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

by Unknown

  Making room for Canavan he whispered: “Hi, flatfoot. You’re a long way from headquarters.”

  Canavan nodded. “I had to bring a mug over here to keep his lawyer from finding him.” He looked sidewise at Kolinski. “This time it isn’t one of your boys.”

  Kolinski’s fat face mirrored pleased surprise. “Thanks, pal. Thanks too much.” A three-carat diamond twinkled merrily as he laid a pudgy finger alongside his nose. “Glad to know you’re using Jefferson Heights as cold storage again.”

  Canavan kept watching the girl. She sat on the prisoners’ bench together with two street-walkers, a giant scarred Negro and a kid in grimy overalls who looked as though he had been hauled off a freight train. An aged Mexican was being questioned by Justice Marie Tarbell. Canavan, on sudden impulse, left his place against the wall and leaned over the rail separating him from the clerk’s table.

  Justice Tarbell banged her gavel. “Lieutenant Canavan!”

  Straightening, he waved at her. “Yes, ma’am?”

  She glared at him. “This is a courtroom, not a thoroughfare. I wish you would remember that!”

  The crowd tittered. Canavan, completely unembarrassed, begged the Court’s pardon. He had all he wanted, anyway. His whispered colloquy with the clerk had given him the girl’s name and the charge against her. She was accused of beating a dinner check at the Cathedral. Canavan’s right eye, the one away from Judge Tarbell, drooped a little, and the clerk rearranged the charge slips so that the one concerning Miss Hope Carewe was on the bottom of the batch. Miss Carewe herself, unaware of the interest being taken in her, tried unobtrusively to put another inch between herself and one of the street-walkers. Against that drab back-drop, perhaps because of it, she looked like a million dollars.

  Canavan went back up the aisle and into the main lobby of the jail, and from one of the public booths called Luis Renaldo, who ran the Cathedral. “Luis? This is Bill Canavan. You filed a complaint against a gal named Hope Carewe.”

  Renaldo’s voice was smooth as silk. “For eight bucks I’d file a complaint against my own grandmother.”

  “Maybe your grandmother,” Canavan said. “Not against this gal, unless she wouldn’t let you take it out in trade. Personally, I don’t think she would.”

  Renaldo laughed softly. “Such a suspicious nature. So what, Lieutenant?”

  “So I want you to call up and kill the charge. I’ll take care of the eight bucks.”

  “Meaning she’d prefer you to me?”

  Canavan cursed. “Listen, heel, this gal don’t even know I’m alive. But for eight bucks I wouldn’t have her spend the night in a tank full of tramps and worse. You get on the phone and kill that complaint.”

  “O.K.” Renaldo sighed. “O.K., copper, but just the same I want the eight bucks. Tonight, not next payday, savvy?”

  “You’ll get it!” Canavan snarled. He suddenly felt like a fool. Pronging the receiver with a vicious swipe, he banged out of the booth and went down the tall steps to the street.

  It was perhaps fifteen minutes later that the girl came through the swinging doors. Silhouetted against the light from within she seemed taller. She was wearing a street suit of some dark blue material, no topcoat. Beneath the matching hat with the little green feather her hair showed coppery gold, and Canavan guessed her eyes would have gold flecks in them too. The property clerk had given her back her bag.

  Canavan stepped out of the shadows, lifting his hat. “Take you someplace, Miss Carewe?”

  She descended the steps. Her eyes were, as he had suspected, golden brown. They were also faintly contemptuous. “You’re the man whom the judge reprimanded. Lieutenant Canavan, wasn’t it?”

  He admitted this without shame.

  She said, still distantly aloof: “Aren’t you presuming a little bit on the badge you carry?”

  He had the grace to flush. “Maybe I am, at that.” He put on his hat, turned away. Then, because he was a persistent sort of guy, he again faced her. “Listen, I can’t exactly explain it, but when I saw you there in a place you’d no business to be—” He broke off as the full implication of her question hit him. “Hell’s fire, if you think I make a business of rescuing ladies in distress—”

  “Oh, so it was you who rescued me!”

