“Give me time to make a call!”
“To your lawyer? Sure. Amery was signed out of the hospital at six-fifteen. About three-quarters of an hour ago.”
“You keep close tabs on folks you’re interested in, don’t you?”
“Only way. By now, your barrister is probably out at his Long Island place, sleeping off a dose of bromides. The number’s Great Neck seven-two-four-one-four.” Ross used the phone for a while, said yes? and no! a few times, hung up.
“Shows what a miraculous system you have for checking up on people. Paul isn’t there.”
“We can’t be right all the time. Where is he?”
“Left for his office. Only stayed home long enough to change his clothes. He had a hurry-up call.”
“From—?”
“Staro. Ned’s bodyguard.”
“I’ve been wondering where that lad was.”
“He’s at Amery’s office. In the Tower Building.” Ross tied his necktie hastily. “Mrs. Amery said there was trouble of some sort.”
“Forgive her for understating. Grab your hat.”
Chapter Eighteen
OFFICE INTO SHOOTING GALLERY
A TRIM SECRETARY with a sleek, satin-blond bun on the nape of her neck, smiled mechanically over the law journal she was marking.
“Mister Amery’s not in yet. Oh! Good morning, Mister Ross.”
“It’s lousy, Miss Bernard.” Ross nodded. “Mind if we wait in the sanctum sanctorum?”
“Not at all.” She opened a heavy, paneled door to the inner office. It didn’t look like a lawyer’s place of business to Pedley.
There were no bookshelves of brown-backed tomes. Instead, the walls were covered with framed photographs of theatrical celebrities. Autographed, To my bosom, pal. Smuch love, Paul, A friend in need, indeed—and all the other clichés.
The near-great and once-great of Broadway were here; Pedley knew most of the famous faces that looked down on what might have been a pleasant study in a private home. He turned to the secretary.
“We expected to run into another gentleman who has an appointment, miss.”
“There hasn’t been anyone.” She looked blank, examined the memo pad on the enormous mahogany flat-top. “Mister Amery has no appointment until eleven. He shouldn’t come in at all, after that terrible experience yesterday.”
Ross took the chair beside the desk. “They let him out of the hospital this morning.”
“Yes. But the doctor said he really should have a nurse around for a while; he’s in no shape to go out.”
“I can testify—” Amery came through the door abruptly—“that the doctor was right. I feel like ice breaking up in the Hudson.”
He certainly didn’t look good, Pedley thought. Strips of plaster held a wad of cotton in place along the lawyer’s jaw; a wide band of gauze served him in place of a collar. His eyes were rabbit-pink from the smoke; his skin was the shade of mildewed canvas. The wheeze was still in his voice.
“Get the Lownes files for me, Miss Bernard. Everything but the transfers. Morning, Terry—” Amery noticed the marshal, scowled. He took off his balmacaan. “I promised my physician I’d avoid excitement.” He sat down heavily at the big desk. “That was before I knew you were going to be here, sir.”
Pedley said bleakly, “I can’t take time out to be sorry every time somebody has a coughing spell. But I’ll try not to be too great a strain on your constitution.”
The lawyer gestured in deprecation. “Let’s not start with a misunderstanding. I don’t want any consideration on my account. I shouldn’t have come here at all, today, if I’d consulted my own preferences.”
“So what? You came here to meet this ex-bodyguard of Ned Lownes. Staro’s a client of yours, isn’t he?”
“Indeed not!” The lawyer’s chin lifted, resentfully. “I wouldn’t represent that hoodlum for any fee you care to name.”
“Put it the other way, then,” the marshal retorted. “He wanted to consult you. Why?”
“You still haven’t got it quite right.” Amery extracted a pink capsule from a small round box, popped it into his mouth, poured a glass of water from the Thermos set at his elbow, washed the pill down. “Staro telephoned me at my home. Claims to have information about a leather case that had been Ned’s property. Apparently there’s been some trouble about it.”
“What’s this private convoy know about it?”
