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

by Unknown

  The other man was tall and slender, with a boy’s pink cheeks and flax-colored hair that waved as if it had been marcelled. He wore a suit of pearl-gray gabardine, a wine-red shirt and an apple-green tie. Neither of the two faces above him had been among the photographs Ed Schmidt had taken from the Bureau of Identification, Hansard decided.

  The tall youth spoke languidly. “Don’t waste time giving him the toe, Gorilla. Use the pipe.”

  The squat man grunted, swung clumsily with the chunk of lead. Mike did his best to roll away from the blow, but took it on the shoulder. His left arm felt as if it were paralyzed.

  “He’s one of them he-guys, Babe,” spat the Gorilla. “Got guts.”

  “Never mind his guts, George. I want his brains smeared on the carpet. And make it snappy. He might have a partner hanging around somewhere.”

  Mike wished to God he’d had sense enough to lug Ed Schmidt along. Maybe he could summon help, if that fat dame in the hall wasn’t in on the play. He tried to cry out, but the smash on the back of his neck had done something to his vocal cords. He could only whisper.

  The Gorilla could still talk all right, though. “Can’t I have a little fun with him, Babe? It ain’t every day—”

  “Kill him! Kill him now,” insisted Babe in an ugly high-pitched squeak. “Cave his skull in. Knock his teeth out afterwards, for souvenirs, if you want to. I don’t give a damn. But finish him off, first.”

  Gorilla George measured his distance, swung down his arm.

  Mike twisted, rolled, stumbled to his feet.

  Babe was leveling a gun at him, five feet away. The detective could see the bright blue eyes sighting along the barrel.

  There was no time to make a decision. Babe would put a shot through his heart in another split second. And if the slug missed, the Gorilla would be on him and next time that lethal pipe would smash home.

  Mike acted almost without thinking. As Babe’s finger tightened on the trigger and the Gorilla’s grunt of rage came close behind him, Hansard leaped.

  Through the window …

  He took shade, curtain and sash with him. The glass crash was loud enough to smother the crack of Babe’s gun. Mike didn’t feel the impact of a bullet. But at that particular instant he didn’t think it mattered much. One way or another, he was probably checking out. Unless his estimate of distance had been exactly right!

  He could hear the warning yells of pedestrians below as he burst out over the sill. It wouldn’t do any good to brace himself, but he couldn’t help it. Something came up, slammed into him with terrific force. He grunted with the shock, but it wasn’t the sidewalk, and it hadn’t knocked him goofy.

  He’d guessed right, then. The narrow, flat surface beneath him, that had stopped his fall, was the top of the MEATING PLACE sign. It was directly under Lily’s window.

  Women screamed from below. Mike twisted around to look down. There was a vicious stab of agony at his right side. That must be a cracked rib. The pain made him dizzy. He put out a hand to steady himself, knocked aside a length of hot tubing, saw the sign beneath him flicker and dim.

  He gritted his teeth, got his knees under him, crawled backward till his heels touched the building.

  A traffic cop sprinted across Seventy-second Street, shouting: “Don’t move! Stay right where you are.… Keep your head now. I’ll get you!”

  Hansard stood up, teetered precariously on the foot-wide top of the sign. He knew the traffic man, hollered: “Never mind me, Allison. Watch below there. Don’t let anybody in or out.”

  “Got you, Mike.” The policeman bellowed gruff commands at the gathering crowd.

  Mike rested his elbows on the sill above him, muscled himself up. He hadn’t taken all of the windowpane with him. He had to kick some of it out before he could climb back into Lily’s room.

  The light was still on, his gun still on the floor, over in the corner where Gorilla George had kicked it. He picked it up.

  The fat woman stood in the doorway, dry washing her hands and whining: “I thought you said there wasn’t gonna be any roughhouse?”

  Mike ignored it. “Where’d those two punks go?”

  “Those men who ran out into the hall just now?”

  Mike’s lips tightened. “Don’t stall. Where are they?”

  She pointed to the stairs. “They went down. I didn’t know you were after them. I couldn’t have stopped them, anyway.”

  “I’ll say you couldn’t. You know ’em!”

  “Never saw either of them before tonight, in my life. Honest to God.”

