“Let me decide whether they were irrelevant or not,” he said impatiently. “I never throw anything away.”
“I’ve given you about all there were. Then when we got to this place, I heard him say, ‘Well here we are,’ and he turned in. So I went in after him without particularly noticing where it was. The flat turned out to be on the second floor; it was an elevator building, but the car was in use or something. I remember him saying, ‘Come on, let’s take the stairs for a change,’ and he headed for them without waiting, like he was in a hurry to get up there, so I followed him.”
Denny drove fingernails into his hair. “Not much there, is there? Fifteen a week. Caged up all day. We’ll have to try to figure him out from those two chance remarks. Caged up all day. Bank-teller? They get more than that.”
“I’ve never had enough money on me at one time to go near a bank.”
“Cashier maybe, in some cafeteria or lunch-wagon where you’ve been going?” He answered that himself before I had a chance to. “No, you’ve been taking your meals home with us since you’re out of work. Not a ticket seller in a movie house, they use girls for that. And you never go to stage shows, where they use men in the box office.”
“No,” I agreed.
“Caged up all day.” He kept saying it over to himself, trying to make it click. “Change booth on the transportation system maybe, on the station you used to use going to work every day?”
“No, I know both the guys on shift there, Callahan and O’Donnell.”
“Pawnbroker’s clerk, maybe. You’ve been patronizing them pretty frequently of late, haven’t you?”
“Yes, but that’s Benny, I know him real well—by now.”
“I can see where this Joe’s going to be a tough nut to crack.” He mangled the pin-feathers at the back of his head, where the part ended. “It might have been just an idle expression, it don’t have to mean he’s actually in a cage, literally behind some sort of bars or wicket. But it’s the only lead you’ve given me on him so far, and I’m blamed if I’m going to pass it up! Are you sure you can’t dog me up something else, Tommy?”
I couldn’t have if my life depended on it. Well, it did in a way, and even so I couldn’t. I just eyed him helplessly.
He got tough. Tough with himself, I mean. I guess he always did, when something showed signs of getting the better of him. “Well, I’m gonna get it if I sit here in this room until cobwebs form all over me!” he snarled.
He raised his head alertly after a moment. “How’d they act at the door? What’d they say to him at the door?”
“Nothing. He thumped it, and I guess it was opened by whoever happened to be standing closest to it, a visitor there himself, just like we were. He didn’t say a word to us, and we didn’t say a word to him, just made our way in.”
“Pretty free and easy,” he grunted. He gnawed at it some more, like a dog with a bone. “You say he was kind of in a hurry to get up there?”
“No, not on the street he didn’t seem to be. We just ambled along, the two of us. He took plenty of time. He stopped and looked at some shirts in a window. Then another time he went in a minute and bought a pack of cigarettes.”
“But you said—”
“That was after we got in the entrance. Like I said, the elevator was in use, or at least on its way down to us. I remember the little red light over the shaft was lit up, and the indicator showed it was already down past the second floor. It would only have taken a minute more for it to reach us. But he didn’t seem to want to bother waiting, he said, ‘Come on, we’ll take the stairs for a change—’ ”
“That don’t make sense. On the street he’s not in a hurry, once in the building he’s in too much of a sweat to wait. Either a person’s in a hurry to get someplace the whole time, or not at all.”
Suddenly he uncoiled so suddenly I got kind of a fright myself and jumped back from him. “I’ve got it!” he said. “I got something out of that! See, I told you it never pays to throw away anything.” He stabbed his finger at me accusingly. “Your unknown friend ‘Joe’ is an elevator operator! I’m sure of it. Fifteen a week would be right for that. And he wasn’t in a hurry when he took the stairs inside that building! He was just sick of riding in elevators, glad for an excuse to walk up for a change.”
He looked at me hopefully, waiting for my reaction. “Well, does it do anything to you, does it mean anything to you, does it click? Now do you place him?” He could tell by my face. “Still don’t, eh?” He took a deep breath, settled down for some more digging. “Well, you’ve evidently ridden up and down in his car with him more than a few times, and he took that to be sufficient basis for an acquaintanceship. Some fellows are that way, without meaning any harm. Then again, some could be that way—meaning plenty of harm. Now: where have you gone more than once or twice where you’ve had occasion to use an elevator?”
I palmed my forehead hopelessly. “Gosh, I’ve been in so many office buildings all over town looking for a job, I don’t think I’ve missed being in one!”
Right away he made it seem less hopeless, at least trimmed it down. “But it would have to be a place where you were called back at least a second time, probably talked to him about it riding up to the interview. Were there any such?”
“Plenty,” I told him grimly.
