“That’s the first I heard about a car,” I said.
“Rented, probably. A kid described it as a black compact with no trim, so we can assume it was an agency vehicle. You want me to check with the garages that handle them?”
“Yeah ... and get the mileage records. Did Greta—or whoever it was—show up after the Poston kid died?”
“Apparently not. There was a police investigation and her parents picked up her clothes. Three days later her room was rented to somebody else.”
“Anybody else asking around there?”
“Not as far as I could find out. I played it cool enough so nobody would identify me again in case you’re worried.”
“I’m worried,” I told her. “From now on we’ll stay away from the office. You take a room at the Carter-Layland Hotel and get me one adjoining....”
“Oh boy,” she grinned.
I faked a swing at her and she faked ducking. I looked at my watch. It was three-thirty. “Let’s cut,” I said.
Pat had identified the guy who tried to kill me. We sat at one end of the bar in the Blue Ribbon having a sandwich and beer before the supper crowd came in and he let me scan the report that had gotten to his office an hour before.
Interpol, through their Paris office, had picked his prints and mug shots out of their files and transferred them to New York immediately. His name had been Orslo Bucher, accredited with Algerian citizenship, an army deserter and minor criminal with three convictions. He had escaped from a prison camp three years ago and been unheard from since. The report said there was no present evidence of him having applied for a passport from any country they serviced.
“Illegal entry,” I suggested.
“We get a few hundred every year. There are probably thousands in the country we don’t know about. A lot of the traffic comes up through Mexico and the Gulf coastline.”
“Why here, Pat?”
He said, “The Washington Bureau thinks it’s because they want political sanctuary. They have enemies in other countries. Because of their criminal records they can’t come in legally.”
“And this one?”
Pat shrugged and took a bite of his sandwich. “Who knows? We traced him to a room in the Bronx he had occupied for a year and a half. He did odd jobs, seemed to have enough money to keep him going, though nothing fancy, and didn’t cultivate any friends except for a couple of jokers at the neighborhood bar. He serviced a whore every two weeks or so without any unnecessary conversation. The only thing she remembered was that the last time around he made her change a fifty instead of giving it to her in the assorted bills he usually did.”
“New money?” I asked him.
He got the point. “If he had any more, we didn’t find it. I’d figure that if you were the target for a contract kill it would go higher than what he was showing and the gun hand would have had a little more class. That’s why I’m still letting your story stand, old buddy.”
I grinned at him and hoisted the beer. “He was an army type and that pistol he carried wasn’t a zip gun.”
“Hell, I figured that, but who isn’t ex-military any more? And with his background you could expect him to tote a little hardware. It isn’t that hard to come by.” He paused and put down his sandwich. “Incidentally, we found some burglar tools and some goodies lifted in a previous robbery in his room.”
I kept my face straight and nodded. Pat was really scrambling it now. He was throwing the possibility that the guy really had tried to knock off my office for something of monetary value instead of having either Velda or me as a primary target and all I did was add to the picture by phonying the other break-ins.
“And now the case is closed,” I said.
Pat washed his last bite down and shoved the glass back. His eyes went over my face and the lines that played with the comers of his mouth weren’t a smile. “Is it?” he asked me.
When a few seconds went by, I said, “Don’t nudge me, Pat.”
“Last night we exhumed a body. It was that of a young girl supposedly killed in a car crash about four months ago. She was burned beyond recognition, but we got a make from a routine inquiry on her dental work a month later. The lab reports said she was loaded to the gills, and that quite literally. Anybody with the alcohol content she had shouldn’t have been able to drive at all. However, making exceptions for certain tolerances people show, we had to assume that’s what caused it. She was known as a heavy drinker and a wild kid who could really hold the stuff. She was last seen alive in a slop chute in the Village and said she was going on a party somewhere without saying anything more. The ones she was with were well alibied and told us it was nothing new. She took off in her car and what happened wasn’t totally unexpected.”
“Then what’s your angle, Pat?”
