This Is Murder

Chapter Fifteen

Sam Moraine drove his car rapidly around the block, brought it back to within twenty yards of where he had deposited the district attorney. He switched off the motor, lit a cigarette, settled back in the seat, and waited.

People pounded along the sidewalk, girls hurrying from offices to stores on errands, trial deputies leaving the district attorney’s office for various courtrooms, carrying brief cases bulging with papers. Everyone seemed in a hurry.

Moraine waited, smoking.

Traffic streamed by in the street. Occasional cars turned into the private parking place reserved for cars of the district attorney’s office.

Moraine, watching the traffic, saw a car driven by Barney Morden swing in toward the reserved parking place. Beside Morden sat Carl Thorne. The faces of both men were grim and tense.

Moraine flipped his cigarette to the street, twisted his key in the ignition, stepped on the starting motor, snapped the car into low gear and had shifted into second and was pouring gasoline into the motor as he went past the place where Morden was parking his car.

Moraine shifted his eyes to the rear view mirror, slammed on his brakes as though making an emergency stop. The tires screamed a protest. Moraine swerved the car so that his fenders almost touched those of the car nearest him. Then he released the brakes, snapped the gear shift back into high, and stepped on the accelerator.

His eyes flickered from the road ahead to the rear view mirror. Barney Morden’s car was leaving the parking place.

Moraine nursed his car into speed, made a sudden turn to the right, pushed the accelerator down close to the floor-boards.

He had gone two blocks when he heard the low, throbbing sound of the siren.

He continued to push the accelerator close to the floor-boards, keeping the car running at high speed. The moan of the siren became a shrill scream as Barney Morden’s powerful car pulled alongside and started crowding him into the pavement.

Pedestrians toned startled faces toward the two cars.

Barney Morden shouted, “Get over, Sam!”

Moraine looked up, let his face register a fleeting expression of alarm, then took his foot from the accelerator; gradually applied the brake, and slid m close to the curb.

Barney Morden stopped his car directly beside Moraine’s machine, and a little ahead, so that it would have been impossible for Moraine to have swung back out into traffic without first moving the investigator’s car.

Morden slid from behind the steering wheel. His broad shoulders squared, his jaw thrust forward, he walked around the front of Moraine’s car. Carl Thorne slipped out through the other door, walked around the rear of the car, and came up on Moraine from behind as Barney Morden put his left foot on the running board, slid his right hand back toward his hip-pocket, rested his left elbow on the door.

“What the hell’s the hurry?” he asked.

“Oh, hello, Barney. I saw you back there and waved to you, but I guess you didn’t see me.”

“Yeah,” Barney said, “you saw me all right, and started burning up the road making a get-away.”

Moraine let his face register injured innocence.

“Listen,” Morden said, “you’ve got the Chief bamboozled. You haven’t got me bamboozled. I want to ask you some questions.”

“Such as how fast I think I was going?” Moraine inquired.

“Baloney,” Morden said. “You know what I want.”

“What do you want?”

“I was in your office about ten forty-seven last night.”

“That’s right, Barney. You were,” Moraine said, as though the district attorney’s investigator had given the correct answer to some very complicated question.

Morden’s eyes narrowed.

“A jane called you up.”

“Right.”

“I took the call first. You may remember that.”

“I remember you grabbing the telephone before I had a chance to get it,” Moraine said.

“Figure it any way you want to,” Barney Morden said patiently. “I heard the jane’s voice over the wire.”

“What of it?”

“She was excited.”

“So many women get excited when they’re calling me up, Barney. It must be some subtle power that I have...”

Barney Morden hitched himself a little closer to the door of the car. His left forefinger jabbed Moraine in the chest.

“Forget the wisecracks,” he said. “I’m talking business. This isn’t a poker game. This is murder!”

“Murder!” Moraine echoed.

“You know it, buddy. Now, listen. After you got on the phone I was sitting close enough so I could hear something of what the girl said. It was telling you to come out there right away. You hung up the receiver and started yawning and pretending you were all fed up with sticking around the office, and that you were going some place, but you weren’t in any particular hurry. Now, that may have fooled the Chief, but it didn’t fool me.”

“Ha!” Moraine said. “You heard me talk with a woman, heard the woman tell me to meet her, and therefore you deduced that I was going to meet a woman. Clever, Barney. Clever, indeed.”

