The Copper Frame

Chapter 18

Sunday morning Saxon didn’t go to church. His first act after breakfast, while still in robe and pajamas, was to phone the state police barracks.

Arnold Kettle had already phoned the barracks and talked to the lieutenant in charge, he learned. As a result Saxon wouldn’t have to come down to make a formal statement. In a few days he would receive an accident report form in the mail from the state Bureau of Motor Vehicles, and would be required to fill it out and return it. If there was to be any criminal investigation in connection with the accident, he would hear from the district attorney.

Saxon asked what had been the disposition of his car and was told it had been hauled from the ravine and into Iroquois by a wrecker owned by the Fellinger Repair Garage. He would have to phone the garage to learn the towing charge. When he phoned the garage, he learned he owed twenty-five dollars. The man he talked to suggested that the wreck would bring about that amount from a junk yard, and offered to call it even.

“Better leave it there until the insurance adjuster can examine it,” Saxon said. “I’ll talk to you again after he’s seen it.”

When he hung up, he looked for and located his auto insurance policy. It was a seventy-five-dollar-deductible policy and he had paid the premium. He made a mental note to phone his insurance agent first thing Monday morning.

Then he phoned Bell’s Service Station, where he bought gas, and caught owner Dick Bell on duty. The place was not merely a gas station, but also a repair garage that handled used cars.

“This is Ted Saxon, Dick,” he said into the phone. “I wrecked my car last night.”

“Yeah, I heard about it,” Bell said. “But the way I heard it, you’re not gonna want it repaired.”

“No. I’m not calling about that. Do you have anything I can use for a few days until I find out if the insurance company is going to buy me a new one?”

“Sure, Ted. How far away you going to be traveling?”

“Well, I want something that will get me to Buffalo and back.”

“Oh. Then I’d better not send you the clunker I had in mind. I thought maybe you wanted something for just around town. I have a five-year-old Dodge here in pretty good shape. I’ll have Lenny leave it in front of your house.”

“Fine,” Saxon said. “Want me to drive him back?”

“Any kid working for me who couldn’t walk two blocks I’d fire,” Bell said. “The keys will be over the visor. It’ll be there in ten minutes.”

Hanging up, Saxon went upstairs to shower, shave, and dress. Before putting on his jacket, he snapped the holster of his thirty-eight Detective Special to his belt just over his right hip. When he took his overcoat from his closet, he noticed a torn spot on the bottom hem. Examining it, he realized that it was a bullet hole and remembered the bullet plucking at the skirt of the coat as he climbed up the ravine bank. Saxon, a one-hat man, didn’t have a replacement for the one he had lost. His father had owned several, though, and their head sizes had been the same. He selected one from the closet in what had been Andy Saxon’s room.

A black Dodge sedan was parked at the curb when he left the house. The storm had spent itself during the night and it was a clear, still day. The tireless snowplows had cleared the streets before dawn and traffic had melted what little snow the plows had left. The temperature hovered just below freezing.

Saxon took the Thruway to Buffalo, on the theory that it was more likely to have been plowed free of snow than the less-used Routes Twenty and Five. It had been. He made the twenty-five miles in twenty-five minutes, arriving about eleven o’clock.

He got off at the Bailey Avenue exit and drove straight to the apartment house where Ann Lowry and Sandra Norman lived. In the lobby he threw a casual glance at the card beneath the mail slot for apartment 6-B, then did a double take.

The card read: Mrs. Helen Fremont.

Going back outside, Saxon glanced both ways at the apartment houses on either side. He had entered the central of the three buildings on the block, all right.

Back inside, he climbed the stairs and rang the bell of 6-B. A plump blonde woman of about forty-five answered the door.

Saxon took off his hat. “I’m looking for Ann and Sandra.”

Carefully she looked him up and down, her expression becoming thoughtful when she noted his red hair. “Who?” she asked with rehearsed puzzlement.

“They live here,” he explained.

“Not here,” she said. “You must have the wrong apartment.”

