Headed for a Hearse

by Jonathan Latimer

  “Thank God for that!”

  Walking very fast on the crunchy snow, they were within half a block of the Detective Bureau when Williams seized Crane’s arm. “That slick dago in the elevator!” he exclaimed. “The one with the green suit!”

  “What about him?”

  “He’s been tailing us. I thought there was something funny about the gee. That’s how those artillerymen in the car caught up with us. He gave them the office.”

  “But why’d they want to shoot at us?”

  “I’m no super-sleuth like you; I never even went to college,” Williams said; “but I’ll bet it was the same gang that bumped off Grant. We got ’em worried.”

  Many feet had stamped the snow to mud in front of the swinging glass doors of police headquarters. Mist covered the thick panes.

  “They wouldn’t be scared, if they knew how little we know,” said William Crane sadly.

  Inside the police building there was a smell of perspiration.

  A thick left arm around Williams’ shoulders, Lieutenant Ernest Strom, Deputy Chief of Detectives, shook hands vigorously with William Crane.

  “Any friend of Doc Williams is a friend of mine.” He was a beer barrel of a man, blue-eyed and pink-cheeked, and his voice was like a train announcer’s. “I’m glad to know you, Mr. Crane.”

  He led them back to a small one-windowed office, offered them seats and cigars. The brown swivel chair behind his desk creaked as he sat down. He lit a cigar and put his feet on the desk. His gray suit needed cleaning. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you, Doc.” He spoke around the cigar. “A damn long time.” Williams said, “I’ve been in New York for the last five years. Private work.”

  “Are you making any dough?”

  “Not bad.”

  “Good.” Deputy Strom peered at Crane. “I used to work with Doc years ago. We broke open a lot of cases together, some of them damn big ones.” Blue smoke poured from his mouth. “Doc, do you remember the Birkhoff diploma mill?”

  “Do I? I still got a scar where that old guy stuck a paper knife in me.”

  The deputy’s laugh shook the windowpane. “You always had a knack for almost getting killed.” He looked at Crane again under straight brows. “But I don’t suppose you’re here to gab with me.”

  Williams said, “It’s about the Westland case.”

  “Oh, ho! What about it?”

  “You worked on it, didn’t you?”

  “Sure.” The deputy’s tone was less hearty. “That was my baby. What’s happened?”

  “Nothing.” Williams turned half around to William Crane, who said: “We’ve been engaged to help Westland. We don’t think he’s guilty, and we’re trying to save him.”

  Deputy Strom’s blue eyes hardened. He seemed to be holding his breath. Finally he said, “Well, you certainly bit into something! You’ve got only three days to work for him, and the only way you can save him is to produce the real murderer—that is, if he ain’t.”

  Crane said, “We’re going to try. We got some pretty good evidence that Westland didn’t kill his wife, but not enough to get him a reprieve.”

  “What is it?”

  “First, let me ask you something. What have you got on that Mannie Grant case? You remember? The fellow who was shot in…”

  “Sure I remember.” Deputy Strom held the black cigar between two fingers daintily. “We got some pretty hot leads we’re working on.”

  “Don’t give us the old baloney,” Doc Williams said. “We ain’t newspaper men.”

  “What do you want to know about him for?”

  Crane told him about the note and of the search they had made for Grant.

  “H’mm.” The deputy’s blond brows almost covered his eyes. “You two guys probably ain’t so popular with some of Grant’s friends right now—at least, not if they knew you’d been trying to find him.”

  “But what about the letter?” Crane persisted. “Don’t you think Grant saw something?”

  “Say, every time there’s a murder played up in the newspapers we get a bushel basket of letters like that. This Grant was a crank—like all the others. He was probably doped up the night of the murder and thought he was the one who shot her…”

  Williams spoke to Crane. “Tell him about the difference in time.”

  William Crane explained what Bolston had discovered, and told the deputy of the change in Dr. Shuttle’s testimony. “You see,” he added, “it makes Westland’s story stand up. He could have left when he said he did with his wife still alive.”

