The Complete Casebook of Cardigan, Volume 1: 1931-32 Page 27

  “Should I, lieutenant?”

  McCartney came over wearing a pained expression. “I don’t want to hold you, Cardigan. I’m a white man. I had no idea of holding you. I—”

  “You just want me to sit down and tell you how I know about that necklace job. Christmas is five months away, Mac, and you don’t notice me wearing a white beard.”

  McCartney looked crestfallen. He waved his hand loosely. “Let him go, Abel—let him go or he’ll get nasty.”

  Cardigan went out.

  PAT SEAWARD was small, trim, neat. She had a one-room suite on West End Avenue, high enough to overlook the Riverside Drive houses and catch a glimpse of the river and the Jersey shore. It was late. She wore black pajamas and a mandarin coat and she sat curled up on a divan buffing her nails when the buzzer sounded.

  She got up and opened the door and Cardigan squinted at her. “At this hour,” she said.

  “Detectiving is the curse of the leisure classes, little home girl.”

  She shrugged, kicked the door shut when he had entered and stood with her back to it, buffing her nails industriously. He scaled his hat across the room into a chair, dropped to the divan and smacked his knees, stared hard across the room at nothing.

  “The Kemmerich butler got it,” he said.

  “Got what?”

  “A look at back of beyond.” He sighed. “Croaked. Bumped off. Finished.”

  “Oh!” she said, softly, and stared at him for a full minute.

  He nodded. “McCartney woke me up and got me over to the Kemmerich casa. Crime in the stronghold of the élite always seems out of place.”

  Worry masked her eyes. “Oh, chief, you didn’t—”

  “Now you’re going to start that,” he growled; shook his head, saying: “No, I had nothing to do with it. McCartney thought he had an idea that this murder was in connection with that necklace job—a house break. The butler must have poked in and the guy took a haul at him. You should see him.”

  “Thanks, no.” She shuddered.

  He said: “Pat, there’s something on the low-and-low about the necklace business. When I hit that apartment tonight Lily Kemmerich looked like a ghost. Like a very beautiful ghost. I heard her speak once. Her voice sounded—you know—clogged. She’s worried about something.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you think it was really stolen?”

  He looked at her. “Yes, I’m sure it was stolen. It was lifted in the street, on the sidewalk. It was on her neck when she walked through the lobby. Her coat was open and six people saw it. She lost it between the lobby and the curb—in the crowd.”

  “What did they get tonight?”

  “Nothing. That’s the funny part about it. The apartment was crashed; McCartney said Lily’s room was knocked apart—but nothing was taken. She said nothing was taken.”

  “Then why was she frightened?”

  He stood up. “Listen, little wonderful. Get out bright and early tomorrow morning. Get on her tail. No matter where she goes, tail her. See what kind of people she meets. Stick with her till she gets back home. That clear?”

  “Perfectly. What’s on your mind?”

  “I’d like to know why she looked so white tonight.”

  Pat sighed. “Listen, chief. Why get mixed up in this killing? Leave it to the cops. You’ve got a pretty good steer on who snatched that necklace. You’ve got two men tailing ‘Packy’ Daskas and if they tail him long enough—”

  “I know, I know,” he broke in. “Packy was in Forty-fourth Street that night and we know snatching necklaces is his business. But do as I tell you. Tail Lily Kemmerich.”

  She shrugged. “O.K., iron man.”

  He went to the door, opened it and turned to smile at her. “You look nice in black, Pat.”

  She was back at her nails. “You should see my grandmother,” she said.

  HE went downstairs and grabbed a cab. West End Avenue was dead as a country lane and he leaned back, crammed an old briar and lit up. He’d got the tip about Packy Daskas from a barman in a Forty-fourth Street walk-up speakeasy. The barman was a cop hater but on the other hand he had no use for Packy Daskas. He liked Cardigan, and when Cardigan had dropped in a few nights after the robbery the barman had told him about Packy.

  “See that front window?” he had said. “Well, Packy was in here for an hour before the show let out. And three or four times he went to that window and looked across at the Dorado. He left here about ten minutes before the show was out.”

