The Lady in the Morgue (4 page)

Crane said, “So long” to Johnson. The captain roared, “Where're them reporters?” Eyes narrowed, Burman watched Crane leave.

Sergeant O'Connor telephoned the Sherman from a booth in the upstairs waiting room, found that Crane was registered there, said reluctantly, “I guess you can go.”

“Thanks.” Crane started to walk away, then paused. “Say, aren't you a friend of Lieutenant Strom?”

“I used to work on the same squad with him.”

“I worked on the Westland case with him myself. Next time you see him ask him if he remembers me, or Doc Williams.”

“I was wonderin' if I hadn't heard him speak about you. He still thinks you planted the gun in that case.” The sergeant thrust out a huge hand, grinned sociably. “I'm pleased t' meet you, though.”

Crane winced under his grip. “I wonder if you could do me a favor?”

“I dunno. What is it?”

“I'd like to see the place where they carry the corpses in and out, and I'd like to ask somebody on the squad that got here first if they saw any strange cars about the time the attendant was killed.”

Sergeant O'Connor's round face wrinkled as he pondered. “I quess it won't do no harm to let you prowl around a little.” He added in reservation, “Not if I go with you.”

They walked out the front door and around to the driveway leading to the morgue's side door. On it Crane knelt and lit a match, but he blew it out as soon as he saw the surface was of dark asphalt. “No tire marks,” he said.

Further along a red light burned faintly over a double door. There was a cement runway, instead of steps, leading up to the door.

“This is where they haul 'em up,” said the sergeant. He opened the double door. “Inside's the receiving room.” With a click the lights came on.

Crane paused at the entrance, his hand resting on the inside knob of the right door. The room was chill and very clean, and at the other end were five white enameled hospital tables with sheet-covered bodies on them. Half-a-dozen empty tables were also in the room.

“Waiting to be posted this morning,” explained the sergeant. “The coroner's doctors don't work at night unless it's something special.”

“Where do they perform the post-mortems?” asked Crane. “In there?”

“Naw, they got a room back here.” Sergeant O'Connor opened a door and revealed a room with a stationary operating table under a battery of overhead lights and two cases filled with stainless steel instruments. He closed the door, opened another and said, “This one goes to the storage room where they keep the mummies on file.”

There was a man standing in the passageway. His arm was resting on the rail of a series of metal stairs which Crane recognized as those leading up to the waiting room. “Hi, Tom,” the man said.

“Hello, Prystalski,” Sergeant O'Connor replied, closing the door to the receiving room. “Just taking a look around.”

“You won't find nothing. My squad was the first here and we cased the whole joint. We looked in every vault and even lifted the sheets off the stiffs in the receiving room. There's no doubt but somebody got away with the gal's body.”

Crane asked, “Before you got the flash to come here did you see any cars parked around the morgue?”

Prystalski's black hair was oily. He scratched his head, then rubbed his fingers off on his shirt. “We did see a big sedan parked out front. We drove around the block so we could take another look at it, but it was gone when we come back.”

The metal door to the storage vault opened and some people came out.

“You're sure it was a sedan and not a hearse?” Crane asked.

“I ought t'know the difference between a sedan and a hearse, oughten I?”

“The devil!” It was Captain Grady. “O'Connor, I thought I told you to get rid of this fellow.” His face was turkey-gobbler red. “What d'you mean, allowin' him to be askin' my men questions?”

Confusion made O'Connor's face moronic. Crane said quickly: “The sergeant and I were waiting until you had finished with all these reporters, to see if you wanted me any more.”

“An' so ye whiled away the time by askin' a few questions?”

From beside the captain a Tribune reporter asked, “Is this the man you were telling us about, Captain?” The reporter's name was Shadow Jones, and he was popularly believed to have worn his suit for seven years without ever having had it pressed. Some even asserted he hadn't taken it off for seven years.

“It's the same.” Captain Grady was about to say something more when one of the homicide men appeared at the top of the stairs, called down, “Captain.” Testily, the captain asked, “Well, what is it?” The homicide man said, “There's a man here says he can identify the body.”

