The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries

by Otto Penzler

  DEAD ON CHRISTMAS STREET

  John D. MacDonald

  JOHN D. MACDONALD’S MOST FAMOUS CHARACTER, Travis McGee, lived on a houseboat named “The Busted Flush,” which he won in a poker game. One of the great characters of mystery fiction, McGee is a combined private detective and thief who makes his living by recovering stolen property and, while operating outside the law, victimizes only criminals. Mac-Donald’s outstanding suspense novel, The Executioners, was filmed twice as Cape Fear (in 1962, with Gregory Peck, Robert Mitchum, and Polly Bergen, and in 1991, with Nick Nolte, Robert De Niro, Jessica Lange, and Juliette Lewis). “Dead on Christmas Street” was first published in the December 20, 1952, issue of Collier’s.

  Dead on Christmas Street

  JOHN D. MACDONALD

  THE POLICE IN THE FIRST PROWL car on the scene got out a tarpaulin. A traffic policeman threw it over the body and herded the crowd back. They moved uneasily in the gray slush. Some of them looked up from time to time.

  In the newspaper picture the window would be marked with a bold X. A dotted line would descend from the X to the spot where the covered body now lay. Some of the spectators, laden with tinsel- and evergreen-decorated packages, turned away, suppressing a nameless guilt.

  But the curious stayed on. Across the street, in the window of a department store, a vast mechanical Santa rocked back and forth, slapping a mechanical hand against a padded thigh, roaring forever, “Whaw haw ho ho ho. Whaw haw ho ho ho.” The slapping hand had worn the red plush from the padded thigh.

  The ambulance arrived, with a brisk intern to make out the DOA. Sawdust was shoveled onto the sidewalk, then pushed off into the sewer drain. Wet snow fell into the city. And there was nothing else to see. The corner Santa, a leathery man with a pinched, blue nose, began to ring his hand bell again.

  Daniel Fowler, one of the young Assistant District Attorneys, was at his desk when the call came through from Lieutenant Shinn of the Detective Squad. “Dan? This is Gil. You heard about the Garrity girl yet?”

  For a moment the name meant nothing, and then suddenly he remembered: Loreen Garrity was the witness in the Sheridan City Loan Company case. She had made positive identification of two of the three kids who had tried to pull that holdup, and the case was on the calendar for February. Provided the kids didn’t confess before it came up, Dan was going to prosecute. He had the Garrity girl’s statement, and her promise to appear.

  “What about her, Gil?” he asked.

  “She took a high dive out of her office window—about an hour ago. Seventeen stories, and right into the Christmas rush. How come she didn’t land on somebody, we’ll never know. Connie Wyant is handling it. He remembered she figured in the loan-company deal, and he told me. Look, Dan. She was a big girl, and she tried hard not to go out that window. She was shoved. That’s how come Connie has it. Nice Christmas present for him.”

  “Nice Christmas present for the lads who pushed over the loan company, too,” Dan said grimly. “Without her, there’s no case. Tell Connie that. It ought to give him the right line.”

  Dan Fowler set aside the brief he was working on and walked down the hall. The District Attorney’s secretary was at her desk. “Boss busy, Jane?”

  She was a small girl with wide, gray eyes, a mass of dark hair, a soft mouth. She raised one eyebrow and looked at him speculatively. “I could be bribed, you know.”

  He looked around with exaggerated caution, went around her desk on tiptoe, bent and kissed her upraised lips. He smiled down at her. “People are beginning to talk,” he whispered, not getting it as light as he meant it to be.

  She tilted her head to one side, frowned, and said, “What is it, Dan?”

  He sat on the corner of her desk and took her hands in his, and he told her about the big, dark-haired, swaggering woman who had gone out the window. He knew Jane would want to know. He had regretted bringing Jane in on the case, but he had had the unhappy hunch that Garrity might sell out, if the offer was high enough. And so he had enlisted Jane, depending on her intuition. He had taken the two of them to lunch, and had invented an excuse to duck out and leave them alone.

  Afterward, Jane had said, “I guess I don’t really like her, Dan. She was suspicious of me, of course, and she’s a terribly vital sort of person. But I would say that she’ll be willing to testify. And I don’t think she’ll sell out.”

