“How the hell do I know?” Mike asked cheerfully and turned to Hank Ross. “A character,” he said. “Funny thing, he’s not a bad investigator. Barring being a bastard filled with more than his share of the milk of human larceny.”
There was the rasping sound of a bolt being withdrawn, followed by the scrape of a second; the men in the hallway could next hear a heavy bar being removed and apparently tilted against a wall. The door finally swung away from the sill the length of a safety chain. A suspicious eye surveyed the two men, after which the door closed again to permit the chain to be removed. At long last the panel swung back to admit them. Mike walked in, surveying the protection with honest wonder.
“What’s the matter, Russ? Somebody after you?”
Jennings was busy replacing the hardware.
“Nobody’s after me,” he said sourly. “What’s the matter? You just move to this town? This neighborhood’s changed. And I don’t bulk as big as you.”
It was an understatement. Jennings’ five feet six barely came to Mike’s shoulder, and his scrawny body looked as if it hadn’t had a good meal in years.
“So why don’t you move?”
“You got any idea the rents those thieves are asking over on the East Side?” Jennings led the way into the living room. He pointed to a sagging sofa and sat down in a straight kitchen-type chair. The windows were without curtains or drapes; old-fashioned shutters were closed and barred. Jennings looked uncertainly at the two men.
He said, “Sit down.”
Ross tried the sofa and almost fell through; he was saved by a broken spring. He struggled to the edge and sat there. Mike Gunnerson preferred the arm of the sofa; it wiggled under his weight, but held.
“All right,” Jennings said. “I know Mr. Ross, at least by sight. Well, what brings you two out slumming? I’m pretty sure it wasn’t to tout me on a pad in the high-rent district.”
“No,” Mike said. “It wasn’t.” He leaned forward. “Russ, some time ago a man named Raymond Neeley came to you and wanted to hire you to do a job for him. Right?”
Jennings’ face could have been carved from stone. He sat motionless, his small hands on his thin knees. He said, “You’re telling it.”
“What did he want?”
There were several moments of silence. Through the closed shutters came the normal sounds of the neighborhood; a child screaming, the screech of skidding tires, a derisive hoot from some boys in the street, and the distant wail of a siren. Then Jennings shook his head.
“You know better than that, Mike. That’s a confidence between me and my client.”
“I know,” Mike said sympathetically. “And you don’t want to go down to the morgue and ask his permission to divulge.” His voice lost its false humility, becoming harder. “Stop the crap, Russ. This is old Mike asking, remember? The guy you owe a few favors to, like not breaking your back for trying to steal the Webley account from me? What did you think, I didn’t know? All right, now, let’s take it from the beginning without the violins in the background. What did he want?”
“There are people who would rather—”
“Russ,” Mike said, his voice deadly serious, “I’m going to ask you one last time and then I’m going to lose my temper. As for the people you’re talking about, I know them, too, and they won’t save you from getting set on your ass if you don’t open up. Like you say, I bulk larger than you. Now, what did he want?”
Russ Jennings tried to look unhappy, but he was only weakly attempting to calculate how he could possibly make a profit without getting hurt. At last he decided it would be risky at best with Mike Gunnerson, and the unhappiness became real. Mike nudged him verbally.
“Well?”
“He wanted me to trace some dame,” Jennings said sullenly.
“Whose name was Grace Melisi?”
“If you know, what are you asking for?”
“Practice,” Mike said coldly as Hank watched entranced. “What did he give you for starters?”
“She had a sister in Albany. That’s where she came from originally.”
“Albany, New York?”
“Is there another one?” Jennings asked, disgusted.
“Several. And?”
“And what?”
“Russ,” Mike said, “if I’ve got to drag this out of you like pulling teeth, I’d just as soon pull teeth. Don’t sit there and act like you’re getting paid by the word—”
“I ain’t getting paid at all!”
“You’re so right,” Gunnerson said. “Did you find her?”
