Collection 1983 - The Hills Of Homicide (v5.0) (29 page)

It was Al Brooks, however, who had first suggested that Mary Burns might have killed her husband. It was also Al Brooks who had reported seeing Mary coming out of a divorce lawyer’s office.

Now that he was thinking about it, a lot of ideas came to mind. Stopping his car at the curb in front of his apartment, Ragan got out and started for the door. There was a strange car parked at the curb a few doors away, and for some reason it disturbed him. He walked over to it. There was no one inside, and it was not locked. He looked at the registration.
Valentine Lewis, 2234 Herald Place
.

The name meant nothing to him, and he turned away and walked to his private entrance and fitted the key into the lock. As he opened the door he was wondering what the blackmailer could have that would influence both Hazel Upton and Louella Chasen to start the divorce rumor, and if Brooks—

He stepped through the door, and the roof fell on him.

Wildly, grabbing out with both hands, Ragan fell to his knees. He had been slugged and he could not comprehend what was happening, then there was a smashing blow on his skull and he seemed to be slipping down a long slide into darkness.

When he fought his way out of it, he was lying on the floor and his head felt like a balloon. Gray light was filtering into the room. It must be daylight.

He lay still, trying to focus his thoughts. Then he got to his hands and knees, and then to his feet. He staggered to the sofa and sat down hard.

His skull was pounding as if an insane snare drummer were at work inside. His mouth felt sticky and full of cotton. He lifted his head and almost blacked out. Slowly he stared around the room. Nothing had been taken that he could see. He felt for his handkerchief and realized his pockets had been turned inside out.

Staggering to the door, he peered into the street. The strange car was gone.

“Val Lewis,” he muttered grimly, “if you aren’t guilty, you’d better have a mighty good story, and if you slugged me, God help you!”

Somehow he got out of his clothes and into a shower, and then tumbled into bed. His head was cut in two places from the blows, but what he wanted most was sleep.

It was well past noon when he was awakened by the telephone.

It was Angie. “Joe!” She sounded frightened and anxious. “What’s happened? Where are you?”

“I must be home. When the phone rang, I answered it. Where are you?”

“Where am
I
?” Her tone was angry. “Where would I be? Don’t you remember our luncheon date?”

“Frankly, I didn’t. I got slugged on the head last night, and—”

“At least,” she interrupted, “that’s an original excuse!”

“And true. I was visiting an office in the Upshaw Building, and then—”

Her gasp was audible. “Joe? Did you say the Upshaw Building?”

“That’s right.” Suddenly he remembered her visit there while he and Keene had watched. “Some people up there play rough, honey. A lawyer was murdered up there last night. He knew too much and was too curious about somebody named Bradford.”

She was silent. “The slugging,” he added, “happened after I got home. I think somebody wanted to find out if I’d carried anything away from that building.”

That idea had come to him while he was talking, but it made sense. What other reason was there? Thinking it over, it struck him as remarkable that he had not been killed out of hand. They had probably killed Ollie Burns for little more, or even for less.

She still did not speak, so he asked, “How’s Mary? Is she all right?”

“Joe!” She was astonished. “You didn’t know? She was arrested this morning. I believe it was Al Brooks.”

Brooks? Ragan’s grip tightened on the phone until his fist turned white. “So he arrested her, did he? All right, that does it. I’m going to blow everything loose now.”

“What are you going to do?” Her voice sounded anxious.

“Do? Their whole case is built on a bunch of lies and perjury. I know that Hazel Upton and Louella Chasen were forced into this by a blackmailer.”

“Joe, did you say a…blackmailer?”

“Yes, Angie, a blackmailer. The same people who hounded Alice Towne to death murdered Ollie Burns and Jacob Keene.”

“You mean you
know
all that? Can you prove it?”

“Maybe not right now, but I will, honey, I will!”

It was not until after he hung up that he realized he was still groggy from the blows on the head, and that he had talked too much. He was still suffering from the concussion, but he was mad, also. He had been a damned fool to say so much. After all, she had been blackmailed, too.

He dressed halfway and then went into the bathroom to shave. His Irish face had been altered somewhat some years back, when he stopped a right hook with his nose. The hook had broken his nose, not flattened it, and what had happened to the other guy was in the record books. He lost by a knockout in the fourth round.