  Two agency men, working through stoolies, had landed on Packy’s tail. They’d frisked his room on Seventh Avenue, found nothing. He wouldn’t be fool enough to carry thirty thousand dollars worth of pearls in his pocket. The natural assumption was that he had fenced them, and the agency had the two men still on his tail in hopes of finding Packy’s connections.

  The cabman was taking corners rapidly.

  “What’s the hurry?” Cardigan asked.

  The driver said: “I don’t know for sure, buddy, but I got an idea you’re bein’ follered. There’s been a checker takin’ all these turns with me. I’m headin’ for the bright lights and then you give a guy a break and get out. I got a wife and kids and I ain’t figgerin’ on gettin’ me or the buggy shot up.”

  Cardigan looked around. Then he turned front and said: “Thanks. Here’s half a buck. I’ll take the next corner on the hop.”

  “Am I relieved!”

  Cardigan opened the door, and when the driver slowed for a southbound turn he swung off and went bounding to the shelter of the corner building. He crowded it and watched the checkered cab take the turn. The tonneau was dark, but he had a feeling that a face inside was turned toward him. He shrank back. The checker loafed south, stopped at the next block. Cardigan, standing now on the curb, saw a figure leave it and duck down a side street. He knocked out his pipe, walked east as far as the park and boarded another cab.

  When he reached his apartment hotel on Lexington Avenue he went straight to the telephone and called Pat.

  “I was tailed,” he said, “from your hotel. So watch your step…. I don’t know who it was. May be one of McCartney’s men trying to be bright or it might be somebody else. But keep your ears pulled in, little girl.”

  He hung up and then called his boss, George Hammerhorn. He said: “Listen, George. The Kemmerich butler was killed tonight during a house break. McCartney’s on it. Thinks it has some connection with the necklace. The police department may be camped in your office when you get down in the morning, so act innocent…. I’m clean as a hound’s tooth…. That’s all.”

  He pronged the receiver, jacked a chair against the door, undressed and piled into bed. He drank a stiff nightcap straight from the neck of a flask he kept in the bed-table drawer. Elevated trains slammed up and down on Third Avenue, but he went to sleep in a few minutes.

  Chapter Two

  Sol Feitelberg Entertains

  IT WAS nine-thirty when Cardigan entered the outer office of the agency on Madison Avenue. Miss Goff, the stenographer, had a handkerchief to her face and above it Cardigan saw that her eyes were wet. He closed the door softly.

  “Man trouble?” he said.

  She shook her head, made a face, started to say something and then began crying harder. He shrugged, crossed the little office and pushed in the glass-paneled door that led to the sanctum of his boss.

  George Hammerhorn sat at his big flat-topped desk. His hands were palms-down on it, the arms at full length. His bulk was motionless. His big face was a mask and his eyes stared out through an open window. In an instant he was aware of Cardigan’s presence, and he made a sound in his throat, blinked his eyes, and began moving things aimlessly around on his desk.

  “Well, Jack….”

  Cardigan was scowling.

  Hammerhorn looked up at him. “Fogarty got it.”

  “What!”

  “Two A.M. this ack emma.”

  “Fogarty!”
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  “Fogarty was killed at two this morning in West Tenth Street, near Sheridan Square. Two shots—both in the back of the neck. He wasn’t carrying any identification, so they didn’t find out who he was until an hour ago.”

  Cardigan ripped out, “Packy Daskas—”

  But Hammerhorn raised a hand. “Don’t get hot. Sit down a minute. Don’t go off half cocked.”

  Cardigan looked brown and ugly. “If that Greek so-and-so—”

  “Sit down, sit down, sit down.”

  “If that Greek so-and-so gave Fogarty the heat I’ll bust more than his schnozzle!”

  Hammerhorn slammed the desk. “Sit down! I tell you, sit down, Irish!”

  Cardigan rolled to an iced cooler and drew a glass of water. He slopped half of it on the floor, downed the rest. He planked the glass back in the metal container, gave all indications of an impending explosion, then suddenly relaxed and walked quietly to a chair, sat down, put chin in palm.

  “Poor old Fogarty,” he sighed, heavily.

  Hammerhorn blinked wistfully. “He was my first operative.”

  “Where was Goehrig?”

  “Goehrig covered the tail till midnight. Fogarty picked it up then and Goehrig lammed home to get some shut-eye.”

