“You ain’t even mentioning I’m ruined, absolutely.”
“Are you?”
“Sixty thousand dollars squirrels alone. Two minks, anyhow three thousand. Nine, ten seal at sixty apiece wholesale. A couple dozen neckpieces, genuine silver fox—”
“Hell of a lot of stuff to have on hand at the end of the season. Were you covered?”
“Positively I got insurance. But—”
“One good fire’s worth a dozen salesmen, eh?”
Rossman’s plump cheeks mottled. “It’s the fur business I’m in. Arson, it ain’t my line. Rather I’d lose every cent I got in the world, God forbid, than see Mary suffering like this.” His fists clenched at his side.
Pedley stepped into the vault. “How come all your stuff wasn’t locked up in here, instead of being out in your shop? There’s room enough here for all the pelts in Alaska.”
“Only made-up garments, we keep in the vault. And only them which ain’t sold yet. All them squirrels... yesterday they was bought by Dick Dablin.” Rossman gazed miserably at the coats the Marshal had removed from the bookkeeper. “Now I can’t make delivery on them so I got to return the payment. Also the insurance people wouldn’t pay me for them, because legal they ain’t mine property no longer. Both ways I get stuck. Weh ist mir!”
Pedley came out of the vault with a leather-bound loose leaf ledger. “This your duplicate stock book?”
The manufacturer nodded, warily. “So maybe it ain’t exactel up-to-date.”
“Show me the set-up on squirrel coats.” The Marshal held his flashlight on the volume.
Rossman turned the pages uneasily. “Fifty-four swaggers. Forty-one three-quarter models. Nineteen full lengths...” he hesitated. “I ain’t guaranteeing Mary keeps this checked absolutely.”
Pedley let his lips flatten against his teeth. “Listen! If you try to pull that on the people who issued your insurance, you’ll be S.O.L. That’s up to you. But don’t try to outfox the Fire Department. This isn’t any backyard bonfire. It’s first degree arson; probably first degree murder. Somebody’s going to wind up getting his pants legs slit and his head shaved. If you want to be it, just keep on stalling.”
“I swear before God—”
“Yah! You’ve been holding out on me. You know something. Or you suspect somebody.”
“I’m giving you my word of honor—”
“All right. Keep on futzing around. If you weren’t in on this yourself, you’re helping the criminal by withholding information. You’ll come in for eight to ten years upriver, as accessory.”
Rossman’s mouth curled up in a smile but the corners of his eyes crinkled as if he were about to cry. “I give you my solemn oath, there’s only one thing about this business which it’s bothering me.”
“Spit it out.”
The furrier held up the stock ledger. “For quite a while, already, the finished garment record, it’s all messed up. My office book, it shows right. But this duplicate Mary keeps in the vault, it’s cockeyed. Which one actual shows what merchandise we got in the shop, I ain’t been sure.”
“Your bookkeeper doing a little double entry on her own, huh?”
Tears trickled down the fat man’s cheeks. “My tongue I’d rather cut out than say it. Mary, she’s been with me since I start mine own factory. Always I trust her; never would she steal so much as a postal stamp. If only she’d tole me if she’s needing money...” He blew his nose hard.
There was neither sympathy nor softness in Pedley’s tone. “I’ve been gumshoeing for the Fire Department for twenty years, mister. This isn’t the first time I’ve run up against a crooked employee who’s tried to cover up thefts with ashes. And I’ve learned one thing—”
“Yes?”
“When they decide to burn up a place to hide evidence against them, these amateur firebugs usually are desperate enough to gamble on one last big haul.” The Marshal waggled his flashlight toward the rear of the building. “It’s ten to one you were practically cleaned out of fur coats before this blaze began. Let’s go gander.”
Chapter Three
Fire Victim No. 3
The fact that someone had finagled the records of Beautifurs didn’t help Pedley much. Grim experience had sharpened his suspicions of any fire in the millinery district after the close of the hat season, or in the clothing center at the end of each wholesale garment buying season. Alarms always doubled in those areas, at those times.
Nor did Rossman’s story of being home in Brooklyn at the time the blaze started eliminate the furrier from the arson picture. Many a business man now making little ones out of big ones had committed the mistake of hiring a professional pyro and trusting to an alibi. But if the furrier’s story about the sale of sixty thousand dollars worth of squirrel coats stood up, then there wouldn’t be any sense to his making a bonfire of property on which he couldn’t recover.
Pedley made the pudgy man precede him to the row of heat-sagged racks. The manufacturer stooped, picked up a handful of the fluffy fuzz at the base of the metal stands. He stared at it. His lips quivered and he let the feathery ash sift through his fingers.
The Marshal prodded Rossman with the flash. “What was hanging here?”
The man sniffled. “Absolutely first quality natural platinum squirrels. Prize pelts, long, silky hair. Custom made, with extra-full-cut backs. Hundred percent wool interlinings, Skinner satin besides. And such sensational style. Super-shawl collars on the full lengths. Six inch cuffs, positively...” he wagged his head, dismally.
Pedley took a cellophane envelope out of his vest pocket. He held it open with one finger, scooped up an ounce or so of the ash, put the light on it. “Squirrel? In a pig’s pazook!”
“I’m telling you!”
The Marshal sealed the envelope. “Squirrel coats might have been hanging here. But they weren’t on this rack when the fire caught ’em. This,” he shook the envelope, “is bunny.”
“Rabbit!”
“Yair. Or whatever the hell fancy name you guys give ’em. Dyed coney. Siberian squirrel.”
Rossman seemed dazed.
“Somebody put the snatch on your sixty grand worth of nut chasers and substituted a flock of Belgian hares.”
“You couldn’t get me to believe Mary done this to me,” the furrier breathed heavily.
“How about this sister of hers? This Rena? Could she be mixed up in it?”
Rossman’s fingers fumbled at his lips. “It ain’t possible. Rena is a dummkopf; three years now she’s been modeling for me and still she don’t hardly know a muskrat from a chinchilla. She wouldn’t know to pick good furs from cheap.”
“Know where we can find the sister?”
“Somewhere in the Village, she’s living with Mary.”
“Allez oop, then! Let’s look her up!”
The stairs were clear of hose when they descended. Only the occasional hiss of escaping steam, the dripping of water came to their ears. The street was deserted except for uniformed men from the precinct house and a crew from the electric company.
Pedley gave curt orders to a patrolman, led the way to his red sedan. Rossman started to get in. The Marshal pushed him up against the side of the car, searched him, found no weapons.
“I can’t be horsing around with you. You’re under arrest, mister. Be right... and if your nose is clean, you’ll come out okay. Act up... and you’ll be looking up from an operating table.”
The furrier shuddered. They rolled downtown. At Sheridan Square Pedley flagged a traffic officer, sent him into a cafeteria to look in the phone book. The bluecoat came out with an address on Jane Street.
It was a remodeled apartment house. The celluloid card with the inked-in Fallucci was under the button for 1-C. Pedley thought he’d have to wake the superintendent, but from the front steps he spotted a light in the third floor front. He pressed the button under 3-A. The latch clicked.