The James Michael Ullman Crime Novel

by James Michael Ullman

  To Spook’s friend, those reports would hold out hope, and that’s what Jon wanted. Spook’s friend was in trouble now. He wouldn’t dare go home or to the places where he’d normally be found. He was sweating it out. Even if Spook had killed Jon, Jon might have wounded him first. Wounded, Spook might be picked up by state troopers or might drive to a hospital. At this minute, he could be telling everything. Spook’s friend would be very anxious to learn if Spook made it back to his apartment.

  Head down, Jon turned the corner and walked along Broadway, a wide, main thoroughfare. This was the most dangerous moment. Spook’s friend might be lurking near the building, watching. On the other hand, if Spook talked, it might be risky for him to hang around here, an army of police might turn up. It would also be a waste of his time. He should be busy making travel arrangements, preparing to skip the country if all had gone wrong. More likely he’d phone every few minutes, hoping Spook would answer.

  Jon stepped into a dimly lit vestibule, found a key that unlocked the inner door and walked beyond the stair well to a door to the only basement apartment in the building. He opened that and snapped a light on. It was a shabbily furnished little place—a parlor, two bedrooms, a bath and a kitchen. Upstairs, a television set blared. Someone was watching a war movie. A battle raged as Jon went through the apartment, searching the closets, even peering under the bed. All Spook had brought with him from Nevada were some clothes, a razor, a toothbrush and one suitcase.

  The phone was in a bedroom. Jon dialed the Weather Bureau; on tape, a girl’s voice delivered the local forecast. He left the receiver on the desk. The line was now busy. It would remain busy, as the tape repeated itself endlessly. Anyone phoning the apartment would know it was occupied.

  Finally, he turned off all lights but those in the parlor and settled in a chair facing the front door, the .45 on an end table a few inches from his right hand.

  He waited quite a while. Fifteen, twenty, thirty minutes. Nearly an hour passed. He began to think the long shot had failed, that Spook’s friend had seen him enter the building and was already on his way to Canada or Mexico or wherever. That would be too bad because if he had to run, he’d never make it. Gardino’s people would get him. Anyone deserved a better death than that, this man especially. Jon wasn’t looking forward to the moment when he’d have to face this man, to tell him it was all over, that the only place he could go now was to a police station…

  Jon felt a draft. That was odd. A moment ago, there hadn’t been a breath of air in the room.

  Slowly, he looked up at a mirror on the wall. The dining room was to his left, and beyond that a door to one of the bedrooms. Jon had closed that door earlier, but in the mirror’s reflection he saw that it was wide open now, blackness yawning behind it.

  Spook’s friend had decided not to ring the front bell; he’d come in the back way, picking a lock or climbing through a window. The blare of the television set in the first-floor apartment would have masked the sound. For that matter, it would probably mask a shot down here, too.

  * * * *

  Jon didn’t move.

  Eyes still on the mirror, he said, “Before you pull that trigger, you’d better listen. If you’re in the fix I think you are, you’d better negotiate.”

  From the bedroom, there was no response.

  “I know your name,” Jon went on. “I know what you did. It was a real classic of a crime, a far cry from the casual hijacking Schatz theorized. You master-minded a murder and a million-dollar jewel robbery. Quite a haul, enough to set you and Spook up for life. Enough to allow you two to send me a couple thousand dollars on my birthday each year, to keep the Chakorian legend alive. You stole a million, and that’s where we all went so wrong. The diamonds were the motive for my father’s murder all along. Me, my father and Schatz—we weren’t the only ones who knew about those diamonds. You and Spook knew about them, too.”

  Still, no movement; no sound.

  “You lured me to the Retreat with a tape recording, didn’t you? That’s why the connection seemed bad. It was a tape, words and phrases culled from recordings made sixteen years ago, but you reassembled the words to make my father say something quite different. Of course it would take a lot of recordings to produce a fake with the words you wanted. The spools from the phone taps and the study microphone were erased as soon as they were transcribed. I heard that in my house, on Christmas Day; I wrote it down later in a book, ‘My Father’s Betrayal.’ I remember almost everything in that book. If your tape wasn’t made from those spools, it had to be made from other spools. Other recordings, from a different source. A different microphone, in a different location.”

