O’Leary and I followed her, leaving DeCoudre alone, and he was to all intents and purposes as dead as his two pals up in the park. That night he shot himself...
Outside, O’Leary said sadly: “I can’t be mad at you for ruining my boss but I surely would like to have had that job.” A little later she wondered out loud: “Which one of them was the Voice?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe we’ll never find out.” But we did. Two weeks later, we quietly sprung Laurie Bressette from jail and saw her aboard a train for East Peoria. At the station to see her off was a mild-faced, pipe-smoking young fellow. He was Laurie’s boy friend. His name was Danny Lawson.
His pipe was the gun he stuck in the back of my neck that day on Cahuenga Boulevard. He was just putting it back in his mouth when Marty Wensel snapped his picture which was why he happened to have his hand up to his face. And that voice he used to try to scare me away from finding Laurie in jail was the same one he used as a maniac in a radio serial called The Mad Doctor. He was about as deadly as a bubble bath!
Death Is No Stranger
by Norman A. Daniels
Ex-con, ex-shamus Trent should have known better than to get tangled up with a slay sequence just to pick up a little scratch. Why worry about a few minor expenses? In stir, the groceries are for free.
Chapter One
You’ve seen those movies where a private detective occupies an office in a run-down building with the elevated rattling past the window, where the elevator is an open cage that creaks up and down and the corridors are ankle deep in cigarette butts? Gus Cooney didn’t maintain an office like that. His suite was on the fourteenth floor of a very modem, centrally located building. The corridors were marble and tile and neat as a hospital. There was a waiting room, done in jade green and empty now, for it was well after office hours. I walked through this outer room and banged on the door labeled Mr. Cooney, Private.
I’d known Cooney for some time. I didn’t like him much and curiosity more than thoughts of profit lured me to answer his off-handed request that I visit him. He had a loud, brassy voice and I opened the door in answer to it. I stepped into what looked like the directors’ room of some international corporation.
Cooney sat behind half an acre of desk and looked out of place there. I’d have managed to look the part much better. Cooney was fifty, paunchy and gimlet eyed. I would have trusted him loyally with no more than a nickle.
“Sit down, Rick,” he said. “You look a little seedy.”
I grinned at him. “That’s what comes of success. You don’t have to give a damn how you look.”
“Let’s cut the kidding,” he told me. “I know you’re down and out. You served a rap in prison and can’t practice private detecting any more. You spend your time in Bryant Park behind the Public Library and number only the best pigeons among your friends. And I don’t mean the kind that go into the park for necking. How do you live, Rick?”
“I got friends,” I told him. “And a job of sorts.”
“Sure, doing leg work for Stuart Sedley at about thirty bucks a week. You used to spend more than that taking a doll to lunch. How would you like to earn twenty bucks?”
“I’m not exactly averse to it,” I told him. “Only when you broker a job, it’s usually murder. I make it a point to get twenty-five for murder.”
“Stop clowning,” he said irritably. “I’ll go to twenty-five and it ain’t knocking anybody off. Job’s really worth about ten bucks, but you need the dough. If you didn’t, I wouldn’t have you because the guy I need has to look like a bum.”
“Thanks,” I said and made up my mind that he needed me because nobody else would take the assignment. “Remember though, I’m limited. I can’t do any snooping. The cops and the Parole Board no like.”
Cooney opened a desk drawer and took out a newspaper photo. It was slightly yellow with age and it showed a young man — good looking boy, whose face looked familiar. The girl in the picture was a stunner and I’d have handled some of Cooney’s lousey work just to meet her.
“Know either of them?” he asked me casually.
“The boy seems to register. The girl doesn’t. Break the riddle, Cooney.”
“That kid is Freddie Ogden. Now does he register?”
“Yes,” I said slowly. “Freddie served time with me. On a manslaughter rap. I imagine he got out no more than a month ago.”
“Six weeks ago. The girl is Lila Doane and her old man happens to be Ernest Doane who has three-quarters of all the money in the world.”
“What’s the pitch?” I asked him bluntly.
“Tonight, around eight-thirty, Ogden and the girl will step out of a car and enter the Elite Club. You’re to be there. Before he reaches the club, you are to move up to him, call him by name, remind him of the fact he is an ex-con and ask him for a stake. All you get out of him is yours.”
“And then what?”
“Nothing more. That’s all.”
I studied him for a moment. “There’s more than that behind it, Cooney. Unbuckle your tongue. I’m not stepping into a set-up.”
“It’s no set-up. We’re just trying to embarrass young Ogden. I can’t tell you who my client is and I can’t give you any other reasons for doing all this. Twenty-five if you make the kid turn pink.”
“Fifty,” I said. Me, the speculator. Fact is, I didn’t care whether I got the dough or not. This sort of thing wasn’t the private detective work which ran in my veins instead of blood. I was merely interested to see how important the job was. If he paid out hard cash easily, then this was something big.
“You’re a blood-sucker,” he told me, “but it’s too late to compromise now.”
I still wasn’t satisfied. I said: “At least I have time enough to shave and look more presentable.”
He held up his hand quickly. “That’s exactly what you must not do. I want you to look like a plain bum.”
I leaned back and twiddled my thumbs. “In that case,” I said, “my fee is a hundred bucks, Cooney. I’m the type who believes in getting paid for character work.”
Sure, he paid it — after a suitable amount of cursing me. But I knew whatever I was meant to do was important and Cooney would profit ten times the fee he gave me. I was also determined to be very careful not to get myself gummed up in something Detective Lieutenant Westover could pounce on me for. Lieutenant Westover was beset with an obsession. He wanted me back in stir.
I had an hour or so to kill and an extra hundred bucks to help kill it. I drifted into a cheap eating place and ordered the works. I would have liked to patronize one of the more fashionable clubs or restaurants, but they sold liquor there and I couldn’t be caught dead within a hundred yards of a bar.
At eight o’clock I was casing the vicinity of the Elite Club, looking for cops, crooks or other down-in-the-mouth snoops Cooney might have hired. The job looked too easy and Cooney had called my steadily rising ante too fast. I meant to find out what this was all about if I had to beat it out of Cooney. Which would have been a pleasure...
At eight-thirty I was set with the doorman eying me in none too friendly a manner. Ten minutes later a cab pulled up and young Freddie Ogden got out. He didn’t much resemble the con I knew in Sing Sing. Freddie wore a tux that fitted him perfectly, and the doll who got out on his arm had been grossly insulted by the picture I’d seen of her. No camera could have done her full justice.