Death of an Old Sinner (22 page)

“Mr. Rocco?” said Mrs. Norris.

“Sh-sh,” Flora said. “He’s dead.”

“So is the General,” Mrs. Norris snapped.

“But he died different,” Flora wailed.

“That is an understatement of some proportions,” Helene remarked. She had the note from Mrs. Norris’ hand, and was about to put it in her purse. Flora’s eyes were not too wet to see it. She rubbed her fingers together, the gesture of “hand-it-over.” It had been worth a try, at least, Helene thought.

“A girl’s got to have some protection,” Flora said, naive as a fox. “You ought to know all about that, honey. This is my insurance policy.” On her way to the bedroom again, she paused. “I don’t suppose Ransom left me anything? I’ve been dyin’ to find out only Nick wouldn’t let me. And I don’t care about money. I just want to know if he mentioned me.”

Suddenly there was a long ring and a short at the doorbell. The parakeet began to screetch “Ransom, Ran-son,” and Flora leapt for the bird’s coverlet. “That’s Nick downstairs now, I promised him to go to Florida with him and I don’t want to go, I don’t want to go away from here ever…Ransom and I was so happy.”

“Miss Tims, I should prefer not to meet Mr. Casey here,” Mrs. Norris said. Helene was already looking out the window.

“Not out there in daylight, honey,” Flora cried. “Nick’d look there first if he was lookin’. I got to hide this note. Why don’t you two just roll under the beds? There’s two of them, one for each of you…”

Since the choice of escapeways was even narrower, the two women looked at each other and then abandoned their dignity.

T
HE DETECTIVE AND JIMMIE
were caught between wrath and despair arriving at Mrs. Joyce’s house and finding her gone as well. This was the logical place for Mrs. Norris to have come—unless she had found out far more than her phone call intimated. Tully went to the kitchen, Jimmie into the living room to see if there was a note anywhere. There Jimmie found the General’s valise gaping, one of the pages of the newspaper on the floor, spread open. He called out to Tully, and before the detective reached him he had found the other paper, one item having been torn from it.

It took Jasper Tully nine minutes on the phone with the newspaper’s librarian.

“Nick Casey! That’s it all right….” He listened to the rest of the story, shaking his head at his own blindness. Even while he listened, his eyes wandered through the story of the St. Patrick’s Day preparations….the perfect decoy. Just like Minnie’s restaurant.

He wrote the name and address of Miss Flora Tims, thanked the librarian and hung up. “Blossoms for my little blossom,” he muttered in disgust. “Do you know what’s wrong with the world, Jimmie?” He waved his arms in the air. “Too many distractions! Nobody pays attention! Nobody listens. Everybody talks. That’s what hell is going to be like when we get there.”

“Maybe that’s where we are now,” Jimmie said. “Are we on our way?”

“With the throttle open.”

M
RS. NORRIS AT LEAST
had had the presence of mind to go under feet first, as it were, so that her head was beneath the foot of the bed, and she could plainly hear all that went on in the living room. Mr. Casey was in an ugly mood. Mrs. Norris could see his feet and Flora’s, toes to toes, suddenly Flora’s were lifted from the floor entirely, and it was not because she was caught in a loving embrace.

“Make up your mind, baby. You’re going with me in five minutes whether it’s with a suitcase or in it.” The man’s pointed toes were suddenly flapping across the bedroom. In its cage, cover or no, the parakeet was screaming with glee. Casey flung Miss Tims on the bed, fortunately the one under which was Helene. There wasn’t room for an ounce of play between Mrs. Norris and the springs. Casey opened the closet door, helping himself to clothes and suitcase, which he tossed onto Mrs. Norris’ bed. “Now you get them packed pronto. I’m going to take care of that bird.”

That would be a mercy, Mrs. Norris thought.

Flora began to scream and thump the bed. “I won’t go and you leave my bird alone! Ransom bought him for me at Christmas.”

“I’ll buy ya a peacock for the Fourth of July!” Casey shouted.

“I just want you to go away and leave me alone,” Flora wailed.

“Un-unh. You know too much about Nick, baby. And Nick don’t like to see you gettin’ lonesome.”

He stomped out then, and there was a terrible flurry and threshing about in the living room. Flora lifted the skirt of the bedspread, throwing some light on Mrs. Norris. “Can’t you help me save my poor little bird? I’m goin’ to tell him you’re here if you don’t.”

