“How?”
“Alicia traded the money for the briefcase and left Minutes later Bannister’s thugs broke in on the thieves and took back the money. The thieves disappeared.”
“They skipped town?”
“I rather doubt it,” he said. “I believe a cement overcoat is the American term. You could probably find the four of them on the river bottom.”
Maddy shuddered. I put an arm around her and Armin looked on with fatherly approval.
“It all grows jumbled after that point,” he said. “I believe Alicia carried her double cross to its logical conclusion. She had the briefcase. It could make her richer than cooperation with Mr. Bannister could. So she stopped being Alicia Arden and turned into Sheila Kane. She must have been planning this all along. Her alias was established in advance.”
“Maybe she was afraid of winding up in the river. Or maybe she wanted the twenty grand in her hands before she gave him the case.”
Armin conceded that was possible. “She disappeared,” he said. “Several weeks passed. Then everybody found the poor girl at once. Mr. Bannister found her and had her murdered. But he didn’t recover the briefcase. You found her, but you didn’t find the case either. I was certain you had, but I was wrong. And I was able to find the girl but not the briefcase myself.”
I looked at him. “It’s about time we got around to you,” I said. “You know all about it without fitting in anywhere. Just how did you get into the act?”
“I didn’t.” I stared at him and he smiled back at me. “Let me put it this way, Mr. London. I learned of the situation. My livelihood hinges upon my ability to hear of situations where a profit is in the offing. I heard of this one, worked very carefully, found the girl out, and arrived too late on the scene. I’m still searching for the briefcase. I intend to make a spectacular profit when I get hold of it.” His smile spread. “Does that answer your question?”
“I guess it has to.”
He held out both hands. “My contribution,” he said. “Now you must keep your part of the bargain. What do you know?”
“Not much.”
“It may help. Will you tell me?”
I gave him most of it. I left out Jack Enright’s name, kept some of the details purposely vague. He listened to all of it.
“That helps,” he said. “It explains things.”
“It does?”
“Of course. I now understand several points which made no sense before. Your presence, for example. I had to think you were after the briefcase since there was no other explanation for your interest in Alicia. I also understand how she found an alias so easily. It was waiting for her because of her double life with your friend. Yes, it makes sense now.”
There was silence for a few seconds. Maddy broke it. “You said you went to the apartment,” she said to Armin. “Was that after Sheila... Alicia... was killed?”
“That’s correct. After Mr. London’s friend and before Mr. London. Say ten o’clock.”
“And the apartment? What did it look like?”
He shrugged. “As Mr. London found it. The apartment neat, the girl garbed in stockings and garter belt. That’s all.”
“Just like that,” I said.
“Just like that. I searched thoroughly, of course, but I left everything as I found it. A bizarre tableau. But I left it as it was.”
“Then somebody was there after my friend and before you.”
“Possibly.”
“But—”
He said: “Not necessarily, though. Your friend, Mr. London, is neither criminal nor detective. He entered, reacted, left. He may have seen what you and I saw without it registering on his mind. You and I were emotionally stable, saw the scene as it was. But your friend must have been distraught—”
“He was a wreck.”
“And consequently may have seen his mistress dead without seeing anything else. The death alone stayed in his memory. He arranged the rest unconsciously to conform with his vision of what should be, not what was.”
“That’s pretty far out, isn’t it?”
“I’m not stating it as fact, Mr. London. Purely as a supposition. It makes a certain amount of sense, doesn’t it?”
“Maybe.”
“Think it through,” he suggested. “The apartment was neat all along. Alicia was at home. Bannister or his men came in, searched the apartment, found nothing, killed her. Perhaps they molested her sexually. He employs that type of thug—”
I reminded him that there was no evidence.
“There doesn’t have to be,” he said. “She was hardly a virgin. Or suppose they stripped her to search her, if you prefer it that way. They killed her and left. Your friend came, saw, and ran screaming, his mind unhinged. I came, searched, and left. You came, removed the body, and went away with it.”
His analysis was logical enough. I let it lie there. Something was a little out of whack but I could worry about it later.
I stood up, turned to Maddy. “Let’s go,” I said.
“Leaving?” He looked disappointed.
“Might as well,” I said. “I’m going to see where I can get with Bannister. In the meantime you can work from the angle of the briefcase. With both of us handling opposite sides of the street we should double our chances of getting somewhere.”
“We should.”
“We’ve made progress already,” I told him. “There’s just one thing more.”
I took out his Beretta, let him look at it. I think there was a second or two when he thought I was going to shoot him with it.
“This is yours,” I said. “You might as well have it.”
He did one hell of a take. He stared hard at me, then burst out laughing. He was a little guy but he laughed like a dynamo. It took him a few minutes before he could talk again.
“Oh, that’s funny,” he said. “That’s really funny. But I still have the mate to that gun, Mr. London. And since we’re working together I’d like you to keep that one for your own protection. You might need it.”
He started laughing again. “But that’s funny,” he said. “That’s really very funny.”
Ten
We left him laughing and rode the elevator down to the lobby. I stopped there to relight my pipe. I’m glad I did. Otherwise I probably would have missed him.
He was the kind of guy it’s easy to miss. He sat in a big armchair and disappeared in it. He had his nose buried in a copy of the Morning Telegraph but his eyes showed over the top of it and they were looking at us.
We had a tail.
I finished lighting the pipe, took Maddy by the arm and steered her toward the door. I heard a rustle behind us as he started to fold up his paper. “Don’t look around,” I said, “but we’ve got a shadow. A little man who isn’t there.”
“How do we get rid of him?”
It’s not hard to duck a shadow if you know he’s there. You can tell your cabby to do some tricks with his hack, or you can walk in one entrance of a building and out another, or you can play games on the subway, getting off the car just before the doors close and letting your tail ride to Canarsie alone. But I didn’t feel like just ducking the little bastard. He was Bannister’s present to me and I wanted to send him home looking ugly. I was sick of Bannister and his presents.
“Could you stand a screen test?”
She didn’t understand.
“You’re an actress,” I told her. “I’ve got a little acting for you to do. Game?”
I told her about it and she was game. We walked out of the Ruskin and down the block to Forty-third Street. We cornered at Forty-third and idled in a doorway, waiting for our friend to catch up with us. He was lousy.
He took the corner and breezed past us without spotting us.
Now we were tailing him.