Halo in Blood

by Howard Browne

  “Okay,” I said. “You saw me. But the corpse was no friend of mine.”

  Right there was where he was going to be cunning. He put out his jaw a little farther and said quickly, “Somebody you didn’t like?”

  It seemed a shame for all that guile to go to waste. But I had no choice. I said, “Make it somebody I didn’t know, Lieutenant.”

  He wasn’t going to cherish that one either. He took out a cigarette and turned it over and over between a thumb and forefinger and kept on looking at me. He said: “You make a habit of going to strangers’ funerals?”

  I drummed my fingers lightly against the wheel. “What’s the belch, friend? Am I supposed to have bent a law?”

  “All I want out of you is answers.”

  I indicated that I was bewildered by all this.

  “Who was he, Pine?”

  “The stiff?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Name of John Doe,” I said. “But I don’t believe that either.”

  “Who gave you his name?”

  “A chauffeur to one of the preachers.”

  “How come he knew?”

  “It seems the name was on the chapel door.” I made a show out of looking at my wrist watch. Two-thirty . . . and clients as scarce as German generals named Cohen. “Nice to have seen you again, Lieutenant. Now, if you’ll excuse me . . .”

  “How’d you happen to be in there?”

  He was going to stand there and ask questions until I ran out of answers and if I didn’t like it I could write to the newspapers. So I told him about getting into the procession by accident and why I had to stay there until the end. Minutes were important right then so I left out most of the details. I should have known better.

  When I finished talking, he used up a minute or two more to finger his chin and spit in the gutter and put the cigarette he was twiddling into his mouth and get it burning.

  Presently he said, “Notice anything peculiar about that burial, shamus?”

  “Three things,” I said promptly. “Four, in fact. There were no mourners; there were twelve preachers instead of one; everybody was in a hurry to get it over with.”

  He was staring at me curiously. “What’s the fourth one?”

  “This business of you being in a lather about it.”

  Red seeped up from under his collar. “Don’t get me mad at you, gumshoe.”

  I lifted an eyebrow at him but didn’t say a word.

  “You going some place, Pine?”

  “Now that you mention it—yes.”

  “Where?”

  “To see a client.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “You wouldn’t know him, Lieutenant.”

  “That doesn’t answer the question.”

  “That question isn’t going to be answered.”

  The two vertical lines between his eyes deepened. “What’s the matter? He somebody I shouldn’t know about?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You’re not saying anything.”

  “I’m going to keep it that way.”

  He tucked in a corner of his lower lip and looked at the ashes on the end of his cigarette. “I’m a nice guy to cooperate with, Pine. A private cop needs the police ever once in a while. Like when it comes to getting a license renewed, say.”

  I was sore enough by now to do a little sneering. “Don’t scare me, Zarr. I learned a lot in those two years with the State’s Attorney. Now kind of take your goddam hoof to hell off my fender. I’m tired of this.”

  We stared at each other. He put the cigarette back in his mouth and took a deep drag, then took it out again and dropped it to the pavement and stepped on it with the foot that had been on my running board. He said:

  “Last chance, hot-shot. Who was the guy in that coffin?”

  “John Doe. I told you that.”

  Zarr took off his hat and looked at the sky. He scratched his half-dollar-sized bald spot and put his hat back on his head. “Okay. . . . Maybe I’ll drop in at the office and see you one of these days.”

  I said, “Any time, George,” and stepped on the starter and drove away from him.

  Several times I looked back. But I didn’t see that gray prowl car again.

  CHAPTER 2

  Oak Park is a suburb of Chicago. It lies directly west of the Loop and is a nice place to raise your kids. Or so I’ve heard. The residential sections run from not-so-hot to very fine indeed, with less of the former than most towns its size. There are trees and grass and flowers all over the place. The streets are sleepy streets, with maids pushing perambulators along the sidewalks and sprinklers whirring on the lawns and neat delivery trucks courteously giving you the right of way.

  The address I wanted was on Kenilworth Avenue, a block or two south of North Avenue in the exclusive Fair Oaks section. It was a neighborhood where more than three houses to one side of a block was rank overcrowding. Some of the residences went in for Old World charm; some were modern, as sulfadiazine; some combined the worst features of both and still managed to look as though nice people lived in them.

  Number 1424 narrowly missed being classified as an estate. There was a tall green box hedge, trimmed as carefully as a movie star’s toupee, fronting the grounds to keep out the stare of the vulgar passer-by, and there was an ornamental bronze gate set in an opening that led to the grounds beyond. About fifty or sixty feet farther along, a glazed-concrete driveway cut through the hedge, but it too was sealed off from the street by a pair of bronze gates that would swing back for you if your car was custom-built and had gold-plated headlights.

  I parked across the street and got out and straightened my tie and moved my gray felt hat straight on top of my head so the gardener would think I was too respectable to sick the dogs on. Then I crossed over to the smaller gate.

  I turned the handle and passed through and along a curving walk of gray sandstone flags, lined with bearded irises, that I could see was going to lead around to the north side of the house. There was enough lawn on either side of the walk to set up a golf course and the grass was thick and dark green and cut to the right length by somebody knew his business.

