The James Michael Ullman Crime Novel

by James Michael Ullman

  CHAPTER 7.

  My CAPTIVE TALKED readily. His name was Luke ’ McNair. An itinerant railroad worker, he’d been in the city just three weeks. He rolled a drunk in an alley one night and an old man named Sam witnessed the theft. Sam followed Luke into a bar. He bought Luke a beer and told him he knew an easy way to make money.

  “He said all I had to do,” Luke whined, “was hit a man on the head. I wasn’t to kill you. Just hit you, see.”

  “Where does Sam live?”

  “The Garden Hotel.”

  “He didn’t tell you about the note? Or the credit card?”

  “No, sir. He said you were an insurance collector. And that once a month, after you paid some calls on Clay Street, you stopped off at Jimmy’s on your way home to collect from a night bartender. All Sam told me was to be here tonight. Hey, my arm, it hurts bad…”

  “You can stand it awhile longer.” I shoved the gun back into the holster. So long as I watched him, Luke would be in no condition to take the gun from me. My only worry now was that a stray squad car would come by and the police would stop and ask questions of two obviously suspicious characters.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  “Where to?”

  “I see a phone booth on the next block. I’m going to call a cab. You and me, we’re going to the Garden Hotel.”

  I dialed the Moreland. If I telephoned a cab company dispatcher, I might run into trouble. Many drivers would balk at coming out alone at night to a location as isolated as this. I couldn’t waste time waiting for Sam Alban to appear in the Moreland cab line either. So I identified myself to the doorman and asked him to send any cab in the line to pick us up. The driver, I added, would get a big tip for his efforts.

  Luke sat down on the curb again. I lit a cigarette. Luke began to moan. I told him to shut up.

  “You do as I tell you,” I advised, “and after we talk to Sam, I’ll let you go. When that cab gets here, you get in first and don’t open your mouth. When we reach the Garden Hotel, I’ll get out first and you come right after.”

  “I gotta see a doctor.”

  “After I let you go, you can see anyone you like. You can tell them whatever you like. If you want to tell them I shot you and why, that’s okay too. A prison term for attempted extortion won’t do you any harm.”

  “All we wanted was your money, mister. A couple hundred dollars. I told you about Sam, why don’t you let me go now?”

  “Is that what Sam said I’d be carrying?”

  “He said three or four hundred, and we’d split.”

  “The box under my arm,” I said, “contains two thousand dollars.”

  Luke received the news in stunned silence.

  “I’m afraid,” I added, “Sam got you involved in something over your thick head. But that’s your tough luck. I’m interested in much more than protecting my money. That’s why, if you try to cross me in any way, I’ll shoot you. With absolutely no hesitation.”

  The cab arrived in twenty minutes. The doorman had selected a driver who worked for Sam’s company and out of the same garage. The driver knew who I was.

  I told him to take us to the alley adjoining the Garden Hotel and to let us out there. The Garden was on the 600 block of North Clay, in the skid-row district. If the driver observed Luke’s bloody arm, he didn’t comment.

  At the Garden I gave the driver a twenty and told him to keep the change.

  Like a docile Saint Bernard, big Luke followed me out of the cab.

  “Where’s Sam’s room?”

  “Second floor, 205.”

  “When we go in, head straight for the stairway. You can hold your arm. But try not to let people see the blood.”

  We walked inside and crossed the lobby. Two old men reading newspapers didn’t even glance at us. The desk clerk glanced. But since we seemed to know where we were going, he did not call out.

  Luke preceded me up a battered wooden stairway which was illuminated by dirty 25-watt bulbs. A few guests had set their radios or television sets at full blast. Others were noisy drunk. The racket suited me fine. We stopped at 205. The box of money was under my left arm. With my right hand, I pulled the gun from its holster. I jammed the muzzle against Luke’s ribs and flattened against the wall.

  “Okay, Luke,” I whispered. “Now you put on an act.”

  “Whatever you say, I’ll do.”

