The Complete Casebook of Cardigan, Volume 1: 1931-32

by Frederick Nebel

  Bone made a jaw. “I’m not kidding, Cardigan!”

  “The woman,” Cardigan said, feeling his way, “was a stoolie of mine. I had her on this case. I had her planted out back of the Cordova. She saw Pat and the guy come through the alley and get a cab. She wasn’t sure, but she followed the cab. She followed it to here.

  “When I left the Cordova I called up the office and told them I was going to Rosalie Wayne’s apartment. The stoolie phoned the office to find out where I was. They said I’d gone to the Wayne apartment. The stoolie called me there and I told her to meet me downstairs. A little woman, Abe? That’s the one. She brought me here and rang the bell and a guy opened the door when he saw it was only a woman. I crashed in, taking the woman with me, but I sent her out the back way. I held the guy up, had my gun on him. I told him I’d kill him if he didn’t turn over Pat. We went into a room and there was a lot of talk. He wouldn’t turn over Patrick unless I let him go. What could I do, Abe?”

  “You let him go?”

  “I had to,” Cardigan said. “He lit out the back way.”

  Bone said, “I don’t believe you, Cardigan! You’re a dirty Irish two-faced liar! You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to pinch this Jane! Why? For socking me in the Cordova. All right, you say she didn’t. I say she did. I’m going to get some straight talk out of this if I have to break somebody’s back!”

  Cardigan was grave. “I told you the truth, Abe. You’re not going to pinch Pat.”

  Her fingers dug into his arm. Was there a window open upstairs? She imagined she had caught a glimpse of a vague face. She gritted her teeth to keep them from chattering.

  She cried, “I’ll go, chief! He won’t get anything! You must let me go!”

  “No! Damn it, no!”

  Suddenly the front door opened and a man started down the steps. Halfway down, he stopped. Pat let out a little cry. Cardigan, unable to figure this move out, stood rooted to the pavement. Bone whipped his gun out and leveled it at the man on the steps.

  “Stick ’em up, you!”

  The man walked down the steps, started to stop, then turned and began running. Bone fired. The sound of his gun banged in the silent street. The man pitched headlong and Bone prowled toward him, his gun raised.

  The man turned over on his back and said. “All right, you shot me. It was a poor shot, though.”

  “I like ’em alive, guy.”

  “Not this one.” Steel glinted in his hand. “You see this? It reached the throat of Giles Jacland, my mortal enemy, this morning. And so—”

  “Stop that!”

  But the blade was quick. It sank into Guido’s chest and he gasped out and lay quietly on the pavement.

  Pat was shaking. “Chief,” she whispered, “he knew—he knew it couldn’t be done! He heard Bone! He came down, giving the others time to get away by the rear! He— Poor Guido!”

  Cardigan grimaced. Bitter-faced, he walked down the sidewalk, knelt, picked up the lifeless hand. He shook it and laid it down.

  “What’s the idea?” Bone crabbed.

  “Just,” Cardigan said, rising, “an idea.”

  The Candy Killer

  Chapter One

  The Peppermint Kill

  GEORGE HAMMERHORN, the head of the Cosmos Agency, was signing correspondence at five that afternoon when Cardigan pushed open the glass-paneled connecting door and came in. Cardigan, whistling a tune from Show Boat, sat down opposite Hammerhorn at the large double desk, jangled keys, unlocked a drawer, pulled out a bottle of Scotch and poured himself a neat jolt.

  “George?”

  “Nope.”

  Hammerhorn’s pen scratched across paper. He said: “Ever get seasick, Jack?”

  “Me? Once—on a troop ship. It wasn’t something I drank.” He raised the glass. “Mud in your eye.”

  “Bon voyage.”

  Cardigan chuckled.

  Hammerhorn finished with the pen, laid it down, tossed the signed letters into a basket marked “Out” and leaned back. “Jack, you’re going places.”

  “Tiarri’s for ravioli and steak. Want to come?”

  “You’re going on a long journey, Jack.”

  “All right, be funny.”

  Hammerhorn scratched a match, lit a cigarette. “Poland.”

  “Now I’ll tell one.”

  “Get your passport fixed up tomorrow and pay any bills you have around town. You’ll travel on B Deck on the Magnetic. She sails day after tomorrow. You’ll be gone three weeks and you don’t have to send any postcards.”

  Cardigan sat back, laughed. “Rave on, George, rave on.”

