Corpse on the Grill

Chapter Three Gorilla Greg

They went up to the office. Biddonay opened the safe with fingers that rattled the combination dial. He pulled out a black and red ledger. “Here y’are.”

Pedley read: Suzanne d’Hiver, 12 Griswold Place. He checked down the list of employees until he came to: Peter Donnelly, 966 West 51st Street.

“This cashier of yours lives just around the corner, eh?”

“That’s right.”

“Funny he hasn’t showed up.”

“Is queer.” The cafe man snuffled dismally.

“Give him another buzz,” Pedley suggested.

Biddonay stuck a pudgy forefinger in the phone dial, spun it seven times. There was an odd, puzzled look in his round eyes; after a bit he held the receiver away from his ear so Pedley could hear the operator ringing. “Nobody home.”

The marshal growled: “Give him another couple minutes. If he doesn’t show up, we’ll have to go after him.”

“It would be a dumb trick to lam out, Marshal. An’ Pete ain’t dumb, at all.”

A black limousine slid to the curb in front of the restaurant. Four men got out, carrying valises, camera cases, tripods, flash guns.

Pedley said: “Homicide boys’ll take over here, but you better come with me, Biddonay. I’ll put you under technical arrest as a material witness.”

“For the Lord’s sake—”

“Hold on, fella. Material witness arrest means the cops won’t be able to drag you downtown for a day of questions and answer stuff while I need you to run down this arson business.”

The stout man seemed relieved. “It’s just I don’t like the idea of being arrested, is all. Besides, I won’t be much use as a witness, will I? I don’t know anything about the fire. And I’ve only seen this Gorilla lug a couple times here in the restaurant. I never talked to him—”

“Don’t worry about your testimony.” The Marshal opened a closet door, peered inside. “This is your joint; you hire the help; you were first on the scene after the crime was discovered. That’ll be all I’ll need. Except I’ll want you to shag over to Donnelly’s with me, if he doesn’t get here directly.”

“I can’t go like this.” Biddonay wiggled his toes in the slippers. “My clothes is upstairs—” he gestured, palms out.

Pedley tilted his head toward the closet. “Who belongs to those duds?”

“The tux? That’s Herb’s. I couldn’t get into that.”

“Try it. Better than going around like you are.” The Marshal went out to meet the headquarters men. He explained the setup briefly and wound up, “All that’s left of it in the ice-box is the torso. Arms and legs went on the grill. Might look around for the skull. I’m going over to the cashier’s; he’s supposed to be the last man here, the guy who closes up.” He didn’t go into detail about the wrestler or the snowball dancer; Jewett would do that, anyhow, and the homicide squad liked to do things its own way. And they made a fetish identifying corpses before rounding up suspects...

The murder experts trooped down to the basement; Pedley went back to the office. Biddonay was dressed. The pants were skin-tight and an inch too long. The coat wouldn’t button, but there were shiny patent leathers on his feet and a soft dress-shirt under the coat.

“I buzzed Herb,” the fat man frowned. “He wasn’t home. Mrs. Krass was there. She don’t know where he is. I told her to have him come right over soon’s he shows up.”

“That’s right. Thought you said your partner went home early.”

Biddonay pursed his cupid-bow lips, comically. “Herb likes to buck the tiger, once in a while. Prob’ly where he is now.”

Pedley was noncommital. “He’s lost his shirt, anyway.”

They walked a block and a half, found 966 a shabby redstone rooming house. An angry woman in a bedraggled dressing gown answered the bell after a while, subsided after a glance at the gold badge in Pedley’s palm.

“Second floor front is Mr. Donnelly. I hope there ain’t anything wrong?”

The Marshal didn’t satisfy her curiosity. He borrowed her keys and went upstairs.

Biddonay panted: “Hell of a place to live. Pete can afford better’n this.”

Pedley knocked, without result. Then he used a key.

By the light of a cheap lamp on a center table, they saw the cashier lying face down on top of the bedclothes. He might have been asleep, save for the wedge-shaped wound on the back of his head. A thin red ribbon trailed down the back of his neck, across his pajama coat.

The Marshal barked: “Stay outside, Biddonay. Don’t want you smearing up any prints in here.” He gave the room a rapid once-over. Nothing seemed to be disturbed; there were no signs of a struggle, and no indications that the bureau or the wardrobe in the corner had been ransacked. The man’s clothes were neatly piled on the back of a chair by his bedside; the suit had been hung on hangers in the wardrobe. He put a hand on the dead man’s wrist. It was cold, but not yet stiffened in rigor mortis.

