Читать книгу Murder Points a Finger - David Alexander - Страница 8

FOR THE MOST PART Dab and Romano were silent as the Departmental car carried them uptown. But as they sped along the West Side Highway, Dab said, “Lieutenant, I’ve been thinking about the timetable. The same man couldn’t have done the murder and the kidnapping could he?”

“It’s possible, just possible,” replied Romano. “The murderer might have had as long as forty-five minutes to reach the hamburger stand where Walters’ gas was siphoned. A fast driver, with any luck, could have made it in twenty-five or thirty. But how on earth would the man know he’d find Walters and Pat at a certain roadside stand at that exact moment? Answer is he couldn’t have, not possibly. Whoever snatched Pat had been following Walters’ car all evening. That seems certain. Theory is the murderer had confederates who pulled the snatch while he was taking care of the kill. We’ve got reason to believe Abner Ellison knew plenty of muggs who wouldn’t shy at a snatch.”

“That’s a lot of damned nonsense,” said Dab shortly. After that there was no more conversation.

It was after three when they reached Linton’s little house. In sharp contrast to the grim, dark bulk of the castle across the street, the small dwelling blazed with lights. The mortal remains of Philip Linton had been carried out in a basket some time before. The body reposed now at that great clearing house of violent death on East Twenty-ninth Street—the City Mortuary. Dark stains on the carpet and chalk marks showed where the body had been found. The house was still filled with police officers, some in plain clothes, some in uniform. Most were there on official business. Some had been friends of the murdered man and had come when they heard the news. Among them was a huge, red-faced old man with hamlike hands, Detective-Inspector Sansone, long past retirement age. He had once walked a beat with Linton. Dab recognized Sansone and Captain Haas, the Identification Bureau’s fingerprint expert since Linton’s retirement, and a Homicide aide of Romano’s named Grierson. He had played poker with these men in this same house.

Every man in the room looked grim. A cop had been killed. Murder is mostly routine business to hard-bitten veterans of the force. But when a cop-killer is on the loose, it’s a very different matter.

And Phil Linton had been a great cop. One of the best the Department had ever known.

Dab saw young Allan Walters standing miserably in a corner. The old actor’s heart went out to the boy. He was shocked by Walters’ appearance. The large, usually ruddy young man was corpse-white. He was shaking like a drunkard. Even his lips were trembling. Dab had always liked Walters, although he had felt much closer to Pat’s other suitor, Abner Ellison. Ab had a spark of sheer brilliance, a kind of incandescent charm that was lacking in the simple, sober Walters. Dab walked over to the young detective, put his hands on his shoulders.

“Allan, my boy,” he said. “This is a terrible thing, I know. But you have to pull yourself together. You must help us find Pat.”

Walters sobbed, broke down completely. “Oh, God, Mr. Dab, why did I leave her alone in the car like that?”

“It wasn’t your fault, boy. Nobody blames you.”

Captain Haas spoke. “Mr. Dab,” he said, “if you’ll be good enough, please take a look at those cards that are spread on the floor. Linton must have arranged them while he was dying. He seemed to want to direct your attention to them especially. We have a pretty good idea of what they mean, but we’d like to know what they convey to you.”

Somewhat hesitantly Dab crossed the room. He stood looking down at the cards. It took only a few seconds for their meaning to stab into him like a knife. He knew now what Romano had meant when he had said “It’s in the cards.” But Dab didn’t want to admit that this could be the only meaning. He stalled. He tried desperately to make his devious mind bring forth another answer.

“Well, Mr. Dab,” said Captain Haas. “What do you see?”

“Not much I’m afraid, not right off,” Dab replied. “I know what the cards are, of course. The fingerprint symbols Phil used to illustrate his talks.”

“Just tell us what you see,” the captain prompted.

Dab resorted to a little ad-libbing and wished he might depend upon an off-stage prompter. “Well,” he said, “Phil taught me the rudiments of fingerprinting from time to time. I know the names of these symbols, I think. The first is a simple arch. The second’s rather odd. It’s a loop shape, all right, but it’s not inclined or marked in any way, so it can’t be called either ulnar or radial. It just goes straight up and down, and loops don’t do that on the fingertips. They have to be one thing or the other. Loops are the patterns most frequently encountered in fingerprinting, I believe.”

