The New Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction

1. One Corpse – Well Done

Slabbe lowered his after-lunch quart of beer long enough to rake in the busy telephone. “Yeah?”

Homicide Lieutenant Carlin answered. “That grifter you’re looking for, Max Lorenz – we got him.”

Slabbe changed the location of eight ounces of beer. “I should put you cops on retainer.”

“Oh, you pay your license.”

“Sure it’s him, Pat? Five feet eight, a hundred and sixty pounds, light complected—”

Carlin cackled: “Dark complected now.”

Slabbe’s big hand on the telephone hardened a bit. “That so,” he murmured.

“He was burned up,” Carlin said. “He went over Bleeker’s Canyon in a jalopy and it caught fire. Some Oybay Outscays found it this morning, what was left of it. Lorenz was in it – what was left of him.”

Slabbe’s meatblock face registered as much expression as a meatblock. “Accident, huh?”

“Am I a whirlwind?”

“They post him yet?”

“Doing it now.”

“I’ll be down.”

Slabbe drank to the last drop, left his office and walked for ten minutes and entered City Hall. The morgue was in the basement. He filled his lungs with the relatively sweet corridor air before turning the knob of the autopsy room door, held his breath, nodding to Carlin, a rangy, slope-shouldered cigar-smoker in blue serge, and squinted at the charred stuff on one of the three guttered tables.

He said: “Dark complected is right.”

Carlin never used a word when a grunt would do.

A pathologist who had rolled up his sleeves but hadn’t bothered to don a gown said to another who was acting as medical stenographer: “It’s a male. Been dead a while. Today’s Wednesday, two o’clock. Say about Monday afternoon or night. Five feet eight’ll do. Can’t guess the weight much from the ashes.”

Carlin tilted the stub of his cigar close under his long bony nose to mask the smells. “What else, doc?”

“Some lung tissues in fair shape. Tell you if he was breathing when the fire started.”

“Suppose you do that.” Carlin looked at Slabbe. “Any reason for him to have got knocked off?”

“No-o-o.”

Carlin snorted. “When you say it like that, you might mean—” He stopped; his snort had yanked the cigar stub from under his nostrils and he’d sucked in a good lungful. He gagged, covered it, whitening. He started for the door, controlling himself, then peeked at another operating table bearing something that had been picked off a tide flat and upon which the median incision had not yet been stitched. He ran.

“Sensitive for a cop,” murmured the pathologist.

“Don’t worry about him,” Slabbe said. “He can back me up any day.”

“He shouldn’t mind just one,” the pathologist said. “Monday we had – how many was it, Joe?” he asked the other medic.

“Twenty-six. Twenty passengers and the crew.”

Slabbe nodded. A Lockheed Constellation had cracked up on the take-off Monday at the airport and burst into flames. Everyone aboard had perished.

Slabbe pointed a frankfurter-thick finger at the operating table “That his thigh?”

The pathologist peered. “Yeah.”

“Bullet in it?”

“See for yourself.”

“Hard to tell,” Slabbe said. “How about an X-ray? A slug, even if it was there, could fall out or melt up. There’s supposed to be one in his left thigh, though.”

“Oh, this is the right one. Here’s the left.”

“Still can’t tell,” Slabbe shrugged. “Check it, will you? Check too, if he was pushed around, slugged or like that before he died. A good sock knocks loose fat deposits and the blood takes ’em to the lungs, right?”

The medic looked up sharply. “How did you know?”

“Read it in a book,” Slabbe said. He left.

Carlin had his pacing area of the corridor blue with cigar smoke. He grimaced. “I helped out with those bodies at the airport Monday and didn’t even flutter, but today I had kidneys for lunch. Come on upstairs.”

In his gopher-hole-sized office upstairs in the Homicide Bureau he went to the window and nursed two tall green bottles of ale in off the outside sill. He dealt one to Slabbe, fished for an opener.

Slabbe absently uncapped his bottle with his teeth. “How did you make him, Pat?” he asked. “Car license?”

“You’re gonna bust your teeth some day.” Carlin caught foam. “Yeah,” he said. “The jalopy had a Pennsylvania license tag and I phoned Harrisburg and it was registered in Lorenz’s name Saturday: ’41 Chevvy, two-door sedan. What was he up to?”

“Well, I can’t just say.”

“That’s dandy.”

“Don’t pop off now. He was a grifter and that’s for sure, so he didn’t just come here for the mountain air; but why he did come, I don’t know. He got out of Lewisburg Saturday, which accounts for him buying a jalopy in Pennsylvania. This is good ale.”

“What little bird told you this?” Carlin murmured.

“No little bird, an old buzzard – the New York manager of the Zenith Detective Agency. How come I had the weather eye out for Lorenz is I got a sort of tie-in with Zenith. No retainer, no contract or anything, understand. It’s just that I passed along some dope on a guy they had on one of their readers once and they sent me a check for fifty bucks and said I was an alert investigator that they’d remember if ever they were interested in this neck of the woods again. So last week they wanted a line on Lorenz and called me. They don’t want him for anything he did, they just want to keep him spotted for whatever he might do. Big outfits like Zenith find it pays to get there first sometimes.”

“Don’t educate me,” Carlin sniffed.

Slabbe drank. “They probably had a plant at Lewisburg and found out that Lorenz was heading this way, and the old buzzard in the New York office remembers that I’m an alert investigator—”

“You said that.”

“If I don’t, who will? Anyhow, I didn’t find out what Lorenz was up to here. I didn’t even see the guy in the flesh.”

“You saw the flesh, though. What was his rap in Lewisburg for?”

Slabbe held up an open palm, not quite as heavy and gray as a small granite grave marker. “The Zenith telegram didn’t say. All it said was he was about forty, probably armed, always dangerous. Five feet eight, a hundred and sixty pounds, light complected, blond, natural teeth, brown eyes, a limp in the left leg from a slug in the thigh picked up in a heist of some kind, years back. I told the medics to X-ray for the slug.”

Carlin stopped drinking abruptly. “You think it ain’t him?”

Slabbe’s shoulders moved like ponderous sides of beef, in a shrug that said nothing. “Today’s Wednesday. He was sprung Saturday morning. It would take time to buy the jalopy and transfer the tags and about ten hours to drive here from Lewisburg. He could have hit here late Saturday night or Sunday morning, but I put some lines out as soon as I got the Zenith telegram Saturday and none of my people saw him . . . or so they say. That’s why I contacted you and asked did you spot any strangers in town.”

Slabbe put his bottle on the scarred desk. “The doc says Lorenz fluffed off Monday. Maybe the guy wasn’t in a hurry to get here. Maybe he got drunked up along the road to celebrate and took his time, and never got to town at all. We should find out if he was in and did his stuff, whatever it was, and was on the way out again when he piled up, or if he was just heading in. Which way was the car going?”

Carlin’s dark eyes were as gloomy as his voice. “No can tell. Bleeker’s Canyon is a seventy-foot drop from the road. A car turns over going down and you can’t say where it was heading unless skid marks show on the road, which they don’t. The guard rail is gone in a couple spots and there’s curves that if you come around too fast, blooie. The fire sure as hell made smoke and a blaze, though, but nobody reported it.”

“Lonely stretch there,” Slabbe reminded. “You might see smoke in the daytime, but the way the road overhangs the cliff along there, at night you wouldn’t see any flames unless you had your head out the car window and had giraffe blood in your neck.”

Slabbe got his bulk vertical again, tossed a gumdrop into the air and caught it on his tongue. “I’ll talk to my people again. Maybe with Lorenz dead, they’ll remember something.”

“You’ll also phone Zenith and say that the circumstances of Lorenz’s death are highly suspicious, that the local police are baffled and that the services of an alert investigator are for hire.”

“You’re a cynical so-and-so, Pat,” Slabbe said mildly, and went back to his office and did it.

The voice of the Zenith Detective Agency’s New York City manager, one Enoch Oliver, purred as smoothly over the wire as one of the phone company’s dynamos. It informed Slabbe that it would be most gratifying indeed if Max Lorenz were really kaput – but by all means to make sure.

Lorenz had first attracted Zenith’s attention in 1922 when he burgled a New Jersey warehouse protected by them. He was committed to the New Jersey state reformatory May 8, 1922, and paroled December 20, 1925.

On August 12, 1928, he was committed to Elmira reformatory from Dutchess County, N.Y., for five years, for grand larceny. He was transferred to Dannemora, Auburn and Clinton prisons, being paroled from the latter March 10, 1931. Declared delinquent of parole, he was returned to Sing Sing September 16, 1931, transferred to Clinton and reparoled July 7, 1932. He was again declared delinquent of parole December 9, 1932, and returned to Sing Sing where he made an unsuccessful attempt to escape.

Transferred back to Clinton and paroled November 22, 1933, he was taken in custody by Dutchess County officers and sentenced to five years for burglary. Again he was paroled, on September 23, 1935.

He was arrested February 9, 1936, by Troy police for the Saratoga Springs headquarters, charged with grand larceny and the possession of a concealed weapon in connection with a hot car setup. He went the circuit of prisons and was released by commutation November 19, 1940.

“Busy little bee, wasn’t he?” Slabbe told the phone.

Mr Oliver agreed absently, concluded the biography with: “In June 1942, Lorenz was arrested in Pennsylvania in connection with black market operations in nylon hose, sentenced September 12 to from four to seven years in Lewisburg, from which penitentiary he was released July 6, 1946.”

A Zenith man planted in Lewisburg for the express purpose of welcoming strayed sheep back into a world of light – and incidentally learning their attitude and plans for the future, when possible – had tried to shake Lorenz’s hand at the pen gate. He’d got the hand but in the stomach, together with Lorenz’s “Scram, gum heel! You don’t have nothing on me and you ain’t gonna get nothing. You won’t even see me around in a couple days.”

Being the usual fearless type of Zenith operative, the man had oozed along in Lorenz’s wake, nonetheless, had seen him buy the ’41 Chevvy, had talked with the used-car dealer, learning that Lorenz hadn’t been at all critical of the car, though he’d paid cash. Lorenz had said that he wanted a car for only a few days and then the hell with it.

While the tags were being transferred, Lorenz had gone to a respectable enough saloon and taken on a cargo of gin and bitters. At one point he had asked for a road map and had drawn a pencil line on it from Lewisburg to Treverton, and this was how the Zenith operative – snitching the map later – had surmised Lorenz’s destination.

Slabbe clucked admiringly at the Zenith sleuth’s ingenuity and inquired if the man had by any chance checked back with prison officials to learn who had visited Max Lorenz lately, and so on.

Mr Oliver said quietly: “We have been established in this business since 1872, Mr Slabbe.”

“Excuse it,” Slabbe said.

“It’s excused,” Mr Oliver murmured. “Lorenz’s last visitor, on June 28, just eight days before he was released, was a man who operates a private detective agency in your town, Mr Slabbe.”

Slabbe sat up.

“The name is Jacob George,” Mr Oliver continued, “and it was he who deposited five hundred dollars with the warden to be paid to Lorenz upon his release, which, of course, explains how Lorenz was able to buy an automobile for cash. The price, incidentally, was three hundred and seventy-five dollars plus the cost of transferring the license tags.”

Slabbe managed something about Zenith being quite a neat outfit. Mr Oliver passed this and purred that perhaps with this information in his possession Mr Slabbe might now do a bit more than he had in the past few days, if he hoped to be considered an alert investigator by the Zenith Detective Agency. The phone clicked.

Slabbe swore quietly but emphatically, jiggled the phone, gave a number and demanded of the female voice that answered: “Where’s Jake, Susie?”

“I don’t know, Benjie. Probably on a toot, the poor guy. Hasn’t been in since Monday afternoon.”

“ ’Cause why?”

“ ’Cause a client that was going to pay heavy got killed in that plane wreck Monday.”

“Who?”

“We-ell, it’s confidential.”

“Look, Susie kid, you know me. Tell me. There’s a guy dead over this, and if Jake hasn’t showed since Monday . . . well, you better tell me.”

“Benjie! You don’t think—”

“Talk, cookie.”

“Gee, yeah! Jake was working for Mr John Nola. He was tracing somebody for him for weeks. He had a big expense account and last week he was up to Lewisburg and said the job was practically cinched if his party showed up when he was sprung.”

“Did the party show? Was he about five-eight, light complected, a limp in the left leg?”

