Inspector Herlehy pushed a button on the edge of his desk. “At the moment, I’m interested in only one thing. I want the guy who killed that woman last night.” He broke off long enough to ask the cop who materialized in the doorway to rustle up a couple of hot coffees. When the cop had withdrawn, he said, “If I go along with you, the killer was the guy who got away last night. If that’s the case, he’s the man I want.”
Liddell nodded grimly. “So do I.”
Herlehy pulled over a pad, picked up a pencil. “You got a good look at this guy, of course?”
“A real good look.”
“Good. Let’s have him.”
“He was a little guy. Maybe five feet four or so. He was carrying a forty-five, and I remember thinking it was a pretty heavy cannon for such a little guy.” He watched the inspector note down the facts. “Had a thick head of black hair, but his most prominent feature was his schnoz. Big, and it kept running like he was on nose candy.”
“We can have B.C.I. try to get a make on him.” He read the facts over. “How about a name?”
“The driver called him Hook.”
Herlehy added that information, tore the sheet off the pad. “We can cross-check that through the nickname file.” He tossed the pencil down, leaned back. “Chances are he’s on file if his partner was.”
The door opened, and the patrolman was back with two coffees.
“Run this up to Identification, will you, Ray? Tell them I want a make on this character as soon as I can get it.”
The patrolman took the paper and left.
Herlehy pulled a container of coffee toward him, gouged out the top. “What’s going on, Johnny? Whose toes have you stepped on hard enough so they’re putting a bonus on you?”
“That business over in Jersey the other night. I lost a good boy. Tate Morrow. The guy who did it is trying to discourage me.”
“The Lane killing, eh?” The inspector stirred his coffee with his index finger. “You don’t go along with the theory that Morrow shot the girl and was killed trying to rob her?”
“What do you think, Inspector?”
“It’s not what I think, it’s what the Jersey police think. They think the case is closed. I think you’re going to have to have some pretty conclusive evidence before you’re going to persuade them to reopen it.” He looked up. “Got any suspects?”
“Plenty,” Liddell growled. He reached for his container, rolled it between his palms, warming them. “I’m going to open up all the way, Inspector. There were between a hundred and fifty thousand and two hundred and fifty thousand dollars’ worth of unmounted diamonds in that house the night she was killed. Only seven or eight thousand dollars’ worth were found. The killer got the rest.”
“I haven’t seen that mentioned in any story I read about the case.”
“You won’t, either. I can’t prove the diamonds were ever there.”
“Why not? Somebody must have known about them.”
“Somebody?” Liddell snorted. “Everybody! But nobody’s talking.” He dug the top out of his container, scaled it at the basket. “Al Murphy knows about them — he bought them for her. But he won’t admit it because he bought them from undeclared income, and he’s afraid the Man with the Whiskers will toss him in the poky for being party to a falsified return.”
Herlehy took a swallow from his container. “Who else?”
“Lou Dongan. The girl owed him a wad, and he was going to take some of the diamonds off her hands so she could bail herself out. Edmund Wiley, her husband, won’t admit he knew about them because if he gets his hands on them, he doesn’t want Uncle Sam taking his cut. And Julie Layton, Wiley’s new meal ticket, would have knocked Laury off just to be able to save the cost of a divorce for Wiley.”
Herlehy swirled the coffee in his container. “You haven’t told any of this to the Jersey cops?”
“What for? They don’t want to have any facts that will upset their preconceived solution. It’s a lot simpler for them to hang it around a dead man’s neck than to go up against a gambler like Dongan or a dame with connections like Layton.” He sipped at his coffee gloomily.
“And you think one of them got these two guns after you last night.”
Liddell nodded. “I’m sure of it. And they’re not the first. Yesterday, Dongan sent over a boy with a sap to try to improve my memory. He thought it would be cozier all the way around if I stopped trying to find the rest of those diamonds.”
“You don’t think Murphy could be persuaded to back up your story so the case can be reopened?”
Liddell grinned humorlessly. “He’s so scared he’s not even sure himself there ever were any diamonds. He’s not only scared of facing a Federal rap, but a couple of boys with guns sprayed holes through the windows of his car yesterday. Probably the same two. As far as he’s concerned at this moment, diamonds are something you see on playing cards.”
“It looks like you’re really boxed in. Isn’t there anybody else who knows about the diamonds who doesn’t have a personal stake?”
Liddell nodded. “Two people, but they can’t talk about it unless you know how to use a ouija board. They’re both dead.”
“Both? Morrow’s one — who’s the other?”
“A chorus girl named Readon. Claire Readon. She was playing house with Al Murphy, but before that she was tied up with Dongan’s partner, Mike Davey. She conveniently fell down a flight of stairs and cracked her skull open.”
“Tough break. No question of somebody helping her to fall?”
“In my mind, yes. But there were no signs of it, so the M.E. wrote it off as accident.”
Herlehy swirled the coffee around his container, stared down at it for a second. Finally he set it down on the desk, pulled over his pad. “Her name was what?”
“Readon. Claire Readon.”
Herlehy copied it down. “When and where did it happen?”
“Yesterday morning. I don’t remember the exact address, but they’ve got her up at Bellevue morgue for the P.M.”
Herlehy nodded, tossed down the pencil. “Why don’t you take a run up to Identification and go through the mug file. Maybe you’ll come across the little guy. In the meantime, I’ll have a talk with the examiner’s office and see if there was anything suspicious about the way the Readon girl died.”
