Corpses in the Cellar (10 page)

“Mack Grand’s wife may have found out he was cheating on her,” Lockwood said, using Brannigan as a sounding board. “She may
have wanted to get revenge on him.”

“Sure, that’s a possibility,” Brannigan said. “But still, if she knew the guy was cheating on her, hell, you’d think she’d
have checked beforehand to see that he was in the club before she torched it.”

“I know,” Lockwood said, staring down into his glass. “That part doesn’t add up.”

“Griese could’ve done it. He tried to muscle into the club. He could’ve done it out of pique,” Brannigan laughed. “Pique—a
hell of a word to attach to a mug like Griese.”

“Sure. That, and having his girl fired. But if Black was onto Griese, what’s the odds of Griese or one of his men putting
Eddie away with the Baby Nambu?”

“It’s that goddamn gun,” Brannigan agreed. “That stinkin’ gun keeps messin’ up too many of our theories. What about Grand?
He’s no pro. He might have a dumb weapon like that.”

“Could be. He’s got some exotic things in his apartment,” Lockwood agreed. “Might have picked it up on a trip to the Orient.
And I’ll tell you something else,” the detective offered. “Eddie Black had said he’d heard someone running away when he discovered
the fire. And the sound of the steps was arrhythmic.”

“So?” Brannigan asked, waiting.

“Mack Grand has a limp.”

“Let’s pick up the bastard,” Brannigan said, not budging an inch. It was hot and he was thirsty. Besides, the look on Lockwood’s
face stopped him.

“I’ve checked around. He was devoted to his sister. She was all alone, you know. No husband, no kids. He hired her, found
her an apartment, visited her every Sunday when the club was closed. Why would he have killed her?”

“Desperate for loot,” Brannigan said. “Christ, by the time payday comes, I’m desperate enough to kill anyone who gets in the
way of me and my check.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Lockwood smiled. “Still, if he was doing it for insurance, he didn’t have to kill all those people. He
could’ve waited another hour, after the place had emptied out.”

“It was way past closing. Maybe he thought it had.”

“Not likely. I figure whoever did it tossed a torch down onto those rags from an outside window. The noises from the club
would’ve drifted out onto the street.”

“Not if they were all a-huggin’ and a-kissin’,” Brannigan offered, lifting a crumpled pack of Wings off the table. They were
half soaked by the beer that had slopped onto the table, but he managed to get one of them lit. “According to those books,
Grand was on his way to a Chapter Eleven.”

“Yes, he was near bankruptcy,” Lockwood agreed, “but when he talks about that club you get the feeling he’s not lying when
he says he loved it too much to burn it down.”

“Hell, Billy, I get the feeling my kids aren’t lying when they tell me they didn’t swipe the change off my bureau. But I know
goddamn well they did,” Brannigan sighed. “And Black did say he heard a gimp hotfooting it away.”

“True,” Lockwood admitted, “but it could be that Black also knew Grand had a limp.”

“Meaning he was setting the old guy up for a fall,” Brannigan mumbled. “Christ, Hook, don’t you ever trust anybody?”

“I haven’t yet met anyone involved in this case that I trust. You notice I haven’t even left my Camels anywhere near
you
,” Lockwood admitted dead-pan, as he watched Brannigan trying to relight his beer-soaked butt. He rose. “Got to get some shut-eye.”
He reached into his pocket and tapped out a few cigarettes. “Here. This should hold you.”

As he left, Brannigan was methodically dipping each of the Camels into his mug of beer, while grinning perversely at his friend.

The street was as oppressively muggy as the saloon, not a breeze stirring. It was only one
A.M.
, so the sidewalks and streets were still jammed with people, but the heat held almost all to a pace more common to Montgomery,
Alabama than to New York City. He had ambled two blocks before he realized he was being tailed. It was a little runty guy
about a half block back. Something about the look of him, Lockwood had mused. He’d then tried halting occasionally, looking
in a store window, pausing at a curb, and he’d seen the runt hold up, too. Lockwood felt cheered by the discovery. It could
be tied to the Mack Grand case. And if so, it could, if he didn’t wind up being carried out bare feet first, a tag tied to
one toe, provide the break he was looking for.

He kept to his unhurried pace till he was near the end of the block, then speeded up, made a quick turn, and ducked into the
vestibule of a cigar store. A few seconds later, the runt, looking worried, whipped around the corner, and Lockwood shot out
an arm and grabbed him.

