Time Off for Murder (18 page)

  The janitor, dozing forlornly on the couch, jumped as his title was called.

  "You. What's your name?"

  "Johnson, Inspectuh. Ellsworth Johnson."

  "Y'live on the premises?"

  "Yessuh, boss. In the basement. Me an' mah wife."

  "O.K., O.K. What do you know about this man MacKinoy? McCabe - whatever you call him? What do you know about him and the other two that lived here with him? What were their names?"

  The janitor scratched his woolly head. "Ah don' have the lees' idea, boss. Ah don' b'lieve ah evuh heah they names. No suh, boss, ah don' have no dealin's here wid nobody on'y Mist' McCabe…. He the one done pay me mah rent."

  "Didn't they have their names on the letter-box?"

  "O'ny one name on the bell, boss. Mist' McCabe…. Maybe they's all name' McCabe. Same name as him."

  "What did they look like?"

  The super rubbed his nose. "Ah disremembuh, boss. They's all gen'mun. Tha's all ah know."

  "Tall? Short? Fat? Thin?"

  "Ah kain't tell you, boss, at all. Ah disremembuh eff ah evuh see them. This yere's a walk-up house, boss. Ever' tenant has he's own key to the doah downstairs. An ef they don' bothuh the supuh, he don't have to bothuh with them. They ain't nevuh bothuh me none, an' Ah don' bothuh them."

  "Then how'd you know there were two others?" Mary asked.

  The janitor looked offended. "He tol' me. Mist' McCabe, he done tol' me whin he done took the place. Fo' him an' he's two friends. Travelin' salesmen, he say they is."

  "What'd they sell?" Mary demanded. "Poker chips?"

  "Looks like it," the Inspector agreed. "Now, see here, Johnson, did these men have many visitors? Other men coming to see them? Or women? Did the neighbors ever complain about noise or loud talking?"

  "Ah don' know, boss. Nevuh had no complaints about 'em."

  "Think they were running a game up here, Inspector?" Johnny Reese suggested.

  "Could be. Anything's possible in a walk-up. Nobody knows who comes and goes. Who has the other apartments on this floor, Johnson?"

  "Mist' Weinstein. Him an' his wife has A. Ain't nobody livin' in B at all. C is this yere one. And D. That's next do'. Miss Franzine, she live nex' do'. She the one mek the noise. She got a dawg. She got a poll parrot. An' she give lessons on the piano."

  "Let's get them in here," the Superintendent commanded. "Not the dog and the parrot. The neighbors. Bring 'em in."

  Detective Reese went out to ring the doorbells.

  Mr. and Mrs. Weinstein did not answer their bell, but Miss Franzine needed no urging. She was ready and waiting in the knot of interested by-standers. She came in trippingly, bringing with her the decadent scent of gardenias, and a hostess gown of violently striped magenta. She was sallow and scrawny and with a straight, long, black bob, bangs across a convex forehead, and dark rings, mascara abetted, under her eyes. She looked about her with pleasure-tinged curiosity, sniffed, flashed a gold-flecked smile.

  "You'll have to excuse me, gentlemen…. My costume, I mean. I hadn't time to get into my things. Oh, a woman!" She stared at Mary Carner. She beamed. "Are you the wife? A lady detective? You're a detective! How thrilling! I always wanted to be a lady detective…. He's dead isn't he? Is it murder?" She jiggled with excitement.

  "Sorry to disappoint you, lady," the Inspector growled. "Only suicide. Sit down." He motioned to one of the squashy armchairs.

  Miss Franzine sat down gingerly, eyeing the dust on the chair. "Where is he? In the bedroom? Can I go in?"

  "You certainly can not," the Inspector said. "This ain't no sight-seeing excursion. You're here to answer a question or two."

  Miss Franzine pursed her lips. "You've got the wrong person," she said with hauteur. "I don't know anything."

  The Inspector hitched up his coat sleeves as if he were going to work. "We'll see about that," he said "You live next door, don't you?"

  "I do."

  "Then you're the one can tell us about the people who occupied this apartment."

  Miss Franzine folded her hands in her lap. "I don't know a thing," she repeated. "Not a single thing."

  "Now, look here, Miss, Madam. What'd you say your name was?"

  "Franzine. Rita Franzine.
Miss
Franzine."

