I pushed most of the stuff back into the desk drawers and the rest into the wastebasket. By the time I was through I was ready to go back to bed. I yawned and sat down in the swivel chair and spun the telephone dial a few times without lifting the receiver. For practice. I tried thinking about the Bishop and Wirtz and a few sheets of papyrus, or whatever, worth twenty-five million dollars. Nothing came of it. I tried thinking about Louie Antuni and Lola North, or Lola Wirtz as it had turned out.
Nothing came of that, either.
And right then, in the middle of lighting a cigarette, I remembered something I never should have forgotten.
I dug out the classified directory and started checking off public garages in the vicinity of the seventeen-hundred block
121
on West Erie Street. After half an hour's work I figured the list was long enough.
The nearest was on Huron Street just west o^ Ashland. I dialed the number shown and got hold of a deep-south accent against a background of motor noises.
I said, "Is Wirtz's car still on the floor?"
"Whodat?"
"Wirtz," I said. "Raymond Wirtz. A Chewy coupe."
"Ah cain't rightly heah you, mistuh. Gimme dat name agin."
"Wirtz!" I yelled. "W-i-r-t-z. Like in liverwirtz. You got his Chewy coupe out there?"
"Hoi' on a minute, mistuh." The receiver went down, leaving me with the motor noises.
I leaned back to wait and to ogle the red-haired girl on my Varga calendar above the filing cabinets. It was a calendar with a fresh page and a different pose for each month. This being May, she wore a green play suit about half the size of a microbe's necktie. She was weaving a daisy chain, but her green eyes hinted she could think of better things to do with her time.
"We-all don' sto' no cah fo' nobody lak that, mistuh."
Another half hour and five more calls added up to the same answer. Maybe it hadn't been such a hot idea, after all. But number six paid off big—a public garage out on West Superior, near Damen. The man who answered the phone owned the place and evidently it was small enough for him to know all his customers by name.
"The Wirtz Chevrolet?" he said. "Sure, it's here. Hasn't been out, to my knowledge, in the last three, four days."
"Anybody been checking on it?"
"Only you, mister. What's the angle?"
"It may be a bender," I said. "Report from the West Coast says it was picked off a Los Angeles street about three weeks ago."
He stuttered over that but finally admitted the job was wearing California pads. I remembered hearing somewhere that car owners out there usually carried their registration certificates strapped to the steering post. He checked up when I mentioned this, but came back and said there was no sign of one. He called me "officer" at the time. It was his idea—I hadn't said I was from the Stolen Auto Section—and I didn't correct him.
"Okay," I said. "There'll be a man out sometime today. If Wirtz calls for it before then, tell him the battery's dead, or something. Might be a good idea to work a wire or two loose, just in case."
He said he'd do that and he hoped we wouldn't think he was running a hot car farm. I gave a noncommittal grunt, which proved to him that I was a Department man, and hung up.
I made a note of the address, picked up the receiver again and called Michael Light at his home. Mike did leg work for me now and then—a wild-eyed Irishman, smart, fast, tough, built like a light-heavy. He wore a wooden left arm to replace the one lost under wheels one zero night while on duty as a railroad dick. He and his wife lived on a pension, but he still liked to play cop and I was able to use him now and then.
When he came to the phone I explained about the car. "It's at the Cushman Garage, 1944 West Superior. Get out there and take a look at it. When you're sure you'll know it, when and if it pulls out, tell the guy in charge our tip was a bum one; that you've got nothing on this particular heap and to
fori^c't to mention it when tlic real owner comes around. If he wants credentials, flash one of those insurance cards you carry."
"I can handle it."
"Yeah. Then you park where you can keep an eye on the entrance. I want full-time service on this, Mike. Chances are the place closes nights; some of those outlying garages do. If not, arrange for a relief."
"And if somebody takes her out ?"
"Then tie a string to it. Lose that buggy and I'll skin you for a banana."
