Obit Delayed (16 page)

“Admiration,” Mitch said. “I’m thinking of forming a fan club. Just think, six months ago you took over this landlord’s liability and today you own the business free and clear! I don’t see how you do it. I’ve been managing the
Independent
for five years, and all I have to show for it is three hundred dollars in the bank and the pink slip on a car that’s about due for the wreckers.”

“I’m crying for you,” Pinky said.

“You needn’t—not any more. I’ve just discovered that I have a talent, too.”

Mitch stopped talking and began to enjoy his coffee, not to mention the troubled expression on Pinky’s face. “I find things,” he explained between sips. “Other people search high and low for them, but I’m the boy who does the finding.”

“What kind of things?” Pinky asked hesitantly.

“Oh, valuable things. Are you sure Dave hasn’t been around?”

“You found something that belongs to Dave?”

Mitch smiled. “Now that’s a technical matter that doesn’t concern me,” he answered thoughtfully. “I’m not interested in whom it belongs to; only in who can pay for it. Let’s just say that it’s something Dave has been looking for ever since Mickey Degan was killed on your doorstep.”

Mitch studied Pinky’s face over the rim of the coffee cup. He was too upset to be unaware of what all this talk was about. A couple of kids from the rear booths came up to pay their checks and he didn’t even look at their money, which was proof enough that Pinky had big troubles on his mind. “You remember Mickey,” Mitch added. “He was a friend of Virginia’s.”

The atmosphere was getting pretty heavy by this time, but with those kids at the counter Pinky was at a disadvantage. Mitch forked out a dime for the coffee and stood up. “You’ll tell Dave if he comes in, won’t you?” he said. “Tell him I’ll be working late at the office tonight—alone. And tell him to bring his checkbook.”

Pinky, of course, wasn’t going to tell Dave anything; but that was all right. Dave’s apartment was the next stop on Mitch’s list, anyway.

The last time Mitch met Dave socially the evening had ended in a big headache, but that was before he acquired that special life insurance in the shape of a Mexican doll. With that kind of backing even Herbie’s big shoulders couldn’t scare him away from the door. Dave, who came out of the bedroom perfumed with something allegedly masculine and wrapped in a dazzling silk robe, couldn’t have made his own shadow jump.

“I was just driving by,” Mitch began, “and I remembered that I’d forgotten to thank you boys for taking me home the other night. And in my own car, too.”

“It’s a service of the house,” Herbie said. “We always take care of noisy drunks,” but Dave silenced him with a glare and then found another for Mitch. “All right, what do you want?” he demanded. “Any time you come near me it’s trouble. Don’t you ever get enough?”

“Enough?” Mitch grinned. “There’s no such thing as enough, Dave, you should know that. Money, women, power—a man just naturally keeps reaching as long as there’s more to be had.”

“Shall I throw this guy out now?” Herbie asked hopefully, but nobody was going to throw Mitch anywhere. He picked a chair with its back to the wall (just in case Herbie had any ideas about getting behind him) and made himself comfortable. “I’m no different from the rest,” he added. “When I see a chance to make a buck I’m all for it.”

“So what’s that to me?” Dave snapped.

“Plenty. You’re the boy who’s going to help me make it. Oh, you’ve helped a lot already, Dave, and I’m grateful. Without you saying and doing the wrong thing all the time I’d probably still be in the dark about Virginia Wales’s murder. Worse than that, I’d never have found the doll—”

It was beautiful to see the first link in the chain snap wide open. Of course Dave knew about the doll; Mickey hadn’t figured that angle all by himself. The idea had an artistic touch and Dave was a very artistic boy—look at that robe! But it must have been terribly frustrating to go over Virginia’s house with a fine-tooth comb and find nothing at all.

“How could Virginia know the doll was so valuable?” Mitch added. “You should have cut her in on the deal.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Dave yelled.