  “All right,” he growled. “If you see either of them again, and don’t report it to the precinct, you’ll take a good long vacation at the city’s expense.” He went up to third and top floor, made sure there was no trap to the roof.

  Allison yelled up to him: “Mike! Janitor down here says a couple of mugs beat it out back into Seventy-first, through the basement, a minute ago. One was a kind of ape-man with a scar on his face. The other one just a real sweet thing. They the ones?”

  “That’s the pair.” Mike came down, described Gorilla George and the Babe in lurid detail. “Phone that dope in to the dispatcher. Tell every man on duty to pick up either one of those lugs on sight.”

  “They got guns, Mike?”

  “They sure have. And they like to use ’em on a man’s back. They’d have used one on me, right away, except they didn’t want to attract too much attention here in a crowded district. The Babe shot at me, as it was.”

  “You look like you been in another fracas, somewhere, Mike. Get chewed up a little?”

  Mike put his hand up to his cheek. The cotton and collodion bandage was still there. “Rather be chewed up than boarded up, Allison. I still got my luck. Never mind filing an accident report. But after you finish with that alarm, you might phone Homicide and tell ’em what happened up here. Those punks must have a hangout in town somewhere. They know their way around too well to be strangers. So maybe some stoolie can help us out.”

  He went back to Lily’s room, closed the door. There was no doubt this was the blonde’s “place of residence,” even if she didn’t always sleep here. There was another one of those letters in the bureau drawer, in the same handwriting, signed, Mama, but very little else. On the dresser was a pyroxylin toilet set in flamboyant lavender and gilt.

  Mike thoughtfully stuck the hairbrush in his pocket, went out and locked the door. He’d never seen a set just like that one. The fact might be worth a little nosing around.

  He tossed the room key on the marble table. The fat woman eyed him fearfully.

  “Lily won’t be back,” Mike said, curtly. “She’s got a date with an undertaker. Keep everybody out of this room until an officer tells you different.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  KREDIT KORNER CLUE

  hen he went down and climbed in his car, it hurt him to sit straight behind the wheel. He found he could get by if he twisted sideways a little. That rib would give the sawbones a little something extra to play with when he went to have his cheek dressed.

  The part the girl had played in the robbery and killing had been cleared up a little. She had undoubtedly been a pickup, hooked into the crime without knowing what it was all about. Probably they’d given her the one ring as her part of the payoff. But when MacReady had spotted them, been murdered for his alertness, the girl got cold feet and tried to run out.

  That still ≠didn’t clear up the main problem. Who was behind this business? Neither the Babe or Gorilla George were more than cheap choppers. They wouldn’t be likely to have planned this whole series of window jobs on their own.

  Mike stopped in at a bar opposite the News building and ordered rum—a double Demerara, straight. He felt better directly he’d downed it.

  When he got down to Little Maiden Lane, Brundage, the Ames Patrol Service guard, was inside the jewelry store with a small, dapper, apple-cheeked man in pince-nez who wore a Vandyke that looked as if it were made of old manila rope.

 
; He bobbed his head to Hansard, held out a neatly manicured hand and said: “I am Ramon Dumont. You are from headquarters, Lieutenant … ?”

  “Yeah. Just Detective Hansard. Hello, Amesy.”

  “Hello.” Brundage stared. “Judas Priest! They marked you up, didn’t they? I heard about it from the harness bull who took MacReady’s beat.”

  “I’m still a hell of a lot better off than Tom. You make out that missing property list, Mr. Dumont?”

  “I have it here. The total amount is near seven thousand. But of course the thieves cannot realize any sum such as that.”

  “Don’t bet on it,” said Mike. “They might have ways and means.” He put the list in his pocket, took out the hairbrush. “You sell this?”

  Dumont examined it. “No. It is not an item we carry.”

  The Ames man goggled. “Nobody’d be fat-head enough to risk ten years in the pen for a hunk of junk like that, Hansard.”

  “I didn’t think it was stolen, shamus.” The detective tossed the brush on the showcase. “But it belonged to the skirt who was in on the robbery here. Figured maybe she’d bought it down here, used it as an excuse to case the store.”

