The Lady in the Morgue

by Jonathan Latimer

  “Don’t think I’m not your friend,” he said, handing her the bottle of Gilbey’s gin.

  Her voice was almost lost in the noise of the accelerating engine. “What do you want?”

  Crane cut the tinfoil off the champagne bottle with his thumbnail. “We want to know where you’ve been for the last month or so, Mrs. Paletta.” He shoved on the cork, but nothing happened.

  “Where to, Bray-mer?” called Williams from the front seat.

  Miss Renshaw said, “I’m not Mrs. Paletta.”

  “Drive around Lincoln Park,” Crane said.

  “Where’s Lincoln Park?” Courtland asked.

  Williams said, “I’ll show you. Turn right here.”

  “Sure, you’re Mrs. Paletta,” Crane said.

  O’Malley said, “Here, lemme open that bottle.”

  Miss Renshaw said, “And even supposin’ I am Mrs. Paletta; what’s it to you?”

  The champagne bottle went POP.

  Williams said, “Mi Gawd! I am shot.”

  While the Packard slid effortlessly around the curves of the tree-walled inner drive in Lincoln Park they drank the champagne. Miss Renshaw was politely offered the first drink from the bottle, but she refused. Crane demanded the first drink, but was refused. When he finally did get the bottle there were only a few sips left. “A fine bunch of pals you are,” he said sadly.

  O’Malley took the bottle of gin from Miss Renshaw and twisted the corkscrew into it.

  Crane tried to question Miss Renshaw, but she wouldn’t tell him anything. He explained he wanted to establish the fact that Mrs. Paletta was alive to prevent Frankie French and Paletta from doing him further injury. He told her of his experience with French and showed her his eye, his bruises and cuts.

  She laughed as though they really amused her.

  O’Malley had opened the gin bottle and was holding it behind him so Crane wouldn’t see it. “Should I knock her off, Boss?” he demanded gruffly.

  “Give her a minute or two more,” said Crane.

  Miss Renshaw laughed huskily. “If you Boy Scouts get much funnier I’ll have hysterics,” she stated.

  Dead white light from passing street lamps played fitfully on her face. Crane saw she certainly didn’t appear frightened. “All right,” he declared. “All right. If you won’t admit you’re Mrs. Paletta, you won’t. But I know you are. I know French and Paletta would like to see you. And I’d like to have them see you.” He had to stop for a breath. “Which one do you want to go to?”

  The road curved to the left, crossed over a stone viaduct and neared the lake. There was a faint odor of fish in the warm air. They were on Lake Shore Drive.

  Miss Renshaw said, “I don’t want to go to either.”

  “Come on,” said Crane. “Pick one.” He made a lunge for the gin bottle, but O’Malley deftly passed it to Williams. “We’re being little gentlemen. We’re giving you a choice.”

  “You better let me go,” said Miss Renshaw, “or you’ll be dead little gentlemen.”

  “Threats, eh?” Crane sat up straight on the seat. “Very well. We’ll take you to Frankie French.”

  Her fingers tightened around his wrist It was the first feminine move she had made. “No. Not to French. I’m afraid of him.” Her harsh voice had a pleading note.

  “O.K. To Paletta, then.” He spoke to Williams. “Do you know where the guy lives?”

  “Sure. Over on Delaware Place.”

  It took them only three minutes to reach the co-operative apartment building in which Paletta lived. Crane pulled Miss Renshaw out of the car after him. “You better come along, Doc,” he said, starting for the door. Williams followed them through the ornate marble-and-gold lobby and into the elevator. The operator was a bright-looking boy. He closed the door, started the elevator and asked, “What floor, please?”

  Crane asked, “What floor’s Mike Paletta on?”

  “I really couldn’t say, sir.”

  Williams hauled out a .45 automatic, pointed it at the boy’s startled eyes. “Listen, punk; what floor’s Paletta on?”

  “Twenty-third, sir.”

  “That’s better.” Williams lowered the pistol, let it dangle from his hand. “Always be polite to your elders.”

  There was only one door on the twenty-third floor. While Williams watched the elevator boy Crane led Miss Renshaw across the hall and pushed the bell. After a time a man opened the door a crack and peered out at them. It was the Italian who had tried to see the body in the morgue. His eyes goggled at them.