“Yes! He came to the office about three o’clock Monday afternoon and he saw Jake and went right out. Jake called him Lorenz. On the way out he whispered to me: ‘I’m taking him to Nola’s home and we collect.’ And about an hour later Mr Nola called and said Jake’s job was done and that he’d put a check for a thousand dollars in the mail next morning. I called around for Jake, caught him at Fudge Burke’s and told him. He said we’d celebrate that night, only a little later it came over the radio that Mr Nola was one of the passengers in the plane wreck and I guess when Jake heard that Nola had burned up and wouldn’t be putting the check in the mail after all, Jake got burned up, too, and . . . Ooo, I don’t mean it like it sounds!”

“Keep your snood on, honey. And I’ll call you back.”

Slabbe called seven numbers, said each time, “Seen Jake George?” and received four “Naws,” one negative grunt and two “No, dearies.” He called City Hall, reminded Carlin that this constituted cooperating with authority and relayed his information.

“We’ll put him on the air,” Carlin said. “What are you going to do?”

“See Fudge Burke,” Slabbe said and went there.

2. The Bitter and the Sweet

It was a block-long edifice which, besides serving as rendezvous and clearing house for the underworld, rendered various public services, starting with juke jive for the kiddies and working up to pool, bowling, bingo, a night spot complete with craps and roulette and geisha girls.

One wall of Fudge’s executive-type office on the third floor was slotted one-way glass overlooking the casino and bar. Slabbe handed over his compact .38 to an expert at the metal door and waded through the sponge-rubber-cushioned oriental rug, nodded genially to the candy man.

Fudge flapped a plump hand at one of the red leather club chairs. His dumpy body was a marshmallow. His face was a buttered bon-bon, topped with a puddle of chocolate syrup for hair. He said: “Trouble?”

Slabbe said, “Information.”

“Candy?” Fudge pushed a hammered copper dish an eighth of an inch toward Slabbe. “Drink?” He flapped a soft hand at his private bar. Slabbe looked over the bottles of various nectars and liqueurs, shook his grizzled head.

Fudge said: “Such as?”

“Max Lorenz,” Slabbe said. “Ex-con. See him here?”

The soft brown raisins of Fudge Burke’s eyes moved lovingly over the hammered copper dish. He selected a chocolate-covered cherry and nestled it in his cheek, sucked experimentally.

He said: “I don’t keep customers by advertising ’em.”

Slabbe agreed solemnly, but pointed out: “He’s cooked though, and that makes a difference. You can talk when they’re dead, can’t you?”

Fudge caressed the jowl that held the cherry. “I guess,” he said and spoke to the watcher on duty at the one-way glass. “Seen a Max Lorenz, Slip?”

Slip didn’t turn. “I’d say no even if I did, but I didn’t.”

“Know him?” Slabbe pressed.

“I would if I’d seen him here. Ten minutes after a stranger comes in down there, he ain’t a stranger or he ain’t in no longer. If he don’t make himself satisfactory, he goes out.”

Slabbe said to Fudge: “Slip isn’t on twenty-four hours. How about the other watchers? Maybe they saw Lorenz.”

“Charley’s sick and Slip and Dink Quint have been on alone for ten days,” Fudge said. “Dink’ll be here later. You can ask him.”

There was the sound of Slabbe’s hand sand-papering his gray-bristled jaw line. He said: “Tough about John Nola going in that plane crack-up, Monday.”

Fudge said delicately: “He was only one out of twenty-six. Why so tough about him?”

“Oh, prominent man and stuff,” Slabbe said. “His silk company gives work to about eighteen hundred men. Son a hero in the Pacific. Didn’t know Nola myself, did you?”

“To see,” Fudge yawned. “The hero pays his dues here regular. Blackjack and craps player. Can’t settle down, I guess, after what he went through. Maybe he’s here now. Is he, Slip?”

Slip didn’t turn. “Yeah. At the bar with that Reed biscuit. She’s a lotta woman, but built.”

Slabbe looked through the one-way glass at a couple half turned to face each other at the gleaming bar below. She was a lot of woman, he agreed. She was at least five feet eleven, a red-lipped brunette, an Amazon princess.

It was a job to look heroic beside her, but the livid scar on Prentice Nola’s right cheek and his fierce blue eyes and the combination of sun-whitened hair and black bushy beard got him by.

“Looks more than twenty-seven, don’t he?” Slip commented. “The beard hides all but that one scar. He was a pilot. He was strafing some Jappies on a move and cracked right up into them. Busted his legs but got a gun going and held ’em till his buddies come up. Nervous as hell. He can drink two bottles of Scotch and walk away from ’em. He just come from the old man’s funeral.”

“Never saw the girl before,” Slabbe decided.

“Her first time here was Saturday night,” Slip said. “She’s staying at the Carleton Arms, registered from New York City. She picked the hero up, only he thinks he picked her up. Watch when she turns her head.”

Slabbe watched, grunted. “What a beaut. Somebody must’ve hit that left eye with a roundhouse. She get it here?”

“G’wan, we don’t let stuff like that happen here. She come in with it Monday night, says she bumped into a something, but not a fist. Barney McPhail, the houseman at the Carleton Arms, says no commotion around her except wolves she brushes off like nothing. Ruby Reed. New York City. We don’t worry so much about babes as guys.”

Slabbe tongued his gum out of a cavity and got it going again, said, “Thanks,” and started for the door. Then he murmured: “Seen Jake George lately?”

Fudge Burke said: “Well, well. That’s what you want, eh?”

“Guess I wasn’t so cute,” Slabbe sighed.

The chocolate broke and Fudge tilted his head back to let the cherry syrup ooze down a favorite channel. He smacked his lips, started scouting for another cherry and said: “Tell you what, Slabbe, come back when Dink’s here. He saw Jake George. He’ll tell you all he knows. He’ll tell you when Jake was in last, what he ate and drank, who he went out with, what happened to him, all of it.”

Slabbe’s gray eyes were opaque. “Cooperation with a capital C. How come?”

For just a second Fudge’s candy-eaten teeth showed. Then he turned it into a grin and chuckle. “Well, like you said when you came in . . . when they’re dead you can talk.”

“Yeah.” Slabbe took a step, stopped. He did a double take. He licked his lips. “I heard it right, what you said?”

Fudge nodded.

“Then Jake’s dead?”

Fudge nodded again.

Slabbe took a breath. “What—”

Fudge flapped his hand at him. “Don’t heckle me. I told you Dink’ll tell you. He’ll be here at eight.”

Slabbe glanced at his railroader’s watch. It was three-thirty. “Eight o’clock, hell,” he growled. “Where’s Dink now?”

“Give ’em an inch and they want – Hell with it!” Fudge snapped. “Fairview Hotel.”

Halfway through the metal door Slabbe caught himself, held out his hand to the guard. “Gimme my gun back.”

Slabbe got out of the elevator in the casino and headed for the bar. At three-thirty in the afternoon a mere handful of fifty-odd citizens were anaesthetizing themselves. Slabbe jostled a half-dozen aside and came up beside Prentice Nola’s football shoulders.

He said: “You’re in a mood, Mr Nola, but this is important. Can I talk to you?”

The flick of the blue eyes was sharp enough to shave with, then dull. “A character,” Prentice Nola said to his and Ruby Reed’s reflections in the bar mirror. “A little man mountain who says I’m in a mood.” He sipped his Scotch and soda. “Take off.”

“I like Fred Allen, personally,” Slabbe said. “But you’re funny, too. So are dead men. So is life. So’s your old man.”

He moved back from the bar, fast, behind Nola. His hands made clamps on Nola’s biceps, which were hard-packed as cables. It looked like a friendly gesture, but Nola couldn’t move. Slabbe was set in case the bearded youngster put a knee against the bar and heaved backwards, but it didn’t happen.

Nola said: “The longer you hold me, the harder I’ll hit you when you let go.”

“I take it back about your old man. It slipped,” Slabbe said. He looked at Ruby Reed. She was ready for something but waiting for the right spot. “Talk to him,” Slabbe told her. “This is kid stuff. Two guys are dead so far. I’m a private dick.”

Ruby’s lips, red as red, parted ever so slightly. “It’s absurd, Prentice, but let’s not have a scene.”

“OK?” Slabbe asked Nola.

Some of the tension went out of Nola’s arms. “Let me drink,” he said. Slabbe let him, waiting, then moved back alongside him on the left. The purple mouse on Ruby’s left eye was several days old but still something to behold.

Nola said: “Spit it out. I’m still in that mood.”

Slabbe nodded. “Your father hired a detective named Jake George. Maybe you know why.”

“I don’t.”

“Ever hear of Max Lorenz?”

“No.”

“OK. I’ll be seeing you.”

Nola’s hand was the clamp this time, on Slabbe’s right wrist, “No, you don’t, big boy.”

Slabbe started to use the necessary twist and foot-pounds to release his wrist without quite fracturing Nola’s thumb, then stopped. The reason he stopped had nothing to do with the ex-pilot, it had to do with Ruby Reed. Her perfectly madeup face, stark white against the contrast of her upswept ebony hair, was showing no expression whatever – which was, of course, the giveaway.

Nola was saying: “I didn’t pull my weight while the old man was alive, but maybe this did something to me. Maybe I’m interested in something – for the first time since they invalided me out.”

Slabbe mumbled something, stared into the bar mirror. Ruby’s green eyes were on him. Her lips moved, formed the words, “See me later.” Slabbe winked into the mirror.

Prentice Nola snapped: “Why would my father have employed a detective?”

“That’s what I asked you,” Slabbe said. “Would I ask what I know?”

Nola’s blue eyes burned at him. Softly, he said: “Men ask what they know to find out if anybody else knows. Especially dicks, big boy.”

“Not this trip, junior,” Slabbe said easily. “How close were you to your father?”

“None of your damn business, big boy.”

“I can find out somewhere else.”

“I’m scared.”

Slabbe grimaced. “We should have a camera and sound truck. About here the director would say, ‘Cut.’ Let go of my wrist and get back on your bottle. Put milk in it. That’s for babies.”

Nola began to breathe the least bit deeper. The pupils of his eyes got small. Almost delicately, he released Slabbe’s wrist, slid off the barstool.

Slabbe warned: “Five bouncers will be on top of us.”

Ruby said huskily: “Prentice, stop!”

The words were repeated, and in a female voice, but not Ruby’s. In a tinkling voice, a voice clear as tiny bells in a fine Swiss watch. “Prentice, stop that!” it said.

Prentice winced, looked over his shoulder as if there might be a chance he was hearing things, saw that he wasn’t and moaned softly: “Good Lord, Aunt Serena, why didn’t you bring the servants too?”

“Don’t be rude, Prentice.” The tinkling voice had the clarity of ice, now. “I’m sure this is a charming place to mourn your father, but you’re coming home.”

Slabbe looked at her. Her ancient, rustling black taffeta with lace at the throat suggested another century. Her white hair under its black bonnet might have been a powdered wig. Her companions might have been a retinue of lady-in-waiting and footmen. They were instead a little-girl-sized ash-blonde, a slender, tired-faced young man and a brute in chauffeur’s livery.

The latter just stood there, yellow-flecked hazel eyes alert. The tired-faced young man put a hand on Prentice Nola’s shoulder, said, “Come on, chum,” and then saw Ruby Reed’s green eyes gleaming on him and was done for – literally. His thin, high-cheekboned face was no longer merely tired – it was dead.

“Prentice is so confused,” murmured the ash-blonde. “I know how he feels, I had nothing to live for, either, till Bill came.” Her soft gray eyes went to the dead-faced young man.

Prentice mocked: “My Lord, sweetness and light at Fudge Burke’s.”

“Shut up, Prentice,” ordered the tinkling voice. “Don’t be sentimental, Ione,” it told the blonde. “Start him moving, William,” it prodded the object of Ruby’s predatory gleam – not missing it at all.

It was then Slabbe’s turn. “May I ask who you are?” the old woman murmured. “You were about to fight with Prentice, weren’t you? You’d make mincemeat of him.”

Slabbe tongued his chewing gum into a cavity, suspecting that it would offend. “I’m a private detective, ma’am. Benjamin Slabbe.”

“Indeed. Prentice isn’t involved with the law? He became intoxicated one night and forged his father’s name to a check, but that was settled in the family, and he didn’t do it again.”

Prentice snarled: “Thank you, Aunt Serena!”

“Tchah! You can’t keep things from detectives, you jackanapes.” Her eyes were black moist olives, thirty years younger than the rest of her. She said to Slabbe: “I am Serena Yates, John Nola’s wife’s sister. You know Prentice. This is Ione Nola and William Teel, her fiancé. We’ve just buried John. We think Prentice should come home with us for the afternoon, at least. You’re not arresting him?”

