They were reaching for the ceiling, and I motioned a cop forward to frisk them. He did. Then I stood in front of Tony Partucci and snarled, “O.K., where is he?”
He must have known it wouldn’t help him any to stall. Or maybe he didn’t like the looks of the fist I held ready to tag him with. He jerked his head toward a door on the other side of the room and said, “In there.”
I crossed over and jerked the door open. Jojo Evans was inside, bound to the end of an iron bed.
He didn’t say anything. Couldn’t. His mouth was smothered under layers of tape. He stared, though, and don’t ever let anyone tell you a man can’t talk with his eyes. I was as welcome as sunshine after three weeks of rain.
I got him untied and he pulled the tape off his mouth. I would have done that for him, too, but my hands were twitching so hard I probably would have torn away his teeth.
I said, “Lomac’s responsible for this. Just wait until I get my hands on that rat!”
Jojo slumped down on the bed and sat there, sucking his lips. He was a sight. His clothes were covered with floor dirt and torn half off him, and his face was a mass of bruises. They’d tossed him around, slugged him, doused him with water to bring him to again. He’d been through hell.
“How’d they get you out of your apartment?” I demanded.
“I thought it was you,” Jojo said. “Like a sap I just opened the door.”
“They took the pictures?”
He shook his head. “Couldn’t find them. That’s why I’m not dead yet. They been beating hell out of me, trying to make me tell where to look.”
I said, “Where are those pictures?”
“There aren’t any.”
“What?”
“I mean there aren’t any prints. All I did was develop the roll. It’s hanging up to dry in the apartment house airshaft.”
I gave him the fishy stare he deserved, and walked into the other room. The boys had cuffs on Lomac’s three rats and were ready to herd them out.
“Take ’em to Headquarters,” I said. “I’ll be over later with Evans and Lomac.”
I almost had to carry Jojo down the stairs. He needed a doctor, but I had something else in mind that would do him a lot more good. Mentally, anyway. We piled into my car and I dismissed the cop who was waiting there, guarding Lomac. Lomac was coming to.
I took a roundabout way to Headquarters, a route that led through a couple of nice dark alleys. We spent some time in one of those alleys. When we did reach Headquarters, Jojo felt better. So did I. I slung Lomac over my shoulder and lugged him up the steps, took him into the Chief’s private sanctum and dumped him down on a chair. He slid off it and lay in a heap on the floor.
“What the devil happened?” the Chief demanded, looking at him.
“He resisted arrest,” I explained.
The Chief said, “Oh.”
Later, Jojo and I went over to Jojo’s apartment and picked up the roll of film. I held it to a light and looked at it, while Evans stared at me. They were pictures he’d taken in Leon Vanetti’s room, with his camera. They showed the corpse hanging there, the fishline, the overturned chair.
It was the chair, of course. I’d been in that room enough times to know it, but sometimes when you’re that close to a thing you don’t see it. The pictures gave me the proper perspective.
The chair was a mighty long way from the dangling feet of Mr. Leon Vanetti. And it was a heavy hunk of furniture; I knew because I’d hefted it. And no guy with a game leg could ever have kicked it so far out from under him.
I said, “Lomac hangs for this, Jojo. At least he rots in jail for a time. They planned this thing beautifully. Moeller swiped Vanetti’s door-key out at Venny Hamlin’s place, Monday night. The rest was easy. They just laid for Vanetti and strung him up. Maybe Lomac wasn’t on the scene, but he engineered it, and when we put the pressure on those rats who kept you company at the Dexter Hotel, something’ll break wide open.”
“It would be easier,” Jojo declared, “if we knew why they hung Vanetti.”
“I think maybe we’ll find that out.”
“How?”
“From Bill Donahue. He seems to know plenty about all this.”
Bill Donahue wasn’t at Headquarters when we got back with the film. He’d stayed on his feet long enough to superintend the cleaning up at Lomac’s house; then he’d collapsed.
Jojo and I drove over to the hospital to see him.
He was in bed and he didn’t look too good. We parked beside the bed, and when the nurse went out I said, “Mister, we want to know why Lomac saw fit to rub out Vanetti.”
Bill scowled. “Any reason will be good enough for a jury,” he said.
“I know that, but just between us we’d like to know the truth. And where you fit into this thing.”
Bill handed me a long, quiet stare. “I suppose you know I’m through,” he said.
“Hooey! You’ll be up and around—”
“Not a chance,” Bill declared calmly. “As long as a month ago I knew I was through. I went to a flock of doctors, Thompson, and they all told me the same thing. Bum ticker. Lights out any time. A month at the most.”
“You mean it?” I said, feeling queer.
He nodded. “So I decided to raise a little private hell before I turned in my checks. I’ve been a dick a long time, and I’ve taken more than my share from looked politicians and plain rats like Lomac. So I snooped around, Thompson. I snooped and came across a pretty chunk of crime in which Lomac was sunk up to his greasy neck. You remember that Mason Street underpass?”
I said I remembered it. Why wouldn’t I? When the Mason street underpass caved in — by accident — three workmen died.
“Lomac was the lad who arranged that cave-in,” Bill Donahue said quietly, “because he was sore about not getting the contract in the first place. He arranged it, and Vanetti did the dirty work. I dug up positive proof. Not the kind of proof that would convince a jury, but more than enough to convince me. So... I planned a curtain call for him. Me, too, I guess.”
He hooked his mouth into a smile. To this day, when I go past the cemetery where Bill is buried, I can still see that smile. “So... I decided to scare the wits out of Lomac, just for the hell of it, Thompson. I made a few cagey phone calls. I tipped him off that the cops were wise about that underpass cave-in. I figured it would do me a lot of good to see that rat shake in his shoes for a while.”
I stared at him. After a while I said, “So he figured he’d be safer with Vanetti out of the way.”
“And that,” Bill declared, “was the mistake he made.”
Fifty Grand Frail
by Eric Howard
Irish shamus Tim Ryan tangles with killers for a pretty client.
The girl’s name was Sullivan, Peggy Sullivan, and if there were ever any prettier members of the Sullivan tribe they would have won all the beauty contests from Dublin to Shanghai. I was for her a hundred per cent even before she spoke, but when I heard her lilting voice, with just a musical hint of old Erin in it, I was lost. I would have bet that she could sing. And she was built for dancing. On top of such qualifications, she had a merry laugh and mischief in her eyes. I can no more resist that combination than I can turn down a thick steak, broiled rare.
If I had known that she was the frail who would lead me into trouble with the cops, get all my friends down on me, and run me into a jam that almost left me on a slab in the morgue, maybe I wouldn’t have fallen. Maybe. My guess is I would have fallen just the same.
She came into my office that crisp October morning like an autumn leaf, dressed in rust-brown that went with her hair.