Which Way to Die? (5 page)

“I just told you. I'm a leader and you're not, Gerry. You'll have to excuse this little set-to, gentlemen,” Frank Grant said mockingly. “They kept us pretty much separated in prison. This is really the first chance we've had to get things straight.”

“Ah,” Gerard said with disgust. “I'll put it to you, Captain. If you had your choice of brains, whose would you pick, Frank's or mine?”

“That's no choice,” Corrigan said.

“What d'ya mean?”

“Give me a third alternative—say, a vulture—and I wouldn't have any trouble.”

Gerard cursed. Frank laughed. Baer spat out the window.

“You're making our bodyguard dislike us, Gerry,” Frank said “You'd better hope we don't need him.”

“I don't dislike you, son,” Chuck Baer said. “You can't dislike somebody who's sick in the head. But you sure as hell don't have to want to inhabit the same planet. You're both as paranoid as they come. It's lucky I have a cast-iron stomach. Just being in the same car with you two makes me want to throw up.”

“Some bodyguard,” Gerard Alstrom snarled. “Who picked this knight in shining armor, Frank?”

“Your father,” Frank Grant said.

“Drive,” Corrigan said. Poor Chuck. He had to take these two for a couple of weeks. He thanked his lucky stars that his chore ended on delivery in Manhattan.

5.

The apartment house was the highest building in the area; it rose eleven stories. The sight of it touched a chord in Corrigan's memory, but the melody eluded him.

Young Alstrom drove down a ramp into a vast basement garage. There were over a hundred numbered parking slots outlined in white paint. At the far end another ramp led to a lower parking level.

Only a scattering of cars occupied slots in the middle of the working day. No one was in sight.

Gerard braked to a stop at the bottom of the street ramp. “Our space is supposed to be number one. Should be right here somewhere, if they have any kind of sensible numbering system.”

Frank peered both ways through his thick glasses. “Over there, Gerry.” He pointed to the right.

Gerard swung the car into the space and cut the engine. He was about to get out when Corrigan said, “Hold it. Chuck, you stay in the car with them. I want to take a look around.”

He got out and checked the basement, paying particular attention to the parked cars. They were all empty. There was an elevator on one wall, with an open door near it. He went to the doorway and looked in. It was the furnace room. The enormous steam boilers were cold at the moment. A huge air-conditioning unit droned steadily. There was an incinerator, and several workbenches laden with tools. Through an open door across the furnace room he caught a glimpse of a lean, gray-haired man in a striped jump-suit sitting on a cot reading a copy of
Playboy
; he had it open to the center fold.

Corrigan went quickly back. “Okay,” he said. The pair and Chuck Baer got out of the car, and Gerard Alstrom locked it. From the confident way in which their charges moved about, Corrigan got the impression that they had been thoroughly briefed to the setup. Probably neither had been here before.

Corrigan said, “There's a maintenance man in the room off the furnace room, Chuck. For what it's worth, when you get a moment you might arrange for him to tip you to any new tenants who move into the building. Or ones who got here very recently.”

Baer nodded.

Gerard jabbed the elevator call-button. Corrigan and Baer blocked their way when the door opened, but the elevator was empty.

It was self-service.

“Which floor?” Corrigan said.

Gerard did not deign to answer him. He pushed the 11 button, and they sailed up. When the door opened, Corrigan got out first. The way was clear.

“Where now?” Corrigan said.

The blond one crossed the hall to another elevator. There was a telephone on the wall beside it. Obviously a house phone; instead of a dial, it had a single push-button.

Gerard pushed the elevator button. When the door failed to open he reached for the wall phone, but at the moment the elevator opened, and he hung up and stepped in. They followed.

Impatient, Corrigan thought. So he's not the Fearless Fosdick he makes out to be. Frank Grant seemed content to let his friend take the lead.

The elevator car was much smaller than the one they had come up on. Its capacity was about six passengers. There were three buttons on the control panel. One said “U,” one “D”; the third was red, an emergency button.

Gerard pushed the “U” and the car rose to the roof. They stepped out into a small windowless foyer with a single door opposite the elevator. There was nothing in the foyer but a mail chute, and a trash chute that must have led to the basement incinerator.

