And Now the News (19 page)

Howell dialed Maggie Athenson's number. There was a pause, and then the phone burped a busy signal at him.

“Busy,” Howell called.

“Still?” asked Cassidy. “Good old Maggie. Chatty as ever. She's probably asking for a boy in blue to camp outside her door.”

“She's already done that.” Howell reinserted the dime. This time he got a ringing signal.

And got it. And got it.

“Now she doesn't answer,” said Howell, coming out of the booth.

“Maybe she's gone to bed.”

“Uh-uh. The phone was busy fifteen seconds before I rang. No one's going to move from his phone into his bed in fifteen seconds.”

He stood in thought for a moment, his weak-looking eyes on Cassidy's pink face. There was nothing there.

“Look!” Cassidy pointed through the display window.

Howell whirled. A man dived out of the lighted doorway opposite, skidded, pounded up the pavement to a yellow convertible which, in seconds, came to life. It roared and then spun into the street, tail down, tires burning. It breezed through a red light at the first intersection, turned right and disappeared.

Cassidy turned from the sight and began to speak, but the detective was gone. Cassidy turned, swung back, and then saw Howell outside in the middle of the street, shading his eyes against the streetlight, as he peered after the convertible. He came back into the drugstore.

“Who was it?” asked Cassidy.

“Later,” grunted Howell, and piled into a booth. He left the door open, dialed. “Brophy,” he said. Then, “Brophy? Trace a yellow Caddy convertible, Illinois license YD sixty-ninety-seven, heading north from here. What for? Passing a red light, of course. I'll proffer the charge. Hold him until I can get there to do it. What? Oh—
that
. I'm on it now. All right.”

“I didn't know you could move that fast,” said Cassidy.

“Speed is my secret weapon,” said Howell. “I smell homicide. Let's go see Maggie, who won't answer her phone so suddenly.”

“Must I? I have things to do.”

“No, you
must
not. But come on. This can't have anything to do with you.”

“Why, sure.” Howell thought he was going to smile, but he did not.

They crossed the street and entered the apartment hotel. A man with beetling brows and a heavy jaw stood behind the desk. Howell went to him. The man raised his eyes with reluctance from the book he was reading, and moaned with a rising inflection, a sound which probably meant, “Yes?”

“Did you see someone run out of here a minute ago?”

The man moaned with a falling inflection. Howell ignored these tonal subtleties and took the accompanying nod for an answer.

“Who was it?”

“A man.”

Howell opened and closed his mouth, and behind him Cassidy chuckled. Howell showed his badge. “Where was he going?”

“Out,” said the man.

“Can't get a word in edgewise here,” said Howell to Cassidy. To the clerk, “Do you know the guy?”

The man shook his head and went back to his book. Howell went on tiptoe, which made him wince, and peered over the counter at the book. It was
Little Women
by Louisa May Alcott.

“Come on, Cassidy,” he said disgustedly.

They went to the automatic elevator, and Howell pushed the button marked 12.

“Fourteenth,” said Cassidy.

“Thanks,” said Howell, pushing the ‘stop' button and then 14.

“Thanks for what?”

“I wondered if you knew just where Maggie's apartment was but I didn't want to ask you.”

“You're real downy,” said Cassidy with admiration. “But you could have asked me. I know old Maggie well. And—I have nothing to hide.”

“Yes,” said Howell, which might have meant anything.

The elevator stopped. Howell let Cassidy lead the way down the hall to an apartment door. He checked Cassidy's hand as it approached the bell-push and, extracting his fountain pen, speared the button with the butt end of it.

“I like your gloves,” he said. “Chamois. Same stuff they use to take fingermarks off brasswork.”

Cassidy chuckled again.

There was no answer. Howell rang again, and again. He turned suddenly to face Cassidy, but the big man's face was blank and untroubled. Howell squinted at the lock, and took out a bunch of keys, from which he selected three.

“This won't work,” he said. “It never does.” He tried the first. It didn't. “I'd hate to pull that lacework bulldog downstairs away from his reading. He chatters so.” He tried the second key. The door opened.

