Pardon My Body (10 page)

I
WOKE UP WITH A BRAKEMAN'S
cleaning-rag in my mouth. Somebody was drilling holes in my forehead with hot rivets and the back of my head had switched places with a sponge. Opening my eyelids was like raising a concrete slab, but I made it. I was still in Lena Martin's apartment. I was lying on the slightly threadbare carpet by the bureau. I sat up, supporting myself with one hand and using the other to finger the back of my skull. I fetched my hand away and saw the brownish-red smear across it, but I knew my skull was intact. Whoever hit me hadn't wanted to kill me.

Whoever…I quit wondering because my eyes were starting to focus. What they had focused on was Lena Martin. I knew it was her by her clothes. That was how I did know it was her, although I hadn't previously seen her with her skirt rumpled-up almost to her waist. Her long nylon-clad legs were half drawn up under her and I could see that that she was
wearing pink silk panties. They looked pretty. Nothing else did. This was because her head had been smashed in. The face which had once been beautiful wasn't any kind of a face any more.

I sat on the floor staring at the dead girl. A single blow had cracked her skull apart, but that wasn't good enough for the killer. He had gone to work on the rest of her head. I slumped forward on both hands, twisting my head a little to the side. I was going to be sick. Then I knew I wasn't. Two things stopped me and they were just below eye level. They were a pair of heavy black boots and maybe they wouldn't have stopped me except that I knew feet were inside them. My gaze travelled up a pair of dark blue trousered legs.

From up above a voice spoke.

“Ya can get up, Bogard.”

He didn't say it nicely. He said it the way he would if he was opening a third degree session on a shine.

I got up and wobbled against the bureau. My legs still felt like they were made of rubber but they were hardening a little. I mean I could stand on them.

The man who stood three feet from me wore tree trunks for legs and had a big chest rating. Not the biggest in the world. Epstein's sculpture of Adam has that. But big. He wore the uniform of a police cap
tain. His face was red, sweaty and spotted but it had the kind of expression that made you think it had been carved out of solid hardwood. Puffy fat closed in on the eyes so much that you saw them through tiny slits. You didn't miss them because they glittered like little ice-blue pellets. He wore a pre-1918 Prussian haircut and his right hand engulfed a wicked-looking Navy Colt. It was pointing at my stomach, which is a very unpleasant place in which to be shot. But I knew he wasn't going to shoot. That was why he had hit me.

I had never seen him before but I knew he was Captain Lester Tawley and I understood now why Falls City had got left behind in the march of time.

Tawley let his bull voice snarl. “Why d'ya kill the broad, Bogard?”

I said, “I wouldn't know.”

A single long blue vein down the left-hand side of his fat neck throbbed a little. “Cracking wise won't get ya no place, Bogard. Why d'ya…”

“Don't keep asking me that,” I snarled back. “Tell me who lives at 2469 South Franklyn Avenue.”

A globule of sweat rolled down the side of his thick nose. “That's my home, smarty pants,” he said softly, “and the fact ain't gonna make no difference to ya one way or th' other.” He let his white
tongue crawl round his lips. “Now—give. Why d'ya kill th' broad?”

“Maybe I should ask that question and find out for you,” I sneered.

“Yeah—who?”

I said very slowly, “Maybe I should ask you—”

I had to let it go at that because he had pushed the Navy Colt into my chest. He fetched up his balled left fist and drove it straight at my front teeth. I had time to turn my face, but I took the blow just under my cheekbone. I got enough of it to feel my head jerk sideways and my back teeth bite into the inside of my face. There was a sharp salty taste in my mouth and a trickle of blood ran over my lips.

Tawley stepped back and grinned.

“That's just a slap,” he said. “Just one li'l slap for the smarty pants. When we're finished with ya there'll have been so many ya'll have given up th' count. Finally, we get th' signed confession.”

I felt my gorge rise. I wanted to slam him across his gross face. I wanted to do a whole lot of things to this yegg in copper's clothes, but he was the man with the gun. So I just stood there and said, dully, “What confession?”

“Why, th' one that tells us all how ya let this floosie
pick ya up in that beer parlour and then wouldn't pay her and satisfied ya dirty instincts by…”

“Don't give me that,” I screamed. “I didn't kill her, I tell you. Why should I kill her…?”

“I just told ya why, Bogard.” Now Tawley was gloating. He was going to enjoy himself over this.

I wobbled about by the bureau. “If I killed her who put me out?”

Tawley leaned forward. “Why, that's silly, smarty pants. No guy thumped ya. Ya beat up this poor kid and in th' struggle ya finally fell and hit ya head against that bureau.” He paused a moment, then: “There's blood on th' base of th' bureau right now.”

