“You and Harvey in the tonneau,” I said. “Melkins, Red Small, Jackson and Schulte. One of the M.E.’s, prepared to make an examination right on the spot. I think we can forget the warrants.”
“What’s it all about,” Devine said, “or am I being personal?”
I told him what I thought, and why, and he looked skeptical. But he didn’t discourage the trip. He would have liked to see me miss this one — the stage was properly set for me to look very silly if I missed.
We rode up that way, three of us in the Dusy, the others following in a squad car. I moved along at a smart clip. Without conversation, it was a boring trip, and neither of my riders seemed to be very much interested in conversing.
I put Schulte at the gate. We rode around the entire estate, and I put the others where I thought they should be, though only the gate really needed watching. But I hadn’t known this before coming up. Then Devine and Glen ducked down in back, while I drove up the gravel drive.
Carl wasn’t in sight this afternoon. Miss Townsbury herself came to the door. She was wearing the steel-rimmed glasses again. We walked back together to the pastel blue room. There was no knitting in sight.
I sat in the same rocker, and she in her knitting chair. I told her about the death of Rodney Carlton.
She showed no emotion at the news.
I said: “He didn’t die right away. He talked, before he died.”
There was emotion now — fear in the cold eyes, and a stiffening of the spine. “To — whom did he talk, Mr. Jones?”
“To me,” I lied.
There was some relaxation in her posture, some relief.
“Miss Harlin is dead, isn’t she?” I asked her suddenly.
Again, the stiffening. “Are you insane, Mr. Jones? If I knew she were dead, would I have engaged your services?”
“You might. You knew I was in with the department. You could do that to make the police think you were worried about her, as a sort of advance alibi. If you went directly to the police, they’d be coming up here. They’d be nosing into your business.”
“That’s ridiculous,” she said, without expression. She was only mouthing words.
“Maybe. Or maybe you wanted Every to think you were worried about her. Is he getting out of hand, Miss Townsbury?”
“I don’t know the man,” she said.
“You knew he was a bootlegger, though he was never well known by anyone outside of the department. You knew him, all right. He worked for you. His little fat friend knew you, too, though he tried to pretend in my office that he’d only heard of you. And Miss Meredith knows you, too. The tie-up’s there, all right. It’s clear enough.”
Light glinted off the lenses of her glasses. She was studying me, all pretense of indignation gone, sizing me up. She said: “You’ve managed to put quite a few unrelated facts together, haven’t you, Mr. Jones?”
“A few,” I admitted. “That redhead was the tip-off. I could see you had her well on the road. You bring the wealthy drunks up here, and cure them of their alcoholism. But you start them on something worse. Is it morphine? Opium?”
“And why would I do that?”
“So you can sell it to them. Or so Every can, through your cooperation. They aren’t likely to talk, your customers, are they?”
“Talk to whom?”
“To the police.”
“No,” she admitted. “They aren’t likely to go to the police. And neither are you, Mr. Jones. This place is well guarded.”
There was somebody else in the room. The chauffeur, Carl. The gun he had in his hand was a Colt Camp Perry model, a single shot pistol with a long barrel, a hell of a long barrel. It was a .22.
“That’s the gun that killed Lundgren and Carlton, isn’t it? Is that the one that killed Miss Harlin, too?”
Carl said nothing, the long barrelled gun held unwaveringly in his hand.
Miss Townsbury said: “All three of them made the mistake of trying to blackmail me. Is that the mistake you were trying to make, Mr. Jones?”
“No,” I said.
“Both Lundgren and that poet,” she went on, “knew that Flame came up here. That poet put her on the train that took her up here. Both of them know that was when she disappeared.” She looked down at the floor. “That’s why they died. They tried to blackmail me. That’s why she died, too, that night—” Her voice trailed off.
“Carl took care of them?” I asked. “All of them?”
Carl said: “What difference does it make to you, shamus? What difference is anything going to make to you, where you’re going?”
There was a sharp intake of breath from Miss Townsbury.
I said: “The man in the doorway will take care of me.”
Carl’s laugh was low. “That’s a pretty dusty gag, Jones. That’s a little old for me.”
From the doorway, Devine said: “You’d better put that toy away, big boy. This thing in my hand is a man’s gun.”
Carl never even turned before he dropped the gun to the carpet. It would be a long time, I knew, before Devine would let me forget this.
The department built up a case, all right. Some of Miss Townsbury’s patients talked, and after that, some of her former patients. Some of the organization’s small fry talked enough to sew all of them up — Every and Carl and the old girl and her staff. Judy wasn’t in on any of it. Carl’s gun had killed Lundgren and Carlton, but not Flame.
They found Flame the next day. In a shallow and poorly concealed grave in the woods. No coffin. In the cold, wet ground, with a knitting needle through her left eye, embedded in her brain...
I Remember Murder
by Julius Long
What a lovely party! Everybody high as a kite, nobody knew anyone else and a riotous time was had by all. All, that is, except the blonde they left behind them. She was very shapely and very young — and she wouldn’t be getting any older. Not with that bullet-hole through her pretty head!
Chapter One
Wine, Women and Worse
Everybody at the party was drunker than I was, and I was afraid to stand up from fear I’d fall down. I just sat there staring into space, trying to figure out whose apartment Phil Sutton had brought me to and where it was.
My watch was still running, and I knew it had been two hours since Sutton had come upon me in a south-side honky-tonk and insisted that I go with him to a “swell party.” If I hadn’t been three sheets to the wind I’d never have walked out of any public place with Phil Sutton.
There were plenty of people willing to associate with him since he’d organized the Acme Auto Insurance Company, but not me. I’m funny about respecting people just because they have money and even funnier about the way they got it. I knew how Sutton had got his.
A couple of weeks before Pearl Harbor he had gone into bankruptcy and stuck his creditors for a hundred thousand dollars. By the time the Nips took Bataan he was riding around in a black Cadillac with white side-wall tires, and a year later he was so rich that when he bought a new fur coat for his secretary he even bought one for his wife.
If you wanted a case of Scotch, Sutton wouldn’t sell it to you, but if you wanted a truck-load of it and were willing to pay a hundred thirty-five a case, he would. He wouldn’t sell you a set of tires, either, but if you had a place for a gross, he was your man. There is a popular notion that the federal boys always get their man, too, but when they finally put the pinch on Sutton he walked out none the worse for it except what it had cost for lawyers.