Tough as Nails: The Complete Cases of Donahue From the Pages of Black Mask (51 page)

Overhill, a blonde man with big ears, a Roman nose and a wicked pair of eyes, said: “There you are, Donahue,” and kicked shut a desk drawer upon which his foot had been propped. He scanned some sheets, leaned back and made a pyramid of his fingers.

“Well, Kelly, what’s the dope?”

“Donny’s in the dark.”

Overhill planted his elbows on the desk. “You knew this man, Donahue. You were riding with him and the cock-and-bull story you handed Kelly doesn’t go over—not at all. Now I’m not here to waste my time or patience on a private dick. I don’t want a song and dance. I want to get the guys that killed him and I want to recover a certain amount of money. This Stromson cached about twenty thousand before he was imprisoned. He got it when he came out and these two heels went after him to get it. He hired you—”

Donahue broke in: “As for wasting time, Inspector, mine’s as important to me as yours is to you. Kelly went over all that and I told him what I’m telling you: I never saw this guy before until I picked him out of the gutter tonight.”

“You’re lying, Donahue.”

“Did you get me down here to pinch me?”

Overhill frowned. “Of course not. I got you down—”

“I know—to hand me a lot of crap. Well, keep it. Any time something happens within a hundred blocks of where I happen to be, you damned blockheads get me down here and put on an act. I’m getting fed up on it!” He glared. “And if I’m lying, you prove it. You go ahead and prove that I knew this bird, that I was acting as his bodyguard when he was bumped off. Prove it! And when you prove it, get out a warrant for my arrest or a subpoena as a material witness—”

“Here, here!” Overhill said. “Don’t get all steamed up—”

“Oh, don’t get all steamed up! Maybe I should take it as an honor!”

McPard shook his head. “Tsk, tsk! All over nothing. We’re just your friends, Donny—”

“Oh, yeah!” Donahue said, nodding his head. “Yeah. Like”—he drew a forefinger across his throat—“this.”

He pivoted and strode to the door.

“Hey,” Overhill said, “where you going?”

But Donahue did not reply. The door banged after him.

Overhill shrugged. “No use, Kelly. We haven’t anything on him. He knows it.”

Kelly McPard smiled whimsically and rosebuds bloomed on his cherubic cheeks. “Some day, Ed… some day I’m going to make Donny say Uncle.”

When Donahue sailed into his apartment the first thing he noticed was that the bedroom door was open. The next thing he noticed was that the bed had not been slept in.

The girl was not there.

Both bags were gone—the suitcase and Charlie’s handbag.

His eyes brown and hard, he cruised around the apartment. There was no sign of a struggle. Nothing was overturned, no rugs had been scuffled. He stopped in the center of the living-room and his thoughts went round and round. She had listened, heard Kelly and himself talking. Afterwards she had slipped out. No note of thanks, no note of explanation.

The phone rang and he answered it. “No, don’t send it up. I’ll be right down.”

The clerk at the desk was mysterious when Donahue confronted him downstairs. “A lady left this letter for you with instructions that I should give it to no one but you.” He smiled. “She emphasized—‘no one but Mr. Donahue.’”

“What time was that?”

“About forty minutes ago.”

“Thanks, Herbert. You’re a great guy.”

He walked to a corner of the lounge and opened the letter beneath a shaded wall light. It read:

Dear Mr. Donahue:

I heard the conversation between you and that man. He was a detective, I guess. I am sorry. I wanted to open the door and tell him you were innocent but I was afraid. I am taking the bags to the Penn Station. I thought that I better get Charlie’s bag out of your apartment in case some policemen came back. I will wait at the information booth in the station until midnight, in case you come back. Then you can come over and tell me what to do. If you don’t come, I will check the bag and throw away the check. I don’t want it. Then I will take the first train home I can get. The way you talked to that man, I know you would not want me to show up. But I am very grateful to you for everything.

Laura.

He crumpled the letter and stuffed it into his pocket. She had used her head, taking the bag out. But—he cursed—it would be like her to throw away the money! He stalked out of the hotel, hailed a taxi and climbed in. Ten minutes later he climbed out at Penn Station and made his way to the information booth. She was not there. He looked all around, ventured into the waiting-room, came back to the information booth. He sought out every nook in the station, re-covered the waiting-room and returning to the information booth stood with his hands in his pockets and regarded the floor darkly.

It began to occur to him that his position was not as secure as he had felt it to be when he walked out of Overhill’s office. Certain people had seen him take the girl into the hotel earlier that evening. The clerk was a good fellow, but the cops could make him talk. If she turned up a corpse, they would be able to get a fair likeness of her for the tabs. Certain people in the hotel would recognize her….

He shook his head, made a sound in his throat and strode long-legged out of the station. He stood for a moment on the curb, the wind hooting and clapping about him. A cab drew up.

“Taxi?”

Donahue said: “Maybe that’s a good idea.” He climbed in and said: “Sheridan Square.”

He leaned back, his hands way down in his pockets and his shoulders hunched. The more he thought of it, the less he liked it. He took the letter out of his pocket, tore it up into little bits and let them fly out the window. He did not go quite as far as Sheridan Square.

“Stop here,” he said, and got out at Hudson Street and West Tenth.

He made his way slowly down West Tenth Street, bending his head into the wind that blew from the river. He was frank with himself. No mock heroics. The guy with the death gurgle in his throat asked you to do something, and like a sap you did it. The girl turned out to be a pop-eyed little thing from the sticks. You broke the news to her as gently as you could. You didn’t have to be gentle about it, but you were, anyhow. Then you felt relieved: it was simple, and you’d put her on the train back, tomorrow, brush your hands together and—finish. Hell!——you would. The yellow handbag turns out to be a plant, the girl is more shocked than you are. You still are able to get over that. “Take this dough, little one, go home and bury it for another five years. Then use it.” But then Kelly had to turn up….

