Читать книгу Die, Little Goose: A Bret Hardin Mystery - David Alexander - Страница 5

one

“Seven and crap,” the stickman said. “Pay the line and pass the dice. Next shooter!”

The floating crap game operated by Moe Selig, Broadway’s gambling czar, was being held that night in the cavernous recesses of a garage on West Fiftieth Street near Ninth Avenue. The place was shadow-haunted except for one small island lit harshly by a two-hundred-watt ceiling bulb. On the edge of the light pool, almost blending into the encroaching shadows, nine tense and sweating men squatted on their haunches, peering intently at the rough crap layout that had been chalked upon the cement floor. The atmosphere of the garage was as stifling and moist as that of a fetid cave, but the temperature was ten degrees lower than the 90 still being registered by street thermometers at ten-thirty in the evening. It was July and it was the thirteenth day of the worst heat wave in the history of New York City.

The stickman rolled six dice to Bart Hardin, a rangy man in his early thirties who served as managing editor of a sports and theatrical journal called the Broadway Times when he wasn’t trying to beat an overlay at Belmont Park or fill an inside straight in stud or make Little Joe the hard way in the floating game.

Bart Hardin was not handsome, judged by the usual standards, but physically he was the kind of man who commands attention. There was a lean, hard look to him and a peculiar intensity, the intensity of the compulsive gambler. His short-cropped hair was so light it seemed silvery in contrast to the bronze pigmentation of his skin. His nose had been broken and it made a serpentine curve in the middle of his face that relieved the sharp, jutting angles of jaw and cheekbone. He had been born on Broadway, above a flea circus and fun arcade on Forty-second Street, where he still lived. He had never left Times Square except to serve two hitches in the Marines. He knew the Big Street in the way a card sharp knows a marked deck, and his familiarity with its denizens made him an odd mixture of toughness and tenderness, cynicism and naïveté. He could spot a phony at fifty paces—and he was generally regarded as the softest touch on Broadway.

Hardin went through the crapshooter’s ritual of weighing and pairing off the dice that had been thrust to him across the cement. He chose two, rolled the four others back to the stickman. He clutched the dice in a big fist and rattled them close to his ear, trying to “listen to his luck” before he made a bet. He had come into the game an hour and a half earlier with what was left of the three-hundred-dollar weekly salary he had received that afternoon. Taxes, social security and other pestiferous deductions had already accounted for a chunk of it and another fifty had gone to an old actor named James Lennox. Lennox, who was in his middle seventies, had been a friend of Hardin’s father and he had been existing on relief until Bart hired him as his “secretary” and paid him out of pocket. The old actor could neither type nor take shorthand, but Hardin claimed it was worth half a yard a week just to look at an honest man on Broadway.

There was coarse money piled in front of Hardin now, more than fifteen hundred dollars. On his last previous roll he had let six hundred lay after a couple of “naturals,” thrown Eighter from Decatur as his point and come up double-four.

As Hardin hesitated, the stickman grew impatient. “Name the bet, name the bet,” he urged. “You can’t get faded unless you name your bet. If you don’t lay it down, you can’t pick it up, and speculation is the life of trade.”

Hardin was counting five hundred off his pile when there was a sudden interruption. A stocky figure lumbered out of the surrounding gloom, breathing heavily. It was Eddie O’Grady, a Broadway character known as the Old Top Sarge, who had been a hero of World War I and now served as lookout for Selig’s gambling enterprises.

Selig’s face was pasty and moist in the glaring light as he leaned forward and stared at the lookout. He said, “Don’t tell me it’s the Law. I paid off plenty for the juice on this floater and there ain’t no stinking flatfoot slipping me the Double-X.”

Selig had been content to take the house percentage and let the stickman, one of the Syndicate’s expatriates from Vegas, run the game, but now he was tense.

The Old Sarge said, “It ain’t Law. It’s some guy downstairs in the alley that wants to see Bart Hardin.”

Hardin looked up at the Old Sarge, a sheaf of money in his hand. He said, “Who is it?”

