She frowned, but when she spoke she tried to keep it light and frothy. “No need for that,” she said. “Not in broad daylight and when I have a proper warm coat.”
“We’re not worrying about your coat now,” Gibby said. “Don’t forget that you’d be dead of strangulation right now if it hadn’t been for that nice warm ring around your neck. Do you call it a necklace?”
“Nobody will strangle me in the subway,” she said.
“And at your apartment? Somebody could be waiting for you there.”
“No,” she said, and she almost was screaming it. Some people in the crowds passing along William Street stopped and looked at her. She dropped her voice. “No,” she said. “Why are you trying to frighten me?”
“There was an attempt made on your life, wasn’t there?” Gibby said.
“Yes,” she conceded hesitantly. “There was.”
“We intend to see that there isn’t a second attempt on it, and it is our job to try to catch the man who made the attempt. Even attempted murder is a crime in New York State, you know.”
She stood in the street and argued, and she almost made a good argument of it. She insisted that she had left her keys in her other purse and she would go home and find them and return to the bank and she would feel safe as a church all the way. The attempt on her life she didn’t try to minimize but she said she was certain that it was only an accidental thing, someone wandering through the empty offices of the bank to make petty thefts, a little money left in an unlocked desk or anything like that that could be picked up. She had come in early and had surprised him in the office. It wouldn’t happen again in a million years.
Gibby shook his head. “It isn’t any ordinary harmless sneak thief,” he said, “when he goes about with that black strap handy for strangling people.”
The strap she did dismiss. “That’s nothing,” she said. “You’ll find those all over the bank. They put them around bundles of records. He could have picked that up anywhere.”
“In your office or Mr. Coleman’s?” Gibby asked.
“There, too,” she said. “We often get bundles with those straps on them.”
“And you just leave the straps lying around your office. No, Miss Salvaggi. We saw your office. You keep a very neat office, nothing like that lying about.”
She wasn’t finished. She still had an argument to offer. “A lot of the men in the bank carry one or two of the things around in their pockets all the time. They take one off a bundle of checks or something and slip it into their pocket to have it handy when they have to make up a bundle. They’re like elastic bands.”
“But far more deadly,” Gibby said grimly.
She shuddered. “I’ll get used to seeing them again, I suppose,” she said. “They’re all over the place.”
“I’m sure,” Gibby said, “but we’d better get going for those keys of yours. The sooner we start, the sooner you’ll be rid of us. You can’t get out of it. We’re going with you and there isn’t anything you can do about it.”
“I don’t want you,” she said, and although this time she did keep her voice down, there was so much desperation in her face that people were staring again.
Gibby capitalized on it. “You don’t want to make a scene here,” he said. “People are looking at you. A little more and we’ll have gathered a crowd.”
She jumped at it. “That’s just it,” she said, and her voice was shaken by a dry sob. “What will my neighbors think? I have to live out there. There’s going to be all sorts of talk.”
She was down to that and, as arguments go, that one, except for desperation, didn’t have much in it. Gibby took a firmer grip on her arm and piloted her across the sidewalk to the car. I opened the door and he helped her in. She sat there and pouted. We were well out of the downtown traffic before she spoke at all; and, when she did speak, her tone was a shock to me. I hadn’t expected anything so sweetly cagey.
I should have been expecting it because in my thinking about her I had gone a long way. I had long recognized that she was playing it cozy with us. This girl knew a lot more than she was letting on. It was evident that she did and it had become so evident that I had even come around to suspecting the miracle of her escape from strangulation. That metal ring business she was wearing as a necklace, I had been thinking, could even have been deliberate. It left plenty of her lovely throat exposed, and I had been counting over the miracles. In the first place, we had the miraculous accident of her having happened to be wearing the thing that particular morning. Then we had the even more miraculous accident of the canvas strap just happening to encircle that metal ring and to tighten around it without slipping off the slick surface to encompass her bare throat above it.
