The Fatal Frails (12 page)

They rode in silence until Tiny pulled in at Columbus Circle. Harry Palmer got out hurriedly as though to forestall any further attempt at conversation. He trotted off without a backward glance.

Tiny started off again and headed down Seventh Avenue. “I was up t’ Dmitri’s d’ udder day,” he rumbled from the front seat in the familiar, breathy hoarseness. “I ast ‘im how he rated us. You know w’at he said?”

“No,” Johnny said shortly. He had other things than Dmitri on his mind.

“He said on da mat wit’ th’ strangle barred I’m six to five.” Tiny cut around a cab picking up a passenger, forcing the car in the next lane to pull up abruptly. “I tol’ him he’s crazy. I got t’ be better’n six to five over a jerk never made his livin’ at it. Right?” Johnny made no reply. Tiny evidently expected none. “Th’ kicker an’ th’ t’ing made me laff is that crazy Rooshian’s sayin’ wit’ nothin’ barred, I’m only five t’ eight. I tol’ him, nuts, man, I want—”

“You’re in the wrong lane,” Johnny interrupted as they crossed 50th. “You got to go east on Forty-fourth an’ circle the block.”

Tiny might never have heard him. “I tol’ him I can use a little of that five t’ eight, mebbe more’n a little. Anytime I outweigh a man fi’ty poun’s an’ he lays me eight t’ five I got to see it.” Approaching 45th, the Continental slowed.

“Another block!” Johnny said sharply. “An’ left, not right!”

“Sure,” Tiny said, and swung right on 45th.

“You goddam—” Johnny sucked in his breath as it came to him. He reached for a doorhandle. Locked. Front-seat mechanism. Tiny was watching him in the rear-view mirror as they crossed Eighth Avenue. Grimly Johnny took off his jacket, unbuttoned his collar, and rolled up his sleeves.

“ ‘At’s a boy,” Tiny approved hoarsely from the front seat. “In fi’ minutes now I want t’ see how mucha that eight t’ five you’re layin’.” Catching all the lights, the Continental sailed across Ninth, Tenth and Eleventh. It threaded its way between trucks loading on both sides of the street from narrow warehouse platforms, nosed out under the elevated highway at the wharves, turned left on the cobblestones, and almost at once turned sharp right and darted into a narrow opening that widened as the cobblestones gave way to crushed stone.

Tiny swung the big car in a circle and stopped it with the driver’s side nearest the lane by which they’d entered. He got out and stretched, reached in and touched a button on the dash. “You c’n git out now, hardhead.”

Johnny climbed out on the side opposite. In this neighborhood of busy loadings and unloadings of the world’s largest liners, he wouldn’t have believed it possible for this still, deserted dock with its splintery planking and rotting pilings to exist. “This Palmer’s idea?” he asked tightly as he came around the front of the Lincoln.

Tiny covered his nose with a massive paw. “The boss gimme th’ office when ya got in th’ car ya had a big nose,” he said solemnly. “I been tellin’ ‘im that. You go inta dry dock a while, chum, as of now.”

He advanced ponderously, crouched forward, arms semi-circled. The stone crunched under his shuffling feet. Johnny circled, to his right, just outside the reaching arms. Tiny pursued patiently, in a narrowing orbit. Johnny speeded up suddenly. Tiny’s upper body pivoted to face him, but the legs floundered. In the second the man-mountain was off balance Johnny smashed the heel of his shoe against Tiny’s left knee. There was a loud pop. When the pursuing man’s entire weight came down on that leg he went down like a falling tree. He lay in the crushed stone, wheezing.

Johnny walked around him to face him. “That was your kneecap, sucker,” he said in a hard voice. “Satisfied, or should I get a tire iron out of the trunk an’ take a few divots out of your thick skull?”

His face gray and perspiration beading his broad forehead, Tiny muscled himself up on his forearms. “Jus’ lemme get muh han’s on ya, pal.” He tried to drag his great weight forward.

“Ahhh—” Johnny said disgustedly. He walked away, toward the Lincoln. “I’ll send somebody in here after you. If you’re plannin’ on walkin’ again, quit draggin’ that knee.”

He drove out onto the cobblestones. At the corner of 44th he leaned out to tell a blue uniform he’d heard a man hollering behind the fence across the street. The cop took in the Lincoln in one all-encompassing glance and started across the street.

Johnny drove to the Duarte and parked in front, illegally at that time of day. In the lobby he ran into Gus. “Who’s on the beat?” he asked the black-haired Greek.

