lawyer. Blake, Anderson, and McCall. Nice guy.”

  “But not smart about his women.”

  “Not smart at all.” Mike let go of the back of his neck and clasped his fat fingers over his bulging paunch. He had his coat off and he was wearing a silk shirt, and the thumbs of his clasped hands caressed the fabric absently. “You want me to say I made those reports, is that it? And then I suppose if I say yes, you’ll want to look through my files; if I say no, then you’ll threaten to go to the cops, and that will scare me, and I’ll let you have a look anyway.”

  Murdock started to speak, closed his mouth. He was beginning to feel a little childish. He knew he was licked and he was sore at himself for thinking he had a chance.

  “Forget it,” he said.

  “Let’s,” said Mike. “Let’s talk about Ross Neely.”

  “Why? You say he doesn’t work for you.”

  “We’re quibbling now,” Mike said. “And I’m too busy for quibbling this morning.”

  “They told me at Caldwells’ that Neely worked for you. He was a guard, to keep cranks and trippers from climbing the wall and having picnics on the lawn. That I know. What I don’t know is wether you paid him or whether Caldwell did.”

/>   “I paid him.”

  “Then he did work for you?”

  “I never said he didn’t.”

  Murdock started to lose his temper. Mike saw it and enjoyed it. “You asked me if Neely worked for me, and I said he didn’t. If you had said, ‘Did he used to work for you?’ I would have had to say yes.”

  “On account of you’re an honest man.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Who did he take orders from? That is, when he worked for you?”

  “From the Caldwells.” Mike leaned forward slightly. “And now let’s get to why the police should be interested in Neely, so I can go back to work.”

  Murdock told Mike about Eddie Kelsey. He did not mention the reason Neely had been sent to the Courier-Herald, but explained what Neely had done.

  Mike was interested. His eyes were busy behind the sleepy lids, but he was an expert at disguising his thoughts and Murdock had no due as to what the other had in his mind.

  “So what do you want from me?” he said when Murdock finished.

  “I wanted to know if Neely worked for you, and I want to find out where he lives when he’s in town.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t tell you.”

  “Okay,” Murdock said. “If he worked for you he had to have a license and put up a bond. That means his picture and the information I want is on file.”

  “That, I believe, is true,” Mike said. “But it would take a bit of research, so you thought you’d come here and ask me first.”

  “Something like that.” Murdock stood up. “Also, I hadn’t seen you in quite a while, Mike, and I thought I’d stop in. You have a lot of charm.”

  Mike grunted and waved Murdock toward the door. “Sorry I can’t help you,” he said. “But if you’re going looking for Ross Neely, I would suggest you get some help. Just a word of advice, Murdock. There’ll be no charge.”

  Murdock stopped at the door. He gave Mike a long, hard look that was a mixture of annoyance and grudging respect. The fat man did not move, and his eyes were still sleepy and immobile when Murdock turned and stepped into the anteroom.

  Jack Fenner was a slender, but compactly built man with gray-black hair and steady agate eyes that slanted a little at the corners and gave his glance a perpetually narrowed expression. He dressed conservatively and well, and might have passed for a moderately successful business man until you noticed his watchful ways and the tight, thin-lipped mouth. After that, though you might not guess his business, you knew that no one fooled him much.

  At the moment, standing at a bar a few blocks from Mike Quimby’s office and listening to Kent Murdock’s story, his eyes were narrower than ever, and there was a thoughtful frown on his angular face when he finished hearing about Eddie Kelsey and Ross Neely.

  “I checked a little on Neely,” he said, “and if he’s got a license I can find out his address. Do I do that first, or do you want to know about Neely?”

  “Find out where he lives first,” Murdock said. “You can tell me about him on the way there.”

  “Take it easy,” Fenner said. “It may take a little time.” He glanced at his strap watch and asked if Murdock had had lunch. “Then suppose I get somebody working on the address,” he said when Murdock’s reply was in the negative, “and we can grab a sandwich while we’re waiting.”

  Murdock found the suggestion agreeable and they walked half a block to a lunchroom. When they had ordered and Fenner had put in his call, he sat down and told Murdock what he knew about Ross Neely.

  “He was one of those mean cops,” he said between bites of his sandwich. “There are always a few, and some of them get away with it and some of them don’t. Neely didn’t. When he was a rookie some young punks jumped him one night down in the South End and gave him a real going-over. There were six of them, and they got his club and gun away. There was no point in it. They were just hoodlums with a few beers in them and they thought it would be smart to beat up a cop, and they did.”

  He took a gulp of beer and said, “They got the kids, all right, and sent the bunch of them to Concord. But Neely went to the hospital for two months and he never forgot that beating. Maybe that’s why he used to swing first and ask questions afterward. He never was a coward, and he shot a couple of guys who tried to stick up a liquor store one night, and got a commendation for it. Another time he took a slug in the arm shooting it out with three kids in a stolen car. That part was all right; it was when he was making routine arrests that the sadistic streak came out.”