  Now as he told her about the girl, he saw the sudden tears of sympathy in her gray eyes. “Oh, Dan! How dreadful! You’d better tell the boss right away. That Vince Servius must have hired somebody to do it.”

  “Easy, lady,” he said softly.

  He touched her dark hair with his fingertips, smiled at her, and crossed to the door of the inner office, opened it, and went in.

  Jim Heglon, the District Attorney, was a narrow-faced man with glasses that had heavy frames. He had a professional look, a dry wit, and a driving energy.

  “Every time I see you, Dan, I have to conceal my annoyance,” Heglon said. “You’re going to cart away the best secretary I ever had.”

  “Maybe I’ll keep her working for awhile. Keep her out of trouble.”

  “Excellent! And speaking of trouble—”

  “Does it show, Jim?” Dan sat on the arm of a heavy leather chair which faced Heglon’s desk. “I do have some. Remember the Sheridan City Loan case?”

  “Vaguely. Give me an outline.”

  “October. Five o’clock one afternoon, just as the loan office was closing. Three punks tried to knock it over. Two of them, Castrella and Kelly, are eighteen. The leader, Johnny Servius, is nineteen. Johnny is Vince Servius’s kid brother.

  “They went into the loan company wearing masks and waving guns. The manager had more guts than sense. He was loading the safe. He saw them and slammed the door and spun the knob. They beat on him, but he convinced them it was a time lock, which it wasn’t. They took fifteen dollars out of his pants, and four dollars off the girl behind the counter and took off.

  “Right across the hall is the office of an accountant named Thomas Kistner. He’d already left. His secretary, Loreen Garrity, was closing up the office. She had the door open a crack. She saw the three kids come out of the loan company, taking their masks off. Fortunately, they didn’t see her.

  “She went into headquarters and looked at the gallery, and picked out Servius and Castrella. They were picked up. Kelly was with them, so they took him in, too. In the lineup, the Garrity girl made a positive identification of Servius and Castrella again. The manager thought he could recognize Kelly’s voice.

  “Bail was set high, because we expected Vince Servius would get them out. Much to everybody’s surprise, he’s left them in there. The only thing he did was line up George Terrafierro to defend them, which makes it tough from our point of view, but not too tough—if we could put the Garrity girl on the stand. She was the type to make a good witness. Very positive sort of girl.”

  “Was? Past tense?”

  “This afternoon she was pushed out the window of the office where she works. Seventeen stories above the sidewalk. Gil Shinn tells me that Connie Wyant has it definitely tagged as homicide.”

  “If Connie says it is, then it is. What would conviction have meant to the three lads?”

  “Servius had one previous conviction—car theft; Castrella had one conviction for assault with a deadly weapon. Kelly is clean, Jim.”

  Heglon frowned. “Odd, isn’t it? In this state, armed robbery has a mandatory sentence of seven to fifteen years for a first offense in that category. With the weight Vince can swing, his kid brother would do about five years. Murder seems a little extreme as a way of avoiding a five-year sentence.”

  “Perhaps, Jim, the answer is in the relationship between Vince and the kid. There’s quite a difference in ages. Vince must be nearly forty. He was in the big time early enough to give Johnny all the breaks. The kid has been thrown out of three good schools I know of. According to Vince, Johnny can do no wrong. Maybe that’s why he left those t
hree in jail awaiting trial—to keep them in the clear on this killing.”

  “It could be, Dan,” Heglon said. “Go ahead with your investigation. And let me know.”

  Dan Fowler found out at the desk that Lieutenant Connie Wyant and Sergeant Levandowski were in the Interrogation Room. Dan sat down and waited.

  After a few moments Connie waddled through the doorway and came over to him. He had bulging blue eyes and a dull expression.

  Dan stood up, towering over the squat lieutenant. “Well, what’s the picture, Connie?”

  “No case against the kids, Gil says. Me, I wish it was just somebody thought it would be nice to jump out a window. But she grabbed the casing so hard, she broke her fingernails down to the quick.

