The morgue of the Dispatch was in the basement of the building. It was the final resting place for dead speeches, forgotten celebrities, lost reputations, and buried crimes. Its walls were lined with shelves containing more books than most public libraries, ranging from the World Almanac to the Old Testament. The clippings themselves were filed in rows of metal cabinets in heavy Manila envelopes that contained not only the name of the subject, but cross references to others who had been involved with the subject.
The reference portion of the room was separated from the outer section by a chest-high railing with a counter top. Outside, three long library tables were placed in a row from one end of the huge room to the other.
Keeper of the morgue was Les Ryan, a wrinkled old former legman and feature writer on the Dispatch. The actual filing and cross filing was done under his direction by a trained staff of librarians, but Les was in complete charge because of his encyclopedic memory and his intimate knowledge of the people and the events that bulked out many of the thousands of Manila envelopes filling the file drawers.
He was leaning on the counter staring vacantly into space when Muggsy and Liddell walked in. He grinned her a welcome, raised his hand in a greeting.
“Well, well. If it isn’t Muggsy. You’ve been neglecting old Les. You haven’t been down to see me in a long time.”
“How could I, you old fraud? You know I was serving out a term in Hollywood.” She pretended to shudder. “That comes under the head of unjust and inhuman punishment, believe me.”
The old man winked at Liddell. “Johnny and I sure missed you. Things got real quiet and peaceful around here.” He cackled gleefully. “Guess you want the stuff on Dongan and Layton and them?”
Muggsy nodded, waited while the old man piled four huge Manila envelopes on top of the counter. He pushed over a pad, and she initialed a slip acknowledging receipt of the folders.
“Tough about Laury Lane,” Les commented conversationally. “Used to be quite an actress. Remember her in radio?”
Liddell raised his eyebrows. “I didn’t know she was in radio.”
Les nodded. “That’s maybe ten, twelve years ago. I was getting pretty old for city side, and Jim Kiely put me on the radio column just to justify paying me a salary.” Les denuded a stick of gum of its wrapper, rolled it into a ball, stuck it between his teeth. “She was the queen of nighttime radio back then.” He frowned at the ceiling, shook his head. “Must be longer than ten years. Seems like she was riding high about the time Orson Welles was doing the Shadow. That’s closer to fifteen years.”
“Live and learn, I always say,” Muggsy nodded. “I took for granted Laury Lane had always been in the theater.”
The old man’s jaws macerated the wad of gum. “That’s where she came to tie with Al Murphy. He was the sound man on the Sweetheart Hour when she was the star. First thing you know, he gets to be a producer, and Lane wouldn’t do a show unless he was in the control room. Always thought they’d get married.”
“But they didn’t?”
The old man grinned, shook his head. “Murph is too smart an operator to mix business with romance. He had a good thing when he signed Laury to a management contract, a real good thing. You’d have to be blind not to spot that she was headed for the top. Even back then.”
“All that in the files?” Liddell demanded.
“Some of it, not all. After all, back in those days, columns didn’t go into what color underwear the stars wear like they do today. All we did was report the news, not the gossip.”
“Thanks, Les.” Liddell picked up the envelopes, carried them back to one of the big tables. “Let’s try Laury first.” He spilled a pile of clippings on the table, riffled through them with his index finger. “Just the stuff that might have some bearing on this case and the people involved.” He picked up the Manila envelope, read the cross checks. “Doesn’t look like there’ll be too much, but let’s have a look.”
A half hour later, Muggsy Kiely brushed the hair from her forehead with the side of her hand, leaned back in her chair. “You got anything?”
Liddell shook his head. “Nothing earth-shaking. Les was off a few years. Laury was riding high in radio in 1934, twenty years ago. There’s a stick here on Al Murphy taking over as her manager in 1937. How about you?”
