1962 - A Coffin From Hong Kong

by James Hadley Chase

  Having satisfied myself that she was anonymous, I went into the other room and waited for the sound of trampling feet that would tell me the boys were arriving. I didn’t have to wait long. Within ten minutes of my telephone call they came swarming over me like ants over a lump of sugar.

  The last to arrive was Detective Lieutenant Dan Retnick. I had known him off and on for the past four years. He was an undersized bird with thin, foxy features and a snappy line in clothes. The only reason why he held his position on the city’s police force was because he had been lucky enough to have married the Mayor’s sister. As a police officer he was about as useful as a hole in a bucket. Luckily for him there had been no major crime in Pasadena City since he had got his appointment. This affair would be the first murder case since he had been upped to Detective Lieutenant from a desk sergeant in a small, unimportant cop house along the Coast.

  But I’ll say this for him: even though he hadn’t the brains to solve a child’s crossword puzzle, he certainly looked the pan of an efficient tough cop as he breezed into my office with Sergeant Pulski, his sidekick, trampling along in his rear.

  Sergeant Pulski. was a big man with a red fleshy face, small vicious eyes and two fists that seemed to be itching all the time to connect with a human jaw. He had less brains than Retnick if that is possible, but what he lacked in mental equipment, he made up in muscle.

  Neither of them looked at me as they came in. They went into my office and stared for a long time at the dead woman, then while Pulski was going through the motions of being a police officer, Retnick joined me in the outer room.

  He now looked a little worried and a lot less breezy.

  “Okay, shamus, give with the story,” he said, sitting on the desk and swinging his immaculately polished shoes. “She a client of yours?”

  “I don’t know who she is or what she’s doing here,” I said. “I found her like that when I opened up this morning.”

  He chewed on his dead cigar while he stared his hard cop stare.

  “You usually open up this early?”

  I gave him the story without holding anything back. He listened. Pulski who had finished acting the police officer with the boys in my office, propped up the doorpost and listened too.

  “As soon as I found out the bungalow was empty, I came straight back here,” I concluded. “I figured something was going on, but I didn’t expect this.”

  “Where’s her handbag?” Retnick said.

  “I don’t know. While I was waiting for you to arrive I searched for it, but couldn’t find it. She must have had one. Maybe the killer took it away with him.”

  He scratched the side of his jaw, took the dead cigar out of his mouth and looked at it, then put it back into his face again.

  “What did she have in it, shamus, that tempted you to kill her?” he demanded finally.

  There was never anything subtle about Retnick. I knew when I telephoned for the police, I would be his suspect number one.

  “Even if she had had the Koh-i-Noor diamond, I wouldn’t have been that dumb to knock her off here,” I said patiently. “I would have tailed her back to where she lived and fixed her there.”

  “How do you explain what she was doing here and how she got in if you had locked up?”

  “I could make a guess.”

  His eyes narrowed and he cocked his head on one side.

  “Go ahead and guess.”

  “I think this woman had business with me. A guy calling himself John Hardwick didn’t want her to talk to me. I don’t know why nor do I know what she wanted to talk to me about—I’m just guessing. It’s my guess Hardwick sent me to sit outside an empty bungalow to be sure I wouldn’t be in my office when she arrived. I think he was waiting here for her. My locks are nothing special. He wouldn’t have any trouble opening the doors. He was probably sitting at my desk when she walked in. The fact she doesn’t look scared makes me think she didn’t know this guy and thought he was me. After she had said her say, he shot her. It was a quick expert shot. She didn’t have time even to change the expression on her face.”

  Retnick looked at Pulski.

  “If we don’t watch out, this shamus will be stealing our jobs.”

  Pulski removed something from a back tooth and spat it on my carpet. He didn’t say anything: it wasn’t his job to talk. He was a professional listener.

