Tough as Nails: The Complete Cases of Donahue From the Pages of Black Mask (63 page)

“’Night, George. Give the old woman my deepest symp’thy.”

“Thanks, Sam.”

Donahue and the late Emperor’s brother rode down in the elevator in silence, crossed the lobby and reached the street.

“I go uptown,” George Brown said.

“Me down…. Say—” Donahue dropped his voice. “Don’t squawk about the autopsy. Let ’em pull it.”

George Brown looked quizzical. “You talk as if you think something’s wrong.”

“Listen. Did your kid brother ever say anything about changing managers?”

“No. You see, we never saw him much in Harlem. He stayed in midtown when he was here. He trained down South and on the West Coast. Who told you?”

Donahue said: “Well, I’ll grab a cab and go home.”

“You’re connected with the Boxing Commission, aren’t you?”

“They hired the agency.”

“What makes you think—”

“Taxi!… S’ long, Mr. Brown.”

Alex Karssen was a small man, five feet four; he had a leathery, lopsided face, a bright, tyrannical eye, and crooked teeth in a crooked but engaging mouth. He had a habit of spurting words sharply out of a corner of his warped mouth. He weighed about a hundred pounds. He was head of the Boxing Commission.

“Sit down, Donny. Want a drink?”

“Not now, thanks.” Donahue remained standing in the library of Karssen’s Fifth Avenue mansion. He was drawing on a cigarette, holding it with his fingers, and gazing down with a rueful smile at the diminutive Boxing Commissioner.

Karssen bit him with a keen, windy look. “Champions come and champions go, eh?” He took a quick, snapping puff at his cigar. “And some champions die.”

“In his dressing-room,” Donahue said in a low voice pregnant with implication. “Five minutes after he left the ring.”

“Five minutes.”

“Black Harlem went nuts. I heard it was a blow to the heart.”

Karssen leaned back, put his cigar in his mouth, took three quick puffs while his keen, bright look hunted back and forth across Donahue’s face.

“So what, Donny?”

“Kelly McPard’s going to crab for an autopsy. I told Beckert. He seemed agreeable. Paisley was there—in Beckert’s apartment, I mean.”

Karssen leaned forward, took the cigar out of his mouth, kept his eyes fastened on Donahue’s face. “What are the chances?”

“I bribed that bank clerk once. I guess I can again.”

“What about the autopsy?”

“I hope to find something there. Beckert wasn’t knocked over when I hinted—but you know that lug.” He paused, reached down to grind out his cigarette in a tray. “Mike Dolan’s in San Francisco. I’m going to get him on long distance tomorrow morning. If it’s true that King Brown spent an hour on the phone with Mike in a Los Angeles hotel a month ago, there’s only one reason why he should have.”

A crooked, wily grin captured Karssen’s face, and he nodded, puffed jerkily but made no comment.

Donahue brushed the dead ash from his fingertips. “If a stink is up Beckert’s alley, it’s going to mean murder. Which means that if we get hot, somebody’s going to get hurt.” He paused, dropped his voice, held Karssen’s eye. “If it gets to that, I’ll have to shoot first and go around asking bright questions afterwards.”

Karssen nodded.

Donahue said: “Is that okey with you?”

Karssen stood up, came around the desk, dug his bony fingers into Donahue’s biceps. “I’m behind you, boy. I won’t be Boxing Commissioner much longer, but while I am”—his crooked jaw shot forward—“I’m going to see if I can’t weed out a lot of this lousy double dealing.”

Donahue picked up his hat. “Les Paisley first,” he said.

Alex Karssen linked his arm in Donahue’s and walked to the door with him. He clipped: “Okey, then, Donny. Get Mike Dolan on long distance tomorrow. If Mike comes through—and I’ll bet my shirt he will—we’ll have a motive to start on.” He pressed Donahue’s arm, said with sudden earnestness: “Watch yourself, boy. I’d feel lousy if you turned up some morning in the obituary column.”

The alarm clock woke Donahue at eight next morning. He phoned the lobby newsstand to send up the morning papers, went into the bathroom and showered hot, then cold. He walked in his underwear to the door, received three papers from the bellhop. He poured himself a glass of Canadian ale, sat on the edge of the bed and spread the papers.

The death of the Emperor Brown was news. The sports writers had liked him, had always gone for him in a big way. The Emperor had been an unusual Negro, with many of his kind’s virtues and very few of its vices. He’d had the heart of a lion in his black body. He had been engaged, at the time of his death, to one Mary Hartley, a high-yellow Bronx school teacher. His death outshadowed the crowning of the new champion.

