Man-Trap

IX

“You had him right in your arms!” Day yelled at me. “Once you even had him unconscious!” He drew a deep breath. “So you just stood around until he woke up and took off.”

He was leaning over my chair, his nose approximately an inch from mine so that he could be sure I heard him clearly. Hannegan, bending above me from the other side, snorted, “Hah!” and walked over to lean against a wall.

“Can you give me any explanation at all why you didn’t report Knight in the first time you saw him?” Day asked in a controlled voice.

“Didn’t recognize him,” I said for the twenty-seventh time. “I didn’t have a description of Knight and had never seen his picture. I should have had, but I muffed it and I’m not making any excuses. I just wasn’t awake. I can’t be a genius all the time.”

“Hah!” Hannegan snorted again.

“If anyone else disappears during this investigation,” I said, “I’ll memorize his description and carry his photograph next to my heart. Why don’t you admit what you’re really mad about is Knight not being Lancaster’s killer, so you could close the case.”

“I never said he was Lancaster’s killer!” the inspector half yelled. “He was only a suspect.”

“And now who have you got?” I asked. “A hood who’s cagey enough to stay across the river until the heat dies down.”

“Seldon didn’t bump Knight,” Day muttered. “The Illinois cops have been tailing him for me, and he was at a dinner in Madden, Illinois with fifty other people when Knight got it.”

“All his guns got alibis too?” I asked dryly.

The inspector rubbed his head wearily. “I know Seldon’s alibi doesn’t mean anything. But Knight’s death doesn’t necessarily remove Knight as a suspect in the Lancaster killing either. Maybe he bumped Lancaster and the Jones woman bumped him.”

“Oh for cripes sake!” I said.

“According to you she was gone from the bar about ten minutes after Knight went upstairs,” he said doggedly. “She says she went to the ladies’ lounge, but she could just as easily have spent the time knocking off her lover.”

“The elevator operator would have remembered taking her up. And don’t tell me she walked fourteen flights, shot the guy and walked down again, all in ten minutes.”

“The elevator operator took lots of people up and down last night,” Day growled. “He wouldn’t remember one lone woman.”

“He would a good-looking one like Isobel Jones. Bet you ten bucks if you ask him about Fausta going up with me, he’ll remember her.”

“That doesn’t prove anything,” the inspector said with such lack of conviction I was convinced he had already discovered the elevator boy recalled Fausta. But to myself I had to admit only a dead man would have missed her in that dress.

“Mrs. Jones phoned Knight I was on my way up,” I told him for the dozenth time. “She didn’t even know he was dead.”

“Maybe a cover-up,” he muttered. “Anyway, we’re holding her awhile.”

“What’s her husband think?”

Frowning at his ash tray, the inspector began to search for a long butt. “He thinks we’re the Gestapo, apparently. Doesn’t believe his wife had a lover. Doesn’t believe his partner would have deceived him even if his wife would. If he wasn’t so upset, he’d have had a lawyer down here prying her out of jail, but apparently it never occurred to him. He hung around here half the night waiting for somebody to let him see her.”

“Why don’t you let him?”

“We will, soon as we get a straight story from Mrs. Jones.” Finding a cigar butt which suited him, the inspector blew it free of ashes and stuffed it in his mouth. “So far she insists she met Knight accidentally. Claims she went to bed last night the same time as her husband, couldn’t sleep and got up to take a walk. She dropped into the Sheridan simply because it was close to her home, and ran into Knight at the bar. When we jumped her about seeing him there the previous evening when she was with you, she blandly explained she assumed he had just dropped in for a drink, and she didn’t realize he was staying there. The reason she gives for introducing him by a fake name is as screwy as the rest of her statement. She says she knew you and the police were hunting Knight, and if she identified him, she’d be called as a witness. Then her husband would discover she’d been out with you instead of home in bed.”

Knowing both the inspector and Hannegan had been up half the night questioning Isobel, I couldn’t repress a grin, for I could visualize how her faintly mad manner must have slowly driven them both toward insanity. Day scowled when he saw the grin, and I erased it hurriedly.

“What did you make of the bank deposit slip in Knight’s pocket?” I asked.

“We haven’t made anything of it yet. I sent a man over to Riverside Bank when it opened, but he isn’t back yet. Jones didn’t know what it meant either. I sprang it on him about nine this morning and he nearly had a conniption fit. He took off in the direction of the bank like a scared rabbit.”

