“Take this,” Cardigan said, tossing a ten-spot to the table. “Buy yourself some flops with it. I’d hang around here with you tonight but Bert Kine’s on a job and I got to meet him at Powell and Bush in half an hour. I’m not Santa Claus, Shoes, but if you ever need a meal, buzz me and I’ll stand you. Here’s the office card.”
“Thanks, Jack. Only back up there in the pen I was lookin’ forward to bein’ a private dick for a change. Me old woman always wanted me to go on the cops like me old man, and thinkin’ about her and all— Well, that’s life; there today, here tomorrer. Thanks for the chow, Jack. And I’d do somethin’ about them rats. They’re right by this door.”
He put on his overcoat, a lumpy misshapen figure, forty-odd and opened the door. He jumped back with a short, hoarse outcry as a man’s body, which evidently had been propped kneeling against the door, flopped at his feet, the head making a loud thump against the floor.
“M’gawd!” groaned Shoes.
“Look out,” clipped Cardigan, thrusting him aside, dropping to his knees. He started to heave the body around, but stopped midway, and his jaw sagged. “Bert…” he muttered. His dark eyes flashed as he glared up at Shoes. “It’s Bert Kine!”
“Hanh?”
“Bert—”
“It musta been him clawin’ at the door and us thinkin’ it was rats.”
Cardigan, still kneeling, held the young blond man in his big arms. The blond head lay backward, the eyes wide open. Cardigan felt one of the wrists, then pushed his hand beneath the overcoat. Then he put his ear to the chest, listened. He laid Bert down, got up and went into the bathroom, returning with a mirror. He tried the mirror test. Then he shrugged, his big frame sagging, his eyebrows coming together sullenly, a humid wrath growing in his eyes. He was looking at Shoes, but not seeing him; though Shoes, gulping, retreated apprehensively.
CARDIGAN turned and scuffed his big feet to the telephone, stabbed sullenly at the instrument and scooped it up. He called police headquarters, spoke in a thick, chopped voice, hung up. Shoes still eyed him apprehensively, as a man might eye some strange, dark piece of magic, uncertain as to what course it would take next.
But Cardigan no longer paid any attention to Shoes. He returned to the body, dropped to one knee. He mumbled thickly, “Hell, Bert, old sox,” and his mouth was twisted in a half-angry, half-sickly grimace. Bert was so young—hardly more than a kid—and had come on fresh from New York only two weeks before. A guy Cardigan felt he could have trusted anywhere. “Hell, Bert….”
Shoes ventured: “He was a kind of a sort of a pal?”
“Yeah,” Cardigan muttered, “a kind of a sort of a.”
“Geez,” sympathized Shoes, genuinely, removing his hat and holding it piously in front of his chest.
There was a small, artificial rose in Bert’s lapel, and Cardigan unpinned it and turned it round and round in his fingers. Just beneath the rose was a small strip of yellow paper with the words La Rosa Memorial Home stamped on it.
Shoes pointed: “Looka, Jack. One of his hands is open and the other’s kinda shut hard. I been noticin’ that, but not wantin’ to butt in….”
Cardigan shoved the artificial rose into his pocket, leaned over and pried open Bert’s hands. Tiny beads, the size of small peas, fell to the floor; and one by one Cardigan picked them up. They were made of glass. Nine of them. Some were dark red, some green, some blue. Cheap beads. He felt his heart pounding more slowly now within his chest. He rose, went to his desk, took out an envelope and in this placed the nine beads and the artificial rose. There was a dark, sly and thoughtful look in his eyes, and his thick wiry eyebrows were locked above his nose.
Then he started, said: “You, Shoes—you get the hell out of here! Go on, scram!”
“Hully gee, Jack—I ain’t done nothin’!”
“Did I say you did anything? But breeze. The cops are coming. I can’t afford to have you here and what’s more you, just out of stir, can’t afford to be here. Is that plain, Shoes, or do I have to draw a diagram?”
Shoes blinked. “I get you,” he panted, nodding. “Them guys, you mean, might think—”
Cardigan took hold of Shoes’ arm and marched him to the door. “Exactly.”
Shoes was suddenly scared. He had no particular ill feeling for coppers, but the coppers usually did not like him. He reeled away from Cardigan and his lumpy, comical figure went hiking down the corridor. He took the stairway down, almost tripping twice, and rushed to the hall door. Opening it, he barged out into the misty winter rain, went down the stone stoop and, slipping, careened into a uniformed patrolman.