I screamed at him some more. “You can't get away with this…I got attacked from behind…I…I…”

Tawley reached out and yanked me off the bureau. “Ya yellow dog, Bogard—ya ain't got the guts of a louse. I'll…”

He stopped and spun me away from him. I reeled against the bureau again, whimpering and rocking back and forth on my feet. Then I gave a little sound and slumped to the floor at his feet.

I lay there moaning and rolling side to side. I could sense him bending down. Then I saw him lift his police boot to let me have a slap in the face. And
as he raised his leg I seized the foot with both hands and sprung him almost into a somersault. I could hear the big Colt clatter into a corner of the room as I straightened up and leaped onto him.

He had hit the carpet with an impact which shook the room but he hadn't time to rise because I had landed on top of him. I landed with both feet on his fat belly. A funny whistling sound came out of his mouth and all the color rushed from his face. I bent down and let my right swing in a low arc to his chin.

But he had rolled instinctively and I went sprawling over him. Now it was fists, teeth, feet—nothing would be barred. Tawley would use every dirty trick in the book and a whole lot more they haven't written down. He used the flat of his feet to send me staggering half-erect back over the room and lunged after me. He was going for my eyes—but, as he came, I drove my right knee hard into his groin. The collision was almost sickening. He bent double in his agony but I slammed a left hook into his jaw and he swayed upwards, rocking back and forth with his piggy eyes glazed and nearly lost in their fat. Then, suddenly, he plunged headlong onto the carpet.

He lay still, with his face pressed into what was left of the pile. I grinned crookedly. I bent down and jerked out his police handcuffs. I dragged his hands
behind his back and clamped the irons on. He would have to lie still with those. I knew that police pattern. The more you struggle the tighter the steel gets on your wrists.

Okay—but he could shout. But not if he had a gag in his mouth. I pulled a cloth off a small round side table and stuffed it on to his tongue. Then I tied it in a double knot.

I stood there looking down at him. Captain Lester Tawley wasn't going to frame anybody. He was going to lie there getting very sore indeed until the night janitor found him. Or the day janitor. I wasn't bothered.

But there was still something to do. I got out my handkerchief and wiped off all the surfaces I could think of. Including the bludgeon I'd been hit with. It was a long, black, leather-bound one. It had blood on it. Her blood.

I looked down at her again. Then I turned away and reached the little bedroom. There was a washbasin near the window. I leaned over it. This time I was sick. I was sick for maybe a minute. My inside felt hurt and empty. I ran both taps and drank a glass of water without stopping.

Then I picked up my hat and coat and walked out into the corridor. I left the light burning. No one was around. I thumbed the elevator call-bell and waited
for the steel cage to come up. It came up empty. I stepped in and rode down to street level.

The hall was empty, too. Not that it mattered. I was getting out of Falls City and I wasn't coming back. Outside the apartment was Tawley's big police car. I got in it and drove it a hundred yards down the boulevard. Just to make things more difficult.

I walked fast back to my Buick and stepped in. There was a half-bottle of Scotch under the dash and I drank most of it the way I had drunk the water.

I
STOPPED OVER AT
C
OLUMBUS
, O
HIO
,
and drove back into the Big Town at nine o'clock the next night. I hadn't hurried. This time I had plenty to think about on the drive. As, for instance, who tipped-off Tawley that I might go to Falls City. I thought I knew the answer to that one, the way I knew the answer to a lot of things. Don't think you're too damned smart, Bogard—you still don't know who killed Banningham, do you? All right, so I don't. But I will.

It was important that I shouldn't go to Falls City—or, if I did, that I shouldn't get out alive. I twisted my mouth sourly. They'd nearly fixed that angle. Suddenly, I remembered the way Lena Martin had let her gaze rove over the beer parlor, the way she had got up and walked out. Somebody had suspected something. Maybe the man in the once-good seersucker suit. Maybe he had heard the name Schultz. Maybe he had orders to watch things. There were too
many maybes. But the police department would have my car registration and as soon as Tawley saw the Buick he would know whose it was.

So he murdered Lena Martin because she had talked and he was going to frame me for it. That was a way to kill two birds. But he'd only killed one. The other had flown. By now, though, Tawley would have been found and he could radio every cop between Falls City and New York. Every motorcycle officer and every prowl car could be looking for me. But I didn't think they would be. I didn't think Tawley would radio anybody. Tawley had plenty to hide and the men behind him had plenty to hide, too. Clear of Falls City I could get lawyers, call friends. Above all, I couldn't be third-degreed. No, Tawley would have to play it quiet—if he could play it at all.