  "O.K.,
Miss
Franzine. You don't have to get tough with us. We're officers of the law, doing our duty. And you're a citizen, see. And it's the duty of the citizen to help the officers of the law whenever they can." The Inspector's tone was truculent. "We asked you in to find out a few simple things. You're an intelligent woman, I know y'are. I can see it."

  Miss Franzine melted. She exhibited her gold inlays again, but she pouted. "I don't know anything, officer, really I don't. I didn't hear or see a thing today. Not till I heard the police sirens. I never pay attention to what my neighbors are doing. I'm a very busy woman. You can't imagine how much I have to do. My pupils. My dog. My parrot…. My apartment."

  "Didn't you ever see these people in here? Don't you even know what they looked like?"

  "Why no, officer…I don't really." Miss Franzine posed a blue veined band against her chin. "I don't believe I ever saw them…. Well, not very often. Oh, yes. Let me see. There was one time. Last fall. I was going out with the dog in the evening. It wasn't very late. I passed three men on the steps. They brushed right by me. Why, one of them almost knocked me over. And without an apology, either. Just rushed right by and unlocked this door. One of them almost tripped over my dog. Kicked the poor little thing. But Skippy's so sweet. He's so friendly. The poor little thing just sniffed and wagged his tail. He's so good."

  "Your dog wagged his tail when these men rushed by?" Mary said. "Could that mean he recognized any one of them?"

  "Oh, no. He never saw them before. Nobody ever saw them. Oh, I used to hear voices here. Rather late at night. Once in a while when I was going down stairs or coming up in the evening, I heard the radio going, or the telephone ringing. And, oh yes, some evenings there'd be quite a few men coming up to the apartment. Not lately. Not so many as there were before the winter. And now that I think of it, some of them were colored men, too. Nice looking colored men. Well dressed."

  "You're a help, Miss Franzine," the Inspector said sincerely. "You don't know how much of a help you really are." He patted her arm.

  "Oh it's nothing. Nothing at all," Miss Franzine tittered. Color came into her sallow cheeks. "All I've told you is that my dog wagged his tail at them and colored men came to call here."

  "Colored men, eh? Colored? Johnson!" Inspector Heinsheimer turned to the janitor. "Do you play the numbers?"

  First, blank surprise, then, wariness spread over the super's face. "No suh, boss. Ah don' play no numbahs."

  "I wouldn't believe that, even if it was true."

  "Ah swear it, boss. Ah don' play no numbahs…Solid don't. Don' know nothin' 'bout no numbahs…."

  "Never played policy in your life?"

  "Nevah's a long time, boss. Ah won't say ah nev' play in all mah life. No suh, boss, that ain't the truf. But ah don't play now. No moh. Ah knows it's agin the law, ah do."

  "But you know there is such a game, don't you?"

  "Sho, boss." The super breathed more freely. "Ev'body knows that. Rockey Nardello, he run the numbahs up in Harlem. He run ever' kind of racket. He in jail now fo' runnin' numbahs. Ev'body know that."

  "Rockey Nardello," Mary Carner said. "I never heard a more persistent name. Wherever we turn in this investigation, that man's name pops up."

  Johnny Reese broke in. "MacKinoy used to be in Harlem, didn't he?"

  "That's right."

  "Harlem's where Rockey made his dough. Harlem's where everybody plays the numbers. Right?" Johnny persisted.

  "Yessuh, boss." The super wagged his head. "Ev'body's fooling around wid Lady Luck up in Ha'lem."

  "O.K. I get what you're driving at, Reese," the Inspector said. "MacKinoy was a businessman. Played along with the Nardello racket." He looked again at the letter to the policeman's widow. "Wouldn't surprise me. Wouldn't surprise me at all. All that surprises me is that the D.A.'s office didn't bring it out in the trial." He raised one shoulder. "Who'm I to tell the D.A. his business? He was after Rockey. Rockey alone. That served his purpose." He lifted a telephone on the table, dialed the headquarters number once more. "Get out all the photos you have of the Nardello gang. I'll have somebody down to look at them." He turned back to the group in the living room. "That's what we'll do. We'll take the little lady and the janitor down-town to get a look at them. See if they recognize any of the muggs."

  Miss Franzine hunched her thin shoulders. She shuddered. "Oh, I'd rather not, officer. I wouldn't dare to." She clapped her hand over her mouth. "Oh, this is dreadful. It isn't safe…Why, it isn't even safe for me to stay here. I ought to move right out. I could break my lease here, couldn't I?"