“Like hell you don’t! I’m talking about a cheap souvenir doll with a not-so-cheap insides. I’m talking about Mickey Degan with a couple of slugs in his back, and Virginia with her pretty face all spoiled. And if that’s not enough to stir your memory I’ll throw in Rita Royale and her permanently cured insomnia. Now do you get the picture, Davey, or do I have to run it on the front page?”

Mitch was a little out of breath. He’d come up from the chair quick when he saw Herbie moving in, but now Herbie was looking at Dave with a queer sort of expression. That was the trouble with a system like Costro’s—the links were never quite sure of each other.

“You’re not going to hang that on me!” Dave sputtered. “I was out of town when Rita—” Dave caught himself but it was already too late. For a man who wasn’t supposed to know Rita was dead he seemed remarkably well informed. Mitch merely smiled and took it from there.

“Too bad about Rita,” he said. “You shouldn’t have told her why you were hanging around Virginia Wales so much, but I suppose she was quite a handful when she got jealous.”

“You suppose a hellova lot,” Herbie growled, “but you don’t know nothing.”

“Oh, yes, I do! I know where the body lies—” Mitch had to laugh when he saw the stricken expression on Herbie’s beefy face. “No, not Rita’s body,” he explained. “Rita doesn’t interest me any more. I was referring to what must be about fifty thousand dollars’ worth of junk that I’m willing to let go at half price. Generous, I’ll admit, but this is sort of a fire sale. Anyway, it’s real hot.”

It was getting a little warm here, too. Mitch moved over to the door, still not turning his back on Herbie. “You run along and get dressed now,” he told Dave, “so you can hurry out and tell Vince about my proposition. I’ll be at the office until midnight in case he’s interested.”

Now that the invitations had been delivered Mitch could go back to the office and prepare for the party. It was almost six and the place was deserted except for a janitor sweeping up the pressroom; but The Duchess had left a report on his desk with a hand-scrawled note clipped to one corner.
Can’t wait any longer
, she’d written.
Finally cornered that illusive ex-husband and we’re having dinner together. Call me at home if you need reinforcements
.

That was thoughtful of The Duchess. Not having to explain his plans meant not having to talk down the inevitable protest, and Mitch went on to the report with a sense of relief. The first was something labeled:
Operation Nothing
, but only because she hadn’t realized that an experiment doesn’t have to turn out positive to be a success. The other report was just the filling for a small hole. Mrs. Degan, after some effort, did remember a phone call Mickey received the night of his death. He was dressed for a date and seemed to be arguing with someone about not being able to meet. Finally Mickey said, “All right, maybe around two.” It wasn’t important, Mrs. Degan thought, because nobody would make a date for two in the morning; it must have been for the next day. Mrs. Degan didn’t know Mickey.

And so the small hole was filled and the last element of coincidence could be removed. Mitch thought about it over a cigarette he smoked down to a stub end, and then reached for the phone. He had one more invitation to deliver.

ALL DAY Mitch had been too busy to notice the temperature, but now it was getting chilly. The sun had been a long time lost behind the mountains, and the wind droning in across the desert was rolling wild dust hoops along the empty street. He looked at his watch again. Eleven-thirty and not a sign of life beyond the dim windows of the newspaper office. If anything was going to happen it would have to happen soon.

Mitch had been waiting a long time; but the waiting wasn’t wasted. There was a letter, carefully composed and painfully typed, that now rested in Lois’s mail basket complete with instructions for mailing. He’d spent hours on that letter—not because it was so long, but because it took time to thresh out the facts from the fancy. Getting acquainted with Virginia Wales, for instance. That wasn’t a thing to document as evidence; yet, he’d gone to a lot of extra trouble because he couldn’t recognize the truth when it talked to him. Norma had told the truth, Mrs. Molina—even Rita told what she knew. But Mitch Gorman was too smart to believe a battered blonde could be just a kid who never grew up. So he’d gone to Rita Royale with that yarn about a rival.

