Lucky Stiff
Leo, the night bartender at Parker’s Grill, squirmed off his stool and yawned audibly as he cast an eye at the clock atop the cash register. The hands pointed to midnight. As though waiting for this moment, Fish, number one camera for the Express, drained his glass and set it down.
“Another day, another dollar,” he said wearily. Leo, a Falstaff in a white apron, punched the register, spun two dimes at Fish and reached tentatively for a bottle.
“A short one before you go, Fish?”
“Not tonight. I’m going home.”
“Lucky you.”
“Yeah,” said Fish. “Lucky me.”
He bent a brow at Leo, his voice sardonic.
“Follow me around some day and see. Up half of last night on a fire out in Charleston—”
“You eat it up,” said Leo.
Fish snorted good-naturedly and turned away, hearing Leo say goodnight, and in the background, the clink of his two dimes in the glass set aside for tips next to the cash register.
Fish, reaching for a cigarette as he walked, saw that the stool behind the cashier’s desk was vacant.
A waiter stood in front of it and, leaning across the counter, staring moodily at the night outside, was Sam Parker.
Fish stopped and lit the cigarette.
Parker continued to brood and Fish said:
“Beth gone?”
“Yes. Two—three minutes.”
“Oh,” Fish said. “I thought I’d give her a lift.”
Parker turned suddenly, his face dark.
“Then whadda you wait for? Why don’t you come?”
Fish blinked.
“She works till twelve, don’t she? She usually has to get her coat and hat.”
“She’s a go early,” Parker said. Then explosively:
“It’s that asshole, Buck. Drink drink, drink. All of the time since he get out.”
There was more sputtering but Fish knew what he meant.
Lew Buck had been in the booth opposite the counter when Fish came in less than a half hour before.
Even then he was in a bit of stupor.
Now, apparently, Beth Roberts, the cashier, was taking him home.
“Its a shame,” Parker said.
“She’s too nice a girl for that asshole. Maybe they put him back in jail, you think?”
Fish said he didn’t know and was flipping up the collar of his balmacaan when he saw the policeman crossing diagonally from the other side of the street.
Walking fast, he was angling toward the inner edge of the sidewalk when he passed the window.
Something in his manner suggested that he had a very definite mission in view.
Fish opened the door and went out.
Then he saw what the cop was after.
A few feet to the right was a woman and a staggering man, quite obviously drunk.
A taxi stood at the curb, the driver waiting beside the open door.
The cop had ahold of the man’s shoulder.
The woman had his other arm and was arguing with the cop, and even in the shadows Fish could see that the woman was Beth Roberts and the drunk was Lew Buck.
“He’ll be all right,” Beth was saying. “If I could just get him home.”
“Stand up,” the cop barked.
He jerked the man roughly about and shook him.
“Hey! Buck!”
Buck mumbled some answer and tried to pull free, and by this time Fish had moved up beside the group.
The cop, concentrating on Buck, apparently spotted the big photographer from the corner of his eye.
“Keep moving,” he ordered over his shoulder. “Take a walk.”
“Quiet, Kelleher,” said Fish.
The cop quit shaking Buck and turned.
“Listen, you!” he began, then his eyes widened.
“Fish. Didn’t recognize you.”
“Fish,” Beth Roberts said, her voice quick with relief.
“Can you help?”
Fish already had slid an arm under Buck’s armpit.
“I can handle him,” he told the cop. “He was in Parker’s and gargled a couple too many.”
“Then keep him off the street,” Kelleher said. “The next thing he’ll be violating his parole and back he’ll go for a couple more years. I ain’t so sure he oughtn’t to.”
Fish got Buck into the waiting cab and Beth climbed in the opposite side, giving the driver the address.
Buck sat, his chin on his chest, mumbling thick words that made no sense.
Fish propped him up to keep him from falling sideways and looked at the girl.
“Still in love with him?” he said.
“I don’t know.”
She was silent for quite a while.
“I’m grateful to him, I know that. And he’s not well. It’s not just his health. But he doesn’t have anybody.”
“Besides you?” Fish asked.
“Besides me,” she agreed, her voice low in the shadow painted interior.
The cab rolled down Boylston.
Dark store windows mirrored their swift progress and corner lights made a rise and fall of illumination within the windows.
Beth Roberts sat very straight, her hands in her lap, her profile clean and grave.
About twenty-three, Fish thought, and the things about her he could not see now, he remembered.
Rather small, she was, and slender and trim-figured, her body gently rounded and straight along the back.
Not pretty, almost plain-looking, really, but nice-looking too with her wavy chestnut hair and eyes of serious brown.
There was a quiet genuineness about her that had always impressed him, but she had learned to smile since she had been at Parker’s.
Fish knew that Buck got the job for her.
That had been three or four years ago when the place was run by Joe Rizzo and was called the Club Marseilles.
Lew Buck had played the piano then, and tickled it well.
“This is it,” Beth Roberts said, and Fish saw that the cab had pulled in toward the curb.
“Give you a hand?” the driver said.
Fish pulled Buck out and stood him up.
“Hold him a minute,” he said, and asked the driver what the fare would be to take Beth Roberts home.
“I’ll go up with you,” the girl said.
She stood beside Fish, one hand on his arm as he paid and tipped the driver.
“You’ll get back in the cab,” Fish said.
“But can’t I—”
“No. What could you do? Get to bed. There’s where I’m going to put Lew. He’ll be all right.” T
he girl hesitated; then there was a quick pressure on his arm and she turned away, a wetness glistening on her cheek.
“You’re sweet, Fish.”
Fish growled.
“What’s the apartment number?”
She told him and the driver said:
“I’ll help you up with him.”
“I’ll get him,” Fish said and tipped Buck into his arms, carrying him like a baby.
The apartment house wore a cheap looking front of sand-colored brick, weather-streaked and dirty.
There was a sidewalk-level entrance, and when Fish nudged open the glass door he heard the cab drive away.
He passed the row of mail boxes on the foyer wall without a look and trudged up the rubber-treaded stairs.
A night light burned dimly on the second floor landing and the far end of the hall reached into semi-darkness.
Puffing a little now from his labor, he glanced at the nearest door number and started along the wall, muttering,
“It’s a break he don’t live on the fourth.”
At the last apartment on the right he stopped and tried to hold up Buck with one arm while he went through his pockets for a key.
He got no cooperation.
The man’s legs were rubbery, and Fish cursed and laid him on the floor.
“Good old Fish,” Buck mumbled.
“Shut up,” said Fish, and then his hand found something hard and bulky and he forgot about the key.
He swore softly, knowing it was a gun the instant he touched it.
When he brought it out, he saw that it was a short-barreled .32 with a pearl handle.
“Dumbass,” he said. “You dumb asshole.”
“Good old Fish,” Buck slurred. “Wait’n see,”
Fish growled, slipped the gun in his pocket and resumed his search.
“Wait’n see. You and I are going to have a talk, bud.”
He kept talking to himself as he found the key.
“Out a week on parole and packing a gun. If Kelleher had dragged you down for drunk and disorderly, that would have been it.”
He got a living-room light on, heeled the door shut and carried Buck with one arm against his hip.
He lurched through a doorway and dumped his burden on the bed.
He went in the bath, found the light and turned on the cold water in the tub.
By the time the tub was half full, Buck was naked and Fish had his coat and vest off, his sleeves rolled up.
“Nothing but skin and bones,” he said, and looked down at the mumbling figure before he picked him up.
The face was thin and sallow, and the nondescript brown hair was still cut quite short.
The chest was flat and bony.
He made a lot of noise as he breathed, and seeing him this way, Fish knew that Lew Buck had gone a long way down since he had teamed with Anna Sinclair at the old Club Marseilles.
He picked him up in both hands, went into the bathroom and dunked him.
For a second nothing happened, then Buck squirmed.
More from instinct than anything else, he tried to lift himself and Fish pushed him back.
This time the man’s eyes focused, stared.
Then he opened his mouth and yelled.
“Shut up!” Fish growled.
Buck began to thrash around.
Fish pushed his head under.
The other came up choking and sputtering.
“Don’t!” he yelled. “Hell, Fish, you’re killing me.”
Fish pushed his head under once more and stepped back.