The phone rang at that moment and the inspector answered it. “Day,” he said, then grunted twice and hung up.

“Ballistics,” he offered in a discouraged voice. “The slug hit a bone and was all mashed up, just like in the Lancaster killing. All they can give me is it was a thirty-eight. And since there was no casing found in the room, probably a revolver was used.”

“Unless the murderer stopped to pick up the ejected cartridge.”

“Yeah,” Day said. “So it might be the same gun used on Lancaster, or it might not. What I like about this case is all the scientific help we get from our hundred-thousand-dollar laboratory.

“Take fingerprints. Every time somebody gets killed, the public wants to know about fingerprints. Know how many usable fingerprints we found in Knight’s hotel room? One. Exactly one. On the underside of the dresser’s glass top. Probably belongs to the guy who set the top there when the room was furnished. Every other print in the room was so smudged it was useless for comparison. Look here.” Pulling a glass paper weight before him, the inspector rubbed it clean with his handkerchief. “Now there’s a perfect surface for fingerprints, wouldn’t you say?”

“You’d think so,” I agreed.

Gently he placed an index finger against the glass. “If I touch it lightly like this, I leave a nice print. But if I press too hard...” He illustrated by increasing the pressure. “...the print smudges. Fingerprints are wonderful for identification purposes, but I never yet solved a murder by finding fingerprints on anything.”

Picking up the paper weight, he tossed it from one hand to the other a half-dozen times, then shoved it toward me. “Take that up to the fingerprint bureau and I’ll bet you ten bucks they don’t bring out a single print good enough for comparison purposes.”

Knowing Warren Day’s eagerness to part with money was approximately equal to my eagerness to part with another leg, I declined the bet. “I’ll take your word for it, Inspector. I’m convinced scientific criminal investigation, television and the horseless carriage are all flops. The blacksmith, vaudeville and homicide cops who can’t read will have their day yet.”

“Oh, the hell with you, Moon. I try to educate you a little and you crack wise.”

A knock sounded at the door, Day growled, “Yes?” and a uniformed cop entered.

“Fellow named Robert Caxton asking to see you, Inspector.”

“Caxton?” Day repeated. “Oh, that taxi driver in the Lancaster case. What’s he want?”

“Wouldn’t say, sir. Wants to talk to you.”

“All right,” the inspector said impatiently. “Send him in.”

The little taxi driver came in, scowled at me also, then turned his attention to Warren Day.

“I figured I better bring this straight to you, Inspector. I got to thinking about this phone call I got yesterday morning, and the more I thought about it, the screwier it seemed.”

“What call was that?”

“From this guy who said he was a reporter for the Morning Blade. Got me out of bed about nine yesterday morning. Usually I don’t get up till noon, see, because I work the four till midnight shift. I was half dopey with sleep, or I might have tumbled something was fishy at the time, but I never thought about it until this morning when the phone got me out of bed again and some woman asked what radio program I was listening to.” He smiled with relish. “Bet the Hooper people scratch me off their phone list. Then when I got to thinking about this reporter’s call, I dressed and came right over.”

“Well, get to it,” the inspector said impatiently. “What’d he want?”

“Just getting background for a human interest story on the Lancaster case, he said. Wanted some dope about the witnesses. Asked how long I’d run a cab, whether I was married or not. That kind of stuff. When he was finished asking about me, he said kind of casual-like, ‘Let’s see, you’re the third witness I’ve called. Thomas Henning... that’s the doorman, Manville Moon, the customer who saw it, and you. What was the name of that fourth witness again?’ Being half asleep, I said, ‘You mean Miss Moreni, the lady who runs El Patio?’ and he said, ‘That’s it. Forgot the name for a minute.’ Then he thanked me and hung up.”

All three of us were glaring at him by the time he finished. Day and Hannegan continued to look at him, but I swung my glare at the inspector.

“So you put tails on the witnesses,” I said bitterly. “If the killer approached either of them, all you had to do was grab him. But being so scientific-minded, it never occurred to you he might make use of a modern invention like the telephone.”

Day’s nose was whitening at the tip when he swung it at me. “It never occurred to you either. You knew what the setup was.”

Not deigning to answer, I jerked his desk phone from its cradle and gave the police switchboard Fausta’s apartment number. When it had rung for three minutes without answer, I hung up and tried the bar phone downstairs. Since it was only ten A.M. and El Patio did not open till noon, I was not surprised that it took another three minutes before I got an answer there. The voice that finally answered sounded like it belonged to a colored porter.

