I heard a scrape as the phone on the other end was picked up.
“Calling to offer an apple, are you?” Connelly asked wryly.
Had he guessed it was me, or did enough girls call that he shrugged them off?
“I just came across something – long shot – could have to do with those burglaries.”
“I’m listening.”
“That guy I’ve been following? Yesterday he went slumming. Rough neighborhood. Met a guy with a pickup truck. Money changed hands.” I sketched details, how I’d followed the pickup and watched its occupants stop to study a building. “On my way back to the office just now, I saw the truck again and tagged along. They made another pass. Same place,” I concluded. One white lie didn’t alter the gist of the story.
Connelly was silent a minute. Then he took down the address.
“You’d have to be mad to look a place over one day and break in the next,” he said.
“Yeah. You would.”
“Still.”
“Still.”
Thirty-one
I missed my oatmeal the next morning. I missed my coffee even more. It was just after eight and I was in the passenger seat of my own car at the far end of the parking lot where I’d watched people leaving work yesterday. The building was called The Wellington and the earlybirds were arriving. From time to time I darted a pencil at a fistful of papers, trying to look like a private secretary madly correcting some important document for her boss who had stopped off en route to a meeting.
After the guy with the brown mustache had left with Al last evening, I’d noted the cars remaining in the parking lot. Around eight I’d checked back and only one was still there, a tan Cadillac roadster, maybe not quite as fine as Woody Beale’s car, but sporty and guaranteed to turn girls’ heads. Today it wasn’t around, but after half an hour or so it turned in. Sure enough, the towhead got out. As far as I could see he hadn’t been roughed up any and the way he walked didn’t indicate nervousness. Maybe he and Al were just pals. I dumped the papers I’d been shuffling and hurried after him into the building.
“Hold it, Sam,” he barked at a colored elevator attendant who already had the doors half closed.
The attendant obeyed. I quickened my pace intending to get in too and see where the towhead got off. A kid with a mail cart appeared out of nowhere and I had to dodge. I looked up just in time to see the elevator departing.
With time to kill I checked the building directory again. It still didn’t show any insurance companies. A woman in horn rimmed glasses and a mousy man with thinning hair came in. A group of girls from the typing pool ran up the stairs, young and fearful of being late. Half a dozen more pulled up breathless to wait for the elevator. Fishing in my pocket I rehearsed my next move.
The empty elevator clattered back into view. The attendant pulled back the gate. He wasn’t very tall, and had a smooth face scrubbed of all expression. I started in with the other passengers.
“Hey, I think this belongs to a gentleman you took up on your last trip,” I said as I flashed a cigarette lighter from the second hand store. “Blond guy but with a brown mustache. Seemed in a hurry?”
More people were waiting to get in, except I was blocking their way. I was counting on that to help me, thinking he’d want to move things along.
“Lost ‘n found’s that way.” He pointed.
“Houseman. I think his name is Houseman,” offered a girl in the elevator. She turned to her friend. “The one with that spanking car?” They shared a laugh, information exhausted.
“If you tell me which office he’s in I can stop by and give it to him,” I said.
“Can’t help. You going up or staying, Miss?”
Outmaneuvered, I let the people waiting for the elevator jostle me in and rode to the top floor. A stroll past the closed doors of the three tenants there told me nothing. I took a flight of stairs down a level, but no miracles happened there either. Going into offices with my story about the lighter risked drawing too much attention so I headed back to my own.
* * *
Before ambling past Beale’s watchdog and indoors for the rest of the morning I picked up a muffin and cup of coffee at Joe’s. The muffin sack hung from my teeth, the morning paper I’d bought was under my arm, and my free hand held the mug of hot coffee as I unlocked my door.
“That lock you have wouldn’t challenge a choirboy,” Mick Connelly said lounging against one corner of my desk.
I startled just enough to almost spill some coffee. Which I didn’t.
“I thought that uniform you’re wearing meant you were supposed to uphold the law, not break it,” I snapped snatching the sack from my mouth and dumping it on the desk with my keys. “What the hell are you doing breaking into my office?”
“Waiting to see if you might have any more details.”
“Details about what?”
Leaning forward he snagged the paper from under my arm and flipped it onto my desk with a thump of his finger.
“That.”
It was near the bottom, a small boxed item squeezed in after the main press run but in time for the late edition. I sank into my chair, unbuttoning my coat as I scanned the single paragraph.
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph.” Police had thwarted a burglary in progress at a factory on Springfield Street. “One day after they checked out the lay of the place?”
I looked up wondering if someone, somewhere, was having a laugh at my expense. Connelly’s gaze was narrow.
“Oh, for Pete’s sake. You don’t think I’d hand you this on a plate if I was setting you up, do you?” I asked irritably. “It felt to me like something was going to go down there, but I’ve had more than enough hours sitting in cars on surveillance these last few days. I didn’t see why I should add more callouses to my backside playing a hunch just to be a good citizen. Those break-ins are your dog fight, not mine.”
“Why don’t you have some coffee?” Connelly suggested. “You sound like you need it.”
