Meet Me at the Morgue

chapter 8

I met her an hour later in what passed for the local morgue. It was actually the back room of an undertaking establishment near the courthouse. The dead man had been brought there to wait for the deputy coroner, who had gone sailing. Cause of death was not in doubt, but there would have to be an autopsy.

Identity was in doubt. The Highway Patrol had given us rapid service on the license number, and were tracing the car itself. It had been licensed in Los Angeles to one Kerry Smith, who gave his address as the Sunset Hotel, a transients’ hostel near Union Station. The Sunset Hotel reported that no Kerry Smith had been registered there, at least since the first of the year; and the name Kerry Smith did not agree with the initials A.G.L.

The anonymous man lay on a rubber-tired table against a coldly sweating concrete wall. Sandy the bellhop had looked down at his face, nodded in nervous recognition, and been booked as a material witness. A few minutes after Sandy was led away protesting, Helen Johnson came in out of the sunlight. She was dressed in high fashion, in hat and veil and gloves. The color of the suit she had chosen was black. In the fluorescent light her hair looked almost black, and her eyes black. Ann Devon was with her.

Death, which banishes the dead to unimaginable distances, brings the living closer together sometimes. The two women linked arms and formed a unit against the silent wind blowing from those distances. Behind them Cleat, lieutenant of detectives, gnawed impatiently on a remnant of cigar. Our eight eyes were drawn to the body against the wall, and wavered away from it.

“What does it mean, Howie?” Ann said. Still in her working dress and flat-heeled shoes, she was shorter and shabbier than the other woman, like a younger sister or a poor relation.

“I don’t know what it means. These are the facts. This man picked up the money at the station – the bellboy he sent for it identified both him and the suitcase. Then he walked the three blocks from the station to the beach, where he’d parked his car. Someone was waiting at the car, or followed him there, stabbed him with an icepick, and made off with the money. We don’t know whether that someone was an accomplice in the kidnapping or not. We have no lead on who it was. Lieutenant Cleat’s men are canvassing the waterfront now, trying to turn up a witness.”

Mrs. Johnson reached out as if to grasp me, but her black-gloved hand stayed empty in the air. “There’s no sign of Jamie?”

“None. That doesn’t mean anything. We didn’t expect to find him here in town. This man was obviously detailed to collect the money. He couldn’t have handled both the money and the boy. There must be at least one other–”

“Fred Miner?”

“That’s our working hypothesis, ma’am,” Cleat said heavily. “Miner’s melted into thin air, along with the boy. It didn’t happen by accident.”

“No.” Her face began to crumple, then straightened itself. “I’ve been thinking wishfully. I hated to believe it.”

Cleat caught my eye and held it, rather grimly: “It’s what I always say. Once a man starts to go bad, he’s bound to go all the way.”

It was no time to argue. I said to Mrs. Johnson: “What does your husband think of this development?”

“I haven’t dared tell him. I left him sleeping, poor dear. Well.” She squared her shoulders and turned to Cleat. “You brought me here to see him, didn’t you? I might as well get it over with.”

“We looked at it like this,” Cleat said. “If him and Miner were in cahoots, you might have seen him with Miner some time, or maybe loitering around casing the joint. He certainly had a line on your routine, mail deliveries and such. I realize it’s a painful ordeal, ma’am.”

“Not at all. I’ve frequently handled cadavers.”

Cleat’s eyebrows jumped.

I said: “Mrs. Johnson was a nurse. But wouldn’t Mrs. Miner be more likely–?”

“I got her waiting outside. Now, Mrs. Johnson, if you don’t mind.”

She and Ann approached the table. Cleat switched on a hanging lamp above it and adjusted the toupee. A.G.L. looked straight up into the light without blinking.

“I’ve never seen him.”

Cleat removed the toupee. The bald head gleamed. Ann caught her breath and leaned forward, craning her neck sideways.

“Head’s sunburnt on top,” Cleat said. “I figure he didn’t always wear the hairpiece.”

“No,” Helen Johnson said clearly, “I have never seen him.”

Ann said nothing. They went out together. Ann called back through the closing door: “I’ll be in the office.”

The door was opened again almost immediately, and Mrs. Miner came in. Cleat seized her roughly by the arm:

“I want you to take a good hard look now, Mrs. What’s your first name?”

“Amy.”

“I want the truth now, Amy. You know him, say so. You have any doubts, I’ll give you a little while to make up your mind. That clear?”

“Yessir,” she answered tonelessly.

“Whatever you do, don’t lie to me, Amy. That’s what they call suppressing evidence. It’s just as bad as the original crime itself. That clear?”

“Yessir.”

“You know and I know,” Cleat said, “that if this fella here was mixed up with your husband, you’d know it. You couldn’t help knowing it–”

“Hire a hall, Lieutenant,” I said.

Amy Miner looked at me gratefully. She, too, had changed to different clothes, a knitted jersey suit that sagged on her thin body. I guessed that she had inherited it from Mrs. Johnson, or from a plumper version of herself.

Cleat placed an arm around her back and propelled her to the table. She winced away, more from Cleat than from the body. Cleat jerked her back by the arm. He hated criminals. He hated anyone connected with criminals.

I moved up behind him. “Easy, Lieutenant.”

His voice remained perfectly bland. “Now watch it, Amy.” With a showman’s gesture, he manipulated the toupee.

Her breath made a small shrill sighing in her nose. “No, I never saw him.”

“Wait now, just take your time.” He whisked the toupee off.

“No,” she said. “I never saw him, with Fred or anybody else.”

“His initials are A.G.L. Doesn’t that suggest a name to you?”