  “Knock on the door. Tell Sam you’re alone, you want to talk to him. Stand up close so if Sam opens the door with the chain locked, he’ll see you but not me. Pray he lets you in. Because if he doesn’t, I’ll pull the trigger and then shoot my way in. Is that clear?”

  “I reckon so.”

  Luke knocked. He got no response. I prodded his ribs with the gun. He knocked again.

  Inside the room, someone shuffled toward the door.

  “Yeah?”

  “It’s me. Luke.”

  “Luke who?”

  “Quit stallin’. You know Luke who. Lemme in, I’m bleedin’.”

  Sam opened the door a crack. He saw Luke but didn’t see me. He closed the door, unlatched the chain, and opened the door wider.

  I’d been waiting for that.

  I rammed Luke with my left shoulder, shoving him forward. We plunged into the room together. Luke stumbled and sprawled to the floor.

  I kicked the door shut and pointed the gun at Sam. Sam huddled in a corner, gazing venomously at me. Sam was very short, maybe sixty years old or more, with thin shoulders and a bent posture. His narrow face was mottled and lined with tiny blue veins. A filthy sports shirt hung outside his unpressed trousers.

  I waved the gun’s muzzle.

  “You’re Sam, right?”

  “What’s the idea?”

  Luke sat up. He grabbed his arm again. He groaned.

  “Come off it,” I snapped. “The big slob told me everything. How do you think I got here?”

  “Mister, somebody made a mistake,” Sam said. “I never saw that big guy before, except in a bar once. Sure my name’s Sam, but I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Luke said, “Sam, you didn’t tell me he had a gun. He ain’t no insurance collector. And you didn’t tell me about no two thousand dollars, neither.”

  “The guy is nuts.” Sam spat angrily. “He’s trying to pin something on me. And who are you, busting in here and waving a gun around?”

  I moved a step closer to Sam.

  “I see you’re packing. You figure on checking out?”

  “I was just…”

  When Sam got that far with his reply, I rammed him across the cheek with the barrel of my pistol. Sam crumpled, hands over his face. He sobbed.

  I leaned over Sam.

  “Old man,” I said evenly, “you do know something about my brother. Not much, because if you did, your information would really be worth two thousand dollars. But you tried to parlay what little you do know into two thousand dollars by hitting me on the head and robbing me outright. For that I could kill you. I will kill you, unless you tell me how and where you got that fragment of Ed’s credit card.”

  Sam pulled his hands down. He stared at the blood on them.

  Luke said, “You better do it, Sam. He means it. He’s plumb crazy.”

  As the old man spoke I listened mute with growing hatred for this animal who could have come forward with what he knew fifteen months ago when the trail was fresh. Instead, he had hoarded his pitiful store of knowledge in the hope of profiting from it one day. Thanks to Sam’s greed, his information was useless now, except in theoretically reconstructing a general picture of what had happened to Ed.

  “I’m a pensioner,” Sam explained, “and I’m always a little short of money. So that night I tied in with this bottle gang. I never did make it back to the hotel. I fell asleep under a stairway in an alley. A couple blocks n
orth of Clay and Jackson, behind the fourteen-hundred block. Early in the morning, a garbage truck woke me up. Private truck or city scavenger, I don’t remember. The truck was nearly full and the wind was blowin’ so hard, a bunch of trash blew off the truck. This credit card blew almost in my lap. It was burnt away on the bottom. It musta been in a trash fire before someone dumped it in the garbage. Seeing it was a credit card, I stuck it in my pocket. Even if it was burnt, maybe I could calculate a way to use it. I went back to sleep. Then later I read in the papers how this Ed Kolchak disappeared. The name on the card was Ed Kolchak. Well, what could I do? A man like me, if I went to the Clay Street Precinct with the card, they’d hit me with hoses, they wouldn’t believe how I got it. So I kept it, see. I almost forgot it and then I heard how you were lookin’ for your brother. I don’t know what came over me. I never did nothing like this before and I didn’t mean no harm…

  “Of course you didn’t. All you meant to do was squeeze every last dollar out of that card you could. And I bet you have a police record a mile long. Why did you cut the burnt part of the card away?”