He lifted the head. Donnelly’s eyes were open; the man hadn’t been killed in his sleep. By the placid expression on the corpse’s features, Pedley guessed that the cashier hadn’t even known he was going to die.

Pedley knelt, looked under the bed and behind the wardrobe. No sign of a weapon. He went to the bureau, opened the drawers with his hand covered by a handkerchief. He found shirts, sox, underclothes; a bank-book with eleven hundred dollars as the last balance; some old baseball scorecards and theatre programs. There were gloves, handkerchiefs, cuff links — stuff you’d find in half a million rooms like this.

Under a folded sweater in the bottom drawer, Pedley found a photograph. It was a glossy print of a nearly nude girl, with a figure that could stand that kind of photography. She wore only a white fur cap, white mittens and skating boots with wooly socks. She was poised on skate-toes; she held in her mittened hands a white ball about the size of a basket-ball. The Marshal took it over to the door and asked, “This the mouse who does the snowball dance?”

Biddonay exclaimed, “Why... why sure! That’s Suzie. But I never saw this. What would Pete be doing with her picture?”

“Maybe he went for this mouse.”

Biddonay gaped. “I’d never dreamed.”

Pedley picked up a newspaper from the table, slid the picture in between the folds. “The guys who go for Suzie seem to get treated pretty rough, mister. Suppose we ask her why.”

Downstairs in the hall, Pedley used a slot phone to call Biddonay’s office. To the plainclothesman who answered, he said: “When you’ve finished at the Ice-taurant, there a job at Nine-sixty-six West Fifty-first. Second floor front, name of Peter Donnelly. Cashier at Biddonay’s place. Back of his head split open with a cleaver or something like that. Hurry it, will you?”

He hung up. He questioned the landlady as to possible visitors to Donnelly’s room; got nowhere. She couldn’t keep track of everyone who came in her house at that hour of the morning, could she?

Biddonay said: “I think Pete’s mother lives somewhere upstate. We better send her a wire.”

“Up to the Bureau of Identification,” Pedley replied. “They’ll find her address in his things, probably. Here comes the death watch; let’s grab a cab.”

They went out as the Homicide Squad came in. Ten minutes later a taxi dropped them in front of 12 Griswold Place. A new apartment with a river view, it boasted too much chromium and plate glass and stainless steel for the Marshal’s taste. Miss Suzanne d’Hiver occupied Apartment 7B. They used an automatic elevator; there was no night man visible in the lobby.

Pedley listened at the door of 7B for a minute, and heard voices. They ceased abruptly when he buzzed, but it was a full minute before a girl’s voice called:

“Who is it?”

“Fire Department.”

The door opened, revealing a flaxen-haired, pleasant-faced girl with wide-set mint-green eyes and sensuous lips. The negligee she wore hadn’t been designed to conceal her curves.

“Mr. Biddonay! Is something wrong?”

“Yeah, Suzie.” The fat man sighed. “A lot is wrong. The spot burned down tonight; three firemen lost their lives. And—”

“I want to ask a couple of questions, Miss d’Hiver,” Pedley cut in.

“That’s perfectly dreadful. Come right in.” She seemed shocked at Biddonay’s news. Still, she was in show business, the Marshal realized — she might be putting on an act. The cafe proprietor introduced them.

“Better give out with the answers, Suzie,” Biddonay counselled. “The truth, the whole truth, you know.”

She said she understood. She watched Pedley warily as he gazed around at the ultra-moderne furnishings of the apartment.

“Someone here with you? Thought I heard voices,” he inquired.

“I had the radio on. I turned it off.”

“Oh, that was it.” The Marshal thought she was lying. “You know a big guy they call Gorilla Greg? A wrestler?”

“Gregory Scanopolous? I ought to.” She nodded calmly. “He’s my husband, you see?”

Biddonay cried: “You said you weren’t married. That’s what you told me and Herb!”

“Sure I did. A wedding ring wouldn’t go so good in the snowball dance business, Mr. Biddonay.”

Pedley interrupted: “You’re not living with this Gorilla gent now?”

“No. We called it a day. Been separated for two years now. He used to beat me up.” She said it quite without venom.

“Why’s he keep going to the Ice-taurant to see you?” Pedley asked.

She rubbed thumb and forefinger together. “He’s broke. Greg used to make fair dough out of circusing with one of those cross-country wrestling troupes. But he strained his back; he couldn’t wrestle one of the Quints, now. So I give him a few pieces of change, now and then. I hate his guts, but I wouldn’t want to see anything happen to him.”

“No?” The Marshal heard a scraping noise from somewhere outside the living-room; it sounded like a dog scratching at a door. “Somebody did—. And gave your husband a workout on a butcher’s block. With a cleaver.”