Knocked for a Loop Read online

  “Italian girl,” Joe the Angel said glowingly. “Beautiful. Like this.” He made appreciative, curving gestures with both hands. “She used to be Carmena Bordreau.”

  “That’s not Italian,” Malone objected.

  “Her first husband,” Joe the Angel said, “was a rich millionaire too. He got drunk and fell out a tenth-story window and died from it.”

  Carmena’s husbands, Malone reflected, seemed to have had uniformly bad luck.

  This time conversation not only seemed to be standing still, but to have died in its tracks.

  Malone’s patience was rapidly narrowing toward its vanishing point when von Flanagan picked up the ball again.

  “That friend of yours, Helene Justus,” he remarked, very idly, “wasn’t she a great friend of Commanday’s first wife?”

  Malone stiffened. For Helene to be mixed up in this would be just a little more than he could bear right now. “I have no idea,” he said cautiously. “Helene has a lot of friends.”

  He was glad that von Flanagan dropped it at that, even if talking did help to pass the time. It occurred to him that the big police officer had been doing a lot of research about the Estapoole family. Entirely too much.

  At last, von Flanagan looked at his watch, seemed to be greatly surprised, and remarked, “By now, I should have been home over two hours ago.” He stood up.

  By now, Malone realized bitterly, Scanlon and Klutchet-sky must have finished giving the office a good going-over and be waiting downtown to report to von Flanagan.

  “Drive you home or anywhere?” von Flanagan asked agreeably.

  Malone nodded glumly. It was six of a half-dozen, he told himself, wondering if that was exactly what he meant. Anyway, either he waited here brooding long enough for von Flanagan to get safely out of the neighborhood, or else he went back to the Loop hotel that had been his home since he first opened his law office, and walked back to his office. He decided it would be simplest to go back to the hotel, through the lobby, out the side entrance, and back up to Washington Street.

  At least, that was his theory.

  A dark sedan was parked near the entrance to his hotel. The little lawyer paid no attention to it as he got out of von Flanagan’s car, waved good night, and started across the sidewalk. The sedan waited until von Flanagan had driven away and then moved up a few feet.

  A voice called, “Hey, Malone!”

  Malone turned around and took a few steps back.

  The rear door of the sedan opened, and the voice said, “Get in.”

  The little lawyer hesitated. He had important things to do, and this was no time for interruptions, either business or social. Besides, it was an unfamiliar and not too pleasant voice.

  “I said, Malone, get in!”

  Malone decided promptly that the unfamiliar voice was probably backed up by at least light artillery, and obediently got in.

  The car moved away fast. There were two men in the front seat. Malone couldn’t remember ever having seen either of them before, and he wasn’t getting a very good look at them now. But they seemed to be adequate for the occasion.

  There was a little girl beside him. He turned his head to look at her and decided right away that he wasn’t going to get along at all well with her.

  Even in the dim light of the street as they rode along, he could see that she was about nine or ten years old, skinny, deeply tanned, wiry, and probably mean. She had mouse-colored hair in braids, braces on her teeth, and a nasty look. She made a face at him and he resisted an impulse to make one right back at her.

  “Where do you want us to take her, Malone?” one of the men asked.

  “Home,” Malone said hastily. “Wherever that is.”

  The other man laughed.

  “This isn’t any time for bad jokes,” the first man said. “Don’t you know the Commanday kid when you see her?”

  Malone took a second glance at what represented a rumored hundred grand plus what the legal mind would call other valuable considerations. He wondered if the late Leonard Estapoole could possibly have been out of his mind.

  “I don’t like you,” the child said.

  “Good,” Malone said. “We’re going to get along fine.”

  “Look here,” the driver said. “We can’t drive around Chicago all night while you two make friends. She was delivered to us to deliver to you, and we’ve done it. Now where do you want us to take her?”

  “Just keep driving a few more minutes,” Malone said. “I’ve got to think.”

