Where There’s Smoke

Chapter Seventeen In Danger of Making the Obits

Pedley got his elbows up in time to cover his face. The door at his side flew open. The violence of the shock threw him free of the car, into a stone wall.

The cushion of snow helped some, but it was half a minute before he made it to his feet, hobbled to the smashed sedan. Conover wasn’t in sight.

There were plenty of spots for cover which the lieutenant could have reached in that 30 seconds. Rows of drift-banked billboards, a hedge on the other side of the road, a couple of metal garages less than 100 yards away. In this gray light it would be useless to search; the man could move faster than the marshal could, in his present condition.

He felt of his thigh. It wasn’t broken; might be black and blue for a year or two, but he could use it.

That was more than he’d be able to do with the sedan. The front axle formed a V with the rear one; the steering post canted to one side; the windshield looked as if it had been run through a rock crusher.

But the dashboard was intact; by some miracle the two-way set still seemed to work. He waited anxiously until the tubes warmed up, was relieved to hear the WNYF dispatcher’s “go-ahead.”

Pedley put in an all-state alarm for Lieutenant William Conover, with complete description. He asked the dispatcher to call his office and relay back reports from Shaner and Barney. Then he asked the battalion chief in the nearest borough division for the loan of a car, shut off the set, and got out and walked while he waited. No sense in getting any stiffer than he was.

Conover’s escape complicated matters a good deal, but the lieutenant hadn’t promised to clear up the principal problem, anyhow. That, Pedley informed himself bleakly, was a Florentine box about which nobody seemed to know anything, though a number of people were greatly concerned about it.

Ned Lownes had had it; it was a fair assumption that his having it — or maybe his losing it — was responsible for his murder.

Chuck Gaydel had been looking for it, but hadn’t found it because some mysterious visitor had evidently abstracted it prior to the producer’s visit to Ned’s hotel rooms.

Wes Toleman hadn’t been queried on the question, but it was possible the announcer had been looking for the leather case, instead of a gold pencil, when he’d come up to the dressing-room after the fire.

Kim Wasson had known something about Leila’s past which might be the same secret presumably as the one hidden in the missing box. She’d intimated that the knowledge might have had something to do with Ned’s death; the marshal thought it likely it had been the cause of her own.

Hal Kelsey had claimed he had the case, and then denied it. At least he guessed the thing’s importance — and might have tried to get it, after Pedley left the Roof.

And Terry Ross — Ross had known about the thing, but had kept the knowledge from Pedley, even under considerable pressure. He’d tried to get it from the orchestra leader, to the extent of offering a price for it. Whether Ross had been making that offer on his own or for Leila — it was necessary to know that. And since the publicity man knew the value of the leather box, it was reasonable to suppose he had a pretty good idea what was in it. Mister Ross was a man to put on the carpet and without delay.

The car that arrived to pick him up, presently dropped him at the Olympiad Athletic Club; the probationer who had driven handed over the keys.

“She’s yours, Marshal. The chief has a spare he can use until you return this jeep.”

Pedley said, “Thanks much,” went into the huge lobby.

At the desk he held a sotto voce discussion with an assistant manager who was sufficiently awed to produce a passkey.

Upstairs the marshal unlocked the door of 67, picked up the morning newspaper tucked inside the sill, switched on the lights.

Terry Ross pulled the sheet up over his eyes, mumbled, “Go ’way.”

Then he did a double take, jerking the sheet down off his face, sitting up gawk-eyed. He moaned, “Are you in again?”

“Tut, tut.” Pedley dropped into a modern chair that brought his knees up on a level with his eyes. “Didn’t actually think I’d been pulled off the case, did you?”

Ross loosened the neckband of his red-and-white striped pajamas, propped himself up on one elbow, ran fast fingers through his mat of curly hair.

“What you want, waking me up in the middle of the night?”

“The eight-o’clock just blew. Let us then be up and doing.” He tossed the newspaper onto the bed. “All the news that’s print to fit. Story on page one. Third column.”

Ross grabbed the paper; the gargoyle features became a caricature of consternation.

“It says” — he had difficulty speaking — “Kim’s on the critical list. Is she going to—?”

“Live? Long enough to tell us what she knows, I imagine. Get up. Put your clothes on. Unless you want to go downtown looking like a barber pole.”

