The Complete Casebook of Cardigan, Volume 1: 1931-32 Page 20

  Bone snapped, “Now cut it out, Cardigan.”

  “All right, then tell this crackpot to keep his mouth shut. Leggo!”

  Bone and Raush stepped back and Cardigan said, darkly, “I’m moving to another room. Try any rough stuff and see where it gets you. Just see.”

  DAYLIGHT was filtering through drawn green shades when the telephone bell jangled. Bedcovers erupted, and out of them appeared Cardigan’s tangled shock of hair. A long arm slewed outward; a big hand picked up the instrument from the bed table and drew it to the bed.

  “Hello…. Well, what the hell’s the idea of waking me up so early?… Oh, it is? Well, now I think that eight o’clock is too early—… All right, George, all right. What’s on your mind?… You did? Big headlines ’n everything, huh? Swell…. Didn’t know the guy from Eve’s daddy…. Yeah, Bone was there, sour-mugged as ever. And Fogel…. You know the guy you canned three years ago. And is he sore? Uhn-uhn!… I’ll tell you when I get down the office, George…. Goom-by.”

  He hung up, swung out of bed and plowed into the bathroom, clearing his throat raucously. He took a cold shower, cursed it, rubbed down with alcohol, dressed and went down to the coffee shop. He drank half a pint of tomato juice, ate three eggs, four rolls and drank two cups of coffee. It was nine o’clock when he came out on Lexington Avenue and said ‘hello’ to the chasseur.

  He walked north to Thirty-ninth Street, stopped and looked backward. He didn’t see anyone tailing him. He walked on north to Forty-second Street, turned west. At a stand in front of Grand Central Terminal he bought a newspaper, saw his name mentioned twice, got the gist of the story and walked west to Fifth Avenue. He boarded a taxi and gave an address.

  Fifteen minutes later he got off at the corner of Seventy-fifth Street and West End Avenue. He walked north for several blocks, passed the Whitestone Hotel, stopped at the next corner to light a cigarette and look around, then turned back and entered the Whitestone. From one of three house phones in the lobby he called suite 708, then took an elevator and got off at the seventh floor.

  A man with carroty hair and freckles on a sun-tanned face opened the door.

  “Well,” Cardigan said, “so it’s started.”

  The man was in pajamas and dressing gown. His voice shook, but his mouth remained firm. “Yes, I read it. Come in.”

  Cardigan tramped into the living room, scaled his battered fedora onto a divan, toed an ottoman out of the way and dropped into a mohair armchair.

  “Drink?”

  “Not till the eggs get down,” Cardigan said.

  The man had locked the door. He was tall, broad-shouldered, had a muscular jaw and steady blue gaze. He dropped to the divan with a faint outburst of breath, shrugged and slapped his palms to his knees.

  “I’m sorry, old bohunk.” He leaned back. “What did he look like?”

  “Tall, thin, yellow hair—about forty.”

  “That would be Tracy. He must have tried to lone-wolf it.”

  “Then who got him?”

  “Bradshaw, Sterns—or the woman.”

  “Leave the woman out. Bradshaw or Sterns.”

  A brindle bull walked in from the bedroom, flopped down and stared at Cardigan.

  Cardigan said, looking at the dog, “Charley Wheeler, I don’t know what you’re going to do.”

  The carroty-haired man shrugged. “I came back for Mary. I’m not leaving this man’s burg till she’s well enough to pull out with me. I don’t like the way those guys have turned on you, though.”

  “You worry about yourself, Charley. Don’t think that the cops or these heels or anybody else is worrying me. Not me. I like it. It’s not often I get the chance to work for an old pal.”

  Wheeler said, reflecting, “She ought to be O.K. in a week. Anyhow, we’re booked on the Gigantic for Southampton next Tuesday. What do the cops think?”

  “Nothing worth a damn. Abe Bone is on it—and Abe’s hard as nails and twice as nasty. I gave him the run-around last night, but he didn’t fall like a tree.”

  “They can’t hang anything on you, can they?”

  Cardigan laughed shortly. “I should say not. They might try, but—” he rose and raised palms toward Wheeler—“they’ll wish they hadn’t.”