Carl Thorne, pushing forward, said, “Hell, Barney, let’s take him where we can really talk with him.”

“I’m afraid of what the Chief might do.”

“To hell with the Chief. You do what I say and you’ll be sitting pretty.”

Morden hesitated for a moment, then said slowly, “Sam, cut out the wisecracks and get down to brass tacks. Where did you go when you left your office?”

“Is it any particular business of yours?” Moraine asked.

“I’m making it my business.”

Moraine knitted his forehead in thought.

“Right now, Barney, I can’t remember. I may remember a little later on, but right now I can’t remember.”

Morden looked at Thorne. Thorne nodded. Morden jerked open the door.

“Get out,” he said.

“What’s the big idea?”

“Get out!”

“You’re making a mistake, Barney.”

Barney Morden’s face was set in grim, uncompromising lines.

“Get out,” he said slowly, and emphatically.

Moraine slid from behind the steering wheel.

Barney Morden made quick tapping motions over Moraine’s hips.

“Where’s that gun?”

“What gun?”

“The gun the Chief gave you permission to carry.”

“Oh, that? Why, I don’t know where it is, Barney. In my apartment somewhere, I guess. I carried it the night I took that ransom money out and then I put it in my bureau or somewhere.”

“That’s what you say. A .38, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Know anything about Pete Dixon being shot twice with a .38?”

“I heard he was killed,” Moraine said. “Shocking case, wasn’t it?”

Barney Morden took Moraine’s arm, piloted him over to the car which he had been driving.

“Get in.”

“Have you got a warrant?” Moraine asked.

“I don’t need one. This is a pinch.”

“And I thought you were a friend of mine.”

“Never mind what you thought. Get in. You’re going places.”

“Where, for instance?”

“Where I can get some information out of you.”

A small crowd had collected and Barney Morden glared at them.

“Go on about your business,” he said. “Don’t stand here gawking.”

He pushed Sam Moraine into the automobile. Carl Thorne jumped in beside him and closed the door. Morden slipped behind the steering wheel and the car purred into motion.

“Taking me to jail?” Moraine asked, casually.

“You’re damn right I am,” Morden said. “I’m doing something now I wanted to do last night.”

“Under those circumstances,” Moraine told him, “you’ll get no cooperation from me.”

“I don’t want any cooperation from you.”

“All right, Barney, just remember that.”

Moraine sat back in silence.

Morden ran the car around the block, back through an alley, and swung sharply to his left, pressing his hand on the button of his horn. A door slid smoothly back and the car entered a big concrete room. A police officer in uniform, seated in a chair, controlled the mechanism which opened and closed the door. Another man in uniform stood by the side of a steel door.

Barney Morden stopped the car, nodded to the officer by the steel door, and said to Moraine, “Get out.”

Moraine left the automobile. The officer fitted a key and opened the steel door. Morden pushed Moraine into a long concrete corridor. A man looked up from a desk. Morden said, “I’m not booking him right now. He’s in for questioning.”

Carl Thorne was walking slightly behind Moraine. The man at the desk glanced at him curiously.

“Okay,” Morden said, jerking his head toward Thorne.

The three walked down a corridor. Morden stopped at a door marked “BUREAU OF DETECTIVES — HOMICIDE.”

He stood in the doorway, said something in a low voice to one of the men, nodded, stepped back out, and escorted Sam Moraine to a room fitted with a battered desk, half a dozen chairs, a barred window, a table and a cuspidor.

“Sit down, Sam,” he said.

Moraine sat down.

“Where did you go after you left your office last night?”

Sam looked around the room and said, “Nice place you have here, Barney.”

“Where were you last night after eleven o’clock?”

Moraine said, “I’d like to telephone to my lawyer.”

Morden’s face flushed.

Thorne leaned forward and whispered to Morden. Morden shook his head and said, “Not until were sure. We can’t afford to slip up on this thing.”

He glared steadily at Sam Moraine for several seconds, then said, “Okay, buddy, we’ll wait.”

“What are we waiting for?” Moraine asked.

“You’ll find out.”

Morden pulled a cigar from his waistcoat pocket, clamped his teeth on the end of the cigar, tore off the end by jerking the cigar with a savage wrenching motion. He spat out the bit of tobacco, wrapped his lips about the cigar, and held a match to the end. Moraine took a cigarette from his cigarette case and, after a moment, Thorne did the same. The three sat smoking in silence.