Dab paused.

“Go on,” urged Haas.

“Well, after the space . . .”

“After the space,” snorted Inspector Sansone. “The space is the only important thing, sir. Keep that space in mind.”

Dab groaned inwardly. There could be no doubt that they had seen it, too.

Dab named the cards that appeared after the space—the whorl, the accidental, the lateral pocket, the tented arch, the exceptional arch. He paused when he came to the eighth card, said, “The next to last is another loop, but this time the way the markings are inclined show plainly it’s a radial type loop, one that points toward the thumb, since it’s the eighth card and would be on the left hand. The final card is very strange indeed. It’s not a symbol for a pattern. It’s a symbol for one of the five characteristics of fingerprints. It’s called a ridge fragment, isn’t it?”

“You pass one hundred per cent,” commented Captain Haas drily. “Now tell us what all this means.”

“I’m afraid I really don’t know,” Dab lied.

“Come on now, Mr. Dab,” growled the inspector. “You’re supposed to be good at puzzles, aren’t you? The meaning’s plain as the nose on Jimmy Durante’s face. Think of the space, man.”

“How many cards do you see on the floor?” asked Haas. Dab pretended to count. “Nine,” he answered.

“How many fingers do most people have?” asked Haas.

“Ten, of course,” said Dab.

“You see a space between the cards?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“Between the second and third cards.”

“Assuming that a fingerprint man arranged those cards, he would begin with the right hand. So the card for what finger would be missing?”

“The middle finger of the right hand,” Dab answered miserably.

“Exactly,” said Haas. “In fingerprinting that missing card would be called an amp. Meaning an amputation, of course. What we have are cards that point out a nine-fingered man, a man with the middle finger of his right hand amputated. Do you know such a man, Mr. Dab?”

Dab wiped his brow with a linen handkerchief. “Yes,” he said softly. “Yes, of course I do.”

“And his name?”

“Abner Ellison,” said Dab. “He lost the middle finger of his right hand in the war.”

“See what I mean about a deathbed statement, honey boy?” asked Romano.

“Convinced, Mr. Dab?” the inspector asked. “We’re lucky in a way. Most of us were Phil Linton’s friends. Had been for years. We’d visited his house, knew his family well. That’s why he was able to leave evidence he was sure we’d understand. That’s why we’ve been able to clear this thing up in a matter of minutes insteads of days or weeks.”

“We’ve still got to find the girl,” Romano reminded him. “Finding the girl’s what counts. We can’t save Linton now, but we can save the girl—maybe.”

“We’ll find her.” The old inspector wagged his big head. “When we find Ellison we’ll find the girl and pray to the Almighty that she’s still alive. Questioning suspects is supposed to be a lot of psychological rot, these days. But me, I’m an old-time cop. Just find Ellison and leave me alone with him in a locked room.” The inspector held out his two enormous, hair-spiked hands. “When I get these meat-hooks of mine on him, he’ll talk.”

Oh, God, thought Dab, they’re talking about my boy. Yes, he was my boy, almost as much as he was Phil’s. I remember when they first brought him here. He was such a little fellow with such big eyes and so much terror in them. We used to walk together then when I came up here, and sometimes when we were coming up the hill he’d put his hand in mine. Phil used to laugh at us. “Dab and Ab,” he’d say. “You remind me of Mike and Ike, They Look Alike.” We’d sit out on the front steps in the summer and I’d make up stories for him about the Mad Hatter’s Castle and the beautiful princess in the tower. Was it his tenth birthday or his eleventh that I gave him the baseball uniform and the Louisville Slugger bat? He always had a front-row seat for the Wednesday matinée when I was in a play, and I’d look down and wink at him. Then there was the first night of the Lonsdale play, he was about sixteen then, and he wore his first tuxedo, the one charged to my account at Brooks Brothers, and Pat was beside him, no more than a child of twelve wearing a frilly dress, and Allan Walters, wearing his first tux, too, and looking scrawny and all Adam’s apple. And then the news from the War Department when Rundstedt struck back in the Ardennes and we didn’t know if he’d lost a leg or an arm or his eyes and how relieved we were when we found it was only a finger.

