Man-Trap

III

About all I got from Davis was a little background material on Walter Lancaster, and even that contained nothing I could not have dug from a newspaper morgue had I wanted to take the time.

Prior to entering politics Lancaster had been legal advisor and vice president of the Illinois Telegraph Company at a salary of $50,000 a year. He had served no political apprenticeship, jumping from business into a key political position much in the manner of Wendell Willkie. He left a widow, a college-age son and an estate Laurie Davis estimated might run into two million dollars. Most of this, Davis believed, was in corporate stocks, as Walter Lancaster had been on the board of directors of four small corporations in addition to his primary job with the Illinois Telegraph Company, and presumably he would not have been elected to these boards unless he had substantial investments in the companies.

The only point on which Davis seemed willing to impart detailed information was the lieutenant governor’s business connections. He told me the four corporations on whose boards Lancaster had served were Rockaway Distributors (a wholesale magazine and news company), Ilco Utilities, Eastern Plow Manufacturers, Inc. and the Palmer Tool Company. All were Illinois firms.

Deciding I could get more information than my client had to offer from almost anyone I asked, including the shoe shine boy on the corner, I took Davis’ private phone number in Granite City and told him I would report the minute I had anything definite. After he and his gangling bodyguard departed, I shaved, dressed and cooked myself a combination breakfast and lunch, it then being nearly one P.M.

Instead of breaking my back going over ground already covered by the police, I decided the best place to start my investigation was to learn what they knew. And the best source for that was Inspector Warren Day.

I found my scrawny friend in his office hunched over a sheaf of written reports. When I entered, he raised his skinny bald head to peer at me over his glasses and snarled, “Can’t you knock, Moon?”

Remembering the radio release he had made caused me to snarl back at him, “What are you trying to pull on Fausta Moreni?”

The inspector only growled and returned to his reports. Sinking into his chair, I said, “I won’t take much of your time. I only came in for two things. The first I already asked you.”

“You mean about Miss Moreni? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t get coy with me, Inspector. We’ve known each other too long. You know as well as I do that statement of Fausta’s is meaningless. Why play it up?”

“Meaningless?” he asked. “You mean it’s a false statement?”

“Oh, for cripes sake, Inspector!”

He gave me a smile like a cat with feathers in its whiskers. “When a witness signs a statement, Moon, I have every right to assume it’s the truth. Of course she can repudiate it, but in that case I’d have to accept Robert Caxton’s statement and take you into custody.”

I said disgustedly, “You don’t believe either statement. You’re using Fausta to try to smoke out the killer. I suppose your next move will be to let the eyewitness identity leak out.”

Day looked wounded. “We’re not that crude, Moon. You think we’d deliberately set up a young woman as a target?”

“Yes.”

He examined me in silence for a minute. “It’s none of your business,” he said finally, “but just to relieve your mind, I’ll tell you what we’re doing. I have tails on that taxi driver and doorman.”

I looked at him blankly. “For what?”

“Put yourself in the killer’s place,” he said irritably. “You read in the paper a witness has seen your face. The name isn’t given, but the names of three other witnesses who didn’t see your face are. Possibly these witnesses, or at least one of them, knows who the fourth witness is. Is it worth the risk of approaching them one at a time in an attempt to learn the fourth witness’ identity?”

I thought of something. “Have you got a tail on me too?”

Day shook his head. “If the killer bites at all, we figure he would steer away from a private detective except as a last resort. And even if he did approach you, we assume you’d have sense enough to sit on him and give us a buzz.”

I thought of something else. “The other witnesses actually do know who the fourth is, because we were all present when Fausta made that silly statement. Suppose the killer does contact one of them, gets the information he wants, and your man loses him?”

The inspector frowned, opened his mouth and closed it again. Finally he rumbled, “We don’t make mistakes like that.”

I emitted a polite horse laugh.

“If we figure Miss Moreni is in any danger, we’ll take her into protective custody,” he snapped.

“Swell,” I said bitterly. “Put her in jail.”

“Better than being dead,” he offered in a reasonable tone. “Get on with the second thing you want. I’m pretty busy.”

“I want to help you,” I told him. “As a patriotic citizen, I feel it my duty to do something about this blot on our honor.”

Day regarded me suspiciously. “Do you know something you didn’t tell last night?”

“Not yet,” I admitted. “I plan to crack the case as soon as you tell me what you’ve got so far.”

He glared at me with sudden indignation. “You’re on the case? It’s not enough I got the district attorney, two governors and every newspaper in the country on my back. Now you want to breathe down my neck. Go away.”

He dropped his eyes back to the reports on his desk. I sat quietly chewing my filched cigar. Finally he looked up again.

“Who’s your client?”

“The governor of Illinois.”

He snorted. Searching his ash tray, he found a long cigar butt, blew the ashes from it and stuck it in his mouth. I waited for him to produce a match, but he preferred merely to chew also.

“Laurie Davis was seen in town this morning,” he said, eyeing me expectantly.

“He was?”

“Is he your client?” he demanded.

“My client wants to remain incognito.”

He started to glare, but let it deteriorate into what was supposed to be an ingratiating smile. I knew what was going through his mind. If my client actually was Laurie Davis, he could hardly afford to be uncooperative, for even the governor might listen attentively if the political boss of a neighboring state decided to make a complaint. And with pressure on the department already tremendous, Day had no desire to make it any worse.