  “Ever hear of Marta Dahl?”

  “Ask me a hard one.”

  “You’re going,” Hammerhorn said, “as Marta Dahl’s bodyguard. To Poland. Yesterday afternoon, as Marta Dahl walked from a taxicab to the entrance of her hotel, the Gallice, an umpchay broke out of the crowd and began calling her names. He was a bum, a tramp, with ideas. The essence of it is this: the umpchay thought it was an outrage because these foreign actresses come over, make a lot of dough and take it back to the fatherland. The guy got pretty rough and nasty and some guy took a swing at him. A cop comes up and grabs the umpchay and is going to run him in when Marta Dahl intercedes. She says, ‘Let the man go, officer. It is nothing.’ The cop swoons—who wouldn’t?—and lets the bum go and Marta Dahl goes into her hotel. Catch on?”

  “No.”

  Hammerhorn interlocked fingers behind his head. “About an hour ago her manager, a nice little old fat fellow by the name of Adam Baum, comes in here all hot and bothered. No, he’s not worried particularly about the umpchay, but that helped. He wants a bodyguard to accompany Marta to Poland. Why? The umpchay? No. Tomorrow Marta Dahl will draw four hundred thousand dollars from a bank—in cash. Get that, sweetheart—in cash. She will lug four hundred thousand dollars in cash back to her native Poland.”

  “Why can’t she transfer it?”

  “Don’t ask me why actresses do things. Baum tried to talk her out of it, but it was no go. The money’s in a checking account and maybe she thinks that while she’s on the water something might go wrong with the transfer. All that concerns us is that she’s toting four hundred thousand dollars and you’re to see that she and the dough get to Poland together. Our fee for this is one thousand berries, exclusive of your expenses. There is a Santa Claus.”

  “And I’m the goat, huh?”

  “What the hell are you beefing about? An ocean voyage with the screen’s hottest mama! I’d go myself, sweetheart, but the wife wasn’t born yesterday.”

  He leaned forward, unhooked the telephone. “Get me the Hotel Gallice.” He looked across at Cardigan. “Shuffle board, deck tennis, real liquor—”

  “And a knife in the back.”

  “Do you expect everything for nothing? Think of the moonlight!” He ducked his head near the mouthpiece, spoke into the phone, waited, then said: “Mr. Baum?… This is Hammerhorn of the Cosmos Agency…. My ablest man will accompany Miss Dahl. His name is Cardigan.”

  “Suppose this dame falls for me and I don’t come back?”

  Hammerhorn hung up, made a sour face. “M-m-m, don’t you hate yourself!

  TIARRI’S was a noisy Village speak. It had a large, low dining room in which Tiarri had gone wild with plaster frescoes. The bar was better, though noisier; it did not look like a vain attempt to transplant an Italian alley to lower New York. Cardigan was rolling poker dice with Frank, the barman. One side of Frank’s mustache was gone; he had promised to cut that side off if a local Dago boxer lost.

  Angelo, a waiter, punched Cardigan in the ribs. “Ouch!” said Cardigan.

  Angelo bowed. “Onna da tele-phono.” He jerked an illustrative Sicilian thumb. “In-a da off-eece.”

  “Listen, Angelo,” Cardigan said. “I’m not here.”

  “Uk-key, boss.”

  Angelo went away and Cardigan returned to the dice. But in a minute Angelo was back.

  “Deesa gentelman say, ‘Nu
ts to you, Dago. Tell-a dat gorill’ to get-a hell on de tele-phono.’”

  “Sounds like a pal,” Cardigan said, and sloped off into the little cubbyhole behind the bar. He scooped up the phone there, said. “Who’s a gorilla, you big stiff?… Oh, hello Garrity! How’s your diabetes?” He stopped short, the laughter ebbed from his eyes. He said, after a minute: “O.K.” And hung up.

  He rolled out at the bar, lost, paid up. He went into the dining room, got hat and topcoat from a costumer, slapped the hat on his shaggy mop of hair and went out the front, up three steps out of the areaway and into a taxicab.

  A man opened the taxi’s door in front of the swank Hotel Gallice, on Park Avenue. The man looked like an Austrian general but was only the hotel doorman. Cardigan swung across the sidewalk, slapped his way through revolving doors and headed across the lobby. His coat was six years old and looked it and his lop-eared hat was faded from rain, sun and old age. His thick hair bunched around the ears.

  A man headed him off.