  “Marks you can see, in oak as hard as iron. Banged her head on the sill and left black hair on the rough edge of the casing. Lab matched it up. And one shoe up there, under the radiator. The radiator sits right in front of the window. Come listen to Kistner.”

  Dan followed him back to the Interrogation Room. Thomas Kistner sat at one side of the long table. A cigar lay dead on the glass ashtray near his elbow. As they opened the door, he glanced up quickly. He was a big, bloated man with an unhealthy grayish complexion and an important manner.

  He said, “I was just telling the sergeant the tribulations of an accountant.”

  “We all got troubles,” Connie said. “This is Mr. Fowler from the D. A.’s office, Kistner.”

  Mr. Kistner got up laboriously. “Happy to meet you, sir,” he said. “Sorry that it has to be such an unpleasant occasion, however.”

  Connie sat down heavily. “Kistner, I want you to go through your story again. If it makes it easier, tell it to Mr. Fowler instead of me. He hasn’t heard it before.”

  “I’ll do anything in my power to help, Lieutenant,” Kistner said firmly. He turned toward Dan. “I am out of my office a great deal. I do accounting on a contract basis for thirty-three small retail establishments. I visit them frequently.

  “When Loreen came in this morning, she seemed nervous. I asked her what the trouble was, and she said that she felt quite sure somebody had been following her for the past week.

  “She described him to me. Slim, middle height, pearl-gray felt hat, tan raglan topcoat, swarthy complexion. I told her that because she was the witness in a trial coming up, she should maybe report it to the police and ask for protection. She said she didn’t like the idea of yelling for help. She was a very—ah—independent sort of girl.”

  “I got that impression,” Dan said.

  “I went out then and didn’t think anything more about what she’d said. I spent most of the morning at Finch Pharmacy, on the north side. I had a sandwich there and then drove back to the office, later than usual. Nearly two.

  “I came up to the seventeenth floor. Going down the corridor, I pass the Men’s Room before I get to my office. I unlocked the door with my key and went in. I was in there maybe three minutes. I came out and a man brushed by me in the corridor. He had his collar up, and was pulling down on his hatbrim and walking fast. At the moment, you understand, it meant nothing to me.

  “I went into the office. The window was wide open, and the snow was blowing in. No Loreen. I couldn’t figure it. I thought she’d gone to the Ladies’ Room and had left the window open for some crazy reason. I started to shut it, and then I heard all the screaming down in the street.

  “I leaned out. I saw her, right under me, sprawled on the sidewalk. I recognized the cocoa-colored suit. A new suit, I think. I stood in a state of shock, I guess, and then suddenly I remembered about the man following her, and I remembered the man in the hall—he had a gray hat and a tan topcoat, and I had the impression he was swarthy-faced.

  “The first thing I did was call the police, naturally. While they were on the way, I called my wife. It just about broke her up. We were both fond of Loreen.”

  The big man smiled sadly. “And it seems to me I’ve been telling the story over and over again ever since. Oh, I don’t mind, you understand. But it’s a dreadful thing. The way I see it, when a person witnesses a crime, they ought to be given police protection until the trial is all over.”

  “We don’t have that many cops,” Connie said glumly. “How big was the man you saw in the corridor?”

  “Medium size. A little on the thin side.”

  “How old?”

  “I don’t know. Twenty-five, forty-five. I couldn’t see his face, and you understand I wasn’t looking closely.”

  Connie turned toward Dan. “Nothing from the elevator boys about this guy. He probably took the stairs. The lobby is too busy for anybody to notice him coming through by way of the fire door. Did the Garrity girl ever lock herself in the office, Kistner?”

  “I never knew of her doing that, Lieutenant.”

  Connie said, “Okay, so the guy could breeze in and clip her one. Then, from the way the rug was pulled up, he lugged her across to the window. She came to as he was trying to work her out the window, and she put up a battle. People in the office three stories underneath say she was screaming as she went by.”

  “How about the offices across the way?” Dan asked.

  “It’s a wide street, Dan, and they couldn’t see through the snow. It started snowing hard about fifteen minutes before she was pushed out the window. I think the killer waited for that snow. It gave him a curtain to hide behind.”