“Desmond. Why?”

“I left a Lincoln out front. Tell him to use up his book of tickets on it.”

He went upstairs to his room for a drink.

T
WILIGHT HAD COME AND GONE
before Johnny’s vigil outside the precinct station house was rewarded by the appearance of Detective James Rogers in his unmarked black sedan. Johnny stepped from his doorway and walked rapidly to the car as Rogers parked in the only open space in the block, squarely beside a fire hydrant. The sedan’s wheels were still moving when Johnny opened the door on the passenger’s side and slid into the front seat.

The nose dipped as Rogers instinctively hit the brake. “Well, well, well!” he exclaimed sarcastically. “Isn’t it fortunate that I’m the cool, even-tempered type who looks first before he shoots? That kind of an entrance can get you lead dimples.”

“Or a night stick behind the ear? How’s my friend Cuneo?”

“Johnny, I want to talk to you.” The detective swung about on the seat until he was facing Johnny squarely. “You’re going to get yourself so thoroughly—”

“I hear you’re acquirin’ a taste for French Seventy-fives, Jimmy,” Johnny interrupted.

“You hear a hell of a lot that’s none of your business,” the sandy-haired man said acidly. “I’m warning—”

Johnny interrupted again. “You get a decent description from anyone of the guy that stepped from the car to break up Madeleine Winters?”

The detective was silent a moment before replying. “Man Mountain Dean, without the whiskers,” he said finally.

Johnny nodded. “How many arrests you made, Jimmy?” At Rogers’ flat stare he grinned. “Like Perry Mason, I’ll rephrase the question. Would you like to make one?”

“What do you know, Johnny?”

“Your Forty-fourth Street beat man at the wharves found a guy in a lot this afternoon with a flat wheel. You find out what hospital he sent him to, an’ you toddle on over there an’ tell the guy in the bed his boss is swearin’ out a warrant accusin’ his ex-employee of the assault. You might get some action.”

Detective Rogers’ regard of Johnny was unwinking. “Who is his boss?”

“Harry Palmer.”

The resulting silence lasted fifteen seconds before the detective spoke again. “Motive?”

“Blackmail. Long-time.”

“I’ll send someone over,” Roger said. He glanced at his watch. “I’ve a nine o’clock appointment myself.”

“Send a fast talker,” Johnny cautioned.

“Bob Hope’s understudy,” the detective promised. “We’ll pick up Palmer, too. Would it do me any good to inquire how the man happened to be in a lot with a flat wheel?”

“He didn’t believe a guy who said the odds were eight to five.”

“I guess that makes about as much sense as most of what I hear from you,” Rogers observed. He swung about in the seat again and reached for the door handle. With his hand on it he paused, looking straight ahead through the windshield, his voice uncomfortable. “This and a dime will get you a cup of coffee from me any time,” he said gruffly. “Understand? The first time that Cuneo—”

“Could Palmer have killed Arends, Jimmy?” Johnny cut in.

“The first time that Cuneo sees you,” the sandy haired man continued doggedly, unheeding, “I won’t be responsible.”

“I don’t like people who carry their hardware around in back of me, Jimmy.”

“Cuneo was trying to break up a brawl in a public place, which he had every license to do!” Rogers’ voice had risen sharply. “Which it was his duty to do,” he continued more quietly. “Each of us does his duty as he sees it.” He threw up the door handle and opened the door part way. With his legs already out he spoke over his shoulder. “I forget that question you just asked, but the answer is negative. Physically impossible.” He climbed out, slammed the door, walked around the car and ran lightly up the worn white stone steps of the old building.

“Thanks, Jimmy,” Johnny said softly after the departed figure. He climbed leisurely from the sedan and looked at his watch. Eight twenty-five. Thirty-five minutes to Rogers’ appointment time. Johnny was more than a little curious about this appointment of Jimmy Rogers.

He walked up to the corner. Before he was halfway there two cruisers rushed out of the private police parking lot and roared past him nose-to-tail, a low
rrrrrr
of the sirens and the flashing red dome lights denoting urgency. Johnny smiled to himself. Tiny would be having company.

The smile faded as he walked. If he’d been sure this afternoon, that tire iron might have been a good idea. Madeleine Winters might have been and done a lot of things, but no woman deserved what had happened to her. Palmer might not have killed Arends, but he had a lot to answer for.

And it still left the question of who had killed Arends.

