JAMES HADLEY CHASE: A COFFIN FROM HONG KONG

His face tightened with fury.

“Listen, you son-of-a-bitch,” he mouthed. “I don’t take smart talk from a cheap peeper. I’ll get Pulski to handle you! He’ll take the shine off your wit! You’re too goddam smart to stay in one piece!” “Better look in the car first before you feed me to your meat grinder, Lieutenant. Look in the glove compartment. It’ll save time.” I stepped away from the car, letting the car door swing open.

His eyes smouldering, Retnick leaned into the car and yanked open the glove compartment.

I watched his reactions. His fury died. He didn’t touch either the gun or the handbag. He looked for a long moment, then turned to me.

“Is that your gun?”

“Yes”

“Her handbag?”

“It adds up, doesn’t it?”

He studied me, puzzled.

“What the hell’s this? You ready to make a statement admitting you killed her?”

“I’m laying the cards face up as they’re dealt to me,” I said. “I can’t do more than that. It’s up to you what you make of it.”

He bawled to the cop guarding the gate. When the cop came over, Retnick told him to get Pulski fast.

While we waited, Retnick again looked at the gun and the handbag without touching them.

“I wouldn’t give two bits for your chance of survival now, shamus,” he said. “Not two bits.”

“I wouldn’t give two bits myself if I hadn’t come here to show you what I found,” I said, “but since I’ve come, I’ll gamble two bits but no more.”

“Do you always lock your car?” he asked, staring at me as his brain creaked into action.

“Yes, but I have a duplicate key in the drawer where I keep my gun. I didn’t look but I bet it isn’t there now.”

Retnick scratched the side of his face with a rasping sound.

“That’s right. When I looked for the gun, I didn’t see any key.”

Pulski came pounding across the yard.

“Give this car the works,” Retnick said to him. “Check everything. Careful how you handle the gun and the handbag. Better let Lacey look at the gun. Get moving.”

He nodded to me and we walked across the yard, up the three steps, through the doorway into a dimly-lit white-tiled passage that smelt the way all cops houses smell.

We tramped down a corridor, up a flight of stairs, down a corridor and into a room the size of a hen coop. There was a desk, two chairs, a filing cabinet and a window. It was as cosy and as comfortable as an orphanage’s common room.

Retnick waved me to an upright chair while he eased his way around the desk and sat in the chair behind it.

“This your office?” I asked interested. “I’d have thought you being the Mayor’s brother-in- law, they would have fitted you up with something more plush.”

“Never mind how I live: concentrate on your own misfortunes,” Retnick said. “If that’s the gun that killed her and that’s her handbag, you’re as good as dead.”

“Do you think so?” I said, trying to make myself comfortable on the upright chair. “You know for ten minutes, maybe even longer, I struggled against the temptation of ditching the gun and the handbag in the sea and if I had ditched them, Lieutenant, neither you nor all the bright boys who take care of the law in this city would have been any the wiser, but I decided to give you a break.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I didn’t ditch them because they had been so obviously planted in my car. It all adds up to a plant—the whole set-up. If I had ditched them, you might not be able to break the case.”

He cocked his head on one side: he was good at doing that.

“So I have the gun and the handbag: what makes you think I’m going to break this goddam

case?”

“Because you’re not going to concentrate on me, you’re going to look for the killer and that’s what he doesn’t want you to do.”

He brooded for a long moment, then he took out his cigar case and offered it to me. This was his first friendly act during the five years I had known him. I took a cigar to show I appreciated the gesture although I am not by nature a cigar smoker.

We lit up and breathed smoke at each other.

“Okay, Ryan,” he said. “I believe you. I’d like to think you knocked her off, but it’s leaning too far backwards. I’d be saving myself a hell of a lot of trouble and time if I could believe it, but I can’t. You’re a cheap peeper, but you’re not a fool. Okay, so I’m sold. You’re being framed.”

I relaxed.

“But don’t count on me,” he went on. “The trouble will be to convince the D.A. He’s an impatient bastard. Once he knows what I’ve got on you, he’ll move in. Why should he care so long as he gets a conviction?”

There didn’t seem anything to say to that so I didn’t say it.

He stared out of the window that gave onto a view of the back of a tenement building with badly washed laundry hanging on strings and baby carriages on balconies.

“I’ve got to dig around before I can make up my mind about you,” he said finally. “I can book you as a material witness or I can ask you to stick around voluntarily. What’s it to be?”

“I’ll stick around,’’ I said.

He reached for his telephone.

“I want you,” he said when a voice sounded over the line.

There was a pause, then the door pushed open and a young plain-clothes man came in. He was the eager-beaver type. I could see, so far, police work hadn’t soured him. He looked at Retnick the way a friendly dog looks for a bone.

With an expression of distaste, as if he were introducing a poor relation, Retnick waved to me.

“This is Nelson Ryan: a shamus. Take him away and keep him amused until I want him.” He looked at me. “This is Patter-He’s just joined the force: don’t corrupt him faster than he need be.”

I went with Patterson down the corridor and into another small room that smelt of stale sweat, fear and disinfectant. I sat down by the window while Patterson, looking puzzled, squatted on the edge of a desk.

“Relax,” I said. “We’ll probably be here for hours. Your boss is trying to prove I murdered a Chinese woman and he hasn’t a chance to prove it.”

His eyes bugged out as he stared at me.

Trying to put him at ease, I offered him the half-smoked cigar Retnick had given me. “This is a museum piece. Would you like to have it for your collection? It’s Retnick’s. You have a museum?”

His young, eager face turned to stone. He looked almost like a cop.

“Listen, let me tell you something. We don’t like ...”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I said, waving my hand to cut him short. “I’ve heard that one before. Retnick tells it better. I stir up the dust. I get in your way. I bother you boys. Okay, so what? I make a living the same as you. Can’t I kid you a little or are you that sensitive?”

I grinned at him, and after a moment’s hesitation, he relaxed and grinned back. From then on we got along fine.

Around lunch-time a cop brought us a meat pie and some beans which we ate. Patterson seemed to think the pie was pretty good, but then he was young and hungry. I toyed with mine and sent most of it back. After this so-called lunch, he got out a deck of cards and we played gin rummy for matches. After I had taken a whole box off him, I showed him how I was cheating him. This seemed to shock him until I offered to teach him how it was done. He made a very enthusiastic pupil.

Around eight o’clock the same cop brought more meat pie and more beans. We ate the stuff because by now we were so goddam bored we would have eaten anything just for the hell of it. We played more gin rummy and he cheated so well he took a whole box of matches off me. Around midnight, the telephone bell rang. He picked up the receiver, listened, then said, “Yes, sir,” and hung up. “Lieutenant Retnick is ready for you now,” he said getting to his feet.