You Can't Kill a Corpse (4 page)

Clane parked his car in the basement garage of the hotel and with his suitcase took the elevator to the lobby. A bellhop relieved him of the suitcase and Clane went to the front desk to register.

The Metropole had a big lobby with dark wood paneling on the walls and darkly upholstered furniture scattered over the carpeted floor. The place looked comfortable without being shoddy or cheap. There was a fireplace at the far end of the lobby with large logs burning gently and throwing shadows into the darkened corners. The desk and cigar stand were at the other end, nearest the door. Clane found the clerk to be a small, dapper man, thin-lipped and stiffly impersonal. Clane gave him his name and then turned his attention elsewhere. His main interest would not be the clerks but others who could be more useful to him. Most bellboys, he had found, were ready to try anything if there was a big enough tip attached to it. They usually heard things they weren't supposed to. So did telephone operators, and Clane glanced at the switchboard now.

He thought, I'll have to work hard here. The girl was young, about twenty-five. Even seated as she was he could tell that she was tall with a slim but good figure. Her hair was dark and she wore it loose about her shoulders. She returned his stare politely but without interest. Her eyes, he decided, were her nicest feature. They were large and dark and, like her broad mouth, looked as if she laughed a lot.

She did not look prim but she gave him the impression of being conscientious and sure of herself in her job. He hoped he was wrong, because a girl like that would be hard to get information from.

The clerk spoke to Clane. “We put you on six, Mr. Clane.” He gave the bellboy a key. “Your package has been sent up.”

“Fine,” Clane said absently. He looked at the bellboy. “I'll be along in a minute.” He walked around the desk to the opening alongside the switchboard. The girl was busy with a call and Clane lounged there, waiting. When she was done she loosened her headpiece and glanced inquiringly at him.

“I want to make a call,” Clane said.

She nodded her head at a row of booths behind him. “Take booth one, please.” Her voice was rich but impersonal.

“To the telephone operator at the Hotel Metropole, Dunlop,” Clane went on.

“That's been done before.”

“I suppose so,” Clane said. “But I'm a stranger in town.”

“There's a Lonely Hearts Club on Main and Fourth,” the girl said. She turned aside as the board buzzed. Clane watched her fingers work nimbly for a moment. When she leaned back, he said:

“I'm Clane.”

“I know,” she said without smiling. “We've all been watching for you.”

“You sound disappointed.”

“You don't,” she said, and smiled a little at him.

Clane grinned sourly. “I'll put the call through my room.” She didn't answer and so he turned toward the elevators. He felt silly using such a shoddy approach with the girl, but it had brought him to her attention and that was enough for the time being. He went on up to his room.

Clane liked the Metropole. His room was big and comfortable, and the bellboy had found a bottle of straight bourbon for him. It had been surprisingly easy to get the liquor despite it being sold only in state stores. It was, he reflected, another example of Dunlop's smoothly running rackets.

Clane's suitcase had yielded his motheaten dressing gown and slippers and now, after a hot, soaking tub, he was stretched on the bed with the bourbon and the latest newspaper. He let the paper lie in his lap while he watched the rain sluice down.

It was a hard, pelting rain. The air had cooled off and Clane was feeling better. He looked down at the newspaper. “Crucify me, Wickett,” he said cheerfully. He hoped Ed Thorne was reading the article.

He dropped the paper to the floor and rolled onto his side, reaching for the bourbon bottle on the bedstand. He poured himself a short drink, lit a cigarette and turned onto his back again. He was wondering about Thorne.

When Clane was instructed on the job he had been told to watch Thorne and Paul Grando. Thorne, Clane understood, was by far the more subtle. From all reports, Grando fancied himself as a supercharged racketeer even though he was still old-fashioned enough to try the protection business.

He turned his mind to Thorne again. He would be a hard man to handle. Suave and smart, and he looked determined enough to push aside anything he thought could become interference. Clane looked at his watch. Nearly seven. He finished the bourbon, stubbed out his cigarette and got to his feet.

