“What did he say?”
“He said no, and then suggested that I work for him on the same basis as Mother, with my percentage applying against the checks also.”
“Then what happened?”
“I was so surprised at first, I didn’t even say no. I just sat like a fool while he went on to explain that I had contacts with the younger set which Mother didn’t reach, and that all I had to do was suggest El Patio when I had dates. I got mad then and called him an old blackmailer. He smiled coldly and said that was his proposition. I could take it or leave it, but he wasn’t interested in my hundred dollars a month.
“I asked to see the checks he still held against Mother. He pressed a button, then pushed the lever of that little talking gadget he has on his desk and told Alvin Christopher to bring in Mother’s file. Alvin came in with a folder and stood waiting while Mr. Randall opened it and removed four checks. He looked them over and dismissed Alvin, who went back out into the front office. Mr. Randall spread the four checks on the desk in front of him, facing me, but out of reach. He was not a trusting man. I asked him again if he wouldn’t consider my proposal and let Mother go, and he just shook his head. I left then, and that’s all that happened.”
“Do you remember whether the spring lock on the back door was set?” I asked.
She wrinkled her smooth forehead. “No. Mr. Randall opened the door and closed it after me.”
“Where were the checks when you left?”
“Still lying on Mr. Randall’s desk.”
“They were gone when I discovered the body,” I said. “How long did you stay after Christopher went back to the front office?”
“Two or three minutes.”
“You’re sure of that? It couldn’t have been five?”
“Oh, no. I just looked at the checks, asked one question and left. I’d say about two minutes.”
We reached the downtown end of the bus line and circled to return.
“I’ll get off shortly,” I said. “You go home and get arrested. I’ll have a lawyer at headquarters shortly after you get there. Don’t tell the police anything except your name. Say you refuse to make a statement without advice of counsel, and keep repeating that every time they ask a question. Got that?”
“Got it,” she said, and smiled up at me confidently.
CHAPTER IV
Find the Motive
I dropped from the bus at Eighth and Washington in front of a corner tavern. I used the tavern’s telephone booth to phone Russard’s. A treble-voiced female answered the phone.
“Has Miss Joan Garson left yet?” I asked.
“Oh yes. She must have left about an hour ago.”
I tried to sound disappointed. “I thought she had a late appointment.”
“Her appointment was for two-thirty.”
“Thanks,” I said and hung up.
I dropped another nickel and called Inspector Warren Day of the Homicide Squad.
“Where in blazes are you?” he greeted me. “I’ve got a warrant out for you.”
“I supposed you would have,” I said ignoring his question. “I’d have phoned earlier, but I’ve been busy doing your work. Wait at your office. I’ll be over in an hour.”
“Wait, your grandmother! You get here in ten minutes or you go in the can as a material witness when you do arrive.”
I made an impolite noise. “You couldn’t hold me two seconds. Do you want the information I have free? Or must I bring a lawyer with me and make you pry it out?”
Day’s voice sank to a low growl. “You’ll spill everything you know, or you’ll rot in jail till your grandchildren have beards. Your neck is out a mile, running off like you did. Get tough, and I’ll make your warrant read ‘on suspicion of homicide’.”
“I’m already tough. See if your broken-down police force can find me. I’ll drop you a card from somewhere.”
“Hey!” he yowled. “Are you hanging up?”
“Sure.”
“Now wait, Moon. You’ll only get in trouble if you disappear. Be smart for once instead of bullheaded.”
“And rot in jail until the D.A. gets around to trying someone? No, thanks.”
“I wouldn’t hold you. Heck, you’re getting touchy! Can’t you take a riding?”
“Now I like you better,” I said. “See you in an hour.”
“Why so long?” he complained. “I got a dinner waiting at home.”
“I’ve got one waiting here. I eat too, you know.”
“Where’s ‘here’?” he asked casually.
“A tavern at Eighth and Washington.”
My next call was to Eddie Duncan, the lawyer I use when I need one. I told him to be at Headquarters by seven with a writ of habeas corpus, just in case.
“Better be prepared to post some bond, too,” I said. “You have a new client name of Joan Garson. She’s in the jail house for murder.”
I made my dinner from a bowl of chili and a hamburger, the tavern’s total menu. Then I borrowed pencil and paper from the waitress and printed out:
Received of Mr. Manville Moon, one (1) P-38 pistol, numbered 42831.
I finished just as the squad car rolled up. Hannegan of the Homicide Squad and a uniformed rookie came in and planted themselves in front of my booth.
“Evening, boys,” I said. “I figured you’d save me taxi fare. Does your boss trust his mother?”
“Let’s have your gun,” Hannegan said.
I pushed the receipt I had printed to the table’s edge. “Sign here.”
“Hand over that gun.”
“You’ll get it,” I said reasonably. “Just sign the receipt.”
His body leaned forward imperceptibly as he centered his weight on the balls of his feet. I shifted slightly in the booth and let my face go expressionless. Hannegan settled back on his heels. His face was pale with anger, but his voice was moderate when he spoke.
