Black Mask (Vol. 29, No. 3 — January 1947)

Tommy Rex was the best-dressed jewel thief in seven states, but like many a smoothie, he caused a lot of trouble. He left a trail of blood on the boulevard and a corpse in every closet. Four detectives, including that beer-drinking behemoth, B. Slabbe, found that he was an easy man to follow — but a hard one to get away from.

Chapter One Rubies on the Run

About ten minutes after the two-thirty train from Philly whistled behind Slabbe’s office building that September afternoon, his telephone rang.

He was tilted back in his chair, a quart bottle of beer to his lips, and he hauled in the phone without missing a swallow.

“Yeah?”

“You Slabbe?” a man’s voice asked.

“Yeah.”

“Gage is the name, Al Gage. I’m a Zenith op. Just got off the train from Philly.”

“That so?” Slabbe murmured. “How’s my friend, Mr. God Almighty Enoch Oliver?”

“Oh. You know the boss?”

“By long distance,” Slabbe said. “He told me how slick you Zenith guys are and how dumb us guys are when I was protecting you slick guys on the Max Lorenz thing, last month.”

Gage made a deprecatory sound over the wire. “The Old Man’s O.K. It’s just that he expects results and chews you till he gets ’em.”

“You getting some?” Slabbe asked.

“M’m,” Gage murmured guardedly. Then he sighed. “Well, hell, I guess I have to tell you if I use you, huh?”

Slabbe agreed placidly: “And you knew before you rang me that I’d done a chore for Zenith, and so had been checked up.”

Gage said, without apology: “Yeah. I wanted to hear the sound of you, though.”

“I sound O.K.?”

“Sure. You got a man’s voice and you don’t soft soap me right off or get excited. You know Tommy Rex, Happy Lado and Silk Flaim?”

“We got newspapers and radios in the town,” Slabbe replied.

“O.K. Don’t ride me, pal. I’ve been up all night a couple of nights now. One of the reasons I want you quick is I’m so damn tired. I just put Tommy Rex in your town. He’s in the washroom down here at the station. He’ll be on the move again in a couple seconds and I’ll stick along; but I want you to be handy for me to call back to when I put him down again. O.K.?”

“Check. You want me to line up a cop to make the pinch?”

“It ain’t going to be a pinch right off,” Gage said. “We want Tommy to connect with somebody, first. You can tell your cop pal to be handy, though, when we want him, and while you’re waiting for me, you can put out a line to see if there’s any other new arrivals in your hunting grounds.”

“Like Happy Lado and Silk Flaim, huh?” Slabbe mused. “You think they’re coming together here in our peaceful metropolis to cut the cake?”

“Maybe,” Gage said cautiously. “We’ll see. There was a girl working with ’em, too, when they heisted that jewelry store in Philly last month. At least, she was Tommy Rex’s girl, and she dropped out of sight about the time the others did. Pola Velie. Get a lead to her and I’ll kiss you.”

Slabbe made a “phlutting” sound with his lips. “Any other little thing I can do for you, cousin?”

“Well—” Gage broke off. Then he hissed: “Here comes Tommy out of the washroom. I’ll call you back.”

The line went dead and Slabbe knuckled an itch somewhere in the quarter-inch-long gray bristles that grew on his head. He finished the current quart of beer, deposited the empty in a desk drawer and got another one going, out of the refrigerator conveniently near his desk. His ample poundage was not distributed at all awkwardly on his six-one, but sitting down made his thick shoulders all the bulkier. He telephoned Homicide Lieutenant Carlin, over at the City Hall.

“Got something, Pat,” he said. “A Zenith op just put Tommy Rex down here on the two-thirty from Philly. He, the op, wonders if Happy Lado or Silk Flaim are slumming around. See ’em?”

Carlin cursed, said no, he hadn’t seen ’em and hoped to hell he didn’t, and cursed some more.

“Don’t bust,” Slabbe advised. “I’d say they’ll be good boys. They’re not here to turn anything, just to divvy up the stuff they heisted out of that jewelry store, last month.”

“Oh, sure!” Carlin spat. “They’ll be good, eh? Guys like that have a habit of making nasty remarks to each other with forty-five’s.”

“Tommy Rex’s girl friend, Pola Velie, might be around, too,” Slabbe continued. “Just letting you know, is all. I’ll call you back when and if.”

“When and if what?” Carlin demanded.

“When and if anybody makes any nasty remarks to anybody.” Slabbe chuckled, and hung up. He held his hand on the receiver while he squinted thoughtfully, then he called four numbers rapidly, said each time that a grunt responded: “Tell Whitey Fite I want him.” This done, he tilted back again and waited. Once he slid his .38 out of its rig under his armpit, checked it and eased it back.

The time elapsed since Al Gage’s first call and his second was no more than twenty minutes. This time the Zenith operative said: “I’m at the Carleton Arms Hotel. Tommy came straight here, looked over the lobby like he was expecting somebody but didn’t get his expectations and went into the dining room and ordered. He’ll be set here till he wraps around a steak. Step over.”

“Five minutes,” Slabbe said.

“How will I know you?” Gage asked.

“I look like a mucker,” Slabbe said. “Wearing gray tropical worsteds, green sports shirt and white Panama hat.”

He finished his beer with a gulp that wouldn’t have dropped the Pacific ocean more than an inch, tossed a handful of chiclets into his mouth and used ten minutes to walk over to the Carleton Arms Hotel. Barney McPhail, the head houseman, spotted him coming into the luxurious lobby and looked less happy. “Now what?” he said.

Slabbe murmured: “The guy must be good if you didn’t spot him.”

“Who?” McPhail sighed.

“A Zenith op,” Slabbe explained. “He’s waiting for me here somewheres.”

McPhail bristled and scanned the lobby. “Don’t tell me I can’t spot a dick.”

Slabbe felt a touch on his arm, turned and saw an inconspicuous man at his elbow. “Gage?” he said, and when the man nodded briefly, Slabbe said to McPhail: “That’s right, Barney, you can’t spot a dick. Let us be, now, and you won’t have any headaches.”

He followed Gage to adjoining chairs which commanded a view of the dining room entrance. Gage passed over his wallet. Slabbe looked at a card in a celluloid protector that informed whoever it concerned that Albert Gage was an operative of the Zenith Detective Agency. The description on the back of the card fit the man in the chair: five feet eight, one hundred sixty-five pounds, brown hair, green eyes, pale complexion, no distinguishing blemishes, age 44. It did not mention the fatigue that deepened the crow’s feet around Al Gage’s eyes and the tired lines beside his mouth.

“Boy, am I pooped,” Gage groaned. “In case I fall asleep while I’m talking, Tommy Rex is a husky good-looking blond guy about six feet, a hundred and eighty pounds. Blue eyes, small tight mouth, small ears close to his head, wearing a tan gabardine sport jacket and brown slacks and brown and white shoes. He’s still in the mess hall. He isn’t walking so chipper. He just got out of a Philly hospital this A.M.”

“That where you picked him up?” Slabbe asked.

“Uh-huh.” Gage closed his eyes wearily for a few seconds, rubbing his forehead, then smacking ft with the heel of his hand to zip up the circulation.

“Keep your eyes closed if it’ll rest ’em a little,” Slabbe said sympathetically.

“Thanks. I was doing some stuff upstate the last couple days and nights and just got back to Philly this morning and heard Tommy was being discharged from the hospital, and got right on him. He and Happy Lado and Silk Flaim knocked off a jewelry store last month in Philly and picked up eighty thousand in unset stones. You know that. What you maybe don’t know is that since Pola Velie, Tommy’s lady friend, dropped out of sight along with Happy and Silk, she was in on it. How we figure it is that she was outside of the jewelry store and they passed her the stuff on the way out. She’d be supposed to meet them later for the split.”

“So close to Philly as here?” Slabbe objected. “It’s only an hour on the train.”

“Well, they might’ve changed plans some on account of Tommy going to the hospital for a month,” Gage explained. “See, he cracked up in the getaway car. That was how we got onto him in the first place. The job went smooth: Tommy and his buddies slugged the clerks in the jewelry store from behind just when they were ready to close the vault for the day. No pedestrians outside the store noticed nothing fishy, and nobody could identify nobody. Tommy and his pals would have been away clean except they cracked up. We knew right away when they cracked up in the neighborhood five minutes after the heist that it was them that done it, but Happy and Silk got clear anyhow. Tommy was pinned behind the wheel but he didn’t have no evidence on him, not even a rod, and even the car wasn’t stolen but borrowed from a guy dumb enough, or maybe smart enough, to lend his car to a guy like Tommy.”

Slabbe nodded. “So Tommy went to the hospital and you waited for him to get out and tailed him.”

“Right.”

“And the change in their plans might be that since it’s a month old and Tommy might be weak and not in shape to travel a long ways, they’d come back this way and meet him here?”

Gage shrugged tiredly. “It depends on how good of guessers we are on Wednesdays. Maybe we’re wrong. Maybe Tommy’s here for another reason and the others are out in Frisco. Did you check any place to see if Happy or Silk or the babe showed up here?”

“The cops say no,” Slabe said. “I’m contacting another guy who might know.”

“Stoolie?”

Slabbe nodded. “He’ll be sliding into my office any time, now. Would Tommy meet Happy and Silk right out in the open, like here?”

“I’d say no,” Gage admitted. “But he might meet Pola and she’d take him to them, on account of she’s a dame that can get by in ritzy places like this: tail, built, black hair and eyes, white skin, smooth dresser. Tommy don’t look no worse than a young lawyer hisself. They’d just pick a place like this to come together.”

“Well, we waft and see.” Slabbe shrugged. “Suppose I jingle my office and see if my boy checked in yet?”

“How good is he?” Gage asked.

“Whitey gets around,” Slabbe assured the tired man. “Tell you in a second.”

