The Collection (111 page)

I knew it was a gag, but I pressed the button that turned on
the little yellow light down at the telephone company's switchboard.

I'll explain about that light. A police station gets lots of
calls that they have to trace. An excited dame will pick up the phone and say
“Help, Police” and bat the receiver back on the hook without bothering to
mention who she is or where she lives. Stuff like that. So all calls to any
police station in our city go through a special switchboard at the phone
station, and the girl who's on that board has special instructions. She never
breaks a connection until the receiver has been hung up at the police end of
the call, whether the person calling the station hangs up or not. And there's
that light that flashes on over her switchboard when we press the button. It's
her signal to start tracing a call as quickly as possible.

While I pressed that button, I said, “Nice of you to think
of me, Barranya. Who's been murdered?”

“No one, yet, Sergeant. It's murder yet to come. Thought I'd
let you in on it.”

I grunted. “Picked out who you're going to murder yet, or
are you going to shoot at random?”

“Randall,” he said, “not random. Charlie Randall, Sergeant.
Neighbor of mine; I believe you know him.”

Well---on the chance that he was telling the truth and
was
going to commit a murder---I'd as soon have had him pick Randall as anyone.
Randall, like Barranya, was a guy we should have put behind bars, except that
we had nothing to go on. Randall ran pinball games, which isn't illegal, but we
knew (and couldn't prove) some of his methods of squelching opposition. They
weren't nice.

Barranya and Randall lived in the same swank apartment
building, and it was rumored that the pinball operator was Barranya's chief
customer.

All that went through my head, and a lot of other things.
Telling it this way, it may sound like I'd been talking over the phone a long
time, but actually it had been maybe thirty seconds since I picked up the
receiver.

Meanwhile, I had the receiver off the hook of the other
phone on my desk---the interoffice one---and was punching the button on its
base that would give me the squad car dispatcher at the main station.

I asked Barranya, “Where are you?”

“At Charlie Randall's,” he said, “well, here it goes,
Sergeant!”

There was the sound of a shot, and then the click of the
phone being hung up.

I kept the receiver of that phone to my ear waiting for
Central to finish tracing the call, which she'd do right away now that the call
had been terminated at that end. Into the other phone I said, “Are you there,
Hank?” and the squad car dispatcher said, “Yeah,” and I said, “Better put on
the radio to--- Wait a second.”

The other receiver was talking into my other ear now. The
gal at Central was saying, “That call came from Woodburn 3480. It's listed as
Charles B. Randall, Apart---”

I didn't listen to the rest of it. I knew the apartment
number and address. And if it was really Charlie Randall's phone that the call
had come over, maybe then Barranya was really telling the truth.

“Hank,” I said, “send the nearest car to Randall's
apartment, number four at the Deauville Arms. It might be murder.”

I clicked the connection to the homicide department, also
down at main, and got Captain Holding.

“There might be a murder at number four at the Deauville,” I
reported. “Charlie Randall. It might be a gag, too. There's a call going out to
the nearest squad car; you can wait till they report or start over sooner.”

“We'll start over right away,” he said. “Nothing to do here
anyway.”

So that let me out of the game. I stood up and yawned, and
by the electric clock on the wall, it was two minutes before five. In two
minutes I could leave, and I was going to have three stiff drinks to see if it
did my toothache any good. Then I intended going to the Deauville Arms myself.
If there was a murder, the homicide boys would want my story about the call.
And having something to do would help make the time go faster until nine
o'clock when there'd be a dentist available.

If there wasn't a murder, then I wanted a little talk with
Sibi Barranya. He might still be there, or up in his own apartment two floors
higher. Maybe “talk” isn't the right word. I was going to convince him, with
gestures, that I didn't appreciate the gag.

I put on my hat at one minute of five. I looked out the
window and saw Captain Burke, who relieves me, getting out of his car across
the street.

I opened the door to the waiting room that's between the
hall and my office, and took one step into it. Then I stopped---suddenly.