  “Call Paletta,” said Crane.

  Bare feet thumping the carpet, small black eyes squinting in the light, Paletta marched ponderously toward them. He was wearing a tan flannel robe with a peach-colored monogram over purple pajamas. He needed a shave. Crane put his right palm in the small of Miss Renshaw’s back, pushed her through the door into Paletta’s arms.

  “Now quit bothering me, you big Dago,” he said.

  He slammed the door, jumped into the elevator, rode down to the lobby and hurried out to the Packard. He was well pleased with himself. He climbed into the back seat and said:

  “To the graveyard, driver, and flail the horses.”

  He leaned back in the leather seat and in thirty seconds was fast asleep.

  Chapter Eighteen

  CRANE SHOOK the hand off his shoulder, said querulously, “Lemme alone. Please lemme alone. I don’t feel well.” He kept his eyes shut. Then he said, “Graveyard. What graveyard?” With a tremendous effort he sat up, asked, “Am I dead?”

  In the citron radiance of the low-hung moon they stood and watched him. Their faces were composed and quite pale.

  Light reflected from the chromium fittings of the Packard dazzled his eyes. He rubbed them with the sleeve of his linen coat. “I don’t feel well,” he repeated. His coat smelled of jasmine.

  O’Malley had been shaking him. “Come on,” he said. “We got work to do.”

  Dew on the grass sparkled in the moonlight; the air was laden with the thick odors of graveyard flowers, of tuberoses, carnations, lilies, violets. There was no wind at all.

  Cautiously, O’Malley opened the gate of twisted iron, closed it after they had tiptoed through. The night attendant’s white stone lodge was at their right. A 25-watt bulb burned from a cord hanging just inside the lodge’s single window. O’Malley tried the door, found it was open. They could hear the tick-tick of a Big Ben alarm clock. Williams had his pistol in his hand, and he led the way through the door. The night attendant was lying on the cement floor of the lodge on his side, his head almost touching his knees, his back toward them.

  For a broken second they thought he was dead.

  Swiftly, Crane knelt beside the man. He was white-haired and frail, and a cord held his thin wrists to his bent knees. Over a tight cloth gag his eyes were terrified. Air rushed in and out of his nose in painful puffs, made a noise like an accelerating locomotive.

  “What the hell?” whispered O’Malley.

  Crane shook his head. He unfastened the cloth gag. “What happened, old timer?” he asked.

  The man had difficulty speaking. “Somebody socked me.” He worked his cramped cheek muscles. “I was readin’ an’ I heard a noise behind me. I looked around, and there was a guy. Next thing I knew I was all tied up like this.” He pulled at the cord around his wrists. “Get me loose, so I kin call the cops.”

  “Later, maybe.” Crane bent down, put the gag in the man’s mouth and tied it firmly behind his head. “Keep quiet and you’ll be all right, old timer.”

  “What the hell?” asked O’Malley again.

  “I don’t know,” said Crane, “but I fear the worst.”

  In the tool shed they found spades and then marched single file to the grave of Miss Agnes Castle. Their feet left black stains on the silver carpet of dew. A small wooden cross marked the grave. Fastened to the cross was a metal disk on which was printed:

  AGNES CASTLE

  BORN—OCTOBER 2, 1910

  DIE
D—AUGUST 4, 1936

  REQUIESCAT IN PACE

  (Temporary Marker)

  From the lilies strewn ankle-deep over the grave came a cloying scent; heavy, sickeningly sweet. “How do you like ’em?” asked O’Malley proudly.

  “They’re just dandy,” said Crane. “Fit for a gangster’s funeral.”

  Williams said, “Forty bucks,” in an aggrieved tone.

  Courtland asked, “Is this the grave?” His voice was excited. “Do you think …?”

  “This is the grave, all right.” Crane was lifting the lilies from the mound. “But I don’t like the looks of that tied-up attendant.”

  Courtland bent down to help him. “Don’t thieves sometimes steal ornaments from a cemetery?” he asked. “Couldn’t it have been something like that?”