  “I didn’t want you to guess I just found it in an alley. I wanted you to think I knew more than that about your brother. But honest, I don’t…

  “That garbage truck. Was it coming from north to south? Or south to north?”

  “I couldn’t recall.”

  “I ought to split your skull open.”

  “I’m telling the truth.”

  “Exactly. For what you’ve done, a split skull is what you deserve. And if I ever find out you’re lying, I’ll give you that and more. You believe me?”

  Sam didn’t reply. He didn’t have to. He believed me.

  Business was slow at The Dugout that night. I could have had my pick of tables, but I selected a booth in the bar instead. I’d changed to a white shirt, tie, and sports jacket. The gun and the box of money were upstairs in my apartment. For once I’d have welcomed the company of a hard-drinking clown like Harry Bagwell. Harry would keep me from thinking the thoughts I was thinking now. But Harry was not in sight.

  “A drink, sir?”

  Tony posed the question. A Puerto Rican boy, he was tall, smug, slim, and in his early twenties. He’d been assistant cook in the old days, before Bagwell staggered in with his pot of gold. Tony had been paying a lot of attention to me lately. Whenever Lorene or her father were absent or otherwise engaged, Tony, in his faultless tux, acted as greeter. He fawned on me so much that I mailed his name to Max Fuller. All Fuller’s report showed was that Tony came from an impoverished but honest family, and that his hobby was constructing little plastic model sports cars.

  Of course Tony’s concern with me could have stemmed from his interest in Betsy. On the few occasions I’d brought Betsy to The Dugout, his eyes never left her. He’d been at her elbow every second he could. And once he asked me a lot of questions about the girl: where she lived, where she worked, and particularly, whether or not she had any boyfriends.

  “I’ll try a double martini, mixed the way Bagwell likes them. When that one’s gone, bring me another.”

  I did eat, finally. And as I sobered up on my third cup of black coffee, Lieutenant Van Doyle slipped into the other side of the booth.

  He asked, “Been here all night?”

  “Most of it. I was out making the rounds earlier. Why?”

  “Just wondering.” Doyle lit a cigarette.

  I studied the dapper detective. Fuller’s assessment of him had been concise. “Van Doyle,” Fuller had written, “is one of the smartest men on the force. No other man on the force is entirely sure whether Doyle is honest or not. As a result, nobody entirely trusts him but everyone is willing to work with him.”

  Doyle was forty-five years old. The youngest of seven children, he grew up on Clay Street. His father drove a coal truck; his mother died when he was twelve. He held a number of odd jobs after high school. Then, with a little help from Hiram Schell, he was appointed to the police department. There was nothing significant in Schell’s sponsorship of Van Doyle, which amounted to some tutoring for the police exams and assistance in filling out forms. Schell guided hundreds of Clay Street boys through the municipal red tape surrounding appointments to the police and fire departments, especially boys from big families that would provide plenty of voters. Schell’s motives may have been politically inspired. But at least he helped those boys into potentially honest employment, something nobody else in the city seemed willing to do.

  Patrolman Doyle volunteered for army service in early 1942. He was assigned to the CID and shipped to England, where he spent the war doing work he was still not allowed to discuss. Before his discharge, he made master sergeant. In 1944 he married an English girl who died four months later in a buzz-bomb raid. He had never dated a girl more than twice before he met her; he never dated any girl after she died.

  Doyle rejoined the department in 1945. He became a detective in 1946, a sergeant in 1950, and a lieutenant in 1957. He had won nine commendations for meritorious service and had been wounded twice—once, by a dope-crazed teenager, and the second time, by a man who had just murdered a neighbor with a rifle. Doyle had been night-duty lieutenant at the Clay Street Precinct since 1960. His superior, Captain Ernest Ware, was regarded as the most corrupt captain on the force, but somehow Ware’s taint never fastened itself onto Doyle. Doyle got along with Ware and the other crooked cops. He was also known as a scrupulously tough guy who commanded respect from the polyglot people in his precinct for his fair enforcement of the law. Apparently Ware liked having Doyle around because when Doyle ran the precinct during the critical night hours, the precinct ran smoothly. Doyle had few close friends. He lived alone in a small apartment at 301 Harper, a block west of Clay and three blocks from the Clay Street Precinct. His only known eccentricity was a fondness for fine clothes.

