The Complete Cases of the Marquis of Broadway, Volume 1

by John Lawrence

The Marquis swung him back. His blue eyes were hot, hard, now. There were little beads of sweat on his neck. “I’m telling you. With the proper friends, if you come clean with them, you’ve got nothing to fear from Frankie—or what Frankie leaves behind.”

  Ginger shook him off furiously. “You-don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “And I picked you for a smarty! Are you crazy? I’m—”

  “No, I ain’t crazy. And that’s why you’re wasting your wind. I don’t get your angle. What the hell do you want me to do?”

  “Nothing. Just nothing.”

  “Nothing? Well, that’s what I am gonna do—and I don’t need no help from you. I’m for Frankie—six, deuce, and even. That’s all. You’re wasting your wind. You’re wasting—”

  A houseman was walking over from the door. Ginger turned. So did the Marquis.

  Just inside the door stood a little Spaniard with a face like an evil cigar-store Indian, and wearing a black-felt hat. He was about an inch shorter than the Marquis.

  “A guy here to see you,” the houseman said.

  The Marquis said quickly: “Before you see him, Ginger, I want to tell you—”

  He was talking to himself.

  HIS round Irish face was darkly flushed, his eyes strained. He watched Ginger to the second office in the side wall—the one adjoining Frankie May’s office—and watched the Spaniard precede the red-headed assistant inside. The door closed.

  He stood rooted, for ten seconds, his fingers taut in the tight pockets of his neat black Chesterfield, then he went swiftly toward the exit at the top of the stairway.

  He gathered speed, as he went down. As he hit the street, he looked up at the sign that glowed high in the darkness, a block away—Hotel Beveridge. As he started toward it, Johnny Berthold’s shaggy blond head, with its too small hat, popped up in front of him. “Hey—hey—where you—”

  “Get out of my way,” the Marquis said. “It came unstuck.”

  He made more speed with his sideslipping, darting walk than if he had run. He poured into the lobby of the Hotel Beveridge and snapped at the desk clerk, “Go back to sleep,” commandeered an elevator and swung to the eleventh floor.

  He knocked on the door of Room 1120 and heard pacing footsteps cease on the rug within.

  He knocked again and finally said: “Mr. Conrad. This is Marty Marquis.”

  THE Spender opened the door. With his coat off, and an empty shoulder-harness plainly visible across his chest, he looked younger, darker, more vital and savage than ever. He was keyed to a pitch of tension that made his black eyes pinpoints. His wild dark hair was lumped on his head. He stared at the Marquis, tight-lipped.

  “Well, what’s the matter?” the Marquis wanted to know. “A hell of a way to greet a pal.”

  The Spender’s face was troubled, badgered. “Marty—be a good guy and come back in”—he looked at his watch—“fifteen minutes.”

  The Marquis’ tone was hurt: “I like that. No, Spender, I won’t be back at all if I go—but maybe some other jobbies will—with axes.”

  The big man stepped away from the door, ran a taut hand over his thick black hair. “Hell—don’t be like that. Come on in. I—I was just trying to think something out. I—well, what the hell. You’re welcome to take a look round, Marty, if that’s what’s eating you.”

  The Marquis strolled in. It was a simple, single room. The desk-table was pulled out to the center of the room, and the telephone was looped from the little oak box atop which its twin bells and little ringing-hammer protruded. There was no one in the bathroom.

  The Marquis asked casually: “Come to the big town alone, Spender?”

  “Huh? Sure. Yeah. Just thought I’d run up and—and look the situation over, Marty. Listen, you can see I’m not pulling anything here, pal. Only—I’m expecting a phone call. A—a jane, see? It’s got to come within a few minutes or—or it means something important, kind of. Be a good guy and let me be for fifteen minutes.”

  The Marquis slued an armchair around, took off his hard hat and sank down, hooking his hat over the twin bells and the little hammer that topped the phone box, screwed to the wall a foot from his hand. He looked at Spender, as if puzzled: “A phone call?”

  The Spender made a jerky gesture. “No—that is, yes. Listen, be a good guy and scram, please—for God’s sake!”

  The Marquis looked at him quizzically.

  “Hell—all right, Spender, if that’s the way you feel. I just wanted to talk to you about that Frankie May we mentioned. The pup’s become a killer now. We’d just love to—well, we’ll talk about it later.”

