Call Me Killer (Prologue Crime)

by Harry Whittington

  And there was another reason why Barney Manton didn’t quit the department. A reason that he never even allowed his conscious mind to consider. This reason kept him there year after dreary year, although Milligan gave him degrading and elementary tasks, and the police commissioner, Mitchell, disregarding his Civil Service eligibility refused him promotions and delighted in saying that Manton’s methods of strong arm were as old fashioned and passe as the third degree.

  Barney Manton smiled to himself. Just the other day in some police paper, he had read that third degree was outmoded, and unheard of in modernly operated police stations. His wilful mouth twisted bitterly. He sat there at the bar, sipping his whiskey, the water-chaser forgotten beside him, and thought over that ludicrous statement. The third degree, no matter how cruel and brutal it might be, would live as long as there were police officers with bodies that tired and tempers that failed; as long as there were stubborn criminals, too smart and too callous to break under the high-flown ideal methods. Manton’s jaw set in a hard line. All right, so Milligan with his quiet voice and test tube methods had broken the Seaver case. But Manton had broken it, too. He’d gotten Seaver out of his cell at 2 a.m. and slapped a confession out of him. Not a mark showed on Seaver’s body. It was testimony admissible in any court. But Milligan wouldn’t touch it. It had to be test tubes and irrefutable scientific proof before Milligan would turn the case over to the D.A.

  He laughed bitterly. But Milligan hadn’t been able to get away with his slide rule theories in the big society murder last year. The police and even Mitchell himself had been afraid to lift their voices for fear of offending the great and wealthy people involved in as nasty a scandal as Manton had ever witnessed. They’d have tread tip-toe through the jewel-studded parlors and thrown the whole thing into Unsolved. But Manton was not afraid of being fired for calling a spade a spade and a half, or a bitch a bitch. There was no difference in Manton’s eyes: they wore red shoes, or they wore diamond chokers, but under the skin they were the same breed of soulless animal. His eyes hardened. That damned young wife had seemed guilty as hell. But after one night with Manton in the back room, she was found in her cell the next morning. The little fool had hung herself with her slip. That had been close. But the same day Manton came up with the murderer, and the test tubes had missed him completely. He and Milligan were stalemated on that one. Anyhow, the case was solved.

  He was aware that the blonde woman who had gone to the Ladies Room had now returned and this time she sat on the tall stool beside his.

  “Warm, isn’t it?” she said. “Or is it cold? I wouldn’t know. I haven’t been out.”

  He smiled at her. “You look like you’ve been out, all right.”

  She looked at him unsteadily, her blue eyes glazed. “I don’t know if I like that or not.”

  “You like it all right,” he said.

  “You wanta dance?” she said.

  “Here?”

  “Why not?”

  He looked down the bar to where the bartender was serving two men. “All right to dance, Jack?”

  “Sure. I don’t care what you do. It’s against the law. What the hell. Did I make the law?”

  She took a handful of coins from him and fed them into the juke box. In a moment the room was loud with music. It was fast.

  Barney looked at her and laughed. “You couldn’t dance to that fast stuff if your life depended on it, sister.”

  She was pushing chairs and tables out of the way. “My life does depend on it,” she said. She wobbled toward him. “You watch me and see.”

  She immediately came in so close against him that dancing of any kind was impossible. Manton moved her about the darkened room with her clinging to him.

  “There’s no use staying in here to do this,” he told her.

  “You catch on fast,” she said. As he released her, she held on to his arm. “Maybe I oughta tell you, I’m married.”

  “It’s all right, I don’t want to marry you.”

  “You don’t think very much of me, do you? You don’t think I’m very much, do you?”

  “Sure I do.”

  “No. I’m pretty low. I’m married. But I don’t love my husband. I never did love my husband. He’s jealous of me. He’s a fool. But you can’t give somebody very much if you don’t love ‘em, can you?”

  “I don’t know,” he said honestly.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I never loved anybody,” he replied, still holding her tightly against him, still moving her body in time with the music.