I guessed he couldn't do that. But others could move in on me. Now I would have to take every step with a gun in my hand and it would no longer be safe to sleep nights. But maybe there wouldn't be any more nights. I was going to play it big myself from now on.

It was ten minutes after nine when I killed the motor out front of my apartment. I was tired, hungry and sticky from the long drive. I showered, changed my clothes and drank the only Scotch I had left in the place. I felt better. Then I got a bottled beer out of
the icebox and drank that, too. I felt better still. There was some cold chicken in the box and I made myself sandwiches while the coffee was getting hot.

A quarter of an hour later I was back in the car. The night was clear and the Manhattan air was exhilarating enough to make you doubt that 112 tons of soot fall per square mile on this city every month. Besides, it wouldn't dirty my face before I got to Cornel Banningham's house. It belonged to the old man who seldom used it but kept a small staff there. It was an Upper Crust-looking place in the East Thirties. Not massive. Not pokey. Just a nice house. The kind you can just afford when you're pulling down thirty grand a year. That's why I'm living in a midtown apartment house.

The front door didn't have a bell push. The head of a small brass monkey leered at me instead. I lifted the head and rapped it smartly against the brass resting-base. There was a longish interval. Long enough for me to knock my pipe out, put it away in my overcoat pocket and whistle half of the
Beale Street Blues
. Then footsteps, a click as the hall light went on, and the door opened and Cornel Banningham stood there looking very elegant in a maroon silk dressing gown over pale cream pajamas. His hair was beautifully slicked back and he looked and smelled as though he had shaved recently.

He wore the same slightly insolent look but I thought he was a little uncertain.

“Early night, huh?” I said.

“I do that sometimes,” he said, smiling. “Come on in, Bogard.”

He poured a couple of highballs, gave one to me and raised his own.

We drank and he sat on the arm of a chair, swinging one natty pajamaed leg over the other.

I said, “I went out to see Mrs. Grierson. She isn't Mrs. Grierson. He picked her up in a burlesque show because she took his fancy and asked her to live with him as his wife. He figured it would look good to have a wife running that big place of his out on Long Island and the arrangement worked…until recently. She had the idea he was getting ready to quit. Maybe she was wrong about that. I don't know.”

He didn't say a word.

I went on, “She thought he was being blackmailed but might have tied that up in the last week or two. The big thing, though, is that she isn't his wife. So who gets the money?”

Banningham slowly lit a cigarette. “Nobody gets anything. Nobody outside the firm. You already know, I think, that his share of the business goes to myself. The arrangement under which money is paid
to the widow of a partner falls to the ground if she isn't his widow. That's all there is to it.”

“No possible motive for anyone in line for the money to have Grierson squibbed off?”

“None.” A smile flickered over his face. “Unless you think I could have done it. His death puts me on top, doesn't it?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I've got that in mind. How'd you fix it all up three thousand miles away in London?”

He laughed. “I didn't, of course.”

Suddenly, he seemed to remember something. His face darkened a little. “Something I found out only today—Grierson had drawn up a revised constitution for the firm. Under it his share of control was to pass to his widow….”

I whistled gently.

Banningham said carefully, “That makes things a bit different, doesn't it? Though I imagine my father would have needed a lot of persuasion to agree to it. But if Grierson wasn't married who was going to benefit?”

“If he was getting ready to marry that would explain it,” I said. “But we don't know a damn thing about that.”

He shrugged. “Well, perhaps we shall see. By the way, what happened to you the other night?”

I told him about the cast-eyed guy with the .22
target pistol. I thought maybe I might as well tell him the rest. For the first time he looked nearly excited.

“But this is serious,” was all he could think of to say, though.

“Yeah,” I said, “I thought so too when Tawley had the drop on me.”

“But the captain of police…”

I promoted a twisted grin. “This isn't England, Banningham. There are still some crooked coppers over here and Tawley is about the crookedest of the lot.”

“And this man Canting?”

“I am certain he had Grierson killed. I am equally certain that he got Bule rubbed out and dumped in my apartment to throw a scare into me. The Grierson murder was done by a hired killer from Falls City. Canting still has interests there—and Tawley is on his payroll. They didn't want me in Falls City, and Canting took the precaution of arranging for my reception in case I ignored his warning about going.”

Banningham sat drumming his nails on his knee “I see…”

He broke off because there was a slight sound in the corridor outside. It was a light rustle. Like a woman wearing a long robe that catches the floor a little as she walks.

Banningham got off the chair arm and moved a little way towards the door.

“I wouldn't trouble,” I said easily. “I think you're too late.”

