Give ’Em the Ax

18

Sellers only stopped long enough to fit my keys to the lock on the agency car to make sure they worked. Then he loaded us into the police automobile, turned on the motor and kicked in the siren.

It was a hell of a place in which to have to think, but I knew that I had to think, and think fast. By the time we reached Headquarters, it would be too late to do any good.

The siren was screaming for the right of way and the car was building into speed. We flashed past a street intersection. My eyes noticed the name of the street we were on. It was Mantica Street.

Ahead of us and on the left was a rather swanky apartment hotel. A couple of taxicabs were parked in front. One of the drivers looked up curiously as the siren went screaming by. I had a glimpse of a twisted, broken nose.

The next street was Garden Vista Boulevard and Frank Sellers was bracing his car for a screaming turn.

“Frank!” I yelled at him.

He didn’t even turn his head.

The tires screamed the car around the turn.

“Frank, for God’s sake stop!”

Something in my voice caught his ears, made him ease his foot on the throttle. “What is it this time, a stall?”

“The murderer of Rufus Stanberry,” I said.

“I’ve got her right here.”

“No, no, Frank. For God’s sake — at least pull in to the curb and let me talk to you before he gets away.”

He hesitated.

Bertha said, “Please, Frank.”

“The hell with him,” Frank said. “It’s just a stall and you know it as well as I do. He’s quick witted enough to have thought up some lie and...”

“Goddammit!” Bertha screamed at him. “Pull this car in to the curb!”

Sellers looked at her in surprise.

Bertha leaned forward, twisted the ignition key in the lock, jerked it out and held her hand out of the window.

The motor went dead. The momentum carried us in to the curb as Sellers turned the steering wheel.

Sellers sat perfectly still. His face was white with rage.

After a half second, he said in a choked voice, “It’s all right with me. I take in the three of you.”

Bertha looked back at me and said, “And don’t kid yourself he isn’t man enough to do it. If you’ve got anything to say, say it — and I hope to hell you’ve got something.”

I leaned forward to put my left hand on Frank Sellers’ shoulders. The right was handcuffed to Billy Prue.

“Listen, Frank,” I said, “I’m coming clean. I’ve wondered how the hell that murder weapon got in my car. I’ve thought back over every step of the way. It couldn’t, simply couldn’t have been put in my car by someone who knew whose car it was and was framing things on me unless Billy Prue double-crossed me, and I don’t think she double-crossed me. There’s only one other way it could have got in my car.”

Sellers was listening now.

I said, “Listen, Frank, I’m doing this for you as much as for anybody. For the love of Mike, don’t pull us in and get a splash in the newspapers and then have to hide your face.”

“Don’t worry about my face,” Sellers said. “Tell me about that murder weapon.”

I said, “The only way it could have been put in the car was by someone who didn’t know what car it was — who it belonged to.”

“Nuts!” Sellers said.

“And,” I went on, “there was only one way that could have happened and that was that my car happened to be the most convenient and the most accessible place for the murderer to have put it, and there’s only one way that could have happened, and that was when my car was parked at the Rimley Rendezvous and I tried to be a smart Aleck and squeeze in front of the car behind me on the hope that it wouldn’t go out before I did. But the guy in the car behind me wasn’t that sort of an egg. He simply stuck his car in low gear and pushed mine out into the taxi zone and went on his way. And a taxi driver damn near beat me up over it when I came out — and that taxi driver was sitting in a cab at that hotel a couple of blocks back on Mantica Street. That’s probably his regular stand. And the handle of that hand ax had been sawed off so it would fit in a woman’s handbag.”

“And what the hell’s all that got to do with this pinch?” Sellers asked.

“Don’t you see?” I said. “Don’t you get the sketch? Remember that accident at Mantica Street and Garden Vista Boulevard? Figure out the time element. Now then, if you want to be a smart dick — be smart, and if you want to be dumb — be dumb. I’ve said everything I’m going to say. Put the keys back in the ignition, Bertha.”

Bertha said, “But I don’t get it, lover. What the hell has the taxicab got to do with...”

