Dead of Night

Chapter twenty-three: Bait for a slugging

If I’d been one of those fictional dicks who deduce a criminal’s entire life history from the manner in which he drops his cigar ashes, it would all have been simple then, I suppose. All I’d have had to do would have been to crawl around with a magnifying glass, retire to my dressing-gown, give myself a shot in the arm, play a solo on my battered fiddle, and zango! Everything clear as a slug of straight gin. Whereas nothing was clear to me except that the prominent corpse in the bathroom wasn’t the doing of one Al Gowriss.

Reidy informed me, “We compared the note with Miss Marino’s registration card. Same writing, Gil.” I asked if the gun was in Lanerd’s fist or on the floor when they found him.

“He had it gripped tight,” Hacklin grumbled. “So don’t strain your brain givin’ us suggestions. We had all the amateur advice we want.”

“From Lanerd’s secretary?” I inquired.

“No, not from Lanerd’s secretary.” He mocked me, annoyed. “We didn’t get anything from her, thanks to you lettin’ her out of the suite before I had a chance to question her. She skipped — an’ that’s only one of the stumblin’ blocks you’ll have to account for when we haul you over the barrel.”

“We got a man after her, to bring her in,” Schneider said. “She must’a known about the suicide, an’ concealment of a crime is just as much a felony as helpin’ a suspect escape. Maybe the body was there when you were here in his suite with her?”

I said if it had been, I hadn’t known it. Any notion of telling them about Tildy or the events over on Atlantic Avenue went out of my head. If they meant to pass the buck to me for the bungling that’d gone on, I might need an ace up my sleeve.

Schneider waved at a couple of accordion-folded tickets caterpillaring along the top of a fingerprint-equipment case. “This is a wrap-up. Lanerd was nuts about the skater. He planned to go away with her. He had those plane tickets to Rio in his pocket along with her note. We know it wasn’t his wife he planned to take along; we phoned her; she didn’t even know he intended to go to Rio.”

Reidy said, “Mrs. Lanerd’s on her way here.”

“Grrr!” I didn’t want to be present at that farewell party. “Better get a nurse from the hospital suite, just in case.”

Reidy hadn’t thought of that, went to take care of it.

Hacklin took up where Schneider’d left off.

“Roffis must have tried to veto this buzzaway to Miami and Rio, and Lanerd fixed him. That’s why Herb hadn’t unholstered his gun; he knew Lanerd and naturally figured he didn’t have anything to fear from the big shot.”

I said, “Then Lanerd hung around after the killing? Waiting for a streetcar, maybe?”

“We figure that after the murder, Miss Millett got cold feet, turned Lanerd down, wrote him that note, and decided to beat it all by herself. I know there was some trouble between ’em, because when I got to the suite, she’d been bawling.”

“Why didn’t Lanerd leave the suite when you did?” I asked.

“I asked him to stay,” Hacklin answered. “He wanted to come to the studio with us, but I wanted someone there to tell Herb what had happened, if he came back while I was away.”

Schneider stuck a palm out toward me inquiringly. “What else would a prominent party like him do, faced with ruin an’ exposure? Nothing but put a period to himself.”

I knew they must have something else; it was too pat.

“I didn’t know him. But he seems to have enjoyed what the psyko sharps would call a very satisfactory sex life. Two or three of ’em, probably. I never heard of a man who was enjoying life that way committing suicide. Look at it another way, a lad who hunted grizzlies and liked to fight swordfish doesn’t seem like the fella to dig a blade in another man’s back.”

“The knife.” Tim looked distressed. “The steak knife, Gil. I didn’ want to mention it on the phone—”

“You found it?”

Hacklin nodded ponderously. “Wrapped in a bath towel. In the bottom of the towel hamper in his bathroom. Coupla feet from the body.”

I attempted irony. “Ties the ball of wax up nice and neat. No need to hold Auguste, hah?”

Schneider came toward me with that same slow, surly approach Hacklin had tried on me earlier. “We figure the murder took place right after dinner. While Auguste was in the next room. Until somebody proves different, we’ll put it down Auguste was paid to keep his mouth shut. Paid with that compact. What you got to say about that, Smart Stuff?”

“Pick a four-letter word,” I answered. “I could use any of ’em. I don’t believe Dow Lanerd committed suicide.”

