The Complete Casebook of Cardigan, Volume 4: 1935-37

by Frederick Nebel

  Cardigan wore a half-smile of grim amusement. “What’ve you been doing since they won’t let you ride horses anymore?”

  “Move on,” said Pinky in a bored voice.

  “Or since they let you out of the can in San Diego?”

  Pinky read intently.

  Cardigan said: “Don’t tell me you live here.”

  Pinky sighed, read on.

  “Don’t you find it cold in San Francisco?” Cardigan asked.

  “I find that a bad smell has suddenly come in this lobby.”

  “Sure. You opened your mouth once. Now you’ve opened it twice and the smell is worse. Why don’t you wash it once in a while?”

  Pinky looked blankly at him. “Move off.”

  “I suppose you came in here to get out of the cold.”

  “No. I just killed six guys down the street and cut the throats of six kids. Move off.”

  Cardigan said: “The more you open your mouth the worse the smell gets. Not even your best friends will tell you.” He stood up, said, “Keep your feet clean, Pinky,” and went out.

  Three blocks away he entered a drug store, crowded into a booth and called Balm’s apartment. He said to Balm: “Just for your own information, I saw a young punk down in the lobby of your apartment house. It may mean nothing at all. I just thought I’d tell you…. Why, he’s about five-feet-eight. Thin as a rail. Dark green hat, blue overcoat, blue suit. Narrow face, pink cheeks. About twenty or twenty-one. Pinky Bellmont’s his name. He used to be a jockey…. Don’t mention it.”

  He took a streetcar out to his place on California Street—he always used the same address when he was in San Francisco—two plain rooms in a plain old house. It was economical, and he was a working man.

  Chapter Three

  Lead Poison

  WHEN the telephone bell jangled, he rolled over in bed, pulled on the bedlight and, picking up the phone, saw that the hands of the tarnished old alarm-clock pointed to two A.M.

  “Yeah?” he yawned into the mouthpiece. “Oh, hello, Sergeant. Don’t you ever go to bed?… Sure I was asleep…. Now is that nice?… All right, spill it. It’s probably screwy…. All right, don’t like it. You can’t wake me up at two in the morning and expect me to be cheerful.” He sat up in bed suddenly, his hands tightening on the instrument. “When?” he muttered. “Yeah…. Who called you?… No, never mind. I’ll come over.”

  He hung up and swung out of bed at the same time. His worn cotton pajamas were twisted around his body and one of his pajama legs was bunched up under his knee. He stripped, bleary-eyed with sleep; got into his undershirt and shorts and going into the bathroom doused his face with cold water. He took one sweep at his hair with a comb and considered himself groomed. In five minutes he was dressed.

  California Street was a wide, deserted thoroughfare. He saw neither streetcar nor taxi. The wind was raw, damp, and cut him to the bone. He started walking east, his hands dug into his coat pockets, his head bent deep against the wind. When he had walked three blocks a nighthawk taxi creaked around a corner and Cardigan winged it, told the driver where to go.

  “And step on it, pal.”

  CARDIGAN climbed out of the cab a block from the place, paid up, and went ahead on foot. Outside the house where Mae Ling lived, a small group of men huddled, curious and murmuring. Besides the ambulance, there were two small inconspicuous cars. A cop was leaning against the iron handrail of the front steps. Cardigan slanted past him, climbed.

  The cop turned, poked him in the small of the back with a nightstick and said: “Hey, you live here?”

  Cardigan, angered by the jab, turned and growled: “Look out how you use that stick, copper!”

  “You want it used on your head?”

  A voice said from an upper window: “What’s going on down there?”

  Cardigan looked up. “A jumpy cop, Sarge.”

  “Oh, you, Cardigan? Get up here!”

  Cardigan plowed into the hall, climbed the stairs and found the upper corridor littered with half a dozen uniformed policemen. Mae Ling’s door was opened and Dave Brice appeared there with a pearl-gray Stetson on the back of his head. His suit was gray and although it was well pressed it still looked baggy. He wore a green-striped silk shirt and a black bow tie. A big-boned man, he was broad as a garage door, with leathery skin, big hard white teeth and a jaw like a spade.

  He said: “They’re just about to take him out.”

  “Look out,” said Cardigan, and twisted past Brice into the little living-room.

