Helen screamed, once. Teccard heard a thud. He lunged at the panel. “Helen! Get the door open!”
There was no answer.
He pointed the muzzle of Meyer’s automatic an inch from the edge of the jamb, at the lock.
Before he could pull the trigger he felt something, like the end of a piece of pipe, jab painfully into the small of his back. A suave voice murmured: “Use my key! It will be easier.”
Chapter Six
Cupid Turns Killer
The lieutenant held the pose. A hand came around his side and relieved him of the .45.
“Come on, Vanya! Open up!”
The door swung wide.
The girl stared, white-faced. “I didn’t know you were out here, Stefan. I heard him — trying to get in.” She held a heavy, cast-iron skillet at her side.
“I came upstairs while he was bellowing like a bull.” Kalvak prodded Teccard between the shoulder-blades with the muzzle of the automatic. “Get inside, there.”
Helen sprawled on the floor beside the refrigerator. Her hat lay on the floor beside her, the wide brim crushed by the fall. The sergeant’s head rested on a brown-paper shopping bag, her hair over her forehead.
Kalvak whistled, softly. “You killed her, Vanya!”
“She’s only stunned.” The girl lifted the skillet. “When I found she was a detective, I could have killed her.”
“We’ve enough trouble, without having a cop-murder to worry about. Did you search her?”
Vanya kicked the sergeant sullenly. “There’s no gun on her. What are you going to... do with them?”
Kalvak snarled at her. “I’ll take care of them.” He dug a spool of adhesive out his pocket. “Sit down in that chair. Grab the back with your hands. Close your eyes.”
“Hell! You’re not going to tape us, are you?”
“You think I want you to follow us, you—!”
Teccard saw a peculiar bulge inside the lining of Miss Yulett’s hat. He couldn’t be certain what it was — but it might be worth a gamble. “If you don’t want to fret about a cop-murder, you better call a doc for her.”
“She’ll snap out of it, all right.”
“Damn it! I tell you she’s dying!” Slowly and deliberately, so Kalvak couldn’t mistake his intention, Teccard moved a step closer to Helen — dropped down on one knee beside her.
The weapon in Kalvak’s hand swiveled around to follow the lieutenant’s movement. “Leave her alone.”
Teccard rested his weight on one hand, close to the hat brim. The other he put on Helen’s forehead. “She’s like ice — if you don’t get her to a doctor, fast—” His hand touched cold metal under the loose lining of the big hat.
Kalvak sensed something wrong. “Keep away from that hat!”
Teccard fired without drawing the stubby-barreled .32 out from under the hat-lining where Helen had hidden it. It was an angle shot and risky as hell — but the lieutenant knew the risk he and Helen were running, if he didn’t shoot. The bullet hit Kalvak about three inches below his belt buckle. It doubled him over and spoiled his aim with that automatic. But the heavy slug ripped across the lieutenant’s hip. It felt as if molten metal had been spilled all along the thigh. He lifted the .32 — hat and all — emptied three more chambers. The first bullet missed its mark. The second one caught Kalvak under the V-cleft in his chin. The third wasn’t needed.
Vanya sprang, caught him as he fell. She slumped on the floor, held his head in her arms, whimpering.
Helen struggled to sit up. “You and the U.S. Cavalry, Jerry,” she mumbled.
He helped her to stand. “I was a sap to lose you, there in the subway.”
Helen pressed her hands on top of her head, winced. “Peter — I mean Harold — or Stefan— Gone?”
“Thanks to your hiding that .32 in the Yulett dame’s bonnet.”
Vanya whined, wretchedly: “I know you’re glad he’s dead. I ought to be glad, too. After all the terrible crimes he’s committed. But I’m not, I’m not.”
The lieutenant limped over to her. “It was a good act, while it lasted, Mrs. Kalvak. But it couldn’t last forever. You can take off the disguise.”
She stopped rocking. “You mean I knew about Stefan’s having committed murder? Yes, I knew. When it was too late to prevent them.”
“I’ll say you knew.” He picked up Meyer’s pistol. “The one who didn’t know — for sure, anyway — was Stefan!”
Helen said, “What?”
The girl sat there, as if stupefied.
“All right. O.K. See what that innocence stuff gets you after Patrolman Taylor identifies you as the woman who ran downstairs at Eighty-eighth Street to tell him there was a fight going on over your room. Why’d you chase over there after your husband, anyway? Because you’d read that story in the newspaper about the kid finding the Lansing girl’s bones?
“That’d be my guess. You were up there in the room Stefan had rented as Harold Willard, so he could get his hooks into another dame,” he waved ironically toward Helen, “and you were packing up the clothes he had in the closet, or maybe just arguing with him so he wouldn’t think you knew too much about those bones under the pier. Then who should ride up on his charger but T. Chauncey Helbourne. When he heard about the disappearing dames and the dough that vanished along with them, he wanted a cut of that, too. And he went to the right place to get it.”
Vanya laid her cheek against the bloodless one in her lap. “You do not really believe such horrible things. No one could believe them.”
Helen was at the sink, using cold water. She held up a small camp hatchet. “Could it be this Boy Scout meat axe? Somebody’s been scouring it with steel wool.”
“The head of it would fit the gash in my fedora just ducky,” Teccard answered. “But it didn’t kill Helbourne. It knocked him cold. He was shot after I’d had my light put out. You shot him, Mrs. Kalvak — so I’d either get blamed for bumping him myself or think Helbourne was the rat responsible for the Happiness murders.”
“I was there at Eighty-eighth Street.” Vanya stroked the corpse’s forehead. “I did hear the fight. I told the truth to the policeman. You shot that man yourself.”
“No cop shoots a man lying down, lady. The blood stain on Helbourne’s vest was round, with the bullet hole in the center. If he’d died on his feet — the way it would have been if he was shot in a fight — the blood stain would have been tear-shaped — with the point down. How’d you beat it out of the house? Rush your husband down to that bathroom on the second floor — have him wait there, while you murdered Helbourne without Stefan’s knowing it? And then take a powder after the patrolman ran up to the third floor?”
The sergeant went over to pick up what was left of Miss Yulett’s hat. She picked up the brown-paper market basket at the same time. “Don’t tell me this girl cut up that Lansing woman, all by herself, Jerry!”
“Yair. Probably did it all with her little hatchet.”
“But why?” The sergeant held the bottom of the market bag up to the light. “If Stefan got the money out of these women, with his honeyed words...?”
“Stefan wheedled it out of them — and turned the cash over to Mrs. Kalvak. She’s the sort of skirt who wouldn’t mind her husband monkeying with other femmes, if it paid enough.”
Vanya kissed the corpse on the lips. “Darling! Listen to the hideous lies they make up about me!”
“Talk about lies, Mrs. Kalvak! You must have lied plenty to your husband. You’d probably promised to get the lovelorn out of his way after he’d garnered in the gold.” Teccard turned his back to inspect the wound on his hip. “Maybe he thought you scared them off by that ‘he’s-a-married-man — I’m-his-wife’ line. I don’t know. But I’m damned certain you thought the easy way to keep the suckers quiet was to plant them. Why you had to hack them to pieces—”