  “Who found Fogarty?”

  “A cook in an all-night restaurant—on his way home.”

  “I mean the cops.”

  “A patrolman—Ferraro. He busted over from Sheridan Square and found poor old Fogarty in the gutter. He got nervous and took a swing at the cook with the locust. So the cook passed out for two hours and everything was balled up. The cop called an ambulance and the ambulance hit a drunken driver in Hudson Street and that tied things up too.”

  Cardigan made a jaw. “O.K. I’ll go out and find me this yap Daskas. Or have the cops got him?”

  Hammerhorn passed a cold palm across his forehead. “No. I didn’t tell the cops. You know how I feel about Fogarty. I know how you feel. That’s all very jake. But you’ve got a job to do. We’ve got to recover that necklace. If we stick the cops on Daskas that’ll end things. If Daskas did lift that necklace, we’ll never get it if the cops slap him in jail. There’ll be a big commission for us if we get it—and a nice slice for poor old Fogarty’s wife. We’ve got to think of that too. Fogarty—you know—didn’t carry any insurance. We’ve got to—well—look out for his wife.” He made a few awkward gestures. “It’s the only right—kind of—thing. You know?”

  “I get you, boss.” Cardigan stood up, made a fist with his right hand and eyed it; then snapped the fingers open toward Hammerhorn and sighted down along them. “But I’m going to make contact with this Greek.”

  Hammerhorn hardened. “I don’t want you clowning around just for the sake of a grudge.”

  “I know what I’m doing.”

  Still hard, Hammerhorn said: “Remember, it was on your say-so that we put the tail on Daskas. You haven’t got a thing on him. You don’t know that he lifted that necklace. After all, I’m running a detective agency here, not a crap table. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to have you run this Greek punk against the wall and load his belly with lead! Not while I’m in these pants! If you want to play the role of avenger, we’re quits. You may be Irish, but I’m Dutch.”

  Cardigan let the echoes die, meanwhile regarding the ceiling. Then he lowered his gaze and said in a tranquil voice: “I stuck Pat on the Kemmerich woman.”

  “Why?”

  Cardigan told him, then added: “Pat’ll be glue on that lady’s heels and we may find something. Lily Kemmerich’s got something up her pretty sleeve and I don’t mean her shapely arm.”

  Hammerhorn stood up and got his hat, cleared his throat. “Well—I’m going to run up and see what I can do for Fogarty’s wife.”

  CARDIGAN was marking time in the office when Pat rang in a little before noon.

  He said: “O.K., sugar. I’ll run right over.”

  He hung up and was reaching for his hat when McCartney came in chewing the stub of a cigar to shreds. Everything about the bony lieutenant was shapeless—his hat, his coat, his shoulders, his worried, irritable face. When he took his hat off his slabby hair was partless and ragged. He took it off to scratch his head. He was not a bad man; he was a fair cop but he had a reputation for a busybody and by some he was called “Old Woman McCartney.”

  “Sorry,” Cardigan said. “I was just about to leave.”

  “Cardigan, Cardigan….” McCartney’s head shook like the head of a loose-jointed marionette. He yanked at his loose pants and ran the back of his hand across his sour, worried lips. “Look at this now, Cardigan. Here your man Fogarty is bumped off only a few hours after the Kemmerich butler gets slammed out. Cardigan, now listen—”

  “Mac, I’ve got a lunch date.”

  McCartney wobbled his loose arms and stamped one foot like a child being deprived of candy. Half embarrassed, half petulant, he also seemed on the verge of tears.

  “Honest, Cardigan, I can’t help believing this kill of the butler has some connection with the necklace. You say it’s your job to get that necklace. O.K., and luck to you. But it’s my job to get the guy who knocked over the butler. You must have a suspicion. Give me a break.”

  Cardigan slapped on his hat, nodded toward the door. “Going down?” He did not wait for an answer but headed out, reached the corridor and drifted to the elevator bank.

  McCartney was at his heels, plucking at his elbow. “Here I am a good guy, always giving other guys breaks, living a straight home life and taking no more graft than I need—and everybody takes advantage of me.”

  “Going down!” sang out the elevator boy.

