The Corpse in the Crystal

Chapter IV

It was crowded in that heavy seven-passenger sedan. But there was no chance to make a break. These lads had been recruited, because they were fast on the trigger, knew their business, and would shoot their own brothers for a grand note.

I sat beside Murder, listening to his jerky breathing. The sedan wound its way through back streets, where the one short yell we might be able to give would do no good. Streamers of fog began to slither across the headlight beams. The particular smell of grimy water lapping piers bit my nostrils. We were down in the waterfront section of warehouses, docks, slums — and slaughter houses.

The sedan drew to a stop before a huge, weather-browned building. One of the men got out of the car, opened a broad, creaking door. The sedan moved forward, tipped down, went down a wooden incline.

Nostra said, “Last stop. You will keep your hands over your heads, gentlemen.”

The chief and I got out. In the beams of the headlights we saw that we were in a huge, boxlike room. A row of hand trucks stood to one side. Empty boxes were stacked along one wall. Overhead tan a series of steel rails, huge, gleaming meat hooks hanging from pulleys here and there, on which huge slabs of meat were shunted toward the refrigerators at the far end. The slaughtering pens were not here, but were in the rear section of the building; yet the odor of the pens hung over everything.

Krile carried a flashlight, walking directly behind us as the chief and I moved forward with our hands above our heads. I knew Nostra had been lying about one thing. Whoever owned this packing house was not a friend of his. It was a legitimate place. The owner would never suspect it had been broken into and two men cooled in its refrigerators.

The lights of the car snapped off. We moved forward in single file, footsteps echoing, Krile’s light a dim, lost finger in the vastness of the place.

It was a mistake all the way through on the part of Nostra. He shouldn’t have told us to keep our hands up. We shouldn’t have been walking single file with only one flashlight behind us. Nostra shouldn’t have been leading the procession with Murder directly behind him.

If Nostra had done none of those things, Abner Murder never would have grabbed the next meat hook we passed.

Murder’s arm snapped like a small load of dynamite behind the hook. The pulley wheels supporting the heavy, three-pronged hook on the gleaming rail zinged an angry cry as the hook left Murder’s hand.

Krile yelled and Nostra turned. The crystal-gazer jerked up his arm, his face contorted. He was only five feet away. He never had a chance. The sharp tip of the hook was on a neat level with his chin...

Then I was piling into Krile. I couldn’t wring the light from his hand, but I smashed it to the floor by throwing him. The light winked out. Krile thrashed, yelled. Everything was happening between heartbeats. Men were cursing and milling about in the Stygian darkness.

Murder’s hands found Krile’s face. Still Krile hung on to me. So the chief draw back bit toe and kicked. Hit aim was good. I beard Krile lose teeth, and he relaxed in unconsciousness.

Somebody tripped over me. I cursed in a reasonable facsimile of Krile’s voice. I got his gun, located the chief by feeling around for him. I fired the gun three times. I wasn’t aiming at anything, simply away from Murder and myself.

We dropped fiat on our faces before the last shot had died. Everybody started shooting, which is the spark I’d wanted to set off. They were still banging away in the dark, insane with panic, when the chief and I inched out of one of the packing house windows.

Four blocks away we found a drug store. Murder dropped a nickel in the phone and dialed headquarters. He got Tim Brogardus on the wire and told Tim about the little party in the packing house. “But never mind that, Tim,” he said, “send some of your minions to pick up the pieces. If any of them are still alive, we’ll want them for questioning. We especially want Duvarti and Krile to spill their brains. Krile at least will be alive, I think. You’ll find him on the floor unconscious.”

Murder paused. At the other end, Brogardus evidently had picked up another phone and was yelling orders to be dispatched to squad cars.

Then Murder said, “Here’s what I want you to do, Tim. Pick up Wendel Hobbs, Linda Sloan, and her piggish husband. Take them to my office. If you get there before we do, use one of your passkeys and wait. By the way, Tim,” he added, “you might have told your squad car lads that Nostra will be hanging around when they get to the packing house.”

Tim worked fast. The chief and I had to hoof several blocks to find a cab. We trudged up to the office and saw that the light was on. We opened the door, and they were there. Tim. Gregory Sloan. Linda Sloan. Wendel Hobbs.

Murder surveyed them, closed the door, took a turn around the room like a lecturer preparing to start his talk. The chief really lived at moments like these.

He addressed Wendel Hobbs, “I asked you here, Mr. Hobbs, in order that you might enjoy knowing the identity of the person who was wringing money from you.” Murder fastened his gaze on the lovely Linda Sloan.

She half rose from her chair. “No!”

“Yes!” the chief mimicked sardonically. “You want details? Here they are. The whole business was a combine to extort money from wealthy men. Scare them half to death, stage a lot of spectacular stuff, and demand money as the price of their staying alive. That’s the motive. Simple enough?

“Except for Frank Snow. He was killed because he was getting wise to the setup and trying to muscle in. Just as Luke and I were slated to be killed because you weren’t sure Snow hadn’t talked to us. You knew he’d sent us a packet containing evidence with an envelope inside the manila envelope sealed and inscribed with something like ‘Not to be opened except in case of my death.’ He was doing that to hold you in line.