  Think and think fast, he told himself. The matter of Leonard Estapoole’s body on his fire escape required immediate attention. But so did the matter of Leonard Estapoole’s kidnaped stepchild. He knew that the sensible thing to do would be to drop her like a heated penny on the Estapoole doorstep. But perhaps this wasn’t the occasion that called for the sensible thing.

  He turned to her and said, “What’s your name?”

  “It’s Bertie,” she said, with just a slight touch of a lisp, and a voice like a bad-tempered mosquito. “For Alberta. My name is Alberta Commanday, and I’ve been kidnaped, and I can’t be taken home because I’ve been kidnaped, and I don’t want to be taken home because I don’t like it there anyway, and if you do try to take me home I’ll kick and scream and bite and tell everybody you kidnaped me and beat me and wouldn’t give me any food, and you’ll go to jail and be hanged by the neck until you’re dead.”

  “Shut up,” Malone said, almost absent-mindedly, and amazingly, she did.

  Yes, Alberta Commanday would undoubtedly do exactly that. And in any case, there would be an interminable amount of explaining to be done—far, far more than his limited time budget allowed. Of course, he could simply deposit her in front of her home and drive away fast.

  He turned to her again. “Where do you live?”

  “In Lake Forest,” she said promptly. “I bet you don’t live in Lake Forest. I bet you live right here in dirty, horrid old Chicago, like a lot of other dirty horrid people. I don’t like Chicago. But I don’t like Lake Forest either.”

  This time he didn’t even bother to tell her to shut up. He said, “Don’t worry, you’re not going there right now.”

  It would have to be Lake Forest, he thought unhappily, which, as far as his immediate plans were concerned, and the limited time he had to carry them out, might just as well be the Cape of Good Hope.

  Besides, it could be a wise idea to hang on to Alberta Commanday until he knew a little more of what was going on. He doubted if she herself knew much, if anything, about her own kidnaping. Certainly even less about her stepfather’s murder, and the elaborate frame-up job. But having her on hand and available could just possibly put him in a nice bargaining position, especially in view of some ideas that were beginning to form in his mind about the identity of the murderer.

  “Well, where to, Malone?” the driver asked again.

  Malone had a sudden inspiration and gave them an address that was not too far away. Ma Blodgett wasn’t going to like being awakened after midnight, but that was one of the multitude of problems that could always be solved with money.

  “You’re kidnaped,” he told Alberta Commanday grimly, “and you’ve got to keep quiet and stay where I put you. Or I’ll destroy you.”

  “I’d like that,” Bertie said.

  “Not the way I have in mind,” Malone told her.

  There was a light showing in the window of Ma Blodgett’s front room. The driver of the black sedan stopped in front of the old frame house, reached around to open the door to let them out, and then drove away without a word. A soft, warm spring rain was beginning to fall.

  Malone rang the bell and waited, holding firmly to Bertie’s small hand until Ma Blodgett appeared. She wore a gray flannel wrapper, and cold cream glistened on her heavy, still handsome face. Her thin, dyed black hair had been hastily pinned back. She looked at Bertie without much interest, and at Malone questioningly, but without surprise.

  “I don’t like you,” Be
rtie said.

  “That’s okay,” Ma Blodgett told her.

  Malone fished out the two biggest bills in his wallet, reflecting that it was fortunate that last night’s poker game had turned out so successfully.

  “Just keep her for me for a while,” he said.

  “That’s okay,” Ma Blodgett said.

  “I’ve been kidnaped,” Bertie said triumphantly. “So you’ve got to keep me.” She made a face at Ma Blodgett, who didn’t seem to notice it.

  “She has been,” Malone said hastily. “And just where I fit into things, I don’t quite know yet. But I’ve got to park her out of sight somewhere until I do find out. So you’ll have to keep her out of everybody’s way.”

  “That’s okay,” Ma Blodgett said. She steered the unprotesting Bertie toward the door.

  “You’ll hear from me,” Malone called to her.