  Tony approached our table. Doyle shook his head. Tony faded away.

  “It’s been a busy night,” Doyle observed. He looked me in the eye. “Among other things, a shooting. A poor dumb hill slob named Luke McNair showed up at the mission with a slug in his arm. He claimed a guy took a pot shot at him while he was walking down an alley. But that doesn’t make sense. Nobody on Clay Street would waste a bullet on Luke McNair.”

  “Sounds like a puzzling case.”

  “It is. We did some fast checking. Luke’s new in town. But he’s been seen around with an old crook named Sam Cartwright, who has a record of petty offenses going back to nineteen-sixteen. Sam lives in the Garden Hotel. Know where it is?”

  “I’ve passed it.”

  “Sure. Anyhow, we went to the Garden and learned Sam checked out tonight. The desk clerk said Sam’s face was cut up and bleeding when he checked out. He also said Luke went up to Sam’s room earlier tonight with another man. The clerk said Luke was holding his arm, as though maybe he’d been shot. He gave us a rough description of the man with Luke. You know what?”

  “What?”

  “The description fits you exactly.”

  I picked up my coffee. I drank deep.

  “That’s a coincidence. But no kidding. I never heard of this Luke before. Or Sam either. You ought to find Sam. Maybe he could solve the mystery.”

  “We found him. At a bus station. His story is that Luke and a man he’d never met before went up to his room to persuade him to join a bottle gang, and he turned them down because he was leaving tonight to go to a place with a drier climate, for his sinus. He said he cut his face falling against a coathook in his closet. We provided him with medical attention. But if he doesn’t change his story, I guess tomorrow we’ll have to let him get on a bus for Tucson.”

  “Maybe he’s telling the truth.”

  “Possibly. Of course we’ve been watching Sam, off and on, for a couple months.”

  “Why?”

  “He got drunk one night in the presence of one of my undercover men.
He bragged that he knew a way to get a lot of money out of you.”

  “What did you do about that?”

  “We hauled him in. We searched his room. But we didn’t find anything and he didn’t tell us anything. We assumed at the time he was just talking big. A lot of old men on Clay Street like to talk big. It makes them feel young again.”

  “That’s interesting. I’m sorry I can’t help you.”

  “So am I. I’d hate to think of any private citizen in our town taking shots at other citizens, clobbering more citizens with a gun barrel, and then refusing to tell the police about it. Wouldn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “I also thought I’d tell you,” Doyle added slowly, “that what I ought to do is knock you on your ass here and now and haul you down to the station. Asking questions is one thing, but shooting people is another. This isn’t Tombstone in the eighteen-eighties. This is here and now, and nobody in my precinct is going to take the law into his own hands. If I had an ounce of brains I’d get a search warrant, find the gun in your apartment, break Luke and Sam down, and learn the whole story. But before I decide to do that—you got anything you want to tell me?”

  “Well, since you asked,” I mused, “there is something you ought to know. I obtained this earlier tonight.” I pulled an envelope from a jacket pocket. “Here. A portion of one of my brother’s credit cards is inside.”

  Doyle opened the envelope.

  “It might be a good idea,” I added, “if your crime lab went over it. Not that I expect they’ll learn anything. But just to be sure we don’t miss a bet.”

  “Where did you get this?”

  “A man gave it to me. A Clay Street drifter. He’s been holding it all this time, afraid to give it to the cops, because he thought they’d work him over. But he finally got up enough nerve to give the thing to me.”

  “How did he get it?”

  “It blew off a garbage truck into his lap, early the morning after Ed disappeared. The man was sleeping off a drunk in an alley about 1400 North, behind Clay Street. When he found the card, the bottom half had been burned away. For some reason, he clipped that portion off.”