Rita had to go into the letter, fact and fancy. Rita had to be explained because she was the gal who had the answer all the time, and, unlike Dave, couldn’t hold liquor and silence simultaneously. At least, that’s what her murderer feared, and another death more or less didn’t matter if it paid off in safety.

With the disappearance of Rita’s body
, Mitch wrote,
it became obvious that two forces were at work behind the Wales headlines. Somebody was crossing up somebody else, and that led to interesting speculation. Who was doing the crossing? Rita’s killer, or the man who was so touchy about investigations that he didn’t want her death recorded, accidentally or otherwise?

Two forces. Interesting speculation indeed. But it had taken a small boy in search of a dog collar to identify the forces and uncover a crime. Three things: a boy in search of a dog collar, a photograph, a fancy doll—these were the facts. Mitch set them down carefully, telling himself all the time that he was being melodramatic because nothing was going to happen to Mitch Gorman. But everybody makes a will, and he had nothing to leave to anybody except life to the man Norma Wales loved. So much for Vince Costro and his nasty mind!

But now that the letter was finished Mitch waited behind the windows. The outer office was dark, except for the twin shafts of light falling from the pressroom doorway and the entrance to his own office—and purposely so. Darkness would be more inviting to the guest he awaited. He really didn’t expect more than one. The front door was unlocked (he tried it again to make sure) and Main Street was as desolate as a ghost town. Satisfied, Mitch turned back.

Just outside his office the Teletype began to chatter, and he was on the verge of going to see what else was wrong with the world when the street door opened behind him. He didn’t actually hear it open. It was the wind rushing in and then being shut out again; and it was the sound of footsteps and the fumbling with the front counter gate.

“Oh, there you are,” called the shadow as Mitch stepped into the light. “Working late, aren’t you?”

“A little,” Mitch admitted.

“I saw the light and figured it must be you.”

Mitch moved on into his office with Kendall Hoyt at his heels. Hoyt wasn’t in uniform. “I just got out of the movie,” he explained, forking a pack of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket. “Ernie finally gave me a night off.”

“Good show?” Mitch asked.

“Pretty fair. But I like Westerns better.”

“More shooting,” Mitch suggested, and Hoyt scowled over a lighted match. “Less women,” he said, “and the less I see of women the better I like them.”

This struck Mitch as a rather inverse idea but he didn’t argue the point. Hoyt hadn’t come to talk about women, at least, not women in general. But he’d come for some purpose. He was smoking that cigarette in quick, nervous puffs, and the chair Mitch shoved toward him was ignored. “I’ve been thinking some more about what you told me last night,” he said at last. “This Rita Royale—are you sure she’s dead?”

“I’d lay money on it,” Mitch answered.

“She was pretty friendly with Dave Singer, wasn’t she?”

“Nice people call it that.”

“And Dave’s served time for pushing narcotics.”

The man was working up to something, but he needed help. Mitch pulled out his keys and unlocked the lower desk drawer, and what he brought into view made Hoyt forget all about his cigarette. “What the hell’s that thing?” he demanded.

“Exhibit A,” Mitch said.

“Say, I’ve seen that doll before! That Atturbury woman had it last night.”

“She did. So did Virginia.”

Mitch didn’t try to explain anything. He merely brought the little parcels out of hiding and passed them over to Hoyt. Then he gave him time to get used to the idea. “Doesn’t look much like a prize, does it?” he remarked, propping up the headless doll on his desk. “But that’s what it was. A dance prize for Mickey Degan and his last date.”

“So that’s it!”

“Yes, that’s it. Have you ever heard of a storybook doll, Hoyt? Well, this poor decapitated señorita tells a real story—all about a punk kid sent to do a man’s job, and how he muffed it with too much talk and wound up in a casket.

“There’s another chapter, too. This one concerns a dancing lady who should have been more choosy about her partners. But she wasn’t, and death cut in.” Mitch paused and smiled grimly at the forlorn and wilted object. “Of course, Virginia wasn’t supposed to keep her trophy—not until interior alterations had been made. But then, she wasn’t supposed to be sitting in Mickey’s car when he was shot, either.”