“The gun, Gil.” Tim was really suffering, trying to get me to understand how thoroughly they had the case corked up. “They sent the gun down to the lab with the knife. They can compare the bullet an’ give the right mitt of the body a paraffin test; that’ll cinch it.”

Paraffin! The word socked me straight in the teeth! That might be the answer, or part of it. Wax. Sure.

“Yair.” I nodded as if he’d finally convinced me. “I guess it would, Tim. Unless you verified that report about Al Gowriss’s being in the house.”

Schneider laughed scornfully. “They had a teletype, downtown. From Trenton, New Jersey. Gowriss was identified as one of three men who stuck up a filling-station an’ filled the attendant with lead. About six o’clock tonight, the holdup was.”

Tim added, “In my opinion, Maxie didn’t see this hophead at all. He give me so many details he began contradictin’ himself. I think he just wanted t’ feel important.”

“Common failing.” I heard loud talk in the corridor. When the door opened to let in half a dozen more of the special assistants, I went into the other bedroom. No one followed me or heard me when I opened the door, stepped out into the corridor.

Technically I wasn’t under arrest. But they could have held me for balking them on Auguste, on Ruth. Hacklin wouldn’t let me get away without a stance down at Criminal Courts. I had other fish to fry.

It was long after Mrs. Munster’s quitting-time; the only employee in the housekeeper’s office was Martha Canaday, a spinsterish gal of sixty with thick-lensed eyeglasses.

“This afternoon one of the maids turned in a soiled bedspread that had spots of wax on it, Martha. I want to know what room it came from.”

“But Mister Vine,” she complained, “I couldn’t possibly find out until the girls come in tomorrow — I mean this afternoon — it’s Sunday already.”

“That’s right. Leave word with Ada, she’s to ask each maid before the girls go on the floors. Don’t forget it. It’s important.” I wasn’t sure it was, but if the wax had gotten on the spread the way I thought it might have, it would be practically decisive. “Maybe the girl remembers whether there was any wax on the glass top of the bed table, too.”

Down in the PBX room, Mona was still on the 21MM section of the board. I told her what I wanted.

She put her tongue in her cheek. “We strive to please. The voice with the smile is the voice worth while. And so forth. But that’s a toughie. You know we don’t keep any record of locals, Mister V.”

“The operators mark ’em down as they come through, don’t they?”

“Yes. But they scrap the Numbers Wanted sheet as fast as they’re checked off, completed.”

“See ’f you can find any old ones that cover charges for 21CC. Lanerd may have called a certain babe whose name isn’t in the phone book. He might have called an unlisted number.”

Mona rolled her eyes, caught her underlip between her teeth.

“Plenty of numbers call him, from what I hear. Quite a Casanova, isn’t he?”

“You get a lot of attention from the tender sex when your income is in six figures.”

“How trite but true.” She departed. “See what I can do.”

What she did was to come up with a crumpled slip; on it a number which Lanerd had called twice within an hour Saturday morning. It was in the Trafalgar exchange.

“Now you want me to find out who the subscriber is?”

Mona was a step ahead of me most of the time.

“If it’s a Miss Ruth Moore, I want the address, too.” It was.

Moore, Ruth, residence, four twenty-nine West Seventy-Fifth,” Mona reported, after a chat with some chum in the traffic supervisor’s office. “By the by, somebody in 21CC wants me to locate you, Mister V.”

“You tried. You failed. You’re sorry. Thanks. Go home now, or wherever it is you go Saturday nights.”

“Puh-leeze, Mist-er Vine.”

I cabbed up to Seventy-Fifth, phoned from a basement beer and grill just off Broadway, had no answer for my nickel.

Four twenty-nine was a four-story brownstone, sedate and dignified. Four mailboxes, buttons to press under each one. Name cards above the buttons. R. Moore, engraved, was Apt. 2.

I pushed the button. Waited.

The street door, which ought to have been latched at that time of night, was hooked back because of the heat. I climbed stairs smelling of soap powder and furniture oil. The door to the second-floor apartment was open a crack. Warm light spilled out into the dark hall; a radio or a phonograph was playing Nobody’s Sweetheart Now.

I thumbed the buzzer. It was out of order or else it didn’t make enough noise for me to hear out in the hall.

I pushed the door open farther, called, “Miss Moore?”

On the floor, about a yard inside the door, was a square envelope. Face down. With the Plaza Royale crest on the back.

I had my fingers on it when the roof fell in.