No Pockets in a Shroud Page 7

  “Depends on the questions.”

  Without warning he leaned forward and perspiration popped out on his brow. He overturned his chair backward and doubled across the table with one hand gripping the table edge and the other clasped to his pot belly.

  “Dyspepsia,” I explained to the startled Fausta. “You’ll get used to it.”

  The attack passed almost as quickly as it started. He pulled his chair back to its former position, apologized fluently to Fausta and thrust aside his drink with an air of finality.

  “The attacks are getting worse,” he said. “It’s to the point where I can hardly eat a thing. Just in the last couple of days, too. But I got a new patent medicine lined up …”

  “I know,” I interrupted. “You told me about it the other night. Let’s get back to questions. How do you account for your wife being with Bagnell when he was shot?”

  His small eyes held mine a long time before he answered. “I don’t think that’s any of your business.”

  “It isn’t,” I agreed. “But I’d still like an answer.”

  He examined the growing ash on the end of his cigar, seemed to come to a decision and met my eyes with a sudden confiding air.

  “My wife’s relations with me are her business and mine. But I don’t want talk going around about her and Bagnell, so I’ll set you straight on a few things. Eleanor and I are very happily married. But I keep her out of my business. She had no idea that Bagnell and I were rubbing against each other until she got drawn into this murder investigation. She likes to play roulette and I knew she was going to El Patio, because she tells me everywhere she goes. I saw no point in objecting to her fun just because I intended to open this place in competition to El Patio. And get this … She went there only for roulette. She just happened to be cashing a check in Bagnell’s office when he got it. There was nothing between them.”

  While he spoke I saw Eleanor come from a door to the left of the bar, glance up and down the tabled balcony until she saw our party and move toward us. She had changed the sport suit of the afternoon for a black evening gown that split down the front, exposing a half-inch strip of flesh from the dog collar effect at her throat nearly to her waist. She was nearly to our table before Wade finished his confidential speech, and I could tell she caught the last two sentences.

  AS SHE touched Wade’s shoulder from behind, I rose and Wade looked up nervously. A peculiar embarrassed expression crossed his face. He followed my example by getting to his feet.

  “Evening, hon,” he said faintly. “You know these people?” “We’ve met.” She took a chair between her husband and me and studied the crowd in the game room. “I’d estimate three hundred,” she said to Wade. “What are receipts so far?”

  “I haven’t checked.”

  Her brows raised. “It’s nearly eleven. Better find out.”

  He rose immediately. “Sure, hon.” To Fausta he said: “Excuse me, please.”

  As Wade departed the two women examined each other with that flat coldness which makes men’s skin crawl. To break up the frigid silence I blurted the first remark I could think of.

  “Must have taken some cash to put this old building back in shape.”

  Eleanor said: “Seventeen thousand, including the wheels.”

  My brain tingled with a sudden idea. “What did the whole setup cost, if you don’t mind telling?”

  Her eyes flicked over Fausta and settled on my face. “I don’t mind telling you anything. Twenty-eight thousand for the property and seventeen thousand for repairs and improvements. Forty-five thousand altogether.”

  “That’s quite an investment, if it doesn’t pay off.”

  She shrugged. “We estimated six months to get back our capital. If El Patio stays closed, we may make it in three.”

  Fausta said: “El Patio will no more have the casino. Only dancing, food and drinks.”

  Eleanor looked past my shoulder and I turned to see Byron Wade approaching from across the gaming room. I turned back to Eleanor.

  “You seem to know a lot about your husband’s business.”

  With eyes still on her husband her lips curled in mild contempt. “Someone has to.”

  As Wade rejoined our table, I excused Fausta and myself. She held my arm with unnecessary tightness as we descended the three steps to the game room.

  “That woman, she make eyes at you,” she said in my ear.

  I said: “What do you want’ to play?”

  “Do not change the subject.”

  “What do you want to play?” I repeated.