“No, ma’am,” Slabbe said. “I only asked him if he knew why his father hired a detective named Jake George.”

“I see. Did he know?”

“He said not. More likely – maybe – uh, perhaps you—”

“More likely I know?” Miss Yates provided. “No. I ran my brother-in-law’s home for him, raised his children, practically, but I was not in his confidence about any monkey business. I’ll be happy to talk with you later. Right now, we’re leaving . . . Prentice, you’re ready?” The black eyes seemed to notice Ruby Reed for the first time.

Prentice grimaced and performed the introduction. “Miss Reed. Yes, Aunt Serena, a casual acquaintance.” Prentice patted Ruby’s not-thin arm. “Excuse it, sugar. I’ll see you later.”

“By all means bring Miss Reed along,” Miss Yates said abruptly. Everyone stared. Bill Teel’s dead face threw off its paralysis to twitch protestingly.

Ruby was off her stool, chin up, sails set. “I’d love to come,” she cooed.

“Of course, my child,” Miss Yates said, black eyes gliding the length of Ruby’s statuesque figure with no more interest than a python might have in its prey. She turned and the brute in chauffeur’s livery took her arm solicitously.

Slabbe stood aside. As Ruby Reed glided past him, he whispered: “What time?”

Her lips didn’t move. “Forget it.”

Slabbe watched them leave, the little old lady in black on the arm of the hulking chauffeur, followed by Ione Nola and Bill Teel and The Drunk and The Body. He tried to dip up an appropriate rhyme or moral or parable, plodded to a phone booth.

He informed Carlin: “Ruby Reed at the Carleton Arms Hotel knows Max Lorenz, but don’t pressure her yet – I got her dated whether she likes it or not. She came to Fudge Burke’s place the first time Saturday night and picked up Prentice Nola, a drinker and gambler, who once forged a check on his pop. Doesn’t seem like anything Jake George would have been called in on, though. He’s dead, says Fudge Burke. How d’yuh like that?”

“Geez!”

“The docs find a slug in Lorenz’s thigh?”

“No. They found false teeth in his mouth, though.”

“So then it ain’t Lorenz,” Slabbe grunted morosely. “Zenith said he has natural teeth.”

“Yeah. This burned guy had a skull fracture, too, before the fire started. The fracture killed him and the fact that there was time enough for some fat to travel to the lungs shows the guy was dead before the car went over the cliff. It’s homicide.”

“And Jake George had false teeth,” Slabbe said. “And he left his office Monday with Lorenz. Lorenz dumped Jake into Bleeker’s figuring Jake would be identified as him. It adds. Lorenz told the Zenith plant in Lewisburg that he wouldn’t even see him around in a couple days. He told the used-car dealer he only wanted the jalop for a few days. He had it rigged, huh, Pat? . . . Hey, you there?”

Carlin grunted peevishly. “Yeah, I’m here. Stuck here. If I could get a civil service job, I’d leave here in three minutes.”

“I know. It just goes to show you,” Slabbe consoled.

“Show me what?”

“I dunno. Can’t think of anything symbolic. How about checking the speedometer in Lorenz’s car? We know he drove here from Lewisburg. See if the miles say he went anywhere else, huh?”

“What’s about Jake George?”

“I’m checking that right now.”

“Where can I catch you?”

“Wherever somebody burns a corpse behind ’em.”

Evening chill laced the late April sunlight and toilers who had beat the time clock a little shuttled through the streets, as Slabbe stepped out of a cab in front of a moldy but not resigned brick building called the Fairview Hotel, and ferried his gray-tropical-worsted-clad bulk across the lobby. He wore the same weight clothing all year around, without topcoat, changed every day, but was not the best customer a tailor could have in the pressing department. About June he changed his gray winter hat for a white Panama.

The lobby was as large and as full as the ace of diamonds, the pip being a youth of sixty who drew salary as desk clerk. He gave Slabbe the number of Dink Quint’s room, not ungraciously, not too hungrily and did not look too disappointed when there was no more to the transaction. Slabbe entered an automatic elevator, pressed the 5 button and braced himself as engineering noises clanked above and below him and the cage took off. On 5 he got out gingerly and rapped on Dink Quint’s door.

A dry, tired whisper eddied from beyond the door, repeated itself several times before Slabbe’s ears organized it. It was saying: “Come in. Come on in. For crissakes, are you deaf? Come in.”

Slabbe tested the door, found it unlocked and filled it for a second and then was in a fairly spacious hotel cell. Dry, tired eyes checked him over. The whispering vocal chords sighed, and Dink Quint slid a small-wristed pale hand from under his pillow, made himself more comfortable under four blankets, reached for an eye-cup on the table beside his bed and began filling it with eye-wash from a blue bottle. Five colors stabbed and slashed each other in his silk pajamas.

“Snazzy pajumpers there,” Slabbe admired. “Steal ’em from a Jap? I guess Fudge called and said I was coming?”

“I don’t sleep with the door open,” Dink husked and sat up and threw a shot into each eye. He was five feet three, a good hundred pounds after a steak dinner, with tiredness living closer to him than his skin – except when he was on duty in front of the one-way glass in Fudge Burke’s office. Then he missed nothing.

Slabbe looked for a chair, dismissed the contraption as unfit for heavy duty and balanced himself for a stand.

He said: “Shoot then.”

Dink put down his eye-cup, jacked a cigarette between his dry, tired lips and turned his thin face sideways so he didn’t have to lift the match farther than necessary. He began to talk.

“Jake George came into Fudge’s place Monday afternoon about three-thirty and had two shots and two beers while he was waiting for a sandwich: pickled tongue. He ate it and had a couple more drinks. He was killing time. He was ready to shove off again when he got a phone call.”

“That was his secretary, Susie,” Slabbe nodded.

“Yeah, a little after four o’clock. Well, when he was coming from the phone booth, all smiles, a guy steps up to him and his smiles go away, and I see the guy has a rod on Jake. In his pocket, the rod was, but I see stuff like that.”

“Who was the guy?”

“So I says to Fudge – he was eating a candied apple – ‘Fudge, a guy just put a rod on Jake George and took him out. Does he get away with it?’ Fudge says, ‘See what’s up, Dink – Slip’ll take over.’ I chase after Jake and the guy, follow them. The guy has a car. He makes Jake drive.”

“Who was the guy?”

“Jeez, you got patience! Ike Veech.”

Slabbe’s lips pulled back as if he were going to whistle between his teeth. “Ike Veech,” he said softly, “wouldn’t kill his old lady for less than a C-note. Where’d he ride Jake to!”

“Lilac Lake,” Dink said. “A cabin up there. Going into it, he cut Jake down.”

“Hard enough to kill him?”

“No, not then,” Dink said judiciously. “He just rocked him to sleep and then cooked himself some supper. Boy, it made me hungry.” Dink sighed. “I hung around a long time, and it was bacon he made: I smelled it.”

“OK, OK.”

“After dark about eight o’clock another guy drove up to the cabin and went in. Him, I don’t see clear. No moon or nothing, and they had the curtains pulled. Say another hour, and the two of them bring Jake out, not on his feet, and put him in the back of Ike’s car. He was no more Jake then. You can tell by the sag and slop of ’em when they’re meat.”

Slabbe wet his lips. “Uh-huh?”

“The other guy jumps in his car and starts off. I figure he’s my pigeon now and go after him. But – you dumb slob!” Dink screeched, with the first show of vitality in his voice. “You let him follow you here!”

Slabbe was stone. There was life in Dink’s murky hazel eyes now, bright life, life that wanted to stay life. Dink’s cigarette glowed cherry red, though the rest of him, except for the eyes, was rigid.

There was no need for Slabbe to look around. He said woodenly. “Who is it? Ike?”

Dink didn’t move. The door behind Slabbe closed delicately. “It’s me, yeah,” said Ike Veech’s twang. “Nuh-uh, don’t turn yet.”

3. Death at the Door

There was a gliding, stealthy sound behind Slabbe. A hand gentle as air moved over him, found his armpit clip, whisked out the compact .38 he carried. The air stirred again as Veech drew back. The .38 hit the floor.

“You can turn now, not fast,” he said through his nose. He added reprovingly: “You never were mouthy, Dink. How come?”

Slabbe pivoted, but slowly. Ike Veech’s dapper shoulders were against the door. The .32 in his gray-gloved hand was carelessly assured, his shiny patent leather slippers were flat on the floor. His dark liquid eyes roved only as much as necessary between Slabbe and Dink on the bed.

Slabbe defended himself to Dink. “He wasn’t on me when I came in.”

“Why, no,” Ike Veech, agreed sympathetically. “A guy built like you ain’t hard to trail, though.”

“Lissen, Ike,” Dink said fast. “I don’t talk unless Fudge says so, see? And he knows I know, and you don’t walk in on him, brother. He takes care of his guys, too. You better take it easy with me.”

“What’s the color, Dink?” Veech chuckled.

“White! Go to hell! I’m just telling you. Give it to me and see. Fudge’ll have Slip and Tommy and Pointer run you down even in South America.”

“Shuddup!”

“Sure!”

“Why didn’t you shuddup right along? A rat’s a rat.”

“—you!” Dink said. “Fudge liked Jake George. I don’t know why. Maybe Jake sent him a box of candy once. He told me to tell Slobby here what I seen, so I tell him. I didn’t tell him about the guy with you ’cause I didn’t make him. Like I was just saying, I start after him when he pulls out after helping you dump Jake in your car. Only my jalopy is parked away from the cabin so’s you wouldn’t hear me start up, and while I’m running for it, your partner gets a start. I try for about five miles but don’t catch him, then I come back to the cabin to see what you’re gonna do with Jake’s body, only by then you’re gone too. That’s a lot I know, isn’t it? And would I tell it in court? You don’t have to touch me—”

“Shuddup!” Ike Veech stirred the air with his gun barrel, in Slabbe’s direction. “He goes. That’s for sure.”

Dink let his pillow have him again. His teeth chattered just a little, stopped. He might have been a bit tireder than normally, but the difference was too slight for Slabbe to judge. He knew Dink had talked his way out of it, though. Dink knew, too.

He said wearily to Ike Veech: “Not here. Not now. Take him out.”

Veech frowned, cocked his pearl-gray fedora back on crisp black curls with a casual twist of the gun barrel. “It has to be here,” he decided. “I wouldn’t fool with him in an elevator or like that.”

“Not with me here!” Dink squeaked. “The johns would put me through the wringer. I’m not taking that.”

Veech’s voice snarled: “Get out, then!”

“I’m not dressed.”

“Get dressed!”

“Yeah. OK. Watch him now.”

Dink flung his blankets aside, came to sitting position, swiveled to get his feet over the edge of the bed. And while he did this, his scrawny wrist disappeared under his pillow and he brought it around, pillow and all, and shot three times like that.

Two of his slugs missed Ike Veech completely. One of them, the second probably, took Veech in the midsection.

Slabbe was on the floor.

Veech cursed loud and bitterly. He emptied his gun at Dink.

He was curdling at the knees, though. Slabbe didn’t know it and got his hand on his .38 and turned it up, butt braced on the floor. He shot twice, held the third because he saw, by then, that Veech’s gun was pointing at nothing but the ceiling. Presently Veech’s head and open eyes were, too.

Dink still had the pillow in his lap, only now he was trying to hold something together with it. It was smouldering, and little curls of acrid smoke twisted into his face. They were not dispelled by any breathing for an interval.

Slabbe got to a knee, stood, reached to slap the pillow out.

Dink wouldn’t – or couldn’t – let it go. His voice had never been tireder. “It wasn’t Fudge that liked Jake George,” he said. “It was me. Jake helped me get a divorce and put my kid in a good school, years ago. That’s why I sang. If I’d-uh had guts, I’duh gone into that cabin. Honest, I didn’t think they were gonna g-give it to him, though.”

Slabbe stopped trying to pull the pillow away. There was no flame in it and Dink didn’t seem to mind.

Slabbe said: “You didn’t make the guy Ike was working with?”

“Honest, no. The car, though, I know it good. A twelve- cylinder Caddy. That bigshot’s, John Nola. You can take it from there, huh?”

Dink bent in the middle over the pillow.

Carlin’s dark eyes smouldered on the burnt pillow which a medical examiner had pried away from Dink Quint’s middle. He said: “Damned if it wouldn’t have been another corpse burned behind you, at that.” His cigar jutted suspiciously Slabbe’s way. “Did you smell this coming?”

