“Listen, pot-head, I don’t need display work. I didn’t send my men out because I figured they needed some road-work. I sent ’em out because I—because I—” He made a crooked, irritable face and then barked, “I wish the hell you’d stop doing paper work on me! It gets me all jammed up!”
Kennedy sighed, “Ever hear of Steamboat Hodge?”
“Don’t ask foolish questions.”
“All right. Paper work. Steamboat’s been around Fitz for ten years. He’s been Fitz’s constant shadow, his old dog Rover. He doesn’t want Fitz to bail out of the business because when Fitz bails out Steamboat’s usefulness is done. Maybe Steamboat figured that if Torgensen was out of the way Fitz, feeling the way he does about his business, wouldn’t sell to any of these shady big shots in town.”
MacBride shot back at him, “If he felt that way about it, why didn’t he take a crack at Marcia Friel?”
“Like Fitz, maybe, he thinks a woman’s a wonderful thing. For the past week Steamboat’s been slamming around town stewed to the ears. You hear it in all the bars. The guy was breaking up.”
MacBride stared down his bony nose. His lips moved tautly against each other. He looked upset, harassed, and finally he ripped out, “Damn you, Kennedy!” He crossed the office and got his hat. “Come on,” he growled, digging his heels towards the door.
The big Buick was being washed and the skipper said to Gahagan, “Boy, you sure pick a swell time to wash it.”
Gahagan pointed with the hose and almost doused MacBride. MacBride jumped out of the way and Gahagan said:
“On’y this afternoon you told me to wash it tonight.”
“How did I know I was going to be busy?”
“Well, how did I?”
MacBride colored and went across the basement garage to his own flivver coupé. Kennedy climbed in beside him and the skipper pressed the starter and kept pressing it.
“Try turning on the switch,” Kennedy recommended.
MacBride turned on the switch and the motor started. He whipped the car out of the garage, clicked into high and drove down the center of the street. A truck came booming up from the opposite direction and its driver leaned out and yelled, “Get over where you belong, you mugg!”
The skipper shouted back, “Yeah!” and pulled over so far that he almost hit a car parked at the curb.
Kennedy said, “Maybe we should have waited till Gahagan got the Buick washed.”
“This car’s been steering funny of late.”
“I can understand that. It might be a good idea, if you’re going to drive all over the street, to put your lights on.”
MacBride scowled and turned on his lights.
* * *
—
When he walked into the Million Club, Tom Carney said, “Round trip, eh, Cap’n?”
MacBride blew his nose loudly. “Steamboat around?”
Carney’s smile faded out. “No.”
“Fitz?”
Carney shook his head without saying anything.
MacBride put away his handkerchief. “Where is he?”
“I think he went home.”
“Steamboat still bunking with him?”
Carney shook his head very slowly. “No. Steamboat got temperamental and moved to diggings of his own, I don’t know where.”
“Thanks, Tom,” MacBride said, and fanned out.
Kennedy was behind the wheel.
“Move over,” the skipper said.
“If I move over, I move out. I’m going to see what’s wrong with this steering gear.”
MacBride grunted, gave him a suspicious look and climbed in. “Fitz’s place.”
Kennedy drove out Webster Avenue, tooling the car neatly through traffic and with little effort. He pulled up in front of an ivy-covered apartment house, set the emergency brake, and switching off the ignition, said:
“I guess the steering gear’s a little better.”
“Sometimes it is and sometimes it isn’t. That’s what’s funny about it. Do you know offhand what Fitz’s apartment is?”
“Six-o-six, unless he’s changed.”
“Well, we’ll go right up anyhow.”
A gray enameled elevator hoisted them silently to the sixth floor and cushioned to a jarless stop. MacBride strode out and was halfway down the hall when Kennedy whistled and pointed in the other direction. MacBride pivoted and went after him and they arrived in front of 606 together.
