Masters of Noir: Volume Two (7 page)

"Why, just the same as it always was. I gave her my key, and told her I wouldn't be home before three or four o'clock this afternoon."

"How'd she get the key back to you?"

"She didn't. Not personally, that is. She always hid it in a crack in the stonework over the basement door. The one that leads up to the street."

"That's pretty high. She a tall girl like you?"

"Yes. She used to work in chorus lines, just like I did."

"You known her long?"

"Yes. A long time. About—oh, about fifteen years."

"And when you came home this afternoon you found the key where you expected it to be?"

"No. It wasn't there. I got a passkey from the landlord."

I took out my notebook. “What's Leda's full name, and where does she live?"

4.

She hesitated. “Listen, officer ... Isn't there some way you can keep me out of this? I've known Leda half my life. I think the world of her. So long as I thought that man had killed himself, I was willing to bluff through a story to protect her. But if it's murder, I—"

"It isn't Leda you're worried about,” I said. “You might as well level with us. You've been around enough to know that the more you cooperate with cops, the easier it'll go.” I paused. “All right, so who is it you're afraid of?"

"If you were in my place, you'd be afraid of him too. He—he used to be a hoodlum. Maybe he still is, for all I know. He's mean—mean all the way through. He beat up one of his best friends once, just because the guy danced with Leda a couple of times too often. Once he knocked a man unconscious, just because he brushed against Leda on the street."

"You still haven't told me who,” I said.

"Leda's husband. Eddie Willard."

I wrote the name down. “Where do they live, Eddie and Leda?"

"You haven't promised to—"

"I can't promise anything,” I told her. “I'll do what I can for you, yes—but I can't commit the police department that way. You should know that."

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “They live at the Bayless."

"That an apartment house or a hotel?"

"Hotel. It's at the corner of West End Avenue and Sixty-second Street."

I made a note of it. “What hotel did you stay in last night?” I asked.

"The Paragon, on West Fifty-fourth."

"I know where it is. It's just down the street from the station house. What time did you leave there?"

"Well, their check-out time's a little earlier than it is most places. At one o'clock. I—let's see—I guess I checked out about noon."

"And then what did you do?"

"I took a walk."

"Where?"

"Oh, just around. I walked over to Fifth Avenue, and up Fifth to Central Park. I went to the zoo, and watched people rowing boats on the lake a while, and then I sat down on a bench and tried to get a little sun."

"You walk home from Central Park?"

"Yes. Why?"

"You see anyone you knew?"

"On my walk? No.” Her eyes suddenly grew round. “You don't think
I
... ?"

"I have to ask questions,” I said. “Then I have to check them out.” I took a final drag on my cigarette and flipped it away. For some reason I kept thinking about those filthy mattresses back inside. A cop sometimes turns up a lot of muck in the course of an investigation, and sometimes the stench of the muck stays with you far longer than the memory of the investigation. I had a feeling I'd be recalling those sweat-soured mattresses for a lot of years to come.

Janice Pedrick shifted her position slightly, and as she did so I noticed the play of muscles through the hard, dancer's body. She was a large girl, and a strong one. She would be physically capable of handling a small man the size of the corpse. She would have had no trouble at all stringing him up. On the other hand, the dead man had apparently been a prizefighter, supposedly capable of taking care of himself. And the girl showed no signs of having been in anything like a fight. There were no bruises or scratches, and none of her fingernails had been broken. If she'd been a party to his murder, I reasoned, she had either caught him while he was drunk or drugged—which would come out at the autopsy—or she had had help.

But there was the factor of her alibi—if it was one. I'd heard at least a hundred different suspects tell me the same tale. That walk through Central Park, with stop-offs at the zoo and lake and park bench, had worn pretty thin over the years.

Ben Muller came through the door, carrying a pink petticoat. “Take a look at this, Pete,” he said.

The petticoat was of nylon, with about six inches of lace at the bottom. It seemed to be new, but there were two large rents in the lace, and the nylon itself bore at least a dozen creases that extended almost the entire length of the garment. When I held it loosely across my forearm, the petticoat bunched itself together from top to bottom.