“I read it in Dink’s palm, yeah,” Slabbe said. “Don’t be that way. I told you just how it happened.”

“Don’t you always – afterwards?”

“Let’s eat, Pat.”

“You stay right where you are!”

“C’mon, I’ll buy.”

“You’ll . . . Well, OK then.” Carlin issued instructions to his squad, stepped long legs over Ike Veech’s body by the door. Slabbe followed. They went to a chophouse, ordered.

“I hated to do that,” Slabbe said. “Shoot Veech, I mean. He could have busted it wide open for us, maybe, if he knew why he helped kill Jake George. I wonder did he, though.”

“Gun for hire was all he was,” Carlin shrugged. “Lorenz just picked him up to do a job.”

“Lorenz, huh?” Slabbe mused. “You think it was Lorenz in that Caddy that came to the cabin to meet Veech?”

“Don’t you?”

Slabbe’s shrug was as informative as the booth walls.

“He ain’t saying,” Carlin informed his steak. “Here’s my end: Jake George traces Max Lorenz for John Nola, puts five hundred bucks on the line with the warden for Lorenz to come here soon as he’s sprung. Lorenz does that – incidentally, we accounted for him along the way.”

Slabbe looked up.

Carlin said: “He kept on drinking after he left Lewisburg and Sunday night a Statie flagged him down up the line, shooed him into a tourist place to sleep it off. Lorenz left the tourist place Monday morning about eleven, which would put him down in town just about three.”

“Uuh,” Slabbe said in congratulation.

“So he went straight to Jake George’s office and Jake took him to Nola. Then Jake left and went over to Fudge Burke’s to buy himself a drink on the deal. I’d say that Lorenz came together with Nola and then got Ike Veech to take care of Jake. Don’t ask why yet. Jake was a mouth that might have shot off, maybe. Anyway, Ike Veech took Jake up to Lilac Lake and waited further orders. Chances are that he had Lorenz’s Chevvy to work with, right? So that night Lorenz shows up in Nola’s Caddy. They scrag Jake and put him in the Chevvy and take him to Bleeker’s Canyon, douse the jalop with gas and roll it over. Pick a hole in it.”

“Nola,” Slabbe said. “Upstanding citizen, pillar of the community and so on. He wouldn’t be in it.”

“Nuts. He wouldn’t have to be in on the killing, I’ll give you, because he was burned up in that plane when it took off at four o’clock Monday afternoon, while Jake wasn’t killed till that night. Maybe because Nola died, Jake died. Maybe with Nola out of the way by a pure accident, Lorenz had whatever it is all to himself and wanted to close mouths. Yeah, why not? The first order to Veech was only to hustle Jake up to the lake. It wasn’t until Lorenz showed up at night that Jake got killed. See, with Nola alive Lorenz was only going to keep Jake shut up for a while. With Nola dead, he decides to shut Jake permanent.”

“Chew that canary good before you swallow it,” Slabbe advised. “Did you check the speedometer readings on the Chevvy? Was it burned too bad?”

Carlin leered. “I only got two hands and a dozen guys on the squad. It’s being done. I already telegraphed the used-car guy to see what the reading was when Lorenz took over the car, or if the speedometer was turned back. That’s a waste of money – I never saw a used-car guy yet that didn’t turn ’em back.”

Slabbe sandpapered his jaw line. “While you didn’t have anything else to do this aft’ I guess you checked on Nola some, huh?”

“Dry up, you comic,” Carlin spat. “I want to enjoy this steak . . . Yeah, like you said, he was okay from A to izzard. He lived here all his life and was the kind of guy who doesn’t even go through stop signs. How he tied in with Max Lorenz maybe a tea-leaf reader could tell us.”

“We could see if he had made his plane reservation in advance or if he grabbed it at the last minute,” Slabbe said. “If he jumped on a plane without warning, it could mean he learned something from Lorenz that made him travel. Where was the plane heading, Pat?”

“Just New York City. Everybody was checked into their seats, too, the plane took off on time, four o’clock and all the corpses were accounted for. What I don’t get is—”

“Don’t try thinking yet,” Slabbe cut in. “We haven’t got enough, we’ll just get ballixed up. Why don’t you come along with me and meet the people?”

Carlin made a weighing sound through his long bony nose. “You’re damned polite – when you know I’m going to stick closer to you than your hat anyhow!”

Way out in Treverton Heights was money: wide boulevards, wider lawns, tall trees, taller houses, brighter stars, cleaner air, soundless – and a beat cop who said, “Yes, sir. Good evening, sir,” when Carlin cut his black departmental sedan into the curb and called: “Hey, you.”

Slabbe said: “Can I chew gum in this neighborhood, Officer?”

“Of course, sir.”

Carlin grimaced. “Take off your disguise, Flaherty.”

“Oh! Good evening – I mean, Hi, Lieutenant. What’s up?”

“Chisel any meals in the Nola kitchen?”

“Uh—”

“Relax. I had a tour up here myself, once.”

“Well, yessir.”

“OK. Gossip with us.”

“About the Nolas, Lieutenant? Well, they just had a death in the family.”

“We know. Who all lives there?”

“Just Miss Yates, Mr Prentice, Miss Ione and Bill Teel now – and the servants.”

Slabbe clucked at the sprawling white colonial-style mansion, silvery in the moonlight. “You could make a dozen apartments in that left wing alone.”

“Who’s Bill Teel?” Carlin asked.

“War buddy of Prentice’s,” Flaherty said. “Nice-looking guy about twenty-six, only the war made him look older. He’s going to marry Ione, and that makes ’em both lucky. Her first boyfriend got it in Germany and she walked around here without eyes for months, the old battle-axe just as bad – uh, I mean Miss Yates. Then Prentice brought Bill Teel home and the girl fell for him and everything’s okey-doke. I guess him being a returned soldier and her other boyfriend being a soldier that wasn’t coming back, it was easy for her to what’chacallit.”

“Transfer her affections,” Slabbe said. “You say Miss Yates was busted up too?”

“On account of Ione, yeah. You’d think she was the kid’s real mother, and, well—” Flaherty dropped his voice confidentially – “this is just kitchen talk now, but there are some that say Miss Yates could be Ione’s right old lady, at that.”

Carlin said: “Pour Mrs Flaherty another cup of tea, and let’s get cozy.”

“Aw, Lieutenant, you asked for gossip, didn’t you? They say that years ago it was a toss-up as to whether John Nola would marry Miss Yates or her sister, Agnes, the one he did marry. Then when Ione was on the way, both the sisters went to France and came back after the baby was born and then right soon Mrs Nola died and Miss Yates stayed on at the house ever since, taking care of everything. And John Nola never got hitched again, so what do you think?”

Carlin said sourly: “I think that’s just fine, a lot to go up against them with.”

Slabbe asked: “Ever see Jake George around the Nola stadium here, Flaherty?”

The beat cop said no, he was on duty nights mostly.

“Monday night then,” Slabbe said, “you might’ve seen the Nola Caddy breeze in and out, huh?”

“Heck, there were lots of bigshot cars in and out here Monday night, friends coming to sympathize about Mr Nola and all.”

Carlin said: “All the folks at home then?”

“Yessir.”

“Except,” Carlin sniffed, “that with cars in and out, any of them could have been in and out in them.”

Flaherty shuffled. “I guess, sir.”

Slabbe held up two criss-crossed fingers thicker than the knot in an old-fashioned giant pretzel, and asked hopefully: “A light-complected guy, Flaherty, five-eight, limp in the left leg; make him around here anytime?”

“A grifter?” Flaherty asked.

Slabbe leaned forward. “You got it.”

Flaherty shook his head ponderously. “Nope, nobody like that.”

Carlin groaned. “Go for a walk, Flaherty.”

He jack-knifed bony legs out of the sedan, complaining to Slabbe: “These kind of people are very tough or dumb. I don’t know just what to fish for, except to find out if one of them knows why Nola wanted Max Lorenz.”

Slabbe followed him up a flagged walk that was almost a double-lane driveway. He observed the lawns, trees, shrubbery and outlying buildings. “Good place to play cowboys and Indians.”

A dark, bulking shadow drifted in behind them, said: “Yeah. Which one of you is Tonto and which is the Lone Ranger?”

Neither Slabbe or Carlin looked around. They kept walking. Slabbe said conversationally: “Without looking, I’d say this is the chauffeur.”

Carlin said: “A college man?”

“Dartmouth or Dannemora,” Slabbe agreed.

The voice behind them said sneeringly: “You read that in Murder, My Sweet.”

Slabbe said: “The book was called Farewell, My Lovely. You’re thinking of the picture. You saw me at Fudge Burke’s place. This is Carlin, Homicide.”

“He doesn’t need a sheriff’s star on his chest. What are you heckling these people for? Prentice is a lush. Ione’s in love with love. Bill Teel’s weak with a touch of malaria, and Miss Yates will tell you to go to hell.”

“Let her tell us herself,” Carlin snapped.

“John Nola didn’t take any of them into his confidence,” the chauffeur said, shoulder to shoulder with them now, but considerably taller.

“He did you, though, I guess,” Carlin sneered.

“Yeah, he did me, though, you guess.”

“Just a second, Pat.” Slabbe stopped, faced the chauffeur. In the dark their silhouettes could have doubled for part of the scenery: Slabbe for one of the fuller evergreens, the chauffeur for a medium-sized oak.

Slabbe said genially: “I always like to hear small talk in the evening. What’s your name, bo?”

“Mister Alan Hurst to you, big boy.”

“You heard Prentice call me that. Ernie Hurst any relative of yours? Ernie and I had adjoining suites in the tank once.”

“My brother.”

Slabbe studied the man’s heavy face, thick neck, powerful shoulders. “You don’t look much like Ernie. He’s about as wide as a hatchet blade.”

“Yeah,” Hurst said. “My old man took one look at me and bought an electric ice box.”

“You got a record?” Slabbe asked.

“A record of clean living, thank you.”

“Turn it on, then.”

“As one citizen to another, you could go dip your head in shellac,” Hurst said. “To give the people inside a break, OK, I’ll tell you! I took eight or nine hundred lickings from my old man, then gave him a daisy and took off. Ernie stayed, and maybe that’s why he’s such a runt. I bummed around, then Miss Yates caught me snitching pears off one of those trees in the back. She gave me a break. I was sixteen. I’ve been the chauffeur around here for fifteen years. I got a bad heart, believe it or scratch, so I wasn’t in the Army. A chauffeur gets close to his boss, so I know why Mr Nola wanted Max Lorenz, and it doesn’t have anything to do with the rest of the tribe.”

Slabbe nudged Carlin. “I could go a bottle of beer while we hear this.”

“Huh?” Carlin said. “Oh, sure. But there ain’t a saloon in this neighborhood.”

“Come on, I’ll buy,” the chauffeur said. He started across the lawn toward the garage. Slabbe winked at Carlin. They fell in: two longs and a short.

4. Land of Silk and Money

Alan Hurst said: “You Dick Tracys want Max Lorenz, right?”

Slabbe and Carlin exchanged glances over their beer bottles. Carlin said to Hurst: “Go ahead.”

“You want to know why John Nola wanted Lorenz, too, right?” Hurst asked. “Go ahead, you both grunt together now.”

Carlin scowled. “We could do this downtown, too, if you’re so big for your pants.”

“I’m pale,” Hurst said. He lounged back in a well-worn, leather-upholstered rocker, his yellow-flecked hazel eyes amused at Slabbe and Carlin, across the room. They were in his spacious quarters on the second floor of the Nola garage – bedroom, bath and roomy sitting room.

Hurst stretched long black-putteed legs in front of him, yawned absently and undid the top couple buttons of his gray tunic. “You won’t find Lorenz in a hurry, if at all,” he said reflectively. He removed his visored cap and ruffled thick dark brown hair with a paddle-sized hand.

Slabbe chewed gum solemnly, suggested to Carlin: “Let’s go halfway with him, Pat.”

“Nuts,” Hurst said. “You don’t have to do me favors. I’m doing you one. I’ll be handing you stuff that it would take you months to get on your own – if you ever got it.”

Carlin’s bony nose came forward. “Get to the point, son, get to the point.”

“Gladly, sir, he said,” Hurst mocked. “I know how you johns work, so I want a concession.”

Carlin snapped: “What does that crack mean?”

Hurst shrugged. “Just that you’re interested in getting your own chores done, not some other cops’ in some other town or county or state.”