"Any time I louse up a job, brother, I loan you my skinning knife."
I put back the receiver. I had a lead now, a nice warm one, and I basked in its heat for a minute or two. I had used a brain cell. A little late, but not too late.
More time went by while I sat there and fouled the air with smoke and scratched the back of my neck and dangled my foot. Rain, in soft small drops now, tapped lightly against the window and dripped a lonely rhythm on the brick ledge outside. Cool, clean-smelling air came in over the ventilator top and rattled the cords on the drawn Venetian blind. A gray and misty day. A day for an easy chair and a book and a bottle of brandy. A day for honeymooners, for sleep, for ducks.
The telephone rang.
When I answered, a voice, female and familiar, said, "Is this Mr. Pine, the private detective?"
"Confidential investigator sounds so much nicer," I said. "And how's His Grace behaving this morning?"
It earned me a small gasp. "You recognized my voice!" She sounded pleased for some obscure reason of her own. "Why, he's still sitting up there in his ofifice, Mr. Pine. Just
HALO FOR SATAN 125
won't stir out of it and won't even talk to anyone on the telephone. He even has his meals sent in. He's waiting for someone or something special and I've had to turn everyone away. I'm really worried about him, Mr. Pine; he's bound to have a nervous breakdown or impair his health if this strain he's under doesn't end real soon. If he'd only just come down and visit with me like he used to. He sleeps in the bedroom next to his office and has the only night line connected to his phone when I close the board for the night."
I should never have asked such a leading question. I said, "Does he want to talk to me or was this your own idea?"
"Oh, no! I mean it wasn't my idea at all. He asked me to. I wouldn't dare take it on myself to—to snoop into his affairs. Although I do wish there was something . . ."
She paused, to catch her breath probably, and I jumped into the opening. "Put him on. I'll try to cheer him up for you."
"Oh, I do hope you can! If he would only "
I cleared my throat right in the middle of her sentence, and she understood what it meant. "I'm sorry, Mr. Pine." She closed the key and rang His Grace's phone.
"Yes?" Rich and sonorous on the surface; underneath, a sort of impersonal eagerness if that's possible.
"This is Pine, Bishop McManus."
His breath rustled along the wire. "I was afraid you might not be down this early, Mr. Pine. I decided against ringing your apartment, in case you were still sleeping."
I had a vivid picture of what the last three days had been to him. Sitting there surrounded by redwood walls and leatherbound books behind glass, with his hand never very far away from the telephone in case it should ring and announce that Raymond Wirtz was downstairs to keep the long overdue appointment. Or perhaps pacing the floor with.
measured tread, hands clasped behind his back, his mind torn between the beHef Wirtz had started a hoax too big to finish and the wild hope he was on the verge of the Christian era's greatest discovery.
"I could have used it," I said, "but I'll have to put it off for a while."
He didn't speak again for a few seconds. Then he said, "I was afraid the police might be holding you. I was very careful to assure Lieutenant Overmire that you were acting solely on my behalf and that I would appreciate any effort to keep our names out of the newspapers. It was thoughtful of you to call me this morning in advance of notifying the police."
"I w^as being selfish," I said, "and I'm loose right now because of you. It's
something new for me to have a client who's really influential."
He brushed that one off. "I suppose now we're right back where we started," he said wistfully. "This is getting to be quite a problem, isn't it ? I can't very well transact business with a murderer . . . but then we don't know beyond doubt that he is a murderer, do we ?"
I grinned at that one. It was a pleasure to learn that bishops were as human as the next guy. Here he was, clinging to the last shred of doubt of Wirtz's guilt in an effort to assure himself that dealing with the man for the manuscript was ethical.
I said, "I can report some progress, Your Grace. I've managed to locate Wirtz's car in a public garage near the Erie Street address. Now that the heat's on him for fair because of this cop killing, he may try to get out of town in it. Then, too, I'm seeing a woman, a Mrs. Benbrook, whose husband is an old friend of Wirtz's. He disappeared the same day Wirtz was seeing you and I think the coincidence is strong enough to mean something. I may be wrong—it could
HALO FOR SATAN 127
be woman trouble instead. I hope to find out for sure this afternoon."
