Whistle Past the Graveyard [= Give the Girl a Gun]

Chapter Twenty

A Sergeant John Kietel of the night Homicide detail showed up in answer to my phone call. In addition to the usual retinue of scientific assistants he brought with him another detective whom he didn’t bother to introduce, but whose first name I gathered was Harry.

Harry was of the Hannegan school. He didn’t open his mouth once during the whole investigation, merely nodding agreeably whenever the sergeant gave him an order, then meticulously carrying out instructions.

I explained to Sergeant Kietel how Cumberland tied in with the Walter Ford case and how I happened to have called on the dead man.

I stayed around long enough to get the preliminary reports. The medical examiner guessed Cumberland had been dead thirty to forty-eight hours, adding he might be able to reduce the span after an autopsy. Since Walter Ford’s murder had taken place only a little less than forty-eight hours before, it seemed likely to me that the two killings had taken place the same night.

Possibly the killer had gone straight from polishing off one victim to murder the other.

No weapon was found in the apartment, nor any fingerprints, aside from the dead man’s, clear enough to be useable for comparison purposes.

The apartment consisted of four rooms and a bath. The front room, kitchen, bedroom and bath had been searched thoroughly by the killer, as evidenced by the mess left behind, but in the dining room the drawers of the sideboard were untouched. The logical conclusion was that either something had frightened the killer into stopping his search, or he had found what he was looking for in the dining room. When the painstaking Harry found a section of baseboard which slid upward to disclose a small secret compartment, we decided the latter was the case.

The compartment was empty.

By then it was nearly nine and I broke away to keep my date with Fausta. Sergeant Kietel, still awed by my supposed influence with his chief, didn’t even give me the customary instruction to stay available as a witness.

Mouldy Greene looked at me in surprise when I walked into El Patio.

“What’s the matter, Sarge?” he asked. “You and Fausta get your wires crossed?”

“Not that I know of. Why?”

“She said she was going over to your place when she left here a half hour ago.”

“That’s funny,” I said puzzledly. “She knew I was picking her up here at nine.”

Mouldy lifted his massive shoulders in a shrug. Then a customer at one of the tables in the cocktail lounge called him over to introduce him to a friend, and while he was occupied I went on back to Fausta’s office. I used her private phone to dial my own number, and Fausta answered at once.

“What’s up?” I inquired. “What the devil are you doing there?”

“Waiting for you, my one. Where are you?”

“Where I’m supposed to be,” I told her. “At El Patio. Didn’t you say pick you up here?”

“And did you not phone a message to my headwaiter saying you were hung up and I was to take a taxi to your apartment?” she countered.

“No,” I said slowly. “But if someone did, I don’t like the smell of it. Anyone else there?”

“I am all alone. Did you not leave that note on the door saying the door was unlocked and I was to wait inside?”

“Cripes, no,” I said with rising panic. “Listen, Fausta. Go lock both the front and back doors right now. Then sit there and don’t let anyone in until I get there. Got that?”

There was a sudden gasp, a half-articulate cry of pain, and then silence.

“Fausta!” I shouted.

“She decided to take a little nap, friend,” a low voice said in my ear. “But don’t worry about her. I’m as good with a sap as I am with a twenty-two. The bump won’t even show.”

The voice was that of the young gunman, Alberto Thomaso.

Forcing my voice to come out deadly calm, I asked, “What do you want, Al?”

“Me? Nothing, friend. I just work here. My boss wants a thing or two, though.”

“Who’s your boss?”

He let out a cynical chuckle. “Let’s not waste time with silly questions, pal. Where are you?”

“At El Patio.”

“Where at El Patio?”

“In Fausta’s private office.”

“Alone?”

“Yes.”

“What’s the number of that phone?”

In a tight voice I read it off from the center plate.

“I’ll call you back in about an hour,” Alberto said. “You answer personally. If anyone else answers, your blonde girl friend is done. Got it?”

“I’ve got it,” I said bleakly.

“Another thing. Every five minutes until I call, somebody else will ring that number. If the line is busy, the girl is cooked. That’s to make sure you don’t make any outside calls.”

When I made no answer, he said, “Neat, ain’t it? The boss figured when you got Miss Moreni’s message you’d use her office to phone here, and you’d be there all alone. You’re stuck. If you get far enough from that phone so you can’t answer it instantly when it rings, or if you use it to call the cops, the girl gets it. On the other hand, if you play along, I guarantee she won’t get hurt.”

“I’ll play along,” I said. “But I’ve got some instructions too.”

He emitted a little laugh. “You ain’t in much of a position to give instructions.”

“No,” I admitted, “but I’m giving them anyway. Don’t hurt Fausta and I’ll do whatever you say. If anything happens to her, I’ll hunt you down and kill you. That’s a guarantee too.”

“Nothing’s going to happen to her,” he assured me. “That is, nothing but being locked up for a time. You’ll hear from me in an hour.”

The phone went dead.

While I was talking to Alberto, my mind had been too full of concern for Fausta to even wonder why she was being kidnaped. But the moment he hung up I began to understand the reason. And the more I thought about it, the more amazed I became at the mixture of cleverness and stupidity behind the kidnaping.

It seemed obvious to me that Walter Ford’s killer had engineered the snatch, hoping to use Fausta as a lever to force me to abandon investigation of the case. The manner in which Fausta was kidnaped was clever enough, but the motive struck me as almost incredibly stupid. For even if it accomplished its purpose of making me drop the investigation, the killer should have known that eventually I would tell the whole story to the police, and to them it would simply constitute further evidence that someone was desperately trying to prevent the frame of Thomas Henry from coming to light.