Gerard opened a toggle switch on the wall near the elevator.

“Immobilizes the penthouse car at the roof,” he explained. “Anyone getting off at eleven has to phone from there and identify himself; only then do we send the car down. Clever, eh?”

“How about going in?” Baer growled.

Gerard unlocked the apartment door with another key, opened it, and led the way into a large living room furnished in far-out modernism. There was a real fireplace to the right, a door to a hall in the left rear corner. Through a sliding glass door that ran almost the width of the room, Corrigan could see a wrought-iron lawn table on a genuine lawn. The lawn went to flower beds that edged the three-foot-high wall at the roof line.

This was not just a penthouse apartment, Corrigan thought. It was a private house, surrounded by lawn, and all on a rooftop. Apparently the elevator shaft and the foyer were central in the building, for the living room ran the entire width of the house. The hall in the corner must lead to rooms on the opposite side of the elevator shaft.

Chuck Baer set down his suitcase. Chuck was looking incredulous.

At a movement in the doorway from the hall, Corrigan and Baer spun about, hands snatching their guns.

It was a woman.

She was a tall brunette in her late twenties, with a fashion-model figure in every department except the bust, which was formidable. Jet hair framed a face of pale, almost Spanish, beauty. Her large eyes were a striking violet-blue, not Spanish at all.

“Hello, Tim,” she said. She had paused in the doorway, and it framed her. She had a throaty voice which seemed natural, not cultivated. Corrigan could see that Baer, who had a discriminating eye, was impressed; the redhead's lips were framed in a silent whistle.

“Norma,” Corrigan said. In spite of himself his blood raced. She had always had a powerful hold on him. He realized now that he must have been bracing himself for this encounter for some time; it had been inevitable.

Gerard Alstrom had started toward the girl with outstretched hands. She did not respond, and he halted, flushing.

“Hello, Gerry,” she said, very cool. “You're still running lucky, I see.”

“You call four years in prison luck, Sis?” Gerard said. It was almost a snarl.

“Yes,” she said, and turned to nod at Frank Grant.

Corrigan rather enjoyed the scene. He knew Gerry Alstrom's arrogance of old; to see it struck down by someone who refused to be impressed by it was a consummation he had often devoutly wished. The brief exchange told a long story. She was Gerard's sister, older by a few years, and she took a dim view of the way he had climaxed his young lifetime of riding roughshod over people. She must feel great shame for her blood-relationship with a sadistic killer.

“Oh, Norma,” Corrigan said. “I want you to meet Chuck Baer; your father and Mrs. Grant hired him to bodyguard these two. Chuck, this is Alstrom's sister, Mrs. Christopher.”

“This job is picking up,” Baer said. “Mrs. Christopher, I hope you're going to be occupying these premises, too.”

She smiled at him. There he goes again, Corrigan thought. He never stopped being baffled by his friend's attractiveness to women.

“I'll be here, Mr. Baer,” Norma said. “But it's not Mrs. Christopher.” She glanced at Corrigan. “I've taken my maiden name back, Tim.”

“I didn't know you'd been divorced.”

“I wasn't. It was an annulment.”

“How did you manage that?”

“It's easy. All you have to do is commit perjury.”

“Perjury?” Baer said. He sounded sad.

“Oh, come, Mr. Baer. The wife gets on the stand and testifies that before marriage her husband agreed to have children, but now refuses to. He takes the stand and admits the charge. The judge knows that they're both lying, but he grants the annulment. In this case it was Charles who was tired of me, but he was nice enough to play the villain and let me get the annulment.”

Her brittle, derisive manner disturbed Corrigan. It was new. Four years ago, when he had met her in connection with the Audrey Martello murder, he had found it necessary to clamp a lid on himself. He had been instantly attracted to her face, her figure, her little-girl sprightliness, a kind of naïveté that most girls lost in early adolescence. Not only was she a sister of one of the killers, but she was also married, and she seemed radiantly in love with her husband. How Charles Christopher could have tired of her was beyond him.

“I'm sorry it didn't work out, Norma.”