“I didn’t even start looking,” Jennings said. “Neeley was a policy peddler at the time; I knew that. And he’d been in a jam before with the top boys about some clip he tried to swing outside of school without nobody knowing—”
“Except you knew.”
Jennings looked scandalized. “Me? I never! Well, sure, later, when it was in the papers about him getting shot, I could put two and two together. I ain’t exactly stupid, you know.”
“That’s what everybody keeps trying to tell me,” Mike said, “but I’m not sold yet. So?”
“So I went upstairs and asked if the deal was kosher, and the answer was ‘No.’ So I dropped it.”
Mike frowned across the room at the little man sitting rigidly on the kitchen chair.
“Why did he want to find her?”
“Why don’t you ask him?”
“Why don’t you call your doctor, because you’ll be needing him shortly?” Mike said. “It’s answer period, Russ.”
“Well,” Jennings said grumpily, “it was a dumb question. You know about the deal. He wasn’t going to measure her for diamonds.”
“So when you dropped it, who did he go to?”
“He didn’t,” Jennings said. “The boys upstairs told him to keep out of grief or go find another job. He listened.”
“So nobody ever did dig her up?”
“If they did, I don’t know it.”
There was a moment’s pause. Then Mike sighed deeply.
“Russ,” he said with deadly emphasis, “I guess you didn’t hear what I said before. I came here for information about Grace Melisi and I want it. If you can’t back up that cock-and-bull yarn of yours, I’m going to have to remember that Webley account deal.”
Jennings eyed him coldly for a moment and then walked over to a scarred and battered filing cabinet leaning drunkenly against one wall, opened a drawer, and came up with a handful of folders. He leafed through them and finally selected one.
“You don’t believe me, see if you believe this.”
Mike took the folder and opened it. A single sheet of paper was inside, headed in surprisingly neat hand printing: Grace Melisi. Beneath it was the date: March 23, 1965. Beneath this was her description; Mike took out a pencil and pad and copied it down in detail. The fact that there was no photograph had been noted in the file. A single line completed the sparse information: Sister, Anne Melisi, 1410 Lincoln Blvd., Albany, New York. The balance of the sheet was blank except for a scribbled note: Discontinued. Mike added the address of Anne Melisi to his other notes and handed the folder back.
“You always keep seven-year-old files in your current filing cabinet, Russ?”
Jennings hesitated a moment and then shrugged.
“What the hell! I read where Ross had the kid’s case and I dug it out. I figured maybe I could be of some use to him on the case …”
“Just take it from us and stay away from the case,” Gunner-son suggested pleasantly. “Don’t remind me I don’t like you.” He rose and moved toward the door. Ross joined him. Jennings, his jaw tense, walked over and started to dismantle his fortress at the front door again. He finished and dragged the door open.
“Out,” he said coldly.
“A pleasure,” Mike said, and walked down the hallway without looking back.
The two men trotted down the steps and walked, side by side, out into the street. A cruising cab responded to Hank’s raised arm and they clim
bed in. Mike gave the address of their office building and leaned back.
“Just a quick check before turning in,” he said.
Ross said, “You were pretty tough with Jennings, weren’t you? After all, suppose we did have to pay him something for his information? The client can afford it.”
“I’m not worried about the client,” Mike said, and grinned. “You’ll find that out when I send in my bill. But I’ve known Russ Jennings a long time. All he’ll ever get from me is sweat. Or the back of my hand.”
“You know,” Ross said thoughtfully, “I believe that’s the first time I’ve ever seen you pull muscle on a person.”
“It’s easy when you outweigh them by a hundred pounds,” Gunnerson said cheerfully. “You probably never saw me handle midgets before.”
The cab drew up before their building. Again Gunnerson paid and led the way to the locked doors. A dim bulb within illuminated the unoccupied night porter’s desk, but Gunnerson, who worked nights as often as days, had his own key. He unlocked the door, locked it after them, and led the way to an empty elevator cab whose light angled down to the shadowy lobby.
