The Man with the Lumpy Nose

by Lawrence Lariar

  “Why not? Bring him up to my place. And I’d also like to talk to Mrs. Bartlett.”

  “You’ll have to go out to Brooklyn if you want her. She’s a stubborn one. She won’t move for us.”

  “I’m going over to Brooklyn right now, but I should be back at my place within two hours. You’ll have Orenson up at my flat for me?”

  “I’ll deliver him personally.”

  On the long ride to Brooklyn, Bull re-examined the brown envelope holding the Bartlett case. He had a mind sensitive to detail. By the time he left the train he had almost memorized the evidence of each witness. The facts, he realized, were simple and yet obscure. There were no leads, no suspects.

  Mrs. Bartlett opened the door for him, a short woman dressed in blue. Her round face was at once attractive and disappointing. It was her eyes that disappointed; they were cod’s eyes, large and staring. Her expression reflected neither sorrow nor joy, rather a sort of permanent stupefaction. She spoke in a singsong monotone.

  “I’m not well,” she said, and seated herself tenderly in a rocking chair near the window. “You’ll have to excuse me, the way I look, I mean.”

  “I won’t bother you for more than a few moments, Mrs. Bartlett. You must understand, however, that I’m here to help find the person who killed your husband.”

  “It was a maniac.” She stared through the window and never seemed to blink her eyes.

  “If I thought it was a maniac, it would be easy, Mrs. Bartlett. I’m afraid it wasn’t. I think it was done by somebody who had made plans for a long time.”

  “Plans? Plans to kill my Harry?”

  “Your husband may have had enemies.”

  “He was a good man. How could a man good as Harry make any enemies?”

  “Somebody he may have had a fight with at the store, perhaps?”

  She shook her head dumbly, but her bovine eyes still held their focus on a spot far away. “You’re crazy, mister. Harry was a good man behind the counter.”

  “We must try to discover his enemies, and to do that you’ll have to tell me more about your husband. Did he leave you alone often?”

  “Harry and me were in love. Why would he leave me alone?”

  “You don’t understand. He was a member of several fraternal orders, for instance. He must have attended those meetings without you.”

  “No. He didn’t go to those clubs any more. Harry was only interested in one of them. He was trying to start one by himself.”

  “A fraternal order?”

  She turned slowly and her fish eyes looked through him. “I just told you he didn’t like them clubs, didn’t I? Harry was patriotic. He was starting a new kind of club—for the war effort.”

  “Your husband was a brave man, Mrs. Bartlett. And this club of his—was it already organized?”

  “It never really got started.”

  “That’s too bad. A patriotic club could have done a lot of good over here. I always thought that this section of Brooklyn was full of Nazi sympathizers.”

  She turned her head away from the window. Then a flash of sudden pain snapped her big eyes shut and she clapped a hand to her face. “Oh, my God! You think that they—you think those Nazis—”

  “Nobody knows, Mrs. Bartlett. Your husband may have stumbled into some secret information which made him dangerous. I doubt if he would be killed just because he was collecting money. But you’ve given me something to work on.” Bull rose to leave. “My little talk with you may break this thing wide open.”

  “Those dirty dogs, I’d like to see them all hang for this!”

  She stood on the little porch and her fish eyes followed him down the street. When he turned the corner she continued to stare at the spot where she had last seen him. Then, with a stifled sob, she broke into tears and fled back to the house.

  It was eleven when Inspector McElmore entered Bull’s apartment with Orenson. Orenson was nervous; his every action betrayed his temperament. He sat in the corner of the room, almost on the edge of the big blue wing chair, turning his faded green felt hat endlessly in his hands. He was a slight young man, pale and aesthetic. His head was a triangle of pallid flesh and under his eyes dark shadows lay. He looked at Homer for only a flickering second before he spoke.

  “Vera never told me about her activities. You see, I couldn’t ever hope to join her. My job, you know.”

  “You mean that your hours were hard?”