I glanced at Janice Pedrick. “This yours?"

She nodded.

"You wad it up like this?"

"No. It—it was hanging over the back of a chair when I left the apartment."

"Looks like we might have something,” Ben said.

The girl frowned at the petticoat, and then at Ben. “What do you mean?"

"It could have been used as a garrote,” Ben told her. “If someone grabbed it by each end, and pulled it taut, it would stretch out into a kind of rope. If you looped it around someone's neck, and tightened it up, and kept it there long to cause asphyxia, it would leave lengthwise pleats in the material—just like the ones it has in it now."

I handed the petticoat back to Ben. “Hang on to this,” I said. “Maybe we can book it as evidence, if things fall that way. How's the doc making out?"

"He said he couldn't do anything more until he got the guy to Bellevue. I told him he could take the body. Okay?"

"Sure. You get a receipt for it?"

"Yeah.” He took out a handkerchief and sponged at the back of his neck. “Hot in there, and the stink would make a goat sick."

I turned back to Janice Pedrick. “This friend of yours—this Leda Willard—do you think she'd be home now?"

She looked at her watch. “I don't think so. She goes to work at five."

"Where?"

"She works in a jewelry shop, down in the Village. It's not a regular store. The man she works for makes all his own things. It's just a tiny little place. He's been teaching Leda to make jewelry. She always liked doing things like that."

"How come she goes to work at five?"

"The store stays open until midnight. Leda just has a part-time job, and the only reason she works at all is because she wants to learn enough to start her own shop someday."

"What's the name of this guy she works for?"

She gave me the name—Carl Dannion—and an address on Christopher Street.

I put the notebook back in my pocket and gestured for Janice Pedrick to step back inside.

"That reminds me,” she said. “I'll have to be leaving for work myself pretty soon."

"Not tonight,” I told her.

"What do you mean?"

"I'm afraid we'll have to ask you to spend a little time at the station house."

I had expected something of an explosion. She surprised me. All she did was glare at me a little, and then she shrugged and walked past Ben and me and into the apartment.

"You'd better call for a car, Ben,” I said. “Turn her over to a matron, and let her think about things a while. Maybe a couple of hours down there will make her feel more talkative."

"You don't want me to question her?"

"No. Just let her stew a bit."

"And then what?"

"Get a set of the dead guy's prints and take them down to BCI. See if they can give us a make on him. While they're checking, look up the tailor that made his slacks and the guy who made his shoes. Either one of them could probably give you a fast make—provided you can get hold of them."

We stepped into the apartment. Janice Pedrick was combing her hair before a yellowed mirror over the sink.

"Where'll you be, in case I want to contact you?” Ben asked.

"I'm going down to the Village."

"Hell, I figured that much. I mean afterwards."

"I'll check in at the station house as soon as I can. You do the same."

"All right."

"How do you feel."

"Sleepy."

"Yeah. Same here.” I walked to the front door, then turned. “Just lock the place up when the tech boys finish,” I said. “I don't think we need to leave a stakeout."

He nodded and crossed over toward Janice Pedrick.

5.

It was a little cooler in the Village, and much quieter. I went down four shallow steps and turned into the Dannion Custom Jewelry Shop. Janice Pedrick had been right about its being tiny. There was room for a very small showcase, a workbench, and not much else. The man who came up to the counter was in his late fifties, a very thin, scholarly looking man with pince-nez and a spade beard.

"Is Mrs. Willard here?” I asked.

"No. I'm sorry, but she hasn't come in yet. May I help you?” He had just a trace of accent, but I couldn't identify it.

I took out my wallet and showed him my badge. I couldn't have got much more reaction if I'd showed him a live rattlesnake. His face blanched and his forehead suddenly began to glisten with sweat.

"Are you with the FBI?” he asked.

"You didn't take a very good look at my badge,” I said. “No. I'm a city detective."

