Death House Doll (9 page)

He winced. “Believe me, I’ve never handled such a case in my life. It’s been like trying to climb a glass wall. Mona will neither talk nor co-operate. The same goes for the state’s attorney’s office. For some reason Olson seemed hell-determined to burn the kid. Still, even with as little as I had to work on, I was certain I could get her off with life.” He spread his hands. “And I could have, but Mona wouldn’t let me mention the child. Naturally, Olson didn’t.”

I remembered what Captain Corson had said about the only decent thing Mona had ever done was to make a deal with the state’s attorney to keep the boy out of the trial. I asked, “You made some deal with Olson?”

Emerson shook his head. “Not me. The deal was made before I was even called in to represent her. As I get it, she agreed to sign a confession at the precinct station if no mention was made of the child.”

“And who called you into the case?”

I had a feeling the guy was leveling. He said, “Joe LaFanti. He laid five grand on my desk as an inducement to me to defend her. But in my talks with him, I had the same feeling I did when I was talking to Mona.”

“What sort of a feeling?”

“That I was being given a run-around.”

“Do you think LaFanti killed Stein?”

“I don’t know.”

“How about Mona’s feeling toward the guy? In your talks with her, did you get the impression that she was so crazy about him she was willing to cover for LaFanti?”

Emerson shook his head. “Hell, no. As far as I could tell, she hates him.”

It beat me. I asked Emerson for the address of the nursing home where Johnny’s kid was being cared for and wrote it down on the back of an envelope. Then I pulled out my roll and asked, “Okay. How much to do me a favor?”

Emerson turned cagey. “What kind of a favor?”

“They’ll let you in to see Mona?”

He nodded. “As her lawyer — anytime.” He added, “But if you’re interested in the diamonds she is supposed to have stolen from Stein, you’re wasting your money. There are three things Mona won’t talk about.” He named them on his fingers. “One, why she waited for three hours before she called the police. Two, to whom she made two phone calls during those three hours. Three, the present whereabouts of the missing diamonds.”

I shook my head. “I don’t give a damn about the diamonds. I want to know something about her.”

“What?” he asked.

I told him.

His eyes turned thoughtful, as he mulled over what I had said. He’d have been a good guy to soldier with. You didn’t need to draw him any diagrams. “The little things,” he said, quietly. “I should have thought of that possibility myself. Of course. I’ll drive right down to Joliet. Now. This morning.” He hesitated, asked, “And if what you think may be so is so —?”

I said, “You’re the lawyer. You know the proper channels.”

He nodded. “Right.” He wrote an address on a card and gave the card to me. “This is my home address. In Evanston. Suppose we meet there, say, at ten tonight.” His cocky smile turned tight. “That is, if we both live that long. You realize what this will mean if you are right, Sergeant?”

“Yeah, sure,” I told him. “Of course. LaFanti can’t afford to let me live. But with me, it’s personal.” I started peeling bills from my roll. “How big a retainer do you want?”

His grin stopped being tight and reminded me of the way Johnny had grinned when the going had been tough, a little afraid, but cocky. “Put it away,” he said. “Not a dime. Nothing. This trip is on the house.” He reached his straw hat from a hall tree. “Besides, if it should happen that you are right about this, I’ll be the hottest thing in criminal law in Chicago.” He shaped his hat to his head. “Meanwhile, take care of yourself. I want to be sure that —”

He stopped as the inter-office annunciator on his desk buzzed.

“A Miss Gloria May to see you, Mr. Emerson,” his receptionist said. “And the young lady says it is very important that she see you immediately.”

He repeated the name to himself. “Miss Gloria May.”

“That’s LaFanti’s new girl friend,” I told him.

E
MERSON
talked into the annunciator. “Ask the young lady to wait just one moment, please.” He depressed the switch and looked at me. “Were you followed here?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know.” Sudden sweat beaded my cheeks. I felt a drop escape the pit of my arm and zigzag down my side. “I do know this Gloria May is LaFanti’s most recent mistress. She’s the little blonde babe who claimed she was with him all yesterday afternoon.”

“But she wasn’t?”

“No.”

“You’re positive?”

“I’m positive. She got out of a cab as I left the building. It was another girl I heard crying.”

