Hang by Your Neck

by Kane, Henry

  The sound from the anteroom was a pillowed plop, stopped-up noise, rammed-back sound—but the smell of the cordite identified it. We all ran in. Inspector Sam Kelcey had put his gun in his mouth and killed himself.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Furore was stilted. Everybody was composed, but talk was in whispers. Then Vaydelle looked too long at the bloody distortion of broken face and he was sick in a sink in a corner of the room, the long whinny of his rattling gasps tightening the coils of my stomach as I sucked for air. Parker hurried out, quietly. The Commissioner walked the room, quietly slapping at the sides of his thighs. Vaydelle recovered, quietly, leaning against a wall, his face egg-white, opening and closing his mouth and wetting his lips. Everybody was quiet, the Commissioner walking the room slapping his thighs, and me walking the room rubbing my thumbs against the sweat of my palms (one breast-high in a sling), and Vaydelle leaning against the wall, gaping and closing, gaping and closing. Then Parker came back with the doctor and three young cops in blue blouses, and the body was removed from the anteroom, and the anteroom was closed, and then we were alone again in the big room, the four of us. The Commissioner gave his first attention to Parker.

  “You told him he was under arrest, I assume?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How long have you been with the department?”

  “Sixteen years.”

  “Wasn’t it proper, no, imperative, to relieve him of his weapon in the circumstances?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well?”

  The Lieutenant shifted feet but held his ground although he had no ground to hold. Detective-lieutenant Parker. The best damn detective-lieutenant any police department ever could hope to boast of. Louis Parker. My guy. Then it cleaved for the Commissioner.

  “Lieutenant.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Did you have any idea, Lieutenant, that these charges would stand up?”

  Parker pointed his thumb at me. “The gentleman, sir, isn’t crazy, altogether.”

  “Did you have any idea the Inspector would have no defense, once the charges were consummated?” Stubborn guy, the Commissioner.

  “Well …” Parker said.

  “I see your point, Lieutenant.”

  Sweetheart Vaydelle looked bewildered.

  That was all right with the Commissioner.

  “You,” he said. He meant me. “I studied this report. It made sense.”

  “A report is a report.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means a report is a form of summation that depends upon how it is slanted, who makes the report, what facts might be excluded to color it, how the sum total is funneled—”

  “Let’s have your story, mister.”

  I sighed and I sat back and I hoped I could say it like I knew it was in me. “First off, I knew Johnny. For years. Knew something of his nature. No report can show that. He just wasn’t the guy to shoot a dame, boom, and blow. Leaning all the way over, I’ll concede crime of passion. But this didn’t shape crime of passion. The way this shaped, if Johnny did it, it shaped premeditation.”

  “Why?”

  “Look in your report. She had been two-timing him with a phantom guy—”

  “Yes. One minute, Chambers. From this report, Nancy Reeves was interviewed twice, and thoroughly. She was asked about this ‘phantom guy.’ Also, she saw Inspector Kelcey. Now, if it is a fact that Pamela had confided in her about—”

  “It’s not a fact, sir.”

  “But you said—”

  “I said that because I wanted Kelcey to hear it. He knew I was working on this thing. He may have felt that somehow, in all decency, the sister hadn’t wanted to drag the dead woman’s name around, but that I had pried it out of her. I wanted him to think we could prove the relationship. As a clincher. I was looking for reaction. I didn’t expect—”

  “That’s enough. Please go on.”

  “She had been two-timing him with a phantom guy. She was a bum who had proved a disappointment to him. That’s what I mean about premeditation, if it was Johnny. He had arranged for transportation out of the country. He had drawn a large sum of money from the bank that morning. He had arranged to meet her an hour or so before her death. He had brought her to the apartment when the doorman wasn’t there. Do you see?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right. But if you try to bring that off, you run up against two patent questions.”

  “Yes?”

  “One: why his own apartment? Two: why send me for the bag?”

  Parker mixed in. “There are seventy thousand crisp answers for question number two.”