“Well, here’s your part of the assignment—and take it fast, we haven’t got a hell of a lot of time, you know. You revisit every such place you can recall being at within the past few months, where you nearly got a job, had to go back two or three times. Meanwhile, I’m going to get to work on this knife, slip it in at Fingerprints as a personal, off the record favor, and see just what comes off it, how heavily it counts against you—” He took out a fountain pen, spattered a couple of drops of ink onto a piece of paper, and made an improvised ink-pad by having me stroke it with my fingertips. “Now press down hard on this clean piece, keep them steady. Homemade but effective. I’ll make the comparison myself while I’m down there, without letting anyone in on it—for the present. I’ll probably be back here before you are—I’m going to get sick-leave until we’ve broken this thing down. You call me back here at the house the minute you have any luck with this Joe. And don’t take too long, Tom; it’s almost mid-afternoon already. Any minute somebody’s liable to step up to a certain closet in a certain house, and try to open it, and do something about it when they find it’s locked—”
I flitted out, on that parting warning, with a face the color of a sheet that’s had too much blueing used on it. He stopped me a minute just as I got the door open, added: “Mildred’s out of this, get that straight.”
“I should hope so,” I said almost resentfully. What did he think I was?
I could remember most of the places I’d been around to fairly recently looking for openings. I mean the ones where I’d been told to come back, and then when I had, somebody else had walked off with the job anyway. I revisited them one by one. Some of them were old-fashioned buildings with just one rickety elevator; they were easy to cover. Others were tall modern structures serviced by triple and quadruple tiers of them, and a starter posted out front to give them the buzzer. In places like that I had to stand there where I could command all the car-doors and wait until they’d all opened to reveal the operators’ faces. And even then I wasn’t satisfied, I’d ask each starter: “Is there anyone named Joe working the cars here?” He might be home sick or he might be on another, later shift.
I always got: “Joe who?”
“Just Joe,” I’d have to say. “Joe Anybody.”
Once I got a Joe Marsala that way, but he turned out to be an under-sized, Latin-looking youth, not what I wanted. No sign of the vague, phantom Joe who had, voluntarily or involuntarily, led me into murder. At five to four, or nearly an hour after I’d left Denny, I finally ran out of places where I could remember having been job hunting. I knew there must have
been others, so to make sure of getting them all I went back to the employment agency where I’d been registered for a time to see if a look at their files wouldn’t help my memory out. I figured they must keep a record of where they sent their applicants, even the unsuccessful ones.
I phoned Denny from there, from a little soft-drink parlor on the ground floor, all winded from excitement. “I got him! I got him! I came back here to the employment agency to get a record of more places where I was sent to—and he was here the whole time! He runs the car right in this building!”
“Has he seen you yet?” he asked briskly.
“No, I got a look at him first, and I figured I better tell you before I—”
“Wait there where you are,” he ordered. “Don’t let him see you until I get down there.” I gave him the address and he hung up.
I kept walking back and forth on the sidewalk in front of the entrance, to make sure he didn’t give me the slip before Denny got there. He couldn’t see me from where he was, the elevator was set pretty far back in the lobby. I was plenty steamed up. Kind of frightened too. We were a step nearer to murder. A murder it looked like I’d done. A murder I was pledged to take the rap for, if it turned out I had.
Denny came fast. “In here?” he said briefly.
“Y-yeah,” I stammered. “There’s only one car and he’s running it right now.”
“Stay out here,” he said curtly, “I’ll go in and get him.” I guess he wanted to catch Joe off guard, not tip his hand by letting him see me with him right at the beginning. Then with a comprehending look at my twitching face muscles, he threw at me: “Buck up, don’t go all to pieces, too early in the game for that yet.” And went in.
They came out together in about five minutes, after he’d asked the first few preliminary questions.
It was him all right. He was in livery now, and he looked pretty white and shaky. I guess the shock of the badge hadn’t worn off yet. Denny said: “This your acquaintance?”
“Yeah,” I said. I waited to see if he’d deny it. He didn’t deny it. He turned and said to me querulously, “What’d you do, get me in wrong? I didn’t mean nothing by taking you there with me last night. What happened after I left, was there something swiped from the place?”
Which was a pretty good out for himself, I didn’t have to be a detective to recognize that. In other words, he was just an innocent link in the chain of circumstances leading to murder.
If Denny felt that way about it, he didn’t show it. He gave him a shake that started at the shoulder and went rippling down him like a shimmy. “Cut out the baby-stuff, Fraser,” he said. “Now are you going to talk while we’re waiting for the van?” Which was just to throw a scare into him; I hadn’t seen him put in a call for any van since he’d gotten here; they only used that for a group of prisoners anyway, I’d always thought.
Denny took out an envelope with his free hand and showed me the back of it. “Sorrell—795—Alcazar, Ap’t 2-B,” he’d pencilled on it. He’d gotten the name and location of the party-flat out of Joe. I didn’t know what more he wanted with him. It seemed he just wanted to find out whether Joe’d been in on anything or not. “How many times had you been up there before last night?”
“Only once before.”
“How’d you happen to go up there in the first place?”
“My job before this, I was deliveryman for a liquor store near there. I was sent over with a caseful one night, and they were having a big blow-out, and they invited me in. They’re that kind of people, they’re sort of goofy. They used to be in vaudeville. Now they follow the races around from track to track. Half the time they’re broke, but every once in awhile they make a big killing on some long shot, and then they go on a spree, hold sort of open house. People take advantage of them, word gets around, don’t ask me how, and before they’re through they’ve got people they don’t even know crashing in on them.”
