Ann whispered, “Mike?”
I looked around to bark something at her but nothing would come out because Ann had thrown the robe over the back of the couch and stood there in the center of the room, a living statue in high-heeled shoes smoking a cigarette that reflected orange-colored lights from her eyes. She stood with her feet spread apart and her hand on her hip, daring me with every muscle in her body. My blonde had a brunette base, but it only made her more intriguing, enough to make me forget about the overnight case and killings and beatings that left you too sore to move.
She stood there until I grabbed her and squeezed so hard she breathed into my mouth, then she bit me on the neck and slid out of my hands to the couch where I had to follow her, and the lamp made undulating shadows across the room that seemed to whisper with the sound of our breathing until it increased to a shout, then was still.
My hand shook when I reached for a cigarette. Ann grinned up at me, and her voice was soft, almost musical. “I was wondering if I could be important to anybody any more.”
I kissed her again. “You can be important any time. You happy now that you steered me right off the track?”
“Yes.”
She didn’t say a word when I stood up and went back to the table, but her eyes followed me every second. I dragged on the cigarette again, but it caught on my chest and I put it out. This time I laid the case down and flipped open the lid.
I whistled softly under my breath. The bag was crammed full of baby clothes, every one brand-new. I fingered them slowly, the tiny sweaters, boots, caps, other things I had no name for. At the bottom of the bag were two soft cotton blankets, neatly folded, waiting to be used.
A dozen thoughts were going through my head, but only one made any sense. The redhead was a mother. Somebody was the father. A wonderful, beautiful setup for blackmail and murder if ever I saw one. Only Nancy wasn’t that kind of a girl. Then there was one other thing. All the clothes were new. Some of them showed where price tags had been glued on. What about that?
I ran my hand through the pockets of the lining. The ones on the side brought up an assortment of safety pins, a lipstick and a small mirror. The lid pocket held a folder of snapshots. I opened them out and looked at them, seeing a Nancy different from the one I had known. Here was a young girl, sixteen perhaps, on the beach with a boy. Then another with a different boy. Several had been taken on an outing or a picnic, but Nancy seemed to show no special preference for any one fellow.
She was different then, with the freshness of a newly opened flower. There were no harsh lines in her face, no wise look about her eyes. She was new then, new and lovely. Her mouth and eyes seemed to smile at me, as if knowing that someday these pictures would be here in front of me. There were only two that showed her hands clearly, but in each one I saw the same thing. She was wearing her ring.
I looked over the backgrounds carefully, hoping to spot some landmark, but there was none. They showed only stretches of water or sand. When I flipped them over there were no marks indicating date or the outfit that developed them. Nothing. Now my blind alley had a wall at the end. A nice high wall that I couldn’t get over without a ladder.
I heard Ann speak to me then. She asked, “Does it help you?”
An idea was beginning to jell and I nodded. I pulled out my check book and wrote in it, then laid the slip on the table. I made up my mind as to the value, but just the same I queried, “What are you asking for it?”
When she didn’t answer I turned around and looked at her, still lying there naked and smiling. Finally she said, “Nothing. You’ve paid for it already.”
I snapped the bag shut and went over to the closet for my hat, then opened the door. The redhead had been right all along the line, but Mr. Berin still owed me five hundred bucks, to be deposited in the morning. Ann would get that trip she wanted.
I winked at her and she winked back, then the door clicked shut behind me.
Chapter Eight
I DIDN’T GET TO SLEEP THAT NIGHT. Instead, I laid the contents of the bag out in front of me and sat there smoking one cigarette after another trying to figure out what it meant. Baby clothes. Some pictures. A battered overnight bag. All of them the redhead’s. How long ago? Where? Why?
There was beer in the refrigerator and I finished off bottle after bottle, sipping it slowly, thinking, letting my mind wander back and forth over the facts I had. They were mighty little when you tried to put them all together.