The attorney didn’t answer immediately. He swiveled around in his chair, stared out the window, pressed his lips together. Finally he swung back to face Pedley. “I don’t see any good reason why I shouldn’t tell you. We’re both working toward the same end, I assume.”
The marshal was noncommittal. “I’m after the person who set a couple of fires, myself.”
“I’m interested in clearing Miss Lownes from any suspicion of connection with those fires. Amounts to the same thing.” The lawyer made his recital brief. Some time previously, according to Staro, Lownes had ordered his hired hand to take possession of the Florentine case in the event of a sudden fatality to his employer. The case was to be turned over to Amery. When the bodyguard heard about the theater fire, he hurried to Lownes’s hotel rooms, searched for the case but couldn’t find it.
However, Staro knew what was in the leather box and was prepared to tell the lawyer—for a consideration. What this consideration was, or how much, hadn’t been discussed in their phone conversation.
Pedley digested the information. “You expect the dope he has for sale is damaging to Miss Lownes?”
“I’ll admit nothing of the sort.” Amery was cautious, rather than indignant. “I’m merely acting as my client’s agent in a matter which is extremely distasteful to her. She has authorized me to use my best judgment to get back this case, which she contends is lawfully her property.”
“Can she prove it’s hers?”
“She—um—she tells me the contents of the case are ample evidence it belongs to her.”
Ross cut in. “Why play guessing games? When Staro gets here, we’ll know what’s in it. Then maybe this dumb gumshoe will let me go about my business.”
“You’ve put Terry under arrest, sir?” The lawyer was startled.
“He says he’s protecting me,” Ross said.
“I’m detaining you,” Pedley answered, “as a material witness.”
“You can do that, of course.” The attorney sighed wearily. “But we can probably work out a better way to give you what you want.”
“I’ll tell you what I want.” Pedley roamed around the office, restlessly, looking at the photographs. “I want Ross to sign a waiver of immunity for his Grand Jury appearance—”
“I don’t mind signing a waiver!” the publicity man shouted. “Why should I mind? I’m not guilty of anything!”
Amery gestured irritably. “If you don’t mind, Terry, let me do the talking. I can’t allow a client of mine to be bulldozed into testifying.”
Pedley sat on the lawyer’s desk. “I might make a deal.”
“Willingness to deal—” the attorney was wary—“implies my client has something to lose by not making it.”
“Sure he has something to lose. Time. His freedom. I can take him downtown and lock him up. But I’ll settle for the Grand Jury appearance on your recognizance—if he’ll tell me what strings he pulled to get the Headquarters Squad interested in Lownes’s demise.”
He thought it unnecessary to mention that just before he’d gone to the Olympiad, Barney had relayed him the Fire Commissioner’s urgent insistence on a conference immediately after lunch on the subject of the B.F.I. report. The party who’d brought influence to bear on the police would be the same one who’d convinced the commissioner it would be politic to pull the marshal off the Lownes case.
Amery began to make arrangements of paper clips on his blotter. “That’s an offer I’d accept, Terry. The marshal can get that information sooner or later from other sources, anyway. Your going to higher authority isn’t incriminating�
�on the contrary. You’ll have to go before the blue ribbon panel in any event, but it’ll be simpler if you don’t have to do it under duress.”
Ross sneered. “I told you I’d bring influence to bear, Marshal. All I had to do was tip off Gaydel that you were set on ruining his star’s rep; he turned his client, his agency and the International Broadcasting bigwigs loose on the mayor.”
Pedley considered. “So that was the ticket! The power of the loudspeaker. The boys at City Hall need plenty of free time on the air in the next campaign. And a few generous contributions wouldn’t come in amiss. Well, it hasn’t worked. Yet. But it might.”
Amery flipped a hand in annoyance. “Let’s not get off at cross-purposes. It appears Terry overstepped himself out of zealousness to protect Miss Lownes’s interest. We’ll grant that was a mistake. But you’d be making an equal error, Marshal, if you fail to appreciate that Ross and Miss Lownes and I are quite as anxious as you are to put this firebug behind bars.” The lawyer pushed the paper clips together in a heap. “We’ll do whatever we can to help you convict this incendiarist. I don’t know what headway you’ve made, but—”
He stopped. The secretary in the outer office was screaming!
