The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Original)

by Unknown

  MacBride said: “I’ll be seeing you oftener.” And went out.

  acBride dropped into Tony Gatto’s Jockey Street Club and found Kennedy drinking gin and Perrier at the bar. It was not quite noon, and Kennedy was the only customer. Tony Gatto stood behind the bar grinning, polishing a glass.

  “No see you in a long time, Cap. How’s t’ings?” Tony said.

  “Hello, Tony. Bottle of ale … You ever drink water, Kennedy?”

  “Sure. But I always put liquor in it to kill the germs. It turns out they weren’t two dwarfs, Steve; just the Four Marx Brothers up to their old tricks—”

  “Enough o’ that, honeybunch.” MacBride took a drink of ale; about-faced and hooked his elbows on the bar, his heel on the brass rail. “So all you mugs still think it’s suicide.” He clucked. “I’m continually grateful for the swell support I get from my friends. It just breaks my heart with gratitude. Some fine day I’m going to start out and systematically change the shapes of a lot of schnozzles in this man’s town.”

  Kennedy also turned about, hooking elbows on the bar, a heel on the rail, and stood shoulder to shoulder with MacBride. Both stared at the blank wall opposite.

  Kennedy said: “Ah,” and took another drink. “How about the woman?” he asked.

  “What woman?”

  “Halo Rand.”

  MacBride said nothing. He took a long swallow of ale and cleared his throat; but still he said nothing.

  “This gun business,” Kennedy said. “If it’s true that Rand bought a gun, that means his own gun wasn’t in his desk at home.”

  “My, but you’re a thinker, Kennedy!”

  “And yet the gun found on him was the gun that wasn’t in his desk and the gun he was supposed to have bought was—where?”

  “So you still think it’s suicide?”

  “Come over to one of the booths.”

  They went to the rear of the bar, entered a small booth and drew the curtains. Kennedy flopped onto a chair, plunked down his glass.

  “There’s no reason,” he said, “why a man would buy two guns to commit suicide. So we must believe that his own gun wasn’t in his desk.”

  “It wasn’t there when I went over.”

  “Right. We must believe that it wasn’t there when Rand came home. If we believe that, then it stands to reason that somebody removed it.”

  “It was in the drawer on the day before.”

  “That narrows down the time element. It was removed between then and the time Rand came home.”

  “Why wouldn’t Rand have mentioned it to his wife?”

  “Maybe he thought she’d removed it for fear he might use it. Guys about to commit suicide are very clever. So he said nothing about it. He just went out and bought another.” He dropped his voice. “What do you know about his wife?”

  “Not much. I never saw Dan much in the home. I guess I met his wife only about three times. They seemed happy.”

  “A lot of people seem happy.”

  MacBride frowned. “Hell, I don’t think she’d—”

  “Okey, okey. It was just a thought I had. Only the way you talked, it seems to me she tried hard to stick it into your mind that he was hard up financially.”

  “He was!”

  Kennedy smiled drolly. “I’ve been poking around this morning. I went down to Rand’s office. I talked with his stenog. I got the names of the men who called on Rand yesterday morning. One of them was a man named Osgood—the only name I didn’t recognize. So I looked up the business directory and found out a man named Charles Osgood was connected with the Packillac Motor Car Company. I sloped around and looked him up. Yes, he’d called on Rand. They’d had a long talk. When Osgood left it was practically settled that Rand was to sell his Colosseum to the Packillac people for $300,000.”

  MacBride barked: “Sell the Colosseum— What for?”

  “The Packillac people intended to convert it into an assembling and distributing plant.”

  MacBride smacked the table. “Then it wasn’t money! It wasn’t money that worried him! It wasn’t, then, suicide!”

  “Hold on. We’ve got to believe that he intended to commit suicide. The sale could have been consummated through his estate. When he bought that gun, we must believe it was with the intention of committing suicide. Then, maybe, he changed his mind.”

  “So why, in the first place, if he had a chance to sell the Colosseum for $300,000—why did he even think about suicide?”

  Kennedy was dry: “There might have been another reason. Men do do the Dutch, you know, because of women. Not often. But now and then.”

  MacBride’s voice was low, hoarse: “Then you’ve changed your mind about the suicide theory?”

