Sinners and Shrouds

by Jonathan Latimer

  * Larry Trevor and the Hooded Nun. Copyright 1934 by Elmo Peterkins.

  Chapter 9

  CLAY found his back hurt where it had pressed against the wall. In fact, it seemed to be stuck there. He pushed himself away, walked shakily to the desk and collapsed in Standish’s chair. He couldn’t believe it. It was like being shot at, point blank, and coming out without a scratch. Or, he reflected, like the reprieve that arrives an instant before the switch is pulled. It couldn’t happen, but it had.

  He thought about Clarence, the Easter bunny in a den of wolves. There was, he realized, a sort of cockeyed logic in what he’d done. He’d been scared. Scared enough, what was more, to do a lot of thinking before he went to the police. Which meant time hadn’t quite run out. The problem, though, was what to do with it. He was like a man, he decided gloomily, running on a treadmill against an unspecified time limit that was subject to change at any moment. It was a tough race to win. If he could win.

  He swivelled the chair around to Standish’s private telephone and dialled long distance. When the operator answered, he said, ‘Washington, D.C., please. Dupont 7-7689,’ and after a pause, gave her Standish’s number. He wondered what Standish would say when he saw the charge on his bill. There was another pause, then Washington answered, repeated the Dupont number and began to dial. He felt his heart-beat quicken. The phone rang once; there was a click, a humming noise with an undercrackle of static, and a man said: ‘Dupont 7-7689.’

  There was a strange quality about the man’s voice. He had no accent, but he sounded foreign, pronouncing, enunciating each word a little too perfectly.

  ‘This is the Chicago Globe,’ Clay said. ‘We’d like——’

  ‘Please make your message brief,’ the man interrupted.

  Clay suddenly remembered an interpreter who had attempted to teach his air group basic Japanese during the war. That was what the man sounded like: a language instructor.

  ‘Who is this?’ he asked.

  He waited, but there was no answer.

  ‘Look,’ he said. ‘Would you have the person under whose name your number is listed come to the phone? It’s important.’

  The man remained silent.

  ‘Can you hear me?’ Clay demanded.

  For a moment it seemed as though there wasn’t going to be any reply to this either. Finally the man said, ‘You have thirty seconds. Please finish.’

  ‘Thirty seconds!’ Clay began to get angry. ‘We’re paying for the call, not you! Whose residence is this?’

  Ten seconds went by, followed by the humming-static noise, and with a second click the line went dead. Clay sat quietly, holding the receiver to his ear. He had an eerie feeling, as though he had, by a quirk of electronics, been accidentally connected to a Martian outpost on earth. Or to the Russian Embassy. It was spooky. His thoughts were interrupted by a cheerful this-world voice saying: ‘Your party has disconnected. Do you wish us to ring the number again?’

  ‘Never mind.’ He put the handpiece back in place, said, ‘Moses!’ and swung the chair around to the desk. There was undoubtedly an explanation, but he didn’t have it. The conversation was unlike any he’d held in twelve years of calling up people as a reporter. Maybe his mind was going. Or maybe the whole thing was a nightmare after all. He stood up. He found he was still shaky, but he was also angry.

  Clay crossed the city room to Alma Plummer’s desk. She wasn’t there, but by her typewriter he found a carbon marked: STAFF REPORTS. It contained a long summary of what the various reporters had done so far, but beyond indicating that Canning had assigned every available person to the story, revealed nothing of importance. He put the carbon back, saw the carbons of the other two sheets and remembered he hadn’t looked at Talbot’s note. It was in his coat pocket. He straightened it out, discovered it contained three pencil-scrawled sentences:

  Alice you know who says vital you contact her. Man named Bundy wants you to call. Tip from underworld pal. Shouldn’t repeat, but never liked arrogant one-armed bastard it involves: namely Charley Adair of our sheet. Seems he had the girl with him on night club beat last P.M.

  ANDY

  He looked over to the city desk for Talbot, but Eddie Steinkamp was sitting in his place. Charley Adair! That was a blockbuster, if true! It probably was. Andy’s source must have been pretty reliable. Clay realized, or he wouldn’t have passed the information along. He recalled that Saul Blair had listed Adair among those who’d come to the paper from Fort Worth. A tie-in there, all right. Then there was the fact that Adair hadn’t mentioned being with the girl. Of course neither had he, but it would be interesting to find out why Charley had remained silent.