Pedley took three strides; yanked at the doorknob. Miss Bernard was on her knees by the files. She was bending over one of the lower drawers, as if to hide. Her eyes were riveted on the door into the corridor. Pedley followed her glance.
The door was open a little. Through the foot-wide aperture there was a glint of blue metal. Pedley’s reflexes worked at top speed. He ducked, dragged his own gun from the holster, switched off the lights in the inner office in three smoothly co-ordinated movements.
With the click of the switch came the shot. The orange pencil of flame pointed at the door of the private office. Before the glass had stopped tinkling, Pedley stuck his own arm out, blasted at the segment of dark corridor twenty feet away.
The secretary squealed, “E-e-e-e-e-ee!” Ross cursed hoarsely, flattened himself against the wall.
The marshal crossed the outer office, kicked open the door. The corridor was empty, except for Amery, peering nervously around the jamb of the door leading from his private office into the hall. Then a couple of doors opened down toward the elevator; girls peered out cautiously.
“Ran down—” The lawyer pointed to the stair well.
“Who was it?” Pedley had no intention of conducting a man hunt through the 28 floors of the Tower Building.
“I couldn’t see him clearly.” The lawyer was shaking; he clung to the door for support.
“Staro?”
“No.” Amery looked hard at Terry Ross, who came timidly out into the corridor. “Staro’s not that tall. He’s not tanned like this—gunman.”
Ross babbled, “He tried to kill you, Paul!”
“He wasn’t shooting blanks, that’s sure.” Pedley went back into the office, snatched the phone.
“Police—Emergency.” While he waited for the connection, he asked, “What’ll I give ’em for a description?”
Amery spoke reluctantly. “I was going to say he was about the size and build of Bill Conover—but that would be ridiculous. I know it wasn’t Conover.”
Chapter Nineteen
IN A TURKISH BATH
THE BULLET HAD GONE through a picture of “The Buckaroos,” perforating a ten-gallon hat and drilling a half-inch hole in the paneled oak.
“Forty-five,” Pedley said. It was the kind of gun an ex-officer would be expected to possess, all right. “Didn’t you get a peek at him, Miss Bernard?”
“No.” She was breathless. “I heard the door open and looked up and there was this arm sticking in from the hall with the biggest pistol I ever saw. The man didn’t come in and he didn’t say anything and of course I couldn’t so much as speak. Then I guess I did scream and you came in—” She sat down, her knees weak.
Amery dabbed with his handkerchief at beads of perspiration on his forehead. “I’ll have to ask for police protection until he’s caught.”
“There’s been an alarm out for Conover since early this morning.” Pedley stood in the corridor door to reassure the secretary. “If it was the lieutenant, he hasn’t had time to get out of the building. They’ll get him.” He had a few reservations about it, but he kept them to himself.
When the radio patrol came up on the elevator, the marshal told them he’d seen a hand and a gun, nothing more. He couldn’t identify the hand but if they located the gun they could check it against the bullet in the panel over Paul Amery’s desk.
The lawyer wanted to call Leila. But the sergeant from the patrol car vetoed that in favor of a personal call by the uniformed force to see if Conover had headed toward the apartment.
Pedley didn’t offer an opinion on that, either. The one point on which he expressed himself forcibly was Staro.
“If it wasn’t Staro who did this gunwork—and the light’s so bad in the hall that I wouldn’t rule him out—in any case, you’re not going to see him here in your office, Amery.”
“Of course not,” the lawyer agreed. “If he came into the building now and saw a cordon of officers down in the lobby, he certainly wouldn’t try to come up to the office. I don’t know a great deal about his background but I’m sure he’s had some uncomfortable moments in the company of policemen.”
“Doesn’t anybody know where this Staro hangs out?”
Ross said, “He did live with Ned. Slept on the divan in the living-room.”
“What’s he look like?”
