Epitaph For A Dead Beat

CHAPTER 5

The cop who caught it was a lean, long-necked, wide-shouldered sergeant named DiMaggio. He had a face roughly the shape and color of a clumsily peeled Idaho potato, and he had a jaw like the end of a cigarette carton.

He was strictly business. He let us tell him that we had come in together and found the body, and then he spent twelve or fourteen minutes supervising his lab men. After that he spent twenty more with Fern in her bedroom. There was another detective with him, an amiable, laconic redhead named Toomey.

Fern stayed inside when they came out. Toomey rejoined the technicians and DiMaggio indicated the kitchen with a nod. I followed him. He hoisted one flat hip over the edge of the sink, then swung the door shut with the toe of a shoe big enough to row.

“You have something with your name on it?” he asked me.

I gave him my wallet, open to my state license. He stared at the ticket for a lot more time than it would take to read it. Then he let out his breath, with all the weary resignation of a plumber finding a coat hanger in a drain.

“A private detective,” he said without inflection. He handed the wallet back. “Must be an exciting line of work. Thrills, adventure—”

He wasn’t smiling. I didn’t say anything.

“Anything exciting happen to you lately, Mr. Fannin?”

I supposed I was expected to lend myself to the routine. “I had a real scary one two weeks ago,” I said.

“What would that have been, Mr. Fannin?”

“A dognaping,” I said.

“Oh?”

“The owner decided to pay the ransom. I had to meet the dognaper in a dark street in Flatbush at four o’clock in the morning.”

He nodded thoughtfully. “Things work out without trouble?”

“The dog bit me.”

That changed his expression the way drops of syrup change the expression on a buckwheat cake, no more. He took a cigarette.

“What are you working on now, Mr. Fannin?”

DiMaggio. Toomey had called him Joe, which people would do. On his birth certificate it probably said Melvin.

“I was in a bar on Hudson Street,” I told him mechanically. “Vinnie’s Place. Before midnight tonight I’d never seen Fern Hoerner in my life. Somebody insulted her and I walked her home. She was in here and I happened to look into that bedroom. Before approximately twelve forty-five I’d never seen the Welch girl either. Anything else I can tell you would be hearsay, based on conversation with Miss Hoerner. Except for what went on in the bar — that involved Josie Welch also.”

“Tell it.”

I went into detail about Ephraim Turk, then summarized what Fern had said about background. When I finished he leaned there chewing on it. He was an obvious kind of cop and there would be an obvious question for him to ask. He had already asked it once.

“What are you working on, Fannin?”

I didn’t answer.

“You simply happened to be in Vinnie’s. You weren’t there because you were trying to make contact with Miss Hoerner for some reason — or to get into this apartment?”

“Oh, now look, just because I’ve got this license—”

“Just because. I want to know what you’re working on, Fannin. I think I want to know right about now.”

I sat there for another minute. He had too many preconceived notions and too much sheer habit to take any story of mine on faith. “Would Captain Nate Brannigan be on duty up at Central Homicide tonight?” I asked him.

He stared at me. “Exactly what does that mean?”

“It means I went in there for a drink. All the rest was just luck.”

He cracked a knuckle the size of a walnut, not looking at me.

“I had a security case,” I told him then. “Woman named Skelly found some cash. She decided to leave it in the precinct safe instead.”

“You could have mentioned this before, you know.”

“We got off the road.”

“So we did.” He finally made up his mind to smile, although it was still an effort. “You know Brannigan pretty well?”

“Four, five years.”

He went to the door. “What the hell — it didn’t look very kosher.”

“I figured it wouldn’t.”

“Yeah. You’ll have to see a stenographer later. Stick around if you want.”

“Thanks.”

Toomey was alone in the living room. “Watch your language in front of the man, Floyd,” DiMaggio told him. “He’s a P.I. with connections.”

“I’m genuflecting,” Toomey said.

“Ah, I guess he’s not pushing it.” DiMaggio went back into the second bedroom. The lab men had left and someone else was in with the body, probably the M.E. Toomey went to the bottle.

“What’s his real first name?” I asked.

“Who, Joe?”

“Yes.”

“Joe.”

“Joe?”

“So there’s two of them. You know something makes it illegal?”

