The Collection (112 page)

I let that cook for the moment. “Know where Charlie's wife
is?”

“Yes. Out of town. That is, unless she has returned unexpectedly
and I haven't heard.”

I snorted lightly. “Don't your spirits tell you things?
. . . Let's get back to the warning about me. Did the what's-it
suggest any reason why I might be killed?”

“No,” he told me, “and I can see you're incredulous about
that, Sergeant. Frankly, I don't care whether you take it seriously or not. I
had a message and it was my duty to relay it. Any more questions? If not, I'd
like to get on home.”

I stood up. “We're both going to the same building. Come
on.”

“Fine!” Barranya said. “Want to go in my car? I presume
there'll be plenty of squad cars rallying around over there to give you a lift
back.”

Well, there would be; and these days a chance to save rubber
is a chance to save rubber. So I got into his car. And when I saw how smoothly
it ran I wondered---as all cops wonder once in a while, but not too
seriously---whether I'd picked the right side of the law. It was a sweet
chariot, that convertible of his.

“Can you get short-wave broadcasts?” I asked, assuming that
a boat like his would have a radio, and ready not to be surprised if it turned
out to be a radio-phono combination. I was curious to see if anything new was
going out to the squad cars.

“Out of order,” he said. “Worked early this evening, but I
tried it after I left the Anders Farm and it wouldn't work.”

We drove a few blocks without either of us saying anything,
and it was then that I heard the voice:

“Sibi Barranya killed Randall. He wanted Randall's wife.”

I blinked and looked around at Barranya. He wasn't talking,
unless he was a good ventriloquist. Not that it would have surprised me if he
was, because these fake mystics dabble in all forms of trickery.

But Barranya looked scared as hell. The car swerved a
little, but righted itself as he swung the wheel back. We slowed up and he
said, “Did you hear---”

“Shut up,” I barked. As soon as I'd seen his lips weren't
moving, I looked around the rest of the car. Maybe it was the comparative quiet
because we were slowing down, but I recognized and placed a faint sound I'd
been hearing ever since we'd started; a sound I'd wondered about in a car that
ran as sweet and smooth as that one did.

It was a faint crackling, like static on a radio, and it
seemed to come from the loud-speaker that was up where the windshield met the
car top, on Barranya's side.

“Cut in to the curb and stop a minute,” I said. As we
coasted in, he said, “Sergeant, there are good spirits and evil ones. The evil
ones lie, and you mustn't---”

“Shut up,” I said. “There are good radios and bad radios,
too. Where's a screwdriver?”

He opened the glove compartment and found one. “Do you mean
you think---”

I said, “I'm sure as hell going to see. When it comes to
spooks, Barranya, I don't think anything. I look for where they come from. That
radio's on!”

I got it out from behind the instrument panel with the screwdriver.
The faint crackling noise stopped when I disconnected the battery wire.

The set showed what I had a hunch I'd find. It had been
tampered with, all right. There was a wire shorted across both the short-wave
band switch and the turn-on switch, so that it was permanently on, and
permanently adjusted to the short-wave band. The condenser shaft had been
loosened so the rotor plates didn't turn with the shaft. In other words, it was
permanently set to receive anything broadcast on a certain short wavelength.
Barranya was peering curiously at it. “Could someone with an amateur
broadcasting set have? . . .”

“They could,” I told him, “and did. How's your battery?”

“How's--- Oh, I see what you mean.” Without putting the car
in gear he stepped on the starter and the engine turned over merrily. The
battery wasn't run down.

“This thing's been on,” I said, “since it was monkeyed with.
If your battery's still got that much oomph, it means it was done recently. If
your radio worked early this evening, this was done since then. Maybe while you
were at the roadhouse.”

“Then that other message, the one that warned about you---”

“Yeah,” I said, “my apologies---maybe. I thought you were
talking a lot of hot air.”

Unless he was honestly bewildered, he was putting on a
marvelous act. He said, “But I have heard such voices elsewhere.”

I smiled. “Maybe your radio here was in tune with the
infinite and it was a spirit, once removed. I got my doubts. Let's get going. I
want to show this little gadget to the boys.”

