Tommy Rex was out of the car again, but this time he moved fast. He wrenched open the door of Tezzaro’s car. Both his hands jumped at Tezzaro, the left to clutch the man’s lapel, the right to strike a piston blow to Tezzaro’s jaw. Then Tommy was dragging Tezzaro out of the car. He hit him twice more when he had him on the street, and the man sagged.
Tommy caught him. Happy Lado put out a helping hand and dragged Tezzaro into their car. Tommy slammed the front door, yanked open the back one and jumped in. They rolled again.
Slabbe, still running toward them, looked ahead anxiously for Charlie Somers’ jaloppy. If he hadn’t seen it, he would have jumped into Tezzaro’s car and followed, but Charlie’s old mud-streaked heap was idling along, still a block ahead of Tommy and Happy’s car. Besides, there was something in the back of Tezzaro’s sedan that made Slabbe lick his lips. Something wrapped in a big maroon auto blanket. Without even looking, he could tell what it was from its unmistakable shape. But of course he looked anyhow to make sure. It was the body of a blond woman.
Chapter Three
Nikki Wasn’t Tricky
She had been stabbed to death and not by an amateur, Slabbe saw. The knife had been slid home with a swift upward motion under the girl’s left shoulder. Guided smoothly by the killer’s thumb and forefinger, it had been necessary to use it only once.
The girl’s purse, a drawstring thing that matched her tailored gray suit, was wrapped in the blanket, too. Slabbe avoided the staring blue eyes and opened it. A compact and cigarette lighter bore the initials N.E., and a letter was addressed to Nikki Evans.
“Nup,” Slabbe grunted. “Nikki wasn’t tricky.” He noted that the letter was postmarked from St. Louis two days earlier and stuffed it into his pocket. A beat cop was lolling along down the street. Slabbe went to him, told him to get up to the shiny black car and do his stuff. He went on back to the building that housed the American Diamond Company, rounded it and entered the garage from which Max Tezzaro had driven. There was no one else on hand.
The letter to Nikki was signed “Pola.” It was a friendly letter that told that the two girls had been friends. The last paragraph was the most important. It said: “This boy friend of yours sounds good, but the boys want me to meet him and size him up before we meet Tommy. We three will arrive Wednesday morning, and Tommy will come down as soon as he gets discharged from the hospital the same day. I’ll come straight to your place and look over your friend, then go and meet Tommy and take him to the other boys. We’ll talk over your proposition then and let you know.”
Slabbe blew out his gum. The pattern seemed clear.
Nikki Evans and Pola obviously had been friends from away back and had kept in touch with each other. Nikki had picked herself a boy friend, by accident or design, who had connections in the diamond market. Lately, the boy friend’s business had been going to pot because his trained help were scooting back home to Europe. Nikki would have seen that her Maxie was ripe for a deal that would make him some cash to reconvert and, being friends with Pola, she’d have figured that Pola would be looking for a way to get rid of the stolen jewels.
So far so good: Nikki had broached the proposition to Pola. Pola had come here to look Max over. But then what had happened?
According to the letter, there had been no hint of double cross among the original heisters. Pola, Happy and Silk had arrived together this morning and Pola had come to Nikki’s apartment. Then something had happened and she got killed.
The theory that Slabbe liked was this: Pola undoubtedly had told Happy and Silk that she was going to Nikki’s place to look Max over and that she’d contact them and tell them how she’d made out. When she didn’t do this, Happy and Silk had got worried and had come to Nikki’s apartment to check up. They’d found Pola dead, they hadn’t killed her at all.
At first they’d suspected that Tommy had double-crossed them all, killed Pola and grabbed the stones. This was the only explanation to account for Happy chasing straight to the Carleton Arms Hotel and shooting at Tommy. Happy had been hot, looking for revenge. The answer to how he and Tommy had teamed up together again could only be that after they’d pounded out of the hotel lobby they’d come together outside and Tommy had convinced Happy that he had no part of any double-cross at all, and that if someone had pulled a fast one it must be Max or Nikki.
Tommy was in the clear for the simple reason that he hadn’t got to town till 2:30, and Pola had been dead by then.
Tommy and Happy had then come after Max. Slabbe licked his lips. He could imagine the shellacking Max was in for.
“If they don’t kill him, he’ll fry anyway,” Slabbe grunted and prowled the garage. If Max had had Nikki’s dead body in his car and was going somewhere with it, he was their boy. He was the one who’d done the double-crossing. He’d killed both girls. His plan undoubtedly was to dispose of Nikki’s body, so that it would look as if she’d killed Pola and had lammed with the jewels.
Slabbe found corroboration of his theory in a trash barrel — bloody automobile seat covers. The amount of blood on them, still sticky, showed that Nikki had been knifed as she sat in the car.
Slabbe locked the garage and peeked up the street to where a couple of dolly cars had parked beside Max’s shiny black sedan. He saw nothing of Carlin’s squad car. Probably the lieutenant wouldn’t come up on this one, since he couldn’t know that there was a connection yet. It would be quicker to head to the City Hall and see Carlin in his office, then get set for when Charlie Somers called in to report where Happy and Tommy had taken Max.
Waiting for a street car, Slabbe glanced at his railroader’s-type watch. It was a quarter after five and had been a tolerably busy afternoon. Slabbe crossed the street to a drugstore and telephoned his office. The phone rang a dozen times, but no one answered. Slabbe grimaced. “Dam’ that Abe. He’s supposed to be there. If he got cute again, I’ll mobilize him!”
It called for a change of plans, however, for someone had to be on hand at the office when Charlie Somers reported. Slabbe went straight there. A headquarters dick was lounging outside. Al Gage was asleep on the couch. Slabbe shook him. The Zenith op struggled awake, green eyes bleary.
“Where’s Abe Morse?” Slabbe growled.
“Should I know?” Gage yawned. “He wasn’t here when I came in. Nobody was.”
“When did you come? How’d you get away from Carlin?”
“Like you said, Carlin is a great believer in letting a guy go and shadowing him. He let me scram right after you walked out over at the girl’s apartment. I came straight here and flopped. A dick followed me. Didn’t you see him outside?”
“Whyn’t you answer the phone?” Slabbe snapped, but his eyes were cloudy. Abe Morse wouldn’t have left the office voluntarily without making arrangements for someone to be on hand.
Gage rubbed his eyes. “It’d take more than a telephone to snap me out of it. I could sleep for a week.”
Slabbe sandpapered his jaw with the back of a hand, strode out of the office to the elevators. He talked to one of the elevator boys, learned that Abe Morse had certainly come into the office, though he hadn’t been seen leaving. Ditto for Whitey Fite.
Slabbe went back to the office, muttering. He complained to Gage: “Abe only does what he thinks is right, he says. The little monkey! Whitey Fite came here and spilled something, it looks like, and Abe and him went somewheres.”
“Is that bad?” Gage yawned.
“I dunno,” Slabbe confessed. “I don’t see how anything new could have cropped up if I got it figured right. The only way Abe could get in trouble would be if he somehow finds out where Happy and Tommy took Max, and goes there and sticks his neck out.”