  There were no flower beds in the landscaped grounds at the front of the house to detract from the sprawling, two-storied gray-stone residence of John Sandmark. The place had a weathered look that was as comfortable and unobtrusive as an old hat. Beyond the driveway was a row of Lombardy poplars, all of a uniform fifty or sixty feet, that probably marked the northern boundary of the property. On the south lawn were three very big yellow oaks that dwarfed the house.

  The entrance was on the north side, all right. But where there should have been a comfortably big porch, with maybe a swing or two, were three stone steps and a two-bit-size platform and an ornamental bronze railing to hold onto in case you came home drunk. The driveway curved out of sight behind the house and I never did get a look at the garage.

  The door was narrow, arched at the top like a cathedral window, with a circular sheet of glass behind a bronze grille about head-high. I put my finger against a small pearl button in the pilaster on the right and heard three deep-toned notes that would have delighted Johann Strauss.

  My wrist watch put the time at three-twenty.

  A slip of a girl in a black cotton uniform under a frilly white apron opened the door. She had straight legs and black hair and black eyes and a face you’d call cute and forget about. I told her my name and she took my hat and put it on a hall table I could have reached myself and led me into a big square hall that went up two stories to a skylight. Twin staircases in redwood, with beige runners that matched the carpeting under my feet, curved gracefully to meet at the second floor. Between them, on the first floor, French doors led onto a terrace of gray tiles, beyond which a vast bed of scarlet peonies tugged at my eyes.

  There were doorways leading off either side of the hall. The maid went over to one on the right and opened the door and said, “In here, Mr. Pine.” I said, “Thank you.” and walked thr
ough, and she closed the door behind me.

  It wasn’t the kind of room you’d call cozy. They could have put Rhode Island in there by squeezing it a little. The south wall was mostly French windows, with white metal Venetian blinds turned against the sun, and maroon velvet drapes as contrast to the patternless gray carpeting tickling my ankles. The west wall was books to the ceiling, with a ladder on wheels and a trolley to bring them within reach. The north wall was covered with soft gray-blue parchment, with three very good prints in blond-wood frames spaced to break the monotony above the stone mantel of a fireplace you could have broiled a mastodon in. Two long chesterfields in dark-blue leather stood back to back in front of the fireplace and there was a white bearskin rug near the polished copper screen.

  Over near the French windows was a limed-oak desk not much smaller than a tennis court. The man in the blue-leather swivel chair with his back to the windows stood up as I came in. He waited until I pulled my feet out of the rug enough times to reach him; then he put out his hand and gave me a medium handshake and said:

  “How do you do, Mr. Pine. I’m John Sandmark. I think you are a little late.”

  “I didn’t mean to be,” I said.

  He indicated a chair next to the desk and waited until I was in it before returning to the swivel chair. He leaned back and put his elbows on the arms and laid the tips of his fingers gently together and looked at me over them.

  Even sitting down he was a big man. Not fat, just big-boned and big-chested and with a head like a lion. His hair was coarse and thick and black, combed straight back to fight a tendency to wave. His face was square, heavy in a massive way that had nothing to do with soft living. His eyes were dark blue and they looked at you without apology. His nose would have been at home on an Indian chief and the large mouth under it wasn’t much more than a straight line. You could have hung a lantern on his chin but not without his permission. He could have been forty and he could have been sixty. I figured fifty was about right.

  When we finished sizing each other up, he said, “I appreciate your coming to see me, Mr. Pine. Would you care for a drink?”

  “If you will join me,” I said, in my society voice.

  He bent and swung open a door where desk drawers should have been and pulled up a portable bar that operated on levers like a typewriter shelf. There were three or four decanters and a soda bottle and an electrical freezing unit for cubes. All it lacked was a brass rail and a barfly.

  “Will Scotch do, Mr. Pine?”

  “It always has.”

  He dug out a pair of highball glasses, poured respectable amounts of whisky from one of the decanters, added ice cubes and soda, put a swizzle in each and handed me one.

  We murmured a polite word or two and drank. Mine tasted like something you could bribe angels with. There would have been no point in learning the brand; I couldn’t have afforded it anyway.

  I refused a cigar and took one of my own cigarettes instead. He snapped on a gold lighter from one of his vest pockets and held it out to me with a hand that trembled about as much as the Cheops pyramid. After his cigar was burning right, he pushed a copper ash tray over where we both could reach it and leaned back and blew out a cloud of oily blue smoke and said:

  “You are better than I expected, Mr. Pine. I don’t know much about private investigators, you see, and I had pictured some sort of beetle-browed subhuman with flat feet, a derby hat, and given to talking from the side of his mouth.”

  I couldn’t think of anything to say to that so I didn’t say anything.

  “Tell me something about yourself, if you don’t mind. I’m not just being curious, I assure you.”

  “It won’t take long,” I said. “I’m thirty-one, five feet eleven, one hundred and seventy pounds. The dent in the bridge of my nose came from high-school football. I was an investigator in the State’s Attorney’s office until a change in administration gave me a new boss. He had a nephew who needed a job. I went into business for myself about a year ago.”

