The Complete Casebook of Cardigan, Volume 3: 1934-35

by Frederick Nebel

  Cardigan sat down, saying: “When certain other people knock over a pal of mine, their business becomes mine, Luke.”

  “And when a certain big private dick makes their business his, Cardigan, they make his business theirs. You realize, don’t you, dummy, that you probably know too much already to get out of this?”

  “I have an idea.”

  “You can stick an exclamation point at the end of that idea. You think you’re a pretty tough baby but it’s only that loud mouth of yours that gets in your ears. It’s the Bay for you, kid, with something heavy around your neck.”

  “Think of the loss to my public.”

  “We’re your public now, Cardigan.”

  Cardigan looked around at the faces of the three men, the woman. He knew that Plant meant what he said. He had never thought that Plant was on the soft side but he had been wrong in assuming that Plant was on the level. He didn’t take the situation lightly. If he didn’t look scared—and he didn’t—that was only because he knew how to put on a front. These men knew that he knew too much and under the circumstances there was only one way out for them—and that was to silence him. He felt a knot in his stomach and recognized it as fear. He never kidded himself on this score.

  Plant said testily to the woman: “I tried to get you on the phone and warn you to clear out, that this bird was on his way over. But the operator said there was no answer. I started over in my car but the damned thing skidded and cracked a wheel.”

  She said: “How’d he get here in the first place?”

  Plant glowered. “A dumb busboy, a kid we just hired, heard Flynn giving the address to Corday and spilled the beans. I had to go through with it. I high-signed Flynn to give away the address, because the kid would have anyhow, and then I pasted Flynn to make it look good. I figured on warning you by phone and having Cardigan come to a blind end. He could have come back at Flynn and even had him arrested, but that would have been no good to him because all Flynn would have had to do was say Josie gave him that address for a friend. Where is she?”

  “She’s upstairs with a sleeping powder. The Corday business got her below the belt.” Bella jerked her head toward another room. “I want to talk to you alone a minute.”

  “Talk to me here. It won’t do Cardigan any good. He’ll be under water in less than an hour. I’ve got to do it.”

  “Anyhow, Luke, the other room.”

  He pursed his lips, scowled, and followed her into the other room.

  CARDIGAN felt warm. Heat pulsed inside him like a great heart and little beads of sweat began to blister his forehead. There had been nothing uncertain about Plant’s decision—nor had it been passionate. He had spoken coldly, decisively in his hard, chopped voice.

  Cardigan stood up and Pete, the pale-eyed young man, said: “Watch yourself, fella.”

  “Butt,” Cardigan said.

  There were some cigarettes on the table and he took one and picked up a fresh cardboard packet of matches. He put the cigarette between his lips and turned his back on Pete. Cal, the gaunt man, was standing in front of him, spread-legged, with his thumbs hooked in his suspenders. Cardigan made his hands shake as he struck a match on the packet and raised match and packet toward his cigarette. The packet of matches exploded with a sizzling poof and Cardigan, crying, “Ouch!” fell backward, crashed into Pete, whipped half around, ripped Pete’s gun from his hand and ducked behind the table as Cal fired. The bullet took a brass ashtray off the table and Cardigan, still on his knees, fired beneath the table and got Cal in the leg. Cal careened off balance and Cardigan leaped for the corridor doorway as Plant jumped out of the next room. He knew he would never make the hall door without being shot, so he leaped up the stairway, twisted half around, his gun leveled down toward the corridor below. He reached the top and raced to the back of the upper corridor. He heard footsteps coming up the stairway and crouched, aiming at the top of the staircase. A head and an arm popped up and a gun blazed and the bullet crashed through a window back of Cardigan’s head. He fired instantly and heard a choked outcry, a body tumble down.

  There was silence then, and in a minute Cardigan moved forward, knowing that there would be no way out of this except by the gun route. Halfway down the corridor he stopped, his gun trained on the head of the stairway. The minutes dragged and the only thing he heard was his own breathing. And then he heard a sound directly across the corridor and saw a doorknob move. He saw the door open on a crack and he swung his gun toward it, but the door slammed shut.

