I stepped over what was left of Luke Ritter and started through the desk drawers. I was halfway through the junk in the center one when the phone rang.
VII
I stood there staring at the phone under the cone of light from the desk lamp. It rang a second time before I reached out and took up the receiver. “Yeah,” I said, trying to pitch my voice to the same dull rumble I’d heard Ritter use.
A soft feminine drawl came over the wire. “Luke? Did Max call you?”
My fingers tightened against the hard rubber and my lips pulled back into an aching grimace. It was the voice of the blonde responsible for snatching my wife. I fought down a wave of pure fury and said, “Yeah. A while ago.”
“All right,” the soft voice went on. “When he calls back, tell him Sergi wants the woman brought to his apartment at ten o’clock tonight. Use the rear entrance and the service elevator. Got it?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s all.” A click at the other end told me I was alone.
I put down the instrument with slow care, suddenly aware that my hands were shaking slightly. Ten o’clock. I looked at my strapwatch. Six hours yet. Either I had to find out just who this “Max” was and where he had my wife, or I must wait all those hours before I could do anything about getting her back.
A liquid groan reached my ears from across the room. I looked up in time to see Nekko, moving weakly on the floor like a dying insect. I walked over and caught him by the collar and yanked him to his feet. “Last chance, sweetheart,” I said. “Where do I find Max?”
He hung there, his eyes glazed, his mouth slack, and said nothing. I brought up the .32 and raked the sight across one cheek, laying it open to the bone. “Give, damn you! Where do I find Max?”
Pain took the vacant look from his eyes and brought a groan from his tortured lungs. The battered lips writhed, forming words that were too faint and indistinct for me to interpret. I put my ear close to his mouth. “Tell me again.”
“...warehouse... full... radio...”
Bright blood came spilling from his mouth and he went slack in my grasp. I stared at the blood, realizing it was arterial blood. Something had given way inside of him from the treatment he had taken; perhaps a broken rib had punctured a lung as the result of his being hit by the thrown chair.
He died in my hands. I let the body slip to the floor and went back to the desk. Nekko’s last words had been too vague to be useful. “A warehouse full of radios” could have meant anything. I tackled the desk again, looking for a lead.
At the end of half an hour I had gone through those three offices as thoroughly as it is possible to go through anything. No file of private phone numbers, no personal papers of any kind. Only a lot of bills of lading, invoices, etc., on miscellaneous merchandise being shipped abroad.
I was at the washbasin in the center office when the phone rang again. Before it could ring a second time I was in there and lifting the receiver. I took a slow breath and said, “Max?”
“Yeah, Luke.” Nothing distinctive about the voice. “You hear from Porkov?”
“Bring her to his apartment. Ten tonight.” I tried desperately to think of a question that would help me and not make him suspicious. The slightest doubt in his mind could ruin everything. But before I could come up with something, the voice said, “Check,” and I was holding a dead wire.
I returned to the center office and looked at my face in the mirror over the washbasin. There was a bruise on my right cheek and a slight discoloration under one eye. I rinsed the taste of blood from my mouth, washed a few evil-smelling spots from my coat lapel and went back to wipe fingerprints off the furniture and the file cabinets. The two dead men lay where they had fallen. Sight of the man called Nekko brought his words back to me. “Warehouse full of radios.” It was entirely possible that Lodi was being held in some warehouse, but the fact that there were radios in that warehouse was no help at all.
A faint memory nagged at the back of my brain. Somewhere in Nekko’s last words was a key — a key that tied in with a piece of information I had picked up during the day. I went over it again, word by word. “Warehouse”... a blank. “Full”... just as blank. “Radios”... I frowned. Was it “radios” or “radio”? All right, so it was one radio. That made no more sense than—
And then the missing piece fell into place. Eddie Treeglos had told me earlier in the day that Ann Fullerton had died in a fire at a radio company — the Fullbright Radio Company!
I grabbed the Manhattan telephone directory and leafed through to the right page. No listing for Fullbright Radio. The classified directory drew the same blank. But there had to be a — wait! The company was supposed to have burned out; the fire that had “killed” Ann Fullerton.
I dialed Eddie Treeglos. “Eddie, that Fullbright Radio outfit you told me about. I can’t find them listed in the latest phone books. See what you can find. I’ll hang on.”
He came back almost immediately. “1220 Huber Street. A few blocks below Canal Street. 1220 would be damn near in the Hudson River.”
I put back the receiver, used my handkerchief to wipe away the prints and went out into the corridor. Nobody around. I took the stairs to the third floor, stopped off there and rang for the elevator. The moment I heard the heavy door clang shut on the first floor, I trotted down the steps. The cage was still up there when I went out the front door to the street.
My watch showed the time as 4:45 and the sun was still high and still hot. I walked back through the heat and the stink to where I had left the convertible. It was still there and still intact. Considering the neighborhood, it could have been otherwise. I got in and drove on down to Huber Street.
VIII
It was a small narrow building of ancient red brick crammed in between a cold storage warehouse and a moving and van outfit. The front entrance was boarded up and the smoke-grimed bricks told the story. A wooden sign below the broken second-floor window read: Fullbright Radio Corp. It looked about ready to fall into the street.
I drove on by and turned the corner. Halfway along was the entrance to an alley. I parked well above it and got out. Sunlight glittered on the river’s oily swell across the way. A pair of piers jutted out into the water, pointed like daggers at the Jersey shore. In one of the slips a rusty freighter stood high out of the water, its hold empty of cargo. The reek of hot tar made my nose twitch in protest.
A few doors above the alley was a hole-in-the-wall smoke shop with two shirt-sleeved men in front of it consulting a racing form. I walked past them, turning my head to look at a sun-bleached advertisement for La Palina cigars in the window. I he two men didn’t look up. I would have had to eat oats and run five-and-a-half furlongs in 1:03 first.
This alley was cleaner than my last one. Wire refuse containers were piled high with empty cartons and there was the clean odor of excelsior. A panel truck was backed up to the loading platform of the cold storage plant, but the driver was nowhere in sight. A few steps more and the fire-blackened rear of the Fullbright Radio Corporation was where I could reach it.
Two windows on either side of a strong-looking door. The windows still had their glass and bars besides, and the door had a new look. I went over and leaned against it and delicately tried the latch. My first break. It was unlocked.