The Paul Cain Omnibus (38 page)

“The first I knew about that—that happening to Fritz,” she went on, “was about two-thirty Saturday morning. I’d been expecting Barbara all day and was worried. She and George and that big ape”—she pointed at the giant—“came in together. Barbara was hysterical. I put her to bed and tried to find out what had happened but she passed out, and then you called and told me Fritz had been murdered.”

She was silent a moment, staring at the floor; then she poured another drink and went back and sat down on the divan.

“Barbara was almost crazy when she woke up in a couple of hours but I finally got it out of her. She and George were coming down to my place together but they stopped here and started drinking and kept it up all afternoon. Barbara got paralyzed. She remembered it in flashes after that; she remembered George telling her they were going out and force Fritz to give her a divorce so he could marry her and then they picked up the ape someplace, and the next she remembered they were in front of the house and Fritz came out on the porch and George shot at him, twice… .”

Delavan turned and smiled at me a little. He put his gun on his lap and took out a cigarette and lighted it, settled back in the chair.

Maude sipped her drink, glanced swiftly at all of us, went on: “The next thing she knew they were all in the house and the ape was kicking the life out of Fritz and she was screaming her head off. A man she didn’t know—that was Raymond—appeared in the doorway suddenly and George shot him. Then she fainted, and when she came to they were halfway to Palm Springs. George and the ape brought her to my house and left.”

Someone knocked at the door and Delavan got up and opened it. The men he’d sent for were there and he told them to wait and closed the door and went back and sat down.

“We drove into town early and called George and he came out to the house.” Maude was speaking swiftly now, staring dully at Axiotes. “He gave us a long song and dance about not meaning to kill Fritz—that he was so drunk he didn’t know what he was doing, that sort of thing. Barbara fell for it—she’s crazy about him, anyway, and he worked on her sympathy and told her how much he loved her and how jealous he’d been of Fritz… . But I didn’t fall for it, and before he left we had a session by ourselves, downstairs. He got mad and spit out the whole thing… .”

Axiotes leaned forward slowly and put his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands. He hadn’t taken his eyes off Maude since she’d been talking.

She watched him dully. “He’d come out here to buy out Fritz and Finn and McLennon and a few more gamblers with big clienteles—or run them out, or get control of their business in any way he could. He didn’t say who he was acting for but intimated that it was someone big in the East. Fritz wouldn’t sell and when George met Barbara he made a big play for her thinking he’d be able to reach Fritz that way. When he found out Fritz and Barbara hadn’t been getting along for a long time he changed his plans and it worked out”—she gestured vaguely with her hands—“this way.”

She glanced swiftly at Delavan, then turned again to Axiotes.

“He told me the police were working on the theory that Raymond was the key to the whole business and that that was a great break for us. Us!—he talked about us all the time as if we were just as guilty as he! And he said if I didn’t play ball with him he’d see that Barbara was stuck as the instigator of the whole thing… .”

Maude laughed a little hysterically. “He’s a great convincer. He laid it on thick and I was scared. I told him Mrs Bergliot had hinted to me that she’d recognized Barbara’s voice and he said he’d take care of her with some money. I told him she wasn’t the kind of woman you could take care of that way and he wanted to know all about her and I said she was mixed up with some spiritualist cult on Larchmont. He took down the address and said he’d see what he could do about it… .”

Delavan said: “We picked up Cora Haviland, the leader of that outfit this evening. Axiotes gave her two thousand dollars to go into a trance and tell Bergliot the voice she’d heard was Myra Reid’s.”

Maude smiled faintly, went on: “Then he said you”—she nodded at me—“were the only other person he was worried about; that he thought you knew more than you were telling and he was having you followed. I guess when you went to see Amante he thought he’d better get rid of you quickly and they tried it when you were driving home. Barbara was asleep when George left and when she woke up I gave her a lot of Luminol and she slept through the afternoon and night. When she woke up Sunday morning I told her what George had said and she was scared to death, too. I wanted to tell you about it but she vetoed that. I think that in her heart she’s still in love with George… .”

