by Dale Bogard
He wore the same slightly insolent look but I thought he was a little uncertain.
“Early night, huh?” I said.
“I do that sometimes,” he said, smiling. “Come on in, Bogard.”
He poured a couple of highballs, gave one to me and raised his own.
We drank and he sat on the arm of a chair, swinging one natty pajamaed leg over the other.
I said, “I went out to see Mrs. Grierson. She isn’t Mrs. Grierson. He picked her up in a burlesque show because she took his fancy and asked her to live with him as his wife. He figured it would look good to have a wife running that big place of his out on Long Island and the arrangement worked…until recently. She had the idea he was getting ready to quit. Maybe she was wrong about that. I don’t know.”
He didn’t say a word.
I went on, “She thought he was being blackmailed but might have tied that up in the last week or two. The big thing, though, is that she isn’t his wife. So who gets the money?”
Banningham slowly lit a cigarette. “Nobody gets anything. Nobody outside the firm. You already know, I think, that his share of the business goes to myself. The arrangement under which money is paid to the widow of a partner falls to the ground if she isn’t his widow. That’s all there is to it.”
“No possible motive for anyone in line for the money to have Grierson squibbed off?”
“None.” A smile flickered over his face. “Unless you think I could have done it. His death puts me on top, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ve got that in mind. How’d you fix it all up three thousand miles away in London?”
He laughed. “I didn’t, of course.”
Suddenly, he seemed to remember something. His face darkened a little. “Something I found out only today—Grierson had drawn up a revised constitution for the firm. Under it his share of control was to pass to his widow….”
I whistled gently.
Banningham said carefully, “That makes things a bit different, doesn’t it? Though I imagine my father would have needed a lot of persuasion to agree to it. But if Grierson wasn’t married who was going to benefit?”
“If he was getting ready to marry that would explain it,” I said. “But we don’t know a damn thing about that.”
He shrugged. “Well, perhaps we shall see. By the way, what happened to you the other night?”
I told him about the cast-eyed guy with the .22 target pistol. I thought maybe I might as well tell him the rest. For the first time he looked nearly excited.
“But this is serious,” was all he could think of to say, though.
“Yeah,” I said, “I thought so too when Tawley had the drop on me.”
“But the captain of police…”
I promoted a twisted grin. “This isn’t England, Banningham. There are still some crooked coppers over here and Tawley is about the crookedest of the lot.”
“And this man Canting?”
“I am certain he had Grierson killed. I am equally certain that he got Bule rubbed out and dumped in my apartment to throw a scare into me. The Grierson murder was done by a hired killer from Falls City. Canting still has interests there—and Tawley is on his payroll. They didn’t want me in Falls City, and Canting took the precaution of arranging for my reception in case I ignored his warning about going.”
Banningham sat drumming his nails on his knee “I see…”
He broke off because there was a slight sound in the corridor outside. It was a light rustle. Like a woman wearing a long robe that catches the floor a little as she walks.
Banningham got off the chair arm and moved a little way towards the door.
“I wouldn’t trouble,” I said easily. “I think you’re too late.”
Then the door swung inwards and Julia Casson walked into the room. She was in a long, blue and silver robe and her feet were in silver slippers with high heels. What I could see of her frilly negligee wasn’t enough. She came through the door and leaned her shoulders against the lintel. She looked silky, sinuous and sensuous. But she also looked taken aback.
“I thought…” she began.
I finished it for her. “You thought it could be anyone else but me,” I said coldly. I don’t know why.
She let her wide lips open a little over her small white teeth. Her eyes flickered. This time there was no invitation in them.
“You flatter yourself,” she said. Her voice was low and brittle.
“I don’t,” I said. “The trouble is I only shave once a day.”
I walked out feeling as stupid as a kid who misses out on a date at a graduation day dance. Somebody ought to kick me in my aging pants. Maybe they would…
THE LITTLE SALOON on lower Broadway was jammed. It took me three minutes to elbow my way to the bar. After a little while the place began to thin out some. I got my elbows on to the bar and got my hands around a large Scotch. I drank half of it, set the glass down and went on moodily looking at the colored bottles in the back of the counter.
