Tough as Nails: The Complete Cases of Donahue From the Pages of Black Mask (18 page)

“I don’t get you at all.”

Donahue wagged his finger. “Listen. A guy name Alfred Poore and a jane named Irene Saffarrans brought the diamond over here from France. Poore lifted it from a dowager duchess in Cannes this winter past. Coming over, the jane planted it on an artist named Crosby. They were afraid of the Customs. Crosby got knifed to death by a guy named Babe Delaney, who made Poore and the Saffarrans jane let him in on the racket. He’d found things out. Poore gunned for Delaney and I got Poore and they sent him to the Big House. Nobody concerned got the ice.

“It turned out that the ice had been planted in one of Crosby’s hats, and when he got home Crosby gave his janitor, a guy named Adler, some old clothes—among them the hat. The Saffarrans jane got clear after Poore went up, and she hooked up with a guy named Bruhard. Bruhard bumped off Adler in Grove Street, got the hat but not the diamond. Adler had got the hat cleaned. Bonalino worked in the hat-cleaning store, and when he took the lining out he found the ice. He hocked it here. Bruhard got gunned out in Forty-second Street, the jane got ten years. Nobody concerned got the real ice. Do you get me now?”

“No, I don’t. I loaned Bonalino two-fifty on this diamond. He paid me two-fifty and got the diamond back. That’s all I know, and you can believe it or lump it.”

Donahue’s voice rose—“I don’t believe it and I’m not going to lump it!”

“Listen, master-mind.” Friedman leaned on the counter and laid narrowed eyes on Donahue. “I don’t know what your game is, but it’s not on the up and up. I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, and I don’t have to carry on a conversation with you. Why don’t you get a brainwave and take the air?”

Donahue got interested. “So you’ve decided to get tough, eh? Trying to brazen it out, eh? Well, pipe this, sweetheart: It won’t work. That diamond was worth ninety thousand bucks till it reached here. Do you want to play house with me or do you want me to go to Headquarters and tell what I know? They don’t know that Bonalino hocked it. They think he had it in his possession from the beginning. I kept back the news to clear Bonalino.”

“Go to Headquarters.”

“Yeah? You keep books, you know. You’re supposed to enter every article pawned here. You know that, don’t you?”

“Sure.” Friedman swung a ledger on to the counter, flipped the pages, stopped, turned the ledger around so that Donahue could read it, and laid a finger on an entry. “There it is. I valued it wholesale at eight hundred. I loaned two-fifty on it. My books are okey. Go to Headquarters.”

Donahue looked up at him, smiled without humor. “Your brain’s not lame, Friedman—not at all.”

“There it is—in black and white.”

“Okey. But I don’t believe everything I read. Be seeing you some more, baby.”

Donahue went out wearing a sultry look that was not without chagrin.

Asa Hinkle, the Interstate in person, looked up from his flat-topped desk when Donahue entered and said:

“You look down-hearted, Donny, my boy.”

Donahue paced the floor a turn or two, scowling. He was baffled, and now that he was away from unfriendly eyes, his manner showed it. “That guy Friedman wasn’t born yesterday.”

“Oh, that’s it!”

“I felt like caving in his mug.”

“Only a city dick can do that—and get away with it. What did he say?”

“Nothing worth a damn. He made the entry in his book okey. The guy’s solid and he knows it. He valued it at eight hundred. If anybody argues he can say that was what he valued it at. There’s no proof he had the real diamond. No proof at all. It’s changed hands so much that anyone might have fluked it.” He dropped the bogus stone on the desk. “I guess you can let the Police Commissioner have it back. It didn’t work.”

Hinkle took off his diplomatic pince-nez. “That diamond must be in America, Donny. Poore and the Saffarrans woman know stones. They wouldn’t have tried to bring in a fluke.”

Donahue squinted. “What do you want me to do—go down and see Friedman again, get him in the back room and punch him around until the yellow runs? I’ll do it! By God, I’ll do it!” His dark eyes glittered, his fists were rocks at his sides.

Hinkle smiled, shook his head. “Donny, don’t be so thoroughly Irish.”

Donahue turned away, growled, “That’s an old one of yours!”

Donahue was eating ravioli in an Italian speak in West Tenth Street at noon the next day when Libbey, a city press association reporter fell in through the door, picked himself up and headed for the bar in the rear.

“Some day you’ll knock your brains out,” Donahue called.

“Oh, hello, Donny.”