Her eyes moved to Axiotes and the two of them stared silently, expressionlessly at each other for a moment. Then she turned back to me, went on swiftly, almost breathlessly:

“He called Sunday morning and said he was coming out, we were expecting him when you came in the afternoon; that’s the reason Barbara worked the gag about you shielding Myra Reid so hard—she was afraid George would come while you were there. He called later and said he couldn’t make it and she started drinking and she’s been at it ever since; I sobered her up enough to get to the funeral, but she started again as soon as it was over and insisted on coming here. And here we are.”

Maude finished her drink and put the glass down on the floor. “I guess that’s about all… .”

It was entirely quiet for a few moments. All of us were looking at Maude. Then the giant groaned and rolled over on his stomach and I heard something behind me and turned around. Barbara was standing in the bedroom doorway. She held a nickled revolver loosely in her right hand.

She said, “No—that isn’t all,” thickly.

She swayed suddenly and put her free hand up to steady herself and then her other hand tightened on the revolver and it roared five times with the tick-tock regularity of clockwork. I whirled and saw Axiotes half rise out of the chair and his body jerk as the last two slugs went into it; then he sank slowly back and his surprised face went loose and soft and his head sank forward to his chest.

Delavan was standing with his gun focused on Barbara but as I watched he lowered it, and maybe I imagined it but I thought he smiled a very little. Maude sat staring dumbly at Barbara, and the other man—the t.b.—had jumped up and backed against the wall.

Someone pounded on the door.

Barbara went down suddenly; the revolver dropped from her hand and her knees gave way and she slumped down in the doorway, sobbing.

The giant groaned again and rolled over and sat up groggily.

Delavan crossed to the door and opened it, said: “Come in, boys.”

The doctor tightened the last stitch and snipped off the ends of the gut.

Delavan said: “Hollberg’s been under Axiotes’ thumb for a month; he was afraid to do anything without an okay. Axiotes made him call you tonight and ask you over to the bungalow. Holl­berg thought he was putting the finger on you but Axiotes figured he’d kill two birds with one automatic rifle.”

The doctor finished and helped me put my coat on and Delavan and I went out to his car. We drove out Sunset a little ways and then I said:

“The only thing that doesn’t fit in is the business on Crescent Heights Boulevard when they tried to get me. How could Axiotes be so sure I smelled a rat that early in the game? I’d already been to see Amante and it seems to me Axiotes would figure I’d already spilled whatever I knew and could be counted out.”

Delavan didn’t answer. In a few minutes we pulled up in front of my place and I got out and asked him to come up for a drink.

He grinned at me silently for a moment and then he asked: “Have you ever taken a good look at my car?”

I shook my head and stepped back a couple steps and looked at it. It was a dark blue Buick roadster with a cream-colored top and cream-colored tire covers.

Delavan was watching me and suddenly he threw his head back and laughed until I thought he was going to bust a lung. He finally quieted down enough to sputter:

“I was sure you knew a lot more than you gave out when you and Amante and I had lunch; one of my men picked me up afterwards and we followed you.”

I leaned against the door of the car and said: “Oh.” There wasn’t anything else to say.

Delavan had calmed down to a broad smile.

“We hadn’t gone more than five or six blocks before we knew we weren’t alone,” he went on—“there was another car following you and pretty soon they spotted us and ducked up a side street. They disappeared while I was deciding which one to follow and, anyway, they had us pegged so we kept on after you. I was sure you had some kind of an inside but I was afraid you’d lay down on it, and it suddenly occurred to me that if I threw a scare into you or made you mad you wouldn’t lay down—you’d give us some action… .”

He chuckled some more and pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his eyes.

“The fella with me was Ormiston, who is one of the best shots in our outfit, so I changed seats with him and when you turned off on Crescent Heights I told him to let you have it close enough to look good without mussing up the car too much.”

I said, “Oh,” again.

“Then a couple blocks further along Ormiston jumped out and hailed a cab, and when you came along he tailed you to the drug store and went into the next booth and heard you call Myra Reid and Amante. I’ve been following your leads ever since—that’s all I had to go by. I’ve had men tailing your men—the two you’ve had on Bergliot and Axiotes—”

I cleared my throat and tried to look intelligent, interrupted: “And me?”

He nodded. “Uh-huh—and you.”

I felt like two cents but there wasn’t anything I could do about it but laugh with him. I said: “The least you can do, under the circumstances, is come up and have a drink.”

Harry was waiting. He yelped: “Hollberg has a fifty-fifty chance.” He turned to Delavan. “Your boys lost ’em.”

