“This guy, Bert,” Cardigan drilled on. “The bird that showed me up to your office tonight. What’s his full name?”
“Novack.”
“Where’s he live?”
“I don’t know.”
Cardigan laid the flat of his left hand hard against Shade’s face and said, “I told you to be sure of your answers.”
Shade’s face remained wooden, and though his eyes blinked under the impact of the slap, they did not shift expression. The only change showed in his dry, flat lips; they got a little flatter against his teeth and one corner moved minutely like a pulse beat.
There was a ruthless dark look in Cardigan’s eyes. “McMann owed you forty-eight grand, Steve.”
“Yes?” asked Shade dryly.
“I found a paper he’d been figuring on, putting down his debts on. Forty-eight grand for you. You lying tramp, you told me he didn’t owe you anything!”
“And I told you, loudmouth, that what people owe me is my own business, and their business.”
Cardigan’s face was warped with contempt. “You can chuck those Sunday-school stories out the window. You didn’t hold back because of any sense of honor about telling a man’s debts—you held back because you didn’t want me to know he owed you that much. I remember back along the years, Shade, when you ran gambling joints in Chicago, St. Louis—before you came up to the classy layout you’re running now. If a guy owed you money in those days he paid it—or something happened to him or somebody in his family. A leopard don’t change his spots, fella.”
“Screwy as usual.”
“If being screwy helps me step on rats like you, I’m glad I’m screwy. Now where does Bert Novack live?”
“I don’t know.”
Cardigan thrust his gun into his pocket and hit Shade with both fists. He hit him a third time and flattened him across a table. He picked him off the table and hit him twice more and sent him flying into a divan. Shade lay there like a deflated balloon. Through puffed lips he mumbled an address.
Cardigan hauled him off the divan, walked him across the room, and handcuffed him to the pipe of a radiator. “That’s to keep you honest and—well, to keep you. I’ll be back.” He turned and strode to the door, took out the key, locked the door from the outside, and went down in the elevator.
He walked over to Lexington Avenue, turned south and flagged the first cab that came along. His bow tie had become undone, but he paid no attention to it. The crown of his hat was all out of shape—his hat was, as a matter of fact, on backwards, the brim turned down on his neck and up, above his forehead. The wrinkled cuffs of his shirt stuck completely out of his coat sleeves and one of his socks had rolled down to his shoe top.
AN elevated train rolled by overhead as Cardigan got out at Third Avenue and Forty-second Street. He walked down Third to Fortieth Street and turned east. The street was dark, gloomy, and he had a hard time seeing the house numbers. He passed several garages, one of them open and with a dim light burning. He walked on, counting houses, until he came to a lean brick one of three stories, with a dull yellow door. Through the transom he saw a dim light burning in the hallway beyond. Alongside the door was a button with the word Janitor printed beneath it. He pressed the button.
A scared-looking man in a ragged bathrobe opened the door and Cardigan said in a low voice, “Novack?”
“Hanh?”
“Where’s Novack’s room?”
“Go ’way. Don’t live here.”
The muzzle of Cardigan’s gun rose and stared the man in the eye. The man, shaking, backed up into the hallway. Cardigan followed him quietly—quietly closed the door. He did not lower his gun. He said in a somber whisper, “If you don’t want to get mixed up in messy business, you’ll tell me—and then you’ll shuffle off to your room, stuff cotton in your ears, and keep your nose clean. Where’s his room?”
The scared man pointed upward, whispered hoarsely, “Next floor. Number Five.”
“Get.”
The man turned and pattered off down the hallway, vanished into a room. Cardigan heard a bolt click shut.
He went up the dimly lighted staircase, reached the hallway above, and stood looking warily around at the doors. Number Five was toward the front. He stood before it, looked up at the partly open transom. He listened—there was not a sound. His left hand crept out and closed on the knob. The door, of course, was locked. He slipped a match into the keyhole to see if a key were on the inside, found one there.
Stepping back a pace, he gathered all his weight and strength in his left shoulder, lunged forward, and ripped the door inward. The flashlight in his left hand sprang on; its beam cut the darkness, swooped, steadied.