Buck lashed out blindly and jumped up, gasping, choking, his skin goose-pimpled and bluish.
Fish threw a towel at him.
“Rub down. Or do you want me to do it?”
“No!” Buck drew back.
“I’ve got it,” the slurring was still there, though less pronounced.
More like an accent now, to some exotic place where booze ran like water and the rotgut cheap.
“Then get some clothes on. I’ll take you down to the corner and buy you some black coffee.”
“I’ll be all right,” Buck said, but he didn’t look it.
There was a sickness about his mouth and his eyes were glassy.
“I’ll just go straight to bed.”
“You’re going to drink some coffee,” Fish said, “and you’re going to get told a few things. Now snap it up.”
He went through the bedroom and closed the door.
Fish propped himself on a chair arm, his broad face somber, his jaw a little grim and he stared at the door, waiting.
After a few moments, he stood up and began to pace the room, unable to get Beth Roberts out of his mind, and finding his thoughts strangely troubled.
He was on his second cigarette when the knock came at the door. He opened it and Sergeant Mayer was standing there, a plainclothes man beside him.
For a long second they stared at each other, and it was a question as to which of the two was the more surprised.
Then Mayer pushed in, a chunky, red-faced man with a heavy nose.
“Surprised?” the sergeant said. “Where’s Buck?”
Fish backed away, his frown etched deep and a tightness coming across his chest, for Mayer was attached to Homicide.
“He’s dressing,” he said.
“Dressing? For what?”
“I just gave him a bath,” Fish said and went on to explain how he happened to be there.
Mayer listened, his eyes speculative.
Then he shrugged and started for the bedroom door.
The cop took his arm.
“Wait a minute,” he said.
“What?”
“Know Anna Sinclair? Well, somebody knocked her off about an hour ago with a slug in the heart. We found out Buck was up to her place.”
For the next second or two all Fish could do was stare, all he could think of was the gun in his pocket.
The tightness screwed down a little harder and he stood quite still, a big, thick bodied man with an upward-arching chest and a stomach like a washboard.
His brown hair was shaggy and streaked with gray at the temples, and in his dark eyes and across his rugged face there was trouble and resignation.
“He was at Parker’s,” he said woodenly.
“Don’t argue with me about the time,” Mayer said.
“The lieutenant will figure that out when we get there.”
He stepped past with the plainclothesman at his heels and Fish waited, thinking about Beth Roberts, and the gun in his pocket, and the woman Lew Buck had gone to prison for— Anna Sinclair. He heard the door open.
A quick curse shattered his train of thought.
He spun toward the bedroom, went in.
Mayer and the plainclothesman were leaning out the open window, and Fish elbowed his way beside them.
There was a foot-wide ledge stretching across the back of the building, broken by a fire escape fifteen or twenty feet away.
Below there was nothing but blackness hemmed in by other walls and fences to make a narrow alleyway.
“So,” Mayer snarled. “He was at Parker’s huh? And you held me up in there.”
“Sure,” Fish snapped. “He confessed the whole thing. I figured out the getaway for him. Damn!”
“Come on,” said Mayer. “You can talk to the lieutenant.”
CHAPTER TWO
Anna Sinclair lay on her back upon a thick white rug.
She wore a hostess gown of black satin, but this had been opened by the examiner’s physician to disclose the tea rose slip with the ugly red stain between the breasts.
In life a full-blown, vital woman, there was now something pathetically incongruous in her very stillness, in the red painted lips and nails that glared so brightly in death.
Even the room in which she died had lost its character.
It was a feminine room, done in whites and pastel blues, and already it had been tarnished by the tramp of heavy shoes, the hubbub of men’s voices, the reek of tobacco smoke and cigar butts. The fingerprint man and photographer was still busy with his brushes and powders.
Lieutenant Logan stood in the center of the room, talking with the examiner’s physician, who had packed his bag and was ready to leave.
Off in one corner sat a blond, bespectacled youth Fish had never seen before, and along one wall two men stood smoking, their coats on and hats in their hands.
The taller and younger of the two was Barney Fiske, the other, George Anderson.
Seeing them here now reminded Fish that, aside from Lew Buck, these two had been more closely identified with Anna Sinclair than anyone else in town.
The door opened and two white coated internes entered with a stretcher.
The examiner’s man nodded to them.
As they lifted the still figure to the canvas, Fish’s resentment became a deep and irritable abrasive, directed both at the lieutenant and the circumstances.
Coming in with Sergeant Mayer, he had seen the reporters on the sidewalk, and the photographers from the News and the Star.
In the morning there’d be pictures of that stretcher and the internes, but not in the Express.
Because Fish had been caught without a camera, and had been given no chance to phone the office and get one.
The examiner’s man went out with the stretcher.
Lieutenant Logan surveyed the room, his gaze stopping on Fish.
“You don’t think Lew had anything to do with it?”
“No,” Fish said sourly.
“You went in Parker’s at twenty of twelve. Buck was in a booth. You say he looked as if he’d been drinking.”
Logan watched the photographer nod and continued.
“You had a couple at the bar and when you went out just after midnight, Buck and the Roberts girl were on the sidewalk.”
He grunted softly.
“Well, it fits. Buck came up here at eleven-fifteen. He got to Parker’s five minutes before you did —at twenty-five of twelve—and it’s no more than five minutes from here to there.”
He glanced at the youth in the corner.
“You’re positive, are you, Tidwell, that Buck didn’t come back out? I mean you weren’t in the can getting a snort or something?”
“No, sir,” Tidwell said.
Logan shrugged.
“What did Buck run out the back way for, Fish? Why’d he take a powder when he heard Mayer’s voice over at his place?”
Fish made no comment, but listened as the lieutenant turned back to the youth named Tidwell, the night operator of the apartment house.
Hearing the rest of the story, he became convinced that he had been wrong from the beginning.
The evidence against Buck was too damning, and it explained why the man had been so drunk.
Fear, perhaps remorse, had driven him to it.
He had known what was coming and he had taken a weakling’s way out.
“There were no calls,” Logan was saying, “after Buck went up until Mr. Anderson came in at twenty minutes of twelve?”
“No, sir,” Tidwell said. “Mr. Anderson came in and asked me to ring Miss Sinclair’s apartment. I couldn’t get any answer. I knew she must be there, and Mr. Anderson said she’d asked him to call at eleven-thirty, so—”
“Late, weren’t you, Anderson?” Logan cut in.
“Yes,” Anderson said.
“I’d stopped in the bar down on the corner, as I told you. I’m not sure how long I was there, but I know I got there before eleven-thirty because I wanted a drink and didn’t see what difference it made if I was a little late.”
“So you,” Logan continued to Tidwell, “decided maybe something was wrong, got a pass key and came up with Anderson?”
He rubbed his palms and looked thoughtful.
“What were you going to see her about, Anderson?”
“I don’t know. She didn’t say. She asked me if I could come and I told her I would.”
Logan turned to Barney Fiske.
“And you walked in here while they were phoning us?”
“There was no one on the board downstairs,” Fiske said,
“so I came on up.”
“Kind of a late call, wasn’t it?” asked Logan suspiciously.
“That’s what I told her. She phoned me this morning. I told her I had a date—I’d be tied up. She said it didn’t matter—to come when I finished.”
“And you were with your fiancée, Miss Anderson, until a quarter after eleven?”
Fiske said that was right and Fish, knowing about the girl Logan was referring to, was reminded of many things.
Reviewing them, he found the various connections confusing except in one regard—both Fiske and Anderson had been close to Anna Sinclair.
Anderson was her ex-husband and it had been less than a month since she had divorced him and been given a handsome settlement. Barney Fiske had been attentive to Anna during the divorce proceedings, and some had said they would be married when the decree was granted.
Instead of that, Helen Anderson had announced her engagement to Fiske less than two weeks previous—Helen Anderson, the socially prominent daughter of a noted surgeon.
Vaguely Fish heard Logan continue his questioning but his own thoughts remained centered on Anderson and Fiske.
Both were well groomed and carried an aura of prosperity and good living about them.
There was something else they had in common; that suggestion of tempered hardness, the shrewdness of eye, the confidence and poise that come to those who make a success of life.
And, materially at least, success had come to them.