He slid the car into gear and away from the curb. He asked
thoughtfully, “Is there any way they could trace from that set where the
messages came from?”

“Nope,” I told him. “But they can tell exactly what
wavelength it was set for. That might help, but the F.C.C. has suspended all
amateur licenses since the war started. It would have to be an illegal set.”

“Aren't illegal broadcasts tracked down?”

“Yeah. There are regular listening posts, with directional
equipment. But if a set broadcast only a couple of sentences like that, they'd
probably be overlooked. So that's no help.”

We were slowing down already for the apartment building when
I remembered. “How's about what your radio ghost friend said just now? Are you
chummy with Randall's wife?”

He took time to word his answer. I could have counted to ten
before he said, “You'd find out anyway, I suppose. Yes, I like her a lot and she
likes me. Her husband. . . .”

“Didn't understand her?” I prompted.

He glared at me, and started to say something that would
probably have led to trouble if I'd let him finish.

“Hold it, pal,” I cut in. “Here's the big thing to think
about. Whoever put on that broadcast just now knew about you and Mrs. Randall.
How many people know that. Pete Burd, maybe?” He calmed down. “I don't know.
Anyone might have guessed, I suppose. Uh---Charlie Randall didn't mind, so we
weren't too secretive about being seen.”

“Randall
knew
you were making love to his wife!”

“I think so. He wouldn't have cared, if he had known. You
know that little blonde who used to sell cigarettes at the Green Dragon?”

“I think I know which one you mean,” I told him. “The one
with the nice---”

“That one,” he said. “She doesn't work there any more.” The
car stopped in front of the Deauville Arms, and I got out, carrying the
gimmicked radio. I waited until Barranya came around the car to join me.

When we got into the elevator I said, “We're going to Randall's
flat first, both of us. You'll have to bear up a while yet before you go to
sleep.”

“Why can't I go on up, while you---”

“Nix,” I said. “I'm going to report to Holding, and you're
not going in that flat before I go with you. Listen, Barranya, the only thing I
don't like about your alibi is that it's too damn good. Maybe you got something
upstairs I'd like to see before you dismantle it. Such like a phonograph with
your---”

I broke off, because as soon as I mentioned it I knew it
wasn't a phonograph record that had made that call. Because I'd done part of
the talking, and he'd answered what I said. I remembered that lousy gag about
not shooting at random but at Randall. But I took Barranya with me just the
same. Holding would want to see him.

The Randall flat was full of photographers and fingerprint
men. I parked Barranya in the hallway, and told the man on duty at the door to
keep an eye on him. I went in to give Holding my report and the radio set.

The coroner was working on the body; they'd moved it into
the bedroom after taking photos. Captain Holding showed me the position of the
chair and the ropes; everything checked with what I'd heard over the telephone.

Holding said, “Maybe Barranya could have called you from the
phone booth in the hall at your precinct station, and then gone on into the
waiting room while---”

“No, dammit,” I said. “I traced the call. It came from here.
It must be some kind of a frame, but it's the goofiest thing I ever heard of.
If anybody wanted to frame Barranya, why'd they give him that message about me
that sent him to my office only two minutes after the murder?”

Holding shrugged. “Do you know anybody connected with the
case who's a good voice imitator?”

“Not unless it's Barranya, and he wouldn't imitate his own
voice. Nuts! I'm going in circles, and this toothache is driving me batty. Say,
how's Mrs. Randall doing on alibis?”

“Excellent. We called the hotel in Miami she was supposed to
be at. She's there all right. I talked to her myself.”

“Just now?”

“What do you mean, just now? Think we could have notified
her yesterday, Sergeant?”

I shook my head. “Don't mind me, Cap. My mind just isn't
working any more. But one thing. I take it you're going to send men up to
search Barranya's place. Maybe while he's here and you're talking to him? Well,
I'd like to go up with them.”

“You should go home, Bill. This is our job, now that you've
reported,” Holding pointed out.

“Got to stay awake till I can see a dentist at nine. Having
something to do will keep my mind off this damn toothache. Anyway, this is my
big day, Cap. If Barranya's spirit controls are in working order, I'm due to be
bumped off.”