  Sam Chang was on a stretcher and two men were lifting it. The Chinese op’s eyes were closed but his body was writhing in agony, sweat was pouring down his face. Cardigan moistened his lips, said in a low voice that he suddenly found clogged: “Where’d they get him?”

  The ambulance doctor said: “In the arm—left arm.”

  “But—hell, he’s in agony!”

  “Yeah,” the doctor said. “And he can’t talk. Something goofy. The wound’s a minor one but—” He shook his head. “I dunno. I got to get him to the hospital quick. It’s beyond me.”

  Cardigan said: “Sam—Sam—”

  “No soap,” the doctor said. “He can’t talk. Look out, buddy. It’s a hurry-up case.”

  Cardigan stepped aside, watched them carry Sam Chang out. Dave Brice watched too, and when they had got Sam Chang into the corridor the sergeant closed the door, put his palms together, pressed them against each other and took four long strides the length of the room.

  Detective Adolph Bodenmeyer came out of the bedroom polishing a pair of steel-rimmed spectacles. He put them on, dipped his fat head toward Cardigan and mumbled something.

  “What?” said Cardigan.

  Bodenmeyer mumbled, gestured.

  Cardigan shrugged.

  Dave Brice said: “Bodie’s embarrassed. He was taking a snooze when this call came in and we got away so fast that Bodie forgot his false teeth—left them in a glass of water.”

  Cardigan was toeing a spot on the rug. “This where Sam Chang was found?”

  “Yeah.” Brice sat on the arm of the divan and eyed Cardigan shrewdly. “The guy in the apartment downstairs heard the shot at half past one. He’s an old guy, a tailor. He heard, right after the shot, somebody run down the stairs. But he didn’t look out. He was scared. He rang us. What was Sam Chang doing here?”

  Cardigan said: “I’d like to know.”

  “Was he working on the throne-chair case with you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you don’t know what he was doing here?”

  Cardigan shook his head. He said: “Maybe he tailed somebody here. He must have.”

  Brice stood up, took a look out the window, then turned and said: “What about that business in the Pearl of Nanking Café?”

  “Oh, you heard about that, eh?” Cardigan said.

  BODENMEYER gestured and made some unintelligible sounds and Dave Brice said irritably: “Either go back and get your teeth, Adolph, or shut up.” He slapped his blue sharp eyes at Cardigan. “Sure I heard about it. It’s my business to hear about things in Chinatown five minutes after they happen, sometimes five minutes before. Who was the dame?”

  Cardigan shrugged. “A pick-up. I thought it’d be fun.”

  Brice moved his body inside his clothes as though it itched. “Trying to fox me?”

  “I wouldn’t fox you, Dave.”

  Brice grinned, showing most of his big hard teeth. “No you wouldn’t!” He grunted sardonically. “I hear that the minute the shot busted the window you uncorked for the door and was down in the street before all the glass stopped falling.”

  “Why not? If a guy takes a swing at me with a gun—”

  Brice took the wings of his tie between his fingers and put his head far back without taking his eyes off Cardigan. “Jackie, my boy, you half-expected that shot. When it happened, you uncorked for the street—you wanted that guy. You missed him and when you got back to the Pearl of Nanking Café the gal was gone. If the guy w
as the gal’s guy and you figured, as you said, that he took a shot at you just because he was jealous, you wouldn’t be dope enough to go out as fast as you did after him.”

  Cardigan spread his palms. “That’s the way it is, Dave.”

  Brice gave him a long hard stare. “This is the way it was, fella. Let me figure it out this way. You offer the gal a bribe for some information and take her to the Pearl of Nanking Café. She’s being tailed by a guy who sees you and the gal go in and he figures she’s going to spill to you, so he takes a shot at her. You slam out after him but don’t get him. The gal’s gone when you get back, so you get Sam Chang to find her. Chang gets a line on her through some of his Chinese friends and comes here to get her. She thinks he’s somebody sent by Tom Gow to polish her off and she shoots first.”

  Cardigan said: “If that’s the way you figure it out, Dave, all right. You’re a better man than I am.”

  “The thing is,” Brice said slowly, incisively, “that I have to figure it out, but you know—you know. The dame that rents this apartment is named Mae Ling. I never heard of her. But I never heard of Charley Sun, either, until we picked him up. He’s the clerk at the express company.” He set his jaw, squinted one eye. “I’ve been patient with that guy, but now I’m going back and slap him silly.”

