They looked the place over like they were prospective tenants being shown an apartment. I didn’t go for that; detectives belong in the books you read in bed, not in your apartment at four bells, big as life. “Three closets,” I mentioned, “and you get a month’s concession. I’m not keeping you gentlemen up, am I?”
One of them was kind of posh-looking. I mean, he’d washed his face lately, and if he’d been the last man in the world, well, all right, maybe I could have overlooked the fact he was a bloodhound on two legs. The other one had a face like one of those cobblestones they dug up off Eighth Avenue when they removed the trolley tracks.
“You’re Jerry Wheeler, aren’t you?” the first one told me.
“I’ve known that for twenty-seven years,” I said. “What brought the subject up?”
Cobblestone-face said, “Chick Wheeler’s sister, that right?”
“I’ve got a brother and I call him Chick,” I consented. “Any ordinance against that?”
The younger one said, “Don’t be so hard to handle. You’re going to talk to us and like it.” He sat down in a chair and cushioned his hands behind his dome. “What time did he leave here this evening?”
Something warned me, Don’t answer that. I said, “I really couldn’t say. I’m not a train-dispatcher.”
“He was going to Chicago with a dame named Ruby Rose Reading—you knew that, didn’t you?”
I thought, I hit the nail on the head—he did help himself to his firm’s money. Wonder how much he took? Well, I guess I’ll have to go back to work again at one of the hot spots. Maybe I can square it for him, pay back a little each week. I kept my face steady.
I said, “Now, why would he go anywhere with anyone with a name like that? It sounds like it came off a bottle of nailpolish. Come to the point, gentlemen—yes, I mean you two. What’s he supposed to have done?”
“There’s no supposition about what he’s done. He went to the Alcazar Arms at eight-fifteen tonight and throttled Ruby Rose Reading to death, Angel Face.”
And that was the first time I heard myself called that. I also heard the good-looking one remonstrate: “Aw, don’t give it to her that sudden, Coley—she’s a girl, after all,” but it came from way far away. I was down around their feet somewhere sniffling into the carpet.
The good-looking one picked me up and straightened me out in a chair. Cobblestone said, “Don’t let her fool you, Burnsie, they all pull that collapsible-concertina act when they wanna get out of answering questions.” He went into the bedroom and I could hear him pulling out bureau drawers and rummaging around.
I got up on one elbow. I said, “Burns, he didn’t do it! Please—he didn’t do it! All right, I did know about her. He was sold on her. That’s why he couldn’t have done it. You don’t kill someone you love!”
He just kind of looked at me. He said, “I’ve been on the squad eight years now. We never in all that time caught a guy as dead to rights as your brother. He showed up with his valise in the foyer of the Alcazar at exactly twelve minutes past eight tonight. He said to the doorman, ‘What time is it? Did Miss Reading send her baggage down yet? We’ve got to make a train.’ Well, she had sent her baggage down, and then she’d changed her mind, she’d had it all taken back upstairs again. There’s your motive right there. The doorman rang her apartment and said through the announcer, ‘Mr. Wheeler’s here.’ And she gave a dirty laugh and sang out, ‘I can hardly wait.’
“So at thirteen past eight she was still alive. He went up, and he’d no sooner got there than her apartment began to signal the doorman frantically. No one answered his hail over the announcer, so he chased up and he found your brother crouched over her, shaking her, and she was dead. At fifteen minutes past eight o’clock. Is that a case or is that a case?”
I said, “How do you know somebody else wasn’t in that apartment and strangled her just before Chick showed up? It’s got to be that!”
He said, “What d’you suppose they’re paying that doorman seventy-five a month for? The only other caller she had that whole day was you yourself, at three that afternoon, five full hours before. And she’d only been dead fifteen to twenty minutes by the time the assistant medical examiner got to her.”
I said, “Does Chick say he did it?”
“When you’ve been in this business as long as I have, you’d have their heads examined if any of them ever admitted doing anything. Oh, no-o, of course he didn’t do it. He says he was crouched over her, shaking her, trying to restore her.”
I took a deep breath. I said, “Gimme a swallow of that gin.”
He did. “Thanks.” I put the tumbler down again. I looked him right in the eye. “All right, I did it! Now how d’you like that? I begged him not to throw his life away on her. Anyway, when he walked out, I beat him to her place in a taxi, got there first, and gave her one last chance to lay off him. She wouldn’t take it. She was all soft and squashy and I just took a grip and pushed hard.”
“And the doorman?” he said with a smile.
“His back was turned. He was out at the curb seeing some people into a cab. When I left, I took the stairs down. When Chick signaled from her apartment and the doorman left his post, I just walked out. It was a pushover.”
His smile was a grin. “Well, if you killed her, you killed her.” He called in to the other room, “Hey, Coley, she says she killed her!”
Coley came back, flapped his hand at me disgustedly, and said, “Come on, let’s get out of here, there’s nothing doing around here.”
He opened the door and went out into the hall. I said, “Well, aren’t you going to take me with you? Aren’t you going to let him go and hold me instead?”
“Who the hell wants you?” came back through the open door.
