He had worked on some fine fat stories, and in the process the Chronicle had chewed lightly on the frayed edge of the Concord organization, on the underlings, on the not-too-smart. But never had a lead opened so nicely. And there was no paper to back him. No organization. It was too early in the game to ring in the law. Yet he grinned with a certain satisfaction, and the grin, as always, erased the somewhat moody lines of his heavy face, made him look younger and even a shade reckless.
Yet the hair on the back of his neck seemed to prickle. He walked casually east, stopped to look in a window. A man who had no place to go. The third window of the department store was rigged out as a bedroom, with a plastic dolly sitting on the dressing-table bench. The dressing table had a mirror. It was in that mirror that he saw the one who sauntered on the far side of the street, pausing to cup his hands around a cigarette, tossing the match aside.
And behind the man who sauntered, a car slid to the curb. But nobody got out of it.
Max turned away from the window, walked more rapidly to the corner. As he walked, his mind was busy. Obviously Walch had ordered the tail. But why? Where had there been a slip? Or did Walch still want to cover in case it was a frame and Max was working, on the side, for another paper, or even for one of the perennial civic improvement groups? If Walch was worried enough to employ the tail technique, it would have been easier for him to play dumb about the fifteen hundred.
The obvious thing was to get back to the girl. He picked up a cab at the corner, glanced back in time to see the saunterer swing into the waiting car.
“Uptown,” he directed.
After five blocks he leaned forward, handed the driver a bill. He said, “I might leave you in a hurry, friend. Pay no attention.”
The driver gave a quick and startled look over his shoulder. Then he looked in the rear vision mirror. He said, “Friend, I’ll make a little time and then slow down by the Casualty Trust. Hop out there and go right through the building and with luck you can grab a downtown bus in the next block.”
“You are an intelligent and perspicacious citizen.”
“Thank you too much.”
Max went through the bank at a semi-lope, looking ahead with the expression of a man trying to catch up with someone.
There was no bus, but there was a cab. Max grabbed it, looked back. Three blocks away he thought he saw a tiny figure come hurrying out of the door. He wasn’t certain.
He took the chance of giving his own address. The elevator was in use, so he ran up the stairs, breathing hard. He had his key out and stopped absolutely still when he saw the door was ajar. He kicked it open, moved to one side and called, “Marylen!”
The rooms were empty and dusty, and the tired sun made too much of a point of the frayed rug. The keys that had slid from Gruber’s hand lay in the sunlight. Gruber’s hand was in shadow. The keys were on a chain neatly decorated with a white plastic death’s-head. Gruber lay on his face with his legs spread, his toes pointed in. Max cursed slowly and monotonously as he knelt by Gruber. He got his thumb on the right part of the stringy wrist, felt the strong pulse thud. He rolled Gruber over. There was a deep red spot on the point of Gruber’s chin.
The girl was gone, and her clothes were gone. On the dresser, there was a note in sprawling backhand finishing school writing which merely said: “Thanks for everything.” The note was weighed down with the Jap automatic. The safety was off. He noticed with clinical detachment that it was a silly way to leave a gun.
Gruber responded to the water treatment, dopey at first, and then violently and thoroughly angry, with all the heat and force that a stringy, sandy little man can develop.
Max finally got the sense of it. Mr. Raffidy had locked the girl in. This friend of hers had come and the friend had asked to have Gruber unlock the door. The girl had seemed eager to have the door unlocked. He remembered the friend, a small plump man with red cheeks, saying, “Miss Banner, Jerry is down in the car waiting for you.”
After he had unlocked the door and the girl was in the bedroom dressing, Gruber had stepped in for the expected tip. The man had reached for his hip pocket and then his hand had come up too fast from his hip pocket.
No, Gruber was going directly to the cops. No fat little so-and-so was going to put the slug on him right in his own place. Max blocked the doorway while Gruber danced up and down in a rage, getting even madder as he found a tooth splinter in his mouth.
Max got hold of one of the crisp hundreds. He crackled it, said, “This is to lick your wounds with, Gruber. This is oil for troubled waters. You can gripe all you want with the hundred in your pocket. Or you can yell cop and the hundred is in my pocket.”
Gruber’s dance of anger slowly settled down into a shuffling of feet and then he said, “A deal. But what are you mixed up in, Mr. Raffidy?”
“Never mind me. What did the guy look like?”
He didn’t get more than the original description. Gruber hadn’t seen the car. The girl seemed happy, but worried. At least, that’s the way her voice sounded. Gruber went down to the elevator, grumbling about a respectable apartment house, and how the hell was he to know what kind of friends Raffidy had.
Max sat on the edge of the cot. The door was shut and he was alone with his enormous guilt. He thought of all the things he should have done. A nice safe hospital for the girl. An immediate report to Lowery, District Homicide Squad Captain.
He clenched his fists and looked at his knuckles. Raffidy, the hero type. Raffidy, the job-hungry kid. So hungry for a job that he got the girl a date with her boyfriend. Her nice dead boyfriend.
He reviewed what he knew of the local organization, looking for a starting point. At the top locally was Myron Ledecker, big wheel in both Concord Devices and Valley Farms. Tall, thin, consumptive-looking man with hawk nose, bald head and British accent. Clubman. Semi-socialite. Accepted by those who didn’t know or care that his bankroll was made up partly by schoolkids’ dimes.
The next level was vague. Bill Walch was one. Brad Antonelli was another. Brad had started as collector of the payoff from the horse rooms. Jerry Norma had been on the third level, reporting probably to Walch.
He began to work on how they’d found the girl. The answer wasn’t long in coming. Once the two searchers had hit a dead end on the taxi, they’d gone back trying to identify the man she was with. Stukey wouldn’t have talked. But the waiter in Hiram’s knew him by name. He realized that he should have been smarter. But you can’t turn the clock back.
One more step in the thought process. They had the girl, the actual witness to the murder, even though she didn’t remember it as yet. Shock and the concussion had driven it out of her mind. They would assume that she had told Max the story. He would have only hearsay and yet they had a decision to make. He guessed that they wouldn’t get rough with him. Two killings would be ample. Instead, they would try to discredit him.
It would be best to get the jump on them. At least one mistake could be corrected. He phoned Captain Lowery. It took several minutes to get through to him.
He said, “Ed? This is Max Raffidy. I want to report—”
In a voice heavy with sarcasm and exasperation, Captain Lowery said, “You want to report! You want to report! By heaven, Raffidy, if you send this department on another goose chase like you did twenty minutes ago, I’ll have you picked up!”
“But—”
“I always thought you had good judgment, Raffidy. Maybe the Chronicle folding has softened your brain. I’m not interested in a damn thing you have to report. If somebody has heisted your wallet, report it to the cop on the corner.”