“Yeah?” Carlin challenged.

“Oh, relax,” Hurst said. “I’d hate to be hanging since the last time you were to Sunday School.”

“I knew it,” Carlin said thickly. “Wasting our time.” He started to get up.

“Wait,” Hurst frowned. “I’m saying what I’m saying—”

“Trouble is you’re not saying nothing!” Carlin spat.

“I will,” Hurst returned. “But only because the old girl up at the house there gave me a fair shake when anyone else would have seen me in reform school and now I can do her a favor back for it.”

“Miss Yates, huh?” Slabbe said. “Then she’s in it?”

“She is like hell. Ione’s in it. I mean Bill Teel’s in it, not Miss Yates.”

“Clear as hell, ain’t it?” Carlin sneered.

Hurst’s wide dark face tightened. “Give me a chance, I’m getting there. Miss Yates is nuts about Ione, so anything that hurts the kid hurts her, that’s all.”

Slabbe nodded. “And anything that hurts Teel hurts Ione and that hurts Miss Yates, that it?”

Hurst nodded in return. Carlin said: “Well, we got together for a second.”

“Grow up, will you?” Hurst drawled. “OK, I’ll pull out the stops. Here it is – Ione’s boyfriend got it in the war and she’s always been a romantic drip and she almost blew her top. She was in a fog for months —”

Slabbe murmured: “Is Ione really Miss Yates’ daughter?”

“I don’t know. I guess. What’s the odds?” Hurst shrugged. “She loves her like her own, which is the thing. Anyway, then Prentice came home with Bill Teel and Ione fell for him. So it was OK for a while. Teel seemed like a swell guy. He knew something about the silk business and pitched right in and really did a job. He did what the old man hoped Prentice would do, I’d say. You know, take the business to heart and so on.”

“Nola liked Teel?” Slabbe asked.

“Yeah, at first. I’m coming to that. Nola thought Teel was OK. The guy was a returned soldier and all that, and he was making good. The hitch came when the date was set for Teel and Ione to marry. The old man must have figured it was time to know a little more about Teel.”

Carlin smacked his lips. “So Nola hired Jake George to look Teel up.”

Hurst nodded easily, though his yellow-flecked eyes were veiled. “That was a couple weeks back. Jake George poked around – how do you go about tracing a guy? Look up his record in the service if you can, see where he enlisted, talk to draft board, huh? Me, I’d just go through the guy’s stuff and look for letters and addresses and so on.”

“You could do it a couple ways,” Slabbe encouraged. “Jake did, hey? Got a line on the boy?”

“Yeah. Traced him back to a silk mill in Scranton, Pennsylvania, which explains how he knew something about the business in the first place.”

Slabbe rubbed some wrinkles out of his lightweight gray trousers along the thigh. “Now we start to tie in a little,” he said. “Max Lorenz was picked up in Pennsylvania for this last rap in a black-market nylon setup. Nylons mean silk. Teel worked with silk. Carry on.”

The big chauffeur took his time over a swallow of beer almost as copious as Slabbe could manage. “Well, Teel was in on that black-market deal, whatever it was,” he said. “His name was Walter Evans then and he was a foreman in the shipping department in this Scranton mill, and Max Lorenz got to him – this is all what Jake George reported to Nola, understand? When the setup blew up on them, Teel lammed and joined the army under the name he’s using now. Lorenz took a rap, but didn’t split on Teel, so I honest-to-God don’t think the Scranton cops or the Feds could make a case against Teel without Max’s testimony if it comes down to it – which is why I don’t mind telling it to you upstanding officials.”

“You couldn’t stop being cute for a second, could you?” Carlin said. “No, I guess not. What next?”

The dark skin on Hurst’s wide cheekbones and jaw tightened till it almost glistened, but his voice was quiet enough. “John Nola decided Teel was nobody to marry Ione. But he knew how nuts Ione was about Teel and that she wouldn’t listen to reason. So he told Jake George to get to Max Lorenz in the pen and grease Max to give out with whatever was needed to hang a rap on Teel. Nola figured if he put Teel in the can, Ione wouldn’t be able to marry him at least till his term was up and by that time maybe she’d be over him – or maybe he figured that so long as he had enough on Teel to send him over he could scare Teel into bailing out. Got that?”

“Got more beer?” Slabbe said.

Hurst got up. His stride, going and coming from the refrigerator, was sinuous as a huge dark cat’s. He dealt out more bottles.

He said: “But Lorenz wouldn’t deal through a go-between. He had to see Nola personally and get as big a price as the tariff would bear. That’s why he came here when he was sprung. He came here and talked to Nola Monday afternoon just before I drove Nola to the airport. I don’t think they came together on a price, though, because Nola was sore.”

“Did you see the plane crack up?” Slabbe asked.

Hurst shook his head. “No. I carried Nola’s bag to it and put him on, then went back to the car. The plane and me took off at the same time. As soon as I got back here, though, it came over the local radio that the plane had burned. Miss Yates sent me back to the airport to make sure there was no hope, then I got Prentice at Fudge Burke’s and we got an undertaker.”

Carlin scowled. “If Nola didn’t hit a bargain with Lorenz, how come he told Jake George’s secretary that he’d put a check for Jake in the mail? That sounded like he was satisfied.”

Hurst gave Carlin a long, sideways glance. “I wouldn’t expect a cop to get it right off. Take time.”

Slabbe mused. “Whether they hit it off or not, Lorenz would tell Nola to call off Jake, huh?”

“Sure Lorenz had Nola weejied into a corner,” Hurst said. “Who could finger Teel for Nola? Only Lorenz. Suppose Lorenz said now you play ball with me or I’ll keep quiet till after your daughter marries this bum, and then I’ll sing – and how would an upstanding pillar of the community like that?”

The chauffeur nodded knowingly. “See, Lorenz had Nola on the short end and could afford to drag it out, only being a riffler he’d naturally want to get rid of anybody in the deal who smelled like copper, meaning Jake George. Lorenz probably said: ‘Pay this peeper off and make sure he’s satisfied and then we’ll talk business.’ ”

“Bushwah!” Carlin exploded.

Hurst wasn’t bothered. “You always say that, just on general principles. Your patsy there is thinking it fits.” He nodded at Slabbe.

Slabbe said: “I’m not just checking the framework. Anything’s possible. So Nola calls Jake George off the case. Then what?”

“Then Nola shoves off in that plane wreck,” Hurst said, “and it’s all Lorenz’s baby. It’s the life of Reilly for him from there in.”

“Yeah?” Carlin said.

“Why not?” Hurst countered. “Lorenz has it on Teel. Teel’s going to marry Ione. She inherits at least half of Nola’s estate. Lorenz can blackmail Teel till 1996.”

The phone rang. Hurst answered it, said, “Yes, Miss Yates,” hung up and buttoned his tunic again, adjusted his cap. “They want the car. Miss Reed is leaving,” he explained. “Anyhow, I’ve spilled it and that’s all the hospitality I have on hand.” He nodded at the empty beer bottles.

“What’s your angle?” Carlin said. “And what about Jake George?”

“Lorenz must have knocked George off,” Hurst shrugged. “Jake was the only other guy in the world that knew about it – except me, and Lorenz didn’t know I knew – and Lorenz didn’t want Jake mixing in and maybe trying to squeeze out a few dibs himself. My angle is only to save Miss Yates grief, like I said in the first place, by saving Ione grief, which means letting Bill Teel alone. Why not, you guys? You can’t make a case against him without Lorenz splits on him and maybe not even then. And Lorenz won’t be around here for a good stretch. He’ll wait till Ione and Teel are married and then try to bleed them – only maybe this time I’ll have something to talk over with him.” Hurst’s eyes glistened a little. “How about it? If you find Jake George’s body, you’ll see it fits.”

“Maybe we already found it,” Carlin said sourly.

“You don’t say. Where?”

“Guess.”

Slabbe said absently: “In Bleeker’s Canyon, burned to a crisp in Lorenz’s Chevvy.”

Hurst’s face showed nothing. Not Carlin’s. His started to redden, and the nostrils of his bony nose flared. He opened his mouth, but after Slabbe’s quick wink he closed it again.

“So what about it?” Hurst pressed. “Lay off Teel. He’s straight now, or I don’t know guys. He went through a war, and there are people who learn their lesson.”

Carlin had to take it out on somebody. He said nastily: “Like you, I suppose. You’re the little fixer-upper because the old girl caught you snitching pears once and let you go. In a pig’s eye! What did she catch you at, punk?”

If it had been two strides from Hurst’s position to Carlin’s chair, the slope-shouldered detective would have had clawed hands on his neck. He pawed for his sap.

It was three strides, though, and the huge chauffeur made a tremendous effort and caught himself. He was breathing hard. His yellow-flecked eyes were small and shiny. Deep in his chest, he said at the sap: “You think that thing could stop me?”

Slabbe made the floor vibrate, going toward the door.

Carlin yelped: “Hey!”

“Hey, hell!” Slabbe grunted. “While you jokers were waltzing there, I heard shots from the house.”

There were two wet marks on Ruby Reed’s lime-green suit. She was on her back in front of the main door to the Nola home. Her green eyes were open and the bruise on the left one was no particular color at all now, just darker than the rest of her white skin.

Her black hair was scarcely disarranged. Her long shapely legs were not twisted awkwardly, but it was not a posed tableau: her skirt was swirled higher than a photographer would have arranged it.

For a second Slabbe’s heavy face might have shown a bit more gray granite than usual, then he was again chewing gum stolidly, “I guess I don’t get to keep that date with you, baby,” he murmured.

“Who done it?” Carlin cursed softly, dark eyes everywhere. He bit his lips, barked at the people in the wash of light from the open door, “OK, I sound like a hayseed, but who saw it, or something?”

There was no immediate answer. Prentice and Ione Nola and Miss Yates and Bill Teel stood close to each other, elbows touching. Behind them servants fidgeted and whispered. Alan Hurst stepped toward the old lady in black taffeta, breathing heavily. “You don’t have to stay here, Miss Yates,” he said.

“Cut it!” Carlin snapped.

Hurst’s wide shoulders swung back viciously. Then his hazel eyes widened and he put a hand against the house to support himself. Miss Yates’ black eyes snapped to him. Her tinkling voice ordered: “Take Alan inside, Joseph – it’s his heart again,” and a butler sidled around her and took Hurst’s elbow.

Miss Yates transferred her glance to Teel’s haggard face. He looked older than she did. “What happened, William?” she said. “What’s wrong with your arm?”

Carlin rammed a cigar under his long nose. “I’ll handle this, thank you. Yeah, what is wrong with your arm, bo?”

Teel took his brown eyes off Ruby, sent them straight ahead to look at something a thousand miles away, and said without any inflection whatever: “I was standing in front of the door with her, waiting for Alan to bring the car around. Someone shot at us. I got hit in the arm.”

“Bill!” Ione Nola squealed and pawed at him.

“Shuddup!” Carlin bit. “He’ll live.” He looked at Teel’s tired mouth and empty eyes and his lips peeled back a trifle wolfishly. “For a while, anyhow. Hear me, son? This is a very, very old gag, maybe.”

Black taffeta rustled. The tinkling voice sounded like icicles breaking against one another. “I presume you represent the police,” Miss Yates said to Carlin. “It’s fortunate that you should be on hand at this time, unfortunate that you know only a single technique; intimidation.”

Prentice Nola scratched his beard. “Tell him, Aunt Serena,” he leered.

Carlin struggled with a mouthful of marbles.

Slabbe touched his gray hat deferentially. “Sorry, ma’am. If you people would just say where you were and if you heard the shots, and so on, you could go inside.”

“Thank you, Mr Slabbe,” Miss Yates said. “Bill was with Miss Reed, of course, as he’s admitted. Prentice, you may be sure, was no farther from a brandy decanter than necessary.”

“Merci, darling,” Prentice mocked. “I was indeed imbibing in my room on the second floor. I heard the shots and looked over my balcony railing, saw Ruby sprawled here and came down.”

Miss Yates said: “Ione, where were you?”

The pint-sized ash-blonde turned her head from Teel long enough to say, “Dressing,” and turned back again. Her little-girl’s fingers touched Teel’s gray cheek.

“I was also in my room,” Miss Yates said. “I heard the shots and also looked over my balcony railing and saw what had happened and came down. May I offer a suggestion?”

“Yes’m,” Slabbe said.

“Then I suggest you scour this vicinity for a medium-sized man who limps on his left leg.”