  The little jeweler laid a finger alongside his nose, cocked his head quizzically. “As I say, it is not out of our stock. But it is possible”—he dived under the counter, disappeared from sight—“I might, perhaps, be able to tell you who is the manufacturer.”

  “That might help,” Hansard agreed.

  Dumont began to paw over illustrated pages in a catalogue.

  Brundage said in an undertone: “I phoned a copy of the loot list to our Jersey office.”

  “Can’t do any harm,” Mike said wearily. “Won’t do any good, either.”

  “That’s what you Centre Street wiseys think.” Brundage was nettled. “The Newark cops just give out with a stolen-car bulletin. Guess what car?”

  “Don’t tell me,” Hansard said sarcastically, “it’s that green sedan you saw?”

  “Exactly,” retorted Brundage. “And from the way you described that lug with the scar on his puss, I’d say he’s one of the old Newark mob. A rat called Chuck Scanlon.”

  “You must be out of practice, Amesy. You’re not calling your shots so good. The crut who put the bump on that blonde is named Gorilla George. I don’t know if he comes from Newark or not, but I’ve good reason to believe he’s still in New York.”

  “Well, for Crysake.” Brundage glowered angrily. “How you expect us to be any use on a job like this, if you keep all the info to yourselves?”

  “I don’t, fella. I don’t. This is a cop case. A blue’s been knocked off. It’s a personal matter with those of us who knew MacReady, to get the guys who dropped him, Brundage. That lets you out.”

  “In a pig’s whinny, it does. I been assigned by my office to follow through on this job. The insurance outfits are beginning to raise hell with Ames. So it’s a personal matter with us, too.”

  The jeweler said excitedly: “Here it is. I’ve found it. It is a new design. The manufacturer is the Nik-Nak Novelty Company. They’re up in Attleboro, Massachusetts.”

  Mike said briskly: “I hope they don’t go to bed before ten o’clock up in Attleboro.”

  e reached for the phone and dialed headquarters. “Eddie,” he said, when he got his partner’s extension, “we might have a lead. Up in the Marsh mouse’s furnished room, I find a very gaudy piece of jewelry. A toilet set. It was made by Nik-Nak Novelty, up in Attleboro. According to their new catalogue, it’s listed as number 27VO and is called Passionelle. Hot stuff, eh? Well, I figure maybe one of the killers might have given it to her. If so, it might help a lot to know where he bought it. Or stole it. Get on to Attleboro. I know it’s late, but get the cops up there to locate somebody who can tell you who bought sets like that, around New York. And hustle, Eddie. Hustle.”

  Then he went to work on the loot list.

  “Twenty-two solitaires, up to one and a half carats,” he read. “Five bar-pins, mostly mellees. One platinum brooch with two rubies and six mellees. One yellow-gold brooch with a small cabochon emerald and five genuine pearls. One pair of diamond cuff-links, yellow-white stones, gold lovers’-knot setting.” He glanced up curiously at Dumont, who was stroking his beard daintily. “Didn’t look to me like there were that many empty spots in the display.”

  The jeweler shrugged. “I do not dress the window myself, naturally. But here is the clerk’s notation for the close of business, last night.” He took a typed sheet of paper from his pocket, unfolded it on the showcase. “I have crossed off the items which are still in the window. Those which I have not checked are obviously missing. If there has been any mistake it is obviously … ah … simply an oversight.”

  “You don’t say.” Hansard stuck the display record in his pocket, along with the list of stolen merchandise. “You want to be a little careful about oversights in a matter like this. Might get someone to wondering if maybe you don’t know more about the robbery than you’re telling.”

  Dumont was horrified. “But not at all. The list I gave you is accurate, to the best of my knowledge, I assure you. I cannot permit you to make insinuations.…”

  Brundage tapped on the showcase with a scowl of importance. “The insurance companies will have to prosecute if you’re making a false claim, Mr. Dumont. I’m warning you.”

  “So!” The jeweler hissed, resentfully. “You intend to intimidate me, to induce me to present a less complete list of my losses. Well”—his manila-rope beard stuck out at right angles to his neck—“you will not frighten Ramon Dumont. No. Not one little bit—”

  The phone rang sharply. Mike got it.