  “How about that?” the Commissioner said.

  “No good, that is how about that. It only sounds good. It looks good in a report. But it’s meaningless, because the guy had been to the bank that morning, and, as your report probably shows, he had drawn forty thousand dollars. But does your report show that he left a zoftig balance? Does your report show that he didn’t go near his safe-deposit vault? If that were permanent lam money, wouldn’t he have drawn it all? Wouldn’t he have emptied his vault?”

  “Zoftig?” the Commissioner inquired.

  “It means plenty.”

  “Oh.”

  “The psychiatrist said, which I dispute in any event, that he left the bag in his apartment and a dead woman. I say that if he had done the job, he would never have sent me for the bag—the risk would have been too great—and if it was premeditation, which it would be, if he did it, he’d have had that bag out of there before he brought her to the apartment. Am I making myself clear?”

  “Yes.”

  “Plus the other questions. The latent ones. What’s with running water in the bathroom? Does a guy take a bath before or after shooting a woman, or in between? Or not at all? Since when does an inspector come to collect a murderer not flanked by a couple of lieutenants, just with a pink young patrolman off the beat? None of that shows in a report, not the way it’s supposed to show. A lot of little facts like that, plus I knew Johnny, and Johnny didn’t figure to be that stupid—and Kelcey knew it.”

  “How do you mean that?”

  “I mean that’s how Johnny wound up hanging by his belt. Kelcey had it laid out the minute he saw that bag up there—”

  “When? When did Kelcey see the bag? How—”

  Parker said, “If you please, Commissioner, I know the gentleman. You’re supposed to let him do this his own way. That’s the biggest kick he gets out of life. That, and a lot of girls.”

  The Commissioner moved his lips, made his mouth small.

  “Let’s do it right side up,” I said. “Part of it is guesswork, but it runs right up the canal. Kelcey is taking enormous graft from El Courvocco. He meets Pamela, they get together, the Mick loses her. The Mick had told her about Kelcey’s setup with the organization, which is why she probably made her play for him. That girl loved the almighty buck. So, after a while, she’s taking him. For three hundred a week—that you can check with the sister. If he stopped paying, she’d blast, and Kelcey couldn’t afford that, could he? There you have it. The guy got mixed up with a madcap, and at first it’s worth it, but after a while, a man is a man; when you pay, it irks. At the beginning, he was probably just helping her—you know—but then I’m sure he began to realize that he couldn’t stop paying.”

  “Stay on your story,” Parker said.

  “When you can’t stop paying, you get to hate the party that’s taking you, but, although in back of your mind, you know you’ve got to do something, you don’t. Yet. Meanwhile, business at the Courvocco is sliding. That fifty per cent cut is a tough wiggle in the poop. Johnny’s balking, but Sweetheart is willing to stay in line. Finally, the evening before, Johnny puts it to Kelcey.”

  “Puts what?” the Commissioner said.

  “A new proposition. He’s cutting him. Kelcey kicks. Johnny says, ‘So and so is my proposition. You take it or we’ve got to close down and there’s no more gravy o
n the train for anybody. Think it over.’ “

  A twinge twisted at my arm. I said, “Can anyone manage a drink here?”

  “Medicinal.” The Commissioner was grave. “It can be managed.”

  “Thank you. Will you make it Scotch medicinal, please?”

  Parker got it and I drank it. “All right. Kelcey knew he had Sweetheart here on his side. If he could get Johnny out of the way, he and Sweetheart would be fifty-fifty partners and no trouble. There was one partner too many, and that partner was balking—but Johnny knew just what Kelcey would be thinking. Therefore, he elects to blow out of town while Kelcey thinks it over. Through emissaries, he’d try pressuring to cut the ice down to—”

  “Twenty-five per cent instead of fifty,” Sweetheart interposed, “and believe you me, Johnny wasn’t all—”

  “Shut up,” the Commissioner said.

