“PICK me up at the corner of St. Charles and Audubon Place,” the typed lines read. “We will then reach an agreement which will suit both of us. I will wait for you from 11:00 to 11:15 Tuesday night and at the same time Wednesday if you cannot be there Tuesday. But this will be the one and only payoff. I’m not afraid of you and you have nothing on me. I only wish to avoid a scandal.” There was no signature.
I studied the note. Obviously the writer was an educated person and also obviously there was a threat contained in the lines. More obviously, the cabbie had been out to collect blackmail in some form.
I looked at the woman. “Well?”
“I found that note in Joe’s pants. He’d changed before going out to work that night.”
“Yes?”
She looked embarrassed. “I just thought maybe Joe had something on somebody and the person may have been trying to buy him off. Cab drivers see and hear a lot of things people wouldn’t expect them to notice.”
“There’s more to it than that,” I said, beginning to get interested. ‘What’s the rest of it?”
“We-e-ll, Joe told me to stop worrying about bills. He said he’d found a way to get a lot of money. I begged him not to get in trouble with the police, but he just laughed. He said he couldn’t get in any trouble on this deal because of what the papers would do.”
“Even so, I don’t see how I fit the picture. He’s dead, the papers or police can’t hurt him now. Or anyone else he had a deal on with.”
“You’re a reporter, aren’t you?”
I nodded. “Yes, but I—”
“Well, then why can’t you find out who might be mixed up in a big swindle or a robbery or murder? Then we could find out who wrote that note and who it was Joe went to meet that night he got killed.”
I stared in amazement.
“What do you take me for? A miracle worker or a fortune-teller? I’m only a reporter, not a detective or a crystal gazer!”
Her shoulders drooped. “I suppose it does sound crazy. But I was afraid to take this to the police.”
“Look here, don’t be afraid of the police,” I said earnestly. “You take that note straight to Tommy Gross, he’s chief of detectives. Tell him your story. Tell him I sent you. He’s a grand guy and I know hell do all he can to help you. Will you do that?”
She nodded unconvincingly and stood up, her whole bearing one of utter defeat. I knew she’d never go to Tommy.
“Wait a minute,” I stopped her. “Where did your husband drive from and what were his hours?”
“He drove extra shifts for the Yellow Cab company and most of the time he hauled from the Bienvenu hotel. But he often just rolled in behind the next cab at the nearest station to one of his trips.”
A feeling of excitement stirred in me.
“The Bienvenu! Then he could have been working the hotel the day they found Dr. McGowan’s body! Was he? Did he mention it to you?”
“Dr. McGowan? Oh, him. But a woman killed him. No woman killed my Joe.”
“I’m not so sure of that! A woman possibly killed that Chinese nurse and smacked me on the head with a poker. Suppose she had been in your husband’s cab and somehow he knew what she’d done? Do you think she’d stop at killing him? She could have taken the jewelry to make it look like robbery.”
She shook her head uncertainly.
“You come with me while I go talk to my boss,” I decided. “If he’ll let me off I’ll take you to see Tommy. Okay?”
She nodded and followed me out of the lunchroom.
I took her up and introduced her to Dennis, telling him I wanted to take her to headquarters to see Tommy.
“Go ahead,” he growled. “You’re no salve to my eyes anyhow. Go on and stir up another hornet’s nest for yourself. You’re the one to get stung.”
I grabbed the woman’s arm and beat it.
We found Tommy in his office. I told him the story and gave him the note. He read it and told her she should have turned it in right away.
“I was afraid it would make Joe look like a blackmailer,” she said in a low voice. “He wasn’t really one.”
Tommy bit back a smile and tucked the note in his vest pocket.
“I’ll keep this and get in touch with you later,” he told her.
“Tommy, her husband hauled fares from Ned’s hotel. Do you suppose he might have got hold of something that gave him a lead on those murders? Cab drivers get to know a lot of people by sight, you know.”
He shrugged. “It’s an angle to consider,” he said. “I’ll let you know if it leads to anything.” His nod was a dismissal and I led the woman out of his office.
“You see?” she asked bitterly. “He didn’t care. He wasn’t even interested.”
“You don’t know Gross the way I do,” I assured her. “He’s interested.”