Only a finger!

A damnable, obscene, amputated finger that points to him and calls him “Murderer!”

Dab thought a long while before he spoke. He had to read these lines right. He couldn’t afford to muff them. These were the most important lines he’d ever read and he’d been an actor nearly forty years.

Dab said, “I insist there is some other explanation for the meaning of these cards.”

“Suppose you give us a better one!” challenged the inspector.

“I’m afraid I can’t,” said Dab. “Not right now. Not at just a glance. I’ll have to study them. I suppose they’ve been photographed. Could I have a set of prints?”

“Of course,” Romano answered. “We’ll send them to your hotel first thing in the morning.”

“Why the devil are you trying to make a Chinese puzzle out of this, Mr. Dab?” Inspector Sansone asked irritably. “Why try to do it the hard way? Inside of five minutes or less the dumbest cop here saw what Phil Linton was trying to tell us, saw that those cards meant one thing and one thing only—a nine-fingered man, a man with the middle finger of his right hand amputated.”

“That’s just the point,” declared Dab. “It’s too simple. If Phil had had anything like that in mind, he would have known you cops could read the message. But the message wasn’t directed to you. It was specifically pointed out to me by that envelope that’s standing against the table leg. Phil tried to teach me the more advanced phases of fingerprinting, but he gave up. I couldn’t get beyond the elementary stuff. He often said that I’d never make a fingerprint expert even though I was a crackerjack at puzzles. He knew I was good at puzzles, so he left a puzzle for me to figure out. He wouldn’t have left me a problem in fingerprinting. He’d have left that for you fellows. I contend that these cards constitute a puzzle and that it’s pure freak coincidence that considered as fingerprint patterns they point out a man with an amputation. I claim the symbols on those cards are ideographs, forms meant to convey an idea to me, and that they have nothing whatsoever to do with fingers or the science of fingerprinting.”

“I say you’re nuts,” said the inspector.

Captain Haas said, “Look, Mr. Dab. We can all understand why you’re so anxious to find a different meaning. We know how close you were to Abner Ellison. But I’m afraid you can’t come up with anything that’s more convincing than the evidence that’s right before our eyes.”

Dab turned to young Detective Allan Walters. “Allan,” he said, “you’re a neighborhood boy. You grew up with Ab and Patricia. Do you believe that Ab killed Phil Linton and made off with Pat?”

“No,” said Walters. “I don’t. I don’t believe it for a minute. He just couldn’t have.”

Inspector Sansone snorted. “You’re letting personalities affect your judgment, Walters,” he said. “You’re not talking like a cop.”

“I’m not through arguing,” persisted Dab. “Not by a long shot. I don’t pretend to know much about fingerprinting except a few things Phil told me. But I know this. On fingerprint cards, the impressions of the fingers are arranged in two rows, with the prints of the right hand at the top and the prints of the left hand at the bottom. If Phil had meant to convey something about fingers or fingerprinting to us, he’d have arranged these cards in two rows. He didn’t. They’re spread out in a single row.”

“The answer to that one’s easy, honey boy,” said Romano. “Linton had a gut wound and he was bleeding to death. The slightest unnecessary movement of his body would have made the hemorrhage worse. He would have had to shove back on the floor to make room for another row of cards between his own body and the coffee table.”

“There’s another thing,” the old actor continued. “Why did he use certain cards and discard others? There are several he didn’t include scattered about on the floor. Why, for the last card, he went to another pile entirely! He had plenty of the cards with patterns on them left, but he reached for one showing a characteristic, that snaky looking symbol called the ridge fragment.”

“Are you trying to tell us that Linton died from snake bite?” Inspector Sansone asked.

“The answer, of course,” said Romano, “is that he simply picked up the first cards he touched. He needed nine cards with fingerprint symbols on them. It didn’t make any difference whether they were symbols for patterns or characteristics and it didn’t make any difference what the symbols looked like.”