“Hey!” growled the policeman.
“Oh, excuse it please, mister.”
The glow of a street light dripped through the rain, shining on the patrolman’s black rubber coat, on the black visor of his cap. And Shoes, looking up, frightened stiff by the sight of buttons, a shield, gibbered: “I—I was just—so to speak kinda—”
“Hey, wait a minute—”
“So to speak—”
“Hanh?” drawled the copper, holding on fast. “I seen that mug o’ yours somewhere.”
“In the movies, maybe. I was an actor once.”
“Says you. Take it easy, bud—take it easy. I’m tryin’ to think where I seen you—”
A black sedan drew up to the curb. Its rear door opened and Sergeant McGovern, plainclothed, stepped to the wet pavement and spat neatly at a fire plug, hitting it. Detective Hunerkopf, a roly-poly man with a rubicund face, stepped out next.
McGovern said in a tough, foghorn voice: “What’s this?”
“I’m Sleary,” said the copper.
“Yeah? And who’s this potato?”
“I’m tryin’ to think. He came bustin’ out o’ that house there, piled into me, and began talkin’ like he had marbles in his mouth.”
McGovern, a bony lean man with a jaw like the bow of a tugboat, bent a ferocious glare on Shoes. “You got marbles?”
“No. Honest, officer—”
“Cram it. Hold up your kisser…. M’m.” He jammed his hands on his hips. “Shoes O’Riley, huh?”
Shoes tried to get off a friendly laugh. “Well, well. Sarge. I—uh—that is—well, how’s things?”
“I’ll take care of him,” McGovern said to the patrolman, and he grabbed hold of Shoes’ arm.
The man from the medical office arrived in a flivver coupe and stepped out with his little black bag. “Hello, Mac,” he said. “Looks like rain, eh?”
“What I was thinking.”
Hunerkopf held out his hand, said placidly: “Yup, it’s raining out all right.”
“Up here,” McGovern said, and, hauling Shoes with him, led the way into the bow-windowed house.
CARDIGAN had not closed the door. He stood in the center of the room, his trousers hung low on his hips, the cuffs doubling on his shoes. He was taking a drink, his chin down and his dark eyes looking up from beneath his brows at the doorway. McGovern came hustling Shoes in through the doorway, took one look at the body on the floor, one look at Cardigan, and then sent Shoes spinning into the nearest armchair. The man from the medical office strode in briskly, brightly, dropped a smile of clinical delight toward the body on the floor and promptly knelt to his business. Hunerkopf wandered in placidly humming Ach, Du Lieber Augustin, and, looking dolefully at the corpse, made his way to the kitchenette, still humming.
“So it’s you,” McGovern said to Cardigan.
“Yeah, me.”
“And the stiff?”
“Bert Kine—a new operative of mine.”
“Was,” said the man from the medical office, brightly.
“Split hairs; go ahead, split hairs,” Cardigan said.
“So,” said McGovern, grinning his hard tight grin, expanding his chest, “the Cosmetic Agency is in the limelight again and good old McGovern lands smack into it. Well, what happened?”
“I was sitting here and I heard a scratching at the door and when I opened the door Bert fel
l in. He was dead when I opened the door. Must have tried to get here and tell me something.”
“What do you guess?”
“I can’t guess anything.”
McGovern laughed. His eyes gleamed and he jerked his chin toward Shoes, who sat crouched in the chair, his face gray-white, his eyes round with suspense. “Take a good look at Little Boy Blue here. I tell you, Cardigan, I’m always on the job. I pick him up outside. Shoes O’Riley’s his name. He’s just done a stretch. A dead guy up here, and Shoes O’Riley cramming out of the hall door into a copper’s gentle arms. Ain’t it beautiful?”
“It sounds swell. Now what?”
McGovern stopped smiling and turned a ferocious dark look on Shoes. He snapped: “Well, so what?”
“Ugh—hanh?”
“What were you doing in here?”
Shoes gulped, flicked a half-look at Cardigan, stammered on: “Well, you see, me shoelace got undid, and I was walkin’ along, trippin’ over it. I stop outside and try to tie it, but me paws is too cold. So I see the hall downstairs, with a light and all, and I slip in and warm me hands on a radiator, and then I can tie me shoelace. Then I fall down the steps goin’ out and—”
McGovern held his ears, made a face. “My God, how you think ’em up, I don’t know!”
