“No fight on the street? Maybe knock Boyd Connors down? He could have been hurt more than you knew.”
“Me knock down Boyd? He was twice my size.”
“You were here alone the rest of the night?”
“Yes. You think I did something to Boyd?”
“I don’t know what you did.”
I left him standing there in his bare room with his plans for the future. Did he have a motive for murder? Not really; people don’t murder over an eighteen-year-old girl that often. Besides, Boyd Connors had died of a heart attack.
I gave out the word in a few proper places that I’d like to talk to the Night Angels — five dollars in it, and no trouble. Maybe I’d reach them, maybe I wouldn’t. There was nothing to do that I could think of, so I stopped for a few Irish whiskies, then went home to bed.
About noon the next day, a small, thin, acne-scarred boy with cold eyes and a hungry face came into my office. He wore the leather jacket and shabby jeans uniform, and the hunger in his face was the perpetual hunger of the lost street kid for a lot more than food. He looked seventeen, had the cool manner of twenty-seven with experience. His name was Carlo.
“Five bucks, you offered,” Carlo said first.
I gave him five dollars. He didn’t sit down.
“Boyd Connors’ mother says Boyd was murdered,” I said. “What do you say?”
“What’s it to you?”
“I’m working for Mrs. Connors. The police say heart attack.”
“We heard,” Carlo said. He relaxed just a hair. “Boyd was sound as a dollar. It don’t figure. Only what angle the fuzz got? We don’ make it.”
“Was Boyd with you that night?”
“Early ’n late. He goes to see his girl. They had a battle, Boyd come around the candy store a while.”
“What time?”
“Maybe seven thirty. He don’t stay long. Went home.”
“Because he didn’t feel good?”
“No. He feel okay,” Carlo said.
I saw the struggle on his face. His whole life, the experience learned over years when every day taught more than a month taught most kids, had conditioned him never to volunteer an answer without a direct question. But he had something to say, and as hard as he searched his mind for a trap, he couldn’t find one. He decided to talk to me.
“Boyd, he had a package,” Carlo finally said, tore it out of his thin mouth. “He took it on home.”
“Stolen?”
“He said no. He said he found it. He had a big laugh on it. Said he found it on the sidewalk, ’n the guy lost it could rot in trouble.”
That was when I remembered where I had seen the name of Johnson’s Pharmacy.
“A package when he came home?” Mrs. Connors said. “Well, I’m not sure, Mr. Fortune. He could have had.”
I went through the living room into Boyd Connors’ bedroom. The wrapping paper was still in the wastebasket. Mrs. Connors was neglecting her housework, with the grief over Boyd. A Johnson’s Pharmacy label was on the wrapping paper, and a handwritten address: 3 East 11th Street. The small, empty box told me nothing.
I checked all the cologne, after-shave and hair-tonic bottles — the box was about the size for them. They were all at least half full and old. I thought of the empty bottle under the bed, and got it; a good men’s cologne — and empty. It had no top. I searched harder, found the top all the way across the room in a corner, as if it had been thrown. It was a quick-twist top, one sharp turn and it came off. I saw a faint stain on the rug as if something had been spilled, but a cologne is mostly alcohol, dries fast.
I touched the bottle gingerly, studied it. There was something odd about it; not to look at, no, more an impression, the feel of it. It felt different, heavier, than the other bottles, and the cap seemed more solid. Only a shade of difference, something I’d never have thought about if I hadn’t been looking for answers.
I could even be wrong. When you’re ready to find something suspicious, your mind can play tricks, find what it wants to find.
I decided to see Roger Tatum again. He was working over a book, writing notes when I arrived.
“Not working? Fired, maybe?”
“I don’t go to work until one P.M.,” he said. “Why would I be fired?”
“You lost a package you were supposed to deliver last night, didn’t you?”
He stared at me. “Yes, but how did you know? And you think Mr. Johnson would fire me for that? It wasn’t worth five dollars; Mr. Johnson didn’t even make me pay. Just sent me back this morning with another bottle.”
“Bottle of what?”
“Some men’s cologne.”
“When did you miss the package, notice that it was gone?”
“When I got to the address. It was gone. I guess I just dropped it.”
“You dropped it,” I said. “Did anything happen between the drugstore and Anna Kazco’s place? Did you stop anywhere? Have an accident and drop the packages?”
“No. I went straight to Anna’s place. I had all the packages when I left, I counted them.”
“So you know you dropped the package after you left Anna Kazco’s apartment.”
“Yes, I’m sure.”
My next stop was the Johnson Pharmacy on Fifth Avenue. Mr. Yvor Johnson was a tall, pale man. He blinked at me from behind his counter.
“The package Roger lost? I don’t understand what your interest in it is, Mr. Fortune. A simple bottle of cologne.”
“Who was it going to?”
“Mr. Chalmers Padgett, a regular customer. He always buys his sundries here.”
“Who is he? What does he do?”
“Mr. Padgett? Well, I believe he’s the president of a large chemical company.”
“Who ordered the cologne?”
“Mr. Padgett himself. He called earlier that day.”
“Who packed the cologne? Wrapped it?”
“I did myself. Just before Roger took it out,” he said slowly.
I showed him the empty bottle and the cap. He took them, looked at them. He looked at me.
“It looks like the bottle. A standard item. We sell hundreds of bottles.”
“Is it the same bottle? You’re sure? Feel it.”
Johnson frowned, studied the bottle and the cap. He bent close over them, hefted the bottle, inspected the cap, hit the bottle lightly on his counter. He looked puzzled.
“That’s strange. I’d almost say this bottle is a special glass, very strong. The cap, too. They seem the same; I’d not have noticed if you hadn’t insisted, but they do seem stronger.”
“After you packed the cologne for Mr. Padgett, how long before Roger Tatum took out his deliveries?”
“Perhaps fifteen minutes.”
“Was anyone else in the store?”
“I think there were a few customers.”
“Did you and Roger ever leave the packages he was to deliver unwatched?”
“No, they are on the shelf back here until Roger takes them, and—” He stopped, blinked. “Yes, wait. Roger took some trash out in back, and the man asked me if he could look at a vaporizer. I keep the bulky stock, like vaporizers, in the back. I went to get it. I was gone perhaps three minutes.”
“The man? What man?”
“A big man, florid-faced. In a gray overcoat and gray hat. He didn’t buy the vaporizer. I had to put it back. I was quite annoyed, I recall.”
“Roger took the packages out right after that?”
“Yes, he did.”
That conversation prompted me to visit Mr. Chalmers Padgett, president of P-S Chemical Corp. Not as large a company as Johnson had thought, and Dun & Bradstreet didn’t list exactly what the company produced.
Padgett met me in his rich office down near Wall Street. He was a calm, pale man in a custom-made suit.
“Yes, Mr. Fortune, I ordered my usual cologne from Johnson a few days ago. Why?”