“What’s happened to mine garments, nu?” Rossman was just beginning to understand. If the squirrels he’d sold to Dablin hadn’t been burned, maybe they could be recovered and delivery made in time to get Dablin to make out a new check in payment!
Lemwitz held his hands out, elbows close to his side. “I get an order. I tell Pete to deliver it. I don’t know nothing about any stealing or any burning.”
“No?” Pedley came in close to him, slapped the old man’s clothing. The contractor didn’t have anything in his pockets except keys, cigarettes and matches. “Where were you, all evening?”
“Playing pinochle. At the Royale.”
“What time’d you quit?”
“Around half-past eleven o’clock.”
The Marshal eyed him stonily. Allowing for time to get over from the East Side to Rossman’s building, Lemwitz might have been on West Thirty-eighth in plenty of time to set the fire, maybe murder the watchman. But it wouldn’t have been enough leeway for him to have made the transfer of the rabbit coats for the squirrels. The truckman might have attended to that, though, if he’d been in on a deal.
Below, somewhere, a heavy duty motor roared suddenly. Lemwitz jumped. “Mine truck!” he squeaked, incredulously. “Somebody’s taking mine truck!”
A garage door banged, down on the street. Lemwitz ran toward the stairs. Pedley let him go and barked orders at the others: “Better join the party, guys. Snap it up.”
They went down pell-mell, the Marshal last.
One of the garage doors was open when they reached the street. The headlamps of the truck threw a dazzling beam out from the darkened interior. Lemwitz cried:
“Pete! Is that you, Pete? Was ist los?”
There was no answer, except the drone of the motor. The contractor paused in the doorway, silhouetted by the light. He turned to Pedley. “So it ain’t Pete! It’s someone robbing—”
A finger of flame pointed at him from the darkness at the rear of the truck. The bark of the gun echoed and re-echoed.
Lemwitz gasped: “Hah!” He staggered aside and fell, clutching at his throat.
Chapter Six
Murder’s Middleman
At the shot, Rossman squeaked in fright, sprawled flat on the pavement. Boyne flattened himself against the front of the garage. Pedley dived into the pool of light.
He expected another shot, but none came. He raced toward the comparative gloom at the rear of the vehicle. It took his eyes a second or so to get accustomed to the difference in light. Then he could make out the whole shop; the outlines of scouring boards, driers. But there was no one there.
A cold draft swept across to the garage door. It came from an open window at the rear of the shop. Pedley approached it, cautiously; stuck his head out. He didn’t see anyone, nor did he expect to. The murderer’s getaway had been easy enough, once that screen-protected window had been opened. And there wouldn’t be any footprints on that cement alley outside.
He went back to Lemwitz. The old man lay crumpled like a heap of discarded clothes. There was a glistening hole an inch above his collar button; his shirt was drenched with crimson. He’d never known what hit him.
The bullet had been a .45. It was accurate shooting, even allowing for the fact that the victim had been so plainly spot-lighted by the truck’s headlamps. The murderer had probably planned it that way. He had broken into the garage and started the motor at a late hour when Lemwitz would be certain to feel alarmed and go down to investigate; the window had been opened in advance!
He called. “Come on in here, you fellows.”
Boyne came in hesitantly — froze at the sight of the body. Rossman poked his head timidly around the jamb. When he saw Lemwitz, he crept in and touched the corpse, nervously.
Pedley barked: “Switch’ll be by the door, there, Boyne. Snap it on.”
The salesman obeyed. The light revealed scores of furs on stretcher-frames, stacked up against the walls: broadtail, lynx, muskrat. At one side was a long rod with hangers for finished garments. There were plenty made of seal, imitation leopard, phony sable. But no squirrel coats.
If Lemwitz had substituted his low-priced rabbit coats for the high-priced squirrels at Beautifurs, he hadn’t hidden Rossman’s coats here. Unless they were still in the truck.
Pedley went around to the back of the vehicle. It was locked. He remembered the keys in the contractor’s pockets, got them. One fitted. The Marshal flung the rear doors open and climbed up. There were a dozen garment-dollies inside, but no coats in them. Nothing except something that, for a moment, Pedley mistook for a piece of chinchilla. Then he called:
“Boyne! Get up in here. Roll out that first dolly. The one backed up against the driver’s seat, there.”
The salesman clambered up, edged in past the other wheeled boxes. He bent down over the end one, as if to pat a dog. He drew his hand back with the swift reflex of one who avoids contact with a snake. “Jeeze! There’s... a... man in here.”
“Yeah.” Pedley began to shove the other carriers off the end of the truck to the garage floor. “Don’t take him out. Just push the dolly along here.”
Boyne obeyed. Pedley put his light on the curly black head of hair he’d mistaken for chinchilla. The body was crammed down into the narrow space, the legs doubled up, the head pushed down so the dead man’s face touched the knees.
“That’s Pete. Lemwitz’ driver,” Boyne gasped. “My God! Look at him!”
Rossman scuttered over. “It wasn’t Pete who shot Hymie?”
“No.” The Marshal growled. “This guy’s been stiff quite a while. And it doesn’t look as if he had a chance to shoot anybody. Not after that knife had been jabbed into his ribs from behind.” He jumped down. This cleared up the possibility that Lemwitz had been implicated in either the theft or the arson. And it meant that the murderer was still running amok!
There was a phone on a wooden cutting table. He called the precinct house; told them to notify Homicide. Then he got through to Shaner. “How’s it go at your end?”
“Not so good, skipper,” the deputy reported. “The bookkeeper died about twenty minutes ago.”
“Break for her,” Pedley growled. “How about a break for us?”
“Not so bad. She had a couple lucid moments.”
“You get anything, Shaner?”
“I asked her if she was there when the fire started. She didn’t answer me. I says, ‘Any idea who started the blaze?’ and she just gives me the stare. So I try to find out why she hides in the fur vault. For a minute, it don’t look as if she’s going to speak at all. But then her eyes close and her lips begin to move.”
“Skip the details. What’d she say?”
“All I can make out is a name. ‘Dablin,’ she whispers. ‘Don’t... Dablin.’”
Pedley was silent for ten seconds. Then he gritted: “I’ve been Tuning across this Dablin guy’s trail, myself. Ask the bookkeeper’s sister what she knows about him. She was the model, Rena; she’d be sure to know him.”
Shaner swore. “Jeeze. I can’t do that, skipper. Y’see, when the doc pulls the sheet up over the bookkeeper’s face, this Rena throws a fit. Fell down and bumped her head, passed out cold. The nurses got her in the woman’s ward, now, trying to bring her to—”
“For gawsake, don’t let anything happen to her, Shaner. We’ve got enough stiffs in this case now to organize our own private morgue.”