Masters of Noir: Volume Two Read online

  But there was the factor of her alibi—if it was one. I'd heard at least a hundred different suspects tell me the same tale. That walk through Central Park, with stop-offs at the zoo and lake and park bench, had worn pretty thin over the years.

  Ben Muller came through the door, carrying a pink petticoat. “Take a look at this, Pete,” he said.

  The petticoat was of nylon, with about six inches of lace at the bottom. It seemed to be new, but there were two large rents in the lace, and the nylon itself bore at least a dozen creases that extended almost the entire length of the garment. When I held it loosely across my forearm, the petticoat bunched itself together from top to bottom.

  I glanced at Janice Pedrick. “This yours?"

  She nodded.

  "You wad it up like this?"

  "No. It—it was hanging over the back of a chair when I left the apartment."

  "Looks like we might have something,” Ben said.

  The girl frowned at the petticoat, and then at Ben. “What do you mean?"

  "It could have been used as a garrote,” Ben told her. “If someone grabbed it by each end, and pulled it taut, it would stretch out into a kind of rope. If you looped it around someone's neck, and tightened it up, and kept it there long to cause asphyxia, it would leave lengthwise pleats in the material—just like the ones it has in it now."

  I handed the petticoat back to Ben. “Hang on to this,” I said. “Maybe we can book it as evidence, if things fall that way. How's the doc making out?"

  "He said he couldn't do anything more until he got the guy to Bellevue. I told him he could take the body. Okay?"

  "Sure. You get a receipt for it?"

  "Yeah.” He took out a handkerchief and sponged at the back of his neck. “Hot in there, and the stink would make a goat sick."

  I turned back to Janice Pedrick. “This friend of yours—this Leda Willard—do you think she'd be home now?"

  She looked at her watch. “I don't think so. She goes to work at five."

  "Where?"

  "She works in a jewelry shop, down in the Village. It's not a regular store. The man she works for makes all his own things. It's just a tiny little place. He's been teaching Leda to make jewelry. She always liked doing things like that."

  "How come she goes to work at five?"

  "The store stays open until midnight. Leda just has a part-time job, and the only reason she works at all is because she wants to learn enough to start her own shop someday."

  "What's the name of this guy she works for?"

  She gave me the name—Carl Dannion—and an address on Christopher Street.

  I put the notebook back in my pocket and gestured for Janice Pedrick to step back inside.

  "That reminds me,” she said. “I'll have to be leaving for work myself pretty soon."

  "Not tonight,” I told her.

  "What do you mean?"

  "I'm afraid we'll have to ask you to spend a little time at the station house."

  I had expected something of an explosion. She surprised me. All she did was glare at me a little, and then she shrugged and walked past Ben and me and into the apartment.

  "You'd better call for a car, Ben,” I said. “Turn her over to a matron, and let her think about things a while. Maybe a couple of hours down there will make her feel more talkative."

  "You don't want me to question her?"

  "No. Just let her stew a bit."

  "And then what?"

  "Get a set of the dead guy's prints and take them down to BCI. See if they can give us a make on him. While they're checking, look up the tailor that made his slacks and the guy who made his shoes. Either one of them could probably give you a fast make—provided you can get hold of them."

  We stepped into the apartment. Janice Pedrick was combing her hair before a yellowed mirror over the sink.

  "Where'll you be, in case I want to contact you?” Ben asked.

  "I'm going down to the Village."

  "Hell, I figured that much. I mean afterwards."

  "I'll check in at the station house as soon as I can. You do the same."

  "All right."

  "How do you feel."

  "Sleepy."

  "Yeah. Same here.” I walked to the front door, then turned. “Just lock the place up when the tech boys finish,” I said. “I don't think we need to leave a stakeout."

  He nodded and crossed over toward Janice Pedrick.

  5.

  It was a little cooler in the Village, and much quieter. I went down four shallow steps and turned into the Dannion Custom Jewelry Shop. Janice Pedrick had been right about its being tiny. There was room for a very small showcase, a workbench, and not much else. The man who came up to the counter was in his late fifties, a very thin, scholarly looking man with pince-nez and a spade beard.