Hunerkopf appeared in the pantry doorway. “Hello, Cardigan. You got any apples?”
Cardigan scowled at him. “No.”
“Any grapes?”
“No.”
“Bananas?”
“No!”
Hunerkopf looked crestfallen. “I could go a fig, if you got a fig around.”
Cardigan’s face seemed to bloat redly with repressed anger, and he quickly took a swig of Scotch.
“Knifed,” said the man from the medical office. “He hasn’t been dead long.”
McGovern spun, knelt and rifled Bert’s pockets. “Don’t this guy carry any dough?”
“I advanced him fifteen this afternoon.”
“Well, he’s got none now.”
McGovern shot upright, pivoted, made a bee-line across the room and yanked Shoes out of the chair. From one of Shoes’ pockets he withdrew a ten-dollar bill. It was folded. McGovern unfolded the bill and a Cosmos Agency card slipped into his other hand. His eyes suddenly blazed.
“You dirty, lousy piker!” he snarled at Shoes. He laid the hard knuckles of his hand across Shoes’ face and Shoes smashed backward into the armchair, fright stark on his face.
CARDIGAN licked his lips. Shoes had tried to use his head when he fabricated that story about the shoelace; Shoes had not wanted to tell McGovern that he’d been in Cardigan’s rooms. Cardigan’s hands closed tightly in his pockets.
McGovern was still red with rage. He snarled again at Shoes, “Where’s the knife you cut him up with?”
“I d-didn’t cut nobody—”
“Shut up! What the hell were you doing in the hall?”
“Like I said—”
“Like you said!” grated McGovern. “Listen, you mutt-faced punk. If you spring that bughouse fable again about shoelaces, I’ll go out of my mind. Like that time you were found in a guy’s car, driving it through the Presidio. Telling us it was a new make of car you wanted to see how it run, so maybe you could buy one for your sister-in-law back East. Listen—” He hauled Shoes out of the chair again, pointed to the body on the floor. “You killed that guy.”
“Me? N-no, Sarge. Honest—”
McGovern smashed him back into the chair again.
“You see?” McGovern flung at Cardigan. And then his chest swelled up again. “Guess it kind of makes you feel low, huh? I mean, me walking right in and copping a suspect right under your nose. Why’n’t you laugh it off, huh?”
Cardigan was grave, thoughtful. “I don’t feel like laughing, Mac. I’m looking at Bert.”
“Well,” McGovern went on, “this is open and shut anyhow. I’ll take Shoes over and maybe we’ll have to slam him up all night, but he’ll come through. Get up, punk.”
Shoes stood up, looking very desolate, very resigned.
Cardigan’s lips tightened. “Hold on, Mac.”
“Go ahead. I can listen.”
“As usual, you’re screwloose. Shoes didn’t do it.”
“Trying to pull a fast one?”
“I don’t have to—on you. The slow ones work plenty.” He shook his head. “Shoes didn’t do it. Shoes had dinner here with me tonight. He was in here for two hours before Bert fell through the door. Shoes got the ten-spot and the agency card from me.”
McGovern scowled, his eyes narrowing, becoming very bright, hard and suspicious.
Cardigan said, “You gave me the horse laugh too soon, Mac. Too soon.”
“You’re lying!” McGovern snapped.
“Why the hell should I be lying when an operative of mine is dead on the floor there?”
McGovern reddened, looked cornered, stung with chagrin. His eyes danced, but not happily. He shot out: “One of your big jokes again, huh?”
“No. I just happened to know Shoes when he was a kid and I don’t want to see you guys play kick-the-wicket with him. He was here—for two hours. I’ll swear to that, so don’t make a monkey out of yourself by making a collar here.”
“Who did kill him then?”
Cardigan smiled ruefully. “You go your way, Mac, and I’ll go mine.”
McGovern gnawed on his lip. His eyes glittered. “Wise guy now, huh?” He leveled an arm at Cardigan. “Cardigan, the big shot of the agency, consorting with criminals like Shoes O’Riley! O.K., big boy. Go your way. Go it. But this is going to finish you in this city, fella. Wash you up! O.K.!”
Hunerkopf yawned, took a polite but not very intense interest in the goings-on.
“Call the morgue bus, August,” McGovern growled.
Hunerkopf did; adding, “And listen, Mike. Tell Louie to pick up a couple of apples on the way…. Yeah, apples. No oranges, account of I always swallow the pits.”