George Anderson, a lawyer and one-time advisor to the Laundry Workers’ Cooperative Union, had more recently become the union’s head at a reputed Two hundred twenty thousand a year.
Not a bad gig if one could get it, Fish thought.
A lot of cheddar.
Enough to kill to keep? He wondered to himself.
Barney Fiske was a business man whose endeavors had, in the past, run to promotional lines.
He had got his start with concessions at the race track and branched out into other fields which included the backing of a restaurant, an interest in a business block, a piece of a show or two.
Beyond these similarities, however, they had little in common. Anderson, not more than average height, was a blocky figure, square-faced and dark, with a crisp, aggressive way of talking.
Fiske was tall, sandy-haired and handsome, and in his early thirties, several years younger than Anderson.
Fish became aware that the two were leaving and heard Logan say:
“All right. Thanks. As soon as we pick up Lew Buck, we’ll get in touch with you.”
Anderson and Fiske went out and Logan turned to Tidwell.
“Where can we get you?”
Tidwell mentioned an address and Fish studied him.
He was very pale and his eyes were harried and restless.
Even from where Fish stood, he could see the tremor in his fingers. Just a f{id, Fish thought, and scared to death.
Logan’s gaze came to him as Tidwell went out.
Fish stared back at him morosely.
“Still think Buck is in the clear?” Logan asked dryly.
“Who the hell cares what I think?” Fish groused.
“You’re mad?”
“I’m pissed.”
Logan let one lid come down, a tall, slender figure with black hair and a smooth, hard jaw.
He didn’t look much like a cop with his neat chesterfield and derby. He was too young too, but he was competent and when he had to be tough he was tough.
Now his eyes were sardonic because he’d known Fish a long time and understood his irritation.
“I’m the guy that should be mad,” he said. “If you hadn’t given Mayer all that bullshit, he would’ve nailed Buck before he could duck.”
“If,” Fish said. “So you get pig-headed. I couldn’t phone for a camera? I had to stay here and listen to this routine of yours.”
He snorted and buttoned his coat.
“Well, screw this. Remind me to do you a favor sometime.”
He strode over to the door and went out.
The reporters were still waiting for Logan on the sidewalk, being held at bay by the uniformed husky at the door.
They gave Fish some good-natured jeers and he did not bother to lay them back because he saw that Fields and Cohen, the cameras from the News and the Star, had gone.
There was an Express photographer now, sitting on his case—Evans, who apparently had been routed out of bed—but it was too late now.
There was nothing to photograph.
Fish went over and spoke to him.
“Did you get Anderson and Fiske when they came out?”
“No,” Evans said. “I just got here.”
“That’s awesome,” said Fish with little enthusiasm. “All that leaves you is a bunch of cops.”
“Blaine is burning,” Evans said, referring to the city editor.
“He tried to get you and—”
“Let him burn,” said Fish, signaling a cab.
“He’ll be good and crisp by the time he’s ready for me in the morning.”
When he had slammed the door and given the driver his address, he took the pearl-handled .32 from his pocket.
The instant he sniffed the muzzle he knew it had been fired recently.
Slouched back in the corner, he broke the gun and held it nearer the window.
Of the five shells in the cylinder, one had been exploded.
He slipped the gun in his pocket again and leaned his head back on the cushion, wondering why he hadn’t offered Logan the gun, remembering what the examiner’s man had said.
One shot, angling laterally to penetrate the edge of the heart, a near contact shot with death practically instantaneous.
It was mid-afternoon before Fish reached police headquarters. When he came into the vaulted entrance foyer, his broad face was glum and his eyes were stormy.
He found Lieutenant Logan in his office on the fourth floor, his feet on the desk and his hands locked behind his head.
Logan looked none too happy himself, and neither man spoke until Fish had dropped into a chair and kicked his plate-case over against the wall.
Then Logan said:
“Now what’re you grouching about?”
“I’m in the doghouse.”
“Move over.” Fish looked at him with one eye. “You didn’t pick up Buck yet, huh?”
Logan shook his head.
“Thanks to you.”
“All right,” Fish said. “I held Mayer up one minute last night at Buck’s place. Why don’t you charge me as an accessory?”
“Maybe I will if the super doesn’t crawl off my neck.” Fish lapsed into a morose silence.
An assignment near Winthrop where a fishing schooner had gone aground in the early morning fog had occupied several hours, and when he got back to the Express, Blaine, the city editor, was laying for him.
Blaine had had a lot to say and all of it was sarcastic.
He had learned that Fish had been in on the murder investigation the night before and had inquired why the News and the Star were the only sheets with pictures.
Fish told him and then had kept his hands deep in his trousers pockets to help him resist the impulse to lean across the desk and slap the city editor from his chair.
Even thinking about that argument made him furious.
He sought refuge now in speech.
“What do you figure Buck killed her for?”
“You think he didn’t?”
“I’m asking,” Fish said, feeling the pressure of that pearl-handled revolver in his hip pocket.
“You know he went up to Anna’s and you know he must’ve run out the back way. What else?”
“He ran out on you, too,” Logan said. “Does there have to be something else?”
“A motive would help.” Logan considered this and his voice grew thoughtful.
“I think it might hook up with that Rizzo job.”
With the mention of that name Fish’s mind folded back and he realized he’d had much the same idea.
Joe Rizzo, who had at that time owned the Club Marseilles, had been shot and killed in his apartment by Lew Buck.
Anna Sinclair had been a witness, and it was largely through her testimony that Buck had been let off with a manslaughter verdict and a five-year stretch.
Rizzo, who, as an out and out racketeer, started the Laundry Workers’ Cooperative Union by beating the laundries in line and hiring George Anderson to defend his thugs.
The result could hardly sustain the theory that hard work and honesty are essential factors for success, because somehow this organization had gradually taken on a cloak of respectability so that, at the time of his death, Rizzo was the secretary and treasurer of what passed as a legitimate labor union with a national affiliation.
True, Rizzo had remained a crook to the end—after his death a large shortage in accounts was found—but he had kept such deficiencies well covered and, by his ownership of the Club Marseilles, was supposed to be well off.
Logan broke in on Fish’s thoughts.
“This Anna is a voluptuous number.”
“With a capital V.”
“She’s got looks. She’s got a body you rave about. She knows the answers, she knows how to look out for number one and she knows that men are saps. This Buck is just one of those guys. He plays the piano for her.”
“Sinclair and Buck,” Fish said. “It was quite an act.”
And in his mind’s eye he could see them now.
Anna out on the nightclub floor with her seductive curves and full-blown body and that torch contralto that always seemed to be singing especially for you.
And, outside the range of the spotlight, Buck pouring out his heart through those piano keys.
“He was nuts about her,” Logan went on.
“Like a dog, following her around, talking her up, looking for better bookings, getting her started in radio. And what did he ever get?”
“The brush-off,” Fish said.
“Yeah.” Logan grunted softly.
“He knew she’d never go for him but if didn’t matter. She knew that and she kept him just like that for what he could do for her. About once a week he’d get kicked around by somebody because he objected to something the guy said about Anna. He was always thinking guys were making passes at her. I’ve heard her tell him off. It never did any good. He’d always come back, and she knew it.”
Logan blew out his breath and swung his feet down.
“So it had to happen sometime. She has a couple of guys on the string and Joe Rizzo is top dog. Buck knows he’s a louse. He’s afraid he’s going to lose Anna—and Rizzo isn’t good enough for her. You know what happened.”
“I know what’s on the record,” Fish said.
“He went to Rizzo’s apartment and Anna was there and Rizzo kicked him around and Buck shot him.”
“Yeah,” said Logan.
“And there’s another story.”
“I know that one, too. It says that Buck didn’t shoot Rizzo, that Anna did and Buck took the rap for her.”
“It fits,” Logan said. “Anna shoots Rizzo and calls Lew. For the first time she really needs him and he follows the pattern. What she promises him, we don’t know. Maybe nothing. Maybe she says she’ll marry him when he gets out. Anyway, they get George Anderson to defend him, Anna takes the stand for him, and manslaughter is the best the D.A. can do. All right. Lew’s not in the can six months before she marries Anderson. Lew has to put in another two years before he can get paroled. By that time Anna has divorced Anderson, so Lew isn’t pissed at him, is he?”
“He’s pissed at Anna.”
“You know it,” Logan said.