  He wiped his mouth and said, “It didn’t matter who the guy was. Of course there were times when he’d be holding a couple of guys for the wagon and one of them would make a break and Neely’d lay it on, but he’d do the same to some drunk who’d been tossed out of a bar. It got so other cops didn’t like to work with him. They gave him a couple of reprimands, and his excuse was that he’d damn near got killed once before and he wasn’t going to get caught again. He had a stock answer—the guy he was arresting made a suspicious move—and he got away with it until one night he slugged a drunk and the guy died in the cell.”

  “I remember now,” Murdock said.

  “Sure you do. It didn’t go down in the books that way, because there wasn’t any witness and the guy might have fallen out of his bunk and cracked his head on the floor. But it was too much for the commissioner and they gave Neely the boot. About that time the war came along and gave him something to do. He served three years. I guess his record was okay, too. I guess that record helped him to get a license, though I’m not sure when he got it, and I didn’t know he worked for Mike Quimby.”

  He glanced round as the telephone rang next to the cashier’s desk, and when the girl motioned to him he went over and answered it. He came back shortly, nodding, his agate eyes telegraphing their satisfaction.

  “Neely got his license in ’45,” he said, and gave Murdock a slip of paper on which he had written an address. “He’s supposed to live there. Do you want to take a run out there and have a look?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  The question made Murdock think. His own reply had been automatic and, he realized, possibly ill considered. Before he could think of a good reason Fenner swallowed the last of his beer and said, “Let Jack figure it for you. In the first place you haven’t told me all the story. You never do, damn it! You want me to chase around and do your leg work for thirty bucks a day, and half the time the work has got some connection with a murder, and I never know how far my neck is out.”

  He shook his finger when Murdock started to interrupt and said, “Look! Neely worked for the Caldwells. The Caldwell butler got shot. Neely came up to your office and slugged Eddie Kelsey and you didn’t tell me why but I can guess—because of some pictures you took down at Caldwell Manor.” He paused to take a breath. “How am I doing up to now?”

  “Okay,” Murdock said.

  “So maybe Neely is mixed up in that shooting and you want to find him. I ask you why. Suppose we go up there and he’s in; then what? I’m no cop, and neither are you. If you’ve got any idea that we’re going to bust in and sit on him while one of us calls for the wagon, you’re crazy. That’s police work, and not for me.”

  Fenner had more to say, but Murdock no longer paid any attention. What he had just heard served to clarify his own thoughts and now he knew what he wanted to do.

  “Listen, Jack,” he said. “If the police arrest Neely now and book him on the assault charge, he’ll never tell us who sent him to my office last night. I don’t want him arrested. Not yet. I want to go up there and look around. If we find out he’s in, you can move outside and keep watching. I want to find where he goes, and who, if anyone, comes to see him. It’s the only way I know of getting any kind of worth-while lead. Up to now I don’t know what the score is. I’d like to find out before it’s too late.”

  Apparently such reasoning impressed Fenner. He nodded. He said that sort of figuring made some sense.

  “Sure,” he said, and reac
hed for the checks, hanging on to them in spite of Murdock’s protest. “I’ll put it on the expense account, anyway,” he said, and grinned, and then, serious again, he added, “We’ll have a look. On a thing like that maybe I can be of some help.”

  He left a tip, paid the check, and led the way to the street. When he had flagged a cab he waved Murdock inside and gave the driver an address not far from Massachusetts Avenue.

  15

  THE NUMBER that Murdock had written down proved to be a narrow, gray brick building about a block, from the Fenway. One of a row that varied only in the numbers and names painted on the glass doors, it was four-storied, with stone steps leading from the sidewalk to the vestibule, and a flat roof crisscrossed with radio antennas. At one time the lower windows along this street were filled with Rooms to Rent signs, but the war and the housing shortage had taken care of that and now what signs there were all proclaimed: No Vacancy.

  Fenner paid off the cab half a block down the street, and when they came to this address they saw that the glass door said: The Charles. They went up the steps and found eight rusty metal mailboxes along the right wall with push buttons over the name cards. One of these cards bore a penciled word that might at one time have spelled Neely, but the writing had been worn down and smudged so that it was impossible to be sure.

  “That must be the one,” Fenner said when he had examined the other cards. “Either that or he don’t live here any more.” He narrowed his agate eyes a little. “Do you want me to go up and pretend I’m selling magazine subscriptions?”

  “Do you think he’ll remember you?”

  “No.”

  Murdock was not exactly enthusiastic about the suggestion, but he could not think of a better one. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll wait here.”

  Fenner was gone three or four minutes, and when he came back into the entryway he shook his head. “No dice,” he said. “If he’s in, he’s staying quiet.”

  “You’ve got some keys, haven’t you?”