Dab fingered the waxed ends of his mustache nervously. He decided to try another tack. “Let’s forget these cards on the floor for a minute,” he said. “I maintain that you can present only the flimsiest sort of motive for Ab killing his foster father. Ab’s father, James Ellison, was fired from his job. Rightly or wrongly, he believed he was done a great injustice, that he had been fired solely to make room for one of his employer’s relatives. He was deprived of the means of supporting not only himself, but his child, and Ab became a charge of the city. One night, when he was drunk and desperate, James Ellison went to his employer’s home and killed him. It was a clumsy and an amateurish crime. Ellison left fingerprints all over the place. Phil Linton was the fingerprint man on the case. His evidence convicted Ellison. But because of the man’s psychotic addiction to alcohol and his unbalanced, desperate state of mind, the D.A. allowed him to take a second-degree plea. He was sent up for life to Dannemora with the worst, most hardened criminals of the state. He died there of cirrhosis of the liver while his son was fighting overseas.”

“I don’t give a hang what these modern criminologists and psychologists and so forth say,” put in the old inspector. “I believe in blood. Bad blood and good blood. Like father like son. Crime runs in families. I’ve seen it happen too often.”

“Nonsense, man!” snapped Dab. “I’m very proud of my blood. The Ashton family is rated F.F.V. But one of my remote ancestors was a Louisiana pirate under Jean Lafitte. Do you think that means I’m likely to board the Queen Mary some night brandishing a cutlass?”

“Abner Ellison’s disappeared,” said Romano. “We’ve had men in his hotel room. Clerk says he took off right after Linton was chilled.”

“There’s probably some perfectly rational explanation for that,” insisted Dab. “But to continue. Phil did what he could. He adopted James Ellison’s son, brought him up. Ab and Phil Linton were devoted. I’ve been very close to this family and I know that. Ab held no grudge against Phil because of his father. Why, Phil often took the boy up to Dannemora on visiting days. Ab lived in this house for some twenty years. Do you suppose that all of a sudden, years after his father’s death, Ab is going to kill Phil because he identified his father’s fingerprints once in the line of duty? Such a notion is plain absurd.”

The inspector said, “He lived here for twenty years, but he moved out two months ago. Don’t you think that might mean he and Phil didn’t get along as well as they used to?”

“Ab lived here and paid board after the war while he was going to law school under the G.I. Bill of Rights,” said Dab. “He continued to live here and to pay more board when he graduated and got a job with a law firm. His moving out was purely a matter of old-fashioned propriety. About three months ago Phil Linton signed up with a lecture bureau to give talks on the history and practice of fingerprinting. Some of those lectures were in other towns and he had to stay away overnight. That left no one in the house but Ab and Pat. So Ab moved into a little family hotel not more than ten blocks from here.”

Dab saw the policemen exchange glances. They were holding something back from him, he knew. They had a trump card. But he felt compelled to go on, to state his case, to press every possible point that might be to the advantage of the young man he loved as a son.

“Now,” he continued, “of course I know that Ab was in love with Patricia. He’s about four years older than she. She was a baby when he came here as a child. But I think he always loved her, just as young Allan here did. Since childhood they’ve been friendly rivals. For a while it was anybody’s guess which suitor Pat preferred. I think she was very fond of both boys. They’re very different, but they’re both decent, good-looking young men. However, in recent years I believe even Ab knew that it was going to be Allan she would choose in the end. I doubt that Ab even proposed to her. I think he felt—wrongly, I’m sure—that being the son of a murderer cast a stigma on him in the eyes of a policeman’s daughter. In any event, even granting that he went into a jealous rage when Pat finally accepted Allan Walters last night—providing Ab knew of it—why would he kill her grandfather? Why didn’t he kill Allan Walters instead? Phil Linton would never have done anything to influence his granddaughter’s decision. I’m very sure of that.”

“He might have,” said Inspector Sansone, “if he’d known that Ellison was a crook.”

“Ab a crook,” exclaimed Dab. “Abner Ellison never did a crooked thing in his life!”

The policemen again exchanged glances.

“We’ve got good reason to believe Abner Ellison was a crook,” said Inspector Sansone, “and that Phil Linton knew it and was about to expose him.”