“Just the junk on her marriage to Wiley. He was a juve lead in one of her shows. She took the show on the road because she had a Hollywood deal, but it didn’t work out too well. Married him in California in 1950.” She picked up a Broadway column clipping. “Wallace started hinting at trouble in 1952. There were also a couple of half-veiled references to the fact that Wiley was spending her money faster than she could make it.”
“It fits with the picture Murph painted.” He picked up the file marked “Edmund Wiley” and dumped out a small pile of clippings. While Muggs was replacing the “Lane” file, he started picking the older clips at random. “Hey, Muggs, you know this Wiley guy. How do you have him pegged?”
Muggsy finished replacing the clips on Laury, shrugged. “A panty-waist. A born gigolo. He was strictly a no-talent guy. Ever seen him act?”
Liddell shook his head.
“Absolutely no talent at all. He got by on those big moist eyes and the thick curly hair. A typical gigolo.”
“Dangerous?”
Muggsy snorted. “About as dangerous as a slap on the wrist, I’d say.”
“Then you’d be wrong. Don’t let that baby face fool you. He was doing time before he was fifteen.” He flipped a yellowed clipping across the desk. “Stabbed some kid with a shiv during an argument.”
He went through the rest of the clips methodically, shook his head. “That’s about it. The usual cross references to the Lane stuff that we’ve already covered.”
“That makes him a very active contender for the suspect most likely to end in the electric chair, doesn’t it?”
Liddell pursed his lips. “It doesn’t help eliminate him, that’s for sure. He had the motive and now we know he’s no stranger to violence.”
“How about the opportunity?”
“Layton will make sure that he’s well alibied. No, this case is lousy with alibis. What we’ve got to do is decide who did it and then break the alibi.”
“Oh? That’s all? And here I was thinking this was going to be tough with witnesses conking out on us and all. All we have to do is find a killer, then crack his alibi?” She shoveled the clippings back into the envelope. “You know? There’s something we’ve overlooked.”
“What?”
“Maybe none of this gang did it. Maybe somebody just walked in off the street and pulled the job. Think of all the leeway that gives us. We have millions of possible suspects.”
Liddell ignored her, turned his attention to the Julie Layton file. The clippings dated back to the early thirties when a Juliana Layton was arrested for disorderly conduct arising out of a speakeasy brawl. The clippings traced a career dotted with similar arrests with a history of suspended sentences or acquittals in the majority of the cases. There had been few or no clippings on her for the past several years. Fruitlessly, Liddell tried to build a connection between either Laury Lane and Julie Layton or Edmund Wiley. There was none evident.
He was reaching for the Mike Davey file when the phone behind the railing started to shrill. Old Les picked it up, signaled to him.
“Your office, Johnny.” He laid the phone down on the counter, went back to his chair and paper.
It was Pinky, Liddell’s secretary. “You just got a call from Al Murphy. He wants to see you.”
“Important?”
“He thinks so. Somebody just tried to kill him.”
Liddell grunted. “Has he reported it to the police?”
“No. And he isn’t going to. He’s scared four different shades of green. He wants to talk to you. He’ll be up here in fifteen minutes. Can you make it?”
Liddell checked his watch. “A couple of minutes one way or the other. I’ll leave here in five minutes. Hold him until I get there.”
Muggsy was hopping with impatience. “What’s happened?”
“We almost lost another witness. The most important one.”
“Murphy?”
Liddell nodded. “He called the office. Says someone tried for him. I’m meeting him in fifteen minutes.”
“You think he’s ready to spill?”
Liddell considered it, shook his head. “I think they’ve really thrown a scare into him this time. He hasn’t told the police and doesn’t intend to.”
“What are you going to do?”
Liddell shrugged. “Work on him. Maybe if they can scare him, I can scare him even more. One thing’s a cinch. We can’t get this thing into the open until we can prove that almost a hundred and fifty grand in stones is missing. And right now, Murph is our only hope.”
