“No. He was a telephone company lineman. Said he saw you crawling along on your hands and knees in the middle of the highway, leaking blood as if you were painting a new red center line. He didn’t see any smashed-up cars or any other injured men. It’s possible the man you shot died, of course.”
“Crysake! I never thought of that!” Butch gestured with one bandaged flipper. “I guess I fuggled things up good for you, huh?”
Quinn watched the flames curling up against the soot-blackened brick. “You did all right. Very likely you found the car we’re after. You picked up a red-hot lead to Jack-the-Wrecker. And you spotted that cement mixer.”
“Huh?”
“That truck with the rotary mixer on it. Be hard to think of a better scheme for pounding a corpse to an unrecognizable pulp than to cut it up, toss it into one of those things with a half-ton of stones and boulders, start it churning.”
“Now ain’t that a lovely idea! Don’t gimme no credit for thinking of that!”
“Purely speculation on my part,” Tony Quinn admitted. “But we’ll have the hot-car boys take a squint at that vehicle to see if it could have been used as a sort of whirling hearse.”
He was moving toward the phone the instant the bell began to ring.
“Yes?”
Chapter VI
It was Silk calling. “Message here at the office for you, sir.”
“From Carol?” Tony was anxious.
“No, sir. Telegram from Norristown.”
“Let’s have it. Silk.” He smothered his worry, momentarily.
“Starts, ‘Regarding previous inquiry Jules Verchamps belief is he has left this area, will not return. Reason for this, he is reported to have closed out checking accounts in three local banks, total withdrawals rumored to be in neighborhood of one hundred ten thousand. Do you wish me keep you informed further unverified gossip this sort?’ It’s signed ‘Jacob Asmussen, Chief, Police Department.’”
“Shoot him a straight wire, Silk.” Quinn thought for a moment. “Ready?”
“Go ahead, sir.”
“‘Information concerning Verchamps much appreciated. Can you determine endorser of checks signed by him and place where same were cashed?’ Get it off right away, Silk.”
“Okay, sir. By the way, I may have got something out of an hour and a half long-distancing.”
“Such as?” Quinn inquired.
“The desk clerk at the Koppner House in Pittsburg remembered that a John Myron from Jersey City registered there last Friday night.”
“Ah. The evening of the day Myron Attar left Newark!”
“That was one of the aliases Butch said Attar used, sir. But there was a funny thing. He checked in all right and checked out the next morning before breakfast. But he was a sleep out.”
“Didn’t use the room at all?” Quinn’s eyebrows went up.
“Not the bed, anyway. The clerk remembered it because the floor maid mentioned it when he reported the check-out to her so she could make up the room for another guest. She told him it wasn’t necessary, that it was still made up.”
“Maybe this Attar’s a somnambulist and spends the night sleepwalking,” Quinn said. “Nothing on Verchamps?”
“Not yet. I’m still at it.”
“Good boy. You might nose around a little on the trail of the Unreverend John Wizlow.”
“Jack-the-Wrecker?” Silk sounded surprised.
“Butch thinks he’s the lad who has Prosser’s Cadillac. Butch has a nice, new set of seventeen stitches and a brace of green fractures to back up his opinion. I’m inclined to take it seriously.”
Silk said, “So the party’s getting rough. I better dust off my brass knucks.”
Tony said, “Lead will lie of more help than brass, I expect. Buzz me the minute you get any word from Carol.”
“Yes, sir.”
Tony sprawled in the club chair before the fireplace, feet stretched out, head thrown back so he was apparently staring at the faint plaster cracks in the ceiling.
Butch knew better than to interrupt the Quinn mental processes with comment or inquiry. He helped himself to whisky, opened another can of beer.
The long hand on the mantel clock had almost completed a full circuit before there was any sound in the library except the crackling of the logs and the occasional burble of liquor into Butch’s glass. Then the phone jangled.
“Yes?”
“Don’t bark at me, darling!” Carol protested.
Quinn apologized, “Natural result of worry. What’s what, my lovely?”
“I’m half tight, Tony. I’ve been hitting the high spots, and some of the low ones. But I think I’ll pause here at Ravenwood Lodge for a bite to eat.”
“Whatsit? A motel?”
“With the nicest bar. And the prettiest cocktail napkins.”
“Wherezit?”
“Just beyond the city limits, on Route Forty. Can’t miss it.”
“I’m on my way.”
“Don’t keep me waiting. I’ve had so many quick ones I’m likely to fall off the bar stool.”
“Put some salt in your beer and keep your pants on. Take me ten minutes.”
It took him seven.
But when his Ford swung off the highway to the parking crescent, there wasn’t any sign of her blue Chewy coupe. The only other car there was a beat-up, stripped-down Model T.
He was looking for trouble when he opened the door to the Bar and Grill.
No one was in the dimly-lighted café when Tony Quinn strode in and up to the small, half-moon bar.
Hooded blue bulbs cast small, deceptive reflections against back-bar mirror, rows of glittering sherry and cocktail glasses, a showy array of liquor bottles with chrome-tipped pourers. It was the sort of discreet semi-darkness favored by couples wishing, for one reason or another, to remain virtually unseen in the shadowy booths. To Tony it was an alert, putting his special keenness of hearing instantly on guard.
He would have been on guard anyhow, since Carol wasn’t there. It wasn’t like her to say she’d wait for him, then run off before he got here. Yet if she hadn’t done just that, the most likely alternative would be much more alarming. Across his mind flashed the ominous parallel — no car, no gal; the dismantled Cadillac, the dismembered body in Saylor’s Creek. The mutilating murderers who’d not been afraid to destroy powerful netherworld figures wouldn’t even bother to think twice about putting Carol Baldwin out of their way, if they thought she was wise to them. He didn’t like it.
Neither did he like what he heard. He heard, for a full half-minute, absolutely nothing. Yet if there was anyone in the café kitchen, the sound of the door he’d slammed behind him must have been dearly audible. The silence gave him the sensation of being watched by someone who was keeping abnormally quiet, as unseen observers were apt to do, according to his experience.
If he was being scrutinized through some peep-hole, it could only mean that he was under suspicion. That, in turn, suggested either that he was known, or at least that he was presumed to be the man Carol had phoned from that booth over there beside the twin rest-room doors. It might be important to make sure about that. If Carol had been abducted, and was being held prisoner, his chances of helping her would be nil if her captor knew his identity.
“Hey!” he said loudly. “Anybody home?”
Immediately the swinging door beside the bar banged open. The woman who waddled through it, wiping immense red hands on a ridiculous little frilly white apron, was a freak of fatness. If the gross creature had been a little shorter, he thought, she would certainly be making her living in a circus sideshow as the world’s fattest female. Her small head seemed to be emerging from a blubbery coil overlapping pink inner tubes. Her face was pretty, but the bright merry eyes seemed to be perpetually squinting between puffy, swollen lids.