  She stood away and looked at him. “I don’t think I like you,” she said.

  “You’ve just joined the great majority, sister. Shall we forget the whole thing?”

  He released her, but she returned to the warmth of him like a kitten returning unwanted to a lap.

  “You’re all right. You’re just bitter. You just need to be loved.”

  “Sure.” He looked at his watch. “Catch a drink, baby, on me. I’ll call in and see if there are any calls for me. Then we’ll get out of here. There’s no back seat in my car. But you won’t care.”

  She smiled at him. “I won’t care.”

  Manton went into a booth and called his apartment house. This was habit. There were never any calls for him, but in his younger days, he had hoped the police department, recognizing his merit, would call him at any hour of the day or night Now he knew, bitterly, that though half the town died violently, he would be expected only during his tour of duty.

  Nowadays, he did it to impress the cute little things like the passionate blonde outside. They thought he was pretty hot stuff if he had a couple of calls to make before he could leave any place at all. They knew a man was somebody when they had to stand around waiting for him.

  But tonight was different. “Police Commissioner Mitchell,” his landlady told him. “It must be urgent, Mr. Manton. Mr. Mitchell said for you to come out to his house in Dell Acres the minute I got in touch with you.”

  His heart pounding, the blonde forgotten, Manton came out of the telephone booth.

  “Over here, honey,” the blonde said.

  He looked at her without even really seeing her. “Here’s five, sister, buy yourself some drinks.” She opened her mouth to speak but he stopped her cold, “And turn down that damned juke box!”

  Thirty minutes later, Manton rang the doorbell of Police Commissioner Mitchell’s thirteen-room bungalow in Dell Acres. He was shown into the Commissioner’s study without delay.

  Mitchell was a short tanned man with a shock of white hair parted in the middle. He was wearing expensively tailored tweeds, but he looked steamed up and rumpled. He motioned Manton toward the whiskey decanter. He continued pacing the big rug while Manton poured himself a drink.

  It was a drink he needed. This was the man who despised his methods. This was the man who turned his back on the fact that Manton got things done. Something was up. This was the first time Manton had ever been invited to this imposing house.

  Mitchell suspected what was in Barney Manton’s mind. But this was no time to worry about what a detective sergeant thought of him. He ran a stubby hand through his white hair. Immediately, it flopped back exactly as it had been.

  “I don’t want you to think there’s been any mistake in my calling you like this, Manton. First, let me say that I know I deal with you department men through your superiors. But this is an unusual situation, an urgent matter. A leading citizen has been murdered. Why, Ross Lambart was like a brother to me.”

  Manton drinking, found himself wishing the Commissioner would get on with it. Manton was too intelligent to go for that “brother” line. Somebody was after the Commissioner for lack of results. The old man looked like hell after a sleepless night.

  Manton waited.

  Mitchell smiled and seemed visibly to relax. Barney Manton congratulated himself, he had played this exactly right. If you don’t talk too much, he thought, if you watch the little things —

  “
Manton, I know something of your record. I know the number of times a promotion would have been in order for you. I know the number of times your name has very carefully not even been mentioned. Now, I’m not going to make any speeches. But tonight I’m prepared to make you a very interesting proposition.”

  Here it is, Barney Manton thought. He slid a little forward on his chair, although he tried to remember to appear relaxed. They whispered about him behind his back in the station, they said he’d rip a guy’s back to get what he wanted. They said his brains were in his fists. Now was his chance to get what he wanted. He was going to be able to work around the clock, batter things that got in his way. He’d get results. He had a method, and he knew Mitchell had not chosen the wrong man.

