“A little. I revived Nelson with water. Then I got stronger as soon as he woke up and saw me doing it. I’m not what I ought to be, though.”
“You never were. Can you get away from him yet?”
“No. He’s too firmly convinced we’re inseparable. Something has to happen to change his mind. Unless I get a lot stronger — I’ll have to give it some thought.”
THE bartender produced a bottle with a kilted Highlander on the label, and shoved it across the bar. Harvey saw O’Reilly lick his lips as he filled his glass. He also saw him frown slightly at the small glasses of seltzer which followed. O’Reilly, slugged down the drink and watched Harvey pour his into the seltzer and stir it gently.
“Sissy,” he said, pouring himself another.
“Brain-work,” countered Harvey. “I can drink twice as many by diluting them.
“That’s not brain-work,” O’Reilly disagreed. “It’s extravagance. I can get pie-eyed at half the cost, by drinking them straight.”
A buzzer sounded behind the bar. The bartender put a small head-phone to his ear.
“Mr. Patelli’s in the office,” he said.
Harvey looked at O’Reilly thoughtfully. “You stay here,” he said.
“I’ll go with you.”
“No. Stay here. Patelli mightn’t like the idea of — All right, come along.”
Nelson led the way to Patelli’s office. The night-club proprietor looked askance at the man in the rumpled blue suit. Nor did he seem quite satisfied when Harvey introduced him as Mr. O’Reilly.
“Is that all?” he inquired. “Just ‘mister’? I think I’ve seen that Irish pan before.”
“Is that guy insulting me?” O’Reilly asked.
“You wouldn’t know,” said Patelli, looking at Harvey. “He’s a cop, huh?”
Harvey looked uncomfortable. He realized he should have told Patelli the truth in the first place.
“Yes,” he admitted. “He’s been following me ever since last night. I couldn’t get rid of him, so I enlisted his aid. What did you find out?”
Patelli regarded O’Reilly with a certain amount of distaste. “Wait a minute,” he said. “I don’t like this cop business. I never got anything but trouble from cops. They rob you and then they raid you anyway. They’re not to be trusted. They’re dishonest.”
O’Reilly, already of somewhat ruddy complexion, threatened to burst into flame.
“It doesn’t matter,” Harvey said quickly. “Nothing you’re going to say could be used to embarrass you. What did you learn?”
“Yeah, that’s right,” Patelli admitted. “Here’s some addresses. One of them ought to be the one you want.”
He shoved a typewritten paper across the desk. Harvey looked at the list of addresses. “Why so many?” he asked.
“For his boys, I guess,” Patelli hazarded. “He probably pays their rent. The trick is to pick out the right one. I can’t help you there. This Bonzetti is a cagey guy. All we dug up, except from these addresses, was some dope on a few jobs he pulled in the past.”
“What dope was that?” asked O’Reilly.
“THERE you are, Mr. Nelson,” said Patelli, regarding O’Reilly with a cold eye. “I told you a cop’s not to be trusted. He wants to go off on a side track, just to collect a record for himself.”
But Harvey wasn’t listening. He was going down the list of addresses.
“Bonzetti would have the most pretentious place for himself,” he deduced. “Here’s one. An apartment at the Thyssen Arms.”
“Be a tough place to conceal a kidnapped girl,” said Patelli. “How about that house on Thirteenth Street? A house would be the place to keep a prisoner.”
Harvey lifted his eyes from the list and stared at the blank wall bewilderedly. This was the worst quandary he’d ever been in. The address where Milly was imprisoned was right before him, and he was mortally afraid to pick it out. If he missed, there was every chance that Bonzetti would be warned, with possible disastrous results to Milly. At the very least Bonzetti would leave, and then there might be no lead at all to follow. His eyes returned to the list, blurred slightly, then focused again.
“How about that place in the country?” suggested Patelli. “At the bottom of the list.”
Harvey shook his head. He was hearing another voice, as Patelli spoke, and this one pointed a way out of his dilemma.
“Try the house in town,” Omega said. “It’s probably his home. Someone’s bound to be there, even if it isn’t the right place. Maybe I can do a little mind-reading for you.”