  "Is Mrs. Willard here?” I asked.

  "No. I'm sorry, but she hasn't come in yet. May I help you?” He had just a trace of accent, but I couldn't identify it.

  I took out my wallet and showed him my badge. I couldn't have got much more reaction if I'd showed him a live rattlesnake. His face blanched and his forehead suddenly began to glisten with sweat.

  "Are you with the FBI?” he asked.

  "You didn't take a very good look at my badge,” I said. “No. I'm a city detective."

  He seemed to relax a bit, but not too much. “What can I do for you?"

  "Do you know where Mrs. Willard is?"

  He shook his head.

  "She didn't call in to say she'd be late for work?"

  "No, sir."

  "You know any of her friends?"

  "No, I'm afraid I don't."

  "You ever see her with a very small man—a guy with a broken nose?"

  "No, sir. I've never met any of her friends. I've never seen her with anyone at all."

  "Not even her husband?"

  "No, sir."

  I put my wallet back in my pocket. I was curious about why Dannion had become so upset when he saw my badge, but I had no justification to question him about it. His personal guilts and fears were his own—unless I discovered later that they were connected in some way with the job I was on.

  "I guess that's all, Mr. Dannion,” I said. “Thanks very much."

  "Is Mrs. Willard all right, sir? If she's in any trouble ... That is, she's a very fine young woman, and if I can be of any assistance ... “

  "She'd be glad to hear that,” I said. “But this is police business, Mr. Dannion. I can't discuss it with you."

  I went up the steps and climbed into the RMP car and headed back uptown toward the Bayless Hotel.

  6.

  At the Bayless, I discovered Leda Willard and her husband had checked out at eleven o'clock that morning. They'd left no forwarding address, but they had left a considerable amount of clothing. The manager had ordered this stored for them, under the assumption that they would contact him later with instructions for forwarding or other disposition.

  I got a thorough description of both of them and went back to the station house.

  Ben Muller was waiting for me. He'd taken the dead man's prints to BCI, but BCI hadn't been able to match them with any in its files. The man's slacks, it seemed, hadn't been tailor-made after all, which meant that tracing them would take some time. And the bootmaker who had made his shoes had since closed his shop and gone to Europe.

  I sent Ben over to the Paragon Hotel to start checking Janice Pedrick's alibi, and then I called Harry Fisher, a very good friend of mine who had once been a middleweight contender and was now writing a sports column for one of the tabloids. He knew everyone connected with the prizefight game, retired or active. I asked him if he'd go to Bellevue and see if he knew the dead man. He said he would be glad to. I gave him the phone number of the squad room, and asked him to leave a message if he should happen to call while I was out.

  Then I got Headquarters on the phone and asked them to put out an alarm for the apprehension of Leda and Eddie Willard, and gave them the descr
iptions I'd got from the hotel manager. I asked for a run-through of the records to see if they had anything on either Willard or his wife, and then gave them Janice Pedrick's name and description and asked for a run-through on her as well.

  I had Headquarters switch me to the police laboratory and asked for a report from the tech crew that had worked the murder apartment with Ben and me. They had found several sets of fairly clear fingerprints, but none of the prints had checked out to prints already on file. They were still working, and would call me as soon as they came up with anything.

  I was reasonably sure the assistant M.E. wouldn't have had time to autopsy the body yet, but I called him anyway. He said that he had not been able to get the autopsy scheduled before ten o'clock the next morning, that he had tried to pull a few wires to get to it before then, but had been unable to work it.

  I called the policewoman who had been with Janice Pedrick since her arrival at the station house. The policewoman said Janice had been an easy girl to talk to, but a difficult one to get anything out of. She reminded me she had a reputation for indirect questioning, and that if anyone got anything out of Janice it would be she.

  I put the phone down, left a note in the message book to the effect that I would be back in twenty minutes, and went down to a restaurant on Fifty-third Street. I had two roast beef sandwiches and three cups of black coffee, and then went back to the squad room.