  “Blushingly,” bowed Kennedy.

  “Kennedy,” MacBride said. “I always liked you. I never said I didn’t like you, did I?”

  Kennedy chuckled. “Old tomato! … How’s the chances of buying me a drink?”

  MacBride stood up. “Nah. Not this bellywash Tony sells. Here’s the key to my private stock. Go back to my office. Lower right drawer.”

  “Where’s your white whiskers, Santa Claus?”

  The shabby phaeton rolled into the flagstone courtyard of Tudor Towers. A liveried chauffeur opened the door and MacBride stepped out, passed into the large, deftly lighted lobby. No hurry here; no noise: Tudor Towers was strictly residential, quietly austere. The elevator that carried the skipper to the top floor was a vehicle of black and chromium, noiseless in its ascent.

  MacBride’s hard heels were ably muffled by the thick cushioned runner in the corridor. The oldish maid with the gargoyle’s face let him in. When he entered the living-room he saw Halo Rand sitting in a vis-à-vis couch beside a man wearing a correct morning suit, with a winged collar, dark-rimmed pince-nez. He was about fifty, black-haired, black-eyebrowed. He rose.

  Halo Rand, wearing a black crêpe negligee, did not rise; but she said: “Captain MacBride, this is Dr. Landau.” She had been crying. Her eyes were red-rimmed, her face sapped of color; and she was listless, tired.

  Landau gripped MacBride’s hand, eyed him with a dark, keen, direct look. “I am delighted to know you, Captain. I have heard a lot about you. I was just trying to console Mrs. Rand.” He threw a profound look at her. “It is not easy, Captain.”

  “Family doctor?”

  “Well, I’ve attended Dan Rand for quite a few years.” He stopped, inhaled deeply, said in a low, level voice: “I am glad you came, Captain, when you did.” He stared fixedly, remorsefully, into space. “You know, Dan Rand came to my office yesterday morning. We had a long talk together. He wasn’t well, you know. It was marvelous, the way he kept it from everyone. But he was that way … proud; he hated pity. He’d been coming to me regularly and I’d been treating him, but finally, yesterday, he wanted to know the truth. I tried to evade telling the truth. But when a man like Rand becomes angry— And, well, he wanted to know. So I told him. Lungs.” He nodded reflectively, bitterly. “I told him the truth. I told him to give up business. I said it was necessary for him to go west—New Mexico—if he hoped to prolong his life. He thanked me. He walked out of my office. So you see, Captain”—he shrugged—“what happens when a man demands the truth of a doctor.”

  Mrs. Rand said: “Do you want something, Emma?”

  The maid was still hovering in the doorway. “N-no, madam.”

  “Then please go.” For a brief instant Halo Rand seemed angry. Then it passed, and she relaxed, was limp again.

  “That’s news, Doctor,” MacBride said.

  “I daresay it is. Regrettable news. I hope you will understand my position. I hope you will understand that I tried to keep the truth from Rand a long time.”

  “Would this change of climate have helped him?”

  “It would only have prolonged his life a little while. I daresay the poor chap took the bravest way out. I only regret that in a way I was responsible—”

  MacBride scoffed. “Wasn’t your fault.”

/>   They were silent for a moment and then Landau said: “Well, I shall have to get on.”

  When he had gone, MacBride sat down on a straight-backed chair and regarded Mrs. Rand.

  He said: “Well, that seems to straighten out the motive for Dan’s suicide.”

  “P-poor Dan,” she said in a tiny voice, half sobbing.

  “Only I came here,” MacBride went on, “pretty firmly convinced that it wasn’t suicide.”

  She looked up, startled. “Wasn’t suicide!”

  “Yeah.”

  “But—but if it wasn’t—”

  He said: “Mrs. Rand, your husband, when he left here at noon yesterday, went and bought a gun off a pawnbroker on Diamond Street. I have a complete description of the gun. It wasn’t the gun we found in Dan’s hand; that was the gun I gave him; it wasn’t the gun that killed him.”

  “Oh!” She felt her throat. “You can’t mean—”

  He dragged out sardonically, half to himself: “It kind of bears the dirty earmarks of murder.”