Mularkey himself opened the door, holding an unlit cigar between two fingers. His sandy eyebrows made a hardly perceptible movement and a smile came a second later to his eyes, slanted down across one slablike cheek to the corner of his mouth.
“Come in, come in,” he said. “I want you to meet Marcia Friel….”
He had spent a lot of money on his apartment, some of it not wisely. But you could not expect a one-time dock-walloper to be expert at decorating. He’d mixed antiques with ultra-modern nightmares.
Marcia Friel was wearing a three-cornered hat and a lightweight coat of some dark, crinkly material, draped under the arms and with a loose scrollwork collar. She was tall, with black hair and very fair skin. Her face was triangular, intelligent, and she had an air which she wore easily and naturally. A young, slender man was standing near her. He held a pair of gloves in one hand, a dark Homburg in the other.
“Marcia,” said Mularkey, “this is my old friend Captain Steve MacBride…and this is Kennedy; I’ve known him a long time too. Boys, this is Marcia Friel.”
She dipped her chin, her brows. “I’m so glad to know you both. I have heard about you.”
“I guess we’ve heard about you too,” the skipper said, with an approving nod towards Mularkey.
“And this,” said Mularkey, “is Marcia’s brother Lewis. We’re going in the real estate game together.”
Lewis Friel wore good clothes well. His brown hair was knotty, with a short part on the left. His brown eyes were candid. He came across the room with trim, elastic tread, his hand held out before him, a small amused smile on his lips.
“Fitz has talked enough about you,” he said. “It’s tough there had to be a murder in order to meet you.”
Mularkey explained to MacBride, “I had ’em stop by, Steve. It kind of shook me up, after I got to thinking about it.”
Marcia’s eyes clouded. “Mr. Torgensen was, you know,” she said to Kennedy, “a very old friend of Fitz’s.”
Mularkey looked moody, a little broken up. “I think I’m all right now, though.”
Marcia Friel made a gesture of patting his arm. He turned to drop a smile on her—it was full of thanks and adoration and at the same time a little embarrassed.
The skipper said, “Fitz, can I see you alone?”
“Sure. Excuse us, Marcia…Lewis.”
There was a small study off the gallery. It was lined with books, all finely bound.
“Some library,” MacBride said.
Mularkey brightened a bit. “Like it? I hired a guy to pick those books. I don’t read myself.”
“I don’t either, much, but I like to see ’em around.”
“Me too,” Mularkey nodded.
Both stood looking at the books for a minute and then the skipper said:
“Steamboat around?”
Mularkey looked more steadily at the books. “Steamboat claimed I was getting too high hat.” He chuckled. “He shifted to other quarters.”
“Where?”
“Yeah,” Mularkey slowly reminisced, “Steamboat’s very touchy. He said this place was getting like a museum or something—no place for a decent man to live in.”
“Quite a guy, Steamboat,” MacBride said.
“Yeah, quite a guy, Steve.”
“Where’d you say h
e moved, Fitz?”
Mularkey looked at him. “Want to see him?”
“Yeah, I’d like to.”
Mularkey picked up the phone. “I’ll ring him and tell him to come over.”
He rang but there was no answer and he hung up. “No answer,” he said.
“Where’s he living?”
Mularkey sighed, went slowly around to the other side of the desk, pulled a small book out of a drawer, looked in it, then tossed it back into the drawer. “Over at sixty-five Lyons Street. It’s a rooming-house. He’s in room fifteen.” He looked at his unlit cigar. “What’s the matter?”
“Oh, nothing, Fitz. Just checking up.”
When they returned to the living-room Marcia gave them a troubled look. Mularkey, seeing it, touched her on the shoulder reassuringly, said, “The skipper and me always have our little secrets.”
Lewis Friel, lighting a cigarette, gave him a minute’s careful scrutiny, and then his sister turning to MacBride, said:
“You will talk to Fitz, won’t you, Captain? You will stop him from doing anything foolish?”
Mularkey laughed outright. “Listen to Marcia!”
