Johnny Liddell's Morgue, page 1
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A DELL FIRST EDITION
Johnny Liddell’s
MORGUE
by Frank Kane
a division of F+W Media, Inc.
Contents
LEAD ACHE
FRAME
RETURN ENGAGEMENT
THE DEAD GRIN
A PACKAGE FOR MR. BIG
A GAME OF MURDER
MORGUE-STAR FINAL
GORY HALLELUJAH!
A Real Gone Guy
Also Available
Copyright
LEAD ACHE
THE BIG CAR SWAYED as it rocketed down the narrow concrete road. Its headlights groped for, finally picked out the entrance to a dirt path that meandered off to the right through a clump of trees.
The driver swung the car off the state road, and the hum of the tread on the concrete was replaced by the squash of the soft mud as it sucked at the tires. Larry Jensen sat huddled in his corner of the back seat, squinted through the darkness at the man who sat next to him. His eyes dropped from Madden’s face to the metallic glint of the .45 he held cradled in his lap.
“Where are we going, Lew?” Jensen hoped the other man couldn’t hear the pounding of blood being trip-hammered through his brain by the loud beating of his heart.
“What’s the difference where you’re going? You’re not coming back.”
Jensen licked his lips, made a stab at sounding unimpressed, didn’t even fool himself. “You’re bluffing. You couldn’t get away with it.”
Madden grunted, dug into his pocket, came up with a cigarette and hung it from the corner of his mouth. He snapped on a lighter, held it to the cigarette. In the light of its flickering flame, his black-button eyes squinted at Jensen. His face was thin, pinched. A scar that ran down the side of his cheek to the corner of his mouth lifted the end of his lip in a perpetual snarl. “You mean you’re going to stop me?” He snapped the lighter off, blew a stream of smoke into the other man’s face. “You newspaper guys don’t know when you’ve had it, do you?”
“You can’t kill a reporter, Madden. You should know that.”
“Hear that, Maury?” Madden called up to the driver. “What happens when I empty this gun in your belly, sucker? You figure to get up and walk home?” He roared at his own joke, was joined by the man in the front seat.
“If you think the exposé will stop when you knock me off, you’re crazy,” Jensen lied desperately. “I left all the evidence in a safe place. They’ll pick up where I left off and bust the racket wide open.”
“And what’ll we be doing all that time? Standing by and letting them?” Madden leaned over, jabbing the muzzle of the .45 into the reporter’s side. “When they find you, they’ll get the idea. And if they’re hard to convince, we’ll keep convincing them. Until they do lay off.” He grinned. “Can’t kill a reporter, huh?”
“Maybe you’ll get a couple of us,” Jensen said. “But don’t get the idea that’ll stop them. The ones that’re left won’t stop until they strap you into the hot seat.”
The big car slowed to a stop. The man in the front seat swung around. “We’re here, Madden.”
The gun prodded Jensen in the ribs. “This is where you get off,” Madden told him.
Jensen felt his knees turning to water, struggled to get them under control. “That’s all I have to say,” he finished.
“You never said a truer word, pal,” the driver said.
Madden motioned for the reporter to open the car door, shoved him out. Jensen stumbled, fell to his knees in the mud. Madden stepped out, grinned down at him. “Just to show you I’m a right guy, I might give you a break, at that.”
“I’m not asking for any breaks from you.” Jensen’s white face glinted damply in the half-light.
“How do you like that, Maury?” Madden asked the driver. “I want to give the guy a break, he gets nasty.” He looked back to Jensen. “I’m going to let you run for it. A guy with a lot of wind like you might even outrun a slug.”
Jensen pulled himself to his feet. “I’m not running. Anything I’m getting, I’ll take now. It should be a new experience for a rat like you not to plug a guy in the back.”
The corner of Madden’s mouth twitched upward. His finger whitened on the trigger. The big gun roared four times. The slugs hit Jensen in the middle, folded him over. He clasped his hands across his stomach; his knees buckled under him. He sank to the ground like a deflated balloon, his face plowing into the mud.
The usual clamor of the city room of the Dispatch had hit a new low when Marty Cowan, the managing editor, walked in. He picked his way through the organized confusion of the desks, but didn’t stop for his usual banter with the men and women who sat in front of typewriters of varying ages and vintages, and passed by the copy boys without his usual greeting. He headed for the frosted glass door at the end of the room, disappeared through it.
Barbara Lake got up from her desk, walked up to the slot where Jim Kiely stood talking to the copy men, who were halfheartedly slashing time copy to size. “What’s it all about, Jim?” she asked.
Jim Kiely shrugged. “Marty phoned, said he wanted the whole staff on deck at eleven.” He looked at the clock on the far wall. “It’s just about that now. He’ll probably let us all in on it together.” Kiely was a lean man with a shock of gray hair, keen gray eyes, sharp inquisitive features.
Barbara pursed her lips, frowned. “You wouldn’t be holding out on me, would you, Jim?”
Kiely pulled a battered briar from one pocket, a leather tobacco pouch from another. He dipped the bowl of the pack it with the tip of his index finger. “Marty knows more about it than I do. Suppose you let him tell it.” He looked up as the frosted glass door opened and Marty Cowan stepped out. “Better sit down, Babs. You’ll be able to take it better.”