Carlin’s cigar gave a downward tilt as his mouth opened. “What?”

Miss Yates said coolly: “I can’t say if Prentice was using his eyes when he was on his balcony, but I was. And I saw such a man run east over the lawn.”

Slabbe looked quickly at Prentice, whose jaw was twitching and whose eyes were ugly on the old woman.

Slabbe shifted back to Teel. “We know about you, son,” he said quietly. “Did you see who it was? Was it Max Lorenz? It’s OK. We know you know him.”

Teel’s mouth opened three times for one word. When it came, it was: “Yes.”

Slabbe caught Carlin’s eye, jerked his head toward the door. Carlin scowled, said generally: “OK, you can go inside.”

“Oh, my book!” Ione Nola cried. She pointed at a slender volume that was lying near Ruby’s outstretched hand. “I loaned it to her. Bill gave it to me. I thought if she and Prentice were in love, she’d be thrilled to read—”

“Be quiet, Ione,” Miss Yates ordered. “Go inside.”

Slabbe stooped and picked up the book. It fell open at a well-marked page.

One eye on Ione, he read:

Carlin raged. “What the – that’s enough! Cut that out!”

Slabbe paid him no attention. He was watching Ione’s starry eyes. She said: “Isn’t it marvelous, Bill?” to Teel. “That’s the way I feel for you and—”

“Ione! Inside!” The tinkling voice was sharp. Miss Yates caught the girl’s elbow, turned her to the door. Teel started to follow, his shoulders sagging.

“Not you,” Carlin snapped at him. “You stick here, I know all about you, boy. I don’t know why you’d knock this dish off, but you could have. Two shots for her and one for yourself and heave the rod into the shrubs over there and say you saw Lorenz do it. You and me got a session coming up.”

Slabbe took three steps backwards, saw that Carlin wasn’t paying attention, turned and plodded toward the street. He went to the Carleton Arms Hotel and cornered the houseman, Barney McPhail.

“You’re stuck for a hotel bill, chum,” he told the well-dressed, dapper handshaker. “Miss Ruby Reed. Dead. Shot. No more wolves will bother her. Who did?”

McPhail flicked the starboard end of a black waxed mustache delicately, pale eyes expressionless. “She registered here, 507, Saturday afternoon from New York City. So far as 1 know, she didn’t have any visitors or calls. I can check.”

“Suppose you do,” Slabbe encouraged.

McPhail did. Miss Reed had had no phone calls or visitors that anyone remembered, and such things were generally remembered in a lush thirty-five-story inn like the Carleton Arms.

“How’d she get the shiner?” Slabbe asked.

Barney McPhail did not look embarrassed, having learned poise in his day, but he squirmed just a little. “I hope nothing’s going to come of that, Slabbe,” he murmured. “It wouldn’t exactly be the job, but it would hurt my stock around here. A guy got into her suite and slugged her – she said.”

“You don’t buy it?” Slabbe asked.

“We-ell, I don’t know. It could have happened, but she’s a type – was, huh? – that would sue, or threaten to, and she didn’t. She was willing to let it pass, said she wouldn’t even have mentioned it if another guest hadn’t heard her scream and reported it.”

“What was the story, Barney?”

McPhail’s neat shoulders moved a deprecating quarter inch. “She was on her way into her suite Monday afternoon about five. She opened the door and a guy’s fist smashed her. She screamed, didn’t see the guy clear. He ran. Another guest coming from his room saw the guy’s back, called for help. I went up. Nothing missing from the Reed kid’s room. She said let it go. Should I argue?”

“How about mail for her?” Slabbe pressed.

“I’ll check.”

McPhail did it again. There had been no mail for Miss Reed. There might have been a telegram, a desk clerk thought. The records would show it. The records showed it. Miss Reed had received a telegram Monday afternoon. There was no copy of it on file here. There would be one in the telegraph company’s office. Slabbe left and went to his office and used the telephone to call the New York office of the Zenith Detective Agency.

5. A Matter of Minutes

Late though it was – nine o’clock – the purring voice of Mr Enoch Oliver over the wire assured Slabbe that he was not being inconvenienced, that it was his custom when working with less experienced investigators than regularly employed by Zenith to remain at the office in case the less experienced investigators needed moral support and/or the aid of a more experienced investigator.

Slabbe grunted under his breath, “You and the President!” Into the phone, he said: “Was there a woman involved in the last trick Max Lorenz went over for?”

“I have the file on my desk,” Mr Oliver said. “I’ll summarize the information it contains. There were eight people involved. The ring leaders were Max Lorenz, Walter Evans and his wife, Ruby Reed Evans, a night club singer who contacted wealthy women who wanted nylons and who may have married Evans for the express purpose of enticing him to divert the necessary materials from the silk company for which he worked. Lorenz was apprehended. Evans and his wife vanished. Lorenz refused to implicate them, and they were considered small fry and not traced.”

Slabbe licked his lips sanguinely. “Maybe they’re not small fry today. The girl was just shot. The guy was with her. He’s using the name of William Teel now, and with the wife dead he can marry money and have his own silk company.”

Mr. Oliver was polite about this, but purringly reminded Slabbe once again that the person whom Zenith considered it worthwhile to spend money on was one Max Lorenz. Was he dead or wasn’t he?

Slabbe grimaced. “I’ll tell you that after you have your Wheaties in the morning, Ollie, old kid. Sweet dreams.”

Slabbe telephoned City Hall and had an interesting conversation with the laboratory technician who had examined the burned Chevvy, and then got connected with the detective bureau and used Carlin’s name to instruct them to find out this and that about the telegram which Ruby Reed had received at the Carleton Arms Hotel Monday afternoon.

Having done this, he felt he should also tell Carlin about it. First, he called Abe Morse and Charlie Somers, boys who took his money occasionally, and ordered them to idle away a few hours in the vicinity of the Nola home. He then got Carlin on the wire there, gnawed off the cap of a quart of beer and enjoyed it leisurely while Carlin bawled him out.

“OK, I was a bad boy,” Slabbe said, finally. “There were just enough miles on Lorenz’s Chevvy for him to have got here from Lewisburg, with maybe eight or ten over for riding around town. Lilac Lake is a dozen miles out, so Lorenz’s car wasn’t up there and can’t be the one Ike Veech was using. By itself, that doesn’t sound like much, but here’s another thing: there was no ignition key in Lorenz’s Chevvy and the switch was off. The car was started by fiddling with the wires on the distributor, get it?”

Carlin’s voice altered. “Which means that Lorenz wasn’t the guy who rolled the heap into Bleeker’s Canyon, because if he did it, since the car was his, the ignition would be switched on and the key would be on hand.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s dandy.”

“Isn’t it, though? Can you make anything stick on Teel, Pat? Did you find the gun Ruby was shot with so that he could have done it like you said – shot her and himself and heaved it?”

“No, dammit. I still got guys searching the grounds for it. Teel sticks to his story. They got the family lawyer on hand, and he told them all to clam up – as if he had to. There ain’t no reason why Teel would kill Ruby that I see. Prentice either, or anybody else, though they could have. Any one of ’em could have sneaked out of the house by a back or side door and let her have it and then said they were in their room, or something. Only Prentice swears he only knew Ruby from Saturday night when he picked her up at Fudge Burke’s.”

“What does Teel say?” Slabbe asked.

“Nothing.”

“He’s your boy, Pat. Ruby Reed was his wife.”

Carlin evidently had no expletive on tap strong enough for the occasion. He was silent while Slabbe explained.

Then he said softly: “I’ll face up to him with it. It ought to be good.”

“Watch how Ione takes it,” Slabbe advised. “Teel could have got hold of the Caddy to drive up to the lake Monday night, too. Let him know that.”

“Yeah. This is going to hold. Maybe it’s going to put Teel and Max Lorenz in it together. Why not? We already got Teel and the old lady on record as saying it was Lorenz who shot Ruby. OK, they’re stuck with it. Teel found out that Nola was bringing Lorenz here to upset his apple cart. Teel got to Lorenz first, told him to ride with him instead of Nola and there’d be more in the end. Maybe Lorenz didn’t sign on the dotted line right off, but as soon as Nola was dead in the plane wreck he teamed up with Teel. Sure. Lorenz contacted Ruby when he was sprung, told her to come here and he’d meet her. She was the clincher, Teel’s wife. Only when Lorenz threw in with Teel, then Ruby wasn’t needed.”

“See if the DA thinks it’s enough,” Slabbe encouraged.

“I’ll do just that,” Carlin promised.

“Check. I’ll see you downtown. You bringing him right down?”

“Soon as I can,” Carlin said. “This gang gives me the willies.”

Slabbe hung up and opened the refrigerator by his desk, treated himself to another quart of beer, waiting. When the phone rang again and a detective said, “Here’s what that telegram said,” Slabbe reached for a pencil and scratch pad. It wasn’t necessary, however. The message was short enough to remember easily.

The detective quoted: “ ‘See John Nola for your end.’ No signature. The thing was handed in at the airport Monday afternoon at three-fifty.”

Slabbe’s gray eyes were opaque. He put the telephone back into its cradle and sat without taking his hand off it for five minutes. When he was ready again, he used it to call the airport. He learned that the wrecked plane had been cleared by the control tower on last Monday at exactly 3:50 p.m., and that John Nola had made his reservation two days in advance. He called Jake George’s secretary, Susie Caston, who lived within a half dozen blocks of his office.

Ten minutes later she was there, a small blonde woman, no longer young, her face limp as the dyed rabbit fur on the collar of her three-year-old cloth coat.

Slabbe got up and fathered her into a chair, making grunting, sympathetic sounds. He studied her empty brown eyes, avoided them as he said: “I guess there’s not much doubt about Jake, honey. He wouldn’t want you to take on, though”

“Did you – find him?” Her voice was dead.

“I don’t think so. Not yet. It could be him in a car that burned up, but maybe not. It depends on you a lot, honey.”

“Me?”

“On your memory, anyhow,” Slabbe nodded, “Just relax. You want to help, don’t you?”

“I want to see the man who killed Jake.”

Slabbe squeezed her shoulder, returned to his reinforced chair. Casually he said: “Remember what time John Nola called Monday afternoon to tell you he’d be putting a check in the mail?”

Her hands were together in her lap. She sat stiffly, lips ragged. “It’s important, isn’t it? Then I can’t say for sure. It was about an hour after Jake went out with the blond man who limped. I think they went out about three. That would make it about four, but I can’t be sure.”

Slabbe slid his spittoon out from under his desk, dropped his gum into it. “You’ll be sure, honey,” he promised. “We’re going to make you sure. We’ll do a complete coverage, but take it easy. Don’t strain. This has to stand up in court.”

“All right,” she said dully.

Slabbe got a scratch pad handy. “Just to get organized, we’ll start with Sunday night. Where were you, honey? What did you do? What time did you get home? What time did you go to bed? Did you read or something before you fell asleep? Go ahead now. Don’t leave anything out, but don’t hurry.”

She started. There was no emotion in her voice, little interest. Slabbe was patient.

“Now for Monday morning,” he said. “Everything you did, honey. What time did you get up? Did you get right out when the alarm went off, or did you turn over for another minute?”

“I got right up. My alarm is set for seven o’clock.”

“What did you do first? What do you always do?”

“Wash—”

“OK, then what? Make your own breakfast? What did you have? What bus or streetcar did you take? Remember the driver? Remember the elevator boy at Jake’s office building who took you up? Did he say good morning? Take it, honey. You can remember every single second if you work it right.”

“Yes. I can, can’t I?”

“You bet you can,” Slabbe said. “If you get ahead of yourself don’t be afraid to go back. I’m writing it all down in order. Spit it out, honey, spit it out.”

Susie Caston went on. She spoke faster now. She began to wrinkle her brow. Her eyes got life back into them. She talked over Monday morning, every minute of it. Her voice gathering strength and interest. “It’s like living it over again, Benjie,” she said. “I can almost feel the temperature of the office that day. It was cold, I remember. There was something wrong with the radiator. I called the superintendent three times. He said he’d send a plumber up. The plumber came about three-thirty—”

“Uh-uh, not too fast,” Slabbe cut in. “We’re only at the morning yet. Don’t jump ahead. Don’t try to tell something that happened before something else. One at a time, honey, one at a time. What about lunch?”

“Twelve-thirty to one-thirty,” she responded promptly. “I walked downstairs. The elevator was on the top floor. I went out the front door, went east down Main Street, north on Fifth. I went to the Acme lunchroom. I had a grilled cheese sandwich, two olives with it, lemon sponge pie, a cup – no, two cups of cocoa. I smoked two cigarettes. Going back to the office . . .”

