Hang by Your Neck

by Kane, Henry

  “Mister, there are things that are none of my business.”

  Kelcey said, “Peepers. Phonies. Guys like that—”

  “He’s been a help lots of times,” Parker said. “Why, you once told me yourself, Inspector—”

  “That is aside from the point,” Winston said. “He knew that he could trust Mr. Chambers. As a premise, we say, psychologically, he couldn’t go back, knowing she was there, dead. That would account for the drinking, endeavoring to steel himself, and, of course, failing. He didn’t tell Mr. Chambers what to expect; he was afraid of a refusal. He simply commissioned him to go for the bag, although, from the facts as presented, I assume that Mr. Chambers should have been put upon notice that it wasn’t quite running a mechanical errand.”

  “I was.”

  “Then—”

  “According to him, there might be people looking for him. He said he was slightly on the lam, that he wanted to stay out of the way of certain people that were making up their minds about a deal.”

  “But,” the psychiatrist said, “matters congealed. Things happened that he couldn’t have foreseen. In his excitement, he had left the water running in the bath and he hadn’t turned it off, and hours later, it leaked down to the apartment below. A call from the downstairs apartment was put through to the superintendent. He came up, knocked on Mr. Mikvah’s door, and, when there was no answer, used his passkey. He was going through to the bathroom when he discovered the body. He called down to headquarters and, luckily, Inspector Kelcey was there, and when he heard in whose apartment this homicide had occurred, he took over. I say luckily, because the Inspector used excellent method and excellent judgment. When he saw that bag and the money, he came to a good quick conclusion. The man expected to return. So instead of turning the homicide boys loose, he left everything as it was, and staked his men around the premises, waiting. Then you came, Mr. Chambers.”

  Grumpy I said, “He didn’t know what I was coming for, did he?”

  Kelcey said, “I wasn’t surprised, though.”

  “But when you came out with the bag,” Winston said, “then he did know. So the Inspector himself followed you; he knew to whom you’d lead him. Meanwhile, the boys took over upstairs, proceeding with the usual methods of investigation. The Inspector picked up young Adam Polk near your residence and came up with him and made the arrest. Intoxicated, in your apartment, John Mikvah tried to brazen it. Intoxicated, in his jail cell, he figured out a wild play for freedom. He worked on the guard, and, somehow, he persuaded him. Now he was out … but where to go? He couldn’t go back to his place. He bethought himself of your apartment, somehow picked up those crude burglar instruments, and came here. But once here, as he sobered, as reaction set in, he realized that his brazenness had been drunkenness, that the case against him was solid, that the entire machinery of the police department was at work seeking him, that any plans he might have made for leaving the country were now checkmated, that he was a rat in a trap. He killed himself. It has happened before. Despair, frustration, knowledge of guilt, plans thwarted and askew, and the deep initial depression—when you stop running—alone, emerging from an alcoholic state.”

  I used a cigarette to light a cigarette. “Look, I mean, isn’t it possible that he was murdered? That the guard—”

  “How crazy can you get?” Parker said. “If the guard wanted to kill him, he had him in a cell where he could do it just as good. He wouldn’t break him out of jail, hunt around with him for the pick-things, come with him here, and then knock him off.”

  “No,” I said. “I suppose not.”

  “Anyway, why should the guard want to kill him?”

  Kelcey rubbed fingers at his temples. “He came here because he figured this to be the last place we would ever think of looking for him, you, Chambers, still being in jail. He wasn’t too wrong. We would have come to it, I suppose, but I’ll admit this apartment never even occurred to me.”

  “Me neither,” Parker said.

  “Me neither,” a fat-faced chorus agreed.

  “Murder?” Kelcey went on. “That’s out. I agree with Parker. We won’t dismiss it, of course, but we won’t squeeze it. We’ll probably find that weak-kneed bastard of a screw sitting around somewhere, happy-eyed and slobbering, with a bottle between his knees.”