We told him we’d found ’em and I sketched the business at Axiotes’ for him.

The three of us had quite a few drinks. Delavan called up his headquarters and said he was cleaning up some very important evidence in the Kiernan case and he didn’t leave till about one-thirty.

Harry and I had a nightcap and talked it all over and then I went to bed and had a beautiful dream. It was mostly about the expression on Amante’s face when he heard the news.

L
efty Bowman and I played Spit-in-the-Ocean to see who’d take whose vacation when. I won, or maybe I lost—I forget which. Anyway, I took the last two weeks in July. I spent a week in Bermuda and a couple of days in Havana, got back to town on the twenty-ninth. The Old Man met me at the dock and on the way uptown told me all about the Castell business.

It was the biggest lick of its kind in twenty years. On the night of the twenty-first a collection of unset emeralds had been stolen from the safe of Castell Ltd, in London. There wasn’t anything to work on, or if there was Scotland Yard hadn’t found it; the stones had simply disappeared. The insurance company that carried the policy had offered a reward of twenty thousand pounds and its American office had called in the Old Man the day before I got back.

It seems someone in the London office had a big highly polished hunch the stuff had been rushed to the States, and a half-dozen assorted English sleuths were on their way to New York.

Our firm—the Old Man was it, Lefty and I just worked for him—handled more insurance cases than anything else and had a pretty swell reputation—as reputations of confidential investigating outfits go.

When the Old Man stopped for breath I suggested that he get to the point—what angles did we have to work on? He said there weren’t any angles. I asked him if he meant we were to go to work with nothing but the fact that somebody in England had a hunch a million dollars’ worth of stolen emeralds were somewhere in America, and he said yes.

I told him what I thought, and he asked since when did we need facts to work on? We’d find our own facts.

I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to get a lead. I went to the branch of the insurance company and talked to a British gent named Wister who had less to say, for his size, age, and weight, than any insurance man I ever saw. I called up a few people who might have bright ideas where anything as hot as the Castell stuff might be, if there was enough money in it. Maybe a thirty-three and a third percent split on twenty thousand pounds wasn’t enough money; none of them had anything to say, and said it very emphatically. I got down to the Immigration Bureau at about four-thirty and after wading through several acres of red tape I got a list of everyone who’d come in from England during the past few days. There were two names in the lot that meant something—maybe.

One of them, Lina Ornitz, ran a restaurant on upper Broadway. She’d been born and raised in London, spent most of her mature life in one or another English prison. In the year of 1932, in her badly preserved late fifties, she’d married a Russian with a couple of thousand dollars and they’d come to New York and opened the restaurant. There hadn’t been a reputable British crook in the last thirty years that Lina didn’t know and have some kind of line on. And she’d been visiting England! She’d left New York on the tenth of July and returned on the twenty-eighth.

It was a little after seven when I got off the subway and walked up Broadway to the restaurant. Ornitz was sitting behind the cigar counter. He grunted, “Hello, Mister Keenan.” He weighed about two-ninety in his sock feet and didn’t stand around more than he could help. I asked for Lina.

He said she was home, he expected her in a few minutes.

For eleven years I’ve made it my business to know people like the Ornitzes—know them pretty well. I said I’d go on over to the flat. They lived about a block and a half away, between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue.

Ornitz said: “Maybe you’ll miss her.” He picked up the telephone. “I’ll see if she’s left.”

I sat down at the counter and ordered a bowl of cold borscht and he dialed a number, waited a minute, said:

“Hello, Lina… . Mister Keenan is here to see you… . Uh-huh—how long? … All right, I tell him.” He hung up. “She’s leaving now. She’ll be here in a couple minutes.”

I finished my borscht, waited. I told Ornitz I’d heard Lina had been away and he beamed and told me how good business had been and how Lina had been able to afford a trip back to England to visit her folks. I’d already figured out that on the ship she’d crossed on she couldn’t’ve had more than six days in London. When I asked Ornitz how long Lina had been away he grinned and said: “Not even three weeks. She got homesick.”

We talked about this and that for another ten minutes. Lina didn’t show. I finally said: “I guess she got stuck. I’ll go on over and see what’s keeping her.”