  “When he said he did ….” Deputy Strom shook his massive head. “Naturally, he’d say he left before his wife was killed. Who wouldn’t?” Suddenly he peered at Crane’s face. “What happened to you? Somebody sock you?”

  Crane rubbed his hand against the part of his face which had been pressed against the sidewalk. “I slipped in the snow.”

  “You certainly smacked it.”

  “Listen,” said Doc Williams, “we’re trying to get some information out of you.”

  “I think you’re up a blind alley, boys,” the deputy said. “I know Westland’s the man.”

  “But Grant’s being shot? Don’t you think that’s funny?”

  Smoke curled from the tilted cigar. “Just a coincidence. Yes, sir. Just a coincidence. Somebody wanted to bump him off and they happened to do it while you were looking for him.” Deputy Strom’s feet scraped as they slid from the table. “I’ll tell you the truth, boys, we’re working on something pretty good on that case right now. Grant was a jewel thief, an’ he was in some pretty good jobs. We got a tip he crossed up some of his buddies in the big Walbaum jewel robbery in Miami. You remember? Last winter?” Finger and thumb caressed the cigar. “Of course I’m countin’ on you boys to keep this under your hats.”

  “We aren’t interested in anything except Westland,” Crane answered him. “But we are interested in him. Do you suppose you could see if anybody else in the case has a record?”

  “Who d’you mean?”

  “Woodbury, Bolston and Wharton, and the two ladies, Miss Martin and Miss Brentino. And that clerk—Sprague.”

  Mr. Williams sat up straight in his chair. “You don’t think that little Miss Martin—”

  “It doesn’t hurt to check everybody.”

  Deputy Strom said, “Why, all those people are on the up-and-up. I talked with them myself. They wouldn’t——”

  “Did you look them up in the Bureau of Identification?”

  “No. Why should I? I had Westland cold.”

  “Well, would you mind looking them up now?”

  The deputy grunted.

  Crane wrote the names on a sheet of paper and gave them to a detective summoned from the outer office. “Make it snappy,” Deputy Strom told the man. His blue eyes were alert as he looked at Crane. “If you’ve got it narrowed down to those six, it oughtn’t to be so tough for a smart guy like you to get something on one of them.”

  “We haven’t tried very hard so far. Haven’t had time. All we know is that Woodbury might have taken Westland’s pistol. He was in Westland’s apartment on the night of the murder. That is, if Westland’s pistol was actually used.”

  “Sure it was used. Major Lee, the ballistics expert, found out the bullet came from a Webley pistol of the type used in the war. An’ the major’s never wrong, let me tell you.”

  “Then why was the pistol hidden?”

  “Because Westland knew it would convict him. He hid it.”

  “Yes, but if Westland didn’t kill his wife, why would his pistol be hidden?”

  Deputy Strom grinned with the side of his mouth unoccupied by the cigar. “You don’t expect me to argue against myself, do you?”

  The detective returned with the list of names. “Not a one in the files,” he announced.

  The deputy nodded his massive head in triumph. “You see. They’re all in the clear.”

  Williams said, “It’s too tough for me.”

  The door
clicked behind the detective.

  “Did you try to check on the telephone call Westland testified he received from someone pretending to be Miss Martin?” Crane asked.

  “That was a lot of boloney.” The deputy leaned back in the swivel chair. “First he said it was Miss Martin, and then, when she denied it, he said it was some woman pretending it was her. It’s funny a guy wouldn’t know his own girl over the telephone.”

  “It is funny.”

  “We checked on Miss Martin, anyway. She lives with her uncle and aunt up in Rogers Park, and they have only one phone in the house. It’s in the hall by the living room. They were in the living room at the time Miss Martin was supposed to have called Westland, and nobody used the phone. I talked to them myself.”

  Williams said, “Maybe Miss Martin went outside.”

  “She didn’t, though. She was home, too, that evening. The uncle and aunt are positive she didn’t leave the house.”

  “What the hell,” said William Crane. “It was somebody else who called him anyway.”

  The deputy said, “Nobody called him. He just made the story up.”

