The Avenger 31 - The Cartoon Crimes (6 page)

Allen jabbed a finger at the one who’d called himself Schantz. “Why are you guys so dopey?”

“Search me, Lieutenant. It must be the weather. Some of these hot days here on the island—”

“Who hired you?”

“What’s that?”

“I want to know who hired you palookas? Was it Lewing?”

Gil said, “Wait a minute, Lieutenant Allen. I wouldn’t be likely to hire these guys to knock me out and tie me up.”

“Maybe you would,” said the policeman. “What about it?”

Smitty said, “He was really trussed up at that yacht club, Lieutenant. It wasn’t no fake.”

Allen walked up to the skinny gunman. “Who hired you?”

The thin man looked at the dirty floor. “It wasn’t the young guy,” he said.

“Who, then?”

“I’d rather not say.”

“Listen,” said Lieutenant Allen. “You boys are going—”

“You better not knock us around,” warned the thickset one, after a yawn. “We aren’t going to stand still for that. We’ll slap a suit on you, so watch out.”

“Like hell you will.”

“What?”

“Never mind.” A tapping had sounded on the door. Lieutenant Allen went over and opened the door a slit. “Yeah?”

“Bill Morse is out here,” said the uniformed old sergeant who showed in the strip of opening.

“So?”

“The artist is his client. Morse’d like to take him home.”

“Take him home?”

Smitty volunteered, “It ought to be obvious that Lewing ain’t the murderer.”

“Tell Morse to cool his heels for a while.” He slammed the door and scowled across at Gil. “So you got one of the highest-priced lawyers in Suffolk County working for you?”

“One of the advantages of making a lot of dough,” said Gil. “Are you planning to charge me with murder?”

“He didn’t do it,” said Smitty, boosting himself up to sit atop the desk.

“I don’t see how Early has been able to put up with you so long,” said the policeman.

Nellie had already told them about Allen’s mention of the government agent. “Don Early, would that be?” asked Smitty, innocent-looking. “A nice guy, ain’t he, Mac?”

“Aye, a prince of a lad.”

“If I knew how all this tied in with what he’s working on,” said Lieutenant Allen, “I think I’d . . . never mind. Smith, you and MacMurdie can go.”

“What about Gil Lewing?” asked Smitty, not moving.

Lieutenant Allen said, “Yeah, I’ll be releasing him, too. You can tell his fancypants lawyer that on your way out. Now scram out of here.”

“We want to see our lawyer, too,” said the skinny one.

“See you back at your place,” Smitty said to Gil, tossing him a casual salute and dropping off the desk.

When they were out in the corridor, Mac asked, “I imagine you’ll want to take the guard detail at Lewing’s place, seeing as how Nellie is still there.”

“Well, yeah,” admitted the giant. “But I kind of would like to follow up the lead we got when we used the truth gas on them two hoods.”

“The Yellow Rose?” said MacMurdie. “I kin handle that m’self, lad. ’Twill probably be nothing but a routine inquiry.”

Not quite.

It wasn’t a dive. It was a small bar in a quiet neighborhood in Port Bascom, Long Island. MacMurdie arrived there at twilight, walking downhill toward the place from where he’d parked his car. The ocean showed above the rooftops below, turning black as the sun dropped away. A ten-year-old boy was sitting on the cement steps of the drugstore next door, deep into the latest issue of
Wonderman Comics,
a roller skate on one foot. The front of the bar was narrow, made of black glass bricks. There were no windows. A light box replaced one of the bricks in the front façade at eye level. Illuminated within it was a small porcelain vase with a single fresh yellow rose in it.

There was a chilliness inside the dim room. The colored lights made everything seem deathly blue. The bartender, a one-armed man, was reaching across the bar to pat a sobbing blond woman on her plump padded shoulder.

“I wouldn’t do it, Maxine,” he said.

“Tell him,” said Maxine, continuing to sob. “Tell that no-good Ronald that.”

“You know, Maxine, you may remember me telling you when you married that guy that anybody named Ronald wasn’t likely to be your type.”

“He looked so nice in his sailor suit.” Each time a sob shook her body, the plaster fruit on her hat rattled together.

“A sailor named Ronald, Maxine, it’s asking for trouble.”

Mac’s eyes got adjusted to the sparse light. There were six round tables in the room, none of them occupied. Maxine and the bartender were the only people in the place.

MacMurdie crossed the room and took a stool at the bar several stools away from the unhappy Maxine.

The bartender gave her one more consoling pat before shuffling down to Mac. “What’ll it be?”

“A glass of beer’ll do it.”

The one-armed man deftly selected a glass from the shelf behind him and held it up to the blue light above. “Bit of a speck, looks like.” He placed it on his work sink and rubbed the rim with his apron. After another aloft examination, he judged it spotless. Setting it beneath a nozzle, he filled it with foamy beer. “Notice how I managed that whole operation with relative ease?” he asked as he placed the glass before Mac on the bar top.

“Aye, that I did.” The gunmen had told them they’d been recruited for their guarding job here in the Yellow Rose by a heavyset man named Lucky, a frequent patron. After a decent interval MacMurdie would ask a few questions of this bartender.

“Shows you a guy with only one arm can take care of himself,” asserted the bartender. “But you can’t make them believe that down at the recruiting office. The Monday morning after Pearl Harbor I marched down to sign up. No dice, they wanted no part of me. Every once in a while I try again, but nothing’s probably going to come of it.”

Mac sipped his beer, making no reply.

“With my one arm,” the other man continued, “I can do the work of the average guy who’s got two. You take this guy Ronald who poor Maxine got herself hooked up with. Big strapping guy, got two arms, and she can’t get him to even carry out the trash when he’s on leave. The Navy took him, though . . . Something wrong, Mr. MacMurdie?”