Hoyt had been listening intently, but now he dropped the parcel in his hand as if his fingers were afire. “Wasn’t supposed to be?” he echoed. “You talk as if Mickey’s death was planned!”

“It was,” Mitch answered quietly, “even to those phony attempts to break into the liquor store just to make that faked burglary look good. Then there’s the matter of a phone call Mickey received just before he left for Mexicali—that was to make sure he’d show up for his funeral. Use your head, man. Would you stage a two-bit burglary with stuff like this in your possession?”

“But I heard the alarm—”

“Sure you did. The whole street heard that burglar alarm, but only one person saw who actually set it off. And that’s it, Hoyt. That’s why Virginia Wales is dead.”

Mickey, Virginia, Rita—how the bodies stacked up when a plan went sour! Kendall Hoyt might not be the world’s greatest thinker, but he could recognize a problem when he heard one. Suddenly he started scooping those parcels into his pockets. “This stuff’s going to headquarters,” he announced, “and you’re coming along to tell this story to Ernie. Christ, now you’ve got me believing it!”

As Hoyt swung away from the desk a sound came out of the darkness. A faraway sound, thin and metallic, like the wind rattling the steel doors that closed off the pressroom from the alley. “Maybe we should wait,” Mitch murmured.

“Expecting somebody?” Hoyt asked.

“Possibly. I sent out several invitations.”

Hoyt stared at Mitch as if he belonged in a cage, and he probably had a point at that. But it seemed such a good idea at the time—advertising his wares so the interested parties could settle this unfinished hijacking among themselves. Only now Mitch remembered what usually happens to intruders in a family fight, and he had a deep longing to be out of this bright room. The exit was steps away. He took them quickly, Hoyt at his heels, and then froze in his tracks as the pressroom doorway disappeared before his eyes.

Two bright doorways—and then there was one. That was the trouble with guests. You fixed up everything nice, left the front door open and the lights turned low, only to have them sneak in the back way. Mitch didn’t like it, but he liked being a target in the doorway even less. “I’ll go first,” he whispered, as Hoyt reached under his coat for his gun. “Stay behind me and keep quiet.”

There was one advantage on Mitch’s side; he knew his way around. He knew how to reach the pressroom without banging into the furniture, and he could slip through that black doorway without falling over equipment. Beyond the doorway was nothing but darkness and silence. Something was wrong, terribly wrong, but it was too late now for a change of plans. He could only creep forward, groping his way, until a violent gust of wind grabbed one of the steel doors and hurled it back against the building. A single bulb burned over the alley entrance, but its light cored the darkness like a beacon.

“Look out!” Hoyt yelled behind him. “He’s going for the door! Stop him!”

Mitch never did see the man until he leaped into the alley, as pretty a target as ever was, but he followed Hoyt’s command instinctively. He followed as far as the doorway, and then dropped and rolled quickly into the shadows where he couldn’t be trampled by running feet, and where he wouldn’t be caught in the blaze of that eager gun. One shot split the night wide open, and a lanky man with a shock of reddish hair stumbled and fell forward.

Hoyt couldn’t stop running until he reached Pinky, and Pinky couldn’t get going. He tried. He tried crawling backward, one hand held up before his face as if to ward off the bullet he was going to get as soon as Hoyt realized what had happened. There was no margin for error in this game. In a moment Pinky would need a medium to tell the tales he knew.

But there was still that moment. “Go ahead, make it four,” Mitch taunted from the shadows. “You can only sit in that gas chamber once.”

It didn’t take so much rope for a man to hang himself: a length of temptation, a few feet of opportunity, and a knot of fear. Hoyt was all finished now. He’d never get to tell a coroner’s jury how poor Mr. Gorman leaped into the line of fire and stopped a bullet intended for the prowler who got away. This plan hadn’t worked any better than the first one.