He seemed to relax a bit, but not too much. “What can I do for you?"

"Do you know where Mrs. Willard is?"

He shook his head.

"She didn't call in to say she'd be late for work?"

"No, sir."

"You know any of her friends?"

"No, I'm afraid I don't."

"You ever see her with a very small man—a guy with a broken nose?"

"No, sir. I've never met any of her friends. I've never seen her with anyone at all."

"Not even her husband?"

"No, sir."

I put my wallet back in my pocket. I was curious about why Dannion had become so upset when he saw my badge, but I had no justification to question him about it. His personal guilts and fears were his own—unless I discovered later that they were connected in some way with the job I was on.

"I guess that's all, Mr. Dannion,” I said. “Thanks very much."

"Is Mrs. Willard all right, sir? If she's in any trouble ... That is, she's a very fine young woman, and if I can be of any assistance ... “

"She'd be glad to hear that,” I said. “But this is police business, Mr. Dannion. I can't discuss it with you."

I went up the steps and climbed into the RMP car and headed back uptown toward the Bayless Hotel.

6.

At the Bayless, I discovered Leda Willard and her husband had checked out at eleven o'clock that morning. They'd left no forwarding address, but they had left a considerable amount of clothing. The manager had ordered this stored for them, under the assumption that they would contact him later with instructions for forwarding or other disposition.

I got a thorough description of both of them and went back to the station house.

Ben Muller was waiting for me. He'd taken the dead man's prints to BCI, but BCI hadn't been able to match them with any in its files. The man's slacks, it seemed, hadn't been tailor-made after all, which meant that tracing them would take some time. And the bootmaker who had made his shoes had since closed his shop and gone to Europe.

I sent Ben over to the Paragon Hotel to start checking Janice Pedrick's alibi, and then I called Harry Fisher, a very good friend of mine who had once been a middleweight contender and was now writing a sports column for one of the tabloids. He knew everyone connected with the prizefight game, retired or active. I asked him if he'd go to Bellevue and see if he knew the dead man. He said he would be glad to. I gave him the phone number of the squad room, and asked him to leave a message if he should happen to call while I was out.

Then I got Headquarters on the phone and asked them to put out an alarm for the apprehension of Leda and Eddie Willard, and gave them the descriptions I'd got from the hotel manager. I asked for a run-through of the records to see if they had anything on either Willard or his wife, and then gave them Janice Pedrick's name and description and asked for a run-through on her as well.

I had Headquarters switch me to the police laboratory and asked for a report from the tech crew that had worked the murder apartment with Ben and me. They had found several sets of fairly clear fingerprints, but none of the prints had checked out to prints already on file. They were still working, and would call me as soon as they came up with anything.

I was reasonably sure the assistant M.E. wouldn't have had time to autopsy the body yet, but I called him anyway. He said that he had not been able to get the autopsy scheduled before ten o'clock the next morning, that he had tried to pull a few wires to get to it before then, but had been unable to work it.

I called the policewoman who had been with Janice Pedrick since her arrival at the station house. The policewoman said Janice had been an easy girl to talk to, but a difficult one to get anything out of. She reminded me she had a reputation for indirect questioning, and that if anyone got anything out of Janice it would be she.

I put the phone down, left a note in the message book to the effect that I would be back in twenty minutes, and went down to a restaurant on Fifty-third Street. I had two roast beef sandwiches and three cups of black coffee, and then went back to the squad room.

There was a note to call Harry Fisher on an extension at Bellevue Hospital. I called, and he told me that our dead man's name was Teddy Connors. He said Connors had been a pretty fair featherweight in the middle 30's, had retired with all his brains and most of his money, and had since taken an occasional flyer as a fight manager and promoter. Harry had seen him around only now and then in recent years, though he had once been a steady customer of the various bars around Madison Square Garden and St. Nicholas Arena.

I thanked Harry, made a tentative date for lunch the first day both of us had a free hour, and then called BCI back again. I gave them Teddy Connors’ name and asked for a run-through.