Miller was bending over a girl on the bed, lifting one of the girl’s limp hands, feeling for a pulse. The girl was young, dark-haired, thin under the blanket that was tucked below a lax chin. She slept heavily, not moving. O’Hara could see more than a casual resemblance between her thin youthful face and the bony, anxious countenance of the man bending over her.
O’Hara said: “Sister?”
Miller nodded. “Thank God I’ve found her, O’Hara.”
“They put the snatch on her to handle you, huh?”
Miller took a deep breath of relief and stood up. He said: “Six days ago I got a message in Midland City that Linda had been kidnaped and that I was to come out here, register at the Diplomat and see Waldon, meanwhile keeping my mouth shut. I had no choice. I flew out here and Waldon put his proposal. He said the two key witnesses in the Midland City case had disappeared. I checked by phone. It was true. But I had affidavits from both of them. Waldon told me that if I’d arrange to have the affidavits turned over to his man back there, I’d get ten thousand dollars and Linda would be freed. Otherwise she’d be killed. I pretended to play along. I arranged for the affidavits to be turned over — but not until they had been photostated. I was to get the money tonight and be told where Linda was being held.”
O’Hara said: “And you took a chance on upsetting everything by keeping Ernie’s knife out of me.”
“I couldn’t stand there and see murder done.”
“Thanks,” said O’Hara. “And that, Miller, is not an empty word. Well, we’d better get an ambulance.” He started to turn, then said: “About the libel suit now—”
“Forget it. That was just part of the act I had to put on until they’d released Linda.”
O’Hara went back downstairs and got on the phone. He called the receiving hospital and reported merely that an ambulance was needed for a sick woman; he didn’t want any opposition reporters barging around for a while at least. After that he called the Tribune, got through to the city desk.
He said soberly: “Ken O’Hara, Brad.”
“Where,” said Braddock, “the hell have you been? We’ve got a regular Irish wake going on here for you.”
“Huh?”
“Your friend, Clancy, came in and said you’d got a line on the kidnapers and you’d disappeared. Your pal, Tony Ames, has been chewing her fingernails to the elbows. Even your sidekick, Lenroot, is hanging around trying to find out what mess you’ve been cooking up for the cops. So what have you been doing?”
“Settling that libel suit for you.”
“How come?”
“I’ve got the real story now, Brad, and it’s a lulu.”
“Shoot — we’ve got five minutes to the next deadline. I’ll make my apologies to you later, Irish.”
O’Hara talked at breackneck speed for a minute and a half. Then he said:
“That’ll hold you for now. Put Lenroot on.”
Lenroot came on and said: “Hello.”
“Hello, monkey.”
“All right, you made a monkey out of me.” Lenroot’s voice sounded unaccustomedly old, heavy. “And I guess the story you’ll write won’t make any less of a monkey out of me.”
“How does it feel?”
“It don’t feel good, Irish.”
“I didn’t like it, either, when you made an ape out of me the other day. Be seeing you, pal — out in the sticks.”
“O.K. — and I hope I catch you spittin’ on the sidewalk on my beat.” But his voice didn’t have the old bounce.
There was the sound of several voices faintly at the other end and then Clancy’s voice came clearly. “Hey, Kenny, I was looking for you all over. All over I was hunting.”
“That,” said O’Hara, “makes us even. I’ve been hunting you every five minutes for the last three days. Put my girl friend on.”
Presently Tony Ames’ voice came over the wire and O’Hara said: “Well, you were right, angel face — as always. Miller was leveling all the time.”
“I knew it, Ken. I was sure of it. When I get an intuition—”
“Sure, kitten. That intuition stuff is where you gals have it on us guys. We have to get our facts the hard way. Had dinner yet?”
“Not yet.”
“You’ve got a date.” He was silent for a moment.
“Yes, Ken?”
“Put Lenroot back on, kitten.”
Lenroot’s voice said presently: “Ain’t you rubbed it in enough?”
“Get the lead out of your pants and get out here,” O’Hara growled. “How can I give you credit on the case if you’re not around?”
“Huh?” said Lenroot. Then he rumbled: “Hell with you— I don’t need any charity.”
“Nuts to charity,” O’Hara said. “How’re you and I going to dig up any good fights if you get sent to the sticks?”
“Yeah,” said Lenroot. “That’s right, ain’t it?” His voice began to have a lift to it again. “You got something there, Irish. I’m coming out — and, by cripes, I think when I get there I’ll bang one on your chin just for luck.”
“You,” O’Hara said, “and who else?”
A Killer in the Crowd
by Bruno Fischer
His alibi was perfect — or it should have been. Thousands saw him at the moment of the crime, but not one remembered his face. They were minding their own business — as he was minding his. And he swore it wasn’t killing.
So Many out-of-towners are always saying that our city isn’t friendly, that we New Yorkers don’t even bother arguing with them any more, if we can avoid it.
There’s no way to make them understand that you can live in a house for ten years and not even know the names of all the people on your floor, let alone everything that happened to them since the day they were born.
The thing is that New Yorkers are too busy minding their own business, of which they have more than anybody else. Besides, New York is too big. There’s nowhere a man can be lonelier than in a crowd — and more unnoticed.
I’m a homicide lieutenant on the finest police force in the world. That’s why I was there on the inside that time New York came pretty close to killing a man by minding its own business.
John Garson was a young man who had a terrific crush on a fiery brunette named Isabel Lewis. One evening at eight o’clock he called on her in her two-room apartment in a run-down apartment house in the West Nineties.
A minute after he entered, her closest neighbors in the building got an earful of them arguing. The battle was as loud and shrill as if they’d been husband and wife, and practically every word came through those paper-thin walls. The usual thing. Garson had learned that Isabel was seeing a lot of a lad named Clarence Hannen, and he didn’t like it one bit.
It took Garson ten minutes to say all he had to say. Then he walked out on her.
Night was falling and it was starting to rain when he reached the street. His car was parked a couple of hundred feet away. He drove east to Central Park West, then turned south. He was very upset and didn’t remember much of the drive except that at Columbus Circle he went through a red light and came close to knocking over a man who jumped out of the way just in time. At Fifty-Seventh Street Garson headed east again. He lived in Queens and was taking the widest street to the bridge.
As he was crossing Seventh Avenue, his motor stalled. The car rolled a short distance more and came to a dead stop directly in front of Carnegie Hall.
By that time it was close to eight-thirty. There was a concert in Carnegie Hall, and a mob trying to get in was jammed under the marquee, out of the rain and the street was packed solid with cabs and private cars trying to get to the curb to discharge their passengers. And there was Garson’s car stuck in the middle of it, with traffic piling up behind him past the Seventh Avenue intersection. Garson almost wore out his battery, but the motor stubbornly refused to catch.