  “You don’t seem to like Westland.”

  “I like him all right. I just think he plugged his wife.” The deputy waved his cigar to indicate a minor thing like that wouldn’t affect his personal interest in Westland. “Anything else you’d like to know?”

  “The damnedest thing was the locked apartment,” Crane said. “Don’t you think there might have been some way for the murderer to have got out without a key?”

  “The place was all locked from the inside. We looked it over carefully as hell, and every window was fastened,” Deputy Strom replied. “The only way to get out was to use the door and then lock it from the outside. That’s the way it was.”

  “Then somebody must have had a duplicate key.”

  “There ain’t a duplicate key. There’s just two. We know because the newspapers had photographs of the two keys and questions asking: ‘Is there a third key?’ The lawyers for the defense had them photograph the key because they knew Westland’s only chance was to find someone who knew of a duplicate. If a keysmith had made a duplicate he’d have been sure to tell about it.”

  Williams rested his elbow on the desk. “That’s about the only smart thing those lawyers did.”

  Deputy Strom shrugged broad shoulders. “What could they do? That guy did more to convict himself than the prosecuting attorney. He even admitted there couldn’t be a duplicate key.”

  Crane asked, “Then how did the murderer get out?”

  “That’s easy. Westland murdered his wife and then let himself out with his own key.”

  “We always come back to Westland.”

  The deputy allowed the smoke to roll over his lower lip. “Why not?”

  A young detective opened the door, thrust his head in the room. “St. Luke’s has got a funny shooting,” he announced. “A jigaboo was brought in with a bullet in his leg. He says he was plugged in a machine-gun battle between coppers and a carload of hoods a couple of blocks down the street. Like to go over an’ see him?”

  “Sure.” The deputy heaved himself from the swivel chair. “Might be interesting.” He struggled into his overcoat. “You fellows like to come along and see him?”

  Crane spoke hastily, “No, thanks. It’s time we were going.”

  It was only ten o’clock when they got back to their hotel room, and they decided to have a few drinks. They mixed the Canadian rye with water this time.

  Crane took a fair-sized drink, then asked, “Did I thank you for saving my life?”

  Williams spoke over the top of his glass. “I must have been out of my mind when I shoved you down.”

  “Well, thanks anyway. I wouldn’t like to try to stop one of those slugs.”

  “Me neither.”

  Crane moved from his chair to the bed. He propped a pillow under his head and looked at the room with disfavor. “This isn’t as classy as Mrs. Westland’s apartment.”

  “No; there ain’t any babes with orange hair in here.”

  “I wonder how he’s making out?”

  “Who? Finklestein?” Williams poured himself another drink. “I’ll bet she’s got that sparkler by now.”

  Crane rested on the pillow with closed eyes. His face, where he had struck the sidewalk, hurt a little, but not enough to prevent him from feeling comfortably drowsy. “That copper didn’t think so much of our client’s innocence, did he?”

  “Sometimes I’m doubtful myself.”

  The red electric sign of the Palace Theater flashed on and off a block up the street, sending intermittent rays of light into the room. The snow was still falling, and now there was no wind at all.

  Crane said, “I don’t think he would have lied about the time. He didn’t have to convince Finklestein or me that he wasn’t guilty. We would have worked just as hard anyway.” He reached for the glass of rye, carried it to his lips. “I think Bolston’s discovery of the mistake in Shuttle’s testimony proved Westland was out of there when the murder was committed.”

  “It may prove it to you, but not to the Governor.”

  “No, not to the Governor.”

  “Well, what are we going to do?”

  “I’m damned if I know.”

  Williams slid his thumbnail across a red-topped kitchen match and lit a cigarette in the flame. “I got one idea.” He inhaled, let the smoke dribble out his mouth as he spoke. “You got the list down to six. Why don’t you find out where they all were on the night of the murder?”

  Crane opened one eye. “That’s a good idea. We’ll start with Finklestein on that tomorrow.”