“Haven’t any cards here, have you?” Moraine asked.

Morden said nothing.

Moraine sighed and resumed his smoking. A clock on the wall tick-tocked off the seconds.

More than fifteen minutes elapsed. Moraine, having finished his cigarette, turned to Barney Morden and said, “You know, Barney, if you’re trying to get my goat with this waiting business, you’re not getting anywhere.”

Morden said nothing. Once more Thorne leaned forward and whispered.

Morden nodded his head. A door opened. A plainclothes man said, “Okay, Barney.”

Barney got up.

“This way,” he told Moraine.

Moraine followed him through a door, down a passage, through another door, and into a room. Across one end of the room was a lighted stage effect, a huge box closed on three sides, open on the side toward the room. The open side was covered with light, silken gauze, which caught the illumination of concealed electric lights. The room itself was dark. The interior of the box blazed with brilliant light. A man opened the door, stepped through, and Barney Morden said, “Line up,” and nodded his head toward Moraine. The man took Moraine’s arm.

“This way, buddy,” he remarked.

Moraine walked through the door, leaving Barney Morden and Carl Thorne in the room.

Moraine found himself in a long corridor, at the end of which was a transverse corridor with a man standing in the intersection. The man who held his arm shouted, “Send down eight or ten, Bill.”

The man at the transverse corridor waved his hand in token of assent, and vanished.

“Lovely weather were having, after the big wind storm,” Moraine remarked.

The man who held his arm nodded wearily. He kept his eyes on the transverse corridor.

After several minutes there were shuffling steps. A file of slack-shouldered men came into view. There were men of different ages and heights, men who were well-dressed, men who were shabbily dressed. Their faces were apathetic. They showed whatever resentment they might have felt by a slouching gait and a slow, shuffling walk.

The man with Moraine opened a door. White, brilliant light blazed out into their faces.

“All right, boys,” he said.

The men started filing into the shadow box. When four of them had gone in, the man pushed Moraine into the line.

Moraine held his ground, holding up the men behind him.

“Look here,” he said, “you can’t do this to me.”

“The hell we can’t,” he said, “we’re doing it. If you only knew it, were giving you all the breaks. Get in there. If you’re wise, you’ll stand up and take it on the chin. If you get rough, you’re going to get hurt.”

The man’s voice was elaborately impersonal. The very lack of feeling carried conviction. Moraine walked into the shadow box. The other men shuffled along behind him. A door closed. Someone yelled, “Okay, Barney.”

Moraine looked out toward the white gauze. Lights beat into his face. He could see only the white gauze and darkness, could not even discern the men in that other room as vague, shadowy figures.

A door opened and closed.

Barney Morden’s voice said, “Okay, begin at the front of the line. Say ‘Sixth Avenue and Maplehurst, and drive like hell.’ Turn around and face the lights when you say it.”

The man at the head of the line turned wearily, “Sixth Avenue and Maplehurst,” he said, after the manner of a bored waiter repeating a patron’s order, “and drive like hell.”

“Put more feeling into it,” Barney Morden said. “Snap it out. Say ‘Sixth Avenue and Maplehurst, and drive like hell.’ ”

The man sighed, hesitated for a moment.

“You heard me!” Barney Morden bellowed.

“Sixth Avenue and Maplehurst, and drive like hell.”

“That’s better,” Morden said. “Now you, next in line!”

Someone on the other side of the white gauze started to say something in an excited voice, but Barney Morden silenced him.

“Wait a minute,” he said. “We’re playing this absolutely on the up-and-up. Wait until you’ve heard them all.”

The men repeated the formula in order. Moraine studied their voices. When it came his turn, he tried to simulate the bored weariness of men who were utterly indifferent to what they were doing, who were only following instructions because they dared not disobey.

“Sixth Avenue and Maplehurst, and drive like hell,” he said, mouthing the words rapidly but with no particular expression.

The man behind him took up the message.

When the last man had spoken the piece, there was silence. “Okay,” Barney Morden’s voice said. “Do you know any of those men?”

The voice of a man on the other side of the white gauze, sounding excited, said, “Sure I know him. It’s that fourth one from the end — the fellow with the red necktie. He ain’t talking like he talked when he got in the cab, but that’s him, and that’s his voice.”

Abruptly, a door snapped open. “All right, boys,” a man said, “file out.”

