Then Lieutenant George Bailey’s voice came through the thin partition. “I’ve got a flashlight in one hand, a gun in the other. This is the cops! Open up!”
I doused the light. There was a short moment of silence; then the house shuddered as Bailey’s weight struck the door. The second time he struck the door panels I was ready for him. I jerked the door open. He lurched in, a bulky shadow in the dark room. From my pocket, I had taken the gun. Bailey made a gagging sound as I swiped him across the side of the head. He hit the floor with a thud. Bailey’s man in back was yelling.
We ran down the front walk as the cop in the rear crashed through the back door. At the police car at the curb, I stabbed through the open window with my hand. The keys were not in the ignition. We were afoot.
“As they say in the movies, scatter men! And the first one caught is a rotten egg. I hate like hell to leave you, Millie, but...”
“Where are you going?”
We were already fading in the darkness. “To throttle the truth out of a Rayfield!”
We burrowed into the cloak of night in different directions in the vacant lots as the cop and Bailey, staggering, reached the front porch of the bungalow. Personally, I stayed away from open lawns, where I would be starkly outlined in moonlight. I knew Millie and Burt Morgan were doing likewise.
4
I wanted rest and food, and my head had settled to a steady, pounding roar as if it had a big Deisel engine inside of it, but downtown, I eased in a busy all night restaurant, went to the booth in back, and began phoning bars. The third call hit the jackpot. “Sure,” Gibney, the bartender at the Blue Mirror said, “York. Rayfield is here, drinking alone, as if he’s waitin’ for somebody. Want I should call him?”
“No. I’m coming down. You needn’t mention, even, that anyone called.”
I could imagine Gibney shrugged his fat shoulders. Matter-of-factly he said, “I won’t tell him you called.”
York Rayfield was turning his glass in his hands, making moist rings on the table, when my shadow fell across him. He looked up, almost dropped the glass. I slid quickly in the semi-circular, maroon leather booth, pressed my hand across his mouth. With my other hand, I jabbed him in the ribs with my gun. His eyes rolled: his body arched away from me.
“I’m a desperate critter, York. When I take my hand away from your mouth, don’t get any fancy ideas about yelling.”
I slid my hand away. Breathing heavily, he straightened his tie with studied nonchalance. “I’ve seen the papers, Frazee. I know how you knocked off Conklin. Every cop in town must be looking for you.”
He looked at me as if he wanted me to deny it. I said, “Well, they can’t burn me but once. Pay your check.”
He wilted, wincing under the pressure of the gun. By the time I had steered him out of the bar, into a cab, and rode him silently to Millie Morgan’s apartment, his breath was rasping and he was trembling all over.
The apartment was empty. York sat down abruptly on the studio couch, his face glistening with a clammy looking sheen of sweat in the light from the small lamp I turned on.
“For the thirtieth time since we got in the cab, Frazee,” he begged, “what do you want?” He fumbled, got a handkerchief, shakily wiped his face. “Say something, Frazee! Damn you...”
I said, “Give, York. I know the whole story. That your father. John, was blackmailing Morgan, that you intended to use the weapon of blackmail to marry Morgan’s daughter, that Morgan faked an accident to get out of it. I know that Howard Conklin saw Morgan. Conk begun working, got dope on your father. Your father killed Conklin because Conk learned the details about the blackmailer.”
“No, Frazee,” he begged. His shirt collar was wilted limply. “You’re right about some of it. I happened to follow Morgan one night. He left a package at a vacant lot. He acted so damn mysterious. I took a look at the package he left. Morgan came creeping up on me just at the moment I discovered the package was a bundle of money. That’s what led Morgan to believe that I or my father was blackmailing him.”
York swallowed drily, went on: “Morgan was insane with anger. He came to my father after that, got kicked out of the house. Later Morgan tried to beat hell out of me in a bar.” Conk had mentioned that on the paper in his hatband I remembered.
“Keep talking,” I said, “or I’ll show you how Morgan must have felt back then, being hounded to death.”
With a suddenness that caught me off guard. York Rayfield darted from the couch toward the door. I lunged at him. And the door burst open and John Rayfield, flanked by two of his thugs, came in the room. I released York, edged back.
“I’m sorry you spoiled our friendship by this sort of thing, Frazee,” John Rayfield said. “York was waiting for me in the bar. I arrived there and Gibney told me York had left with you. It was a simple matter to find the cab driver who brought you here.” John closed the door behind him. His two thugs flanked me.
“Are you going to give me the same treatment you gave Conklin?” I asked.
John shook his head. “Not guilty, Frazee. The papers stated the time Conk was killed. At the moment there were a dozen people in the house with York and me. They weren’t people who work for me, either. They’re big people in town, left my house just a few moments before you paid us your second visit. It’s an alibi you’ll never break, Frazee.”
York broke in to tersely explain to his father how I’d been planning to kill him and dump his body in Tampa bay. John Rayfield looked at me, his eyes blazing.
He said, “Kick Frazee’s meddlesome brains out!”
One of the thugs swung at me. I rolled with the blow — rolled right into a haymaker tossed by the other gent. I hit the carpel so hard the windows rattled.
When I again became aware of living, I was lying on the couch. Millie’s cloud of blonde hair came slowly in focus. She was applying a damp cloth on my forehead and the feel of her fingertips, cool and gentle and soft, was nice. I wanted to dose my eyes again, but I struggled to a fitting position.
She watched me with concern in her eyes. “Rayfield?”
I nodded.
She said, “I found you out cold on the floor, just a few minutes ago. I was settling my father in a hotel room for the night, or I would have been here when you came.”
“It’s best that you weren’t. York might have told his father that you had intended to gouge his eyes out with scissors.” I got to my feet. “Rayfield might send the cops here. If Bailey comes, tell him I threatened you, said I’d wring your neck if you raised an alarm while I was here.”
She followed me to the door. “Afraid I’ll be tagged as an accomplice?”
“I wouldn’t want it.”
“Thanks, Ham Frazee.” Her lips brushed my cheeks.
“That was nice,” I said. “We’ll talk it over sometime.” I closed the door softly behind me.
I left the apartment house, made my way around Mirror Lake, down Central, back to the office. I pulled the blinds, turned on the light. The wreckage of our files still littered the floor, but Conk’s body was gone and a couple of exploded flash bulbs reminded me that the tech squad had done its work here.
In my mind the pieces were in place.
I picked up the phone, called headquarters. When the cop at the switchboard answered, I said, “I made a call between seven and seven thirty this evening. It was never attended to.”
He asked me who I was, and I said, “Never mind that. The call concerned Howard Conklin.”
I heard the swift intake of his breath, and I knew the call I was now making would be traced. He said, “There was no such call made at that time. Who are you? Where...” I hung up. I had me a murderer.
A chuckle sounded harshly in the doorway. The murderer was here with me, slipping a passkey from the lock into his pocket. In his other hand was a gun. George Bailey said with mock nostalgia: “Hello, Frazee, you dirty bum.”