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

by Unknown

  Circling back to my chair, I settled in it again and was drawing slowly on my cigar when he reentered the room. I looked up and got a surprise.

  A sardonic smile lifting the edges of his wide mouth, he leaned in the doorway and accurately pointed an army automatic at my cigar.

  I removed the cigar, but the muzzle failed to follow it, which led me to believe my head was the actual target. I waited for him to speak, but he seemed perfectly content to continue leaning and pointing.

  “What am I supposed to do?” I asked finally. “Raise my arms, bark like a dog, or just go home?”

  “Just sit,” he said. “And keep your mouth shut.”

  So for twenty minutes I sat and kept my mouth shut. When my cigar became a stub, I set it carefully on the ash stand next to my chair, moving my hand slowly because I could see the automatic’s hammer was back and the safety off. At the end of twenty minutes a key turned in the outer door’s lock.

  Anton Strowlski came through the door, nodded to Tattersall and turned his brittle eyes on me.

  “Mister Moon, isn’t it?” he asked with heavy sarcasm, deeply underlining the “Mister.”

  I didn’t feel called on to reply.

  “Stand up,” he said.

  I rose slowly, turned my back and raised my arms without waiting for the order. Anton’s hand snaked under my armpit from behind, removed my P-38, then carefully patted my pockets.

  “Turn around,” he commanded.

  Facing my host again, I dropped my arms. Anton drew a short, dainty automatic from his side pocket, a twin of the one he had lost to the police, removed his smart snap-brim hat and dropped it over the gun.

  “Only a .32,” he said pleasantly. “But I use dum-dums. It makes a hole like a saucer.” The mock-pleasantness left his voice and his lips drew thin. “We’re going out now, and if you make a move I don’t like, you get it.”

  He waved me toward the door, then followed, keeping a pace distance between us. Tattersall stayed home, presumably not caring to participate in murder on his day off, but just before the door shut behind us he said: “It’s been very pleasant, Mr. Moon. Do come again.”

  I said: “If I can’t make it, drop in on me. I’ll be in the river.” It wasn’t good, but it was the best I could do with that hat-covered little gun aimed at my back.

  Our trip down was uneventful. Just two well-dressed men, one of the modern school who wears his hat in elevators, the other with his politely draped over his fist. It stayed there even after we left the elevator, clear across the lobby, down the steps and into the waiting Buick coach at the curb.

  Anton and I shared the roomy back seat. Our bullet-headed chauffeur was a stranger. Getting in, I caught a quick glimpse of his knuckle-bent profile and knew I had never seen him before. As we pulled away, I started to memorize the back of his head, on the remote chance that I’d ever get an opportunity to look for it.

  It was an interesting head. The neck was a weal of creased muscle that bulged out beyond the flattened rear of his skull, and the ears were mere blobs of broken gristle bunched into shapelessness.

  Without instruction he wheeled the car through traffic toward the south edge of town. He kept the speed moderate until we reached the river road, then opened up and we rolled along at highway speed.

  Anton spoke only once during the trip, when we reached a long, straight stretch and bullet-head pressed his foot to the floor.

  “Cut the horses,” Anton said curtly.

  Our speed immediately dropped to a sedate fifty-five.

  A few miles later we slowed and turned onto a dirt road. We passed a farmhouse, went on about two miles without seeing another and the road began to grow rougher. Now entirely away from public view, Anton uncovered his gun and put his hat back on his head. I glanced down at the gun and got my second shocking surprise of the day. Only this one was pleasant.

  They say that every criminal eventually makes some stupid mistake which ends his career. Anton Strowlski had just made his and it exceeded the criminal’s prerogative of stupidity. His neat and deadly little automatic had the safety tightly on.

  Selfishly I kept the secret to myself. My right hand slashed sidewise and the hard edge of my palm caught him directly between the eyes. I had learned that blow with the Rangers, and twice used it on German sentries. It worked just as effectively on Polish-American gunmen. I felt the bone crunch and he was dead before his automatic dropped to the seat between us.