“Hold it, Novack,” he growled.
Novack lay twisted sidewise on a bed. He was in shirt and trousers and socks; his other clothing was strewn over a chair. His hand was poised midway between the side of the bed and a small table on which a gun lay.
Cardigan dropped his flashlight on a chair in such a manner that its beam hung steadily on Novack. Then he reached up and pulled a light cord. An electric bulb sprang to life, flooding the room, and he turned his flashlight off and thrust it back into his pocket.
“Get dressed,” he said, and took the gun off the bed table.
Novack’s lean white face began to take on a cynical half-smile. “For a big guy, you sure get around fast. What’s in your hair now?”
“You.”
“Yeah?” Novack put his shoes on and laced them. “You sure gave me the surprise of my life that time. Why am I in your hair? I didn’t bop you at the Orion.”
“Be funny. Look at me bust a rib laughing.”
Novack looked at him. “You must laugh on the inside of your face. The outside looks like a secondhand prune.” He stood up, whipped a tie round his neck, knotted it smartly up into the crotch of his collar. “I’ll never eat prunes again.”
“Do you like grapefruit?”
“Crazy about grapefruit.”
“Well, the chances are you won’t eat grapefruit again, either.”
Novack snapped his arms into his coat, was particular about parting and combing his hair. “Would it be too much to ask you why I’m being waltzed out of here?”
“Not at all,” Cardigan said. “For killing a guy named Plavy, a porter at the Burley Hotel. And for killing—Madge McMann.”
“Go on, it sounds interesting.”
“I figure that just as you pitched her from the window this guy Plavy came into the apartment with a passkey to leave a package. The package contained a suit. He caught you in the act and you pulled a gun on him. He dropped the package and it fell open. You knew you were caught red-handed, but you didn’t dare fire a shot there because that would’ve given the whole scheme away. So you made Plavy put on the suit he was delivering and you made him walk out of the hotel with you. You had plenty of time, because fifteen minutes passed from the time Madge McMann hit the sidewalk until anyone entered the apartment.
“You brought Plavy here and trussed him up, locked the door and went back to get advice from Steve Shade. Shade probably told you that the guy Plavy would have to be done away with—no other alternative—and you came back here to do it. But Plavy had worked himself loose and you met him, either in the house here or on the street, and he ran. Sometime during the time he was here he made a couple of hurried pen drawings—the guy was an amateur artist—and when he was found dead down in Thirty-ninth Street, the drawings were found, too. They looked like nobody but you.”
Novack indolently lit a cigarette. “All sounds swell, except why the hell should I dump McMann’s wife out the window?”
“Because you’re one of Shade’s boys, and because McMann owed Shade forty-eight grand and he wanted the money.”
Novack put on his hat. “Come on. Take me over the precinct. You don’t worry me at all. There’s six guys at the Orion, including Shade and McMann that’ll prove I was there when Madge McMann took her dive.”
Cardigan’s s
mile was chill. He motioned to the door and Novack strolled out. He took hold of his arm as they reached the sidewalk. “This way,” said Cardigan, and walked Novack to Third Avenue, where he stopped a cab. “Hotel Burley,” he told the driver.
“What’s the idea?” asked Novack.
“What idea?”
“The Burley.”
Cardigan laughed hollowly. “You took too much for granted, Novack, when you thought I’d take you to a police station.”
Novack stared straight ahead, his brows bending, a queer glint in his eyes. The cab turned west and in a few minutes pulled up at the side entrance of the Burley. As they got out of the cab, Cardigan nodded to the sidewalk.
“That’s where they picked her up.”
Novack turned a white, numb face toward him. Cardigan grabbed him by the arm, walked him into the lobby, and on into an open elevator car. It rose to the fourteenth floor. They got out and walked down the corridor to 1404 and Cardigan used the bronze knocker on the door panel. Novack’s eyes were round, quiet, mirroring apprehension. His face was dead white and one corner of his mouth was sucked inward.