All through the case it was impressing me more and more that Ford’s killer possessed an amazing mixture of brilliance and stark stupidity. These thoughts skipped through my mind almost instantaneously, then my whole attention reverted to plans for getting Fausta out of her situation. The elaborate plot for making sure I would stick close to the phone and couldn’t call the police, like most of the killer’s plots, had a cardinal defect. I had phoned my apartment from Fausta’s private phone, which had a direct line into the building. Next to it on her desk was a phone which went through El Patio’s switchboard.

The inspector dislikes being disturbed on police business after five o’clock in the evening, but at the moment I wasn’t concerned about anyone’s feelings. I cut him off in the middle of a growl.

“Listen fast, Inspector,” I said. “That young hood Alberto Thomaso has put the snatch on Fausta. Why, doesn’t matter right now, but I just talked to him on the phone. I’m in Fausta’s office and he had Fausta at my apartment.”

When he interrupted to ask how this arrangement came about, I said, “Just hold the questions and listen, Inspector. My instructions are to wait right here, where Alberto will phone again in an hour. Meantime a confederate of Alberto’s will call me every five minutes on Fausta’s phone to make sure I’m still here and I’m not calling the police. If I don’t answer, or if the line is busy, Fausta gets it. Alberto doesn’t know Fausta has two phones. I’m calling on the second.”

At that moment Fausta’s private phone pealed.

“There’s the call now,” I said. “Hold it and don’t make any squawking noises, or the caller might realize I’ve got a second phone.”

Laying down the one phone, I picked up the other and said, “Moon speaking.”

There was silence, a click and a buzzing noise. I replaced the receiver and picked up the other again.

“Here’s what I want,” I said rapidly. “First, get some cops to my flat. Probably they’ll get there too late, but it’s a slim chance. Next, get somebody here fast. Fausta has extensions to both phones in her apartment upstairs. A cop upstairs can listen on the extension of her private phone and use the switchboard phone to arrange for tracing the calls. Got it?”

“I can arrange for the last from here,” the inspector said. “What’s that private phone number?”

When I read it to him, he said, “Check. I won’t call you back because the phone might ring just as you were talking to your caller on the other phone. Think I’ll come out there soon as I get things moving.”

He rang off.

During the next twenty minutes Fausta’s phone rang on schedule every five minutes, and each time I answered I was greeted only by silence, the click of the other phone hanging up, and then the buzz of the dial tone. At the end of twenty minutes Warren Day walked in.

Giving me a gruff nod, he asked which was the phone connecting with the club’s switchboard and, when I pointed to it, picked it up. In a crisp tone he informed the operator he was Inspector Warren Day of Homicide, told her to get him police headquarters and instructed her to leave the connection open until she was told to close it.

A moment later the inspector was saying, “Blake? Any news from Moon’s flat?”

After listening a moment and giving a noncommittal grunt, Day said, “I’m having this line kept open so I’ll be in constant communication with you. Put a man on it and keep him there with the receiver to his ear so all I’ll have to do is pick up the phone if I have any orders. If you want me, have your man let out a whistle. I’ll be close enough to the phone to hear it.”

The phone crackled as Blake indicated he understood instructions. With a final grunt the inspector laid the receiver on the desk.

“We can’t have this thing ringing,” he said to me in explanation. “It might sound off in the middle of one of those five-minute checks.”

“What was the report from my place?” I asked.

“Negative. Nobody there. No sign of violence. What do you make of this, Moon? Alberto gone nuts?”

The private phone rang before I could answer. When I had listened to the usual silence and hung up again, I said, “Walter Ford’s killer has, apparently. Alberto is just stooging for him. Or her, as the case may be.”

Day looked puzzled. “What’s this snatch supposed to accomplish?”

“Get me off the case, I suppose. At least my guess is the ransom will be for me to drop the thing. Maybe I’ll have to agree to take a long trip.”

The phone Day had laid on the desk emitted a shrill whistle. The inspector picked it up, barked, “Yeah?” and then listened intently.

“Good,” he said finally. “Let me know as soon as they report in.” He laid the phone down again.

When I looked at him questioningly, he said, “The phone company has a supervisor tracing every call that comes to Fausta’s private line. That last checkup call you got came from a four-party residential phone. There’s no way to check which party, but there’s a squad car on the way to each address right now.”

It seemed to me it was about time for another checkup call. I glanced at my watch, then uneasily looked at it again.

“It’s eight minutes since the last call,” I said. “Maybe our killer got cagey.”

Apparently he had, for there were no more calls until Alberto himself finally phoned. After some discussion the inspector and I decided Alberto’s confederate probably never intended to continue phoning at five-minute intervals for the full hour. The device was designed to give Alberto time to get Fausta well away from the vicinity of my flat, we reasoned; and after the confederate made several calls, the risk of my using the phone to call the police was less than the risk of his calls being traced.

Another whistle from the phone connected to headquarters caused Day to pick it up again. When he had listened, then acknowledged the report with his usual grunt, he looked at me with a curious expression on his face.

“What now?” I asked.

“This one is a dilly. Three of the addresses on that four-party line turned out to be families who never heard of either you or Fausta. The last one was Thomas Henry’s basement flat.”