Stab in the Dark (3 page)

“I’ll do everything I can,” Beeker agreed.

Knox said, “Auffer was supposed to have been here for about the past two weeks. He was to have picked up some information from another contact, pass it and what he had gathered on to me and leave. I was to take over and finish the job.”

Beeker showed his surprise. “Auffer was—one of you?”

“For fifteen years,” Knox admitted. He got in when Europe was cracking apart. His playboy jaunts were good cover—good enough so that he isn’t even openly connected with World-Circle like I am. I go around as a simple operative looking for missing persons, stolen bonds and the like. Auffer, as far as most people knew, wasn’t connected with anything.”

“Then he wouldn’t have carried a card?”

“He’d have carried the little, inside card,” Knox said, “but where he kept it, I don’t know. I didn’t know him too well. He worked on bigger stuff. Until recently, I’ve been strictly small time—learning the business.”

Beeker waited. Knox fell silent, debating how much he should tell Beeker. If he gave it to him the wrong way, Beeker might get an attack of civic pride and blow the whole thing spart. On the other hand, he reminded himself, Beeker was no fool, and if anyone could be trusted, he could.

Knox said, “A little obscene matter has been moved into town here.”

Beeker snorted. “And World-Circle gets called in on that?”

“World-Circle and two or three government departments of this country, Canada, and a couple of Caribbean nations,” Knox said. “This is movie stuff, Mel. A lot of it is stag show stuff, of course, but some of it is what you might call collector’s items. Real, high class pornography.”

Beeker said, “Even so …”

Knox took the time to light a cigaret. “I’ll be brief. Some bright boy had an idea a few years back. He formed an organization to take pictures of prominent people when they didn’t know their pictures were being taken. There are certain groups of the wealthy who forget that they’re under the same rules and regulations as other mortals. There are other groups who forget it occasionally—like when they go on vacations far from home.

“A few of these pictures were taken with the subject aware of it. But what little we’ve recovered shows that in every such case, the person was too drunk to really be responsible. Most of the stuff was taken without the subject knowing what was going on. I should say subjects,” he corrected himself. He made a distasteful face. “I won’t go into it, Mel, except to say that if any of it ever got loose—well, you’d be surprised whom it would hurt.”

“What’s the point,” Beeker said. Then he stopped, staring at Knox. “You mean these people get first chance to buy the movie rights, as it were.”

“Exactly. And there’s no hocus pocus. They get the negative, all the prints. Once they pay, they’re safe enough. Already a few deals have been made, enough so that the customers are satisfied. The word gets around, the next customer knows that he’ll be satisfied too.”

“High powered blackmail.”

“Very high powered,” Knox agreed. “There’s still about two million dollars riding around loose, waiting to be sold.”

“Two million bucks.”

“Which are worth a lot of francs and pesetas and other assorted currencies,” Knox said, “what with the power of the dollar on some money markets.”

Beeker poured the last trickle out of the coffee pot. “In a way I had to know this, Paul. In a way, I’m sorry I learned about it. Finding Auffer’s murderer is my responsibility, and there’s no doubt in my mind that it’s connected to this.”

“Nor mine, now,” Knox said. “That blows your caught-in-the-act-of-love theory to hell.”

“Seems to.” Beeker grinned. “Now we haven’t any explanation for those panties, have we.”

Knox said, “That can ride. Does what I’ve told you help at all?”

“I’Tll do a little quiet checking with the Vice boys and see if they’re any rumors of new stag shows floating around.”

“That’s part’s a sideline,” Knox said. “Whoever moves into an area—as this one has been moved into—brings a load of that kind of stuff and dumps it with the local hoodlums. It pays expenses. It’s also a protection in case the big stuff is found. Then there’d be a claim that everything was in the same pot—the cheap and the high priced.” He added thoughtfully, “But so far we’ve found out that the local operators haven’t any idea who is behind the stuff. In other words, the smart boys are keeping the two as separate as possible for their own safety.”

“Logical,” Beeker said. He pushed out his lip and pulled at it. “Just two questions, Paul. First, why not let these big shots pay up and get rid of the stuff that way? Second, why would anyone choose an out of the way burg like ours to do business in?”

Knox said, “The answer to the first is that we can’t always be sure that the stuff will end up in the right party’s hands. There’s always the chance of a slip. Take, for example, someone politically exposed. Then, there are some of the kind I mentioned who feel they’re beyond us humans. A few of them don’t want to pay. Unfortunately, we can’t let them take it on the chin. There’s liable to be an international backfire if we do.”

“Oh,” Beeker said, “it goes that far, does it.”

“It goes all the way,” Knox agreed. “Answering your second question, Auffer was here because we’re almost certain that the big boys covering this area are here. We’re moving all at once—in the U.S., in Latin America, and in certain parts of Europe. And,” he added, “in Canada. And it’s through here that the Canadian stuff will go.”

