Richard Deming: Tweak the Devil’s Nose

I said, “Evening, Inspector,” put the last bite of sandwich in my mouth and chewed it with enjoyment.

Day turned his gaze at Fausta. “Miss Moreni, isn’t it?”

There was none of the usual strain in his manner which appears when he is faced by a beautiful woman. Ordinarily he exhibits traces of psychotic terror when he has to speak to any woman at all, and the degree of terror increases in direct proportion to her beauty. Fausta’s should have reduced him to a dithering wreck, but she is the exception which proves the rule. Possibly because he had met her on a number of previous occasions, but more probably because he refused to be in awe of any woman who would associate with me, she was the one woman I knew with whom he was able to be almost entirely natural.

When Fausta admitted she was Miss Moreni, Day said, “May we use your office for questioning?”

“Certainly,” Fausta said, turning to lead the way.

Back in the office I sipped a quarter of my coffee, then set the cup in the saucer I had left on Fausta’s desk. The inspector watched me with irritation.

“May I interrupt your meal long enough to ask what happened, Moon?” he inquired acidly.

“Sure, Inspector. I’ll even skip my dessert. Somebody hiding in the bushes right across from the club entrance shot Lancaster just as he started to climb into a taxi.”

I explained in detail just what I knew, including my argument with the taxi driver and his apparent assumption I had been shooting at him and missed.

“The doorman thinks I shot him too,” I said.

“Did you?” he asked.

I gave him a pained look. “You think I’d miss and get the wrong man at a distance of four feet?”

“Maybe it was Lancaster you meant to get.” He turned to the cop who still remained with him. “Bring in that cabbie and the doorman. And tell Lieutenant Hannegan I want him.”

While awaiting these arrivals, I went back to sipping my coffee. Fausta sat on the edge of her desk and crossed her legs, which parted a knee-high slit in the side of her green evening gown to expose a beautiful silk-clad calf. Instinctively the inspector gawked at it, then turned his head to study the far corner of the room.

The moment the little cabbie was ushered into the office by the cop Day had sent after him, he pointed a finger at me and said in a shrill voice, “There he is! He done it!”

“What’s your name?” the inspector asked in a bored tone.

“Caxton. Robert Caxton. This guy tried to kill me, but he hit that other character instead. You take away his gun?”

“Just tell your story, Caxton,” Warren Day suggested.

Except for implying he had left plenty of room for any normal driver to pass when he parked his cab, and stating I had no business to move his cab, the little man’s story corroborated mine up to the point of the shot. From there on we were miles apart.

“As soon as he seen what he’d done, he put away his rod, jumped in his car and tried to escape by backing out the drive,” he said. “But another car was coming in, and when he saw he couldn’t make it, he come back to brazen it out.”

“You saw him put away the gun?” Day asked.

“Sure I seen him. He wasn’t five feet away from me.”

“What kind of gun was it?”

“Geeze, I don’t know. Everything happened too fast. I heard the shot, turned around, and there he was with this gun in his hand—”

“Turned around,” I interrupted. “Catch that, Inspector? He was opening the door for his customer and had his back to both of us. When the shot went off, he took one look at me and dived in front of his cab. Ask him how he saw me put away a gun when he had his face in the gravel under his radiator.”

“Shut up, Moon,” the inspector said without anger. He looked up as the doorman Tom was ushered into the room by Hannegan. “What’s your name?”

“Thomas Henning, sir.”

“What’s your story?”

The doorman, though less definite about it, generally verified Robert Caxton’s accusation. He refused to say right out I had done the shooting, but said that was his impression. His eyes had been on Lancaster when the shot came, and a lance of flame seemed to come from where I was standing. He cheerfully admitted it could have come from the bushes, however, and his assumption I had done the shooting could have been based on the fact no one else was in evidence.

“Hmph,” the inspector said. He stared at me with relish. “Guess we’ll have to book you overnight at least, Moon.”

I glared at him. “You know damn well this little twerp is talking through his hat, Inspector.”

“He sounds like a reliable witness to me, Moon. I hate to drag in an old friend, but I can’t let friendship interfere with duty.”

He beamed at me piously as I tried to decide whether to kill him right then, or wait till I had a chance to plan out the crime so that I might get away with it. Warren Day is probably one of the best homicide cops in the country, but he is also, to put it mildly, eccentric. And one of the symptoms of his eccentricity is that he firmly believes he has a sense of humor.

He hated to drag in an old friend like I hate fresh apple pie. He had known me so long, I was sure he held no belief whatever in the possibility of my being the killer, merely seeing an excellent opportunity to exercise what he regarded as his sense of humor. Day’s sense of humor is the kind which battens on fat men slipping on banana peels, or women getting their noses caught in wash wringers. It would split his sides to have me spend the night in the pokey.

Fausta said suddenly, “Nobody asked me who the killer was.”

Everybody in the room turned to look at her.

Finally Day asked, “Do you know?”

“I know it was not Manny,” she said positively. “I was just coming around the corner of the building from the side door to the ballroom when the gun went off. It was a man behind a bush right next to Manny. I could see his face in the light from the neon sign.”

“Wait a minute, Fausta,” I said. “You don’t have to—”

“I cannot describe him,” she said firmly, “because I could only see his head. I do not know whether he was thin or fat, or how tall he was, because I think he was crouched a little. But I would recognize his face if I saw it again.”

After a moment during which no one said anything, Day growled, “You’re making that up to save your boy friend’s skin. You didn’t say anything about it when Moon was telling his story.”

“You did not ask me, Inspector.” She looked at him calmly. “Many customers who saw me can testify I stepped from the ballroom door a few minutes before the shot came. I wish to make a formal statement, and I would like a copy to show the judge when he asks you why you arrested Manny.”

The inspector gave up. Had he held the slightest belief in my guilt, probably he would have thrown Fausta in the cooler as an accessory along with me. But since he had only been exercising his perverted sense of humor in the first place, he decided to let it drop.

“Take her statement, Hannegan,” he growled. “Okay, Moon. You can shove off. But stay in town. Understand?”

“I was thinking of a Canadian fishing trip,” I growled back at him.

Just then a medical examiner stuck his head in the door and informed Day that Lancaster was dead. He had been for nearly an hour by then, of course, and this was the fourth doctor to say so, but this made it official.

By the time I got home the news of Walter Lancaster’s death was on the radio and special bulletins were coming over every few minutes. Having stopped for a late supper to top off my lone sandwich at El Patio, it was after midnight by then and sufficient time had passed for the radio news bureaus to hold telephone interviews with most everyone important enough to quote.