  His smile showed even white teeth that were probably his own. “I imagine it was a good thing for you, Mr. Pine. You impress me as a man who does not like to take orders.”

  “I’ve had complaints about that,” I said. “Some of the complaints were probably justified.”

  His smile broadened. “At least you’re frank about it.”

  A gray squirrel darted along the ledge of the terrace outside the windows, startling a robin who had been minding his own business. The robin said about what a man would have said under similar circumstances and flew off somewhere. I cut down an impulse to yawn and sampled my drink again.

  Sandmark nodded as though he had made up his mind. He put his smile away and his glass down and said crisply:

  “Mr. Pine, I have a daughter—actually a stepdaughter —although I legally adopted her when she was hardly more than an infant. Now she’s grown into a very lovely and charming young woman and I love her very much. But . . . she has caused me some trouble and quite a bit of worry from time to time.”

  He stopped abruptly and looked past the top of my head at nothing at all and his lips went back to a tight line.

  I said, “Is she in trouble again?”

  My abruptness surprised him into looking at me. “I think so, yes.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “A man, Mr. Pine.”

  “I see. How old is your stepdaughter?”

  “She’ll be twenty-five in two months.”

  “What form does the trouble take?”

  He studied the ash on his cigar. “I think she intends to marry this man.”

  “You would object to that?”

  He glared at me. “I most certainly would! I told you my daughter is very dear to me. I do not propose to allow her to make a mess of her life the way her mother did.”

  “I just asked,” I said mildly. “Of course you realize your stepdaughter is of age. If she’s hot to get married I don’t see what can be done to prevent it.”

  He got a little chilly around the eyes. “I didn’t send for you to tell me that, Mr. Pine.”

  “I’m sure you didn’t,” I said. “And while we’re on the subject, just what did you call me in to do?”

  People didn’t talk to him that way. His face reddened and a vein began to throb in his temple and for a minute there I thought he was going to throw a thousand dollars’ worth of desk at me. He took three or four deep breaths before he figured he could open his mouth without having a roar jump out.

  Finally he said, “I want this affair broken off once and for all. And I want it done quickly.”

  “That sounds all right,” I said, “and it can probably be done. But I’ll have to find out whether I want to do it.”

  I got sneered at for that. “You’re mighty independent for a workingman, I would say.”

  “You’d be right,” I said. “There’s no point in getting mad at me, Mr. Sandmark. I make my living by working at a business that has more bad smells to it than most. I try to avoid them. I don’t know enough of the facts on this case to say anything one way or the other. If it’s okay with you I’ll ask some questions; if not, I’ll say good-by and no harm done.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “What is your stepdaughter’s name?”

  “Leona.”

  “Sandmark?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. What’s her boy friend’s name?”

  “Marlin. Gerald Marlin, I think.”

  “You think?”

  “She refers to him as Jerry. I’ve never met him.”

  “You mean she meets him only away from the house?”

  “Leona isn’t living here, Mr. Pine.”

  “Why not?”

  His shoulders moved in the ghost of a shrug. I said, “I’ll have to know where she’s staying.” He took some of his drink and set the glass back on the desk but kept his fingers around it. “Of course. She has an apartment at 1317 Austin Boulevard in Chicago.”

&
nbsp; “That isn’t far from here, is it?”

  “About a mile.”

  “How long has she been living away from home?”

  “About two months.”

  “Is she employed anywhere?”

  “No. Certainly not.”

  “Money of her own?”

  “None to speak of. I give her an allowance.”

  “Mind telling me how much of an allowance?”

  “A thousand a month.”

  “How long has she known this man Marlin?”

  “Well . . . about three months.”

  “She know you have no use for him?”

  “I make no secret of my dislikes, Mr. Pine.”

  “And she moved out because you didn’t like Marlin?”

  He sighed and his heavy shoulders sagged a little.

  “Leona is quite—well, headstrong. She is stubborn, willful, proud . . . and beautiful. She is very beautiful, Mr. Pine.” Lines deepened between his eyes. “I’ve tried to keep her from being hurt. I’m afraid I haven’t been successful. Her father’s blood, I suppose. There have been some unfortunate . . . incidents.”

  I waited, but he set his jaw and said no more. If I wanted particulars I was going to have to blast for them.

  “What were the incidents, Mr. Sandmark?”

  “I don’t think we need go into that.” He was polite about it, but it was a frosty politeness meant to chill me into dropping the subject. But I put on my earmuffs and mittens and dug into it anyway.

  “I like to be thorough, Mr. Sandmark. You want me to go to work for you. From what you have said. I’ll be actually working for your daughter too—even though she doesn’t realize it. But I won’t be able to do a good job if things I should have known about keep popping up to confuse me.

  “You say your daughter has had some trouble. A lot of nice people get into trouble. I don’t expect to be in charge on Judgment Day, so I don’t go around sentencing people for practice.

  “The point is, your attorney gave you my name and, I suppose, recommended me as someone you could trust. Then go ahead and trust me, or ring the bell and tell the maid to fetch my hat.”