Mute Witness, page 9
Clancy fingered the billfold, his smile fading, his forehead wrinkling. If Stanton said there was no identification, then there wasn’t any. But such complete anonymity was hard to understand, particularly in a man who carried his identification on his face. Not even a spare pair of shoes, or even a clean shirt—or even a pair of socks for a change. Sockless Johnny Rossi, Clancy thought; first-baseman on the San Quentin Nine.
He studied the billfold once again, and then tucked the money back into place, slid the wallet into the envelope and the envelope into the center drawer. Later it would have to go into the safe, but that was later. No help there in any event. No help anywhere, he thought bitterly; maybe if I weren’t so bushed I could see something that’s probably right in front of my nose. A good night’s sleep would probably do more toward solving this case than a hundred clues.
The phone rang again, breaking into his thoughts. He reached over, picking up the receiver, stifling a yawn.
“Yes?”
“Lieutenant; there’s a man here says he wants to see you.” The Sergeant hesitated, his voice dropping. “It’s Pete Rossi.”
Clancy sat up, his eyes narrowing in thought, his weariness falling from him. “Send him in.”
“Your sandwich is here, too.” The Sergeant sounded stymied. “Should I hold it until you’re free?”
“Send that in, too. He’s seen a man eat before.” He hung up and scratched his jaw thoughtfully. He suddenly realized he needed a shave. A shave, and a new suit, and about two days sleep, he thought. And the answers to a lot of questions if I’m ever going to clean this up in twenty-four hours. Or a month of Sundays.
A policeman appeared at the door, entered, and laid a paper-wrapped sandwich and a cardboard container on the desk. As he left, his place was taken in the doorway by a man in his late forties, impeccably dressed, but with the tough uncompromising face of a professional hood that no amount of prosperity could disguise. A three-hundred-dollar suit draped neatly over the wide hulking shoulders, and a fifteen-dollar Sulka tie managed to encase the bullneck. An older and tougher edition of the man at the Farnsworth, Clancy thought; the family resemblance was strong. The stocky man stood in the doorway, looking over the small room. His tiny eyes skimmed the battered desk and the scratched file cabinets; took in the dismal view from the window. His lip curled.
Clancy reached over, pulling the sandwich, closer, beginning to unwrap it. He looked up at the other, his eyes expressionless.
“Come on in,” he said. “Sit down.”
Rossi pulled a chair from the wall, drew it up to the desk, and lowered himself into it. He looked about for a place to set his pearl-gray fedora and then apparently decided that his knee was probably the cleanest place. Clancy suppressed a smile at the obvious gesture, and tugged at the top of the cardboard coffee-container. The tiny eyes across from him stared at him, reptilian and hard.
“Well,” Clancy said, picking up the sandwich and bringing it halfway to his mouth, “What can I do for you?”
“Where’s my brother?” The voice was grating, harsh; it sounded as if something had happened to the vocal chords, and that speech might even be painful.
Clancy munched awhile and then sipped coffee. He grimaced; the coffee was cold and, as usual, tasted like oily cardboard. His eyes came up, studying his visitor calmly.
“You’ve got the wrong department,” he said evenly. “The Lost-and-Found is down the hall.”
The jaw across from him tightened ominously.
“Don’t get cute with me, Lieutenant! Not with me. I’m not one of your local bums; I’m Pete Rossi. Where’s my brother?”
“What makes you think I know?”
A manicured hand, hairy and hard as marbles, waved in the air. Light winked from an outsized ring on the little finger. “Don’t give me any crap, Lieutenant. I just got through talking with Chalmers in the D.A.’s office. Where is he?”
“And what did Chalmers tell you?”
“You know what Chalmers told me. Where’s Johnny?”
Clancy took another bite of the sandwich and chewed it slowly. It tasted terrible. He swallowed and set the sandwich to one side with a frown, looking up.
“Did Chalmers also happen to tell you that somebody took a shot at your brother with a shotgun? And didn’t miss?”
“Yeah, he told me. But he also told me it wasn’t anything serious.” The heavy hand on the desk clenched into a fist. “He also told me you took him out of the hospital and stashed him away somewhere, Lieutenant. I want to know where. And why.”
