“Let it ring,” he groaned.
“Damn! I’d like to.” But she got up and answered it. Then she held it out to him. “It’s for you.”
It couldn’t be anybody but Mike Casey, because nobody but Mike knew that he could be reached at this number.
Casey rasped: “Phil? They’ve dropped an atom bomb on us. Just blew the safe in the Lord Calvert Hotel Jewel and Fur Shop and grabbed one hundred eighty thousand dollars worth of ice. Didn’t touch the furs. Get down here right away.”
The black Chevvie streaked downtown to the Lord Calvert Hotel in six minutes.
The Jewel and Fur Shop was on the mezzanine floor of the big hotel, overlooking the ornate lobby, but set well back from it. There were several other shops, a travel bureau, and the hotel’s business offices there, and after the close of the business day the mezzanine was usually quite deserted. It was reached either by elevator or by a broad staircase from the lobby.
Phil Egan bounded up the stairs. There were two policemen outside the Jewel and Fur Shop. Inside were Mike Casey and two detectives, the manger of the hotel, and a Mr. Birnbaum, who managed the shop. There were wisps of acrid blue smoke still floating around, and the sharp odor of acetylene gas. The door of the safe was open, and there was a round hole about a foot in diameter where the lock had been.
“Hello, Mike,” Egan said. “How’d they get in?” He added in an aside: “As if I didn’t know.”
“Like always,” grated Casey. “They unlocked the door with a key and walked in.”
“Anybody see them?”
“Maintenance man in the basement saw three guys in overalls go up in the self-service freight elevator about quarter of eleven. One of them was carrying a big canvas bag, like a laundry bag. They must have got off at the mezzanine, opened the door with a key, cut the lock out of the safe with the acetylene, grabbed the ice, and left the same way they came.”
“Anybody see them go out?” Egan asked.
“No. At least, we haven’t turned up anybody yet.”
“Hm. In that canvas bag they must have had one of those baby tanks of acetylene — the kind you carry in your arms — and a blowtorch. They knew when the night-watchman rang in from the mezzanine and timed it just right. They opened the door with a key, cut the lock out of the safe with the acetylene, grabbed the ice, shoved it into the bag with the acetylene tank, and left the same way they came, by the freight elevator.”
“Yeah,” said Casey. “And acetylene gas, which brings a heat of sixty-three hundred degrees Fahrenheit to the point of contact, can cut through steel like a sharp knife through a tender steak — as every damned crook knows.”
One of the detectives came over to them. “This might be something.” He handed Phil Egan a small metal gauge. “We found it under a chair.”
Egan examined it curiously and stuck it in his topcoat pocket. “Anything else?”
“That’s all,” said the detective.
Egan spent the next day interrogating employees of the hotel and the Jewel and Fur Shop. There were two of the latter, a woman in her fifties and a man in his sixties. Both had been with the shop for more than Jen years, both were bonded, both had airtight alibis, as did Birnbaum himself. Their keys, they swore, had not left their possession.
Egan had been hoping for some evidence of an inside job, but there was none. How the hell were they getting the keys? The police lab could uncover, no trace of wax around the lock on the shop’s door. No identifiable fingerprints, either — outside of those of Birnbaum and the two employees.
The interrogation of the hotel employees turned up only one interesting item — the maintenance man who had seen the three thieves get in the freight elevator made a fairly positive identification of a mug shot of Binky Byers as one of the three.
Binky, who was currently throwing money around The Block, was now tentatively linked to the last two jewelry heists.
Three nights later Phil Egan prowled The Block again. Most of the people hadn’t heard anything, but when he came into the Three O’Clock Club Haydee Melendez left the man she was drinking with at the bar and nodded towards a table in a dark corner.
“ ’Allo Eegan,” she said. “Zat Peet — he’s here last night wiz same two pals. Me, two uzzer girls, we treenk wiz zem. Zey ask us come up zair place for party after club close. I zay ‘Who the hell are you an’ ware you place?’ Zey zay: ‘You’ll come up?’ We zay sure, we like party mucho. Zo Pete, he write down names and ware place is. I got paper in dressing room. Wait, I get.” She bounced up.
Phil Egan sighed and ordered a bourbon and water. His hands were a little shaky. The unsolved jewelry heists were getting on his nerves, what with the newspapers demanding a shakeup in the Police Department and Mike Casey breathing hotly down his back. And now maybe the first small crack in the case was beginning to open up.
Haydee came back and handed him a piece of paper. On it in pencil was scrawled: Pete Byers, Maury Mahaffey, Frank Visconti — 674 Preston Street, Apartment 3B.
Egan smiled and said: “Good girl, Haydee. Have a drink — a real one?”
“No, I got go back to heem.” She nodded in the direction of the man at the bar. “Ware my feefty dol-lah, Eegan?”
He handed her two twenties and a ten. “How was the party?” he asked.
She laughed. “You don’ theenk we go, do you? ’Bye, Eegan.”
V
The first thing the next morning he called Sergeant Ed Stearns in Identification. “Ed? Phil Egan. Listen, have you got anything on a Maury Mahaffey or a Frank Visconti?” He spelled out the names.
Ten minutes later Ed Stearns called him back. “Phil? We’ve got both your boys. Want to hear it?”
“Shoot!”
“Mahaffey, Maurice — he is also known as Milton Haffey — thirty-two years old, unmarried, WMA. Last known address, twenty three fourteen West Saratoga Street. Three arrests suspicion of narcotics violation, one conviction. Served two years City Prison. Two arrests simple assault, one conviction. Served six months City Prison. Four arrests petty larceny, no convictions.
“Here’s the other one: Visconti, Frank — also known as Larry Visco — thirty-four years old, WMA, divorced, last known address, fifty seven seventy one York Road. Three arrests petty larceny, one conviction. Served six months of a nine-month sentence to City Prison. One arrest on suspicion of rape, released after questioning. One arrest on charge of burglary, reduced to malicious mischief. Suspended sentence. Suspect in murder of gambler Jack Keefe, June sixteen, nineteen-fifty nine. Released after inconclusive lie detector test. That’s it, Phil.”
“Thanks, Ed. Send up the mugs, will you?”
“Sure thing, Phil.”
Cheap, petty hoods. Where was the brains? Where was the clever locksmith? Where was the expert boxman?
The slugged salesman had gone back home by this time. Egan sent Sergeant Lou Grissom up to New York with the mug shots of Mahaffey and Visconti to see if Norman Feldman could identify them, along with Byers, as his assailants. He also put a stake-out on 674 Preston Street.
That night he was back prowling The Block, and this time he got a little something from the stoolies. The jewelry heisters were local, and the Outfit was letting them work for a big 40 % of the take. The jewels were being fenced through a chain of small loan companies controlled by the Outfit. And the gang was already poised for another strike.
He ended up with Haydee in the Three O’Clock Club. No, she hadn’t seen Pete, Frank, and Maury since the night they had invited her up to Preston Street for a party.