Sir Lancelot’s Crime Wave

Chapter Two Song and Dance

He left her in the car. The lot was at the rear of the office building where Ballou and Stark rented a full floor. The tiny gate house was brightly lighted and the lights gleamed on a sign that read: Not open to the public.

Jamison’s heels were loud on the gravel. The old attendant put down his magazine. He had a scar that bisected both lips and twisted his mouth. His speech was thick and hard to understand. “Something, mister?”

Jamison took out his wallet, flashed the gold-and-blue enamel badge. “Traffic Division, pop. Understand you park Ballou and Stark cars here.”

“Three of ’em.”

“Know the men that drive them?”

“Guess I do.”

“Two weeks ago last Sunday one of those Ballou and Stark cars went through a red light at about eight o’clock in the evening. The witness didn’t get the license number. Have any idea which one it was?”

“Hard to tell, captain. All three of ’em were out, I think. No, let me see, now. Mr. Gardner’s car was in. He put it in early. He’s the sales manager. That leaves two out. Mr. Brank had one and some new salesman, blond fella, had the other. Mr. Brank is the head salesman of the company and he helps Mr. Gardner in the office, I think.”

“Know when those two came in?”

“Brank come in about midnight. The young fella was in earlier. About nine I’d say. He isn’t around any more. They got another new one. Good thing. The one that left was a smart punk.”

“How did he act that night?”

“He drove in too damn fast as usual. I was all set to give him hell when he came out of the lot.”

“Didn’t you?”

“No. He parked it over in the back corner — heard him whistling back there. Then some damn kids started slinging rocks at the cars over in the front corner there. I don’t get around so good with this leg, captain. I went over to chase the kids. When I came back, that young fella was already through the gate here and over across the street in the shadows.

“He’d tossed the car keys in on the floor of the shack here. Too damn important to put ’em on the table and keep an old man from having to bend over. I yelled after him not to drive in here so fast. But he didn’t hear me, I guess. He was still whistling.”

“So it was Brank or Kiern, eh?”

“That’s his name! Kiern. How come you know it, captain?”

“I checked with the office, pop. Who is your nomination for running the light?”

“I’d say Kiern. Brank is as old as I am and he drives the car like it was full of eggs. But Kiern doesn’t work here any more, I guess. My Lord, you people really run down these traffic cases, don’t you?”

“Routine, pop. Thanks a lot. Did you catch the kids?”

“Me? Hell, I never even got a look at ’em. Instead of messing around with somebody running a light two weeks ago, you ought to haul in these brats denting good cars with rocks and busting them with eggs and such. I told Mr. Gardener about it a hundred times.”

He was still grumbling as Jamison walked back on down to where he’d left his aged coupe. He climbed in behind the wheel, gave Corrine a cigarette, waited for the dash lighter to pop out.

“Did you get anything?” she asked.

“Hard to say, Corrine. How good a business does Ballou and Stark do?”

“Why... I suppose it’s all right. The big drug companies sell direct to the retailer. We handle lines for companies that sell on a national scale, but are too small to have a sales force. Of course, it’s a pretty competitive business. We maintain bulk warehouses at key points for some items, and merely send orders on to the manufacturers for others. It’s a very old firm. Mr. Ballou has been dead for twenty years. Mr. Stark is retired and lives in the south of France. What has that got to do with it?”

“I don’t know yet. There’s a warehouse here?”

“Quite a big one. On Front Street near the docks. Lots of times the local salesmen go down there and pick up small orders and deliver them directly.”

He smoked in silence. Some latent alertness in him had been aroused.

She said, “Lieutenant, you’re looking quite grim, you know.”

“You’ll be calling me that at the wrong time. Make it Jamie.”

“Then Jamie is looking grim.” She touched his arm. “Please tell me if you think I might be right... about Johnny.”

He brushed her question off by saying, “We can’t do any more tonight. I’ll take you home. But first we’d better eat.”

“You’re my guest.”

“Nonsense! I’ll pay.”

“Dutch, Jamie, or I insist on being taken home...”

At ten o’clock Isaac Jamison, alone in the apartment he shared with Carl Case of Homicide, searched through the desk drawers until he found the large-scale city map he was looking for.

He spread it out on the desk top, the phone book beside him. Kiern had checked out of his apartment at seven-thirty. He had left the car at the lot at nine. No suitcases had been found in the car and Charlie, the attendant, would have noticed if Kiern had been carrying any.

With a red pencil, he drew an X where the apartment house was, another at the parking lot. The distance between them was about thirty city blocks and, since it was necessary to angle across town to get from one to the other, he calculated the average driving time between the two as about twenty-five minutes. That gave Kiern sixty-five minutes to dispose of the bags.

Corrine had given him a neatly typed list of all the customers Kiern had been authorized to call on. He checked the addresses in the phone book. The hundred and twenty drugstores were all in the southeast portion of the city. It took him an hour to mark them all with a red dot.

Then he carefully shaded the entire area. Kiern’s territory had been a kidney-shaped area taking in several suburban shopping areas plus what could be called a slum area. It was that portion of the city furthest from the waterfront.

By driving with respectable speed Kiern could have gone from the apartment out to the middle of his territory, spend ten or fifteen minutes there, and then driven back to the parking lot in midtown.