  “Hello, Yager,” Cardigan clipped, and was on his way, long-legged.

  But Yager caught up with him. “In my office a minute, Cardigan. I got a proposition.” Yager was the house dick.

  “Got no time. What suite?”

  “Fourteen twelve. Now listen, Cardigan—my office—just a minute and—”

  “While Rome burns?” Cardigan said and walked on into an open elevator.

  Yager bounced in after him.

  “Fourteen,” Cardigan said. He stood on wide-planted feet, spinning his hat on a big forefinger while the elevator rose smoothly, noiselessly, to the fourteenth floor.

  Yager got out with him. Yager was a pudgy short man with a bullet head, a squat hard neck and gimlet eyes. He said: “Now listen, Cardigan. There might be some dough in this for us. Baum, the dame’s manager, said he’d pay five thousand dollars—”

  Cardigan lengthened his stride, reached a door numbered 1412, knocked loudly. A cop opened it and said: “Hello, Cardigan.”

  “Hello, Swanson,” Cardigan said; lifted his chin. “Hello, Garrity.”

  Yager pushed in behind him, looking abused and misunderstood. Captain Garrity, a bluff headquarters dick, was sitting on the arm of a chair swinging a foot.

  “Thanks for coming, you roughneck.”

  A woman sat on another chair. She was young and in black livery. Her eyes were red-rimmed and she clasped a crumpled damp handkerchief in her hand. A short, rotund man in evening clothes was pacing up and down, his eyes glued wildly on the floor. He kept muttering to himself, shaking his head, rubbing his palms together.

  Garrity clipped: “Mr. Baum, this is Cardigan.”

  The fat man stopped short, rushed across the room, bowed deeply, shook Cardigan’s hand violently and then returned to pacing the floor. The maid broke out crying again.

  “In here, Cardigan,” Garrity said, and led the way into another room. He was a lean, hard-boned man with a good jaw, hard gray eyes. “What do you know about this dame, kid?”

  “Not a thing, Pete. I’ll give you the straight of it. The little fat guy dropped in on George this afternoon and hired a man to bodyguard the dame to Poland. She’s drawing four hundred thousand dollars out of the bank tomorrow and lugging it home with her. George picked me to dry-nurse the dough home. Just what happened?”

  Garrity scowled. “Well, a couple of cops heard shots in West Fifty-fourth Street at nine tonight. They legged it over and found a taxicab halfway across the curb. The driver was in the gutter with his belly all shot to hell. All they could get out of him for a while was ‘Marta Dahl! Marta Dahl!’ Like that—over and over again. They got an ambulance and went to a hospital with him. They didn’t get much more out of him. Only that Marta Dahl was his fare. He must have recognized her. Who wouldn’t? The cops tried to get out of him where he picked her up, but the poor guy was croaking fast. It gets down to this, near as I can figure it out. A guy crowded into the cab at a traffic stop and made the driver turn west. Another car followed. In West Fifty-fourth Street the guy in the cab made the driver stop. The other car drew up and they switched the jane over. Then the driver gets heroic and starts to fight. One of the eggs lets him have it in the guts. Now the taxi driver remembered one thing: he said he smelled the guy’s breath—he smelled peppermint on the guy’s breath. Why he remembered that, I don’t know. He didn’t get the pad numbers. So Marta Dahl is kidnaped. The old boy outside—this Baum lad—is all smashed up. I tried to stop him but right away he phones the papers and offers five thousand bucks reward.”

  Cardigan said: “That dough of hers is still in the bank. Has her manager got power of attorney?”

  “No. Technically he’s not her manager anymore. She’s through with the screen. But the old guy’s built her up and the way I get it, he kind of worships the ground she walks on. If these mugs call for ransom—if the call’s in her handwriting—that can be fixed at the bank.”

  “How about that five thousand reward?”

  “Well, I could use half of it.”

  “How about the other half?”

  Garrity said. “What’s the matter, you gorilla—can’t you use half?”

  Cardigan chuckled. “Pete, for a cop, I like you.”

  “Don’t get me wrong, baby. A swell chance I’d have of grabbing the whole five grand with you waltzing around. So I’d rather have you with me than against me. Not that you faze me, Jack—but you have a habit of falling smack on your face into the breaks. This job is a tough one to crack. The jane walks out of the hotel at seven-thirty. The maid says she has a habit of taking these walks alone. The maid doesn’t know where she went—only out. Ten to one she walked till she got tired, then snatched a cab.”