Somebody else leaned elbows on the bar right next to me. I didn’t bother to see who it was. He had to tell me.
“I’ve been looking for you,” he said.
I turned my head and then said, “Well, you’ve found me. What will you have—as if I didn’t know. Two Scotches, please.”
O’Cassidy said evenly, “Where’ve you been and what do you know?”
I wasn’t in a talking mood. I wanted to listen.
“Suppose you come clean first?” I suggested.
O’Cassidy grinned. “It’s th’ duty of the police to ask the questions,” he said. “I don’t have to tell you nothing.”
“That’s fine,” I told him. “Let’s call it a day.”
Cass peered into his drink, then peered at me. “That guy Harry Bule, now,” he said. “We found he was hit with a slug from a .22 target gun….”
I could feel my fingers flex round the glass until it was nearly ready to crack. I knew that Cass had seen them do it.
“Know a mug who uses a .22 target gun?” he asked softly.
“Yeah,” I said. “A tall bird with a cast in his right eye and dressed sharp as a tick in a gray jacket with fall-away shoulders. He has been known to drive a big black sedan. I mean I’ve known him to drive it.”
“When?”
“Three nights ago when he took me for a drive into the Bowery so we could have a nice talk in a black patch under the Elevated. He said he was nice people and to prove it he kept calling me pal.”
“Go on, Dale.” Cass said it so softly I only just heard it.
“I didn’t like him keep calling me pal and he didn’t like me being mixed up in this murder business. I don’t think he minded personally—but the nice people who sent him along minded a lot.”
“You got warned off, huh?”
I nodded.
“And then what?”
“He kicked me out of the car, and I went home. It was a nice friendly talk. Only next time there wouldn’t be any talk.” I gave Cass a steady look and decided to come clean about Falls City.
When I had finished he grinned a little. “Those Falls City coppers sure are tough. Guess they must eat barbed wire for breakfast or sumpin’. I know all about Tawley. Just a hood in uniform. You’d better keep outa Falls City the next twenty years….”
He reflected for a moment and resumed. “A witness we picked up will testify that a big black sedan was parked at the back of your apartment around the time Bule’s body was dumped there. The witness saw th’ car drive away. He also saw there was sumpin’ wrong with the man’s right eye. This cast-eye guy ain’t on our books, but we finally traced a man answering to his description to an old roominghouse overlooking the tidewaters of East Riverway.
“I sent Lieutenant Klinger on th’ job, but he come back and says this guy was there but has beat it. Klinger, he don’t have a clue…”
There was something funny in the way Cass said it and I stared.
He seemed to hesitate a m
inute. Then, as though he had made up his mind about something, he said, “I don’t trust Klinger.”
“Why’d you send him?”
O’Cassidy wiped the shadow off his lean face with a tiny grin. “It was Klinger who said he figured this car had driven out to East Riverside. It was Klinger who said he would make the inquiry. So I let him do just that. I also put a tail on Klinger.”
I said, “That’ll cause a lot of talk down on Lafayette.”
“It won’t,” said Cass, “on account of I was the tail. It was a tough assignment on account of there weren’t many people riding the local, but I made it.”
“What did Klinger do?” I was curious to know.
“He went to the rooming house all right and when he came out I slipped in. He’d made the inquiry, too. Only thing was the old man who kept the joint said nobody looking like this cast-eye mug had ever roomed there. When Klinger turned in his report it didn’t say that.”
“Risky,” I said.
“Not so much,” said Cass. “In normal circumstances we don’t go around checking up on police lieutenants.”
“What do you suppose it means?”
“It means,” said Cass slowly, “it means that somebody is paying Klinger to lay a false trail. His theory was that the guy had taken it on the lam outa New York. If we fell for it that would be the end of embarrassing inquiries right here in this city, wouldn’t it?”