“I'll question Barranya now. I'll hold him a while, and give
you plenty of time, though.”

“Swell. I'm even going to take the kitchen sink apart up
there. Say, know who lives above and below this flat---on the third and fifth?”

“Third's vacant. Guy named Shultz has the fifth, in between
here and Barranya.”

“What's he do?” I asked.

“Manufacturer. Pinball games and carnival novelties.”
Holding saw the sudden look of interest I gave him, and went on. “Yes, he did a
little business with Randall. But he's clear on this. He's out of town, he and
his wife. We've checked and it's on the up and up.”

“How about Burd?”

“Murphy's on the way over there now. I'm going to have that
cigarette girl angle looked into, too. We can trace her easy enough if Randall
set her up somewhere. Might be an angle there.”

“More curves than angles,” I said. “Sure you don't want
me
to---”

“I do not. Send in Barranya, and take Clem and Harry up to
his flat.”

Clem and Harry and I spent two hours searching, but there
wasn't anything in Barranya's flat worthy of interest except a bottle of Scotch
in the cupboard. The homicide boys didn't touch it because they were on duty,
but I wasn't.

When they left, I sat down at the table in the living room
to wait. Holding kept Barranya down there another half hour. He looked mad when
he came in. By that time my tooth had stopped jumping up and down and settled
into a slow steady ache that wasn't quite so bad.

I waved my hand toward the Scotch on the table, and the
extra glass I'd put there. “Have a drink.”

“Thanks, Sergeant, I shall. After that, if you don't mind,
I'd like to turn in.”

“Don't mind me,” I told him. “Go right ahead and turn in.
It's your flat.”

“But---” He looked puzzled.

“Don't mind me, I'm just sitting here thinking.”

He poured himself a drink from the bottle and refilled my
glass. He said, “And how long do you expect to sit there and think?”

“Until I've figured out how you killed Charlie Randall.”

He smiled, and sat down on a corner of the table. He said,
“What makes you think I killed Randall?”

“The fact that you
couldn't
have,” I told him, very
earnestly. “It's all too damn pat, Barranya. It's like a stage illusion. It's a
show. It doesn't ring true. It's just the kind of murder and kind of alibi that
an illusionist would arrange. The kind of thing that wouldn't occur to an
ordinary guy.”

“You're logical, Sergeant, up to a point.”

“And I'm going to get past that point. Go on to bed if
you're tired.”

He chuckled and stared down into the amber liquid in his
glass. “Is that all that makes you think I did it?”

“Not quite,” I said. “We found something very suspicious in
this flat. That's what makes me sure.”

He looked up quickly.

“We found
nothing,
Barranya. Absolutely nothing of
interest.”

His smile came back; mockingly, I thought. “And you find
that suspicious?”

“Absolutely. I have a strong hunch that before you left here
this evening you took away and hid any papers, any notations, you wouldn't have
wanted the police to find. And the gimmicks connected with the seances you hold
here.”

“They aren't seances. I've explained---”

“It's just unlikely,” I went on without paying any attention
to his interruption, “for us not to have found
something
you wouldn't
want found. Not even letters tied in blue ribbon. Not a scrap of a notation
about one of your customers.”

“Clients.”

“Clients, then. Nothing at all. I just don't believe it,
Barranya. And if you knew this apartment would be searched, then you knew
Randall was going to be killed. That means you killed him, somehow.”

“Brilliant, Sergeant. Have your deductions gone any farther?”

“Yes. You knew when he was going to be killed---or when it
would appear that he was killed. Probably it was twenty minutes before I got
that phone call. Time for you to get from his flat to my office.”

“And you think I framed myself by accusing---”

“Why not? That radio was a swell trick. It wasn't the radio
at all, Barranya. I've thought that out. It
was
ventriloquism. My first
guess was right, only I found that radio going and naturally thought that the
voice came from it. You fixed the radio yourself, and any spiritualist knows
ventriloquism---the safest and easiest way of getting spirit voices in a
seance. The trick has whiskers on it.”