“Well, they did live here,” he amended. “Did you just move in here today?”

“I’ve lived here for three months, mister. All by myself. I never heard of no Nan and Sandy.”

If her stagey manner hadn’t already given it away, Saxon would have realized by the woman’s pretense of misunderstanding the names that she was a plant. He didn’t bother to argue with her. Replacing his hat, he turned and walked away without even saying good-by.

Downstairs the first apartment off the lobby, numbered 1-A, had a sign on its door reading MANAGEMENT. Saxon’s ring brought a buxom, hard-featured woman in her mid-fifties to the door.

Removing his hat, he said, “You the manager here, ma’am?”

She nodded. “But there’s no vacancies, mister.”

“I’m not looking for an apartment. I’m looking for the former tenants of 6-B.”

A film seemed to settle over the woman’s eyes. “Former tenants? The same woman’s lived there six months.”

The woman herself had claimed only three, but Saxon didn’t offer any correction. He decided on another approach. “Larry Cutter sent me,” he said.

Her gaze touched his red hair. “Never heard of him,” she said stolidly.

His damned red hair and freckles, he thought. They made him to easy to describe.

It was obvious that Larry Cutter had moved fast to make Saxon’s story of the kidnaping seem implausible, in case he reported it to the police. The two girls had been whisked out of sight and a different tenant installed in their place. The manager had been bribed to substantiate the new tenant’s story of having occupied the apartment for some time. If the police came around to investigate apartment 6-B on Saxon’s complaint, they would come away convinced he had nightmares. In case Saxon himself showed up, the new tenant and the manager had been briefed on his appearance so that they wouldn’t fall into a trap.

He could, of course, ring the bells of other apartments on the second floor and probably find tenants who recalled seeing the girls. But he doubted that a pair of call girls would have mingled much with their neighbors, so it was unlikely any would know where they had gone. He decided it would be a waste of time.

The same elderly man, wearing the same dirty shirt, was behind the desk of the Fenimore Hotel. Again he said nothing to Saxon when he walked by.

Upstairs there was no reply to his knock on the door of room 203. Trying the knob, Saxon found the door unlocked. He opened it and walked in.

No one was in the hotel room. Nevertheless, Saxon checked. A curtained alcove served as a closet. Jerking the curtain aside, he stared at two bare coat hangers hooked over the clothing rod. He let the curtain drop in place and turned to the battered dresser. Every drawer was empty. There was no sign of human occupancy anywhere in the room.

Downstairs the elderly man eyed him warily as he approached the desk.

“What happened to the tenant in two, oh, three?” Saxon inquired.

“Mr. Zek? He moved out.”

“When and where to?”

“Last night. He didn’t leave no forwarding address.”

“Did he leave alone?”

“No,” the desk clerk said. “Some friend came to help him move.”

“You know the friend’s name?”

The elderly man shook his head. “Tall, kind of skinny fellow with a mustache.”

That would be Spider Wertz, Saxon thought. Larry Cutter had lost no time in removing all witnesses who could possibly corroborate anything at all Saxon told the police. He had done as good a job covering up the blunders of his men as he had in framing Saxon.

Stalking across the lobby to the single phone booth, Saxon flipped open the book to the C section. No Lawrence Cutter was listed.

Of course not, he thought furiously. Big-shot hoods, like call girls, had unlisted phones.

He looked up Tony Spijak’s number, dropped coins, and dialed. The bookmaker himself answered the phone.

“This is Ted Saxon, Tony,” he growled.

“How are you, boy? How’d you make out yesterday?”

“Lousy,” Saxon said coldly. “Do you know Larry Cutter’s address?”

After a moment of silence, Spijak said cautiously, “Yeah, I know it. Why?”

“Because I want it.”

“I don’t like the sound of your voice, old buddy,” the bookmaker said. “You sound sore. You going to do something foolish?”

“Listen, Tony,” Saxon said. “Are you going to give me the address or not?”