Nick roared from the bedroom door: “The goddamn bird flew out the window! He’ll be blabbin’ up and down the neighborhood, “Ransom, Ransom, Ransom.”

“He’ll get pneumonia out in this weather!” Flora screamed and ran to the window.

“I’m losing patience, baby,” Nick said.

“Nickie—I don’t know a thing about you, exceptin’ that note Ransom got from you by mistake…”

“Keep talkin’.”

“If I was to give that to you now, would you go along to Florida, and jus’ forget ever meetin’ up with me again?”

“I’d love to forget it, baby.”

“Swear it?”

“My word as a gentleman,” Casey said.

The sound of Flora’s heels clacked across the floor.

“Thanks,” Casey said after a moment, and Mrs. Norris could hear the tearing of paper.

There was a long ring and a short at the door. “That’s Echo,” Casey said. “I’m gonna wait in the car, baby. He’ll help you pack. Come here now! You ain’t going out any window when my back is turned.” Casey must have been hauling her by the arm for her feet stumbled after his to the door.

“But you promised,” Flora cried, “you gave me your word!”

“As a gentleman,” said Nick. “You know better than that.”

“Mrs. Norris?” Helene squeaked.

Mrs. Norris lifted the spread to peer out at her.

“What will we do?” Mrs. Joyce queried in a whisper.

“I wish we could fly out like the bird,” she said.

Casey and Flora returned, and with them a man the toes of whose very shoes rose from the floor like black moons, Mrs. Norris thought.

“Now listen to me, baby, and listen good. We got a nice large trunk on the back of the car. You can go in that—or you can go inside the car sitting beside me like a doll.”

Flora’s response was to sink into a dead faint, her face six inches away from Mrs. Norris’.

“Bring her any way you can,” Casey snarled. “And don’t wait to clean up.”

“Echo,” merely grunted.

Mrs. Norris tensed her fists. She waited, holding her breath until she heard the door close behind Casey. The thing called “Echo” came between the two beds to begin his work on Flora. As though by signal, Mrs. Norris and Helene each grabbed him by a leg, except that Mrs. Norris couldn’t hold hers when he began to tumble. She humped out from beneath the bed like a snail, however, and while the thug was twisting and scratching at Helene’s grip on his ankle, Mrs. Norris climbed onto the bed and bounded from there upon his back. Helene scrambled out and to her feet.

“Throw water on her, we may need her,” Mrs. Norris directed Helene, riding the goon piggy-back while he balked round the room like a mule.

Helene grabbed the only water nearby, a vase with the last of the late General’s roses, and dumped it flowers and all on Miss Flora Tims. She rose up in a wrath and Mrs. Norris let go of her hold on “Echo.” He went out of the place like a rabbit only a leap and a pant ahead of the vixens.

T
HE DETECTIVE AND JIMMIE
had driven up at the moment “Echo” got out of the limousine to go upstairs. They waited long enough to ascertain that two people were in the car, a man and a woman, and both of them looking like mummies. Then, even as Tully and Jimmie were walking by, the man took his handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his hands. He pulled himself up in the seat then, using a chrome rail at the side, and from that he wiped the perspiration also. He turned and stared at the building into which the thug had gone.

Tully watched with fascination. Thus was accounted the lack of fingerprints on the door of the General’s Jaguar! A mere nervous habit of Mr. Robinson’s.

He and Jimmie went into Flora’s building, striding quickly, and ringing every bell for entrance into the downstairs hall. They were admitted in time to catch the elevator. The door was closing on the wire cage when Tully recognized Nick Casey. Wherever the gangster had found the stairs he was on his way out of the building. Tully moved with the unexpected speed of a snake, and slithered his lean body out before he was caged in the lift.

Casey caught sight of him then, sprinted across the street and leaped into the driver’s seat of the limousine. The car had been parked with the caution of thieves, and it took Casey but an instant to power it on its way. Tully had his revolver in hand. He might have shot out the tires, and again he might have missed. There were bystanders and walkers on the street. Let him go. The alarm was out. He would not go far, even if the license number Tully wrote down was another phony.

The detective moved in the direction from which Casey had come and found the stairs. From some flights up, as he started mounting, someone was starting down pell mell. Then came a shrieking and howling and clamor of heels, all to put him in mind of goats and geese, bats and banshees. He drew his revolver and waited. The moonfaced one came down, his mouth and his eyes like round holes.