Lewis Friel made a troubled movement of his head. “Nevertheless, Fitz, she’s right.”
MacBride said, “Fitz has given me his word. He knows better than break it.”
“Sure,” said Mularkey. “Sure.” The second “sure” seemed to tail off just a trifle and for a brief instant a chill blue light waved through Mularkey’s eyes.
MacBride and Kennedy went downstairs and Kennedy, having the ignition key, got in behind the wheel. MacBride was clouded in thought.
“ ’D you see that look in Fitz’s eyes?”
Kennedy started up the motor. “The gal looks cream enough to keep his coffee from going bitter.”
“Kennedy, she’s the one thing that stands between Fitz and a gun. If what you think about Steamboat’s true—and if Steamboat gets crocked and decides to turn native and clout that gal with lead….”
“I catch on. It means the end of Fitz.”
MacBride nodded gloomily. Then he said, “Go to sixty-five Lyons Street.”
CHAPTER IV
Lyons Street is a narrow defile on the southern fringe of the city. Many of the buildings there have been condemned and the city hopes to condemn all of them some day and build a park and playground. But a few houses are still occupied. One of these is 65.
Kennedy, climbing out of the coupé, said, “Steamboat must certainly have wanted to be alone. A lot of men do that. When things go wrong, they hide away alone and brood. That’s bad. They get complexes.”
“The room’s fifteen,” MacBride said, hiking across the broken sidewalk.
The glass-paneled door with the faded 65 on it was not locked. MacBride opened it and Kennedy followed him into a barnlike corridor where a light with a broken glass shade stuck out of the wall. Somebody in a rearward room was coughing.
“Fifteen ought to be upstairs somewhere,” the skipper said.
He climbed, his hard-heeled cop’s shoes slugging the carpetless steps. They found 15 on the third floor, front. It was locked and after knocking several times and getting no answer, MacBride used a master key. The break was simple, for it was a makeshift lock. He spanned the room with his flashlight’s beam, spotted a light cord and yanked on the light. It was a bare, downtrodden room, with two front windows. There was a patchwork quilt on the bed and a shuffled rag rug on the floor. A big suitcase, open, lay on the floor. It contained clean clothes. A heap of soiled clothing lay in a corner. Nothing had been hung up in the closet.
“He’s just marking time here,” Kennedy said.
“I wonder when he was in here last.”
Kennedy dawdled over to the bureau and looked at a glass half filled with water. “Not very long ago.”
“Huh?”
“Drops of water on the outside of the glass, where he slopped it over.”
“Sweat, maybe.”
“Sweat beads. This is water.”
MacBride nodded. “I guess you’re right.” He picked up the stub of a cigar. “Yes, you’re right. The end of this cigar’s still wet. Did Steamboat smoke cigars?”
“Always. I saw him without one one day and didn’t recognize him. What’s this?”
Kennedy picked up a writing pad and carried it over beneath the light. He slanted it in various directions, then said, “He wrote with a pencil, a hard one, and he pressed hard. Here’s the impression he left—part of it.”
“What’s it say?”
“Hard to tell. He presses hard on some letters and soft on others. But I can make this much out: “ ‘If you go through with it—’ and then I can’t make the next words out. But here, a little later on: ‘Fitz don’t know what he’s doing—’ and then it fades again. Look—now listen to this: ‘—try to muscle in and I’ll—’ and that fades and then two lines down I see this: ‘—even if he calls you his best friend.’ ” He handed the pad over. “Take it along. It might help.”
“Might help?”
“You could never hang a guy on that.”
MacBride snorted. “But I can hang a lot on him.”
“Maybe.”
MacBride grumbled, “You make me sick! You get me all steamed up on a thing and then you chuck cold water on me!” He went to the wall and lifted the telephone receiver. He called Headquarters and said, “Moriarity or Cohen get back yet?…Well, send Cohen over to sixty-five Lyons Street, room fifteen. Tell him to snap on it….Sure it’s MacBride.”