  Retnick thought for a moment. It was a process that apparently gave him some pain. Finally, he said, “I’ll tell you what makes your guess stink, bright boy. This guy called you from the airport which is two miles from here. If you’re not lying, you left your office just after six. He couldn’t have got here much before seven-thirty the way the traffic is on that highway at that time, and anyone, even a yellow skin, would know that’s after business hours. She wouldn’t have come here on the off chance of finding you here. She would have telephoned first.”

  “What makes you so sure she didn’t? Maybe she did and Hardwick was in my office to take the call. Maybe he told her he would be waiting for her and for her to come right along.”

  By his change of expression I knew he was irritated with himself for not having worked this out for himself.

  The M.O., plus two interns, plus the usual stretcher appeared in the doorway.

  Pulski reluctantly pushed himself off the doorpost and took the M.O., a fussy little guy with a lemon sour face, into the inner room to view the remains.

  Retnick adjusted a pearl stickpin in his tie.

  “She shouldn’t be difficult to trace,” he said as if he were talking to himself. “When a yellow skin is as pretty as this one, she gets noticed. When did you say this guy Hardwick was going to call on you?”

  “Tomorrow—Friday.”

  “Think he will?”

  “Not a chance.”

  He nodded his head.

  “Yeah.” He looked at his watch, then yawned. “You look like hell. Suppose you go get yourself a cup of coffee? Don’t go far and don’t flap your mouth. I’ll be ready to talk to you in about half an hour.”

  I wasn’t kidded for a moment. He wasn’t being considerate: he wanted me out of the way.

  “I guess I can use some coffee,” I said. “Okay for me to go home and take a shower?”

  “Who cares how bad you smell?” he said. “Just coffee and where you can be seen.”

  I took the elevator to the ground floor. Although it was only twenty minutes to eight o’clock, a small crowd had collected to stare at the waiting ambulance and the four police cars parked in front of the building As I walked to the Quick Snack Bar I heard heavy footfalls behind me. I didn’t bother to look around. I expected to drink my coffee under police supervision.

  I entered the bar and eased myself up onto a stool. Sparrow, his eyes bugging, tore himself from the window where he was watching the ambulance and looked expectantly at me.

  “What’s cooking, Mr, Ryan?” he asked, his breath hissing between his teeth.

  “A coffee, strong and black and fast,” I said, “then two fried eggs on ham.”

  The big plain-clothes man who had followed me didn’t come into the bar. He stood just outside where he could watch me.

  Containing his patience with an effort that brought dark circles to his armpits, Sparrow drew coffee and then got busy with the eggs and ham.

  “Someone dead, Mr. Ryan?” he asked as he broke the eggs onto the hot plate.

  “What time do you shut down for the night?” I asked, watching the cop outside who scowled at me through the plate-glass window.

  “Ten o’clock sharp,” Sparrow said, doing an unconscious little jig with impatience. “What’s going on across the way?”

  “A Chinese woman got herself murdered.” I drank some of the coffee. It was hot and strong and good. “I found her in my office half an hour ago.”

  His Adam’s apple did a rock ‘n’ roll.

  “No kidding, Mr. Ryan?”

  “Gospel truth.” I finished the coffee and pushed the cup towards him.
“And again.”

  “A Chinese woman?”

  “Yeah. Don’t ask questions. I know as much as you do about it. Did you see a Chinese woman go in my office block after I had left?”

  He shook his head as he refilled my cup.

  “No. I think I’d have seen her if she had gone in before I shut up. I hadn’t much to do last night.”

  I began to sweat gently. I had an alibi up to half past eight: the time the girl and the poodle had passed me. I had reckoned the Chinese woman had been in my office at that time. After half past eight, I had only me to say I had been sitting all night outside Jack S. Myers Jr.’s empty bungalow.

  “Did you notice any stranger going in there from the time I left to the time you closed?”

  “Can’t say I did. Around nine the janitor locked up as usual.” He served the ham and eggs. “Who killed her?”

  “I don’t know.” I had suddenly lost my appetite. The set-up now began to look bad for me. I knew Retnick. He was essentially a guy who clutched at straws. If I hadn’t a cast-iron alibi that would convince an idiot child, he would pounce on me. “You could have missed seeing her, couldn’t you?”