I let it pass, getting a new drink for myself. Toomey sat down in one of the sling chairs and scratched an ankle.

People wandered in and out. It was only 1:47 when they came for the body, which meant it was a quiet night at the morgue. Maybe the juvenile delinquents had declared a truce for Tuesdays. Fern’s door remained shut while they were getting the stretcher out.

DiMaggio was on the couch. “You see that bankbook in there?” he asked me.

“I didn’t dig around.”

He punched his tongue into his cheek. “Pretty queer. According to Miss Hoemer the girl was nineteen — came here after high school in Kansas City two years back. So first we get regular weekly deposits, checks, which would be a salary from somewhere—” He flipped pages in a notebook. “Yeah, here. Fifty-eight bucks and change. But then for the last eleven, twelve months the girl’d been putting away between one and three hundred a week—”

Toomey whistled. DiMaggio nodded and went on. “Spending a fair bit, but the income is regular enough — all deposits in cash, and never more than an even hundred at one time.” He grunted. “And no visible means whatsoever — at least none since Miss Hoerner met her. The girl claimed a relative was supporting her—”

“Uncle Aga Khan,” Toomey said.

DiMaggio looked from him to me. “The uptown chum?” I said. “This Connie?”

“There’s an address book, but nobody with the name. I think I’m ready to lay about eight to five she was on call.”

“Age nineteen,” Toomey said. “You suppose Vice Squad will have a make on the guy?”

“I want the other end of the odds on that one. Hell, there’s a high-class pimp working out of every other nightclub these days. But anyhow, one other thing. Like I say, all deposits are fairly consistent — and then two months ago there’s a fat one. July tenth. One thousand, eight hundred and fifty-two bills— again cash.”

“Daily double at Belmont,” Toomey said.

DiMaggio did not smile. “Miss Hoerner says she knows nothing about the uptown pitch — she’d rather read this Connie as a married cheater. There’s no lead to him — no letters, not even an uptown match folder. The girl was neat as a squirrel. Almost too neat, as if she had something to hide. And just incidentally we’ve got no family address either. We’ll have to contact Kansas City and see what they can file.”

He dropped the notebook into a side pocket of his jacket. After a minute he lifted his face toward me, squinting. “Ephraim Turk — a runt of a guy with a face like a sponge? A writer?”

“Close enough.”

“For Chrissakes, sure, that son of a bitch has a shoplifting record. Six, eight months ago — somebody had a party, reported some stones missing. One of those rich hens who thinks it’s quaint to let a pack of poets with greasy hands paw the draperies. We checked the guest list and this Turk’s background came out — he’d done a suspended on the coast someplace. San Francisco. We never did find the gems. Yeah, yeah, Turk left the party with friends and slept in someone else’s apartment. It gave him an out, since he didn’t have time or opportunity to get rid of the haul.”

“I remember,” Toomey said. “But didn’t we decide it was too big a job for him?”

“Swiping Miss Hoerner’s twenty-two wouldn’t be,” Di-Maggio said.

“I just thought of something,” I said.

DiMaggio raised his cardboard jaw an eighth of an inch.

“It doesn’t have to mean much,” I said. “Turk didn’t have his fight with the Welch girl until just recently. The gun was taken two weeks ago.”

DiMaggio traced his tongue across the tips of his teeth. “Okay, it’s a point. Still, we run him in the same time we run in these others. This Dana O’Dea, the girl Welch had the fight with at that party. And this Pete Peters — Peter J. Peters, Miss Hoerner says. Although well need the pregnancy report to bring him into it—”

“Me, I like the uptown bird,” Toomey said.

“I’ll let you fly up and find him for us,” DiMaggio said. He glanced toward Fern’s door, then puckered his lips.

“Hell,” I said.

“She has to be automatically suspect.”

“Me too,” I said.

“Okay, you too.” DiMaggio got to his feet. He fished around in his breast pocket and came up with a small white card. “You and Miss Hoerner can see the steno anytime — in the morning, if she doesn’t feel up to it now. Tell her, will you? Meanwhile, here — it’s got my home number on it. In case you just happen to be in some more bars and run into something before we wrap it up.”

I took the card. Only a rare cop would have one. It said:

Giovanni Boccaccio DiMaggio Detective Sergeant

Toomey laughed nasally, heading out.