  Quietly easing him back in the far corner, I picked up the gun, flipped off the safety catch and settled back to enjoy the rest of the ride.

  The road grew rougher and rougher, finally becoming nothing but two weed-choked ruts. Bullet-head halted the car alongside a dense growth of bushes.

  “This O.K.?” he asked, peering out at the tangled cluster of undergrowth.

  “Just fine,” I said.

  Startled, he spun in his seat and gaped at me and my lifeless seat-mate. Then his hand dove toward a shoulder holster. I let him bring his gun as far as the top of the front seat.

  Anton had told the truth. It made a hole like a saucer.

  The doorman at the Drake Hotel gave me a more courteous greeting than I deserved after parking a Buick containing two dead men at his curb. The elevator operator remembered my previous visit too, and shot to the fourth floor without waiting for instructions.

  I had recovered my P-38 from one of Anton’s pockets and found his key to four-seventeen in another. Approaching Tattersall’s door with the former in my right hand and the latter in my left, I unlocked the door, kicked it open and charged in.

  My dramatics were unnecessary. Howard Tattersall sat in the same chair I had occupied while enjoying my cigar. But he wasn’t smoking, because a bullet had left too little of his mouth to hold a cigar.

  He slumped sidewise with one arm hanging over the edge of the chair so that fingertips just touched the floor. The other hand lay in his lap, gripping the Army automatic.

  Kneeling next to the body, I sniffed the gun muzzle. It had been fired.

  Rising, I entered the room from which Tattersall had phoned and found the telephone standing on a desk by the window. I dialed Homicide and asked for Inspector Day.

  “Moon,” I said, when he finally came to the phone. “I’m at suite four-seventeen in the Drake Hotel. Dead lawyer here named Tattersall.”

  Day asked: “Murder?”

  “Can’t say. Either suicide or framed to look like it. Unless you want an unscientific opinion.”

  “Give it,” the inspector said.

  “Murder, then. No evidence. Just a hunch.”

  Day was silent for a minute; then he said: “I’ll send Hannegan. Got to take a nap before I drop dead.”

  As though bringing up an afterthought, I said casually: “There are also two bodies in a Buick parked in front of the hotel. License 207-309.”

  “What!” Day yelped. “What you got there? A massacre?”

  “Just a rough party.” I gave him a quick sketch of what had happened.

  When I finished the résumé he asked: “Think Tattersall bumped Carmichael?”

  “Possibly.”

  “Wish you hadn’t eliminated all the witnesses,” he complained. “Complicates things.”

  “If they were still alive, I wouldn’t be.”

  “That’s not a bad idea either,” he growled, and hung up.

  Glancing at my watch, I was surprised to discover it was only a quarter of eleven.

  Beginning to feel the effect of only three hours’ sleep, I found a sidestreet barroom and took on a rye and water. I was the only customer at that time of day, and as I dawdled over my second drink, the bartender dropped a coin in the record machine to play a Phil Harris number. When it played out, I picked a nickel from my change on the bar and started over to play another. Then I noticed a pinball game against the wall. Right next to it stood a cigarette vendor.

  I changed my mind and went back to my stool. Three coin machines in this small, neighborhood
bar had started a train of thought. I began visualizing various stores I had been in recently, trying to remember whether or not they were equipped with coin machines. The drugstore near my flat had one pinball game. The confectionery next to it had one. I thought of two filling stations and a barbershop where I had noticed them, and suddenly the tremendous size of the business registered on me. I could not think of a single tavern, restaurant, drugstore, grocery, filling station or barbershop I had been in during recent months which was not equipped with one or more coin devices. I motioned to the barkeep.

  “You own this place?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” he admitted.

  “Where you rent your coin machines?”

  He rubbed his chin. “Why?”

  “Because I want to know.”

  “You a cop?”

  “No.”

  “What are you?”

  I said: “I’m the guy just asked you a question. Get up an answer before I kick your teeth in.”

  He widened his eyes at me, sucked in his breath and said: “Fellow named Sartt.”

  “Tiny?”