Then the door swung inwards and Julia Casson walked into the room. She was in a long, blue and silver robe and her feet were in silver slippers with high heels. What I could see of her frilly negligee wasn't enough. She came through the door and leaned her shoulders against the lintel. She looked silky, sinuous and sensuous. But she also looked taken aback.

“I thought…” she began.

I finished it for her. “You thought it could be anyone else but me,” I said coldly. I don't know why.

She let her wide lips open a little over her small white teeth. Her eyes flickered. This time there was no invitation in them.

“You flatter yourself,” she said. Her voice was low and brittle.

“I don't,” I said. “The trouble is I only shave once a day.”

I walked out feeling as stupid as a kid who misses out on a date at a graduation day dance. Somebody ought to kick me in my aging pants. Maybe they would…

 

T
HE LITTLE SALOON
on lower Broadway was jammed. It took me three minutes to elbow my way to the bar. After a little while the place began to thin out some. I got my elbows on to the bar and got my hands around a large Scotch. I drank half of it, set the glass down and went on moodily looking at the colored bottles in the back of the counter.

Somebody else leaned elbows on the bar right next to me. I didn't bother to see who it was. He had to tell me.

“I've been looking for you,” he said.

I turned my head and then said, “Well, you've found me. What will you have—as if I didn't know. Two Scotches, please.”

O'Cassidy said evenly, “Where've you been and what do you know?”

I wasn't in a talking mood. I wanted to listen.

“Suppose you come clean first?” I suggested.

O'Cassidy grinned. “It's th' duty of the police to ask the questions,” he said. “I don't have to tell you nothing.”

“That's fine,” I told him. “Let's call it a day.”

Cass peered into his drink, then peered at me. “That guy Harry Bule, now,” he said. “We found he was hit with a slug from a .22 target gun….”

I could feel my fingers flex round the glass until
it was nearly ready to crack. I knew that Cass had seen them do it.

“Know a mug who uses a .22 target gun?” he asked softly.

“Yeah,” I said. “A tall bird with a cast in his right eye and dressed sharp as a tick in a gray jacket with fall-away shoulders. He has been known to drive a big black sedan. I mean
I've
known him to drive it.”

“When?”

“Three nights ago when he took me for a drive into the Bowery so we could have a nice talk in a black patch under the Elevated. He said he was nice people and to prove it he kept calling me pal.”

“Go on, Dale.” Cass said it so softly I only just heard it.

“I didn't like him keep calling me pal and he didn't like me being mixed up in this murder business. I don't think he minded personally—but the nice people who sent him along minded a lot.”

“You got warned off, huh?”

I nodded.

“And then what?”

“He kicked me out of the car, and I went home. It was a nice friendly talk. Only next time there
wouldn't be any talk.” I gave Cass a steady look and decided to come clean about Falls City.

When I had finished he grinned a little. “Those Falls City coppers sure are tough. Guess they must eat barbed wire for breakfast or sumpin'. I know all about Tawley. Just a hood in uniform. You'd better keep outa Falls City the next twenty years….”

He reflected for a moment and resumed. “A witness we picked up will testify that a big black sedan was parked at the back of your apartment around the time Bule's body was dumped there. The witness saw th' car drive away. He also saw there was sumpin' wrong with the man's right eye. This cast-eye guy ain't on our books, but we finally traced a man answering to his description to an old roominghouse overlooking the tidewaters of East Riverway.

“I sent Lieutenant Klinger on th' job, but he come back and says this guy was there but has beat it. Klinger, he don't have a clue…”

There was something funny in the way Cass said it and I stared.

He seemed to hesitate a minute. Then, as though he had made up his mind about something, he said, “I don't trust Klinger.”

“Why'd you send him?”

O'Cassidy wiped the shadow off his lean face
with a tiny grin. “It was Klinger who said he figured this car had driven out to East Riverside. It was Klinger who said he would make the inquiry. So I let him do just that. I also put a tail on Klinger.”

I said, “That'll cause a lot of talk down on Lafayette.”

“It won't,” said Cass, “on account of I was the tail. It was a tough assignment on account of there weren't many people riding the local, but I made it.”

“What did Klinger do?” I was curious to know.

“He went to the rooming house all right and when he came out I slipped in. He'd made the inquiry, too. Only thing was the old man who kept the joint said nobody looking like this cast-eye mug had ever roomed there. When Klinger turned in his report it didn't say that.”

“Risky,” I said.

“Not so much,” said Cass. “In normal circumstances we don't go around checking up on police lieutenants.”

“What do you suppose it means?”

“It means,” said Cass slowly, “it means that somebody is paying Klinger to lay a false trail. His theory was that the guy had taken it on the lam outa New York. If we fell for it that would be the end of embarrassing inquiries right here in this city, wouldn't it?”