Ornitz shrugged, mumbled something about the undependability of women. I paid my check and went over to the flat. I knocked several times but no one answered so I tried the door, pushed it open, yelled, “Hey! Is anybody home?” There was still no answer; I crossed the living room to the kitchen. Lina Ornitz was lying face down on the kitchen floor with the handle of an ice pick sticking out of the left side of her back, a little below the shoulder blade.

She was very dead. I called Nick Moore at the precinct station and called Ornitz and told him something had happened and that he’d better come home. Then I looked around.

The back door was unlocked, led to a rickety stair, an alleyway running to the street; there was a half-full flask of Chianti on the kitchen table, one stained glass; there were a dozen or so telephone numbers scrawled haphazardly in pencil on the wallpaper around the telephone. I made a list of all that were legible.

I’d just finished a swift but fairly neat check on the contents of most of the drawers and closets when Ornitz puffed in. I sat him down in the living room and broke the news as gently as I could. I was getting into my stride on who’d want to liquidate Lina, why she’d gone to England, and a few leading questions like that when Nick Moore wandered in with a plainclothesman and a cop.

I told Nick about coming to pay a social call and finding Lina, and turned Ornitz over to him. I figured his “Who done it?” technique was better than mine and I had a hunch Ornitz was just as dumb as he sounded, anyway—and just as innocent. He didn’t know what it was all about—any of it. He just sat with his mouth open and shook his head. I told Nick I’d call him later and checked out.

As I crossed Ninety-first Street diagonally toward Amsterdam Avenue a dark blue Buick coupé roared out from the curb, missed me by a hair. A slug ripped through my left coatsleeve and thudded into the side of a parked car. The blue coupé melted into traffic before I could spot the number.

A couple of men ran out of a delicatessen and stood on the curb arguing about whether one of them had heard a shot or not. I took off my coat and folded it and carried it over my torn shirtsleeve.

* * *

I dropped in on Jack Gordean at the Martinez on the way downtown. His was the second possibly warm name I’d found on the passenger lists; he’d come in from London on the twenty-seventh. He was a big-time gambler and the only thing that might tie him up with the Castell case was the fact that he was lousy with money and had a decided taste for shady, and profitable, investments. I thought maybe he’d branched out into emeralds but after about five minutes I decided he hadn’t. In this business you get so you can make a damned good guess about things like that after you talk to a guy.

Jack and I had a couple beakers of Scotch and then I went back to my hotel and called Lina’s numbers. The first one turned out to be a wholesale grocer and the second was Ornitz’s Aunt Sadie: they ran like that till I got to number eight. That one was familiar. I looked through my address book, found it—it was the branch office of the Burke-Reynolds Insurance Company. I’d jotted it down while I was waiting to see Mister Wister. I tried the rest of the numbers but none of them meant anything.

The Old Man called and I told him I had a fair lead. He said what makes you think so and I told him for one thing Lina Ornitz had been murdered the day after she got back from London, and for another thing the sleeve of my practically new suit had been ripped by a bullet and I’d need another.

He said: “That’s fine. Now we’re getting somewhere.”

When I finished talking to the Old Man the telephone girl called and said a man named Dekker had called while my line was busy, said he’d call again in a few minutes. I couldn’t place the name.

I was too tired. I took a shower and put on some clean clothes and went down to the bar, told the telephone girl to page me if Mister Dekker called again.

* * *

I was getting a running start on my Planter’s Punch when a man sat down on the next stool, smiled sidewise and said:

“I am Hans Dekker. I hope you will forgive my dropping in so informally.”

He was short and round. His head was too big for his body and his round face was like a cake with pink icing, his round China-blue eyes popped in an almost perpetual stare. He moved his fat hands nervously on the bar, said softly:

“I have reason to believe that you are interested in recovering some stolen emeralds.”

His voice was very low, velvety; his accent very precise.

I took a long drink. “We can help each other a great deal,” he went on.

“I know where they are. You, most certainly, will never find them without my help.”

I waited, but he stared at his hands and was silent.

“In the first place,” I said, “who are you, and in the second place, what makes you think I’m interested in stolen emeralds?”

He shrugged slightly, smiled slightly. “I have been so informed.” He took a thick green cigar out of his vest pocket, bit off the end and lighted it.

I said: “And what about the first place?”

