David Alexander - Masters of Noir - Volume 2

The columnist swung on the Inspector. “Either you get that lunatic out of my way, Herlehy, or I’ll hold you just as responsible for this as he is.”

The door to the bedroom opened. One of the lab men was about to say something, Liddell cut him off with a wave of his hand.

“You know you’re going to have to prove all this, Johnny,” Herlehy told him.

“You’re damn right he does, Herlehy. You can still get out from under,” Morton raged.

“Get me a damp rag, one of you guys,” Liddell called over to the plainclothesmen. They looked to the inspector, drew a nod. One of them disappeared into the bathroom, tossed a wet towel to Liddell.

“You see, inspector, I knew I’d have to make the killer expose himself, so I set a trap. I told him the killer had left his prints in the ornamental frieze on top of Mona’s bed. No killer could resist the temptation to wipe those prints out. While I was gone, he wiped that grillwork clean.”

“Try and prove it,” the columnist snarled, “try and prove it.”

“Okay, pal.” Liddell walked over to where the newspaperman stood, wiped the wet towel across his right hand. The hand turned deep purple.

The inspector stared for a moment. “What’s that prove?” he roared.

“Tell the inspector what you found in the frieze, boys.”

The shorter of the plainclothesman nodded. “No prints, but the cut out work was filled with the grating of an indelible pencil. Anyone who tried to wipe away any prints would get the dust all over his fingers.” He looked at Morton. “The minute you wet those fingers, they turn purple.”

The newspaperman swore, rushed at Liddell, threw a punch at his face. His second blow never landed. Liddell caught him flush on the jaw, drove him backward. He was on top of him with an uppercut to the midsection. A hard overhand spun the columnist around, slammed him against the table. Liddell caught him by the shoulder, turned him around and hit him flush with another right hand that knocked him clear over the table. He landed on the other side in a heap, didn’t move.

“Don’t rough him up,” Herlehy growled. “We have special facilities for that downtown. And you better fill me in before he comes to.”

“Well, we were both agreed that the killer was the head man of the jewel ring. He had to be someone who could show up in the club every night. Right?”

Herlehy nodded for him to continue.

“As you said, your night club squad would have noticed anyone who showed up every night. But nobody would notice a columnist — it’s part of his job to be there.”

Herlehy considered it, nodded. “Pretty neat. But why Morton? Why not half a dozen other newspapermen?”

“The way he lived. It’s common gossip that the Dispatch pays off in glory instead of dollars. Yet, Morton wore the best clothes, drove the most expensive cars. Only a guy with a piece of a juicy racket can live like that.”

Herlehy rubbed the side of his jaw with the tips of his fingers. “Why all the killing?”

“Mona figured on getting out and using the jewels to take care of herself. Morton didn’t know she’d given me the jewels until after he’d killed her and found they weren’t at her place. He called Charles to search my place. Then he realized he had placed himself in Charles’ power, so he killed him. Murder is like getting olives out of a bottle. After the first one, they come easy.”

Herlehy held up his hand, cut him off. “Why did he come back to the apartment that night? We wouldn’t even have known he knew Varden.”

Liddell grinned. “One of his master touches. Remember your boys turned up a witness who described Morton as knocking on Varden’s door. We took for granted it was the time he met us there. That’s what he wanted us to think. Actually, it was the first time he was there — the time he killed Mona.”

Herlehy looked down to where the columnist was moaning his way back to consciousness. He nodded for one of his men to put the cuffs on Morton.

Liddell grinned. “Buying it?”

The inspector nodded. “It was a long shot, but it paid off. Between checking his accounts and what Eastman can tell us we’ll make it stick.”

Liddell wiped the perspiration off his forehead with his sleeve. “Where can a man get a drink around here? And how soon?”

Herlehy winked at one of his plainclothesmen. “Take Morton in and book him. I’m going to buy Liddell a drink.”

Liddell stared at him. “A policeman buying a drink? That’s the second most immoral thing I’ve heard all day.”

There was a quiet, restrained atmosphere about the place that you could feel the moment you walked into it. It looked pretty much like any other Times Square side street cocktail lounge and restaurant. There was the bar and leather-cushioned booths and a dining room in the back. The lighting was subdued without being gloomy. But there was this feel, this air about the place that somehow seemed inviolable, so that cruising drunks, going from bar to bar to look for conversation or excitement or a pickup, walked in here and sensed the atmosphere and turned around and walked right out again. Or perhaps had one drink and used the Men’s Room and then left.

The owner prided himself that in twenty years in the business there’d never been any violence in his place. Some close calls, but never any real action. This was because of the owner’s infallible judgment of character. He knew the kind of people he wanted as customers almost on first sight and everything was done to encourage them; extra service, drinks on the house, credit, check-cashing, almost unctuous hospitality. The owner also knew the kind he didn’t want. Everything politely possible was done to discourage them. His was a place for gentlemen and ladies, a place to drink, even to get quietly and genteelly drunk if you cared, to have a good meal after a few drinks and to relax.

He was a short, stocky, shiningly bald man, the owner, with a round, seriously intelligent face. He spoke precise English and was unusually well read and was an almost preciously agile conversationalist. With the favored customers, that is. With the others he was gentle but firm. That was the secret of running his kind of a place. When he listened to the other owners discuss the various troubles they had in their places and what to do about them, he couldn’t help smiling a little smugly.

It was so easy. If you had any perceptiveness at all, you could spot by a customer’s reactions when he first came in, while he was taking his first drink, by every little action and reaction, whether or not he had already taken too much, if he was hostile, inclined to boisterousness. You studied these things and it became very easy. The owner had trained his bartenders and waiters to do likewise, although, of course, they were never as good at it as he was because it didn’t matter as much to them.

The bartender, this night, was new. He was a relief man the union had sent up when the regular night man called in sick. The owner watched him work, from his place by the cash register at the end of the bar, and was quite pleased. The bartender was medium height, clean cut but not so handsome that the men customers would resent him or the women start trouble by flirting with him. He had the right combination of friendliness and reserve and he knew his job. He seemed to be a smart, a good man. The owner was quite pleased.

The real test came, though, when, toward the end of the dinner hour, the door burst open and a man in an old Army field jacket came in. He was clean-shaven but he somehow looked rumpled and dirty. His hair was long and it stuck up in sprouts all over his head as though he’d just got out of bed. It was medium brown hair, except for a perfectly square patch of white on one side. He had a thin, ferret-like face, with a lot of blackheads in it. His eyes were kind of strange; not staring, exactly, but too intense, sort of fixed in their gaze and on nothing in particular. He took a seat at the bar between two groups of regular customers. The conversation at the bar, which had been rather spirited in a controlled sort of way, died down when this man sat at the bar. Everybody watched the drumming of his fingers. He didn’t look at anybody. He looked down at the bar.