  “Yes. We met only during the mornings or on my day off.”

  “But you must have talked with her about such things, Orenson. Weren’t you going to marry her?”

  “I never said I was. I have a mother—”

  “Come, come. Don’t you know whether she belonged to any clubs—any societies? This information will help us to find her murderer. You want us to find him, don’t you?”

  The hat dropped to the floor. “Of course. But I hate to talk about Vera and her affairs. She wouldn’t want me to talk about them.”

  “Why not? Did she have something to hide?”

  “No!” His voice broke sharply. “Vera never did a dishonorable thing in her life. It’s just that—well, she did several things that I couldn’t see. She was active in politics, for one—the sort of movements that were dangerous. I didn’t want to see her get hurt. Then, too, I never could understand a woman, a girl like Vera, mixing into politics.”

  “Ah!” Bull slapped the brown envelope against his knee. “She was interested, perhaps, in an Anti-Nazi movement?”

  Orenson’s fleshy mouth fell open. “How did you know?”

  “I don’t know. You must tell me. All of it.”

  “It was an organization she was interested in. I tried to discourage her because I thought the thing was Communist.”

  “You thought it was? Was it?”

  “I don’t know. I really don’t know yet, but I don’t think so.”

  “Did you ever ask her whether the organization was Communist?” roared McElmore.

  “Yes. I asked her. But she said it had nothing to do with them. She claimed it was her own idea, this fighting with the Nazis, whether the Communists were doing it or not. She began to plan her work, to form a giant Queens society to fight the Fascist groups.” Orenson still looked down at his hands. He wet his underlip with his tongue. “I didn’t want it known she was working with them, the Communists I mean.”

  “But you just admitted that she wasn’t a Communist!”

  “The idea seemed to have Communist approval. I didn’t want it known that she was active that way.”

  Bull said, “Don’t you ever read the papers? Fighting Fascists is an American idea, too, you know.”

  “I know. I felt later that I should have told the police. But then—well, I figured you wouldn’t understand and you might think I was involved—”

  “What did she do? How did she go about organizing the society?”

  “She went to her friends, a few of them, and asked them to help her, but they refused. So she started to collect money. She wanted to rent a big hall and get speakers for a mass meeting.”

  There was a silence.

  “I went with her, most of the time. I was afraid for her, you see. Even though I wasn’t much interested in her ideas, I went along to protect her.”

  “You mean that she was threatened?”

  He nodded. “Several times. She got a lot of letters, but she tore them up.”

  “You remember who sent them?”

  “No. I don’t remember any names. She always got angry and tore those letters up, you see. Vera had a bad temper.”

  “You never heard anybody threaten her? Anybody you could identify?”

  Orenson looked up at Homer. “No. That never happened. I never saw that happen.”

  “Do you suppose she might have found out something or recognized somebody who killed h
er to protect himself?” asked Bull.

  “I wouldn’t know,” said Orenson.

  Bull let him go. “That’s all for now, Orenson. It may prove important—it may lead us to the man who killed Vera.”

  “Yes?” Orenson stood in the hallway. “I hope it does. If you need me for anything else you can get me at Radio City.”

  McElmore, arms akimbo, watched him leave. Then he hurled his cigar butt into the wastepaper basket with an oath. “The stupid nut! Why is it so many musicians are a little weak in the dome, Homer? If he had spilled that story to me when we found his little Vera, maybe I’d have that killer behind bars.”

  “Maybe. If you knew his name and address, perhaps. We’re still operating along the narrow road of coincidence. There’s a big piece missing from our jigsaw puzzle, Dick.”

  “A big piece?”

  The phone rang. It was for McElmore. He listened for a while. “You’re sure it’s a black sedan? Tell him we’ll be out.” He put down the phone wearily. “That might be your missing piece, Homer.”

  “So? They’ve found the car?”

  “Under water.”

  “Anybody in it?”

  McElmore made a horrible face. “A regular convention in it. They found three guys inside—and they weren’t playing pinochle!”