  She cocked her head up at me and pouted. “Nothing. I watch you.”

  I am strictly a penny ante gambler. I dropped four dollars in two bets at a dice table, bought four two-bit chips and lost them at roulette, then moved on to the slot machines. Two nickels and two dimes in one-armed bandits, with no results except lemons, discouraged me.

  We had started back toward our table when a voice behind us said: “Hey!”

  Fausta and I turned together, and there was Gloria Horne.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “Looking for you.”

  I piloted both women back to the table. Byron Wade and Eleanor had disappeared. I looked out over the crowd, failed to locate them and told the waiter to bring only three drinks.

  “How’d you get out here?” I asked Gloria.

  “Drove.”

  “How’d you make out with Amos?”

  She looked at me as though surprised at the question. “All right,” she said casually. “I have his car outside.”

  Fausta asked: “Amos know you come here?”

  Gloria’s bovine eyes were wandering over the crowd, lingering now and then on the apparently unaccompanied men. Without ceasing her deliberate examination, she said: “What he don’t know won’t hurt him. He doesn’t get home till two.”

  The previous afternoon Amos Horne had said: “Look, Moon, my wife is a moron.” I began to sympathize with him.

  I looked at my watch, saw it was eleven-thirty and said to Fausta: “Let’s get out of here.”

  “I’ll take you wherever you want to go,” Gloria offered.

  The night air had grown still and heavy, presaging rain. Halfway to town it began to drizzle and in a few minutes turned to a steady, light rain. Gloria switched on her windshield wipers.

  “Seems funny not to hear that singing sound on a wet road,” she remarked.

  Fausta had fallen asleep on my shoulder and I was concentrating on the way tree shadows flittered across her still face. Gloria’s statement failed to register immediately, then its peculiarity gradually sank in.

  “What singing sound?” I asked.

  “The tires. We used to have skid-proofs and they made a singing sound in the rain. Amos swapped them yester-day.”

  I let a full minute go by while adjusting my mind to a flood of new ideas. Finally, forcing my voice to be uninterested, I asked: “Why’d he do that?”

  “I don’t know. I thought they were still good, but I guess he got a chance for a deal. I didn’t know he’d traded till I asked for the car keys. He told me then.”

  I said suddenly: “Take Fausta home.”

  Gloria flashed me a sidewise, interested glance, but made no reply. When we reached El Patio, I gently shook Fausta awake. She yawned like a sleepy kitten, then burrowed her face in my shoulder again. “Hey!” I said. “This is home. You get off here.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Skidproof Alibi

  THE RAIN GRADUALLY INCREASED in intensity until it became a steady downpour. Gloria’s driving, which was uncertain enough in clear weather, became more and more capricious. She knew only one speed—forty miles an hour—and apparently was incapable of adjusting it either up or down to suit varying highway conditions. Now she began to add to the suspense by continually throwing me side glances.

  “Keep your eyes on the road,” I said finally.

  Dutifully she fixed her eyes straight ahead and kept them t
here long enough to swerve abruptly around a truck whose tail gate materialized out of the rain almost in our laps. Then her glance shifted back toward me again.

  “Where we going?” she asked.

  “To your place.”

  She drove in silence for a few moments, most of the time keeping her head turned toward me, but occasionally peering through the windshield as a gesture to indicate she still realized she was driving.

  “Suppose Amos comes home?” she said.

  “Suppose he does?”

  She let time pass again. “He won’t like it.”

  I made no answer and we drove the rest of the way in complete silence. Gloria continued to look sidewise at frequent intervals. In the darkness I couldn’t make out her expression, but I guessed it was puzzled.

  When we neared her apartment house she swung into the alley, drove headlong through the open garage door and jolted to a stop which nearly put me through the windshield. I pulled down the door for her, latched it and followed her along the dark yard at a dead run in an attempt to cheat the rain. In the lower hall we paused to regain our breaths.

  Our coats were dripping wet, but underneath we were relatively dry from our necks to our knees. Below that we were both soaked.