  There was a note to call Harry Fisher on an extension at Bellevue Hospital. I called, and he told me that our dead man's name was Teddy Connors. He said Connors had been a pretty fair featherweight in the middle 30's, had retired with all his brains and most of his money, and had since taken an occasional flyer as a fight manager and promoter. Harry had seen him around only now and then in recent years, though he had once been a steady customer of the various bars around Madison Square Garden and St. Nicholas Arena.

  I thanked Harry, made a tentative date for lunch the first day both of us had a free hour, and then called BCI back again. I gave them Teddy Connors’ name and asked for a run-through.

  While I was waiting, I walked to the next room and searched the cards in the Eighteenth's Known Resident Criminal File. These are the cards kept on file in the precinct where the criminal lives, no matter where he was arrested. It has his picture, his record, and the date his parole is up. In the event he was arrested with other individuals, these individuals’ names are listed on the back of the card. But there was no card for Teddy Connors.

  I'd put off the paper work as long as I could, but now I sat down at a typewriter and filled out a Complaint Report form as thoroughly as I could, at this stage of the investigation, and then did the same with the other routine forms.

  When I finished with the forms, I had gone as far as I could go. I had almost dozed off staring at the typewriter, so I went down to the corner and brought back a quart carton of black coffee.

  I was sipping at it when Ben Muller came in.

  "Any luck?” I asked.

  "Maybe she took a walk, maybe she didn't,” he said. “She checked out of the hotel when she said she did, but that's as far as I got.” He reached for the coffee and drank steadily until he had finished a good half of it. “You want me to talk to her, Pete?"

  "Nope. Let her think a while longer."

  He shrugged. “Suits me.” He sat down at his desk and put his head down on his arms. “Don't wake me up unless I inherit a million bucks, Pete."

  The phone on my desk rang. It was Tom Volz, of the Tenth.

  "We got something for you, Pete,” he said. “Eddie Willard."

  "Where'd you grab him?"

  "We didn't. He walked in."

  "The hell!"

  "Sure did, Pete. About two minutes ago. He says he won't talk to anybody but you. That's fine with us. We got our own troubles."

  "We'll be there before you can hang up,” I said.

  "What's the deal?” Ben asked.

  "They've got Eddie Willard, over at the Tenth."

  He stood up, yawning widely. “Fine. Maybe we'll get to bed some time this year after all."

  7.

  The boys at the Tenth gave Eddie Willard and me the rear interrogation room to talk in. Willard had said he wouldn't say a word if anyone else was in the room with us, and I'd left Ben shooting the breeze with Tom Volz. Neither Willard nor I sat down. He was about my height, but a lot thicker-bodied. He had a lot of dark hair and restless dark eyes that never seemed to blink.

  "I'm going to give you this fast and hard and all in one piece,” he said. “I've heard of you a lot. I think I'll get a clean shake."

  I nodded. “What's on your mind, Mr. Willard?"

  "I heard a rumble you were looking for Leda and me. I would have turned in up at your precinct, but I didn't want to take a chance on getting tagged by some other cop before I got there."

  "Where's your wife, Mr. Willard?"

  "I'll get to that. First I want to tell you that I'm doing this to save my own hide. No other reason. I've done a lot for Leda in my time, and now I'm through.” He paused a moment, biting at his lip. “Here it is, the whole thing. I just found out about Leda this morning, see? I've been married to her eight years, but I never knew until this morning just what a rotten woman she really was. The only reason I found out then is because she was scared crazy. She didn't kill Teddy Connors, you understand. But she'd been fooling around with him, over at Janice Pedrick's dump and all."

  "Did she have any part in the killing?” I asked.

