Murder Your Darlings (34 page)

“Nah.”

“No?”

“He’s got no bus fare. He’s probably hitchhiking.”

“See?” Benchley said, grinning. “What a resourceful fellow he is.”

She suppressed a smile. Damned Benchley. Always ruining her bad moods.

She turned and peeked out the tiny back window. They were moving into the industrial part of town now. They puttered by an icehouse, small factories, warehouses, stables and a couple tumbledown hotels. Eventually, the paddy wagon turned onto a cobblestone street.

“There it is,” the driver said.

On the left was the enormous St. John’s Freight Terminal. The printing plant was on the right.

Finn’s white limo and white sedan were parked half in the street, half on the sidewalk. Most of the car doors were still open—Finn and his men had been in a hurry.

“Go around the corner—to the loading dock,” O’Rannigan ordered. “We’ll sneak in the back door.”

Around the corner, at the loading dock, stood a line of big trucks emblazoned with NEW AMSTERDAM SUPPLY CATALOGUES AND CALENDARS, INC.

A smaller truck was also haphazardly parked there. Its front end was severely dented in, and its front doors had been left open hurriedly, too. Printed on the side of the truck: NEW CANAAN BIBLE CO.

“So it was Battersby who tried to run us down,” Benchley said.

The driver said over his shoulder, “That truck was parked behind the Algonquin Hotel today.”

“It was?” O’Rannigan snapped. “Why didn’t you say something?”

“I-I didn’t think anything of it. How was I to know?”

O’Rannigan fumed but didn’t have an answer. “Stop the car. Let’s go!”

The paddy wagon skidded to a stop. They jumped out onto the cobblestone street. The two officers took the lead, O’Rannigan and Church next, followed by Dorothy and Benchley. They ran up the concrete steps to the loading dock.

O’Rannigan cursed. “Where the hell are the men from the Fourteenth Precinct?”

As if on cue, sirens sounded nearby.

O’Rannigan and Church, their guns drawn, paused to listen. The sirens came closer. Then they seemed to come to a stop around the corner, where Finn’s cars were parked.

“Good,” said Church. “Those officers will secure the front of the building. We have the rear. No one can escape.”

“Let’s go!” O’Rannigan roared, his pistol clutched in his meaty fist. He ran into the only open bay on the loading dock. The officers and the police captain followed him.

Dorothy and Benchley peered into the darkness through the open bay door. They could hear the loud locomotivelike chugging of the printing press.

Benchley raised his eyebrows. “Once more unto the breach, dear friend?”

She shrugged. “Lay on, MacDuff.”

They turned and went inside.

Chapter 42

The large room was dark, but Dorothy and Benchley were able to make out the outlines of thick bundles of newspapers piled into six-foot-high mounds, ready to be loaded onto the trucks outside.

Ahead, they could see the figures of the policemen, shouting and running into the wide doorway that led to the printing floor. From that direction came the chugging of the enormous printing presses.

She tugged Benchley’s sleeve. “The cops and the gangsters will keep each other busy. We have to find Billy and Battersby.”

“Certainly. But where?”

“The boilers, of course. Let’s find the stairs to the cellars.”

Instead of following the policemen, they circled around the edge of the room, looking for a stairway. Finally, as they neared the wide doorway that opened to the printing room, they spotted a darkened stairway. Trotting down the dark stairs, they nearly collided with a portly figure.

“By Jupiter!” the man shrieked.

“Woollcott!” she yelled. “You just about scared the pants off us!”

Woollcott, in his silken Oriental pajamas, was nearly shaking.

“And it looks like someone scared the pants off you,” Benchley said.

Woollcott composed himself quickly. “Those brigands. Those bootlegging fiends. Kidnapping a man out of his bed—”

“My bed, you mean,” she said.

He ignored her. His tone changed from indignant to joyous. “But what loyal friends you are to come to my rescue! How can I repay you?”

“How?” she said, moving down the stairs. “You can stay here. We’re looking for Billy. Have you seen him?”

“Well, no.”

They turned and left him openmouthed at the top of the stairs and continued down into the darkness.

At the bottom of the stairs, they could smell rather than see the furnaces somewhere to their left. Someone was coming toward them. They heard the sound of pounding feet and heavy breathing. Benchley reached into his pocket and pulled out a box of matches, lighting one quickly with his thumbnail.

