The telephone rang and Slabbe answered. Al Gage said: “Gage talking. It’s washed up.”
Slabbe gaped. “Huh?”
Gage sounded very pleased. “I’ll see that you get all the credit that’s coming to you and your expenses taken care of, but don’t forget I took Happy by myself.”
Slabbe bellowed: “Will you tell me what the hell you’re talking about?”
“Sure thing. I got Happy. That’s it, isn’t it? I chased him down the fire escape, tailed him to this hotel I’m at now. He come in, took a room, went up and I went up after him. I knocked on the door. We both had guns out, only I shot first. He’s meat, and he had the jewels on him.”
Slabbe uttered a string of words, the mildest of which was: “Goddam!” He took a breath and yelled: “What hotel?”
“Uncas Hotel, just around the corner from your place,” Gage said.
The procession that left Slabbe’s office and marched to the Uncas hotel included Slabbe, Charlie Somers, Abe Morse, Lieutenant Carlin and four plainclothes men and three harness cops.
The desk clerk marveled. “My God, you cops move fast these days! I just hung up from calling City Hall. Room 307. The man just came in and registered and went upstairs and the next thing I knew a woman came screaming down that there was shooting there.”
The last harness cop in the procession might have heard the desk clerk, but the others had already crowded into an elevator.
Al Gage was sitting at the writing desk in room 307, talking on the telephone. On the green blotter in front of him lay a gun and a chamois bag. The drawstring of the bag was loose and glittering stones had spilled out of it: diamonds, pearls, an emerald or two.
Gage looked around at the sound of feet, held up a hand for silence, then waved at the bent-over heap which was Happy Lado. Happy was doubled up on the floor, resting on his knees and forehead, both arms clasped about his midsection as if he’d tried to hold pain down or his guts in. Gage had obviously shot him in the stomach. Happy’s gun was under him, just the butt visible, as it would naturally be if he’d dropped it after collapsing.
Everybody started talking, and Gage held up his hand again, said into the telephone: “Mr. Oliver? Gage talking. I’ve recovered the jewels. Satisfactory?... Yessir, my lead worked out fine. I’ll get some sleep and come in.”
Slabbe had been staring woodenly at the chamois bag of jewels beside the gun on the desk blotter. He recognized the gun as one of his own, one that he kept in a desk drawer in his office.
Gage started to hang up, noted the direction of Slabbe’s stare and said apologetically: “I didn’t think you’d mind if I borrowed it. Remember I gave my own to the lieutenant after I shot Silk.”
“Wait a second,” Slabbe said and took the telephone from the Zenith op. He said, “Mr. Oliver?” and when Enoch Oliver’s dry voice purred, “Yes?” Slabbe put a lash into his voice and said, “A fine outfit you got, sending a man on a job like this when he’s half dead for sleep!”
Mr. Oliver gasped, sputtered. Slabbe railed at him some more, his voice dripping sarcasm.
“Now stop that!” Mr. Oliver burst. “We did have other operatives set to follow Tommy Rex from the hospital today, but Gage picked up a better lead and wanted to handle it himself.”
“That would have been about noon today, huh?” Slabbe said. “He told you he had this tip down our way, right?”
“Naturally. Of course. And I authorized him—”
Slabbe needed no more. He hung up, looked at Gage. The fatigue lines about the Zenith op’s eyes had deepened and tightened from more than weariness.
Slabbe said: “Honest to God, I’m sorry, Gage. I kind of liked you. You know the job and you got guts, and you like your work. Yeah, maybe you like your work too much. You got too enthusiastic with Pola, huh?”
No one had to hold up a hand for silence now. The room was packed with cops. Someone shut the door. The air in the room was suddenly hot and still. Al Gage’s green eyes were sinking back into his skull. A weary muscle in his cheek twitched once and was still.
Slabbe tongued his gum into a cavity and spoke without relish. “Tommy Rex was right when he said he’d have spotted anybody who tailed him down on the train. You didn’t tail him, Al. You knew he was coming here and you got here first. I’d say you got here about the one-thirty train, not the two-thirty.”
Slabbe’s words hung in the air tightly. Someone shuffled, coughed. All eyes were on Al Gage.
Slabbe wet his lips. “Whitey Fite saw Pola and Happy and Silk get off a ten o’clock train today. Then he took the ten-thirty to Philly. That would put him in Philly at eleven-thirty. He was a stoolie, Whitey was, and his business was knowing who was wanted and for what and who was interested. He knew the Zenith Agency protected the jewelry store that had been heisted. He knew he’d get paid more for his information by a Zenith op than by anybody else. Did he come straight to you, Al? Your boss just admitted that other arrangements had been made, but you picked up a better lead and were authorized to handle it.”
It didn’t look as if Gage were going to say a word. It didn’t look as if he had the strength to. His face was shriveled, his green eyes dull. Normally inconspicuous as a successful dick should be, he now stood out above anyone else in the room. He was branded.
His lips scarcely moved, and his words were very low. “It was the breaks all through,” he said. “It was a fluke that Whitey picked me. He was waiting in the corridor outside the boss’ office about noon today when I was leaving. I’d just checked in from a job up-state and was going home to bed. Whitey must’ve figured I was the boss and braced me, asked me what it was worth to get a line on Happy, Silk and Pola.”
Slabbe nodded. “It was worth plenty and you paid Whitey. He told you he’d seen Pola, Happy and Silk get off a train in our town and had tailed Pola to Nikki Evans’ apartment, right? Was it just a fluke, too, that Whitey was on hand at the railroad station and spotted ’em?”
“Fifty-fifty, I guess,” Gage said. “A guy like him hangs around railroad stations off and on, but I think he was coming to Philly for a personal reason today. What’s the difference? He spotted them and passed the dope along to me.”
“And you told your boss you’d picked up a lead and he should call off the ops who’d been supposed to tail Tommy from the hospital,” Slabbe filled in. “You figured that with Pola, Happy and Silk here and Tommy due to be discharged from the hospital, he’d sure make a beeline here, right? You didn’t have to tail him. Maybe you didn’t even want him at all. You knew where Pola had put in, at Nikki’s apartment. You figured she’d be packing the jewels. You’ve got guts. Maybe you could get them back.
“So you hopped the very next train down, the twelve-thirty, I’d say, and it put you here at one-thirty. You went straight to Nikki’s apartment, told her you were from Tommy and wanted to talk to Pola alone. The girls accepted you and Nikki left and... like I said, you got too enthusiastic about getting the jewels back, Al.”
Gage’s voice was hollow. “I didn’t know she had a bad heart. I was fagged out, too. Excited, yet tired. I talked to her. She gave me a song and dance. I started to bum. I hate crooks, anyhow. I started to search the apartment. She laughed at me, lit a cigarette and blew smoke in my eyes. I socked her and her cigarette fell down. I picked it up and her eyes popped out. I didn’t have any intention of using it, then. But when I saw her get scared, I figured she’d crack easy. I turned up the radio and...
“All right! Go ahead!” Gage cried suddenly, voice rising. “Look at me! All of you! I guess no other guy here would do such a thing!”