  Wheeler stood up and looked grimly at Cardigan. “I hope to God we can make that boat, Mary and me. If there was any chance in the world of me sliding out by telling the cops, I’d tell ’em.”

  “They’d never recognize you, Charley. That plastic surgeon did a swell job, and your hair’s a knockout.”

  Wheeler held up his hands. “They have my fingerprints. They’d find out. The papers’d get it and spring it: ‘Big-Time Charley Wheeler, Former Beer Baron—’” He shook his head. “I’d never stand a chance, old bohunk.”

  Cardigan came over and towered close to Wheeler. He laid a big hand on Wheeler’s shoulder. “You’ll make that boat with Mary, Charley. You had the guts to come back and get her. I always said you had guts. You’ll get her.”

  The brindle bull, scarred and battered, got up and went back into the bedroom.

  Chapter Two

  On the Loose

  WHEN Cardigan tramped into the inner sanctum of the Cosmos Agency, George Hammerhorn, the brass hat, lifted a leonine blonde head and said, rusty-voiced, “Now what the sweet hell have you gone and got yourself into again?”

  Cardigan said, “Morning, George,” and went to an ice-water cooler, drew and drank two glasses of water while Hammerhorn regarded him with agate-colored eyes.

  “I said, by cripes—”

  “I heard what you said,” Cardigan cut in. “Now keep your pants on and don’t get loud-mouthed, for, after all, I’m only working for you, and for two cents I’d start an agency of my own.”

  “Who said anything about starting an agency?”

  “I did.”

  “Piffle, piffle, piffle!”

  “All right, piffle all you want, but get over the underfed idea that you can land on me like a ton of brick and make me like it. I had eggs for breakfast and they haven’t settled yet. Now lay off.”

  He walked around the room, and Hammerhorn, no weak sister himself, followed Cardigan with a glacial squint until by a circuitous route Cardigan reached the chair on the other side of the desk. Cardigan remained standing. He looked somberly at Hammerhorn for a long minute, and finally Hammerhorn, breaking a tight, hard smile, said offhand, “You’re getting temperamental as a chorus girl. Unload your feet, big boy. Sit down.”

  Cardigan did not sit down. He placed palms on the desk, locked his arms at the elbows and leaned on his braced arms. “Did you ever have a friend that got in a tight spot?”

  “Make it short and sweet, will you?”

  “There’s a friend of mine in a tight spot. He’s in town under an assumed name. Three years ago he was a pretty big shakes in the beer trade, but he bailed out and skipped the country. He was through. He had the lousy racket up to the gills, and he was through. A lot of guys figured out beforehand that he was making to slide and told him he’d get the hot grease, if he tried to lam. He called their bluff and lammed.

  “He went to Europe, had his face made over, dyed his hair. He went to Algiers and lived there. He met a doctor—a half-cracked old guy—and they became friends. One night a stranger busted into the doctor’s quarters with his belly all shot to hell. The doctor did what he could for him, but the guy died. It was an incident, and for a month it was over. Then one night the doctor was stabbed and died. He left a crazy will. He left a signet ring, an old empty jewel box, his instruments, and a bulldog to this friend of mine.

  “A couple of days later a guy approached this friend of mine and talked about the doctor. He wound up by pulling a rod on this friend and demanding to see what the doctor had left him. He saw. But he wasn’t satisfied. He wanted five diamonds that he claimed the doctor must have taken from the guy he attended a month before. This friend got mad, and in the tussle took the gun away from the heel.

  “He lef
t a few days later for Paris. He was still in love with a jane in New York. He’s a guy like that. He took a ship and came here and found the jane recovering from an operation. He asked her to marry him, and she said O.K., but they’re waiting another week till she can navigate. Then they’re going to Europe.

  “Now who should turn up but the guy that pulled a rod on him in Algiers. He’s got two pals with him and a jane. They’re still after those five diamonds. This friend gets in touch with me to ask me what to do. I tell him to sit tight. They must have seen me come out of his apartment, and they make a stab at my room. One must have tried to double-cross the others. He got knifed in my room.

  “Now—this friend of mine is in a tough spot. He’s innocent, but if he gets tangled up in this, the cops’ll find out who he really is. Word will spread, and the mob he ran with, the guys that threatened to rub him out, will get on his tail.