The blonde walked back to her desk, perched on the corner of it and crossed her knees.
Marty Cowan stood at the front of the room, looking around. “Everybody here, Jim?” he called over.
The city editor nodded. “Everybody but a few district men. They won’t figure in it anyway.”
The managing editor raked his fingers through his hair, seemingly undecided where to begin. “I’ve got some bad news,” he told the crowd. Immediately an excited hum filled the room. Cowan held his hand up for silence. “No it’s not that. The paper hasn’t been sold, and nobody’s going to lose his job. It’s worse than that.”
The murmur began to die away. When there was silence Cowan said: “One of our staff’s been murdered. Taken for a ride. I’ve just come from identifying him at the morgue.”
“Who?” Barbara Lake asked out of the stunned silence.
Cowan half turned. “Larry Jensen,” he said. “He was found an hour ago in a mudflat in Jersey with four .45 slugs in his belly.”
A mutter of anger rumbled through the room. Cowan again silenced the crowd with a gesture. “That’s not the worst of it. Larry wasn’t dead when they left him. The medical examiner told me his lungs were full of muddy water.”
“Who did it?” somebody yelled above the hubbub.
Cowan shook his head. “We don’t know. Yet.”
“What was he working on, Marty?” Barbara Lake asked.
Cowan consulted the sheaf of assignment sheets in his hand, shook his head again. “Just routine stuff, as far as I can see. Nothing that was likely to put the heat on him.” He turned to Jim Kiely. “You have him on anything special, Jim?”
Kiely chewed on the stem of his briar, shook his head. “Strictly routine stuff.”
Cowan turned back to the crowd. “Any of you know about anything he was working on in his own time?” He waited, looked from face to face around the room, but drew nothing but blank stares, negative shakes of the head. He took a deep breath, then nodded. “If any of you think of anything that might give us a line on who murdered him, bring it right to me.” He turned on his heel and walked back into his office, slamming the frosted glass door after him.
There was a momentary shocked silence, and then the excited roar took over again. The news and feature men broke into small groups, the clatter of teletypes and occasional ringing of phones ignored.
Barbara Lake sat on the corner of her desk, dug into the depths of her handbag, came up with a cigarette. She lit it, took one puff, and removed it from her lips, studying the carmined end with distaste. She stubbed it out, hopped off the corner of her desk and walked over to where Jim Kiely sat behind his desk, smoking glumly.
“What are we going to do about Larry, Jim?” she asked. ‘The paper, I mean.”
Kiely shook his head. “Everything we can.” The juice rattled noisily in his pipe-stem. “Which isn’t very much, I guess. We’ll just have to leave it to the police.”
Barbara laughed. “The heck with the police. This is our job. Larry was one of us.”
“Be sensible, Babs. What can we do that the police can’t? They’ve got 18,000 trained men — ”
“Yeah, but those 18,000 trained men have a million things on their minds. We’ve on
“Where are you going, Babs?”
She stopped with her hand on the knob. “You going to stop me?”
Kiely grimaced. “I guess we’ll have to do without our star reporter for a while. But what are you going to do?”
“That depends on what Cowan is going to do, Jim,” she said. “Larry Jensen was a reporter. If the rats who killed him get away with it, I’ll be ashamed to let anybody know I’m a newspaperwoman. If Cowan doesn’t know how to go about getting the killers, I know a guy who does.”
The cab dropped Barbara Lake in front of an old brownstone building in the heart of a Brooklyn residential section. There was no indication that there might be a restaurant anywhere in the block, other than the oversized garbage cans in the areaway of the house in front of her. Luigi didn’t need a sign to advertise. His customers knew their way, and he couldn’t handle any more business.
The blond reporter handed a bill to the cabby, walked to the decorative iron grille leading to the basement apartment. She pushed a small button alongside the door and after a moment the door creaked open. A large, amply proportioned Woman filled the doorway.
“Miss Barbara,” the woman in the doorway said warmly. “Your friend been waiting for you a long time.” There was a flash of teeth in the gloom. “The way you look, he’s not going to mind waiting, I can tell.”
“I’m sorry to keep you up so late, Seraphine,” Barbara said, taking the big woman’s hand. “I’ll bet Luigi’s half crazy.”
The fat woman grinned again, shrugged. “It’s nothing. Luigi, he sleeps. He snores, so Seraphine cannot sleep anyhow.” She squeezed back against the wall to let Barbara slide past her, then locked the grilled gate. After Barbara, she waddled from the vestibule into a basement room that had been enlarged by breaking through the walls to make one huge dining-room. At the back was a large, old-fashioned wood-burning stove, and scattered around the room were a dozen wooden tables with bright-checked tablecloths.
“I leave some manicotti and some veal on the stove. You help yourself, eh?” Seraphine asked. “You don’t mind if I go to bed?” She waddled to the stairs, climbed them with a loud puffing and snorting.
Johnny Liddell was at a corner table, on his third glass of Chianti when Barbara walked in. She crossed the room, bent over, covered his lips with her soft mouth. “Hope I haven’t kept you waiting too long, Johnny.”
