Collection 1983 - The Hills Of Homicide (v5.0) (26 page)

“Well, I think he was working something like that. I think he was so close on the trail of somebody that they got scared. I think, somehow, they led him into a trap tonight. We’ve got to figure out what it was he had on his mind.”

Mary shook her head. “I have no idea what it could be, Joe. He was working on something, I do know that. I could always tell when something was on his mind. He would sit staring across the top of his newspaper or would walk out in the yard and pull a weed or two. He never liked to leave anything until it was finished. What it was this time, I do not know.”

“Think, Mary! Think back over the past few weeks. Try to remember any of those absentminded little comments he used to make. One of them might be just the lead we need.”

Angie filled their cups again. Mary looked up doubtfully. “There was something just this morning, but it doesn’t tell us a thing. He looked up while he was drinking his coffee and said, ‘Honey, there’s just two crimes worse than murder.’ ”

“Nothing more?”

“That was all. He was stewing about something, and you know how he was at times like that. I understood and left him alone.”

“Two crimes worse than murder?” Ragan ran his fingers through his hair. “I know what one was. We’d talked about it often enough. He thought, as I do, that narcotics peddling was the lowest crime on earth. It’s a foul racket. I wonder if that was it?”

“What could the other crime be?”

He shook his head, frowning. Slowly, carefully then, he led Mary over the past few days, searching for some clue. A week before, she had asked him to meet her and go shopping, and he had replied that he was in the Upshaw Building and would meet her on the corner by the drugstore.

“The Upshaw Building?” Ragan shook his head. “I don’t know anything about it. Well”—he got up—“I’m going to adopt Ollie’s methods, Mary, and start doing legwork and asking questions. But believe me, I’ll not leave this case until it’s solved.”

Al Brooks was drinking coffee when Ragan walked into the café the next morning. He dropped on the stool beside the vice-squad man and ordered coffee and a side order of sausage.

Al was a tall, wide-shouldered man with a sallow face. He had an excellent record with the force. He grinned at Ragan, but there was a question in his eyes. “I hear Stigler has you on the Burns case. What gives?”

Ragan did not feel talkative. Morning coffee with Ollie Burns had been a ritual of long standing, and the ease and comfort of the big man was much preferred to the sharp, inquisitiveness of Al Brooks.

“Strange, Stigler putting you on the Burns case.”

“Not so strange.” Ragan sipped his coffee, hoping they’d hurry with the sausage. “He figured that being a friend of Ollie’s, I might know something.”

After a moment, Brooks looked around at him. “Do you?”

Ragan shrugged. “Not that I can think of. Neither does Mary, but we’ll find what it was. Ollie was working on something, I know that.”

“I still think it was a woman.” Brooks was cynical. “You say he never played around. Hell, what man would pass up a good-lookin’ babe? Ollie was human, wasn’t he?”

“He was also in love with his wife. The guy had ethics. He was as sincere and conscientious as anyone I ever knew.”

Al was disgusted. “Where did all that lipstick come from? Do you think he cornered some gorilla in that lot and the guy kissed him? Are you kidding?”

“You’ve judged him wrong, Al, you really have. My hunch is that was all for effect. The killer wanted us to think a woman was involved.

“Besides,” he added, “something they didn’t count on. He had a date with his wife and my girl friend. He was to meet them at nine. Allowing time for going and coming, he wouldn’t have had much more time than to say hello and good-by.”

Al stared at him for a moment, then shrugged. “Have it your way, but take a tip from me and be careful. If he was working on something that was serious enough to invite killing, the same people won’t hesitate to kill again. Don’t find out too much.”

Ragan chuckled. “That doesn’t sound like you, Al. Nobody on the force stuck his neck out more than you did when you pinched Latko.”

“That’s another thing. I had him bottled up so tight he didn’t have a chance. None of his friends wanted any part of it. I had too much evidence.”

Ragan got to his feet. “What the hell? We’re cops, Al. Taking risks is expected of us. Only if they tackle me, they will have a different problem than with Ollie.”

“What do you mean?”

“Why, I’m sort of a rough type, Al. I like it the hard way. If they start shooting, I’ll be shooting too. If they start slugging, I’ll meet them halfway. I like to play rough, Al, and when it comes to Ollie’s killer, I’ll be out for blood.”