The sun came up over the window sill chasing the night out and I remembered to call Mr. Berin. He answered the phone himself and this time the sleep was in my voice. “Mike again.”
“Good morning. You’re up early.”
“I haven’t been to bed yet.”
“You’ll pay for lack of self-discipline in later years, young man.”
“Maybe,” I said tonelessly, “but tonight you pay. I left my friend a check for five hundred bucks.”
“Fine, Mike. I’ll take care of it at once. Did you learn anything from your... shall I say source?”
“Not a damn thing, but I will, I will.”
“Then I can consider the money well spent. But please be careful, I don’t want you running into any more trouble.”
“Trouble’s an occupational hazard in this racket, Mr. Berin. I can usually take care of it one way or another. But what I got here won’t mean trouble for me. I haven’t got the angle lined up yet, but I can see it coming.”
“Good. You’ve got my curiosity aroused now. Is it a secret or can you ... ?”
“No secret. I have an overnight bag that had been packed with baby clothes. That and a folder of pictures.”
“Baby clothes?”
“They were the redhead’s ... or her baby’s.”
He mulled over it a moment and admitted that it presented quite a puzzle, quite a puzzle. I agreed with him.
“What do you intend to do now?” he asked me.
“I don’t know. I’m too sleepy to do much, that’s for sure.”
“Then get to bed by all means. Keep in touch with me whenever you think I can be of use.”
I said all right and hung up. My eyes were burning holes in my head and too much beer had me stumbling over things. I took a last drag on the butt and clinched it, then lay back on the couch and let the sleep come, wonderful blessed sleep that pulled a curtain over all the ugly things and left you with nothing but a nebulous dream that had no meaning or importance.
There was a bell. It kept ringing insistently and I tried to brush it away like a fly and it wouldn’t leave. Finally I opened my eyes and came back to the present with the telephone going off behind my head. I squirmed around and picked it up, wanting to throw it against the wall.
Velda said hello twice, and when I didn’t answer right away, “Mike ... is that you? Mike, answer me!”
“It’s me, sugar. What do you want?”
She was mad, but there was relief in her voice. “Where the devil have you been? I’ve been calling every saloon in town all morning.”
“I’ve been right here.”
“I called there four times.”
“I’ve been asleep.”
“Oh, out all night again. Who was she?”
“Green eyes, blue hair, purple skin. What do you want, or aren’t I the boss any more?”
“Pat called early this morning. Something to do with Feeney Last. He wants you to call him back when you can.”
“Well, why didn’t you say so!” I sat up quickly, my hand over the cutoff bar. “See you later, Velda. I’ll buzz him right away.”
I held the bar down, let it up and dialed police headquarters. The guy at the desk said yes, Captain Chambers had been in, but he wasn’t now. No, he couldn’t say where he was. Official business, and did I want to leave a message. I wanted to swear but I couldn’t very well so I told him never mind and hung up.
It was five minutes to twelve and the day was half shot. I gathered up the baby clothes and folded them back into th
e bag, stuffing the photos in the same top pocket, then I went in and took a shower.
Right in the middle of it the phone rang again and I had to wade back into the living room. It was Pat, but I didn’t lace into him for dragging me out of the tub because I was too anxious to get the news.
He chuckled when I answered and said, “What kind of hours do you keep, pal?”
“If you knew you’d want to change jobs with me. Velda said you have something on Feeney. What gives?”
He got right down to cases. “When I put out feelers on him they all came back negative. This morning I had one in the mail from the Coast, a return feeler from an upstate sheriff. It seems like Feeney Last answers the description of a guy who is wanted for murder. The only catch is that the guy who could identify him is dead and they have to go from the poop he gave them.”
“That’s something.” I thought it over, knowing that a mug like Feeney wouldn’t be hard to describe. A greaseball. “What are you going to do about it?”
“I wrote for the finer details. If it fits we’ll put out a call for him. I had copies made of his picture on the gun license and forwarded them to the sheriff to see if Feeney could be identified there.”
