An Occasional Rat

4

I wanted rest and food, and my head had settled to a steady, pounding roar as if it had a big Deisel engine inside of it, but downtown, I eased in a busy all night restaurant, went to the booth in back, and began phoning bars. The third call hit the jackpot. “Sure,” Gibney, the bartender at the Blue Mirror said, “York. Rayfield is here, drinking alone, as if he’s waitin’ for somebody. Want I should call him?”

“No. I’m coming down. You needn’t mention, even, that anyone called.”

I could imagine Gibney shrugged his fat shoulders. Matter-of-factly he said, “I won’t tell him you called.”

York Rayfield was turning his glass in his hands, making moist rings on the table, when my shadow fell across him. He looked up, almost dropped the glass. I slid quickly in the semi-circular, maroon leather booth, pressed my hand across his mouth. With my other hand, I jabbed him in the ribs with my gun. His eyes rolled: his body arched away from me.

“I’m a desperate critter, York. When I take my hand away from your mouth, don’t get any fancy ideas about yelling.”

I slid my hand away. Breathing heavily, he straightened his tie with studied nonchalance. “I’ve seen the papers, Frazee. I know how you knocked off Conklin. Every cop in town must be looking for you.”

He looked at me as if he wanted me to deny it. I said, “Well, they can’t burn me but once. Pay your check.”

He wilted, wincing under the pressure of the gun. By the time I had steered him out of the bar, into a cab, and rode him silently to Millie Morgan’s apartment, his breath was rasping and he was trembling all over.

The apartment was empty. York sat down abruptly on the studio couch, his face glistening with a clammy looking sheen of sweat in the light from the small lamp I turned on.

“For the thirtieth time since we got in the cab, Frazee,” he begged, “what do you want?” He fumbled, got a handkerchief, shakily wiped his face. “Say something, Frazee! Damn you...”

I said, “Give, York. I know the whole story. That your father. John, was blackmailing Morgan, that you intended to use the weapon of blackmail to marry Morgan’s daughter, that Morgan faked an accident to get out of it. I know that Howard Conklin saw Morgan. Conk begun working, got dope on your father. Your father killed Conklin because Conk learned the details about the blackmailer.”

“No, Frazee,” he begged. His shirt collar was wilted limply. “You’re right about some of it. I happened to follow Morgan one night. He left a package at a vacant lot. He acted so damn mysterious. I took a look at the package he left. Morgan came creeping up on me just at the moment I discovered the package was a bundle of money. That’s what led Morgan to believe that I or my father was blackmailing him.”

York swallowed drily, went on: “Morgan was insane with anger. He came to my father after that, got kicked out of the house. Later Morgan tried to beat hell out of me in a bar.” Conk had mentioned that on the paper in his hatband I remembered.

“Keep talking,” I said, “or I’ll show you how Morgan must have felt back then, being hounded to death.”

With a suddenness that caught me off guard. York Rayfield darted from the couch toward the door. I lunged at him. And the door burst open and John Rayfield, flanked by two of his thugs, came in the room. I released York, edged back.

“I’m sorry you spoiled our friendship by this sort of thing, Frazee,” John Rayfield said. “York was waiting for me in the bar. I arrived there and Gibney told me York had left with you. It was a simple matter to find the cab driver who brought you here.” John closed the door behind him. His two thugs flanked me.

“Are you going to give me the same treatment you gave Conklin?” I asked.

John shook his head. “Not guilty, Frazee. The papers stated the time Conk was killed. At the moment there were a dozen people in the house with York and me. They weren’t people who work for me, either. They’re big people in town, left my house just a few moments before you paid us your second visit. It’s an alibi you’ll never break, Frazee.”

York broke in to tersely explain to his father how I’d been planning to kill him and dump his body in Tampa bay. John Rayfield looked at me, his eyes blazing.

He said, “Kick Frazee’s meddlesome brains out!”

One of the thugs swung at me. I rolled with the blow — rolled right into a haymaker tossed by the other gent. I hit the carpel so hard the windows rattled.

When I again became aware of living, I was lying on the couch. Millie’s cloud of blonde hair came slowly in focus. She was applying a damp cloth on my forehead and the feel of her fingertips, cool and gentle and soft, was nice. I wanted to dose my eyes again, but I struggled to a fitting position.

She watched me with concern in her eyes. “Rayfield?”

I nodded.

She said, “I found you out cold on the floor, just a few minutes ago. I was settling my father in a hotel room for the night, or I would have been here when you came.”

“It’s best that you weren’t. York might have told his father that you had intended to gouge his eyes out with scissors.” I got to my feet. “Rayfield might send the cops here. If Bailey comes, tell him I threatened you, said I’d wring your neck if you raised an alarm while I was here.”

She followed me to the door. “Afraid I’ll be tagged as an accomplice?”

“I wouldn’t want it.”

“Thanks, Ham Frazee.” Her lips brushed my cheeks.