The Old Sarge heaved heavy shoulders. “He didn’t give no name. A young character and kind of skinny.”

“He say what he wants?”

The Old Sarge shrugged again. “He’s a friend of your secretary’s, he says. He wants to tell you something, he says. He wants to tell you he just killed his wife.”

Selig grinned unpleasantly, revealing yellow teeth. “Nice chums you got, editor,” he said. “Only I wish you wouldn’t make social appointments at the floater. The floater is supposed to be kind of private.”

Hardin tossed the two dice back to the waiting stickman. He pocketed the money in his hand, scooped up the bills on the floor in front of him and stuffed those in his pocket, too. He said, “Pass the dice.”

Selig said, “It’s real lucky for you this jerk chilled his doll. Just at the right time, too. You’re taking off with a bundle, Hardin.”

Hardin made no answer. He buttoned the sweat-soaked collar of his shirt, slid his knit tie into place. He took a heat-rumpled raw-silk jacket off a peg on the wall where garage workers hung their overalls. He donned the jacket and followed the Old Sarge down a long ramp to the first floor of the garage. As he descended he could hear the dice rolling again and the muttered imprecations of the shooters. Murder was a minor distraction in the dedicated lives of gambling men, he thought.

The Old Sarge clicked back heavy bolts on a sliding steel door, cracked the door open a foot. He said, “I made him wait outside in the alley.”

Hardin nodded and squeezed through the door. The areaway was lighted by a blue bulb over the door that cast an unearthly glow into the massed shadows. The humidity was wet wool on the city now and it held the city’s million smells like a stagnant crucible. Even the stench of the garbage that burned eternally on the Jersey flatlands across the river was a part of it.

A slender, nervous young man stood just outside the door. He reeked of alcohol. He was many pounds underweight for his height and his dark eyes seemed bright and feverish even in the wan blue light. But in his own peculiarly intense way he was handsome. Hardin recognized him as a night-club dancer known as Adrian Temple. He and his crippled wife Daphne lived in the room next to James Lennox at the relatively luxurious theatrical lodgings to which the old man had moved when Hardin hired him.

“How did you know I was here?” Hardin asked the young man.

Temple said, “Old Jim Lennox says you spend most of your evenings at the Sligo Slasher’s bar across from the Garden. I went there. The little man who runs the place told me I’d find you here.”

“Why did you want to see me?” Bart asked.

“I’ve killed my wife, Hardin. I’ve murdered Daphne. I want to confess.”

“I’m neither a policeman nor a priest,” Hardin said. “Why confess to me?”

“I can’t stand physical pain, Hardin. I’m a coward about that. I’ve always been, ever since I was a kid. That’s why I couldn’t go through with it. We had a suicide pact. I thought I could get enough sleeping pills from the doctor, because Daphne was paralyzed after the accident and she suffered terribly at times. But he wouldn’t give us enough. So I had to kill her with a knife. When it came my turn, I couldn’t go through with it. I couldn’t stand the thought of the pain, even though I wanted to die. I went out and got drunk. I’ve been drunk for hours now. I want to give myself up, but I can’t bear to have policemen beat me. I just want to die, to pay for what I’ve done as quickly as I can. Old Jim told me you know a police lieutenant named Romano. He says he’s a decent man. I want you to take me to him.”

“Does Jim know you killed Daphne?”

“No one knows. I killed her about this time last night. She’s been there in her wheelchair dead for twenty-four hours, Hardin, and nobody knows about it yet. I ran out of the house and got drunk, and I’m still drunk. I just walked and walked and walked when the bars were closed. I had a bottle. I’ve been trying to work myself up to going to a police station, but I was afraid they’d beat me. Then I thought about you and how you knew the lieutenant. For God’s sake, take me to him, Hardin.”

“Are you sure you killed your wife?” Hardin asked. “This isn’t just some drunken idea you’ve got?”

“Good God, man! Of course I’m sure!”

“But why?” asked Hardin. “Old Jim Lennox told me she was doing as well as could be expected. He sees a lot of her. He says she doesn’t have much pain. And he told me you and this new partner, Elsa, have just been booked for a spot in a night club starting next week.”

