The Complete Casebook of Cardigan, Volume 2: 1933 Page 12

  “Where?”

  Cardigan was at the door. “Going to disguise myself as four Hawaiians and see if this guy Cordova has a home.”

  He went to the lobby in the creaky old elevator, stepped out as Pat Seaward stepped in. He grabbed her by the arm, turned her about and marched her out into the street.

  “O, kind sir,” she said, “but I don’t want to go places.”

  “Hey, taxi!”

  The cold had pinked up Pat’s cheeks. She used plenty of make-up also; but she knew how to use it. The close-fitting heatherish chapeau went well with the sport-length raccoon; and lizard-skin pumps completed the smart ensemble.

  “In, doohickey,” Cardigan said, opening the taxi door.

  “So now I’m a doohickey!”

  “In any language, chicken, you’re the berries and the prefix isn’t razz…. Uptown, driver; hit Lex around Thirtieth.”

  THE cab started off. Pat powdered her nose, said: “How did that fingerprint business turn out?”

  “Swell!” Cardigan said, and explained.

  Pat lighted a cigarette. “It certainly has me up a tree, chief. Now that Cordova’s entered in it. Before this, I had it all reasoned out: a temple in far-off China… night… Wayne creeping up and stealing a Buddha’s eye. Of course, the Buddha’s eyes is a tremendous, sacred ruby. And then revenge following him across the world. So romantic!”

  Cardigan made a face but said nothing.

  The cab turned north into Lexington Avenue and soon it drew near the corner where Cordova was still on post. Cardigan gave a start. There was a woman talking with Cordova.

  “Isn’t she just gorgeous!” Pat excited.

  “Pipe down.”

  “And can she wear clothes!”

  The taxi rolled past the corner and Cardigan said: “Stop at the next corner.”

  He alighted, handed Pat out, waited for change, tossed the driver a dime tip and then pulled Pat out of the path of pedestrian traffic.

  He said: “We part here, Pat. See her?… O.K. Now she’ll leave him any minute. Follow her. After that, use your head. Got Wayne’s phone number?… O.K. If I’m not at the office I’ll be there, or I’ll be at Maxie Stubinoff’s. Snap into it before she fades!”

  Cardigan walked north, entered a telephone booth in the Grand Central and called Wayne’s apartment. Wayne and Casey were still there. Wayne’s brother Herbert had just arrived from upstate; they had not seen each other in three months. Wayne said: “Casey and I intend going out in about an hour.”

  Cardigan said: “When you do, you walk up Third Avenue—alone. Have Casey go out the back way. Tell him to cover you from the time you reach Third Avenue. He won’t walk with you, but he’ll have his eye on you all the time. And he’ll have his eye on the man shadowing you.”

  He hung up, stepped out of the booth and saw Hackett, the newshawk, fingering magazines at a stand. Hackett looked up, met his glance and smiled. Cardigan went toward him wearing a malignant scowl.

  “Aren’t you off your beat, Hackett?”

  “Railroad stations always attract me. Mind?”

  Cardigan was silent for a moment, and then he said in a low threatening voice: “Some day I’m going to spoil that pretty map of yours for the maidens who think you’re God’s answer.”

  Hackett’s smile was thin, amused. “When you do, tell me about it, will you? I’d like to know.”

  A man’s head appeared around the end of the magazine stand. The head was followed by sloping shoulders and a thickset body encased in a black overcoat. The face was square as a wooden block, the fat neck was pinched by a tight soft collar. His big mouth opened and showed big teeth in a squarish, hypocritical grin.

  The man, for all the bigness of his mouth, seemed to speak through his nose. “Now what’s the lowdown on Cordova, huh, old pal Cardigan?”

  Cardigan swung a savage look on Hackett. Hackett was debonair, smiling shutter-eyed. He said through his fine set of teeth: “You have met Sergeant Stoltz, haven’t you?”

  Stoltz pried in with a wet-eyed, avaricious look. “You know who I mean, Cardigan. Cordova. You mind the time he beat that counterfeiting rap? Well—” he thumbed himself on the chest—“he beat me out of a medal on that and I said I’d get him yet.” His voice wheezed through his nose; his eyes widened, wet and gleaming. “What you got on him, Cardigan?”

  Cardigan was still eyeing Hackett, but presently he turned to Stoltz. He said: “This ham actor gave you a bum steer, Sarge. It’s because he likes me.”

