Owls Don't Blink, page 18
part #6 of Donald Lam and Bertha Cool Series
“Hello, Sherlock,” he said as I opened the door. “Want something?”
“Maybe.”
“How’s the sleuthing?”
“Only fair.”
“How are you and Bertha getting along?”
“Swell.”
“Don’t see any footprints on your hip pockets.”
“Not yet.”
“She’ll get you in time. You can stall her off for a while, but you’re just living on borrowed time. She’ll earmark you, put her brand on you, kid you along until you’re fattened up, and then send you to the slaughterhouse. After she has your hide nicely tanned and made into leather, she’ll start looking for another victim.”
“That’s where I fool her,” I said. “I won’t get fat.”
He grinned. “What’s on your mind?”
“Nineteen-thirty-seven. Unsolved murder. Man by the name of Howard Chandler Craig.”
He had bushy eyebrows. When he frowned, they came down over his eyes like black thunderclouds piling up behind a mountain. Now I got the full effect of them.
“Aren’t you funny?” he said.
“I didn’t think I was being funny.”
“What do you know about that?”
“Nothing.”
“When were you in New Orleans?”
I hesitated.
“Start lying to me,” he said, “and I’ll bust your damn agency! You won’t get a bit of co-operation as long as you live.”
“I just got back from there.”
‘I thought so.”
“Why, what’s wrong?”
He placed his forearm flat’ on the desk, raised the wrist, and slapped the tips of his fingers with an up-and-down drumming motion against the scarred desk top. At length, he said, “The New Orleans police are making inquiries.”
“There may be a New Orleans angle on it.”
“What?”
I looked him straight in the eye, said with wide-eyed candor, “A girl by the name of Roberta Fenn was riding in the car with Craig when he was killed. She’s been mixed up in another murder case in New Orleans. Police aren’t certain what happened, whether she was a victim or whether she pulled the trigger, or whether she’s just got frightened and taken a powder.”
“Two murders in five years is altogether too many murders for a nice young girl.”
“So it would seem.”
“What’s your angle on the case?”
“Just investigating.”
“For whom?”
“A lawyer,” I said, “trying to close up an estate.”
“Nuts!”
“That’s the truth. That’s what he’s told us anyway.”
“Who’s the lawyer?”
I grinned.
“What’s the angle?”
“We’re looking for a person who seems to have disappeared.”
“Oh.”
Rondler pulled a cigar from his pocket, puckered his lips as though he were going to whistle, but he didn’t whistle. He simply made little blowing noises as he carefully clipped oft the end of the cigar. Then, as he pulled a match from his pocket, he said, “Okay, here’s the dope. Around the latter part of 1936 we were troubled with a man who stuck up petting-parties. He’d take whatever the man had, and if the girl was good-looking, he’d take her, too. It made quite a stink. We put men out and staged mock petting-parties and did our damnedest to bait a trap he’d walk into. Nothing doing.
“When it began to get cold and people didn’t sit out in automobiles and neck so much, our bandit suddenly quit. We thought we were rid of him; but in the spring of ‘37 when things began to warm up, our petting-party bandit was right back again.
“Several guys-put up a squawk when he started to take their women. This bird Craig was one of them. There were three altogether. Two of them were killed. One was shot, and recovered. Things got pretty serious. The chief told us to get this bird, or else.
“We kept baiting traps. He wouldn’t walk into them. Then somebody got the bright idea, A guy who does that sort of stuff doesn’t do it and then lay off, and then do it again. It’s a steady racket with him. So why did he lay off during the cold months? Of course, the pickings were rather slim, but there were pickings just the same, and logically you’d have thought he’d have been easier to trap when he didn’t have so much to choose from.
“So we got the idea perhaps he’d gone some place else for the winter months. San Diego was all clear. So we looked up Florida. Sure enough, back of Miami there’d been a lot of trouble with a petting-party bandit during the winter of ‘36 and ‘37. What’s more, they had a couple of clues, some fingerprints, and something we could work on.
“That gave us an opportunity. We figured this man was driving an automobile that was registered in California. We thought that he was a lone wolf, particularly that he had no woman. It was a tedious job, but we started checking the license numbers of California vehicles that had been registered in Florida, of California vehicles that had crossed through the state quarantine inspection station at Yuma in the two weeks before the first petting-party holdup took place in Los Angeles.
“That gave us our first clue. We found a car registered to a man named Rixmann had crossed at Yuma just four days before the first of our spring petting-party holdups in ‘37. We looked Rixmann up. He was rather good-looking in a dark, sullen sort of way. He’d been out of work for some time. His landlady didn’t know just what he did. He seemed to be moody and morose, but paid his rent on time, had plenty of money, and slept a lot during the day. He drove a Chevrolet coupe and stored it in a garage back of the place where he roomed. Two or three nights a week he’d go to a picture show, but a couple of nights a week he’d take his car and go out. She’d hear him come back quite late. All this was in the late summer of ‘37.