Moon-face flung himself against the wall and crumbled there into a heap as the three women hove down upon him. Mrs. Norris was brandishing an ashstand like a shillelah, Mrs. Joyce had a lamp by the neck, and the other one, looking like she’d been washed up in the seaweed, and in her petticoat at that, was waving a fireplace broom.

“All right, ladies. You can turn in your badges,” Tully said at the top of his voice. He frisked the blubbering lump at his feet and took from him a snub-nosed revolver and a knife that would have butchered a hog.

Jimmie came down the steps. “Anything I can do?”

“Round up the women,” said Tully. “They shouldn’t get too fond of this sort of business.”

He jerked the goon onto his feet and out to the car. He wanted him to see that Casey had abandoned him. The poor slob stood limp and miserable in bewilderment that the limousine was gone from where he had parked it. The poor slob, Tully thought again, poor bedamned. He was equipped like an arsenal. All Casey ever needed to do was say “sick ʼem,” and get himself an alibi.

Later, when all the pieces were being fitted together in the D.A.’s office, Tully finished the portrait of “Echo”: “A mechanical man, with a kind of a heart, but no brains at all. When it comes to an automobile, there probably isn’t a better driver on the road. Nothing else on his mind, don’t you see. Absolute concentration. And when he was told to give the note to Johnny Rocco, Casey must have told him no more than was absolutely necessary—a man in his seventies, who drove a sports car, and who could be found at Robbie-the-Printer’s.”

Mrs. Norris gave a start. “Robbie-the-Printer,” she said. “Oh, my goodness.”

“He’s quite a fellow, your brother-in-law,” Mr. Tully said with a wink at Jimmie. “He thinks you might be willing to go bail for him. Says the General told him you had buckets of money.”

“Buckets—oh!” Mrs. Norris cried, “well, if he’s the good provider Mag still claims he is, he can go bail for himself.”

Nick Casey and his passengers had been picked up at the mouth of the Lincoln Tunnel. Mr. Robinson admitted to bookmaking in partnership with Johnny Rocco, but to no other crime. All he had accepted from Mr. Casey was his offer of a ride to Florida after Rocco was killed. As soon as he could then Mr. Robinson had liquidated his assets. And how he had come to know Nick Casey? It took Robbie-the-Printer but a moment to get round that: “He was a friend of a friend…of a friend, who was trying to tempt me into another little business on the side…the manufacture of famous diaries, you might say.”

Mr. Tully had not pursued the question further.

“Whatever’s to become of Mag now?” said Mrs. Norris.

“Well, I’ll tell you how I see it,” Tully said. “Mr. Robinson was inquiring if there was any chance of him being deported. Back to the country of his origin that would be. He would work there at the same trade, legitimate, he says, and he’s promised Mag all her life to take her home.”

“The canny rogue! A fit companion for the General, excuse me, Master Jamie.”

“I was thinking much the same thing,” said Jimmie. “You know, Jasp, I have a few friends in the State Department…”

“If you want my advice then, my boy,” said Tully, “put in a good word quick for a bad egg. I’ll press his suit here, if you know what I mean.”

The D.A. himself squeezed the confession out of “Echo” and his boss. While Nick was trying to explain to Miss Tims the mistake his boy made that Thursday night, “Echo” returned to Brooklyn to straighten things out there. He arrived back at Robbie-the-Printer’s in time to get Johnny Rocco’s “No” to Nick’s proposition. He trailed him then to the First Federal Bank. He let him get out of the car, make his deposit in the night box, and then took him on the long ride home. By that time Nick was getting out of night court in Manhattan.

Since the District Attorney of two boroughs shared the headlines with “the crusading gubernatorial candidate” on the cracking of the Rocco case and the breakup of the gambling ring in Brooklyn, cooperation flowed like politicos’ saliva. At the request of all the ladies involved, their names and the extent of their participation in the roundup were withheld.

By nightfall, the trio of Tully, Norris and Jarvis, started on a last call in the line of duty. Mrs. Joyce said she had had it. She would make dinner for them and kiss them all adieu thereafter. Judge Turner had offered her a fellowship in the peaceful English countryside. Little had she known then how much and how soon she would need it.

“R
ANSOM, RANSOM, RANSOM….” THE
parakeet was back in his cage.

“Everybody in the neighborhood thought he was callin’ them handsome…handsome, handsome, handsome. Isn’t that cute?”