While I waited I kept in close touch with my office and got the reports of the men who were still trailing Monk and Larry Coster around. They’d separated when they’d been scared off in the subway at Radio City, each of them taking off alone and riding around in the subways for more than an hour, but then they both started making telephone calls. I suppose when nothing else happened to them and they calmed down a little they thought they were in the clear. They must have contacted Leon Schell, because about two hours later they met in a downtown bar, then went for a long walk together, occasionally stopping off at drug stores to make phone calls. Once they made a long call in a street booth outside a filling station on the west side, each of them taking turns going in to the booth. It could only be Leon Schell they were talking to then — I would have given anything to see his face when he heard what happened.
I wanted to get them alone, first pick up Larry Coster and put him on ice, and then go to work on Monk, and I hoped, through Monk, to find out where Leon Schell was. We still had no idea where he could be.
When the transistor recorder was ready for me I cabbed up to my room in the hotel, and that’s where Monk upset my plans. I never dreamed he’d have anyone watching the joint for me, but he did and he had, and I couldn’t get too mad at the guy for it because he’d paid for it with his life.
Now as I turned into the bar to make my call to the office I felt a terrible urgency, because if I couldn’t get to Coster alone I might just as well forget about Leon Schell. I wanted to bag him as much as the jewelry firm wanted their stuff back. The office phone answered before the first ring was finished. It was Jack Finch — he’d been glued to that phone for the last ten hours. I told him briefly about what happened with Monk.
“Yeah, Bill, I heard,” he said. “A Captain Carrara of the Safe and Loft Squad called a couple of minutes ago. He’s in your hotel room now and he’s plenty mad. He wants you to call him right away — he said that when Inspector O’Leary finds out what you did he’ll chew him out until there’s nothing left of him and he’ll probably tear you apart personally when he catches up to you. Maybe you’d better call him fast, Bill.”
“Sure,” I said. “I’ll call him right away. First give me a run-down on Larry Coster.”
“He and Monk were together in a bar on West Eighth Street until a little over a half hour ago. Monk got a phone call and took off real fast — that’s when he went over to your hotel room. Coster stayed there a few minutes then went out and made a phone call from a drug store on the corner. Then he took a cab up to an apartment hotel on West Sixty-Second Street. He went in there about ten minutes ago. We found out he’s in Apartment 4E under his own name — Coster. That must be his voting address.”
“Very funny. Give me the number on Sixty-Second Street,” I told him. He did and I jotted it down.
“Look Jack,” I said, “I’m going up there now to make the pinch. Before I do, though, I have to find out something from him, so I don’t want you to let anyone know I called or where I’m going. You got that straight?”
There was a long pause before he answered. “You mean you’re not going to telephone the cops, Bill? Those guys are really awfully mad at you for leaving Monk alone.”
“I’ll call as soon as I make the pinch,” I said. “Just forget I called you now, understand?”
“Okay, Bill,” he said. “I can follow an order. Good luck.”
I hung up and went out and found a cab right away and told him to run me up to Sixty-First Street and Central Park West. I wanted to have the attache case with me when I went in to Larry Coster but there wasn’t time for that now — I’d have to figure out another angle. I knew I wouldn’t be the general of this operation much longer. Maybe by now Inspector O’Leary had me down to buck private or worse. If my office knew where Coster was it was for sure the Safe and Loft Squad did too, and the same five minutes that Inspector O’Leary decided to grab Coster they’d go in and bag him and that would be the end of what I was trying to do. I was still determined to get Leon Schell no matter what chances I had to take to do it.
The cab pulled up to the corner of Sixty-First Street. I paid the driver and got out. My gun was at the office and I needed one now so I walked up towards Sixty-Second Street looking for one of my men. I saw him sitting at the wheel of a cab we used for tail jobs right on the corner of Sixty-Second Street. It was Harry Sloan and he was alone in the cab. He saw me coming through his mirror and slid open the cab door when he saw me head for the cab. I stepped into the back and sat hunched forward on the seat.
“He still in there?” I asked.
“Yeah, Bill. I followed him uptown and saw him go in the building. Then a couple of minutes later the light went on in that fourth floor room on the corner. He came to the window and I saw him good when he closed the blind.” He pointed to the window he meant. There was still a light in the room.
“I haven’t got time to fill you in on everything that’s happened,” I said. “I’m going in now and make the pinch, but first I have to see him alone and try to find out something. You got your gun on you?”
He nodded.
“Let me have it,” I said.
He took it out of his shoulder holster and handed it back to me. I slid it under my belt, around on the left side.
“How many city detectives are there around here now?” I asked.
“Three or four that I know of. A couple of them are out behind an alley that leads into the back yards there. Why, Bill?”
“I’m in a mess with them, and I want to steer clear of them if I can,” I said. “I’ll make this as fast as I can, but if I get in any serious trouble, Harry, I’ll try to smash that window. Come in fast then, but come in with a gun, and bring those cops with you. I’m not sure what this guy might try, he’s certainly pretty upset and mad after what happened today. If I can bag him quietly, though, I’ll call the office and have them contact you over your radio — keep it on. Then you can come in alone or with our guys, but leave the cops out of it until I can duck out. I don’t want to see them if I can help it. You got that straight?”
“Whatever you say, Bill.”
I got out of the cab and started for the entrance of the apartment building. I could feel that knot growing in my gut again. I walked in and went right to the elevator and rode to the fourth floor. Apartment 4E was off to the right. I reached into my jacket pocket and turned on the switch of the transistor recorder. I didn’t need any more evidence against Larry Coster, but you could never tell — it might come in useful. Then I pressed the doorbell button twice, two short ones.
In a couple of seconds a low voice came through the door. “Who is it?”
“Me, Bill. Bill Young,” I said. “Monk just sent me up.”
The door opened a little and he peered out at me. I could see the blue glint of an automatic at his waist. When he saw I was alone he opened the door wide enough for me to walk in. He stood off to the side of the door and then I didn’t have any trouble seeing the gun.
He waved me into the room with it and shut and locked the door behind me. He kept the automatic right on my middle.
“Where’s Monk?” he asked.
“Downstairs in his car,” I told him. “He came to my hotel room and I gave him the suitcase with the stuff in it. He brought me out to his car and we rode up here. He couldn’t find a place to park so he told me to come up here and get you. He said you should call the Boss to let him know he had the stuff and find out what he wants you to do.”