Richard Deming: Tweak the Devil’s Nose

I said disgustedly, “You don’t believe either statement. You’re using Fausta to try to smoke out the killer. I suppose your next move will be to let the eyewitness’s identity leak.”

Day looked wounded. “We’re not that crude, Moon. You think we’d deliberately set up a young woman as a target?”

“Yes.”

He examined me in silence for a minute. “It’s none of your business,” he said finally, “but just to relieve your mind, I’ll tell you what we’re doing. I have tails on that taxi driver and doorman.”

I looked at him blankly. “For what?”

“Put yourself in the killer’s place,” he said irritably. “You read in the paper a witness has seen your face. The name isn’t given, but the names of three other witnesses who didn’t see your face are. Possibly these witnesses, or at least one of them, knows who the fourth witness is. Is it worth the risk of approaching them one at a time in an attempt to learn the fourth witness’s identity?”

I thought of something. “Have you got a tail on me too?” I demanded.

Day shook his head. “If the killer bites at all, we figure he would steer away from a private detective except as a last resort. And even if he did approach you, we assume you’d have sense enough to sit on him and give us a buzz.”

I thought of something else. “The other witnesses actually do know who the fourth is, because we were all present when Fausta made that silly statement. Suppose the killer does contact one of them, gets the information he wants, and your man loses him?”

Warren Day frowned, opened his mouth and closed it again. Finally he rumbled, “We don’t make mistakes like that.”

I emitted a polite horse laugh.

“If we figure Miss Moreni is in any danger, we’ll take her into protective custody,” he snapped.

“Swell,” I said bitterly. “Put her in jail.”

“Better than being dead,” he offered in a reasonable tone. “Get on with the second thing you want. I’m pretty busy.”

“I want to help you,” I told him. “As a patriotic citizen I feel it my duty to do something about this blot on our city’s honor.”

Day regarded me suspiciously. “Do you know something you didn’t tell last night?”

“Not yet,” I admitted. “I plan to crack the case as soon as you tell me what you’ve got so far.”

He glared at me with sudden indignation. “You’re on the case? It’s not enough I got the district attorney, two governors and every newspaper in the country on my back. Now you want to breathe down my neck. Go away.”

He dropped his eyes back to the reports on his desk. I sat quietly chewing my filched cigar. Finally he looked up again.

“Who’s your client?”

“The governor of Illinois.”

He snorted. Searching his ashtray, he found a long cigar butt, blew the ashes from it and stuck it in his mouth. I waited for him to produce a match, but he preferred merely to chew also.

“Laurie Davis was seen in town this morning,” he said, eying me expectantly.

“He was?”

“Is he your client?” he demanded.

“My client wants to remain incognito.”

He started to glare, but let it deteriorate into what was supposed to be an ingratiating smile. I can’t describe what it actually was, but a close approximation would be the grin of a weasel with a stomach-ache.

I knew what was going through his mind. If my client actually was Laurie Davis, he could hardly afford to be uncooperative, for even the governor might listen attentively if the political boss of a neighboring state decided to make a complaint. And with pressure on the department already tremendous, Day had no desire to make it any worse.

Apparently the inspector decided to take no chances, and the decision brought about one of his abrupt changes in manner which never fail to fascinate me. All at once he was full of wheedling friendliness.

“We’re always willing to co-operate with you private fellows when you co-operate with us, Manny. I’ll be glad to give you the little bit we got, if you’ll promise to turn in everything you find out the minute you find it — not a week or two later, as you sometimes do.”

“Let’s make a deal,” I said.

Immediately he was suspicious again. “What kind of deal?”

“I’ll hold nothing back at all from you, if you’ll promise the same treatment.”

“Sure, Manny,” he said, relieved and a little surprised, for he seemed to hold the erroneous impression that he generally came out second when we horse traded.

“There’s one qualification,” I said. “I want you to agree that regardless of which one of us breaks the case, we keep the arrest secret for twenty-four hours.”

Straightening in his chair, he looked at me with amazement. “Why should I agree to a silly thing like that?”

“There’s a political reason,” I said casually.

Day opened his mouth, closed it again and glared at me speechlessly. The two things in the world he understands not at all are women and politics, and it is a tossup as to which frightens him more.

“No politician is going to tell me how to run Homicide,” he declared unconvincingly.

“None wants to,” I assured him. “You’ll have your killer and no one will interfere with the legal prosecution. All I’m asking is he be held as a material witness or some such thing for twenty-four hours. Assuming we ever catch him, that is. If he can’t, we’ll have to work independently, because I’m committed to work on that basis only.”

“Why?”

“Because I am. Do we co-operate, or do I tell Laurie Davis I’m on my own?”

I let the name slip deliberately, and watched Day’s reaction to the confirmation that my client was who he suspected. A faint spot of white appeared at the tip of his nose. Around headquarters Warren Day’s nose is surreptitiously referred to as the “rage gauge,” for it exactly meters his degree of anger. When it becomes dead white, he is just short of homicidal.

“For an old friend like you I think we can arrange that,” he said in a choked voice.

So our agreement was made and the inspector proceeded to bring me up to date.

As I had surmised from the double wound, the bullet which killed Lancaster had passed entirely through his body. The spent slug, too badly battered from striking a rib on the way out to make comparison tests possible in the event the murder weapon was ever found, was located lying on the gravel drive only a few feet from the body. Since no ejected casing was found, it was assumed the weapon had been a revolver rather than an automatic.

A thin coating of dried leaves from the previous fall had been spread over the close-cropped grass as fertilizer by El Patio’s gardener, and the resulting spongy turf left no footprints. However, muzzle flash had singed a bush at the edge of the drive, so it had been possible to determine where the killer had been standing.

At this point I interrupted. “Then my story is verified without Fausta’s statement. If she repudiates it, that taxi driver’s imaginings still don’t mean anything.”

Racketeer Barney Seldon had been held for questioning as a matter of routine, the inspector went on unperturbably, but since he was still seated at his table in the midst of over a hundred other diners when the shot was fired, he was not even booked. It developed that he was a habitué of El Patio, dining there several nights a week, so there was nothing unusual about his being present at the time of the murder. Except for his reputation for violence, the police had no reason to connect him with the affair.

“Right after you left I sent Hannegan over to Carson City to break the news to Lancaster’s wife,” Day went on. “A lousy job, but somebody always has to do it. He found out from Mrs. Lancaster the dead man’s purpose in being this side of the river was a business meeting with some investment brokers, and she had expected him home last night. He also found out practically everybody knew Lancaster would be at El Patio last night. During a luncheon speech in Carson City a few days back he made a humorous reference to a charge by a political rival that he was in the pay of a restaurant-owners’ lobby which was trying to get the state sanitary code relaxed. He said his influence among restaurateurs was so great that when he phoned El Patio a week in advance for a seven-thirty dinner reservation for last night, he only had to argue about twenty minutes in order to get himself fitted in an hour later than he wanted. The speech was reprinted in the Carson City Herald, so anyone who can read could have known he would be coming out of El Patio about nine thirty.”