The inspector looked doubtfully at Lieutenant Romano.

Lieutenant Romano said, “This much is fact that we can prove. Abner Ellison was with Philip Linton last night. He was with him half an hour or so before Linton was murdered. Patrolman Bellinger saw the two of them come out of this house about eleven o’clock. They spoke to him. They walked down the hill toward Broadway together.”

“But Phil was killed inside the house by someone who forced an entrance. He must have been killed after Abner left him.”

“Ellison could have followed him back here and forced the window so it would look like an intruder,” replied Romano. “We have reason to believe that Ellison’s conference with Linton last night convinced him he had to kill Phil to save his own skin.”

“Why? Why on earth should you think that?”

Romano looked inquiringly at Sansone.

“Take over if you want to, Inspector,” he said.

Inspector Sansone regarded Dab with narrowed eyes. His big, spatulate fingers played over his square chin.

“I shouldn’t tell you this, Mr. Dab,” he said, “but I think I’ll let you have it. It’s top-echelon police business and mustn’t be repeated, but you’re peculiarly concerned in this affair and I think you have a right to know. Phil Linton knew something. Something that was hot as a firecracker. He told me two or three months ago that he’d talked to the new commissioner—he’s an old-time cop Phil had known well—and told him he’d blundered on to something and that in time he might be able to offer the Department some information that would knock the town wide open. Right after that, Ellison moved out of here. Things seemed kind of cool between Ellison and Linton from that time on.

“I guess you remember the Grand Jury probe into the numbers racket a year or so back. Evidence was presented to indicate that some Manhattan police officers had been taking graft from the Lenny Fassio mob that’s got the numbers and a lot of other enterprises sewed up in this town. Well, I remember the investigation, all right. There were some dirty hints in the papers that I was one of the ‘high officials implicated.’ I’ve got thirty-five years on the force and am due for retirement. The reason I’m still here is I wouldn’t quit under fire.

“Main witness against the cops was a former Fassio gunsel named Mike Stella. The Grand Jury returned indictments but before the case could come to trial, Stella disappeared. He stayed disappeared. Theory is he was bumped and packed in cement. So the case fell to pieces and the D.A. wound up grinding his teeth down to stubs. A few cops retired, some of the brass got busted, half a dozen detectives were put back in uniform and sent out to walk beats in Canarsie. That’s all there was to it, so far as the public was concerned. But very quietly a departmental investigation continued. That’s why I’m still around. I’m going to take a pension only when I’m free and clear of any charges, actual or implied.

“The numbers racket went merrily on, of course. There were whispers that somebody connected with the law firm of Burke and Holmquist was the payoff man. Burke and Holmquist acted as counsel for Lenny Fassio when he was called before that senatorial television show a while ago. Abner Ellison works for Burke and Holmquist.”

“Good Lord, man!” interrupted Dab. “Are you trying to imply that working for a law firm that accepts criminal cases makes a man a crook? Burke and Holmquist are one of the most respected legal offices in the city. Besides, Ab is mighty small potatoes. He’s only been working for the firm a few years, since he got out of Columbia Law School. He’s never even tried a case. He’s just a kind of glorified clerk who looks up precedents and points of law.”

“Nevertheless,” declared Sansone, “his connection with Burke and Holmquist would give him an opportunity of meeting Lenny Fassio and Lenny’s boss mobsters. And his connection with Phil Linton would give him access to a lot of cops, including some top brass in the department.”

“This is plain damned silly!” flared Allan Walters. “Everybody knows that Mike Stella himself was payoff man in the numbers. That’s what the whole investigation was about!”

“You’re forgetting your rank, Detective Walters!” Sansone barked like a martinet on the drill field. “But under the circumstances, I’ll overlook the breach of discipline. Stella may have been payoff man. But he broke with Fassio and turned pigeon. That’s why he’s got a cement overcoat or is cut up in little pieces and stowed away in trunks. With the heat on, it was a lot safer to use a respectable lawyer as payoff man than to use a known mobster. Even Fassio hasn’t got enough money to corrupt the top men of Burke and Holmquist. But Ellison was a little man, with just the right contacts, and Fassio’s money would look mighty big to him. One cop even intimated that he’d been approached by Ellison in person, but that cop was under a cloud himself and nobody would take his unsupported testimony. When Phil Linton, who’d been retired for years and out of touch with departmental business, said he might have information about the payoff, it was a different matter. How would he get such information except through personal contacts? And who was he closer to than Abner Ellison, the boy he’d brought up, who had lived with him up to a couple of months ago?

