The Copper Frame

Chapter 12

The Saturday, January 3 issue of Buffalo’s morning paper reported Saxon’s suspension on its front page. The new mayor was quoted extensively to explain the suspension. In part the item read:

Saxon felt grim amusement at Adam Bennock’s characterization of himself as a “reform” mayor. The adjective would probably give Ben Foley apoplexy.

Since by the time he arrived in Buffalo early Saturday morning the whole city knew of his suspension, he decided it would be a waste of time to try to get to any information from police headquarters. The past relationship of the Iroquois police and the Buffalo police had always been excellent, and Saxon was personally acquainted with the chief and most of the division heads. But he knew that most cops hold rapists in the same contempt they hold blackmailers, and he could hardly expect a very favorable reception at Buffalo police headquarters if he started inquiring about a woman he was supposed to have raped.

Instead his first stop was the city morgue.

He was a day too late to view the remains of Grace Emmet. A fat, rather unpleasantly affable morgue attendant told him the body had been released to a relative from New York City the evening before.

“Helter and Fork Funeral Home picked her up,” the man said. “You could still probably find her there, ’cause they have to embalm her before shipping her back to New York. Shouldn’t think you’d want to see her if you were a friend, though.”

“Why not?”

“You wouldn’t recognize her. It’ll be a closed-casket funeral. She hadda be cut out of the car with a torch. When the car went over the bank, it nosed straight down twenty feet. Folded up like an accordion. If it wasn’t for her clothes and that mink coat she was wearing, we wouldn’t even of been able to tell she was human when they brought her in. She didn’t have no face left. And she had short hair just like a man, you know.”

“It wasn’t that short,” Saxon said with a frown.

“You should see some of the men we get,” the fat attendant said, grinning lewdly. “Sure it was short. What they call a poodle cut. Bleached blonde. But we get bleached blond men too. Somebody’s always bumping off a swish. She was so banged up, they hadda identify her by fingerprints.”

“Oh? Where’d they get the fingerprint record to compare her with? She’d never been in custody here, had she?”

“Hadda send to Erie, where she was picked up. It was Grace Emmet all right. That cop with her was sure lucky he was throwed clear.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” Saxon said. “Well, thanks a lot, anyway.”

He decided not to visit the Helter and Fork Funeral Home. Primarily Saxon had gone to the morgue to make sure the body was really that of Grace Emmet. It had occurred to him that possibly her inducement to go along with the frame had been a promise to let her escape, and that Morrison had rigged the accident with some other body in the car to substitute for his prisoner. But if she had been identified through fingerprints, that killed that theory.

It had been a rather farfetched idea anyway, he decided.

From the morgue he drove to a drugstore and checked the phone book for the address of an Anthony Spijak. The man was listed as living on North Street just off Delaware — which was a section of big, expensive homes. Five minutes later he parked in front of a large brick house, followed a winding, freshly shoveled walk to its wide porch, and rang the doorbell.

A dark, good-looking woman of Saxon’s age answered the door. She looked at him in surprise. “Why, Ted Saxon!” she exclaimed. “We were just talking about you!” Then her face slowly colored with embarrassment.

“You saw the morning paper, huh?” he said dryly. “Tony home, Marie?”

“Sure. He never leaves until about eleven. Come on in.”

Pausing to kick off his overshoes and leave them on the porch, he stepped into a small entry hall off a wide front room which, he could see, was expensively furnished in modern American. Marie Spijak took his coat and hat and hung them in a guest closet, then led the way into the front room.

“Tony!” she called.

A tall, darkly handsome man with black curly hair appeared from the rear of the house. Shirt sleeves rolled to his biceps exposed muscular forearms covered with fine, curling black hair. He too was about Saxon’s age.

The man grinned broadly when he saw Saxon. Advancing with hand outstretched, he said, “How are you, Ted, old buddy? I ain’t seen you since your old man ran me out of Iroquois.”

Clasping the hand, Saxon said with an answering grin, “You have to admit you deserved it, Tony.”

“I guess trying to run a wide-open handbook in a place like Iroquois was asking for it,” Spijak admitted. “Incidentally, I was sorry to read about your dad. He was a great guy, even if he did roust me out of my home town.”

“He certainly lasted in the job a lot longer than I did.”

“We’ve just been reading about that. Sit down; Ted. Like a drink?”

Saxon shook his head. “Too early for me.”

“I have beer for breakfast. Keeps me in shape.” Seating himself in a chair opposite Saxon’s, Tony Spijak said to his wife, “How about a beer for me, hon?”

Marie disappeared in the direction of the kitchen.

Glancing around at the expensive furnishings, Saxon said, “You seem to be doing pretty well, Tony. The bookie business must pay well. I assume you’re still in it, aren’t you?”

Spijak cocked an eyebrow. “You asking as a cop or as an old buddy?”

“I’m not a cop any more. You read the paper. I wouldn’t have any jurisdiction here, anyway.”

Spijak grinned. “You sure made the front page. What the hell got into you, anyway? Were you drunk?”