At seven he was at Thorne's house. He found it to be a big, sprawling place on the low knoll that Dunlop called its hill. Clane had pushed the car to make it on time. It had been easy enough getting the few blocks from the hotel to the foot of the hill, but once he started climbing he found a maze of short, twisting streets, running with no apparent pattern. It was obvious that most of the well-to-do citizens lived there, getting their privacy with high fences or brick walls with a good deal of ground around their expensive houses.

Thorne had a nice expanse of manicured ground, drowned by the rain now, a garage as big as the average house, and the mansion itself. It was of frame and native stone, painted white. Clane thought he might like it on a sunny day, but it looked a gloomy pile in the rain.

He parked under a portico and walked to the front door. His ring was answered at once by a uniformed maid. She took his coat and hat and hung them in a small closet off the foyer. Clane looked the girl over but she was too drab for his taste. And a little too thin. She looked about twenty-two, and he couldn't decide whether she looked frightened because she was pop-eyed or looked pop-eyed because she was frightened. He wondered what kind of man Thorne was with the ladies.

Then he met Thorne's wife, Natalie. She was an ice blonde; a slick, well groomed forty, he estimated. He saw signs of the chorus years but he admitted she could have passed for thirty even in hard daylight. Her almost patrician features would have been more effective with less vivid make-up, but the gold cloth gown she had poured herself into held his eyes more than her features. She was a tall woman and she carried herself as if the gown were part of her. Watching Thorne look at her, Clane could see the man's weakness lying openly on his face and in his hard eyes. He would have no thought for any woman but his wife.

Thorne said, “We'll have cocktails and then eat.”

“So you're Clane,” Natalie Thorne said. Her contralto voice held speculation. “You don't look like Dunlop.”

“I'm not the only one,” Clane said. His brooding eyes took in the luxuriously furnished living room. It was defiantly modern, a decor such as he would have expected of Natalie Thorne. And it was bright and warm after the gloom of outside.

“I like small puddles,” Thorne said.

“So do I,” Clane agreed. “But I don't try to take all the water.”

“That's a good way to be,” Thorne told him.

Clane had two cocktails and there was a smooth sauterne with the pheasant at dinner. Natalie Thorne led the conversation, chatting easily with Clane and her husband. She asked Clane's opinion of the town and the weather, but there was nothing Clane heard that had any bearing on why he had been invited. He was beginning to feel anxious when Thorne rose from the table.

“We'll have our brandy in the library, Clane.”

“Don't let Ed shoot dice with you,” Natalie said throatily. Clane caught her eyes. They were sultry. He took a second look, a long one. He turned away, following Thorne. He felt uncomfortable. Thorne was a man of strength and violence, and a man who worshipped his sleek wife. And Clane knew that she had deliberately made him feel a physical pull toward her. He wondered what kind of wrench she would throw into the situation.

Thorne seated himself in a leather chair and waited for Clane to do the same. He poured brandy for them both and offered Clane a cigar. Clane refused, taking a cigarette for himself. He looked around the room a moment. It was dark and heavily masculine. The walls were lined with books and for the most part they looked well read. Thorne's furniture was utilitarian rather than made for eye appeal. There was a fireplace with a brisk fire going. Clane decided that Thorne liked fireplaces.

Thorne was blunt when Clane stopped his inspection and turned to his brandy. “What's your business, Clane?”

“I'm a salesman,” Clane said. “I sell hard-boiled eggs from rump-calloused hens.”

“I asked it straight, Clane.”

“I'm a salesman,” Clane repeated. “You want something sold. I'll sell it.”

“Morgan?”

“Morgan,” Clane admitted. “You're bucking a big outfit, Thorne. And with what?”

“Nothing yet,” Thorne said. “Wickett and Pryor have us sewed up. We're biding our time, building our own machine.”

“With what?” Clane repeated. “For what?”

“For better civic government,” Thorne said blandly. He sipped his brandy.

“You're no man to sit for four years,” Clane said. “Election is ten days off. I'll put Morgan over for you.”

“You started out on the right track,” Thorne said heavily.

