Very Cold for May

Chapter Thirteen

Jake left Sheila with Toni and caught a cab for the North Side. He knew the patrolman who was standing inside the lobby of Niccolo’s building. He told him that Martin was expecting him and went up to the third floor landing, where the Lieutenant was talking with a detective from the district.

They nodded to each other and Martin led him into Niccolo’s apartment.

Niccolo’s tweed-clad body lay on a grass rug in the center of the large, high-ceilinged living room. His face was buried in the crook of his arm, and except for the blood on his cheek he might have been asleep. The blood came from a wound in his temple and had stained his thick black hair.

“It was at close range,” Martin said. “Probably a .32. Now what was this about his killing Meed?”

Jake looked away from Dean’s huddled figure. “That was his story,” he said. “He made a slip, you see, talking with me about the diary. He said something that indicated he knew I’d received it. When I called him on it, he gave me a song-and-dance about getting the information from Toni Ryerson, whose office adjoins mine.”

Martin held up a hand irritably. “Let’s go slow, Jake. You seem to be running over with information.”

“Okay,” Jake said. He started again and told Martin every detail of his conversation with Dean Niccolo, and of his interview with Toni Ryerson, and Dean’s original mistake. When he finished Martin scowled and ran a hand abstractedly through his thinning brown hair.

“So he killed Meed, eh? That leaves May and himself for us to figure out, doesn’t it?”

Without waiting for an answer he drifted away and began talking with a detective who was dusting the arms of the light maple chairs for prints.

Jake glanced around the smartly furnished room, noting the monk’s cloth drapes, the modem drawings, the liquor cabinet and shelves of records. Niccolo had enjoyed the good things of life. Several of the pictures had been pulled down from the wall, he noticed, and the drawers of a small desk had been removed and their contents dumped on the floor.

Martin walked back to Jake, massaging the bridge of his nose thoughtfully, and Jake said, “Did your men make the search here?”

“No. This is just the way we found it. Someone made a quick search after letting him have it, I’d say.”

“Any ideas?” Jake said.

“No, I wouldn’t go that far,” Martin said drily. He looked at Jake with an odd expression. “You got any ideas?”

“As a matter of fact, yes,” Jake said. “Supposing Avery Meed killed May to get the diary? Logical?”

“Reasonably so. We’ve found Meed’s prints on the table where May kept the diary. He had a motive, opportunity, and so forth. Yeah, it’s logical.”

“How about those double crosses drawn on the mirror with lipstick and the clothes of May’s that were strewn about, and so forth? Do you think Meed did all that?”

Martin smiled slowly and touched Jake’s tie with his forefinger. “That’s a nice tie. I wouldn’t have thought green would go with gray that well. But to answer your question: You said Niccolo said he was outside May’s when Meed went in. Well, according to Niccolo, Meed was only inside a minute. That wouldn’t have given him time to talk the deal over with May, murder her, tear up her clothes, draw on the mirror with lipstick, and so forth. That would take ten or fifteen minutes.” Martin lit a cigarette deliberately and blew smoke at the ceiling. “Maybe Niccolo was wrong about the time?”

“I’m betting he wasn’t,” Jake said. “Niccolo had been in radio quite a while before coming with us. He could look at a page of copy and tell how long it would take to read it over the air. I’d say he’d make a good witness.”

“You’re saying that Meed didn’t murder May. That he couldn’t possibly have.”

“No, you’re saying that,” Jake said.

A flicker of annoyance crossed Martin’s face and he said, sardonically, “How long are you going to keep me in suspense, Jake? Do you know anything I can use?”

“I honestly don’t know,” Jake said. “I’ll try though. Do you know that Riordan’s wife, Denise, and young Brian have been two-timing the old man with gay indifference, so to speak?”

“I’ve known that from the start,” Martin said.

Jake shrugged. “Well, you’re ahead of me.”

“I know that Dan Riordan didn’t spend the night of May’s murder in Gary,” Martin said. “I know a helluva lot, Jake. I know that your boss, Gary Noble, has lied to me about what he did the night of the murder. I wonder if anyone is telling the truth.”