“A more detailed autopsy showed injuries not normally sustained in a car crash, even one of that magnitude. Even the heat couldn’t account for certain aspects of her condition.”
“You’re not saying much, kiddo.”
“Ever hear of the rack?”
“Come off it, Pat!”
“Nasty thought,” he said, “but look at this.” He held out a photo and let me look at it. It was a reduced studio picture of a lovely, well-built girl in her middle twenties, swathed in a sheer, Grecian-style dress, posed languidly against an artificial column, a seductive expression in her dark eyes and the trace of a smile creasing her mouth.
“What about her?”
“Registered with the police department as a night-club entertainer. Good appearance, but a lousy voice so she didn’t make out. Her agent couldn’t sell her except as a hostess in a few joints and said she picked up money from the johns in the places she worked and seemed to do all right. Orphaned at sixteen with a crippled brother in Des Moines who drew a full World War Two disability pension and ran a moderately prosperous market on the side. He sent the money to bury her.”
He gave me another long, steady look. “Tie in the others and what do you have?”
“Somebody loves nice bodies,” I said.
“There’s one other thing.”
“So?”
“This one knew Greta Service,” Pat said. “They both worked for the same two outfits in the garment district at the same time, modeling identical lines. Phil Silvester photographed them together for their brochure.”
“Got a pick-up out on her?”
“In five states.” He paused and glanced at me out of the corners of his eyes. “We covered some of your ground but didn’t get too much cooperation. How did you make out?”
“No better.”
“Harry Service wouldn’t talk, either.”
“Put him in jail,” I said.
“Quit trying to be funny, Mike. He mentioned a letter to you without giving the postmark. The tape was clear at that point.”
“He didn’t say,” I told him.
“Withholding evidence isn’t a petty matter, chum.”
“Evidence of what? All I have is privileged information. I’m working for Harry, remember?”
“Balls.” Pat’s face grew tight. “I’m not going to play you down, Mike. Right now I want an opinion. Do you think there’s any tie-in between these women?”
I waved to Ed to bring me another beer and finished half of it before I answered him. “Look, Pat ... we have three kids in allied professions. It’s possible they all knew each other. It’s a damn tight business so it’s likely they ran into each other. Let’s assume they did. Two are dead and one is missing.”
“You forgot the fourth one.”
“For the moment that’s pure speculation. Check your statistics and you’ll see how many die every hour.”
“Think maybe Greta Service is dead?”
“No. A friend of hers saw her alive and not too far from here not long ago.”
“Mike, they were show kids, no family ties and not in the big time. Any of them would hustle for a buck.”
“And you and I know plenty like that. You’re angling for the Jack-the-Ripper bit, aren’t you?”
“It’s possible. There’s a curious part to it. None of those girls were sexually molested prior to their deaths.”
“If it’s one man he’s got a damn good operation going. Just tell me this ... and it’s your thought... why go so far out for a remote poison to knock off the Poston girl? How would he have access to the stuff if it’s that scarce? It doesn’t fit the pattern.”
“But there’s a pattern,” Pat insisted.
“Sure, if you look at it like that.”
Pat swung around and looked straight at me. “Which brings us straight back to you, friend.”
“Now you’re sweating me.”
“Nope. That’ll come later, old pal. Right now I’m just wondering about one thing. That business with Orslo Bucher. Did it happen the way you said it did?”
“Funny, Hy asked me the same thing.”
“What did you tell him?”
“Does Macy’s tell Gimbel’s?”
Pat threw his half of the lunch money on the bar top. “Don’t get too deep, Mike. You don’t go solo in this world very long. We’ve played a lot of games together. Let’s not quit here. I know how you think, so I’m going along with you for now, but remember that upstairs, people are after your neck. If you fall, I can too, so stay loose.”
“I’m so loose I jingle.”
“Just one more time. For me. And off the record. The bit with Bucher ...
did
it happen like that?”
I shook my head. “Nope.”
“You know what you are, don’t you?”
“I’ve been told often enough,” I said.