Clancy dropped the remains of the sandwich into the wastepaper basket and pushed the coffee-container away distastefully. He should have ordered buttermilk—cardboard couldn’t ruin that. And you would think that being in business ten years a restaurant would learn how to make a simple ham on rye. He reached into a pocket, brought out a cigarette, and lit it, staring at his visitor curiously through a cloud of smoke.
“How long have you been here in New York, Rossi?”
“Look, Lieutenant. I came here to ask questions, not to answer them.”
“Answer this one.”
There was something in the Lieutenant’s hard eyes that brought the other man a sudden awareness that he was in a police station. “Couple of days. Why?”
“And what are you doing in New York? Things too dull for you out on the west coast?”
“I come up to take in some shows.” The gravel voice was expressionless. “I like to look at tall buildings. Come on, Lieutenant. Quit stalling. Where’s my brother Johnny?”
“What made you get hold of Chalmers?” Clancy asked.
Despite the look in his eyes, his voice seemed to contain nothing but innocent curiosity. “Do you always look for your brother at the D.A.’s office when he gets lost?” His voice suddenly hardened. “Or was it the other way around? Did Chalmers get hold of you?”
The small eyes set in their puffy pouches crinkled contemptuously. “Lots of rumors floating around this town, Lieutenant. I got ears.” The faint smile disappeared as suddenly as it had come, replaced by a black frown. “Well? Where is he?”
“Tell me something,” Clancy said idly, relaxing, his eyes fixed on the lazy spiral of smoke rising from his cigarette. “This blasting; this gunning down of your brother. What’s your idea about that?”
The face across from him might have been carved from marble. “A mistake,” Rossi said, his voice rasping. “I figure it was a mistake.”
“What do you mean, a mistake? Do you mean mistaken identity? Or do you think somebody figured they were in a shooting-gallery and mistook Johnny for a pin-wheel? Or a duck?” Clancy smiled gently at the other. “Or maybe a pigeon?”
No muscle moved in the gross face. “A mistake,” Rossi repeated.
“I agree with you,” Clancy said equably. “But on whose part?”
Rossi leaned over the desk. “Look, don’t bother your head about that, Lieutenant,” he said intensely in his grating voice. “We’ll find the guy that did it and we won’t need any fly-cops to help us, either. We settle our own beefs in the Rossi family. We handle our own grief.”
Clancy lifted his eyebrows.
“You overlook the fact that somebody shot him, and shooting a man is against the law,” he said easily. “That naturally means the police are bound to get involved. But there’s one more point…” His eyes held the other’s. “I hear that the Rossi family may not be so big anymore. I hear that maybe they can’t handle all the grief they’ve got.”
The small eyes tightened into pinpoints. There was a moment’s silence.
“You hear wrong, Lieutenant. Let’s cut out all this chatter.
Where’s my brother Johnny?”
“I told you,” Clancy said patiently. “You’re in the wrong department. Try the Lost-and-Found.”
Pete Rossi eyed the lined, tired face across from him a moment, and then heaved himself to his feet. His huge hands held the gray fedora across his stomach.
“Speaking of mistakes, you’re making one right now, Lieutenant.” He spoke as softly as his harsh throat would allow. “A big mistake. I’ve got friends.”
“I’m sure you have,” Clancy said, looking up at the heavy face. “And I’m sure they have shotguns…”
Pete Rossi opened his mouth and then closed it. He returned Clancy’s stare evenly, his face expressionless. “A cop. A chintzy low-pay fly-cop. In my book you don’t even rate a beat out on Staten Island.” He turned towards the door.
“Don’t be bitter…” Clancy began, but he was talking to an empty room.
He swung about, staring out of the window, his mind busy trying to analyze the possible implications of Pete Rossi’s visit. The line of socks drying on the clothesline waved gently in the afternoon breeze, as if offering friendly consolation on the obscurity of his problem. Sockless Johnny Rossi, Clancy thought, grinding out his cigarette in the ash tray. Sockless Johnny Rossi, bat-boy on the Purgatory nine…
Chapter Six
Saturday—3:20 P.M.