  And there was still another thing. Adair was reputedly rich. Oil royalties, Clay remembered having heard, so the girl could have been blackmailing him. It was sounding better all the time. If he just smoked Parliament cigarettes!

  Picking up Alma’s phone, Clay got the direct wire to the detective bureau. Clive Thompson answered, his voice muffled by something he was chewing. Clay told him to ask Lieutenant Diffendorf for the lab report on the cigarettes found in the apartment closet.

  ‘Diff’s still out, but I can check the lab direct,’ Thompson said indistinctly. ‘Call you back.’

  By the time Clay had reached his own desk, the phone was ringing. ‘Moisture content of tobacco high, indicating butts weren’t there long,’ Thompson reported. ‘No trace of narcotics. No lipstick on filter tips, indicating male user. End of transmission.’

  ‘Thanks, Clive.’ Clay hung up and the phone immediately rang again. A woman’s voice, high pitched, asked, ‘Sam?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘This is Gwen. Oh, Sam, I found them!’ Her words tumbled out unevenly. ‘I didn’t mean to. In the bookcase. I found them!’

  ‘Found what?’

  ‘Oh, I’ll never tell. To the grave. I promise. I’m leaving now. All packed. Freddie English. He’s been asking me. We’ll just drive and drive——”

  ‘What in hell are you talking about?’

  ‘Good-bye, Sam.’ Her voice was choked. ‘And bless you even … even …’ She sobbed, hung up.

  Clay stared at the telephone incredulously. Either he or Western Electric, he thought, had better consult a psychiatrist. He tried to remember what he had in the bookcase. No pornography, except possibly the Memoirs of Casanova, and he doubted if there was anything in the six volumes Gwen didn’t already know. Something had wound her up though. He wondered who Freddie English was. It was going to be a memorable trip, if he was any judge, for good old Freddie.

  Canning, coming into the city room, called, ‘Clay!’

  ‘Just a second.’ Clay dialled Amos Bundy’s number, gave his name to the woman who answered. ‘Mr. Bundy would like to see you at once,’ she said in a clipped, British voice.

  ‘I can’t make it just now.’

  ‘Come as soon as you can, please.’

  ‘Right-o!’

  ‘Thanku.’

  ‘Q,’ said Clay.

  He went across the room to Canning, who was thumbing through a three-inch pile of copy. Eddie Steinkamp, in Talbot’s place, was fighting a losing battle against the call lights flashing on the telephone control box. ‘Give you rewrite,’ he said into his phone, flipped a switch, said, ‘City desk, hold on,’ flipped another switch, said, ‘Be with you in a sec, O’Rourke,’ flipped a fourth switch, said, ‘City desk, hold on.’ Across his back, sweat had turned his pink shirt lavender.

  Canning spoke without looking up. ‘Standish is about to blow a gasket.’ He could read copy and talk at the same.

  ‘Let him,’ said Clay.

  ‘So say I. But don’t get out on a limb.’ Crumpling a two-paragraph 4-head, Canning dropped it on the floor. ‘Any ideas?’

  ‘I wish we’d get something from Fort Worth.’

  Canning frowned at the next page, picked up a pencil and destroyed three sentences. ‘The sex fiend angle doesn’t send me either.’

  ‘Not with that telephone
call.’

  The pencil halted. ‘Remember the limb.’

  ‘But God damn it, Harry!’ Clay said. ‘I’m going to find out about that number sometime!’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘No maybe about it! I’ll …’ He broke off, realizing he was sounding like a petulant child. ‘Okay. Maybe.’

  Tossing two dismembered stories into the wire basket beside him, Canning growled, ‘Copy!’ Still flipping switches, Eddie Steinkamp yelled, ‘Copy!’ A frightened-looking boy, black hair hanging over his eyes, darted up, said, ‘Copy,’ seized the stories and trotted to the copy desk.

  Clay said, ‘There’s one thing new. I don’t know how it fits though.’ He told Canning about the half-smoked Parliaments and what the police laboratory had reported. ‘Could be the guy was hiding in the closet,’ he concluded.

  Canning was giving him his full attention now. ‘That’s damn interesting.’ He reached behind him, put his hand in the pocket of the coat hanging on his chair, pulled out a rectangular silver case, thumbed it open. ‘Cigarette?’

  ‘Thanks.’ Clay took one from the case. As he bent over the flame of the offered lighter, he felt an icy prickling between his shoulder blades. The cigarette was a Parliament.