There was the sound of a snap lock being turned and then the door swung and McMann stood there, in trousers and undershirt, a highball in his hand. He looked foggily at Cardigan and said, “You still up, too?”
Then he looked at Novack and a dull, listless, heavy stare came to his eyes. Cardigan pushed Novack through the doorway, pushed him on into the living room, and into a chair. McMann followed with lagging steps.
Cardigan said to Novack, “So you thought I’d take you around to a police station where you could hook a lawyer, eh? You’ll talk here, mister. Right here. You’ll talk your head off before I’m through with you. I’ve got Shade manacled to his radiator and I’ve got you—and Madge McMann is dead—and she didn’t die by her own hand. And Plavy is dead—and he left behind him a sketch of you.”
McMann screwed up his face, as though he found difficulty in understanding all this. Novack eyed him sidewise, furtively. McMann looked at the wall and, as though he had found an answer there, his eyes widened and a look of fierce determination set suddenly round his heavy jaw. His eyes swung round and blazed on Novack.
With a hoarse outcry McMann fell upon the desk, snatched up his automatic pistol, wheeled wildly and leveled it at Novack. Novack squeezed back into the chair, gritted his teeth, pressed his eyes tightly shut. Cardigan made a dive for McMann, yelling, “Wait till he talks!” but he stopped in his tracks, amazed by the small flat sounds that McMann’s automatic was making. The gun was empty.
Realizing it, McMann stared down at it as though it were some foul, unclean object. With a fierce snarl he flung it the length of the room. Cardigan said, “Easy now, Flush,” and McMann turned on him and hit him in the face. The shock of the surprise and the blow unrooted Cardigan and he hit the floor on his back. But he bounded like rubber and was on his knees, then on his feet.
McMann was roaring, staggering, trying to get under way. Cardigan saw a wild, unreasonable light in his eyes, and the awful grimaces on his face. McMann’s big feet clubbed odds and ends of furniture out of the way. He reeled, swayed. Cardigan, a dark, bitter look on his face, jumped in front of him and barked, “Flush!”
McMann flung both fists at him, kicked out, picked up a bottle and heaved it. Cardigan ducked the lot. Then suddenly he stepped in, clipped McMann on the jaw and brought him down with a crash. He spun to find Novack speeding toward the door.
“Novack!” he roared. “Stop! Stop! Novack—” He fired low. Novack skidded helplessly along the wall and then dropped to the floor. Cardigan turned and looked at McMann. The big man lay where he’d fallen, low groans mumbling through his lips.
ABE GREEN was brooding over a small beer in the Burley bar. He muttered, “I’d never in the world ha’ thought that of Flush McMann.”
“He had his back to the wall,” Cardigan said, “and he must have been a rat at heart. And he was scared stiff, because Shade wanted the forty-eight grand and he told McMann that if he didn’t get it soon, he’d get something else—in the gut. When McMann went up to his apartment at eight he found Madge dead, lying there in bed. Her heart had given out. He told me all this when he came to, after I socked him—but you’ll get it again in the formal confession. Well, there she was—dead. She was insured for thirty thousand, but thirty thousand, after he buried her and all, wouldn’t be enough to pay Shade and the other people he owed. So instead of reporting her death, he went out and went up to the Orion Club. He was scared stiff that if he didn’t pay Shade, Shade would have him knocked off. Shade was hard up, too, desperate for money. So McMann told him that Madge had died—told him that there was thirty grand due in insurance.
“Shade told him that wouldn’t be enough—that he had to have forty grand himself by the first in order to meet his own debts. So then McMann said, ‘There’s a double-indemnity clause in the policy. Thirty grand if she dies naturally, sixty grand if she dies by accident.’ Well, there they were, both desperate for money. So they called in Novack, who was really nothing more than a floorwalker around the Orion, and offered him a thousand to do the job. Novack accepted and McMann gave him the key to the apartment, and a few instructions.
“McMann knew that Dr. Chadwick would testify that Madge had fainting spells. So he told Novack to wet that towel and shower curtain, as if she’d taken a bath, and to spread powder on the bathroom floor. Then Novack was to pick her up, put her feet on the powder, and then toddle her across the carpet, leaving those footprints, as if she’d staggered to the window to get air. He never stepped into the bathroom himself after he spread the powder, so there was no powder on his own shoes to leave any marks.