“Looking for me, pal?”

The little man stared up at him, startled and bewildered. He’d caught him completely offguard.

“I said, looking for me?”

The peanut’s hand shot inside his jacket, and The Hook clamped a fist over the skinny little wrist, drawing it away. With
his other hand, he pulled back the jacket, and saw the concealed .32. He shrugged, and left it where it was. “Why were you
following me?” he asked his captive.

Shorty shook his head.

“You don’t know?”

Peewee shrugged out a negative.

Lockwood’s eyes went ice-cold, and the hood began to register fear. “Don’t give me that crap, half-pint,” he breathed. “You
hit me with the truth or I’m running you in for violation of the Sullivan Law.”

That got the mug. Carrying a handgun in New York could get you in a lot of trouble, if you were caught. “Okay.” His voice
had a funny accent to it, a combination of New Yorkese and something softer. “I been hired to follow you.”

“Who by?” Lockwood was no longer gripping the man, his icy authority enough now to hold him there.

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t stall me.”

“I promise you. I was just given a number. I call in every so often, lettin’ them know where you are.”

“Who put you on me?”

“A guy named Red. That’s all I know. He pointed you out and told me to tail you.”

“What’s the number?”

The runt tried to tough it out, clamping his mouth shut, but as Lockwood stared down at him, he began to squirm, and finally,
“BU4-3552,” he whimpered.

“Come on”—The Hook grasped the little man by the back of his jacket. “You’re going to make a call.”

They found a phone booth on a nearly deserted side street. The Hook held out a nickel. “Drop it in and dial, pal,” he told
his companion. “Tell them that I’m bombed out of my skull and have collapsed in a doorway at Tenth between Forty-second and
Forty-third.”

The hood was wild-eyed. “They’ll kill me for lying to them.”

“You won’t be lying. That’s where I’m going to be by the time they get there.”

The shrimp’s index finger trembled as he dialed. He waited while the phone rang, his lips near the mouthpiece, the receiver
held equidistantly between his ear and that of The Hook’s.

“Yeah?” came a voice, faintly cleaving the air between the two of them.

“Hello, this is Mickey Mississippi.”

“Yeah?”

“That guy Lockwood—” the mug’s voice broke, “I—he—uh, he come out of a bar, he’s three sheets to the wind, I mean, he can’t
even walk.”

“What you sayin’?”

“Well, he’s—he’s just kinda collapsed, you know? He just sort of pulled himself into a doorway right on the street to sleep
it off. He’s really out.”

“Where?” came the thin voice.

“On Tenth. Between Forty-second and Forty-third. The east side. Uh, I mean west side,” the punk said, as Lockwood shook his
head at him.

“Uh huh. Wait a minute.”

The two of them stood there in the booth on the darkened street, the pipsqueak shivering with fear, Lockwood impassive, and
finally the voice came back on the line. “Stay with ‘im,” it said. “We’ll be right over.”

Lockwood put the receiver back on the hook. “Okay. Now we’ll take a walk over to Forty-second and Tenth,” he told the sallow-faced
man.

“Wait a minute.” There was pleading in the mite’s eyes. “I did what you said. Now how about lettin’ me go?”

Lockwood’s voice was quiet and even, and the bantam’s body started to shake all over again as the first tone of it cut through
the evening’s air. “No. They’re expecting to see you there. So that’s where you’re going to be.”

Mickey Mississippi quailed, nodded, and trotted along quietly the rest of the way, occasional small noises of fear squeaking
out of him as they neared their destination.

Finally, on the west side of Tenth, between Forty-second and Forty-third, they stopped in front of a small pawnshop, whose
entrance extended in twelve feet or more to the actual front door. “I’m going to lie down in here,” The Hook told the tiny
man, “I want you to stand right out there where I can see you. And remember, when they show up, no tip-offs, or I’ll gun you
down before you can move.”

Mississippi nodded miserably, his whole body twitching nervously, and Lockwood moved back toward the door, then lay down on
the worn white tiles of the entrance, his hand gripping the .38 he’d drawn from the spring holster concealed beneath the waistband
of his trousers. It was still hotly sticky, the temperature in the 90s, not a breeze stirring, but for the first time that
evening, The Hook felt comfortable.

