“What’s worryin’ you boys?” Sam asked.
“A girl named Belle Henry work for you?” Luke said.
“Sure. She’s my best girl. Been with me three years. I couldn’t hardly get along without Belle.”
“You’ll have to, feller,” Luke said. “Somebody stuck a knife in her.”
“Huh! You mean— Hey! You mean somebody — croaked Belle?”
Luke nodded, watching him. The Greek looked scared. His eyes shifted and his face twitched.
“Yeah,” Luke said. “Funny, ain’t it? Right after Doc Harris got shot. They tell me Belle liked the old Doc.”
“Didn’t Doc kill himself?” Sam asked. “I heard—”
“Looks like it now, don’t it?” Luke said sarcastically. “No. Some guy killed Doc. Belle got a look at him and got shut up. You wouldn’t know anything, would you?”
“Me? No. All I know is, Belle was O.K. She was right, see? She was havin’ trouble with her dogs and I was buyin’ her some shoes the Doc said she ought to have. Belle was a pal. Sure, she liked Doc. Used to feed him in here or take stuff up to him. I never kicked. Doc was all right.”
Luke shifted his feet, looked around the place, then back at the Greek.
“You know a black-haired guy with black eyes and a deep scar on his right cheek?” he said.
Sam shook his head. “A lot of guys come in here, but I don’t remember nobody like that. No.”
I was just going to grab his arm and call him a cockeyed liar when Luke stepped on my foot. I kept still.
“If you do see such a guy, let me know,” Luke said. “So long, Sam.”
“So long, boys. This about Belle — it’s got me down. I depended on her. Lots o’ times I let her run the place when I wanted to take time off. I’m good for her funeral and if I can help get the guy that knifed her— Say! Did you boys know Doc’s son was down here last night?”
“Huh? His son?”
“Stepson. I guess. He was in here talking to Belle about the Doc. Say, he’s black-haired and black-eyed. Only there’s no scar on his face.”
“What did he want to see Belle about?”
“He was asking about his old man — what had made him bump himself, and like that. And there was something about insurance, too.”
“Insurance?”
“Yeah,” Sam said. “Belle told me after. Doc had some insurance, all paid up. His missus, the one that split with him, this punk’s mama, was the bene... bene — you know. So the kid said.”
“Beneficiary,” Luke nodded. “Does the punk go by Harris’s name?”
“No, his name is Rogers, so Belle said! Bert Rogers. She gave him the devil because he was never down to see Doc until he died.”
“Thanks. You see a guy with a scar on his face, you let me know.”
“Yeah! Always glad to help you boys out.”
Bert Rogers lived with his mother, the Doc’s ex-wife, and his sister, in a comfortable old house on a wide boulevard. Bert was home when we got there. So was Mama, a fluttery dame about fifty, scatter-brained and full of chatter. And Bert’s sister, a serious-eyed, seventeen-year-old girl with looks; as quiet as her mother was talky.
Bert and Mama were screwballs, nervous, irritable, always interrupting each other and exchanging savage looks. The young girl was all right. Maybe Mama had divorced the Doc because he drank, but she hit the bottle herself. So did Bert. He was about twenty-two, a runt, unhealthy looking; and I’d have bet that he occasionally got high on reefers.
We didn’t get much out of them. They talked a lot, but said little. The dame was mad because the Doc’s death had brought her more scandal. She didn’t know or care whether it was suicide or murder. All she cared about was that the Doc had brought her grief, nothing but grief.
“Yeah,” said Luke. “He set you up to all this, too. When you ditched him, he gave you all the dough he had. The poor guy had an alcoholic conscience. And now about this insurance.” He turned to Bert. “How do I know you didn’t go down and croak the old man, so Mama here could collect?”
The girl gasped, but Bert sneered. He stuck a cigarette between his teeth, let it dangle from his lower lip, and said, “How do I know what you know? What do I care what you think, copper? Try and pin something on me. Go ahead and try.”
Luke grinned at him. “When did you hear the Doc was dead? Where were you?”
“I’m not talking until I see my lawyer,” the punk said. “But I was in a place where a lot of people saw me, right up to the time the news came out.”
I walked over to him. I looked at Luke and he nodded. I put my hand on the punk’s thin neck, lifted him out of the chair, swung my fist under his nose. He yelled; so did Mama.
“Where was this place?” I said.
“The Parisian Inn,” he spluttered. “A lot of people saw me there.”
“Jud Marvin’s spot,” said Luke. “So you hang around there? That helps.”
I didn’t see how, but if Luke thought so, all right. We walked out, with Luke warning them to stay put. The young sister followed us into the hall. She seemed to want to say things to us and I gave her a smile.
“Could I— Would they let me see Dad?” she asked.
“I think so,” I said. “You liked him?”
“Oh, yes! He was always very good to me. I was very sorry for him. Mother is — difficult. I think that’s why he drank. But he was a wonderful surgeon, a wonderful man!” The kid was whispering, and she meant every word of it.
“Florence!” Mama yelled. “Florence! Come here!”
“If I can go to the — the morgue,” she said, “will they let me see him?”
“Sure, honey,” I said. “Tell ’em we said so — Hennessey and McGuire.”
“Thank you!” she breathed, and went back to mama.
“Lousy people,” Luke muttered, as we piled into the car. “Except the kid. Well, let’s go down to Jud Marvin’s.”
“Why?”
“I smelled something like Jud. You know what, boy? This could be bigger than we think. We were going to skip it as the suicide of an old guy who didn’t count any more, just a poor old tramp who hit the skids. But it’s different now. There’s more to it. Let’s talk to Jud.”
Jud Marvin was two hundred and fifty pounds of immobile fat. The guy needed exercise, but never took it. He had a suite of rooms upstairs over his Parisian Café — an office, bedroom and bath — and he spent most of his time there, except when he was downstairs.
He was expecting us. He had been tipped off by a buzzer as we walked in.
“Hello, boys,” he said. “Have a drink? Have a cigar? No? What can I do for you?”
“Help us find a guy, Jud,” Luke said. “You’re doing all right here. Nobody’s bothering you. You want it to stay like that, don’t you?”
Jud smiled. “I’m going to keep it like that,” he said. “It costs me some dough, but I lay it on the line the first of every month. Tell me.”
“Did you hear about a guy named Doc Harris doing the Dutch?”
“Yeah, I heard about it. Some of the boys were talking.”
“He was murdered, Jud, for some pretty good reason. And a dame he knew, a waitress in Sharkey’s Grill, got it, too, on account she tried to tip us off about the killer. A guy with black hair and black eyes and a scar on his right cheek. That’s the one we’re looking for. Maybe you can help us.”
Jud blew cigar smoke toward the ceiling. “I don’t know anybody like that,” he said. “I don’t get around much. But I’ll be glad to help. I’ll put my boys on it. If there’s some guy like that going around killing people, the boys may be able to find him for you.”