There was a tall, dark, smooth-looking guy sitting there,
looking at one of the picture magazines from the table. He had sharp features
and sharp eyes under heavy eyebrows, each of which was fully as large as the
small moustache over his thin lips.

There was only one thing wrong with the picture, and that
was
who
the guy happened to be. Sibi Barranya---who'd just been talking
to me over the telephone a minute before . . . from a point two miles
away!

I stood there looking at him, with my mouth open as I
figured back. It could have been
two
minutes ago, but no longer. Two
minutes, two miles. There's nothing wrong with traveling two miles in two
minutes, except that you can't do it when the starting point is the fourth
floor of one building and the destination the second floor of another. Besides,
the time had been nearer one minute than two.

No, either someone had done a marvelous job of imitating
Barranya's voice, or this wasn't him. But this was Barranya, voice and all.

He said, “Sergeant, are you---psychic?”

“Huh?” That was all I could think of at the moment. On top
of being where he couldn't be, he had to ask
me
a completely screwy
question.

“The look on your face, Sergeant,” he said. “I
came
here to warn you, and I would swear, from your expression, that you have
already received the warning.”

“Warn me about what?” I asked.

His face was very solemn. “Your impending death. But you
must
have heard it. Your face, Sergeant. You look like---like you'd had a
message from beyond.”

Barranya was standing now, facing me, and Captain Burke came
in the room from the outer hallway.

“Hello, Murray.” He nodded to me.
“Something wrong?”

I straightened out my face from whatever shape it had been
and said, “Not a thing, Captain, not a thing.”

He looked at me curiously, but went on into the inner
office.

The more I looked at Barranya, the more I didn't like him,
but I decided that whether I liked him or not, he and I had a lot of
note-comparing to do. And this wasn't the place to do it.

I said, “The place across the street is open. I like their
kind of spirits better than yours. Shall we move there?”

He shook his head. “Thanks, but I'd really better be getting
home. Not that I'd mind a drink, but---”

“Somebody's trying to frame a murder rap on you,” I told
him. “The Deauville Arms is full of cops. Are you still in a hurry?”

It looked as though a kind of film went across his eyes,
because they were suddenly quite different from what they had been and yet
there had been no movement of eyelid or pupil. It was somehow like the moon
going behind a cloud.

He said, “A murder rap means a murder. Whose?”

“Charlie Randall, maybe.”

“I'll take that drink,” he said. “What do you mean by
‘maybe?’ ”

“Wait a minute and I'll find out.” I went back into the
inner office, but left the door open so I could keep an eye on Barranya. I
said, “Cap, can I use the phone?” and when he nodded, I called the Randall
number.

Someone who sounded like a policeman trying to sound like a
butler said, “Randall residence.”

“This is Bill Murray. Who's talking?”

“Oh,” said the voice, not sounding like a butler any longer.
“This is Kane. We just busted in. I was going to the phone to call main when it
rang and I thought I'd try to see who was---”

“What'd you find?”

“There's a stiff here, all right. I guess it's Randall; I
never saw him, but I've seen his pictures in the paper and it looks like him.”

“Okay,” I said. “The homicide squad's already on the way over.
Just hold things down till they gel then'. I'm corning around too, but I got
something to do first. Say---how was he killed?”

“Bullet in the forehead. Looks like about a thirty-eight
hole. He's sitting right there; I'm looking at him now. Harry's going over the
apartment. I was just going to the phone to call---”

“Yeah,” I interrupted. “Is he tied up?”

“Tied up, yes. He's in pajamas, and there's a bruise on his
forehead, but he isn't gagged. Looks like he was slugged in bed and somebody
moved him to the chair and tied him to it, and then took a pop at him with the
gun from about where I'm standing now.”

“At the phone?”

“Sure, at the phone. Where else would I be standing?”

“Well,” I said, “I'll be around later. Tell Cap Holding when
he gets there.”

“Know who done it, Sarge?”

“It's a secret,” I said, and hung up.

I went back to the inner office. Barranya was standing by
the door. I knew he'd heard the conversation so I didn't need to tell him he
could erase the ‘maybe’ about Charlie Randall's being dead.