I didn’t answer. I heard what he said perfectly clearly but the words didn’t mean a thing. I was looking straight over O’Cassidy’s shoulder. A man had just come into the bar. He came with a crisp walk, stepping straight up to the long counter. He stepped up smartly, just like the cast-eyed gunman had stepped up behind me when I had to go to the can in Marty Alton’s club.
The man stood against the bar and said, “A shot of rye.”
Then he looked around the way guys do when they’ve ordered their drink. That was when he saw me. I was jerking the Luger out of my shoulder holster. There was no expression on his face and I didn’t see anything, but suddenly something sprang into his hand.
For a split second it was just a blur of motion. Then I could see that it was a .22 target pistol.
He decided to speak then.
“Looking for me, pal?” he asked softly.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I LET THE LUGER SLIDE BACK into its holster. I leaned sideways against the bar.
“I guess somebody will always be looking for you,” was what I said. Cass hadn’t moved a muscle.
Cast-Eye backed off the bar so that he faced us.
“Coppers,” he said slowly. “This bird’s a copper. Me, I don’t like coppers.”
“Not even Falls City coppers?” I jeered.
Cast-Eye wasn’t bothered. “Wise guy, huh? Don’t get too damn wise, pal. Remember our little talk?”
He moved a few paces nearer. “Better give me your gun, copper,” he said. “You too, Bogard.” He stuffed the guns into his pocket and backed off again. His eyes swung rapidly over the room. There were only a dozen people left by now.
“Don’t nobody get any ideas about trying to stop me,” he snapped.
I could have told him not to worry. The twelve guys in the bar were still frozen in their last attitudes. Three were still holding their drinks halfway to their mouths and the rest just stood there with their hands prominently displayed.
He was almost to the door when he stopped. He lifted his left foot and kicked a floor waiter into life. “Get my drink off that bar,” he said. “I paid for it, pal, didn’t I?”
The waiter stumbled across the little floor, picked up the drink, walked unsteadily back and handed it to him. Cast-Eye tossed it down and pitched the glass into a corner. The tinkling sound it made as it smashed seemed louder than it was because of the quiet.
Then, suddenly, he was through the doors. They slammed shut and I could hear the click as he pushed a bolt home.
O’ Cassidy reached out a long arm and yanked the barkeep towards him. “There must be another way out—where is it?”
The barkeep motioned and we sped out of a small corner door, down a short flight of steps and along a narrow passage into the alley which ran along the back of the block. I knew we were too late because I could hear the noise of a car motor going through the gears.
We got onto the sidewalk in time to see its taillight disappearing in the traffic.
Cass swore softly.
I said, “C’mon—we’ll go in my car. It’s in the next intersection.”
We ran along the sidewalk, turned and got to the car. I swung it into a wide arc and headed into the Broadway traffic.
“You ain’t going to catch that mug, Dale,” said Cass.
“I’m not chasing him,” I said. “I’m going where I think he might be.”
“That’s fine,” said Cass. “If I knew where it was.”
“Canting’s place,” I told him grimly.
Cass said shortly, “Stop off at headquarters. We’ll get some artillery.”
It was twenty minutes later when we parked outside High Corners. The admiral of the fleet was still at his post. Cass didn’t show him his buzzer. He didn’t have to. They were old buddies.
We stepped into the elevator. As we rode up I said, “So you’ve been here before, huh?”
Cass grinned faintly. “Yeah. I found out from Bella where you went the night you wouldn’t tell. I checked up on Canting.” He stopped as the cage reached the top. The doors slid apart and we were ankle-deep in the pile. “Somebody ought to do sumpin’ about that guy,” he said.
We walked up to the biggest double door. This time it didn’t slide noiselessly inwards. It didn’t do anything. We stood there inhaling the heavy sweetness of the Canting incense. It still made the butterflies flutter under my belt. I balled my fist and hit the door. That made the door open about three inches and it was strange because the doors locked when they closed and had to be opened by one of Canting’s pretty table buttons.