The men filed out, with that same shuffling gait. When Sam Moraine went through the door, the man took his arm.

“This way,” he said.

He led Moraine back down the corridor. The door opened. Barney Morden and Carl Thorne stepped through.

“This way,” Morden said.

Moraine followed them back to the room in which he had waited.

“You heard what the cab driver said,” Barney Morden remarked.

Moraine yawned.

“Was it the cab driver?” he asked. “Or was it just one of your men planted in there to throw a scare into me?”

Morden’s face flushed.

“You see,” Moraine remarked, “I’ve played so much poker with you, Barney, that I always like to see your cards before I let you take in a jack pot.”

Barney Morden sucked in his breath in a quick inhalation. His fist clenched. He remained tense for a minute, then said, “I’m giving you a chance, Sam. I’m playing fair with you. That bird was the cab driver. You’re the man that picked up that cruising cab and told him to go to Sixth and Maplehurst and drive like hell. Now, why did you go out there?”

Sam Moraine looked all around the room, let his face show disappointment. “There doesn’t seem to be a telephone here,” he remarked. “I wanted to call a lawyer.”

Morden lost patience. He leaned forward, let his eyes bore into Sam Moraine’s.

“I’ll tell you why you went out there,” he said. “You went out there because your secretary, Natalie Rice, had telephoned you and told you to come out just as fast as you could get out there. You got out and found that she’d shot Pete Dixon. When you got to playing around with the Hartwell woman, she tipped her mitt that she’d been out at Dixon’s. You sent Natalie Rice out to investigate. You were going, yourself, when Phil Duncan came to your office. You were afraid to go then, for fear you’d tip your hand, and the girl volunteered to go. She had your .38 revolver, and Dixon got rough with her. She shot him twice and made a squawk for help to you over the telephone. You rushed out.”

Barney Morden ceased talking. He was breathing heavily, as though he had been running. There was no sound in the room save that heavy breathing and the ticking of the clock.

Moraine yawned.

Morden’s face flushed.

“Let me try it, Barney,” Carl Thorne said.

Thorne hitched his chair around so he was facing Moraine. His voice was calm and suave.

“Now, listen, Moraine,” he said, “there’s no hard feelings between us. This is murder, and it’s got to be cleaned up. But there are lots of ways you can get the breaks. You’re friendly with Phil Duncan; I’m friendly with Phil Duncan. Barney Morden, here, is friendly with you — that is, he wants to be friendly if you’d only give him a chance. Now, no one knows exactly what happened in that room except Natalie Rice and Pete Dixon. Pete Dixon is dead. If you’d play ball with us, Natalie Rice could tell her story and there wouldn’t be anyone to contradict it. Dixon was a mean customer. He probably got rough with her. He started pawing her over. Maybe he tried to choke her or something and she shot in self-defense. Do you get me?”

Moraine shifted his eyes to meet those of Carl Thorne. His expression was that of one who is patiently waiting.

“Now, then,” Thorne said, “when you got out there, you went up to the room to see what the evidence was going to be like. You didn’t know what to do. The girl was hysterical. She didn’t know what to do. You wanted to look things over before you reached any decision. You went up there and found a bunch of documents lying around. They may have been all collected together in a pile — perhaps they were in a bag or something. Those documents had a lot of stuff in them that Dixon was intending to take before the grand jury. They were going to call him to-day as a surprise witness. He was getting stuff together. It was stuff he’d been collecting for months with a whole flock of detectives. Some of it was stuff that he’d stolen from me. He’d bribed Ann Hartwell to sell me out. He had her notebooks there and probably transcriptions of what those notebooks contained. He had a lot of other stuff. Some of it didn’t look so good.

“Now, then, Moraine, we want that stuff and we’re going to get it.

“You’re a smart man. You saw that Natalie Rice was in a spot, but you knew that if she controlled those documents, she could hold the whip hand.

“Now I’ll tell you what well do. If you’ll kick through with those documents, we’ll forget that Natalie Rice was out there, and we’ll forget that you went out there. We’ll put the hush-hush on this cab driver and let the newspaper boys play around with the unsolved mystery. If anything should happen and they put the finger on you, the district attorney will listen to Natalie Rice’s story and give it his official okay — whatever that story may be.”

“You’re speaking for Phil Duncan?” Moraine asked.

Thorne flushed, and said, “I’m speaking for the district attorney — whoever he may be — now or in the future.”