  He got up, taking his hat, toed the chair a little further forward.

  The Spender followed him nervously to the door, wiping sweat from his swarthy forehead. “Please don’t be sore, Marty.”

  ON THE sidewalk, in front of the hotel, Johnny Berthold was waiting. The big, yellow-haired hulk fell into step with the Marquis, his Airdale-like face a troubled mask.

  “For God’s sake, Marty—give! What’s going on?”

  “I wish I knew,” the Marquis said.

  “Well, what’s the score? Ain’t I entitled—”

  The Marquis held up a gloved thumb and forefinger, barely spread apart. “It’s like that. It came unstuck. Maybe it got stuck together again. If it did, I’ll have a few nightmares, probably, but I’ll— Oh hell, come on up to the apartment and close your yap. What time is it?”

  “How do I know?”

  “Well, find out, you yap. Look in a window or something.”

  EARLY afternoon sun slanted in at the windows of the Marquis apartment. The inspector held his big square bald head between huge palms and walked up and down the thick carpet. The Marquis sat in a red-leather easy-chair, in bathrobe and slippers. The morning paper lay in the corner.

  Johnny Berthold said vehemently from a corner: “Whatever anybody told you, Inspector, it ain’t so. I was with Marty here every minute since six o’clock this morning. And that’s on the level—among friends or among anybody. Furthermore, we dropped into the Blue Room for a bite on the way up here. We was both in the Blue Room from six to seven, and there’s a dozen to prove it.”

  JOHNNY LYLE looked clean, eager, young, a little dreamy, a little actorish. The abrasions were gone—or hidden—from his head and face, and he was round-eyed.

  The girl had a hat like a pancake, floating on a small part of her shining black hair. Her gown of black, slashed with royal-blue, and black-silk stockings, pumps, made her look very sophisticated, yet vividly young and small.

  They stood side by side, holding their wine-glasses, as if they didn’t exactly know what to do with them. The two pairs of eyes were a little frightened, on the Marquis.

  From the depths of an easy-chair, he told them: “Both of you are to go and see a man named Zimmerman at this address. He’s opening a new night-spot and he—well, he has openings there for your type of work. Tell him I sent you. I’m sorry I lost you your regular jobs but these will be plenty better.”

  Two pairs of worried eyes followed the scribbled-on card he tossed on the table before them. And, as if they were controlled by a wire, both the boy’s round blue eyes and the girl’s velvet dark ones slipped from the card to the spread-open newspaper on the same table and its headline—

  GAMBLER SLAIN

  BODY OF FRANKIE MAY FOUND IN MARSHES OUTSIDE BROOKLYN

  POLICE WITHOUT CLUES

  The phone rang.

  Johnny Berthold’s voice: “I fanned the Spender’s room, like you sent me to do. His ex-room, I should say. He checked out six hours ago. Nothing in the room to interest anybody. But, hey—”

  “Well?”

  “Here’s a funny one. You know these phone boxes—how they got two bells mounted on top and a little hammer in between that vibrates back and forth when the phone rings? Well, somebody stuck a wad of gum in the middle of the little hammers, see? So the phone couldn’t ring. The phone was on a table in the middle of the room, and the b
ox was kind of hidden by the armchair, so that whoever was sitting at the table wouldn’t know—”

  “All right, Sherlock. That’ll do. Don’t sprain that brain. Come on up here.”

  As he hung up, Jerry Lyle stammered, “Mr.—Mr. Marquis. Frankie May—who—what happened to him?”

  “We’ll have a time guessing that!”

  “You mean, some rival gambler, or—”

  “Something like that.” The Marquis examined his wine critically. “But he was a sick man—Broadway sickness we call it, when a man grows a little out of his hat. It’s nearly always fatal. The instrument that does the final trick is unimportant. Things just somehow work out. Just forget the whole thing. Life is but a bowl of cherries and all that rot,” said the Marquis of Broadway.