  CARDIGAN shook his head. “If these mugs tailed her from the hotel they would have nabbed her before she got in a cab. What I’d like to know, Pete, is where she went. She might have started out for a walk, but I’ll bet you she changed her mind and went some place. Then she took the cab from that place. It was at that place that these mugs started to tail her. How about the cab?”

  “I checked up on that. I thought the driver might have been on duty at a hack stand. He wasn’t. I looked at his meter and from the fare on it he must have driven three and half miles. So start from that and tell me when you go nutty.”

  Cardigan said: “How about the umpchay called her names outside the hotel yesterday?”

  “Yeah,” Garrity chuckled, “I thought you’d come to that. No connection. Hackett, the cop collared him, says he’s a hophead named ‘Chink’ Wiggins.”

  “Chinaman?”

  “No. They just call him Chink. He thinks everything’s wrong with the world. Every now and then they collar him for making goofy speeches on street corners.”

  “Listen, Pete. Collar that bird.”

  Garrity threw up his hands. “Nix. I’m not going to make myself a laughing stock by grabbing that sap. I’m out to grab some guys for the murder of Jacobs, that driver, and the kidnaping of Marta Dahl—”

  “I tell you, Pete, grab him. We may be wrong, but what the hell!”

  Garrity tossed his chin up. “Listen, Cardigan. I’m not asking you to think for me. I’m out to grab some killers, I tell you; not to make news by landing on any guy I happen to think of.” He strode hard-heeled to the door, added: “Or that you think of.”

  Cardigan sighed out loud: “You cops, you cops! I think I find a cop with brains and what happens? Why, I find a Brooklyn Hibernian who’s so proud of his record he never pinches a guy till the guy says, ‘I did it, officer—with my little hatchet’.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Garrity took his hand off the doorknob and came toward Cardigan with a mean glint in his windy gray eyes. He punched Cardigan on the chest. “Listen, Jack, you bum: I’m one cop they can’t hang anything on. I follow the line of my thinking. If that’s wrong, it’s my tough luck. But I let no guy make my decisions.”

  Cardigan laughed with rough good humor, threw his arm around Garrity’s shoulder. “Good old Pete
Garrity! O.K., Pete! If I need a battering ram some day I’ll borrow your head.”

  He ducked a punch, yanked open the door and reentered the living room with a gust of laughter. Mr. Baum stopped pacing. He looked shocked. The maid, who had stopped crying, put her face in her hands and began again. Windy-eyed Captain Garrity stalked into the room, his chest out, his manner important.

  Yager, the house dick, began crabbing: “O.K. I guess I see where I stand all right.”

  Garrity eyed him. “What’s eating you?”

  “Yeah, you and that big tramp going in a huddle behind the door and leaving me out of it.”

  Garrity twisted his neck and looked at Cardigan, jerked a thumb. “This house dick a friend of yours?”

  “What’s the idea of making a dirty crack like that?” Cardigan said, eating an apple he had taken from a fruit bowl.

  Yager leveled an arm. “I’ve got as much right to that reward as anybody! Why leave me out in the cold?”

  Cardigan assumed a mock-grave expression. “There you go again, Yager—thinking only of the money. Thought of that reward never entered my mind and I am sure—” he turned, bowed toward Garrity and lifted an eyebrow—“it never entered the captain’s.”

  “Of course not!” Garrity said indignantly.

  Yager reddened to his ears, spluttered, turned and thumped out of the room.

  Mr. Baum raised his hands, shook with rage. “That foul person! Thinking only of money while my poor Marta is lost—lost!”

  “And don’t forget,” Garrity pitched in, “the dead taxi driver. A wife and five kids in the Bronx.”

  Chapter Two

  Hophead’s Hideaway

  WHEN Cardigan went through the hotel’s revolving door into the street, a taxi was emptying. When the “Vacant” sign was raised he climbed in, gave an address, and leaned back. He was as Irish as Garrity was, and in his own way quite as stubborn. When he became obsessed with an idea, a hunch, he had to play it even though realizing, in great measure, the futility of it. The cab was heading south. At Grand Central it weaved through pedestrians. In the morning, Cardigan mused, these people would read of the disappearance of Marta Dahl. There would also be a parenthetical note about the death of one Jacobs, a taxi driver, who had attempted, apparently, to save her. But the death of a taxi driver is not news. The vanishing of a famous screen actress is news—a final fling for Marta Dahl at the headlines.