  Jon paused again. The only chance of getting out alive now, he concluded, depended on his continuing to talk, in interesting the guy in what he had to say.

  “A second mike explains everything, and I think I know where it was hidden. In my father’s bedroom. A mike there would have picked up two very significant conversations between my father and me. Tire first, on Thanksgiving, after Elvira found me with the diamonds. He took me to his bedroom and told me all about them—where they were, even how much they were worth, a million bucks. That gave you and Spook plenty of time to plan the crime. And on Christmas Eve, in that room he called the Retreat my favorite place. That’s how you got that phrase on your tape tonight. He also made me give my sacred promise not to reveal anything I’d seen in his house. ‘Sacred promise,’ that’s a phrase I’ve never voiced to anyone, but you used it this afternoon. You said it still burned you, the sacred promise I made as a boy.

  Where’d you hear that phrase, Train? I didn’t mention it at Lord’s house, when I told him about Schatz. I just told him I made a promise, and I’d say no more about it…”

  Train moved into view, a giant shadow in the bedroom doorway. One arm was at his side and the other was up, his hand holding a revolver pointed at Jon’s head.

  CHAPTER 15

  Train asked, “He’s dead?”

  “Very. I took his car.”

  “Why?”

  “Among other things, I was afraid it might be the only way to stop you. To keep you from running away before I could talk to you. I’m guessing, but I think if you’d known Spook had been killed, you’d be on your way out of the country by now. There must be a link between you two. Something in his effects, maybe. Or if not, a fingerprint check would provide the link.”

  “It was a crazy stunt, playing hero. Making me think he was alive, so you could bring me in yourself. Get up. Turn around.”

  “No.”

  Unbelieving, Train stared.

  “You’d kill me immediately. You’re right, I planned to take you in after we had a talk, but now that you’re holding the gun I intend to sit here and try to negotiate. My word on it, I won t make a move unless you do. But take another step and I’ll go for this .45.”

  “Negotiate? I’m pointing a .38 at you…”

  “You know guns, Train. Your skill slips if you don’t keep in practice, and I have a hunch you’re sixteen years out of practice. You might miss or wound me slightly with the first shot, and I warn you I’m good with a service automatic. Why risk it, when it might not be necessary?”

  “By negotiate,” Train said slowly, “what you got in mind?”

  “Is it true? That when the police identify Spook, you’re a goner?”

  “It is. He’s got stuff in his office, incriminating me. He left it there in case I tried to kill him.”

  “Okay. I already have most of what I want. The Chakorian case has been broken and you’re a dead pigeon, so here’s my deal. I want to know what happened to my father. I can already guess most of that. Also, if you’re taken alive, I want you to tell a lie—that you lured me to the Retreat tonight by offering to sell information. Forget that gimmicked tape, and forget we saw one another in this apartment. Do that, and I’ll get out of this chair with my hands
up. You can take my gun and leave. I won’t tell Novak what I’ve guessed until the alarm’s out, and the police are looking for you.”

  “What’s so important about that lie?”

  “Bonella’s life depends on it. If you don’t tell it, Gardino will know I held out on him. He’ll kill Mike.”

  “Gardino? What’s he…”

  “I’ll tell you that too, after I hear about my father.”

  It was a good negotiating point. Train would want to know about Gardino.

  The investigator reached for a chair and sat down, still holding the gun on Jon. “It’s a deal. Suppose you begin by telling me what you’ve guessed. And how you guessed it.”

  “Let’s start with Spook. Is Berkley T. Harris his real name?”

  “No. It’s Fred Berk. He changed it to Harris when he moved to Nevada, fifteen years ago.”

  “All right. Spook—Fred Berk—was your agent at the wire-tap plant.”

  “That’s good,” Train conceded. “Yeah, he was a freelance electronics expert, from the East.”