  “We’ll see.” Crane tried to tell with his fingers how recently the soil had been dug up, but he couldn’t. It felt fairly dry. He reached for his spade. “All right, boys, dig for dear old Johns Hopkins.”

  The only noise was their labored breathing and the soft plop of earth hitting the grass. The dirt came out easily, and in a few moments the cavity was so deep that only one of them could work in it. O’Malley shoveled, and the others smoked cigarettes, watched from a comfortable seat on a near-by grave.

  “I don’t feel so good about this,” Williams announced. “What if the dame is really Agnes Castle?”

  Crane let the smoke from his Camel ooze from a corner of his mouth. “We’ll toss the dirt right back on her.”

  “Yeah.” Williams’ voice was gloomy. “I know. But I wasn’t thinkin’ about that. I mean … about digging into somebody’s grave.”

  A faint mist rose from the graveyard. It was like gauze in the rays of the moonlight; milky, opalescent, faintly colored with blues, greens and violets. In the shadows of tombstones, willow trees, it was like smoke.

  Crane pressed his cigarette stub into the damp earth. “You mean if this turns out to be the wrong grave a big black THING will come and snatch us away?”

  “Aw, forget it,” said Williams.

  Two blocks away, on the elevated tracks, a Michigan Central milk train pounded by with scarlet flames pouring from the firebox, was quickly lost in the distance.

  O’Malley crawled out of the grave, tossed his spade on the grass and wiped his face with his handkerchief. “For Christ’s sake,” he demanded, “am I the only guy who can dig?”

  Courtland pushed himself to his feet. “I’ll do it for a while.” He selected a spade and lowered himself into the grave. O’Malley was completely winded. His shirt stuck to his back, his hands were covered with the damp loam. “What are you going to do with the dame when you uncover her?” he asked, stretching out on the grass.

  “It depends upon who she is,” said Crane.

  Williams tossed his box of matches to O’Malley, said, “I thought you were sure the gal was Kathryn?”

  “I was, until that letter came.”

  O’Malley asked, “Somebody could’ve imitated her writing, couldn’t they?”

  “The colonel says she wrote the letter. He saw it when it arrived in New York last Saturday.”

  O’Malley scratched his neck. “Well, I’ll be damned!”

  Courtland’s voice floated over to them. “I’ve hit the casket,” he announced excitedly.

  It took only a few thrusts with the spade to lay the top-bare. It was a cheap casket of stained pine. Williams took the hammer and pried the cover loose. He and Courtland took hold of an end and lifted it until it was at right angles to the casket. “What’d’ya see?” he asked.

  O’Malley leaned over the grave, blinked his eyes. “She must be out to lunch,” he said.

  “Empty?” asked Williams.

  “Yeah,” said Crane.

  They rested the cover against a wall of the grave and inspected the coffin. It was absolutely bare. Courtland ran his hand around the interior. “Maybe nobody was ever buried here,” he suggested.

  “My God!” Crane rubbed his hand on his trouser leg. “Do you suppose that entry in the undertaker’s book was made to throw us off the track?”

  Williams nodded his head. “They could’ve made up the name of a girl and buried an empty coffin, pretendin’ she was in it.”

  “A phony funeral!” breathed Crane.

  O’Malley lowered the lid on the empty coffin. “What’ll we do? Scram out of here?”

  “We better fill in the grave.” Crane seized Courtland’s hand; hoisted him out of the pit. “We don’t want the police to know we’ve been interested in it.”

  With all four of them throwing dirt into the rectangular opening it was only a matter of seconds until the mound was as they had found it. When Crane bent over to help the others scatter the lilies his head began to ache. He didn’t know if the ache came from the liquor or from thinking. He hoped it came from the liquor, because he felt he was going to have a great deal of thinking to do.

  O’Malley artistically draped the last lily over the small white cross. “There,” he said with satisfaction; “you couldn’t want a nicer grave.”

  “Forty smackers for lilies,” Williams mourned, “and there’s nobody home.”

  “Maybe we can sell them to somebody else, for their grave,” O’Malley suggested.

  “No. Let ’em lie there.” Crane slapped the dirt from his hands. “We’ll find a body to go under them yet.” He put on his linen coat. “We better break open a couple of these mausoleums.”