  Winston said, “Even if we gave that any credence, would he have strapped him up by his belt? And if so, why? To make it look like suicide? That is somewhat far-fetched for a jail attendant with a strong propensity for stronger drink.” Everybody laughed, and although Winston didn’t take a bow, his face had the expression of someone taking a bow. “I think you can safely rule that out.”

  “You’ve shaped it up pretty well, Dr. Winston,” Kelcey said. “There is no vestige of a doubt that Mikvah killed the woman. That’s open and shut. That’s finished. We’ll mark this as suicide, pending further investigation. But I think you’ve got it shaped, Doc, all the way.”

  “I think so too,” Winston said.

  That was that.

  The party broke up.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Fragments of the beginnings of sunshine littered the apartment as I gathered the cigarette butts. I dumped the ashtrays and I replaced them. I opened the bedroom windows all the way and early morning wind whisked the room. The sky was unfolding green with little white clouds and I watched it for a while and I smelled the sweetness of the park. Then I went back to the living room and shriveled spine-down in a soft round chair, and the empty Scotch bottle loomed into focus. I got up and I took the bottle in my hand and patted it once and flung it hard against a blameless wall and it shattered in ringing tune with the clamor of the telephone.

  “Miami,” the voice said.

  “Arlington Cemetery,” I said, and hung up.

  The phone rang. “Miami,” the voice said.

  “Listen, I don’t care if it’s Moscow.”

  “What’s the matter with you, lover?”

  “Miami! Oh, I’m sorry.”

  “What’s wrong, lover?”

  I told her what was wrong: Johnny at the window, Johnny in a basket, medical examiners, psychiatrists, fingerprint men, fat-faced cops, thin-faced cops, uniformed cops, plainclothes cops, Kelcey, Parker …

  “Oh, my God,” she said. “Oh, my good God.”

  “And I need a drink. Bad.”

  “Then come on over. That’s what we run the joint for.”

  “Good idea. Damn good idea.”

  “Are you coming?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right, I’ll see you. God—I don’t get it, I don’t understand. Hurry up, will you?”

  2

  I used a whisk broom and a sheet of paper to curry up the broken glass. I was coming through the tired vapors of fog. I was catching my second wind. I didn’t like the explanations I had heard. I knew Johnny the Mick since his salad and sauerkraut days: it didn’t figure. A guy doesn’t murder a girl, then pick your lock, for laughs, just to keep his hand in. A guy doesn’t murder a girl and then send you up there, for no reason, just for a bag, without giving you an inkling. Seventy G’s? Not that guy. Not Johnny the Mick. Seventy G’s might sound like very prominent money to a psychiatrist on civil service, but I knew Johnny the Mick. Johnny the Mick wouldn’t pose his chin, like the law was a barber and he needed a shave—not Johnny the Mick. Not for seventy G’s. Not for a hundred and seventy G’s. Maybe the psychiatrist and his nodding assistant were absolutely correct for a lot of guys, but not for Johnny the Mick. Or, maybe it wasn’t the psychiatrists. Maybe I was all wet. Wetter than a nursery in the middle of a diaper shortage. It’s happened before.

  All right, so Johnny killed Pamela Reeves.

  All right, so who killed Johnny?

  Nobody killed Johnny, I had heard. Johnny had killed himself.

  Had he?

  Who knew about the stopoff at the Courvocco?

  Who knew about an open safe?

  Who knew about his picking up at least five, six thousand dol
lars, cash money? Who knew about it? Where was it? It wasn’t on Johnny the Mick. There was nothing on Johnny the Mick, taut by the window, except a few poor slender slivers of steel.

  3

  El Courvocco at 7 A.M. was like El Morocco at midnight. People, noise, lovely ladies, lovely gentlemen, gurgle of giggle water, giggle of gurgling girls, warmth, smell of excitement, smell of food, smell of people … Seven o’clock in the morning was nighttime outside … Seven o’clock in the morning didn’t exist.

  I checked my hat and coat and went through to the Hollow. Miami came quickly, no shadow on her face, smooth, smiling, typically professional.

  “First thing,” I said, “is the drink.”