Donahue paused to reach for the phone. He said to the hotel operator: “I want to get Michael J. Dolan, at the Hotel St. Luke, in San Francisco. Person-to-person.” He hung up, resumed reading, turned a page and then darted his head downward. His eyes snapped, his jaw hardened. He reached for the phone, said: “Listen, never mind that call…. Yes, cancel it.” The receiver smacked into the prong and Donahue stood up, still holding the newspaper.

He re-read the stick that had roused him:

San Francisco, February 8: Michael J. Dolan, well-known boxing figure, manager of Jack Turck, was found dead late tonight in an overturned sedan, which he had been driving. The fact that none of the tires was blown, and that a cursory investigation showed nothing wrong with the brakes or steering gear, caused police to begin an investigation into the cause of the accident. The car left the road and crashed into a tree. Dolan’s skull was fractured, according to police, when he was thrown against the windshield. The accident occurred on a lonely suburban highway, and there were no witnesses, according to the police. He was dead when found, apparently shortly after the accident, by a passing motorist, at 8:30.

Donahue tossed the paper across the bed. He dressed quickly, automatically, with his gaze fixed intently on space. He went downstairs, ate breakfast in the hotel restaurant, swung his long legs out to the street and hopped into a taxi.

Kelly McPard had all the morning papers spread before him on his desk when Donahue walked in.

Kelly McPard said: “The Emperor sure had a swell press, didn’t he?… Tough. I see he was only twenty-three.”

“Did you see anything else?”

“Huh?”

“Page two, right-hand column.”

Kelly McPard turned the page. “Oh. Oh, you mean Dolan. Yeah. Apparently he wasn’t drunk, either.”

Donahue rasped: “He never touched a drop in his life, believe it or not.”

“Pretty early to get steamed up, isn’t it?”

Donahue sat on the desk. “Listen, Kel.” He paused, waited until Kelly McPard looked up at him. “I was going to long distance Dolan this morning. A month ago a West Coast columnist ran a squib that ran something like this: ‘What gentleman of color, sojourning in Hollywood these past two weeks, talked on the phone with what sporting tycoon at what hotel the other night for one solid hour?’ Catch on?”

“Tell me.”

Donahue shrugged. “The Emperor was in Hollywood at the time. So was Mike Dolan.”

“Tell me more.”

“I’ll guess. Dolan and Brown talked over a contract. A week later the columnist ran an apology to the anonymous gentleman of color, saying he had been misinformed. I’ll guess again. Dolan paid him to.” He stood up, pointed. “If this death of Dolan was an accident, I’ll be a moron. Dolan and Brown had to be cagey. So cagey that nobody but Dolan and Brown was to know that they’d talked. Brown’s dead. So is Dolan. Who’s to prove, now, that they talked for an hour?”

McPard fooled with his neat mustache. “But who would care—enough to murder? Don’t forget, Donny, murder is a pretty big thing. Besides, they wouldn’t have bumped off Dolan before the Emperor died. That wouldn’t make sense even on your crazy idea.”

“They didn’t. That 8:30 in the paper is Pacific Coast time. It was 11:30 New York time, an hour after the Emperor died. There was a San Francisco radio hook-up.” He pivoted off the desk, smacked fist into palm, ground the fist in. “This burns me up. If I’d phoned last night—” He shrugged, made a sour face. “But I knew if I phoned early I’d get him in. He wouldn’t’ve been up yet.”

McPard grinned. His mouth was small, his teeth small and very white and even. “I’m beginning to wake up, Donny!” He grabbed a phone, called the morgue. “Jake there?… Hello, Jake. Kelly. That autopsy coming along?… Okey, kid; call me when huh?… Swell.” He hung up, looked at his fingernails.

He said: “What about that columnist?”

“I doubt it. If his dope was straight he must have got it from a hotel telephone operator stooling for him. If he turns her up, it’ll mean a penal offense against her and he’d lose his face and his job and go around hearing ‘rat, rat’ on all sides.” He stared with hard intensity at the floor, chewed on a corner of his lower lip. Then he snapped out of it and said: “I’ll run along, Kel. Be seeing you.”

Kelly pointed to the newspaper. “Did you see that picture of Sam Beckert taken near the dead Emperor’s body?”

Donahue said from the door: “The one where he’s crying?”

“Yeah,” McPard said, with a wry grin.

“The lousy crocodile,” Donahue said.

Lomard’s was a quiet chop house in East Fifty-Fourth Street. It contained a few dark, secluded booths, and in one of these Donahue sat down at a few minutes to twelve and ordered Blue Points on the shell. He was impaling the sixth oyster when a young, pale, weak-chinned man approached the booth. Donahue nodded and the man slid on to the bench opposite.