  “That’s why I’m in this. That’s why I clowned around with Bone last night.”

  “And what, I might ask, do you intend doing?”

  Cardigan straightened. “See that this pal of mine makes that boat with his frau.”

  “How much is in it?”

  “Nothing. It’s not an agency job.”

  Hammerhorn stood up. “Drop it. I’m not going to get mixed up with the cops. We can’t afford to.”

  “Are you asking for my resignation?”

  “I’m telling you not to be a damned fool.”

  “I’m not dropping it.”

  Hammerhorn had a glacial squint. “I still happen to run this agency, you know.”

  “I still happen to have an inclination to quit.”

  Their eyes measured each other.

  Hammerhorn said flatly, “You’re the best man I have. You ran the St. Louis branch swell for a number of years until you antagonized the wrong people out there.”

  “I antagonized a lot of cheap political grafters, and they broke my license in the State of Missouri. I’ll get that license back again inside of six months. If your guts aren’t equal to pressure of that kind, to hell with you and your agency.”

  Hammerhorn came around the desk. “Don’t talk like that, Cardigan. I’m just trying to tell a thick-head Mick something for his own good. I’m telling you that you can’t waltz these cops around and get away with it.”

  “You’re telling me to leave this pal of mine in the lurch and I’m telling you, George, to go to hell for your pains. I’m strictly kosher. Nobody has anything on me. Bone doesn’t worry me. None of them worries me. I didn’t know the guy who was found dead in my room and I told Bone that. I had an idea, but I should go around ladling out ideas. Yes, I should!”

  “Do you know now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then tell Bone before he gets really nasty and makes things hot for you.”

  Cardigan mouthed a corrosive laugh. “You’re getting plain gaga now, George.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Hammerhorn pivoted and went back to his chair, sat down and stuck a cigarette in one corner of his mouth.

  Cardigan darkened and leaned on the desk. “If you so much as make one crack to the cops about what I’ve just told you, I’ll cave in your jaw.”

  “Says you.”

  “What I told you I told in strictest confidence. Break that confidence, sweetheart, and you’ll be an ambulance case.”

  Hammerhorn snapped a spurt of smoke through his nostrils and regarded Cardigan blandly. “We’re both saying things we don’t mean, Irish.”

  “I mean what I say.”

  “As much as I do.”

  “I mean what I say.”

  “All right, all right, I know what you mean. If you think I’d welch on you, you’re just a case of arrested development. I’m just trying to tell you. I see it does no good. But I’m not Santa Claus. I’ve built up a good agency here, and I’m not going to take the chance. Resign now, and if you get clear in this mess, we’ll tear up the resignation.”

  They measured each other evenly.

  Cardigan said, “Sure. Thanks. Thanks for being a great big-hearted son-of-a-so-and-so. Only there’s one thing wrong with your statement, honeybunch.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. This resignation is permanent.”

  “You’re a fool, Irish.”

  “You’re a louse.”

  “O.K.”

  “O.K.”

  ONE of Cardigan’s favorite hangouts was Andre’s, in West Fortieth Street near Eighth Avenue. You got good steak and mushrooms there, coffee in a glass and Three-Star Hennessy straight off the French boats. There was a small quiet bar and a dining room in the rear and also three tables against the wall facing the bar. Cardigan sat at one of these tables pouring French dressing over imported endive. He had four dry Martinis under his belt, a bottle of Chablis at his elbow and a ruminative scowl on his forehead. A drunk was sitting on a high stool at the bar telling the story of his life, and an ingenue from a current Broadway success was trying to keep her eyes open while nodding mechanically at regular intervals. Emil, the barman, wore an expression of polite inattentiveness. It was a cheerful, homey bar, unlike the rowdy joints in the hinterland of Greenwich Village, miles south.

  Abe Bone came in with his hands in his pockets, his Homburg sliced over one ear and his horsey face long and gloomy. He came straight to Cardigan’s table, pulled out a chair, slapped it down and seated himself. He removed his hat, hung it on a prong above the table, blew his nose, and all the while kept his dark, cavernous eyes on Cardigan. Cardigan went on crunching crisp endive between long strong teeth and disfavoring Bone with intermittent glances.

  “Mind if I try some of your white wine?”

  “Yes.”