He started for the phone booths across the lobby, fishing a nickel from his wrinkled gray trousers and juggling it on a palm that made it look like a pinpoint.

A Hiss said: “Hey, Slabbe!”

Nothing altered in Slabbed face as he saw a wisp of a man dart from behind one of the lobby’s huge marble columns and flit into the men’s room. He plodded after the man, found him inside and handed him the nickel.

“I was going to use it to call you, anyhow, Whitey,” he explained. “How’d you know I was here?”

Whitey Fite, adequately nicknamed because he was an albino, whined: “How do I ever know anything, huh? What you want?”

Slabbe held up a hand and ticked off three names. “Silk Flaim, Happy Lado, Pola Velie,” he said. “How about it?”

Whitey’s knowing eyes were no more furtive than a gopher sizing up the situation outside its hole. He used a finger with a thick black half-moon of dirt under the nail to dig at an itch on his white hair thoughtfully. “How much?” he said.

Slabbe chewed gum easily, deciding to handle it by needling the shabby little man. He sneered: “How much? What do you mean? For what you got or for what you think you can get?”

Whitey took the bait. “For what I got!” he bristled.

Slabbe put a fatherly arm over Whitey’s skimpy shoulders, ruffled the white hair fondly. “You wouldn’t hold up an old pal, would you? It ain’t worth nothing, really, ’cause I could find out myself by making a call here and there. You’re only saving me a half hour’s work. Say a finif, huh?”

“Go to hell!” Whitey responded promptly.

“Ten.”

“Fifteen!”

“Ten!” Slabbe repeated sternly.

“Fifteen!”

Slabbe sighed. “You’re a tough cookie.” He got out his wallet, leafed off three five-dollar bills. Whitey’s grimy hand flicked out, enveloped them.

“I dunno where Happy and Silk are now, but you can get to them mebbe through the dame.”

“Did you see them?” Slabbe asked quickly.

“Yeah. They blew in this morning around ten on a rattler from St. Louie.”

“How’d you spot ’em?”

Whitey leered. “I’m giving you fifteen bucks worth, not how I work. The dame is at 5502 Emerald Avenue in an apartment where a girl named Nikki Evans lives. That’s your money’s worth, ain’t it?”

“For now,” Slabbe said thoughtfully. “5502 Emerald, hey? Be seeing you, kid.”

He left the men’s room and made his original destination, the phone booths. He rang a number. A quiet, unexcited man’s voice said: “Hullo.”

“Abe, it’s me,” Slabbe said. “Took a chance on catching you at home. Got a job in your neighborhood there: 5502 Emerald Avenue, apartment under the name of Nikki Evans, only she’s not your party. Who you want is Pola Velie, girl friend of Tommy Rex who pulled a jewel heist in Philly a month back. She’s tall, black eyes and hair, built, white skin, smooth dresser. Take a plant on the place. If you can find out if Pola is inside, call me here at the Carleton Arms. But don’t be cute. Happy Lado and Silk Flaim might be in and out — they play rough.”

“Check.”

“If Pola leaves, it might be to meet Tommy down here. If she’s alone, stick along. If she’s with somebody else and seems to be heading here to the hotel, but they split up before she gets here, stick with whoever she’s with.”

“Check.”

“Don’t be cute, remember.”

“Check.”

Slabbe clicked off, then phoned another boy who took his money on occasion, Charlie Somers. He told Charlie to come to the Carleton Arms, fast. He hung up and returned to Al Gage. The Zenith op hadn’t moved a muscle, he was so tired. Slabbe flopped beside him, saying: “Tabbed the girl. 5502 Emerald Avenue. Told a boy of mine to take a plant on the place and call me back if she’s there. Got another boy coming here to take over in case the girl’s up there and we want to go calling.”

“You don’t do bad.” Gage sat straighter, green eyes speculative. “Yeah, I’d say we should go there if she’s in. Tommy don’t have the stuff, and that’s for sure, but she might, and getting it back is my bread and butter.”

“There he comes,” Slabbe murmured.

“I see him,” Gage said, though his eyes did not seem to be anywhere near the tall, blond man who had come out of the dining room and was trotting down the stairs to the lobby proper.

Slabbe noted that Tommy Rex was quite at ease, not hurried at all. He looked more like a young man about town looking for his date than a heist artist. He selected a chair and sat down leisurely.

“He’s still going to wait,” Slabbe said. “I’ll drift over and pick up my phone call if it comes. If I go out then, and a little fat-forty guy comes in, it’ll be Charlie Somers and he’ll take care of Tommy. You meet me outside and we’ll meet the lady.”

Silence gave Gage’s consent. Slabbe went over to the registery counter and talked to McPhail, the house man, about inflation until the switchboard girl murmured: “Mr. Slabbe? Call for you, sir.” Slabbe took it.

Abe Morse’s quiet voice said: “I’m in a drugstore across the street from where I’m supposed to be. Nobody in or out since I got here. Radio playing loud, though, and people moving around inside. Heard a man’s voice.”

“Be right there,” Slabbe said.

“Check.”

Slabbe went out a side entrance, waited till Charlie Somers got out of a cab, described Tommy Rex to him, then got in the cab himself and waited till Al Gage trudged out of the hotel, yawning.

“Fifty-five hundred block on Emerald Avenue,” Slabbe ordered the hacker. They rolled.

It was a wide, tree-lined residential section, quiet as they came into it and then, a moment later, full of kids racing home from school.

“Drive around the block till these kids scram,” Slabbe told the driver.

Al Gage sat up. “Hey! What—”

“My plant said he heard a man’s voice inside the apartment,” Slabbe explained. “You can’t tell how things will go when there’s eighty grand worth of stuff involved.”

Gage groaned wrily and wiped his palms on his knees. “I thought there’d only be the girl to go up against.”

“Happy and Silk wouldn’t let her get too far away if she’s got the stuff,” Slabbe reminded.

Gage grunted, spying a slender, blue-serge-suited man loafing along the sidewalk. “Is that your boy?”

“That’s Abe,” Slabbe admitted, letting his head swivel in a slow arc as the cab passed Abe Morse, then an apartment house which bore the number 5502. “Suppose I drop off at the alley and go in through the back,” Slabbe suggested. “You and Abe can—” He stopped. “Hold it!” he called to the driver. “Slow-w-.” He nudged Gage. “They your people?” he asked, nodding through the back window at two men who had left the apartment house, one tall, one stocky.

Gage’s green eyes glittered. “That’s the pair, Happy Lado and Silk Flaim. They ain’t got a car handy. They’re gonna walk a little and pick up a cab. We should—”

“Stop!” Slabbe yelled at the driver. “Dam’ Abe!” he swore. “I told him not to get cute!” His hand caught the door lever, which fortunately worked easily, or it would have been ripped away. He crowded out of the cab, Gage’s curses hard behind him. Abe Morse had stopped the pair who had come from the apartment house. He’d apparently asked for a match, having spotted Slabbe and Gage passing, trying to detain Happy and Silk for a second till Slabbe’s driver could turn around to keep the pair in sight, but at once Happy and Silk had deployed on either side of Abe and were now hustling him along. There were school kids in front of them and behind them, and romping on the street and lawns around them.

They were a good hundred yards away and Slabbe’s long legs pumped to close as much of the distance as possible before they glanced around and saw the score. But it was inevitable that the heist men should look around. They did so simultaneously. Slabbe saw Silk Flaim’s dark, thick features freeze into a stolid killer’s mask. Happy Lado’s knife-scarred lips, permanently twisted into a grin from which he’d derived his nickname, pulled back on his teeth.

Both men let go of Abe Morse and clawed at their armpits. Abe dived headfirst into a hedge. Slabbe saw Al Gage going for a gun.

“No!” he bellowed. “The kids!”

He put on a burst of speed, a hand out to knock Gage’s gun down. He saw Silk Flaim’s hairy hand kick, and gun thunder drowned a child’s shriek. Gage went down on a knee. He snapped two shots. Happy Lado returned one. Slabbe hit Gage. There were no further shots from Silk Flaim. Slabbe didn’t notice exactly: he and Gage were tangled together on the sidewalk. Gage was cursing obscenely, trying to scramble for his gun, which had been knocked free.

Slabbe clawed at him, grunting. “The kids, you dam’ fool! They’ll get hurt!”

Gage went on his face again as Slabbe’s paw slapped on his rump. Slabbe looked down the street to place Happy and Silk so he’d know which way to roll out of the line of fire. Silk was easy to place, and would be from then on. Gage’s shots had been centered.

Happy was away, though, legs scissoring. Abe Morse was scrambling out of the hedge, ready to give chase, but Slabbe saw that it would need a sprinter now and Abe was no chicken. Happy rounded a corner and was out of sight. Abe made a beautiful try by charging unerringly across a lawn to cut into the next street and head Happy off, but Slabbe knew Abe didn’t have the moxie to overcome the heist man’s start.

He heaved to his feet, dusted his knees and helped Gage up. The Zenith op’s green eyes were bitter. “I would’ve got Happy, too, you dam’ fool!” he grated.

“And maybe Junior Smith or Mary Jones!” Slabbe snapped.

“I shoot where I aim! Look at Silk!”

Slabbe growled: “I wasn’t worrying about our shots — I was worrying about theirs. If you hadn’t zeroed in on Silk, he’d have kept shooting wild.” He turned from Gage, sang out: “Beat it, kids! Go home! We’re truant officers!” A beat cop’s whistle shrilled somewhere.

Gage wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, spat, picked up his gun and started for the dark huddle that Silk Flaim made on the sidewalk. He was muttering to himself, and Slabbe slung an arm over his shoulders, saying: “Lookit those kids scatter. Suppose one of them was keeping Silk company?”

“All right, all right,” Gage rasped. “You were right, I was wrong! I got one of the sons, anyhow!” He bent over Silk Flaim and started to rifle the man’s pockets. Slabbe stooped beside him, bumped him a little. Gage sprawled again and roared: “Watch what you’re doing, you big tank!”