“I am Hans Dekker. I am in the jewelry business.” His smile widened. “If you are wondering whether I have been in England lately, I have not. I came to this country from Amsterdam three years ago and I have not been back.”

I said: “Drink?”

He shook his head.

I looked at him for a minute and then said: “I don’t suppose you might, by some strange coincidence, know a woman named Lina Ornitz?”

His eyes were thoughtful, opaque. He shook his head slowly.

“Or drive a blue Buick coupé?” I went on.

“No.” He turned squarely toward me and his head moved slowly, negatively from side to side.

I said: “What’s your proposition?”

“What is yours?” He smiled again.

“You get a third of the reward money.” I told the bartender to whip me up another Planter’s Punch. “That will amount to about thirty-three thousand, three-hundred dollars.”

“That is not enough.”

I said: “I work for a living. That’s all I can offer. If you want more I’ll have to talk to my boss.”

He shrugged. “I want half.”

I sipped my fresh drink, took a chance. “Why don’t you get ’em by yourself? Then you’ll get the whole twenty thousand pounds.”

He shrugged again, very elaborately, slid off the stool.

I said, “Wait a minute,” and went to the phone and called the Old Man and told him about it. He said to offer him half and my right eye, as long as we got the stones. I didn’t tell him the Dutchman had fallen into my lap; it was just as well for him to think I’d ferreted it all out. He asked where he could meet us and I said I didn’t know yet, I’d call him back.

I went back to the bar and said: “You’ve made a deal.”

Dekker grinned so broadly it looked like his throat was cut and bellowed: “Good! Now we have a drink.”

We had two. I stuck to rum and he drank straight gin. I tried to get him to talk but he would only smile and shake his head and say: “Wait.”’

He insisted upon paying for his round. I walked outside with him and he said he’d meet me at the corner of Eighth Street and Tenth Avenue at a little after eleven and got into a cab. I went in to the desk and wrote down the number of the cab so I could get a line on him in case he didn’t show, then I looked up Wister’s home telephone number, called.

A woman answered, said: “Mister Wister is not in. This is Mrs Wister—may I take a message?” You could cut her English accent with a can opener.

I told her who I was and she asked me to wait a minute, then Wister came on, snapped:

“Hello, Mister Keenan—what can I do for you?”

I said I’d like to see him for a few minutes if it wasn’t too much trouble.

He said: “Certainly! Come right on over.”

The Wisters lived in a big apartment house on East Sixty-third. Mrs Wister opened the door; she was one of those sleek, shiny-eyed, unmistakably London gals with a mouthful of broad a’s. She asked me to sit down and disappeared.

Wister came in in a minute, shook hands. He said: “Well, Mister Keenan—any news?”

I nodded. “Uh-huh. Quite a lot. Have you heard about Lina Ornitz?”

He hesitated a split second too long, wrinkled his forehead and stared at me thoughtfully.

“Ornitz? I don’t believe I remember the name.”

I said: “That’s funny. They found your telephone number in her flat.”

He did a beautiful job of trying to remember, blurted suddenly: “Oh, yes—that’s the woman who rang me up this afternoon, wanted some additional information about the reward.” He smiled easily. “Had never heard of her before.”

It was half hunch, half wild guess; I took a long jump in the dark.

I said: “I’m afraid you’ll hear a lot more of her. The police are on their way to arrest you for her murder.”

It was entirely still for about ten seconds; neither of us moved nor spoke. Then Mrs Wister came in through the doorway that led to the rear of the apartment. She was holding a small blue automatic very steadily, waist high in front of her. Wister stood up.

I figured I might as well go the limit, went on: “And they picked Dekker up a little while ago. He squawked bloody murder—he’s
still
talking.”

Wister yelped suddenly: “Dekker killed the Ornitz woman. She was going to bring the stones in and then backed out at the last minute! Dekker was afraid she’d squeal!”

Mrs Wister was staring at me expressionlessly. She snapped, “Shut up, John,” out of the side of her mouth and then went on as if she were talking to herself: “I think this bastard is lying… .”

I grinned. I said: “You said it, sister—I was guessing. The Law doesn’t know anything about it yet, but they’ll have to before long. I don’t think you had anything to do with Lina’s murder. I came here to give you a head start. There’s nothing in my contract that says anything about pinching anybody. All I want are the emeralds and the hundred grand Burke-Reynolds will pay for them.”