  “Well—”

  She stood there a moment, considering him. “I can’t quite make up my mind whether to be angry with you or grateful.”

  He gave her one of his very best smiles. “Couldn’t you sort of compromise and just be friends? I’m not on the make. It’s just that—well, a night in a Jefferson Heights tank is like the ill wind that blows nobody good. I knew a guy once that had to burn his clothes afterward.”

  “I see,” she said. Then with the faintest of shrugs she came down the last step. “I think I shall avail myself of your kind offer. There’s nothing like a police escort when you are thinking thoughts like mine.” Her golden eyes had angry little glints in them. “Who knows? You may keep me from committing murder.”

  Canavan thought she was beautiful as hell, but he carefully refrained from saying this. Instead, he opened his car door for her, went around to the other side and climbed in under the wheel.

  “Where to, lady?”

  “The Hotel Wickersham,” she said.

  They rode in silence for a little while.

  North Broadway was a magic lane of lights, weighted with the sounds and smells of Little Italy and, later on, with those of the new Chinatown. Canavan, leisurely threading his way through ten-o’clock traffic, watched the girl’s ungloved hands. They were good hands, indicative of character. Presently he said: “Care to tell me about it, Hope?”

  At the use of her given name she shot him a swift glance. Then, apparently satisfied, she once more looked straight ahead. “I was to meet a man at the Cathedral, ordering dinner for both of us if he happened to be late.” She shrugged. “He didn’t show up at all and I had less than a dollar in my bag.”

  Canavan growled deep in his throat. “Didn’t Renaldo proposition you?”

  She shivered. “So you even know about that!”

  “I know Luis Renaldo.” Canavan swung the car west on Seventh Street. “Listen, Hope Carewe, I’m not trying to pry into your affairs—”

  “Oh, aren’t you?”

  “All right,” he said savagely, “then I am! Just the same, there’s something about this business that smells. How come, if you stay at a place like the Wickersham, you haven’t got eight bucks to square a dinner check? Who was the guy you were supposed to meet? Why didn’t you contact him?”

  “I couldn’t,” she said, answering the last question first. “I don’t know who he is. As for the money, I left all I had in my room. They say it isn’t there anymore.”

  “Who does?”

  “The management.”

  Canavan took his eyes off the road long enough to stare at her. “You mean you’ve been robbed?”

  She nodded. “That’s what I mean. The hotel people seem to think it’s all a figment of my imagination, that I never had any money.”

  “Well,” Canavan said decisively, “we will certainly have to look into this.”

  He ran the car into the curb before the pretentious portal of the Wickersham. Getting out, the girl dropped her bag and the contents spewed all over the car floor. Canavan scooped up the miscellany and dumped it back in the bag. They entered the lobby.

  There were quite a few people around, well-dressed, important-looking people. The Wickersham was that kind of hotel. Hope Carewe crossed directly to the desk. “See here, if there has been anything taken from my room I’m going to hold you responsible.”

  The clerk just looked at her. He was a tall, languid young man with the manner of a diplomatic attaché. His words, however, were not exactly diplomatic. “Valuables are supposed to be checked at the desk, Miss Carewe. If, as you claim, there really were any valuables.”

  She was outraged. “If I were a man I’d—”

  Canavan leaned on the coun
ter. “Look, punk, if the lady says she had some stuff in her room, then she had it.”

  The clerk examined him. “You sound like a policeman.”

  Canavan reached across and got a handful of coat lapels. “You said it, Lord Fauntleroy. I am a policeman.”

  A second man now made his appearance from behind a glass partition. This man was portly, dignified. He pointed a plump pink forefinger at Canavan’s nose. “I take it that you are interested in Miss Carewe?”

  Canavan pushed the finger aside. “And if I am?”

  “Then perhaps you would like to pay her bill here.”

  “Meaning you’re asking her to vacate?”

  The portly man’s mouth curved downward. “Exactly. We do not care for guests who have been in jail. Nor can I release her baggage until the account is cleared up.” He coughed. “A matter of some eighteen dollars only. I am sure that—”

  The girl’s face was as white as paper. “Lieutenant Canavan, I think—”

  “Shut up!” Canavan said. He fished a twenty-dollar bill from a pants pocket. “Change back, Shylock. And the key to Miss Carewe’s room.” He got both. Then, cursing under his breath, he took the girl’s arm and piloted her across acres and acres of carpet to the elevators. “A fine business!”