“Simmer down,” Slabbe said easily and searched Silk. He found no jewels.

Gage punched the sidewalk. “It would happen like this! I get the guy who don’t have the stuff!”

Slabbe snapped his fingers, whirled toward the apartment house. He said: “If the dame is there and heard the shooting, she’s gone now!”

Pola Velie was in apartment 2-A, however, though she hadn’t heard the shooting or anything else for some time. She’d been tortured and killed.

Chapter Two One Good Burn Deserves Another

Slabbe looked at the tall, black-eyed, black-haired girl tied hand and foot in an overstuffed chair beside the blaring radio. She was dressed smoothly in lime-green gabardine and a yellow silk blouse, and her skin was very white: so white that it made the angry rosettes on her long arms and soft throat uglier and crueler by contrast.

“They worked on her with lighted cigarettes,” Slabbe said, deep in his chest. Gage, beside him, gave no sign of having heard. He simply stared at the dead woman and breathed heavily.

Slabbe reached out and snapped off the radio. The volume had been turned full on to drown out Pola Velie’s cries. She had been gagged, too, but the wadded handkerchiefs which had been used had been torn out of her sensuous mouth, as if the killer had tried to get a last word out of her before she died.

Al Gage said thickly: “Happy and Silk did it to her. You should’ve let me blast Happy, too.”

Slabbe straightened his shoulders and his jaw took up its normal rhythm on his chewing gum. If his granite-soft face had shown anything, it did so no longer. It was set, and his gray eyes were opaque. He glanced around the room. It was ripped and stripped, and a bedroom beyond had received the same treatment.

“It shapes up different than we figured,” he murmured. “They weren’t coming together to divvy up. Looks more like Pola ran out on Silk and Happy, maybe to meet Tommy here, and they caught her.”

Gage agreed: “They give her the business to make her say where she hid the jewels, only she don’t talk. So they strip the place and kill her.”

“How?” Slabbe asked. “How’d they kill her, I mean? No marks of gun or knife. She wasn’t choked, and poison doesn’t fit their style.” He bent over the girl and probed spatulate fingers into her thick dark hair, exploring the skull thoroughly. “She wasn’t slugged,” he decided. “We’ll have to wait for an autopsy.”

Gage flopped into a chair, pinching and massaging the back of his neck wearily. “Maybe I ain’t sorry at that. It’s cops’ work now. I can get some sleep.”

“I wonder if Happy got the jewels,” Slabbe pondered.

Gage waved at the ripped upholstery and broken furniture, the wallpaper stripped here and there. “If Pola had them, Happy got ’em,” he said. “Nothing’s been missed.”

“Yeah, but maybe she didn’t have them,” Slabbe reminded.

“She could have them stashed somewhere else,” Gage admitted, “but it ain’t likely. If she was crossing Happy and Silk by running out on them to meet Tommy, she’d have the stuff right with her. Happy got it.”

“Maybe.”

Gage scowled. “What do you mean?”

Slabbe chewed placidly. “I wonder is Nikki tricky.”

Gage jerked. “Nikki? Oh, the babe who rents here?”

Slabbe nodded. “Who is she? Where is she? Why did Pola come to her? If Nikki knew that Pola was connected with the heist, then she might know, or figure, that Pola was packing the jewels. Maybe Nikki tied into Pola.”

The Zenith investigator’s lips moved in tired swear words. “Let’s just keep it simple. Let’s just drag the town for Happy Lado.”

“We’ll do that,” Slabbe soothed, “but until we get the loot right in our hands we can’t be sure just what happened. How close we are to right depends, like you said, on how good of guessers we are on Wednesdays.”

He cocked an ear. A siren’s whining was dying in the street. Slabbe took three strides into the bedroom, eyes cruising one quick trip around the room. The mattress had been ripped, the drawers pulled out. The only thing that looked as if it hadn’t been upset was a small framed picture of a man on the dresser. There was handwriting on the picture. Slabbe swept it into his pocket and was back in the other room beside Gage when police brogues rumbled on the stairs and Homicide Lieutenant Carlin’s long, bony nose appeared in the doorway. His dark eyes flashed hotly.

“Now, now, we didn’t do it,” Slabbe clucked. “Gage here is the Zenith op I told you about. He potted Silk Flaim out on the sidewalk. We got the tip to come here from Whitey Fite.” Slabbe went on, explaining.

Carlin heard him out, said sarcastically: “Real open and above-board today, aren’t you?”

“Well, there ain’t nothing to be close about.” Slabbe shrugged. “Tommy Rex ought to be still down in the Carleton Arms Hotel lobby. I got Charlie Somers on him, but you can’t figure Tommy did this. Gage just put him in town at two-thirty and had an eye on him all the time.”

Carlin leered at Gage. “You’ve got a crust, blitzing in our town. Gimme your gun.”

Gage handed it over. Carlin broke it, looked at it, swung the cylinder back into place, put it in his pocket.

Gage said mildly: “I’ll take a receipt for it, Officer.”

Carlin’s eyes glittered on Gage, taking him in piece by piece. Slabbe pushed Gage into a chair. “The guy’s pooped, Pat,” he told Carlin. “He’ll stick and make his statement. I’ll make mine later, huh? I gotta see a guy.”

Carlin’s lips twisted. “You gotta see a guy,” he mocked. “Did I ever see you right after a kill when you didn’t gotta see a guy!”

“I’ll level,” Slabbe said openly. “I’m going to look up Whitey Fite again. How he got to know that Pola Velie was here didn’t seem important before, but now it does. Who he saw her with and when is important, too. When she was killed might mean something. Who this Nikki Evans is we gotta find out.”

“Finished?” Carlin purred. He said over his shoulder to the assorted cops who had accompanied him: “Everybody understand how this investigation is going to be run, now? Inspector Slabbe will be glad to answer your questions.”

His dark eyes pinned Slabbe. “Siddown!”

Slabbe blew a bubble with his gum that burst with a flat little cracking sound, sat down on a chair by the telephone, looked at the instrument speculatively, then put it to his ear and gave the number of the Carleton Arms Hotel. He asked for the house man, McPhail.

“Barney,” he said, “is Charlie Somers still there?” Then he jerked the phone away from his ear, held it at arm’s length — it was spitting furious static. A word here and there remotely resembled McPhail’s normal voice and said: “No headaches, you promised... guy pulled a gun right in our lobby... shot at the guy your guy was watching... hell to pay... my job... just lucky they didn’t kill somebody!”

Slabbe shot questions sharply, listened, hung up again. Lieutenant Carlin hovered over him, challenging him to hold anything back. Slabbe didn’t. He tongued his gum out of the way into a cavity and explained: “Happy Lado, it looks like, went straight from here to the Carleton Arms lobby and took a potshot at Tommy Rex. He didn’t connect and Tommy sloped out with Happy still chasing him.”

Carlin’s thin nostrils flared. “My God, the Rotary and Kiwanis and the Citizens’ Committee use that hotel for meetings and dinners. They’ll crucify the whole department! Gimme that!” He snatched the phone, called the radio rotunda at the City Hall. “Railroad stations, airport, ferry slips!” he barked. “Get the staties to bottle the highways! I know you already done it! Do it again!”

Al Gage hissed at Slabbe. “How good is that Charlie Somers you have on Tommy?”

Slabbe winked. “He didn’t pull any miracles this week, but he gets by. Catch yourself forty winks, cousin. Carlin’s got great faith in letting guys loose and shadowing ’em. He’ll do it to us when his fuse burns out. While we’re waiting we can learn something, maybe.”

Slabbe waited till Carlin was dealing out orders to his squad, then slid out of his chair as unobtrusively as a man of his bulk could do and stepped into the kitchenette of the apartment. He scowled when he saw that a cop was posted there, but grinned when he saw that there was beer in the refrigerator. He uncapped a couple of bottles and went back and gave one to Carlin. Al Gage had closed his eyes and was breathing heavily.

Carlin took the bottle Slabbe proffered, sneered at Gage: “These slick Zenith guys! Gotta sleep on schedule or they’re no good.”

Slabbe said: “Whitey Fite will talk to me, Pat.”

“He’ll talk to a hose, too.”

“So maybe he will, but that’ll take longer. Lemme go to work.” Slabbe put the telephone to his ear, gave the same four numbers he’d given earlier at his office and said the same words four times: “Tell Whitey Fite I want him.” He hung up, warned: “Don’t horn in now and scare the kid. I gotta hunch he might know something about this Nikki Evans’ connections. He said he saw Happy and Silk and Pola get off a train from St. Louis at ten this morning, and if he knew Pola came here, which he did, it must be he tailed her from the station. He gave me the information pretty cheap, too, so maybe it was because he figured I’d be back for more.”

“Just the same, stick around,” Carlin ordered. “When Whitey gets to your office, if he does, I’ll want to be in on it. Here comes the M.E.”

Slabbe thought that the medical examination was worth something, and he hovered beside the medical examiner interestedly. “What killed her, doc?”

“Have to post her to be sure,” said the man with the black bag. “Heart conked, probably.”

“Uh-huh,” Slabbe mused. “How long ago?”

“Two hours at least. It’s four-thirty. She was dead at two-thirty for sure, maybe earlier.”

Slabbe looked at Carlin’s brooding eyes. “Put that in your pipe and smoke it,” he said.

As if this remark reminded him of it, Carlin probed a vest pocket for a long, thin cigar and canted it under his bony nose, waited for Slabbe to continue.

Slabbe said: “Happy and Silk were coming out of here when Gage and I arrived. If they killed Pola and she’s been dead at least two hours, that means they hung around that long after giving it to her. I don’t buy that. It wouldn’t take ’em two hours to case this apartment, so they weren’t here that long. They didn’t kill her.”