“He’s been around a week lapping it up to get his nerve in shape, and he goes around there and plugs her last night for double-crossing him. And I guess she had it coming.”
“If she did promise him anything,” Fish said.
“Suppose she didn’t—in the first place, I mean. Lew was the kind of a guy that would have thought up that sacrifice all by himself. If he did, it was because he was nuts about her. And if that was so, he still would be, even now.”
“Shit,” the cop sighed.
“I don’t say it couldn’t be made to fit,” Fish argued.
“But if we’re going to tailor things, what about Barney Fiske?” Logan squinted at him.
“What about him?”
“For my dollar,” Fish said, “he’s got a better motive than Buck.”
“You’re out of your mind.”
Fish stood up.
“I know it. I know that that lad, Tidwell, says nobody went up to Anna’s but Buck, but when you talk about motives, I’ll take Barney Fiske.”
“O.K.” Logan said, grinning, “you can have him.”
“Barney’s not a bad guy,” Fish said. “Maybe he’s played a few things fast and loose but he’s always been legitimate. I understand he’s got a good education—a football player, wasn’t he? On one of those backwoods colleges that always buy good teams. And he’s made himself some money. He’s a good-looking guy and he wears clothes well—” he paused, screwing one brow down—“almost as well as you.”
“Bullshit.”
“And he’s got himself engaged to a nice girl. Those things happen, you know. Helen Anderson isn’t the four hundred maybe, but she’s near the upper crust and it’s a nice step up for Fiske. Good family, a chance to settle down.”
“Go on,” Logan said.
He was listening now.
He wasn’t throwing away Buck because the evidence was too strong, but Fish was talking sense.
“Women have always gone for Barney. Anna did too, didn’t she? He played around with her all the time she was divorcing Anderson. I imagine she found out a lot of things about him, huh? But that’s before he meets Helen Anderson. Now things are different. Maybe Anna don’t like it. Nobody ever brushed her off before.” Fish hesitated, laughed shortly but without humor. He picked up his case and adjusted his hat.
“Do you want me to draw you a picture?”
The question brought no rise from Logan.
Instead he said, thoughtfully:
“Jealousy?”
“When you’re talking about motives there’s none better,” Fish said.
“It doesn’t have to be that either. Anna could tell things about Fiske. She could blackmail him plenty and she sure as hell could break up that engagement if she tried.” He started for the door and Logan scowled at him.
“Where you going?”
“Out.” Logan looked annoyed. Fish had tossed an entirely new hypothesis at him and he didn’t like it because it upset his own theory. Now he eyed the big photographer suspiciously.
“Just out?”
“Yeah,” said Fish.
“I gotta get me a couple of pictures some place.”
And out he went before Logan could reply.
CHAPTER THREE
Number 492 barry street was a tired looking brownstone front with a Rooms To Let sign in the door and another one in an area-way window which said:
N. D‘Antonio — Tailor.
Fish went up the steps, stopping in the entryway to glance at the name cards tacked on the wall, then continuing to a gloomy high-ceilinged hall that smelled of fried foods and disinfectant.
He went up a long straight staircase, circled at the second floor landing, and went up to the third floor.
At the last door on the left-hand side he knocked.
There was no answer and he knocked again, at the same time trying the knob.
Examining the lock and finding it to be a spring type, none too expertly installed, he took a thin strip of celluloid from his pocket and slipped it between the molding and the doorframe, pushing against the sloping surface of the bolt until it slid back.
He caught the knob as the door swung in, looking down the hall and stepped quickly inside.
Then, before he could close the door, he saw Harry Tidwell, and even in that first glance the limp and shapeless position of the body told him he had come too late.
For long seconds Fish stood there, his breath held and a quick cold pressure moving up his spine.
Then, not bothering to inspect the still figure on the bed, he slipped back in the hall, pressed the lock button to keep the bolt secure, and went downstairs.
His camera and plate-case were in his car.
He got them out and came back into the gloomy downstairs hall, meeting a tired-eyed fellow just coming out of one of the main floor rooms.
The man did not seem to notice him and he went back upstairs, hurrying a little as he approached the last door.
He went in and locked it behind him.
Harold Tidwell lay on his back, his face bluish, his eyes wide and staring, his thin-rimmed glasses twisted and bent.
His chin was tipped back, disclosing a mark around his skinny throat with a peculiar color—or lack of color —all its own.
Across the foot of the bed was a thin bath towel still somewhat twisted.
When he could, Fish pulled the gaze from the body, seeing the lavatory in the corner and the rack from which the towel had come. After that he let his breath come out and opened his case and pulled out his camera.
He took a few pictures, the click and whir of the shutter loud in the deathly silence of the still room, and put the camera back into the foam insert.
There was a worn club chair by the lone window and he sat down a minute to try and assimilate the implications of his discovery.
He had not expected this, even when he had found the door locked, and his coming here had been nothing more than a hunch based upon hope rather than fact.
In Logan’s office he had accepted the two inescapable alternatives.
Either Tidwell was telling the truth, in which case Lew Buck was guilty, or Tidwell was lying.
Now there could be no doubt.
Tidwell had lied and he was dead.
Fish stood up, his eyes troubled and a momentary weariness upon him as he realized that even now there was no conclusive proof of Buck’s innocence.
He took a final glance about the room, scarcely seeing its sordidness but only knowing that Tidwell had been poor and that an offer of money for his silence had been too tempting to resist.
“Just a kid, too,” he said, half aloud, knowing now why Tidwell had seemed so scared the night before.
Something about this boy’s death stirred him deeply.
Last night the sight of Anna Sinclair had left him singularly unmoved—perhaps because he had been prepared.
Now it was different, although he did not know why, unless it was because this time the victim was so young and had paid so high a price for something he did not understand.
The thought of it, the feel of death that somehow permeated the very room, made him a little sick, and he trudged out, closing the door behind him.
Out on the street once more, he stepped to his car to get rid of his camera case.
At a nearby drugstore he telephoned Logan.
“I’m down at Tidwell’s,” he said when the lieutenant answered.
“I remembered the address he gave you last night, and when I phoned Anna’s apartment house they told me he wasn’t due until six. So I came out.”
“What about it?”
“Somebody beat me to it. He’s dead. Strangled.”
He paused, hearing Logan’s quick curse before he went on.
“He held out on you last night. The killer got caught and knew Tidwell could pin it on him. He bought the kid off until today. So maybe somebody came to see Anna between the time Buck came and George Anderson got there. Maybe you want to have a talk with Fiske like I told you.”
Logan tried to break in but Fish cut him off.
“Or maybe you’re just going to keep on being stubborn about Buck.”
He hung up without waiting for an answer.
He went outside.
It was a crisp cold day with a lot of sunshine, and some kids were playing marbles on the sidewalk.
Fish did not see them, nor was he aware of the sunshine.
In his mind everything was gloom and depression because he knew there was someone else he had to see.
Beth Roberts wore a green woolen dress with a narrow belt about her waist.
The moment she opened the door, Fish noticed the redness of her eyes and the stamp of weariness upon her pale young face.
“Fish,” she said, and stood back to let him enter.
“Hi, Beth,” Fish said, keeping his voice casual in a hearty sort of way.
“I stopped in at Parker’s and they said you wouldn’t be down until later.”
“I was just going,” Beth Roberts said.
Fish perched on the edge of a straight-backed chair.
She sat down opposite him, and then the silence began to pile up between them.
Fish dangled his hat between his knees, aware that her eyes were avoiding him.
Presently he cleared his throat and went ahead.
“Where’s Lew?”
She looked at him then, and although she made no sound he got the impression of some inward gasp.
Quick alarm touched her glance and passed across her face. It took her a second or two to get things under control. Then she forced a smile and gestured idly.
“Why I—I don’t know.”
“The cops question you?”
“Yes.”
“Then you know what happened last night.”
She nodded silently and he went on.
“Something happened this afternoon too,” he said and told her about Harold Tidwell.
By the time he finished her face was chalky and her hands were white knuckled in her lap.
“Lew didn’t do it,” she said weakly
“Where is he?” Fish demanded.
“How—how would I know?”
“Call it a hunch,” Fish said.