“She wouldn’t tell him how much she suffered, Hardin. She suffered terribly. She has, ever since that night I drove a car while I was drunk and smashed it up. I was thrown clear and was hardly hurt at all. But Daphne could never dance again. She couldn’t even walk again. And it was my fault. We were a top act, Hardin. Adriane and Daphne, The Temple Dancers. This new girl and I, all we get is cheap hotel bookings and spots in strip joints.”

“Romano’s working the four to midnight,” Hardin said. “He’s at Homicide West on Twentieth. We can get a cab and drive downtown if you’re sure that’s what you want.”

“I’m sure,” Adrian declared.

As they walked down the alley, Hardin wondered why he was going out of his way to help a comparative stranger who was not only drunk but was probably a screwball. He hadn’t wanted to leave the game. One of the gambler’s ironclad axioms is “Stay in action when you’re winning.” He was doing this mainly because of old Jim Lennox, he supposed. Old Jim had seemed to like this boy and his crippled young wife, and to pity them. Hardin had always felt ironically paternal toward Lennox, who was some forty years his senior.

They walked toward Ninth Avenue. Two blocks back of them the brightest lights in all the world blazed on Broadway, but this neighborhood was cellar-dark. Men and women in underclothes and night dress leaned far out of the windows of brick and brownstone tenements, gasping for a breath of the stale air. In their despairing fight against the heat, they no longer lit their low-watt light bulbs, dreading to add even this small warmth to the choking pall inside their box-like flats. New York, Hardin thought, has the brightest lights and darkest byways of any city on earth.

At the corner of Ninth Avenue a red neon sign sputtered, flickering on and off, as if it, too, were melting in the heat.

The twisted tubes of the sign spelled out “Mike’s Bar.” Adrian paused at the corner. He looked at his wrist watch and said, “I’ve got to have a drink before I go through with this, Hardin. It’s only ten to eleven. We’ve got time. Your friend will be on duty for another hour.”

Hardin shrugged. “It’s your party,” he said.

Mike’s place did not boast air conditioning. The door stood open and an electric fan on a tall standard blew swirling patterns of smoke and the stench of sweating bodies through the trapped air of the gloomy interior. Soiled men with dead faces stood at the bar, drinking silently. Adrian ordered a double shot of bar whisky and disregarded the water chaser the bartender placed beside it. Hardin refused a drink. While Adrian was drinking two doubles, Hardin said, “If the body has been there since last night, someone must have found it. I know your rooming house. It’s a clean and decent place—one of the last of the old-fashioned Broadway theatrical residences—and Mrs. Mattingly wouldn’t let a day go by without having your room cleaned. The maid must have been in there this morning. Jim drops by to chat with your wife all the time. He must have knocked on the door when he got home tonight after the paper was out. And your partner—Elsa Travers, is that her name?—lives in the room right next to you. She must have looked in, too, when you didn’t show up today.”

Adrian Temple said, “I can’t understand why they haven’t found the body, but I can’t believe they have. I’ve read all the papers and there’s nothing in any of them. They would have played it up. We were a famous dance team once. It was Daphne, though, who was the star. I was just her dancing partner. We had top billings everywhere. We were guest artists on all the big TV shows. We could name our own price then. We had an apartment on Park Avenue and a little hideaway in Connecticut and I drove an MG. I wrecked the MG when I was drunk and crippled Daphne for life. I was nothing without Daphne. She was the act. Since then, for two years now, I’ve tried a lot of partners and this last one, Elsa, is no better than any of the others. They book us to fill in between the strip women at cheap clubs. All our money’s gone. The hospitals and doctors and operations took that.”

He drank the last of his whisky and said, “They haven’t found her yet. That’s why I want to confess. I can’t stand the thought of Daphne being there all alone, even though she’s dead.”