Three burly men, covered head to toe in soot, charged out of the darkness. Dorothy and Benchley flattened themselves against the wall. The three coal scuttlers grunted as they ran by, not even slowing down.

“Let’s go,” she said after they passed. “Battersby and Billy can’t be far.”

As they neared the end of the corridor, they could see the flicker of flames coming from the infernolike boiler furnaces. When they turned the corner, the heat hit them like a wave.

Ahead, silhouetted by the flickering light of the three boilers, the figure of Battersby pulled on the arm of Faulkner, who lay on the ground.

“Bud Battersby! Enough!” she yelled.

Battersby looked up. Then he turned away toward the boiler. He grabbed something—a shovelful of yellow hot coals. Twisting back around, he flung it—shovel and coals together—at her and Benchley. They jumped back into the corridor. The shovel landed at their feet with a clang. The glowing coals skittered across the floor.

After a moment’s pause, she and Benchley peeked around the corner. Both Battersby and Faulkner were gone.

“Is he—” Benchley said. But Dorothy was already running for the nearest furnace. She was relieved she couldn’t see Billy inside. She glanced at the floor.

“Look,” she said. Something had been dragged away in the coal dust. “This way.”

They ran ahead and soon came to the open door of the large newsroom. The room was empty. Two sets of dusty footprints went off in the direction of the executive offices at the far end of the room. They followed the footprints, which ended at the doorway to Battersby’s spartan office.

An electric whirr came from the back wall. There was a small metal door set into the wall at about waist level. It looked like a tiny elevator.

“A dumbwaiter,” she said, moving toward it. “It’s going up.”

On the floor, directly below the dumbwaiter, were a few scraps of paper.

“What are those?” she asked.

“Typesetter’s instructions,” Benchley said. “You suppose they somehow took this dumbwaiter up to the typesetting room?”

“So it would seem,” she said. “Should we wait for this one to return, or take the stairs?”

They turned around and took the stairs.

Back up on the printing floor, the thunderous noise from the printing presses battered their ears. Looking around, they saw a knot of men at the far end of the gigantic room: Captain Church and several policemen stood guard over a few of Mickey Finn’s men. But Finn himself, as well as Lucy Goosey, was noticeably absent.

As Dorothy and Benchley ascended the wooden staircase to the typesetting room, they noticed that the three enormous printing presses were going full steam, yet there were no workers tending to the great machines. Likely the police had evacuated them from the building.

So, it was a surprise to find the typesetters still working busily in the glass-enclosed room that overlooked the printing floor. The half dozen typesetters—speedily punching keys on the Linotype machines or filling up the printing plates—seemed unaware of, or unconcerned about, the mayhem going on below.

Benchley scanned the room to locate the dumbwaiter; then he tapped the shoulder of the nearest man, who turned with a start.

“Your boss?” Benchley enunciated loudly and slowly. “Mr. Battersby?” He pointed to the dumbwaiter.

The man frowned, seemingly annoyed by the interruption.

Dorothy grabbed some of the lead letters from the table and quickly put them in order. She waved to get the man’s attention, then pointed at what she had spelled:
BatTerSby
.

The man nodded, smiling at her. He now casually glanced about the room, as if perhaps Battersby might very well be present. Then something caught the man’s eye. He pointed out the plate-glass windows.

Below, skulking along the near wall, was Battersby. He dragged along Faulkner, whose hands were bound. Faulkner looked like he might collapse at any moment. Then the two of them disappeared through a high, narrow archway.

Benchley again enunciated loudly, “Where—does—that—doorway—lead—to?”

“Never mind. Let’s just go,” Dorothy shouted to Benchley. Then, with a quick shake of the man’s hand, she ran from the room. Benchley followed on her heels.

They hurried down the stairs. At the far end of the printing-room floor, they could see that Church and the other policemen were not looking in their direction— and they had not seen Battersby and Faulkner either; otherwise, at least a few of the cops would have come running.

“That dumbwaiter must have been a trick,” Benchley yelled over the noise of the presses. “And we fell for it.”

“Live and learn,” she shouted. “I’ve fallen for dumb soldiers, dumb sailors and dumb writers. About time I was fooled by a dumb waiter.”