Johnny stepped off the curb at sight of a cruising cab, and it slowed and backed up for him. He pointed out Detective Rogers’ sedan to the driver as they passed it. “See that one, chief? Circle the block an’ pull in at the corner above here. Double-park if you have to. When he takes off don’t let him get away from you.”

The driver looked. He flashed a glance back at Johnny, his voice unenthusiastic. “You see where he’s parked, Mac? You sure it’s not the fuzz?”

“I don’t give a damn if it’s an Episcopal bishop!” Johnny barked. “Get around this block an’ in behind him. We lose him I’m gonna be mighty unhappy with you, chief.”

The driver surveyed Johnny in his rear-view mirror. The sight appeared to convince him. They circled the block in silence, and pulled in at the corner where Johnny had hailed him. Lights on and motor idling, they sat, with the cabbie casting nervous glances up and down the street.

Perhaps ten minutes had elapsed when Johnny saw Detective Rogers’ slender figure run down the station-house steps, slip out of his jacket in the mild night breeze and slide under the wheel. The driver saw him, too. “I hope you know what you’re doin’, Mac,” he grunted, easing forward. “Anyways, I got him covered.”

They followed out to Eighth Avenue, and as Rogers turned north Johnny had a hunch. The Hotel Alden was their destination, he suddenly felt sure. He watched closely as they eased up to within a quarter block of the sedan, the cabbie with one eye on the lights ahead.

When they turned off Columbus Circle onto Central Park West Johnny sat back in the seat and relaxed. No question about it now. When they turned into 82nd he leaned forward again and watched until he was sure the sedan ahead was slowing. “Okay, chief,” Johnny said as soon as it did. “Anywhere’s right here’s good enough.” He dropped a bill on the front seat and got out in the middle of the block. Leisurely he sauntered up the street toward the lighted Alden marquee.

He saw Rogers’ sedan at the first meter beyond the hotel no-parking zone. In the same glance he saw something else. Two cars ahead of the black sedan, a long blue Cadillac regally pre-empted a space and a half. Johnny quickened his stride. This could be part of Rogers’ appointment, but Johnny didn’t think so. And, if the detective walked in on them unknowing, there could be some firepower in that package upstairs.

“Four,” he said shortly to the gum-chewing, uniform-trousered brunette in the elevator. She ascended with him boredly. There was no sign of Rogers in the corridors. Johnny paused outside 407. He was going to need a hell of an opening line to talk his way in here. Tremaine nor nobody else wanted to see him.

He tested the knob, cautiously. Locked, of course. He shrugged, raised his hand to knock—and then heard, from what sounded like just beyond the door, a muffled thumping noise, twice repeated. Without even stopping to think, Johnny backed off the width of the corridor and charged the door with all the momentum he could generate. At the last second he barely remembered to lead with his right shoulder to protect his still-bandaged left side.

The door burst inward shiveringly in a shower of wood splinters from around the shattered lock. Johnny scrambled for balance as he lunged into Max Stitt, who was standing with his foot drawn back to kick Detective Rogers’ prostrate body on the floor. Stitt backed off with a snarl, his colorless eyes lethal, his hand darting to a pocket. Johnny’s quick reach and bone-crushing embrace clamped Stitt’s arms helplessly to his sides; then Johnny swung him aloft with his feet to the ceiling. Abruptly Johnny released him, and the furiously struggling Stitt crashed floorward, head first. Stunned, he offered no resistance as Johnny bent quickly and removed a blued-steel Mauser from his jacket. It felt sticky to the touch, and Johnny looked down at bloodstains on his palm.

He took two quick steps to the doorway off the hall and looked through it at Jules Tremaine sitting slackly on the sofa, the handsome face lumped, red-streaked, and sick-white. Behind Johnny, Stitt rolled over and came up on his knees. Without a word Johnny stepped back inside, reversed the Mauser in his hand and slapped it tightly alongside a lean cheekbone. Max Stitt went over backward as bright juice spurted beneath his right eye. Raging, he doubled on himself like a snake and flung himself at Johnny’s legs. The Mauser knocked him sideways along the floor in a sliding skid. He came halfway up to his knees again and paused.

“Keep comin’,” Johnny invited him in a voice he had trouble recognizing. “Do me a favor. See can you wear out this iron. I wouldn’t break up my hands on a puff adder like you.”

“Cut it—out, Johnny,” a voice said weakly from the floor to one side. Johnny half turned, one eye still on Stitt calculating his chances. Detective Rogers grimacingly pushed himself erect from hands and knees, one hand at the back of his neck and the other at his left side. “You want to—kill him?”