“Chicken broth and an omelette,” he said to the waiter.

The waiter went away and Donahue leaned his elbows on the table.

“How goes it, Trent?”

Trent kept his eyes lowered while he thrust a hand into an inside pocket of his coat. He withdrew a folded piece of paper, opened it, spread it on the table and put on a pair of glasses. He leaned forward, lowered his voice nervously.

He said: “This morning he deposited eight checks made out to himself. They totaled eighty-seven thousand dollars and were signed by eight different persons. All the checks were drawn against New York banks and bear dates as far back as two weeks ago.”

Donahue grinned. His grin faded and he dropped his voice, bent a sharp eye on Trent. “If I could only find out who made out that check for a hundred grand he deposited three weeks ago.”

“I’m sorry. We can’t check that up.”

“But you’re sure before that his account was only ten thousand?”

“Yes. Of course, he may have had accounts in other banks, and it may have been a transfer.”

“It might have been,” Donahue mused, but his tone bore a negative implication. He sighed. He drew from his pocket a fifty-dollar bill, passed it across the table.

Trent colored. His fingers fumbled with the bill, thrust it away into his pocket.

Donahue was saying: “Watch that account. See what happens to it.”

“I—I—” Trent moistened his lips. “I’m getting nervous—”

“What the hell for?” Donahue muttered, darkening. “You started it. Finish it.”

“Y-yes, of course.”

Donahue said quietly, but threateningly, “Bail out on me now and….”

The waiter brought chicken broth.

It was almost two when Donahue walked in on Kelly McPard. The sergeant turned from a window. A slow grin made bright spots on his rosebud cheeks, put a tantalizing twinkle in his blue eyes. He shrugged, held his arms out, palms out, then shook his head.

“Poor old Donny,” he sighed.

“Poor old Donny, why?”

McPard suddenly looked sad. “The autopsy is all washed up, pal. What do you think the Emperor died of?”

Donahue kept a sharp eye on McPard. “Go ahead.”

“Heart failure.”

“Quit kidding.”

“I’m not kidding, Donny. They didn’t find anything. He wasn’t poisoned and he wasn’t needled. The old heart just folded up.”

Donahue snarled: “That’s a lie!”

McPard was tranquil. “There were three doctors working on him. No two of them were close friends. But they all said the same things. It’s open and shut, Donny. The Emperor was like a lot of high-priced thoroughbred horses. They suddenly blow up.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“Hell, man, you can’t go against the findings of three good doctors. An autopsy’s the last court of appeal.” He came over, took hold of Donahue’s arm, shook it good-humoredly. “Trouble with you, Donny, you been working for the Box Commish so long that you see dirt in every corner. Drop it, kid. You can’t go farther than an autopsy. That’s a good kid—drop it.”

Donahue shrugged off McPard’s hand, walked to a window. He stuck a cigarette in his mouth, snapped a match on the nail of his thumb. He lit up, scowled down at the street. McPard crossed to stand beside him—a genial, scrubbed-looking fat man in well-made clothes, crisp, clean linen.

He said: “It was just a tough break for the Emperor, Donny. Don’t be a sap. You can take it, I know you can. We got to admit we’re wrong now and then; you know, take it on the chin—like the Emperor did—”

“Ah, lay off the stuff,” Donahue rasped. He pivoted, strode across the office and went out. He slammed the door.

McPard looked pop-eyed at the door for a moment, then broke into a chuckle. Still chuckling, he sat down, poured liquor from a flask into his mouth. He chuckled again, capped the flask.

“Same old Donny,” he mused. “Same old palsy-walsy.”

The Negress was tall, dusky tan rather than black. She had an unusually high forehead, a good chin, and there was nothing Negroid about her nose. Her eyes were intelligent. She wore a short brown jacket, a longish brown skirt that tapered from the hips smartly to well-shaped ankles. She wore smooth black hair over her ears; it was rolled in a loose doughnut on her nape.

“I’m Donahue,” Donahue said, leaning in the doorway; he added: “I work for the Cosmos Detective Agency. The Boxing Commission’s been using us for several months.”

“Won’t you come in?”

He nodded, walked past her to the center of a small, well-furnished living-room; stood twirling his hat slowly on his index finger and turned when he heard the door close. The customary nonchalance with which he went through life was gone now; there was a hard, shrewd depth in his eyes, and an innate stubbornness had found its way to his lips, tightening them at the right-hand corner.