“I put Clane in the public eye,” Clane said. “I'll put Morgan there—in a better light. I'll put Pryor where I am.”

“You have Wickett to deal with,” Thorne said. “The man who hit you in the mouth.”

“I'll deal with him,” Clane said quietly. “I'm remembering him.”

“What do you get out of it?” Thorne demanded.

“Ten thousand dollars cash,” Clane said. “Half in advance. The rest if I succeed.”

“And then you leave town?”

“No, then Morgan creates a job—assistant city manager. That's Clane.”

“Ten thousand dollars. A thousand a day for ten days. And a cut of the melon.”

Clane said, “What kind of a man is Morgan?”

“Honest,” Thorne said. He spread his hands. “A business man. He wants to run the city like a business.”

“Then,” Clane said, “there won't be much melon to cut. I'll live on my salary after the election.”

“Sure,” Thorne said. “Don't forget to tell the voters.”

“All right,” Clane agreed. “We'll wait for election to argue that one. Before there's any argument you have to get Morgan in. You have to put him in over a twenty-year, air-tight machine. Who runs it?”

“Wickett and Paul Grando—he's the Baron of Casey Street.”

“And what are you the baron of, Thorne?”

“I'm not asking personal questions, Clane.”

“Mutual,” Clane said. “I'll take the money in cash.”

“Venchetti told me you had nerve,” Thorne said. “How do you work this—shoot Pryor?”

“I work alone,” Clane said. “On my own time. I make no reports. If I get in a jam I'll wriggle out of it this time, Thorne.”

“What if we lose?” Thorne demanded. “You're in five thousand.”

“And you're out five thousand,” Clane agreed. “Without me you can't win. With me I'll guarantee you even odds.” He watched Thorne's heavy face. He saw the gambler in the man. He said again, “Even money, Thorne.”

“How much do you need for expenses?”

“It comes out of the five thousand,” Clane said.

Thorne set down his brandy glass and heaved himself to his feet. He went to his desk and felt beneath it and a drawer leaped out at him. He put Clane.

“There shouldn't be much point in telling you that you can't pocket this and leave town.” Clane caught the note of warning in the smooth voice.

“I'm not selling you the Brooklyn Bridge,” Clane said flatly.

Thorne smiled and brought a roll of bills from the desk drawer. He counted out five thousand dollars in fifties and hundreds. He handed them to Clane. “One thing.”

“Strings already, Thorne?”

“A rope,” Thorne said softly. “Keep my wife's eyes off you.”

It took Clane half an hour to find his way from Ed Thorne's to Wickett's house. Both places were on the Hill but Wickett's mansion was in a newer section and the roads were even more winding and obscure than where Thorne lived.

Wickett's home was almost at the top of the knoll, and after parking his car Clane sat a moment, staring through the downpour at the lights of Dunlop bunched below. Main and First were brightly lighted, wet strings of glowing color forming a cross against the more subdued secondary streets. Looking down, Clane was surprised that Dunlop was so small. It had seemed a good deal larger while he was driving about, hunting for Thorne's house. Outside of the central area it was quite dark, but by looking through the rear window of the car he could see a line of hard white light edging a strip of blackness. That would be Casey Street along the river. Paul Grando's home base, he thought.

Clane got out of the car, satisfied with his inspection of the city. By noting the position of the Metropole Hotel, taller than anything but Wickett's
Call-Clarion
building, he had oriented himself. He was parked two blocks from Wickett's home and now he walked along the wet sidewalk, finding occasional shelter beneath spreading locust and elm trees, their last leaves being beaten from the branches by the rain.

The rain had stopped by the time he reached Wickett's and the cold chill of late October was settling from an unevenly clouded sky. He hunched himself deeper into his overcoat, went through a picket gate set in a thick white brick wall, and began the crossing of a drenched lawn. The house ahead was white brick, cold and lifeless-looking with no lights showing. Clane walked warily, his hat pulled low.

He was looking for a dog. Houses like these always had dogs. Clane had no use for any dog. He kept his fingers around the cold butt of the .25 he carried. It wasn't much of a gun, but in Clane's hand it was a sure weapon.