  “That’s the guy.”

  I said: “Next time he’s in, tell him to take ’em out. My company’s taking over this territory.”

  The bartender paled. “Listen, mister. I can’t tell Sartt that. I’d end up in the gutter.”

  “You’ll end up in the gutter if you don’t.”

  He ran a hand over his forehead. “Geez, mister. I’m just trying to make a living. I don’t want any damn machines in here at all. But I want trouble less than I don’t want machines. If you guys start squeezing me between you, I lose no matter which way I jump. Why don’t you talk to Sartt, and I’ll take whichever machines the both of you say.”

  I grinned at him. “Relax and have a drink. I was just fishing for information. Now I’ve got it.”

  Some of his color came back, but now he looked worried. “You are a cop, ain’t you?”

  I shook my head. “Just a guy who doesn’t like Tiny Sartt. Forget it. You won’t get in trouble.”

  I had the final segment of the puzzle.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CLOSE-IN

  I went home and shaved, ate a quick breakfast and took a cab to police headquarters. I found Warren Day asleep on the cot in his office. I shook him awake.

  “Go away,” he said.

  “Get up. I’ve got your case solved for you.”

  He sat up and rubbed his eyes, groped over to the desk and found his glasses. “What time is it?”

  “About noon.”

  Sinking into his chair, he took a pint bottle from a bottom drawer, swished a slug around in his mouth, swallowed and started to put it back.

  I said: “Do I drink alone when you come to my house?”

  Grumpily he reopened the drawer, examined the bottle’s liquor level over the top of his glasses and handed it to me. He watched suspiciously as I raised it to my lips and said: “O.K. That’s enough,” before I even downed the first swallow. I handed it back after the second.

  “If you’re going to get me up at four in the morning to break your cases,” I said, “you’ve got to keep me awake.”

  He fumbled a dead cigar from his ashtray, dusted it off and popped it in his mouth. “O.K. Spill your story.”

  “Not yet. I’ve got it figured out, but we have to prove it. I’ve no urge to be sued.”

  “Oh,” he said. “You got a theory.”

  “Sure. What have you got?”

  “Nothing,” he admitted. “I’m listening.”

  “This is what I want. You have Marden Swope, Mrs. Swope and Marie Kincaid picked up separately and brought here. Keep them apart and I’ll talk to them one at a time.”

  He eyed me fixedly over his glasses. “What do I pick them up on?”

  I waved that aside impatiently. “That’s your problem. If you’re leary of warrants, lure them down. Tell ’em the jail’s on fire and you need a bucket brigade. Tell them anything.” Then I remembered something. “Swope was coming in anyway, to identify Longstreet. He suggested your prisoner might be someone else.”

  Day snapped erect. “He what!”

  “Don’t get excited. Just a screwy idea he had. It’s Longstreet, all right.”

  He leaned back in his chair again. “And when all these people get here?”

  “I’ll talk to them.”

  He scratched his head. “Knowing how you like to grandstand, I don’t suppose you’d outline your case first?”

  “Don’t suppose I would.”

  “O.K.,” he said wearily. “What can I lose? I haven’t got a case anyway.”

  He picked up his phone, gave the necessary orders and we sat back to wait.

  Inspector Day sent out for sandwiches and coffee after pointedly informing me that my share of the bill would be thirty-five cents, and collecting it before he ordered. We had just finished our uninspiring lunch when Hannegan stuck his head in the door.

  “They’re all here,” he said.

  “Separate?” I asked.

  “None of them even know the others are here.”

  “Send in Mrs. Swope,” I ordered.

  Hannegan looked at Day, his eyebrows raised.

  “I’m just a figurehead around here,” the inspector said bitterly. “Don’t pay any attention to me.”

  The lieutenant shrugged, started to smile and wiped it off fast when Day roared: “Get a move on!”

  “Yes sir,” he said, and backed out hurriedly.

  “See what happens when I let you give orders?” Day asked aggrievedly. “Discipline shot to hell!” He rubbed his bald spot and mumbled: “Impertinent pup.”