“Why?” she said lightly. “I find freedom wonderful.”

“If you two are through celebrating Old Home Week,” her brother said sullenly, “I'd appreciate seeing where we flop. I hope the beds are soft. Don't you, Frank?”

“Soft, shmoft,” Frank Grant said. “Who wants to sleep? Speaking of freedom, Gerry, do you realize we
are?
Free?”

“How free is free?” Corrigan said. “Seems to me you've just exchanged one prison for another.”

“
Olé,”
Norma Alstrom said softly. “Well, come along. I'll give you the grand tour.”

To Corrigan's embarrassment she beckoned him and, when he went to her, took his hand. Frank snickered; Corrigan could have belted him. He withdrew his hand as soon as he decently could. Norma glanced at him, arched her brows, and smiled.

There was a dream-kitchen off the hall, and a large bathroom, and a book-stacked study with Union League-type chairs and lamps, and then a rear hall which served three bedrooms.

The first bedroom Norma showed them was large, with twin beds and masculine wallpaper. French doors looked out on the lawn. Corrigan noticed that the flower beds hemming the roof parapet extended to this side, too; they must run all around the roof.

“This is the only bedroom with its own private bath,” Norma said, indicating a door. “The rest of us will have to use the one off the hall.” She glanced at Baer. “I hope you don't mind roughing it, Mr. Baer.”

The redhead grinned. “Sight unseen, it beats the outhouse behind my pad. But who are the rest of us? Someone else going to be staying here?”

“Just Frank's mother. She and I will share the room at the end of the hall. You'll have the one next door, so you can be near the boys.”

“Isn't Dad going to be staying here?” Gerard demanded.

“There's not enough room,” Norma replied without looking at him. “He's taken an apartment on the eleventh floor. Mrs. Grant's chauffeur will live in with Dad, so we'll have someone to run errands. The plan, as I understand it, is to have as few outsiders as possible come to the apartment, even delivery and service people.”

“Whose idea was that?” her brother asked. “It's smart.”

“Dad's.” She shrugged. “Not mine, I assure you. I'm just along for the ride. I can't break Dad's heart any more than it's already been broken. So if you have any idea I'm in on this because of you, Gerry, forget it.”

Her tone was as cold as a hanging judge's. So she had never shared Mrs. Grant's conviction that the boys were innocent, or her father's pretense, Corrigan thought.

She did not speak to Frank Grant at all.

The ex-jailbirds were opening closets and dresser drawers. They were full. Someone—probably Mrs. Grant—had gone to a great deal of trouble. There was something sick about the whole thing, and suddenly Corrigan wished he were back in his cubby off the MOS squadroom, in the realm of decent crime.

6.

Chuck Baer's was a smaller room, with a double bed. Baer tossed his valise on the bed, glanced around, and announced that the room was fine.

“We may as well complete the tour,” Norma said.

They looked into the last bedroom, another twin-bed affair. Again French doors led onto what Corrigan had mentally come to designate as the back yard, although it actually faced the street that fronted the building.

“I want to take a look outside,” Baer said.

They stepped through to the roof, Norma closing the French doors behind her.

“The apartment is completely air-conditioned,” she explained, “so the windows and doors have to be kept closed at all times. At night they can be locked as an added precaution, although I don't see how anyone could possibly get up here without using the penthouse elevator. That's why this place was chosen.”

Corrigan and Baer looked over the wall. To get close enough to it to lean over, it was necessary to step into the loam of the three-foot-wide flower beds. They trod carefully.

There was a sheer drop on all four sides. There were no fire escapes. The wall was as free of handholds as glass. To climb up from the eleventh floor unaided would be physically impossible.

“How do people get out in case of fire?” Corrigan asked.

“There's a fire stairs at the eleventh floor,” Norma said. “Of course, if the electricity went out, no one could get down from the roof to the eleventh, but the fire inspectors seem to have missed that.”

Baer was dissatisfied. “This place isn't as foolproof as it looks. A cat-burglar with a nylon rope and a gang hook tied to it could stand on a windowsill on the eleventh and toss it up to hook onto the parapet. All he'd have to do then is shinny up the rope.”