  Courtland stared at him in surprise. “What for?”

  “We want to make the police think we were looking for valuables, not for a lady’s corpse.”

  Courtland led them in breaking open four tombs. In one, above which was inscribed: “Here Lie the Mortal Remains of Benjamin Applegate Griswold,” they found two silver birds set on the marble crypt. O’Malley knocked these loose with the hammer and put them in his pocket.

  “Atta boy,” encouraged Crane. “We may make our expenses out of this.”

  Williams was mopping his face with his handkerchief. He said, “I don’t feel so good about this.”

  Crane shook his head at him, spoke to O’Malley. “I guess Doc’ll never be a first-rate vandal.”

  “Hell,” said O’Malley. “He ain’t even a third-class ghoul.”

  “You guys think you’re funny,” said Williams.

  When Courtland had finished Crane led the way to the lodge by the gate. While O’Malley and Courtland rubbed the fingerprints off the spades and hammer he and Williams went inside. Crane took the gag from the old attendant, loosened his bonds a bit. “There,” he said, “you’ll be able to get free in a couple of minutes or so. By that time we’ll be far away.”

  The attendant’s eyes were relieved but still suspicious.

  They passed through the iron gate and walked along the street until they reached the Packard. Sparrows in a maple were making a din of peeps and chirps. The sky was milky.

  “What are we going to do with this car?” asked Williams.

  “That’s right. It is hot.” Crane frowned. “We’ll take it around to a garage and park it, and send the ticket to the guy that owns it.”

  Courtland asked, “How are you going to find out who he is?”

  “We’ll check on the license number tomorrow.” Crane got in the back seat. “We’ll take it to a garage now and get a cab to drive us into the Loop.”

  Courtland climbed into the driver’s seat. He pressed the starter, asked, “What are we going to do after we reach the Loop?”

  Crane hid his mouth behind his hand, “We’re going to bed.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  WILLIAM CRANE impartially examined the toes at the faucet end of the bathtub. They were a trifle large, especially the two big ones, he thought, but on the whole they looked well set as they were, like jewels on the pale-green surface of the water. He wondered how they would look painted cherry red, like Miss Renshaw’s toes. He wondered what they thought of his face at the other end of the tub. He wriggl
ed the big toe on his right foot, made circular ripples on the water.

  Shaving cautiously with a straight razor in front of the mirror over the washbasin, Doc Williams said, “The colonel called while you were asleep.” He wiped the razor on a piece of toilet paper. “He wanted to know what we found.”

  Crane sank into the warm water until only his mouth, nose and eyes were visible. “What’d you tell him?”

  “I told him the grave was empty.” Williams daubed additional lather on his chin. “He was surprised.”

  “I bet not any more than we were,” said Crane contentedly. He turned on the hot water with his foot. “I wonder if the hotel would serve dinner to me in this tub?”

  O’Malley’s face, clean-shaven and darkly handsome, appeared in the doorway. “Let’s eat in the living room.” He had on flannel trousers with a faint blue stripe, a white silk shirt and brown leather slippers. “We been around enough the last two days.”

  “Boy! We have been places,” agreed Williams.

  Crane said, “A regular Cook’s tour.”

  “You mean a Crooks’ tour,” corrected O’Malley. “In two days we start a fight in a taxi-dance joint, find a murdered guy and don’t tell the police, crash in on Bray-mer and his dope mob, bust in on a party, kidnap a gal, steal a car and rob a graveyard.” He paused for breath. “The only thing we ain’t done is to park in a no-parking zone.”

  “If we did that,” said Williams, “they’d catch us and send us up for life.”

  Crane closed the hot-water faucet with his foot. “That reminds me, what about the Packard?”

  Williams closed his razor with a snap. “It’s all fixed up. While you were pounding your ear I checked on the license number and then had a pal of mine call up and tell the owner where it was. The car belonged to a guy named Brandt, a lawyer.”

  Crane sat up in the tub, started to soap under his arms. “What time is it, anyway?”

  O’Malley looked at his wrist watch. “Eleven past nine. You slept a little better than thirteen hours.” He moved squarely into the doorway. “What do you want to eat?”