  He went down the steps, drawing a deep breath of relief. At least that problem was oiï his hands for a little while. He hoped that disposing of the other and more important problem was going to be anywhere near as easy.

  He went down the street trying to find a taxi and thinking the whole thing over. What had started out as a simple little frame for murder had now developed into a very complicated frame indeed. First the victim of murder turned up on his hands. Now he was stuck with the victim of kidnaping.

  Suddenly he had the disquieting thought that Jake and Helene Justus might be somehow involved in all this. Von Flanagan had dropped Helene’s name just a little too offhandedly. And they had an unfortunate—well, he had to admit, sometimes fortunate—habit of getting involved in just such situations. But neither of them, his two best friends, would set out to implicate him, deliberately, in murder and kidnaping.

  Then he remembered that they were far away in Wyoming and immediately felt much better about that aspect of things.

  But not about the other. It was, he could see, all part of some carefully worked out and obviously elaborate plan that he didn’t understand yet and wasn’t going to like in the least when he did.

  There was the disheartening fact that someone not only wanted to murder Leonard Estapoole—which was not surprising; from what Malone had heard, any number of people might have—but that someone had wanted to involve, and doubly involve, Malone. Even to the extent of, after having carefully built up the frame, planting the rumor that he was to make the deal on the kidnaping, and finally, getting a tip direct to von Flanagan’s office that Leonard Estapoole had been murdered in Malone’s office. Or perhaps the tip hadn’t been planted that way, only that there was to be a payoff. But von Flanagan was head of Homicide and kept to his own department. The little lawyer turned the whole thing around and around and tried to look in every possible window, but found nothing but darkness.

  Perhaps, through von Flanagan, he could trace the source of that tip. But not until he’d arranged for the safe removal of Leonard Estapoole’s body from its present resting place.

  He had walked nearly a block down the deserted and dimly lighted street before he began to feel that he was not alone. Pure imagination, he told himself, and the soft, whispering sound of the rain falling everywhere. He began to walk a little faster. If there actually were footsteps behind him, he told himself sternly, it didn’t have to mean a thing. He just didn’t happen to be the only person who was out late, that was all.

  He walked still faster, somewhat reassured by the fact that there were street lights shining just a little way ahead of him now. And if the person behind him was walking faster too, why it only meant that person was in a hurry. No, it didn’t mean a thing, and it was nothing to worry about.

  He whirled around suddenly to face his pursuer, just as the sound of footsteps came close behind him.

  It was too dark, and everything happened too suddenly for him to see his assailant’s face. But even as he started to fall, he knew that he would recognize the fist that had struck him, even if he met it in his dreams.

  CHAPTER 3

  It was a long time before Malone even tried to figure out where he was. At first, he was too occupied trying to figure out how he was. It seemed to be a matter of opinion whether he was alive or dead, and if alive, whether or not he would ever be able to move again.

  He opened his eyelids several tentative times before they agreed to stay even partly open, moved his head once or twice experimentally, and finally decided it wasn’t going to come completely off and go bouncing around by itself.

  The room he was in was an unpleasant one, little and dingy and grayish, with the irreducible minimum of furniture, an unwashed window, and a two-month-old calendar on the fly-specked wall.

  A streetcar went clanging by outside. Malone winced and closed his eyes again. He had a feeling that the next time he opened them the whole room would begin to spin in perfect rhythm with his complaining stomach.

  Suddenly memory returned in a horrifying rush and he sat up on the bed, wide awake now. The room spun only for a moment or two, and he realized that it was one in a very cheap hotel. He pulled himself up, made his way to the battered dresser, and looked apprehensively in the tarnished mirror. He wasn’t the least bit pleased with what he saw.

  It wasn’t just that he needed a shave, and badly, but that the unshaven face showed distinct signs of considerable wear and tear. There was a very small mouse under one bloodshot eye, a bruise on his chin, and a small cut on his puffed lip. His suit was something that would have been scorned not only by a cleaning and pressing establishment but would have been turned down by any self-respecting old-clothes drive. His Sulka tie was a miserable and irreparable ruin, and there was a combination of blood, rainwater stains, and old mud on his handmade shirt.