Carlin’s angry teeth on the cigar told that he was thinking this over, though he protested: “It don’t follow. They could have killed her, beat it, and then come back for some reason.”

“Name it,” Slabbe requested.

“Go ’way,” Carlin growled.

Slabbe said, “I’ll just do that,” and strolled out into the kitchen again. The cop was still on the door, but now he’d seen Slabbe take beer to Carlin once and talk chummy, so when Slabbe casually unsapped another bottle of beer and said, “Convoy this to the Lieutenant,” the cop practically touched his visor and did so. Slabbe rambled on out the back door.

As he’d expected, Abe Morse was in the vicinity waiting for him, but making himself inconspicuous. The slender little man caught Slabbe at a corner, trotted along like a blue-serge-clad terrier beside a gray mastiff.

He said in his quiet voice: “Happy caught a cab while I was chasing him. I got the number and—”

“No good now,” Slabbe cut in. “Happy went to the Carleton Arms and blasted at Tommy Rex and they both chased off. Our hope is that Charlie Somers sticks with one of them. Take a look.”

Slabbe fished in his pocket, brought out the photograph he’d snicked off Nikki Evans’ dresser. The man in the picture was short of forty, with a high forehead, even teeth, small ears set a trifle high, sleek black hair with touches of gray at the temples. The flourishing handwriting at the bottom of the picture said: “To Nikki, one swell kid. Max.”

Slabbe asked Abe Morse: “Make him?”

“Gimme a second,” Abe said, and took the photograph from Slabbe, held it at his side as he walked, and from time to time jerked it up in front of his gimlet eyes as if it were a shot glass. He looked at the street, at the sky, at the sidewalk. Then he’d try to catch himself unawares and jerk the picture up again. His quiet, narrow face registered nothing, but he muttered: “I seen this guy somewheres, and in town. He ain’t been around long or a lot or I’d have him right off.”

“Maybe the girl clicks with you,” Slabbe murmured. “Nikki Evans. Theatrical name, huh?”

“Dames I don’t remember so good,” Abe confessed. “This Max now...” He jerked the picture up again, quickly dropped it. “He’s a big operator, I’d say,” he went on, struggling with the thousands of muggs filed under his neat, dark hair. “He’s got money. Yeah. He goes for night spots, too. I betcha I seen him at Fudge Burke’s place, playing roulette, I betcha.”

“Give it a rest,” Slabbe suggested. “Charlie Somers will call in at the office as soon as he has something. You better be there to catch his call, only dammit, don’t you go getting cute any more, understand?”

“I only do what I think is right,” Abe said, hurt.

“Sure, sure.” Slabbe staggered the little man with a clap on the shoulder. “That guy I was with, Al Gage, is a Zenith op. Good man. If he buzzes down to the office, tell him I said he should sleep on the couch till I contact him. If Whitey Fite comes in, tell him to wait for me somewhere where Carlin won’t spot him.”

“What you going to do?”

“Talk to this Max guy,” Slabbe said and added casually: “What did you say his last name is?”

“Tezzaro, or Tezzaro,” Abe said absently. He stopped dead. “Yeah! That’s it: Tezzaro! You jogged it out of me. Nice going.”

“Nice going for you!” Slabbe chuckled. “What about him?”

“A smooth cookie,” Abe said, talking easily now. “He’s from Philly. He’s only been in town here since about the middle of the war. Hell, I got him now. He fits right in, too. You know this gang of refugees that come to town about ’forty-three and started up that diamond factory or mill, or whatever you call it over at Eighth and Green Street? Well, Max Tezzaro promoted them.”

Slabbe’s jaws stopped their steady motion for a second, then went on a little faster. “Uh-huh,” he said. “The Chamber of Commerce gave the outfit a big hand, figured they’d employ local talent and make jobs, and so on.”

“Well, they didn’t,” Abe Morse said. “The only thing they used local boys for was labor, because a first-class diamond grinder and cutter’s gotta be trained for years. These refugees were all from Antwerp and Amsterdam, brought up in the trade. They did a good business through the war. Lately, they’ve been starting back home to Europe.”

“And Max Tezzaro was boss,” Slabbe mused. “Beat it down to the office now. Don’t be cute.”

It was a two-story building of cement block, cheap, hastily constructed with banks of factory type windows. A sign over the double doors on the street said: ACME RAYON COMPANY, First Floor. AMERICAN DIAMOND COMPANY, Second Floor. The rayon company’s looms were clacking at top speed making a noise like an elevated train charging full blast, but the second floor was dim and quiet. As he turned right into the office on the second floor, Slabbe glanced into the long room which housed the diamond grinding and polishing machines. There were two rows of them, but only a half dozen were working.

Slabbe opened the office door and said to a middle-aged woman in horn-rimmed spectacles: “What’s the matter? Is your help running out on you?”

The woman glanced up from her desk, saying automatically: “Yes, I’m afraid that’s true. You can’t really blame people for wanting to return home, now that the war is over, but it leaves poor Mr. Tezzaro holding the bag. He has all this equipment but just can’t find men experienced enough to operate it profitably.”

“So he’s trying for profit in other ways.” Slabbe nodded sympathetically.

“Yes, he’s doing his best to replace these machines with something more practical, like looms. Of course they’re hard to get and it takes money and—” The secretary, for she was obviously that, stopped suddenly, snatched off her thick-rimmed glasses and peered at Slabbe, “Excuse me. I didn’t get your name, sir.”

“Not important,” Slabbe waved. “Where’s Mr. Tezzaro?”

“Why, he isn’t here just now, sir.”

“How long ago was he here?”

“Just a few minutes ago, sir. I expect him right back, too.”

“I’ll wait,” Slabbe decided. “Was he here all day?”

“Well, in and out.”

“Is he married?”

“No, sir.”

“Does his girl friend, Nikki, ever stop in here?”

“Why, occasionally she—” The secretary put her glasses on again. “I don’t understand, sir. May I ask why you’re asking these questions?”

“Just being friendly,” Slabbe said pleasantly.

He drifted over to a side window. He was just in time to see the rakish hood of a shiny black sedan peek out of a garage below. The driver of the car strained forward over the wheel and reconnoitered warily. He was short of forty, with a high forehead, even teeth, ears set a trifle high. He was the man in the photograph which Slabbe had snitched from Nikki Evans’ dresser. He fed gasoline and the car glided out onto the street — and Slabbe glided out of the office.

He knew only the one way down to the street, the way he’d come up, and this put him in front of the building again. Max Tezzaro’s car, if it cut out to this street, would appear at the intersection to the left. Slabbe pounded that way.

A battered, mud-streaked jaloppy rattled past Slabbe and a voice yelled: “Duck, willya! I’m onna job!”

Slabbe didn’t actually see the man who’d yelled, but he recognized Charlie Somers’ voice and veered into the nearest doorway, pondering. Charlie had been at the Carleton Arms Hotel and should, by all rights, have tailed either Happy Lado or Tommy Rex when the pair had run from the hotel lobby.

Slabbe looked up and down the street. He grunted. “Good boy Charlie!” A car had stopped in front of the office door and a tall blond man was slinging his gabardined legs to the sidewalk — Tommy Rex.

Slabbe realized that Charlie had been tailing Tommy cart before the horse. Slabbe peered at the man with Tommy, the man who was driving, and then he said a man-word quietly but emphatically and chewed his gum with short, snappy bites. The man with Tommy was Happy Lado!

Slabbe shook his head. Happy Lado had taken a shot at Tommy when he’d first caught him in the lobby of the Carleton Arms, but now they were together. Howcome? Why?

There was no time to figure it. It looked as if Tommy were going to duck through the door into the factory building, but he’d taken only a step or two when a bark from Happy Lado stopped him. Slabbe saw Happy pointing through the windshield of the car he was driving and swiveled in time to see Max Tezzaro’s black sedan tooling down the street.

Tommy leaped back beside Happy and they rolled after Tezzaro’s car. Slabbe scanned the street, grimaced. There wasn’t a taxicab in sight. He’d have to trust Charlie Somers to handle it alone. He stepped out of the doorway and started up the street. He could see Tezzaro’s car about two blocks ahead, followed by Tommy and Happy. Slabbe watched them with the interest of a professional, shook his head at their lack of finesse. They were gunning to get close behind Tezzaro. They’d give themselves away. Then Slabbe got it, snapped his fingers and started to run.

Tommy and Happy weren’t merely tailing Tezzaro — they were gunning for him!

Slabbe was running while it all happened. The two cars rocked even for a second as Happy and Tommy caught up, then Happy swung his wheel right, bearing down in Tezzaro’s path. Tezzaro’s rubber squealed as he cut off to the side and suddenly jammed on his brakes.

Tommy Rex was out of the car again, but this time he moved fast. He wrenched open the door of Tezzaro’s car. Both his hands jumped at Tezzaro, the left to clutch the man’s lapel, the right to strike a piston blow to Tezzaro’s jaw. Then Tommy was dragging Tezzaro out of the car. He hit him twice more when he had him on the street, and the man sagged.

Tommy caught him. Happy Lado put out a helping hand and dragged Tezzaro into their car. Tommy slammed the front door, yanked open the back one and jumped in. They rolled again.

Slabbe, still running toward them, looked ahead anxiously for Charlie Somers’ jaloppy. If he hadn’t seen it, he would have jumped into Tezzaro’s car and followed, but Charlie’s old mud-streaked heap was idling along, still a block ahead of Tommy and Happy’s car. Besides, there was something in the back of Tezzaro’s sedan that made Slabbe lick his lips. Something wrapped in a big maroon auto blanket. Without even looking, he could tell what it was from its unmistakable shape. But of course he looked anyhow to make sure. It was the body of a blond woman.

Chapter Three Nikki Wasn’t Tricky

She had been stabbed to death and not by an amateur, Slabbe saw. The knife had been slid home with a swift upward motion under the girl’s left shoulder. Guided smoothly by the killer’s thumb and forefinger, it had been necessary to use it only once.

