Pardon My Body (11 page)

I didn't answer. I heard what he said perfectly clearly but the words didn't mean a thing. I was looking straight over O'Cassidy's shoulder. A man had just come into the bar. He came with a crisp walk, stepping straight up to the long counter. He stepped up smartly, just like the cast-eyed gunman had stepped up behind me when I had to go to the can in Marty Alton's club.

The man stood against the bar and said, “A shot of rye.”

Then he looked around the way guys do when they've ordered their drink. That was when he saw me. I was jerking the Luger out of my shoulder holster. There was no expression on his face and I didn't see anything, but suddenly something sprang into his hand.

For a split second it was just a blur of motion. Then I could see that it was a .22 target pistol.

He decided to speak then.

“Looking for me, pal?” he asked softly.

I
LET THE
L
UGER SLIDE BACK
into its holster. I leaned sideways against the bar.

“I guess somebody will always be looking for you,” was what I said. Cass hadn't moved a muscle.

Cast-Eye backed off the bar so that he faced us.

“Coppers,” he said slowly. “This bird's a copper. Me, I don't like coppers.”

“Not even Falls City coppers?” I jeered.

Cast-Eye wasn't bothered. “Wise guy, huh? Don't get too damn wise, pal. Remember our little talk?”

He moved a few paces nearer. “Better give me your gun, copper,” he said. “You too, Bogard.” He stuffed the guns into his pocket and backed off again. His eyes swung rapidly over the room. There were only a dozen people left by now.

“Don't nobody get any ideas about trying to stop me,” he snapped.

I could have told him not to worry. The twelve
guys in the bar were still frozen in their last attitudes. Three were still holding their drinks halfway to their mouths and the rest just stood there with their hands prominently displayed.

He was almost to the door when he stopped. He lifted his left foot and kicked a floor waiter into life. “Get my drink off that bar,” he said. “I paid for it, pal, didn't I?”

The waiter stumbled across the little floor, picked up the drink, walked unsteadily back and handed it to him. Cast-Eye tossed it down and pitched the glass into a corner. The tinkling sound it made as it smashed seemed louder than it was because of the quiet.

Then, suddenly, he was through the doors. They slammed shut and I could hear the click as he pushed a bolt home.

O' Cassidy reached out a long arm and yanked the barkeep towards him. “There must be another way out—where is it?”

The barkeep motioned and we sped out of a small corner door, down a short flight of steps and along a narrow passage into the alley which ran along the back of the block. I knew we were too late because I could hear the noise of a car motor going through the gears.

We got onto the sidewalk in time to see its taillight disappearing in the traffic.

Cass swore softly.

I said, “C'mon—we'll go in my car. It's in the next intersection.”

We ran along the sidewalk, turned and got to the car. I swung it into a wide arc and headed into the Broadway traffic.

“You ain't going to catch that mug, Dale,” said Cass.

“I'm not chasing him,” I said. “I'm going where I think he might be.”

“That's fine,” said Cass. “If I knew where it was.”

“Canting's place,” I told him grimly.

Cass said shortly, “Stop off at headquarters. We'll get some artillery.”

It was twenty minutes later when we parked outside High Corners. The admiral of the fleet was still at his post. Cass didn't show him his buzzer. He didn't have to. They were old buddies.

We stepped into the elevator. As we rode up I said, “So you've been here before, huh?”

Cass grinned faintly. “Yeah. I found out from Bella where you went the night you wouldn't tell. I checked up on Canting.” He stopped as the cage reached the top. The doors slid apart and we were ankle-deep in the pile. “Somebody ought to do sumpin' about that guy,” he said.

We walked up to the biggest double door. This
time it didn't slide noiselessly inwards. It didn't do anything. We stood there inhaling the heavy sweetness of the Canting incense. It still made the butterflies flutter under my belt. I balled my fist and hit the door. That made the door open about three inches and it was strange because the doors locked when they closed and had to be opened by one of Canting's pretty table buttons.