  The sudden realization that bright daylight was streaming in through the dirty window took his mind completely off the badly damaged image in the mirror.

  He walked hastily to the window and looked out. There were vaguely familiar landmarks outside. Madison Street. West Madison Street.

  But how had he gotten here?

  He felt anxiously through his pockets. Yes, everything was intact, including what little money he had left after paying Ma Blodgett last night.

  Action was obviously called for, but just exactly what action, and in what direction, was something he couldn’t quite figure out just yet. He looked at his watch and groaned. It was nearly seven.

  Well, at least he might be able to find out how he’d gotten here, and then what had been happening while he had been, so to speak, away from it all.

  He brushed off a little of the mud, ran a comb ineffectually through his tangled hair, tried to straighten his demolished tie. Then he went down a flight of stairs to a dingy little lobby and made highly discreet inquiries at the desk.

  A bleary-eyed clerk grinned wickedly at him and said, “You must have had a wonderful time!”

  “I’m sure I did,” Malone said. “And how did I get here, and how much do I owe you?” He hoped it wasn’t much.

  The clerk said it was two dollars, and that a friend had brought him in late last night. No, no particular description of the friend. He hadn’t paid much attention. Would he recognize him again? Well, he might, and then again, he might not. He couldn’t be too sure about it.

  Malone thanked him and went out into a morning that was bright with spring sunlight and sweetened with a hint of tomorrow’s summer in the soft wind that managed to reach all the way in from the lake, but dismal with the forebodings of the day ahead. That brief encounter in the dark and deserted street had cost him vital time, and he didn’t need to have a reminder shouted at him that that had been its purpose. Nor that the purpose had undoubtedly been accomplished long before now.

  He paused at a corner cigar store and telephoned his office experimentally. An unfamiliar male voice answered. Malone hung up without speaking and went unhappily on down Madison Street. Its frowzy citizens were just beginning to crawl, dispirited and filmy eyed, out of flophouses and alleys, and his encounters with them cost him, rough
ly, two dollars in small coins.

  He stopped at the next corner cigar store and tried another experiment, this time calling his hotel. He recognized the voice of George, the desk clerk, and said very cautiously, “Mr. Malone?”

  George’s voice said promptly, “Mr. Malone isn’t in. There are several gentlemen here waiting for him.”

  He thanked George politely for the warning and hung up fast. Then for a few minutes he stood, trying to think and wondering if the morning newspapers already carried an unflattering front-page photograph of him as a wanted man.

  He went on out to the street, glancing casually at the newsstand. No, there was nothing yet. But any edition now, there would be. He hoped it wouldn’t be the one taken of him years ago in the McJackson trial.

  The brief pause on the sidewalk cost him another quarter, and he decided it would be cheaper to do his thinking in a taxi.

  The first and immediate problem was rest, a bath, a shave, fresh clothes, a lot of food, and a comfortable place in which he could keep out of sight long enough to decide what to do next. He considered Ma Blodgett’s and gave up that idea in a hurry. He had enough worries this morning without teaching Alberta Commanday good manners. If Jake and Helene weren’t in Wyoming, his problem would be no problem at all. But they were, and that was that.

  John J. Malone, Chicago lawyer, wanted for murder and kidnaping. Well, he’d seen worse things happen to plenty of his friends in the past, and he’d always known exactly what to do. This time, when he himself was in the same situation, he didn’t have as much as the faintest hint of an idea.

  But it was a leadpipe cinch he couldn’t go riding around in a taxi for the rest of his life.

  Then another and even more difficult problem hit him. He suddenly realized that after paying the hotel bill, making two telephone calls, and providing eye-opener money for assorted citizens of West Madison Street, he didn’t have taxi fare to practically anywhere, let alone for riding around and thinking.