The girl’s purse, a drawstring thing that matched her tailored gray suit, was wrapped in the blanket, too. Slabbe avoided the staring blue eyes and opened it. A compact and cigarette lighter bore the initials N.E., and a letter was addressed to Nikki Evans.

“Nup,” Slabbe grunted. “Nikki wasn’t tricky.” He noted that the letter was postmarked from St. Louis two days earlier and stuffed it into his pocket. A beat cop was lolling along down the street. Slabbe went to him, told him to get up to the shiny black car and do his stuff. He went on back to the building that housed the American Diamond Company, rounded it and entered the garage from which Max Tezzaro had driven. There was no one else on hand.

The letter to Nikki was signed “Pola.” It was a friendly letter that told that the two girls had been friends. The last paragraph was the most important. It said: “This boy friend of yours sounds good, but the boys want me to meet him and size him up before we meet Tommy. We three will arrive Wednesday morning, and Tommy will come down as soon as he gets discharged from the hospital the same day. I’ll come straight to your place and look over your friend, then go and meet Tommy and take him to the other boys. We’ll talk over your proposition then and let you know.”

Slabbe blew out his gum. The pattern seemed clear.

Nikki Evans and Pola obviously had been friends from away back and had kept in touch with each other. Nikki had picked herself a boy friend, by accident or design, who had connections in the diamond market. Lately, the boy friend’s business had been going to pot because his trained help were scooting back home to Europe. Nikki would have seen that her Maxie was ripe for a deal that would make him some cash to reconvert and, being friends with Pola, she’d have figured that Pola would be looking for a way to get rid of the stolen jewels.

So far so good: Nikki had broached the proposition to Pola. Pola had come here to look Max over. But then what had happened?

According to the letter, there had been no hint of double cross among the original heisters. Pola, Happy and Silk had arrived together this morning and Pola had come to Nikki’s apartment. Then something had happened and she got killed.

The theory that Slabbe liked was this: Pola undoubtedly had told Happy and Silk that she was going to Nikki’s place to look Max over and that she’d contact them and tell them how she’d made out. When she didn’t do this, Happy and Silk had got worried and had come to Nikki’s apartment to check up. They’d found Pola dead, they hadn’t killed her at all.

At first they’d suspected that Tommy had double-crossed them all, killed Pola and grabbed the stones. This was the only explanation to account for Happy chasing straight to the Carleton Arms Hotel and shooting at Tommy. Happy had been hot, looking for revenge. The answer to how he and Tommy had teamed up together again could only be that after they’d pounded out of the hotel lobby they’d come together outside and Tommy had convinced Happy that he had no part of any double-cross at all, and that if someone had pulled a fast one it must be Max or Nikki.

Tommy was in the clear for the simple reason that he hadn’t got to town till 2:30, and Pola had been dead by then.

Tommy and Happy had then come after Max. Slabbe licked his lips. He could imagine the shellacking Max was in for.

“If they don’t kill him, he’ll fry anyway,” Slabbe grunted and prowled the garage. If Max had had Nikki’s dead body in his car and was going somewhere with it, he was their boy. He was the one who’d done the double-crossing. He’d killed both girls. His plan undoubtedly was to dispose of Nikki’s body, so that it would look as if she’d killed Pola and had lammed with the jewels.

Slabbe found corroboration of his theory in a trash barrel — bloody automobile seat covers. The amount of blood on them, still sticky, showed that Nikki had been knifed as she sat in the car.

Slabbe locked the garage and peeked up the street to where a couple of dolly cars had parked beside Max’s shiny black sedan. He saw nothing of Carlin’s squad car. Probably the lieutenant wouldn’t come up on this one, since he couldn’t know that there was a connection yet. It would be quicker to head to the City Hall and see Carlin in his office, then get set for when Charlie Somers called in to report where Happy and Tommy had taken Max.

Waiting for a street car, Slabbe glanced at his railroader’s-type watch. It was a quarter after five and had been a tolerably busy afternoon. Slabbe crossed the street to a drugstore and telephoned his office. The phone rang a dozen times, but no one answered. Slabbe grimaced. “Dam’ that Abe. He’s supposed to be there. If he got cute again, I’ll mobilize him!”

It called for a change of plans, however, for someone had to be on hand at the office when Charlie Somers reported. Slabbe went straight there. A headquarters dick was lounging outside. Al Gage was asleep on the couch. Slabbe shook him. The Zenith op struggled awake, green eyes bleary.

“Where’s Abe Morse?” Slabbe growled.

“Should I know?” Gage yawned. “He wasn’t here when I came in. Nobody was.”

“When did you come? How’d you get away from Carlin?”

“Like you said, Carlin is a great believer in letting a guy go and shadowing him. He let me scram right after you walked out over at the girl’s apartment. I came straight here and flopped. A dick followed me. Didn’t you see him outside?”

“Whyn’t you answer the phone?” Slabbe snapped, but his eyes were cloudy. Abe Morse wouldn’t have left the office voluntarily without making arrangements for someone to be on hand.

Gage rubbed his eyes. “It’d take more than a telephone to snap me out of it. I could sleep for a week.”

Slabbe sandpapered his jaw with the back of a hand, strode out of the office to the elevators. He talked to one of the elevator boys, learned that Abe Morse had certainly come into the office, though he hadn’t been seen leaving. Ditto for Whitey Fite.

Slabbe went back to the office, muttering. He complained to Gage: “Abe only does what he thinks is right, he says. The little monkey! Whitey Fite came here and spilled something, it looks like, and Abe and him went somewheres.”

“Is that bad?” Gage yawned.

“I dunno,” Slabbe confessed. “I don’t see how anything new could have cropped up if I got it figured right. The only way Abe could get in trouble would be if he somehow finds out where Happy and Tommy took Max, and goes there and sticks his neck out.”

Gage stifled his yawning, looked alert. “What’s this? Who’s Max? How would Happy and Tommy get hold of him, and why?”

“He’s the guy who was going to fence the stuff,” Slabbe explained absently, “only he crossed the gang up and knocked off both those girls, Pola and Nikki. Tommy and Happy got together again and came at him. They’re working him over right now, I’d say.”

“Well, let’s get on it, bo!” Gage exclaimed. “Get your friend Carlin to get a squad together and—”

Slabbe grunted. “There’s only one small point yet — I don’t know where they are. Charlie Somers is still tailing ’em and will call in first chance — if things break right. But until then, we sit and sweat.”

Gage cursed softly. “This game is like war.”

Slabbe nodded. “Ten percent action, ninety percent waiting.”

He scooped a couple of quart bottles of beer out of the refrigerator by his desk. Gage shook his head sadly. “Not for me. It’ll only make me groggier. How about a sandwich? Besides not sleeping, I ain’t et since breakfast.”

“Get me four pickled tongue,” Slabbe said. “There’s a delicatessen around the corner.”

Gage stretched and plodded off. Slabbe sat in his big chair looking happy as the beer made his Adam’s apple bob, then scowling between swallows. He hauled in the telephone, started calling his four numbers again. His question this time was: “Did you send Whitey to my office?”

The second party, a female, said: “I told you twice already I ain’t seen him today. He went up to Philly this morning and he must still be there.”

Slabbe’s eyes flickered. “You didn’t tell me before that he went to Philly. When did he go?”

“The ten-thirty train this A.M. I had a date with the little squirt and he phoned me and said he couldn’t make it until late this aft’.”

“Thanks, dream girl,” Slabbe said softly. He called another number. “Did you send Whitey to my office?”

“Yeah.”

“When?”

“Lessee. You called the second time about four-thirty, ain’t it? It’s going on six now. It was around five when I told him to see you again. He oughta be there.”

Slabbe hung up, started to put in some chiclets, then remembered that they’d spoil the taste of the beer. Whitey had told him that he’d seen Happy and Silk and Pola get off a train that pulled in at ten today. At ten-thirty, according to the girl friend, Whitey had taken the train to Philly. What had the little information huckster gone there for?

It might have no connection whatever, Slabbe realized. Whitey might merely have been going to Philly for personal reasons. In fact, if he’d been waiting for a train himself at the station, it would account for him being on hand to spot Pola, Happy and Silk.

Slabbe peered at his potato. Enough time had elapsed since Happy and Tommy had snatched Max for them to have got where they were going. Charlie Somers should be calling any second.

“Unless he tries to be cute, too,” Slabbe grumbled.

Then the phone rang.

Slabbe said: “Yeah.”

“It’s me,” said Charlie Somers’ voice.

“Where are you?”

“In a gas station on Highway 309, just outside of town. Maybe I done wrong, but you can’t let a guy die, can you?”

Slabbe groaned. “What happened?”

Charlie said: “I stuck with Happy and Tommy right along from the time they chased out of the Carleton Arms lobby. What happened was that Tommy lammed after Happy shot at him in the hotel, only outside he laid for Happy in a doorway and jumped him. They both got into a cab, rode a while and then got friends again.”

“That’s what I figured,” Slabbe said.

“Yeah. Then they stole a car and headed up where I saw you and snatched that guy, Max. I figured they’d take him somewhere, but they worked on him right in the car while they kept rolling. Brother, did they work on him! Even if he lives, his old lady’ll never recognize him again.”

“Can he talk?”

“Well, he makes noises which if you listen you can figure out, but his brain ain’t working. Tommy and Happy must’ve busted something in the poor mugg’s head. They shoved him out along the highway finally. If he’d have been dead, I wouldn’t have stopped, but I seen him twitching and Tommy and Happy headed back into town, so I figgered we could catch ’em by bottling the place.”

Slabbe growled: “What did Max say?”