The enormous room looked the same. The delicate interior lighting in the Lalique glass fixtures still spread softly over the glass furniture and the cream walls and the jade green drapes. The biggest table in the world was still at the far end of the room. It was just as if nothing had ever happened since I saw it. Even Mr. Lucius Canting was there. He was still behind his table. Only this time he wasn't sitting, and he wasn't wearing a sky-blue linen suit and didn't have a bloodred tie. He was laying back in his chair with his chin tilted up towards the glass-domed roof. He was wearing a midnight-blue tuxedo over which flowed something that wasn't a bloodred tie. It was red blood.

It had flowed over his shirt in a widening lake because somebody had driven a Task Force dagger into him up to the full extent of the blade.

The silence of the heavy air was like something you could feel. It was broken by the mellow chimes
of a gold and glass clock announcing the hour. The eleventh hour. I felt my mouth tighten cynically. The eleventh hour. Almost. There would be no more dagger deaths. Unless…

I turned towards Cass.

“He's been dead at least two hours,” I said. My voice sounded a little off-pitch. I was remembering that he had been here before.

“Yeah—about that.” He said it slowly. He didn't touch Canting. He stood there looking at him for another minute. There was a telephone on the vast table. He jerked a handkerchief out of his sleeve, wrapped it round his left hand and reached out to lift the receiver.

His hand had closed over it when a small door to the left of the table opened and a man came through it.

“Ceiling high,” said Cast-Eye. “Reach it quick and don't even stop to think about it. I ain't bothered about killing coppers now.”

O'Cassidy straightened up with his hands half raised. I was still trying to touch the dome. My muscles ached under the strain.

“So you come here and bump th' boss?” Cass said.

Cast-Eye's face twisted. “I didn't knife him, pal. I don't like knives. That's the way he was when I came in.”

“Yeah?” O'Cassidy sneered the word. “You can tell it later to th' judge.”

The .22 never wavered. “There ain't gonna be no talk with the judge, copper. That's why I ain't afraid of shooting a bull. I'm stepping outa—”

O'Cassidy cut in. “How'd you step in without being seen?”

Cast-Eye said, “It makes no difference now, does it? But there's a private entrance at the back. Canting had it built on. It was useful at times, I guess.”

“He hired you to knock off Harry Bule, didn't he?” Cass asked it as though he wasn't expecting an answer.

“I ain't telling you nothing, copper,” said Cast-Eye softly. “I wouldn't be talking to you now if you'd got that call in to homicide, but I balked that play, didn't I? Just like I outsmarted all you coppers. You ain't gonna get nothing on me.”

He started backing towards the twin doors. It was a long way back but he took his time. The target gun wobbled about as much as the Radio City Music Hall in a summer zephyr. Cast-Eye seemed to get smaller as he receded from us. In another moment his back was against the doors. They were still just a little ajar.

“Goodbye, copper,” he said. “Don't think you can follow me because I know how to wedge these doors so that little button right by you won't play….”

He reached a hand behind him and pulled the doors open enough to get through. But he didn't. A uniformed police lieutenant came through the other way. He had a long blue gun in his hand and he slammed it into the small of Cast-Eye's back.

He said, “Shed the heater, mug. Make it fast. I'd enjoy drilling you and I ain't seen your pan even.”

Somehow I didn't like the way he said it.

C
AST
-E
YE DROPPED THE TARGET
pistol but you couldn't hear or see it because it vanished in the deep purple at his feet. He raised his hands and walked back into the room slowly, stiffly, until he stood by the table again. The lieutenant who followed him was tall and thin with a white face, white eyebrows and yellow teeth. He had pale blue eyes under puffed-up lids. He was Lieutenant Klinger of the homicide bureau and I never had liked him.

The lighting got better towards the center of the room but Klinger's face didn't. Two heavy vertical lines forked his forehead immediately above his veined, bony nose. He didn't even look at us.

He spoke to Cast-Eye again. “Turn round, mug,” he said. His voice was high-pitched and breathy.

Cast-Eye turned slowly so that Klinger could see his face gradually coming into full focus. Cast-Eye
whispered, “You didn't know it was me.” The way he said it, it wasn't a question.

Klinger tipped his lips with his tongue. A funny look crossed his face and was gone. I thought he had decided something and was pleased about what he had decided.

He said softly, “I didn't know it was you, Tommy—but I've been looking for you.”

O'Cassidy leaned his buttocks against the table and spread the palms of his hands on the surface.

“Who is this bird, Klinger?” He asked it in a cold, even voice.