We got in my car and I asked where I could take her. She gave me an address in a shabby down-at-the-heel section uptown near the river. I drove to a small, ashamed-looking house.
“Won’t you come in?” She didn’t expect me to accept, but impelled by curiosity and something else deeper, I got out and followed her.
Inside the house was painfully neat and the furniture surprisingly good.
“I had most of these things when I got married.” She seemed to read my thoughts. “I’ve had to sell some pieces but I haven’t brought myself to let these go yet.”
“That chair is very good,” I said awkwardly, indicating a rosewood arm chair.
“Yes.” She pushed it toward me. “Won’t you sit down a moment?”
“I should be getting back to work,” I said, but I sat down.
There was a picture of a couple standing on the mantel, a handsome man and a pretty girl. It was hard to accept the fact that the girl was the drab woman sitting opposite me. A large snap of a man in riding breeches was tucked in the corner of the picture frame. I got up and studied the snap.
I thought: I’ve seen him before—but where?
Again she read my mind. “That’s Joe. Did you know him?”
“I’m not sure,” I said uncertainly. “I’ve a feeling I’ve seen him somewhere.”
“You saw him in the morgue,” she reminded me.
“I didn’t mean that time. I may have ridden with him. I’ve seen him like he was in this snap, smiling and dressed just like tnat.”
“He worked in breeches and boots,” she said, then asked, ‘Won’t you have a drink?”
“Drink?” I repeated stupidly. “No. No thanks. I better get back to work.”
“I mean a good drink,” she said quietly. “Not bathtub gin or corn. This is good Scotch. Joe had connections and he sold it to the boys in the hotels. There are still a few bottles around. I’m afraid to try and sell them.”
I hesitated then accepted. She went to the kitchen and came out with two glasses filled with Scotch and water.
“I hope you don’t mind if I join you,” she said. “I feel like a drink might help me. I haven’t had one since Joe died.”
“Why should I mind?” I asked in surprise. “It’s your home and your liquor, isn’t it?”
“I know. But I’m only a murdered taxi driver’s wife.”
I felt uncomfortable. “Don’t get to feeling inferior!” I said somewhat tartly. “What difference does it make what he was? You’re the one who counts now. By the way, what did you do before you were married?”
She brightened. “I had a good job as a supervisor for the telephone company. I was the youngest full super working there.” There was pride in her tone. “Then I met Joe and three months later we got married. He didn’t drive a cab then and he made good money—plenty to live and keep a nice home and save some too.”
“What did he do?”
“He was a trouble shooter for the company. You know, repairing broken lines and such.”
“What happened? He didn’t quit that to drive a cab, did he?”
“Oh no. He got hurt in an accident out at the airport and it left him slightly crippled.”
“Fall from a pole?”
“No. It was during that big storm a couple of years ago. Lines were blown down at the airfield and Joe got the job to go fix them. He’d started across the field when a plane tore loose from its moorings and struck him. It broke both of his legs and one hip. The doctors had to take bone from his left leg and it made it shorter than the right one. It wasn’t very noticeable but he couldn’t climb any more and they gave him a desk job. He’d always worked with his hands, so he didn’t last long on a desk. After he left the company he took a job driving a cab.”
“Cab drivers don’t make much in this town now that they put on the city limit rates,” I said thoughtfully. “I suppose it took all your savings to pay his sick bills?”
“No. The man who owned the runaway plane paid them and the company paid his wages all the time he was laid up. It wasn’t bad even after he first went on the cabs. Then they made that city rate limit and he took to bootlegging. Then he got killed.”
She sat staring at the wall, dry-eyed and tense.
“He didn’t tell you anything about who he might be getting that dough from? Not even a hint as to whether it was a woman or a man?”
She shook her head. “Joe changed a lot after the accident—it made him bitter and surly. He stopped telling me anything. I wouldn’t have known he was selling whisky if he hadn’t stored the stuff here.”
“In that case it’s a wonder he said anything about expecting the money.”
“He wouldn’t have if I hadn’t been almost frantic about bills we owed. I was crying and Joe told me to shut up and stop worrying, he was going to get enough dough to pay all the bills and have plenty left over.”
“So he got killed instead.”