  “While the first heat was on, he’d be away. The guy was a businessman; time helps. While he was away, he felt Kelcey would see the light; part of a loaf is better than no star sapphires at all. But, as he told me, without telling me what it was all about, the thing might turn nasty.”

  I got up and I began to walk. “Anyway, that day, and here we’re guessing, Kelcey tries to contact Johnny, but Johnny’s not home, because he’s keeping out of his way. Kelcey tries Pamela, who is now no more than a very irritating pinky in his ear, and she tells him about having to meet Johnny at four; that Johnny is expecting to leave town for a while. Kelcey gets a big idea. He might be able to lop off two—and make a deal of it. So he arranges to meet her right after she sees Johnny at Anchors Away.”

  “That’s the saloon,” Parker said.

  “I know, I know,” the Commissioner said.

  “She tells him that Johnny is not going back to his apartment, but that he’ll probably send over for a bag that’s packed there. Johnny was looped, drinking most of the day, and he probably shot his mouth off to her, not knowing, of course, that she was Kelcey’s sweetiepie. Kelcey says, ‘What bag?’ She says, ‘How do I know?’ He says, ‘You’ve still got that key, so let’s go over and see, huh?’ “

  The Commissioner said, “You can’t know all this for certain, now, can you?”

  “No. I know a lot of it for certain, and I’m filling in a lot. But it’ll jibe, if you’ll let me.”

  “I’m letting you.”

  “So Kelcey says let’s sneak up and see, and she says we don’t have to sneak because the doorman is off at this time, I ought to know, remember? Kelcey’s big idea keeps growing. They get there. He wears his gloves. He uses her key. They go in and he looks the place over. The bag is there, and the money, and Johnny’s gun, and Kelcey’s idea comes to fruition. He shoots the girl, which ends the blackmail, and paves the way for continuing the graft, in full. For the frame, he stops up the bathtub, turns on the water, locks the door with her key, blows the dump, throws the key away, and goes down to headquarters. Neat?”

  Sweetheart Vaydelle said, “Wow.”

  The Commissioner said, “Mm.”

  Parker said, “Then?”

  “Kelcey had it figured. Once he got his hands on Johnny, he could ram it all together and make it stick. The call came through because of the leak, just as he’d planned. That was his one break, and you always need a little luck. The leak beat Johnny’s errand boy—me. He might have known, even, from Pamela, that Johnny wasn’t expecting to send for the bag until late at night. Whatever, the call came through, so now it was a murder case that they were working on. He goes into the sharp detective routine about the bag being packed and the guy coming back for it, and he strews the homicide boys around, deployed, but waiting. When I showed, he followed me. But alone.”

  “Why?”

  “Because in case some of the conversation with Johnny didn’t go to rote, he didn’t want anybody smart making anything of it. He picked up the young cop for bodyguard in case of action, and he was set. He made some easy palaver with Johnny, told him about the woman found in his apartment, but he straightened him out on the important item. I remember just what he said: ‘I saw your partner tonight. Your last business deal panned out perfectly. The guy made his mind up like you wanted him to.’ Like that, he was telling Johnny he had accepted his proposition, without me and the young cop knowing what he was talking about. He had him, and he took him.”

  The Commissioner said, “What are you talking about?”

  “I think he had it figured the minute he took Johnny.”

  “Had what figured?”

  “He saw to it we were in the same cell-block with the guard Nottiby. Nottiby, a drunk, a weakling, that he, Kelcey, had put on the job, pulling a few small strings. He sent Nottiby home. He told him, probably, who it was that was murdered, and he sent him home—maybe pulling the old business about avoiding publicity, waiting till it died down. He had him use that downstairs back door, after he complained he didn’t feel well. That was the gag—Nottiby was going home, he didn’t feel well, but nobody saw him go. He told him to get his car and drive up to the place in Nyack, and stay there until he got in touch with him. Nottiby could be handled. For any facets of Mr. Nottiby’s personality, I refer you to Conrad Merrill.”