  “I caught the sales manager in his office, working late, Mike. He checked his order book, and the Nik-Nak people sold that particular number to twenty-four jewelers in the metropolitan area.”

  “We haven’t got time to fine-tooth twenty-four stores, Ed. Look up their cards.”

  “I already done it,” Schmidt announced. “There’s only two of the twenty-four on our blue list.”

  “Which two?”

  “Salvatore Monterro, down on Nassau Street, and that big outfit up in Harlem. Nathan Kutwik.”

  “Ah! Maybe you got something there, Eddie. Grab your hat. I’ll pick you up down front, in five minutes.”

  He left Brundage cross-questioning the jeweler, ran his coupe up to headquarters. Schmidt was waiting. “Pile in, pal.”

  “Holy cats, Mike. What smacked you?”

  “Glass out of Litzman’s window. I want to do a little smacking back.”

  “Can’t blame you for that.”

  “They laid for me up at the blonde’s hangout, too, Ed. Wanted to put me out of the picture because they weren’t sure how much the blonde had told me before she died.”

  “How much did she tell you?”

  “Not one damn thing. But I dug the Nik-Nak lead up in her room.”

  “It smells like trouble, Mike. Wouldn’t it be an idea to let the Homicide babies do the dirty work up in Harlem?”

  “A lousy idea. They’ll be on the Litzman end, anyhow. But this business is right down our alley. We know this Kutwik is a chiseling fence, or he wouldn’t be on the suspected file. Maybe he’s been engineering all of these window-hole jobs.”

  “His place’ll probably be closed, this hour.”

  “Might. Might be open, too. They do more business in Harlem around midnight than they do in the daytime.”

  When they rolled up in front of a dazzling corner in the heart of Harlem Mike got out of the coupe. The luminous sign said—YOUR Kredit Is Good at Kutwik’s Korner.

  “You can watch through the window, from here, Eddie. Don’t let anybody climb on my back.” Mike went inside.

  There was only one man in the store, a tall, powerfully built individual with expressionless gray eyes and skin the color of tallow. “Something I can do for you, sir?”

  “Maybe. I’m a police officer. You’re Nathan Kutwik?”

  The b
ig man’s eyes narrowed. “I am.”

  “Then you’ll know about a girl who bought a dresser-set here a little while ago.”

  Kutwik pulled down the corners of his mouth and rotated his head slowly, from left to right. “I can’t be expected to remember every person—”

  “You remember this blonde. Friend of the Babe’s and Gorilla George.”

  A pendulum clock on the wall ticked off several seconds before Kutwik answered. “These persons you mention. I can’t seem to recall—”

  Hansard shrugged. “Maybe they’re the ones who’re lying, then. They claim to know you, all right.”

  “That’s quite possible.” The expressionless eyes stared insolently at Hansard. “I have been here on this corner for several years now.”

  “Yeah. We been watching you for several years, too. You shouldn’t have any trouble remembering these lads. They say they been doing business with you for quite some time.”

  Kutwik picked up a cocktail shaker made of ruby glass in the shape of a barrel, ringed with silver hoops. “What sort of business?”

  “Stones. Their statement says they just left a bunch of stuff with you.” Mike was casual about it. As yet there was no indication his bluff was working. “I’m just waiting for the search warrant to come over from the station.”

  The proprietor of the Kredit Korner waved a bloodless hand. “Help yourself. You don’t need a warrant in my store. Go right ahead.”

  The plainclothesman played his last card. “If it was only some hot ice we were after, I’d take you up on that. But this is a homicide case, Kutwik.”

  “Oh!” The jeweler set down the shaker, softly. “Someone has been killed?”

  “The girl I just told you about. And a cop. You know how it is with the commissioner. When a policeman’s been murdered we put on plenty of pressure, but we have to do everything strictly legal, to be sure no pratt of a lawyer can beat a conviction.”

  Kutwik took out a silk handkerchief, wiped his mouth. “This killing, now. It was in connection with those diamonds?”

  “That’s right. And the party who’s fencing them is going to be charged as an accessory. It’s a chair-job for someone. But of course, if you’re in the clear, it won’t worry you.”