But with a gun in his hand Hoyt knew what to do. Pinky could wait; the important thing was to silence that voice from the darkness. He fired wildly—but Mitch wasn’t there. He fired again, and now the dogs were yelping in the distance and somewhere a window banged open. It was so hard to kill a man he couldn’t see! When a pair of headlights suddenly swung into the alley Hoyt spun about like a cornered animal, a perfect setup for the first flying tackle Mitch had thrown in fifteen years. He’d be using liniment for a week because of it, but under certain conditions liniment smelled much sweeter than flowers.

After the tackle Ernie Talbot took over.

It was going to be hot when that fireball in the east swung up over the valley; but nobody would notice the weather today. Nobody would notice the price of lettuce or how the water fight was going, because excitement was spreading like virus all across town. That was the danger in trying to liquidate a partnership with lead; it had to be successful or run the risk of stirring up voluble resentment—and Pinky had never been so voluble in his life. You could read all about it in the
Independent
, providing Ernie ever shut up and let Mitch get to work.

“Frankly,” he was saying, “I thought you were crazy when you called last night and asked me to tail Hoyt. But you had me going with those cracks about Rita Royale and Mickey Degan’s gun. I was curious to see what you came up with next.”

“If you ask me he very nearly came up with a lily,” The Duchess observed.

“You’re not just talking! Dammit, Mitch, I ought to run you in for withholding evidence!”

Ernie wasn’t really mad; he was worried. One bad apple in the barrel could make things tough for the whole force, and he had no way of knowing that Ernie Talbot had already been inspected and passed as the most fully mortgaged and bribe-free man in town. Explaining that would lead to embarrassing questions. Mitch preferred hearing about Pinky.

“I’ve been listening to true confessions until I feel like an old crying-towel,” Ernie added with a sigh. “Pinky blames everything on Hoyt. It all started, he says, when Hoyt caught him peddling Mickey’s merchandise and voted himself into the firm. But the profits weren’t big enough split up that way, and when Mickey mentioned that he was pulling a big job Hoyt made plans. Pinky lived over a liquor store—that’s what gave him the idea. All he had to do was tamper with the door a few times and then make a date for Mickey to stop by his apartment on his way back from Mexicali. Mickey would run like a scared rabbit when Hoyt set off the burglar alarm, and who would think anything of Mickey Degan getting shot?”

“Vince Costro,” Mitch said. “He was bound to wonder why the police failed to find anything in Mickey’s car.”

“Sure he was, but if Hoyt had the stuff it wouldn’t matter. He could even make a deal with Vince—sell him back his own merchandise. It would be a lot cheaper than having it turned over to the narcotic squad.

“But Hoyt didn’t have it. All he found in Mickey’s car was a drawing of Virginia Wales, and that didn’t mean a thing until Dave Singer began badgering Pinky for information. To save his own skin Pinky told what he knew, but nobody could do anything to anybody until they located the missing doll.”

“Which was,” Mitch concluded, “in the one place it couldn’t possibly be since Mickey didn’t get home that night.”

It was easy to get the right answers when you knew how. Mitch didn’t need Ernie to explain the weeks of watching and waiting until Virginia gave notice and told Pinky she was leaving town. Hoyt couldn’t have that. He needed that intercepted shipment; it was all he was using for life insurance. A dead Virginia couldn’t tell him where it was hidden, but she couldn’t tell Dave Singer, either. And she couldn’t get careless and repeat what she’d seen the night Mickey Degan died.

Kendall Hoyt liked his women silent—the way Rita was supposed to be after drinking the nightcap he’d fixed her. That answer was easy, too, because cruising around town gave him every opportunity of seeing Herbie pour the woman into her apartment, and there was nothing unusual about a police officer making a call at that address. Too bad he couldn’t stay off the job long enough to make sure she’d taken the drink. He was probably still wondering how a dead woman could answer the phone!