“Identify the body? Identify the body?” Up the scale rose the captain's voice. “Why should we be needin' anybody to identify the body? We all know it's poor Augie.”

Patiently, the homicide man said, “The girl's body.”

“Why didn't ye say so, man? Send him down.”

Emerging into view, feet first, the man could be seen to possess twenty-two-dollar bench-made shoes, saddle-soaped the color of cinnamon toast; tan gabardine trousers and coat of the kind William Crane had always wanted to buy but never felt he could because of the comparative inexpensiveness of Palm Beach suits; a white shirt, a tie the shade of a mild havana, and no hat. There was a lot of style tailored into the gabardine, especially around the pleated and half-belted back, and until he saw the coat had been cut loose at the waist Crane thought possibly the man was a gangster, or at least someone who had a connection with race horses.

Pausing uncertainly on the bottom step, the man blinked in the channel of light from the storage room. “Is Captain Grady here?” He was a young man about twenty-seven years old, and his blond hair was wind-blown. He was not handsome, but he was the sort of man women, especially older women, would call nice-looking.

Brows lowered in an official scowl, the captain said, “I'm Grady.”

“My name is Brown—A. N. Brown of San Diego—and I'd like to see the young lady who was brought here yesterday afternoon.” He moved from the bottom step to the floor. “Alice Ross, I believe her name is.”

“Do you know an Alice Ross?”

“No, I don't. But I'm afraid this woman may be my cousin … unless, of course, she's already been identified …?”

“She hasn't been identified.” The captain thrust his hands in his coat pockets. “What makes you think it may be your cousin?”

“My mother and I (I live with her in San Diego—Mission Hills) have been worried about Edna (that's my cousin) for the last month. We haven't heard a word from her, and we're afraid …”

The captain had a pipe in his right pocket. He took it out, clenched it between his teeth. “Well?”

“We're afraid she may have killed herself.” Brown spoke hesitantly. “She hadn't been well … heart trouble … couldn't dance or play any games … made her very despondent.”

“Didn't she have any family?”

“That's just the trouble. We were, are, the only family she has. Mother and father both dead. She lived with us … of course she had a small income, enough to travel on … and I'm afraid she was worried about being a burden to us.” He was looking at the captain. “Can't I see her?”

Shadow Jones of the
Tribune
said, “What was your cousin's last name, Mister—” He consulted his notes on the back of an envelope—“Brown?”

Apprehension clouded Brown's face. “We're not going to have any newspaper publicity about this, are we?” he asked Captain Grady.

“Don't worry, Mister,” said one of the other
Tribune
men. “We wouldn't think of putting this in the newspapers.”

Captain Grady seized Crane's arm, spoke to Brown. “Do you know this man? Ever seen him before?”

Brown's eyes were intent on Crane for a second, then he shook his head. “I never saw him before in my life.”

Crane's arm, released, dropped to his side. To him the captain said, “You can scram. You'd think you were a special observer for the crime commission, the way you've been hangin' around.” To the reporters he said, “You guys, too. I want to talk to Mr. Brown alone.”

Johnson and Shadow Jones walked up the stairs with Crane. “That son of a bitch, Greening,” said Johnson. “He got you into all this trouble. Why couldn't he have kept his mouth shut?”

“I don't mind,” said Crane. “I've been in trouble before.”

Shadow Jones remarked, “Burman seems to have it in for you.” He gave his trousers a hitch. “He thinks you had a hand in stealing the body. Thinks you were hired to do it and accidentally killed poor old Augie.”

“What does he think I wanted the body for?”

“I'm damned if I know,” Shadow Jones pulled at his pants again. “I don't think he does, either.” The pants looked as though they had been made for somebody about four sizes bigger than he was. “I guess it's just a policeman's intuition.”

“You'd be in a cell now if I hadn't told him you had some powerful connections in town,” said Johnson.

Crane asked, “What makes you so sure I shouldn't be in a cell?”