Hardin remained silent. Temple replaced his glass on the bar. His hand was shaking and his face had gone pale. He turned to Bart and said, “Hardin, it’s not true what they say about electrocutions, is it? I mean, they don’t give you the current slowly, torture you to death? I can’t stand pain. I can’t help it. It’s a phobia. I’ve always been like that. I get sick all over at the thought of pain. They give you dope before they take you to the chair, don’t they, Hardin?”

Hardin said, “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been electrocuted.”

Adrian glanced at the big clock on the wall. “It’s eleven,” he said. “We’d better go while I still have the courage, before the whisky wears off. I’ve got to go through with it now.”

They left the bar and found a cab. Ninth Avenue is a one-way downtown street with staggered lights and they made good time. They reached Manhattan West in slightly under a quarter of an hour. The old precinct station was the clearing house for all the murders west of Fifth Avenue on Manhattan Island. Appropriately enough, it was located in the edge of the area that used to be known as Hell’s Kitchen.

The desk sergeant on duty was a pleasant, rather scholarly-looking man with horn-rimmed glasses and he might have resembled a high school Latin teacher if he had not worn a policeman’s uniform. He knew Hardin. “If you want the lieutenant,” he said, “you’ll find him upstairs in his little sweatbox.”

Hardin thanked the sergeant and led his companion up a flight of worn stairs.

Romano’s office was an airless cubicle that contained a desk, two chairs and an old leather couch where the lieutenant, who seldom went off duty when a big kill was breaking, often slept. Romano sat in a creaking swivel chair behind the battered desk. He was in his shirt sleeves and his shirt was soaked. A small electric fan blew hot air at him. He was a dark, heavy-set man with a mane of black hair that was sprinkled with gray and shining with beads of perspiration. He perspired freely the year around and tonight he was drenched. His rough-hewn profile gleamed in the light of a green-shaded desk lamp. A tall young detective named Grierson reclined on the lumpy leather couch. His attire was less formal than Romano’s. His crumpled shirt hung from the back of a chair and his undershirt gleamed white against his wide, sun-tanned shoulders. Grierson raised himself to a sitting position as Bart and Adrian entered the office.

Romano said, “Hello, editor. How are you enjoying our heat wave? And who’s your friend?”

“This is Adrian Temple,” Bart replied. “He wants to talk to you.”

Romano looked hard at Adrian. He said, “I know you. I’ve seen you somewhere, not too long ago.” He glanced toward Grierson and said, “You make him, Grierson?”

The young detective studied Adrian’s face, shook his head.

“He’s an entertainer,” Hardin said. “A dancer. He was on television quite often up to a couple of years ago. Maybe that’s why you recognize him.”

Romano stared at Adrian. “No,” he said. “I don’t watch much of anything but ball games on TV. Ball games and the Disney show. I’m a sucker for Disney.” He spoke directly to Adrian. “A dancer. I make you now,” he said. “You were in here about six months ago, around the first of the year. You had a big load on. You wanted to tell me you’d killed your wife. We checked up. Your wife was an invalid in a wheelchair, but she wasn’t dead. She was sitting in her wheelchair reading a book when the cops got there. We sent you to the city hospital for observation. They kept you there four or five days and let you loose. They said you were just drunk.”

Romano turned to Grierson, said, “You make him now?”

Grierson nodded. “I remember. You think—”

Romano raised his hand to silence Grierson. He said to Adrian, “You want to confess another murder?”

Adrian’s eyes were glazed. He seemed hardly conscious of what the lieutenant had said. He spoke in a monotone. “I want to confess the murder of my wife,” he said.

Grierson said, “I’m damned.”

“When did you kill your wife?” Romano asked quickly.

“Last night. About this time. A little earlier, I think. Somewhere between ten and eleven o’clock. We had a suicide pact, but I couldn’t go through with my part of it after I’d killed her. I’m afraid of pain and the only weapon I had was a knife.”

“You killed her with a knife?”

“I stabbed her through the heart.”

“Where is the knife?”

“I—I don’t know. I must have thrown it away. I got drunk and wandered around the streets all last night and today and then I found Hardin and asked him to bring me here to you so I could confess. For God’s sake promise me you won’t let them give me a third degree. I’m willing to tell you everything. I’m willing to die for what I did. But don’t hurt me!”