  CHAPTER 19

  The sheriff said, “The first one is in here.”

  In the sheriff’s office, Bull, McElmore and Dumbo looked down at the corpse on the table. The coroner frowned.

  Homer said, “That’s Dino Bragiotto.” He didn’t seem surprised.

  McElmore paced the floor and pounded his big fists in a steady beat. “This sews it up, Homer. Bragiotto knew we were on his tail and decided to bump himself off.”

  “And, having decided, he took his assistants with him?”

  “Why not? You never can tell what a guy will do after he’s murdered somebody. Bragiotto probably figured it this way: He was all washed up. The police were right on his tail and getting closer every minute. It was just a question of the hot seat or something like this for him.”

  Bull still gazed at the corpse. He turned to the coroner.

  “Does he look like a suicide to you, Doctor?”

  Millett shrugged. “How should I know? He wasn’t a friend of mine.”

  “Look at his body.”

  “I’m looking.”

  Homer smiled. “Are you? Let’s assume that Bragiotto decided to commit suicide, as the inspector suggests. He drove the car over the edge of the pier and into the water. And then what?”

  “He died,” said McElmore.

  “Of course he died, Dick. But what happened before he drowned? Do you think that his high resolve overcame his desire to breathe air? Don’t you imagine that even a suicide struggles for breath in the throes of dying? Look at Bragiotto’s body. His knees are bent. He is leaning forward in exactly the position he must have held while driving the car. Doesn’t that strike you as being peculiar?”

  “I get it,” shouted Dumbo. “You mean that he would have made a last try for air, even though he wanted to die?”

  “I know he would have. It’s a natural thing to breathe, isn’t it, Doctor?”

  Doctor Millett rubbed his jaw. “You may be right, Bull. On the other hand, you may be all wrong. We can never prove that he didn’t struggle, you know. And even if we did prove it, where would it get us?”

  “Nowhere!” roared the inspector. “This bird knew we had him dead to rights and decided to get out of it the easy way.”

  “That sounds stupid,” said Dumbo. “If you really believe Bragiotto’s the murderer, how can you explain the two other stiffs? Do you think he wanted them along for company, maybe?”

  “We’ll find out about that later, Waddell! You stick to your writing and leave the hard questions to the Police Department!”

  “Is that for publication? You want me to send in this story?”

  McElmore reddened to the ears. “Why not? This suicide is as good as a confession, for my money.”

  Bull interrupted. “You think Bragiotto killed Chance? Why? Dino had only one motive for murder and that motive was jealousy. He may have killed Chance because of Marcia Prentiss, but we’ll have to dig a bit deeper before we can connect him to the murder of Smith and these two men in the car with him.” He turned to the doctor. “Suppose he had been drugged, then placed at the wheel of the car, would he drown without a struggle?”

  The little coroner rose slowly and walked to the corpse.

  “Never thought of that, Bull. Yes, there are many drugs that would render a man insensible to drowning. Oh—I’m not saying that a doped man wouldn’t struggle a bit—a very little bit, mind you—before drowning. That depends entirely upon the amount of stuff given him. An overdose of morphine, for instance, would even kill him. But he might remain unconscious for a long time under a slightly lesser dose. And, while unconscious, of course, he could be drowned with ease.”

  “Nuts!” snapped McElmore. “The only dope that mug took was a couple of dozen drinks before he left that saloon. He probably got himself tight as a drum and then took his pals for a ride.”

  “A new type of drunk,” cooed Dumbo. “I’ve heard of men seeing dark magenta elephants from too much bottle, but I’ve yet to meet an alcoholic suicide who can drive two plug uglies forty miles from the city and over the edge of a pier. Sort of a diabolical deadhead he was, eh, McElmore? Or maybe his pals were stewed to the ears and wanted some fresh Long Island spume, eh?”

  The inspector answered with his eyes and strode out of the room. “Let’s look at the other lugs,” he said.

