As Sara Chesterton worked in the field mornings and didn’t arrive at her office until one-thirty p.m., and since Stub Carlson was in school until two-thirty, there wasn’t much I could do the next morning except take care of a couple of routine matters. I started by checking with Warren Day to see if there had been any new developments.
There hadn’t been.
When I left the inspector’s office, I went down the hall to the record room and asked the cop on duty if he had anything on Buzz Thurmond or Limpy Alfred.
He didn’t have any trouble locating the card on Thurmond, but Limpy Alfred took him a little longer. I studied Thurmond’s record while he continued the search.
Buzz Thurmond’s given name was Leroy, I noted, and he was a two-time loser. His first conviction was for assault and battery at the age of nineteen, and had gotten him a six-month term. The second, for extortion, had occurred when he was twenty-two and had cost him two years. The front and profile pictures on his record card had been taken at the time of his second conviction, which made them eight years old, since the man’s age was listed as thirty. They showed a thick-featured man with a strong jaw and a sullen cast to his mouth. He was a big man, I noticed, his height being listed as six feet two and his weight as two hundred and six.
By the time I had finished reading over Leroy Thurmond’s record, the cop had located Limpy Alfred’s card by checking the nickname file.
His full name, according to the record, was Alfred Lloyd Leventhal, and he was forty-two years old. He’d only been in circulation thirty years, however, because he’d spent twelve years behind bars. His time had been served in two separate sentences, with several years intervening: the first a five-year term for armed robbery, of which he had earned four years, and the second a fifteen-year term for second-degree murder. Two years previously he’d been paroled after doing eight of the fifteen.
The front and profile views on the card dated from the time of his parole. They showed a thin, sharp-featured man with a receding chin and a slit for a mouth. His height was given as five-eight and his weight as only one-thirty-five. He had earned his nickname because, according to the description, he had a pronounced limp as a result of an old gunshot wound in the left knee.
Both men, from these records, had been picked up for questioning a number of times since their respective releases from the penitentiary, but had never been charged. Two of Buzz Thurmond’s had been on suspicion of homicide, one for receiving stolen goods and one for attempted extortion. The crimes for which Limpy had drawn the suspicious attention of the police included everything from assault to homicide, even, in one case, arson.
I gave the record room cop a cigar for his trouble.
Instead of phoning Sara Chesterton, as she had suggested, I decided to drop by the welfare office. She was busy at work, but put it aside and told me what she’d learned. “I phoned Records from home this morning before I started out in the field and asked them to pull my old Thurmond case, Manny. I haven’t had a chance to look at it yet, but it should be in my box.”
She rummaged through a pile of case records, and correspondence in her in-box and gave a grunt of satisfaction when she found a manila folder labelled Thurmond, ADC-6251.
As she opened it and started to look through it, I said, “I’ve learned Buzz’s real name is Leroy.”
“Leroy,” she repeated, studying the face sheet. “According to this Mrs. Thurmond had only two minor children named Thomas and Grace. Wait a minute. Here he is, under ‘Relatives Not Living in the Home.’ Leroy Thurmond, eldest son of client, age twenty-four.” She glanced at the date of the record. “That would make him thirty now, as this is six years old. His address is listed as the Bremmer Hotel, where he worked as a night clerk.”
She thumbed through several pages of the record. “According to this, his mother phoned she wouldn’t need ADC anymore because her eldest son was now giving her support. That’s when we closed the case.”
“He fell into money, eh?” I said thoughtfully.
“Apparently.” Again she thumbed through the case record. “There isn’t a thing more on him.”
“I’ve learned Limpy Alfred’s name is Alfred Lloyd Leventhal,” I said. “Could you check your old records for him?”
For answer she picked up the phone and called Records. Then she excused herself, and returned in about three minutes with a manila folder similar to the other. Sitting down at her desk again, she opened it and studied the face sheet.
It turned out Limpy was from another district, and his common-law wife had applied for relief when he was in the state penitentiary. “Leventhal was paroled two years ago,” she said. “Here’s a notation that the worker visited him to ask if he was willing to support his common-law wife. And guess where he was living?”
“The Bremmer Hotel,” I said.
Sara looked at me in surprise. “How’d you know?”
“Intuition,” I said.
It was to some degree, but I knew the reputation of the Bremmer Hotel, as did everybody in town who had dealings with crime. A second-rate place at the edge of the slum area, it was respectable on the surface, but those in the know, including the police, were aware the respectability was only a veneer. The place was the on-and-off residence of numerous known criminals, including a good number of freshly-released convicts who made it their first stop after getting out of the can.
The police raided the Bremmer Hotel with monotonous regularity, they’d never been able to make any charge stick, as a matter of fact, because, while the proprietor wasn’t very particular about his guests, he carefully avoided harboring criminals who were wanted at the moment.
A reputed racketeer named Sherman Bremmer owned the place, which made me wonder if I hadn’t stumbled onto the leader of the gang which maneuvered the Purple Pelicans and the Gravediggers into criminal activity. It seemed too much of a coincidence for both gang lieutenants to have a connection with the Bremmer Hotel unless they also had a connection with the owner.
Sara broke into my thoughts by saying, “Any of this helpful?”
“It’s given me another lead,” I said, rising. “Thanks a lot.”
Before I closed the door behind me, she called, “Don’t forget that fishing date we have some Sunday. You won’t forget?”
“I won’t forget,” I said.
It was pretty close to two-thirty when I left the welfare office, but I made it to the flat where Stub Carlson lived by twenty of three. I found no one home.
As I waited downstairs, a boy in a purple jacket turned to come into the building. “Stub isn’t home,” I said.
He looked startled, and then smiled. “You must be the guy Stub told us to be on the lookout for, Manny Moon. I’m Dave O’Brien.”
He explained to me that the club members were being rounded up for a special meeting. “I guess it’s about Stub and you,” he said. “Some of the guys don’t like it you’re a private cop. I think Stub’ll change their minds.”
I decided I’d see Stub later, after the meeting, when he could tell me what had been decided, and I’d know how much I could depend upon the Purple Pelicans for help.
To kill a couple of hours, I visited the downtown YMCA, and had a talk with an affable man in his fifties, the YMCA secretary, named Gardner.
He sent me to see a vital, well-muscled young man named Wilfred Reed, as the one most likely to know about the Y’s program of converting juvenile gangs into law-abiding clubs.
He knew Bart, and felt bad when I suggested Bart might have been killed because of his plan to reform the club.
“You shouldn’t blame yourself,” I said. “Your program seems a fine one to me. If you dropped it more kids would get killed in rumbles than could possibly get hurt in fighting for reform.”