“That was nice,” I said. “We’ll talk it over sometime.” I closed the door softly behind me.

I left the apartment house, made my way around Mirror Lake, down Central, back to the office. I pulled the blinds, turned on the light. The wreckage of our files still littered the floor, but Conk’s body was gone and a couple of exploded flash bulbs reminded me that the tech squad had done its work here.

In my mind the pieces were in place.

I picked up the phone, called headquarters. When the cop at the switchboard answered, I said, “I made a call between seven and seven thirty this evening. It was never attended to.”

He asked me who I was, and I said, “Never mind that. The call concerned Howard Conklin.”

I heard the swift intake of his breath, and I knew the call I was now making would be traced. He said, “There was no such call made at that time. Who are you? Where...” I hung up. I had me a murderer.

A chuckle sounded harshly in the doorway. The murderer was here with me, slipping a passkey from the lock into his pocket. In his other hand was a gun. George Bailey said with mock nostalgia: “Hello, Frazee, you dirty bum.”

“Save the comradely insults, Bailey. I’ll never forgive myself for thinking of you as a friend — when you were the man who eventually murdered Howard Conklin and tried to skid me to the chair.”

“I didn’t want to murder Conklin, Ham. But it was either murder him, silence him, or lose everything I’ve got, everything I live for — all the money and good time — and spend the rest of my active years behind prison bars for blackmailing Burt Morgan.”

“I should have known,” I said bitterly. “All the time we thought you were merely stretching letters of the law — shaking down a gambling joint here and there, tipping Conk and me to cases for a cut of the fee. But the bulk of your coin was blackmail dough.

“You had a couple breaks too, Bailey. For instance, York Rayfield’s actions one night years ago when he followed Burt Morgan, led Morgan to believe that it was Rayfield blackmailing him. You planned to make a break or two for yourself, also. You came here today, questioned Millie and me slyly to learn if Conk had told us anything about his present case. We said he hadn’t, but you still didn’t feel safe. You were afraid of me. You were also afraid to leave the murder of Conklin open to investigation by the whole department. That gave you a doubly strong motive for wanting to plant the blame on me, be on hand to nab me, and close the case in a hurry.”

He smiled mirthlessly. “It will be closed, Frazee. In a few seconds I’m going to blow your brains out. I’ll tell them you resisted arrest, see?”

“You’re an opportunist, Bailey. Just as you took advantage of opportunity in the very beginning — of all persons connected you were the one to know that Burt Morgan was dickering with old man Blodgett for the beach property. For it was you who told Morgan where Blodgett lived! Morgan never would have tipped Rayfield about the Roxlin Hotel deal in advance. They were too great rivals.

“I got the whole picture, Bailey, when Rayfield presented me with a staunch alibi in Millie Morgan’s apartment just before I came here. If Rayfield couldn’t have killed Conk, it meant someone else. Everything then pointed to you. And the master piece of the puzzle came from your own lips! When you entered this office and found me with Howard Conklin’s body earlier this evening you said a phone call, a tipoff, had brought you. You felt impelled to give a reason for your appearance, because you’d really been laying for me to come back here and walk in your trap. But now I know you were lying. No call was made to headquarters at the time you stated concerning Howard Conklin!”

“Yes, Frazee. I was laying for you — just as I was laying for you a few minutes ago when you left Millie Morgan’s apartment and came here. John Rayfield had phoned me that you were out cold in the apartment. When I arrived you were just leaving. I followed you, waiting again for opportunity, not wanting to shoot you on the street, Frazee. I wanted to get you in a corner.”

He raised the gun to fire.

The frosted glass panel in the door showered glass. I caught a fleeting picture of Millie Morgan’s wooden purse, which she had thrown, and I also glimpsed two cops.

As Bailey spun about I crashed into him. The cops hauled us off the floor, and from the way they handled Bailey I knew he was in for a rough Lime at headquarters.

Millie was warm and her perfume made me giddy. “I watched as you left the apartment, Ham. I saw Bailey fall in behind you. I got here just us these two policemen came. They said you’d made a call about a murder case. You’d acted mysterious and the call had been traced. We — the two policemen here and I — listened outside the door while you and Bailey talked just now.”

“We heard enough to burn him,” one of the cops said. He looked at Hailey and added: “When you have a country with as much freedom as the good old U.S.A., you’re bound to have an occasional rat sneak into a place of public trust. But he never lasts long. Too many free people against him. Folks will know when we get through with Bailey that cops don’t like snakes getting their filthy fingers on a shield.”

“You’ll have to drop down to headquarters with us, Frazee. We’re gonna call the D.A. now and get him out of bed,” the other cop said.

“It’s a pleasure,” I said.

Millie and I detoured by way of a restaurant and I had ham and eggs. She drank coffee and watched me stow the grub away. She said, “Gracious, those eggs look awful.”

“Could you cook ’em better?”

She said she could. Maybe sometime she’ll talk herself into another job with Hamilton Frazee. A job cooking for him, among other things.