“Where’s a phone? Give this Donnelly a bell. Tell him I want to see him down here right away.”
“Sure.” Biddonay looked away. “But Pete ain’t the kind of lad to harm a flea, much less chop up a guy.”
The Marshal followed to the office, a little water-soaked, soot-stained cubbyhole off the corridor leading to dressing-rooms for the entertainers. There were a couple of ash-smeared desks, swivel chairs, a black iron safe piled high with old and soggy Racing Forms; a glass-front bookcase filled with a row of Moody’s Manuals, some small silver cups, a few paper-covered Spalding pamphlets on bowling and two round, black leather cases for carrying bowling balls. Biddonay sagged into one of the padded chairs, dragged a phone across the desk toward him, dialed.
“Pete? Hello, Pete? This’s Bill... yeah... all hell’s bust loose. We hadda fire, Pete... The whole shebang’s burned down... just now... They only put it out a few minutes ago. And that ain’t all. There’s a—” the cafe owner glanced up at Pedley’s outstretched palms.
Pedley said, “Shush on the killing, Biddonay.”
The fat man nodded, unhappily. “Listen, Pete. There’s a guy from the Fire Department down here with me now. He wants you should get down here right away... I don’t know what for; I suppose he wants to ask you some questions. Hurry it up, now, Pete.” He hung up, as a blue-uniformed man in the regulation cap of the Fire Department came into the office and saluted Pedley.
“E. T. Jewett, fireman, first class. Company Eighty-six. Inspection duty, sir.” The man’s narrow, tight-lipped face was tense with worry.
“These premises on your beat, Jewett?”
“Yes, sir.” The fireman rubbed his chin, uneasily. “I checked the floorshow here, tonight. About eleven-thirty, wasn’t it, Mr. Biddonay?”
The cafe man sighed. “Guess it was. Seems a year ago.”
Pedley took out a notebook. “What time’d your tour end, Jewett? Twelve?”
“Yes, sir. Everything was okay here, then. How’d she start, do you know, sir?”
“Overheated wall behind the charcoal grill. Hike out and tell that cop to ring his station. We’ll need the medical examiner, homicide boys, and one of the lads from the Bureau of Identification. Then come back down cellar.”
Jewett’s eyes opened wide. He saluted again and hurried away.
The Marshal said curtly: “Let’s go down to your private morgue, Biddonay. See if we can put the finger on that corpse.”
The fat man labored to his feet, mumbling something about not wanting to set eyes on the damned thing, much less a finger. They went downstairs, into the nose-tingling ammoniacal vapor. They searched the rest of the refrigerator first, for the missing head. They had found nothing when Jewett rejoined them. The fireman expelled his breath in a long whistle of repugnance.
“Somebody had a screwy sense of humor, huh?” he said. “To hang that thing in here like a chunk of mutton? He was a big guy, wasn’t he!”
“Big,” Pedley answered, “and powerful as a bull. Look at those shoulders. Don’t see chest muscles like that very often.”
Biddonay pointed to a number of garnet-colored scars on the back of the torso, about the level of the shoulder-blades. “What were those marks?”
Pedley’s mind went back through the years to a body that had been fished out of the ashes of a great conflagration; the cadaver had been marked in the same peculiar way. And that body had been identified.
“Mat scars,” he suggested. “They might be scars from a canvas-covered mat. Sort a wrestler gets from having his shoulders scraped by some two hundred and fifty pounder on top of him.”
“A wrestler!” Jewett frowned. “Say, Mr. Biddonay—”
“I don’t know any wrestlers,” the cafe man muttered, hastily.
“That big black-haired guy who comes in two, three times a week and tries to date Snowball Sue,” Jewett cried. “Looks like an ape who needs a shave.”
Biddonay shut his eyes, shook his head. “I don’t notice every customer in the Ice-taurant. I couldn’t remember ’em all—”
Pedley went close to him, grabbed the fat man by the back of the neck, pushed his face within an inch of the gruesome thing on the steel hook. “Don’t hold out on me, mister! Not when there’s murder and arson involved and three of my department buddies are sleeping on a slab! You talk! You talk straight and quick — or I’ll put you where you’ll be glad to have even this bloody hunk for company!”
Biddonay stammered. “It’s only I don’t want to give you a wrong steer. I’m not certain—”
“Who’s this wrestler Jewett described?”
The cafe man shuddered. “An ugly lummox they call Gorilla Greg. I don’t know who he is. I don’t know anything about him except that Sue kids him and calls him Gorilla.”
“Who’s this Sue?”
“Our snowball dancer,” Biddonay moaned.
“You know,” Jewett put in, “she comes out after them chorines do their strip tease on skates; she ain’t wearing a stitch except she’s holding this big snowball, and of course while she skates around the snowball begins to melt—”
“Shut up,” barked Pedley. “What’s her name?”
Biddonay looked at the floor. “Name is Sue d’Hiver. She’s a swell kid. She wouldn’t harm a flea.”
“Where’s she live?”
“Over on the East Side somewheres. The address’d be up in the cashier’s ledger.”
The Marshal got his arm, shoved him toward the stairs. “Let’s get it, fella. I might want a word with this mouse.”
Chapter Three
Gorilla Greg
They went up to the office. Biddonay opened the safe with fingers that rattled the combination dial. He pulled out a black and red ledger. “Here y’are.”
Pedley read: Suzanne d’Hiver, 12 Griswold Place. He checked down the list of employees until he came to: Peter Donnelly, 966 West 51st Street.
“This cashier of yours lives just around the corner, eh?”
“That’s right.”
“Funny he hasn’t showed up.”
“Is queer.” The cafe man snuffled dismally.
“Give him another buzz,” Pedley suggested.
Biddonay stuck a pudgy forefinger in the phone dial, spun it seven times. There was an odd, puzzled look in his round eyes; after a bit he held the receiver away from his ear so Pedley could hear the operator ringing. “Nobody home.”
The marshal growled: “Give him another couple minutes. If he doesn’t show up, we’ll have to go after him.”
“It would be a dumb trick to lam out, Marshal. An’ Pete ain’t dumb, at all.”
A black limousine slid to the curb in front of the restaurant. Four men got out, carrying valises, camera cases, tripods, flash guns.
Pedley said: “Homicide boys’ll take over here, but you better come with me, Biddonay. I’ll put you under technical arrest as a material witness.”
“For the Lord’s sake—”
“Hold on, fella. Material witness arrest means the cops won’t be able to drag you downtown for a day of questions and answer stuff while I need you to run down this arson business.”
The stout man seemed relieved. “It’s just I don’t like the idea of being arrested, is all. Besides, I won’t be much use as a witness, will I? I don’t know anything about the fire. And I’ve only seen this Gorilla lug a couple times here in the restaurant. I never talked to him—”
“Don’t worry about your testimony.” The Marshal opened a closet door, peered inside. “This is your joint; you hire the help; you were first on the scene after the crime was discovered. That’ll be all I’ll need. Except I’ll want you to shag over to Donnelly’s with me, if he doesn’t get here directly.”