  “If he’s still alive after that babe——”

  Shrilly, the telephone rang. Crane jumped, pushed over his glass, deftly caught it as it rolled from the table. “I certainly got the jitters from that shooting.” The phone rang again, and he lifted the receiver. “Hello! … Sure, come on up.”

  “Who was that?”

  “Bolston. He says he’d like to talk to us.”

  Under his black Burberry, Bolston wore with distinction a wide-lapeled dinner jacket. He had an ivory-colored gardenia in his buttonhole. He sat on the straight-backed chair by the writing table and accepted a glass of rye whiskey and water. “I just finished a late dinner in the Loop,” he explained, “and I thought I’d drop in and see if there was anything I could do.”

  “That’s just the trouble,” said Crane. “It doesn’t seem as though there was anything we could do.”

  Bolston’s carefully brushed blond head moved up and down. “It’s a tough one all right, and it’s costing Westland a lot of money to push this thing.… I paid the warden ten thousand, and Lord knows how much Finklestein is getting.”

  Williams said, “He can’t take the dough with him, can he?”

  “No, that’s right. But he ought to get a lot of action for that much money.”

  “You mean,” Crane said drowsily, “a lot more than we’re giving him?”

  “Well…”

  “I admit we’re not getting along very fast, but we’re trying. Yes, sir, we’re trying. If you’ve got any ideas, let’s have them.” Crane poured more liquor into his glass. It was his fifth drink. “You can’t say we aren’t putting in the hours. Take Finklestein, for instance. He’s working right now.”

  Williams was stricken with an attack of coughing.

  Bolston’s tan face relaxed. “I’m not complaining, but I would like to see you pull this business off.” He shook his head. “It’s a terrible thing for an innocent man to go to the electric chair.”

  Williams said, “It’s not so much fun for a guilty one, either.”

  “The only definite thing we have so far is what you found out about the time,” said Crane. “We seem to hit a wall every time we try to figure out how the murderer got out of that apartment. We talked to Deputy Chief of Detectives Strom about it this evening, and there’s no doubt the apartment was locked.” He rolled into a sitti
ng position on the bed and ran his fingers through his hair. “It makes a neat problem. The apartment is locked on the inside everywhere but at the door. The door has been locked by one of the two keys that will fit it. The lock couldn’t have snapped shut, because it is the kind of a lock that has to be turned. One of the two keys is inside the apartment, and Westland has the other. Question: How’d the murderer get out without the key?”

  After a time Bolston said, “Couldn’t Mrs. Westland have killed herself and fixed things up to look as though she had been murdered? You know she never wanted her husband to marry Miss Martin?”

  “How could she have disposed of the pistol?”

  “I remember reading a Sherlock Holmes story in which the woman killed herself on a bridge with a revolver tied to a heavy rock. She fired the shot through her head and then the rock jerked the pistol out of her hand and into the pool. If it hadn’t been for Holmes, another person, who had a mate to the first pistol, would have been hung as the murderer.”

  Crane said, “I thought of something like that, but I couldn’t figure out where the pistol might have been hidden. The only place I could think of was under the couch, but it wasn’t there.”

  “Well, it might be a variation of that stunt.”

  Liquid gurgled into glasses as Williams poured three more drinks. A newsboy in the street below was calling: “Read about the Million Dollar Fire. Two Dead. Read all about the Million Dollar Fire.”

  “Would Woodbury have any reason to put Westland out of the way?” Crane asked.

  “Woodbury?” Bolston laughed. “Lord, no. They’re the best of friends. Woodbury would have nothing to gain from a thing like that.”

  “Where was Woodbury on the morning after the murder?”

  “At the office. I drove my Rolls from Mrs. Westland’s apartment to the office, arranged for a lawyer and bond money with Woodbury, and then drove to the Detective Bureau.”

  Williams asked, “How do you park that big boat of yours downtown?”

  “Oh, I don’t park it on the street.” Bolston exposed his teeth. “I use the garage at the La Salle Hotel, a block from the office.”

  Crane pursued his original line of questioning. “Wouldn’t Woodbury get a bigger share in the brokerage business?”