“You’re talking to the law, Moon. Give me that gun.”
“Take it,” I said.
It was a stalemate, Hannegan standing over me with frozen, unrelenting eyes, and my expression yielding no more than his. The rookie broke it up.
“Shall I slug the punk, Lieutenant?”
Hannegan turned and looked at him cynically. “We can’t spare any men right now.”
He picked up the pencil and scrawled his name on the paper: I gave him my pistol, butt first.…
* * * *
Warren Day was chewing a dead cigar and squinting over horn-rimmed glasses when I was escorted into his office. He dismissed Hannegan and the rookie by bobbing his skinny bald head at the door, and peered at me furiously over his spectacles. I was not asked to sit down, so I dropped into a chair and helped myself to one of his cigars. “Start talking,” he said.
I raised my eyebrows. “Let’s get something straight. I’m here because I want to be, not because your flat-tails could find me in a million years. Get civil and we’ll swap information. Stay tough and you get nothing.” I glanced at the time. “Eddie Duncan will be here in twenty minutes with a writ of habeas corpus.”
He straightened, pain and outraged innocence struggling together in his face.
“Habeas corpus! I said I wouldn’t hold you. Don’t you trust anybody?” Day is like that. We had snarled at each other for five years before I went in the Army, and we picked up where we left off the day I got out. I almost like him. He knows his job and neither takes nor gives favors. Under his crusty exterior I suspect he almost likes me too, but he would jerk the head off of anyone who accused him of it. When after information he has an astonishing technique of unexpectedly switching from sour rage to a sort of wheedling friendliness. He employed it now.
“Don’t be touchy, Manny. I know you’re working on this case for somebody, or you wouldn’t have ducked my boys at the University Buil
ding. We’re both after the same thing, so you tell me what you know and I’ll tell you what I’ve got. It’s a cinch case anyway. We’ve already arrested the murderer and all we need is clinching evidence.”
“Who’s the murderer?”
He looked surprised. “You know as well as I do. You were there. Joan Garson.”
“Well, well,” I said. “Joan Garson.” He regarded me suspiciously, but I made no further comment.
We started a session of information swapping then. It resembled a meeting of diplomats, each of us suspicious the other would hold back, and neither willing to tell everything at once for fear the other would stop giving out if he thought there was nothing left to receive in exchange.
After much sparring the Inspector allowed me to examine the murder weapon, a heavy-hafted knife with a seven-inch tapered blade machine stamped, “Souvenir from Juarez, Mexico.” The pewter handle was intended to resemble silver.
“Know whose it is?” I asked.
“Randall’s. He kept it as a desk ornament.”
“How about fingerprints?”
“Clean as a whistle.”
That I expected, having examined the handle myself while the knife was still in the body.
“Have you figured out a motive?” I asked.
“Sure. That is, we know there was a motive, but we’re not quite sure what it was.”
“Great. That makes fine sense. The jury will love it.”
“Now, wait. We’ve got motive enough, but we can’t get the whole story because the blasted girl won’t talk. All she’ll say is, ‘I refuse to make a statement without advice of counsel.’ Keeps repeating it like a parrot. Ask her if she wants a glass of water and she says, ‘I refuse to make a statement without advice of counsel.’
“We know Randall had four checks signed by Judith Garson, Joan’s mother. We got that from his secretary. We also know Randall was showing them to Joan Garson just before you found his body. We don’t know what the Judith Garson checks mean or why Randall had them. But Randall gets killed and the checks disappear. I ask you, is that a motive or isn’t it?”
“How about a will?” I said.
“His secretary says he died intestate and the nearest relative is a nephew in Canada. That lets out the money motive.”
“A lawyer without a will. That’s a funny one.”
“Randall was a funny guy,” said Day. “Apparently never cared about anyone but himself, and didn’t care who got his money after he died.”
All else I could get from the Inspector was that the coroner’s inquest would be held the following morning, and that I was elected one of the main witnesses. Pending the inquest Joan was being held at Headquarters. I decided it was time to throw a monkey wrench.
“Joan Garson didn’t do it,” I said.
The Inspector dislikes unexpected statements. He likes things cut and dried. His first impulse was to relapse into one of his rages, but he caught himself short and merely turned sour. “Why?”
“When she left Randall’s office she went straight to a hairdresser. I checked it myself. She was at Russard’s from two-thirty till nearly four.”
“That was after the murder.”
“Think a minute,” I said. “What would you do if you had committed a murder?”
“I wouldn’t commit one.”
“You’d head for the next state,” I answered myself. “No woman would stick a knife in a man and then calmly go have her hair set. Joan Garson didn’t even know Randall was dead till I told her.”
“Murderers don’t act rationally. I knew one who wiped out his family with an ax, then went to a Mickey Mouse.”
“He was loony. This girl is sane. If she had killed Randall, she’d be miles from town now.”
A rap sounded on the door and Hannegan entered.
“A lawyer named Duncan wants to have his body.” He jerked his thumb at me.
Behind him Eddie Duncan interrupted. “I want to see my client also. Miss Joan Garson.”