Moraine, glancing at the clock, said, “Could I use the telephone for a minute?”

“Who do you want to telephone to?”

“My lawyer,” Moraine said.

Thorne’s face purpled. He jumped to his feet and raised his voice in anger and excitement.

“You’re trying to protect that Rice woman,” he said, “and back of her there’s someone else. Don’t think we’re a bunch of damn fools and don’t think we’ve been asleep at the switch. You’re trying to protect her father, Alton G. Rice, who got out of jail and at the present time is hiding somewhere. He went to Natalie Rice’s apartment, and you went to that apartment and took him out with you, and, at the time you took him out, you were carrying a heavy suitcase. Now laugh that one off!”

Moraine yawned, patted his mouth with his four fingers and said, “Don’t shout, Thorne. I can hear you perfectly.”

Thorne turned to Barney Morden.

“Lock this son-of-a-bitch up,” he said, “and go get the Rice woman and give her the works.”

Barney Morden nodded, scraped back his chair, got to his feet.

“You’ve got one last chance, Sam,” he said.

Moraine started to chuckle.

“What’s the joke?” Barney Morden inquired savagely.

“I was just thinking,” Moraine said, “that if your story was correct and you held me here while you went out and searched my apartment, my automobile, and all the places you thought those papers might be, and didn’t find them so you could destroy them, and the foreman of the grand jury should find out I was held as a suspect and bring me before the grand jury, what an interesting situation would develop if those papers should appear before the grand jury and before you had a chance to destroy them.”

Barney Morden’s face writhed with expression. He started to say something, then jerked a door open and said to a man in the corridor, “Frank, bury this bird. Don’t let anyone talk with him. Don’t let him get near a telephone. Don’t let anyone see him. Don’t answer any inquiries about him. Take your orders from me and from no one else. Is that clear?”

“You mean from your office?”

“Office hell! I mean from me personally.”

Carl Thorne stepped forward.

“You know me?” he asked.

The man nodded.

“He means from himself personally,” he said.

The man nodded again, jerked his head to Moraine.

“Come on, buddy.”

Moraine followed him down a corridor to a desk back of which a man sat reading a newspaper. There was a big safe behind the desk.

“Empty your pockets,” the man said.

Barney Morden stepped up beside Sam Moraine, scowling.

Moraine took a handkerchief, a key container, cigarette case, a lighter, a pocket knife and a watch from his pockets.

“Frisk him,” Morden said.

The man ran his hands through Moraine’s pockets, gave an exclamation as his fingers closed about the sheaf of bills in Moraine’s inner pocket. He pulled it out, looked at Barney Morden and gave a low whistle.

Barney Morden stepped forward, snatched the bills out of his hand, started counting them.

Morden finished counting the bills. He looked at Moraine accusingly.

“So,” he said, “you were going to take a run-out powder.”

Moraine turned to the man behind the desk.

“Pardon me,” he said, “could I telephone a lawyer?”

The man looked inquiringly at Barney Morden.

“Hell, no!” Morden said. “I’m responsible for this guy.”

“Who’s responsible for the money?” Moraine asked.

“You’ll get your money back fast enough.”

Moraine said to the man behind the desk, “I want a receipt.”

The man took a manila envelope from a drawer. The flap of the envelope contained a numbered stub. He listed Moraine’s belongings one at a time, dropped them into the envelope, sealed it and handed Moraine the numbered stub.

“Your money’s safe enough,” he said.

“This way,” the man told him.

Moraine was taken to a cell. The steel door closed behind him.

The cell had an iron cot which folded up against the wall, or let down, held in position by a couple of chains. There was a thin mattress on the cot. Moraine untied his necktie, opened his shirt at the neck, climbed to the cot, lay down and closed his eyes. He was physically and mentally fatigued, and he drifted off into a dozing, uneasy sleep.

Some two hours later he was awakened by a key turning in the lock. The door opened, and Barney Morden stood in the doorway.

“Sam,” he said, “I’m going to give you a break. I’m going to let you out.”

Moraine chuckled.

“In other words, Barney,” he said, “after having made a complete search of my office, my apartment, my automobile, and every other place you could think of, you can’t find where those papers are, so you’ve decided to turn me loose and put a shadow on me. Is that right?”

Barney Morden’s face was dark.

“You,” he said, “get the hell out of here!”