“How about Mike Francesca?” Jake said, with a smile.

“I know all about Mike Francesca,” Martin snapped. He dropped his cigarette and put his foot on it heavily; and then he looked at Jake with embarrassment. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t make things add up in this case. It’s got me edgy.”

A uniformed patrolman who had been going through a shelf of books came over to Martin with an envelope in his hand. “I just found this behind a row of books, Lieutenant.”

Martin took the envelope from him, opened it and removed a sheaf of clippings. He opened them and Jake saw that they were covered with May’s back-slanted script.

“This is damn interesting,” Martin said.

The clippings were obviously those that had been cut from May’s diary and Jake, as he read over Martin’s shoulder, saw why Riordan had been worried.

The clippings contained the story of his wartime jugglings, not in elaborate detail, but in implications, scraps of conversations, and forthright opinions by May of Riordan’s activities. There were facts, figures and dates, all adding up to a pretty clear picture of how Riordan had cheated the government through the substitution of cheap grade steel, and of how he had bribed the inspector, Nickerson, to okay the faulty barrels.

“Looks like this Riordan is quite a bastard,” Martin said, and looked at Jake coldly. “You enjoy working for him?”

“I didn’t, so I quit,” Jake said.

“Well,” Martin said and cleared his throat noisily. “I seem to make an ass out of myself every time I get away from murders.”

“Forget it,” Jake said. “Does this information give you a lead?”

“An obvious one. Who would want this information hushed up? Riordan.”

“Tell me this,” Jake said. “Did you ever find any additional diary of May’s?”

“Now you’re getting smart. That was the first thing I looked for when she was murdered. You see, the diary we recovered ran up until the end of 1948, and this is more than a year later. People usually don’t give up the diary habit once they start. When they do it’s a lead-pipe cinch they wouldn’t stop on the last day of the year. That’s psychology, in case you’re wondering how I know. New Year’s Day is the time to start a diary because it’s an exciting day, it’s a fresh start in life. So when I saw that her diary ended on December 31, 1948, I made a little bet that we’d find some further record of her day-to-day routine.”

“Well, did you?” Jake said impatiently.

“Oh, yes,” Martin said. He fit a cigarette and said casually, “Yes, we found it, all right. May had stopped keeping a written diary at the end of 1948. From then on she had her material typed by an outfit called Autowrite. We found a bundle of typewritten pages in her bedroom, hidden away in a little closet behind her shoe rack.”

“What do you mean she had her material typed?” Jake said. “Did she use a secretary?”

“No, a Dictaphone. And it was empty when we arrived. Either she hadn’t been working or the cylinder had been taken away.”

Martin excused himself to talk with a district sergeant and Jake wandered to the window and stared down into the snow-blurred street. Everything was coming into shape now, the pattern was taking form. He stood at the window for perhaps three or four minutes, smoking a cigarette, and then he turned and went back to Martin.

“I’ve got an idea,” he said. “Lend me one of your men for a half hour or so, and I may surprise you.”

“You haven’t asked if there was anything interesting in May’s new diary?” Martin said.

“I know damn well there wasn’t,” Jake said.

“I’m going to arrest Riordan,” Martin said. “Does that interest you?”

“Yes and no. Well?”

Martin nodded to a detective from Homicide, a man named Murphy. “Go along with Jake, Murph. He may need some help. When you’re through with him check back to Headquarters.”

“I’ll see you in an hour,” Jake said.

“You’re going to miss the show,” Martin said. “Maybe not,” Jake said. “Come on, Murph.” Downstairs Murphy crawled into his car and said, “Where to, Jake?”

“Find a drugstore, first, I’ve got to make a call.”

Leaving Murphy in the car Jake went into the warm, sweetly-scented drugstore and walked to the telephone booths. He picked up the city directory and leafed quickly through to the S’s, and then slowed down as he searched for the name of May’s maid, Ada Swenson. Jake wasn’t sure she had a phone. If not, they’d have to make the trip to her home. But she was listed in the book, to his relief.