Apparently the inspector decided to take no chances, and the decision brought about one of his abrupt changes in manner which never fails to fascinate me. All at once he was full of wheedling friendliness.

“We’re always willing to cooperate with you private fellows when you cooperate with us, Manny. I’ll be glad to give you the little bit we got, if you’ll promise to turn in everything you find out the minute you find it... not a week or two later, as you sometimes do.”

“I’ll hold nothing back at all from you, if you’ll promise the same treatment.”

“Sure, Manny.”

“There’s one qualification,” I said. “I want you to agree that regardless of which one of us breaks the case, we keep the arrest secret for twenty-four hours.”

Straightening in his chair, he looked at me with amazement. “Why should I agree to a silly thing like that?”

“There’s a political reason,” I said casually.

“No politician is going to tell me how to run Homicide,” he declared unconvincingly.

“None wants to,” I assured him. “You’ll have your killer and no one will interfere with the legal prosecution. All I’m asking is he be held as a material witness or some such thing for twenty-four hours. Assuming we ever catch him, that is. If he can’t, we’ll have to work independently, because I’m committed to work on that basis only.”

“Why?”

“Because I am. Do we cooperate, or do I tell Laurie Davis I’m on my own?”

I let the name slip deliberately, and watched Day’s reaction to the confirmation that my client was who he suspected. A faint spot of white appeared at the tip of his nose. Around headquarters Warren Day’s nose is surreptitiously referred to as the “rage gauge,” for it exactly meters his degree of anger. When it becomes dead white, he is just short of homicidal.

“For an old friend like you I think we can arrange that,” he said in a choked voice.

So our agreement was made and the inspector proceeded to bring me up to date.

As I had surmised from his double wound, the bullet which killed Lancaster had passed entirely through his body. The spent slug, too badly battered from striking a rib on the way out to make comparison tests possible in the event the murder weapon was ever found, was located lying on the gravel drive only a few feet from the body. Since no ejected casing was found, it was assumed the weapon had been a revolver rather than an automatic.

A thin coating of dried leaves from the previous fall had been spread over the close-cropped grass as fertilizer by El Patio’s gardener, and the resulting spongy turf left no footprints. However, muzzle flash had singed a bush at the edge of the drive, so it had been possible to determine where the killer had been standing.

At this point I interrupted. “Then my story is verified without Fausta’s statement. If she repudiates it, that taxi driver’s imaginings still don’t mean anything.”

Racketeer Barney Seldon had been held for questioning as a matter of routine, the inspector went on unperturbably, but since he was still seated at his table in the midst of over a hundred other diners when the shot was fired, he was not even booked. It developed that he was an habitue of El Patio, dining there several nights a week, so there was nothing unusual about his being present at the time of the murder. Except for his reputation for violence, the police had no reason to connect him with the affair.

“Right after you left I sent Hannegan over to Carson City to break the news to Lancaster’s wife,” Day went on. “A lousy job, but somebody always has to do it. He found out from Mrs. Lancaster the dead man’s purpose in being this side of the river was a business meeting with some investment brokers, and she had expected him home last night. He also found out practically everybody knew Lancaster would be at El Patio last night. During a luncheon speech in Carson City a few days back he made a humorous reference to a charge by a political rival that he was in the pay of a restaurant-owner’s lobby which was trying to get the state sanitary code relaxed. He said his influence among restaurateurs was so great that when he phoned El Patio a week in advance for a six-thirty dinner reservation for last night, he only had to argue about twenty minutes in order to get himself fitted in two hours later than he wanted. The speech was reprinted in the Carson City Herald, so anyone who can read could have known he would be coming out of El Patio about nine-thirty.”

“Who were the investment brokers he met with?” I asked.

“Jones and Knight Investment Company on Broadway. I sent a man over this morning and he talked to one of the partners. Guy named Harlan Jones. According to him, Lancaster left the brokerage office alone at five P.M. Offhand this looks to me like a political assassination by some fanatic.”

I said, “Remember a while back when a couple of pot shots were taken at Laurie Davis?”

He nodded. “Before he hired that ex-FBI fellow as a bodyguard.”

“There’s a probability Barney Seldon was behind those attempts.”

Day peered at me over his glasses. “How would you know a thing like that?”

“I don’t,” I told him. “It’s only a guess. But it’s a guess founded on pretty sound reasoning. Did you know Laurie Davis ran Seldon’s rackets out of his county?”

“No. I don’t pay much attention to Illinois crime. I’ve got enough troubles of my own.”

“Well, he did,” I said. “And if you read the papers, you’d know Davis literally hand-picked Walter Lancaster for lieutenant governor. Maybe Barney was striking back at Davis by having his protege knocked off.”

“A little roundabout for a hood like Seldon,” Day said dubiously. “He’d be more likely to have Davis himself bumped. Besides, he has a perfect alibi.”

“So what? He wouldn’t do his own gun work. He probably has a dozen gunnies he could call on.”

The inspector gave his head a shake of disagreement. “We’ll watch for him to come across the river again and go over him some more, but I can’t see Barney Seldon behind this. If he ordered it, he wouldn’t go out of his way to be on the spot. He’d have a perfect alibi a hundred miles from the murder.”

“Maybe,” I suggested, “that’s exactly what he figured the police would think.”