Стюарт Стерлинг - Collection of Stories

She was gone; there wouldn’t be anything more he could do to help her here. If he didn’t get out of here in a few minutes, he’d probably get himself in an ugly jam, too. That sadist wouldn’t have gone to all the trouble of staging what would have appeared to be a lovers’ quarrel without notifying the authorities himself. There’d be a squad car around before the ambulance got here, in all probability.

He shouldered into his raincoat, slapped on his wet hat, gathered coat, vest, shirt and tie into a bundle. He wiped the barrel of the shotgun with his undershirt. The bending over made him retchingly ill. He might need another slug of that brandy, he decided, and stuffed the bottle in his pocket.

He looked down at Suzanne. “I’ll try to pass on your message to Benny, kid. If I can find him.”

He used the undershirt on the knob of the hall door, inside and out, and tucked the bundle of clothes under his coat as he went down the stairs, half expecting one of the tenants on the other floors to fling open a door and confront him.

It was still raining when he reached the street. It would be difficult to get a taxi in a storm like this. A horn blasted insistently eastward. Its volume rose higher as it neared.

He crossed the street, walked toward the river, so his back would be toward the arriving police. But he made himself turn as the patrol car whined to a stop a hundred yards behind him. Cops would think it queer if a passerby should pay no attention to a racing police car.

That would be one of the precinct patrol cars, the one Clem had arranged for, no doubt. Don hesitated long enough to watch the two officers run up the steps. Then he lowered his head against the driving rain and plodded slowly on to the corner.

Wouldn’t he have presented a picture of fleeing guilt if those uniformed boys had decided to pick him up! Bare to the waist, carrying his shirt and coat, a bottle of looted liquor in his pocket! And a swollen left ear that felt like an eggplant and probably looked like one!

Taxis streamed past on Seventy-second, but they were all full. He thought of taking a bus, then decided the subway would be safer. At the “Telegrill” near Broadway he turned in, headed past the lineup at the long bar to the stag’s room.

He went into one of the toilet booths, hung up his raincoat, put on his undershirt, shirt, tie, vest and coat. Then he took a slug from the Fundador bottle.

A small painted label caught his eye as he lowered the uptilted bottle from his mouth. He examined it:

He knew Congers. It was the sort of small town where a liquor dealer would know his regular customers. Of course there was the big probability the bottle had been bought while somebody’s car was en route up or down the Hudson. It was also likely enough the brandy had been bought by Suzanne herself. But there was still the outside chance Clem had bought it and that Sammy, or one of his employees, might know who Clem Was.

Don went to the washbowl, looked at his puffed-up ear in the mirror. He didn’t give the ear a second thought when he saw the scratches on his right cheek.

The sort of scratches that might have been made by a girl’s fingernails! Even the fingernails of a dying girl — if somebody else had clawed them against Don’s face.

On the subway down to Christopher Street, Don stood on the platform of the rear car of the local pretending to read a damp newspaper so no one would be likely to notice those scratches on his face. If Clem had done what Don thought he had, the lab technicians down at Broome Street would presently be suggesting to the Homicide specialists that they put out a bulletin to be on the lookout for a man displaying marks of feminine fury.

Quite likely someone in the houses along Seventy-fourth Street who had been looking out a window when the patrol car had rolled up, would by now have given the police his description, anyway. For that matter, Clem might have telephoned his description to the cops when sending in the alarm which had brought the radio car.

The doorman at his apartment house was busy blowing his whistle for a taxi. He didn’t notice as Don stalked into the building. The elevator man was descending from one of the upper floors. Don didn’t wait for the car. He met no one on the stairs or in the corridor of his floor.

He shucked his clothes, stood under a hot shower for five full minutes while his ear throbbed and hammered like an abscess. Then he let the cold water stun him. When he looked in his mirror the scratches seemed more lividly prominent than before, but the swollen ear had been reduced a little.

He had one more shot at the Fundador before he sat down in his bathrobe to call the office.

It was Cora who answered. “Oh, Lord, Mr. Marko! When’re you coming back?

The most awful thing—”

“Mary?”

“No. She’s still on the critical list, but they think she’ll be all right. It’s Mr. Harrison!”

“Maxie told me.”

“They’ve found another phony delivery, Mr. Marko. To the Stuyvesant Binns! For nine thousand!”

“Oh, great! What was it — furniture?”

“And curtains and mirrors and light fixtures. Mr. Harrison is throwing a Grade A fit. He’s been calling for you every fifteen minutes!”

“Switch me over to him, Cora.” After what he’d been through, the G.M.’s bellowings wouldn’t bother Don too much.

Bob Harrison wasn’t in a bellowing mood. He was in a cold, quiet rage. “Where are you, Don?”

“Downtown.” He was purposely vague.

“I want you here in my office as fast as you can get here.”

“No can do. Boss I’m riding a hot lead on the Deshla thing.”

“Deshla!” the G.M. snorted. “It’s a half-dozen swindles by now and God knows how many more to come! Do you realize this thing is getting up toward the fifty thousand mark! We’ve got to put a stop to it, if it means shaking up the entire protection staff, understand?”

“Perfectly. But it might mean going even higher.”

Harrison fumed. “What do you mean by that?”

“These things had to be inside jobs, partly. From what I’m onto right now, I’d say there’s quite a crew involved and one or more of ’em will turn out to be Nimbletts employees.”

“Then get back here, damn it, and—”

“Can’t, Bob. There’s more than our loss to take into consideration.”

“Yes, yes. I know all about Miss Bayard and Ralph Eddrop. Unfortunate.”

“Murder’s generally very inconvenient, Boss.”

“Murder?”

“Couple of dead girls, so far. Both members of the con crowd, near’s I can make out. Might be more if I don’t stick with this.”

“What have you found out?”

“Bit here. Piece there. Seem’s as if some interior decorator has been getting inside dope on some of our heavy-dough customers who’re gone away for winter vacations, got stuff shipped to their country places, then transferred it elsewhere. Leaving no trace except a bunch of unpaid bills.”

“Who do you suspect here in the store?”

“Haven’t got to that yet. But you might have someone with discretion in the credit department check over all the charges billed out by the furniture and drapery departments for the past sixty days and make a list of the ones that haven’t been paid to date.”

“Eddrop be all right? He’s absolutely trustworthy.”

“Sure. He’ll have his heart in it, too, after that crack in the mouth.”

Harrison was subdued. “When’ll you be in, Don?”

“No telling. But I’ll have something when I get there.”