“It all worked—until that poor guy Plavy happened to walk in. Well, you know what Novack just told you about that—he had to take Plavy with him to keep the cat in the bag.” He swallowed some rye.
“There I had it all figured out that the hookup was between Shade and Novack and that McMann was just a poor widower drowning his sorrow in drink. Sorrow, hell. The guy was so scared, after things went wrong, that he tried to drink himself insensible. And when he saw Novack, when I brought Novack in, he just went haywire—figured that Novack was there to confess and tried to kill him. And he’d have killed me, too, if that gun had been loaded. You might say Madge died twice—once in bed and once out the window.”
Abe Green took a drink of beer. “Why the hell was he toting an empty gun?”
“He wasn’t. The last time I looked in his room it was loaded. And when I came down I told Meyer, one of our ops who was taking my place here, that I’d left the gun up there loaded, even though I had a feeling McMann might get blue enough to bump himself off. So Meyer, not wanting to have anything like that happen while he was on the job here, went up after I left and unloaded the gun.”
“Sounds like a very conscientious guy.”
“Well, not exactly. He likes to get a good night’s sleep on these hotel jobs, and he wasn’t taking any chances.”
“Where’s he now?”
“Sleeping.”
“My god, didn’t all that racket wake him up?”
“No. I woke him up and he told me about emptying the gun, but he fell right to sleep again. He’d had a stomachache earlier and took some powders to ease him. But he took sleeping powders by mistake.”
Bottles, the barman, said, “It’s my fault. I was meanin’ to give him the gut powders and me the sleepin’ powders, and the minute after I took what I thought was the sleepin’ powders, I said to meself, ‘Montmorency, there’s somethin’ wrong.’”
Death in the Raw
Chapter One
The Can for Cardigan
CARDIGAN rolled his battered old roadster down the wide main drag of Branbury at noon of a summer day. He made a left swing round the Soldier’s Monument at Center Square, moved slowly in a welter of traffic until he neared the Hotel Flagg and then warped into the curb. The tires smelled of fast travel and the wh
ole car reeked of hot engine oil.
When the fat Negro doorman came to the car Cardigan said: “Get the bag out of the rumble. I’m going to park up a side street.”
The Negro beamed. “Garage is only sebenty-five cents, suh.”
“And the street’s free. Get the bag.”
“Yassuh, yas-suh!”
Cardigan drove to the next corner, turned right and parked halfway up the block. He put on his shoes, picked his coat and tie off the deck behind the seat and climbed out. Sweat beaded on his face. With his shirt rumpled and his coat and tie tucked under his arm, he walked back to the hotel and shoved into the cool, dim lobby. People turned their heads to look curiously at the big, shaggy-haired man with dark sweat blotches on his shirt, but Cardigan had things on his mind and paid no attention to anyone.
The desk clerk, dapper in a faultless linen suit, stood absentmindedly regarding his fingernails. He took one look at Cardigan, turned away and continued to contemplate his nails.
Cardigan said, “Room with two exposures and bath,” and picked up the pen lying beside the register.
“Sorry,” said the clerk, tapping a mild yawn, “we are full up.”
“That’s what you say,” Cardigan replied, writing down his name in a bold, ragged script. “There was a reservation made for me this morning by Cabot Pennock, attorney-at-law. That,” he added, spinning the register about, “is the name. The price is four bucks and there’s nothing extra for ice or meals served in the room.” He swiveled, saying: “Where’s my bag?”
“Is this it?” asked a bellhop, coming forward with the bruised old Gladstone.
The desk clerk became active. “Of course, of course, I have just the room you want, Mr. Cardigan. I have one on the fourth floor, two on the fifth, and there’s a nice southerly exposure on the sixth. I didn’t know you were Mr. Cardigan, otherwise—”
The Complete Casebook of Cardigan, Volume 4: 1935-37 Page 8