  Live Man’s Shoes

  It was murder all right—with a dripping-wet negative to prove the Marquis was the author of the crime and send him to the chair. But it took more than a lens to lick the master of Manhattan’s Main Stem. He knew even a camera can lie—when it gets the chance. And this particular one had all the chance in the world.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Marquis Murder

  THE mirror, for once, did the Marquis of Broadway full justice. The reflection that stared from it was trim, dapper, deceptively slight in smoothly tailored dark clothes. Round, weathered face and deep-set small blue eyes had clear color. The imported hard hat, the tight black silk scarf and black kid gloves were all new; gleaming small black shoes might have been. No wrinkle marred the smooth Chesterfield or knife-edged dark trousers.

  Even Broadway Squad lieutenants must have vacations. The Marquis’ had done wonders for him. This was his last night. He had left the Adirondacks behind that morning early, and they were now only pleasant memory—pleasant and miraculous. For the man who turned unhurriedly from the dingy drug store’s mirror to step into a phone booth was a different man from the hag-ridden officer of a month ago. He felt, acted, even looked, younger, and there was fresh live intensity in his small, bright eyes.

  He glanced thoughtfully at a wrist-watch, before he dialed. When, after a moment, he got an answer, his voice was quiet, casual.

  “Sid? Marty Marquis…. Yeah. Just tonight, Sid. I…. Well, what would it be? I need some quick money, Sid…. That’s right…. No, I’d rather come down there, Sid. Though I’d prefer not to go barging in the front way if it can be helped…. Yes, through the Atlas Building behind you and… right. Say half an hour, Sid.”

  THERE was a glowing light in his eyes as he hung up. The maelstrom of thought behind them was almost visible. He missed the hook entirely at the first attempt, then stood with one hand still on the pronged receiver for two full minutes. Then slowly his face molded into an apple-cheeked mask, his vermilion lips to a thin, flat line.

  He stepped from the booth, looked round the drug store. There seemed no patrons whatever in the place. He walked to the side door that let him out onto Fourth Avenue. He sent slow glances in both directions before crossing the sidewalk to climb into the softly purring, small, shiny coupe at the curb, send it scuttling northward. When he reached Fiftieth, he cut crosstown, rumbled finally onto Broadway, turned up the noisy, glaring thoroughfare.

  Fall bite was in the air. It had evidently inspired New York to gaiety. Broadway was jammed tight, taxis honking, black crowds swarming, loudspeakers blatting, lights blazing.

  It took him ten minutes, moving by inches, before he could nose the little coupe into the curb directly before a darkened pawnshop.

  He did not get out. He could not risk chance recognition. It was said that one person out of nine on Broadway knew the Marquis by sight and sight was very good here. The blazing marquee of a lofty two-a-day cathedral of the motion picture was directly opposite, making the street like day.

  He leaned across the seat, taking the hard hat from his tight, rubbly black hair, to run thin eyes over the pawnshop’s front. He could catch only obscured glances of the black, steel-barred windows, as throngs streamed by. It was five minutes before he was content that there was no chink of light visible within.

  He settled back, drove on to the next corner, turned right and then immediately right again onto Seventh, found a parking-spot that placed him fifty yards from the dingy entrance of the rickety Atlas Building, which backed up the pawnshop. Again, he left the car running, while he crossed the dark sidewalk to the building’s uninviting entrance.

  The Atlas was a honeycomb of cheap rehearsal halls. As he threaded the dirty, narrow, imitation-marble lobby, there were more than a dozen youngish, strained-looking people clustered grimly around the moth-eaten elevator cage. From overhead came the monotonous, dispiriting din of shuffling feet and a score of tinny, pounded pianos.

  Stairs at the rear of the lobby led him down into the dim-lit slot of a dirty basement. Half a dozen doors in the walls were closed. No one was in sight. At the back of the basement, an iron door swung open and he was at the foot of six steps which led him up into the small, open court, directly behind the pawnshop.

  The cement-paved court, hemmed on four sides, was fifteen feet wide by twenty-five deep. The rear wall of the pawnshop was a solid battlement of cement, with an oblong abutting backwards out of its middle. The oblong housed the office of the pawnshop. It was windowless, with a gray-painted steel door at one end of the abutting block.

  His rubber-soled shoes were silent. He walked unhurriedly to the corner of the abutment farthest from the gray door, knelt, taking a jack-knife from his pocket. He did not remove the black gloves from his small hands as he snapped open a small saw-blade on the knife. He groped in the angle the abutment made with the cement court, found a lead cable. The cable came out of the ground and bent at once into the back of the pawnshop. Some flaw of installation had left two inches of exposed surface.