There was no sound but his own breathing and his footsteps brushing the wet, clipped grass. He passed into a yard through a second white picket gate and now he could see a faint glow from the side windows. It was a small, wavering flicker of light and it took Clane a moment and ten feet of walking to realize it came from a fireplace log. Thorne and now Wickett. Clane wondered if all Dunlop was addicted to fireplaces.

He stopped at French doors. They were separated from the flagstone path that bisected the lawn by a single concrete step. One door was fully covered with a dark drapery. The other drapery was only half pulled and it was through the glass that Clane could see the light from the fire. There was no other light in the room. He put out one gloved hand and turned the door latch. The door opened easily under pressure and he moved inside.

He closed the door softly behind him and let his eyes adjust themselves to the dancing, uncertain light. A large log had almost died in the fireplace; only a few small flames were left. Clane turned and looked around the book-lined study, his eyes following the wall until they reached a wide, paper-littered desk at his extreme right. Anthony Wicket was seated there, his body relaxed in a chair, one hand on the desk top. A cigar was smoldering in an ashtray.

Clane said, “All right, Wickett. It's cold enough for a drink.”

He took a few steps forward. Now he could see better. A warning chill started at the base of his spine and ran upward, prickling the hairs at the base of his neck. He felt a little foolish, talking that way to a dead man.

He went around the desk until he stood over Wickett. He could see the bullet hole in the side of the man's head. There was a look of sardonic amusement on Wickett's face and he had died before it could fade. Clane noted again his relaxation and the natural way his hand rested on the desk top. Except for the hole in his head and the accentuated immobility of his features he could have been sleeping.

Or resting, Clane thought. Or thinking up further ways to stop Clane. This was one way. A very good way unless Clane could think fast and act faster. He held no delusions. Particularly if he were caught there, with Wickett's body, would the police jump to a natural conclusion.

He glared at Wickett. The sardonic expression did not change. Evidently the bullet had come from a door inside the house, across the rom and at right angles to the front of the desk. It had caught Wickett by surprise. That the publisher could have held a gun to his temple and shot himself Clane did not believe. Wickett had not impressed him as a man faintly contemplating suicide.

From the size of the hole Clane judge the gun to have been no larger than a thirty-two.

Clane felt the stillness of the room creep over him and mingle with the scent of the cigar smoke. That cigar puzzled him. Tentatively he pushed a gloved finger at it. The ash was short and it fell from the cigar tip into the ashtray. The mouth end of the cigar was not quite dry. It had been lit only a few minutes before. And from the appearance of the wound Clane estimated Wickett had been dead close to half an hour.

He let his mind linger on that. He had left Thorne's place a little before ten. In the intervening hour he had driven to a drug store and looked up Wickett's address and then had spent the remainder of the time cursing the short, curved streets of the Hill. That was a fine alibi for the cops, for a man like the belligerent Day.

Clane wondered who was in the house and if anyone had heard the shot. He began to feel impatient with the darkness and he reached out his hand, snapping on a desk study lamp. It was powerful and threw light against the polished desk top and back, pushing aside the flicker of firelight and filling one corner of the room. Clane blinked a little and then looked around. Behind him, within reach of the man at the desk, he saw an Ediphone machine. The cover was on it but was bunched and setting askew. As if, Clane thought, someone had jammed it there in a hurry. He removed the cover gingerly and glanced at the machine. There was no record in it. He shrugged and replaced the cover, not bothering to set it neatly.

Outside of the machine, there was nothing near Wickett's desk. It sat almost in a corner with a door behind it and one directly across the room. A large heavily curtained window was at one side and a little to the rear of the desk. Behind it and to the left of the door was the fireplace, taking up almost all of the rear wall. Clane turned so his back was to Wickett's side and walked a direct line toward the door at the side of the room. His right arm was to the rear door and the fireplace now; on his left was the largest part of the study.

He reached the door and put out one hand to open it. A small sound came from the other side, a noise as of someone vainly trying to move hurriedly and silently away. Clane jerked at the door.