  Then—too late—he saw Plant and Plant’s gun rising above the head of the staircase. The boom of Plant’s gun rang in his ears and the jolt of lead somewhere in his body unbalanced him and he went reeling across the hall and fell against the door which had just slammed shut. His whole body seemed paralyzed and he could not raise his gun nor could he push himself away from the door.

  “You got Pete and Cal,” Plant said tonelessly, “but you didn’t get me.” He raised his gun, sighted on Cardigan’s head, said: “Watch the birdie.”

  The door swung inward as the gun boomed and Cardigan went with the door, and down, and the bullet shattered the frame. He could not rise. He felt a hand rush down his arm, rip away his gun. He saw, above him and coming toward him, Plant. And then above and back of his head a gun boomed twice and he saw shock leap into Plant’s face, saw his hands go limp, his body sag. Plant went down as though his knees were broken.

  Cardigan heard a hammering on the door downstairs, then a crash. A fog came over his eyes and his head seemed to swim up and away from him and he thought he felt a gun being slipped back into his limp hand.

  HE WAS lying in a hospital bed next day when Hunerkopf came in to see him. Hunerkopf carried a loaded paper sack which he sat down on the bed table. “Oranges,” he said. “Oranges and apples, Mr. Cardigan. Nothing like fruit to build a man up.”

  “Thanks, Augie. Glad you came around.”

  “Don’t speak of it,” said Hunerkopf, planting himself on a chair beside the bed. “Say, you know you sure busted some racket there. I and Mac and a couple of cops heard the shooting in that house and we busted in just in time to grab a couple of dames. When we got upstairs we seen you laying in a doorway there and this fella Plant knocked cuckoo. How’d you do it?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Sure, sure, I know. You was pretty much tuckered out. But it was quite a ring you busted up. We got the whole dope from a gal named Josie Greene. The other dame, the older one, she was a tough customer. Josie was, too, but she busted down. It seems like Plant and this woman Bella ran a string of gals that they’d circulate through the night clubs. A guy with dough was spotted and taken in by one of the gals. She’d give him slow knock-out drops at whatever club they were in and then take him to that address, where he’d pass out, thinking he was tight. Then they’d roll him for his dough. In the back they kept a lot of chickens. They’d kill a chicken and smear the blood over the guy’s hands and clothes and then take him home and leave him. When he’d wake up he’d be so damned scared he’d killed somebody that he’d never make a peep about it or go back to the same night club. It seems your pal, Barney Corday, was hooked but he wasn’t as knocked out as they thought and when he tried to phone you from that address some other guy smacked him, picked up the phone, kidded you and found out who you were. A little later Corday made a break for it and they chased after him and let him have it.”

  Cardigan started to sit up, his eyes wide with amazement. But the pain jabbed him and he lay back again, wincing.

  “There, there,” Hunerkopf said. “I’ll be going, Mr. Cardigan. I’ll see you get plenty of fruit.”

  He went out and in half an hour the nurse came in to say that a Mr. James Montgomery O’Riley was calling.

  When Shoes O’Riley came in, Cardigan said wearily: “I thought I told you a dozen times—”

  “Sh!” said Shoes O’Riley, coming over to the bed. “I hadda come around to see how you was, I hadda.”

  Cardig
an said: “I hope you liked my bottle of Scotch.”

  “Ain’t that a break?” Shoes lamented, wagging his turnip head. “Just as I’m about to take a big hooker two guys bust in your apartment and begin socking me. ‘Well, Cardigan!’ they yell. I try to tell them I ain’t, but they make me dress and then they haul me over to that house and slam me around some more. I accidentally make a pass at the phone and pull it out by the roots. Then they take me to a room upstairs and tie me hand and foot. It takes me a couple of hours to chew through the rope on me wrists and then git the rope off me feet, and by that time there’s a lot of shootin’. When you fall in through that door—it was me opened it and let you fall in—I just grab the gun outta your hand and let the guy have it. Then I hadda sneak away out back before the cops got in, I hadda.”

  “Shoes,” said Cardigan, “I’ll write that introduction for you if it loses me my job.”

  “Nix, Jack. I give up the book idea. It’s too revealin’. But”—he wrinkled his forehead—“I wish you’d do somethin’ else for me.”

  “What?”