His voice perked up noticeably. "Excellent! I have every faith in you, Mr. Pine. Please keep me informed on any new developments."
I said I would and that ended the conversation. In one respect, at least, the Bishop was turning out like almost every other client: he wanted satisfaction and he wanted it with the speed of light. In his case, however, there was the best reason in the world for wanting it that way.
More time passed while I sat there woolgathering—and an inferior grade of wool at that. The mailman came and pushed a telephone bill and an advertisement through the inner-door letter drop and went away.
I ate an early lunch for want of something better to do, and spent a few hours browsing in a department-store book section. I picked up a new mystery by William P. McGivern and took it back to the office to read.
At two in the afternoon I marked my page and put the book in the same drawer I formerly kept my bourbon in, took my hat off the filing cabinet and went out into the rain to earn my living.
The Myles Benbrooks lived along the best section of Sheridan Road, two blocks south of Devon, in one of those eighteen-room rock piles the idle rich call homes. It was at the southwest corner of an intersection, set back in the middle of a huge lot that was mostly flower beds and dark green lawn behind a seven-foot hedge.
A pair of elderly white elms drooped spreading branches over the cross street side of the property, and a big southern Cottonwood held lacy gray-green curtains in front of the upstairs windows facing the Lake.
I swung the Plymouth left into the cross street and up to the curl) a short distance above the entrance to a crushed stone driveway that made a wide bend behind lilac bushes and disappeared at the rear of the house.
I got out into the rain and locked the car, although it seemed hardly necessary in this neighborhood, and went quickly along a glazed concrete walk and up three steps to a sprawling rough-stone porch with a flat roof, black-and-red-mosaic tile flooring and a low railing loaded with flower boxes painted a dull green. Several green and yellow canvas chairs stood here and there, also an enormous swing suspended by chains, its padding covered in yellow waterproof chintz.
A yellow reed table held an overflowing ashtray, three empty highball glasses and last week's copy of The Saturday Evening Post. It seemed the wrong kind of weather for porch lounging. Probably left over from yesterday.
The doorway was wide enough to bring in the groceries without leaving the truck and was barred by a hunk of polished teakwood and leaded glass too heavy for its hinges. I found a bell button set among some brass scrollwork and gave it the stiff finger.
If anything rang anywhere I didn't hear it. I took off my hat and shook away some of the water, put the hat back on and wiped my hands dry with a handkerchief. The only sounds were the rain in the gutters around the porch top and the motor growl of a new dark-blue Buick convertible turning the corner, w'ater splashing from under its wheels.
I was reaching for the bell button a second time when the door swung silently back and a tall thin character in gray cufiless trousers and a black alpaca coat looked at me from a face that was mostly nose and teeth.
"Good afternoon, sir." A soft voice, polite, correct, colorless as air.
I made it brief for him. "Paul Pine. To see Mrs. Ben-brook. I'm expected."
"Certainly, sir. This way, if you please."
I followed him into a wide cool-looking hall paneled in blond mahogany and with a graceful sweep of carpeted stairs far back in the dim distance. He took my hat and trench coat and hung them away in a closet, and we went down the hall, our feet soundless against yards of carpeting as rich as butter and as old as Methuselah's grandfather, around a corner and more miles along another hall with a vaulted ceiling this time and a row of French doors at the far end everlook-ing the grounds.
Halfway down, the butler opened a door, announced my name and stood aside to let me through.
It was a pleasant room, not too large, furnished to point up an old-fashioned fireplace with a log fire crackling behind a heavy copper screen. A red-leather chesterfield, seduction-sized, faced the fire across a very large, very white, wool : throw rug. On the mirrored top of a heavy walnut coffee table were highball glasses, a siphon bottle, copper pitcher and ice bucket, and a fifth of the kind of Scotch that is seldom encountered but never forgotten. Over near the three win-. dows was a baby grand piano with sheet music on the rack and a fringed gold scarf hanging almost to the floor.