Of course there was always the possibility that Kiern could have gone directly to the railroad station, checked the bags, returned the car to the lot and then gone on to take a train out of town. But it would have made more sense to take the bags to the lot, hail a taxi outside the lot. It would have saved time and trouble and there were plenty of cruising cabs in the area of the parking lot at night, as it was only a block or so from the theater district.

He made another X, after looking up the address of the Ballou and Stark warehouse. By taking a crosstown thoroughfare, a man could drive from Lincoln to the warehouse, and then downtown to the lot in possibly five or ten minutes more than would be needed to drive directly to the lot. That would give Kiern an hour, more or less, at the warehouse.

Jamison looked down at the map and it was as though he were suspended high over that city on a Sunday night two weeks before. The little black sedan was down there on the street. It waited. Kiern got in it and drove off. Where did he go? And why? If he already had a new address, it would seem reasonable that he would have given that address to the building superintendent.

He was still sitting there at midnight when Carl Case came in. Carl sat down, tenderly took off his shoes and groaned. “Oh, you lucky, lucky guy. I get a car from the department and then I can park it within a mile of where I want to go every time. You have it soft, lad. Soft.”

“Want to trade?”

“I didn’t until today. Joe told me you were locked in for a long time today with some very nice stuff.”

“Joe talks too much. She’s a nice girl.” Jamie took a deep breath. “I took her out to dinner to talk over her problem.”

Case gave him a look of burlesque surprise. “Jamison, the woman hater! Jamison, the strong and silent man! Dating girls now! The earth has faltered on its majestic orbit around the sun. I am speechless.”

“I wish you were.”

Case padded over in his stocking feet and looked over Jamison’s shoulder at the map. He stopped smiling. He said:

“Jamie, you and I are friends. You got a rough assignment. But just between us coppers, let me suggest that you don’t go hero for some babe, without orders.” Jamison quietly folded up the man and stuffed it in his shirt pocket. He lit a cigarette and leaned back. “Homicide needs people with long noses,” he said.

Case flushed, turned and went into his bedroom. In a little while Jamison heard the roar of the shower...

Jamison got some information on the phone, made an appointment, skipped his lunch to keep it. Roger Leesh, the C.P.A., was a burly young man with his big hands, a lurid sports jacket and a customer’s smile.

Jamison took the chair Leesh indicated. He said, “I made it sound over the phone as if this were official business, Mr. Leesh. It isn’t. I’m acting as a private citizen with no authority whatsoever. I found out you audit the books of Ballou and Stark. I know that your relationship with your clients is confidential. So you can tell me to go to hell.”

Leesh grinned. “I like that! Right to the point. Look at it this way, Lieutenant. Some time you might come in with authority. The truth is, I wouldn’t feel right about answering questions. Some questions. Try a few. If I don’t like them, I’ll hedge.”

“Ballou and Stark makes money?”

“If it were a corporation instead of a limited partnership, I wouldn’t be in a rush to buy up a lot of stock.”

“It will keep on going for a long time?”

“Call it the transfusion method. Money is the blood of business. Mr. Gardener, one of the partners, is a transfusion expert.”

“Do they worry?”

“They don’t seem to. That’s not my business. Maybe it’s a hobby with Mr. Stark. Maybe he sends Gardener the transfusions. I wouldn’t know.”

Jamison thought in silence for a time. He said, “No more questions.”

“That was a lot easier than I expected, Lieutenant. I don’t have to say anything about your keeping the mouth firmly closed, do I?”

“Not a word.”

“Now I’ll ask one. Is there any danger of my losing a client?”

“There’s always that danger,” Jamison said...

During the afternoon, during a lull in the procession of people who considered themselves too important to get traffic tickets and had to be disillusioned, Jamison called a salesman friend of his, asked some questions, jotted down terminology on a scratch pad.

And then he called Mr. Gardener. He said, “My name is Hunt, sir. I’m lining up wholesale houses for a new product called Lynadrine. We—”

“We can’t take on any new items at this time,” Gardener said bruskly.

“But we’re spending upwards of a million in national advertising, guaranteeing you a local sale of at least a hundred thousand dollars a year, with an eighteen percent gross profit to your firm, Mr. Gardener.”

“The offer is attractive, Mr. Hunt, but we find that our present lines are all that we can handle at this time. Thank you for thinking of us.” The line clicked dead.

Jamison hung up the phone, slouched in his chair and frowned at the far wall.

At six he met Corrine. She had taken the day off, and found the jewelry store, had the name and address of the clerk who had made the sale. The clerk was young and lived with his parents. They caught him just as he was on his way out.

“Sure, I remember the guy. What’d he do? Steal the dough to buy the ring? It cost him nine hundred and fifty.”

“How did he pay?”

“Cash, mister. Cash on the line. All in fifty dollar bills.”

“Did he act any different than any other customer?”

“He seemed happy and he told me that the ring was for the most wonderful girl in the world and he was whistling about ‘Happy Days Are Here Again’. Say, miss, you’re wearing the ring, aren’t you? Yeah, that’s the one. What gives?”

Jamison thought fast. He said quickly, “If you see the man again, please don’t mention this little visit. Miss Smith wants to borrow a small amount on the ring and I wanted to check and see if the purchase price was as she said.”

The clerk looked wise. “Uh... Oh, sure. Never saw you in my life. How about a lift downtown if you’re going that way?”