“The house it is,” said Harvey, looking at Patelli. “I want to thank you, Joe. This means —”
“Forget it,” said Patelli. “You’re not counting me out yet. I’ll go along.” He patted a bulge in his coat, near the armpit. “I’m still pretty handy with this thing.”
O’Reilly snorted. “An Eyetalian couldn’t hit a telephone booth if he was inside it,” he contended.
Patelli didn’t deny this assertion. He didn’t even look angry. But there was a sudden explosion in the vicinity of his hand, and the cigarette in O’Reilly’s fingers shortened itself by half. The trooper allowed his jaw to relax slightly, then calmly lit the remains of the cigarette.
“Your old lady must have been scared by an Irishman,” he remarked.
Patelli extended him a fresh pack, smiling. “There must have been a Scotch boarder in your house,” he said. “Have a whole one.”
Chapter 23: The Dead Walk: Starring Omega
BONZETTI’S house was in one of the better sections of the city, a half-hour’s drive from Patelli’s club. All three men realized that they were heading into something they wouldn’t be able to back out of. Bonzetti’s place might be well guarded, and their approach noted and prepared for. But all three were gambling on the fact that Bonzetti was known to have a small compact gang, and therefore wouldn’t likely have more than one or two men posted.
The house, situated in the center of well-kept lawns, was darkened when they arrived. There wasn’t a light to be seen at any window. This, Patelli pointed out, didn’t mean that no one was home. Drapes might be over the windows of any room with a light in it.
“We’ll take it head on,” Harvey said. “I’ll bang on the door and when it opens, you cover whoever answers it.”
“Might as well,” agreed Patelli. “There won’t be any unlocked windows.”
It was an excellent plan, except that didn’t work. The whole thing rested on quick action when the door opened. But the door didn’t open! Harvey found a push-button. He pushed it. And then he banged once more with his fist.
“Maybe there’s nobody home,” said O’Reilly.
Patelli raised his eyebrows. “Somebody told you, Irish.”
Back in the car, as Harvey took out the list of addresses, Omega seized the opportunity to make another mental suggestion. “Try that place at the bottom of the list. Strikes me as being the next most likely.”
Harvey relayed the decision as his own, and started the car. He realized now that even a wrong guess was better than inaction. He couldn’t forget that Bonzetti possessed the only guarantee of Millicent’s continued safety.
HARVEY’S sedan, in the next half-hour, proved that the manufacturers hadn’t been exaggerating a bit. It roared along at a rate which ate up the miles with gusto and sound effects. Harvey was familiar with the surrounding countryside, and could almost visualize the exact location of the house.
His tires screamed a protest as he turned abruptly into a rough side road. From that point on the car went at a crawl, with the lights turned out. He drove cautiously, a thin crescent of a moon preventing a collision with the trees which lined the path. Long before he reached the spot where, the car might be visible from the house, he stopped clear of the road and opened the door.
“End of the line,” he said tersely. “We’d better walk from here. It must be pretty close. Keep your eyes open.”
Harvey led the way through the trees, abandoning t
he road. Less than a hundred yards from where they’d left the car, they saw Bonzetti’s house — a bungalow.
A lighted floor-lamp was visible in the living room but there was no sign of activity. The rest of the place was dark.
“Give me your gun, O’Reilly,” said Harvey.
“Yeah, give him your gun, Irish,” said Patelli. “You wouldn’t know what to do with it anyway.”
“Quiet!” whispered Harvey. “And stay put, I’m going to look in that window!”
Harvey stalked the window, not making a sound. When he reached it, he cautiously moved until he could look through. And in the range of his vision he saw enough to make him swear softly in surprise. Sprawled on the floor, his back to the window, was a man — or what had been one. A pool of dark blood surrounded the head.
Across the room, almost out of sight, was another body. This one was visible only from the hips down, the rest concealed behind a large chair. Harvey frantically twisted to the opposite side of the window, trying to see more of the room. But no other body was visible.
“Come on!” he yelled, and dashed for the front door.
