Death out of Thin Air (15 page)

C
HAPTER
I

The Crime at Centre Street

L
ESTER
H
EALY
walked slowly, reluctantly up the steps of the famous and dingy gray-stone building on Centre Street in which the New York City Police Department's Headquarters is located. Had you been there watching him you would have wondered why he was entering that building without handcuffs on his wrists and a cop on either side.

You would have spotted Lester Healy on first sight as being a crook and you would have been quite wrong. People were always making that mistake, and a good percentage of them suddenly found themselves getting their mail at Sing Sing on account of it.

Healy's slouchy posture, his cynical squint, the hard lean face with its ever present drooping cigarette, the underworld argot that was in his speech made him look the way you thought a gangster should look and gave you a jolt when you discovered — in court — that he was a sergeant of detectives.

At the moment, Healy was working on a special assignment for the Bureau of Missing Persons.

Shortly after Dr. Palgar had disappeared, Healy had picked up a rumor on the underworld grapevine that looked like a promising lead. Inspector Church had agreed that it could bear investigation and Healy had gone to work on it.

For the past week he had been a member of New York City's underworld. He had successfully tracked the rumor to its source and what he had discovered gave him a distinctly uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach. He had just witnessed something that he was positive was utterly impossible, but which had happened just the same — something which he knew spelled trouble in big, nasty-tasting doses.

Sergeant Healy was more than a match for the average crook and for a lot that rated considerably above average. His experience had taught him just about all the answers; he knew what made the underworld and its members tick.

But this time he was up against something strange and unprecedented. This time he didn't have an answer because he'd never met anything like it before, and deep down within him he hoped he'd never meet anything like it again. If a man stopped to think about it, the criminal possibilities were enormous, utterly unpredictable and very possibly unbeatable.

He had decided that the smart thing for him to do was to turn in his facts and let some of the hot shots at headquarters do the worrying. He only hoped he could get them to believe he hadn't simply developed a case of delirium tremens or taken to using narcotics.

Healy, you see, had, under bright lights, just watched a man vanish into thin air. He had seen him fade slowly and completely into nothing at all. But it was even worse than that. He had been faced with clearly unmistakable evidence that the man who disappeared was still there under those bright lights — still there but quite invisible!

Inspector Church, Healy knew very well, wasn't going to accept a report like that without a good healthy argument. Church was an efficient, hard-hitting, no-nonsense cop who heartily disliked fairy stories in any shape or form, especially when they turned up in official reports.

Only a few weeks ago he had been involved in a curious case that the newspapers had referred to as The Vampire Murder. Church was still growling about it and a smart dick was careful not to make the slightest reference to it anywhere within a couple of hundred yards of the Inspector.

And now Healy had to take him a story like this!

Healy unlocked the door of his office, went in, threw his hat at the coat rack in the corner and seated himself at his desk. He put his hand on the phone and then sat there for a moment considering what would be the gentlest way of breaking his news to Inspector Church. He finally took a deep breath like a man about to dive into ice-cold water and started to lift the phone receiver.

At that moment his door opened abruptly and an excited man burst in and nearly overwhelmed Sergeant Healy. He jumped across the room, leaned over the desk, grabbed the startled Sergeant's hand and pumped it effusively.

He had a thick Italian accent. “You finda my leetle
bambina.
We are so happy! Maria, she is coming down to thank you herself. She was so afraid for Angelina and then you bring her back. I don't know how to tell you how happy—”

Healy slid back in his chair and disengaged his hand. The man seemed to be about to kiss him on both cheeks. “Wait a minute,” Healy said. “I haven't found any little girls lately. Who were you looking for?”

The happy father bent forward looking closely at the sergeant. “You — you are not Lieutenant Farello? I am so sorry. My eyes—” He gestured toward the round tinted spectacles he wore.

“No,” Healy said. “I'm not the lieutenant. You'll find him three doors down the hall.”

Healy's visitor, flustered, apologized in Italian and backed out into the corridor, closing the door after him. Healy frowned as the thought passed through his mind that the man didn't look particularly Italian. But he had weightier matters bothering him and he turned again to the phone.

That was where he made his mistake. His last one….

