“Roketenetz's heirs-” Johnny echoed. So far as he knew Sally and the kid had been alone in the world, the principal reason it had hit her so hard. She'd mothered him for years. “So Sally's an heiress.” The idea took a little getting used to, he decided.
“She could be,” Detective Rogers said cautiously. “The man I talked to, though, wouldn't say positively. He said that it primarily depends upon the established time of death, but that there are other complicating factors.”
“Sounds like a lawyer himself,” Johnny commented. “If there weren't any, they'd contrive a few.” He shoved his hands deep in his pockets and looked down at his shoes thoughtfully before looking up at Lieutenant Dameron again. “Where in the hell did that kind of money come from, Joe? It wasn't the kid's. He never had but one fight grossed him twenty-five hundred, an' I doubt he netted half of that.”
“So it was Gidlow's money, then?” Lieutenant Dameron sounded only mildly interested.
Johnny frowned. “I never figured Jake for any kind of real money. Jake was an operator-in an' out of a dozen shady deals a week. He'd rather beat you out of a hundred than pick it up on the sidewalk. This sounds like way too much for him.” He waved a hand at the rooms about them. “An' don't let the suite fool you-I've heard Jake brag many a time that it was a tax-deductible business expense. Say, doesn't Gidlow have a wife, or some heirs of his own?”
“No wife.” The lieutenant's tone was firm. “We've checked. He left a will, though.”
“He did?” Johnny straightened on the divan. “Who benefits?”
“Gentleman named Alonzo Turner. Solely.”
Johnny whistled softly through his teeth. “Lonnie Turner! Maybe this thing begins to make a little sense, now.” He jumped up restlessly and paced the length of the room before wheeling upon the silent lieutenant. “Suppose Jake was holdin' a bunch of cash Lonnie was hidin' from the tax people?”
“We've considered that.” Detective Rogers' voice was brisk. “It seems valid only up to a point. It could have happened that way if Turner thought that, through the will and other strings, he had Gidlow so completely sewed up that he was taking no risk in letting him hold the money; but it breaks down when you come up against the fact of the joint account. It doesn't explain Roketenetz's name on the bankbook.”
“Maybe it does, too,” Johnny argued. “If Lonnie had enough on Jake to be sure Jake couldn't double-cross him, he could've had Jake holdin' for him. But if anything went wrong it was Jake that stood to take the fall, and that wouldn't suit a weasel like Jake at all. Jake could have figured that if he had the kid's name on it, too, he could always claim it's the kid's dough and let him explain where it came from when the day for explanations came. I'd like to bet you Gidlow slapped bank signature cards down in front of the kid an' said sign here, an' here, an' here, an' here.
The little account was the kid's. He never even knew about this other thing.”
“It's a theory,” the sandy-haired man admitted after a moment. He looked at his superior. “The kicker in the deal is that if the money is Turner's, he-or whoever the money belongs to-has no legal claim to it now. A joint account balance goes to the survivor, period, except in a very few cases of a consideration of trust, which I doubt would apply here. I can't see Turner invoking it, for one thing-if this is hidden tax money, whoever stakes a claim to it is in the grease with Internal Revenue. No, sir-the owner of this money will never dare try to claim it.” He looked at Johnny. “There's another factor. If Roketenetz had anything to do with Gidlow's death, he couldn't benefit, and neither could his heirs.”
“If you're earnin' your money, you ought to have the answer to that already,” Johnny told him. “Who did grease the chute for Jake?”
“If I could tell you, I could go home and go to bed.” The slender man yawned and stretched prodigiously. He lowered his arms slowly. “It had aspects of a frame. Gidlow was manually strangled, and the body placed on the divan. The camera was rigged with the thread so that whoever opened the door took a picture of himself without realizing it, since there was no flash and the thread snapped after contact. Very crude.”
“What the hell was so crude about it?” Johnny demanded. “Suppose it had been me whizzed in there. I'd have taken a picture of myself in the doorway of the room of a murdered man, an' never even known it. You think I'd ever have noticed that little bit of thread left on the camera trigger? Like hell I would.”
“You'd probably only have been down to your next-to-last appeal before we noticed it, though,” Detective Rogers said cheerfully. “The truth is mighty, and will prevail, to say nothing of the New York City Police Department.” He removed a notebook from his jacket pocket and flipped open its pages. “No sign of forcible entry. We were meant to assume that entry was by key and that a death-reflexive arm movement of the corpse snapped the picture very conveniently upon the murderer's departure.”
“The kid had a key to this suite,” Johnny said slowly.
“It could have been meant for him,” the detective agreed. He looked at Johnny slyly. “Of course, with Gidlow strangled manually, someone as well-known as yourself for talking with their hands could easily have come under suspicion.”
“A situation to which he's not exactly unused,” Lieutenant Dameron rumbled. “Well, are we finished here, Jimmy?”
Detective Rogers rose and bowed elaborately from the waist. “Monsieur, we may not be finish', but we sure as hell are defeat'.”
Johnny laughed, then sobered. “I hope you guys realize both these deaths go right back to that fixed fight.”
“What fixed fight?” the lieutenant inquired blandly.
“Yeah, you're feelin' pretty brave now with no investigation testimony possible from the two principal witnesses. That could be why they're dead.”
“Does that explain the bankbook?” Lieutenant Dameron demanded sharply. He got up out of his chair. “Or why Gidlow twelve hours before Roketenetz?” He turned to the door. “Come on, Jimmy.”
Downstairs in his own room Johnny took down the bourbon bottle thoughtfully and examined the brimful amber contents of the shot glass he then filled. Well, Killain? Why didn't you tell them about finding Monk and the shyster at the door of Sally's apartment before anyone knew Gidlow was dead? Did Lonnie Turner scare you that much into believing you'd better not step on his toes?
Glass in hand, he wandered into the bathroom, and studied his hard-bitten, bronzed features in the mirror. He knew why he hadn't told him. If Turner was as tough as his reputation, it would be just as well to keep Sally out of the foreground so they wouldn't get back at her, rather than Johnny. And from the sound of this thing, Turner had something to protect.
He downed his drink and considered the empty glass. Suppose that Turner knew Gidlow was dead? Or going to be? Turner undoubtedly had a key to the suite, too. Suppose he'd send someone over to check on the cash, or even to retrieve it before Jake went over the dam? All they'd have found was the bankbook. A telephone call about that should have started Lonnie's ulcer working overtime.
A telephone call…
Johnny put down his glass and moved briskly to the phone. “Vic? Can you get me the telephone chits out of the auditor's office for the day Gidlow was killed?”
“Be no problem ordinarily, Johnny,” Vic replied apologetically, “but the police already took them out of here.”
“Okay, boy,” Johnny said shortly, and hung up. He stared at the wall. Great minds…
He sat at a small table in the farthest corner of the dimly lighted Cafe of the Three Sisters and listened to Consuelo Ybarra's professional rendition of gypsy love songs. The surprisingly deep, husky voice from the tiny bandstand did justice and a little bit more to the fiercely passionate nature of her material.