No. No mock heroics. Not tonight. Not now, especially. There was one thing essential, paramount, vital: this girl must not turn up a corpse. Not under any circumstances must the cops find her; not alive, if possible, certainly not dead. So Donahue was frank with himself. He was not being gallant—not now. He was intent on saving his skin, his license to operate, his sense of superiority born of his always having been on the right side of the fence when the cops got gay. When you got right down to it, the girl as a personality meant nothing to him; she was significant only for the fact that her death would bring the cops down on him. And, he reflected, a girl wandering around with almost fifteen thousand dollars was certainly a potential corpse.

He recognized the glow of the areaway speakeasy across the street. He moved on, and in a minute he saw the fire-hydrant. He continued to the end of the block, crossed to the southeast corner and came back up West Tenth on the south side of the street. By this time he had his gun in his overcoat pocket, his fingers gripping it loosely.

He remembered the door, not because it was unlike the other doorways in that block but because it lay diagonally across the sidewalk from the fire-hydrant. He remembered considering how neatly the drunk would have opened his head had he struck the hydrant.

Going up to the door, he put his left hand on the knob and turned it. The door gave but he did not immediately throw it open. He stood deliberating for half a minute. He threw a glance up and down the street. Then he opened the door swiftly the length of his arm, stepped in while his right hand came out with his gun; shifted deftly and quietly on his feet and in a second had the door shut behind him, without a sound.

For the space of a minute he did not move. He stood rock-still, his gun held level with the lapel of his coat pocket, his breath bated and his ears straining. The hall was black as pitch but there was, beyond in the darkness, an oblong of slightly lighter darkness that seemed familiarly like the night outside. He went towards it. The oblong was a door. The door was open. It led into a small yard. Standing not too close to the doorway, he could smell the damp earth. After a moment he slipped into the yard and hugged the outside wall.

It was a sort of hollow square. A high board fence separated it from the yard back of the house on the next street. The house he had entered had a wing extending on either side as far as the fence. These wings made the east and west side of the hollow square, the fence made the south, the part through which he had come made the north.

There was an outside wooden stairway up the front of the west wing, with a platform at the top, and a door. On this door was a spider-web of light, as if a green shade, cracked with age, had been drawn down over the glass panel. Otherwise there was no light, no sound of life or even hint of it, within the hollow square.

He crossed to the foot of the wooden stairway, looked on the building for a button. There was none. A railing went up the outside of the stairway, supported at intervals by a post. He started up, keeping close to the face of the house. He paused on the next to last step and listened. The night had an emptiness about it; street sounds, not nearby, had a bell-like clarity.

He took the last step rapidly, rapped soundly on the glass panel. His right hand shoved the gun back into his pocket and remained there. The door opened, a blowzy fat man in an undershirt stood there outlined against light made hazy by skeins of tobacco smoke. He was sleepy and halfway through a yawn, and Donahue shoved him backward, stepped in and said:

“Now sit tight, everybody.”

It was a large room, dusty, smelling of liquor, tobacco, old perspiration. There was a round table in the center with a drop light, green-shaded, above it. Poker chips were on the table, stacks of silver and bills; and around the table three men in shirt sleeves. The skeins of tobacco smoke wound sluggishly around their heads. They did not move. The three of them leaned with their elbows on the table. One had a deck of cards, ready to deal. They had about them the beady-eyed immobility of rats at bay.

“Sit down, you,” Donahue muttered.

The fat man pawed his way around to the fourth chair and sat down. His fat eyes popped and he wore an injured expression.

Donahue said in a dead-level voice: “I may be up the wrong alley. Who runs this scatter?”

The fat blowzy man looked very pained.

“You?” Donahue said.

“Well, that is, now—as you would say—if some boys want to play a little cards and drink a bit—” He stopped and sat back and looked injured again. “I don’t see—that is, as I would say—”

“Hell,” chopped off the man at his left. He had a face the color of cement and looked quite as hard. His pale hard eyes were steady on Donahue. The man next to him made whistling lips but no sound came forth. He wore a gray hat and an innocent, youthful expression. The man on his right had a bald head and a red neck.

This man fidgeted and then said: “You a dick?”

“Suppose I am?” Donahue said.

“Well, I’d say, then, we only spoke to the skipper last week and he said he’d lay off. He’s gettin’ his cut. He and Henry—”

“Of course,” the fat man nodded. “Me and Bill there—” He looked around indignantly. “Me and Bill are okey with the skipper.”

The man with the pale hard eyes growled: “This guy ain’t no dick! Damn it, this guy ain’t no dick!” He shoved back his chair.

“I wouldn’t do that,” Donahue said.

The man subsided, but his pale eyes glowered. The youthful man in the gray hat went on making whistling lips but still no sound was heard. He kept looking at the cards in his hands.

Donahue said: “It’s about Charlie Stromson.”

The man in the gray hat choked. This startled everybody at the table. The man broke into a violent fit of coughing and the pale-eyed man towered in his chair. The other sneezed, choked, and finally sat with his eyes running water.

Donahue said: “You get up, put your coat on.”

The man rose, put his coat on and stood sniffling and wiping his eyes.

“Pull your hat down a little more.” The man did so.

“Okey,” Donahue said. “Now sit down again and—and this goes for all of you—keep your hands on the table.” His voice lowered, his eyes were fixed hard on the man in the gray hat. “When Stromson pitched out of the street door tonight, why did you open the door and then duck back?”

The man sneezed. “I didn’t open no door.”

The fat man and the bald man both looked very innocent and the pale-eyed man stared hard and bitterly at the man in the gray hat. He seemed about to explode but didn’t. Instead, he tore a card in two and slapped the pieces angrily down on the table.