“But how’d you happen to know there was going to be a party just last night, when you took this fellow up there with you?”
“I didn’t for sure, I just took a chance on it. If there hadn’t been anything doing, I would have gone away again. But it turned out they had a bigger mob than ever in. They didn’t even remember me from the time before, but that didn’t make no difference, they told me to make myself at home anyway. They were both kind of stewed by that time.”
“You make fifteen a week chauffering that cracker-box in there, right? How much did they charge you up there?”
“I don’t get you,” Fraser faltered. “They didn’t charge me anything, it isn’t a place where you pay admission—”
Denny gave him a twist of the arm. “Come on, you knew what they were passing around up there. How were you able to afford it? Did you get yours free for steering newcomers?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, mister, honest I don’t,” he quavered.
“You didn’t know that was a dope-flat?” Denny slashed at him mercilessly.
Joe’s consternation was too evident to be anything but genuine. I think even Denny felt that. I thought he was going to cave in for a minute. I never saw a guy get so frightened in my life before. “Holy smoke—!” he exhaled. “I never noticed nothing like that—I saw this girl in green and I took a shine to her, and the two of us blew the place after about fifteen minutes—”
Denny only asked him one more question. “Who was the guy with the white scar?”
“What guy with what white scar? I didn’t see no guy with a scar. He musta come in after I left.”
Denny took his hand off Joe’s shoulder for the first time. He tapped his notebook meaningfully. “You may be telling the truth and you may not. You better pray you were. I know where you work and I’ve got your home address, and if you’ve been stringing me along, I’ll know where to find you. Now get back in there and keep your mouth shut!”
He turned and slunk back into the building, looking back mesmerized over his shoulder at Denny the whole way.
Exit Joe.
We got in a cab. Denny said, “I think he’s telling the truth, as far as you can be sure about those things. If he isn’t, I can always pick him up fast enough. If I did now, I’d have to book him, and that would bring the whole thing out down at Headquarters.”
“How’d—how’d the knife come out?” I asked apprehensively.
“Not good for you,” he let me know grimly. “Your mitts are all over it. And there’s not a sign of anyone else on it. It must have been cleaned off good before it was handed to you. It’s going to crack down on the back of your neck like a crowbar when I finally got to turn it in.”
The cab stopped and we were around the corner from the party-flat. We got out and headed straight for the entrance, without any preliminary casing or inquiring around. We had to. It was 4:30 by now, and the deadline was still on us—only it was shortening up all the time. It was a kind of flashy looking place, the kind that people who lived by horse betting would pick to live in.
I couldn’t help shuddering as we went in the entrance. We were now only two steps away from murder. There remained the man with the scar and the room with the musical walls. Getting closer all the time.
We didn’t have any trouble getting in. They seemed to expect anyone at any time of the day, and made no bones about opening up. An overripe blonde in a fluffy negligee, eyes still slitted from sleep and last night’s rouge still on her face, was standing waiting for us at the door when we got out of the self-service car. She was shoddy and cheap, yes, but there was something good natured and likeable about her at that, even at first sight.
“I never know who to expect any more,” she greeted us cheerfully. “Somebody parked their gum on the announcer a few weeks ago, and you can’t hear anything through it ever since, so I just take pot-luck—”
Denny flashed her the badge. She showed a peculiar sort of dismay at sig
ht of it. It was dismay all right, but a resigned, fatalistic kind. She let her hands hang limply down like empty gloves. “Oh, I knew something like this was going to happen sooner or later!” she lamented. “I been telling Ed over and over we gotta cut out giving those parties and letting just anyone at all in. I already lost a valuable fur-piece that way last year—”
“Okay if we come in and talk to you?” He had to ask that, I guess, because he had no search warrant.
She stood back readily enough to let us through. The place was a wreck, they hadn’t gotten around to cleaning it up yet after the night before. “Is it pretty serious?” she asked nervously. “Who told you about us?”
Denny was trying to trap her, I could see. “Your friend with the scar on his jaw, know who I mean?”
She didn’t know, and she seemed on the level about it, just as on the level as Joe Fraser had been about not knowing there was dope peddled up here. “I can’t place anyone with a scar on his jaw—” She poised a finged at the corner of her mouth and looked around at various angles in search of inspiration.
“Are you denying there was a guy with a scar on his jaw up here last night?” Denny said truculently. He had my word for that, and I was sure of that part of it, if nothing else.
“No, there could have been ten guys with scars. All I’m saying is if there was I didn’t see him. The excitement was a little too much for me, and I retired about midnight.” She meant she’d passed out, I guess. “He may have come in after that. You’d better ask my husband.”
She went through the next room and spoke into the one beyond, we could hear her plainly where we were. He was asleep, I guess, and she had to talk loud; at least no attempt was made at off-stage prompting. “Ed, we’re in trouble. You better come out here and answer this man’s questions.”
Ed came out after her looking like a scarecrow in a dressing-gown. Interest in the races had kept him thin around the middle, if it hadn’t prevented his hair from falling out. Denny woke him up with the same question he’d just given her.
The Big Book of Reel Murders Page 61