If he was trying to get on my nerves he was doing a fine job. To prove that he wasn’t I took my sweet time sipping some coffee. Then I ripped open the sack and pinched off a wee bit of muffin, exploring it with the tip of my tongue before I popped it into my mouth.
“It was too flat easy for anything you’d concoct,” Connelly said hoarsely. He seemed to have run short of breath and shifted uncomfortably as he watched my act with the muffin. “Team that relieved us had just gone to have a look at that address when they spotted a truck in the alley.”
Arms crossed he got up and began to circle my office. It was harder to ignore him in motion than when he was still. Curiosity trumped my peevishness at his presence.
“Anybody talking?”
“Not much.”
“They look like the crew behind the rest of the break-ins?”
“Ah, now there’s the problem.”
He paused to survey the skeleton of my long dead philodendron which, like several before it, had succumbed to lack of water. Why waste money on a replacement doomed to suffer the same fate? With this specimen on display, clients could think I made an attempt at spiffing things up but had been preoccupied with my cases. At least the flowerpot was pretty.
“The one who was giving orders last night has alibis for the last two break-ins,” Connelly said. “When that tobacco warehouse got hit he was unloading vegetables over at a soup kitchen. Salvation Army captain vouched for him. Time before that he was in St. E’s giving up an appendix.”
I leaned back, baffled by this blind alley. “Doesn’t make sense.”
“Nope.” He hooked a leg across the corner of my desk again, undermining my concentration. “As you said a minute ago, I’ve got my dogfights, you’ve got yours. But some of the dogs are the same. So long as your clients aren’t guilty of anything that should concern the police, and so long as you don’t expect more than I can give with conscience clear, there’d be no harm if we showed a few cards.”
I considered it for a minut
e. Breaking the muffin in half I offered him some.
“Where’s Billy?” I asked to buy time.
“Told him I had a contact might have an idea or two about what happened but that I needed to go alone.” He broke a chunk from the muffin and put it into his mouth, watching me all the time. “You still peddling your interest in Albert Sikes as a lovers’ spat?”
“First tell me what you meant about Woody Beale having friends at City Hall.”
He frowned. “One of the councilmen and some other bigwig down there race cars in the same bunch Beale does, is what I heard. Something to do with racing. Why?”
“Are they pals enough for the cops to back off?”
Connelly planted a hand in front of me and leaned forward
“Do I look like I’m backing off?”
“Freeze reacted when I mentioned the name.”
“So? Man’s got a mind like a trap. And near as I can tell, Chief Wurstner would sell his own mother to solve these burglaries.”
I exhaled in decision. “Okay, there was no jilted lover. Al turned nasty when a fellow he’d been flim-flamming started to suspect something smelled and gave him the brush off.”
“I don’t suppose you’re inclined to tell me what the flim-flam entailed?”
“Just letting Al ride around with him.”
“Casing places?”
“That would be my guess. The guy who got snookered is young. Decent. Saw no harm in having company. Al spun him a yarn about being a writer at work on a project.”
“Jesus.”
I drained the last of my coffee and tapped a fingernail against the mug a couple of times as I thought aloud.
“It doesn’t make sense using a different gang. As much attention as this is getting, you’d want men who knew what they were doing – had worked togther, proved themselves.”
“Could be somebody liked what they’d been reading about. Decided to try the same thing.”
I shook my head. “I saw Al hand cash to a yokel involved in this one, remember? A guy who then made a beeline to check out the place that got hit. When that young fellow Al was riding with put an end to the rides, Beale’s boys started roughing the poor sap up. Smells to me like Al has been pulling strings on all these burglaries. Which means Woody Beale is behind them.”
“No proof, though. And it’s penny ante stuff for Beale.”
“True,” I agreed reluctantly. “These break-ins haven’t been slap-dash though. Until last night no one had been caught.”
“Nor like as not then if we hadn’t been watching.”
I couldn’t argue.
“Benny Norris came into it somewhere,” I mused. “That’s where this whole mess started. For me anyway. And Benny was an errand boy for Beale. I thought I might turn something up with the insurance angle, but I haven’t. You?”
“No.” Connelly rubbed his chin. “Maybe Benny was the go-between, Beale’s contact with the gang doing the actual burglaries. Say something went wrong. Whatever it was put Benny on the hook. Got him iced – most likely by Al or someone else working for Beale. After that, for some reason, Beale switched crews.”
“Trust, maybe?”
“Or with Benny dead they just needed another go-between. One with different contacts.”
“The one I saw Al meet up north? That slipped him the money?” I frowned. “Like you said, it seems like penny ante stuff for Beale.”
We lapsed into silence. Too much didn’t make sense.
“I don’t see how they manage to get the night watchmen out of the way at these places.” I twiddled my empty mug. “They get paid off? Drugged?” Beale was dandy at drugging people, I thought.
“These days lots of places as big as these just have an electric alarm,” Connelly said. “At the one place that still had a watchman as well, the poor old fellow got knocked in the head.”