He spread his hands. “And that’s what I know, Mel. Auffer’s job was to find the big boy—or boys—turn the information over to me and fade. Then, if they had suspected him, they’d stop. I was to move in and clean it up.”

“And you have no idea who he was after?”

“He didn’t when he came,” Knox said. “If he did earlier today, he didn’t get a chance to tell me.” He looked steadily at Beeker. “That means I have to do weeks of work to get up to the point where I’m supposed to come in.

“And all that the one report we got from Auffer told us was that things were moving. We have to jump fast or there won’t be anything to land on.”

B
EFORE
B
EEKER
left Knox’s room, a phone call came for him. Knox watched his expression as he grunted at whatever was being told him. He slammed the phone down.

“They’ve gone through Auffer’s things,” he told Knox. “Your friend Auffer might have been living in a vacuum for all the good it did.”

Knox couldn’t help grinning. “What did you expect, Mel, the name of the murderer?”

“Something after what you told me,” Beeker answered.

Knox said, “Auffer was a careful man with reports. He made few of them until the job was cleaned up.” He looked squarely at the Lieutenant. “Even in our organization, there’ve been leaks. Not many, but there’s always the chance.”

Beeker started for the door. “Sometimes I wish I could work that way.”

Knox waited until he had the door open. “By the way, Mel, if Leo Auffer did write down anything he planned to base a report on, you’d probably need a microscope or a magnifying glass to find it. There’s a story at headquarters that he was laid up in a hospital once and he spent the time teaching himself to engrave his name on the head of a pin.”

“Then I’ll go over his belongings with a magnifying glass,” Beeker said.

“Including what he was wearing,” Knox said.

Beeker thanked him for the coffee and walked out. Left alone, Knox contemplated the blank television screen again. But it held even less interest than before. Rising, he began to prowl the room restlessly.

He disliked a job where he had to wait and let things come to him. And as this one stood now, that was just what he faced—waiting for Beeker’s police machinery to turn up something. Knox was basically aggressive; he preferred to go out and stir up matters. At times, he was aware, this bordered on impatience, an attitude that had more than once caused him trouble.

But in this case, he told himself, it was more than impatience—it was common sense. There was the pressure of time, and unless Beeker’s examination did bring up some notes made by Auffer—something Knox did not think likely—that pressure would grow stronger by the hour. He felt a little as if he were in the jaws of a nutcracker.

Knox went downstairs and surveyed the lobby. The hotel detective, a retired policeman named McEwen, was standing by the desk, talking in a low voice to the room clerk. Knox ambled over and tipped him a grin.

“Still at it, Mac.”

McEwen shook his head. “I heard you were paying to stay here, Paul.” He surveyed Knox’s suit and pursed his lips for a whistle. “That must be a fancy private job you’ve got.”

“I just got born to the right people,” Knox said. He decided they had made enough conversation. With McEwen so friendly, he decided to move in a little closer.

“All this excitement makes me wish I were back in harness.”

McEwen tried to look blank and only succeeded in looking a little more sly than usual. “What excitement? Everything’s quiet here.”

“Like it should be in a well run hotel,” Knox agreed dryly. “Where’d Keehan go?”

McEwen jerked a thumb. “In the back office, asking questions …” His mouth dropped open foolishly and he looked around as if to see whether the clerk had caught him stepping into such a simple trap. But the clerk had drifted off.

Knox said, “It looks like they’ve squeezed you out again, Mac.”

McEwen reacted as Knox expected. “Don’t they always? What good’s a hotel dick?” He looked as if he wanted to spit.

“You find him and then get cut out,” Knox said, pressing it.

McEwen tasted the bait a little more, liked it, and said, “Not me. And if I had, it wouldn’t make no difference. Beekers shut this one up tight—but tight. And is he being careful! Poor Jock—Jock Dylan, the guy that found him—is in being sweat. What the hell, is it his fault if some fat-fannied stenographer busts a chair and he has to go get another one?” He made another face, even more sour. “They’re even grilling the girl. What’s she supposed to have done, busted the chair on purpose so Jock could go down and bump the guy off?”

Knox grinned. McEwen was in fine form. Since leaving the force for the softer job at the Winton, he had spent most of his time complaining of lack of cooperation and of the general stupidity of the department. Knowing him for one of the old regime, Knox was pretty sure it was the other way around on both counts.

Now he said, “They have to act like they’re heating someone’s tail, Mac. How about a beer?”

“On duty,” McEwen said. He sounded regretful. “Later, maybe.” He started away and then turned. “Hey, how’d you know about the trouble?”

“I saw Mel and Maddy Keehan. Don’t they mean trouble?”