  Cardigan said: “What makes you think there’s any connection between him and the girl that owns this apartment?”

  “Don’t ask foolish questions. We pick him up because he makes a phone call just before the throne-chair is to be moved. You’re working on that case—and you’re with a Chinese girl in a restaurant when somebody takes a shot at you. Then Sam Chang is found shot in a Chinese girl’s apartment. It’s good enough for me, Jackie. If you don’t want to play ball, I’ll play myself.”

  Cardigan shot at him: “Don’t forget, baby, that as soon as that throne-chair was stolen I went around to you and offered to work on it with you. You stuck your big nose in the air and said, ‘I don’t need any kibitizers’.” He added in a lower voice: “Since then, Balm’s offered a cash reward, and I see you’ve changed your mind.”

  Brice’s eyes looked chill. “And I see you’ve changed yours, too. Now you’re a male Garbo and want to be alone. Well,” he said, his voice rising angrily, “be alone! Go it alone! I don’t need your help! To hell with you!”

  “That’s all, Dave?”

  “I could say the same things over in dirtier language, you big bum!”

  “Save it for the gutter, Dave—it drains off faster.”

  Cardigan turned, stepped on something that rolled beneath his foot. He bent down and picked up a small, round black button studded with a metal eyelet.

  Brice said: “What’s that?”

  Cardigan dropped it into the sergeant’s palm and Brice said: “H’m. Button off a woman’s shoe. The Ling woman….”

  He looked up narrowly at Cardigan. “Gonna be a hold-out, huh?”

  “I’m a big bum, huh? I’m a kibitzer, huh?”

  Brice rasped: “Hell, don’t be a sorehead! A guy’s liable to say things when he’s mad.”

  “What are you doing now, sucking around?”

  Brice’s eyes flashed. “Nuts to you!” he exploded, and turned on his heel.

  CARDIGAN sat on a metal-frame chair in the receiving-room of the hospital. It was four in the morning. A white-shaded light glowed on the white wall. Another light, green-shaded, glowed on a flat-topped desk. The big op had not removed his overcoat. His head was forward, his chin on his chest, and he dozed fitfully. A white-coated interne came in, took off his glasses and sat down, shaking his head.

  “No luck yet,” he said.

  Cardigan’s head bobbed up. “The other doctor get here?”

  “Yes. He can’t make anything of it. Both agree that it’s a poison of some kind but they haven’t been able to recognize it.” He added: “They’ve got the bullet out. It’s impregnated with the poison.”

  Cardigan said: “I knew a tough dago in Kansas City who used to rub garlic on his bullets.”

  “Oh, we’ve had cases like that—but never one like this.”

  “You think he’ll pull through?”

  The interne gave a short laugh. “If we knew the nature of the poison, it’d be a simple matter. But he’s in agony. The wound’s really nothing at all—but this poison has started into his system and we can’t—”

  A nurse came in, said, “Baggot’s licked,” and went out by another door.

  “H’m,” the interne said.

  “Listen—” Cardigan stood up. “What are you doing, dragging in any doctor off the streets that isn’t busy?”

  The interne smiled compassionately. “Brother, Baggot’s good.”

  “There’s good and there’s excellent. How about Stedter?”

  “He’s a Seattle man.”

  “I don’t care where he is. Get him…. Don’t be afraid. I’ll raise the dough somewhere. Tell him to grab a plane.”

  Baggot looked in, said: “It looks pretty bad, Mr. Cardigan. I’m calling in two colleagues. Just reached one in Sausalito and the other’s on his way over.”

  The interne said: “Cardigan’s set on Stedter.”

  “Stedter’s tops!” Baggot said earnestly. He looked at Cardigan. “That true? You want Stedter?”

  “Sure I want Stedter!”

  Baggot cried: “Swell! I’ll phone him myself!”

  “That sounds like action,” Cardigan muttered. “I’m going out and tank up on coffee. I’ll be back.”

  HE FOUND a lunchroom five blocks away, its windows steamed up. The place was empty except for a couple of taxi-drivers and the goose-necked counterman, his bare arms covered with tattoo designs.

  Cardigan said: “Two mugs of coffee and don’t put any milk in them.”