Burns, as he got up to follow him, said offhandedly, “And what was she wearing when you killed her?” But he kept walking toward the door without waiting for the answer. I swallowed hard. “I—I was too steamed up to notice colors or anything, but she had on her coat and hat, ready to leave.”
He turned around at the door and looked at me. His grin was sort of sympathetic, understanding. “Sure,” he said softly. “I guess she took ’em off, though, after she found out she was dead and wasn’t going anywhere, after all. We found her in pajamas. Write us a nice long letter about it tomorrow, Angel Face. We’ll see you at the trial, no doubt.”
There was a glass cigarette-box at my elbow. I grabbed it and heaved, berserk. “You rotten, lowdown—detective, you! Going around snooping, framing innocent people to death! Get out of here—I hope I never see your face again!”
It missed his head, crashed and tinkled against the door-frame to one side of him. He didn’t cringe—he just gave a long drawn-out whistle. “Maybe you did do it at that,” he said, “maybe I’m underestimating you,” and he touched his hatbrim and closed the door after him.
* * *
—
The courtroom was unnaturally still. A big blue fly was buzzing on the inside of the window-pane nearest me, trying to find its way out. The jurists came filing in like ghosts and slowly filled the double row of chairs in the box. All you could hear was a slight rustle of clothing as they seated themselves. I kept thinking of the Inquisition and wondered why they didn’t have black hoods over their heads.
“Will the foreman of the jury please stand?”
I spaded both my hands down past my hips and grabbed the edges of my seat. My handkerchief fell on the floor and the man next to me picked it up and handed it back to me. I tried to thank him but my jaws wouldn’t unlock.
“Gentlemen of the jury, have you reached a verdict?”
“We have, your honor.”
“Gentlemen of the jury, what is your verdict?”
My heart stopped banging. Even the fly stopped buzzing. The whole works stood still.
“We find the defendant guilty of m
urder in the first degree.”
Some woman screamed out “No!” at the top of her lungs. They were all turning their heads to look around at me. The next thing I knew I was outside in the corridor and a lot of people were standing around me. Everything looked blurred. Someone said, “Give her air, stand back.” Another voice said, “His sister. She was on the stand earlier in the week.” Ammonia fumes kept tickling the membranes of my nostrils. The first voice said, “Take her home. Where does she live? Anybody know where she lives?”
“I know where she lives. I’ll take care of her.”
Somebody put an arm around my waist and walked me to the creaky courthouse elevator, led me out to the street, got in a taxi after me. I looked, and it was that dick, Burns. I climbed to the corner of the cab, put my feet on the seat, and shuffled them at him. “Get away from me, you devil! You railroaded him, you butcher!”
“Attagirl,” he said gently. He gave the old address, where Chick and I had lived. The cab started and I felt too low even to fight any more.
“Not there,” I said sullenly. “I’m holed up in a furnished room off Second Avenue now. I’ve hocked everything I own, down to my vaccination mark. How d’you suppose I got that lawyer Schlesinger for him? And a lot of good it did him. What a washout he turned out to be.”
“Don’t blame him,” he said. “He couldn’t buck that case we turned over to the State—Darrow himself couldn’t have. What he should have done was let him plead guilty to second-degree, then he wouldn’t be in line for short-circuiting. That was his big mistake.”
“No! He wanted to do that, but Chick and I wouldn’t hear of it! Why should he plead guilty to anything, when he’s innocent? That’s a guilty man’s dodge, not an innocent man’s. He hasn’t got half an hour’s detention rightfully coming to him—why should he lie down and accept twenty years? He didn’t lay a hand on Ruby Reading.”
“Eleven million people and the mighty State of New York say he did.”
When the cab drew to the curb, I got out and went in the grubby entrance between a delicatessen and a Chinese laundry. “Don’t come in with me, I don’t want to see any more of you!” I said over my shoulder to Burns. “If I was a man I’d knock you down and beat the living hell out of you!”
He came in, though—and upstairs he closed the door behind him, pushing me out of the way to get in. He said, “You need help, Angel Face, and I’m crying to give it to you.”
“Oh, biting the hand that feeds you, turning into a double-crosser—”
“No,” he said, “no,” and sort of held out his hands as if asking me for something. “Sell me, won’t you?” he almost pleaded. “Sell me that he’s innocent and I’ll work my fingers raw to back you up. I didn’t frame your brother, I only did my job. I was sent there by my superiors in answer to the patrolman’s call that night, questioned Chick, put him under arrest. You heard me answering their questions on the stand. Did I distort the facts any? All I told them was what I saw with my own eyes, what I found when I got to Reading’s apartment. Don’t hold that against me, Angel Face. Sell me—convince me he didn’t do it and I’m with you up to the hilt.”
“Why?” I said cynically. “Why this sudden yearning to undo the damage you’ve already done?”
He opened the door to go. “Look in the mirror sometime and find out. You can reach me at Centre Street—Nick Burns.” He held out his hand uncertainly, probably expecting me to slap it aside.
I took it instead. “Okay, Flatfoot.” I sighed wearily. “No use holding it against you that you’re a detective, you probably don’t know any better. Before you go, gimme the address of that maid of hers, Mandy Leroy. I’ve got an idea she didn’t tell all she knew.”
