A Coffin From Hong Kong (3 page)

After nearly an hour the two interns came out carrying the stretcher. The Chinese woman, under the sheet, looked small and child-like. The crowd made the usual noise a crowd makes when it is being morbid. The interns loaded the stretcher into the ambulance and drove away. A few minutes later the M.O. came out, and getting in his car, drove after the ambulance. There was another long wait, then the Homicide boys came out. One of them signalled to the big cop who was standing watching me. They all crammed into their cars and drove away. The big cop opened the car door and jerked his thumb at me. "Get moving," he said. "The Lieutenant wants you."

As I started across the sidewalk, Jay Wayde, the Industrial Chemist, who had the office next to mine came from his car. He joined me in the elevator.

He was three or four years younger than myself: a big, athletic college type with a crewcut, a sun-tanned complexion and alert eyes. Every now and then we would meet as we left our offices and would ride down in the elevator together to our cars. He seemed a pretty regular fellow and like Sparrow, he had shown an interest in my way of life. I guess most respectable people can't resist the so-called glamour of an investigator's life. He often asked me what excitement I had had, and in the short time we were in the elevator and walking to our cars, I fed him the kind of lies I fed Sparrow.

"What goes on?" he asked as the elevator began its slow climb to the fourth floor.

"I found a dead Chinese woman in my office this morning," I said. "The cops are getting excited about it."

He stared at me. "Dead?"

"Someone shot her."

This piece of information appeared to stand him on his ear.

"You mean she's been murdered?"

"That's the technical term for it."

"Well! For the love of Mike!"

"I've been saying exactly that since I found her."

"Who killed her?"

"Ah! Now that is the question. What time did you leave your office last night? You hadn't gone when I left."

"Around nine. The janitor was closing up."

"You didn't hear a shot?"

"For God's sake . . . no!"

"When you left did you notice if there was a light on in my office?"

"There wasn't. Didn't I hear you leave about six?"

"That's right."

I was getting rattled now. This Chinese girl must have been murdered after nine o'clock. My alibi was looking sicker than a wet hen.

The elevator came to rest at the fourth floor. We got out. Coming from my office was the janitor and Sergeant Pulski. The janitor looked at me as if I were a two-headed monster. They got into the elevator and sank out of sight.

"Well, I guess you're going to be busy," Wayde said, eyeing the cop standing at my office door. "If there's anything I can do . . ."

"Thanks," I said. "I'll let you know."

Leaving him, I walked past the cop and into the outer office. Apart from match ends on the floor and cigarette butts anywhere but in the ash-trays, the room had a lonely empty look. I went into my office.

Lieutenant Retnick was sitting behind my desk. He regarded me with the usual cop stare as I came in, and then waved me to the clients' chair.

There was a smear of dry blood on the back of the chair. I didn't fancy to contact with that so I sat on the arm of the chair. "You got a gun permit?" he asked.

"Yes."

"What's your gun?"

"A .38 police special."

He laid his hand, palm up, on the blotter. "Give."

"It's in the top right-hand drawer."

He stared for a long moment, then withdrew his hand.

"It isn't. I've looked through your desk."

I resisted the temptation to wipe away the trickle of cold sweat that began to run down the back of my neck. "That's where it should be."

He took a cigar from a pigskin case, stripped off the wrapping, pierced the cigar with a match end, then fed the cigar into his face. All the time his small hard eyes locked with mine. "She was shot with a .38," he said. "The M.O. says she died around three o'clock this morning. Look, Ryan, why don't you come clean? Just what did this yellow skin have in her handbag?"

Keeping my voice calm with an effort, I said, "I may seem to you to be a dumb, stupid peeper, but you can't really believe I would be that dumb and that stupid to knock off a client in my own office with my own gun even if she had all the gold in Fort Knox in her goddam handbag." He lit the cigar and blew a stream of rank smoke at me.