  “The man at the plant had to be in on it. Moralistic Adam Lord would never authorize a bedroom mike, but since you handled the details, you installed one anyhow. Nobody’d know, except you and Berk. You faked those reports last week, the two supposed meetings between Berk and my father, to throw Novak off after you killed me and he learned about the diamonds. He’d never believe two agents could have observed a third without someone identifying Berk as your man. You couldn’t risk Novak even dreaming Spook worked for you in 1949.”

  “True. What else?”

  “Now that I think of it, you gave yourself away on Christmas Day. Before you even spoke to Novak, you went to that bedroom. To see if my father’s clothes were missing, you claimed, but actually to climb on the bed and get the mike out. Like the first one, it was in a ceiling light fixture. I saw your heel mark on the bed as I was leaving. You had to get the mike out because at that point you couldn’t be sure I’d keep my word to my father. I might tell Novak about the diamonds; I might tell him where my father told me about the diamonds, and if Novak found a mike there, he’d take a long, suspicious look in your direction.”

  “You come to any other brilliant conclusions?”

  “One, yes. I think I know where my father’s remains are. I think they’re in your house.”

  * * * *

  Train didn’t like that. He frowned, a nerve twitching on one side of his face.

  “Your house,” Jon went on, “is the old wire-tap plant. At least if it isn’t, it’s on the same block, a howling coincidence. Three blocks north and one west of the brown-stone. That’s where you told Novak the plant was, on Christmas Day. It’s in my book, too. And three north and one west is how far from the brownstone Fogarty took me, on a wild ride to your place when I got back from Florida.”

  The investigator didn’t reply, but his silence was confirmation enough.

  “Here’s how I reconstruct it. You and Berk knew I’d be alone with my father on Christmas Eve; you’d heard him order theater tickets for the servants. That was the time to nab him—after I went to bed and before the servants returned. I think you told Novak one lie. Lord didn’t order the stakeout withdrawn from the house to put my father off guard; you made that decision yourself. That night, you heard my last talk with my father. When you thought I was asleep, Berk rang the bell. Probably he identified himself as one of your men and told him about the mike in the study; told him Lord knew the whole escape plan, that his only chance to skip was to leave immediately, with him; that he’d arranged another escape route.”

  “That’s right. He offered to get your father to Mexico for fifty grand. If your old man balked, Berk was ready to force him out at gun point. I was out front, ready to help if anything went wrong.”

  “It didn’t, though. My father found the mike and realized Lord knew everything, so he took a chance and left with Berk. The money in the attaché case was a bonus you hadn’t even counted on. But I think Berk took my father right back to the plant, where you both had to be, listening in case the police were called before morning. You wouldn’t dare stray from there, so you killed him and hid him there. I think the remains are in the one place in the house where you could dig a hole, the earth-floored storage area in the basement where you said the Chakorian records are now. And since Berk’s last words were that Schatz is with my father now, I think you buried Schatz there, too. You were alone in the house this week. Your wife went to Maine…

  “That’s enough.” The investigator seemed uncomfortable, hearing about the bodies buried in his home. “Yeah, they’re both there. As for your father—I got back to the plant first that night. I shot him as they walked through the back door, and I buried him while Berk stayed upstairs, monitoring the phone and the mike.”

  “And Schatz?”

  “I got him out of the motel by saying you’d been working with Venus; that Pearl had told you everything, and his only chance to salvage a dime from the notebook was to sell it to Lord, I’d call the cops otherwise. He went along. He even wanted his wheel chair, to be comfortable negotiating. That suited me fine. I wanted to make him disappear, just like your old man, so it’d be easier to set you up later.”

  “Where’d you kill him?”

  “An alley, near the Venus plant. I shot him, put him in the trunk and buried him that night. I dumped his wheel chair in the lake and burned the notebook. Berk was in it, too…” Train paused. “Dammit, you gotta understand. I was a good police officer. I didn’t take payoffs, didn’t knuckle under to politicians. They got me for it. My reward, for gettin’ shot, seein’ my friends killed. When Lord hired me, I didn’t know how long the job would last. I had big debts, two kids, and I was hitting the bottle a lot then. When Berk and me heard your old man tell about the diamonds, that was it. I looked at him, he looked at me, we both knew we’d try to kill him. A half-million each, and all we had to do was make a thief disappear who wanted to disappear anyhow.”