  A beefy hand pounced on Cardigan’s arm and Stoltz snarled through his nose: “I ain’t being made a fool of, Cardigan!”

  Cardigan looked down into Stoltz’s wet eyes for a long minute and then he said: “You heard me, Sarge.”

  “I heard you!” Stoltz wheezed. “But I heard a lot of crap!”

  “Take your mitt off my arm.”

  Stoltz didn’t.

  Cardigan, still eyeing him, reached up with his right hand, closed it over Stoltz’s right wrist. Silent, holding Stoltz’s eye, he twisted the wrist slowly back and forth, adding pressure little by little. Stoltz’s jaw bulged, his eyes shone more brightly and little veins bulged at his temples. Cardigan twisted, twisted. He smiled tantalizingly down into Stoltz’s face. Finally, he pried Stoltz’s hand from his arm—still held it firmly by the wrist.

  Then his teeth clicked. His eyes flashed. He threw Stoltz’s hand violently downward. Wordless, he pivoted and strode hard-heeled across the rotunda. His face was dull red with anger. There was a muggy red haze in his eyes. He punched open a swing door, heaved out into Forty-second Street.

  Chapter Three

  It’s Murder

  PAT SEAWARD followed the woman to Fifth Avenue. The woman paused on the corner, at the curb. Pat, thinking she was waiting for a north-bound bus, stopped also; stood only a foot from the woman. A keen feminine desire to inspect more closely the smart clothes the woman wore, was thwarted by the knowledge that eyes meeting often give away a secret. So Pat took a small vanity from her purse, held it up, plucked unnecessarily at her hat, tucked away a strand of hair.

  The mirror showed her that a small man in inconspicuous gray had slowed down and was idling in their direction. It occurred to her that possibly this man was covering the woman. At this moment the woman surprised her by signaling a taxi. Traffic was heavy. Pat, instead of taking a cab, boarded a north-bound bus. In the slow-moving procession, the bus kept abreast of the taxi for a block or more. Then Pat alighted, took two steps, yanked open a cab door and climbed in.

  “That cab with the cracked rear window,” she said.

  “What about it, lady?”

  “Follow it.”

  She looked around, back. Had she eluded the little man in inconspicuous gray? The woman had not spoken for long with the man Cordova. And Cordova had remained on the corner. Pat did not know from what hiding place the little man had come but she was sure, dead certain, that he was not a disinterested individual. Looking sidewise, she saw the man in a cab directly beside her. But the man was not looking at her. He was sitting on the edge of the seat, peering ahead. His cab spurted forward, but he did not look around.

  Uptown—and then westward by way of a Central Park transverse. Weaving through traffic, beating stoplights. Across Broadway and into West End Avenue. The woman’s cab stopped in front of the Hotel Pompadour. Pat’s cab was right behind and Pat said: “All right, stop.”

  She stepped out, paid up—entered the hotel ahead of the woman. She was a little nervous. Instinctively she went to the desk. It was unoccupied at the moment, and while Pat waited, the woman came up, tapped fingers on the desk. A man appeared. Pat dropped her eyes.

  “Hello, Mrs. Campion,” the clerk said.

  “D’ you mind seeing if there’s any mail?”

  Pat looked up, saw the clerk swivel, pry into a pigeon hole. She had good eyesight. The pigeon hole was numbered 445.

  “None, Mrs. Campion.”

  Mrs. Campion walked away and Pat said
to the clerk: “I’d like a room—a small one—for a day or so.”

  “Yes, madam.”

  She signed the register, paid three dollars in advance.

  “Front,” the clerk called.

  A hop appeared, received the key, and Pat walked across the lobby with him. The little gray man was sitting in a leather chair, reading a newspaper. He did not look up. Pat was taken to a room on the fifth floor.

  She remained only a few minutes. When she returned to the lobby she saw no sign of the little gray man. She went out, walked to Broadway, entered a drugstore and pushed into a telephone booth. In a few minutes she came out. Street lights were shining. She walked toward a taxicab, climbed in. It sped south, crossed Columbus Circle and went east to Fifth Avenue. Traffic was heavy, noisy, at this dusky hour. There was a briskness, a buoyant energy about the Avenue.

  MAXIE STUBINOFF’S was in the lower Fifties, between Madison and Park. Pat found Cardigan in the bar rolling poker dice with August, the bartender, and on intimate terms with a golden fizz. She climbed onto a stool with an abbreviated back and Cardigan rolling out to a lose, said: “Name it, doohickey.”