Al Brooks lifted a hand and walked out. Ragan looked after him. He had never liked Al Brooks, but he was one of the best men on the force. The way he had broken the Latko gang was an example. Aside from a few petty vice raids, it had been Brooks’s first job. Two months later he followed it with the arrest of Clyde Bysten, the society killer.

Stigler met him in the hall and motioned him into the office. “Joe, you knew them. How did Ollie get along with his wife?”

Ragan’s head came around sharply. “They were the most affectionate people I ever knew. They lived for each other.”

Stigler looked up from the papers on his desk. “Then how do you explain that he was shot with his own gun?”

Shock riveted Ragan to the floor. “Shot with
what
?”

“Not with his issue pistol, but another gun he kept at home. It was a .38 Smith & Wesson. We’ve found the gun, and the ballistics check. The gun is on our records as belonging to Ollie.”

“Oh, no!” Ragan’s mind refused to accept what he had heard. “Anyway,” he added, “Mary was with Angie all the time, from seven until I left them, long after midnight.”

Stigler shook his head. “No, Ragan, she wasn’t. Your loyalty does you credit, but Mary left Angie at the table to go to the powder room. She was gone so long Angie was afraid she’d gotten sick and went to the rest room. Mary wasn’t there.”

Ragan dropped into a chair. “I don’t get it, Mark, but I’d swear Mary can’t be guilty. I don’t care whose gun Ollie was shot with.”

“What are you trying to do, Joe? Find a murderer or protect Mary?”

Ragan’s face flushed. “Now see here, Mark. Ollie’s the best friend I ever had, but I’m not going to stand by and see his wife stuck for a crime she could no more commit than I could. It’s absurd. I knew them both too well.”

“Maybe that was it, Joe. Maybe you knew them too well. Maybe that led to the killing.”

Ragan stared at Stigler, unwilling to believe he was hearing correctly. “Mark, that’s the most rotten thing that’s ever been said to me, and you’re no half-baked rookie. You must have a reason. Give it to me.”

Stigler looked at him carefully. “Joe, understand this. We have almost no evidence to prove this theory. We do have a lot of hearsay. I might also add that I never dreamed of such a thing until we found that gun in the weeds, and even then I didn’t think of you. That didn’t come up until Hazel Upton.”

“Who’s she?”

“She’s secretary to George Denby, the divorce lawyer.”

“Divorce lawyer?”
Ragan stared. “Who would want a divorce lawyer?”

“Miss Upton called us to say that Mary Burns had called when her boss was out, but Mary told her she wanted a divorce from Ollie.”

“Somebody is crazy,” Ragan muttered. “This is all wrong!”

“We’ve got a statement from her. We’ve also got a statement from a friend of Mary’s, a Louella Chasen, who said Mary asked her what her divorce had cost and who her lawyer had been. She also implied there was another man.”

Ragan was speechless. Even before this array of statements, he could not believe it. He would have staked his life that Ollie and Mary were the happiest couple he had ever known. He looked up. “Where do I come in?”

“You were a friend of the family. You called often when Ollie was away, didn’t you?”

“Well, sure! But that doesn’t mean we were anything but friends. Good Lord, man…”

For several minutes he sat without speaking. He knew how a word here and there could begin to build a semblance of guilt. Many times he had warned himself against assuming too much, and here it was, in his own life.

There was that old affection for Mary, never serious, but something they would bring up. He knew what a hard-hitting district attorney could do with the fact that he had known Mary before she met Ollie. They would insinuate much more than had ever existed between them. Ragan could see the net building around them, and there were two aspects he could not explain. Ollie had been shot with his own pistol, and Mary Burns had no alibi. Worse still was the one thing he could not understand, that Mary had actually spoken of divorce.

“Mark,” he said slowly, “believe me, there is something very wrong here. I don’t know what it is or where I stand with you, but I know as well as I am sitting here that Mary never wanted a divorce from Ollie. I was with them too much. And as for Mary and me, we were never more than friends.

“Mary knows I am in love with Angie and would marry her tomorrow if she’d have me. She knows that somehow or other we’ve gotten into the middle of something very ugly.”

“Keep on with the case, Joe. If you can find out anything that will help, go ahead. I am afraid Mary Burns is in a bad spot. You can’t get around that gun, and you can’t escape those statements.”