Slabbe filled in his chart. As nearly as possible, every minute was accounted for in chronological order.

“Yes,” Susie cried, “it was just three o’clock when that man came in, a few seconds before. I can hear the City Hall clock sometimes when the wind is right. He came in and said, ‘Where’s the boss?’ and I got up and went into Jake’s office, and the clock was striking three times. Jake looked past me into the outer office and saw the man and jumped up and yelled: ‘Come in, Lorenz; come right in. Beat it, Susie.’ But they weren’t together more than five minutes when they came out again, headed for the door. That was when Jake whispered to me: ‘I’m taking him to Nola’s home and we collect.’ ”

“On the ball now, honey,” Slabbe warned. “Keep it coming. Were you standing up or sitting down when they left? Did you look at your watch? How did you pass the time?”

“I was typing when they went out. I finished four letters. It was after three then. I wanted to get done to hear Marty and Hazel on the radio. That’s that program that’s on every day at three-thirty.”

Slabbe cut in. “How long is the program?”

“Fifteen minutes. They advertise a soap powder.”

“Did you get it on?”

“Yes. I remember, I turned it on while I was still typing, and I kept going till the announcer was done with the first commercial. Then I leaned back and listened.”

“And Nola hadn’t called yet?”

“No. The program was over. The plumber came before Mr Nola called. He came just at the end of the program with tools. And I said, ‘Don’t you start making noise till I hear this.’ He said, ‘Lady, I knock off at four o’clock, so I’ve got fifteen minutes to stop you squawking about how cold it is.’ ”

Susie’s eyes were intent now. She wasn’t in Slabbe’s office. She was back in Jake George’s office Monday afternoon at 3:45. She said: “Then the commercial started again and I told the plumber to bring the roof down if he wanted to. He went to work. I typed another letter, that took at least ten minutes. Then the telephone rang and it was Mr Nola. I yelled at the plumber: ‘Stop that for just a second please.’ And he stopped, and I talked to Mr Nola and—”

Slabbe had stopped listening. This was what he wanted. The plumber would be another witness.

“How am I doing, Benjie?” Susie asked.

“You did, baby,” Slabbe assured her. “There’s no doubt it was him, is there? You know his voice?”

“Oh, yes, I talked to him often. I’ll swear it was him.”

“And a jury will believe you, honey,” Slabbe said grimly.

“But Benjie, what’s it all about?”

“Just that it must have been five minutes to four when John Nola called you, honey, and the plane that cracked up took off at ten minutes to four.”

Susie goggled. “Well, then . . . he . . . I mean.”

“You bet.” Slabbe sat down again. “He was never on that plane.”

6. Hot and Heavy

Slabbe was again alone in his office at eleven o’clock when Charlie Somers called to say: “That big chauffeur took off in the Nola Caddy as soon as Carlin pulled his boys out. Abe Morse is tailing him.”

“That’s your shift in, then,” Slabbe said. “I’ll pay you in the a.m.”

He got City Hall on the wire, told Carlin: “Come on over, Pat. We’re gonna go places.”

Carlin arrived promptly. His dark eyes were glittering. “You told me to take Teel down just for monkey business, didn’t you?”

Slabbe shrugged apologetically. “Well, he was logical, wasn’t he? It looked good, too, and it took you and your gang away from the Nola joint so they could operate some more. That’s what they’re doing, only they have company. Abe Morse is working.”

“Who’s ‘they’?” Carlin demanded.

“Just Hurst, so far,” Slabbe said. “Drink some beer. I don’t think he’ll be going far, but we gotta wait for Abe to put him in somewhere and get to a phone. How did Ione Nola take it when you let it out that Teel was Ruby’s hubby?”

Carlin folded his long form into a chair, grimaced. “It was touch and go. I didn’t know for a second whether she’d claw my eyes out or fold up and we’d have to send for a nut doctor.”

“Uh-huh?” Slabbe was interested.

“It hit her hard, all right. Her face started to bust up. Then the old lady, Miss Yates, did a Marines to the rescue and started telling her that she loved Teel, didn’t she, and the charges against him were preposter-something, and here was where her love was going to be tested, and like that.”

“And Ione pulled out of it?”

Carlin nodded. “Yep. She’s more nuts about the guy than ever. Dames are nuts.”

“You braced Teel with the Caddy being at Lilac Lake Monday night?”

“Sure. He wouldn’t talk. He has the oldest face on a guy of twenty-seven I ever saw.”

“He has good reason to, I’d say,” Slabbe mused. “Murders going on around him, on his account, and him not having much, if anything to do with them, but still needing to keep his lip buttoned.”

Carlin leveled a finger longer and bonier than his nose at Slabbe. “Just let’s hear you explain this.”

The phone rang.

Slabbe grinned. “You’ll get it on a platter.” He answered the phone. Abe Morse’s husky voice said: “Benjie? I put this chauffeur into a cabin up here at Lilac Lake. I’m down the road at a gas station. He’s alone and he put a pot of coffee on the stove, so I took a chance on phoning.”

“Slide back there, but don’t let him get his mitts on you, kid. He didn’t go there just to drink coffee. We’ll be up. How do we make the right cabin?”

“Turn left at the breast of the dam, left again a hundred yards on. It’s a big log place, all by itself. My jalopy’ll be off in a little grove of pine trees.”

Slabbe hung up. “OK Leftenant,” he told Carlin. They drove to Lilac Lake, left at the breast of the dam, left again a hundred yards on. There wasn’t much moon, no stars. The air off the black-looking water was chill. Slabbe’s breath made frosty clouds when he said, “There’s the pine grove,” and swung ponderously to peer.

Carlin eased the departmental sedan off the road. The tires made whispering sounds on pine needles, a winter old. They found Abe Morse’s car, but not Abe. They prowled ahead on foot, found the cabin, a solid two-story structure in the log cabin tradition, but with nothing phony about the logs. The place was a fort.

“The caddy’s gone,” Slabbe frowned. “Cripes, I hope Hurst didn’t clip Abe.”

“I hope you get your hope,” Carlin grunted. “No lights inside now. No coffee, I can smell. When these trees get full of leaves, I’ll bet it’s black as hell in here.”

Slabbe squeezed the lieutenant’s arm for silence – and got it, complete silence, with only the intangible, non-noise sound of a large body of water nearby.

“Take a chance on a light for a second, Pat,” Slabb suggested. “The road’s dirt. Ought to be tire marks.”

“Yeah,” Carlin said a second later. “Car came in, didn’t go out.”

“He made coffee and drove on past the cabin, huh?” Slabbe said. “Suppose I slip down on foot and you go back for the sedan?”

It wasn’t necessary. A shadow darker than the rest glided up to them. Abe Morse’s husky voice said: “He’s about a quarter of a mile down the road. He’s looking for something in a gully off to the right. I got the distributor cap off the Caddy. Was that right?”

“It wasn’t wrong.” Slabbe chuckled.

“Looking for something in a gully?” Carlin scowled. “What the hell for?”

“A body, is my guess,” Slabbe said. He went ahead, faster now. Carlin cursed and stumbled. “Give me a good concrete city street,” he complained. “What’s that?”

“Tree toads in the woods,” Abe Morse husked. “An owl over there in that chestnut tree. See it?”

“The tree or the owl?” Carlin said sarcastically. “I wouldn’t know one from the other.”

Alan Hurst’s flashlight was suddenly a giant white firefly below them to the right. He was in a gully fifty feet deep, fifty yards across, that ran beside the road. Slabbe squatted and pulled Carlin down beside him so that their silhouettes did not stand out.

“It’s not so steep going down from here, but look at the other side,” he said. “It’s a face of rock. He’ll have to come back up this way or cut left or right down there and plough a hundred yards before he can break clear. How about one of you guys at each end? I’ll go down right here.”

Abe Morse slipped away without question. Carlin spat and burped, but finally loped off. Slabbe went down, crab-style, feet first on his heels, palms and beam. The chauffeur’s flash was swinging methodically, covering every square foot of the undergrowth as he worked through the gully. He found what he was looking for just as Slabbe came up behind him.

Hurst was breathing fast, but stopped and gave a little grunt of triumph as his flash centered on his find: a man’s body. The man was on his back. His clothing showed that he’d been out in the weather for days. Slabbe recognized his features: Jake George.

Hurst hesitated no longer. He caught the man’s arm, started to lift him as easily as a sack of feathers. He stopped, frowned, let the arm go again. He picked up a basketball-sized rock, poised it over the dead man’s pasty face.

Slabbe said: “Don’t do it, son.”

It was a mistake. Slabbe was shambling forward, but he shouldn’t have spoken. Or he should at least have clipped Hurst first.

The chauffeur swung easily, smoothly, catlike, and shot-putted his rock at the first thing he saw moving, which was Slabbe. Man, beast or devil smacking into Slabbe once he was under way would have come off second best, but not rock. It took him on the left shoulder and let him know about it. It stopped him, swung him with more, though less localized push, than a .45 Colt slug. He spun so that his back was toward Hurst when the chauffeur cut his flash and leaped away.

Slabbe closed his teeth against the pain, lurched around and shambled after Hurst. The chauffeur’s longer legs made it an uneven contest. He was twenty yards ahead of Slabbe and gaining.

Slabbe opened his mouth to shout to Carlin and Abe Morse, but decided against it. If Hurst knew there were reinforcements handy, he might go to earth in the undergrowth. As it was, he was certainly trying for the Caddy – which was now without a distributor cap.

Slabbe tried for the car, too. Since he had just come down, while Hurst had been here for a while, he was a bit better oriented. When he started clawing up the slope to the road, he was sure he was lined up with the Caddy, while Hurst, off to the right, would have to run back this way once he made the road.

Slabbe’s left hand and arm were numb. His right hand tore on the rocks he clutched at, felt warm and sticky. The slope was just a blur, he could have closed his eyes and made just as good time. He heard the scrambling sliding sound made by rocks and dislodged earth by both himself and his quarry. His lungs were bellows sucking air through his open mouth, drying his lips and tongue and throat till he wanted to gag. He rolled over the hump and was on the road again. Hurst’s footfalls were approaching, thumping on the dirt. Slabbe peered for the dark shape of the Caddy. He saw double – but it was no illusion. There were two cars there. Headlights slashing suddenly into the night proved it. A tinkling voice proved it. In Fudge Burke’s place the voice had sounded clearly as tiny bells in a fine Swiss watch. Out here, with sky and trees to background it, it was a carillon.

“Here, Alan!” it cried. “In here! Quickly!”

7. Fire to the Finish

Hurst could have made it – but didn’t. It wasn’t his lungs or his legs that gave out. It was his heart. One second he was running freely in a long, loping stride. The next he lurched. The next after, he crumpled.

Slabbe was down on one knee. He shifted his gun from its line on where Hurst had been to the tires of the car with the blazing headlights. But that wasn’t necessary either. Miss Yates was not leaving, she was hurrying to Alan Hurst. Slabbe saw her kneel beside him. Her bonnet had fallen off and her white hair was silvery in the wash of the automobile headlights. There was no need for Slabbe to hurry.

When he had dusted himself off, righted his hat and swabbed blood from his right hand, he went over. Miss Yates was rising. She trembled a little.

“Dead?” Slabbe asked.

She nodded, turned. Slabbe took her arm. “I think there’s coffee in the cabin. Who owns the place?”

“It was John Nola’s. We thought we could intimidate that detective, Jake George, or buy him off if we held him a prisoner here for a while, but when Alan talked to the man Monday night, he saw there was only one way.”

Slabbe nodded. “So Hurst and Ike Veech killed Jake, put the body in Veech’s car and Veech drove down here to the gully and dumped it in. They didn’t think then that it would be found soon or that it would make much difference, anyhow. Let’s go into the cabin.”

She offered no resistance. The only sound was the rustling of her black taffeta skirt and Slabbe’s breathing coming back to normal.

There was a smell of coffee inside the cabin. Slabbe hesitated, then saw that she was through, and went to the kitchen. He brought coffee back to where she sat in front of a huge fieldstone fireplace. Her pale face was as unruffled as her fine white hair, but her hands twitched ever so slightly.

Slabbe said: “It was all for love of Ione. M’m, and hate of Nola probably.”