“Him and his girl friend Nikki met a girl named Pola this morning at Nikki’s apartment, just after Pola got in on a train, see? They talked over fencing some hot ice and made a deal. Then Pola says that she’s going to meet her boy friend Tommy this afternoon and Max goes about his business and Pola and Nikki sit around chewing over old times. About one-thirty this afternoon a guy comes to the apartment and says he’s from Tommy who’s still in the hospital and wants to talk to Pola alone. Nikki leaves them there, not thinking anything wrong about it, and meets Max again and after a drink or two they go back to the apartment to see if this guy who says he’s from Tommy said anything which changed their plans. They were changed, all right.”

“Yeah?” Slabbe pressed, jaws going on gum again.

Charlie continued: “They found that the guy had worked on Pola with lighted cigarettes and she’d conked off. She had a bad ticker to begin with and the pain and excitement loaded it too high, so it doesn’t look like the guy who done it meant to really kill her, huh? Just the same, after she was dead it was pretty clear Nikki had to go, too.”

“Uh-huh.”

“She had seen the guy and could tab him again, see? Anyhow, when they find Pola like that, Max says maybe she didn’t tell where the ice was after all and that Nikki should beat it back to the car and be lookout while he cases the apartment. Nikki does this and Max searches the place. He don’t find nothing, he says.”

“Can you believe him?” Slabbe grunted.

“Lissen, Benjy, this guy is just screeching it out. He don’t even know what he’s saying, so how can he be lying?”

“Check,” Slabbe said.

“When Max goes back to the car, Nikki’s shivved. How d’ya like that? The guy which was working on Pola must have still been there or have been hanging around when Max and Nikki come in. He figured Nikki could tab him and when she went back to the ear, he slid a knife into her.”

“What did Max do next?” Slabbe pressed.

“He was stuck with Nikki dead in the car, see, and all this killing was out of his line. He got the shakes and drove the car to his garage and then went out and drank till he got up some more nerve, then went back and took off the seat covers, wrapped the girl up and started off to drive her out in the woods somewheres and plant her. This was when Tommy and Happy caught up with him. Does it check? Was there this Nikki girl’s body in his car?”

“Yeah, there was, Charlie. Did you call an ambulance for Max?”

“Uh-huh. What next?”

“How long ago was It that Happy and Tommy headed back to town?”

“Ten, fifteen minutes,” Charlie judged. “They were sailing, too, going somewhere in a hurry. Cripes, if I should’ve stuck with them I’m sorry, Benjy.”

“No, you couldn’t let Max die, I guess,” Slabbe agreed without enthusiasm.

“But he probably will, anyhow,” Charlie repined. “And now we lost Happy and Tommy.”

The office door opened and two men stood in it, looking at Slabbe. Slabbe stopped chewing for five seconds, felt the phone in his hand getting slippery from sudden sweat. He started to put it down. Charlie’s voice said: “Maybe we can pick them up again, huh?”

“We did,” Slabbe said.

Save for the gun in his hand and the somewhat glassy set of his blue eyes, Tommy Rex still looked the man about town. His natty gabardine jacket, slacks and brown-and-white shoes hadn’t been dirtied at all. He looked sharp. Happy Lado was different, dumber, duller, without imagination. He was the type to beat to death anyone who got in his path, figuring that if they died they couldn’t have been important anyhow.

Tommy ordered gently, “Get behind him,” and stood flat-footed in front of the desk. Happy Lado’s permanently grinning lips tightened, and he glided out of Slabbe’s line of vision. Slabbe felt the displacement of air. A hand came delicately over his shoulder and whisked away his .38. Very carefully, he picked up his quart of beer and swallowed. As he was taking it away from his lips, Tommy nodded and Happy’s hand licked out in a slap that put the beer into Slabbe’s lap. Slabbe jerked instinctively.

Tommy leaned over the desk and casually moved his gun barrel four inches to Slabbe’s left temple. Pain blurgeoned in Slabbe’s skull and the nerves of his eyes, disorganized for a second, registered bright red. A choking sound started down in his chest and he heaved up.

“Shoulder!” Tommy Rex barked at the man behind Slabbe. Slabbe felt Happy’s gun barrel bite deep in his shoulder.

“Nah-h-h,” Tommy spat. “The collarbone.” Happy Lado’s gun rose and fell again, this time on the muscles sloping down from Slabbe’s neck. Slabbe felt pain scream through his arm and shoulder, then they were numb.

“The other one,” Tommy ordered.

Slabbe bellowed, “I’ll be damned if you do!” and threw himself backwards against his chair. He hit it and carried it four feet into the wall behind him. He knew he’d missed Happy as his head hit the wall and the red blaze engulfed his eyes again. He tried to fight to his feet again, but was vaguely aware that both men were now in front of him, slashing with their guns.

The first half dozen blows laced Slabbe’s head and torso with agony. Then his nerves went numb and he felt only the push, not the cut, of the gun barrels. Tommy and Happy seemed to be dancing around him, though he knew they were planted solid. He could hear the thick sound of their breathing and smell the stench of their sweated bodies. He remembered what Charlie Somers had said about Max: “Even if he lives, his old lady’ll never recognize him again!” He started to pass out.

The blows stopped.

Slabbe felt blood trickling down his face. His mouth was suddenly liquid, and he knew he was retching. He tried to turn his head, felt it sag laxly. The heel of a hand snapped his chin up.

A snarl said: “Where’s the stuff, peeper?”

“Give him a second; he can’t hear yet. Case the place.”

Desk drawers rasped out and hit the floor. The filing cabinets clattered. Bottles clunked out of the refrigerator. Slabbe kept his eyes closed tight, playing possum but not needing to act much to do it. He tightened the muscles in his stomach, released them, tightened them again and again. Pain came back dully throughout his thick torso. He ground his teeth but welcomed it — it takes strength of a kind to feel pain.

He could recognize Happy’s voice now when the twisty-lipped man rasped: “They ain’t here — but they gotta be!”

Tommy said: “There’s still the other guys that were with him. We only came to him first because it was easy to find out who he was when you described him around.”

“Yeah,” Happy replied hungrily. “There was two other peeps with him outside the apartment. The one guy tried to stop me and Silk; the other guy shot Silk. They’re next!”

“Maybe he’ll tell us where to find them,” Tommy said wolfishly. “Go to work.”

Slabbe’s eyes swam open. They were bearing down on him again. Somehow they’d got it into their heads that Slabbe or Al Gage or Abe Morse had glommed the jewels. There’d be no talking Happy out of it. Tommy had a bit more imagination, though.

“Tommy—” Slabbe coughed. “Look, you’re clean on everything that happened today. You’re alibied on the murders because you were tailed down from Philly and we know you couldn’t have done them. That ought to mean something to you, boy.”

“Nuts!” Happy grated.

“What are you getting at?” Tommy asked softly. “Nobody tailed me on the train. You think I’m an amateur?”

Slabbe rasped the back of his hand over bloody lips. Even though Charlie Somers would realize from the way Slabbe had ended their telephone conversation that Happy and Tommy had barged in, it would be another quarter of an hour before he could get here. And Lord help Al Gage if he came back with the sandwiches and waltzed in half asleep.

Slabbe swallowed mightily, tried to focus a steady glance on Tommy. “All I’m trying to tell you is that it ain’t just larceny now. Somebody’s gonna fry for Nikki and Pola. You couldn’t have killed ’em, because you were tailed whether you know it or not, but every step you take now is making you an accessory.”

Happy Lado cursed and slashed Slabbe’s cheeks.

“Cut it!” Tommy ordered lazily.

Slabbe said thickly: “You’re stuck for the jewels, I’d say. I haven’t got ’em. The two guys Happy saw with me don’t have ’em — the one guy works for me regular and is O.K., the other guy couldn’t have ’em because I happen to know he came down on the same train from Philly as you.”

Tommy scratched one of his small, close set ears with the sight of his gun barrel. “So?”

“Look, I’m telling you you’re just stuck for ’em,” Slabbe said. “None of the people we know about in this got ’em, that’s all. Somebody else must have.”

“Who?”

“How the hell do I know?” Slabbe swallowed. “Don’t you think anybody else in town knew Pola was here and was packing the stuff? She had it, didn’t she?”

Tommy nodded. “She kept it on her every second since the heist. Happy here and Silk were with her in St. Louis. When I was due out of the hospital, I passed them the word to meet me. They got it back to me that they had a guy who’d handle the stuff and I should meet Pola at the Carleton Arms Hotel here.”

“And she had the stuff when we got in, today.” Happy leered. “She had it when she went into that apartment, and some wise guy went to her and said he was from Tommy and got rid of Nikki, then worked on Pola.”

“I’ll give you that,” Slabbe said. “But it wasn’t anybody that we connected with yet. What you don’t get is that other people could have known you were in town and made a play for the stuff.”

Happy moved his twisted lips over closer to Slabbe.

“Who else knew it? How could anybody else find out?”

“Why, you were seen getting off the train, you cluck,” Slabbe said. “A stoolie saw you right off. How do you think I found out where Pola was? If the stoolie told me, Lord knows how many other parties he told, too. Figure that, will you?”

Tommy and Happy looked at Slabbe, then at each other, then back at Slabbe. Slabbe held his breath. He’d given them something to think about. Maybe—

Happy snarled: “It don’t change nothing! We just go after that stoolie and beat out of him who all he told about us. Isn’t that right, Tommy?”

Tommy Rex nodded evenly, pointed his gun at Slabbe. “And we still find out from him where to go.” He nodded to Slabbe, “O.K., peeper, who’s this stoolie and where do we find him?”

Slabbe tried to figure out how much time had passed since he’d hung up on Charlie Somers. It must be ten minutes, but he couldn’t be sure. It hadn’t been time enough for Charlie to get here, anyhow.

Slabbe stalled: “I already dropped word for him to come here. He ought to pop in any minute. Take a seat.”

“Work on him,” Tommy said thinly. “He’s trying to slow us up.”