He hung up as Kennedy said, “Listen.”
MacBride turned his head and heard footsteps climbing the staircase. He pulled his gun and went over to face the door and as it opened he cocked the trigger and said:
“Put ’em—”
He lowered the gun.
Mularkey leaned in the doorway with his big hands sunk in his coat pockets. He didn’t smile. He looked weary and his voice when he spoke was low and bore a note of resentment.
“I took it into my head,” he said, “to come over and see what all this stuff is about Steamboat.”
“Nothing, Fitz. I’m just—”
“Just checking up. Ditch that, Steve. You can hide what’s on your mind about as well as I can hide a day-old beard. You don’t have to kid me.”
MacBride shrugged and said, “Why don’t you go home and take a sleep, Fitz? You’re taking all this too hard.”
“I’ll sleep when I feel like it and I don’t feel like it. You’re not checking up. You’re looking for Steamboat.”
“You’re getting tough, Fitz.”
“I’m getting sore.”
Kennedy said, “Don’t get sore, my friend.”
“You mind your own business. When I want a chirp out of you, I’ll say so.”
MacBride shook his head. “That’s no way to talk, Fitz. If you wasn’t all upset, you wouldn’t talk that way. You’re just stepping on your friends’ toes right now.”
“I want to know what you got on Steamboat.”
“Nothing.”
“You’re a liar. I can tell when you’re checking up and I can tell when you’ve got your nose close to the ground. If you got anything on Steamboat, I want to know it. You have—and you’re a liar if you say you haven’t.”
There was dull red color pushing through the skin on the skipper’s neck. He said very slowly, “I got nothing on Steamboat.”
Mularkey was looking at him with the chill blue stare.
The skipper repeated—“Nothing.”
Mularkey dropped his eyes. He pushed out his lower lip, drew it back in again. He frowned, shook his head. He looked disgusted and badgered. After a long minute he turned without a word and went away, his steps slow and heavy as he descended t
he staircase. Kennedy, looking out the window, saw him walk slowly away down the street, disappear.
Kennedy turned, saying, “There’s a man that’s slowly turning into a stick of dynamite.”
MacBride was staring morosely at the door. He said in a preoccupied voice, “Any guy but him that talked to me that way, I’d kick his teeth out.”
Cohen arrived.
“Stay here, Ike,” the skipper said, still preoccupied. “When Steamboat Hodge comes in, pick him up. Come on, Kennedy.”
CHAPTER V
Steamboat did not show up at the Lyons Street place. Cohen hung around until midnight. He was relieved by another man, who was relieved by another at eight in the morning.
The skipper arrived in the Headquarters garage at eight-thirty with a dented mudguard. He had clipped a traffic blinker on his way from home. His shoes were polished, he wore a freshly pressed blue serge suit. He had shaved and his face was ruddy, bony, with highlights on his cheekbones.
“Somebuddy bump you?” asked the garage watchman.
“Yeah. Run around to Louie’s and tell him to straighten it out.”
“Hoke, Cap.”
MacBride reached the central room with his coat tail bobbing. Bettdecken, on desk duty, looked over the top of a detective story magazine.
“Any news from the Lyons Street place?” MacBride asked.
“Nope. That is, whosis—what’s-his-name—you know—”
“Steamboat.”
“Yowss. Him. He ain’t showed up. Gigliano’s on duty there now. Gig says the place is a dump.”
“What else?”
“Well, Blaufuss and his Flying Squad was out practically all night. He rounded up a lot of potatoes. Twenty-three guys and seven dames in the holdover. He ain’t sure about the dames. He brung the seven in just to be sure. Oh, yeah. Pickney Sax come in about ten minutes ago. He was the one give me this magazine.”
“Where is he?”
“Somewheres. Maybe he’s out back playing cards with the crew. Somewheres. I dunno. Say, what’s a locust, like in this book?”
“I think it’s police slang for a nightstick.”
The Big Book of Reel Murders Page 206