“Beg your pardon?”

She didn’t answer. They darted through the high archway and found themselves in another enormous room. They faced a forest of huge blank rolls of newsprint, all standing upright in neat rows, like columns of a Greek temple, but placed much closer together, just wide enough for a person to walk between. The paper rolls, hundreds of them, filled the room from one end to the other.

Dorothy detected movement out of the corner of her eye. At the far end of a long corridor, she saw Mickey Finn and a couple of his men racing toward her. They’d be in the room in a few moments.

“Well,” she said to Benchley, “we know Battersby didn’t go down
that
hallway. Shall we peruse this room for Battersby and Billy?”

“Indeed we shall,” he said. “Why, I spy with my little eye ... what do you call that walkway?”

He pointed up to a narrow metal catwalk that encircled the upper half of the room.

“An elevated sidewalk,” she said. “Why don’t you go up there and take a peek around? Perhaps you’ll be able to spot our quarry from that lofty position.”

“Perhaps I will. And perhaps you can stall Finn and his bootlegging brutes. You let that kind of riffraff in the place and it’ll give this joint a bad name.”

He jogged toward a nearby iron ladder and climbed it carefully to the catwalk. She turned toward the entrance to the corridor, but Finn and his men were already bursting into the room. Right behind them came Detective O’Rannigan—huffing, puffing and sweating—and two brass-buttoned policemen.

“Hold it right there, Finn,” O’Rannigan wheezed.

Finn didn’t even hear him. He shouted at Dorothy. “Battersby! Where is he? We saw him come in here.”

“There he is,” Benchley yelled from the catwalk. He pointed toward the far end of the room. “He’s dragging Billy like a dog on a leash.”

Finn looked up at the sound of Benchley’s voice. His eyes narrowed. He grabbed one of his henchmen by the shoulder. “Muldoon, look! See that crane up there? Get it working and drop it on Battersby’s head. Now!”

Finn pointed to a large, medieval-looking mechanical device that drooped down from the rafters like an enormous rusty metal spider. Dorothy figured it must have been used to transport the giant rolls of newsprint in and out of the room. She traced its chains and wires back to a set of controls up on the catwalk, just a few feet from where Benchley stood.

The man named Muldoon threw off his hat and trench coat as he ran to the ladder.

“Stop in the name of the law,” O’Rannigan wheezed. “Finn, you’re under arrest, and that goes for your men, too.”

Lucy Goosey had somehow appeared at Finn’s side. She chuckled contemptuously at O’Rannigan, a low, throaty sound.

“Fred!” Dorothy yelled, pointing at the controls. “Don’t let him use that crane.”

Benchley spun around, unsure of what she pointed to. Then he saw the controls and his gaze followed the wires to the low-hanging crane.

Finn was smiling, but his voice was ruthless as he spoke to the detective. “I supply all the booze that your flatfoots sneak into the policeman’s ball, not to mention the booze for the speakeasies that all you cops go to.”

“I don’t—” O’Rannigan began.

Finn cut him off. “You arrest me, I shut off the booze. Then you’ll have the whole New York police force down on your neck.”

That gave O’Rannigan pause—just long enough for Muldoon to leap along the catwalk toward the controls of the crane. But Benchley got there first.

High above, the crane jolted to life.

“Ha!” O’Rannigan turned to Finn. “Who’s got the last laugh now?”

“Oh, no,” Dorothy said, realizing her mistake. “Mr. Benchley should not be allowed near mechanical things. Better that Mr. Muldoon—”

Too late. The head of the crane dipped sharply. Benchley wrestled with the controls. Muldoon was right behind him, reaching around him.

Like some kind of prehistoric beast, the head of the crane swooped down as if to strike. Dorothy, O’Rannigan, Lucy and even Finn and the other men crouched low to the ground. Dorothy felt a rush of wind as the thing swung over her head.

“Not at us!” Finn yelled. “Swing that damn thing at Battersby!”

Benchley nodded, seeming to finally understand how to work the machine. The arm of the crane twisted sharply to the left, colliding brutally with the top of a nearby roll of newsprint. As if in slow motion, it toppled like a chopped redwood, knocking down the next roll.