“At least it’s handy to have, Pat. He can always be held for suspicion if we need him ... and if we can find him.”
“Okay then, I just thought I’d let you know. I have a death on my hands and I have to do the report.”
“Anybody we know?” I asked.
“Not unless you hang around the tourist traps. She was a hostess at the Zero Zero Club.”
My hand tightened around the receiver. “What did she look like, Pat?”
“Bleached blonde about thirty. Nice looking, but a little on the hard side. The coroner calls it suicide. There was a farewell note in her handbag along with complete identification.”
I didn’t need to know her name. There might have been a dozen bleached blondes in the Zero Zero, but I was willing to bet anything I had I knew who this one was. I said, “Suicide, Pat?”
He must have liked the nasal flatness of my words. He came back with, “Suicide beyond doubt, Mike. Don’t try to steer this one into murder!”
“Was her name Ann Minor?”
“Yes ...you ... how did ...?”
“Is the body at the morgue?”
“That’s right.”
“Then meet me there in twenty minutes, hear?”
It took me forty-five minutes to get there and Pat was pacing up and down outside the place. When he saw my face his eyes screwed up and he shook his head disgustedly. “I hope they don’t try to keep you here,” he said. “I’ve seen better-looking corpses than you.”
We went inside, over to the slab where the body was laid out. Pat pulled back the sheet and waited. “Know her?”
I nodded.
“Anything to do with the Sanford case?”
I nodded again.
“Damn you, Mike. One day the coroner is going to beat your head off. He’s positive she was a suicide.”
I took the corner of the sheet from his hand and covered her face up again. “She was murdered too, Pat.”
“Okay, pal, let’s go someplace and talk about it. Maybe over lunch.”
“I’m not hungry.” I was thinking of how she looked last night. She had wanted to be important to someone. To me. She was important to someone else, too.
Pat tugged at my sleeve. “Well, I’m hungry and murder won’t spoil my dinner any. I want to know how a pretty suicide like this can be murder.”
There was a spaghetti joint a few blocks away so we walked over to it. Pat ordered a big lunch and I had a bottle of red wine for myself. After the stuff was served I started the ball rolling with “What’s your side of it, Pat?”
“Her name is Ann Minor ... which you seemed to know. She worked for Murray Candid as a hostess four years. Before that a dancing career in lesser clubs and before that a tour with a carnival as a stripper. Home life nil. She had a furnished apartment uptown and the super said she was a pretty decent sort.
“The last few months she’s been a little down in the dumps according to her co-workers, but nothing to positively indicate a suicide. The farewell note said she was just tired of it all, life was a bore and she was getting no place, thus the Dutch act. The handwriting checked with the signature on other documents.”
“Baloney!”
“No baloney, Mike. The experts checked it.”
“Then they’d better check it again.”
Pat let his eyes drop when he saw the set of my mouth. “I’ll see that they do.” He went back to his spaghetti, forked in a mouthful, then reviewed the case. “We reconstruct it this way. Just before dawn she walked down the pier that’s being dismantled off Riverside Drive, removed her hat, shoes, jacket ... laid them down on the planks with her bag on top, and jumped in.
“Apparently she couldn’t swim. However, even if she could she would have drowned because her dress was caught on some bolts below the surface and held her there. About eight-thirty this morning some kids came along to do some fishing and they spotted her stuff first, then her. One of the kids called a cop who called the emergency squad. They didn’t bother to work on her.”
“How long had she been dead?”
“Roughly, about four to five and a half hours.”
I poured another glass of the wine out and spilled it down. “I was with her until two-forty-five last night,” I said.
Pat’s eyes blazed and he stabbed his fork into the pile of spaghetti. It could have been good but he wasn’t tasting it. “Go on,” he answered.
“She found an overnight bag that belonged to Nancy. She gave it to me because before that I had asked her to poke around a little for some history on the redhead. The bag was full of baby clothes, all unused. We went up to her apartment.”