  “He didn’t say a word,” I said in Hannegan’s defense.

  The inspector snapped, “I know what he was thinking!”

  A knock sounded. Day growled, “Come in,” and Hannegan opened the door nervously.

  He stepped aside to let in Mrs. Swope, then asked the space between Day and me if we wanted him to remain. It was impossible to determine which of us he was addressing.

  I nodded imperceptibly and Day said: “You can stay if you keep your mouth shut.”

  Mrs. Swope waited uncertainly, kneading her hands together and looking frightened. I introduced her to the inspector and asked her to have a chair. She looked around hesitantly, finally deciding on the one farthest from Warren Day’s desk. I walked over and looked down at her.

  “Ever hear of truth serum, Mrs. Swope?” I asked.

  She looked puzzled, then nodded doubtfully.

  “We gave it to Longstreet, and his locket couldn’t help. He told us all about it.”

  I might have told her that the world would end in five minutes. She turned paper white and clutched at her throat. “No,” she whispered. “No.”

  “Don’t hold it against him, Mrs. Swope. He meant to keep his oath, but you can’t fight truth serum. He had to tell.” I made my voice sympathetic.

  She asked in a dead voice: “Everything?”

  I played the hunch on which my whole case was based, holding my breath as I played it, because if I were wrong, Mrs. Swope would know my whole attack was bluff.

  I said: “Even that you were the girl who gave him the locket twenty-seven years ago.”

  It worked. The shock of it, superimposed on the shock of Longstreet breaking his oath, nearly heaped her on the floor in a faint. She managed to retain consciousness, but all resistance was knocked out of her. The hopeless eyes she turned up at me were utterly convinced I knew everything.

  “What do you want of me?” she asked.

  “We just want you to clear up a point or two. How you learned of the plot, for example.”

  She was too far gone for suspicion, but she said in dull surprise: “Didn’t Willard tell that?”

  “We didn’t ask him,” I said easily. “It’s not an important point. We know you warned him, after making him swear on the locket he’d never tell. We know why you warned him.… That you couldn’t bear to see an old sw
eetheart framed, even though your husband was the framer.…”

  “Framed?” she asked wonderingly. “I didn’t know it was a frame-up when I told Willard.”

  “I was merely using a figure of speech,” I rapidly backtracked. “You see, we know enough of the story so that we have already arrested your husband. He’s beyond all possible help, so you have nothing to lose by telling us how you learned the plot.”

  Her head drooped and she gazed helplessly down at her hands. “I overheard them in Marden’s office.”

  “Overheard who?”

  “Marden and Miss Kincaid. It was a week ago. I dropped in to see Marden, and Miss Kincaid was in his office. The door was open a crack and I stopped to listen. I don’t know why, because I’m not a suspicious woman. After listening, I thought it best Marden not suspect I had heard, so I left without going in.”

  “What did you hear?”

  “I heard Miss Kincaid say: ‘Suppose at the last minute Longstreet changes his mind about going to the camp?’ Marden said: ‘I thought of that. Anton will tail him when he leaves the office at noon. If he looks like changing his mind, Anton has orders to stick a gun in his ribs and make sure he’s at camp by four at the latest.’ ”

  I suddenly understood a lot of things which had not previously been clear. “How’d you know what they were talking about?” I asked.

  “I didn’t,” Mrs. Swope said dully. “If I’d had any idea …” Her voice faded away for a minute, then went on: “I’d have spoken to Marden. I’d …” She looked up at me helplessly. “I don’t know what I’d have done. I didn’t know what it all meant, and I kept brooding about it until I was nearly sick, and it got closer and closer to the time, and finally the actual morning arrived without my doing anything about it, and I couldn’t stand it any more so I went to the office and told Willard just before he left at noon.”

  She began to cry, making no sound, but with her shoulders jiggling up and down in jerky rhythm as tears slid across her face.

  I said to Hannegan: “Got all that?”

  He looked up from the notebook in which he had been unobtrusively writing during the entire interview. “Yeah. Got it all.”