  ‘Cotton filter.’ Canning’s china-blue eyes examined Clay’s face speculatively. ‘Stinks like hell if you get down too far.’

  Clay let smoke come out his nose. ‘I’ll remember.’

  ‘Yeah. Do that.’ The lighter’s top, snapping, snuffed out the flame. ‘But right now you’d better get busy on Laura Peterkins.’

  ‘I’ll call her.’

  ‘Go out there.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Standish says she wants to see you in person.’

  Startled, Clay sucked in too much smoke, coughed. The telephone conversation! She had recognized his voice. But why hadn’t she told Standish? He coughed again.

  ‘I don’t know why either,’ Canning said, misreading his thoughts. ‘Maybe she wants to get laid.’

  Clay grinned feebly, started to turn away. Canning said, ‘Sam,’ halting him in the middle of his first step. ‘One thing.’ Amusement softened the harsh lines on the granite face. ‘Standish smokes Parliaments, too.’

  On his way to the building’s lobby, Clay thought about that. So everybody smokes Parliaments. That is, if Charley Adair did. Smoke Parliaments and be a murder suspect. Maybe he could sell the idea to Benson & Hedges for an advertising campaign. Alvin, the white-haired operator of the executive’s elevator, looked at him dubiously as he entered the car. ‘I’m supposed to hold for Mrs Palmer,’ he said. ‘She’s coming in from the airport.’

  ‘She wouldn’t want you to neglect your duty, Alvin,’ Clay said. ‘Thirty-one.’

  The top two floors of the Globe building, served by Alvin’s elevator alone, held the offices of all the high executives except Standish. On thirty were such people as I. P. Geisel, David Crawdor, vice-president in charge of advertising; Julius Rubin, whose brother, Jake, had been a gangster, circulation manager; Joe Weatherby, personnel; and when he was in Chicago, Horace Widdecomb, hatchet man for all the Palmer publications. On thirty-one were Mrs Palmer, likewise when she was in town, and, surprisingly, Charley Adair. No one had ever figured out why he rated such eminence except, it was conjectured, as a suave bachelor Mrs Palmer could call upon to entertain guests, and herself, when the need arose. This was quite likely since Adair, in addition to being a Rhodes scholar and a war hero who had lost an arm somewhere in Asia, was a darkly handsome, literate and, when he wanted to be, extremely charming man.

  However, he never wasted any of the charm on Globe underlings, and when Clay found him on the hedge-enclosed terrace outside his office sharing brandy-laced tea and finger sandwiches with a statuesque blonde and two men in Oxford-grey suits, Adair pretended not to see him.

  ‘… a neglected instrument, the kazoo,’ he was saying. ‘A cock’s challenge in Red McKenzie’s hands, raucous and lewd, a braggart, a bully, a flap-wing lover.’

  ‘Oh, yes!’ the blonde breathed, entranced.

  ‘The quintessence of Chicago-land style,’ Adair declared.

  As the others nodded their heads, Clay moved a pace forward and asked tentatively, ‘Could I see you a minute?’

  Adair appeared to notice him for the first time. ‘What’s that?’ Clay repeated the question and Adair frowned. ‘Can’t it wait?’

  ‘It’s pretty important.’

  ‘Nuisance!’ Adair put down his tea-cup, smiled resignedly at the others. ‘Be right back.’ He walked with Clay into his office, paused to close the plate-glass door. ‘What is it?’ The white glove on his false left hand changed shape as the metal claws inside released the knob.

  Clay took his eyes off the glove, said, ‘I’m supposed to be running down leads on the Trevor girl.’

  ‘I attended the conference.’

  ‘I know.’ Clay wasn’t quite sure how to begin and before he could speak Adair was back of his desk, tapping the black Formica top with an impatient finger-nail. ‘Well?’

  Clay felt his ears start to burn. ‘Well, to be blunt, I got a tip you were with the girl last night.’

  A small breeze coming from the air-conditioner back of the desk made yellow curtains tremble by the window framing the north half of the city’s skyline. The finger nail clicked against the Formica, remained there, rigid, but Adair’s face, lean, brown and, because of the pencil-thin black moustache, Italian looking, was impassive.

  ‘So?’

  ‘So, were you with her?’

  ‘Are you asking that on your own initiative?’

  Clay nodded.