“No. Can I go now?”

“Take one more good look.”

She looked down and wagged her head sharply, twice. “No. And I can tell you, my Fred didn’t do it. He never lifted his hand against man or beast. Never in all the years I’ve known him.”

“What about last February?” Cleat said.

“That was an accident.”

“Maybe. This was no accident. Maybe that wasn’t either. We got two unidentified bodies now. They’re piling up like cordwood. Where’s Fred, Amy?”

She said in a still, cold fury: “If I knew I wouldn’t tell you.”

“Do you know?” Cleat towered over her, working his eyebrows.

“I said I didn’t. Ask me some more if you want, though.”

Balling his fist, Cleat thrust it up into contact with her chin, and held it there. They stared into each other’s eyes like trysting lovers. Cleat moved his fist upward slightly. Her head snapped back.

She stepped away. Her features sharpened to a cutting edge. “Rough me up, why don’t you? Fred isn’t here to protect me.”

“Where is he then? You’re his wife. He wouldn’t leave without telling you.”

“He said that he was coming into town, to see Mr. Linebarge. That’s all he said.”

Cleat glanced questioningly at me.

“She’s telling the truth,” I said. “Miner came to my office this morning. I told you that.”

Cleat turned back to the woman, hunching his shoulders melodramatically. “What else did he tell you, Amy?”

“Nothing.”

“Who’s A.G.L. here?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

He lifted his open hand, which resembled a rough-cut piece of one-inch planking. Her eyes followed its movement in fascination.

I stepped between them, facing Cleat. “Break it up, Lieutenant. If you want to question her, use words. You have a few.”

There was a brisk tapping on the door.

“I’m doing my job,” he said. “It wouldn’t be so tough if you’d do yours. I don’t care how you treat your Goddamn clients. Only keep them in line, that’s all I ask. Keep them out of trouble, out of my hair.”

I had no good answer. Miner had made me vulnerable.

The door swung wide, flooding half of the room with sunlight. The uniformed policeman on guard outside said, with the air of a butler announcing a V.I.P.: “Mr. Forest is here, from the F.B.I.”

“Fine.” Cleat swung his cigar towards Amy Miner: “I want this biddy locked up as a material witness. No bail.”

“Witness to what?” she cried on a rising note. “You can’t put me in jail. I haven’t done nothing.”

“It’s for your own protection, Mrs. Miner.” The formula came out pat. “We let you run around loose, you could end up in an alley with an icepick in your neck.”

She turned to me, her thin torso leaning tensely forward from the hips: “How can he, Mr. Cross? I’m innocent. They haven’t got nothing on Fred even.”

“Lieutenant Cleat has the right,” I said. “Your husband’s under suspicion. They’ll let you go as soon as he’s cleared.”

“If,” Cleat said.

She batted her eyes like a scared filly, and ran for the door and the sunlight. The man who was coming in caught her around the waist, immobilized her flailing arms and passed her to the police guard. The guard pushed her towards the black car that was waiting in the drive. Her angular shadow merged with the shadow of the car.

The young man in the doorway was florid and stocky. His silhouette was almost square in a double-breasted business suit.

“I’m Forest, Special Agent,” he said briskly, and shook hands with efficient heartiness. “Our technicians are coming down in the mobile unit, should be here very soon. I understand there’s a ransom note?”

I quoted it, almost verbatim. It kept repeating itself in the back of my mind, like a song that was too ugly to forget.

Forest’s quick brown eyes steadied and sobered. “Nasty piece of work, eh? Who’s in charge of the case here?”

“Lieutenant Cleat is. The corpus was found in the city. But the boy lives in the county. If Miner snatched him, the crime originated in sheriff’s territory.”

“You with the sheriff’s department?”

“I’m a probation officer.” I explained who Miner was, and my connection with the case.

Forest turned to Cleat. “Call the sheriff, will you please, Lieutenant?” He added in a rather doctrinaire tone: “Cooperation with local agencies is our first principle.”

Cleat glanced involuntarily at the body on the table. It had been all his until now. “Okay.” He removed his cigar, threw it on the concrete floor, ground it to shreds with his heel, and left the room. A bleat of organ music came through the inner door before he closed it.

Forest went to the body. His practiced hands dove in and out of the pockets. “Ugly customer, eh?”

“Handsome is as handsome does. I searched him when I found him. Nothing useful, except a pocket comb with his initials, A.G.L. The murderer didn’t want him identified too soon.”

“He was stabbed, wasn’t he? Where’s the weapon?”

“It was done with an icepick. They’re testing it for prints now. I don’t think they’re going to find any.”

“Icepicked, eh? And hijacked. It could be a big-time mob at work. Fifty thousand is a lot of hay. The parents wealthy?”

“The father has half a million or so, according to the rumors.”

“Like to talk to him.”

“He’s at home, ill. The mother’s probably in my office now. It isn’t far.”

“She have the ransom letter?”

“I think she left it at home.”

“We want to get to work on that. They’re bringing our file along for comparison. Modus operandi is primary in a kidnap case. It’s like a compulsion neurosis repeating itself. Not that it often gets a chance to repeat.”

He shot his cuff with a peculiarly mechanical movement, and looked at his watch. I half expected him to suggest we synchronize our watches.

“Twenty past three,” he said. “Let’s get going. You can give me a rundown on the way and I’ll check back here later.”

We cut across the courthouse grounds. A trusty was mowing the lawn with a power mower. The cut grass smelled fresh and sweet, and after the pavement the springy turf was pleasant underfoot.

I talked and Forest listened. He listened well. I had the impression that my words were being recorded on rolls of permanent tape whizzing round in his skull.