“As far as I know, just Lorio’s story.” She leaned across the table, her eyes biasing. “He could have been there on some official business. Lorio could have shot him, then made up this story about the robbery.”
“Yeah — maybe. But why, Muriel? He’d have to have a reason, and a damned good one. Besides, Anthony Lorio’s a big man in this town, and he’s always kept himself clean with the police. Sure, he runs a big private gambling club, and he may have his fingers in other underworld rackets. But he’s no small-time cop killer.” I shook my head.
“If he wanted to get rid of Ralph for some reason, it seems logical he’d have got someone else to do it. He’d have had it done somewhere outside his own place. But Lorio shot him himself, by his own admission. It doesn’t add up.”
I lit a cigarette, and finished up the coffee — it was lukewarm now — and added, “By the way, have the police been to your place yet?”
“No. They asked me to come down and — identify Ralph, right after they told me what had happened. They said they’d be out this morning. They wanted to look over his things.” Her face clouded, and her eyes were defiant. “They seemed to think they’d find some of his loot at home.”
She started to say something else, then paused. Even white teeth gave her lower lip a work-out. A little frown settled itself between her dark eyes. Then she seemed to make up her mind about something, and reached for her handbag. She opened the catch, fumbled inside and came up with a little piece of yellow paper. I didn’t have to look twice to know what it was.
“Cory, I want you to take this pawn ticket, and find out what it’s for.”
“Where’d you get it?”
“I found it among Ralph’s things. Please take it, and see what it’s for, before the police come.”
I took the yellow slip from her fingers, looked at it, turned it over. It was from Lowenstein’s Loan Shop on South Rampart. I creased it in the middle and stuck it in my billfold.
“Has Ralph been hard up lately?”
She shook her head. “There’s nothing missing from the apartment that he could have pawned. Besides, we have money in the bank. I know it wasn’t because he needed extra cash.”
She was afraid to put her doubts and suspicions into words, I was sure. So I helped her out.
“You realize what this could mean, Muriel?”
She nodded. “If it’s proved to me, beyond all doubt, then I’ll have to accept it. But unless it is, I won’t believe Ralph was there for the purpose of robbing that man.”
I got up, walked around to her side of the table and lifted the white topcoat from the back of the seat where it had slipped from her shoulders.
“Come on,” I said, “you’re going home. I’ll take over from here.”
She smiled and stood up. I put the coat across her shoulders and gave her a reassuring squeeze. “You do just what the police tell you, and I’ll call you at home when I pick up anything. You don’t have to tell them about me...” I paused.
“There’s one thing you must know, Muriel. About that pawn ticket — if it turns out to be anything the police should know, I’ve got to turn it over to them. It’s a little matter of ethics that friendship can’t touch. Understand?”
She nodded. “I understand, Cory. I’ll leave it up to you.”
II
I followed Muriel to the street. The grey haze which had cloaked the city that morning had turned into a raw, wet drizzle. I walked a couple of blocks, then went into a drugstore for another cup of coffee.
The early editions of the afternoon papers were out, and their coverage on the shooting was more complete. I took the papers to a back booth, and studied them carefully with the coffee.
It was an open and shut case, according to the stories turned in by the reporters. Anthony Lorio’s story stood up. He had made a signed statement to the police about the attempted hold-up. One paper had a picture of him emerging from Police Headquarters, and he didn’t look very happy. His smooth, black head was swathed in a bandage, and the right side of his face looked swollen and discoloured.
One of the papers had a little bulletin box at the top of the story, printed in bold type. The police had found Kingston’s car parked on the side of the road a half mile from Lorio’s place. In the glove compartment, they had found a roll of black masking-tape, an improvised mask and several pieces of obviously expensive jewellery. They were checking theft reports, the story stated, to see if the jewellery was stolen.
I swore. It looked bad for Ralph, all right — but I still felt as Muriel did. I couldn’t believe it.
I walked the few blocks from the drugstore to Police Headquarters. The rain bit through my topcoat, but I needed the exercise to clear my brain. The pawn ticket was burning a hole in my wallet, where I had stuck it, but I wanted some first-hand information from headquarters before I visited the loan shop. Besides, the longer it reposed in my pocket, the longer it would be before I’d have to face Muriel with what I was afraid I’d find out.
I had known Lieutenant Tracy Evans a long time, since before my days as a homicide detective. He was a good cop, but he had been a cop so long, he had lost a piece of his heart somewhere along the line. To Tracy, all men who passed through his files were bad, until they proved themselves good. I had never agreed with his line of reasoning, but I always admired and respected his ability as a police officer.
Tracy looked dead-tired. His big frame sagged in the chair behind his desk, and his cold, blue eyes were ringed with black circles. He scowled when he saw me.
“Don’t bother me to-day, Andrews. I’m up to my neck in trouble,” he said.
“You don’t mean this Kingston affair is getting you down!”
“Don’t be flippant. I’m not in the mood for wisecracks.” He stabbed viciously with his smoked-up butt at the ashtray. “What a hell of a mess!”
“You really think Kingston was guilty of robbery, Tracy?”
“You’re damn right I think he was guilty! I’ve got all the physical evidence I need. The facts don’t lie, Andrews — much as I hate to admit it. I’m kicking myself all over the place for not finding out about it sooner, before something like this happened.”
He shoved the chair away from the desk, stood up, and started a restless pacing back and forth across the office. “The papers are having a field day. A nice, juicy scandal, and they can kick us right where it hurts most. Then we even find evidence in his car!”
“What about that jewellery? Have you checked it yet?”
“Yeah — we checked. It’s stolen goods, all right. It was stolen about two weeks ago, from a private residence out by the lake.”
“Have you considered the possibility of a frame?”
“Don’t be melodramatic, Cory. This is no frame — it’s cold, hard fact. I don’t like it — you don’t like it — a lot of other people think it stinks like hell. But the facts speak for themselves.”
“Couldn’t someone else have stolen that jewellery and planted it in Kingston’s car last night?”
Evans scowled again, and I knew I had belted a homer. But he said, “We’d never in the world prove it. The house was burglarised while the owners were out of town. No one knows exactly when the stuff was stolen, and no one saw the thief. There were no fingerprints, no clues of any kind.” He paused and looked out at the rain-washed sky.
“Besides, that blow on Lorio’s head wasn’t faked. In fact, it damn near killed him.” He shook his head. “I know Kingston was a friend of yours, Cory, but you might as well face it. He was a no-good, yellow-bellied thief.”