  In the third-floor corridor she faced him. “See here, why are you doing all this for me?”

  He glared at her. “What do you think?” He unlocked the door to 327 and they went in. Even to an untrained eye it would have been obvious that the room had been searched. Hope Carewe gave a little cry and ran to the dresser.

  Something hard and heavy as an anvil clunked Canavan behind the ear. He went suddenly and definitely bye-bye.

  CHAPTER TWO

  A COUPLE OF GHOULS

  anavan awoke to the realization that he had been tricked, and that there was a guy bending over him who could not possibly be anybody but the house dick. This man was small and neat and as inconspicuous as Mr. Average Citizen. Beyond him was the portly and pompous manager. Canavan propped himself on an elbow. “So who let you in?”

  “I just sort of drifted in,” the house dick said. His brown eyes were laughing. “Looks like you’ve been suckered into something, copper. Did the girl hit you?”

  Canavan saw then that Hope Carewe was not among those present. Swift anger made him forget the aching lump behind his ear. He pushed himself to his feet. “Listen, what kind of a flophouse are you running around here?”

  The manager’s face purpled. “Are you insinuating that any of this is our fault?”

  “You’re damned right I am! This room has been prowled. Not only that, but the mugs that did it were still here when we walked in.”

  The house dick made disparaging noises. “Then you saw them?”

  Canavan suddenly was aware that he was in a swell spot to be ridiculed by every antiadministration newspaper in town. The knowledge did nothing to improve his temper. “Get out of here, both of you! And if you think all the signs about the hotel’s liability will keep you from being sued you’re crazy. I’ll back up the girl’s complaint myself!”

  “By the way,” the manager said, “just where is the young lady?” His tone implied that Hope Carewe was not a lady at all.

  Canavan controlled himself with an effort. “I’ll ask the questions, if you don’t mind. This is police business now.”

  “Monkey business,” the house dick said.

  Canavan stabbed him with a hard forefinger. “Let’s have your side of it. What do you know about the girl?”

  The house dick shrugged. “She fooled us, all right. She looked like class, and”—he indicated the rifled luggage—“her bags were class. Registered from San Diego. Been here two days.” He spread his hands. “Take it from our angle, Lieutenant. Renaldo, at the Cathedral, calls up and tells us she’s trying to beat a dinner check. She claims there’s money in her room to cover. So we come up and it looks like she’s taken a powder on us, grabbing the best of her stuff and leaving the rest. There is no money.”

  Canavan took a deep breath. “The room was like this when you first saw it?”

  “That’s right.”

  Canavan had no choice but to believe it. The house dick’s theory was plausible enough, when you came to think about it. The girl could have been taking a run-out on her bill. As a matter of fact, her story about meeting an unknown man at the Cathedral was pretty thin. The only thing was, she herself had certainly not been the one who conked Canavan. Still, she could have had an accomplice. But suppose she had? Where was the percentage? Canavan had paid her bill. He had aided her to get out of jail—

  Quite suddenly he snapped his fingers. That was it! He had been instrumental in springing her, but instead of being free she found herself saddled with him. So she had just tolled him along till the psychological moment and then— Swift hands rummaged his pockets. His wallet was gone!

  The house dick grinned slyly. “So she rolled you too!”

  Spots swam before Canavan’s eyes. He had never been so furious in his life. To cover up he made a great business of pawing through the girl’s effects. Silken underwear, stockings, handkerchiefs, everything bore the subtle perfume she used. He kept seeing her golden-brown hair, and her eyes, and her hands, the hands he had thought so indicative of character. He laughed harshly. “She get any phone calls, or make any?”

  “There were a couple incoming,” the house dick said. “Besides the one from Renaldo at the Cathedral. I can get you the numbers of any outgoing calls.” He went to the phone.