  “Conrad Merrill, the painter?”

  “Yes, sir. A close friend. So Nottiby went home. Then Kelcey himself delivered Mikvah. Told him, probably, it was too tough to beat. Worked on him. Told him he would spring him, that he’d arrange for a guard to take the rap. That Kelcey could be convincing. Told him he’d help keep him out of the way till the thing cleared. Explained all the damning facts. Mikvah bit.”

  “If he knows what he’s talking about,” Parker said, “then Kelcey brought him out through that same back door. It was open.”

  The Commissioner was brusque. “I know all about that from the reports, all about that open door. Fill it in, Mr. Chambers, if you can.”

  “I can. First step was El Courvocco, where Johnny knew he could pick up some money, not much, but money. Kelcey played along with him. El Courvocco was closed, doesn’t open until four a.m. So they stopped off somewhere where Johnny could pick up some simple instruments; there are plenty of places for that. Kelcey, of course, stayed out of the way. A couple of simple instruments, the man was an expert with locks—”

  “I know all about that.”

  “They went to the Courvocco. Johnny took the money out of his safe. Maybe five, six thousand. He was in a hurry. He left the safe open. They got out of there.”

  “Wait a minute,” the Commissioner said. “There was no money found on him. The second time, that is.”

  “That’s just it.”

  “Just what?”

  “That’s when I decided the Mick wasn’t a suicide.”

  “Hold it. Just how do you know about his picking up this money?”

  “The safe in his office was open. It should have been closed.”

  “You told us that?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I mean how did you get to this office? How did you get to this safe? How did you know there was any money supposed to have been in this safe?”

  “I see. My first inquiries were at El Courvocco. In discussion, I asked to see his office. The lights were on, yet he was in jail, and it was his office. The safe was open, yet he wasn’t supposed to have been there. And I was told that there was always money in that safe, in the sums I mentioned.”

  “Hold it.” The Commissioner came out of his chair and walked. He leaned his hips against the desk. “Why didn’t you give this information to the police? This was information. This wasn’t a theory you were privately working on.”

  “I’m not a stool pigeon.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’m not an informer. The Courvocco is an after-hours joint. If I gave it to the police, that would be the end of El Courvocco. It was information, but it was also theory. The money should have been on him, hanging there off my bedroom window, because it constituted lam money. It wasn’t. That made it m
urder. That was my theory. As soon as I was convinced, then I was going to turn my information over. But he might have given it to the guard, as payment—then, possibly, it was suicide. I wanted to find out for myself first, before involving the Courvocco people. I did find out. And—I’m here, sir.”

  He went back to the desk chair and he folded his arms. “Go on.”

  “Now—the refuge, the hideout while arrangements were being made. What better place than my apartment, they decided. Who would look there? I was in the can. And it was perfect, too, for what Kelcey had in mind. My apartment, Commissioner.”

  “Yes, yes, your apartment. Please go on.”

  “He picked his way back into my place, and that’s where Kelcey did it. He clipped him and he hung him up. He took the money off him, because Johnny wasn’t supposed to have any money on him when he left the jail. Kelcey didn’t want anyone sticking his nose in as to where that money could have come from. He left the burglar things, because that would explain how Johnny got back into my apartment. Then he drove up to Nyack, took care of Nottiby, and came back down here—in plenty of time to be alerted for action when I called after finding Johnny. That must have surprised him; he had me figured for the rest of the night in jail.”

  Parker said, “My God, man.”

  “That’s it. He had to do it to Nottiby, because it was wide open there. Two of them he had no use for, and the other a drunken broke-down. But he was pitching for big dough, for a way of life that he had become accustomed to. The extra twenty-five per cent of that take is very important hay. Plus Johnny would always give him trouble, once he’d started. Plus the woman knew too much, aside from hacking three hundred a week out of him. Only Nottiby’s murder had no actual meaning. Nottiby was only the one extra step to keep it all tidy.”