Ричард Деминг: The Second Richard Deming Mystery MEGAPACK™: 23 Classic Mystery Stories

“Suppose we go up to my place and talk it over,” the girl suggested.

“What can I lose but my time,” Mac suggested.

Nan’s “place” turned out to be an apartment on the seventh floor of the exclusive Plaza Towers. Nan opened the door with a key, stepped in and then turned to face Mac with her hand out.

“I’ll take your hat,” she said, her face as still as usual, but her eyes smiling.

As Mac handed it to her, he heard the door click shut behind him and started to glance casually over his shoulder at Cougar, who had entered last. He stopped with his head half-turned when he felt hard metal press against his spine.

“Just don’t move,” said the girl, her eyes still smiling.

Mac stood motionless as her hand slid under his coat and removed his automatic. Efficiently she patted his pockets and hips for other weapons, then backed away, dropped Mac’s hat on an end table and seated herself in a soft chair.

She pointed Mac’s gun at him and said softly, “All right, Thomas. You may put it away, now.”

The pressure disappeared from Mac’s back and the Strangler carefully circled toward a sofa so that he did not pass between Mac and the automatic.

“What’s the pitch?” Mac growled.

“Sit down,” the girl suggested, motioning toward an easy chair directly opposite her own.

Mac sank into the chair, stretched his legs with an aplomb he did not feel and repeated, “What’s the pitch?”

“Just being careful,” Nan said. “Now tell me all about yourself.”

“Why?”

“Because,” Cougar put in sulkily, “I’ll test my grip on your throat if you don’t.”

Mac glanced at the man’s mummified face, let his eyes drop to the long narrow fingers which were gently massaging each other, and hastily looked back at the girl.

“What do you want to know?”

Nan Tracy looked him over thoughtfully before replying. Her lovely face was strictly business. She said, “You can start by telling us your real name.”

“MacDowell,” Mac said. “Larry MacDowell. I told you I wasn’t hot, so why should I use a fake name?”

Nan glanced inquiringly over at Cougar, who said grudgingly:

“Sounds faintly familiar, but I can’t place where I heard it. A guy as fancy with a rod as this Joe, I ought to have heard of. I keep my ear pretty close to the grapevine. But he don’t ring a bell.”

Dissatisfaction showed in his expression and his tone became almost querulous. “You jumped at him too fast. Suppose he turns out to be a cop, or maybe a Fed? Now he knows something’s up, and you can’t just kick him out. So we got a body on our hands.”

Mac quirked his lips in what was meant to be an insolent grin, but which he feared more resembled a sickly one.

Nan’s voice developed an edge of ice. “Since you were let in on my next higher contact, you’ve begun to cultivate a bad habit, Thomas. I still do your thinking for you, and if you get too big for your boots, the boss may order you buried in them.”

Cougar’s already pale face turned even paler and he muttered something about only trying to be helpful. Mac’s mind sifted over the words, Next higher contact, and came to the tentative conclusion that more than one link in the organization of Homicide, Inc., existed above Nan. At the same time he experienced mild surprise that the emotionless Cougar exhibited such fear at mention of the boss. He mentally filed the knowledge for future reference.

Nan turned her attention back to Mac. “Who have you been connected with, Mac? Give us some references. Something we can check.”

Her eyes still seemed to be smiling, but her lips were a hard straight line. Mac felt a flood of thankfulness that he had briefed himself for just such an emergency, “John Hagen in New Orleans,” he said. “Jimmy Dow in L. A.”

“Hagen—” Cougar started to say, then stopped and looked at Nan apologetically.

“Go on, Thomas,” she said.

Encouraged, he swung his gaze back to Mac, and suspicion mixed in his eyes with the hostility already there. “Hagen’s dead and Dow’s at Alcatraz,” he said coldly.

Mac shrugged. “Barrel-Head Morgan in St. Louis.”

Nan’s expression showed interest. “We did some work for him once,” she said to Cougar. “Put in a call.”

The Strangler went into the hallway and they could hear him giving a St. Louis number to the operator. Five minutes passed while the girl’s grave eyes examined Mac without expression.

Mac employed the time to glance around the room, noting two of the doors leading off it seemed to lead to bedrooms.

Cougar came back and spat, “Morgan’s on a Mediterranean cruise. How many more guys who aren’t available can you dream up?” His expression had changed from suspicion to open disbelief.

Mac glanced at Nan’s face, noting something new there which was not exactly suspicion, but a kind of alertness. A bead of cold sweat trickled down his side, but he managed to say unconcernedly, “Those boys were before my time. Try my last boss, Dude Emory in Philly. He was alive and present a month ago.”

Cougar started to turn toward the hall again, but Nan said, “Wait, Thomas. I’ll call him myself.”

She waited while Cougar drew a revolver from beneath his arm and covered Mac, then lowered her own gun and went into the hall.

Again Mac sat quietly while the call went through, but this time his muscles were bunched to throw himself at Cougar at the first intimation that his masquerade had failed. For Dude Emory was his hole card, and unless he spoke the proper words, Mac knew he was as good as dead.

Only two weeks before, the FBI fingerprint department had identified as Larry MacDowell an unclaimed accident victim lying in a Brooklyn morgue. No news release had been made for the specific purpose of letting Mac use his name.

Their physical descriptions roughly tallied, but Mac was counting more on the psychology of his acting than on physical resemblance. Most persons in describing someone do not say something like, “A man weighing 240 pounds, light brown hair, gray eyes, freckles, a hook nose and a dimple in his chin.” Instead they say, “A big fellow with horn-rimmed glasses, who is always pursing his lips and talks about nothing but baseball.”

Mac hoped that Emory’s description would be something like, “A stocky guy of average height who sort of bounces when he moves. Wears his hat on the back of his head and always has a mocking grin, like he doesn’t give a damn about anything.”

There was a good possibility the stunt would work, but there was also a double risk. Possibly Larry MacDowell’s death had been gangland vengeance, rather than the accident it seemed, in which case Dude Emory undoubtedly would be aware of it through the underworld grapevine. And also Emory might mention the cheek scar MacDowell bore, which MacDonald Sprague lacked. Mac found himself wishing Cougar had made the call instead of Nan for the alert light in her eyes warned him she would not be too easily fooled.

When Nan finally returned, Mac forced his gaze to meet hers, and immediately he knew he had won, for there was a faint touch of respect in her eyes.

“Dude Emory seems to think you’re the devil on wheels with a gun, Mac.” She handed back his automatic butt first. “Sorry for the inconvenience, but we don’t take any chances.”

“That’s all right,” Mac said agreeably, concealing his flood of relief. “I prefer working for an outfit that doesn’t.”

He slipped the automatic back in its holster and stared pointedly at the revolver still in Cougar’s hand. Slowly the Strangler replaced it beneath his arm, but none of the hostility disappeared from his eyes, and very little of the suspicion, This guy is going to watch me, Mac told himself , and I better watch him if I want to stay alive.