A couple followed by a luggage-loaded bellhop claimed McEwen’s attention. He nodded, accepting the explanation. Knox drifted off, feeling a sense of futility. He hadn’t got much out of McEwen, but then he suspected that McEwen didn’t have much to give. Going to the newsstand, he idly thumbed through a few magazines, now and then glancing at the people in the lobby. This D-13 should be around somewhere. He cursed the system that kept the operatives so carefully apart. As far as he knew, D-13 didn’t even suspect that he was here, maybe didn’t even know that he was supposed to be here. There was a chance that it was the other way, of course. And then, if he was lucky, D-13 would possibly contact him since he was a World-Circle operative.

Or, he thought, sourly, he could wait for someone else to get killed and decide that was D-13. He made a face and left the newsstand. D-13 sounded like something out of a cloak and dagger job. Knox wished it were, instead of a very real and, to him, very important person.

He stopped his prowling. Since there seemed nowhere to go, no place to make a definite start, he decided to make one for himself. Repeating his earlier jaunt, he went into the basement. Now there were no police on guard to stop him. There was nothing but the dimly lighted corridor with the two doors, shut, at its end. Knox didn’t think Beeker had missed much; he seldom did. But there was always the bare chance, and this gave him something to do.

Opening the door where the body had been, he flipped on the light and stood a moment blinking. There was no body now, only the faint chalk lines where it had lain. The police had left few other signs except to smudge up the dust on the cement floor more than it had been before.

Knox stayed in the doorway. “If I was a maintenance man …”

He tried to reconstruct the scene. The man coming down the corridor, opening the door, switching on the light, his eyes adjusting and focusing on the body. There was something missing. After a moment, Knox got it. The broken chair. He should have been carrying that. Had he dropped it or set it down and taken a good one before going up and reporting? It was a question that might be worth asking the man, Knox decided.

Turning, he went across the hallway and into the room where the tables were stored. There was no sign of either the whiskey nor the panties except for a slightly damp ring left where the bottle had been set. Knox looked down at it and as he did so, noted the various tracks made in the dust of the floor. Besides those that were obviously police brogans, he saw the scuff of smaller oxfords and the dual mark of feminine high heels. The outlines of all the prints were too blurred to be of much use to the police but the pattern they formed interested Knox.

Both the marks of the oxfords and the high heels went from the table to the door and back again. What interested Knox was that some of the prints of the high heels going from the table to the door had obviously been made before the same shoes had made prints going from the door to the table. He could tell by the overlap with the oxfords.

Without any more to go on, it didn’t seem to mean much, but he stored it away in his mind and bent to make a more thorough examination. Humming, he tiptoed to the door, opened it about two inches, and crouched down that he might see into the room opposite. Then he straightened and peered down at the position of his feet. He noticed that the oxfords made clear prints in that same spot; there was no sign of the high heels.

Knox felt the old familiar surge of excitement that came to him whenever something began to click. He flung both doors open so that the combined light from the rooms streamed into the corridor. The cement here was less dusty and more thoroughly trampled than that in the rooms, but with an effort he could make out those distinctive prints, the small sole, the gap, then the spike of the heel. They went out from the table room, across the corridor and into the chair room and then they returned. But as before, those going from the table seemed, in some cases, to have been made before those going to it.

Knox could conclude but one thing. The woman who had worn those shoes had left the room before she had entered it.

Still humming, Knox trailed the prints down the corridor until they were lost in dimness. He returned to the table room and studied the prints there. Finally he closed both doors, having shut off the lights, and went away, cursing policemen with big feet.

Even so, his humming had taken on a happier note by the time he reached the lobby. For the moment he had forgotten Auffer as as individual, forgotten the personal in the pure pleasure of the problem. It had always been that way with Knox, and it was one of the reasons for his success—his ability to be objective. He had made friends and lost them in this work; once he had been very close to a woman who had turned out to be on the other side. Now he seldom thought of that, preferring to keep it in the back of his mind where it lay a warning to the future. But despite all of his friends, he had managed to look at his work as if he were outside, not implicated. He could do so now, for the moment at least. There would come the time when what had happened to Leo Auffer would begin to needle him, bringing the anger. But when he had work to do, he usually managed to control his emotions.

In the men’s room, he washed up and let the porter brush the dust from his trousers. He was handing over his tip when the door opened and a man in coveralls walked in. He ran a bowlful of water and plunged his face into it.

The porter clucked and handed him a towel as he straightened up. “I hear they gave it to you rough, Jock.”

“Back and forth and sideways.” The man snorted into the towel.

Jock. The maintenance man. Knox shook hands with himself. Here was one small piece of luck, anyway. This would save him some time locating the man. He said, “So you’re the one who found him, huh?”

A young face with features a bit too heavy for handsomeness, a round head capped with curly, sandy hair, and with two pale blue eyes peering out on either side of a beaked nose emerged from the towel and surveyed Knox.

“Found who?”

“Yeh,” the porter agreed, “found who?”

Knox opened his mouth, shrugged, and turned away. Keehan had obviously put the fear of God—or of his own big fists—into the hotel staff. It occured to him with sudden force that as valuable as this hush-hush method of investigation might be, in some ways it was going to put painful limitations on him.