  "Not exactly. Bucky Sullivan killed him. Here's the way it went. Leda was working for a guy down in the Village, a jeweler. This guy was trying to make time with her, and she kind of led him on because he slipped her a few extra bucks now and then. Anyhow, this guy—Dannion, his name is—had been knocking down on his income tax. Every time someone paid cash for something, he'd stash the money in his safe. God knows how long he'd been putting it away, but one night he got half crocked and told Leda about it. He said there was twenty thousand in the safe—and when she didn't believe him, he showed her."

  I lit a cigarette and leaned up against the edge of the table. I didn't say anything.

  "Well, Leda had been fooling around a lot with this goddamned Teddy Connors,” Willard went on. “Connors had dropped a word now and then that made her think he might be able to do something about that twenty grand. She put it up to him, and sure enough Connors gets Bucky Sullivan, a guy he used to spar with in the old days, and the two of them went over to the jewelry shop and hit it. They got the dough all right, but Connors—he saw a chamois bag in a corner of the safe, and he took that along too, without saying anything to Bucky about it."

  "What was in the bag?"

  "Sapphires. About a dozen of them. Worth a lot more than diamonds. Anyhow, this jeweler reported the stones missing, and called the insurance company. But he didn't say anything about the money, because he was afraid to. He got into the country illegally, about fifteen years ago, and he knew that if the feds heard about that twenty grand and started smelling around, he might be deported.” He took a deep breath. “Well, the insurance company wasn't getting anywhere. Finally they let it out in the right places that they'd pay a flat four grand for return of the stones, and no questions asked. When Bucky Sullivan got the rumble, he knew what Connors had pulled. It made him sore as hell, to think his old buddy had held out on him, and he went on the prowl."

  "And caught up with him at Janice Pedrick's place?” I said.

  "That's right. Leda and Connors had been shacked up there all night. This morning, Connors went out for some cigarettes. That's when Bucky saw him. He trailed him back to the apartment. He had a gun, and he forced Connors to let him in with him. He told Connors he'd let him go if Connors gave him the rocks, but Connors couldn't do that."

  "Why not?"

  "Because Leda had conned him out of them. She'd sold them for peanuts. He was real gone on her, I guess. He was an ugly guy, and no woman had ever given him a tumble before. Anyhow, Bucky went nuts
. He hit Connors across the throat with the side of his hand and knocked him out. Then he clipped Leda over the temple with the butt of his gun. She fell down and made out she was unconscious, but she wasn't. Then Bucky grabbed a rag or something and started choking Connors. He turned his back on Leda a moment, and she saw her chance and jumped up and beat it."

  I rubbed my cigarette out in a tray, studying him. “Why'd you and your wife check out of your hotel, Mr. Willard?"

  "I must have been a little crazy myself, I guess. Leda—she was almost nuts. She thought sure her part in the jewelry heist would come out, once they really got to checking. She'd done a bit out on the West Coast once, for fingering another guy to a burglar—and that's something else I didn't know till this morning. And she said it'd be her word against Bucky's, and that she might end up in the death house with him. Anyhow, I couldn't think straight, right at first. All I could think about was trying to help her get away. And then all at once it hit me, what a goddamned fool I'd been all these years. And all of a sudden I knew I wasn't going to be a nanny for her any more. I'd had a gut full of her. It was like I was seeing her for the first time since I'd known her."

  "If she's earned a fall, then she's going to take it alone—is that what you mean?"

  "You're damned right. I've been a chump long enough. From now on, she's on her own."

  "Where is she now?"

  "She's in room fourteen-oh-nine, at the Milsener Hotel."

  8.

  We picked up Leda Willard. She was in such a state of panic that it took us almost two hours to get a coherent story from her. But when we did, it was a complete admission. She was too frightened to fight us, even too frightened to be capable of lying. She completely absolved Janice Pedrick and Eddie Willard of any implication.

  Four nights later we cornered Bucky Sullivan in the men's room of a bar in Harlem. He shot it out with us, and took two slugs through the chest. While he was waiting to be operated on, he became convinced he was dying and called for a priest. Afterward, he made a full admission. Declarations by persons who think they are dying are powerful instruments. It was powerful enough to close the case for us, though Bucky Sullivan lived through the operation.