“Of course, on these petting-party holdups where there’s an assault on the girl, it’s only about one out of four or five that makes a complaint to the police. Sometimes the man can’t afford to have his name put on the police records. Sometimes the woman can’t. Sometimes when there’s rape, the woman feels that it’s poor business to make a complaint and have the newspapers publish all the facts.”
“Was it Rixmann?” I asked.
“That was the bird we wanted,” Rondler said. “We started shadowing him, and about the third night he took his car down to one of the lovers’ lanes, parked it, got out and walked about three hundred yards, waited where it was good and dark under a tree. That gave us all we needed. We had a woman police investigator who was willing to go through with it. We caught Rixmann red-handed—and I mean we really caught him. Of course, the boys worked him over some’, and when he arrived here in this office, he was all softened up.
“He sat right over there in that chair and spilled his guts. He knew it was curtains for him. Right at the time, he didn’t care. Afterward he got a lawyer and tried to plead insanity. He didn’t make it stick. He told us that he had a very fine pair of night binoculars. He picked places where he could wait in the dark, but where there was a little light that would shine on the spot where cars would naturally be parked. He’d look occupants over with his night binoculars, and study them carefully before he went out to make his holdup. Three or four times he’d seen a couple of policemen stage a mock petting-party, and he sat watching them through his binoculars and getting a great kick out of it. With those night glasses, you couldn’t fool him. He knew it was a trap, and simply stayed there in the dark and out-waited them.
“He told the story. He couldn’t remember all the jobs he’d pulled, but he could remember enough of them. He remembered the shootings, of course. He always did swear he didn’t pull off that Craig job. Some of the other boys didn’t believe him. I did. I couldn’t see why he’d lie about that when he was talking his neck into a noose, anyway.”
“Did they hang him?”
“Gas,” Rondler said. “By the time they got him convicted, he had grown surly. He never would talk after that first night. He got hold of a lawyer, and the lawyer told him to clam up. They pleaded insanity, and they tried to keep that pose right up to the moment of execution, thinking perhaps he’d get a reprieve. I never have felt, though, that the Craig case was closed.”
“What’s your idea?” I asked him.
“I haven’t any. I don’t have enough facts to work on, but I’ll tell you what it could have been.”
“What?”
“That Fenn girl could have been crazy about him. She wanted him to marry her, and he wouldn’t. She tried all the old gags, and they didn’t work. He was in love with somebody else and was going to get married. She took him out for a last petting party, made an excuse to get out of the car, walked around on the driver’s side, pulled the trigger, ditched the gun, and ran down the road screaming. It was that simple.”
I said, “That could have been it all right.”
“Most of the murders that people get away with are just like that,” Sergeant Rondler went on. “They’re so damn simple that they’re foolproof. There’s nothing about them to go haywire. The more people plan, the more elaborately they try to work out something that will cheat the law, the more they leave a lot of loose threads they haven’t thought about and which can’t be tied up. The bird who commits the successful crime is the one who just has one main thread. He ties that in a good, tight square knot, then walks away and leaves it.”
I said, “How about that Craig murder? Any fingerprints or anything to go on?”
“Absolutely nothing except a description given by Roberta Fenn.”
“What was that?”
He opened the drawer of his desk, grinned, and said, “I just had it brought in after we got that wire from New Orleans. She describes the chap as being medium size, wearing a dark suit, an overcoat, a felt hat, and a mask. She says he was not wearing gloves, that when he first appeared on the scene, he limped noticeably, that when he ran away, he didn’t limp. Hell of a description.”
“Could you have done any better if you’d been there?”
He grinned. “Probably not. But if Rixmann didn’t pull that job, she did.”
“What makes you think so?”
“It’s a cinch. That’s the only petting-party job that isn’t accounted for. After Rixmann was arrested, they quit as though you’d sliced them off with a knife. If someone else had been muscling in on Rixmann’s racket, we’d have had more of the same.” ”
I pushed back my chair, said, “You’d better light that cigar before you chew it to death.”
I saw his eyebrows come together again. “You’re getting a hell of a lot of information without giving much.”
“Perhaps I haven’t much to give.”
“And then again, perhaps you have. Listen, Donald, I’m going to tell you something.”
“What?”
“If you’re playing around with that woman, we’re going to nail you.”
“What woman?”
“Roberta Fenn.”
“What about her?”
“The police in New Orleans want her, and the way things are now, so do we.”
“What’s the next paragraph?”
“If you know where she is and are keeping her under cover, you’re going to get a spanking right where it’s going to hurt, and it’s going to be a nice, hard spanking.”
I said, “Okay, thanks for the tip,” and walked out.
From a booth in the building, I called the office. Bertha Cool had just come in. I told her I’d be there in about two hours. She wanted to know what was doing, and I told her I couldn’t discuss it over the telephone.
I went to the hotel. Roberta Fenn was sleeping late. I sat on the edge of her bed, said, “Let’s talk,”
“Okay.”
“This man Craig. What about him?”
“I was going with him.”
“Did you perhaps want to marry him, and he wouldn’t marry you?”
“No.”