  He thought of Sam Chang’s wife on her way home and wondered how he could ever face her if Sam died. He knew he should never have planted Sam in that room—he should have stayed there himself. The coffee came and he drank it—black and thick and hot. It burned his insides. Instead of slamming out after that lad who had taken a shot at him in the Pearl of Nanking Café he should have stayed with Mae Ling.

  When he returned to the hospital the nurse said: “Why don’t you go home? You can’t do any good here.”

  “Why don’t you mind your own business?” he grumbled, flopping to a chair.

  “All right, be nasty!”

  He shook his head. “Excuse it, sister. I didn’t mean it.” He made a face, as if he were all mixed up. “I should never have let that guy—” He broke off, shook his head.

  “Go ahead—go home,” she urged. “He’s unconscious now,” she added. “There are four doctors in conference now. They’re doing the best they can. Stedter’s unable to come—he’s deathly ill. Go on, be a good egg—go home and get some sleep.”

  He stood up again, muttered: “I guess you’re right.”

  He went out and walked five blocks in the empty, windy darkness; then stopped, thought for a couple of minutes and turned and walked back two blocks. He crossed the street, cut through an alley, walked three more blocks and pushed into a police station. To the man at the desk he said: “Brice in?”

  BRICE straddled a chair, his arms draped over the back of it. He wore a heavy long-sleeved undershirt and one strap of his suspenders was up, the other down. His hair was tousled and he looked fagged out. Bodenmeyer, his mouth now glaringly full of false teeth, had his collar off and his sleeves rolled up. He sat at the desk drinking black coffee from a tin can.

  The Chinese sitting on the straight-backed chair, strapped to it across the chest, was Charley Sun. Two powerful lights streamed into his face and his skin looked chalk-white. He was thin, tall, and at present looked only half conscious.

  Cardigan, closing the door and leaning back against it, said: “Got him pretty well sapped, huh?”

  “I ain’t laid a hand on him,” Dave Brice growled. “And I don’t know who’s more worn out, me or him. The kid can take it�
�plenty.” He looked Cardigan over from head to foot with sultry eyes. “I don’t remember inviting you here.”

  Bodenmeyer said: “Now, Dave—now, Dave.”

  “You pipe down,” Brice told him. “Teeth or no teeth—you always say nothing better than any guy I know.”

  Bodenmeyer said to Cardigan: “Dave is upset. Whenever Dave is upset—well, he is upset. Have some coffee, Cardigan.”

  Cardigan shook his head, and to Brice, “What’d you get out of Sun?”

  Brice cackled. “What’d I get out of Sun!”

  Cardigan went across the office and stood in front of the Chinese. “Boy,” he said, “Sam Chang might die—he will die if they don’t find out what kind of poison’s on the bullet. So far, only an old Siamese throne-chair’s been stolen—or about a hundred thousand bucks. If Sam Chang dies”—he dropped his voice dangerously—“that’ll be murder. Murder, Charley Sun. That’s different. Savvy?”

  Charley Sun’s head rolled from side to side and the whites of his eyes shone as his lids rolled up and down fitfully.

  Cardigan said: “Last Saturday night you were at the Oriental Music Box with Mae Ling.”

  Brice jumped up, his lips whipping taut. “Where the hell did you find that out?”

  “Sam Chang found it out a few hours before he was killed.”

  Brice boiled. “You—you told me you didn’t know—”

  “Quit butting in,” Cardigan said. He said to Charley Sun: “I made Mae Ling meet me. She was afraid to come to my office so we met at the Pearl of Nanking Café. I wanted to know where Tom Gow was. She knew but she wouldn’t tell. When I threatened to turn her over to Dave Brice she signaled a guy in the street and he took a shot at me. Mae disappeared and I didn’t get the guy. Sam Chang and I went to her apartment and I planted Chang there in case she came back. The cops found Sam Chang shot in her apartment.”

  Dave Brice looked very dark and forbidding. He snapped: “I knew you were lying the pants off me before! Damn you, Jackie, I got a mind to toss you in the can!”

  “If you’ve got a mind, Dave, use it—and shut up. I’ve thought things out. I wanted that reward—sure. But to hell with it now. To hell with the throne-chair. I’ve got to save Sam Chang—and I’m taking water—I’m telling you just how much I know.”