  “I’m being hounded every hour of the day, Manton,” Mitchell was saying. Barney Manton overlooked the fact that it was an effort for the Commissioner to put on this buddy act. He knew Mitchell despised him. But he had Mitchell where he wanted him. Mitchell was in a spot, and was ready to turn to the devil himself to get out of it. Manton suppressed a sardonic smile. “Action. Action. Action. They all want action in this Lambart thing. I’m tired of Milligan and his modern methods. His slides and his test tubes and his theories are all very wonderful. But a man has been killed. And very damned likely he was killed by another man who doesn’t even know about theories and test tubes and slide rules. Very damned likely that murderer won’t act according to set rules, because not knowing them, he violates them because no two human beings are alike, and I don’t give a damn if two thousand sheets of statistics prove that the criminal mind repeats itself ninety-eight times out of a hundred. I’m after an honest-to-God, flesh and blood, killer. And I want to send a flesh and blood man after him. I want you to bring him in, Manton. Disregard Milligan if you have to, go over his head, around him, demand his aid, or refuse it. But get some results! And get ‘em quick. I promise you, man, you won’t be sorry.”

  Manton regarded his finger nails. “What about Milligan?” he said. “Milligan can still recommend that I be fired. Oh, not about this. But two weeks after it’s over — ” Manton lifted his hands.

  “Solve this thing, get me some action, Manton, and you’ll be in a position where Milligan can no longer hurt you.”

  Manton felt his heart lurch, but he forced his voice to steadiness. “I might fail, Mr. Mitchell. It’s all right to gamble. But you and me both know — gamblers only take on sure things. I gotta keep my job — ”

  “Do you want to back out?” Mitchell’s voice was cutting.

  “If I can’t get your promise that you’ll back me up. Yes, sir, I do.”

  The short, white haired man glared at the heavy, lax-jowled detective for a moment and then he went purposefully to one of the two telephones on his desk. He picked up the one without a dial face and pressed a button. In a moment, he spoke curtly, “I want to speak to Milligan…. I don’t give a damn where he is … that’s your worry, not mine…. Get him.” As he waited he looked again at Manton. Neither of them spoke.

  At last Milligan spoke through the phone. “Yes, Mitchell?”

  There was weariness in his voice. He had been ridden to the end of the line. He was about to strike back. His voice was loaded with pent-up resentment.

  “Milligan, Barney Manton is here with me.”

  “Oh? I’m sorry, sir. I knew nothing about it. I’ll discipline him — ”

  “That’s not the idea, Milligan. I sent for him. I want him to work on the Lambart case.”

  “I kept him off it purposely, Mitchell. The day when you could beat the heads in of everybody who was even distantly connected with a murder is past. I could do that, you know, and if I knocked off enough heads, I might get the right one.”

  “Just the same, Milligan, I am being hounded mercilessly-”

  “It’s no picnic for me. We’re doing everything we can.”

  “Well, this is to tell you I’m assigning Manton to this case. I expect you to issue the order within the next hour. He is to have every aid, and no hindrance. Is that clear?”

  “It’s very clear, Commissioner Mitchell.”

  Barney Manton’s eyes were smiling, but looking at him, Commissioner Mitchell shivered. In those gray eyes was a cruel light that might have been determination. But — it looked more like hatred.

  8

  AT A LITTLE after eight o’clock the next morning, Barney Manton parked his coupe across the street from the Gowan bungalow.

  He slipped quickly from under the wheel, slammed the door of his car and came along the walk to the house. He had not slept since he had left Commissioner Mitchell’s house a little before midnight last night.

  Manton had locked himself in his room, and had worked all night on every angle of the Lambart killing. No matter where he started, he found that in the end he returned to Elsa Gowan.

  He pressed firmly upon the doorbell and stood there listening to it ring through the house.

  Elsa Gowan opened the door for him after he’d pressed the buzzer five more impatient times. She had hurriedly brushed her blonde hair, caught it with bob pins over her close-set ears. She must have dashed cold water on her face, for all traces of sleep were gone although she wore no make up.

  “Mrs. Gowan,” he said, putting the weight of his knee against the door she’d cautiously opened, “I’m from police headquarters.”

  He saw in her blue eyes that she remembered him. She had seen him only as she was leaving Milligan’s office with her husband, and to anyone but Barney Manton, it might have appeared that she hadn’t really noticed him then. He smiled. It was strange that he had no more success with women than he did, for once they saw him they never forgot him. He shrugged that thought from his mind.