Happy Lado moved in eagerly, gun cutting up under Slabbe’s jaw. “Who’s the stoolie? Where is he?”

Slabbe had been snapping out of it a bit, feeling his normal strength return but he’d needed a couple minutes more grace to be in shape to make a move.

There was no help for it, though. The first slash of the gun told him that it would take only another one like it to jelly his muscles again. This time his chair was back against the wall. He heaved back, pulling both feet up, knees folding into his chest, then snapping straight and stiff again.

Only one foot caught Happy’s body and that not too solidly. But it was enough to throw Happy off balance for a second. Slabbe rolled forward out of his chair, hit the floor with knees and elbows.

A quick sidewise glance showed him that Tommy had stepped back to let Happy close again. Tommy thought it was between Slabbe and Happy for a second and had foolishly dropped his guard.

Happy shuffled in, setting himself. He expected Slabbe to swing up from the floor and meet him. Slabbe came up, all right, but he fooled Happy. Instead of closing with the man, he turned his back full in Happy’s face — and dived at Tommy.

Chapter Four Finders Losers

Even a man who had been expecting it and had braced himself couldn’t have taken Slabbe’s hurtling two hundred and twenty pounds without folding. Tommy wasn’t braced, and he’d just got out of hospital that day. He crumpled like a ping pong ball under an elephant’s heel.

But he still had enough moxie to roll and bring his gun around. Slabbe clawed at it, expecting a blow from Happy any second. When none came, he sprawled on top of Tommy and glanced around. Happy was darting to the window. The sound of a whining siren in the street finally filtered to Slabbe’s ears. At the same instant, Happy whirled, took a step toward Slabbe, gun cocked.

Slabbe was a contortionist, hauling Tommy around so that he formed a shield. The siren screamed again. Happy spat an obscenity and ran from the office. Slabbe saw him dart toward the rear of the building. The elevator doors clanged and Al Gage’s tired face was pop-eyed for a second as he saw what was cooking. Then he dropped the bag of sandwiches and coffee container he was carrying and took off in the direction Happy had gone.

Slabbe grunted happily, now able to give his full attention to Tommy Rex. He did this lustily. Tommy had just been discharged from a hospital, true, but Slabbe figured that the beating he’d taken himself made them even. At that, it wasn’t much of a contest. Slabbe hit Tommy only a half dozen times before he sighed disappointedly. Tommy was out.

“Easy now! What’s going on here?”

Slabbe grimaced at the two radio car cops who skidded in, guns out. “Happy Lado’s lamming out the back way,” Slabbe told them. “For crissakes don’t shoot the guy who’s chasing him, he’s a Zenith op.”

The cops piled out again. Slabbe wrinkled his nose, muttered: “If they didn’t always play cop with that damned siren, we’d have taken ’em both.”

He hefted to his feet, staggered, caught at the desk. He recalled times when he’d felt better. He navigated to the washbowl, sloshed icy water over his face and neck, blowing like a whale. Finally he grabbed a quart of beer, bit the cap off with his teeth and drank.

There was no noise in the corridor now. Slabbe took a pair of handcuffs from his desk and fastened Tommy Rex to the radiator. Then he went into the corridor and turned toward the fire escape at the rear. He saw what he expected to see — nothing. Happy Lado, Al Gage and the two prowl car cops had charged through the alley, it looked like, for garbage and trash cans had been knocked over. But there was no one now, or no one alive.

Slabbe didn’t get it for quite a while. He was seven floors above the alley and his eyes still weren’t working normally, and he wanted beer more than anything else. He held onto the fire escape railing and drank. Each time he lowered the bottle, his chin dropped with it and his eyes focussed on the cans below, but it wasn’t until the third or fourth time he did this that he really saw much. Even then, it didn’t look like anything but a man’s battered hat in one of the larger cans.

Slabbe finished his beer, hefted the empty bottle, then sighted on the can and let the bottle go. It scored perfect and Slabbe took a breath. His coordination wasn’t too bad at that. He turned back into the building, did a double take and froze. The bottle hadn’t clanged in the can. They made futile noises and motions.

Footsteps were sounding in the alley again when Slabbe turned back and looked down. The two cops were coming back. Slabbe rubbed his eyes and looked at the can. The bottle had hit the battered old hat and knocked it aside. There was dirty white hair underneath it.

Slabbe croaked: “Hey, you guys! Am I seeing things? Lookit that ash can!”

The cops followed his gaze, stepped over to the can. They made futile noises and motions. Slabbe started down the fire escape, reeled a little and decided the trip wasn’t necessary. He recognized Whitey Fite from here, anyhow.

He yelled: “How’d he get it?”

“Knife,” replied one of the cops.

“I’ll get Carlin,” Slabbe said. He shook his head ponderously, went back into the building. The elevator boy had said he’d seen both Whitey and Abe Morse come into the building but hadn’t seen them leave. Till now, Slabbe had thought that Whitey had told Abe something and they’d gone off together; but if Abe had been with Whitey he wouldn’t have let Whitey get killed. Slabbe had faith in the men he worked with.

He growled at himself: “And Abe wouldn’t have left the office, either, when he was supposed to be on the job. I bet he didn’t, not under his own power!”

Slabbe stopped dead in the corridor, eyes clear again, glittering. He saw the door of the mop closet, went to it and jerked it open. He cursed softly at the motionless heap of blue serge, then bent swiftly and ripped the gag from Abe Morse’s mouth. The little dick was conscious but too weak to move.

He gagged, tried to lick his lips, gagged some more. Slabbe picked him up as he was and carried him into the office, put him on the couch and tore off the twine that bound him hand and foot. He recognized it as the very twine he kept in his desk.

Abe croaked: “I got slugged. I was only here twenty minutes and blooie. I didn’t see nothing.”

Slabbe gave Abe beer, got on the phone, called Carlin’s office. He said to Abe: “Then you didn’t see Whitey Fite, either?”

“I was slugged,” Abe repeated earnestly. “And, honest Benjy, I didn’t get cute or nothing like that.”

Slabbe got connected with Carlin, told a terse story, ending with: “Happy’s the only guy unaccounted for now and Gage is on his tail — I hope. Let’s all be set this time. We won’t muff it again.” He hung up before Carlin started in on his ancestors.

Charlie Somers came panting into the office. “Wow! They worked you over, too!” he exclaimed. He saw Tommy Rex handcuffed to the radiator. “You hit back, though, huh? When you made that crack on the phone and then hung right up, I knew what was up. I didn’t figure I could get here fast enough, so I called the radio rotunda and told ’em to get a prowl car here on the double.”

“Thanks, cousin,” Slabbe said. “You did fine, but it might have been worth taking a couple more pokes if you’d have come yourself. The prowl car cops had to use their siren, the dopes, and Happy lammed. We got to sweat it out again and hope Gage sticks to Happy.”

But there wasn’t much waiting this time. One of the prowl car cops came back up from the alley, then Lieutenant Carlin arrived with a squad and started to instruct Slabbe, Charlie Somers and Abe Morse on how private investigators’ licenses were forfeited. It didn’t last long.

The telephone rang and Slabbe answered. Al Gage said: “Gage talking. It’s washed up.”

Slabbe gaped. “Huh?”

Gage sounded very pleased. “I’ll see that you get all the credit that’s coming to you and your expenses taken care of, but don’t forget I took Happy by myself.”

Slabbe bellowed: “Will you tell me what the hell you’re talking about?”

“Sure thing. I got Happy. That’s it, isn’t it? I chased him down the fire escape, tailed him to this hotel I’m at now. He come in, took a room, went up and I went up after him. I knocked on the door. We both had guns out, only I shot first. He’s meat, and he had the jewels on him.”

Slabbe uttered a string of words, the mildest of which was: “Goddam!” He took a breath and yelled: “What hotel?”

“Uncas Hotel, just around the corner from your place,” Gage said.

The procession that left Slabbe’s office and marched to the Uncas hotel included Slabbe, Charlie Somers, Abe Morse, Lieutenant Carlin and four plainclothes men and three harness cops.

The desk clerk marveled. “My God, you cops move fast these days! I just hung up from calling City Hall. Room 307. The man just came in and registered and went upstairs and the next thing I knew a woman came screaming down that there was shooting there.”

The last harness cop in the procession might have heard the desk clerk, but the others had already crowded into an elevator.

Al Gage was sitting at the writing desk in room 307, talking on the telephone. On the green blotter in front of him lay a gun and a chamois bag. The drawstring of the bag was loose and glittering stones had spilled out of it: diamonds, pearls, an emerald or two.

Gage looked around at the sound of feet, held up a hand for silence, then waved at the bent-over heap which was Happy Lado. Happy was doubled up on the floor, resting on his knees and forehead, both arms clasped about his midsection as if he’d tried to hold pain down or his guts in. Gage had obviously shot him in the stomach. Happy’s gun was under him, just the butt visible, as it would naturally be if he’d dropped it after collapsing.

Everybody started talking, and Gage held up his hand again, said into the telephone: “Mr. Oliver? Gage talking. I’ve recovered the jewels. Satisfactory?... Yessir, my lead worked out fine. I’ll get some sleep and come in.”

Slabbe had been staring woodenly at the chamois bag of jewels beside the gun on the desk blotter. He recognized the gun as one of his own, one that he kept in a desk drawer in his office.

Gage started to hang up, noted the direction of Slabbe’s stare and said apologetically: “I didn’t think you’d mind if I borrowed it. Remember I gave my own to the lieutenant after I shot Silk.”

“Wait a second,” Slabbe said and took the telephone from the Zenith op. He said, “Mr. Oliver?” and when Enoch Oliver’s dry voice purred, “Yes?” Slabbe put a lash into his voice and said, “A fine outfit you got, sending a man on a job like this when he’s half dead for sleep!”

Mr. Oliver gasped, sputtered. Slabbe railed at him some more, his voice dripping sarcasm.