Romano spoke almost pleasantly. “Relax,” he said. “We don’t use the third degree any more, except on known hoods and cop-killers, maybe. Tell me, where did you kill your wife?”

“In our room. We live on West Fifty-third Street. Mrs. Cora Mattingly is the landlady.”

“Same as last time,” Romano commented. He said to Grierson, “That checks?”

“It checks,” Grierson answered.

“Get Farber from the squad room,” Romano said.

Grierson did not bother to don his shirt. He walked out to the squad room and returned presently with the detective named Farber. Farber had a weatherbeaten face and large, sad eyes. He was mopping perspiration from his face with a blue bandanna handkerchief.

Romano said, “Farber, take this man outside and keep him there until I call you. He’s not to be questioned or touched. Just watch him, that’s all. He may be an important witness.”

Farber nodded. He said to Adrian, “This way,” and led him out of the office.

Romano regarded Bart quizzically. “How long has this man been with you?” he asked.

Bart looked at the stainless-steel watch on his wrist. “The better part of an hour. About forty-five minutes, anyway. He picked me up a little after ten-thirty.”

Romano tapped his fingers on his desk. He and Grierson exchanged glances. The lieutenant said to Bart, “Two minutes before you walked into this office a routine precinct squeal came in. There was suspicion of murder at a rooming house on West Fifty-third Street. The house was operated by a woman named Cora Mattingly. She put in the call. The precinct men were on their way there. The way these things work, the precinct gets the squeal and buzzes us immediately. It’s kind of an alert to Homicide, but we don’t go out on it. We wait until the precinct men check. Half the time it’s only a jumper or an accidental death or somebody’s idea of a joke. If it looks like murder we get another call. When that comes through, Homicide sends a man and so does the D.A.’s office. Verification should be coming through in a minute or two now.”

The verification came almost immediately. The phone on Romano’s desk began to ring as he finished speaking.

Romano said to Grierson, “Take it.”

Grierson picked up the phone. He answered, nodded affirmatively at Romano. He listened intently, scribbled on a pad, muttered meaningless monosyllables. Presently he said, “Okay, will do.” He hung up the phone.

“A woman named Daphne Temple was murdered in Mrs. Cora Mattingly’s rooming house on West Fifty-third Street,” Grierson said in a flat voice.

“Then Adrian was telling the truth this time,” Bart said. “I thought he was just drunk.”

“No,” said Grierson, “he wasn’t telling the truth. The woman wasn’t stabbed. She was shot through the heart. She wasn’t killed last night. She was killed about twenty-five minutes ago, at five minutes to eleven. The landlady and a woman named Elsa Travers can establish the time exactly. They’d been to the show at the Music Hall. There’s a grandfather clock in the hall of the house and when they came in they looked at it. A minute later they heard a shot and rushed upstairs. They found Daphne Temple dead with a hole in her heart and blood all over her.”

Romano said, “Put your shirt on, Grierson. We’ll go up there. I’ll have Farber keep this Adrian Temple on ice. I want to question him some more before we let the bug doctors look him over again.”

Grierson said, “There’s something else.”

“What?” Romano asked.

Grierson turned to Hardin. “You aren’t going to like this, I’m afraid,” he said. “What’s the name of that old actor you keep on the payroll? The one you call your secretary? I met him a while back when the lieutenant and I dropped around to see you at the Broadway Times.”

Hardin’s eyes grew hard. “Lennox,” he said. “James Lennox. He’s a fine old man.”

Grierson said, “James Lennox has the room next to the one where they found the body. He was standing on the fire escape outside Daphne Temple’s room when Mrs. Mattingly and this Elsa Travers got there. The cops found a gun on the fire escape, about where he was standing. It was still warm, and the smell of the barrel confirmed the fact it had been fired at about the time the two women heard the shot. Ballistics will check it, but there’s not much doubt it was the gun that killed Daphne Temple. The precinct boys are holding Lennox on suspicion of murder.”