“It was a frame,” Saxon said.

Marie returned with a glass and an opened can of beer in time to hear the last remark. Handing them to her husband, she said, “I told you there was some mistake, Tony. I knew Ted wouldn’t do a thing like that.”

Spijak poured beer into the glass and set the can on the floor. “Marie used to have a crush on you in high school,” he said amiably. “I don’t think she ever quite got over it.”

“Don’t be silly,” Marie said, blushing.

“Remember the time your old man caught us skipping school?”

“I can still feel in it the seat of my pants,” Saxon said with a rueful smile.

“He was a great old guy. If he was alive now, he’d probably give it to you across the seat of the pants again for this deal. How do you mean, it was a frame?”

“You know Larry Cutter?”

Spijak paused with his beer glass suspended halfway to his lips. “I know who he is,” he said cautiously.

“He’s looking for a place to land, and I think he’s picked Iroquois. He couldn’t swing it with Dad in as chief, so I think he had him killed. He couldn’t swing it with me in as chief, either. Now they have a good, honest, dumb cop in office who wouldn’t know what was happening if Cutter opened a casino at Fourth and Main.”

Tony Spijak took a sip of his beer. “Yeah, I saw by the paper they appointed Art Marks. He was walking a beat when we were kids.”

Ted said, “You’re still in the bookie business, aren’t you, Tony?”

“Oh, I’ve got a couple of spots around. I’m not gonna tell you where, because the Buffalo cops are getting almost as tough as your old man used to be.”

“I don’t care where they are, so long as they aren’t in Iroquois. All I’m interested in is that you’re still on the inside of things. You must know the scoop on Larry Cutter.”

“I keep my ear pretty close to the grapevine,” Spijak admitted. “You have to in this business. What you want to know?”

“First, have you heard any rumors of Cutter planning to move in on Iroquois?”

“Not with any illegal operations. Everybody on the inside knows he’s behind this harness-racing business, but that’s on the up-and-up. It would make sense, though. He’s a got a pretty big organization sitting idle, and he can’t open up here. The Buffalo cops are just waiting for him to make a move, and he knows it.”

“Ever hear of a man named Edward Coombs?”

After taking another thoughtful sip of his beer, the bookmaker shook his head. “Doesn’t ring a bell.”

“He’s an accountant for the Upstate Harness Racing Association.” Taking his small notebook from his pocket, Saxon read off the man’s home address.

Spijak shook his head again. “Still never heard of him.”

“I doubted that you would have. He was in jail in Iroquois the same night Grace Emmet was. He was one of the witnesses to the supposed rape, and Cutter wouldn’t have picked a witness with any underworld connections.” He glanced at the notebook again. “How about a John Simmons?”

Spijak gave him a peculiar look. “Hardnose Simmons?”

“I wouldn’t know of any nickname he had.” From the notebook Saxon read aloud the man’s home address.

“That’s Hardnose,” Spijak said. “What about him?”

“He was the man who posted Edward Coombs’s bail.”

The bookie grunted. “I guess you were framed by Larry Cutter, then. Simmons is one of Cutter’s guns.”

Saxon felt a surge of elation. Here was the first actual evidence to support Ben Foley’s theory. Larry Cutter had made one stupid mistake in his carefully worked out plan to get Saxon out of office. He had wisely chosen a witness whose connection to him couldn’t be traced, then had allowed one of his gunmen to post the man’s bail.

He said, “One more question. Do you know a Sergeant Harry Morrison of Homicide and Arson?”

“That creep?”

“You do know him, huh? Is he tied in with Cutter?”

Tony Spijak looked surprised. “Cutter doesn’t have any cops on his payroll that I know of. Buffalo’s got a pretty clean force. Except for a few two-bit chiselers like Morrison who shoot angles on their own. Every police force has a few bad apples.”

“What’s Morrison’s angle?”

“One that’ll get him kicked off the force if they ever catch up with him. He’s running protection for a call girl.”

“Oh?” Saxon said.

“The rumor is that he steers customers to her, then takes away most of what she knocks down. He’s a real nice guy.”

“You know this girl’s name?” Saxon asked.

“Ann something-or-other. I don’t know her personally. I could steer you to somebody who does, if it’s important.”

“I’d appreciate it.”

Draining his beer glass and setting it on the floor next to the can, Spijak rose and crossed the room to a small writing desk. He wrote on a scratch pad, tore off the sheet and carried it over to Saxon. The paper read: Alton Zek, Fenimore Hotel, Room 203.

“The guy’s a junkie,” Spijak said. “Also a stoolie who plays both sides. But he knows everything that goes on in the vice and narcotics rackets. I don’t want you to tell him I sent you, because he’ll probably run tell Morrison you were nosing around the minute you leave, and I don’t want a guy like Harry Morrison down on me.”

“How will I get him to talk, then?” Saxon asked.

“Show him a twenty-dollar bill. He won’t give a hoot in hell who you are. He’d sell out his mother for a twenty.”

“Thanks, Tony.”