  “I think I understand. Bonella said it once. When a man loses purpose, he does things he’s sorry for later.”

  “Sorry?” Just a little, Train smiled. “Yeah, I got regrets, but your old man and Schatz were crooks. You’re the joker. When you were a kid, Berk wanted to kill you if you recognized him. I said no, he should just scare you, give you an extra reason to keep your mouth shut. I’d hounded you a lot to see if you’d break, and you hadn’t; I couldn’t stomach it, killing a ten-year-old. I told Berk if you kept quiet just a few years, we’d be okay. Hardly anyone here saw him. I was the only man who visited the plant. He’d be safe soon, with a new name and his nose altered, even if you did describe him to Novak.”

  “He’d have been safe forever, if he hadn’t gone to Finney to borrow money on that stock certificate.”

  Train grimaced. “The damn fool. I told him to destroy it, but he held it out on me, and you know what happened. You played into our hands, walking in and telling Lord Schatz had some kind of a list. I let you carry the ball awhile, hoping you’d learn about the list for us. When you didn’t, and you recognized Berk in Florida, we had to act. More and more, we were sure Berk was on the list. And once you, Schatz and the girl knew his name and address, the situation would be entirely out of control.”

  “The faked tape? The old spools from the bedroom recordings?”

  “Berk had those, insurance against me killing him some day. He brought ’em and I faked the tape at Venus. Ten minutes after I played it, I phoned your apartment again. No answer. I phoned an agent, supposedly watching you to see who you talked to, and he said you’d turned your lights out, the cops were still front and back. That meant you’d ducked and were on your way to the Retreat, so we went out to wait. The machine guns were Berk’s idea. He brought those too, said it’d be the surest way to get you at night. Novak told me about the handgun permit, we thought that’s all you’d have…Train got up, shovi
ng the chair aside. “Okay. You got what you came for. What’s with Gardino?”

  “A couple hours ago,” Jon said slowly, “I gave him Berk’s Nevada name and address. It was either that, or he’d have killed Bonella.”

  “You tell him your theories? About the second mike, the bodies in my basement?”

  “No, but if there’s stuff in Berk’s office linking him with you, Gardino’s friends in Nevada have it by now. He’s probably looking for you already.”

  “Get up.”

  “Before I do—I’ll ask you once. Turn yourself in, Train. If Gardino doesn’t get you, the police will. You…”

  “Up!”

  Jon hesitated. Train didn’t seem nearly as worried as he should be. But then, he’d been a cool customer all along, and the chances of Jon surviving a shoot-out with Train already pointing a gun at him were slim.

  He decided to take the gamble. Arms high, he rose.

  Train moved into the parlor. “Over to the wall. Face it.” He came closer. “I won’t like doing this, kid, but I got no choice.”

  He planned to kill Jon anyhow, then. To shoot him in the back.

  “Why, Train? I’ll keep my word, I’ll let you walk out of here.”

  “You’re a bright boy. But you made one big wrong assumption. I conned you just now. There’s no link to me in Berk’s effects, no link to him in mine. We agreed on that, in case one of us got killed trying to get you. The old spools are all Berk had on me. Hell, after he gave me those this afternoon I was set to kill Berk myself, only he was leery, he never gave me a chance.”

  “His prints. If he was a licensed investigator, they’ll be in the FBI file. Novak will learn he was Fred Berk, who worked for you on the Chakorian case. When he knows that…”

  “He was never a licensed anything, he told me once he’d never been printed in his life. He was a loner, working out of an apartment in New York, tapping phones for lawyers and private eyes, when he hired out to me. Nobody back East will remember the guy, I’ll risk that. All the cops will learn is that Berkley T. Harris established residence in Nevada fifteen years ago; so all I got to do is kill you, the one person who knows what’s in my basement…”