“But you found out he’d sent the packet to me. You had Krile and Duvarti ready to lift it, but you didn’t know whether or not I was wised up to a certain extent already. So I was supposed to be removed in the usual spectacular way. For every one of the deaths served two purposes — they created confusion, thereby covering the identity of the murderer; and they created fear in men like Wendel Hobbs who were going to pay off in millions.

“Loren Cole was one such man. But he didn’t pay, so he was made an example to others who might get ideas of balking.”

“But how, Ab?” Tim Brogardus demanded.

“Frank Snow and Loren Cole were murdered by window washers,” the chief said. “Nostra was just a puppet in the game, contacted and hired to write these notes, all of which built the bizarre in the minds of future extortion victims.

“It was a simple matter to remove two workers from the Apex Window Washing Service this morning with bullets in their temples. Then a couple of huskies don the uniforms, drop the lines and platforms and start washing windows — until they get to the office of Loren Cole and Frank Snow. They take those offices one at a time, working as a pair. They open the window — or if it’s locked they tap on it — and tell Cole and Snow to please excuse them, that they want to wash the inside of the windows.

“So Cole and Snow, possibly even experiencing a momentary first instant of fright, think nothing more of it. Cole turns his back and they break his neck, place his body on the floor along with a toy automobile they’ve stolen from his home or bought in a dime-store toy department.

“Snow turns his back, and the two of them cram his head in a pail of their water. They dry his head and face, and he’s apparently drowned with no water near. Just who the two ‘window washers’ were is a minor detail that we’ll And out when your boys really get rolling to tie up the loose ends, Tim.”

“No!” Linda Sloan sobbed. “I wasn’t behind it! I didn’t do it!”

“But you will talk!” Murder said. “Not on the stand of course, for a woman can’t testify against her husband. But you’ll tell us enough off the record to make a confession come easy and lighten the grief you’re going to carry. You were an accomplice, working from inside, putting pressure on the rich guys and building the idea of Nostra and death! Not to mention the way you worked on Hobbs with the bodies planted in his den!”

Gregory Sloan bounded to his feet. “I won’t take your insinuations, Murder! I’m a sick man. I’ve just been out of the hospital a few hours. I was in bed when I graciously consented to come here when Brogardus phoned me.”

“Sit down,” Murder said coldly. “You’re a killer and you’re going to take all the insinuations I can hand out. You were the man behind it all. It’s no secret around town that the last election upset your apple cart. So you picked this way of getting rich quick.

“Sure, you were poisoned. You included yourself right in your list of victims. You even sent the carbon of the note you’d supposedly received from Nostra along with the other carbons that went to Wendel Hobbs. Carbons that were one more tiny example of the dozens of ways your pressure mounted on your victims. You knew that if you were among the victims, there was a good chance you might get caught. One of your hoods might have talked a little too much. There might have been a slip somewhere.

“I suspected you of giving yourself a slight dose of poison — not too much of course — this morning when Tim told me your secretary had rushed in your office and given you luke warm water and baking soda, a good emetic. The water and soda were both on your desk where you’d put them in advance!

“I was positive it was you, Sloan, when I came up to your hospital room and heard you blessing out your secretary for coming into your office at one thirty-five when you had told her in advance to come in at one thirty sharp. That five minutes could have been fatal had the poison been stronger.

“We’ve got Krile. He’ll talk. Linda here is in a jam. She’ll talk. How long do you think you’ll last, Sloan?”

Gregory Sloan whimpered, bolted for the door. I hit him, and he staggered back across my desk, his hand to his cut lips. He slouched there and held out his other hand to Wendel Hobbs.

“Help me! You’ve got money. You can hire lawyers! I’m sorry I did what I did to you. Your money is in my safe at home. Help me.”

Wendel Hobbs looked at Sloan, and Sloan’s words died. His piggish gaze dropped before that of the old man. I looked at Sloan, his pleading words to the man he had victimized echoing in my ears. I knew that not even Abner Murder would ever fully understand the criminal mind. Tim mumbled a thanks, pulled his gun, and herded Linda and her broken, sobbing husband out. The door closed behind them. The chief turned to Hobbs and cleared his throat.

“Mr. Hobbs, I feel I should tell you that my price for recovering lost or stolen property is a mere ten per cent. Now since your money is now known to be neatly tucked away in Gregory Sloan’s safe.”

Old man Hobbs laughed, pulled a checkbook from his pocket. Without hesitation he wrote a nifty. Ten grand, with the notation in the corner of the check, For services rendered — in more ways than one.

“I’ll watch the company I keep, Mr. Murder. I met Linda Sloan at a rather wild party one night. She was the first contact.”

He shook the chief’s hand and walked out. Murder sat down, blowing tenderly on the check. “Luke, call my wife and tell her to put on the coffee and break out the cream puffs. We’re doing to have a celebration!”

Celebration? With ten grand who — besides Abner Murder — would care anything about cream puffs!