“You’re in love with him. Maybe he knows that and maybe he doesn’t, but one thing he’s sure of—you’re for him. He can count on you. Probably you’re the only one he can. When you were down and out, he got you a job.”
“Yes,” Beth Roberts said, not looking at him. “Four years ago. I thought I could sing. I found out I couldn’t, but I didn’t find it out until almost too late. I had less than a dollar left when I went in the Club Marseilles that afternoon. No one was there but Lew. He was playing the piano and I walked up to him. I sang for him and he listened. He was too kind to tell me I was no good, so he arranged for an audition at WBZ that same afternoon. The man there told me the truth and—”
She broke off.
Her eyes came up to Fish but she didn’t see him.
She was looking beyond him at something a long way off.
“But you know all about that,” she said, “and how he got me the job as cashier for Joe Rizzo.”
“Yeah,” Fish said, and found an odd thickness in his throat, an uncomfortable warmth in his cheeks.
He went ahead bluntly.
“Look, Beth. Don’t kid yourself about the cops. They’ll find him, and when they do they’ll drag him down to headquarters. I don’t think he killed Anna, but what I think doesn’t matter unless we can get some proof. I want to talk to him first.”
He scowled at her to overcome the lingering thickness in his throat.
“What do you think I’m horning in on this for anyway? Lew’s nothing to me. But I got mixed up in it last night—”
He broke off before he told about the gun he’d found, and tried another tack.
“And I missed out of some pictures. I’m going get some to take their place and if I happen to help Lew that’s O.K. too.”
“No, Fish.”
She was smiling faintly now, her eyes accusing him.
“That’s not it. It’s for me, isn’t it? Because we’ve been friends. And I’ve lied for you to that city editor of yours to cover up for you sometimes. You give me a lift home at night when you’re around, and you’ve always given me some little present for Christmas, and when you were sick I sent you some fruit. That’s the reason, isn’t it?”
Fish got red and for an instant floundered awkwardly, not admitting the truth because it really hadn’t occurred to him until now that this, after all, was what had first troubled him.
But there was more to it than that now.
Since the death of Tidwell there was another and more pressing reason, but he did not want to tell her lest he be wrong and alarm her unnecessarily.
“That’s got nothing to do with it,” he said. “You know where he is.”
“Yes,” Beth Roberts said quietly. “And you know how I feel about him. He trusted me. I can’t tell you, Fish.”
“Oh, yes you can.”
“I promised.”
Fish rose and pulled the pearl handled .32 from his pocket.
Quickly and directly he told her all about it, seeing the stiffness come about her mouth and -the sickness in her eyes.
When he had finished he knew there was but one more thing he could do.
Hating himself, not daring to look at her, he started for the telephone, talking fast.
“O.K.,” he said. “Then I have to call the lieutenant. I’m in a spot for covering up this much. I’m not going to make it worse.”
“Fish!” Beth Roberts said, her voice tortured.
He was at the telephone now.
He kept on talking.
“Maybe if I come clean I can talk myself out of this jam, but I can’t hold out any longer if you’re not going to play ball with me.” He turned, the instrument in his hand.
“What’s the matter with you?” he demanded.
“You think I’ll cross you up? You think I’ll turn him in if—”
“He’s at the Hotel Albert, room 424.”
She got the words out before she choked up and buried her face in her hands.
Fish went over to her, his face moist with self-reproach as he saw the wracking shudders pass through her shoulders.
Her sobs stabbed at him and he stared down at her wretchedly, swallowing to clear his throat, and then not finding anything he could say. In the end he clamped on his hat and put his hand on her shoulder, pressing it briefly before he went on.
CHAPTER FOUR
The hotel albert was a five-story antique near the railroad yards. There was a water tower on the roof across which was printed in white: Rooms For Rent Daily.
It was that kind of hotel.
The lobby had a tiled door, the furniture was done in black leather, cracked and worn, and the cuspidors were battered and lusterless. Fish rode up in a rickety elevator and went down the hall to room 424.
He knocked loudly, knocked again.
Presently a voice answered and he said:
“Open up, It’s Fish.”
A bolt clicked back and the door inched open.
Fish gave it a push, knocking Lew Buck back a bit, and went in.
“Beth told you!” Buck’s voice was husky.
He backed against the door, jaw sagging.
His vest was unbuttoned, his shirt soiled and open at the throat.
“She told you,” he said again and wet his lips. “She had to.”
“What’d you do to her?”
There was a wild, hunted look in the man’s eyes now, and his hands trembled as he moved away from the door.
He reached for Fish and the photographer pushed him back in a chair.
“I showed her this,” he said and tossed the revolver on the table.
“I got sick of carrying it around for you. I told her she’d tell or I’d call Logan.”
There was a pint bottle of whiskey, half empty, near the gun, and Fish picked it up and pocketed it.
“I ought to break your damn neck,” he said.
“You’ve got a girl like Beth pulling for you all the way, but it ain’t enough, huh? Even in prison she was for you. Wrote you sometimes, didn’t she? And sent you magazines and cigarettes.”
“Yes.” Buck had slumped in the chair now, his eyes downcast.
“Yes,” he said miserably. “She used to bring me stuff to eat, too.”
“So you have to go chasing back to Anna.”
“I didn’t,” Buck said. “That was all over. I knew that when I was in stir, when she married Anderson. I had a lot of time to think about her—and Beth—and lots of things. I—”
“You went back there last night.”
“To tell her off, Fish. That’s all. I knew how it was with Beth, but I had to wipe some things out of my mind. I didn’t have the guts at first, and then last night I decided I would. I went up and told her what I thought. Oh, I guess it was a dumb thing to do, but I had it in the back of my head and I had to do it so I could feel that was all over and I could start clean.”
His voice trailed off and Fish said:
“Well, what happened?”
“Someone rang the buzzer. She’d tried to stall me off when I came and I knew she was expecting someone. She pushed me out the back way—only I didn’t go out. I waited in the kitchen.”
His voice was low now, faraway.
“After a while I heard a shot. So then I went back in—”
“You know who did the shooting, too,” Fish said. Buck’s gaze jerked up and something flickered in his eyes.
Then he pulled them back and was talking again.
“No. I only heard the shot. I went back in and she was on the floor. The gun was there. It was hers. I remembered it.”
“What did you pick it up for?”
“I don’t know.”
Fish did not believe this but he did not press the point because he was thinking of something else.
The thing the examiner’s physician had said about the angle of the slug and the close-up shot.
It had been Anna who had pulled the gun, and killer had grabbed her wrist and turned it back on her body and pulled the trigger. And she had taken out that gun because she’d been afraid of her life.
“How long do you think you can duck the cops?” he asked abruptly.
“I don’t know.”
“You know damn well it won’t be long,” Fish said.
“Because they’re going to try a little harder now.” He went on to explain about Tidwell’s testimony and what had happened to him. Buck’s face was pasty now and his lips were dry again.
“I didn’t do it, Fish,” he breathed. “I ain’t been out of this room.”
“I believe that part,” Fish said. “But you know what you’ve got to do, don’t you? You’ve got to turn yourself in.”
Buck sat up, his mouth stiff.
“No! Who’d believe me?”
“Who cares? Down there you’ve got a chance. Stay here and you’re a dead duck. Not that I give a damn. For my money you’re a lush, Lew. Just for taking the brush-offs from Anna you’re a loser. But—” he shook his head disgustedly— “women are funny. Beth thinks you’re it. I want to do what I can and I want to be damn sure nothing happens to her.”
“But—” Buck swallowed and a look of puzzlement twisted his thin face. “Nothing’ll happen to her.”
“No?” said Fish.
“Don’t be dumb. The cops are looking for you because they know you were in Anna’s apartment about the time she got knocked off. Don’t you think the killer knows that by now?”
“No?” said Buck slowly.
“Yeah,” said Fish. “The killer made a deal with Tidwell, as the only way out, knowing at the time he’d have to knock off the kid the first chance he got, to be sure the kid didn’t change his mind. He got the chance today. That’s two down, huh? And he knows you were at Anna’s—maybe while he was there. He’s got nothing more to lose and he’s not going to take a chance on you either —not if he can cool you off before the cops get you.”
Fish went over to the window and looked out, his thick face troubled.