She was sitting in a wingback chair near the fireplace, a t book in her lap, a tall glass in her hand and a small smile on her very red lips. She was dressed to stay home and drink liquor, wearing a sea-green something too frilly to be a dress and not frilly enough to be a negligee. There were pearls at her throat and one at the lobe of each ear.
Her nice throbbing voice said, "Nice to see you again, Mr. Pine. Do sit down and make yourself a drink. I decided Scotch would suit you. Was I right ?"
"Indubitably," I said, to prove I was a college man and worthy of sitting in her drawing room. I found a place on the chesterfield across from her and put Scotch in a glass with plain water from the pitcher on top of that.
I tested the mixture and damn near emptied the glass before I remembered this was liquor I was drinking. She was watching me with approval. Evidently drinking men were right down her alley.
She said, "I took the liberty of inquiring about you, Mr. Pine. I hope you don't mind." M
"How did I make out?"
"Very well. My husband's attorneys spoke glowingly of you."
"Good for them." I tried my drink again, being a little more gentlemanly about it this time. "Did they want to know why you were asking?"
"Oh, no. Mr. Scott was curious, of course, but he didn't come right out with it. How does your head feel this afternoon?"
"Round as ever, thank you. Does he know your husband is missing?"
"Not yet. I thought I'd wait a few days. Too much of a fuss might be embarrassing if Myles should show up with some perfectly reasonable explanation."
She put her head back and tied into her drink with the easy grace of a practiced drinker. The book slid off her lap , to the floor and she ignored it. It had been nothing but a ( stage prop anyway. Connie Benbrook wasn't the type to curl up with anything as inanimate as a novel.
The rain made cheerful sounds beyond the windows and ; the fire made popping noises behind its screen. I got out my cigarettes and offered her one and lighted them both with a sil- ' ver table lighter shaped like a small gravy boat. She gave me a
melting smile by way of thanks and I went back to the chesterfield and refilled my glass. She finished her drink quickly while I was doing that and I made her another.
When we were comfortable again, I said, "Back to business. No word from your husband at all?"
"No."
"The mystery woman hasn't called back, the one you listened in on the day he
disappeared ?"
"No. Why should she? He's probably with her right now."
"Raymond Wirtz hasn't been around looking for him?"
"No. Nothing has changed since I saw you yesterday afternoon."
"All right. I had to be sure, is all." I took a long drink and shook my head a little getting over it. "Do you have that list of people who might be hearing from him?"
She blew out a long ribbon of smoke and tilted her glass again before answering me. "I'm afraid not," she said carelessly. "Outside of his bank and perhaps his lawyers, I wouldn't know who to put down."
"You do want him found ?"
That one got me stared at. "Certainly. Why would I have engaged your services otherwise?"
"Why, indeed." I emptied my glass and reached for the bottle again. "Maybe we should look over your husband's address book and personal papers. For a clue. I need a clue, Mrs. Benbrook. A bright shiny one with a little arrow painted on it and words saying, 'He went thataway.' "
She laughed softly and finished her glass, her throat muscles rippling as she swallowed. Before I could get up to take the empty glass and fill it for her, she was out of the chair and tilting the Scotch bottle. She put in a jolt to stagger a Kentucky mountaineer, waved the water pitcher in its general
vicinity, and took three smooth rustling steps around the coffee table and dropped down beside me on the couch.
Her brown eyes seemed to lick their lips. "You're awfully good-looking," she said deep down in her throat. We drank to that.
I said, "You're as lovely as a jungle night." We drank to that.
I wondered if a jungle night was really lovely, then decided it would be if there were panther eyes to reflect the moon. Three highballs had done that to me.
The Long escape Page 11