There was a low, wide living room and a bedroom to the left. In the corner of the living room was a desk. On it were a cradled telephone, a great deal of fresh blood, and what appeared to be a tumble of sticky, red-brown hair.

Howell's breath hissed out. Cassidy said, “Poor old Maggie.”

Maggie was not old. However, she would certainly get no older than she was now. She was slumped in the chair, her head on the desk. She had been a handsome woman in her late thirties. Looking down on what had happened to her head, Howell reflected grimly that no one could say she didn't have brains.

“Cassidy?”

“Mm?”

“Lend me your handkerchief.”

Cassidy raised his eyebrows but handed over the handkerchief. Howell took it in one hand and his own in the other, and gently lifted the phone off its cradle. With his pen he dialed Brophy.

Holding the phone by its two ends, he spoke into it.

“Maggie was right after all. Yeah. Thirty-eight or larger. Yeah. Back of the neck. Not a chance. Him? He has an alibi. Me. Hold him? I can't hold him. Yeah—I'll stick around until you get here with the squad. Right.” He hung up.

Cassidy said, “Right under your nose. Hell, Howell, that's a shame.”

Howell squinted vaguely at him. “I know. Your little heart bleeds for me. You know what I think you are? I think you're a material witness.”

“No, you don't. Look it up in your book. The co-discoverer of the body is not a material witness when the discoverer is a police officer.”

Howell sighed. “Lend me a cigarette.”

Smiling slightly, Cassidy took out a new deck of smokes. On his key ring was a small knife. He slid the blade out and meticulously slit the bottom end of the cigarette package, knocked it against the back of his hand, and passed it to Howell. The detective looked at it.

“So careful,” Howell said. He took a cigarette.

“Well,” said Cassidy, “I'll be running along. Tough luck, Howell,” he added, nodding toward what was left of Maggie Athenson.

Howell went to the door with him, seeing to it that Cassidy did not touch the knob. “Don't leave town, Cassidy,” he said.

Cassidy did smile, this time. He said nothing, and left. Howell opened and closed his hands, looked at them, sighed, and sat down to wait for the squad. And to think.

Two hours later they were back at headquarters. Howell's stocking feet were on the windowsill. Brophy strode up and down the room, mauling the case report by swatting it angrily against the desk every time he passed it.

“No prints—only Maggie Athenson's,” said Brophy for the fifteenth
time. “No gun. No yellow Caddy. And just like you said—a will in Cassidy's favor, and papers showing a business deal that Cassidy could have engineered to fail, putting Maggie in debt for almost what the insurance was worth. No proof of anything anywhere. It all points to Cassidy, and you—”

“I'm his alibi,” said Howell sleepily. “I know. I'm absolutely certain that he was on his way to knock her off when I met him in the store. Damn it, she was talking on the phone. He got the busy signal and then I did. She'd only been dead a few minutes when we got there, which means she must've been killed while I was talking to Cassidy in the store. The only thing I can think of is that someone just rubbed her out to do Cassidy a favor.”

“He hired the killer.”

“He did not. Not Careful Cassidy. Listen, Brophy, I know that apple. I know how he thinks. If he was going to do a job like that—and he was—he'd do it himself. I'll tell you one other thing I'm sure of. He's leaving town. The money's going to Halpern—his lawyer, you know—the guy who handled that false-arrest case for him. Unless I'm dead wrong, Cassidy will disappear, his lawyer will collect for him, Cassidy will get the money and we'll never be able to trace him.”

“Didn't you say he carries a rod? Let's get a look at it.”

“Are you kidding? He'd like nothing better. Believe me, any time Cassidy holds out a chance like that, it's bait. It could be bluff, but it's probably bait. If we move in on him and search him, we'll find him clean as a whistle. No, Brophy—you can't handle Cassidy like anyone else. He doesn't move until he's sure of his loopholes.

“If we do the obvious thing with him, just once, the least that will happen is that he'll get off without a scratch and leave a couple of much-advertised damn fools behind him. The worst that can happen is as bad as you can dream up. Anyhow, I don't want to play with him. It's what he wants. Somewhere there's a chance to close on him and get rid of him for good. Somewhere …”

“It says in the books that every murderer makes at least one mistake,” said Brophy, sententiously.