“Come again?”

“It was another girl I heard crying, like she’d been crying a long time. And once I heard her say, ‘Oh, my God.’”

“Where was this?”

“In one of the rooms in LaFanti’s apartment.”

“But the girl wasn’t in the room when you returned with Olson and Corson?”

“No. This Gloria May was in the room and all she had on was lipstick, like, well, like she and LaFanti had been having a good time.”

Emerson returned his hat to the hall tree and his grin spread all over his face. He opened a door that led into a small conference room. I could see a long polished table in it. “It would seem,” he smiled, “that you and I have a lot to talk about, Sergeant. Tonight, at ten. At my apartment. And meanwhile —”

“Yeah?”

“Lie low and take good care of yourself.”

I showed him the butt of the gun with which I had killed Tommy. “I intend to.”

He squeezed my arm. “Good. Until ten tonight. You can go through this room to the hall. Watch yourself leaving the building. It might be you were followed or spotted coming in and this May dame is a plant.”

I watched him close the door and waited for the blonde on the far side to speak. Her voice shrill and filled with ignorant self-importance, she asked, “You are Mr. Quentin E. Emerson?”

“That’s right,” Emerson said.

“The lawyer who defended Mona Ambler?”

“Yes.”

“Well, Joe LaFanti sent me,” she said. “And Joe said I should tell you if that crazy army sergeant who made all that fuss yesterday should come here nosing around or trying to feed you a lot of cock and bull, that you’re not to pay any attention to him.”

“No?”

“No.”

“What am I supposed to do?”

“Call Joe.”

“I see.”

The little blonde sounded suspicious. “He ain’t been here, has he?”

Emerson’s voice was as slick as the sweat trickling down my sides. “Why, no,” he lied, “he hasn’t.”

I opened the door into the hall and looked out. None of LaFanti’s boys had come with the blonde. At least, there were none in the hall. They were probably spread out all over Chicago — looking for me. If I was right about the little doll in the death house, they
had
to pick me up before the police did.

I leaned against the wall, watching the main door of Emerson’s office, trying to figure my next move. LaFanti wanted me bad. He had to have me. Captain Corson was a smart cop. I’d told him that I’d killed Tommy and wounded Gordon. LaFanti had denied it, but sooner or later Corson would demand to see both men and LaFanti couldn’t stall forever by saying they were down in some place called the Dunes.

I forced myself to think. The chances were, it being the kind of a place it was, the clerk at the North Clark Street Hotel had called LaFanti and not the police. That meant that although LaFanti knew how I was dressed, the gray gabardine suit and straw hat were still some protection from the law.

If the clerk hadn’t tipped the police, they were still looking for a red-haired technical sergeant with a chestful of fruit salad. I would be as safe on the street as I would in any hotel, probably a lot safer. Besides, after the night I’d just spent I couldn’t take ten more hours inside of four walls. I’d blow my top waiting for my appointment with Emerson.

I toyed with an idea. The blonde was LaFanti’s girl but she didn’t live in his apartment. She had an apartment of her own somewhere. If I could tail her to her place, it would be as good a spot as any to lie low in. Not even Joe LaFanti would give me credit for guts enough to hide out with his girl.

The idea intrigued me. I walked past Emerson’s door and rode the elevator to the lobby. The lobby was crowded with people coming and going. No one paid any attention to me. If there were any hoods waiting for the blonde or a police stake-out on the building, I couldn’t spot the guys. I walked up the sidewalk a few doors and leaned against the plate glass window of a store front.

A few minutes passed before Gloria came out. No one walked up to her. She didn’t act like she expected to be met. From where I stood, she looked smug and quite well-pleased with herself. She looked none too bright.

She stood a moment, yawning, then walked up the street and turned east toward State Street, with me a quarter of a block behind her. She wasn’t hard to follow. Every now and then a man turned to see if her stern was as attractive as her running lights. It was. She had a nice little wobble and she used it.

She crossed State Street with the light. I sweated a little harder as the cop on the corner looked at me, then away. To him I was just another guy in a gray gabardine suit.
Wear it in health,
the guy who had sold it to me had said. It could be a good omen. It could be he’d brought me luck.