I squeezed back the impulse to shoot up straight as a Catholic school girl.
“More muffin?” I offered.
Connelly looked at me oddly. “Thanks, but I better be going.”
I waited until he’d had time to get to the end of the hall. I went to the window and watched until he came out. Then I went to the phone. Perching on the desk beside it and stretching happily, I called Abner Simms, head of security at Rike’s department store.
Thirty-two
“Getting skinny with another floor to keep track of?” I asked. Rike’s had just added a seventh story, proof to some the Depression might truly come to an end.
Abner chuckled with the satisfaction of one who knew his workplace was as comfy as they came. “Elevators so I don’t wear myself out, chilled air so I don’t even sweat – it’s a wonder I’m not fat as Oliver Hardy. Fine job on that background check you ran for us last month. What do you need?”
“Where do big outfits like yours go for burglar alarms?”
He didn’t even need to think.
“Caldwell-Carter.”
“After that?”
“Montgomery Security. Maybe Gem City Guardian. A one-person office like yours doesn’t need one, surely. You’re not closing shop, are you? Hunting a job?”
He sounded hopeful, but I knew it wasn’t because he harbored me any ill will. Abner hadn’t liked me much when I started at Rike’s as a part-time floorwalker, a high school kid who wasn’t half as docile as people expected. Partly he thought I was green and partly he thought work should go to a man with a family to feed in those worst-of-bad times eight years ago. Then I stopped a nicely dressed gent who was about to walk out the door with a watch and two pairs of new leather gloves in his pocket that he hadn’t purchased. I held him while one of the clerks called a house dick, who happened that day to be Abner. Thereafter Abner started to thaw. Two years later he moved up to assistant head of security, and I was reassigned to loss prevention – though I still got floorwalker’s pay.
“If I ever have to put my tail between my legs, you’ll be the first place I come for a job,” I promised. “This is for something I’m working. You happen to have any names at those places you mentioned?”
He gave me a couple and we chatted some more about this and that. When we’d said our good-byes I sat for a minute swinging my legs while I surveyed the short list he’d given me.
The girls on the elevator in Kettering had thought the gent with the dark mustache was named Houseman. There was no Houseman on Abner’s list. I got out my phone book and looked up listings for security alarms. Caldwell-Carter and Montgomery Security both had offices downtown. Gem City Guardian was at the building I’d visited that morning. The building where Al had waited yesterday and argued with a man who was back today looking unscathed. Time to find out if the man’s name was Houseman.
The unsharpened pencil next to my phone had been a key piece of my office equipment from the day I opened. I used it to save my manicure while I swept the digits of Gem City Guardian’s number around the dial. A precise voice answered, the kind that made you think the burglar alarms they sold would be equally reliable.
“This is Lydia Vandevier,” I said twirling my strand of imaginary pearls since I’d borrowed Lydia’s name from the society pages. “Please connect me with Mr. Houseman.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Houseman is with a client. Is there a message?”
“Tell him I hope she’s not a terribly attractive client.” I laughed merrily and hung up.
Progress.
With one exception all the businesses burglarized used alarm systems rather than night watchmen. Al had visited them all in the course of deliveries with Peter. Al knew a man who sold burglar alarms, a man who judging from his clothes and car was near the top of the heap where he worked. Now I knew that man’s name was Houseman.
The next thing I wanted to find out was whether Houseman was the same man the manicurist from Ollie’s barber shop had described. She’d called him a “rich guy”. The way Houseman dressed and carried himself, he’d probably qualify, but I needed to be sure.
* * *
&nbs
p; I waited until the wiseacre kid who sold papers was clear of other customers before I handed him three cents for the afternoon edition.
“How’d you like to sell the rest of those and have the afternoon clear, make a little extra to boot?” I asked.
He grinned at me shrewdly. “What do I gotta do?”
“Meet me over at the Good Neighbors Shop in forty-five minutes. Know where it is?”
He nodded as another customer approached. I tossed him an apple and left.
At a quarter of two, so accurate I wondered if he owned a watch, he sauntered into view with an eagerness to his step he couldn’t quite hide. I watched from the small front window of the Good Neighbors second-hand shop. It was down on the tip of Van Buren, run by some ladies’ charity group. The clothing it sold was in better condition than it was at most places like it. I left the shop’s warmth and went out on its stoop. The newsie’s ink-smudged face split in a grin.
“Fifteen papers left, sis. Two bits ‘n two dimes.”
I handed it to him.
“What’s the deal?”
“The deal is I need someone to tag along and play like he’s my assistant for a couple of hours tomorrow morning. You’ll get a new pair of pants, a quarter in pay, and I’ll buy all the papers you’d normally sell. You interested?”
He crossed his arms and narrowed his eyes.
“This something I could get pinched for?”
“No. Strictly legal. Worst that could happen is we’d get the bum’s rush.”
His expression grew cocky. “I put up as good a fight as the next guy. What’s the job, then?”
“Go into an office with me and act like my assistant. Pretend to scribbled notes on a pad I’ll give you. You can write, I guess?”
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