“Go on, get your coat and tie on. There’s a guy looking for you right now. Sooner or later he’s going to figure maybe Beth knows where you are, just like I did. Only it’ll be different then. I talked her out of your address. What do you think he’ll do?”
He stood there for another moment scowling darkly at the airshaft outside the window.
Then, not hearing any sound of movement behind him, he turned and looked smack into the muzzle of the revolver.
Lew Buck stood behind the table, his jaw taut and his mouth a thin hard line.
There was no indecision about him now, and that gun was steady in his hand.
“Thanks, Fish,” he said.
“For telling me about it and bringing the rod.”
Fish began to curse.
“Put it down,” he said and started slowly forward.
Buck backed up carefully.
He moved along to a door and opened it, revealing a closet.
He began to circle away from it.
“Inside,” he said.
Fish stopped, brows bent and his eyes ugly.
“You’re not going to shoot,” he said.
Buck’s voice was thin and metallic.
“Inside, Fish, or I’ll have to let you have it in the leg.” Fish hesitated and things tightened up within him.
A curious tingling ran along his nerve ends, and sweat crept out along his hair line.
Hearing Buck’s voice, seeing that hot bright look in his eyes, he suddenly knew that the man meant just what he said.
“I’m going out,” Buck said. “Nothing’s going to happen to Beth.”
Then Fish had his answer.
Buck did know who had murdered Anna Sinclair.
“Tell Logan, you crazy fool,” he said. “You can’t do this alone.”
“Logan wouldn’t believe me,” Buck said.
“Why should he? I’ve got no witnesses, nothing to back me up.”
He paused, took a breath, and Fish saw the hand tighten on the gun.
“I’ve got no more time,” Buck said.
“Do you take one in the leg and have me tie you up or do you—”
He didn’t finish because Fish was already walking toward the closet.
He knew the odds now, Fish did.
And he was no fool.
He could probably bust out of the closet. He could call Logan and maybe head off Buck at Barney Fiske’s place. He stepped in the closet and faced the wall.
“Shut the door,” Buck said, moving up. “And don’t try anything, Fish.”
Fish pulled the door shut and almost at once the bolt clicked, locking him in.
He waited until he was sure Buck had gone before he began to test the door panels with his shoulder.
Just how long Fish banged away at that door he was never sure, but he kept it up until he had to stop and get his breath.
Then he thought of another method and drew back against the wall, slamming the panel with his heel.
Presently he heard the wood splinter.
A few more blows made an opening and he widened it with his fist, then reached through and twisted the key.
He kicked the door open and stepped out, puffing from exertion and mumbling to himself, so busy with his own resentment that he took two steps before he saw the man.
The rest of his impression remained forever confused.
The first glance startled him, and then something in the fellow’s eyes, some quick thrust of intuition, told him that the man was not alone.
There was another here who, hearing his efforts break out of the closet, had been waiting for him beside the door.
He had time for that one impression, that was all.
There was a faint sound of movement beside him and before he could turn his head or duck away, something crashed against his skull and the light went out and he felt himself falling.
The hat he wore probably saved him a fractured skull, and the jar when he hit the floor helped bring back consciousness temporarily lost.
Then he was stretched on his face, and over the roar inside his head and the sickness at the pit of his stomach, his brain began to work again, battling the instinct that prompted him to get up, telling him to lie still.
“Is he out?” a voice said.
“Colder than a fish. I really hung that one on.”
Fish kept his eyes closed and waited.
Gradually his strength came back and his head cleared.
“The little guy must’ve lammed,” the first voice said.
“Now what do we do, Morrie?”
“Call up, dope.”
There was a pause.
Then the first man asked for a telephone number.
Presently he said quickly:
“Look, this Buck ain’t here . . . Yeah, but wait,” he said and went on to explain about Fish.
“I don’t know who he is,” he said finally.
“Yeah. O.K. That place we rented this morning on Spicer Street? O.K.”
There was the click of a receiver.
“Let’s blow,” the man said.
“What about our pal, here?”
“Leave him.”
“I’d better tap him again, huh?”
Fish opened his lids slightly and looked through his lashes, his range of vision low along the floor.
He watched patent leather shoes stop beside one arm, sensed that Morrie was bending down.
Then, moving only that arm, he clamped one hand on a skinny ankle and yanked viciously.
Morrie yelled and came down in one lump, hitting the floor on the back of his head, the gun in his hand dropping scarcely two feet away.
Fish kept right on moving, coming to one knee even as he yanked, lunging past the heap that was Morrie and scooping lip the automatic, rolling over and coming up on elbows and knees to angle the gun at the man by the window.
This worthy had his hand across his chest, eyes wide and a gun butt gleaming from beneath his lapel.
He froze just that way.
“Let go of it,” Fish said.
The man did and Fish stood up.
With his toe he rolled Morrie over and saw that he was still unconscious.
Then he moved over to the squat man, seeing now the flat and twisted nose, realized the fellow was a complete stranger.
He went around behind him and got his gun, looked the room over, noticing the three lamps and the ample supply of electric cord connecting them.
Directing the fellow to rip this cord free, he bound Morrie’s wrists behind his back and secured his ankles, then lifted the bed, putting one of the posts between the man’s legs to anchor him.
He was just getting ready for the flat nosed fellow when the phone rang.
With one eye on his prisoner, he answered it.
It was Beth Roberts.
Relief streaked through him at the sound of her voice and he answered her queries with quick assurance.
No, Lew wasn’t here, he’d just stepped out.
Yes, everything was all right.
“I’m so glad,” the girl said. “I thought—”
“What about you?” Fish cut in.
The story came reluctantly but in the end it was quite clear.
When Fish hung up, his face was grim and the anger burning inside him smoldered in his eyes.
The two thugs had cuffed her around until she had been forced to tell where Buck was hiding.
She had done this, she said, because she had hoped that when the two left she could telephone Lew and warn him.
Instead of that she had been left gagged and bound and had only now been able to work herself free and make it to the telephone.
Flat nose must have seen the danger glint in Fish’s eyes, the tightness of his lips.
He took a step backward, although nothing was said, and was pressed against the wall when the photographer came up.
“Now wait a minute,” the man said pleadingly.
“Kicked her around, huh?”
“We didn’t hurt her. We just—”
Fish feinted a blow with the gun.
The man ducked and Fish caught him flush on the chin with a hard left hook that jarred him clear to the shoulder.
The man went down, and whether he was out or not, he lay still.
“Why should I waste time with guys like you?” Fish said, half aloud.
“I can do it easier this way.”
He put the gun away, took the remaining light cord and treated Flat nose the same way he had Morrie, looping one piece of the cord around the leg of the radiator.
Picking up the telephone again, he spent two minutes in argument that was consistently forceful and sometimes profane.
When he hung up he had the address of the last number called.
The sign on the frosted glass panel said The Keeler Company, and Fish stood looking at it a moment, making up his mind.
That the address should be a room on the third floor of a second-rate office building like this had upset his calculations.
His original intention when he had been locked in the closet, to telephone Logan, had been discarded the moment he had been given this address.
Unless this was some blind of Barney Fiske’s, the set-up did not make sense.
Still, this was the address.
He grunted softly and opened the door, finding himself in a moderate sized anteroom presided over by a hard eyed young man who sat behind a desk next to a door leading to some room beyond. Fish went up to the desk.
“Where’s Lew Buck?”
The man behind the desk, who had followed the big photographer’s progress suspiciously, but without moving, made his eyes a little narrower.
“Who the hell are you?”
“Fish,” said Fish. “Where’s Buck?”
“Never heard of him.”
“Where’s your boss? Inside?”
“What’s it to you?”
“I’d like to see him,” Fish said, and started for the door.
The fellow jumped up, yanking at a desk drawer.
Fish saw the gleam of the gun barrel. When it flashed up, he slapped hard at the wrist, knocking the gun out of the man’s hand and pulling him from behind the desk. The fellow stumbled, trying to swing his right, then had his feet kicked out from under him and went down hard. Fish picked up the gun, put his hand in the collar of the man’s coat and hoisted him to his feet, pushing him roughly toward the door to the inner office.
“Let’s go in,” he said.
“You first.”
The fellow opened the door and stepped in, not looking around.
The room, larger than the first, was sparsely furnished with a large desk, two or three chairs and some ash trays.