She nodded. “I had a feeling he’d get in trouble, but he just laughed at me and told me to stop nagging at him. When I kept after him he got mean and finally he hit me. He’d never done that before. Never.”
“Of course you realize that he must have been planning on blackmail,” I said. “I know it isn’t a nice thing to say but it’s the only answer.”
“I suppose so,” she said miserably.
I stood up and got ready to leave. She went to the door ahead of me and I slipped a folded twenty-dollar bill on the small table near the door.
She held out her hand. “Well, thanks for helping me.”
“I’m afraid I haven’t been much help,” I said wryly. “All I did was listen to you talk.”
“That often helps more than people imagine.” She smiled and again I was struck by the change it made in her looks.
“Listen to me,” I told her. “You’ve plenty of living to do. Get yourself fixed up in a beauty parlor and buy a decent dress, then go get a job. Will you do that?”
“On what? Of course I can sell something—”
“Maybe Santa will send you a present in advance!” I drove off feeling like Santa and rosy with the sense of having done my good deed for the day.
When I got back to the city room Dennis was one jump ahead of a fit.
“You’ve been gone three hours!” he exploded at me. “Where in hell were you?”
“You told me to get out of your sight,” I said frigidly. “I’ve been listening to another woman’s troubles.”
“You’ll have troubles, financial ones, if your salary stops,” he snorted. “Get over to the Roosevelt hotel and interview Rudyard Kipling. He just got in from Brazil.”
I departed in haste to interview the man whose poetry and prose I’d loved all my life. We had a grand talk and I pleased him by reciting some of his poems. He rewarded me with two double strength highballs of Irish whisky and a signed copy of Barrack Room Ballads.
I went back to the office walking on air, with all thoughts of violence and murder temporarily erased from my mind. I handed in my story and relaxed in my chair until Dennis found something for me to do. My thoughts drifted back to murder and violence and the feeling that I’d missed something, some small thing that might be the piece that opened the key to the puzzle, came back to plague me and wipe out the glow induced by whisky and Kipling.
A bellow from Dennis brought me back to the present and I looked up to see Fred McGowan standing by the city desk. I went over to them.
“Mr. McGowan wants to put up some dough to catch his brother’s killer,” he said. “You get the dope for the story from him.”
I took Fred over to my desk, his resemblance to Ned giving me a slightly weird feeling. I thought: No one should ever kill a twin and leave the other one walking around to haunt people!
“Go ahead,” I invited. “What have you in mind?”
“I want to offer a reward, but you’ll have to help me word it. I’ve no experience with this sort of thing.” His mouth was set grimly.
“Okay. How much do you want to offer and for what information?”
“Five thousand dollars for any clue or information that will lead to the murderer.”
“Whew!” I whistled. “Nice bait.”
“Word it so it will be understood that anyone who turns up this clue will get the money. If it takes several different informants, they will all share in the reward. All we want is the guy who did it.”
“Don’t you mean girl?”
“Guy or girl. It doesn’t matter what sex.”
“I suppose you know you’re letting yourself in for a lot of crank calls,” I told him.
“I don’t care about that. Maybe one of the cranks will have the key to the whole thing.”
“Key? Oh, of course. I was thinking about the other keys that figured in this case.”
“What keys?”
“Oh the maid’s key that wouldn’t unlock the door and the master key that did, and the keys to the drug cabinet and the one to that apartment in the Quarter.”
“I see. Who has that apartment key, by the way?”
“The police, I imagine.” I hastily stuck a piece of paper in my machine.
I wrote along, asking questions as I needed information. He wanted the notice to say that anyone having anything to report was to call either him or the paper. I told him he’d have to settle that with Dennis first.
“I have settled it,” he told me. “He said it was okay to run it that way. I’ll pay all expenses such as out-of-town calls.”
“Advertising in a newspaper for a murderer,” I muttered. “A new wrinkle.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Nothing,” I answered. “How long is this to run?”
“Until we catch whoever killed Ned.”
I refrained from expressing the opinion that it was more money than Ned was worth, dead or alive, and thought of Miss Cheng. If it helped avenge her killing it was well worth the five grand.
I gave him the finished copy, he read it and took it over to Dennis. Then I checked out.