The door was unlocked and he pounded in, no longer caring whether he made noise or not. A quick glance showed that no one else was in the living room. He leaped over one of the bodies and headed for the next room. He found a light switch, but that room was empty also. Room after room brought the same result. Millicent wasn’t in the bungalow.
He returned to the living room, panting and almost sobbing. Patelli and O’Reilly had come in the front door and were staring at the two bodies.
“Deader than my club in the daytime,” pronounced Patelli. “That one’s Bonzetti. I don’t know this guy. One of his hoods. Wonder who chilled them.”
“That ain’t the point,” said O’Reilly. “Where’s Nelson’s girl? Not in the house, eh?”
Harvey shook his head.
“Maybe she got the jump on them somehow,” Patelli suggested.
“Not likely,” said Harvey. “She wouldn’t have shot them. But she might have escaped! Go get the car. I want to do some thinking.”
Harvey suddenly slumped in an overstuffed chair, head buried in his hands. The two men looked at him for a second, then went out to get the car. As soon as they left he jumped up and crossed the room. Not far from the body of Bonzetti he leaned over and picked up a large manila envelope.
“Oh-oh,” grunted Omega. “It looks as if Bonzetti tried to hold up the leader of your great party. He must have got those lists on his own hook, or a price would have been agreed upon. Though how he knew about them is more than I can say.”
“O’Reilly might have guessed right when he said that Pembroke might have hired him to recover them from Dolly Patterson,” Harvey said. “Or he might have told him about them to explain why he had to keep his hands off Milly. But right now we’ve got to find... Say! Pembroke must have taken her with him. He still needs her to guarantee the votes of the Fifty-second. Omega, do me a favor. Inhabit Bonzetti’s body!”
“What! Make a ghoul out of myself?”
“You’ve got to! It’s the only way we can jar Pembroke into doing something rash. The way things stand we can’t prove a thing. And he’s got Milly!”
“Oh all right,” agreed Omega, reluctantly.
“THAT’LL take a lot of power. Dead men don’t walk, as a general rule. Can you do it?”
“This is what I’ve been waiting for! Don’t you see? Harvey is perfectly sure that I can do it. There’s no doubt in his mind. I’ve done practically the same thing before. I’m getting stronger every minute.
“The fact that it’s a dead body don’t mean a thing. Harvey knows it’s dead, all right; but when the others see it move they’ll think Bonzetti was only wounded. And their minds won’t work against me. Watch!”
Chapter 24: Keep Tuned to this Station
THE hackles rose on Harvey’s neck, even though it was his own idea, when the body of Bonzetti rolled over on its face and drew the knees up to rise. He controlled his feelings, though, with the thought that it was only Omega manipulating a bunch of meat instead of the usual assortment of clothes.
“He’s kind of stiff,” said Omega. “I’ll have to limber him up.”
At that moment Harvey heard the sound of his car driving up to the house. “Put on an act,” he said. “We’ll have to get you washed up. Pretend you were just wounded. I’ll get a hat to cover that hole in your cranium.”
Patelli gasped as he saw Harvey help the stiffly walking Bonzetti toward the bathroom. Automatically he removed his gun from its holster, pointing it at the gangster.
“He was only creased,” Harvey called, “We’ll take him with us.”
Patelli kept the gun centered from the doorway as Harvey carefully cleaned most of the blood from Bonzetti’s head. Cold shivers ran up his back as he performed the task; but he remembered to keep the punctured side of the head away from the door.
When he finished, after spoiling several towels, the result wasn’t bad at all. Bonzetti must have fallen too quickly for any of the blood to splash his clothes. There were only a few spots on his collar.
“Stand there,” he said, “I’ll get your hat.”
Harvey sidled past Patelli, ostensibly so that he wouldn’t block his gun, while Omega kept the body erect, with the wound away from the door. Bonzetti’s face was twitching slightly as its occupant tried to get the face muscles working, but Patelli only saw a man groggy with shock and grimacing with pain. He didn’t suspect a thing, naturally; and when Harvey returned with the hat, the evidence was effectively covered.