"I don't know: you might. You might be trying to play it smart, kidding yourself you had dreamed up a water-tight alibi," he said, but there wasn't much conviction in his voice. "If I had killed her," I went on, "I would have known the time she had died. I wouldn't have given you an alibi for eight-thirty, I would have cooked one up for three o'clock." He shifted around in my chair while what he used as a brain creaked under pressure.

"What was she doing in your office at that hour in the morning?" "Want me to guess?"

"Look, Ryan, we haven't had a murder in this city for five years. I've got to have some story to give the Press. Any ideas you've got, I'll listen to. You help us, I'll help you. I could arrest you and toss you in the tank on the evidence I've got against you, but I'm giving you a chance to prove I'm wrong. Go ahead and guess."

"Suppose she was from 'Frisco and not here? Suppose she had to talk urgently with me? Don't ask me why or why she couldn't talk to a private dick in 'Frisco: just suppose this happened Suppose she decided to fake a plane and come here so she could talk to me and suppose she made up her mind about seven last night. She would know she couldn't get here before I had left so she telephoned. Hard wick, having got rid of me, was waiting here to take the call. She told him she was flying here and would be here around three o'clock. He said it was okay and he would be here when she did arrive. When she arrived at the airport, she took a taxi and came here. Hardwick listened to what she had to say, then shot her." "Using your gun?" "Using my gun."

"The entrance to this building is locked at nine. The lock hasn't been tampered with. How did Hardwick and the yellow skin get in here?"

"Hardwick must have arrived as soon as I had left and before the janitor locked up. He knew I was out of the way so he could sit right here and wait for the telephone call. When the time came for her to arrive, he went down and let her in. It's a Yale lock. There's no trouble opening it from the inside."

"You ought to write movie scripts," he said sourly. "Is this the yarn you're going to tell the jury?"

"It's worth checking. She would be easily spotted at the airport. The taxi-drivers out there would remember her."

"Supposed it happened the way you say but instead of this unknown Hardwick, you were the one who told hex you would wait for her?"

"He's not unknown. If you'll check with the Express Messenger Service you'll find he sent me three hundred dollars. You can check I was outside 33 Connaught Boulevard from seventhirty until nine. After that time, although I was there, only one car passed me around two o'clock, but I don't know if the driver saw me or not. At six the milk delivery man will tell you I was still there,"

"I'm only interested in knowing where you were between one and four this morning."

"I was outside 33 Connaught Boulevard." He shrugged his shoulders.

"Just to keep the record straight, let me see what you have in your pockets."

I turned out my pockets, laying the odds and ends on the desk. He watched without interest. "If I had stolen her virtue," I said, "I wouldn't be carrying it around in my pocket." He got to his feet.

"Don't leave town. I only need a puff of wind to throw you in the tank as a material witness, so watch yourself."

He walked out of my office, through the outer room and into the passage. He left both doors wide open.

I collected my possessions and returned them to my pockets, then I pushed the door shut and sat on my desk and ht a cigarette. Right now they hadn't a watertight case against me, but they did have something. A lot depended on what they turned up within the next few hours. Although Retnick was a bird-brain, I had a feeling the killer was framing me for the murder and would drop another clue in front of Retnick that could be a clincher. The disappearance of my gun could only mean the killer had shot her with it and it might turn up where Retnick would find it.

I slid off the desk. This wasn't the time to sit around shaking my head at myself. I had work to do.

I locked up the office and headed for the elevator. Against Jay Wayde's glass-panelled door, I saw Retnick's shadow. He was talking to Wayde, collecting evidence against me. With a sense of urgency, I rode down to the ground floor, walked by the two cops at the door, then crossed the street to where I had left my car. I got in and slammed the door.

I was now as jittery as a junkie. I had a sudden urge for a slug of whisky. Drinking before six o'clock wasn't my usual routine, but this was something special. I slid across the bench seat and opened the glove compartment. As I reached for the bottle, my heart gave a big kick against my ribs and my mouth turned as dry as a sun-bleached bone.