“Not all at once. Come on,” Johnny said to the taut-lipped, cold-eyed Stitt. “Do something. Give me an excuse.”

“Cut it out,” Rogers repeated in a stronger tone. Half doubled over and dragging his left leg, he moved past Johnny inside to the sofa on which Jules Tremaine sat with his head in his hands. “Let’s have a look,” the detective said gently, and removed one of the hands.

“Nothin’ thirty, thirty-five stitches won’t fix up,” Johnny said sarcastically from the doorway.

Rogers turned away from the criss-crossed welts and oozing bruises on the shocked face and walked to the telephone. “Get the police up here,” he said into it. “And an ambulance.” He walked back out to the hall, where Max Stitt was kneeling on the floor, his hands slackly at his sides, his pale eyes expressionlessly upon Johnny six feet away. A lowly pulsing tide of red ebbed down the lean visage from the slash beneath his eye.

“I’ll get around later to how you happened to come through that door just then,” Rogers said to Johnny. One hand gingerly at the back of his neck, he looked down at Stitt. “I’d knocked four times before anything happened, and then it happened all at once. The door opened, he yanked me in and sapped me down. I don’t know what the bootwork was for when he got the door closed again.”

“That was because he likes it.” Johnny half leaned in Stitt’s direction. “Don’t you, sweetheart?”

“Cut it out, I told you,” Rogers ordered. He looked inside in the direction of the sofa. “I don’t understand it. Tremaine would make two of him.”

“You got to see this wart go to appreciate him,” Johnny assured him. “Fastest pair of hands I run into in a long time. An’ I do mean run into. You were meetin’ Tremaine?”

“So I thought.” The detective pointed a toe at the silent Stitt. “What’s his mad at the Frenchman?”

“Both of ‘em were wired into Dechant for a long time. Makin’ money at it, too. Dechant was the contact man, an’ a crackerjack. He provided the outlets for half a dozen little schemes that had stuff gettin’ into the country illegally. When he died, the stuff was still comin’, but there was no contact to the outlets. Tremaine hustled around, but he damn soon found out he wasn’t no Dechant. He even had me tryin’ to peddle a hundred fifty cases smuggled brandy for him. He couldn’t carry the load, an’ he started to go to pieces. At the same time our friend here, when Arends was knocked off, all of a sudden becomes one of the landed gentry an’ he’s no longer interested in grubby little smugglin’ deals. Tremaine figured he had to be kept in line, both because of the warehouse facilities an’ knowhow, an’ Stitt’s European contacts. I’m just guessin’ now, but I think Tremaine made the mistake of hintin’ to our boy here that, unless he continued to co-operate, the police were goin’ to get word to look in his direction for what happened to Madeleine Winters. It looked so much like his trademark it would’ve been easy to do. If he had an alibi, okay—he hired it done.” He waved the Mauser at Max Stitt. “Stitt come over here to show him who was givin’ the orders.”

“You’d have to say he made his point,” Detective Rogers said drily. “I don’t see why these two—” He broke off as the battered door opened to admit two blue uniforms followed by an apprehensive looking gentleman obviously an assistant manager. “Come in, men,” Rogers said, and waved at Stitt. “Take him on down. I’ll think up the charges later.”

The assistant manager paused in the doorway at sight of Jules Tremaine. “Dear me,” he said involuntarily. He turned to look uncertainly at Rogers. “A physician is needed? Unfortunately we have no house man. We use one from the neighborhood. I’ll call—”

“Ambulance should be here any second,” the detective said. He watched as Max Stitt went out the door in the custody of the two patrolmen. “You’d better get that door fixed, though. I want to lock this room.”

“Certainly, sir. Certainly. I looked at it on the way in. I believe it can be fixed temporarily well enough to lock it.” He walked importantly to the phone.

Johnny silently handed the Mauser to Detective Rogers, who pocketed it. The ambulance crew arrived, and the white-coated doctor took one look at Jules Tremaine’s face and eyes and stretched him out on the sofa. He worked on him for quite a long time before he signaled for the stretcher.

“Come on, Johnny,” Rogers ordered when the tide had ebbed from around them. “I want to talk to him as soon as I can.”

“Sure, Jimmy.” Johnny followed him on out past a work-man in carpenter’s overalls muttering under his breath at the state of the door.

In the lobby, when he was sure that Rogers was in full flight after the stretcher, Johnny veered off to one side. He wanted a look at that room of Jules Tremaine’s, and he wanted no one looking over his shoulder while he did so.