  She sat bolt upright. “Murder!”

  “Mrs. Rand, it appears that the gun I gave him was not in his desk drawer when he came home yesterday at noon. It appears that though he left this house and bought a gun with the intention of committing suicide, he changed his mind later in the day.”

  “But his gun must have been there!”

  He thought this over. “No,” he said, “it mustn’t have been. He went out and bought another.”

  She was taut, white-faced, shaking. “This—this is all incredible, Captain!”

  He was point-blank: “Is there another man in your life?”

  She jumped to her feet, her eyes flashing. “How dare you say a thing like that?” she cried.

  “My job,” he said, rising, eying her levelly, “is not always the pleasantest under the sun. I asked you a question.”

  “It is so absurd that I don’t feel called upon to answer it!”

  He said: “Of course, you don’t have to answer me—not now, anyhow. Later, you might.”

  Her eyes shimmered. For a long moment she stood tall, quivering, shiny-eyed. Then she burst into tears and covered her face and her handkerchief fell to the floor.

  “How cruel you are! How utterly cruel!”

  He bent, picked up the handkerchief, passed it in front of his face, sniffed, caught the faint odor of perfume. She took her hands from her face and stared at him with tears streaming from her eyes. He gave her back the handkerchief. She broke out into an incoherent hodgepodge of words, wringing her hands, shaking her head.

  He raised palms towards her and said: “Please, Mrs. Rand.”

  She fell suddenly to the divan and fainted. The oldish maid came swiftly, silently, into the room; flicked a cold, contemptuous look at MacBride.

  He offered: “I’ll help you—”

  “You needn’t!” the maid snapped.

  He colored, stepped back. “Very well. Tell Mrs. Rand I’ll see her again—soon.”

  She snapped: “I will tell Mrs. Rand nothing of the sort!”

  “Suit yourself,” he said.

  He pivoted and walked across the living-room, into the foyer; opened the door and went down the corridor to the elevator, his hands in overcoat pockets, his shoulders hunched and a dogged, obstinate look in his windy blue eyes.

  Cohegan was asleep at the wheel.

  MacBride punched him. “Well, sleeping beauty! …”

  The shabby phaeton left a cloud of acrid exhaust smoke in the flagstone courtyard, hummed eastward on Marshall Drive.

  fter all, Steve,” the Police Commissioner said, “if there was another man in her life, and Dan committed suicide because of this, you can’t—you really can’t convict anyone of murder.”

  Pacing the floor grimly, MacBride threw up his hands in a violent gesture. “But it’s murder! I say it’s murder!”

  Commissioner Sterns smiled drily. “I know. I know you’ve been going around saying that, but you haven’t shown one shred of evidence that would hold in court. Very likely this pawnbroker made a mistake. Very likely it wasn’t Dan Rand who bought that gun off him. I’m not trying to pigeon-hole anything, Steve. I—well, I just don’t like to see you make a fool of yourself.”

  “Oh!” MacBride stopped, glared. “I just should be a strong, silent guy, huh? Well, listen to me, Harry. I’ve noticed that a strong, silent guy is usually that way because he don’t know anything. I’m willing to beef around, talk my head off, make a fool of myself—if it’ll get me anywhere.”

  “Trouble with you, Steve,” Sterns said good-naturedly, “is that when a case concerns someone you knew and liked, why, you get all steamed up; you cause yourself a lot of heartache and headache.… Just because the gun happens to have an odd smell, you think that—”

  “That’s only one of the things, Harry.”

  He hammered his heels back to his office, crammed his pipe, lighted it and sat in his swivel-chair and filled the office with smoke. Somehow he couldn’t bring himself to believe that Halo Rand had had a hand in it; and when Moriarity and Cohen drifted in, he said:

  “Now if Dan Rand wanted to kill himself because his wife was in love with someone else, why would he have sold, or planned to sell, the Colosseum? He left everything to his wife. I asked his lawyers an hour ago. It seems to me that if he felt he was losing his wife to another man, he’d have left his estate to someone else. But he didn’t. He meant, you apes—he meant to leave his wife well-fixed!”

  Moriarity and Cohen exchanged subtle winks.