“Were you in trouble?”
“No.”
“You knew the people he was working for?”
“Yes. Roxberry, and after Roxberry died, the Roxberry Estates.”
“Did he ever talk to you about the business affairs of the company?”
“No.”
I held her eyes. “Did he ever mention Edna Cutler?”
“No.”
I said, “You could be lying, you know.”
“Why, Donald?”
“If you and Edna Cutler were teamed up together and if perhaps the two of you framed that deal up on Marco Cutler, you might find yourself facing two murder raps instead of one.”
“Donald, I’ve told you the truth about that,”
“You didn’t have any idea papers were going to be served on you as Edna Cutler?”
“Absolutely not. I didn’t know where Edna was, I tell you. I just went in there and took her name the way we agreed, and—”
“I know,” I told her. “You’ve gone all over that before.”
I got up off the bed.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m working.”
She said, “I’m going to get some breakfast, and then go down and buy a few clothes. I feel awfully naked without a nightgown.”
I said, “You’d better stay off the streets. Have your meals served up here. Get whatever things you want in the department store across the street. Don’t do any telephoning, and no matter what you do, don’t try to communicate with Edna Cutler.”
“Why should I try to communicate with her?”
“I don’t know. I’m just telling you not to.”
“I won’t, Donald. I promise. I won’t do anything you don’t want me to.”
I said, “We’re coming back to that murder case.”
The expression on her face showed how she felt about it.
“I’m sorry, but I’ve got to take it up again. That masked figure that came walking toward the car wearing an overcoat was limping?”
“Yes.”
“When he ran away, he didn’t limp?”
“That’s right.”
“The figure was medium-sized?”
“Well, yes. Rather—I’ve thought that over a lot since then. I was excited you know at the time—but without the overcoat, I think he’d have been rather slender.”
I said, “Okay, think this one over. Could it have been a woman?”
“A woman! Why, the man tried to make me! He—”
“All right,” I interrupted. “That’s part of the gag. Could it have been a woman?”
She frowned, said, “Of course, the overcoat concealed the figure. He was wearing pants and man’s shoes, but—”
“Could it have been a woman?”
“Why, yes,” she said, “of course it could. But then he tried to make me go with him. He—”
I said, “That’s all. Forget about it. You’re certain Craig never said anything to you about Edna Cutler?”
“Why, no. I don’t know that he knew her. Did he?”
“I don’t know. I’m asking you.”.
“He never said anything.”
I said, “Okay, be good. Be seeing you for dinner. ‘By.”
Chapter Twenty
THE MAN at the navy recruiting office didn’t ask a lot of questions. He just hit the high spots and gave me a questionnaire to fill out. When I had the blanks all filled in, he looked it over, said, “When do you want your physical examination?”
“How soon can I have it?”
“Now if you want it.”
“I want it now.”
I was escorted into a back room and relieved of my clothes. They gave me the works—and passed me.
“How much time do you want to get your business straightened up?”
“Twenty-four hours?” I asked.
“Okay. Be back here at one o’clock Tuesday afternoon, ready to go.”
I told him I’d be there, and drove up to the agency office. Bertha was fuming with impatience.
“Where the hell have you been?” she demanded.
“I was in a couple of times during the morning, but you weren’t here, so I had to go ahead on my own.”
Her eyes were snapping. “What have you been doing now, wrecking the business, I suppose?”
“I hope not.”
She handed me a wire.
Congratulations to your owl. Arriving eight-thirty plane. Meet me airport.
The signature was Emory G. Hale.
“I know,” I said. “I telephoned him,”
“What did you telephone him?”
‘That I’d found Roberta Fenn.”
“I thought you said not to tell him.”
“No. It’s all right to tell him that.”
Bertha said, “The afternoon papers have headlines. Solution of New Orleans murder sought here. The paper says police are looking for Roberta Fenn. They’ve dug up the stuff about her being mixed up in the murder of Howard Chandler Craig, the guy who was killed by Rixmann, the petting-party bandit.”
“Uh huh.”
“You don’t seem surprised.”
“No.”
“Trying to pump you for information,” Bertha said angrily, “is a hopeless task. You have to pour in more than you can hope to take out. What I’m trying to tell you is that she’s hot. If you know where she is, or if you’ve hid her out, you’re going to get your fingers burned.”
“How’s the war-construction business coming along?”
Instantly Bertha went on the defensive. Her aggressive manner disappeared. She was suavely polite. “Bertha’s going to have to talk with you about that, lover.”
“What about it?”
“If anyone should ask you any questions, remember that while you aren’t familiar with the details, you’re the big executive. Bertha hasn’t been feeling well lately. I think it’s her heart, and she’s got to rely more and more on you. Bertha signed this contract. There’s some money in it, if we watch things carefully and don’t let those carpenters slip things over on us. But you’ve got to take over most of the management.”
“On account of your heart?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“I didn’t know it was bothering you.”
“I didn’t either until all the strain and excitement caught up with me. I don’t think it’s anything serious, but it bothers me.”