“Downtown?”

“Pokey. The sneezer. The clink. May not have all the comforts of this cozy little establishment, but the board is free.”

Ross rolled out of bed. “I’ll give you any odds you care to name that you can’t arrest me and keep me in jail twelve hours.”

“When you’re working for the City, you learn not to take bets, fella. Sometimes they turn out to be bribes. Anyhow, I’m not going to arrest you, skutch. I’m going to detain you. As a material witness. You shouldn’t beef. It’s for your own protection.”

“I had some of your protection last night. My stomach’s still sore.”

“You think you can take care of yourself. That’s what Kim Wasson thought. I’m here to tell you; all of you people who’re in the know on this Lownes business are in danger of making the obit column. Unless — you spill what you know.”

Ross went into the shower. “I told you what I know.”

“In a pig’s eye! You were hep to her boy friend, Lieutenant Conover. I don’t recall you mentioned him.” Pedley reached for the phone. “Room service, please… Two pots of coffee, to sixty-seven. Better make it three. Mister Ross, yes.” He hung up, grinned at the dripping face the publicity man poked around the bathroom door. “Thing that really rubs me wrong, you failed to report on the bone of contention you and Kelsey are battling over. The radio show.”

“What have those things to do with the fire — fires?”

Pedley gazed down at the caterpillars of traffic crawling southward out of Central Park. “I’m not one of these geniuses who can lean back with a pipeful of hashish and dream up the answers. But Lownes was incinerated because he had some peculiar hold on his sister. You said yourself he knew where the body was hidden. His sword of Damocles seems to have been that leather case, or what’s in it.”

Ross interrupted his shaving to say, “Photos. Indiscreet, from what Leila says. Possibly worse than that.”

“That’s the bunkola. Only thing that would hurt her to any extent is something that could be published. If there were pictures and they were indelicate, they couldn’t be published. Conclusion; something besides glossy prints in the Florentine case.”

“How do you dope out these things?”

“With mirrors. Take another trip through the looking glass with me. I see an arsonist who faces a fifteen-thousand-volt hotfoot up at Sing Sing. He’s so afraid of it, he touches off a second blaze to keep Kim Wasson from telling what she knows. And, sure as hellfire, he’s not going to stop there. He might as well be electrocuted for a sheep as a lamb. Which is the same as a death warrant for anyone else who may be able to point the finger his way. Including especially you.”

The waiter came. Pedley signed the check with Ross’s name, laid a half dollar on the tray, helped himself to a cup.

Ross came out in batik shorts and a burgundy shirt with collar points that reached halfway to his belt. “Why me? I’m simply a guy trying to make a clean dollar. I keep my nose strictly out of affairs which don’t concern me.”

“You’re working for La Lownes. Even if you’re not wise to whatever it is in her past that needs hiding, you’re more’n likely to know the party who’s willing to burn down the town to prevent her secret from being made public.”

“I never heard a breath of scandal about her.”

“Wouldn’t be scandal. You’d know how to cover that. Or tone it down. Or even build it up, make capital of it. My weegee board says it has to be something more serious than a breach of promise. Say, something illegal.”

“Not for all the dough in Morgan’s. I’d have had wind of anything like that, positively.”

“You see? Just claiming you’d know puts you in a position where you’d do well to consider the merits of the steel, or indestructible, casket as compared to ordinary, or soft, pine. Climb into your pants.”

“Give me time to make a call!”

“To your lawyer? Sure. Amery was signed out of the hospital at six-fifteen. About three-quarters of an hour ago.”

“You keep close tabs on folks you’re interested in, don’t you?”

“Only way. By now, your barrister is probably out at his Long Island place, sleeping off a dose of bromides. The number’s Great Neck seven-two-four-one-four.” Ross used the phone for a while, said yes? and no! a few times, hung up.

“Shows what a miraculous system you have for checking up on people. Paul isn’t there.”

“We can’t be right all the time. Where is he?”

“Left for his office. Only stayed home long enough to change his clothes. He had a hurry-up call.”

“From—?”

“Staro. Ned’s bodyguard.”

“I’ve been wondering where that lad was.”

“He’s at Amery’s office. In the Tower Building.” Ross tied his necktie hastily. “Mrs. Amery said there was trouble of some sort.”

“Forgive her for understating. Grab your hat.”