  After a short rest we climbed the stairs to apartment C. Gloria pulled the chain of a floor lamp in the living room and immediately disappeared into the bedroom. I carefully hung my coat and hat on a clothes tree near the door, where they wouldn’t drip on the rug, took off my shoes and socks, rung the water from the socks and put them in my pocket, wiped the shoes out with my handkerchief and put them back on.

  I was stretched flat on the sofa with my head on a pillow, when Gloria reappeared wearing a flowered housecoat.

  “It’s nearly one,” Gloria said. “We haven’t much time.”

  “Time for what?”

  “Before Amos gets home.”

  “Good.”

  She stood in the hall doorway, her hands fidgeting with the knot holding her housecoat together and watched me puzzledly.

  “I came home with you because I want to see Amos,” I explained.

  Her puzzlement turned to a frown, but her brain was too vapid for anger. She looked more disappointed than nettled. For a moment she examined me disapprovingly, then turned and disappeared without even a goodnight. I folded my hands across my chest and went to sleep with the light on.

  The rasp of a key drawing the front door bolt brought me awake. I raised my left wrist to the level of my face, saw it was five of two and sat erect in time to see Amos Horne come into the room.

  He stopped short when he saw me. “What you doing here?”

  “Looking for the tires. Thought you might be able to tell me where to trade skidproofs for new synthetics.”

  He hung his sopping coat and hat from a peg next to mine and dug a cigarette from a box on an end table. When he had it drawing properly, he took a seat opposite me. He didn’t say anything.

  “Stop me if I’m wrong,” I said. “Yesterday morning you get rid of four perfectly good tires and got four synthetics in trade. You made the switch because you realized the skidproofs left nice identifiable marks where you parked near El Patio.”

  He raised one hand to scratch the fuzz over his ear, and tried to seem undisturbed. “Who says I swapped tires?”

  “Your intelligent wife. She wasn’t squealing. She just doesn’t know any better. Want to tell me all about things?”

  “I got nothing to tell”

  I rose. “Stick around while I phone Homicide.” I started toward the hall.

  He rose also. “Wait a minute! You can’t arrest me. You’re no cop.”

  Gloria appeared in the hallway, still wearing her housecoat.

  I said: “I’m not arresting you. I’m phoning Homicide.”

  He went over to the clothes tree, lifted his hat and took his coat from under it.

  “Where you bound?” I asked.

  He shrugged himself into the wet coat. “You can’t even detain me. You got no legal authority.”

  I laughed at him. “Take it off.”

  He put on his hat.

  “How far can you walk with two broken legs?” I asked.

  He looked at me belligerently, then his expression turned uncertain. He glanced at his wife, started to swell his chest with bravado, looked back at me and suddenly deflated.

  I said: “Take it off.”

  He hung up his coat and hat again and sat down. Gloria watched placidly as I dialed the phone.

  Instead of the sleepy answer I expected, a wide awake voice growled: “City police.”

  “This is Moon,” I said.

  “Moon? Manville Moon?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Been trying to get your apartment for two hours. Hang on.”

  A half minute passed and then Warren Day’s voice complained: “Don’t you ever stay home?”

  “Seldom. What got you up at two A.M.?”

  “Work. We got the O’Conner thing solved.”

  I said: “Yeah?”

  “It was an accident. Gerald Foster, the other name on the bracelet, turned up twenty miles down the river. He drifted farther, you see.”

  I said: “Obviously.”

  “They were just a couple of kids out canoeing who upset and drowned. Reason we didn’t get it sooner, they lived on the Illinois side and the cops over there didn’t contact us till they saw our story in the papers.”

  I asked: “So why are you looking for me?”

  “Want to talk to you. This leaves Byron Wade wide open on the Bagnell thing again.”

  “Forget him,” I said. “Wait till you see what I got. Send the wagon to 1418 Newberry, Apartment C.” I hung up before he could ask questions.

