“What did they talk about that night?”
She wrinkled her brows in concentration. “Let me theenk. Mostly, zey complain zey don’ have no fun. Life eez all work. Zat why zey want beeg wild party. Get trunk, have girls all night. I theenk it was Frank zay ‘I don’ even go movie zince zat beeg Towson job.’ ”
Egan took a deep breath. “Thanks, Haydee. You’re a big help.”
By noon the next day Sergeant Grissom was back from New York. Feldman couldn’t be absolutely sure, but he was fairly certain that Mahaffey and Visconti, along with Byers, were the men who had jumped him in front of Hearn’s Jewelry Store.
Phil Egan mulled over in his mind what Haydee had said. Visconti had complained that he hadn’t even been to a movie since the Towson job. What Towson job? Legit, a heist, or what?
Towson was a small, pleasant suburban city ten miles north of Baltimore. He called the Towson Police Department and recognized the answering voice of Herman Watters.
“Hello,” he said. “Herm, this is Phil Egan downtown. I want to check with you on three guys. Here they are: Byers, George, also known as Binky, and lately calling himself Pete; Mahaffey, Maurice, sometimes known as Milton Haffey; and Visconti, Frank, sometimes known as Larry Visco.”
“Got ’em, Phil. I’ll call you back.”
Fifteen minutes later the Towson officer called back. “Phil? We have a small make on one of your boys. On the night of October twenty-ninth last, the Texaco station at York Road and Taylor Avenue out here was held up. We found an abandoned car at the scene later, a fifty-nine Plymouth sedan, black. Had Maryland plates, and we traced the registration to a, George Peter Byers, six seventy four Preston Street, Baltimore.”
Egan sighed. “Binky Byers. He likes his middle name now. Calls himself Pete. He seems to get around. What did you do with him?”
“We brought him in on suspicion. He claimed his car had been stolen the day before the hold-up but He hadn’t reported it because he thought one of his buddies had borrowed it to drive up to Gettysburg to a football game. We couldn’t connect him to the hold-up, so we let him go.”
“Tell me about it. How much did they get?”
“Funny thing — not a penny. They weren’t after money. All they took were two small cylinders of compressed acetylene gas, the kind you can carry in your arms.”
“Who was on duty at the gas station?”
“Seventeen-year-old high school kid named Lou Jackson who works there from five until close-up at nine. He didn’t see their faces. There were two of them, and they had women’s stockings pulled down over their kissers. They locked him in the Ladies Room.”
“Anything else?”
“That’s about it, Phil.”
Egan added it up. Binky Byers’ black Plymouth could have been the car behind Norman Feldman’s in front of Hearn’s Jewelry Store, the car from which Feldman thought the thugs got out to assault him. And the tanks of compressed acetylene gas had been stolen from the Towson Texaco station just two days before the safe in the Lord Calvert Hotel Jewel and Fur Shop was cut open with compressed acetylene gas. The gas had been carried into the hotel by three men, one of whom had been tentatively identified as Binky Byers.
He opened his desk drawer, fumbled around, and found the little metal gauge that had been picked up from under the chair of the Jewel and Fur Shop. He dropped the gauge in his topcoat pocket, picked up the black Chevvie at the police garage on Gay Street, and headed out York Road towards Towson. As he approached Taylor Avenue, he saw the Texaco station on his right.
It was too early for the boy who had been working on the night of the theft to be on the job, but the man who leased the station was there.
He introduced himself. “Lieutenant Egan, Baltimore Police Department. Understand you were robbed of two tanks of acetylene gas about two weeks ago.”
“That’s right.”
“Do you sell compressed acetylene gas?”
“No, we’re just agents for the North Baltimore Industrial Supply Company. The customers pick up full tanks here and drop off the empties. We get a commission.”
He showed the man the gauge. “Could this have come from one of your tanks?”
“Come on back and we’ll see.”
He led Egan to the back of the garage, where full and empty tanks of compressed acetylene gas awaited pickup. The man unscrewed the gauge from one of the empties and screwed on the gauge Egan had handed him. It fit perfectly.
“There’s your answer,” the man said, unscrewing the gauge and handing it back.
Egan sighed. “Well, part of it. We know it’s off a North Baltimore Industrial Supply Company tank. Mind if I use your phone?”
“Help yourself.”
Egan called the office of the company that owned the tanks. Were any of their tanks unaccounted for? The voice on the other end of the wire said sharply: “Who wants to know?” Egan snapped back, “Lieutenant Egan, Baltimore Police Department.” He’d check it, it would take a couple of minutes, the voice replied, much more courteously.
When he came back on he said: “All accounted for but two. They were stolen from a gas station in Towson a couple of weeks ago.”
Egan thanked him and hung up.
There was no doubt about it. The gas station had been robbed of the two tanks for the sole purpose of cracking the Lord Calvert Jewel and Fur Shop. Since lab experts estimated that had used up less than one tank, the gang still had a full tank to use on their next job, which, according to underworld scuttlebutt, would be any day now.
674 Preston Street was right in the middle of the area where the red pins on the map indicated that the jewel thieves were holed up. An unmarked police car containing two detectives from the Criminal Investigation Detail was parked across the street at various inconspicuous locations twenty-four hours a day.
In the alley near the back door of the old-fashioned, three-story gray stone house, a three-man crew from the “telephone company” had dug a hole and over-ralled detectives worked on the “underground cables” around the clock.
These repairmen had explored the house thoroughly. 3B was on the top floor front overlooking Preston Street. It consisted of four small rooms and a bath, and was reached by a small self-service elevator recently installed in the old mansion which had been converted into an apartment house.
There were three apartments on each floor. The other occupants of the house seemed to be mostly young or middle-aged working couples. The house didn’t allow children. It was quiet, undistinguished, respectable — a perfect hole-up for a gang of clever jewel thieves.
Only the three men occupying it weren’t clever. They were petty hoodlums, hanging on the outer fringe of the national crime syndicate that dominated the Baltimore underworld.
VI
The next time Egan ate at Muriel’s, she asked him, as they sipped their pre-dinner martinis: “Why don’t you arrest those three punks you’re cat-and-mousing up there on Preston Street? After all, you can connect them to the last two robberies.”
He shook his head. “They’re connected, but just barely so. I want that gang’s brains, not just its muscle. They’re getting ready to hit again, and when they do we’ll be waiting for them.”
“It’s none of my business,” she said, “but aren’t you overlooking one important angle?”
“All the angles I can overlook from here are pretty good.”
“Lecher!” She drew her housecoat tighter. “No, seriously, Phil, your locksmith is obviously the brains of the outfit. He had to learn locksmithing somewhere, didn’t he?”