The voice did not tinkle now, it was too low. “I did hate John Nola. I loved him at first and even after he married my sister and Prentice was born. Then he said that he still loved me. Ione is my child, mine and his. Knowing it practically killed John’s wife, my sister, but even after she was dead he wouldn’t marry me – perhaps it was because she died over our affair. So then I hated him.”

“Love and hate,” Slabbe said. “They complicate things. You wanted Ione to marry Bill Teel?”

“Yes.”

“Even though you must have learned or guessed that he was phony?”

Serena Yates lifted her chin. “When Bill Teel brought life to my daughter’s eyes again after the months she spent in a crazy dream world of grief and escape, I knew he was good for her. I wouldn’t have cared if he were a freak – but he isn’t. He became infatuated with a girl once, a Ruby Reed, and married her and she enticed him into a criminal enterprise. He learned from his mistake. I’ve watched him these past months, and he’s building solidly and honestly for a good life.”

“Only John Nola couldn’t see him?” Slabbe said.

The old woman’s black smooth eyes were venomous. “John Nola thought people are black or white, with no in-between. Teel was all bad or all good. John said all bad, and he had a strange, perverse love of Ione. He didn’t want her to marry a criminal. The fool was so insensitive that in spite of knowing what he’d done to me he scoffed at the notion that betrayal by a loved one can make a woman warped and bitter, if not actually mad. I know it can,” she said bitingly. “Ione had transferred everything she’d felt for her first boy to Bill. If he had let her down—”

“But just pulling a trick a couple years ago wouldn’t have thrown her if she was so nuts about him,” Slabbe interrupted.

The black eyes studied him. “You’re quite right. A woman in his past would have done it, though – I thought. Bill told me openly and frankly that he had already been married and not divorced when I encouraged him to love Ione. I told him not to tell her. I was wrong there, but my child was coming to life again and I wouldn’t risk anything that might change her. And then as she loved Bill more and more and believed that she was the only one he had ever loved, it became even more dangerous, to my way of thinking, to tell her that another woman had been first in his life.”

“To your way of thinking,” Slabbe said. “You put that in yourself. You see you were wrong there, too. She knows now that Teel was married to Ruby. She took it, didn’t she? She didn’t crack.”

The old lady bowed her head.

Slabbe said: “You can’t keep your kid from getting bumped, lady. Everybody gets bumped. Most everybody takes it, too. They stand on their feet. They gotta. It’s not your way of thinking that counts for them, it’s their own way. Believe different and look what happens. Rather than let John Nola give your kid a bump, you killed him.”

“In cold blood,” Serena Yates said.

“Drink your coffee,” Slabbe murmured. “You’ll have to make a statement when Lieutenant Carlin gets here. Let me go over it with you.”

He sandpapered his jawline, sighed. He said: “John Nola meant to expose Teel. He hired Jake George. Jake got a line on Teel, an old black market rap hanging over him. Nola may have been pig-headed, like you say, but he knew a mere criminal charge that maybe wouldn’t even stick wouldn’t be enough to make Ione throw Teel down. He told Jake to dig some more, look for a woman in Teel’s past. Jake heard of a wife, but couldn’t trace her. He went to Max Lorenz to see if Lorenz knew where she was. Lorenz did and would tell for a price. That was John Nola’s scheme: put Teel’s wife up against him in front of Ione.”

“And break her heart,” Serena Yates said harshly.

“It didn’t break,” Slabbe said simply.

“Thank God. That’s why telling you the truth is good, at last. You’ll see that Ione and Bill had no part of it and let them alone.”

Slabbe said: “Your chauffeur was nuts about you. He killed for you.”

“I caught him burgling our house when he was only sixteen years old and gave him a job. I killed John Nola, though, and Ruby Reed, too. I wouldn’t have let Alan touch Jake George if I’d guessed what would happen.”

Slabbe shrugged. “Hurst knew a little about how cops operate. He knew you can’t just wet your toes in a murder deal, you gotta jump in feet first. He took a Brody on telling us as much of the truth as possible, hoping we’d check just so far and be satisfied, not tie Ruby Reed in with Teel. But I knew she had to fit somewhere the second she showed that she knew Max Lorenz, at Fudge Burke’s. The telegram Lorenz sent her from the airport showed they were definitely connected. He told her to meet him here to make money, but didn’t tell her the score because she, as the wife, would have been in the driver’s seat. It was just coincidence that she picked up Prentice at Fudge Burke’s. Maybe not. She was the type to go for the rich pups and Prentice hangs out at Fudge’s. So long as they both were in the place at the same time, they were bound to get together. It was one between the eyes for Bill Teel when he walked in there today and spotted her.”

“It was – what do you say? – a bad break.” The old lady’s lips were tight. “If Prentice hadn’t met her, and she hadn’t seen Bill, she would have given up waiting for Max Lorenz after a few days and probably never have returned to Treverton.”

“Loves and hates, women and breaks,” Slabbe murmured. “Did you try to buy her?”

“Of course.”

“And her price?”

“Prentice.”

Slabbe sighed. “It would be, wouldn’t it? She’d keep mum about Teel if you helped her to marry Prentice.”

Serena Yates’ black eyes were icy. “I knew her type. We never could have been sure of her – and Prentice wouldn’t have had her, anyhow.”

“She had to go,” Slabbe agreed. “No time like the present, either. When she walked out the door with Teel, you slipped out another door and shot her. You’re not so good with a gun. You pinked Teel.”

“I am good with a gun. I meant to wound him to divert suspicion from him,” the old lady said calmly.

“And when you claimed you’d seen a man who limped run over the lawn, he had no choice but to back you up. He wasn’t in it, no – only up to his gizzard. How did he know you’d killed Nola? Was he there when you did it?”

The white head shook slowly. “I called him Monday to try to bargain with Lorenz. I overheard John and Lorenz in the study Monday afternoon. I called Bill at once, told him to catch Lorenz when Lorenz left the house and promise to pay him more not to produce Ruby than John was paying him to do it. Bill was outside when Lorenz left. He was in the car with him, drove to the airport with him. But Lorenz hated Bill because Bill hadn’t been apprehended in the black market thing. He laughed at Bill and wrote that telegram to Ruby right in front of him, bragged that Ruby was already here in town and would go straight to Nola the minute she received the telegram. Bill phoned back to the house to me when Lorenz boarded the plane. Bill saw the plane crack up from the phone booth and blurted out what had happened.”

Slabbe said: “How come that Nola let Lorenz have the plane reservation?”

“Because Lorenz said he wouldn’t reveal Ruby’s whereabouts till he was safely out of town. He was a conniving criminal type who thought John might, once he’d got his information, call in the police and try to get back the price he’d paid Lorenz. When Lorenz said that he’d wire John the minute he arrived in New York, John said he’d see that Lorenz got there as soon as possible and gave him the plane reservation.”

Serena Yates’ smooth eyes opened as wide as possible, but the pupils were small and black and perfectly motionless. “Yes,” she said and her tinkling voice was metallic. “Bill was talking to me on the telephone. He said that the plane had just taken off, that Lorenz had telegraphed Ruby at the Carleton Arms, what could we do? Then he cried, ‘My God, the plane cracked up! It’s a mass of flame! No one has a chance!’ ”

Her teeth gleamed. “Lorenz was dead. John Nola was in his study. He was the one who should have been on that plane. What did it matter about Lorenz? He’d sent a telegram. Ruby would appear. Why couldn’t it have been John? Why, I asked myself – why couldn’t it still be John?”

Her coffee cup grated on the saucer. Her bloodless lips were not those of a white-haired old lady. “I shouted at Bill, ‘Go to her hotel! Stop her from reading that telegram! Do anything! I’ll reason with John Nola!’ ”

Slabbe said: “Teel got into Ruby’s suite and accepted the telegram when it was sent up. She walked in on him before he could get away, though, and he slugged her. You slugged Nola – only harder.”

“With a poker,” she said. “Just once. He was in his big chair at the fireplace. I picked up the poker. I hit him with twenty years of hatred. He was supposed to be dead in the plane – he was dead then!”

“Just get rid of him now, was all you had to do,” Slabbe said. “Hurst comes in here.”

“Yes. I needed help. Alan worshipped me. I called him. He said if John was supposed to have been burned up – then burn him up. And if Max Lorenz’s body was going to be identified as John’s, then why not have John’s identified as Lorenz’s?”

“Lorenz had been driving a car,” Slabbe nodded. “A chauffeur would think of that. Lorenz’s car must be at the airport. Hurst went there, but the ignition key wasn’t in it. He monkeyed with the distributor wires and got it going, came back to the house, put Nola’s body in. That night he fired the car and rolled it into Bleeker’s Canyon. But there was Jake George, too.”

“Alan thought of him at once, but he couldn’t be in two places at the same time. He called a man named Ike Veech to kidnap Jake George and bring him here. He called Veech again today after we saw you at Fudge Burke’s and told him to pick you up and see if you were making any progress.”

Slabbe said: “You were afraid that Jake George was a chiseler who might try to blackmail Teel and Ione after they married. But Jake was OK, just a peeper trying to get along, but honest. You couldn’t let him go after pulling shennigans on him.” Slabbe’s voice was thin. “For that, you don’t bother me a bit, lady.”

She looked away.

Slabbe moved his sore shoulder ponderously. “Your original plan was to burn Nola’s body in Lorenz’s Chevvy and have it identified as Lorenz. You didn’t intend Jake George’s body to turn up until after the investigation of the burned body was old and cold. The two catches were that we knew how to identify Lorenz from a bullet in his thigh – and so knew it couldn’t have been him who burned in the Chevvy – and Ruby Reed spotted Bill Teel.”

Slabbe squinted somberly. “With us nosing around about the burned body and Ruby in a spot to tip the cart, you and Hurst cooked a new deal. You figured that we thought Lorenz was still alive. So why not foster that illusion? Kill Ruby and blame it on Lorenz.

“Of course if we were to go on believing the burned guy was Jake George, then Hurst had to make sure Jake’s body wouldn’t turn up or at least wouldn’t be identifiable as Jake when it did get found. I’d deliberately let it out to Hurst that we figured the body in the Chevvy was Jake’s and then put a couple of my people out to watch Hurst’s move. He came up here tonight to beat Jake’s face in with a rock.”

Slabbe found his chewing gum, used it moodily for a second. “John Nola taking that plane right at the time he’d talked to Lorenz wasn’t kosher. Nola’s main ambition right then was to expose Teel; he would have said to hell with whatever his trip was for. Then I remembered that Susie had said Nola had called her just about the time the plane took off. It was worth a workout and it paid. Nola couldn’t have been on the plane. Who was then? Who would send that telegram to Ruby? Max Lorenz, of course. So he was the one on the plane. Then where was John Nola? Why not him in the burned Chevvy? And who would have killed him to stop him from exposing Teel and hurting little Ione? I didn’t have to guess, lady.”

Slabbe shook his grizzled head. He marveled: “When you let Hurst tell most of the truth about Teel, you counted on the fact that no dumb cop would imagine anything so goofy as that this had all started rolling because a screwy old woman had raised her daughter dizzy enough to go bats because her boyfriend had once married a tramp.”

Serena Yates clenched her coffee cup as if to throw it. She didn’t. One by one, her fingers lost their strength and the black fire in her eyes consumed itself. She tried to set the cup down. It fell and broke. She stared at the pieces. Her face worked. “May I go upstairs to the bathroom?” she said.

“Uh-uh,” Slabbe refused. “After Carlin hears it, you can do it – kill yourself, you mean, don’t you?”

She stood up and without haste held the white lace at her throat free with one hand and removed a small revolver from her bosom with the other.

“Yes, kill myself,” she said. “Not you, too, I hope.”

Slabbe didn’t move. “Nope, not me, lady.”

He watched her climb the open staircase, her gun steady. She stood at the top, gripping the rustic banister.

“The bedroom doors are made of seasoned logs,” she said. “The locks are bolts which cannot be shot loose. There are no ladders available, so you won’t be able to reach the second floor from outside.”

For just a second her eyes, black as ever but no longer smooth, looked off at something that wasn’t in the cabin. Then she opened a bedroom door.

“And there are large emergency lamps filled with kerosene in each bedroom,” she said. She closed the door.

Slabbe tried what there was. It wasn’t much. Even when Carlin and Abe Morse came it wasn’t much. Abe dashed for the nearest village for what fire apparatus was on hand, but that wasn’t much either.

Slabbe stood beside Carlin outside, watching the licking brilliance at a second-story window. He wondered if, for a second, he saw a vacant face at the window, but there was too much smoke to be sure.