The hallway was dark but Clane made out the movements of someone running. Clane took two steps forward and turned, making a diving tackle. His arms closed around a pair of pumping knees. There was a hard, jarring sound. Over his own breathing Clane heard a sob. He cocked his fist.

“Clane … Jim!”

Clane rolled away. “You crazy kid!” he panted. He stood up and let Bob Morgan get to his feet. “Who else is here?”

“The maid and her mother,” Bob Morgan said. “They're asleep over the garages at the other end of the house.” His voice shook uncontrollably.

Clane said, “Come on in the library.” When they were once more in the other room he shut the door. “Damn it, did you do this?” He shot the question abruptly, one hand grasping the boy's upper arm in a tight, hard grip.

Bob Morgan's muscles were shaking as badly as his voice. He took a deep breath and said, “No,” flatly. Clane dropped his hand.

“What were you doing here?” Clane was less savage now. Bob Morgan was scared sick; it was a natural reaction in the face of violent death. It could also be the reaction if the boy had caused that death, but Clane doubted that.

“Mickey—my girl—works here,” Bob Morgan said. “She had to work tonight so I brought some stuff, ice cream and junk, and hung around.” He had himself controlled a little now. He kept his back to Wickett, his eyes fixed resolutely on Clane. His face was white, drained, but not shaking so badly.

“What time did she go to bed?” Clane asked.

“Ten,” Bob Morgan answered. He was positive.

“It's eleven-twenty now,” Clane said.

“I wasn't sleepy,” the boy said. “I stayed around.”

“You talked to Wickett?”

“No. He didn't know I was here.”

Clane said, “This isn't the kind of information you can hold back, Bob. You can talk to the cops or to me. Maybe you'll have to do both.”

“We can both fade and keep our mouths shut,” Bob Morgan said. There was a short break in his voice and then he blurted, “Wickett was a louse I” He had begun to shake again.

Clane took his arm and turned him so the light fell on his face. His eyes were hot and bright, his mouth trembling. It gave Clane something to think about. Bob Morgan was a pretty self-sufficient boy for eighteen. He had managed to hold himself in check once, but now he was going to pieces again. Only this time it looked more like anger than fright.

Clane said, “It isn't a good thing to start at your age, but you'll take a drink.”

“I've never used it.”

Clane crossed the room. In a recess between the bookcases he found a portable bar. He opened it and took out a bottle. He saw that it was rye but he took a shot himself and then passed it to the boy.

“Put your handkerchief around the bottle,” Clane directed.

Bob Morgan took his handkerchief and wrapped it around the bottle and took a drink. He coughed and choked and some of the whiskey ran down his chin. He wiped at it and blinked watering eyes at Clane. Clane said, “Try again.” The second time it was easier. Clane took the bottle away from him and put it back.

“Now,” he said, “give. I'm not kidding about the cops. They're sure to know you were here at ten—they'll be on your tail sooner or later.”

“Give me a cigarette, Jim.”

Clane lit one and put it in the boys' mouth. His hands were shaking so that he nearly dropped the cigarette when he tried to take it from his lips to talk. He walked away from Clane, into the darkened end of the room, swung around and paced back. He was getting control of himself again and after a few moments the color started back into his face and he looked almost normal.

“I saw Edith,” he said abruptly. He faced Clane squarely. “I've got to trust someone, Jim.”

“Sure,” Clane said. “I don't love the cops. But you can't hide everything, Bob.” He added, “Your sister was here—alone?”

“Yes,” Bob Morgan said. “I saw her come in. She didn't see me. I don't know what she wanted but she went through Wickett's desk.”

“He was dead then?”

Bob Morgan ran his tongue over his lips. He looked miserable, but his voice was steady. “He was dead. He was sitting like that.”

“She could have shot him?” Clane asked.

“She came in the same way you did. But she could have been inside and gone out and circled around the house. I suppose she could have killed him.” He took a step backward, turned and found a chair and dropped heavily into it. “She or Dad—he was here too.”