“Now stop that!” Mr. Oliver burst. “We did have other operatives set to follow Tommy Rex from the hospital today, but Gage picked up a better lead and wanted to handle it himself.”

“That would have been about noon today, huh?” Slabbe said. “He told you he had this tip down our way, right?”

“Naturally. Of course. And I authorized him—”

Slabbe needed no more. He hung up, looked at Gage. The fatigue lines about the Zenith op’s eyes had deepened and tightened from more than weariness.

Slabbe said: “Honest to God, I’m sorry, Gage. I kind of liked you. You know the job and you got guts, and you like your work. Yeah, maybe you like your work too much. You got too enthusiastic with Pola, huh?”

No one had to hold up a hand for silence now. The room was packed with cops. Someone shut the door. The air in the room was suddenly hot and still. Al Gage’s green eyes were sinking back into his skull. A weary muscle in his cheek twitched once and was still.

Slabbe tongued his gum into a cavity and spoke without relish. “Tommy Rex was right when he said he’d have spotted anybody who tailed him down on the train. You didn’t tail him, Al. You knew he was coming here and you got here first. I’d say you got here about the one-thirty train, not the two-thirty.”

Slabbe’s words hung in the air tightly. Someone shuffled, coughed. All eyes were on Al Gage.

Slabbe wet his lips. “Whitey Fite saw Pola and Happy and Silk get off a ten o’clock train today. Then he took the ten-thirty to Philly. That would put him in Philly at eleven-thirty. He was a stoolie, Whitey was, and his business was knowing who was wanted and for what and who was interested. He knew the Zenith Agency protected the jewelry store that had been heisted. He knew he’d get paid more for his information by a Zenith op than by anybody else. Did he come straight to you, Al? Your boss just admitted that other arrangements had been made, but you picked up a better lead and were authorized to handle it.”

It didn’t look as if Gage were going to say a word. It didn’t look as if he had the strength to. His face was shriveled, his green eyes dull. Normally inconspicuous as a successful dick should be, he now stood out above anyone else in the room. He was branded.

His lips scarcely moved, and his words were very low. “It was the breaks all through,” he said. “It was a fluke that Whitey picked me. He was waiting in the corridor outside the boss’ office about noon today when I was leaving. I’d just checked in from a job up-state and was going home to bed. Whitey must’ve figured I was the boss and braced me, asked me what it was worth to get a line on Happy, Silk and Pola.”

Slabbe nodded. “It was worth plenty and you paid Whitey. He told you he’d seen Pola, Happy and Silk get off a train in our town and had tailed Pola to Nikki Evans’ apartment, right? Was it just a fluke, too, that Whitey was on hand at the railroad station and spotted ’em?”

“Fifty-fifty, I guess,” Gage said. “A guy like him hangs around railroad stations off and on, but I think he was coming to Philly for a personal reason today. What’s the difference? He spotted them and passed the dope along to me.”

“And you told your boss you’d picked up a lead and he should call off the ops who’d been supposed to tail Tommy from the hospital,” Slabbe filled in. “You figured that with Pola, Happy and Silk here and Tommy due to be discharged from the hospital, he’d sure make a beeline here, right? You didn’t have to tail him. Maybe you didn’t even want him at all. You knew where Pola had put in, at Nikki’s apartment. You figured she’d be packing the jewels. You’ve got guts. Maybe you could get them back.

“So you hopped the very next train down, the twelve-thirty, I’d say, and it put you here at one-thirty. You went straight to Nikki’s apartment, told her you were from Tommy and wanted to talk to Pola alone. The girls accepted you and Nikki left and... like I said, you got too enthusiastic about getting the jewels back, Al.”

Gage’s voice was hollow. “I didn’t know she had a bad heart. I was fagged out, too. Excited, yet tired. I talked to her. She gave me a song and dance. I started to bum. I hate crooks, anyhow. I started to search the apartment. She laughed at me, lit a cigarette and blew smoke in my eyes. I socked her and her cigarette fell down. I picked it up and her eyes popped out. I didn’t have any intention of using it, then. But when I saw her get scared, I figured she’d crack easy. I turned up the radio and...

“All right! Go ahead!” Gage cried suddenly, voice rising. “Look at me! All of you! I guess no other guy here would do such a thing!”

“Easy,” Slabbe said.

“Like hell you guys wouldn’t do such a thing!” Gage panted. “I’ve been in the racket a long time! I know what goes on! I’ve been in some back rooms at police stations myself! I just got a tough break ’cause this Pola twist had a bum heart. If she’d have lived and I’d’ve got the jewels off her, you’d have all been rooting for me. You’d have held her in the tank till her bums healed, say you wouldn’t, you damn lousy creeps!”

Not a man spoke.

Slabbe pressed: “But you got the jewels. Happy didn’t have enough imagination for this run-around. If he’d had them, he’d have lammed right off, not gone gunning for Tommy.”

“Sure, I got them,” Gage snapped. His lips quivered. “Pola cracked. She yelled: ‘My heart’s bad! Don’t bum me again! I’ll die! I’d sooner give you the stones! They’re hidden in my hair!’

“And there they were, too!” Gage said. “She had the bag flattened out and fastened on her skull with adhesive tape and her hair combed over it sweet. I got them. I set out to get them and I did!”

“But you couldn’t just turn up with them now,” Slabbe said quickly. “Even if the cops never guessed, your boss Mr. Oliver knew you’d come down here on a lead. If you turned up with the stones and Pola was found dead, he’d guess the score. Being the kind of guy he is, he’d have at least fired you and black-listed you.”

“You had to do something. Why couldn’t you make it look as if you’d come to town later than you actually did? Why not play it just like you would if you’d tailed Tommy here? You could pull it if you got to the station and picked Tommy up when he arrived. You did that, then called me.”

Slabbe shook his head. “But you don’t make me your alibi, cousin. In fact, I gummed the works. You intended to plant the stones on Silk’s body this afternoon after you shot him, but I bumped you and searched him myself. You didn’t care about the jewels — you weren’t out for profit. It was the thought of being disgraced in your profession that pushed you. Hell, I know guys like you,” Slabbe said tiredly. “Your job is your life.”

Gage was an old man, face lifeless, shoulders sagging. “Nikki was the only one who’d seen me. I waited around the apartment till she and Max came back. When he sent her down to the car to be lookout, I did it. Then I went to the station and saw Tommy getting off the two-thirty train, called you and made it sound as if I’d tailed him directly from the hospital.”

Slabbe sighed. “But then you had to get Whitey Fite, too. He was the one who had tipped you in the first place. Maybe you both came down here on the same train, anyhow Whitey was tailing you when you went to Nikki’s apartment. He would have guessed that you’d killed Pola and he’d have seen you step into the car with Nikki. Maybe he didn’t see you actually put the knife in her, because he’d have kept out of sight as much as he could. But he was there.”

Gage scowled. “How do you know that?”

“Because Whitey met me in the lobby of the Carleton Arms just after I got there,” Slabbe said. “I asked him how he knew I wanted to see him, but I didn’t think much about it at the time. But Whitey couldn’t have known I was going to the Carleton Arms. So what was he doing there? The answer is that he was following you. And whether you knew he was tailing you or not, you knew he worked for me off and on and would finally figure out that you were the only one who could have killed the girls and sell me the dope.”

Gage shrugged fatalistically.

“So when Carlin let you go today, you came straight to my office. You’d heard me call around and tell guys that I wanted Whitey, and you figured he’d come to my office. You slugged Abe and shoved him in the mop closet, tying him with twine from the same desk drawer where you picked up that gun. Then you waited.”

Slabbe went on, voice flat and monotonous, doing something he had no stomach for. “When Whitey came, you gave him what you’d given Nikki and took him down the fire escape and stuffed him in a trash can. You could have got rid of his body later if you didn’t want it found right near my office, but first you had to locate Happy and Tommy, get to them, take them, and claim they’d had the jewels. You have the guts for it, I’ll give you that, and you knew that I had Charlie Somers tailing Tommy and Happy and that he’d be sure to call the office first chance.”

Slabbe wiped his mouth. “It would have been one on you if Charlie had called while you were out on the fire escape with Whitey. The fact is that he didn’t, Al, but I did. I rang the office and nobody answered. It was a giveaway on you, kid. You tried to cover up by saying you’d been asleep and the phone hadn’t wakened you; but a guy like you sleeps like a cat no matter how tired he is. I knew that if you had been in the office, you’d have answered my call. If you didn’t answer, then you weren’t there.

“Then why were you lying by saying you were there but asleep? I figured back over it and you gave me the clincher when you claimed to have recovered the jewels from Happy just now. You’re licked, kid. You know how we can work back, now that we’ve got the thing figured. We’ll find somebody on that one-thirty train that saw you. We’ll—”

“Cut it! Cu-u-u-t it,” Gage blurted. “I’m in the game myself. I know you can do it. You think I’d be singing if I didn’t know it?”

He looked up. His green eyes went from face to face, slowly, carefully. His lips tried to sneer but were too tired.

He said ever so wearily: “If I was a grifter, I’d get a better break, wouldn’t I? But I’m supposed to be on the right side, so you guys can’t let me get away with a thing. Maybe you’re right. I’d figure that way, too, was I in other shoes. O.K., then.”

Without haste, Gage reached out and lifted the gun from the green desk blotter. He didn’t put it to his head clumsily. He simply turned it into his chest. He held it so tightly against himself that there wasn’t much noise at all. Then he sagged back.

His lips moved. “You don’t have to blacken Zenith’s name on this, do you?”

“Sure not,” Slabbe said thickly. “You shot it out with Happy. Both of you got killed in the fight.”

Gage was going to say, “Thanks,” but he couldn’t get it out.

Slabbe looked at him. He shook his head. “He was all tired out,” he said. “He can rest now.”

He turned and pushed through the cops and left the room.