Liddell finished his coffee, tossed the cardboard container in the wastebasket. “Thanks, Inspector. I don’t think there’s much of a chance that they left any traces, but it’s worth a try.”
In the corridor outside Inspector Herlehy’s office, Liddell took the open-grill elevator to the sixth floor to Identification. He pushed open the ground-glass door and walked in.
A man with a lieutenant’s badge pinned to his blue serge suit sat at a small desk, sorting a stack of filing cards. He looked up as Liddell walked in. “You the fellow from Herlehy’s office?”
Liddell nodded. “Name’s Liddell.”
The man behind the desk stuck out his hand. “I’m Michaels, in charge of this section.” He referred to the penciled notation Herlehy had sent up earlier. “We’ve got this monkey on the machines now. It’ll take a little while before we can narrow it down. Want to do some fishing in the mug file while you’re waiting?”
Liddell looked up the long line of filing cabinets, sighed. “I might as well.”
The lieutenant grinned. “It’s not as tough as all that.” He studied Herlehy’s notes for a moment. “A hired gun, eh? You thought he was on nose candy?” He looked up at Liddell thoughtfully. “That sounds like out-of-town talent. Horse is the east, Charley in the west.” He pushed back his chair, got up. “Suppose you just have a look at some of the out-of-towners that have operated here any time during the past five years.”
He led the way to a cabinet halfway down the room, ran his index fingers down three drawers. “These are known out-of-town hoods who are or have been operating here. Good fishing.”
Liddell pulled open the first drawer, started flipping through the cards. He was almost through the second drawer when Inspector Herlehy walked in.
“Any luck?” the gray-haired man wanted to know.
Liddell shook his head. “Not yet. How about you?”
“They’ve got some results on the machines. I told them to bring them in here.” He nodded toward a table against the far wall. “Come on over and sit down. I’ve got some things to talk to you about.”
When Liddell was seated, Herlehy pulled out a folded piece of paper, flattened it out on the table top. “In the first place, like a lot of other people, you jump to conclusions about cops. You should know better.” He dug a pack of gum from his pocket, offered it to Liddell, drew a shake of the head. “I’ve been talking to Sergeant Murray over at Powhatan. You told me he had the case solved already.”
“That’s the way he acted.”
Herlehy peeled a stick of gum, stuck it in his mouth. “Well, he wasn’t any more satisfied than you were. He’s been working on it ever since.” He rolled up the gum wrapper, flipped it across the table, referred to his notes. “He’s convinced that Morrow never fired the shot that killed the girl.”
Liddell brightened up. “Good. How about Tate? Did she shoot him?”
“Wouldn’t have mattered if she did. Morrow was dead when the bullets were pumped into him. Post-mortem showed a depressed fracture of the skull. Besides which, the girl didn’t fire the gun. Dermal nitrate test showed up negative.”
“A negative reaction could still show up, even if she did fire it.”
“Some guns have such a tight breech they don’t kick back nitrates, it’s true,” the inspector conceded. “But not this gun. In every test the reaction was positive.”
Liddell nodded his satisfaction. “O.K. At least the kid’s name is clear. Have they announced it yet?”
Herlehy shook his head. “Murray thinks he can work faster under cover. Don’t underestimate the guy, Johnny. Some of these small-time cops can give us both cards and spades. He’s the kind that doesn’t talk much and has nothing to say until he knows what he’s talking about.”
Liddell nodded absently. “A depressed fracture, eh?” He investigated the stubble on his chin with the tips of his fingers. “How about Claire Readon?”
Herlehy nodded. “A depressed fracture. The M.E. doesn’t throw out the possibility of violence; he just sees no evidence of it. But I know what you’re thinking, and it’s occurred to me.”
“The same method. Quiet them down with a sap and then finish the job in some other way.”
“Didn’t you say downstairs that Dongan sent a boy with a sap to pound some sense into your head?”
Liddell nodded. “A kid with a crew cut. Called himself Sammy Hodges. He didn’t look any more than twenty-five.” Liddell conjured up in his mind a picture of Crew Cut’s bulging shoulders, heavily knuckled hands. “He was big enough so that maybe if he laid that sap on you, he mightn’t know his own strength.”
The door from the corridor opened, and a technician from B.C.I. walked in. He looked around, spotted Herlehy, headed for him.
“How’d it come out, Al?” the inspector greeted him.
The technician shrugged. “Maybe we got something for you, maybe not.” He held out a typewritten sheet. “It boiled down to this. We ran the nickname file, crosschecked it with short men. That cut it down to sixteen. Only three of those sixteen were out-of-towners who use a forty-five. That’s a pretty heavy iron for a small boy. Two of the three were accounted for. One’s dead and one’s in Quentin.” He pointed to a name on the bottom of the list. “This may be your boy.”
Herlehy studied the name, frowned. “I don’t make the name.” He held it out to Liddell. “Alfred Best. Alias Hook. Mean anything?”
Liddell shook his head.
“Hey, Mike,” Herlehy called to the lieutenant. “Pull the mug shot on Alfred Best, alias Hook Best.”
The lieutenant consulted a small card index, found a code number. He walked to the row of drawers, flipped through the cards, and pulled one out. He walked back to where Herlehy sat. “This is him, Inspector.”
Herlehy glanced at the card, passed it over to Liddell. “That your boy?”
The face of the man who had held the gun on him throughout the ride the night before stared front and profile from the card. Liddell studied the features carefully, turned the card, and read “Narcotic addiction, dangerous.” He handed the card back to Herlehy. “That’s my boy, Inspector. All mine.”