“I’m getting used to it.” He grinned up at her, got up from his chair and helped her out of her long, loose-fitting coat, draping it over the back of the chair.
She was a few inches shorter than his five-eleven. Her long blond hair was caught in a soft bun at the nape of her neck, and the tight-fitting green sweater made no attempt to conceal her assets.
“What’s it all about?” Liddell wanted to know.
“I’ve got a job for you.” She slid into a chair, waited while Liddell poured some wine into her glass. “The Dispatch is picking up the tab on it.”
Liddell nodded. “What kind of job?”
“I want you to find a killer. One of our boys was murdered tonight.”
Liddell whistled soundlessly, dropped into his chair. “Anyone I know?”
“Larry Jensen.” She reached over, picked up the pack of cigarettes from the table in front of Liddell, shook two loose. “They shot him four times through the stomach and left him to drown in a mud puddle in Jersey.” She shivered.
Liddell watched while she lit the two cigarettes, accepted one. “A ride, right? Any ideas?”
Barbara shook her head. “None. Neither have the cops. That’s why Marty Cowan wants you to take it on. He said to tell you the sky’s the limit. We want that killer, and we want him bad.”
“How come Cowan didn’t come along with you?”
Barbara took a deep drag on her cigarette, let the smoke drift from between half parted lips. “He doesn’t want to figure in it. If possible, he doesn’t even want the police to know who hired you.” She picked up her wine, sipped at it, studied Liddell over the rim. “There is one catch in the deal.”
“It figures,” Liddell said. “What?”
‘The Dispatch wants a first-person exclusive from you when you break the case. That’s where I come in. I’ve been detached from assignments to work with you on it.”
Liddell nodded. “Okay, star reporter. Start working. You knew this Jensen: fill me in.”
“I don’t know where to begin;” Barbara said.
“What was he working on? Was he stepping on any of the mobs’ toes? After all, if somebody took the trouble to drive him over to Jersey and cool him off, he must have done something to somebody.”
Barbara shook her head. “If he did, it didn’t show. We went through all Larry’s assignments for the past three weeks. It’s all routine stuff.” She reached for her bag, dug into it, came up with a typewritten sheet. “He did a couple of interviews in connection with that charity premiere of the new Gregory Peck picture. Covered the opening, too. Nothing there.”
“Not unless he also reviewed the picture,” Liddell commented.
Barbara looked down the typewritten list, shook her head. “A feature on the Missing Persons Bureau a couple of weeks ago, two screwball interviews — a guy who makes leg pads for Shakespearean actors — ”
“Leg falsies, yet,” Liddell said.
“ — the manager of a shop on Madison that features men’s girdles.” She looked up, passed the list to Liddell. “See for yourself. Nothing there that would tie in with — murder.”
Liddell looked over the list, flipped the paper onto the table. “He had no regular beat?”
“No. He worked something like me. The desk gave him a pretty free hand — He was one of those guys who could do the tongue-in-cheek stuff. He came up with some dillies.”
Liddell took a deep drag on his cigarette, blew a thin collar of ash from its end. “But he gets himself knocked off by a pro,” he said. “Got anything else on him?”
Barbara shook her head. “We went through his desk. Just the usual collection of junk.” She dug into her bag and came up with a set of keys. “He kept a spare key to his car and apartment in his drawer. I thought you might want to have a look around before the cops get to it.”
Liddell bounced the keys on the palm of his hand, sniffed the aroma from the pots on the stove appreciatively. “That gives us just enough time to dig into the manicotti and veal Seraphine left on for us.”
Larry Jensen had lived in an old brownstone house on West Fourth Street in the Village. It was in a block filled with similarly weather-beaten brownstones that had been converted into fashionable apartments.
Johnny Liddell climbed the high stoop, found the vestibule door and tried it. It was locked. He jammed the key in, opened the door, stepped inside. The glass-covered apartment register said that Larry Jensen lived in 3D.
Liddell climbed the carpeted stairs in the inner hall to the top floor, found 3D to be one of the two rear apartments. He tried the knob, found the door locked, then used Jensen’s spare key to open it.
The apartment beyond was in darkness. He slid his hand along the wall, found the switch, spilled a bright yellow light into the room. He walked through the apartment, satisfying himself that it hadn’t been searched. The door to the service entrance in the kitchen was locked.
There was little of interest in the living-room. The desk drawers yielded the usual jumble of papers, canceled checks, galley-proofs and clips of stories bearing Jensen’s by-line. All of them were in the innocuous, lighthearted vein, with the broad touch of satire that was Jensen’s trademark.
The clothes in the bedroom closet gave little more: ticket stubs, scraps of paper with smudged pencil notes, a few tickets marked Great White Way Dance Palace — Good For One Dance, another clipping of a Jensen story dealing with the Missing Persons Bureau. Liddell read through it quickly, transferred it and the rest of the things to his own pockets.
Suddenly he tensed. There was the unmistakable sound of a key being fitted into a lock, somewhere in the apartment. Quickly, he doused the bedroom light, pulled his .45 from its shoulder holster. It was too late to try to reach the living-room lights.