“She went home at five that day. How can she help you?”
“I bet she was greased plenty to softpedal the one right name that belongs in this case. She may not have been there, but she knew who to expect around. She may even have tipped him off that Ruby Rose was throwing him over. It takes a woman to see through a woman.”
“Better watch yourself going up there alone,” he warned me. He took out a notebook. “Here it is, One Eighteenth, just off Lenox,” I jotted it down. “If she was paid off like you think, how are you going to restore her memory? It’ll take heavy sugar.” He fumbled in his pocket, looked at me like he was a little scared of me, then finally took out something and shoved it out of sight on the bureau. “Try your luck with that,” he said. “Use it where it’ll do the most good. Try a little intimidation with it, it may work.”
I grabbed it up and he ducked out in a hurry, the big coward. A hundred and fifty bucks! I ran out to the stairs after him. “Hey,” I yelled, “aren’t you married or anything?”
“Naw,” he called back. “I can always get it back anyway, if it does the trick.” And then he added, “I always did want to have something on you, Angel Face.”
I went back into my cubbyhole again. I hadn’t cried in court when Chick got the ax, just yelled out. But now my eyes got all wet.
* * *
—
“Mandy don’t live here no more,” the janitor of the 118th Street tenement told me.
“Where’d she go? And don’t tell me you don’t know, because it won’t work.”
“She moved to a mighty presumptuous neighborhood all of a sudden. To Edgecomb Ave.”
Edgecomb Avenue is nothing to be ashamed of in any man’s town. Every one of the trim modern apartment buildings had a glossy private car or two parked in front of the door. I went to the address the janitor had given me and thought they were having a housewarming at first. They were singing inside and it sounded like a revival meeting.
A fat old lady came to the door in a black silk dress, tears streaming down her cheeks. “I’m her mother, honey,” she said softly in answer to what I told her, “and you done come at an evil hour. My lamb was run over on the street, right outside this building, only yesterday, first day we moved here. She’s in there dead now, honey. The Lawd give and the Lawd has took away again.”
I did a little thinking. Why her, when she held the key to the Reading murder? “How did it happen to her, did they tell you?”
“Two white men in a car,” she mourned. “Appeared almost like they run her down purposely. She was walking along the sidewalk, folks tell me, nowhere near the gutter, and it swung right up on the sidewalk after her, went over her, then looped out in the middle again and light away without never stopping!”
I went away saying to myself, That girl was murdered as sure as I’m born, to shut her mouth. First she was bribed, then when the trial was safely over she was put out of the way for good!
Somebody big was behind all this. And what did I have to fight that somebody with? A borrowed hundred and fifty bucks, an offer of cooperation from a susceptible detective, and a face.
* * *
—
I went around to the building Ruby Rose had lived in and struck the wrong shift. “Charlie Baker doesn’t come on until six, eh?” I asked the doorman. “Where does he live? I want to talk to him.”
“He don’t come on at all any more. He quit his job, as soon as that—” he tilted his head to the ceiling “—mess we had upstairs was over with and he didn’t have to appear in court no more.”
“Well, where’s he working now?”
“He ain’t working at all, lady. He don’t have to any more. I understand a relative of his died in the old country, left him quite a bit, and him and his wife and three kids have gone back to England to live.”
So he’d been paid off heavily, too. It looked like I was up against Wall Street itself. No wonder everything had gone so smoothly. No wonder even a man like Schlesinger hadn’t been able to make a dent in the case.
But I’m not licked yet, I said to myself, back in my room. I’ve still got this face. It ought to be good for something. If I only knew where to push it
, who to flash it on.
Burns showed up that night, to find out how I was making out. “Here’s your hundred and fifty back,” I told him bitterly. “I’m up against a stone wall every way I turn. But is it a coincidence that the minute the case is in the bag, their two chief witnesses are permanently disposed of, one by exportation, the other by hit-and-run? They’re not taking any chances on anything backfiring later.”
He said, “You’re beginning to sell me. It smells like rain.”
I sat down on the floor (there was only one chair in the dump) and took a dejected half-Nelson around my own ankles. “Look, it goes like this. Some guy did it. Some guy that was sold on her. Plenty of names were spilled by Mandy and Baker, but not the right one. The ones that were brought out didn’t lead anywhere, you saw that yourself. The mechanics of the thing don’t trouble me a bit, the how and why could be cleared up easy enough—even by you.”
“Thanks,” he said.
“It’s the who that has me buffaloed. There’s a gap there I can’t jump across to the other side. From there on, I could handle it beautifully. But I’ve got to close that gap, that who, or I might as well put in the order for Chick’s headstone right now.”
He took out a folded newspaper and whacked himself disgustedly across the shins with it. “Tough going, kid,” he agreed.
“I’ll make it,” I said. “You can’t keep a good girl down. The right guy is in this town. And so am I in this town. I’ll connect with him yet, if I’ve got to use a ouija board!”
He said, “You haven’t got all winter. He comes up for sentence Wednesday.” He opened the door. “I’m on your side,” he let me know in that quiet way of his.
The Big Book of Reel Murders Page 41