O’Reilly turned pale as Bonzetti stumbled stiffly out of the bungalow. “Holy Sunday!” he exclaimed. “I thought he was dead!”
“He had a pretty close call,” Harvey said. “We’re taking him back. You drive.”
“Who shot you, Bonzetti?” O’Reilly demanded.
Omega tried to manipulate Bonzetti’s vocal chords to say the name “Pembroke,” but they refused to cooperate. He merely achieved a hoarse croak which didn’t sound like anything, except perhaps a hoarse croak.
“He said he thinks it was Pembroke, but he’s not sure,” interpreted Harvey.
“We’ll call on that gentleman, and try to get something out of him.”
UNDER O’Reilly’s skillful hands the sedan performed almost as well as his own motorcycle. If anything it made better time than it had on the outward journey. Harvey sat beside Omega, in the rear seat, and tried to control the shivers which kept coursing their way up and down his spinal column every time a curve threw Bonzetti’s remains off balance. He placed his borrowed gun on the seat beside him. It was a forty-five and too heavy to carry in a pocket when it wasn’t necessary to do so.
This fact led to a discovery which made Omega feel a little optimistic. For when they alighted in front of Pembroke’s home, Harvey helped Omega and his troublesome body out of the car, then turned back to retrieve the gun. Omega didn’t notice this and kept on walking.
Harvey had decided in the car that Omega would place himself at the side of the door, out of sight, and then suddenly confront Pembroke in an effort to shatter that man’s usually unbreakable poise. But Omega had barely crossed the sidewalk and started up the tree-lined path, when he suddenly collapsed.
Patelli, who had been watching alertly, gun pointed through a pocket, caught him as he fell. Harvey turned; but before he had reached the body, Omega had it on its feet again.
“A fine thing,” he said, in Harvey’s brain. “Why don’t you stay — Say, how far away was I when I started to fall?”
“Almost thirty feet,” answered Harvey.
Harvey’s knock and repeated rings on the door bell brought no sign of life. The Pembroke home was apparently deserted, even by the servants. Harvey helped Omega fold himself back in the car.
“The Bugle Building,” he directed.
Once more O’Reilly slammed the car into motion. Patelli kept his gun pointed at Bonzetti’s mid-section, thoug
h the gangster’s body had made no show of wanting to be elsewhere. He was, in fact, a very sick-looking corpse, with an extremely unhealthy color.
The elevator boy in the Bugle Building looked very startled when Harvey laid a heavy hand on his shoulder. But he promised to go up as slowly as possible when Harvey explained that Mr. Bonzetti was a very sick man and couldn’t stand any jolting starts or stops. He could readily see that the man was sick. Cheating an undertaker, was the way he privately expressed it.
“What are you figuring on doing?” asked O’Reilly. “If Bonzetti ain’t sure, we better not pull anything rough. Pembroke is a pretty hot guy.”
“You said you would string along with me,” Harvey reminded. “So stay out of the office when I go in. I want Pembroke to see Bonzetti without any warning.”
Pembroke looked up and scowled as Nelson walked in, half suspecting that he meant no good by his visit. Harvey stopped in front of the desk.
“Where is she?” he asked, shortly.
“What’s come over you?” demanded Pembroke in a soft voice. “Our agreement still stands. After election you’ll get her back.
“I want her now,” said Harvey. “You have her. You took her with you when you got the lists from Bonzetti.”
Pembroke looked slightly startled at the emphasis Harvey put on the last word. His hand reached in the upper drawer of the desk and brought out a gun. He smiled — almost cheerfully.
“Go ahead,” he said. “Speak your piece. You’ve come in here with blood in your eye often enough for me to be able to prove you’ve been threatening —”
Pembroke’s eyes shifted momentarily, then fixed themselves in the direction of the door. His gloating expression turned to one of stark incredulity. Then, in the twinkling of an eye, he lost all his rigid self-control. His mouth worked, trying to form syllables. Then he shrieked: “He’s dead!” and swung the gun toward the approaching body of Bonzetti, pumping shot after shot into it. The menacing figure wilted and slumped to the floor.
The Best of Argosy #8 - Minions of the Shadow Page 12