There were no filing cabinets, no typewriter, nothing to suggest that it was greatly used, and Fish knew he had been right about one thing.
This office was simply an address and phone number for the use of someone whose main business was somewhere else.
There was a door in one corner and he eyed it narrowly.
“What’s in there?”
“A closet,” the man said sullenly.
“Open it,” said Fish and when his command was obeyed, he saw the cubby beyond was a combination closet and washroom.
By the time he had returned to the anteroom, anxiety had fastened firmly upon Fish’s thoughts.
This was the number the two thugs had called.
The man who had sent them had been here at that time.
Suppose Buck had walked in here and been trapped?
Suppose he had been hurried out after the two thugs had phoned? Suddenly Fish remembered something else and confronted the hard-eyed youth who watched him hatefully.
“What’s that number on Spicer Street?”
Even as he spoke, he knew what he was up against.
The quick recoil of the youth’s eyes told him that he was right, but he saw the leer, the hardening of the mouth, and knew it would take a long time to make this fellow speak.
And now time was the all important factor.
If Lew Buck had been taken to that Spicer Street address he had been taken there for one reason. . . .
The thing that made up Fish’s mind was his knowledge of the city. Spicer Street was a one-block, dead-end affair.
It might be quicker to find the right place once he was there, than by trying to get anything out of this tough youth.
“O.K.,” he said abruptly, and broke the revolver, shaking out the shells.
He threw the gun in the waste basket and went out.
CHAPTER FIVE
Even in daylight Spicer Street was discouraging.
Put there by some ambitious landholder with the help of a lenient planning board, it ended in the blank wall of a movie house and was lined by grimy brick structures—two family houses and small tenement-like apartments.
But Fish saw none of this.
What he saw with a quick lift of hope was the four smutty-nosed urchins who played in the street with a home-made baseball and a piece of wood for a bat.
He braked his car beside them, got out and stood watching the game.
The ball game stopped.
The players looked at him and he looked back, taking a half dollar from his pocket and spinning it in the air.
“See a couple of men go in one of these houses in the last few minutes?”
“Three guys,” one boy said. “That’s their car.”
A hundred feet away a nondescript sedan stood in front of a three story apartment.
Fish tossed the coin towards his informer.
“O.K., bud. Go buy yourselves a bat.” Fish got out his camera and case.
By the time he reached the apartment, a stoop-shouldered Italian with swooping mustaches had begun to sweep down the steps.
“You the boss here?” Fish asked.
The man said he was and Fish said:
“Rented an apartment this morning, didn’t you?”
“Sure.”
“Which one?”
“Number Three D.”
Fish had the fellow by the arm and was pulling him back in the hall.
“You got a phone here?”
“Sure. Back there.” The man, a little bewildered now and blinking fast, gestured toward the rear of the hall.
Fish took out a coin and pressed it in a calloused palm.
“Get this,” he said.
“I’m from police headquarters. I want you to phone for me. Ask for Lieutenant Logan. Get it? Logan. Tell him that Fish says he’s to come here just as fast as he can. Got that? As fast as he can. To Apartment Three D.”
He shoved the man toward the telephone and started up the bare stairs on a run, knowing that while it might have been better to make the call himself he did not dare to take the time.
There could only be one answer to a layout such as this.
Two thugs hiring this out-of-the-way apartment that morning, being told to come here now —if Lew Buck had been brought here it was to be murdered.
Going down the narrow third-floor hall, Fish made up his mind.
If three men had come, two of them would be armed, and his job now was to stall, to prevent any shooting until Logan could get there.
Of the guns he had taken from the two thugs he left one in his coat pocket as a decoy, and tucked the other inside his belt.
At the unpainted door, he knocked loudly, and presently a voice said:
“Who is it?”
“Fish.”
There was a pause and Fish waited, feeling his pulse quicken and the prickling of his scalp.
They’d let him in, all right.
They’d have to now.
They’d have to find out how he had trailed them here. . . .
The lock clicked and the door opened swiftly, presenting a tall, lean man with a tight mouth and a pointed chin.
“Come on,” he ordered, and Fish saw the heavy automatic in his hand and stepped in the room.
Right in the middle of it, the pearl handled .32 leveled, was George Anderson.
Seeing him, Fish stopped and stared, and something cold curled about his ankles arid crept up the back of his legs.
“You, huh?” he said finally, and turned and saw Lew Buck in one corner, his hands at his side, his thin face abject and hopeless.
Fish heard the door close behind him.
He put down his case and tried to look unconcerned while his brain battled the rush of new and confusing thoughts.
“Was I wrong?” he said finally. “I thought Barney Fiske was the guy who did it.”
“Search him, Al,” Anderson said.
The tall man came up behind him and Fish felt a hand slap his clothing.
The gun in his pocket was removed and Al stepped back.
“Make it clean,” Anderson said.
Fish held his breath and Al resumed his search, his fingers exploring until they found the gun in Fish’s waistband.
“I knew it,” George Anderson said. “You were kind of loaded with artillery, weren’t you?”
Fish masked his disappointment with a grin, telling himself that it didn’t matter.
Logan would be here in another ten minutes and he should be able to stall that long.
The thing to do was make believe that he wasn’t worried and that time was unimportant.
He started in at once.
“I don’t get it,” he said. “Why should you kill Anna?”
“It’s a long story,” Anderson said.
“I didn’t get it either,” Buck said, “until last night.”
There was a cutting bitterness in his voice.
Fish eyed him resentfully.
“You had to run out, huh? You knew it was Anderson but you had to do it your way.”
“Would Logan believe me?” Buck asked. “I go up to Anna’s and stay out back while the shooting happens. I come back and pick up the gun. I know I’m in a spot but I figure if I can have it out with him—” he glared at Anderson, “and hand him in to the cops I might be O.K. That’s why I took the rod, but—then I lost my nerve. I stopped in Parker’s and had a couple, and then a couple more, and then it was too late. No guts, that was my trouble, Fish.”
He paused and his voice thinned out.
“Then, this afternoon when I found out what the score was, I knew I had to do it. The only guy who could clear me—the operator—was dead. Nobody could ever prove Anderson had been up to Anna’s. But I had been, sure. I had been and the cops knew it.”
He snorted savagely.
“What chance would I have had? But I knew about that phony office and I went down. If it hadn’t been for him—”
He broke off and stared at Al.
There was a second or two of silence and Fish spoke up to keep things going before Anderson got restless.
“Maybe you killed Rizzo too, huh?” he said, guessing aloud.
“Sure he killed Rizzo,” Buck said.
“Did they play me for the sucker. You know what I thought had happened, don’t you?”
“That Anna killed him,” Fish said.
“That story got around. Anna killed him and cried on your shoulder and you took the rap.”
“Yeah,” Buck said. “That’s it. That’s what I thought. She conned me into it. Big-hearted Lew. I was so nuts about her then I couldn’t think straight. Sure. I told her I could do the rap standing on my head. And then last night I got it right—while they were fighting in the front room. It was almost the same kind of set-up when Rizzo got his. Only instead of me listening in it was Anna that time.”
“She was at Rizzo’s place that night, all right, and Anderson came up and she went in another room. And Anderson plugged him because Anderson was the lawyer for the laundry boys and he had charge of a lot of their funds. Rizzo was treasurer but he’d let Anderson handle—”
“Right,” Fish said slowly. “I guess I get it now. Joe Rizzo, the organizer of the laundry workers, the secretary treasurer. And a shortage had been discovered after his death—only it was Anderson’s shortage, and now Anderson was the big shot. You married her sort of quick, didn’t you, George? So she wouldn’t get ideas about squealing. But you couldn’t keep her satisfied. She divorced you and you gave her a nice settlement, but it wasn’t enough. She was raising the ante on you again, huh? And as long as she was alive she could—”
“That’s close enough,” Anderson said, and his voice was unusually quiet.
He’d been sitting on the edge of the table by the windows and he got up.
Fish plunged ahead.
“And you went there last night, not intending to kill her then, but maybe to make a date for some time when you would. But you lost your head and scared her and she pulled the gun. What did you tell that kid Tidwell?”
“I told him I’d gone up and found Anna dead,” Anderson said.