“They lied. They lied and they know they lied.”

“For what reason? What would they gain? Why, they didn’t even know why we wanted the information! Mary Burns was seen coming out of Denby’s office, so we made inquiries. That was when we got the statement from Denby’s secretary. Denby was out of the office, so he knew nothing about it.”

“Who saw her come out of that office?”

Stigler compressed his lips. “I can’t say. It was one of our men and he had a hunch there was something in back of it. As his hunches paid off in the past, we asked him to look into it.”

“Al Brooks?”

“Don’t start anything, Ragan. Remember, you’re not in the clear yourself. You make trouble for Al and I’ll have you locked up as a material witness.” His face softened. “Damn it, man, I don’t want to believe all this, but what can I do? Who had access to that gun? She and you. Maybe your girl friend too. There isn’t anybody else.”

“Then you’ve got three suspects. I wish you luck with them, Stigler.”

Nevertheless, when he got outside he felt sick and empty. He knew how much could be done with so little. Still, where had Mary gone? And what about this divorce business?

For a moment he thought about driving out to see just what had happened, then he decided against it. Nobody needed to see him and Mary again now. Besides, there was much more to do.

Mary had said Ollie had called her from the Upshaw Building. There was no reason why that should mean anything, but it was a place to begin, so he drove over and parked his car near the drugstore where Ollie had met Mary to go shopping.

No matter what had happened since, his every instinct told him to stick to the original case. If Ollie had begun to close in on somebody, all the troubles might stem from that.

The Upshaw Building had a café on the ground floor across the hall from a barbershop. Upstairs there were offices. In the foyer of the building there was a newsstand. Walking over, he began to study the magazines. There was a red-haired girl behind the counter and he smiled at her, then bought a package of gum. He was a big young man with an easy Irish smile, and the girl smiled back.

“Is there something I can find for you? Some particular magazine?”

“I was sort of watching for a friend of mine, a big guy with a wide face. Weighs about two-twenty. Has a scar on his jaw.”

“Him? Sure, I remember him. He comes by a lot, although I don’t know what for.”

“Maybe to see you?” Joe smiled. “I couldn’t blame him for that.”

“He’s nice. Married, though. I saw the ring on his finger. He was talking to me about Nebraska.”

“Are you from there? I used to work out in a gym in Omaha. I was a fighter for a while.”

“You sure don’t look it. I mean, you’re not banged up a lot. You must have been pretty good.”

“Fair.” Ragan peeled a stick of gum. So Ollie had been here more than once? And just standing around? “He’s a friendly guy, my friend is. Likes to talk.”

“Yes, he is. I like him. He’s sort of like a big bear, but don’t you tell him I said so.”

“All warm and woolly, huh?”

She laughed. “He did talk a lot, but he’s a good listener too.” She glanced at Ragan again, appraising his shoulders. “What business is he in? He told me he was looking for an office in this neighborhood.”

“He’s a lawyer, but he doesn’t handle court cases. He works with other lawyers, prepares briefs, handles small cases. He likes to take it easy.” Ragan paused. “Did he find an office?”

“I don’t know. They’re full up here, though he was interested in that office on the fourth floor. Nobody is ever around there, and he was hoping they’d move out. I told him I couldn’t see why anybody would want an office they didn’t use.”

“Does seem kind of dumb, when you’re paying rent. That’s like buying a car and leaving it in the garage. It doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

“It sure doesn’t. I think Mr. Bradford has been in no more than twice all year. I think he comes over to do his work in the evening. Old Lady Grimes, she cleans up in there, and she says he’s been here several times at night. I asked her about the office, thinking maybe I could find out something for your friend. She said they had a special lock on the door, and their own cleaning man who comes once a week.”

Joe Ragan steered the talk to the latest movies and her favorite songs, then strolled to the elevator and went to the fourth floor.

He had no idea what he was looking for, except that Ollie Burns had been interested, and Ollie was not a man who wasted his time. Getting off the elevator, he walked briskly down the hall as if looking for a particular place, his eyes scanning the names on the doors.

A closed door with a frosted-glass upper panel was marked
JOHN, J. BRADFORD, INVESTMENTS
. There was a mail slot in the door.