Time Off for Murder (19 page)

  "Cut it out," said the Inspector sharply. "I ain't here to criticize the law, and you ain't neither. You're here to find out why he killed Phyllis Knight. Just that and nothing else. Get to work."

  "O.K. Is this clothing all MacKinoy's?" Mary pointed at the pile of men's apparel.

  The Inspector shrugged. "I wouldn't know."

  Mary fingered the garments. "Whoever it belonged to," she said, "he pampered himself. That's no bargain counter stuff. Those pajamas are ten dollars per in any store. We sell shirts like that - Blankfort's used to sell shirts like that - for five dollars each. The ties are imports…No, the stuff belonged to more than one man. This shirt's a size seventeen and a half, thirty-one sleeve - belongs to a thicknecked, short-armed man. The other's sixteen and a half neck, thirty-five sleeve man taller and a bit thinner, I'd guess. About MacKinoy's size. Two men's things. Why, yes." She held up two pairs of trousers, one of dark blue and one of gray. "One man was short and stubby, the other taller - not quite so heavy set…What's this?"

  The gray trousers dangled from her hand. There was a long, jagged rent in one leg, and near the cuff, a cluster of small, brown spots which might have been blood.

  "Where's the coat?" She dug into the pile of clothing. "Here…Here's the gray coat. No blood. But this." She pointed to the sleeve and shoulder. "Dirt and plaster dust…Maybe…Could it be? . . ." She placed the garments carefully on the bed. "Could it be that this was the suit that was worn by the man who carried Phyllis down those basement steps?"

  "Might be. Might be." The Inspector's eyes were alert. "Was it MacKinoy's? Tell you that in a minute."

  He draped the coat across the dead man's shoulders, stretched the sleeve from arm-pit to wrist.

  "Nope," he said ruefully. "Belongs to the short-arm guy, whoever he is…. Y'see what we got in all this stuff? We got the size of one of them other guys. How tall he was, how much he weighed. His hair on the collar - even some of his dandruff."

  "But it's strange," said Mary, "that the suit's still here. Phyllis was killed six months ago. If this suit was worn by her murderer - or at her murder - why wasn't it cleaned or destroyed? Six months is a long time to keep incriminating evidence around. It doesn't make sense."

  "Look here, Inspector." Johnny Reese had been down on his knees near the closet. "Something's been dragged across here. There's a track from the closet to the dresser. And heel prints alongside it."

  The Inspector shook his head. "Dragged across is right. But more'n one set of heel prints. Place has been a regular promenade." He whipped a magnifying glass from his pocket. He studied the tracks on the floor.

  "Same guy," he announced. "Same guy was in the kitchen. The small guy with narrow feet." He uncovered the dead man's feet. "Not them tootsies. This on the floor is a number seven or eight. No twelve D."

  Mary came back from the bathroom. She had a pink silk night-gown and a satin negligee, maribou edged, over her arm, and an amber comb, carefully held in her hand. "There's a full set of cosmetics inside," she announced. "A woman has been here."

  "Phyllis Knight?"

  "Phyllis wouldn't need the cosmetics. Or go for fancy negligees. But there's light-colored hair in this comb."

  "I'll take it. Here, in this envelope. Drop it easy." The Inspector's face bore a look of grim satisfaction. "We're sitting pretty," he crowed. "The whole works dropping right in our laps."

  The telephone on the bedside table rang. The Inspector picked up the receiver. "Heinsheimer, speaking. Yes, Seiffert. Mrs. MacKinoy's out, eh? Yeh, what'd the maid say? She went shopping, eh? Somebody ought to tip her off to buy black. A matinee, huh? Nobody knows what show? Yeh, you leave word she's to get in touch with me the minute she comes in. Nice kids, eh? Three little girls, eh? Don't say a word to 'em. Not a word. Izzat so? Riverside Drive. High class set-up. He didn't do it on his pay, that's sure. Oh, you looked in the bureau drawer. You're learning, Seiffert. And about time. The hell you say! Dough in every Savings Bank in town. Crummy with it, eh? I'll be damned…. No, I don't know how long I'll be here. I got plenty to do today…I got a big case, busting wide open."

  He hung up. He said curtly to the detectives, "MacKinoy's a rich man. He didn't make it pounding a beat…. Aw right, let's go in the kitchen."

  The fingerprint man had turned off the leaking tap.