  “May I come in?”

  She nodded, stepping away from the door and pulling her house coat more securely about her plush body.

  As Elsa closed the door behind him, Manton heard movement in the rear of the house. He supposed it was Sam Gowan, and said nothing. Elsa appeared elaborately unaware of the noise.

  He followed her into the neat parlor. The windows had been opened to the fresh air and sunlight now, and the place looked like any number of other suburban homes. Bargain basement furniture, reprint pictures on the walls, a couple of photographs on an end table. A man’s hat tossed carelessly in a chair. Somehow this note was wrong. This woman didn’t keep house that way, Manton was sure. “Do you mind saying why you want to see me?” Elsa said. Before Manton could answer, a man’s voice called from the kitchen, “Elsa-”

  Manton saw color mount to Mrs. Gowan’s smooth face. “I’m in here,” she said distinctly.

  In a moment a tall, lithe, almost absurdly handsome man came through the door from the rear hallway. Manton felt his hands clench. Here was an old enemy.

  Their eyes met. Manton spoke first.

  “Hello, Hal. Long time no smell.”

  “Maybe I’ve been lucky,” the handsome man said. “Maybe I’ve seen you first.”

  “Still running that two-bit detective agency, Hal?”

  Hal nodded. “I’ve been doing some work for Mrs. Gowan. I’ve been trying to find her husband for her.”

  “Mr. Lambart hired him,” Elsa broke in awkwardly.

  Manton looked at the private detective. Slimer had been forced to resign from the police department a good many years ago. He looked no older than he had the first day Manton had ever seen him, and Manton disliked the man as much for this as for anything else.

  “I thought Gowan had returned,” Manton said softly.

  “He left the morning after we were in the police station,” Elsa Gowan said. “He has not come back. I called Mr. Slimer to see if he could help me find him.”

  Manton waited.

  “I’ve been checking the back yard,” Slimer said. “You see, I removed all the plants and shrubs from around the house and had soft fill dirt put around it. That way we’d pick up the shoe prints of anyone who might be prowling about the house.” His eyes h
eld Manton’s, and the private eye said meaningly, “We’ve some very interesting specimens, sergeant”

  Manton didn’t like surprises. He didn’t like to be caught off guard, as he was now. Color crawled across his tanned cheeks.

  “I suppose you have,” he said.

  No one spoke for the space of half a minute, but to all three it seemed much longer. Slimer scooped up his hat and sat it on the side of his head.

  “Well, I guess I’m about through here for this morning, Mrs. Gowan. I’ll call you later today if anything develops.”

  Elsa nodded, and went with Slimer to the door. When she returned, she sat in a straight chair between two windows.

  Manton got up from the divan where he’d been perched on the edge of a pillow. He came slowly across the room to her.

  “I want to know all there is to know about you and Ross Lambart,” he said evenly.

  She looked up at him, startled.

  “I told Mr. Milligan all there was to tell,” she said.

  “Mr. Milligan is one man. I am another. I read what you said to him. But I’m not after pap. I want the truth. Even if I have to black that other eye to get it.”

  She stood up, facing him. “You can’t talk to me like that!”

  “I just did,” he said indolently. “And you’ll hear a lot more of the same stuff, sister. I know all about you.”

  She flushed. “What do you mean?”

  He took the little black book from his pocket, flipped through to the pages marked Lambart. He began to read to her slowly, watching the change that came into her face. From haughtiness, he saw her run down the line to amazement and fear.

  He shoved the book back into his coat pocket. “Was Lambart the first lover you had since you married Sam Gowan? Or was he one of several? You see the thing is incomplete on you. You only came into it with Lambart. It was Lambart I was interested in — and not you.”

  She was watching him narrowly.

  “But now it’s you,” he said quietly. “I think I know who killed Ross Lambart. I think we both know.”

  She wheeled away from him and went to the window. Her shoulders sagged round.