  Bone said, “Thanks,” poured a glassful, raised the glass and added, “Whatever they say in French.”

  “Could you by any chance be at the wrong table?”

  “I could, but I ain’t.”

  A waiter swooped down. “Monsieur?”

  “I’ll have,” said Bone tonelessly, “a pair of lamb chops, well done, some of those trick thin potatoes, some spinach and that’s all.”

  The waiter vanished, and Cardigan said, “Don’t you ever go home to your wife?”

  “I haven’t got a wife.”

  “Maybe janes aren’t wise nowadays, huh?”

  Bone spread a napkin, then reached for the wine. Cardigan put his hand on the bottle. “This stuff is six bucks a bottle, little boy, and times are hard.”

  “You don’t like me, do you?”

  “Oh, you’re all right—in your place.”

  Bone said to the bar, “Bottle of that Canadian ale.” He returned to Cardigan, saying, “My place happens to be smack on your tail, Cardigan.”

  “Yeah, I saw that keyhole artist, Fogel, tail me from the hotel. Using him for a stool pigeon nowanights?”

  “I’ll use anybody, Cardigan. Who was that guy?”

  “Who?”

  “The stiff.”

  Cardigan put knife and fork together crosswise on his plate and said, “It’s pretty tough when I can’t enjoy Andre’s swell food without having you planting your ugly mug opposite me.”

  “Pulling a waltz-me-around-again-Willie isn’t going to get you anywhere, Cardigan.”

  “I’m not going anywhere, Bone, so now what?”

  “You’re a nice enough guy, so why don’t you play along with the right people? What’s one job going to get your agency when you run up against us?”

  “I’m not working for any agency.”

  Bone looked at him. The waiter arrived with the chops and went away, and Bone was still looking at Cardigan.

  “You’re not what?” Bone growled.

  “I’m on the loose. Out of a job. Temporarily. Until I start an agency of my own…. You don’t believe me? O.K., call up George Hammerhorn. I’ve resigned.”

  “What you resign for?”

  “Found the Cosmos too confining for my unusual talent.”

  BONE balanced three pommes frites on
his fork, swallowed them and kept his gloomy eyes on Cardigan. “I’ve got a good mind to haul you over to the house and beat a little truth out of you, smart aleck.”

  “You’d better have your mind examined then, Bone.”

  Cardigan had drained his glass of coffee. He said to the waiter, “I’ll take my brandy at the bar,” and stood up. Bone kept looking gloomy-eyed at him. Cardigan turned his back on Bone. The drunk at the bar fell to the floor. Cardigan picked him up and helped him back onto the stool. The drunk went right on with the story of his life, and his ingenue friend seemed unaware of the fact that he had fallen. She had a rare glow.

  Cardigan drank brandy and Benedictine, half-and-half, and Emil read him the latest race results. Bone finished his meal and two bottles of ale and came up to the bar for a pony of Scotch.

  Cardigan called to the girl at the cigar counter, “Check, mademoiselle,” and finished his drink.

  He paid up and started down the corridor, and Bone was behind him. One of the waiters unlocked the front door and let them out. Cardigan reached the curb and bent his head to light a cigarette.

  “Hold it,” Bone said.

  Cardigan held the light, and Bone got a cigar going. “Be sensible, Cardigan. You know damned well I’m going to find out who that guy was.”

  Cardigan tossed the match into the street and headed east past the newspaper sheds where trucks were loading up. Bone walked along beside him. They reached the whirlpool of Times Square and wedged through the eight o’clock theatre crowd. Cardigan ducked into the Times Building, went through the lunch room and took the staircase down to the subway. A northbound train was at the platform. Cardigan jumped and stopped a door from closing. Bone bumped into him.

  Cardigan said, “All right, get in.”

  Bone hopped in. Cardigan stepped back and let the door close. Bone, in the vestibule, tried to stop it, but was too late. Cardigan tipped his hat and watched the train pull out with Bone, sour-faced, in the vestibule. Cardigan climbed the stairs and took the Broadway exit out.

  At eight-twenty Cardigan tramped into the lobby of his hotel on Lexington Avenue, went past the desk and turned left toward the lounge. In the small connecting corridor there were two house phones on the right and two high-backed Italian chairs on the left. The place was very quiet.