“Now I can tell you something that I can vouch for. I saw Phil four days ago. He seemed mighty unhappy. He said he was going to see a certain person on Wednesday night. That was last night, the night he was murdered. He said he had to make sure, but he’d be sure after he saw this person, and he’d lay what he had before the commissioner. Well, he saw Abner Ellison last night and he won’t lay anything before the commissioner, because Phil Linton’s on a slab in the morgue right now.

“The way I figure it, it all ties in. The Fassio mob thought maybe Phil’s granddaughter knew something, too. Did she say anything last night to you that would indicate she knew, Walters?”

“No,” said Walters in a choked voice. “No, I’m sure she didn’t know anything.”

“You’d better be careful in dark alleys just the same, young man,” warned the inspector. “The mob must know you were with her and they may figure she talked to you. They may try to keep you quiet. But they probably think having the girl is enough assurance that you won’t squeak, even if you know something.

“Here’s what I think. Murder’s a lot simpler than kidnapping. They left chilling Linton to Ellison. But Fassio’s still got a few old-timers around, some of them just sprung from stir, who were experts in the snatch racket even before the Lindbergh law was passed. Those are the guys who got the girl. It was neat, siphoning the gas tank and all. Maybe they figure having an ex-cop’s granddaughter will help ’em make a deal with the police. Anyhow, they’ve got her where they can keep her quiet.

“We know from the hotel people that Ellison got in before twelve, that there was a telephone call for him, but that the party disconnected and a few minutes later a seedy-looking bird came in and left a sealed note for him at the desk. Soon as he got this note, he took off. It was probably word that the snatch was set and told him to meet somebody somewhere.”

The old man looked at Dab. “That’s it, Mr. Dab. I’ve let you have it.”

Dab was silent for a long while. “Tell me,” he said at last, “if I can find another meaning in these cards on the floor, will you give my version serious consideration?”

“Sure we will, Mr. Dab,” replied Romano. For once he wasn’t flippant. “We’ll get photos of these cards to you first thing in the morning, and we’ll listen to anything you have to say.”

“You needn’t bother sending me home in a police car,” said Dab. “I want to walk a piece. I can get a cab on Broad-way.”

Allan Walters accompanied Dab to the front porch. He was a large young man with wide shoulders, but somehow he appeared to have shrunk, to have wasted in a matter of hours. His taut face accentuated the size of his eyes which seemed to burn feverishly. The cheekbones were pronounced, the flesh glove-tight over them. His face is like a death’s head, Dab thought. He’s like a skeleton wearing a coat with absurdly padded shoulders. He’s dazed. I’m dazed, too. We’re both in a state of shock. Panic, even.

Walters laid a hand on Dab’s arm. He said, “Can you solve that puzzle another way, Mr. Dab? Can you, sir? She’s my girl. She’d have been my wife in just a few more weeks. I’ve loved her since we were kids. You’ve got to solve it, Mr. Dab. It’s up to you. If we find the murderer, we find the kidnapper and that means we find Pat. I’m a cop. I know about these things. When there’s a snatch, you have to catch them right away. Kidnappers wait twenty-four hours, forty-eight hours, maybe a little longer. But if you don’t find the victims quick, you find them dead. It’s Pat they’ve got, Mr. Dab. Can you find her? Can you solve that puzzle Phil Linton left for you?”

The dandyish gentleman with the waxed mustache looked suddenly very old and very tired.

“I don’t know, boy,” he answered. “It’s the toughest job I’ve ever tackled. I’ve not only got to do it the hard way. I’ve got to prove the easy, obvious answer is the wrong one. But maybe, if I have time . . .”

The big clock across the river flashed

TIC

TOC

It was four o’clock in the morning.