He asked the operator to connect him with Inspector Church, and when that gentleman's booming “Hello” came over the wire he said, “Sergeant Healy speaking. I've got a report to make in the Dr. Palgar case. I think I'd better give it to you verbally and do the written report later. It needs action immediately.”

“Did you get any trace of Palgar?” the Inspector wanted to know.

“No, not yet. But I found that machine of his and something else. Something that looks like a big headache. Can I come up now and give it to you?”

“No. I'm on the way out. The boys just fished one of Dutch Kutzman's gunmen out of the East River. He was weighted down with machine-gun slugs. I've got to go take a look. I'll stop by your office on the way and you can give me a quick once over. See you in half a minute.”

Healy said, “Yes sir,” and replaced the phone receiver.

Inspector Church's office was on the floor above and it wasn't much more than a minute later when he walked down the stairs and along the corridor toward Healy's office. The inspector, in his years of service, had never done the sort of undercover work that Healy did. He looked too much like a dick; a movie director would never have cast him as anything else.

He had the heavy, broad shouldered build, the flat feet that came from his long apprenticeship of pavement-pounding on the uniformed force, and the brusque, cocksure, suspicious manner of a policeman. His jutting, square-cut jaw had a determined forcefulness about it that a good many lawbreakers had discovered was the real thing.

But now, halfway down the corridor toward Healy's door, his jaw suddenly dropped and the determined look was replaced by one of amazement. The Inspector's quick walk abruptly became a wild dash.

He had heard behind Healy's closed door the familiar heavy crack of a gunshot.

Church's own gun was in his hand by the time he reached the door. As he grasped the doorknob, he heard a sound that made him throw his full weight against the door in a frantic smash. He was too late. The door was locked and the sound he had heard was the metallic click of the bolt sliding over.

Someone, inside that room had locked the door. There was no other exit except for the window five stories above Centre Street. Church pounded on the door and shouted, “Healy! What the hell is going on in there?”

He got no answer whatever. Quickly, then, he put his gun to the door's lock, fired twice, and threw himself against the door again. The lock still held. Church fired once more, stepped back and this time really hit the door a hard smash. It gave suddenly.

The Inspector, falling inward, took a quick step, recovered his balance and stared at what he saw, the smoking gun in his hand lifted and ready but finding no target. Sergeant Lester Healy lay slumped forward in his chair, a streaming flow of blood moving down across his face and making a widening pool on the green desk blotter.

Sergeant Healy was there, the chair he sat in, a desk, a hat rack, and on the Inspector's right, behind the door, a table that bore a single-drawer filing cabinet. There was a tin wastebasket and one other chair. But that was all. Except for the Inspector himself, there was nothing and no one else in that room.

Church, a baffled angry look in his eye, looked quickly behind the door, under the table and the desk, found nothing, and made for the window. That was closed and locked on the inside.

Church stared at it with unbelief. Then he grabbed at the phone. As he did so, he heard a quick taunting voice behind him say, “
See you later Inspector.
”

He whirled like a top and saw the door through which he had come swinging shut! He had turned in time to catch a glimpse of it end-on, and for a moment he saw both the inner and outer sides of it at once. The door was apparently closing of its own volition!

This uncanny sight made the Inspector hang fire for nearly a full second. Then, as the door slammed against the jamb, he sprang for it and yanked it open. There were men in the corridor outside, running toward him. Two detectives coming from the left; Inspector McShean, a uniformed cop and a secretary from the right. Church goggled at them.

“Who,” he bellowed, “came out of this door just now?”

He got blank looks all around as the reinforcements reached him.

“No one at all, Church,” McShean said. “What the—”

Inspector Church didn't answer. He turned back into the room, took a quick close look for the first time at Sergeant Healy.

“He's still alive,” he said grabbing at the phone. Savagely he pounded an impatient tattoo on the receiver rest. “Operator, operator, dammit why doesn't….” His voice trailed off as he became aware that the phone cord was dangling uselessly over the side of the desk, its cut end attached to nothing at all.

Church put the phone down slowly. McShean rapped, “Kramer, get Pepper.” Kramer left on the double quick.

McShean's bright quick eyes moved around the room. Suddenly he reached out and took the gun which Inspector Church still held. Church was thinking fast and furiously of something else. He let it go, then suddenly realizing what was happening, he blurted, “Hey, what's the idea of that?”