“You can finish me, Ayerell,” the credit man was saying grimly. “I’m ready for it. You’ve corrupted me, and Benny has debauched me until I’m done for, anyway. I want to go. I couldn’t face them at the store any more.”
Clem put the automatic to Eddrop’s stomach, pulled the trigger.
Don saw Ralph double over like a jackknife, then straighten slowly and take a few tottering steps toward his attacker. He flung his arms out, grabbed Clem as the gunman poked the muzzle at his chest and fired again.
Eddrop’s body jerked like a toy on a string, but he clung to Ayerell’s arms until his grip slid to the man’s waist, his legs.
Benny screeched, “Clem! Clem! Get out! The cops are on their way!”
Clem aimed painstakingly at the top of Eddrop’s head. Don shot with his hand braced against the side of the chair. Clem’s smile vanished. He closed his mouth, opened it again. Don shot once more.
Clem and Eddrop crumpled to the floor like brawlers in a street fight.
Benny ran shrieking to the hall.
A bulky figure in blue grabbed her at the door, calling,
“All right, you in there! Heave ya guns out here! Before we have to come in and blow ya t’ pieces.”
Don got up shakily. “Officer, come in and get ’em yourself. They’re both dead ducks.”
Chapter XII
Now the apartment was crowded with humans and full of the smell of death. Ambulances had taken along the bodies of the two men. The patrol wagon had swallowed a wildcat Abenita. Don Marko lounged on the chair that had saved his life or nearly cost him his life, he couldn’t make up his mind which.
Cora was there and Bob Harrison and Maxie, in addition to four men from Homicide and a lucky reporter for the City News Syndicate.
Don was sourly waving aside congratulations. “Don’t make any damn hero out of me. If I’d used my head, Eddrop wouldn’t be dead, and they might have caught Ayerell alive. First time I heard about Benny I should have figured the name referred to a girl, because even then it was pretty clear butcher-boy Clem got dames to do all his dirty work.”
Cora stood up for Don. “Her name wasn’t Benita or Abenita on our records. I’d never heard her called that.”
“The girls in the credit department must have, though,” he said. “I should have checked on them, soon as it began to look as if the credit coins were phony.”
The general manager chewed on an expensive cigar. “They weren’t phony. That was the worst of it, Don.”
“Oh, no,” Don said. They were the McCoy. Benny looked over the accounts, followed the society columns, and found out which of our big customers were due to be away on winter vacations. Then she made Eddrop order duplicate coins for a few of those accounts, as we do when they’re lost, anyway. When the tokens came in, she’d give them to Clem. She’d pass them on to the particular feminine stooge he’d selected to do the job. He couldn’t use any of them more than once, naturally, or they’d have been spotted by someone of the sales force in the furniture or floor coverings. or draperies departments. But probably he kidded the babes along, told them they’d try it on another store later. Then as soon as the job was over, he’d knock them off, the way he did the dame down there at the Deshla place in Maryland.”
Maxie asked, “Why’d he stick to furniture, with what looked like an easy graft like that?”
Don was astonished to see how his fingers trembled when he lit a cigarette. “He was a decorator. Got jobs for doing over big country places from the swanky set. Soon’s he’d get an order from some of that hot-buttered bonbon, I suppose he sent one of the babes into our store and ordered exactly what he needed to fill his contract. Only, instead of having it charged to Mrs. Ritzbitz, he used the Deshla coin and name. When the stuff got down there in our truck, he’d be there to get it unloaded and ship it back in his own truck to the job he was doing or else to his Quonset hut out in Congers, to wait for the time it’d be needed.”
“Mary busted that up,” Cora said.
“And got busted to hell herself, for doing it.” Don blamed himself. “I should’ve been on the lookout for an inside worker right then.”
The general manager defended him. “I don’t know why you should have. We haven’t had a Nimbletts employee go bad on us for years. In anything as big as this, I mean. I hate most mightily to have it come out that our assistant credit manager was a crook.”
“Maybe it won’t have to come out,” Don suggested. “Eddrop kind of paid his bill, there at the last. If that Benny hellcat doesn’t insist on dragging his name into her trial — which won’t be necessary if she pleads guilty to conspiracy for grand larceny — I’d say we could talk to the D.A. about making Eddrop simply a victim of a crazy butcher.”
Cora said, “He was such a nice little man.”
Don agreed. “Not a bad guy until this Benny got a job in his department and suckered him into making love to her. After that, she could get him to do anything she wanted him to, because he’d have been afraid of scandal at the store. But he evened it up pretty well. The way he walked into that gun would have broken your heart.”
The G.M. nodded. “One of the few instances where the pig stabbed the butcher. Let’s do what we can to keep his name clean, Don.”
Cora asked, “Did Clem come here after you, Mr. Marko? Or after Mr. Eddrop?”
“Oh, after Ralph. Benny knew the game was up when she heard about Suzanne’s murder. So she decided to make Ralph the fall guy. She gave me a long rigmarole about Ralph’s finagling with the credit coins, then arranged to run right up here and meet him, hold him here until Clem came. She’d given Clem a key to this apartment. I’d say she knew Clem was going to kill the poor guy. What she probably didn’t know was that he’d have shot her, too. He hated leaving loose ends around that might trip him up.”
Maxie moved to avoid one of the Homicide photographers. “You ain’t said how you come to find this cuddle-up, Boss.”
“Clerk at Ralph’s hotel remembered the phone number he used to call three-four times a week. And up in his room I found a lipstick of that Congo orange Miss Wrenn used all the time. I couldn’t imagine a bird like Ralph carrying around anything like that unless she’d happened to drop it in his pocket some time when they’d been out together.”
Cora touched his arm. “Aren’t they going to let you go home pretty quick? You look shot to pieces.”
He smiled. “You ought to see the other guy, honey. No, they’ll have me making depositions until midnight. But I wish you’d call Doc Towbin for me.”
“You want him to come, here?” his secretary was solicitous.
“Oh, no. I’d like to have him run down to my apartment and take a peek at a gal pal of mine who needs a little help.”
She stuck out her tongue at him. “Oh, you’re impossible!”
“Incorrigible is the word.” He smiled. “Go phone him, like a good girl.”