“I told him I might be under suspicion if he told the truth. I said it was worth a grand to me to keep clean. I went down to the corner for a drink and came back. That was the time to tell the cops, and then we went up and found her—officially. But to hell with that.”
He glanced down at the gun in his hand, a strong, blocky figure with a hard, muscular jaw and no pity in his deep-set eyes.
“You make it tougher, Fish. Why didn’t you keep out of it?”
He paused.
When there was no answer he said:
“How’d you know where Lew was?”
“I got it from Beth Roberts,” Fish said.
Even as he spoke he regretted it.
He saw the quick movement of the man’s lids, the narrowing frame they made for his eyes.
Anderson sighed.
“We had better go check on her too, Al.”
“No!” Lew Buck said.
“She—”
“She doesn’t know anything about it,” Fish said.
“How do I know?” Anderson said. “You talked to her. So did Lew.”
“You’re crazy,” Fish said. “I got my dope from two punks of yours.”
“What about them?” Fish told him and Anderson smiled sardonically.
“You did all right, Fish. O.K., Al. Go to the Albert first.”
He grunted softly.
“I wondered what held them up. Get them. Then go get the girl.”
“No,” Buck said again.
“I’m in too deep to go soft now,” Anderson, said.
“Go ahead, Al and—” his glance touched Fish’s camera case.
“Take that thing with you. Get rid of it some place.”
As Al started for the door, Lew Buck pushed away from the wall.
“Leave her out of it, Anderson.”
Al hesitated, looking from Anderson to Buck.
Anderson’s gun moved up to corner Buck and again he ordered Al from the room.
The fellow picked up the case and opened the door.
For that one instant Fish nearly told about Logan, but he caught himself in time, knowing that to mention that fact now would make Anderson shoot at once.
He heard the door close behind him.
Then some movement pulled at the corner of his eye and he saw that Buck had taken another step.
“Hold it, Lew!” Anderson said.
Buck stopped.
He was about ten feet from the gun.
He had no chance of reaching it and yet.
Sweat began to leak down Fish’s back but underneath his spine was cold and stiff.
Suddenly he knew that Lew Buck was going to try and in that same moment a curious reaction came over him.
He saw clearly now a lot of things that he had been too dumb to analyze.
Lew Buck had run out on him and come gunning for Anderson because he realized the danger to Beth Roberts.
Now, knowing there was nothing left for him but death, he was going to try again to keep her safe.
His number was up.
He must know it.
He must know also that should he reach Anderson in time, Fish would be left to telephone Beth Roberts and warn her.
Fish’s hands were wet now and his mouth was dry.
And this was the man he’d called a lush. A loser.
For no reason except that he had loved a woman once, blindly and with little hope of reward.
This was the man who had stood trial for a murder he did not commit and who, all his life, had been kicked around and double-crossed with never a complaint.
But courage was in him now.
Fish found it in his eyes and written across the thin white face as he took another slow step toward the gun.
Seeing all these things so clearly now, Fish was ashamed and knew that, somehow, Buck should not be left to fight alone.
“Hold it!” Anderson said again.
“You’re going to get it, Lew.”
Fish’s hand moved to his pocket.
“You too, Fish, if you make another move.”
“I got a bottle in my pocket,” Fish said trying to keep his voice indifferent.
“I’m just getting it out. I need a drink.”
He slid his hand around the bottle and pulled it out.
Buck had stopped about eight feet from the gun.
Fish uncorked the bottle, seeing the ready set of Anderson’s shoulders, the tightness of his hand on the pearl-handled revolver. He saw, too, the guns that had been taken from him and were now on the table in back of Anderson.
He took a swallow and the whiskey burned his throat.
He lowered the bottle, measuring distances, and then, before he could move, Buck started.
With a sudden, half-choked cry, he lunged forward, hands outstretched.
Anderson fired instantly, the gun bucking in his hand and the roar of it shaking the room.
Buck’s torso jerked with the impact of the slug and he stumbled.
As he went down, Fish threw the bottle, not at Anderson’s head, but at his wrist, watching it turn in the air as he followed it up, seeing the whiskey spurt from the neck until it smashed against Anderson’s forearm.
The gun went spinning and Anderson wheeled and grabbed for one of the automatics on the table.
Fish took a step and lunged, going off balance and to his knees, stretching, straight-arming Anderson as he fell, knocking the man down—but not in time.
Anderson had grabbed a gun as he went over.
It was all finished in another three seconds, but for Fish the sequence was clear cut and distinct.
He saw Anderson roll away arid come to his knees with cat-like quickness.
He got his own hands under him and pushed off the floor like a sprinter, seeing the muzzle of the gun level down, ducking his head instinctively to protect his face, knowing even then that his awkward, scrambling dive would fall short.
The gun blasted as he ducked and he groped for it, not realizing that he had not been hit until his hands found Anderson and, with driving feet, he fell over on top of the man.
Only then did he see that there was no resistance to his charge, no movement now in the body beneath his own.
Only then did he know that the gun he had heard had not been Anderson’s.
Incredulous, shaking all over from exertion and reaction, he stood up.
Thfere was a tiny red-rimmed hole just over Anderson’s right eye. He turned.
Buck was propped on knees and one arm.
In the other hand he had the pearl-handled .32.
As Fish stared he got himself to a sitting position and put the gun on the floor.
“Thanks, Lew,” Fish said huskily.
“I guess—”
“Call Beth,” Buck said.
“Never mind me, Fish.” Fish hesitated and just then he heard the screech of automobile brakes followed by shouts.
He went to the window, threw it open and looked down.
A police car stood at the curb.
On the sidewalk was his plate-case.
Beside it, arms upraised, was Al, and surrounding him were Logan, Mayer and two plainclothes men.
Fish let his breath come out, realizing now that all this had happened in that minute since Al had left the room.
Relief brought a curious weakness to his body, and he said huskily:
“It’s all O.K., Lew.”
“But—”
“Logan and the boys. They got our friend Al.”
“Logan?” Buck said.
“Yeah,” Fish said, and explained what he had done before he came upstairs. As he talked he dropped to one knee beside Buck.
“How is it, Lew? Bad?”
Buck shook his head and smiled weakly.
He put his hand inside his coat and held his chest.
“No,” he said.
“He was high with that one. I’ll be O.K. And look, Fish, will you tell Beth? Tell her I’m all right.”
“Sure,” Fish said and the cords in his neck tightened again.
He looked away and stood up, a burly, shamefaced figure with a broad, sweat streaked face and pity and compassion in his eyes.
“Sure,” he said, turning toward the door. “But the time they dig that slug out of you, she’ll probably be waiting with her arms full of flowers.”
“Yeah,” Lew said.
His voice was low and remote but there was a curious smile on his face.
“I bet she will at that.”
The clock atop the cash register pointed to five minutes of twelve when Fish pushed his plat case against the bar front and climbed on a stool.
Leo, the bartender, pushed a bottle toward him.
“You’re late,” he said.
“Yeah.” Fish poured a, drink downed it, poured another and dumped in the soda.
“Boy, what a job!”
“Horse shit” scoffed Leo.
Fish bristled.
“Listen, if you’d been through what I’ve been through—”
“Sure, I know,” Leo said. “Up half the night on a fire or a murder or something.”
He shrugged.
“You eat it.”
Fish opened his mouth to protest resentfully and then checked himself.
Somehow, in spite of his weariness, he felt good—and it wasn’t just from the whiskey he had drunk, either.
Until now he hadn’t had a minute’s rest, what with the police investigation and seeing Beth Roberts and then going to the hospital to see Buck.
He’d just now come from there, and he still remembered the way the girl had looked sitting there beside Lew.
“I repeat,” said Leo, “you eat it up.”
Fish’s grin came slowly and he remembered other things.
The pictures he’d turned in and the look on Blaine’s face when he slapped them on the desk.
He drained his glass and put it on the bar along with a crisp bill. Leo rang him up and yawned, glancing at the clock as he did so.
It was just midnight.
“Well,” he said. “Another day, another dollar.”
“Yeah,” said Fish. “Another day, another dollar.”
He picked up his case and trudged away, a burly, imperturbable figure, absorbed in thoughts that softened the lines of fatigue upon his face and left his dark eyes remote and faintly smiling.
Behind him came the tinkle of his change in the glass beside the cash register.
Chris Lowry Books 