They weren’t long in coming, ten minutes maybe. There were just two of them, and in the dark The Hook couldn’t place either
as their car drove by, circled, and drew up again, a few yards out of sight, the two of them striding quickly to where Mickey
Mississippi stood rooted, vainly trying to hold his nerves together.

Lockwood didn’t give any of them a chance to speak.

“Hold it right there,” he said, his voice cutting through the darkness. “I’ve got a gun, and I’ve got a rep as a marksman.
You’d be nitwits to try me out.”

The two men froze and he slowly rose and moved toward them.

A few feet away, he paused. “Start walking backward to the curb. Slowly.”

The three men did as he asked. “Okay. Hold it,” he told them finally as the light from the streetlamp illuminated their faces.
He smiled, grimly. He’d suspected as much.

His eye roamed over Itchy Laplattanier, and a thug he knew only as Bomps. “Why does Griese want me?”

The two shrugged, standing mute.

“Would a bullet in your kneecap refresh your memory?”

“He thinks you killed his boys,” Laplattanier said quickly.

“I did,” Lockwood acknowledged, calmly. “But only because Vinnie had sent them after me. Why’d he send them after me?”

The two shrugged again.

Lockwood thrust his pistol out. “Which kneecap do you want, Laplattanier?” he asked, his voice the calm, only slightly troubled
voice of a concerned host.

“I’m tellin’ ya the truth, Lockwood! I don’t know.”

“Me neither!” shrieked Bomps, as the pistol swung in his direction.

They seemed to be telling the truth. Could it be Griese wanted him only because of his liaison with Tawny Tourette? After
all, fires were part of Griese’s business. No need to conceal them from his men. Or could it be… Lockwood’s jaw tightened,
as the thought hit him. Could it be Tawny was the one who had torched the club, and Griese was trying to protect her?

There was only one way to find out, he decided. “Okay, boys,” he told them, “I want all three of you to cram into the front
seat of that car, while I spread out luxuriously in the back. And then I want you to take me to your boss. It’s time Vinnie
Griese and I had another talk.”

They were halfway to Griese’s when Bomps made his move. Laplattanier was driving, with Mickey Mississippi seated by the door,
scratching himself, plucking at himself, patting himself, an unending paroxysm of nervous gestures. Suddenly, Bomps had lunged
at the door, jerked down the handle, and then shoved at the screaming Mississippi, pushing him out the opening. The Hook,
as Bomps had hoped, instinctively had thrust forward, leaning out over the seat, trying to grab at both Bomps and his victim,
but, a bare instant before the slug came tearing up at him, he saw the pistol gleaming in Bomps’s hand.

He’d flung himself back into his seat, the .38 ready, flame flashing out in the darkness as he’d pumped one, two, three bullets
into the upholstery in front of him, and then another flush into Bomps’s face. Mississippi was already twenty-five yards behind
them, screaming out in the street, when Bomps finally pitched over, like the end product of a Chicago packing house.

Lockwood jammed the .38 into the back of Laplattanier’s neck. “Drive, my friend, just keep driving.” He leaned over and pulled
the front door shut, cracking it against Bomps’s skull as it clicked into place, shoving his lifeless body down in the seat.
Laplattanier paled as the corpse jolted into him, but he kept driving. No sense checking on Mississippi, Lockwood decided.
Whatever he’d got, he deserved it.

The car came to a stop in Little Italy down in lower Manhattan. Lockwood recognized one of the brownstones as belonging to
Vinnie Griese.

“Okay, Itchy,” he said, “here’s where we debark. Take it slow and easy, and remember I’m covering you at all times. Try anything
funny, and you’re dead. As dead as your pal here.”

The two of them got out of the car, Laplattanier moving gingerly. Slowly, they climbed the red stone steps, Lockwood to the
right of Laplattanier, and slightly behind him.

The hoodlum looked at Lockwood, dully. “I gotta ring,” he explained, pointing to the button alongside the solid wood front
door.

“Go ahead,” Lockwood told him, taking the .38 away from Laplattanier’s spine and dropping it down to his back thigh, where
it would be out of the sight of anyone opening the door.

Laplattanier punched the doorbell and they waited. After a few moments, the big door opened partway, and a beefy head was
thrust out. The head glanced at Laplattanier, and then at Lockwood. “You got ‘im, eh?” And then the mobster peered out into
the dark. “Where’s Bomps?”

Lockwood grabbed Laplattanier, and slammed him against the door, thrusting it all the way back, throwing the portal’s guardian
off-balance.