On the far side of State Street, she turned into a street level arcade, then into a big bar with Polynesian murals on the walls. I watched through the window while she sat down in a booth. Then I walked in and stood at the bar and watched her in the big back bar mirror. She had three daiquiries in quick succession while I washed down a rye with a short beer. In between drinks she worked on her face, touching up her lips and re-powdering her nose. No one sat down with her. She didn’t seem to be expecting anyone. Having finished what she’d been sent to do, she was on her own for the day.

A half hour later, beginning to feel her drinks, she walked north on Wabash Avenue and turned into a large department store on the corner of Randolph Street. I thought for a moment I’d lost her, then I saw her standing at a counter fingering the sheer material of an expensive bra and panty set.

They seemed to be what she wanted. She bought three sets, paying for them with a thick wad of bills.

The longer I watched her the hotter under the collar I got. It was probably Joe LaFanti’s money she was spending, money he’d given her for lying to Captain Corson and State’s Attorney Olson, for making a chump out of me. And I’d even paid her cab fare — two dollars and twenty cents.

The girl back of the counter put the panty sets in a green bag and the blonde moved on to purses, with me pretending to counter-shop behind her. She bought a big hand-tooled leather shoulder bag that must have cost her plenty. A small bar on Wabash came next. I stood outside and sweated every time a cop walked by.

When she came out she was stinking, so high she dropped the green bag and the panty sets spilled out on the sidewalk. A passing middle-aged man stopped and picked them up. As he handed them back he asked her something, like could he buy her a drink or if she was lonely or something and the little blonde laughed in his face.

He walked on, red-faced, leaving her as she stuffed the panty sets into the big shoulder bag she’d bought. I hoped she wasn’t so drunk that she was going to pass out on the street. She wasn’t. She wove across the walk and got into a yellow taxi that had just discharged its passegners.

I walked out under the elevated structure and flagged down the next cab that came along.

“Where to, fellow?” the cab driver asked me.

I pointed to the disappearing yellow cab. “Wherever that cab goes. But if it stops you keep right on going. I don’t want the dame to see me.”

“You’re paying the meter,” he said.

The cab ahead turned north on Michigan and crossed the bridge, then went a few blocks toward the lake and stopped in front of an old flat-building that had been remodeled into studio apartments. Gloria was so high by now that the driver of her cab had to help her across the walk. He, too, said something to her and she laughed. She had no need of small fry. She was a big-time hussy now.

My driver whistled as we passed the parked cab. The blonde girl was that kind. I rode on for half a block and told my driver to stop. I passed a bill through the partition.

“A little girl trouble, huh?” he grinned.

I lied, “Yeah,” and let it go at that.

The building was three stories high with three apartments on each side. I walked into the tile foyer and looked at the names over the bells. None of them read Miss Gloria May. The only Miss was named Terrill. Besides her, there was a Bleakley, a Roberts, a Gardner, a Phillip T. West and a Mr. and Mrs. J. Duane. The glass door leading to the stairs was locked.

I stood a moment wondering what to do, then walked around to the back of the building. Only the front had been remodeled. None of the open back porches told me anything.

A thin-faced man in a dirty undershirt came out of the basement door carrying a heavy can of ashes. “Ya looking for someone?” he asked me.

I nodded. “Yeah. A Miss Gloria May.”

He set the can of ashes on a small cement apron. “Ya must have the wrong address, fellow. There’s no one by that name lives here.”

It could be he was right. It could be Gloria was just visiting a friend. “Who are you?” I asked him.

He said, “I’m the janitor. Why?”

I peeled a five off my roll and gave it to him. “Maybe you know the dame.” I described her with my hands. “She’s about this high, blonde, well-stacked and very pretty.”

He showed me his yellow teeth. “Oh. You mean Mrs. Duane.” He confided, “now there’s a little number I could go for. She lives on the third floor right.”

“With her husband?”

The janitor shook his head. “Naw. That’s just the name she gave the real estate firm that handles the building.” He folded the bill and put it in his watch pocket. “Oh, she has company now and then. She has to, from all the bottles I have to carry down from her porch. But if there’s a Mr. Duane, I never seen him. Who are you, another bill collector?”