We went across the street to Joe's, which is open
twenty-four hours a day. It was five minutes after five when we got there, and
I noticed that it took us a few seconds over two minutes just to get from my
office to Joe's, which is half a block.

We took a booth at the back. Barranya took a highball, but I
wanted mine straight and double. My tooth was thumping like hell.

I said, “Listen, Barranya, first let's take this warning
business. About me, I mean. What kind of a hook-up did it come over?”

“A voice,” he said. “I've heard voices many times, but this
was louder and clearer than usual. It said, ‘Sergeant Murray will be killed
today.’ ”

“Did it say anything else?”

“No, just that. Over and over. Five or six times.”

“And where were you when you heard this voice?”

“In my car, Sergeant, driving---let's see---along Clayton
Boulevard. About half an hour ago.”

“Who was with you?”

“No one, Sergeant. It was a spirit voice. When one is
psychic, one hears them often. Sometimes meaningless things, and sometimes
messages for oneself or people one knows.”

I stared at him, wondering whether he really expected me to
swallow that. But he had a poker face.

I took a fresh tack. “So, out of the kindness of your heart
you came around to warn me. Knowing that for a year now I've been trying to get
something on you so I could put you---”

His upraised hand stopped me. “That is something else again,
Sergeant. I don't particularly like you personally, but a psychic has
obligations which transcend the mundane. If it was not intended that I pass
that warning on to you, I should not have received it.”

“Where had you been, before this happened?”

“I went with a party of people to the Anders Farm.”

The Anders Farm isn't a farm at all; it's a roadhouse and
it's about fifteen miles out of town. Coming on from there, you take Highway
15, which turns into Clayton Boulevard in town.

“I left the others there around four o'clock,” Barranya
said. “We'd been there since midnight and I was getting bored, and---well,
feeling queer---as often happens when I am on the verge of a communication from
the astral---”

“Wait,” I said, “were you there with someone? A woman?”

“No, Sergeant. It was a mixed party, but there were three
couples and two stags and I was one of the stags. I drove slowly coming in,
because I'd been drinking and because of that feeling of expectancy. I was on
Clayton, out around Fiftieth, when I heard the voice. It said, ‘Sergeant Murray
will be killed to---’ ”

“Yeah, yeah” I interrupted. For some reason, it made my
tooth ache worse when he said that. I looked at him a minute trying to figure
out how much truth he was telling me. I couldn't swallow that spirit message
stuff.

But the rest of it? It would be easy to get and check the
names of the people he'd been with. But that was routine, up to whoever was
handling the case. . . .

Say Barranya left the Anders Farm near four o'clock. He came
to my office at five, or a few minutes before. That gave him an hour. Not too
long a time if he'd driven as slowly as he said. But it was possible.

I said, “Now about Charlie Randall. What were your relations
with him?”

“Very pleasant, Sergeant. I advised him in a business way.”

I studied him. “Meaning when he had to bump off a competitor
you'd cast a horoscope to see if the stars were favorable?”

That veil business was over his eyes again, and I knew he
didn't like the way I'd put that. It was probably a close guess. We knew that Randall,
like most crooks, was superstitious and that he was Sibi Barranya's best
hocus-pocus sucker.

Barranya said, “Mr. Randall conducted a legitimate business,
Sergeant. My advice concerned purely legal transactions.”

“No doubt,” I said. “Since it would be hard to prove
otherwise now, we'll let it ride. But look---you're probably pretty familiar
with Randall's business. Who would benefit by his death?”

Barranya thought a moment before he answered. “His wife, of
course. That is, I presume she'll inherit his money; he never consulted me
about a will. And there is Pete Burd; but you know about that.”

I knew about Pete Burd, all right. He was the only rival
Randall had had, and not too much competition at that. He put his machines in
the smaller places that Randall didn't want, and that was maybe why Randall
hadn't done to him what he'd done to more enterprising competitors. But now
that Randall was out of the way, it would mean room for expansion for Burd.