Тэлмидж Пауэлл: The Talmage Powell Crime MEGAPACK™: 20 Classic Mysteries!

Hannrihan smiled. “A corpse. Somebody squealed on you, Smith, said I’d find Joe Dance’s body here.”

My chin nearly hit my toes. “Joe Dance!”

Smith sort of stiffened. “Whoever called you, Hannrihan, must have recently escaped from the insane asylum. Have you checked there?”

Hannrihan said, “I’m not kidding, Smith. Now shall I get a warrant?”

“Why get a warrant now?” I said. “You’ve just about covered the place. The boss won’t mind you finishing.” I was giving him plenty of the Bronx cheer in my tone. “Why don’t you look in that closet over there, you grinning ape? Maybe we killed Dance, for no reason at all, and stuffed his body in that closet.”

Hannrihan’s face was about to gush blood. “I’ll do that, Mr. Aberstein,” he said soft-like. “I’ll look there.”

He crossed the office and I couldn’t help it; I laughed until my head roared. The big dummy yanked the closet door open. The laugh choked up in my throat. I staggered back like I’d been punched with a hard left jab.

There was a coat hanging in the closet, but I didn’t even see that. I couldn’t see anything but Joe Dance’s eyes. There were three of them, and the one in the middle of his forehead had spilled red down over his face. He’d never tell us anything about Droyster.

I couldn’t move. I had to hang to the edge of the desk. Hannrihan started to turn around. But I couldn’t do a thing about it. It took the boss to do that.

He swarmed all over the big cop. Hannrihan yelped, swung, but the boss hit him in the back of the neck with a rabbit punch.

Hannrihan went stiff, bounced up on his toes. His eyes rolled back. The boss hit him again and the floor caught the big dick.

I’d seen Smith do that before. His old man had wanted Smith to be a doctor; the boss knew every nerve center in a guy’s body. That’s what he had done to Hannrihan. I knew the big dick would be out ten or fifteen minutes until the nerves started working again.

The boss bent and looked at Dance. “Probably a thirty-eight slug, Willie,” he said. “It’s parked in the middle of Joe’s brain — if he has one.”

He closed the closet door. He took a look at me and laughed. “Feel sick?”

I nodded.

He stepped over Hannrihan. “Well, come along, Willie. We’ll snap you out of it. We’ve a very busy night ahead of us.”

“You’re telling me!” I wobbled out the door.

On the way to Newell’s place, which is some dump, the boss relaxed in the cab like he was coming home from a picture show. Me, I opened the window and poked my head out. I kept seeing Joe Dance and the cold air helped.

“All we’ve got so far,” the boss muttered, “is Mark Droyster dead, a dog track now owned in its entirety by Al Newell, a widow who wants insurance, a bookie named Lorentz who had a fight with Droyster and made tracks, and the corpse of Joe Dance in the office of the Smith Agency.”

“Yeah, and a big bull who saw the corpse.”

The boss fired a smoke. I said, “Honest, boss, I was just making with sarcasm when I told Hannrihan to look in the closet. Cripes, I never dreamed that Joe Dance...”

“I haven’t blamed you, have I?”

“No, but still it makes me feel punk, me causing that ape to look in the closet.”

“Oh, forget it, Willie. He would have looked sooner or later anyway.”

“Well, that sort of makes me feel better.” Then I remembered those three eyes of Dance’s and had to get my head out of the window where the wind could hit it quick. It’s fine, the things cold air will do for you. It sort of knocked the grogginess out of my head.

The boss laughed. “Feel better?”

“I don’t know. I guess so. Wonder what we’ll find at Newell’s?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

Well, I guessed all the way down. I was sure we’d find plenty. But I was wrong. We didn’t find nothing. Newell’s apartment was as quiet as a graveyard. The boss kept buzzing the buzzer.

After awhile I said, “Nobody’s going to answer, boss.”

He looked at me kind of funny like. “That’s quite obvious,” he snapped. He tried the knob. The door was locked. “I wonder if the fire escape—”

He broke off when a door down the hall opened. We looked, and I could have hung around there awhile. The blonde standing in the doorway was some babe.

“I heard you ringing,” she said. “If you’re looking for Mr. Newell, you won’t find him.”

The boss gave her a million dollar smile. “Yes?” he said.

She smiled back. Then she frowned a little. “Mr. Newell is in jail.”

“Jail!” I said, and the boss gave me a dirty look.

The blonde nodded. “I can’t understand it. He hardly knew my name and he looked like such a nice fellow, yet he burst into my apartment this afternoon. He was so drunk he could hardly walk. He seemed to think I was some woman named Susan. I got him in the bedroom, locked him in, and called the police.” She giggled.

“What time was that?” the boss asked.

“About four o’clock. I—”

“Thanks very much, Susan.”

“But I’m not Susan, I tell you. I...” But me and the boss were already on our way.

Down in the street again, the boss took a quick gander about. There was no bulls around, so we started walking.

I was sort of dizzy. I thought we’d come here and have a little fun choking the truth out of Newell about Joe Dance. But now...

The boss said, “It would be a nice alibi, being in jail.”

“Cripes, it would!”

“But I’m not so sure, Willie.”

“Well, I don’t know nothing, it seems like.” We walked on a little. There wasn’t many people out and we kept our eyes peeled for coppers.

Then an idea popped into my mind. “Listen, boss,” I said, “I got an angle. That sawbones, the one who went to the funeral with the Droyster dame. And, say: What about Alicia Droyster herself?”

“You mean Doctor Lawrence Jordan?”

“That’s right.”

“That’s too weak, Willie. Lack of motive. And I think Mrs. Droyster is out. It would be too risky for her to call us if she...”

“I’m not so sure, boss. People do the damndest things. Maybe she’s hoping we’ll pin it on somebody else. Maybe...”

“Stop it, Willie. I didn’t hire you to play Sherlock.”

“Aw, gee, boss. I was just trying to help.”

He slapped me on the shoulder.

“When I need you, I’ll whistle. Now come along, Willie, it suddenly occurs to me that I am a great lover of dogs.”

“You what...?” But he didn’t answer.

We walked a block, then turned into an alley that ran to the next street. It was a fairly wide alley and pretty dark.

We passed a platform that was used for loading I guessed. It was all messed up with old crates and boxes and big sheets of paper.

I knew we were headed for Droyster’s. It wasn’t far this way, taking short cuts. The boss didn’t want to use cabs much. Cops have a nasty habit of talking to cabbies.

Thinking about cops was bad. Hannrihan was chasing all over town by this time. I laid myself four to one that me and the boss was being talked about plenty on the police short wave.

I had to wipe my face with a handkerchief. What those cops would do if they caught us...

I never had the chance to put the handkerchief back in my pocket. A car had turned in the alley at our backs. Its headlights made a lot of light in that alley.

I turned around. The car was coming like a cannonball.

“The end of the street, boss. We’re close. Let’s go!”

He gave me a hard shove. “You fool! We’d never outrun them. Dive for that doorway over there!”

I scrambled across the alley. The car wasn’t a prowl car because there was no siren.