Howell snorted. “Not Careful Cassidy. He figures every least little
angle. He does everything like that. Lend me a cigarette.”

Brophy sighed and passed over his tattered pack. Howell took it absently, looked at it. Suddenly his eyes went round and he sat bolt upright. Brophy stared aghast at this completely unusual phenomenon—Howell with his back straight.

Howell threw the cigarettes on the floor, shoved his feet into his shoes, and without waiting to lace them, galloped out of the room.

“Hey! Come back here—” Brophy stopped, helplessly, and listened to the slithering pound of Howell's feet as it diminished down the short flight of steel-bound steps. “Either that guy gets real bright or he makes sense,” he muttered. “Never both.”

Brophy picked up the cigarettes, lit one, and sat down to wait …

Howell burst into the drugstore and skated to a stop down the smooth floor. The clerk faced him across the counter. “Yes, sir,” he said briskly.

In spite of himself Howell glanced at the clock. It was 4
A.M.

“Do you stand at attention when you sleep?” he asked. “No one should be that wide awake at this time of the morning. Listen—remember when I was in here before?”

“Oh, yes, sir.”

“Did you notice that big man in brown I was talking to?”

“Yes, sir. He came in just a minute before you did. He seemed to be in a hurry. He went straight to the phone booth.”

Howell grunted. He fumbled in his pockets. “Lend me a dime. While you're at it, lend me two dimes.”

“But, sir, I can't afford to—”

“You're the guy always wants to do something for someone! Come on,” snapped Howell, extending his hand.

“Very well,” said the clerk stiffly. “But this comes out of my own pocket.”

“All right, all right. It has your heart's blood on it. Gimme.”

Howell took the coins and ran to a booth. The clerk watched wall-eyed while he dialed a number, listened, put the receiver down on the shelf, and, leaving it there, stepped into the next booth. There he put in the second dime, dialed, listened again, put this receiver down too, uttered a wordless shout and ran out.

The clerk waited until his lower jaw stopped swinging, shut his mouth with an effort, and went to the booths. He hung up the two phones. Each returned a dime. He stood looking out into the night with slightly glazed eyes, his lips set in tight lines.

A few minutes later, Howell strode into the lobby of the Cheshire House. The brutal-looking character stood where he had been before, his eyes on his book.

“You,” said Howell.

The man turned his face up and followed it reluctantly with his eyes. “M-m-m?”

“That big man who was with me before. Did you ever see him before?”

The man nodded.

“Tonight?”

The man shook his head.

Howell hesitated, thinking rapidly. The man took the opportunity to go back to his book.

“Hey,” said Howell suddenly.

The man started at the crackle of his voice, stamped his foot and said, “Goodness gracious, can't a fellow get a moment's peace? What is it now?”

“Well, smash my tea tray,” said Howell. “I only wanted to ask you if that big man could have gone out of here without your seeing him.”

“Of course he could. Don't I have enough to do without watching every single human
soul
who goes in and out of here every
minute?
How can I answer the telephone and make out cards and hand out keys and write down morning calls and answer silly stupid questions and watch everyone who comes and goes too? What do you think I
am?
”

Howell stepped back a pace from this tirade. “We won't go into that,” he said. He turned away, paused, said, “Try
The Bobbsey Twins at the Circus
next. It'll kill you,” and raced out.

In the corridor of a lush apartment house uptown, Howell stopped and regarded the wide unpanelled slab of a door. Soundproofed, he thought. He sighed; and pressed the buzzer. Nothing
happened immediately. He waited patiently, not ringing again. Finally the door opened a crack.

“Who is it?”

“Howell.”

“Ah,” said Careful Cassidy. “I half expected you. Come in.”

“Thanks,” said Howell.

Cassidy closed and locked the door behind him. “Drink?” he asked.

“Nope.” Howell, holding his breath, lounged through the foyer and instead of continuing into the living room, turned sharply left into a bedroom. As he expected, there was a packed suitcase in the middle of the floor and another one open on the bed. Drawers and a large clothes-press were open.