They rode to the proper floor jerkily; Mike brought the car to an inexpert stop almost a foot below level, jockeyed the control handle a moment to end up a foot above level, said “The hell with it!” and tugged the door open. They stepped down to a silent hallway; the light from Mike’s office was the only sign of life in the quiet building. Mike opened the door; his night telephone operator, a college student, laid down the book he had been studying.
“Hello, Mr. Gunnerson. Hello, Mr. Ross.”
“Hello, Tod. Anything new?”
“A bunch of reports on your desk. Nothing else.”
“Right,” Gunnerson said. “Hank, come in and sit down while I run through these reports.”
“In a minute,” Ross said. “Tod, do me a favor? Do you have the number of my answering service there?”
“Same as ours, Mr. Ross.”
“Give them a ring, please. See if I had any messages.”
“Sure,” Tod said, and plugged in a cord. He dialed, spoke a few words, waited, and hung up. “Nothing, Mr. Ross.”
“Then get me the Marlborough Hotel on Lexington, would you? Room 803.”
“Right.” A rotary file was consulted, a dial twirled. Ross waited impatiently. Tod shook his head. “No answer. Want the desk?”
“Please.”
Ross picked up the nearest phone as Tod inserted a plug. “Hello? Desk?”
“Yes, sir.”
“My name is Ross—Hank Ross—”
“Oh, yes, Mr. Ross!”
“I was with a young man who checked into the hotel this afternoon a little after three. His name is William Dupaul, in Room 803. He doesn’t answer his telephone. It’s quite important that I reach him. I wonder if you might have him paged?”
“I remember, Mr. Ross; I’d just come on duty when you came in. One moment.” This time the delay was, indeed, only a moment. The desk clerk sounded genuinely sorry. “I’m afraid there wouldn’t be much point in paging him, Mr. Ross. Your note about meeting him for dinner is still in his box, together with his key.”
“I see,” Ross said slowly. “Thank you.”
He hung up, frowned at the telephone a moment, and then walked into the inner office. Mike Gunnerson was tilted back in his chair, the lamp behind him throwing a shaft of light over his shoulder onto the sheet he was reading. He looked up.
“What’s the matter, Hank?”
“Billy Dupaul’s not in his room. He hasn’t been back to the hotel since he left this afternoon.”
Gunnerson grinned.
“What do you think? In jail for seven of the last eight years, he’s going to be cooped up all alone when he doesn’t have to? He’s over on Eighth Avenue somewhere in the forties, making up for lost time.”
“Maybe,” Ross conceded, but he didn’t sound sure of himself. He shrugged. “What’s new in the reports?”
“Well,” Mike said, indicating the paper he was holding, “I had a man check with that prison chaplain at Attica—Father Swiaki. It seems the good Father simply mislaid the key to the equipment room. He looked all over, remembered his laundry, went to the prison laundry, found his bag, and the key was in the pocket of a sweater. So he opened the door and the game got started. A half hour late.”
“Well,” Ross said thoughtfully, “that’s a little something, anyway. Not a great deal, but something.”
“Which brings up the question I raised before. Do we go after the umpire?”
“Just get his name and address,” Ross said. “I may want to put him on the stand, if Gorman brings the riot into it. To confuse things, if nothing more.”
“Right,” Mike said. He made a note, yawned cavernously, and came to his feet, looking at his watch. “Almost twelve! And I want to be on that six o’clock plane to Glens Falls!”
The telephone rang. Mike leaned over and picked it up.
“Yes, Tod?”
“Don Evans from Glens Falls, Mr. Gunnerson.”
Gunnerson cupped the receiver. He said, “Don Evans. Maybe he got something on the old man’s finances …” He removed his hand and listened. The unintelligible crackle of sound from the receiver could be heard in the quiet room. Ross waited patiently. Gunnerson’s mouth dropped open from shock.
“What?”
He looked up at Ross.
“Somebody just put a thirty-caliber bullet through Jim Marshall as he was parking his car. He’s dead.…”
CHAPTER
12
For the last time,” Ross said into the telephone, his voice tight, “where were you last night?”