  Mary sniffed. She said. "Light housekeeping, all right. Alcohol and coffee. No diet for full-grown men. That's why MacKinoy died young."

  The Inspector plunged his hands into the black mess in the ice bucket in the sink. He stirred the soggy ashes with exploratory fingers. "Here's something. 1t didn't burn." His blackened fingers held a tiny looseleaf notebook with hard leather covers. "Take it, Reese, till I rinse my flippers."

  Fire and water had attacked the little book, but had not vanquished it. The fire had blackened the pages; the water had soaked the blackness in, made the ink run, but Johnny Reese could decipher something still. "Telephone numbers," he said gleefully. "In Harlem. University. Monument. Edgecomb. Bradhurst. All the Harlem exchanges."

  "Take it along," the Inspector ordered. "The boys'll work on it after they dry it out. Rest of the stuff's mush. Fire and water do a good job…. O.K. Now, let's pick up the piano teacher and get down-town."

The Inspector shut his office door against the reporters. "No statement, boys. Nothing to say. Come back at eight o'clock."

  The hands on the big clock on his office wall had reached quarter past six.

  The lady and the janitor had returned to Seventy-first Street, sworn to silence, and pledged police protection. Their service to law and order and crime detection had been rendered in a melodramatic moment when Inspector Heinsheimer had spread a frieze of Rogues Gallery portraits on his desk.

  "Fine bunch of muggs. Ever see any of them before?"

  Miss Franzine had taken two steps toward the desk, three steps back. She had covered her eyes. "I can't," she had wailed. "I wouldn't dare."

  "Lady, you ain't gonna make it harder for all of us? Nobody'll know you said a word."

  Miss Franzine's dark eyes had roved the circle of photographs, then had stopped, narrowed. Her breath had quickened as her forefinger dropped on a picture.

  "That one. On the steps that night. He kicked my dog. That's the man."

  "The hell you say. Know who you're pointing at? Rockey Nardello. The big boy himself."

  The super had quivered like chocolate pudding.

  "Tha's Rockey? The big boy fum the numbahs? He been in mah house?…Hones' boss, Inspectuh, Ah'm tellin' you gawds hones' truf. Ah nevuh had no idee at all Rockey Nardello was livin' in mah house…." His eyes had been big and white as egg cups. "Y'ain't holdin' me for what he done, is y'all, boss? That man's low. Too low to be carryin' guts to a buzzard. Yessuh, boss. Solid is."

  When they had gone and the reporters had been sent away, Inspector Heinsheimer turned to the detectives, slumped wearily before his desk. "Go on. Drink your coffee," he commanded. "It's lunch. Supper. Miss C., eat that sandwich. What's the matter with it? Don't you like ham? Ain't
kosher,
are you? Can't live on coffee and cigarettes. O.K., then. Hand it over."

  He nipped the sandwich in half with a single bite.

  "Now listen, you two," he began, his words muffled by ham on rye, "the D.A. runs a big show last fall and sends Rockey Nardello up the river, but nothing comes out about MacKinoy or any other big shots. He leaves the dirt for us to dig up. And we find a flat that could be hide-out and business headquarters for the outfit. Now, you wanna know what I think? I think that woman lawyer spotted the layout and that's why she got bumped off."

  "Then why wasn't she - " Mary started to interrupt.

  "Don't butt in, Miss C. Sit still and listen to papa. Clancey came across handsome…. Not at fifty-nine All he got out of there was a couple of prints of some colored dame that got sent up in the Gordon raid. Name of Bessie Jackson. Got thirty days from the judge, but who knows where she is now? Couple of her prints on the underside of some of the plates. And that proves it, see. The dishes came from the house next door and the supper party came from the same place. Some guys that would just as lief not be seen by Flo's regular customers. Now, who wouldn't want to be seen? Well, a guy like MacKinoy, who's in good standing on the force and is doing business with the boys in the rackets. So I figure he could be chair number one at that supper party. And then we come to a guy like Rockey that's going on trial the next day and wouldn't want nobody to see him at Flo's place. He could be chair number two. And then that small guy that cleaned out the apartment. Maybe he's a feller that could easy be recognized. So he wouldn't want to be seen around Gordon's house in the evenings even if he was a friend of hers. But he could be chair number three. Now, get me straight. I figure MacKinoy's flat was a hang-out for the Nardello gang. Clancey got MacKinoy's prints off the gun and Rockey's prints off some of the bottles. And he got three guys that we know were working with Rockey: Conkey Zeisser and Frankie Storch and Milt Marks. Only Conkey's dead and Frankie and Milt are on the lam. And the Franzine woman recognized Rockey's picture. So we know for a fact that Rockey hung out with MacKinoy in that Seventy-first Street place, and if they were all pals together, why wouldn't they be going up to Flo Gordon's - her being a chum of Rockey's - for a snack and a talk, specially if Flo's got them fixed up with a private dining room next door."