Mac was having trouble keeping his eyes open. And the room seemed to be growing dimmer and dimmer. “How . . . do ye come to . . . ken m’ name?”

“We know a lot of things, Mr. MacMurdie.”

Mac tried to say something more. He couldn’t. He slumped forward onto the bar.

“Passing out drunk so early in the day,” remarked Maxine. “What’s this world coming to?”

Cole increased his foot pressure on the gas pedal and the car eased more rapidly through the night. “For several generations, Richard, the Wilsons have been gifted with a well-nigh infallible instinct for discerning the truth,” he said. “I’m ready to wager that none of the chaps we interviewed this long languid afternoon has anything to do with Walling’s murder or Gil Lewing’s troubles.”

Richard Henry Benson was sitting in the back seat of the fast-moving car. “I don’t discount hunches, but I’d like a few more facts,” he said. “What do you think, Josh?”

The Negro was slouched next to Cole, watching the darkened Long Island scenery tick by. “I think that old messenger from Swifty’s has been swiping office supplies from Walling. But outside of that I got the same impression Cole did.”

“Suppose,” suggested the Avenger, “that no one connected with Lewing’s publishers is responsible for his so-called hallucinations. The field of possibilities narrows.”

“We’re on our way to talk to Lewing now,” said Josh. “I’d like to get a look at this guy. Could be he really is imagining things.”

Cole pointed out, “He didn’t imagine the two hooligans who tried to do us bodily harm. Or the pair of bullyboys who had the donnybrook with Mac and Smitty.”

“Okay, so those things really happened,” said Josh. “Doesn’t mean all the other stuff did. From what Nellie told us in her last call, Lewing says he saw one of his cartoon characters kill Walling.”

“If the chap isn’t balmy, I don’t see why he’d concoct a yarn like that. Which is why I’m inclined to believe him.”

“Let’s say he is sane, then,” said Josh. “Then who’s doing all this fancy stuff?”

“Why
is an equally important question,” added Benson.

The black man glanced back at him. “It’s got to be a money motive, doesn’t it? Like I mentioned before, money for his wife, maybe.”

“Your average Long Island matron,” said Cole, “doesn’t have a staff of goons and plug-uglies at her beck and call. We know of at least four such who’ve tried to assault us this day.”

“I don’t know, if I was a lady thinking about getting control of several million bucks per year, I could hire me a dozen local tough guys without too much trouble.”

“The two men Mac and Smitty captured are local talent,” said the Avenger. “As you know, they don’t know anyone beyond their hiring agent.” He leaned back against the seat and steepled his fingers. “I don’t see Mrs. Lewing masterminding a gang.”

Cole guided their machine around a slower-moving car on the dark roadway. “There’s another element in the stew,” he said. “Namely, our old crony Agent Early of Washington, D.C. Though we’ve none of us encountered the bloke face to face as yet, his name keeps rearing its head. Why?”

The Avenger said, “There have been several serious incidents of sabotage in this area during the past few months, especially incidents involving aircraft factories. The Nils-Hardin Plant was the latest to suffer damage. I imagine the sabotage is what Don Early’s looking into.”

“Well, I’m betting this time us and Early are working two different sides of the street,” Josh said. “Don’t see no way funny papers and sabotage are going to mix.”

“I’ll take that bet,” said Cole.

A huge shape loomed up in front of the headlights.

Cole applied the brakes. “Is that you, Smitty?” he called out of the open car window. “Or am I starting to see comic-book monsters?”

The giant came trotting down the Lewing driveway. “I was sort of waiting for you guys,” he said. “I’m kind of worried about Mac. He’s been gone since before sundown.”

“You’ve had no word from him?” asked the Avenger.

“Nope, not so much as a holler.” The giant rubbed his big hands together. “If it’s okay by you I’d like to get on over to that Yellow Rose bar in Port Bascom. Can’t be more than a ten-or-fifteen-minute drive, and I figure—”

“You stay on deck here,” instructed Benson. “We’ll check on the Yellow Rose.”

Smitty made a disappointed sound and pawed at the ground with his right foot. “Oaky doaks,” he said. “Let me know soon as you find out what’s happening to the guy.”

Putting the auto into reverse, Cole asked, “How’s little Nell?”

“She’s okay,” said Smitty. “Right now, though, I’m worried about—”

“Give her my best.” Cole shot the car back down the drive.

Wayne Harmon yawned. “Guess I’ll head for my own spread,” he said to the living room in general. He turned his freckled head toward Gil. “You sure you don’t want me to hang around?”

Jeanne spoke first. “Gil’s going to spend the night resting, not drawing.”

Gil shrugged as best he could while hunkered down in a soft, deep armchair. “Yeah, I guess I ought to take it easy, Wayne. Pop over tomorrow, and we’ll get going on the stuff.”

“Well, I’ve got a couple covers to work on over to home.” He ambled to the doorway. “Nice meeting all you folks.”

Smitty grunted at the departing artist. He scowled out at the phone in the hall, rubbed at his belt buckle, checked the mantle clock once more. “Almost midnight,” he observed.

Nellie leaned toward him from her perch on the arm of the sofa. “Relax, old sport.”

“First Mac, now the rest of—”

“If anybody can handle himself, it’s Fergus.”

“Yeah, but—”

“Your boss won’t mind if we put off our talk until morning?” Gil stretched up out of his chair. “I think I’ll follow Jeanne’s advice and hit the hay.”

His red-haired wife stood up and took his arm. “You know where everything is, Nellie. Good night, Mr. Smith.”

“Huh? Oh, yeah, good night.”