  The jack-knife chewed a little square mouth in the lead cable. He dropped the knife back into his pocket, took a small metal disk—brass covered with file-marks, ground to sharpness at the edges. He wrapped a handkerchief around his black glove, held the disk through that, inserted it in the little leaden mouth. Pie jammed it in, turning the disk to operate the cutting edge. Electricity bit quiveringly at his hand and arm.

  He stood up again, looked at his watch, went slowly to the gray steel door. He knocked, hesitated, knocked five times, then twice more.

  PRESENTLY, locks began to click back. The door swung open a few inches, obviously on a chain. Dim yellow light framed a saddle-colored, corrugated face and bald head. The face was mostly a huge, drooping nose, separating little leering brown eyes. The owner looked like an evil Punch. “Who is it?” There was an impediment in his throat. Everything he said sounded like a furtive whisper.

  “Marty, Sid.”

  The chain was thrown off and he squeezed in, between the fat little shirt-sleeved man and a battered oak desk, sauntered over and stood with black-gloved hands in his Chesterfield pockets, while the pawnbroker relocked the door.

  There was nothing in the room to indicate that Sid Lajoie was believed the richest man on Broadway. The walls were cracked, brown plaster. A single dim bulb glowed sickly in the ceiling of the low-ceilinged room. There was no ventilation. The scarred desk and a swivel-chair crowded one end of the room, a greasy-looking cot with a standing, old-fashioned floor-safe, the other. The bare board floor was dirty. Midway the black wall hung a glass-fronted, hanging bookcase, above a yellowed wall-calendar. Facing it, in the front wall, was the closed door to the pawnshop proper with a cuckoo-clock above it.

  “Well, how much, Marty?”

  The squat little man turned back from the locked door, waddled over to the standing safe at the end of the cot, wiping hands on his shiny blue trousers. The safe-door was unlocked. He squatted down, pulling it open, looked up over his shoulder. “Hey—how much?”

  “Ten thousand, Sid.”

  The pawnbroker’s dirty hands flew up. He sat down on the floor with a bump, his mouth open. “Hey! I haven’t got anything like—”


  “Get it up, Sid.”

  The saddle face winced. There was agony in his little leering eyes. “Marty, be reasonable! If I should lose so much—Oy!” He clapped a dirty hand to his forehead.

  “You think I’m not good for it?”

  “Good for it? Yes, if nothing happens to you. But what if they should knock you off or something?”

  “Who?”

  “My God, who, he asks me! After eighteen years running Broadway with blackjacks who, he asks me? Liebchen, if all the goniffs that would do it were laid end to end—”

  “They will be, if they try it. Quit stalling, Sid. I’m in a rush now.”

  The pawnbroker, making as long a process of it as possible, got miserably to his feet, made a vague gesture toward the calendar under the hanging bookcase. “Well—will you give me a note then?”

  “Sure.”

  Still shaking his head, moving at snail’s-pace, Sid pushed the calendar aside. A splayed, dirty thumb reluctantly pressed a spot in the plaster. A square door of plaster spurted open, and the round face of an ultra-modern wall-safe gleamed. The money-lender sighed, worked the combination, turned back presently, whisking bills from the top of a thick pile, between thumb and forefinger.

  “Marty, y’unnerstan’. This should absolutely ruin me, if—”

  His husked words got tangled in his throat. He went rigid, unmoving. Slowly, his bloodshot eyes crawled from the black gun that had quietly appeared in the other’s black-gloved hand, crawled up the sleeve of the Chesterfield to the grim, thin lips, to the agate-hard eyes, now sunk almost out of sight.

  He whispered: “Marty! You— For God’s sake, you don’t—don’t need a gun on old Sid, Marty—”

  “Don’t get excited, Sid, and nobody’ll be hurt. Just put the dough on the desk over there—what you have in your hand and what’s in the other safe, as well.”

  THERE was shocked, incredulous wonder in the old man’s grotesque face. He whispered desperately: “Marty—you don’t have to—to give me no note. You don’t have to give me none, at all.”

  “Get a move on, Sid.”