Through the glass of the telephone booth he could see Mike Gunnerson pointing significantly toward his watch and then out toward the runway where the Mohawk plane, all lights lit, stood ready to take off. Beyond, the lights bordering the runway tapered to infinity in the darkness. Ross nodded his understanding and went back to his call.
“Look,” Billy Dupaul said, “I’m sleepy. I’ll talk to you later.”
“You’ll talk to me now!” Ross said. “Where were you last night?”
“Well, if you want to know, I was walking.”
“Walking? All night?”
“Sure, all night; what’s wrong with it? You ever spend all your nights locked up, Mr. Ross? Year after year after year? And then suddenly find yourself free when you didn’t think there was a chance in hell of being free? Well, you walk, Mr. Ross. You walk.”
“Did you stop any place? Any bar? Any restaurant?”
“No, I just walked.”
“Can you prove it?”
“Why should I have to prove it?”
“Never mind that. Can you prove it?”
“Can you prove I didn’t?”
Ross sighed hopelessly. “Where did you walk?”
“How should I know where I walked? All around.”
“You walked all night in this weather?”
“What’s wrong with the weather?”
“It rained last night after midnight,” Ross said.
“It did? Look, Mr. Ross, I appreciate everything you did for me yesterday, but if you want to cross-examine me, wait until I’ve had a little sleep, will you? I’m going to hang up.”
The telephone clicked in Ross’s ear. He slammed the receiver down with irritation and pulled the door of the booth open. Mike grabbed his arm.
“Come on! It’s bad enough getting up at this ungodly hour, without missing the plane you got up for. Let’s go!”
The two men hurried out to the runway and climbed the aluminum steps. The first faint strands of dawn were tinting the sky to the east as the stewardess closed the door behind them and latched it. The thunk of the lock going into place seemed to reprimand them for their lateness. They sat down and fastened their seat belts. Mike pulled his tight and looked over at Ross.
“Okay. Now, what did he say?”
“He said he was walking all ni
ght.”
“Walking all night?”
“That was my line,” Ross said. “Anyway, that’s what he said. He also said he was sleepy.”
“I can imagine. He didn’t happen to be walking in Glens Falls, was he?”
“If he was, he didn’t mention it. Let’s hope not. One murder and one riot are enough at the moment. As you once said,” Ross went on, “Billy Dupaul is either the most unlucky man in the world, or the most stupid. I’m still not sure which.”
“Did you tell him about Marshall?”
“No,” Ross said shortly. “If he did it, he alreadys knows. If he didn’t do it, there’s no rush to bother him. He’ll read about it in the papers.” He yawned and leaned his head back against the headrest, closing his eyes. “Wake me when we get there. I haven’t been walking all night, but I’m sleepy just the same.”
Lieutenant Ernest (Ernie to his friends) Lamport was a tall, well-built, pleasant-faced man in his late forties, with a deep voice and a ready smile when he wanted to use it. At the moment he was using it very little. His hands were surprisingly small for a man his size and he used them frequently to gesture. At the moment he stood beside Gunnerson and Ross, pointing, while Don Evans stood in the background. The lieutenant’s breath steamed in the chill Adirondack air.
“We figure the killer stood over there on the edge of the woods and waited for Marshall to come home. There’s a yard light that can be switched on from either the garage or the house. Marshall apparently drove into the garage, got out of the car, switched on the yard light from inside the garage, and then went outside to close the garage door. In the glare of that yard light, and at that distance, he would have been a perfect target. And he was.”
Gunnerson looked at the scarred door where the fatal bullet had been removed.
“Where was he hit?”
“The bullet got him in the back, left of the spine, went through his lung and nicked one of the main heart arteries, came out and hit the door. He was dead when we got here.”
“Who gave the alarm?”
“A neighbor said he heard a shot and looked out, saw this shadow on the ground, went out and it was Marshall.”
“Did he see anyone leaving?”
A Handy Death Page 13