  “Make a silver,” Pat said.

  Maxie bobbed in, grabbed her hands. “Am I pleasured, am I pleasured! You’re looking sweller than I seen you last, was it a month ago, was it?”

  Pat fluttered her eyelids. “You do flatter me, Maxie-waxie.”

  Maxie tiptoed backward, wiggled a forefinger, simpered: “Nixie-wixie!”

  Cardigan turned, scowled, growled: “What the hell kind of gibberish is this!”

  Pat made a face at him. “Boo!” she said, wide-eyed.

  He lounged on his elbows, leaned close to her: “And so you tailed her—and what?”

  “To the Hotel Pompadour, West End Avenue. Her name’s Mrs. Campion and she has a room or an apartment—it’s Number Four Forty-five. Don’t interrupt. I think she was being covered all the time by a man. A little man—a plain little man, about fifty, in clothes you wouldn’t look at a second time. Gray clothes. He popped up shortly after I began tailing her—he wound up in the lobby of her hotel.”

  “Think he got on to it that you were tailing her?”

  “I’m pretty sure he didn’t.”

  “What else did you find out?”

  “Isn’t that enough?”

  He took a drink. August was fooling around innocently with the poker dice. “Take ’em away,” Cardigan said. He turned back to Pat and told her about Hackett, about Sergeant Stoltz. He looked at his watch.

  “Casey and Wayne are going out. They’re out now,” he said. “Casey thought Don Cordova might have another guy or two helping him. Casey’s going to watch how Cordova acts. If anything happens, we’re going to pile down on Cordova. I hate to wait too long. Wayne might get bumped off—or Casey. Wayne’s brother turned up a little while ago. Only thing I’m worried about—” his voice dropped—“this punk. Hackett and that lame-brain Stoltz—between them they might clown around just enough to put a banana peel under our act.”

  Pat’s eyes were intent on space. “It gets worse, chief. The woman, Mrs. Campion—this little gray man—Cordova—maybe others. If there was only a reason for all this.”

  “There is, precious.”

  “But we don’t know what it is.” She sighed. “She certainly wears exquisite clothes.”

  “Listen… wrap yourself around another drink and then shoot back to the Pompadour. Find out if the Campion woman is still there. If she is, buy a magazine and plant yourself in the lobby. If she goes out, follow her.”

  “O.K.—and I’ll pass up the drink, if you don’t mind. Where are you going?”

  “Grab something at the Grand Central Oyster Bar and then down to Wayne’s. I have to have a talk with his brother. His brother may pop something that Norman Wayne forgot to. Casey’ll have him out and I can talk fast to his brother…. Hackett knows you, doesn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  “Watch out for him. If he gets fresh, kick him in the face.”

  “I can’t kick that high.”

  “Then kick as high as you can. I’ll be seeing you, Pat.”

  “Yes, milord.”

  She was gone.

  August said: “A very swell-elegant gel, Mr. Cardigan.”

  “Her?… Say, August, if I didn’t like her so well I’d marry her…. What’s the bill, you big racketeer?”

  THE door to Wayne’s apartment was slightly ajar. Cardigan, having received no answer to his knock, pushed open the door. It made a faint thumping sound against the doorstop.

  A sudden, inhaled breath whistled through Cardigan’s nostrils. He left the threshold springlike, plunged across the room.

  A man was sitting on the floor beside a secretary. He was hatless, his hair tousled. The light from the desk lamp streamed down into his face. His face was white, the cheeks sucked in, the lips hueless. He wore an overcoat, a blue and white polka-dot scarf. He sat, sagging, gripping a telephone in his hands. He stared glassily into space. His hueless lips writhed, grimaced; sounds retched from his throat but made no sense. He was young, though not very young. He looked remarkably like Norman Wayne. Cardigan knew it was Norman’s brother. Fascinated for a moment, he hovered over the man. Then he knelt swiftly, grabbed a unit of the instrument in each hand, pried, twisted. He hung up.

  “Wayne—listen, Wayne!…”

  The man said: “Ooh—ooh—” Then he fell backward.

  Cardigan bent over him, unbuttoned the overcoat. The vest was soggy. He unbuttoned it. The shirt was soggy and red and he tore it, tore the undershirt. He suddenly looked up at Wayne’s face. He felt the pulse. Rising, he ran to the bathroom, came back with a shaving mirror. No mist, no breath, was on it. There was something flat about the eyes. Cardigan pulled down one lid, then the other. The eyelids stayed down.