Libbey changed his course, came over and flopped down in a chair facing Donahue. Drink had sapped the color in his cheeks. Drink had given him that young-old face. The crown of his hat was dented in, and his tie was crooked against his collar. He reached for the bottle of red wine beside Donahue, poured a water-glass full, swallowed it without a pause. He smacked his lips.

“How’s the ravioli?”

“How’s the wine?”

“I don’t like wine…. Hey, Skinny, bring me a Bacardi cocktail, and I don’t mean rosewater…. Well, wine is all right, Donny, if there is nothing else but water around. I feel depressed. That louse Sweeney is God’s most ungrateful man. I telephone him immediately after the murder happens and what does he do but wisecrack and accuse me of being drunk. I’m going to throw the job and get down to writing a novel.”

“Who got gunned out?”

“A fellow gave pennies and baubles to little kiddies. It’s a shame, Donny.”

“Around here?”

“Fourteenth Street.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah. A hock-shop man, Friedman.”

Donahue looked up. “How’d it happen?”

“Nobody knows. Some guy just came in, apparently, and blew him apart and went away, taking with him some loot—possibly. At any rate, there was a chamois gem bag on the floor near the pool of blood.”

“What time?”

“About eleven, I guess…. If you could see the pool of blood—”

“What’s the cop on the job think?”

“Who… Roper?”

“Roper on it?”

“Yeah. Great mind, that Roper… for a moron. Well, what the hell could he think? What do I think? What does anybody think? Look now: Murder and robbery, of course. But of an odd nature. There is the chamois bag lying beside the pool of blood. But it appears that the safe was not rifled and nothing stolen from it. Then what? Well, either the chamois bag was flung down in disgust by the murderer-thief, or it was discarded after he had taken something out of it. In the latter case, it’s plausible to assume—hic—to assume that Friedman had something shady in his possession. What was it? Who knows? Ah, my son, that is the mystery…. Well, it’s about time, Skinny!”

Libbey tipped the Bacardi cocktail against his lips and drained it at two swallows. “Encore, Skinny…. How’s to, Donny?”

“No, thanks. And what does Roper think exactly? Did he figure things out that way?”

“No. God, no! Roper? Pardon me if I seem to chortle…. How’s the ravioli?”

“Fine.”

“Think I’ll have some spaghetti. By the way, I kidded our friend Roper a bit. I said to him, quite offhand, ‘If you find it hard, Roper, look up Donahue.’ You should have seen him! And do you know what he said? He said, ‘Whenever I look that palooka up, it’ll be to put bracelets on him.’ I said bracelets were kind of effeminate; you might object. He spit on the floor, showing how he was brought—or dragged—up…. Cripes, Skinny, you take long! A guy would think this belly-wash was custom made.”

Donahue paid his check and got up.

“So soon?” Libbey asked.

“I’ve got places to go.”

Before he left the speak, however, he made a telephone call. “Hello, Ames?… Listen, Billy. This is Donahue…. I’m jake. Say, can you meet me in Fritz’s in fifteen minutes?… Oh, something. I’ll tell you then…. Great, Billy!”

When Donahue stepped from the booth there was a hard smile on his face. He walked briskly to a subway station and walked impatiently for a northbound train. His manner was eager and alert. He was smiling when he went down into a basement speak on Thirty-sixth street.

Ames was standing at the bar. He was a medium-sized man, blonde, casual, smiling. “Hello, Donny.” He was lazy-voiced.

“Listen, Billy. D’you hear about that kill in Fourteenth Street?”

“Yeah. We got it over the precinct. Mob job, eh?”

“I wouldn’t know. There’s a possibility it wasn’t. Want to do something for me?”

“Any time.”

“Find out who was released from Sing Sing recently, and if any of the guys was a cell-mate of Alfred Poore.”

“That all, Donny?”

“That’s all.”

“Have a drink?”

Donahue had bathed and was on his way out for dinner that night when the telephone rang. He went back to answer it.

“Yeah, this is Donahue…. Oh, hello, Roper. What’s on your mind?… Oh, you do? Well, I’m going out to eat…. It can wait, can’t it? Okey. I’ll drop in.”

He hung up, stood for a long moment with the telephone in his hand. Then he put it down, looked a little puzzled, and went out.

Roper was sitting in the back room of the station-house. Madden, his partner, and another dick named Crowley, were with him, and none of them smiled. Crowley closed the door, and Roper creaked his swivel chair. He drew a letter from his pocket, held it out.

“Read it, Donahue.”