“Fausta around?” I asked.

“No suh.”

“Is Mouldy Greene there?”

“Back in his room, maybe. Want I should look?”

“Get him to the phone fast,” I snapped. “Got that? I want him right now.”

“Yes suh,” he said in a startled voice, and I heard him drop the receiver on the bar.

Another two minutes passed before Mouldy’s belligerent voice said, “Who’s in such a rush?”

“Moon,” I said. “Where’s Fausta?”

“Oh, hello, Sarge.” His voice turned friendly. “Ain’t she showed up yet?”

I felt my stomach turn over. “Showed up where?”

“Wherever you was supposed to meet her.”

“Look, Mouldy,” I said desperately. “Try to get this the first time I say it. I wasn’t supposed to meet Fausta anywhere. The guy who killed Lancaster knows she was the fourth witness, and if a fake call came for her, it was from him.”

“Huh?”

“For cripes sake, get your brains together, Mouldy. A killer may have hold of Fausta.”

“A killer? Just a minute, Sarge.” There was a dull clunk as the phone was laid on the bar.

“Mouldy!” I said. When there was no answer, I yelled, “Mouldy, you goddamned moron!”

There was still no answer, and I sat there with the phone glued to my ear a full two minutes, frustratedly glaring from the inspector to Hannegan to Caxton and then starting the circuit over again. I was almost ready to hang up and start driving toward El Patio when Mouldy returned. And by then I was so mad I couldn’t speak.

“Hadda talk to Romulus a minute,” he said calmly. “He’s the porter who answered the phone. About an hour ago the bar phone rang and Romulus answered. Some guy said he was you and he’d been trying to get Fausta’s apartment, but something was wrong with her phone. Then he told Romulus to tell Fausta to meet you at the Sheridan Cocktail Lounge at ten o’clock. She called a taxi and left here at nine thirty.

“Meet you at the Sheridan,” he said, and hung up.

As I started for the door Warren Day said, “Wait a minute, Moon. What happened?”

I stopped with my hand on the knob. Over my shoulder I said, “Your killer used my name as a lure, and Fausta may be dead by now. If you want to help rectify the results of your clever trap, start phoning cab companies to find out who made a trip from El Patio to the Sheridan at nine-thirty.”

Pulling open the door, I passed through and slammed it behind me without waiting for a reply.

In the time it took me to cross the street and climb into my Plymouth, Warren Day must have started a couple of plainclothes men on my tail, for as I pulled away I noticed a blue sedan swing into a U-turn from in front of Headquarters and fall in behind me.

As I slowed down just short of the Sheridan, it pulled next to me and the man next to the driver waved me over to the curb. I pulled into a loading zone just across the street from the hotel and climbed out of the car. The blue sedan double-parked next to me and emitted its spare passenger at the same moment.

The sedan bore nothing to identify it as a police car, but the man who got out immediately flashed a badge. He was a middle-aged heavy-set man with a bull neck and a face nearly as flat as Mouldy’s Greene’s.

“If Inspector Day set you on my tail, he didn’t tell you to get in my hair,” I snapped at him. “Check with Day later, if you want, but don’t try to stop me now.”

One or two passersby had stopped to gape at us curiously. The bull-necked man paid no attention to them, but held his coat wide so they could not fail to see his badge, and suddenly drew a short-barrelled gun with his other hand.

“Get in the back, Buster,” he ordered.

“Now wait a minute,” I said. “I’m on my way to prevent a murder witness from getting killed. Come along if you want, but if you delay me, Warren Day will have your scalp.”

There was a click as the hammer of the short-barrelled gun drew back. And a sudden thinness about the man’s lips warned me he would have no compunction about squeezing the trigger.

A trigger-happy cop, I thought with a sense of shock. The guy wants an excuse to shoot somebody.

Opening the sedan’s rear door, I got in the back.

As the heavy-set man climbed in next to me, still holding me under his gun, I said, “Don’t blame me if you end up walking a beat.”

“All right, Slim,” my arrester said to the thin-faced man behind the wheel, and the sedan moved away with a purr of power.

It was not till then that I got it.

“Oh,” I said, glancing down at the cocked gun. “I forgot you could buy tin badges in a dime store.”

“You catch fast, Buster. Just hold still now.” His left hand reached across and patted me beneath the arms and at the waist. “No artillery, huh?”

“I didn’t realize anybody was gunning for me,” I apologized. “I’ll start wearing some tomorrow. What did you do with Miss Moreni?”