Then as he dialed her number he went quickly back over the chain of reasoning that had led him to her. He might have slipped, but he couldn’t see where or how.

First May was using a Dictaphone. He shouldn’t have needed Martin to tell him that. She had said she was going to work the night he had seen her for the last time, and she had said there were no servants in the house at night, because she didn’t like them eavesdropping on her. If she had been using a typewriter or pen or pencil she wouldn’t have had that worry. Therefore she was dictating. That much was fine. But she had intended to work that night — yet the police had not found a cylinder in her Dictaphone.

There could be several explanations for that, of course, the most obvious being that she had decided not to work after all. However, if she had worked, there should have been a dictaphone cylinder in her machine the next morning, unless — it had been taken away by her murderer, or had been mailed away by the maid, Ada Swenson. The woman had told Martin she had mailed a package before discovering May’s body.

That last alternative had all of Jake’s hopes pinned to it. That “package” had to be the dictaphone cylinder.

He tried to keep his excitement in check as he waited for her phone to answer. There was a chance she’d left town. She could have been in an accident.

“Hello?”

Jake recognized her soft, anxious voice. “Miss Swenson, this is Lieutenant Martin,” he said. “Can I talk to you a moment?”

“Why — yes.”

“I’d like you to tell me again what you did the morning of Miss Laval’s murder. Everything, please.”

“Oh, it was terrible,” Miss Swenson said, her voice rising. “She was laying on the bed, and I said, ‘Good morning’ and she didn’t answer, and she was dead all the time, and the police came and found her throat had been strangled, and I—”

“Now don’t upset yourself, Miss Swenson,” Jake said. “What did you do when you entered the house? Immediately after you unlocked the door, what did you do?”

“I closed it,” Miss Swenson said.

“Yes. And then what?”

“Oh!” Miss Swenson cried. “I forget. I forget the mail. I took the mail out and then came back and found her there.”

Jake’s hand tightened on the receiver. “What was it you mailed, Miss Swenson?”

“Like always. First thing she want me to take out the little package and drop it in the box. She left it for me at night, and I mail it in the mail box. Sometimes she leave two or three, but they should go out first, before the dusting. Always Special Delivery.”

Jake let out his breath slowly. “Thanks, Miss Swenson, thanks very much,” he said.

“Good night. And do you know will anybody else want to know about this? I am leaving soon for sister’s, but with you and the other fellow calling me maybe I should plan to leave not right away.”

“Did someone else call you about this?” Jake said.

“Oh, yes. Not an hour ago. He wanted to know just like you what I did and about the mail. I almost forgot about the mail to him too, I’m so nervous.”

“Who was it called?” Jake said.

“I don’t know.”

“Well, I don’t think you’ll be bothered again tonight,” Jake said. He replaced the receiver and stared at it for a moment; someone else was thinking along the same line that he was, and that “someone” now knew as much as he did.

He flipped quickly through the phone book again, found the address he wanted and rejoined Murphy in the car. “We’re going downtown,” he said. “The Science Building at Wabash and Lake Streets.”

The revolving door of the Science Building was locked but Murphy hammered on the glass until he roused the janitor, a shuffling old man with gray hair and filmy blue eyes.

Murphy showed his badge to the janitor through the glass and they were admitted. Jake asked what floor the Autowrite Company was on, and the janitor said the thirteenth.

“Let’s go up,” Jake said.

The Autowrite Company occupied a three-room suite with an entrance several doors down from the elevators. Murphy told the janitor to unlock the door and Jake walked into the office and snapped on the lights, while Murphy watched him curiously.

Jake went to the filing cabinets and looked through the index for May’s account with the company. He found a card with her name on it, listing the dates when recordings were received and when the typed material was returned to her. The last entry showing the receipt of a recording was the day after May’s murder. There was no record that the material had been returned, and Jake began to feel excited. He was still on the right track, so far.

There remained now the job of finding the cylinder that contained May’s record of what happened the last night she was alive.