Klinger went on not looking at us. He answered, “A loogan named Tommy Nello. He knows plenty. I been trailing him for two or three days.”

I was watching Tommy Nello's face. Something terrible was happening on it. He seemed to be struggling for words but when he found them they came out in an incoherent blur. “Why…you…you dirty double…”

Klinger kept his big police gun steady in his right hand while he brought his left up in a swing. His huge sharp-knuckled fist smashed against Nello's nose. I could hear the bone structure crack. Nello's head slammed back as though it was going to jump off his shoulders. Then he pitched backwards and rolled on his side in the carpet, his hands clawing at his face.

O'Cassidy took his hands off the table and stared at his nails. For a copper he kept them nice. His voice was quiet and gentle and deadly.

“The guy was just going to say sumpin', wasn't he?”

“Was he?” Klinger bared his yellow teeth a little.

“I think so,” said Cass. “You stopped him. Why did you stop him?”

Klinger's face was suddenly livid. “You never liked me, O'Cassidy, but I'm on this goddamned case as well as you. I'll play it my way.”

“Yeah?” O'Cassidy seemed interested. “How will you play it when Tommy Nello can talk again?”

Klinger sat on the side of a glass chair nursing his gun between his knees. “He ain't gonna talk,” he said in an odd voice.

O'Cassidy said, without looking up, “You're tangled in this, aren't you, Klinger?”

Klinger went on nursing his gun. “I'm a police officer doing my duty,” he said slowly. “That's how it is and that's how it's gonna stay. Check.”

There was a little silence. Then O'Cassidy said without any emotion, “Nothing stays if a cop gets to being crooked. The Department don't wear crooked cops.”

Klinger laughed. It was a hard, dry sound. “We
don't want no scandal in the Department. We should take all possible steps to keep the name of the Department clean. That's the phrase, ain't it?”

“Maybe this witness won't care about the Department enough to keep from talking,” said Cass in that low voice.

“The way I see it,” said Klinger softly, “we wrap this case up right now.” His lips parted again and a driblet of saliva glistened on his chin. “I don't want that we should arrest this guy. He killed Bule and knifed the other birds.
But we don't take him in
….”

O' Cassidy thrust his hands into his sagging pockets.

“Then we wouldn't have a witness,” he said.

Klinger held his gun hard down on his knee. His long yellowed forefinger started to crook around the trigger.

“That's right,” he said, “we wouldn't have no witness….”

I knew O'Cassidy was going to move, but I wasn't looking. I was looking at Tommy Nello. He had rolled half over on to his face, groaning a little the way you do when you have a splintered nose bone and a lot of blood in your mouth.

I heard Klinger's big gun boom and I saw Tommy Nello writhe on the floor. Then a small shiny blue gun jumped into his hand. There was a spurt of
flame and a little crack and Klinger topped over backwards off the glass chair, his gun thudding across the carpet.

Cass had jerked his service revolver out but it didn't matter now. I went down on one knee and held Tommy up a little.

He used his good eye to give me a faint look. He coughed once.

“Klinger ain't so smart,” he whispered. “He didn't think I had that little .25 handbag gun. I give him his all right. He ate that one. Right through the mouth.”

“Yeah,” I told him, “he ate it.”

Tommy rested a hand on his stomach. He didn't wince. “Goodbye, pal,” he said. “It's been nice knowing you….”

“Goodbye, Tommy,” I said, though I knew he wouldn't hear.

I got back on to my feet and walked to the glass table. Cass was putting his gun back in his underarm holster.

“That about ties it,” he said slowly. “Looks like Klinger was right. This case
is
wrapped up now.”

He leaned across the table. “I'll call the D.A.,” he said. I didn't say anything. I had too much on my mind.

 

I drove slowly back to my apartment. It had rained a little and the roofs of the big parked cars on the drive
were like shiny roaches. The traffic was as bad as ever but I hardly noticed. Traffic signals gonged but I hardly heard them. Maybe I broke a half-dozen city ordinances but I didn't know anything about that either. Banningham and Grierson were dead. Bule was dead. Lucius Canting was dead. Now Tommy Nello had checked in, too. The case was all wrapped up and there was nothing more to do except go home, change your clothes and go out and get drunk and forget it.