  “I guess that’s right. I wasn’t looking out of the window all the time.”

  Two men came in and ordered breakfast. They asked Sparrow what was going on. After a glance at me, he said he didn’t know. One of the men, a fat fellow wearing a Brando leather jacket said, “Someone’s got knocked off. That’s the blood-wagon outside.”

  I pushed aside my plate. I just couldn’t eat food right now. I finished the coffee and slid off the stool.

  Sparrow looked unhappily at me.

  “Something wrong, Mr. Ryan?”

  “Just too ambitious I guess,” I said. “Put it on the slate,” and I went out onto the street.

  The big cop closed in on me.

  “Where do you imagine you’re going?” he demanded.

  “Back to my office,” I told him. “That worry you?”

  “When the Lieutenant’s ready for you, I’ll tell you. Go sit in one of them cars.”

  I went to one of the police cars and sat in the back. The forty-odd people standing staring, stared at me instead of the ambulance. I lit a cigarette and tried to ignore them.

  I sat there smoking and letting my mind work on the past and the present without allowing it to move into the future. The more I considered my position the less I liked it. I had a feeling of being in a trap.

  After nearly an hour the two interns came out carrying the stretcher. The Chinese woman, under the sheet, looked small and child-like. The crowd made the usual noise a crowd makes when it is being morbid. The interns loaded the stretcher into the ambulance and drove away. A few minutes later the M.O. came out, and getting in his car, drove after the ambulance.

  There was another long wait, then the Homicide boys came out. One of them signalled to the big cop who was standing watching me. They all crammed into their cars and drove away.

  The big cop opened the car door and jerked his thumb at me.

  “Get moving,” he said. “The Lieutenant wants you.”

  As I started across the sidewalk, Jay Wayde, the Industrial Chemist, who had the office next to mine came from his car. He joined me in the elevator.

  He was three or four years younger than myself: a big, athletic college type with a crew cut, a sun-tanned complexion and alert eyes. Every now and then we would meet as we left our offices and would ride down in the elevator together to our cars. He seemed a pretty regular fellow and like Sparrow, he had shown an interest in my way of life. I guess most respectable people can’t resist the so-called glamour of an investigator’s life. He often asked me what excitement I had had, and in the short time we were in the elevator and walking to our cars, I fed him the kind of lies I fed Sparrow.

  “What goes on?” he asked as the elevator began its slow climb to the fourth floor.

  “I found a dead Chinese woman in my office this morning,” I said. “The cops are getting excited about it.”

  He stared at me.

  “Dead?”

  “Someone shot her.”

  This piece of information appeared to stand him on his ear.

  “You mean she’s been murdered?”

  “That’s the technical term for it.”

  “Well! For the love of Mike!”

  “I’ve been saying exactly that since I found her.”

  “Who killed her?”

  “Ah! Now that is the question. What time did you leave your office last night? You hadn’t gone when I left.”

  “Around nine. The janitor was closing up.”

  “You didn’t hear a shot?”

  “For God’s sake . . . no!”

  “When you left did you notice if there was a light on in my office?”

  “There wasn’t. Didn’t I hear you leave about six?”

  “That’s right.”

  I was getting rattled now. This Chinese girl must have been murdered after nine o’clock. My alibi was looking sicker than a wet hen.

  The elevator came to rest at the fourth floor. We got out. Coming from my office was the janitor and Sergeant Pulski. The janitor looked at me as if I were a two-headed monster. They got into the elevator and sank out of sight.

  “Well, I guess you’re going to be busy,” Wayde said, eyeing the cop standing at my office door. “If there’s anything I can do . . .”

  “Thanks,” I said. “I’ll let you know.”

  Leaving him, I walked past the cop and into the outer office. Apart from match ends on the floor and cigarette butts anywhere but in the ashtrays, the room had a lonely empty look. I went into my office.