  “Well, downstairs before I come up, there’s a big fat guy standin’ talkin’ to a nurse and I see his hip bulgin’ and, me mind wanderin’, I accidentally lift a rod from his pocket. Then when he goes out I hear the nurse tellin’ another nurse he’s Detective Hunerkopf, a friend of yours. I wouldn’t do a pal o’ yours dirt, Jack.” He slipped the gun from his pocket. “Kinda figure up a way to git this back to him, will yuh?”

  Too Hot to Handle

  Chapter One

  The Man With the Missing Hand

  IT WAS one A.M. in the Dynamite Bar. The blue-checkered cloths of the small square tables had plenty of elbows on them still, and the lad with the broken nose was rippling the ivories in his own version of Rhapsody in Blue. The Dynamite Bar was in a cellar in a house off Pacific Street and among its patrons were disillusioned poets, bloated plutocrats and a sprinkling of chaps who couldn’t be placed at all. It was noisy, smoky. Its stone walls were painted a dull red and in one corner there was a potbellied stove. There was a legend connected with the place: you might get plastered there, but if you got too plastered somebody would always take you home.

  Cardigan came down the winding stone staircase at a few minutes past one, his big, distorted shadow moving along the wall beside him. His cheeks were reddened by the cold out-of-doors and as he made his way among the tables toward the bar he unbuttoned his shaggy ulster, pushed back his batted fedora.

  Miles O’Mara was leaning on the bar. He was a thin, hawk-nosed man, nattily dressed, with tight red hair and a small sliver of a red mustache.

  Cardigan said: “What’s it, Miles, a gag?”

  “Have a drink,” O’Mara said, and motioned to the barman.

  The barman said: “What’ll it be, Mr. Cardigan?”

  “Rye and seltzer on the side.” Cardigan turned, looked the place over. “Nice crowd, Miles. Where’d you get the piano player?”

  “He came with the piano.”

  Cardigan chuckled, leaned his elbows on the bar. “I was just turning in. What’s the gag?”

  “It’s no gag, Jack.” They drank and O’Mara nodded toward a curtained doorway. “He’s in the next room. I think the guy’s got a complex, but if he has—what the hell. He’s afraid to go home in the dark. I offered to send Jakie home with him, but he gave me a knowing leer and said, ‘Oh, no you don’t, mister. I want a detective—a guard or something.’ Then he asked me for a phone book and he looked in the classified ads and found your agency. He told me to call the number. I kept calling you ‘Mr. Cardigan’ on the phone because I didn’t want him to think I knew you personally.”

  Cardigan said: “Maybe he’s screwy.”

  “No, he’s just tight. He came in here about an hour ago and Max here”—he nodded to the barman—“said he asked for four Scotches. Max thought he was with a gang at some table, so he poured out four Scotches. Well, the guy just stands here and downs ’em—one, two, three, four. Then he has another. Of course he was tight when he hit here. Then his knees began to give away and I took him in the back room. Then he began wanting somebody to take him home.”

  Cardigan groaned. “My God, Miles, and you get me down here on a job like this!”

  O’Mara spread his palms. “What could I do? I offered to send Jakie home with him. But no. The guy’s got an idea I’m a smoothie. I told you on the phone—”

  “I know, I know. I thought it was a gag.” He scowled, annoyed and irritated, then growled: “O.K. Where is he?”

  O’Mara took him into the rear room.

  THE man was lounging on the small of his back on a green settee, his legs out straight and far apart. He wore evening clothes and a black overcoat. He looked to be about fifty, tall, thin, bony, with grayish hair. His right hand was in his overcoat pocket, his left lay on the settee. Though he was drunk, very drunk, his eyes were sharp, searching.

  Cardigan said: “I’m Cardigan from the Cosmos Agency.”

  “Let me see your identification.”

  Cardigan showed him.

  “O.K.,” the man said. “You know you can’t trust people these days.” He shot a quick look at O’Mara, drew liquor-parched lips across large teeth in a weird smile. “No one can fool me,” he added, stirring, starting to get up. He managed to get to his feet and leaned against the wall, keeping his right hand in his overcoat pocket, buttoning his coat with his left. He suddenly staggered and Cardigan caught him, steadied him.

  “Thanks,” the man said gravely. “My name is Lincoln Trent. Let us go.” He paused, however, to bend a blue stare on O’Mara. “No, sir,” he said, “I’m not easily fooled.”