“Lieutenant? Stanton’s on the line.”
“Good. Put him on.” Clancy shoved aside the report he had been working on and leaned back, waiting. The switchboard clicked. “Hello, Stan?”
“Hello, Lieutenant.”
“Where are you?”
“Back at that same drugstore on Columbus where I met you this morning. Mary Kelly is across the street from the apartment, watching. She’s busy jabbering with a couple of old hens down there; my hunch is they’re probably forming a committee to stop stick-ball playing on the block. I can see everything from here.”
“And?”
“And I’m going to get a bite to eat as soon as I report. I haven’t had time to eat yet, even.”
Clancy stared at the telephone. “Forget your stomach for a minute. Where did she go? The blonde?”
“Oh.” Stanton took a deep breath. “Well, she headed right for the New Yorker Hotel with no stops in between. She had the cab drop her at the 34th Street entrance, and then she practically ran inside. I parked in the taxi-loading space there and flashed my badge when the doorman tried to give me a hard time. Anyway, I left the heap there and hustled inside just in time to see this blonde stepping into an elevator. The door closed before I could catch up with it—I knew I couldn’t take a chance of losing her, so I went over to the phones where I could watch the elevator she took, and called in and asked the Sergeant to send somebody out to give me a hand, and he said he’d send Mary Kelly…”
“Get on with it,” Clancy said impatiently.
“Well, I had to hang around the lobby where I could watch the elevators; I couldn’t even go over and question the elevator-operator that took the blonde upstairs, because they got two banks of elevators there, and I was afraid if I went over to this operator, see, she might come down the other bank in the meantime, so…”
“For God’s sake! Get on with it!”
“So I figured as soon as Mary Kelly came I could check on the operator, but before she came this Renick woman comes down a different elevator—which proves I was right—and heads for the mail-desk…”
Clancy frowned. “The mail-desk?”
“Yeah. She heads for the mail-desk and talks to one of the clerks there for a few seconds and then this clerk hands her an envelope. And she shoves it into her purse and pulls out another one and hands this other one to the clerk. A smaller one…”
“Hold it!” Clancy thought a minute and then snapped his fingers. “Of course! Sure!”
“Of course what?” Stanton was puzzled; then light dawned.
“Do you know what was in those envelopes, Lieutenant?”
“I can make a pretty good guess,” Clancy said. “Steamship tickets. That’s why she was so long a time leaving her apartment this morning—I thought it shouldn’t take her that long to dress.” Things were falling into place. “She was telephoning the travel agency, telling them to leave the tickets for her at the hotel. And she left an envelope with either money or a check in it for payment, to be picked up.” He nodded in satisfaction and returned his attention to Stanton. “Then what?”
“Steamship tickets?” Stanton asked, mystified. “What steamship tickets?”
“Skip it; it would take too long to explain. Just tell me what happened at the New Yorker.”
“Well, O.K. Anyway, I’m standing there trying to look like an out-of-town buyer, or a ballplayer or something, and hoping Mary Kelly would hurry up and get there because I wanted to go over and ask the clerk at the mail-desk about those envelopes, and maybe even get a gander at the one this Renick dame left there, when all of a sudden she swings around and heads for the street and I don’t know whether to sweat or stink because she heads out the Eighth Avenue entrance and I’m parked around the corner on 34th Street, and I figure I’ll probably have to leave the car and take a cab and Mary Kelly will wonder where the hell I am, but for once we were lucky because she walks to the corner and around on 34th Street and gets a cab there and I hop into the car and just then Mary Kelly finally shows and I don’t have time to talk or brief her or anything, so I figure the New Yorker will just have to wait and I drag Mary Kelly into the car and take off, and we trail her back here.”
“Take a breath,” Clancy said. “Did she make any stops on the way back?”
“No,” Stanton said. “The thing she did was to have her cab ride her around Central Park for about a half-hour, but she didn’t stop or get out or anything. That’s what took all the time.” He hesitated. “And, Lieutenant, you ought to get a good mechanic to take a look at that car. You’ve got a piston slap you can hear a mile.”