  The second dead man lay on a table. They had covered him with a sheet, but his head was exposed. He had a tremendous nose. His face was greenish-white in death, but the nose still looked alive. It was horribly large, fat and covered with small bumps of flesh. There was a quality of madness in this nose. One wanted to laugh at it, now that the eyes were shut and the mouth closed in an expressionless line. Yet, its ugliness worked against the laughter. It was too easy to imagine how this nose would look were the eyes glaring with life. Then it would be an animal’s nose, a snout, perhaps. It would be fearful and frightening and foul.

  Dr. Millett said, “The man was obviously suffering from acne rosacea. This leads me to believe that he was a heavy drinker. Acne rosacea is common among heavy drinkers of a certain type.”

  McElmore stared at the nose. Homer flipped back the sheet and exposed the man’s feet. He wore high shoes, laced above the ankle. They were the old-fashioned type of footgear, made of heavy leather and designed for comfort.

  “Do you think he was alive when the car hit the water?”

  The coroner shook his head. “It’s hardly likely. He was shot above the heart, from fairly close range.” He pointed to the other corpse. “It’s the same with that one. Somebody held a gun up to his head and fairly blew that one’s brains out.”

  Homer turned to Wolpert, the sheriff. “You say you found nothing on these two men? Nothing at all to identify them?”

  “Not a thing. This one with the nose didn’t even have a handkerchief in his pocket. Never saw anything like it.”

  “Get me his jacket. How about the little one, Dick—he look familiar to you?”

  “I think I know him. He looks like No Nose Frenchy.”

  “More noses?” guffawed Dumbo. “This case is lousy with schnozzles.”

  “What was his line of work, Dick?”

  “Nothing particular. No Nose hasn’t been booked in a good long time, you understand. He was a small time stooly who operated downtown with a mob of car thieves and down-at-the-heel racketeers. That was a couple of years ago, of course, the last time I saw him.”

  “Where did he get that moniker? His nose isn’t bad!”

  The inspector laughed grimly. “This sure is funny; the nose
s, I mean. First we get a big ape with a nose as big as a fist. And now, No Nose Frenchy. Well, No Nose Frenchy wasn’t exactly what you might call a handsome boy when I first saw him, Homer. He came over here about eight years ago from France. He was a horrible looking guy the first time we pulled him in. Had his nose blown off by shrapnel in the last war. He was left with a kind of a scar on his face where his nose should have been.”

  “Must have been easy to spot,” said Dumbo.

  “He was. Well, he got mixed up with this dirty bunch downtown and we kept pulling him in regular, from force of habit. Real reason was that we could get hold of the guy so easily on account of that nose of his. But, it was funny, we could never really pin anything on the rat. He always seemed to sneak out of the pinch with an alibi. We had our own ideas about his alibis, but this nose business worked for him, if you get what I mean.”

  Dumbo said, “I don’t get it.”

  “I knew you wouldn’t, smart boy. Well, it was a funny thing—about his nose, I mean. Anybody seeing No Nose on a job would have to remember that scar on his face where a nose should have been, you understand? But we could never get a witness to identify the lug. They would make a funny face when they took a squint at his nose and swear up and down that the man they saw wasn’t No Nose, because they would have remembered an awful looking face like he had. We had our own ideas on the guy. I was pretty sure he had a gag worked out where he puttied up his beak before he went on a job. You understand how clever that was, Homer?”

  “That was clever. He could never be identified with a fake nose.”

  “That’s it. Anyhow, before I can pin him with the putty business, he disappears from New York—I mean downtown. Next thing I know he turns up on the line in the Bronx somewhere.”

  “Why was he arrested?”

  “I don’t remember. That isn’t important, Homer. Point is that I don’t recognize the little ape. He has this new nose grafted on his face, you understand. Some doctor must have fixed him up.”

  “How did you know him?”

  “I’m lucky, because I could always identify him by the way he talked.”