  “It’s waiting for you, lover.”

  She waved her hand at some of the customers, smiling, always smiling, and she brought me to a small corner table with a full, amber, brand-name bottle sitting up plump and high in the middle of the table. I had one straight and I chased it with another one straight, and then I sighed and I poured a respectable highball, one for her and one for me.

  She wasn’t smiling. “What’s it all about, lover?”

  I told her again.

  “Unthinkable,” she said. “It’s unthinkable.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Who’s this Pamela Reeves?”

  “A no-good little louse. But Johnny wouldn’t have done it. Johnny was a smart operator.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “In his own apartment. It’s nutty.”

  “I’ll introduce you to a psychiatrist. He’ll explain it to you.”

  The smile was back again, wan, practiced, and brittle. “Cute?”

  “Too small for you.”

  “I like them small. I liked Johnny the Mick.”

  “So did I.”

  She pulled her eyebrows together. “What goes, lover? What is this all about?”

  “Did you get a look at that safe?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well?”

  “No money. There was nothing in it of any importance, except his will.”

  “He didn’t have any dough on him, on his person, when I found him. He had nothing except some crude burglar implements, all he needed to get in here in the first place, and then to get into my apartment. He could have picked those up anywhere.”

  “No dough?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Look, you working on this?”

  “Nobody’s paying me to work on anything, if that’s what you mean.”

  “What about the five thousand you mentioned that Johnny gave you?”

  “That gives me an academic interest.”

  “I’ll pay you, lover.”

  “How?”

  “Don’t get fresh.”

  “And—what for?”

  “For straightening this out. For taking the onus off Johnny. Look, he didn’t kill that dame. Maybe he killed himself, maybe he had a reason for that. But I’m telling you, Johnny didn’t knock that young lady off in his own apartment. That’s out.”

  “Is it?”

  “Out.”

  “Funny, huh? You think he might have killed himself, but he didn’t kill the dame. I’ve got it in reverse. I think maybe—maybe he killed the dame, but I don’t think he killed himself.”

  “Why? But why?”

  “Because he didn’t have the money on him.”

  “What’s that got to do with it? He probably gave that to the guard. To pay him off.”

  “Lam money?”

  She hesitated. “Maybe you’ve got something there.”

  “Nobody pays off with lam money. Not in the spot Johnny was in.”

  “You think the guard did it? You think Johnny held out, and the guard did it for the dough?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Then he hung him up to make it look like suicide?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. None of us know what character Johnny might have taken back to my apartment with him. Or why.”

  “Now, look. Are you on this thing, or not?”

  “So far, I’m not.”

  “I’ll pay you, lover. I’m willing to.”

  “What the hell have you got to do with this?”

  “Listen, smart guy. I’ve got this to do with it. He left a will upstairs in that safe. After you talked with me and told me about Johnny, I told Sweetheart. We broke open that will. Whatever interest he has in this joint, he leaves to Sweetheart, with, first, a clean hundred-thousand-dollar bequest to me. Me. That’s the kind of guy Johnny was. That’s why I’m willing to pay. Right? Understand? You working for me?”

  “If you want, I’m working for you. But you’re not paying me.”

  “Why?”

  “You figure it out.”

  “Why?”

  “I want you under obligation to me.”

  “You’re a nasty guy, aren’t you?”

  “What’s nasty about wanting you under obligation to me?” This time she smiled with a lot of teeth. And dimples. “Well—the way you put it—”

  “Deal?” I asked.

  She bent over and her breath by my ear wasn’t good for a guy playing potsy with corpses all of this night, jittery from too much wakefulness. “You’re a mixed-up kind of chap, Pete. I’m curious about you.”

  “Deal,” I said.

  We clinked red glasses, and I looked at her eyes and her face and her neck and her shoulders, and then she put a finger under my chin and brought me back up again. “Listen, you don’t really think he killed that dame?”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t.”

  “Then why didn’t you tell that to the cops?”

  “Because all I’ve got on that is a batch of ideas, and they’ve got their own ideas, and their ideas make much more sense.”