  “You, Mory,” MacBride clipped. “You go to the telephone company and find out about a telephone call Jim Cardiac received at 11:30 this morning. Find where it came from.”

  Moriarity went out and Cohen said: “Ah, so we’re going to make Jim Cardiac the fall-guy.”

  “Razz on, Ike; razz on. Even the Commissioner’s doing it. I’m getting used to it.”

  Moriarity returned in half an hour and said: “The call came from Southern 509—the Apex Laboratories, in the Marks Building, 199 South Endicott Street.”

  MacBride grabbed his hat, put on his overcoat and left his office. He ran into Kennedy in the central room, barged past him, went down to the basement and on into the garage. Cohegan was working on the phaeton’s bright work.

  “Knock off, Bert.”

  The skipper climbed in back, sat down and was joined in a moment by Kennedy.

  “I don’t remember asking you to join me, Kennedy.”

  “Oh, I’m sure you did.”

  “Where to, Cap?” Cohegan said.

  “South Endicott Street—199.”

  The phaeton rolled out of the garage.

  “How about the woman?” Kennedy said from beneath his hat brim.

  “I think she’s okey.”

  “She say she was?”

  MacBride snorted, made no reply.

  Kennedy said: “Where are we going now?”

  “Call on Mr. Apex Laboratories … Hey, Cohegan, you color blind? That was a red light you passed through!”

  “Oh, was it?”

  The phaeton crawled through a midtown traffic jam, turned south past the Empress Theatre, entered South Endicott Street and pulled up before a narrow stone building.

  “I’ll be right down,” MacBride said.

  Reaching the elevator, he found Kennedy beside him.

  “Me and my shadow!” he muttered.

  “Think of all the guys who haven’t got shadows. Up!”

  They got out at the fourth floor and turned left. The legend Apex Laboratories was in black on the ground-glass panel of a door at the end of the corridor. The door was locked. There was a white card tacked to the wood: Gone for the day. Phone Midland 214 or call at 26 Cypress if urgent.

  “Let’s go, skipper.”

  MacBride complained: “Listen, Kennedy. Haven’t you got a room of your own, or just some nice quiet place where you can go and sit for a while?”

  “Sitting is a vice, skipper. Continuance of the
practice leads to a multitude of evils.”

  They went down to the lobby, strode out to the phaeton. Cohegan was not in sight, but in a moment he was seen coming across the street with a package in his hands.

  “Peanuts?” he offered soberly.

  “Idea!” said Kennedy. “It stimulates the liquid appetite.”

  They climbed in and MacBride said: “I bet some fine day I manacle Cohegan to that wheel! … Drive to 26 Cypress.”

  Kennedy munched hot peanuts. “Translated into English, Steve, what would Mr. Apex Laboratories’ name be?”

  “I’ll let him translate it.”

  umber 26 Cypress was a large fieldstone house in the West End; there was a broad lawn in front planted with shade trees. A driveway ran past the right side of the house, and on this side was a white porte-cochère. The phaeton was parked in the street. MacBride and Kennedy walked up the driveway and MacBride hammered a knocker on a broad, heavy door.

  A vellum-skinned butler opened the door.

  MacBride said: “I want to see the head of the Apex Laboratories. My name is MacBride.”

  “Have you an appointment?”

  “No.”

  “Is the call professional?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Please step in.”

  They entered a high, dim foyer paneled in dark wood.

  “Please take a seat,” the butler said. “It won’t be long.”

  He padded off down the hall, vanished.

  MacBride and Kennedy did not sit down. They heard the low sound of voices somewhere near, behind a closed door. Kennedy roamed around, came back and pointed.

  “In there, skipper. That’s the talk-talk room. Mr. Apex Laboratories is probably busy.”

  “So am I.”

  MacBride went down the large foyer towards the door Kennedy had indicated. It was broad, heavy, and he stood eying it speculatively. Then he knocked. The low sound of voices ceased. After a moment the latch clicked, the door opened noiselessly.

  MacBride stared; then his eyes narrowed, his low blunt voice said: “Hello, Dr. Landau.”

  “Why—Captain Mac—”

  Kennedy chuckled: “You old translator, you!”

  “Come on, Kennedy.… This is Kennedy, Doctor—of the Free Press—”