  O’Mara leered. “O.K., Mr. Trent. Drop in again some time.”

  Cardigan had hold of Trent’s arm. Cardigan was angry and disgusted, and he said suddenly: “This’ll cost you twenty-five bucks, Mr. Trent.”

  “Pay you now,” Trent nodded, drawing a small sheaf of bills from his left trousers pocket. He held the sheaf in the palm of his left hand, deftly separated the bills with the fingers of his left hand. “A twenty and a five.”

  Cardigan took them. He was frowning and he said: “You might give me an idea what you’re scared of.”

  Trent chuckled drily. “Fellows like….” He nodded toward O’Mara, chuckled again.

  O’Mara drew a thin smile across his lips. “I can take it, Mr. Trent.”

  “Come on,” Cardigan muttered.

  He had a time getting Trent out of the Dynamite Bar, getting him up the narrow winding staircase. The man was shaky on his pins, and though he did not fumble his words when he spoke, still it was obvious that he was very drunk. So drunk, in fact, that he had illusions of people following him. There was a cab outside and Cardigan helped him into it, followed and asked him his address and then gave the address to the driver. As the cab drove off, Trent twisted around, stared suspiciously through the rear window.

  “You can never tell,” he mused aloud. “No, you can never tell.” He reached up and pulled down the roller shade. “Imagine that bird wanting to send me home with one of his pals. Thought he could fool me! Ha-ha!”

  The streets were empty. It was a cold, clear night, with a million stars, no moon. The sound of the tires was brisk and dry and the various sounds of the city, coming from near and afar, had a sharp bell-like clarity.

  Cardigan let the man ramble on, nodding, humoring him. Likely he was a decent enough guy in everyday life. You might find him next day behind some executive desk, running a prosperous business. At length Cardigan smiled to himself, shrugged. The agency game was a crazy one anyhow. You ran into all kinds of things. Suddenly he wasn’t angry any longer.

  The address was in Polk Street.

  Cardigan said to the driver: “Hang around. I’ll be right down.”

  HE piloted the unsteady Mr. Trent into the small, neat foyer of a small apartment house. There was no elevator. “What floor?” he asked.

  “Third.”

  Cardigan
kept a firm grip on the man’s arm and they mounted slowly to the third-floor landing.

  “This one,” Trent said, falling against the door on the right and fumbling in his left overcoat pocket. He gave that up and searched in trousers pocket, his vest.

  “Try this one,” Cardigan said, and thrust his hand into the man’s right overcoat pocket, where his bare fingers touched a gloved hand, then a key. He withdrew the key, unlocked the door and opened it and steered Trent in. He found the light switch.

  “Much obliged,” said Trent.

  The living room was small but neat and comfortable, and there was a door open to a bedroom beyond. Trent wiped a hand across his eyes, staggered. Cardigan caught hold of him. The man was becoming a dead weight and Cardigan stood holding him for a moment, thinking he would brace up again. But Trent didn’t and Cardigan lugged him into the bedroom, turned on the light there and placed him on the bed.

  “I’ll be all right,” Trent said.

  “It was probably something you didn’t eat,” Cardigan grinned. “Come on, I’ll get your overcoat off.”

  It was then that he noticed that Trent’s right hand was useless.

  “Lost it in the war,” Trent said, chuckling. “Always wear a glove. Just the overcoat… and my collar. That’s enough. And leave the lights on. I always sleep with a light on. You can never tell.”

  Cardigan thought, “Shell-shock.”

  He laid Trent’s overcoat across a chair, picked up some address cards that had fallen from one of the pockets and placed them on the bureau. Then he went into the bathroom, drew a glass of water and placed it on the bed-table.

  “You may want that,” he said, “when the liquor begins to bite in.”

  “You’re a white chap, Mr. Cardigan.”

  Cardigan grinned, pivoted and left the bedroom. He put the key on the inside of the door. About a foot above the ordinary lock was a massive brass snap lock whose keyhole did not penetrate to the outside of the door. The man certainly had an obsession, Cardigan reflected. This lock, when snapped shut, could not be opened from the outside. He shrugged, released the catch, stepped into the corridor and closed the door. He heard the lock snap and then he tried the door. It was locked.