In the glove compartment lay my .38 police special and a lizard skin handbag.

I sat staring, feeling a chill crawl up my spine. As sure as I was breathing, this handbag belonged to the dead Chinese woman.

On one of the walls is a big notice that says in large red letters against a white background this park is for police vehicles only.

I swung my car through the open gateway and parked carefully beside a patrol car. As I cut the engine, a cop appeared from nowhere, his red Irish face showing violent fury.

"Hey! What's the matter with you? Can't you read?" he bawled in a voice that could be heard two blocks away.

"Nothing's the matter with me," I said as I removed the key from the ignition, "and I can read—even the long words."

I thought he was going to explode. For a long moment he opened and shut his mouth while he struggled to frame words violent enough for the occasion.

Before he could give utterance, I said, smiling at him through the open window of my car, "Detective Lieutenant Retnick, the Mayor's brother-in-law, told me to park here. Take it up with him if you feel badly about it, but don't blame me if you get yourself kicked humpbacked."

He looked as if he had suddenly swallowed a bee. For two long seconds he glared at me, his mouth working, then he stalked away.

I sat staring into space for perhaps twenty minutes, then a car came into the yard and parked within ten feet of me. Retnick got out and started towards a door that led into the grey stone building that was police headquarters. 

"Lieutenant . . ." I didn't raise my voice but he heard me. He looked over his shoulder at me. He stiffened as if someone had goosed him with a' branding iron, then he came over fast.

"What do you imagine you are doing here?" he demanded.

"Waiting for you," I said.

He considered this, staring intently at me. "Well, I'm here—now what?"

I got out of the car.

"You searched me, Lieutenant, but you forgot to search my car."

He became very still, breathing heavily through his pinched nostrils, his hard watchful eyes
alert.
"Why should I search your car, shamus?"

"You wanted to know what the yellow skin, as you call her, had in her handbag that had tempted me to shoot her in my office with my gun. You didn't find it in my office nor in my pockets. I should have thought a really keen cop would have checked my car to make sure I hadn't hidden the motive for murder there. So I've brought the car along just in case you wanted to be a really keen cop." His face tightened with fury.

"Listen, you son-of-a-bitch," he mouthed. "I don't take smart talk from a cheap peeper. I'll get Pulski to handle you! He'll take the shine off your wit! You're too goddam smart to stay in one piece!"

"Better look in the car first before you feed me to your meat grinder, Lieutenant. Look in the glove compartment. It'll save time." I stepped away from the car, letting the car door swing open.

His eyes smouldering, Retnick leaned into the car and yanked open the glove compartment. 

I watched his reactions. His fury died. He didn't touch either the gun or the handbag. He looked for a long moment, then turned to me."Is that your gun?"

"Yes"

"Her handbag?"

"It adds up, doesn't it?"

He studied me, puzzled.

"What the hell's this? You ready to make a statement admitting you killed her?"

"I'm laying the cards face up as they're dealt to me," I said. "I can't do more than that. It's up to you what you make of it."

He bawled to the cop guarding the gate. When the cop came over, Retnick told him to get Pulski fast.

While we waited, Retnick again looked at the gun and the handbag without touching them. "I wouldn't give two bits for your chance of survival now, shamus," he said. "Not two bits."

"I wouldn't give two bits myself if I hadn't come here to show you what I found," I said, "but since I've come, I'll gamble two bits but no more."

"Do you always lock your car?" he asked, staring at me as his brain creaked into action.

"Yes, but I have a duplicate key in the drawer where I keep my gun. I didn't look but I bet it isn't there now." Retnick scratched the side of his face with a rasping sound.

"That's right. When I looked for the gun, I didn't see any key."

Pulski came pounding across the yard.

"Give this car the works," Retnick said to him. "Check everything. Careful how you handle the gun and the handbag. Better let Lacey look at the gun. Get moving."