“I know,” Clancy said. “Is that all?”
“That’s it. She went back into the apartment house and Mary Kelly is down the block yakking with a couple of old ladies and keeping her eye on the place, and I’m in here telephoning to you. And then I figure on getting a sandwich and a cup of coffee.”
Clancy had been thinking during this last discourse. Now he leaned forward, gripping the phone.
“Forget your stomach; you’ll eat later. You tell Mary Kelly to watch the place; I’ll get somebody over there right away to work with her. You get back to the New Yorker. I want to know what floor she got off at, and then you check the floor-maids or anyone else, and see if you can find out what room she visited. And if you can’t, see if you can find out what floor at least and check at the desk on everyone on that floor. Check on the names Renick, Randall, Rossi…”
“They all begin with ‘R’?”
“So far,” Clancy said. “As a matter of fact, that’s a thought.
Bring me a list of everybody registered on that floor. And then go down and see if the mail-clerk remembers anything about that envelope—the one the blonde picked up. Maybe it had a business address in one corner, or something. And if the envelope she left there is still there, bring it in. If they try to give you an argument about it, let me know. And if it’s already been picked up, see if the clerk remembers the name on it, or at least who picked it up—what he looks like.”
“Anything else?”
“That’s all I can think of right now. Do you have it?”
“I have it. I’d rather eat, but I have it,” Stanton sighed.
Another thought struck him. “By the way, Lieutenant; did you get that billfold I left in your drawer?”
“I got it That was the works?”
“Everything. I never see a guy so clean in my life. I don’t know why I didn’t notice it when I was in the room with him. He didn’t even have a fitted case or one of them little bags for a razor. He didn’t even have a toothbrush. He didn’t even have a spare pair of socks.”
“Which simply means,” Clancy said thoughtfully, “that he never intended to stay there until Tuesday.” His eyes narrowed. “Maybe he didn’t even intend to stay until today.”
“You mean he was going to blow?” Stanton was shocked.
“Owing me better than sixty bucks?”
“It’ll teach you not to gamble,” Clancy said. “I warned you.
He probably had more important things on his mind.”
“Yeah,” Stanton said. “He looked it. Well, I better get back to the hotel.”
“Do that,” Clancy said. “And call in.”
“Right.” The phone went dead. Clancy held the receiver, clicking the bar up and down until the Sergeant cut into the line.
“Sergeant, who do we have around who’s free?”
“Quinleven’s here.”
“Good. Get him over to No. 1210 West 86th Street on the double. In a car, in case Stanton took mine, piston slap and all. Mary Kelly’s there, across the street, on a stake. She may need help. He can check with her—she’ll fill him in.”
Clancy set the telephone down and swung around in his chair, his mind busy, trying to fit together everything he had learned since the case began. Facts he had, and more coming in all the time, but none of them made any sense. None of them linked with any of the others. He sighed. Maybe when Kaproski called in, maybe when he had even more facts, the thing would lock up. He shook his head in disgust at himself. Maybe you’ll solve it, he thought sourly, when somebody walks in and lays a signed confession on your desk.
He bent back to his report.
Saturday—4:40 P.M.
“Lieutenant? Kaproski’s on the line.”
“Good.” Clancy laid down his pen and rubbed the back of his neck. He tried to square his shoulders in an attempt to ease the tightness there. “Kap?”
“Hi, Lieutenant.”
“Where are you?”
“Over on Broadway right now; uptown. Corner of 108th and Broadway.” Kaproski sounded discouraged. “How long you want me to keep riding this merry-go-round?”
“No luck?”
“Nothing.” Kaproski sighed. “Lieutenant, I’ll bet I’ve hit about a jillion travel agencies today. I’ve been as far south as Columbus Circle and as far north as Cathedral Parkway, 110th, a couple of blocks up from here. Where they only handle passage to and from Puerto Rico. And I bet I didn’t hit more than half of them. I just tackled the biggest ones first.” Kaproski was aggrieved. “You have any idea how many travel agencies they got in this town? Boy! If they had half as many passengers as they got agencies. New York City would be empty this summer.” He thought about that. “And I wouldn’t cry if it was.”