None of it was impossible, but there was no blinking the fact that it did raise a most provocative question. If in a case of murder a woman should have good reason to make a try at diverting suspicion from herself, wouldn’t this be the perfect setup for her? It would be so beautifully simple to wear that thing on her neck, carefully adjust the canvas strap on it and pull the canvas strap tight. Then she would lie down behind her desk and close her eyes, waiting there for someone to come and save her. I couldn’t imagine a more beautiful fake. I was thinking about it as we rode along, and under the circumstances I should have been surprised by nothing, but the way she spoke did surprise me.
“You know,” she said, and it was as bland as butter. “You know, I’m beginning to wonder about you two. Your happening along outside the hotel last night was natural enough, but this morning is different. Just how did you happen to be in my office this morning?”
“You can call it luck,” Gibby said, and he was every bit as smooth as she was. “You can call yourself a lucky girl.”
She pouted and she smiled. She turned the smile first on Gibby and then on me.
“I don’t know that I am,” she said. She was obviously flirting with us.
“If we hadn’t come along, you’d still be lying there,” Gibby said.
“Oh, I don’t know. I’d only fainted. I would have come to sooner or later.”
That was too much. I couldn’t stand it.
“Would you?” I asked.
Gibby was sharper at catching my tone than she was, but of course he does know me.
“She would have,” he said quickly. “Miss Salvaggi is a healthy girl. It wouldn’t take her more than a minute or two to pull out of a faint. It wasn’t as though she had been hurt any.”
“And furthermore,” she said, “if you hadn’t happened along, someone else would. The boy who brings the mail around, someone with a memo from one of the other officers.”
“And,” Gibby added, “sometime during the morning your boss would be coming in.”
She by-passed that one. “You know,” she said, “I did think it was funny last night that there should be so many policemen and so many detectives and assistant district attorneys and all over just that silly business with Albert Gleason. Aren’t you people making an awfully big thing out of a practical joke?”
“Are we?” Gibby asked.
“I think you are. After all, the girls didn’t mean any harm. They are tomboyish, but they’re just kids and they’re harmless.”
“What about public decency?” Gibby asked, completely dead pan.
She looked at him and then she looked at me. This time it was with fluttering eyelashes. She did look charming.
“Are you serious?” she asked.
“We do our job,” Gibby said.
She thought that over for a while. “It’s all coming clear now,” she said finally.
“Is it?” Gibby asked. “Good.”
“Someone saw Albert running around the halls that way and called the police. You people are going to make a big fuss about it and really wreck those girls’ lives. Mr. Coleman isn’t going to let you. He asked you to come down and see him, didn’t he?”
“You should know,” Gibby said. “Don’t you keep track of your boss’s appointments?
”
“I should have caught on right away,” she continued, riding blandly past Gibby’s question. “It’s so like Mr. Coleman. If there is anyone in the bank who would try to do something for the girls, it will be Mr. Coleman. He is so sympathetic and so understanding. That’s why everyone loves him.”
“Uh-huh,” said Gibby.
“Aren’t you going to miss your appointment with him now?” she asked.
“Can’t be helped,” Gibby said. “First things first. Your life is more important than Gleason’s pants, especially since we did get his britches back for him. If you were to lose your life, even we couldn’t get it back for you, and how would that look for the District Attorney’s office? Assistant District Attorneys are so preoccupied with a bank clerk’s pants that they allow a young woman to walk straight into a murder trap.”
“That’s nonsense and you know it,” she stormed. Either she had given up her attempt at flirting with us, or the act she was putting on had slipped badly.
Gibby left it at that, and the three of us lapsed into silence. It was a strange silence. After the act Rose Salvaggi had been putting on for us, I had been prepared for a pouting silence, a voiceless attempt at shaking us; but the girl had either given up the flirtatious approach as a bad job or else she had just not been able to sustain it.