  When I returned to the living room, Amos was beginning to sweat and the fuzz over his ears stood out with static electricity from his furious rubbing.

  “Look,” he said. “I didn’t bump Bagnell. I can explain everything.”

  I lifted my hat and coat from their peg. Amos started to talk rapidly, as though afraid I might cut him off before he got out the whole story.

  “I got to thinking that night after I got to work, and I began to wonder if maybe Gloria might be out with Bagnell even after I warned her. So I phoned home and got no answer. That worried me more. I jumped in my car, drove here and sure enough, Gloria was gone. Naturally I got mad and decided to go yank her home. I knew where to look, but when I got near El Patio, I got cold feet and decided I’d just watch for her to come out instead of going in after her. So I parked half off the road where you found the tire tracks and just sat there. I didn’t even get out of the car. After a while a siren sounded and a police car pulled into the drive right behind me. I figured the joint was getting raided, so I scrammed.”

  “Why the tire switch?”

  “When Gloria didn’t come home, I figured she got caught in the raid and was probably in jail overnight. That didn’t worry me none. I figured it would serve her right.” He leered at his wife in the doorway. “But when you’re used to someone in the house, you don’t feel comfortable without her, even if she is a moron. I couldn’t sleep, so about four in the morning I turned on the radio for news. A flash about the murder came over and right away I thought about leaving tire marks and how unusual my tread was. I didn’t want to be tied up in no murder. First I thought about driving back to El Patio and rubbing out the tracks, but I was afraid I’d get caught and make it look even worse. Then I remembered the night station attendant where I buy gas offered me four synthetics about a week ago. So I climbed in my car, ran over to his place and made a deal for the switch. I had the tires changed right then, and beat it back home to bed.”

  “Makes a nice story,” I said.

  “It’s the honest truth.” He looked up at me earnestly.

  A siren sounded in the distance and grew louder.

  I said: “You can put on your hat and coat now.”

  IT HAD stopped raining by the time I got ho
me at 8:00 A.M. Sleepily I pushed open my apartment door and switched on the light while still holding the key. The first thing I saw was Danny. He sat with his hat on facing me, his feet braced against the floor and both hands jammed in his coat pockets.

  Even though I knew he was a coked-up psychopath and that hands-in-pockets was his melodramatic stance in preparation for a draw, he caught me off guard again. His screwball stance lulled you into a sense of security, because it looked so impossible for that obviously empty right hand to move clear to his armpit with any speed. Maybe that was the psychology.

  So with my right arm straight out to the light switch, and with the key held between index finger and thumb. I stopped to ask questions instead of starting to draw.

  I said: “How’d you get in?”

  His right hand moved with incredible speed. It moved so fast, it was darting beneath his arm before I got around to dropping the key and starting my own hand inward.

  I might as well have saved the effort. By the time my fingers touched the butt, I was looking into the narrow bore of his target pistol.

  He said tauntingly: “I thought you were supposed to be fast, Mister Moon.”

  “I probably don’t sniff enough coke,” I said.

  His eyelids narrowed around widely dilated pupils. “That smart tongue gets you in trouble, Mister Moon. I’m surprised you’ve lived as long as you have. Turn around.”

  I turned around, and Danny carefully relieved me of my P-.38.

  “Forward march,” he said.

  We went down the stairs in single file, with me leading the column. After the rain the moon had come out huge and brilliant, and as Danny prodded me up the street I began to hope someone would see us. But the streets were deserted. A half-block from my apartment we stopped next to a brand new Oldsmobile.

  “Get in,” Danny said.

  I got in the right front seat.

  “Under the wheel,” Danny said.

  I moved over under the wheel and Danny slipped in next to me. “Head out highway 42.”

  “Listen, Junior,” I said. “My right leg is only good for walking. I can’t drive a car.”

  “Use your left. This job is hydromatic. All you got to push is a brake pedal.”

  I said: “I haven’t got a license.”