Okay, Bogard—why don't you do just that? You wanted copy for your book, didn't you? All right, so you've got it. Go out and get drunk and then go home and think how you're going to put all this down in writing.

Don't kid yourself, Bogard. You know you can't do that. The time hasn't come. There's still something else you have to know. That's why your stomach feels empty and cold, isn't it? Something you have to know for sure. Something you'd maybe rather not know. But you will. You have to go on with this, though you're all loused-up inside and your stomach is sour and your heart is cold and miserable.

I left the convertible on the corner of the block because there was a party going full blast in the groundfloor section of my apartment-house and four cars were parked out front. I walked slowly along the
sidewalk, turned in through the main entrance and walked slowly over to the elevator.

It wasn't a night off for Bella and she called out, “Hi! Mr. Bogard.” Her voice sounded like it came from a long way off, and I was walking into the little cage before I realized that I hadn't answered. I called back, “Hi! Bella,” touched the button and rode up to my floor.

I flicked lights on, switched on the heater and shivered a little. I thought—baby, you can make this place as hot as a glasshouse and you'll still be cold inside. I found a half-bottle of Scotch I didn't know I had and drank it standing in the kitchenette. I began to feel a little better. I washed my hands and face, combed my hair and walked back into the living room and picked up the phone.

Cornel Banningham said yes, this was Cornel Banningham and what could he do.

I said bitterly, “You can pay my respects to Miss Casson. If she still wants any respect.”

His voice took on an edge. “You'd better explain what that means, hadn't you, Bogard?”

I pulled myself together. “Don't let it bother you,” I said. “I'm on the wrong side of the tracks tonight. Too many dead men.”

He asked what that meant, too, and I told him.

There was a silence. Then his voice came back.
Quieter now. “That seems to be about all, doesn't it? I mean Canting was the kingfish and now he's gone.”

“Yeah,” I said, “that's the way it all works out. I think O'Cassidy has it figured that way. Canting had been blackmailing Grierson for years. When Grierson wouldn't lay it on the line anymore there was the danger he would start talking so he had to go. Canting had a lot of dough stashed away in the Falls City vice district. He had the coppers on his payroll. He could hire a killer from Falls City who wasn't liable to be picked up by the cops here. Only the killer got knifed, too.”

Banningham said, “Something wrong about that, isn't there? I mean the case isn't quite so open and shut as O'Cassidy thinks.”

“If he really does figure it that way,” I answered.

“Well, does he?”

“I can't tell what he thinks. He doesn't talk. Most of the case
is
wrapped up, though.”

“Most, Bogard—but not all.”

“No,” I said, “not all.”

“What comes next?”

“What should?”

“Who killed George Clark, for instance, and why.”

“Maybe Tommy Nello was doing some private homicide.”

“Maybe. Do you think that?”

“No.”

“What do you think?”

“I'm trying not to think,” I said grimly. “I don't like my thoughts.”

There was another silence. Then Banningham said, “Oh, I forgot to tell you. I'm marrying.”

I was full of whisky but I was cold inside again. I didn't speak.

“You still there. Bogard?”

“Yeah,” I said, “I'm still here.”

“I said I was getting married.”

“That was what I thought you said.”

“To Julia Casson.”

“Give her my congratulations,” I heard a voice saying. It had to be my own voice because there was no one else in the room.

Banningham said, “I can't do that right now. She left just after you went. Something she wanted to attend to at her apartment.”

I knew he was lying and why.

Then I remembered what I meant to ask him. It was why I had called him.

“That altered constitution of the company, where did you find it?”

Banningham seemed eager to tell me, relieved
that the talk had switched to something less personal and emotional. “It was in Grierson's private safe at his office. He'd been very secret about it. Didn't use the office typewriters. Must have done it at his home.”

I heard my voice suddenly hit normal pitch again.

“Yeah? How did you know that?”

“He'd worked it out on a portable with one of those elite typefaces. Even the office doesn't have an elite face.”

This time the silence was at my end. Then I broke it.

“Thanks for telling me,” I said. “I'll be seeing you.”

I hung up before he could ask me any questions. I didn't have the answers. Or the answer. Because there was only one. In thirty minutes I would know whether it was the right one.