The enormous room looked the same. The delicate interior lighting in the Lalique glass fixtures still spread softly over the glass furniture and the cream walls and the jade green drapes. The biggest table in the world was still at the far end of the room. It was just as if nothing had ever happened since I saw it. Even Mr. Lucius Canting was there. He was still behind his table. Only this time he wasn’t sitting, and he wasn’t wearing a sky-blue linen suit and didn’t have a bloodred tie. He was laying back in his chair with his chin tilted up towards the glass-domed roof. He was wearing a midnight-blue tuxedo over which flowed something that wasn’t a bloodred tie. It was red blood.
It had flowed over his shirt in a widening lake because somebody had driven a Task Force dagger into him up to the full extent of the blade.
The silence of the heavy air was like something you could feel. It was broken by the mellow chimes of a gold and glass clock announcing the hour. The eleventh hour. I felt my mouth tighten cynically. The eleventh hour. Almost. There would be no more dagger deaths. Unless…
I turned towards Cass.
“He’s been dead at least two hours,” I said. My voice sounded a little off-pitch. I was remembering that he had been here before.
“Yeah—about that.” He said it slowly. He didn’t touch Canting. He stood there looking at him for another minute. There was a telephone on the vast table. He jerked a handkerchief out of his sleeve, wrapped it round his left hand and reached out to lift the receiver.
His hand had closed over it when a small door to the left of the table opened and a man came through it.
“Ceiling high,” said Cast-Eye. “Reach it quick and don’t even stop to think about it. I ain’t bothered about killing coppers now.”
O’Cassidy straightened up with his hands half raised. I was still trying to touch the dome. My muscles ached under the strain.
“So you come here and bump th’ boss?” Cass said.
Cast-Eye’s face twisted. “I didn’t knife him, pal. I don’t like knives.
That’s the way he was when I came in.”
“Yeah?” O’Cassidy sneered the word. “You can tell it later to th’ judge.”
The .22 never wavered. “There ain’t gonna be no talk with the judge, copper. That’s why I ain’t afraid of shooting a bull. I’m stepping outa—”
O’Cassidy cut in. “How’d you step in without being seen?”
Cast-Eye said, “It makes no difference now, does it? But there’s a private entrance at the back. Canting had it built on. It was useful at times, I guess.”
“He hired you to knock off Harry Bule, didn’t he?” Cass asked it as though he wasn’t expecting an answer.
“I ain’t telling you nothing, copper,” said Cast-Eye softly. “I wouldn’t be talking to you now if you’d got that call in to homicide, but I balked that play, didn’t I? Just like I outsmarted all you coppers. You ain’t gonna get nothing on me.”
He started backing towards the twin doors. It was a long way back but he took his time. The target gun wobbled about as much as the Radio City Music Hall in a summer zephyr. Cast-Eye seemed to get smaller as he receded from us. In another moment his back was against the doors. They were still just a little ajar.
“Goodbye, copper,” he said. “Don’t think you can follow me because I know how to wedge these doors so that little button right by you won’t play….”
He reached a hand behind him and pulled the doors open enough to get through. But he didn’t. A uniformed police lieutenant came through the other way. He had a long blue gun in his hand and he slammed it into the small of Cast-Eye’s back.
He said, “Shed the heater, mug. Make it fast. I’d enjoy drilling you and I ain’t seen your pan even.”
Somehow I didn’t like the way he said it.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CAST-EYE DROPPED THE TARGET pistol but you couldn’t hear or see it because it vanished in the deep purple at his feet. He raised his hands and walked back into the room slowly, stiffly, until he stood by the table again. The lieutenant who followed him was tall and thin with a white face, white eyebrows and yellow teeth. He had pale blue eyes under puffed-up lids. He was Lieutenant Klinger of the homicide bureau and I never had liked him.