Orslo Bucher’s neighborhood wasn’t new to me. It lay in the fringe area adjoining a slum section that was marked for urban renewal when they could figure out where to put the people that were already there. You could feel the depression that hung over the buildings like an emotional smog, see it in the gray wash that dangled from the clotheslines between the buildings and in the restless hostility of the inhabitants. It was a place that existed on the gratuity of the city’s Welfare Department, but the bars were filled and the curbs lined with an assortment of misused cars.
Two years ago we had mopped up a bunch who had peddled home-made booze that had killed off fifteen people at a party, and there would still be some around who liked the feel of the cash I had laid out to get a line on the slobs. The police would get a few reluctant facts, a squeeze on their informers might get them a little more, but when they saw the long green and knew I wasn’t submitting official reports they’d lay it out for me.
Max Hughes was the night bartender at the Seville, a grungy corner slop chute. He had just come on the shift when I walked in, mopped the bar top down with a dirty rag and gave me the barest glance of recognition. Without being asked, he slid a beer in front of me and changed the twenty I put down.
“Orslo Bucher,” I said. I tapped the ten-spot on the counter and watched it disappear under his fingers.
He leaned forward, propping his elbows on the mahogany. “You the one who bumped him?”
I nodded.
“Thought it was you. Hell, he was asking for it.”
“Why?”
“Petty crap. He was always pulling something.”
“Alone?”
“Strictly,” Max said. “Nobody much wanted him around anyway. Kind of a mean one. I tossed him out a couple of times when he was loaded and he looked like he wanted to kill me.”
“He make any trouble around here?”
“No ... but I’d lay odds he was the one pulled that armed stickup on Arnie’s liquor store last month. I felt that iron he carried when I heaved him out.”
“Who’d know about him, Max?”
“Like I said ... nobody. He was either in his pad, one of the joints or gone. Nobody cared.” Max squinted and rubbed his chin. “Funny thing though, once I seen him getting into a big new car over on Lenox Avenue. He got in the back and the car had a chauffeur. I didn’t see who he was with, except the guy wore a homburg and seemed to know him. It wasn’t the kind of company Bucher usually kept.”
“Sure it was him?”
“Positive.” He frowned again and tapped the back of my hand with his finger. “Come to think of it, old Greenie said he seen the same thing once. I didn’t believe him because Greenie’s bombed out on booze and can’t think straight. He kept telling me it was a dipple car, whatever the hell that is, but he’s always got a screwy name for everything.”
“Suppose I talk to Greenie.”
Max grunted and said, “You’ll have to go six feet down to do it. He got clipped by a truck two months ago and died in Bellevue.”
I was getting nowhere in a hurry. When Max couldn’t supply any answers there weren’t any to be had. I said, “What about that whore Bucher used?”
“Rosie? Man, that one’s on the last time around. She’ll bang for a beer or a buck and lucky to get either. The only ones she gets is the bums the other hustlers won’t touch. Lucy Digs and Dolly gave Bucher the brush when he tried to warm their pads, that’s why he wound up with Rosie, and when them two turn anything down, it got to be pretty sad. Nope, old Bucher wasn’t too popular around here. He ain’t going to be missed none at all. Not none. If it wasn’t for the cops nosing around nobody would have given him a thought.”
“Okay, kid, if that’s the best you can do.”
“Sorry, Mike. That’s the way it is. Suppose something turns up?”
I took out a card and wrote the name of the hotel on it. “Call me here if you think it’s important.” He looked up at me with shrewd eyes. “I’ll mail you a check,” I said.
Hy was just getting ready to leave his office when I reached him. He had been trying to get me for the past hour and was about to give up. Too many people were around for him to talk, so he told me to meet him at Teddy’s place as fast as I could. I walked up a block, grabbed a cab and gave him the address of the restaurant in the lower end of Manhattan.
He was waiting for me in a private section and he wasn’t alone. He pointed to a seat and indicated the tall lanky guy next to him. “You know A1 Casey?”
“I’ve seen you around.” I held out my hand and he took it. “Biff told me about you going over the morgue files. Come up with anything?”