  ‘Well, this is a surprise.’ Adair scowled thoughtfully, then turned to the ceiling-high book-shelves on the rear wall, his back towards Clay. ‘Are you asking me to help you?’

  ‘I’m asking for an answer.’

  The books were mostly French. Clay saw the names of Vercel, Proust, Anatole France, Flaubert and a whole line of paper-backs from the Série Noir. In a vacant space on one shelf was an African wood-carving of a mule’s head; from another peered a Toltec stone face.

  Adair said, ‘Suppose I won’t give you an answer?’

  ‘Look,’ Clay said. ‘I’m trying to give you a break. I could go to Standish or——’

  Adair swung around, his face ugly. ‘A break! That’s one for the birds!’ His eyes glittered through narrow slits. ‘You’d better get out of here while you can.’

  ‘The hell I will!’ Anger flushed Clay’s face. ‘Were you with her or not?’

  ‘Very well.’ Adair’s voice was harsh, but he had it under control. ‘I’ll answer that.’ He bent, took the grain-leather lid off a tape recorder on a wrought iron stand beside the desk. ‘And then I’m going to beat hell out of you.’

  He uncoiled the recording mike, dropped it on the desk and turned on the machine. It crackled, then was silent, and Adair stepped back of the desk. He spoke in a steady voice:

  ‘This is Charles Adair. Time: 3.05 P.M., Sunday, August 24. Will you put the question to me again, Mr Clay?’

  Puzzled, Clay stared at Adair’s dark face. ‘Why the machine?’

  ‘I want a record of this conversation.’

  ‘All right. Question: Were you with Mary Trevor last night?’

  ‘I was. At eight o’clock I met her for dinner at the Bismark Hotel. At ten, having eaten, we went to Dick & Eddie’s. Between eleven and two we also visited the Encore, Chez Gus, the Silk Hat and the Minuet.’ The perfectly controlled voice slowed for emphasis. ‘At two I left her at the Minuet bar.’

  ‘And then?’ Clay asked.

  ‘I came to the office and wrote my column. Around five I went home. I did not see her again.’

  Adair switched off the recorder. ‘So much for the answer.’ He came around the desk. ‘Now for part two.’ His right arm, fist clenched, was cocked for a punch.

  ‘Look,’ Clay backed away. ‘I’m just doing a job.’

  ‘Put up your hands.’

>   ‘I don’t get it. What are you sore about?’

  Holding his false arm stiff against his side, Adair hit him on the cheekbone. The blow sent him against the wall. Right arm still cocked, Adair moved forward.

  Clay said, ‘You know I can’t hit you.’

  ‘Can’t you?’ Teeth gleamed under the thin moustache. ‘So much the better.’ Adair struck again, a hook with his shoulder behind it, and Clay’s head hit the wall. For a second the room spun crazily and he found he was sitting on the floor. Nausea gripped his stomach, left a sour taste in his mouth.

  Adair looked down at him dispassionately. ‘The well-known streak,’ he said. ‘Men and hyenas.’

  ‘You bastard!’ Clay said. ‘You one-armed bastard!’

  He rolled, scrambled to his feet between desk and bookcase, and when Adair came for him, flung the recorder at his knees. Glancing, the machine crashed to the floor, tubes bursting, amber tape uncoiling. Adair, sent off balance, crashed into the bookcase. Clay took a wild swing at his head, missed, and in turn was shaken by a kick that jolted his ribs. He tried to move in, to grapple, but Adair swung him hard into the bookcase. Books, African mule, Toltec face toppled to the floor. Adair caught him with a glancing hook, a straight right between the eyes, another hook to the left ear. Dazed, he barely avoided a fourth blow, swung and missed again. By now Adair was three foggy, dancing men, dealing out punishment at will. A fist smashed against his jaw, against his neck, against his head. He finally blocked two blows with his elbows, but Adair, turning, brought the false left arm around in a flat circle as though cracking a whip, and metal struck bone below Clay’s temple …

  At first there was blackness, a throbbing, pain-warped blackness that came from nowhere and went nowhere. Then the blackness began to change. It changed to grey and the grey changed to white, as though gauze was being peeled off his eyes, a layer at a time. He saw pink-veined marble and a door and a pair of shoes that didn’t belong to anybody in particular. He saw a hand with a bloody thumb. The hand moved and it was his, and so were the shoes. He pulled them under him and sat up and the blackness came back.