  Cardigan bowed. “Before me, Mac.”

  McCartney stamped into the car, jerked at his tie, made irritable sounds in his throat until they reached the lobby. Out in the street, Cardigan turned and gripped the lieutenant’s arm.

  “You made a few cracks about me last night I didn’t like, Mac,” he said, then shook his head, adding, “but I’m not holding that against you. Fogarty was the best-liked man in this agency. I liked him especially. The old boy broke me in. Seven years ago he took a bullet in the gut to save me. Now I’ll tell you—and it’s on the up-and-up, strictly kosher—that I don’t know who bumped him off. I don’t know if there’s any connection between that and the rubbing out of the Kemmerich butler. I don’t know anything that would be worth a damn to you. I have suspicions, but I learned long ago that they’re worse than dynamite to handle. Now for crying out loud, don’t hang to my tail. Scram.”

  He turned sharply on his heel and strode down Madison Avenue. A little farther on, he hopped a cab and sat back while it tussled with traffic down and across town to Grand Central. He got off at the Forty-second Street entrance and found Pat waiting for him inside, near the bootblack stand. She had never looked more trim. They walked down to the oyster bar and climbed onto high stools, ordered Blue Points on the half-shell.

  “So what?” Cardigan said.

  “She came out of the apartment at nine-thirty. She didn’t ride in the family chariot. Took a cab at Third Avenue and I, therefore, into a second cab. No, I don’t use Tabasco.”

  “McCartney turned up. Good old McCartney. He said—”

  “I thought you wanted to hear my story.”

  “I do, keed.”

  “So I followed her, with the old female eagle eyes. Directly to a pawnshop on Eighth Avenue. Here’s the address. I popped into a drug store across the street and ordered a milk shake. I don’t like milk shakes, so I was able to make it last longer than any other drink I could think of. She was in there half an hour. When she came out she walked a block and got into another taxi. I followed her to a hairdresser on Fifth Avenue. Probably she stopped in for an appointment, because she came right out and then I followed her to a modiste in Fifty-seventh Street, east. She was in there half an hour. When she came out she took another cab and so to home. I spoke with Miss Goff before. What’s poor Fogarty’s wife going to do?”


  “George’ll find a way.” He laid down the oyster fork and looked Pat square in the eye. “Fogarty must have got pretty close. So close that the heel let him have it. There might be something doing down around Sheridan Square.”

  “I don’t like the way you say that.”

  “Why?”

  “The tone seems to indicate that you might revert to the sod and do something crazy.”

  He picked up the oyster fork. “What do you suppose Lily was doing in that pawnshop?”

  “Buying a doohickey, maybe.”

  They both looked at each other and then Cardigan said, “I can imagine. S. Feitelberg, huhn? Pawnshop—Eighth Avenue. All right, Pat—back you go to watch Lily. Watch every move she makes.”

  Pat said, “Swell,” and slid a morning paper across the counter. “That item I checked off there. It probably means nothing, but just the same everything concerning Kemmerich ought to interest you. Heinrich Van Damm, the Holland gem expert, is arriving on the S.S. Oberstadt today and is to be entertained by Leopold Kemmerich, his boyhood friend. With butlers being killed, cops, private and city, horseplaying around the Kemmerich bailiwick, I imagine Mynheer Van Damm will find the entertainment gorgeous. No, thanks; no dessert. The old waistline, governor!”

  “Watch Lily, little wonderful.”

  “I’d stare my eyes out even if I didn’t know her. She knows how to wear clothes.”

  HE stood for a while outside, in front of the sporting-goods store, getting a cigar started after Pat had walked east. He had watched the smart, rhythmic swing of her bright, trim heels. He had given a bum a quarter.

  Presently he walked down the broad sidewalk and pushed into a taxicab. It hauled him westward across town through a stubborn honeycomb of traffic and deposited him on Eighth Avenue. By this time the cigar was half smoked. He walked south. He had the lunging walk of a big man.

  Sol Feitelberg’s pawnshop was bigger than most, but fundamentally it was the same inside—so dark that Cardigan, coming in from the harsh sunlight, stood for a moment blinking his eyes. Then he was aware of a head bent toward him over a small counter between a high brass mesh and a high showcase.