“He’s Italian. But doesn’t look like one, exactly.” The press agent held out his hands to indicate. “Heavy-built. About my height. Black hair—can’t remember what color his eyes are—guess you’d call his complexion florid. Wears flashy suits and neon neckties.”
“And the Little Boy Blues haven’t been able to pick up a traveling trademark like that!” Pedley went to Amery’s desk, wrote WOrth 2-4100 on the pad. “Phone me or leave a message at this number when you get in touch with the guy, hah?”
Amery said the next time he got in touch with anybody, it would be when he had a plain-clothes man at his elbow.
“That’s smart.” The marshal was emphatic. “If the ballyhoo boy here has any sense—” he turned to Ross—“he’ll ask headquarters for a plain-clothes pal for the next couple of days, too. This firebug plays for keeps—and I don’t think he’s played out his string yet.”
Pedley departed before the dragnet really got under way; it would take a couple of hours to comb the building; he wanted a little time to think things out before he had that conference with the commissioner.
He went to his favorite spot for secluded cerebration—the Bosphorus Baths, half a block from the Penn Station. The owner was a pensioned pilot who had been on Engine Nine when Pedley polished his first Maltese cross.
The marshal had the run of the establishment; at this time of day there wouldn’t be many patrons to disturb his contemplations.
There were only two; both departed before the marshal had been in the steam room fifteen minutes. Only one arrived while Pedley was there, a bald-headed, barrel-chested individual with grotesquely bowed legs and, apparently, a hang-over.
Pedley wrapped himself in a towel like a Roman of old, let the steam soak into his dog-tired muscles and put his mind to work on the problem; Who was next in line for the firebug’s lethal attentions?
It seemed to be beyond question that the glow-worm would strike again. The score to date was a pretty good indication of that. In the Brockhurst blaze; Lownes killed, his sister and his lawyer escaped with injuries. In Greenwich Village: Kim Wasson eliminated, one fireman seriously hurt. At Amery’s office: an outright attempt at assassination. It would be feeble-minded to assume that the killer would stop now.
His idea was evidently to remove everyone who might be able to tie him in with the death of Lownes. That left quite a list of possible candidates for the next attempt which probably would be made quickly.
The most
reasonable conclusion he could arrive at was that the next try would also be on the life of the man who came so close to getting shot up there in the Tower Building. But there were other possibilities. Ross, Kelsey, Gaydel, Toleman—“’round and ’round again, Willie!”
Wasn’t this a pretty dish to set before the commissioner!
Well, the ill wind in Horatio Street had blown some small good; the head of the Fire Department couldn’t very well block the bureau from investigating that conflagration. Officially, he might frown on duplicating the work Sime Dublin would pretend to be doing; unofficially, Pedley knew he would have the commissioner’s hearty approval.
But the journalistic anvil chorus would begin its knocking before many more hours had passed—unless the firebug were caught. Editorial writers never asked for any better opportunity than a chance to pan city officials who failed to protect the citizenry.
He took his headache out to the plunge. The bald-headed man was there at the edge of the pool, testing the temperature of the water and shuddering with anticipation.
Pedley hooked his toes over the tiling, swung his arms, knifed in with scarcely an aftersplash. He let his body glide through the cool greenness with the force of his dive, was aware of commotion in the water alongside. He took a lazy underwater stroke to bring him to the surface, felt fingers clutch at his shoulder.
For that first brief instant, he supposed the other man had dived too close to him, was merely horsing around in the manner of kids grabbing each other under water. But the fingers didn’t let go. Another hand clamped itself on his neck, kept his head beneath the surface of the pool.
Pedley tried to roll over to see if the man whose hands were now at the marshal’s windpipe understood what he was doing. Then the marshal knew; heavy elbows pressed down on his shoulders, forced him toward the bottom of the pool!
The man on top had everything in his favor. The surface position, the weight, a fresh lungful of air inhaled about the same time Pedley had been ready to come up for a fresh breath. Also, the man who was trying to drown him had the advantage of the initial grip.
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