“I guess so,” Spijak said reluctantly. “But I hope I don’t read about your mutilated body being found in a car trunk. Cutter can play rough.”

“Just come up with the address,” Saxon snapped.

“Keep your pants on, pal. I have to look it up in my little black book.”

A full minute passed before the bookmaker came back to the phone. “Apartment 4-C, the Gawain Apartment Hotel,” he said. “That’s on North Delaware.”

“I know the place,” Saxon said. “Thanks.”

At the Gawain Apartment Hotel furnished apartments were rented for two hundred and fifty dollars a month and up. The bigger ones, such as Larry Cutter probably had, brought six hundred a month. A self-service elevator took Saxon to the third floor. He walked along deep-napped carpeting until he came to the door numbered 4-C. He unbuttoned his overcoat and suit jacket and loosened the gun in his holster before ringing the bell.

A couple of minutes passed before the door opened six inches and the face of Farmer Benton peered out. His face was just beginning to form an expression of startled recognition when Saxon’s shoulder hit the door and smashed it wide-open, driving Benton backward several feet. The man recovered his balance and was reaching for his armpit when Saxon swept out his gun and leveled it.

Paling, the buck-toothed gunman hurriedly raised his arms overhead.

Saxon’s glance flickered over the room. It was the front room of the apartment. To the right an archway led to a dining room, and the only other door led to a central hall off which Saxon could see into a bedroom. No one except Farmer Benton was in sight.

Saxon moved forward, dipped his left hand beneath Benton’s coat and drew out his forty-five automatic.

“I don’t know why I bother,” he said. “You can’t hit anything with it anyway.” He tossed it over on the sofa. “Put your hands down. You look silly holding them over your head that way.”

Benton slowly lowered his hands to his sides.

A voice from beyond the dining room called, “Who is it, Farmer?”

Saxon had been about to ask where Larry Cutter was, but this answered his question in advance. Grasping the gunman’s shoulder, he spun him toward the dining room and said, “Move.” Stiffly Benton walked ahead of him through the dining room and to the door of a kitchen.

A powerfully built man of about forty with close-cropped blond hair sat at the kitchen table in bathrobe and pajamas. He had a square, granite-hard face and pale-gray eyes. Across from him sat a vivid, baby-faced blonde in her early twenties. She was wearing a white housecoat over a nightgown. Though it was now past noon, they seemed to be having breakfast. Both had coffee cups before them and were munching sweet rolls.

Saxon shoved Farmer Benton to one side. The gray-eyed man looked up and his eyes narrowed when he saw Saxon’s gun. He threw Benton a bleak glance.

“He caught me off balance,” Benton said apologetically. “I wasn’t expecting nothing, Larry. Nobody’s been gunning for you.”

Larry Cutter turned his attention back to Saxon. The girl gazed at Saxon wide-eyed, her jaws still mechanically chewing a piece of sweet roll.

“Know who I am?” Saxon asked Cutter.

Cutter contemplated him for a moment before saying, “From descriptions I’ve heard, I’d guess you were Ted Saxon.”

Saxon shook his head. “I never even heard of him.” He crooked his left forefinger. “Come here.”

Puzzled, the man warily got to his feet. Rounding the table, he neared to within a couple of feet of Saxon and stopped. Saxon looked him up and down. It wasn’t necessary to search the man to determine he was unarmed. The only place he could have concealed a gun was in his robe pockets, and they were perfectly flat. Saxon holstered his gun.

Larry Cutter gazed at him in astonishment. “I don’t think I understand this.”

“You will,” Saxon said.

His right fist lashed out in a short, powerful hook which caught Cutter flush on the jaw and drove him clear across the room against the sink. For a moment the man groped at the edge of the drainboard for support, then his face turned blank and he toppled forward. He hit the floor with a crash and lay still.

Benton gave Saxon a buck-toothed gawk.

“I decided it was my turn for a change,” Saxon explained.

Tipping his hat to the blonde, he turned, stalked to the front door, and let himself out.