  “Then how about your murder theory, I mean, that he was murdered. How about that?”

  “I’ve got more than ideas on that.”

  “Then why didn’t you give that to the cops?”

  “Miami, you sure you want me working on this?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is why I didn’t give it to the cops. The reason I think he was murdered is that he didn’t have that dough on him. Flimsy, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Listen. The guy’s running. He stops off here for the money. He needs that money, badly. That’s sometime between one and two o’clock. Next we catch up with him, at about two o’clock, at my place, dead. He wouldn’t give that money away, would he?”

  “No.”

  “But he didn’t have it on him. That means someone took it from him. He wouldn’t part with it, not while he was alive. Would he, that kind of money, would he—the few last possible bucks with which he could buy some sort of refuge? Would he?”

  “No, he wouldn’t.”

  “Then somebody took it off him. When he was dead. Like that it plays murder, not suicide. Check?”

  “The guard?”

  “Maybe. If I was sure, I’d have turned it over to the cops.”

  She shook her head, tightening her lips. “Pete, I don’t get you.”

  “Sister, you’re a square, you’re a double square, you’re octagonal. In order to give it to the cops, I’ve got to pull down your house on you. This place. This after-hours joint. This Courvocco. In order that I give it to the cops, I’ve got to give it to them—all. Now, if I knew it was the guard, I would give it to them. I wouldn’t put a fence around a murderer just to keep an after-hours joint from folding, much as I love an after-hours joint, much as I love you. See?”

  “Yes,” she said, “I see.”

  “All right, so I’ll mosey around myself. If it clicks, if it is that guard, then I’ll turn it over, Courvocco or no Courvocco. If not, I’ll do what I can to keep the Courvocco out of it. You still want me working for you?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “You’re a hundred per cent, Miami. You’re my kind of person. I love you.”

  “Save that. We have a deal. Remember?”

  �
��I’m not going to forget.”

  “So, move over, lover, now that you’re working, and I’ll give you some more to worry your pretty head over. He and Sweetheart had a terrific argument before closing yesterday.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Who?”

  “Sweetheart.”

  “Upstairs. In his office, resting. We only got back here to New York at about two o’clock. We were in Atlantic City, since early this afternoon.”

  I made for a leer, eyebrows up.

  “Don’t be crazy,” she said. “Business. There’s a little club over in Jersey we’re thinking of buying. We looked it over in the afternoon, watched it operate in the evening, then we drove back to New York.”

  “Then where’d you go?”

  “I dropped him off at his place, and I went home, and four o’clock, a little before, we were both back here, opening the joint.”

  “Then how’d you know about this mess?”

  “What mess?”

  “This Johnny deal. You knew all about it when I came in. You knew he was in jail, and you knew I belonged in jail.”

  “Oh. We got a call on it, just after we opened. From one of the newspaper boys downtown. You’re a suspicious bastard, aren’t you?”

  “You want me working on it, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  I drank my Scotch. “All right, I’ll start asking a lot of questions. Let’s begin with this argument. What kind of an argument?”

  “I don’t know. It was in Sweetheart’s office. They closed me out. I listened outside for a while, you know how it is. They were fighting blue murder. I heard Sweetheart say, ‘It’s suicide, suicide, that’s what it is,’ and I heard Johnny say, ‘I make my proposition to cut the ice, and I don’t care if you don’t like it or anybody else.’ “

  “More?”

  “Yes. Johnny said, ‘Unless we get it straightened out the way I want it, we just can’t make a living,’ and Sweetheart said, ‘We’ve been doing all right, haven’t we?’ and Johnny said, ‘Not any more. We’re an after-hours club, which is illegitimate, and for an outfit running illegitimate, we’re not doing all right, we’ve been slipping bad,’ and Sweetheart said, ‘It’s suicide,’ and Johnny said, ‘Either way, it’s suicide, and my way at least we’re back making money,’ and Sweetheart said, ‘I’m telling you, you’re cutting your own throat.’ “