“Put the keys back in the lock,” I said. “Sellers has a chance now to either cover himself with glory, or make himself the prize damn fool of the force.”

Sellers said, “I’m not making myself a prize damn fool of anything — not with the stuff I’ve got on this Billy Prue.”

“You haven’t got a damn thing on her except coincidence,” I went on. “Billy and I were having an affair before I left. She knew I was coming back. I couldn’t be with her in the apartment where she was living without having Pittman Rimley blow my guts out. She got this apartment in the Fulrose Apartments so we could be together. It was a love nest. That’s where I was last night, and why Bertha couldn’t find me.”

“You son-of-a-gun,” Bertha said half under her breath, and put the keys back in the ignition.

Frank Sellers sat there for as much as thirty seconds without saying a word. Then he pressed his foot on the starter button, slammed the car into gear and made a U turn in the middle of the block. The siren started wailing again and the red spotlight blinked on and off.

We swung around the turn from Garden Vista Boulevard into Mantica Street and the broken-nosed cab driver was still at the wheel of his car.

Sellers braked the car to a stop alongside the taxi driver.

Shifty little eyes glittered out from either side of the broken nose.

“What’s eating yuh?” the cab driver asked.

Sellers said, “Yesterday afternoon there was a smashup on Mantica Street and Garden Vista Boulevard. Know anything about it?”

“I heard it.”

“Pick up a fare right afterwards?”

Broken nose frowned, then said, “Yes. What’s it to you?”

“Man or woman?”

“Woman.”

“What did she want?”

The glittering little eyes met Sellers’ for a moment, then shifted.

Sellers suddenly threw open the door of the car, walked around and stood with his broad shoulders hulking against the side of the taxicab. He whipped open the door of the cab. “Come out of that,” he said to the driver.

Broken nose sized him up, hesitated.

Sellers’ hand shot forward, took a good grip on the necktie and shirt of the cab driver. He gave a jerk. “I said come out!”

The cab driver came out and was suddenly respectful. “What is it you want?” he asked.

“Your fare. What about it? Who was it?”

“A woman,” he said. “She wanted me to shadow a couple of cars that she said would be coming around the corner.”

“Keep talking,” Sellers said.

“When the car came around the corner on Mantica Street, we followed along. Then I noticed a second car was tagging after the first. I told my fare about it. She said never mind the second car, to stay with the first one. It was only about three blocks. They stopped down here at an apartment house. A man went in. The woman in the other car drove away. My fare told me to wait. We waited for about ten minutes.”

“Go ahead.”

“Then a jane came out of the apartment, jumped in a car and drove away. My fare got excited. She got out, handed me a five dollar bill and said, ‘That’s for security on the fare.’ She walked into the apartment house and was gone about ten minutes in all. Then she came back, got in the cab and said, ‘Drive to the Rimley Rendezvous.’ ”

“We drove up to the Rimley Rendezvous. Some bastard had parked a car where it took up most of the cab space. I said, ‘Wait a minute and I’ll bust this car out of here!’ But she didn’t wait. She got out. She had to walk clean around the parked car. She walked around it and on into the Rimley Rendezvous. A guy came out and climbed into the parked car. I tried to shake him down for a buck. He wouldn’t shake. I had five bucks for a sixty cent ride, so I let him pull the old stall about having been shoved ahead into the cab space.”

“Notice anything peculiar about this woman’s handbag?” Sellers asked.

The cabbie looked at him with a certain dawning respect in his eyes. “She had something pretty heavy in her handbag. It stuck out. I thought it might have been...”

“A rod?” Sellers asked as the man hesitated.

“Uh huh. Only it wasn’t a rod.”

“Perhaps a hammer or a small hand ax?”

Sudden realization showed in the little eyes. “Hell,” the cabbie said disgustedly, “that’s what it was — and me wondering if it was a rod!”

“What did this woman look like?” Sellers asked.

“Not bad looking,” the driver said appreciatively. “Nice legs, swell hips, nice complexion. Teeth a little too big, that’s all. Horse-toothed when she smiled.”

“Fry me for an oyster!” Bertha exclaimed under her breath.