Chapter Two
Blood on the Rose
THE Hotel Citadel stood in the shadow of the St. Francis, around the corner from Union Square. The Citadel was small, decent, with a decorous gray front and a rectangular lobby hung with pictures of the redwood forests, Yosemite, and Half Moon Bay. Cardigan’s noisy entry broke up the quietude of the lobby. He bore down on the desk, his big feet smacking the tiles, his battered hat crushed low on his forehead, and all the buttons of his shabby ulster fastened in the wrong buttonholes.
The ancient, parchment-faced clerk was adding a column of figures and the boisterous arrival of Cardigan did not rouse him. He merely looked up, counting to himself, then looked down again and ran his pencil up and down the column. Cardigan shifted impatiently from foot to foot, started to speak several times. Finally he reached over, took paper and pencil from the clerk, bent, and calculated rapidly, dashing off the total in large numbers.
“One hundred sixteen dollars and ninety-nine cents,” he said, reversing the sheet of paper, tucking the pencil in the astounded man’s breast pocket. “And now,” he said, “please ring Miss Seaward and tell her Mr. Cardigan is down here.”
The man fled to the small switchboard and, with an astounded glance still dwelling on Cardigan, telephoned Pat’s room. Taking out the plug, he said: “Miss Seaward will be down directly.”
“Thanks,” said Cardigan, and swiveled away.
Pat came out of the elevator a couple of minutes later. She looked small, neat, trim in a brown suit and a short fur coat, high-collared, open now in front. A small round hat, Russian in manner, seemed to ride capriciously on one smartly penciled eyebrow. She saw Cardigan standing in the lobby as if he owned it. There was a worried look on her face.
“Hello, Pats,” he said, turning. “Bert got knocked off.”
She almost stumbled, the news hit her so hard. Her fingers flew to her lips and through them she said, wide-eyed, “Oh, chief! Oh….” She was suddenly at a loss for words, her pretty lips parted and her round eyes sear
ching Cardigan’s face anxiously.
“Yeah,” Cardigan muttered. “Yeah.” He stood tapping one foot and shooting squint-eyed vindictive glances about the higher regions of the lobby, as though Bert’s killer might be hiding up there somewhere. “Knifed. He tried to make my place. Maybe he didn’t think he was hurt as bad as he was. Probably figured on coming there, telling me something and then getting a doctor there.”
Pat touched his arm, grimaced. “I know you thought so much of him, chief. Oh, it’s awful, miserable, terrible.”
He slapped his big hand on hers, gripped it and led her over to one of the divans. Tears in her eyes, she unbuttoned his overcoat and then rebuttoned it properly.
“You never do it right,” she squeaked.
He muttered: “Don’t let it get you down, Pat. You go on bawling here and for all I know I may too. So cut it out…. You had dinner with Bert, didn’t you?”
She nodded, sniffling behind her handkerchief. “Then I came right back.”
“What time’d you leave him?”
“Seven thirty—at Powell and Market. He said he was going to drop by the office a minute and then meet you later. He’d left his office key at the hotel, so I lent him mine.”
Cardigan had his eyes fixed on space. “He turned up—dead—at my place at eight forty. He was stuck between seven thirty and eight forty. He was working on the Detronius case—Lou Detronius. We were to go over data tonight at my place. He went to the office to pick up those briefs. Poor Bert!”
He stood up. “Come on; let’s chase over to the office.”
They got in a cab outside and it was only a ride of five minutes through the rain to the agency office in Market Street. The building was a walk-up, and the office was on the third floor. Cardigan unlocked the door, reached in and turned on the lights.
“Pike this,” he said. “Pike it.”
“Goodness!”
STEEL filing cabinets had been rifled and sheafs of paper lay on the floor of the outer office. Desk drawers were open. In the back office—Cardigan’s—the drawers of his desk stood open also.
Pat said in a hushed voice: “They must have fought here.”
“Uh-uh,” Cardigan said, shaking his head. “No signs of a struggle here, chicken. Chairs in order, nothing knocked over or even off the desks. They didn’t fight here. That took place elsewhere. Look at this,” he said. “Telephone wires cut.” He strode back to the outer office, knelt and began running through the scattered files. “The Detronius papers are gone,” he said, and stood up.
The Complete Casebook of Cardigan, Volume 3: 1934-35 Page 7