As we rode along, her mask seemed to be slipping away. Her fresh, young face was dropping into haggard lines, and the look that was growing in her eyes was a look of tragedy and despair. Her shoulders sagged and she looked white and strained and tired.
It wasn’t until we were only a couple of blocks away from her apartment that she pulled out of it and tried again. This time it was without plan. It was just a last hysterical effort, the blind struggle of someone who is without hope, who has nothing left but a determination to go down fighting.
“Let me out here,” she begged. “I’ll just run in and get the keys and I’ll come right back here. I give you my word I will.”
Gibby shook his head. “No,” he said firmly. “If you are in danger at all, the danger will be here. This is the part where you may need us.”
“But I won’t,” she insisted. “I know I won’t.”
“You can’t possibly know that,” Gibby told her. “None of us can. know and it’s simply foolhardy to take chances, especially an unnecessary chance like letting you walk into that apartment alone.”
She jumped at that. “I won’t be alone,” she said triumphantly. “I’ll have to get the super to let me in with his master key. I’ll have the super with me.”
Gibby handled that easily. “The super,” he said, smiling at the girl. “He probably knows even less than you do how to handle a killer. I can imagine your super. He’ll be the perfect innocent bystander type. He’s just another reason why we’ll have to go along. We’ll have to protect him and we’ll have to protect you.”
That took the last of the fight out of her. She gave Gibby a quick look that was far too sharp and shrewd for the story she’d been telling us. She knew she had made her last try and she had lost. She was giving up.
We pulled up in front of her apartment house. I helped her out of the car. She took off and ran along the path across the grass plot to the door. Gibby slammed the car door shut and took off after her. I ran with him. The heels we wore were better for running, and we caught up with her easily. We took her by the arms. She glared at us and looked as though she might try to pull away, but evidently she thought better of it. She just glared.
“You really are cruising for a bruise,” Gibby muttered, not unkindly.
She flared up. “You won’t get away with this,” she panted. “I’m going to tell Mr. Coleman how you’ve been pushing me around. I’m going to tell him how you threatened me.”
“Not us,” Gibby told her. “The threat to you comes from someone who might be up in your apartment right now.”
I could think of nothing more innocent or less provocative that he might have said to her at that point, but if he had set himself to flick her on the raw he couldn’t have done better. The look she gave him was pure hate. It was what you could imagine a murderer’s look would be.
In the apartment house vestibule she reached for her bell. Gibby pulled her back. She didn’t make it.
“I’ll do that,” he said, and hunted for the super’s bell.
He kept his firm hold on her arm, and I wasn’t letting go either. Under my hand I could feel her tremble. She was shaking now as though with a sudden chill. I watched the muscle at the hinge of her jaw twitch under the skin. She had her teeth clenched tightly together. Otherwise they would have been chattering.
The door latch buzzed and I pushed the door open. It was clumsy going through the doorway without letting go our hold on Rose Salvaggi, but we made it. By that time she was shaking so badly that she would probably have fallen if we hadn’t been holding her up. An apartment door down the corridor opened and a round-faced, chubby blonde of middle years stuck her head out. She saw Rose and her eyes widened. The girl was looking like death warmed over. The overstuffed blonde quite forgot that her hair was up in curlers and that she wore clutched around her a red wool bathrobe made of a phony Indian blanket. A dazzle of woven eagles and dogs’ heads, she hurried to us.
“Dearie,” she purred. “You’re sick. You look just terrible, dearie.”
Rose wasn’t up to answering her. It took all she had to keep her teeth from chattering. Gibby spoke for her.
“Miss Salvaggi is all right,” Gibby said. “She’s had a bad shock, but she’s all right. She forgot her keys this morning. Could you let her into her apartment, please?”
The blonde stopped short and looked at Gibby. A blush undulated upward over her chubby cheeks.
“Don’t look at me,” she screamed. “I’m a fright.” She turned to Rose. “I’ll have the keys for you in a minute, dearie.”