“Well, it was me who suggested the game that brought you downstairs. You'd never have gone down if I hadn't.”

“That's right,” said Crane.

Shadow Jones asked, “What game?”

Johnson winked at Crane. “That's a secret among us girls.”

Crane went into the phone booth and called a taxicab. “I better get out of here before the captain changes his mind,” he said when he came out. He went out in front and waited on the curb for the cab.

Chapter Three

THE NIGHT was breathless now and clear, and the rays from the cab's headlights were the color of lemon juice on the pavement. Even so slight a movement as getting into the cab made William Crane sweat. He rubbed his forehead with a wadded handkerchief, said, “The Princess Hotel.”

They got away smoothly. As they neared the first corner Crane saw that the grass between the street and the sidewalk was covered with sleeping people. Overhead, too, on fire escapes and porches other people were sleeping.

Conversationally, the driver said, “Well, is it hot enough for you, brother?”

Crane responded wearily, “Plenty hot.” He decided he'd better get the whole weather phase over with right away. “But it's not the heat that gets you, it's the humidity,” he added.

“That's what I always say,” said the driver. He said it. “It ain't the heat, it's the humidity.”

Another car, motor roaring, suddenly pulled up from behind, forced them to the curb. One of the four men in the car got out and opened the cab door. The automatic overhead light disclosed the Italian of the morgue.

“Listen, I got nothin' t' do with this guy,” began the driver earnestly. “He's just a fare, see. I just …”

“Shut up.” Leaning forward until his face was in front of Crane's, the Italian said, “What j'you tell the cops?”

“Nothing. I didn't know anything to tell them.”

In the sedan the three men kept their faces turned away from the cab. They all had on Panama hats.

“You tell 'em about me?”

“Sure, but none of us knew who you were.”

“You know me now?”

“Only as the man who came to the morgue.”

“You know me next time?”

“Why, sure.”

“No.” The Italian patted himself under his left arm. “You don't know me.”

“Maybe you're right.” Crane could see a bulge where the holster was strapped on. “I never could remember faces.”

The Italian looked at him seriously. “I'm right.” He stepped backward, slammed the door, spoke to the driver, “On your way, lucky.”

Crane's head hit the back window of the cab. Three blocks down the street the driver spoke. “Nice playmates you got.” Crane rubbed his head, asked, “Know the guy?”

“After the way he talked,” the driver said feelingly, “I wouldn't know him if he was my brother.”

They turned right on Michigan Avenue and nine blocks south they stopped in front of the Princess Hotel. Crane gave the driver a dollar. “If anybody wants to know, you let me off at the Sherman.”

“O.K., buddy.”

The Princess Hotel was also known as the South Side Riding Academy. It was twelve stories high and it looked as though there would be red bricks under its outer coating of soot and dirt. There was a green rug in the lobby, and the illumination was furnished by pink-shaded lamps of the kind that go with ninety-three-dollar living room suites for newlyweds. In a corner of the lobby the rug had been thrown back, and two slick-haired young men were tap dancing on the tile floor. One of them clapped his hands and cried:

“You're better than Fred Astaire, Angie.”

“Fred Upstairs,” said the other in a shrill voice.

They both laughed delightedly.

A big-bosomed blonde in a yellow silk dress was talking to the night clerk. “If my strip act's good enough for Minsky, I told him,” she was saying, “it's good enough for the Star and Garter.” A cigarette dangled from her lips.

Without lifting his elbows from the counter, the night clerk said to Crane, “Yes, sir?” He was tall and thin, and one of his front teeth was mottled.

At the woman's feet lay a brown Pomeranian, his tongue out, his breath coming in quarter-second pants. Crane avoided him, registered as Edwin Johnson, of Galesburg, Illinois, paid in advance for a two-dollar room. He felt the woman staring at him as he got into the elevator with the sleepy-eyed bellboy.

Windows in the room opened, the bellboy paused in the doorway. “Anything else, sir?” His pale face was sullen.

Crane lifted a twenty-dollar bill from his pigskin wallet. “How'd you like to earn this?”