  "Now, now. Take it easy, lady." The Inspector patted her shoulder reassuringly. "Nobody's gonna hurt you. Y'see, that's the way it is." He sounded aggrieved. "Citizens too scared to co-operate with the police. Now, lady," he looked benevolent but he spoke sternly. "Don't go losing your nerve. It's your duty as a citizen to help the police apprehend a criminal. You go get yourself a coat and hat. We won't take much of your time. A ride down-town. A coupla minutes at Headquarters and you're done. You got no choice, lady…. Don't you worry. You'll be perfectly safe."

  Yet as he reassured the timid spinster, Mary Carner kept thinking. "Phyllis was just a citizen trying to help the law. How safe was she?" The pit of her stomach tightened. She said: "Inspector, isn't there anyone else beside this woman? Any other tenants in the house who might have seen these people?"

  "Oh, sure. Sure. We'll get to 'em all. What about the others on the floor - across the hall, Reese?"

  "Nobody home."

  The fingerprint man came out of the kitchen, snapping his equipment bag shut. "All done, Inspector," he said. "That kitchen was quite a job. Those bottles. Raised some prints from some of them. Want me to take those chips and cards down-town?…You staying up here a while?…O.K. I'll call you back just as soon as I've got something. Let's have the phone number."

  Mary bent over the table to read the digits on the telephone dial for Clancey. Her elbow brushed the box of notepaper. She turned it over, opened it. The Inspector glanced at the box. "Oh, that," he said casually. "That must be where he got the paper for his letters. Dime store stuff, ain't it?"

  Mary nodded. "Clancey, will you take this downtown? It's all right for me to give him instructions, isn't it, Inspector? Will you have them get the Missing Persons File on Phyllis Knight? Take out the two letters she wrote last November, and compare the paper. Here, take the ink-bottle along, too. Compare the inks."

  The Inspector grimaced. "I don't see how I missed up on that."

  Mary said: "I've been on this case a half year longer than you, Inspector. Phyllis' own stationery was an expensive, grayish-blue paper. The letters she sent were on cheap white paper. Paper like this. I wonder." Her eyes brightened. "Oh, say, it's possible. It's more than possible. Maybe this is the place. Why, certainly, Phyllis could have been kept in this apartment for two weeks, for more than two weeks."

  Her glance circled the room, halted at the bars of sunlight, striping the table, the floor. "It suggests a prison," she said. "This room might have been her prison." She turned to Miss Franzine. "You were living here last fall," she said. "Have you any recollection of seeing or hearing a woman in this apartment?"

  Miss Franzine shook her head decisively. "No, I didn't. I never pay any attention to anybody else's affairs." But her eyes had widened. "Did you say a woman was kept prisoner up here - right next door to me? Not really, not really…."

  "I didn't say. I asked. Johnson, would you remember? Please try to think - a woman's voice, or any woman's things in the refuse from this apartment?"

  The super's head wagged slowly back and forth. "Ah nevuh see no woman up here. Ah solid don't. Ah nevuh see nothin' on'y Mist' McCabe whin he give me the rent."

  But the Inspector nodded approvingly. "You got something there, Miss Carner. What do you say we go inside and look around now?"

  Miss Franzine rose with him. "No, not you, Miss. You go over your place and put on your duds." He called a policeman, whispered: "Go with the dame. See she don't duck…O.K. Let's toss the bedroom first."

  A sheet had been drawn over the sleeping face of the dead policeman; his arms folded over his chest. The Medical Examiner had pushed the haberdashery back into a heap at the foot of the bed.

  The Inspector raised the sheet. The detectives looked down at the pale, handsome, slumbering face.

  "Mouth's shut," the Inspector complained. "Not another word out of him."

  Johnny Reese held his hat against his chest in the instinctive, reverential gesture of men in the presence of death. "I can't help it," he said solemnly. "I feel sorry for the guy."

  The Inspector raised his eyebrows. "A son-of-a-gun like that! Murderer. Disgrace to the force. Disgrace to his family…."

  Mary said quietly. "A man's innocent till he's proven guilty."

  "Softie. He's guilty all right. Else why'd he wanna do that? And serves him right. A guy like him. With a good future. Messing around with crooked stuff."

  "There's temptation," Mary said. "When the law makes crimes out of the things that people like to do - things like gambling, playing policy - somebody's going to find a cop who loves money, to help cheat the law."