Day’s face gradually turned red and his nose whitened until it bulged glaringly against its dark background. He pointed the white nose at me.
“So she’s your client!” he roared. “Hannegan, get the D.A. on the phone!” Hannegan scuttled from the office. “I’ll habeas corpus you!” Day growled. “Coming in here to worm out information for your murdering client. She’ll be before a grand jury in the morning.”
“Take it easy,” I said. “Duncan hasn’t got a writ for her. He just wants to talk to her. It’s anyone’s right to see a lawyer. You’re not running a Nazi concentration camp.”
He twitched his nose at me venomously.
“Of course if you want to rush things, Duncan can get a writ in a hurry,” I suggested. “The D.A. will love your spoiling his evening by dragging him into court tonight.”
The Inspector partially underwent another of his quick mood changes.
“Hannegan!”
Hannegan popped into the doorway.
“Can that call to the D.A.,” Day ordered. “And let this shyster into Garson’s cell.” He turned smoldering eyes on me. “Get out of here! If you leave town, I’ll have you hanged without trial. Get out!”
I ambled to the door. “Let me know if you turn up anything to help my client,” I said, and stepped out quickly.
At the desk I exchanged my receipt for my pistol.
CHAPTER V
Army Judo
My watch registered nine-thirty when I got I out of a taxi in front of El Patio. At the top of l broad steps I left my hat with a black-jowled pug who carefully looked me over before accepting it, and threaded my way across the gaming room to the bar on its far side. Fingering a rye and water, I leaned my back against the bar and looked over the place. The casino occupied the whole center of the building. Dice tables, two roulette wheels, and a blackjack game were entertaining a substantial number of customers at high costs. Arches on either side of the room respectively led to a table-ringed dance floor and to the dining room advertised as serving “The Best Food in the City.”
On the far side of the room Fausta Moreni, a blond refugee from Rome, dealt blackjack to five suckers. Five years before, when I first met Fausta, she was freshly escaped from Fascist Italy and frightened and bewildered by America. She was nineteen then, and blond in the dark, brown-eyed way only Romans can be blond.
Her strange combination of naiveté, and Latin voluptuousness had almost put me overboard. I carried her picture through seven campaigns, but during my three years overseas Fausta changed. She met the monied fringe of near respectables on the edge of the underworld, the big-time gamblers.
When I climbed back into civilian clothes, the first person, I looked for was Fausta. I like my women a little helpless, and she had lost her naiveté. A girl who cleans the best at poker, is a wizard at blackjack, and ranks among the top paid dealers in the country is out of my class.
I stepped down and let the suckers who tried to beat her bank with half their minds and tried to make her with the other half have full play. Not that Fausta high-hatted me. She met me with open arms. But we had drifted too far in opposite directions, and neither knew how to backtrack.
Next to Louis Bagnell, the proprietor, Fausta knew the ins and outs of Club El Patio better than anyone else. Maybe it’s callous to capitalize on dead romance, but I never let sentiment interfere with a murder investigation. I meant to pump her for everything she knew.
As though sensing my gaze, she looked up, saw me and smiled, somehow conveying surprise and delight across the distance. When the hand ended she rose and motioned a lounging man to take her deal. I made a place for her at the bar as she crossed the room.
“Manny!” she said, taking both my hands in her small brown ones. “You come to see me almost never any more. Is it not love you have for me?”
“It is not. Drink?”
“Coca cola.”
“With rum?”
“Not during business. Plain.”
I ordered her drink and another rye and water for myself.
“Where you keep yourself, Manny?” she asked. “Why you never come see me any more?”
“I’ve come to see you, haven’t I?”
She narrowed her brown eyes suspiciously. “You here on some business. Always you work at business and never have time for play.”
“I dropped in to see if you’d like supper at the Paris Club some night.”
She let out a delighted little “Oh!” like a child offered candy. “I would sure. I ask Louie. He let me off eleven-thirty.”
“Not tonight,” I hedged. “I have some things to do. How about meeting me there at midnight tomorrow?”
She looked disappointed. “You no pick me up?”
“I’d better not.” I paused. “I’m going in to see Louie in a minute. After our talk I may not be popular around here.”
“Pooh. You just lazy. Did I not love you, I say, ‘Good-by to you, mister. I hard to get.’ But I be there.” She narrowed her eyes to mock slits. “You stand me up, I cut out your heart.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I watched her weave through the crowd back to her table, downed the remainder of my drink and made my way through the dining room to Louis Bagnell’s private office. When someone said, “Come in” to my knock, I turned the knob and entered.
Apparently I was breaking into a conference. Bagnell sat behind a desk facing the door, with one of his stooges on either side of him. Two more slouched on a divan in the corner. All four were typical hoods, bulky and dangerous-looking, but not too bright. The two on the couch I had never before seen, but I knew Vance Caramand at Bagnell’s left, and at his right sat “Mouldy” Greene of my old outfit. Mouldy derived his nickname from having contracted eczema, pubis pediculosis, and athlete’s foot simultaneously.
The Juarez Knife Page 3