  Mary said: "That would account for three of them. How about the fourth? And which one used the lipstick?"

  The Inspector frowned. "In a gang like that there could be one queer. Leave it be for now. I'll come back to it later. I want to get the rest of it off my chest. Now, Rockey's up the river. But New York ain't stopped playing policy just because the big cheese is in the cooler. Not by a damn sight. Rockey's organization is running. And one of Rockey's partners was in touch with MacKinoy. This guy - whoever he is - got a tip off that MacKinoy was going to kill himself, and he snapped right into it and beat it up to the flat, and cleaned it out of everything that could of given him away. A wise baby. Smart enough to keep his gloves on. Now, we don't know if he burned up the papers or if MacKinoy did, or if they were his things or MacKinoy's. But all the numbers in that little book that didn't get burned up are all stationery stores and pool rooms and grills in Harlem - the kind of places where they take the numbers. In MacKinoy's old precinct. Now the torn suit with the spots on the pants…That was made for a guy the size of Rockey Nardello. And the dirt and plaster on the shoulder of the coat checks all right with the wall of the basement of fifty-nine and if the spots on the pants turns out to be blood-stains, I'm willing to bet that the tough guy himself was the one carried the Knight dame down the steps and dumped her in the furnace. And he's been locked up since the middle of October, so that might account for him not cleaning up that suit. Now the
Ramon Allones
cigars. High class goods."

  "Sure," Johnny Reese interrupted. "Not too many guys smokes expensive cigars like that. But a half a dollar's no more'n a penny to a lad like Rockey."

  "Check. Let me do the talking, Reese, will you? Here's how it was: The Knight female has been sneaking around trying to find out what she can about the Nardello outfit. I don't know what her gag is, but maybe she figures if she can bring some important information to the D.A.'s office she'll get appointed an assistant and that ain't such a bad job, either. She might've heard some place that the Gordon woman that was running the house at fifty-seven was one of Rockey's working girls. She might've heard some place that Rockey sometimes came into the basement of fifty-nine, and she goes there to have a look-see. Only it's an awful dumb thing for her to do. Why don't she leave police business to the police? Or why don't she ask an officer to go in the building with her?" His shoulders and eyebrows rose together.

  "That's a woman for you," he went on. "Nobody ever knows what a woman's going to do or why she's going to do it. MacKinoy and Rockey and the little skinny guy and maybe another of Rockey's guerillas are sitting down to a party when the dumb dame breaks in. MacKinoy plugs her, rightaway, bang-bang." His thumb jerked on an imaginary trigger. "Or just as he's about to plug her, the vice squad pulls that raid on fifty-seven and Rockey grabs the girl and they keep her there a couple of weeks and then take her back to the other place and plug her and stick her in the furnace."

  He wriggled in his chair, prodding his cheek thoughtfully with his forefinger. "Cripes," he wailed, "I'm getting more bawled up every minute. Rockey was in jail all the last half of October and November and the girl was alive and writing letters the first week in November, and what she wrote them with came out of that box and that ink bottle in the Seventy-first Street flat. But anyway, she mailed the letters in Jersey, so she wasn't stuck in Seventy-first Street all the time. Unless somebody mailed 'em for her. And maybe the night-gown's hers. And maybe it ain't. But there's one thing sure." He ran through the papers on his desk. "Here's the lab report. The hair in the comb don't match the Knight woman's. It's red. Whaddya Call it? Henna. Home-made. Some sweetie of MacKinoy's, maybe. And MacKinoy would've had to be a bigger dope than one man could be, if he dragged that girl back to that other house to knock her off after Rockey was in trouble. And that's no way to do anyway, stick a girl up in a doorway and use her for target practice. And that party couldn't of been in that basement after the first of November because that's when the company shut off the electricity, and the girl was living on the third of November, anyways. Phew." Beads of sweat ringed his forehead and upper lip. "It's getting hot in here. Hotter'n ten dollars' worth of matches…. You build up a picture, and before you get it done, it's full of holes."