“Something happen to Miss Moreni?”

The way he asked it made me think he actually didn’t know. There was a note of doubtfulness in his voice, and had it not been for the cocked gun pointing unwaveringly at my stomach, I might have gotten the impression he was upset at the thought of anything happening to Fausta.

As the car moved forward again, he said, “Speak up, Buster. What gives with Miss Moreni?”

It was my turn to regard him thoughtfully. “You really don’t know?”

“Buster, we sat in front of your apartment house since six A.M., and we’d have grabbed you when you came out at eight if Slim hadn’t gone to sleep when he was supposed to be watching. By the time he woke up you were pulling out of the garage and there was nothing we could do but tail you. Ever since we been parked across from Police Headquarters. We don’t know from nothing about Miss Moreni.”

I asked, “Why are you interested?”

His expression grew irked. “I’m going to ask once more, Buster, then put a slug in your guts. What’s with Miss Moreni?”

It did not seem to me that suppressing the story was worth a slug in the guts so I told him.

By now we were driving through Midland Park, presumably in search of a quiet spot where they could dump my body, or give me a going over, or do whatever else they had in mind. My stocky seat-mate surprised me by suddenly ordering the driver to turn around.

Nosing onto a bridle path, Slim expertly backed the cat and headed it back the way it had come.

“Hold it,” the heavy-set gunman said before the car started forward motion again. Then to me, “All right, Buster. Out you go.”

I looked at him without understanding, but when he waggled his short-nosed revolver at me, I opened the door on my side and climbed out.

“Push it shut again.”

Pushing it shut, I stared at him through the window.

“Keep your nose clean, Buster.” As the car shot forward, I heard him say, “Back to the Sheridan. And don’t spare the horses.”

They had left me approximately a mile inside the park on the road going past the Art Museum. I started to walk to a bus line.

When I got off the bus across the street from the Sheridan, my watch told me it was exactly thirty-two minutes since my heavy-set friend had abandoned me in the park. I saw no sign of the blue sedan, but my Plymouth stood where I had left it in the loading zone, unchanged except for a bright pink ticket attached to the windshield wiper.

A crowd was gathered on the sidewalk outside the Sheridan, and a uniformed cop tried to stop me from entering the Lounge.

“Sorry, sir,” he said in the mechanical manner of one who has been repeating the same phrase over and over. “There’s been an accident and the bar is closed.”

Just beyond the cop I saw the straw-hatted figure of Warren Day, an unlighted cigar in his mouth thrust upward at an angle as he peered down sourly at a sheet-covered figure lying on the floor. I was conscious of a number of other people wandering around the barroom, but Day was the only one I really saw before my eyes touched the motionless figure, and after that I couldn’t even see him.

I said, “I’m with Inspector Day,” and when the cop didn’t move aside at once, put my hand against his chest and pushed.

“Hey!” he said, staggering back.

“Take it up with the inspector,” I snarled at him, strode over to the sheet-covered figure and glared down at it.

The inspector watched silently as I fell to one knee and tenderly lifted an edge of the cloth. The body beneath the sheet was as dead as a body can get. Lips were drawn back in a grimace of agony and the face had a faintly bluish cast.

But it was not Fausta. It was a man I had never in my life seen before.

Dropping the sheet, I slowly rose and looked at Warren Day. He simply looked back at me, not even scowling for a change. Then he jerked his head sidewise at a corner of the room.

Turning, I saw one of the most welcome sights I have ever seen. Seated at a table with her back to me, calmly smoking a cigarette, was Fausta, and hovering over her in the belligerent manner of a mastiff guarding a bone was Mouldy Greene.

A half-dozen quick steps took me to the table. Sinking my fingers in her blonde hair, I jerked back her head, leaned over and planted a solid kiss on her lips.

“That’s for nothing,” I growled at her. “Scare me like this again and I’ll beat hell out of you.”

She looked up at me from round eyes, for once startled into quietness. Then she touched her lips where mine had bruised them and a wicked expression grew on her face.

“You kissed me,” she said. “In front of witnesses. Mouldy, did you see?”

“Yeah, I saw. Where you been, Sarge?”

“Later,” I said. Rounding the table, I sat across from Fausta. “Let’s have the story, Fausta. All of it, including who the dead man is.”

Warren Day pulled out a chair and wearily sat down also.

“Yeah,” he said. “Let’s have it. All I’ve been able to figure out so far is the dead guy is one of the waiters.”