He nodded. “Was she frightened ... or remorseful?”
“When I left her she was a pretty happy girl. She was no suicide.”
“Damn it, Mike! I....”
“When is the autopsy due?”
“Today ... right now! You got me dancing again! I wouldn’t be surprised to find her full of arsenic, either!” He threw his fork down and pushed away from the table and went over to a wall phone. When he came back he grunted, “Two hours and there’ll be an official report. The coroner’s pulling the autopsy now.”
“I bet he won’t change the verdict.”
“Why?”
“Because somebody is pretty damn smart.”
“Or dumb. Maybe it’s you that’s dumb, Mike.”
I lit a cigarette and grinned at him, thinking of something somebody told me once about persons that drown. “I’m not so dumb, kid. Maybe we’ll give the coroner a shock. I liked that blonde.”
“You think this is mixed up with Nancy, don’t you?”
“Yup.”
“Positive?”
“Yup.”
“Then get me proof, Mike. I can’t move without it.”
“I will.”
“Yeah, when?”
“When we get our hands on someone who knows enough to talk.”
Pat agreed with a flicker of his eyebrows. “I can see us making him talk.”
“You don’t have to,” I reminded him. “When that party gets to you he’ll be so happy to talk he’ll spill his guts. You don’t have to do a thing.”
“You’re going to squeeze it out of him, I betcha?”
“Damn right, friend.”
“You know what you’re bucking, of course.”
“Yeah, I know. Guys that are paying heavy for protection. Guys who can take care of themselves if that protection doesn’t go through. Money boys with private armies maybe.”
“We’re on touchy ground,” Pat grated.
“I know it. We’re going to run into a lot of dirt unless I miss my guess. There will be people involved who will raise hell. That’s where I have the edge, Pat. They can make you smell their stink. Me, I can tell ’em to blow it. The
y can’t take my job away and they can’t scare me because I can make more trouble than they can shake a stick at.”
“You’re telling me!” Pat went back to his spaghetti while I finished the bottle of wine and I could almost hear the gears clicking in his head. When he finished he put down his napkin, but before he could enjoy a smoke the proprietor called him to the phone. He kicked his chair back and walked away.
Five minutes later he came back wearing a grin. “Your murder theory is getting kicked around. The men rechecked on the note. There is absolutely no doubt that the Minor girl wrote it. We had confirmation from several sources. Not a trace of forgery. You can’t break it, Mike.”
I scowled at the empty glass in my hand. At least I was smart enough to know that the police labs mean what they say when a positive statement is issued.
Pat was watching me. “This takes it right out of my department, you know.”
“There’s still the autopsy.”
“Want to go watch it?”
I shook my head. “No, I’ll take a walk. I want to think. Supposing I call you back later. I’d like to know what’s on the report.”
“Okay.” Pat checked his watch. “Give me a ring in a couple of hours. I’ll be at the office.”
“One other thing. . . .”
Pat grinned. “I was wondering when you were going to ask it.”
He was a sharp one, all right. “I haven’t got the time, nor the facilities for a lot of leg-work right now. How about having your wire service check the hospitals for me. See if they ever had a Nancy Sanford as a maternity case. Get the name of the man, family or anything else, will you?”
“I would have done it anyway, Mike. I’ll get it off right away.”
“Thanks.”
I took the check and paid it, then said so long to Pat outside the door. For a while I strolled up the street, my hands in my pockets, whistling an aimless tune. It was a nice day, a lovely day... a hell of a day for murder.
Suicide? Balls. They worked it so sweet you couldn’t call it murder ... yet. Well, maybe you couldn’t but I could. I was willing to bet my shirt that the blonde had asked the wrong questions in the wrong places. Somebody had to shut her up. It fitted, very nicely. She was trying to earn that five hundred. She got too much for her money.
My Gun Is Quick Page 12