She turned and scampered back to her door. Popping into her apartment, she slammed the door after her.
Gibby grinned at Rose. “Is that the super who was going to be a tower of strength when you went into your apartment?” he asked.
“Her husband,” the girl faltered. “He must be off somewhere.” She spoke indistinctly. Her teeth were chattering.
“Yours is apartment 2C,” Gibby said. “We’ll go up and wait for Juno at your door.”
Rose didn’t look at all happy about it, but she was docile enough as she let us bear her along between us up the stairs to the second floor and down to the door of apartment 2C. As we mounted the stairs, figuratively I took my hat off to Gibby. Even in that moment when he was pulling her back from ringing her doorbell he had remembered to take note of the apartment number beside the bell.
We were all the way down to her door before we could see that it stood slightly ajar.
“Watch yourself now,” Gibby whispered at me out of the corner of his mouth.
I nodded. He didn’t have to remind me about the night before. Under my hat I could still feel the tender spot at the back of my head. We pushed Rose back of us and we stood to the side of the door as Gibby kicked it open. Inside the apartment there was complete silence. Behind us Rose Salvaggi made a small gurgling sound. I half turned to look at her. She had crumpled in a faint and was lying on the hall floor.
“Don’t bother about her now,” Gibby growled. “We’re going in there.”
We did go in. Taking it carefully and watchfully, we edged into the small foyer and looked over the living room that lay open to us beyond. That living room was a shambles. It had been taken apart, and systematically. Chair cushions were out of the chairs and dumped on the floor. Pictures were off the walls and lying in the cushionless chairs, and every picture had the backing of its frame ripped away. Every last book was out of the bookshelves and the books lay scattered everywhere. On the floor, all mixed up with the books, were some crumpled bedsheets and a couple of blankets. The sofa was also stripped of its cushions.
Against the wall stood a mahogany chest of d
rawers, but it was only the empty carcass of a chest. The drawers were also scattered about on the floor along with the books and the bedclothes. The contents of those drawers seemed to be all over the place. We could see that somebody had been through them hastily, but thoroughly. The stuff had been handled, item by item, and discarded, tossed away, item by item. It was all sorts of stuff—tablecloths, napkins, cocktail coasters, letter paper, letters, envelopes, stamps—all the things a girl could conceivably want to keep handy in her living room.
We looked into the tiny kitchen. It had been turned out as thoroughly as had been the living room. Dishes and glasses were off the shelves of the kitchen cupboard. Pots and pans were scattered about the kitchen floor. Even the shelf papers had been ripped away and they hung from the shelves in limp and disconsolate ribbons. On the stove stood a Silex coffeepot more than half full of coffee. Beside it stood a frying pan with two cold raw eggs in it. The eggs were rimmed by a bed of cold and congealed bacon drippings.
There was also on the stove a plate with three strips of cold bacon on it and alongside the plate a pop-up toaster that had popped up a couple of slices of toast which had been left in it to go cold. The kitchen had a service door. It was shut and locked but unbolted.
We went back to the living room and picked our way across it to another door which gave on a bedroom and bath. They were no better than was the rest of the apartment. Even the laundry hamper in the bathroom had been dumped, and its contents were scattered over the bathroom floor. Among these contents were a couple of damp towels, which showed pink stains. They looked as though they might have been used to wash away blood.
The bedroom was the worst. The bed had been ripped apart and the bedclothes strewn every which way. The mattress had been lifted off the spring and it sagged between the bed and the floor. The closets had been completely turned out and every bureau drawer had been dumped and its contents scattered. Here, too, all the pictures had been taken from the walls, and the backing of the frames had been ripped from them. There had also been a couple of pictures in standing frames. These had been taken apart. Mats, frames, frame backs, and glasses lay strewn about in the awful intermingling of all Rose Salvaggi’s possessions on the bedroom floor.
The Corpse Who Had Too Many Friends Page 9