There were three desks in the outer office, and on each there was a wire basket filled with the black dictaphone cylinders.

Jake beckoned to Murphy. “You can give me a hand here. I’m looking for a recording made by May Laval.” He picked up a cylinder from the desk and saw that it had a tag attached to it, and on the tag a printed name. “Her name will be on the one we want.” He put the first cylinder aside, and started through the pile, while Murphy applied himself with an impressive disinterest to the stack on the middle desk.

The janitor watched them with gloomy suspicion.

Murphy found the recording.

Jake grabbed it eagerly and slipped it into the player alongside the desk, put the phones to his ears, and flicked the switch to start the machine...

He listened for two minutes, and then he said, “Well, I’ll be damned,” in an astonished voice. And yet he wasn’t surprised.

“What’s up?” Murphy asked.

Jake took the phones from his ears and removed the cylinder from the player. “There’s no time to go into it now, Murph. But here’s what I want you to do. I need this recording and a portable dictaphone at Riordan’s suite in the Blackstone Hotel in about an hour. Can you handle that?”

“Yeah, we’ve got a couple of portables at Headquarters. You want one of them, and this cylinder, too?”

“Yes, and for God’s sake don’t let anything happen to the record.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Murphy said laconically, and dropped it into his outside coat pocket.

“Hey!” the janitor said. “You can’t take things out of here.”

“I’ll leave a receipt,” Jake said, and sat down at a typewriter. He rattled one off and signed Lieutenant Martin’s name to it with a flourish.

“Well, that’s different,” the janitor said.

Murphy drove Jake down to the Blackstone. The traffic going south was light and they made excellent time. The snow had changed to rain now, a heavy slanting rain that blurred the windshield and haloed street lights with a misty corona. Murphy dropped Jake at the hotel and drove on to Headquarters to get the portable dictaphone.

There was a crowd under the marquee waiting for cabs, and the rain-coated doorman was in the street, blowing his whistle at passing cabs with pointless optimism.

Jake elbowed his way through the press of people and trotted up the steps to the lobby. He started for the elevators but saw Martin and Gregory Prior standing at the desk talking to the room clerk. Changing directions he came up behind them and tapped Martin on the shoulder.

Martin turned, and his face was hard. “We’re too late. Riordan checked out an hour ago. The clerk tells us he had a ticket on the TWA flight to the coast.”

“What flight?”

“The ten thirty-five. We can catch him at the airport.”

Prior nodded to Jake. “I’ve got a car outside,” he said to Martin. Prior was hatless and there were drops of rain in his close-cropped hair. “I’ve got an interest in Riordan, too, you know.”

“Well, let’s go,” Martin said. “We can both take a crack at him, but not until we get him.”

They started for the door and Jake had to hurry to keep up with Martin’s long, determined strides. They pushed through the revolving door as a cab pulled up at the hotel.

The occupant struggled through the cluster of people trying to engage the cab; and Jake saw that it was Sheila.

“I hoped you’d be here,” she said. “I gave Toni a sleeping powder and she’s all right. What’s going on?”

Prior cleared his throat. “We’ve got to hurry.”

Jake said to Martin, “Can I bring her along?”

“Sure, bring her along,” Martin said.

Prior’s car was halfway down the block. They were soaking wet when they climbed in, Jake and Sheila in the rear, Martin and Prior up front. Prior drove down Wabash, then over to Roosevelt Boulevard to Archer Avenue, the diagonal artery leading to Municipal Airport.

“What’s going on?” Sheila said.

“Dan Riordan has flown the coop. Wasn’t that a damn foolish thing for him to do, Prior?”

“He knew we had him,” Prior said, rubbing a gloved hand over the windshield and leaning forward over the wheel for better visibility. “Possibly he figured he’d be better off trying to get out of the country with as much cash as he could raise. He might manage to stay at liberty quite some time, say in South America.”

Prior drove expertly. They reached the airport at ten thirty-four.

Martin was out of the car before Prior brought it to a complete stop.