  “Any chance that she marked the killer, Connie?” Dan asked.

  “Doubt it. From the marks of her fingernails, he lifted her up and slid her feet out first, so her back was to him. She grabbed the sill on each side. Her head hit the window sash. All he had to do was hold her shoulders, and bang her in the small of the back with his knee. Once her fanny slid off the sill, she couldn’t hold on with her hands any longer. And from the looks of the doorknobs, he wore gloves.”

  Dan turned to Kistner. “What was her home situation? I tried to question her. She was pretty evasive.”

  Kistner shrugged. “Big family. She didn’t get along with them. Seven girls, I think, and she was next to oldest. She moved out when she got her first job. She lived alone in a one-room apartment on Leeds Avenue, near the bridge.”

  “You know of any boy friend?” Connie asked.

  “Nobody special. She used to go out a lot, but nobody special.”

  Connie rapped his knuckles on the edge of the table. “You ever make a pass at her, Kistner?”

  The room was silent. Kistner stared at his dead cigar. “I don’t want to lie to you, but I don’t want any trouble at home, either. I got a boy in the Army, and I got a girl in her last year of high school. But you work in a small office alone with a girl like Loreen, and it can get you.

  “About six months ago I had to go to the state Capitol on a tax thing. I asked her to come along. She did. It was a damn fool thing to do. And it—didn’t work out so good. We agreed to forget it ever happened.

  “We were awkward around the office for a couple of weeks, and then I guess we sort of forgot. She was a good worker, and I was paying her well, so it was to both our advantages to be practical and not get emotional. I didn’t have to tell you men this, but, like I said, I don’t see any point in lying to the police. Hell, you might have found out some way, and that might make it look like I killed her or something.”

  “Thanks for leveling,” Connie said expressionlessly. “We’ll call you if we need you.”

  Kistner ceremoniously shook hands all around and left with obvious relief.

  As soon as the door shut behind him, Connie said, “I’ll buy it. A long time ago I learned you can’t jail a guy for being a jerk. Funny how many honest people I meet I don’t like at all, and how many thieves make good guys to knock over a beer with. How’s your girl?”

  Dan looked at his watch. “Dressing for dinner, and I should be, too,” he said. “How are the steaks out at the Cat and Fiddle?”

  Connie half closed his eyes. After a time he sighed. “Okay. That might be a
good way to go at the guy. Phone me and give me the reaction if he does talk. If not, don’t bother.”

  Jane was in a holiday mood until Dan told her where they were headed. She said tartly, “I admit freely that I am a working girl. But do I get overtime for this?”

  Dan said slowly, carefully, “Darling, you better understand, if you don’t already, that there’s one part of me I can’t change. I can’t shut the office door and forget the cases piled up in there. I have a nasty habit of carrying them around with me. So we go someplace else and I try like blazes to be gay, or we go to the Cat and Fiddle and get something off my mind.”

  She moved closer to him. “Dull old work horse,” she said.

  “Guilty.”

  “All right, now I’ll confess,” Jane said. “I was going to suggest we go out there later. I just got sore when you beat me to the draw.”

  He laughed, and at the next stop light he kissed her hurriedly.

  The Cat and Fiddle was eight miles beyond the city line. At last Dan saw the green-and-blue neon sign, and he turned into the asphalt parking area. There were about forty other cars there.

  They went from the check room into the low-ceilinged bar and lounge. The only sign of Christmas was a small silver tree on the bar; a tiny blue spot was focused on it.

  They sat at the bar and ordered drinks. Several other couples were at the tables, talking in low voices. A pianist played softly in the dining room.

  Dan took out a business card and wrote on it: Only if you happen to have an opinion.

  He called the nearest bartender over. “Would you please see that Vince gets this?”

  The man glanced at the name. “I’ll see if Mr. Servius is in.” He said something to the other bartender and left through a paneled door at the rear of the bar. He was back in less than a minute, smiling politely.

  “Please go up the stairs. Mr. Servius is in his office—the second door on the right.”

  “I’ll wait here, Dan,” Jane said.

  “If you are Miss Raymer, Mr. Servius would like to have you join him, too,” the bartender said.