Donahue took the letter, spread it and found it to be a note written on I. Friedman’s business stationery. It said:

Dear Benny:

Business is not so good, but that seems to be the case all around. I can lend you a hundred till the first, but I’ve got to have it back then.

My back is a little better, and I guess I’ll be all right soon. Nothing has happened, except a visit yesterday by a fly cop named Donahue. He threatened me, but I laughed that off.

Don’t forget I’ve got to have that century back by the first. Ike.

Donahue said, “H’m,” handed the letter back and added, “What do you make of it, Roper?”

Roper wore a dull, inimical look. “I’ll turn that question right around at you.”

“And we still don’t get an answer,” Donahue said.

“Don’t we?”

Donahue looked at him with wide-open brown eyes. “What’s this—another indication of your sense of humor?”

Roper’s gaunt jaw shifted. “Why did you threaten Friedman?”

“Did I threaten Friedman?”

Roper stood up, a bony man with wide, stooped shoulders, hard wrists and big-knuckled hands. “You read this letter, didn’t you? This guy Friedman wrote to his brother, and he wrote you threatened him.”

“It doesn’t say I threatened his life, does it?”

“It says you threatened him.”

“All right. I threatened to bust him in the face. What about it, copper?”

“Why did you threaten to bust him in the face?”

“It was personal. I lost my temper.”

Madden came up behind Donahue and gripped his arms.

Roper said, “Come on, Donahue. Why did you threaten him?”

Red color began to creep into Donahue’s face. “You guys going to get rough?”

“I’m waiting for an answer,” Roper said.

“Then tell this mutt to take his hands off me!”

“Let him go, Madden.”

Madden stepped back.

Roper said, “Okey, Donahue. Now tell me.”

“I’ve told you. It’s my business, and if you’re dumb enough to think I’m mixed up in this job, arrest me!”

Madden grabbed him again, twisting his arms behind his back. Donahue’s brown eyes got humid, and his lip curled, a dark shadow swept down across his forehead, across his face, making the red there dull and malignant.

Roper said, “I want to know what you were doing in that guy’s store yesterday. This letter wasn’t mailed. We found it in his store. He must have written it this morning. You’ve got to come across, Donahue.”

“Not on your natural, Roper,” Donahue snapped. “Arrest me. Go ahead. Nothing would tickle me more, because I’d be out in a couple of hours and you’d be the laughing stock of the whole neighborhood. You can’t buffalo me, sweetheart. Try it on the kids you slap for pitching pennies in the back alleys.”

Roper took one forward step and laid the flat of his hard hand across Donahue’s face. Donahue kicked Roper in the shins and Roper fell down. Madden butted Donahue with his knee. Crowley punched Donahue in the short ribs, and Donahue, cursing, kicked sidewise at Crowley while Madden still held his arms locked behind.

Roper was getting up, his upper lip lifted wolf-like.

Donahue said hotly, “You know damned well you can’t arrest me! What you want, you cheap punk, is to find out what I know about Friedman! You’re using this letter as a buffer. But it only gives me a laugh. Go ahead—arrest me! Why don’t you?”

“Let him go, Madden.” Roper’s face was somber, his voice a low growl.

Madden stepped back. Donahue smoothed down his sleeves, turned and headed for the door. Madden stepped in his way.

Donahue said, “You’re another dick needs a bust in the mouth.”

“Why don’t you bust it?”

Roper raised his voice—“Get out, Donahue.”

Donahue yanked the door open, threw a contemptuous look at Madden, at Roper, and Crowley; laughed sarcastically and went out with a toss of his chin.

Four nights out of each week Donahue ate dinner at Dominick’s, a quiet joint where you got good chili con carne and Spanish sherry that wasn’t cut but once. This was one of the four nights. Dominique was the real name, but the neighborhood was more or less Italian, and Dom himself had lived much in Genoa; and besides, the guy who’d painted the sign that hung over the narrow door was a Baxter Street Italian with a one-track mind.

It was near Columbus Park, on the Baxter Street side. It had a few booths in the rear room—the restaurant comprised two large rooms—and some lattice-work beneath the ceiling entangled with imitation vines.

Donahue found his favorite booth empty and after he’d told the waiter to bring him a Martini, Dom came over all smiling with a lot of big white teeth.

“Lady lookin’ for you, Donny.”

“Yeah?” Donahue laughed, broke a bread-stick. “It’s happened before.”

Dominick indicated a brunette who sat alone at a table in the opposite corner.