There was a restless stir of movement in the large, brightly-lighted waiting room, as passengers streamed out the doors leading to the field, and red caps trundled luggage after them in four-wheeled trucks. The monotonous, weary voice of the announcer describing flights and weather in other sections of the country lent a charged excitement to the atmosphere.

Martin made straight for the TWA information desk.

“The ten thirty-five is ready to take off now, sir,” the clerk said, answering his question. “I’m afraid you’re late.”

Martin drew his wallet and showed the clerk his badge. “We may have to hold that flight,” he said.

“Oh.” The clerk raised his eyebrows. “I’ll try to contact the dispatcher. Will you need any help?”

“I don’t think so,” Martin said.

Prior came in, spotted them and hurried over. “Everything okay?”

Martin nodded. “Let’s go.”

He led the way to the field with Prior and Jake at his side. Outside the night was changed to brilliant whiteness by the rows of beacons lining the runway.

Prior suddenly grabbed Martin’s arm. “Look.” They all stopped and watched the gleaming, four-engined plane that was hurtling down the runway. It drove into the opaque mist of rain and finally cleared the ground and faded almost imperceptibly into the horizon, its blinking wing lights flashing like fireflies in the dark.

“Well,” Jake said. “That was a nice exit.”

“He won’t get far,” Martin said. “He should know that.”

They drove back to the Loop after Martin had dispatched a wire to police in Kansas City asking them to take Riordan into custody. Martin said he wanted them to come with him to Riordan’s apartment.

“What kind of a warrant do you have for him?” he asked Prior a little later.

“We don’t have a warrant yet and we don’t need one, unless he refuses to cooperate. First, he’ll have a hearing before the committee, which has the authority to subpoena any persons or records it requires.”

“You’re pretty sure of your case?”

“I’d rather wait a bit, but the Senator has the bit in his teeth.”

No one talked for a while after that and they drove toward the city with nothing but the lashing rain and wind against the car to break the silence.

Finally Prior said, “Why do you want to go back to Riordan’s apartment?”

“There are still some odds and ends,” Martin said. He lit a cigarette and looked out the window at the dreary rain, and no one said anything else.

When they reached the Blackstone, Martin said to Prior, “Take Sheila into the lobby and wait for us, will you? I want to talk to Jake a second.”

“All right.”

“Alone at last,” Jake said, as Prior and Sheila ran across the sidewalk and up the steps to the lobby. “What’s on your mind?”

Martin turned and rested his arm on the back of the front seat. He drew on his cigarette and the tiny flare of light revealed the smile on his face.

“What did you find at the Autowrite place?” he said mildly.

Jake was reaching for a cigarette but his hand stopped in mid air. “You son of a bitch,” he grinned. “You made an errand boy out of me.”

“Yeah, that’s right. I knew what you were thinking, so I saved myself the trip. You see, there were only three things could have happened to May’s last record. One, it would be in her home. Two, the murderer would take it with him. Three, it would be at the Autowrite place getting typed.”

“You called Miss Swenson, then?”

“Sure. I knew you would too, and that you’d go down there and look around. No point in both of us working,” he said drily.

“You want to hear about it?”

“Not particularly,” Martin said, and he was smiling again. “Let’s go in and wind this up, Jake.”

“Hey, wait a minute,” Jake said. “I just have a wonderful theory.”

Martin laughed and got out of the car. Jake climbed out and caught his arm. “I’m not going to make accusations that won’t stick.”

“Look at it this way,” Martin said. “I don’t have a case either. And I can’t open up until I’m dead sure of myself. If these were punks I wouldn’t care. But this is a different class of people. You can get things rolling in an unofficial capacity, and when the fireworks start I’ll be right there.”

“With a pair of handcuffs for me?”

“We have to force this thing,” Martin said. “I’m asking a lot, Jake. I know how you’ve been thinking, and where it’s led you. Our theories may support one another. If you’ll start things rolling we can wind this up tonight”

“All right,” Jake said. “Anything to get out of this damned rain.”