His razor smoothed the beard from his face while he turned the case over in his mind. He decided to start with Val Lewis, then work his way to Hazel Upton and Louella Chasen. Also, he was going to talk with that luscious job Keene had for a secretary. And with the sharp-eyed lad who kept an eye on Bradford’s door.

For the next two hours Ragan was busy. He visited and questioned several people and spent time checking the files of the
Times
. Also, he visited the address that Valentine Lewis had.

The door was answered by a dyspeptic-looking blonde with the fading shadow of a black eye. She wore a flowered kimono that concealed little.

“I’m looking for Valentine Lewis.” Ragan spoke politely. “Is he in?”

“What do you want to see him for?”

“Veteran’s Administration,” Ragan said vaguely.

“That’s a lousy joke,” she replied coldly. “Val was in San Quentin during the war. Come again.”

“Police department.” Ragan flashed his badge and started to push by her.

She yelled, strident and angry. “You get out of here, copper! You got no search warrant!”

Ragan took one from his pocket. She didn’t get a chance to see more than the top of it, for it was just a form, partly filled out.

She stepped back and asked no more questions, muttering to herself. Ragan needed only a glance around to see that Lewis had enough guns to start World War III.

It was all he needed. He called headquarters and suggested they come down with a warrant for Val Lewis. Any ex-convict with a gun in his possession was on his way back to jail.

Blue Eyes stood there looking mean. “You think you’re smart, don’t you?”

“Whatever I am,” he said, “I am not foolish enough to buck the law.”

“No,” she said, sneering. “You’re just a dope. You cops aren’t smart enough to make any money, you just crab it for others.”

“An officer doesn’t have to be smart,” Ragan said gently, “although the fact that he’s on the side of the law shows he’s far from as dumb as you seem to think. We’ve got organization, honey: records of crimes, methods of operation, fingerprints, and cooperation from other cities.

“We have a lot of very bright men at headquarters, and some other very bright boys in the patrol cars, but best of all is the organization.”

“You’d better have them all with you when you go after Val,” she said venomously. “I’d like to see you try it!”

The police cars were arriving. “Lady,” Ragan said, “that is just what I am going to do. He works in the Upshaw Building, doesn’t he?”

Her surprise showed him he was right. “I am going to send you to headquarters, and then I’m going after your Val. In case you don’t know, he slugged me last night. Now it will be my turn.”

“Oh? So you’re Joe Ragan?” Her face stiffened, realizing she’d made a miscue. “I hope he burns you down!”

Mark Stigler was with them when they came in. He glanced grimly at the assortment of guns. “What is this?” he asked Ragan. “I thought you were working on the Burns murder.”

“This is part of it,” Ragan said. “See what the girl has to say. I doubt if she wants to be an accessory.”

She was really frightened now, but Stigler ignored her. “You think this Val Lewis did it?”

“If he didn’t, he knows who did.”

All the way to the Upshaw Building, Mark Stigler chewed on his dead cigar while Ragan laid it out for him. He built up the blackmail background, reminded him how Ollie had been bothered by the Towne suicide, and how Ollie had worried the case like a dog over a bone. He told Stigler of his idea that Ollie had been murdered because he had stumbled into the blackmail ring.

He explained about the Bradford office and the letters dropped there and who dropped them. The one thing he did not mention was Angie. She was still his girl, and if she was being blackmailed, he’d cover for her if she wasn’t otherwise involved.

“You think there was money in those envelopes?”

“That’s right. I believe all those records in the filing cabinets, with the exception of a few obvious company names, are blackmail cases. From what I can remember—and I had only a few hasty glances—the income must run to thousands of dollars a month.

“They weren’t bleeding just big shots, but husbands and wives, clerks, stenographers, beauty operators, everybody. I think Bradford, whoever he is, is a smart operator, but he had somebody else with him, somebody who knew Ollie.”

“Somebody who could get close to him?”

“Yes, and somebody who believed Ollie was getting close to a solution. Also, it had to be somebody who could get into his house or his locker for that gun.”