  He grimaced. He looked at his hands; they were smeared with blood, and they shook. His chest shook. No matter how many times you saw death, you never quite got used to it. The fierce intensity of a dying man’s last stare is something to remember. Cardigan’s dark, bitter gaze went up and down the corpse. He looked for a weapon—a knife. His hand darted out, grasped up a long, slim paper-knife. It was made of steel. He thought he had the death weapon, but he saw in a moment he was wrong. There was no blood on it. It had been knocked along with some other objects from the secretary. Young Wayne in his haste….

  “Pretty, brain child….”

  He spun, came up from his knees in a corkscrew twist and saw Hackett leaning in the doorway.

  “Very, very pretty.” Hackett waved languidly. “Success!”

  “What the hell are you doing here, Hackett?”

  Smiling, Hackett sauntered into the room. “Self-defense?”

  “I don’t know. I found him—”

  “Really!”

  Cardigan’s brows bent. He looked down at the paper-knife in his hand. Now it was smeared with blood—from his own hands.

  Hackett said: “I thought I heard an outcry….”

  Cardigan flung the blade away, went toward Hackett with his fist doubled and primed. Hackett stopped smiling. But he did not budge. A shadow dropped across his dark, handsome face and his smooth, neat lips curved.

  “Watch yourself, you dumb cluck,” he said.

  Cardigan dropped his fist. “I came in here. The door was open. I don’t mean just unlocked. It was open. This guy got knifed outside somewhere. His key was in the outside of the door and I—”

  “Is it?”

  Cardigan looked. The key was on the inside. He walked over, to make sure. Then he spun and remained rooted and dull red color splotched his big cheeks. Hackett shrugged, sauntered to the secretary, reached for the phone.

  Cardigan took four long strides, chopped with the side of his hand. Hackett went down like a felled tree. He leaned back on his elbows, smiling crookedly, his eyes shiny.

  “So that gets you—where?” He rose, smoothed down his clothes, adjusted his tie.

  CARDIG
AN started after the paper-knife he had, in a fit of anger, tossed away. Hackett pulled out a gun, lifted his chin.

  “Quit it, Irish,” he said casually.

  Cardigan turned and stood rooted. He said: “I always knew you were a tramp, Hackett, but I never thought you were a louse.”

  “Over my head, sweetheart…. So now where does Don Cordova come into this?”

  “Oh, I see,” Cardigan said.

  “So soon? You surprise me! Now surprise me some more.”

  Cardigan nodded to the phone. “Go ahead, make your call.”

  “The key’s on the inside of the door, Cardigan. I thought I heard an outcry. I came to the door and saw you bending over this man. You were holding that paper-knife in your hand. I see it has blood on it. You don’t have to be a mathematician to figure that out.”

  Cardigan sat down in a comfortable leather chair, crossed his legs, gestured. “Go ahead, louse; make your phone call.”

  “I’d rather get the lowdown on the Don Cordova business. Names make news.”

  “I’d like to get it myself.”

  Hackett came a step nearer. “Don’t be a sap. You’re in a bad spot, Cardigan.”

  “I see. And if I give you the lowdown on Don Cordova you’ll be Santa Claus.” He shook his head. “I don’t like you, Hackett. I’d trust you about as far as I could throw a piano. You’re not doing this for the sake of news. You’re doing it because you can’t forget the time I busted up that little romance of yours with a girl named Kitty Adair.”

  Hackett reddened.

  Cardigan went on casually: “I was getting sick and tired of hearing you blowing off around town that any woman could be made—by you. I hate guys who talk about the women they make…. And so what? So you got all dolled up one night and Kitty Adair stood you up. You went to your favorite speakeasy. She was to meet you there. ‘Well,’ you said to the gang, ‘Kitty Adair has fallen for yours truly, Don Juan. She’ll be here any minute!’ And she stood you up. Later that night who should breeze in with her on his arm but old man Cardigan himself. And was your pan red!”

  Hackett looked sullen. He clipped: “O.K., rat; I bet I make you say ‘Uncle’ yet!” He stepped to the desk, sat down, unhooked the receiver, asked for a number. “Stoltz?… This is that great old finder-outer Hackett. There’s a little mess up here at Number One-eighteen East Thirty-S—— Street…. Nothing much. Just a little murder…. And that mastermind is here too. You know, the Hibernian Hot Number…. You got it, kid.”