  Lieutenant Retnick was sitting behind my desk. He regarded me with the usual cop stare as I came in, and then waved me to the clients’ chair.

  There was a smear of dry blood on the back of the chair. I didn’t fancy to contact with that so I sat on the arm of the chair. “You got a gun permit?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “What’s your gun?”

  “A .38 police special.”

  He laid his hand, palm up, on the blotter.

  “Give.”

  “It’s in the top right-hand drawer.”

  He stared for a long moment, then withdrew his hand.

  “It isn’t. I’ve looked through your desk.”

  I resisted the temptation to wipe away the trickle of cold sweat that began to run down the back of my neck.

  “That’s where it should be.”

  He took a cigar from a pigskin case, stripped off the wrapping, pierced the cigar with a match end, then fed the cigar into his face. All the time his small hard eyes locked with mine.

  “She was shot with a .38,” he said. “The M.O. says she died around three o’clock this morning. Look, Ryan, why don’t you come clean? Just what did this yellow skin have in her handbag?”

  Keeping my voice calm with an effort, I said, “I may seem to you to be a dumb, stupid peeper, but you can’t really believe I would be that dumb and that stupid to knock off a client in my own office with my own gun even if she had all the gold in Fort Knox in her goddam handbag.”

  He lit the cigar and blew a stream of rank smoke at me.

  “I don’t know: you might. You might be trying to play it smart, kidding yourself you had dreamed up a watertight alibi,” he said, but there wasn’t much conviction in his voice.

  “If I had killed her,” I went on, “I would have known the time she had died. I wouldn’t have given you an alibi for eight-thirty, I would have cooked one up for three o’clock.”

  He shifted around in my chair while what he used as a brain creaked under pressure.

  “What was she doing in your office at that hour in the morning?”

  “Want me to guess?”

  “Look, Ryan, we haven’t had a murder in this city for five years. I’ve got to have some story to give the Press. Any ideas you’ve got, I’ll listen to. You help us, I’ll help you. I could arrest you
and toss you in the tank on the evidence I’ve got against you, but I’m giving you a chance to prove I’m wrong. Go ahead and guess.”

  “Suppose she was from ‘Frisco and not here? Suppose she had to talk urgently with me? Don’t ask me why or why she couldn’t talk to a private dick in ‘Frisco: just suppose this happened Suppose she decided to fake a plane and come here so she could talk to me and suppose she made up her mind about seven last night. She would know she couldn’t get here before I had left so she telephoned. Hard wick, having got rid of me, was waiting here to take the call. She told him she was flying here and would be here around three o’clock. He said it was okay and he would be here when she did arrive. When she arrived at the airport, she took a taxi and came here. Hardwick listened to what she had to say, then shot her.”

  “Using your gun?”

  “Using my gun.”

  “The entrance to this building is locked at nine. The lock hasn’t been tampered with. How did Hardwick and the yellow skin get in here?”

  “Hardwick must have arrived as soon as I had left and before the janitor locked up. He knew I was out of the way so he could sit right here and wait for the telephone call. When the time came for her to arrive, he went down and let her in. It’s a Yale lock. There’s no trouble opening it from the inside.”

  “You ought to write movie scripts,” he said sourly. “Is this the yarn you’re going to tell the jury?”

  “It’s worth checking. She would be easily spotted at the airport. The taxi-drivers out there would remember her.”

  “Supposed it happened the way you say but instead of this unknown Hardwick, you were the one who told hex you would wait for her?”

  “He’s not unknown. If you’ll check with the Express Messenger Service you’ll find he sent me three hundred dollars. You can check I was outside 33 Connaught Boulevard from seven-thirty until nine. After that time, although I was there, only one car passed me around two o’clock, but I don’t know if the driver saw me or not. At six the milk delivery man will tell you I was still there,”

  “I’m only interested in knowing where you were between one and four this morning.”

  “I was outside 33 Connaught Boulevard.” He shrugged his shoulders.