Stigler rolled his cigar in his lips. “You’re telling a good story, but do you have any facts? It all sounds good, but what we need is evidence!”

At the Upshaw Building, Stigler loitered around the corner and let Ragan go after Val Lewis. Lewis was sitting at the open door, as usual. As Ragan turned toward the door of the Bradford office, Lewis got up and came around his desk. “What do you want?” he demanded.

“What business is it of yours?” Ragan asked. “I want into this office. Also”—he turned, with some expectation of what was coming—“I want you for assault and murder!”

Lewis was too confident and too hotheaded for his own good. He started a punch and it came fast, but Ragan rolled his head and let the punch go around it, and hooked a wicked right to the solar plexus that dropped Lewis’s mouth open in a desperate gasp for breath. The left hook that followed collapsed the bridge of Lewis’s nose as if it were made of paper.

He was big, bigger than Ragan, built like an all-American lineman, but the fight was knocked out of him. Stigler walked up. “You got a key to this place?”

“No, I ain’t. Bradford’s got it.”

“To hell with that!” Ragan’s heel drove hard against the door beside the lock. It held, a second and a third time, then he put his shoulder to it and pushed it open. While an officer took Lewis to a patrol car, Ragan went to the filing cabinet.

It was empty.

A second and third were empty too. Mark Stigler looked from Ragan to the smashed door. “Boy, oh, boy! What now?”

Ragan felt sick. The files had been removed sometime after he left the place. By now they were hidden or destroyed, and there would be a lot of explaining to do about this door.

Stigler glared at him. “When you pull a boner, you sure pull a lulu!”

“Mark,” Ragan said, “get the lab busy on that floor. This is where Keene was murdered. Right there.”

“How do you know?”

Ragan swallowed. “Because I was in here last night after the murder.”

Stigler’s eyes were like gimlets. “
After
the murder? Were you the prowler?”

“No.” Ragan filled him in on the rest of it. His meeting with Keene, his return, the discovery of the body, and the mysterious watcher outside.

“Have you any idea who that was?” Stigler fixed him with a cold eye.

“I might have, but I’d rather not say right now.”

Oddly, Stigler did not follow that up. He walked around the office, looking into this and that. He was still puttering about when Ragan looked up to see Keene’s receptionist standing in the door. “Hi, honey,” she said cheerfully. “This is the first time I ever saw this door open.”

“Who are you working for now?”

She smiled. “Nobody. Came up to clear my desk and straighten up some work that’s left. I’ll be out of a job. Need a secretary?”

“Lady,” Ragan said, “I could always find a place for you!”

Stigler turned and looked at her from under his heavy brows. “What do you know about this Bradford?” he asked.

“Bradford?” She smiled. “I wondered if you’d ever ask.” She indicated Ragan. “Will it do him any good if I talk?”

“Plenty,” Stigler said with emphasis.

“All right.” She was suddenly all business. “I know that the man who has been calling himself Bradford for the past three months is not the Bradford who opened this office. He is a taller, broader man.

“Furthermore, I know he was in my office after closing time last night, and must have been there after Mr. Keene was murdered.”

Stigler took the cigar from his mouth. “How do you figure that?”

“Look.” She crossed to the wastebasket below the water cooler and picked out a paper cup. “The man who calls himself Bradford has strong fingers. When he finishes drinking, he squeezes the cup flat and pushes the bottom up with his thumb. It is a habit he has.”

She picked up the wastebasket and showed a half-dozen cups to Stigler. He glanced at them and walked next door to Keene’s office. She picked up the basket from the cooler and said, “See? One cup left intact, one crushed. On top of the cup that Mr. Keene threw away in this crushed one.”

She paused. “I don’t know anything about such things, but you might find fingerprints on those cups.”

Stigler chewed on his cigar. “We could use you,” he said, “in the department.”

Outside in the street, Stigler said little. He was mulling something over in his mind. Ragan knew the man and knew he was bothered by something. Finally, Stigler said, as much to himself as to Ragan, “Do you think those records were destroyed?”

“I doubt it. If what that girl says is true, he hasn’t been running this business that long. He would need the files to use for himself. I have a suspicion,” Ragan added, “that whoever he is, he muscled in.”