  The pompous manager plucked nervously at his lower lip, eyeing Canavan worriedly now. He was beginning to see that no matter what happened the hotel was due for a certain amount of notoriety. “See here, Lieutenant, we can forget this if you can.” He appraised the girl’s bags. “We might even refund your eighteen dollars.”

  “Keep it,” Canavan said nastily. “I’m going to get this dame if it’s the last thing I ever do.”

  The house dick replaced the phone. “Only one outgoing. Kester 5-6943. Want me to look it up?”

  “No,” Canavan said. He put on his hat, wincing as the sweatband bit into the lump at the back of his head. “No, thanks, I’ll take care of it.” He picked up the phone and called headquarters and filed a general alarm for Miss Hope Carewe. He was surprised to find that he could describe her so minutely, even down to the little feather in her hat.

  Lieutenant Roy Kleinschmidt came on the wire. “Listen, we got a complaint from a undertaker. The old man says we should look into it.” Kleinschmidt was Canavan’s working-partner. “This guy was bopped on the head. Says somebody was trying to steal a corpse or something.”

  “The hell with that,” Canavan said. “I’m busy trying to locate somebody I can make into a corpse.” He thought a moment. “Look, Roy, send a couple of print men out to the Wickersham, will you? Tell ’em to see the house dick. I want every piece of baggage covered, just in case this dame has been mugged before.”

  “Well, sure, but—”

  “And get me the address of this phone, will you?” Canavan repeated the number the house dick had given him. Waiting, he tapped his foot impatiently. He’d show her, by God. Kleinschmidt came back. The number was the Saints of Mercy Hospital. “But look, Bill, I still think we should ought to see this—now—undertaker. This Egbert Weems.”

  “You see him,” Canavan said. “My regards to all the stiffs.” He hung up, glared at the grinning house dick and the smugly pompous manager, went out and down to his car.

  Ten minutes later Canavan walked into the lobby of the Saints of Mercy Hospital. He had cooled off sufficiently to be quite polite, yet strictly official with the nurse at the information desk. She was a red-head, and at another time Canavan might have been interested. Now she was just a white starched uniform among a lot of others. He showed his badge. “We are trying to check on a Miss Hope Carewe, who apparently called your number some time late this afternoon.”

  The red-head too, was quite official. “Do
you know the reason for her calling us?”

  “No,” Canavan said frankly, “I don’t. Perhaps your records—”

  “I’ll see.” The red-head went away to confer with someone behind a glassed-in partition. Canavan watched people come and go through the tall doors. On a bench beside the elevators there was a little guy who looked as though he were about to become a father. He was sweating.

  Presently the red-head came back. She had a file-card in her hand. “Miss Carewe must have been calling about her brother.” She wrinkled her nose. “Odd, though. His name is given here as Carroll.”

  Canavan felt a pleasurable little tingle at the base of his scalp. He was getting warm. “Fine, that’s just fine. I’ll talk to her brother.”

  The nurse shook her head. “I’m afraid you can’t do that, Lieutenant.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he’s dead. He died at two oh five this afternoon.”

  Canavan said a very naughty word indeed and snatched the file-card. There it was, as plain as the nose on your face. Edward Carroll, admitted 1:18 p.m., Tuesday the 26th—that would be yesterday—operated on for ruptured gastric ulcers at 11:00 p.m. Died 2:05 p.m. Wednesday.

  Canavan drew a deep breath. “O.K. I’ll take a look at him anyway. And his things.”

  The red-head giggled. “You evidently didn’t finish reading the card, Lieutenant. His sister paid his bill, his personal effects were released to her, and his body has been taken to a mortuary.”

  Canavan turned the file-card over. The mortician’s name seemed somehow vaguely familiar. Then he got it. Egbert Weems was the undertaker Kleinschmidt had been talking about, the one who had been having trouble with his corpses. Canavan left rather hurriedly.

  he Weems Mortuary was, even as the neon sign on the lawn stated, a place of beauty, though the chaste Old English rectory effect was slightly spoiled by an inordinate amount of mercury tubing. Under the blue lights even the grass looked faintly magenta. A tall stained-glass window did its best to maintain an air of dignity despite the encroachments of modern advertising. There was a police car at the curb.