Pedley prodded Rossman with the pistol. “Pipe down, fatso.” He turned to the salesman. “Your boss may have held out on some assets, Boyne. But if the bookkeeper was in it, she got paid off the wrong way.”
Boyne stopped lacing his shoe. “Mary? What’s with her?” The blood drained out of his face.
“She hid in the vault during the fire. Got herself damn near barbecued alive.”
“God!” The salesman moved toward Rossman, stepping stiff-legged. “Didn’t want anyone left who could testify against you, you rotten louse!”
The Marshal shouldered him back. “Leave the Superman stuff to me, fella. You can’t help the Fallucci dame that way. Maybe you could if you’d explain how somebody switched those squirrel coats you sold — for rabbit skins.”
Boyne said: “The squirrels weren’t burned?”
“I haven’t sifted all the ashes in the Beautifurs shop.” Pedley looked at a silver picture frame on the bureau; it held a cheap glossy print photo of Dorothy Lamour in a sarong. “But I’ll lay six, two and even none of the coats you sold to Dablin were cremated.”
Rossman blurted: “So figure it, Jack. Insurance on them garments I couldn’t collect, by terms the policy.”
The salesman finished tieing his shoes before he answered. “Hell, you don’t think you’ll be able to cash Dablin’s check, now, do you?”
Rossman merely groaned.
The Marshal examined the radio, idly. “One thing that could have happened; the bookkeeper could have rigged up the deal to cover her defalcations. But in that case, where would those dyed rabbit coats have come from?”
Boyne slapped a shirt on. “From damn near any contractor in town. They’re a dime a dozen, now the season’s over. If Meyer’d wanted coneys or muskrats to substitute for squirrels, he could have gone to any one of a hundred contractors—” he stopped, with his mouth open, his eyes wide.
Pedley swore. “Don’t dumb up on me. What’s your slant?”
The salesman knotted his four-in-hand, lifted his chin, stretched his neck muscles. “I’ll take it all back, Meyer. I might have had you wrong...”
Rossman’s eyes glistened in gratitude. “Positively you did, Jack.”
“I just remembered something.” Boyne stooped to glance in the mirror. “When I mentioned contractors.”
The Marshal banged the table, irritably, with the revolver butt. “Don’t mind me! Go right ahead with your double talk! A little matter of murder can wait.”
Boyne whirled. “You didn’t tell me anybody was killed.”
“The night watchman at your building was strangled. Ties up to the fire. Which must have been touched off by whoever did that hipper-dipper switch of the furs.”
Boyne seemed suddenly tired, drawn. “It would have to be somebody who had rabbit coats to begin with. That means a small contractor, because none of the big manufacturers monkey with that imitation junk.”
“Jack, you ain’t thinking—” Rossman was shrill.
“Certainly I’m thinking of Lemwitz. You don’t farm out work to anyone else, do you?”
“But it’s like crazy to imagine about Lemwitz.”
“Yeah? When I left the office around quarter to seven, one of his trucks was parked in front of our freight entrance. You know any other firm in our building Hymie Lemwitz finishes for?”
“Exclusive for us, he works...”
“Was he supposed to be delivering any garments tonight?”
“I couldn’t say yes.”
The salesman slapped on an oyster gray felt. “And Lemwitz had been peddling a couple hundred long-eared ‘squirrels’ all over the district, — for how long?”
Rossman wrung his hands.
The Marshal gestured toward the door. “Whoever carted those bunnies to your place didn’t do it on a bicycle. If this Lemwitz had a truck over on West Thirty-eighth tonight, let’s ask him why.”
Chapter Five
Another Corpse
The contractor’s place of business was the ground floor of a dilapidated brick structure which had once been a garage.
“Hymie lives up over,” Rossman muttered, dejectedly. “A family he ain’t got.”
There was a rickety staircase. They used it, Indian file, with Pedley bringing up the rear. At the landing, he ordered:
“Wake him up, Rossman. No tip off, now.”
The furrier banged on the door, cried: “Hymie! Hymie! Get up and letting me in. It’s Meyer.”
There was grumbling and grunting, inside. A chain rattled, a latch clicked. In the dim light from a single hanging bulb, Lemwitz peered nearsightedly at the three men in the doorway, his eyes puffed with sleep.
“What’s medder, Meyer?” He had removed his teeth. Tufts of gray hair stood up ridiculously around his bald pate. He rubbed one bare foot against the other leg; the long underwear he wore was patched and baggy.
“It’s a fire. At mine shop, Hymie. I’m ruined, absolutely.”
The contractor held up his hands in horror.
Pedley pushed the others inside. “Climb into some clothes, Lemwitz. You won’t be going back to bed for a while.”
Boyne made a grab for the old man, seized his arm before the Marshal could prevent it.
“What’d you do with those squirrels you stole, you stinking old chiseler?”
“Stole — schmole!” Lemwitz screeched. “What you accusing me?”
Pedley caught Boyne’s wrist, put a leverage on it. “That’ll be all from you, Lone Ranger. Keep still or I’ll tap you good.”
The salesman rubbed his wrist resentfully, sat down on a kitchen chair. Rossman fluttered around like a fussy hen, clucking to Lemwitz in Yiddish.
“Rossman! Do I have to lock you up to shut you up?” The furrier subsided. Pedley gave the barely-furnished flat the once-over, lightly. There didn’t seem to be any place where a hundred fur coats could be hidden. He came back to the contractor.
“What was your truck doing over on West Thirty-eighth Street tonight, Lemwitz?”
“West Thirty-eighth?” The old man buttoned his vest with trembling fingers. “Who says it?”
“I say so, Lemwitz!” Boyne was up on his feet again.
The old man quivered with anger. “Pete drives the truck for only one order all day. Over to Dablin’s — which is by Fourteenth Street. So on West Thirty-eighth it ain’t.”
The Marshal was puzzled. “What were you delivering to Dablin?”
Lemwitz turned to a tumbler beside his bed. When he swivelled around again, teeth showed in a sly grin. “A surplus I’m selling. A lot one hundred and twenty London-dyed squirrel.”
“Rabbit.” Pedley figured the scar on his chin. “You sold those to Dablin?”
“A sacrifice, sure. Over to the next season I couldn’t carry them. He offers me forty-two hundred, two percent in sixty days, so am I foolish in the head? I deliver quick before he’s changing the mind.” His eyes glittered briefly in self-approval.
Rossman pursed his lips. “Was smart business. Only—”
The Marshal picked it up: “Only if those coats were delivered to Dablin, they weren’t the ones that went up in smoke in your factory.”
Jack Boyne took his pipe out of his mouth, made a face at the stem and spat. “It’s just a gag to explain why the rabbit coats aren’t here, that’s all. I’ll give you the back commission Meyer owes me if any of those imitation skins ever got to Dablin.”
Pedley needed his gray matter. The salesman wouldn’t have dared to make the statement about the truck unless it could be backed up. There would have been too many people who could disprove it, if it weren’t so. The Lemwitz vehicle had undoubtedly been at Rossman’s building just before the fire. And that gave a special significance to the watchman’s murder. If anyone had been pulling a fast one by sending up rabbit coats on the freight elevator and bringing down squirrel coats, Whitey would have been the first to become suspicious. So either Lemwitz was lying or...