Al Murphy had aged ten years in the space of a couple of days, Johnny Liddell decided when he walked into the office. His hair was rumpled, there were discolored sacs under his eyes, and he was smoking with short, jerky puffs. He started visibly as Liddell opened the door, sank back when he recognized the private detective.
“What the hell’s going on, Liddell?” he wanted to know. “You heard about Claire? She’s dead.”
Liddell nodded. “I heard.”
“And now me. They’re out to get me.”
Liddell circled the desk, dropped into his chair. “It figured, Al. I warned you. As long as there’s anybody around who knows about that fortune in diamonds, they can’t stop.” He picked two cigarettes out of the humidor, tossed one to the big man, who chain lit it from the butt he cradled in his palm. “What happened?”
Murph ran the heel of his hand along the side of the jaw, made a visible effort to get himself under control. “Right in broad daylight it happened. They’ll stop at nothing, Liddell.” He returned the cigarette to his lips with shaking hand. “Right in broad daylight.”
Liddell got his cigarette lit, nodded for the agent to continue.
“I was driving in from Powhatan. I had to go out there to make arrangements for Laury. I’m halfway back when this car starts to pull up on me. At first I didn’t think anything of it, then I realized they had been waiting for a deserted stretch. I tried to pull away, but it was too late. There were two men in it. When they got along side of me, one of them fired two shots through my side window. I was so scared, I jerked the wheel and went off the side of the road. They kept right on going.”
“Pretty close call. And you’re not going to report it?”
Murphy shook his head stubbornly. “I’ve got enough trouble without begging them to knock me off.”
“Where’s your car now?”
The puffy eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Why?”
“I want to take a look at it. We may get some idea of the caliber and the kind of gun. Maybe there’s even a slug laying around we can hold for comparison. You haven’t done anything to the car?”
“Just rolled down the windows so the bullet holes wouldn’t show.” He took a deep drag on his cigarette, crushed it out. “You wouldn’t have a drink?”
Liddell brought a bottle of bourbon from his bottom drawer, set it on the desk. “Water and paper cups over there.” He pointed to where a water cooler stood humming to itself in the corner.
Murph walked over, drew three cups, half filled one with water. Then he poured himself a stiff slug of bourbon, added a touch of water. “You don’t mind?” Without waiting for an answer, he tossed off the drink. He poured some more bourbon into his cup, dropped into his seat. “Liddell, you’ve got to lay off.”
“You’re not forgetting I have one of my boys lying on a slab, are you?” Liddell reached for the bottle, poured a drink. “I lay off when I think Tate can rest easy.”
“That’s crazy. He’s dead. What good’s it going to do him for a lot of other people to have to die? Maybe if you’d left things alone Claire would be alive and I wouldn’t be on the run.”
“You told Dongan I was out to get the killer, didn’t you?”
Murph wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Yeah. When you were here that night, I told you it was the Powhatan police calling. It wasn’t. It was Dongan. I had to call him back as soon as you left.” He drained his paper cup, crumpled it into a ball, threw it at the wastebasket. “He told me what would happen if I involved him in the mess.”
“How did he know anything happened? The cops hadn’t gotten to you yet.”
Murphy shrugged. “You mentioned his name to that hick cop out there. He wanted to see Dongan in the morning.”
Liddell raised his eyebrows. “Murray’s more thorough than I thought. So Dongan’s been questioned, eh?”
“He has an iron-clad alibi, and you know it. He was aboard that plane of his at the time she got it.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “Even if he did do it, I can’t spill. They’d have me as an accessory to Lane’s tax evasion. I was her manager and made out all her returns.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“It’s up to you, Liddell. Either you’re going to lay off and get the killer off my back, or I’m going to have to go underground.”
“Do you want an answer to that?”
Murphy looked desperate. “Look, Liddell, for God’s sake, be reasonable — ”
“I’ll tell you just what I told Dongan over the phone. I’m going to bust this wide open and I don’t care who gets hurt. Someplace along the line, the killer must have made at least one mistake. That’s all it takes. Just one mistake.”