Dowie studied the woman closely. Her story sounded plausible enough. Finding the heel lift in the hall outside the apartment was a strong point in her favor, he admitted.
“What about you and Joe Balli?” he asked.
Stella shrugged. “It was just one of those things,” she said. “I met Joe at a party a couple of months ago, and I kinda went for the guy. I knew he was married and had a kid, but he sure had a great line. He said he liked me because I was a redhead. His first wife was a redhead, too.”
Dowie nodded. “Go on.”
“There isn’t much more to tell. His first wife had five kids by him and lives in Victoria, Texas. He met his second wife when she was only fourteen. He sure is a great ladies’ man.”
Dowie advised Stella Marshack not to leave town and returned to his office. He felt reasonably certain that she had nothing to do with the murder, despite the fact that she was there around the time it happened. He was studying the shortened length of rope used by the killer when Detective Dupre entered with a short, powerful-looking man in his early 30’s. The man wore a cab driver’s cap and was obviously nervous.
“This is Bob Benoit, chief,” said Dupre. “He’s the cabbie who took Mrs. Balli home this afternoon.”
Dowie waved him to a chair. “How well do you know Mrs. Balli?” he inquired.
“I never laid eyes on her until this afternoon,” maintained Benoit, twisting his cap nervously. “I was cruising along Canal Street when she hailed me. It was a fifty-cent trip, but when we got to her place on Saint Philip she had only forty cents in her bag. She told me to come inside with her and she’d give me the other dime. That’s all there was to it, I swear it!”
“You were inside for at least five minutes,” Dowie pointed out. “Did it take that long for her to get the money?”
“No, not exactly. After I got the dime she asked if I wanted a glass of beer. I said ‘yes’ and she got two cans out of the refrigerator. When I finished the drink I left.”
“Did you notice anyone or a car in the vicinity when you left?”
The cabbie frowned. “No, I don’t think so. There was another cab parked around the corner on Miro Street, but that was all.”
Dowie straightened in his chair. “This other cab, can you remember what company owned it?”
“Yeah, it was a Veteran’s Cab. The city is full of ’em.”
Dowie thanked the cabbie and released him. Then he turned to Jordan and Dupre. “That other cab,” he said. “Does it give you any ideas?”
Jordan rubbed his chin. “Balli drives a Veteran’s Cab. You can’t mean—”
“That’s just what I do mean,” said Dowie grimly. “It might have been a coincidence that Stella Marshack was around when the murder occurred, but we can’t write off the cab as another one so easily. I want the two of you to turn Miro Street inside out for anyone who used a Veteran’s Cab around three o’clock this afternoon. Hustle back here the moment you get anything.”
After the officers left, the autopsy report came from Coroner Nicholas J. Chetta’s office. It stated that Mrs. Balli met death by strangulation sometime between four and five o’clock that afternoon. The rope had fractured her larynx, indicating that the killer was a person of considerable strength. A second report, this time from the lab, stated that Balli’s blood-type had been obtained from his family physician and had matched the bloodstains found in the abandoned car.
Dowie hurried to Campagno’s office where he quickly briefed the young assistant district attorney on the latest developments.
“You figure Joe Balli killed his wife?” asked Campagno when he was finished.
“I’m sure of it,” replied Dowie. “From what I can learn about him, he’s crazy about redheads. His first wife was one, and so is Stella Marshack, and I’ll bet a month’s pay he’s got another one on the string right now. He’s planned this caper pretty well, but too many redheads tripped him up.”
Jordan and Dupre were waiting for him when he returned to his office.
“No dice, chief,” said Jordan. “Nobody around Miro Street hired a cab this afternoon.”
“That settles it,” snapped Dowie. “We’re going back to the Balli apartment and turn it inside out. We’ve got to find out who that third redhead is!”
A thorough inspection of this missing man’s room failed, however, to reveal the name of Balli’s latest paramour. Questioning Mrs. Martinez a second time, Dowie learned that the suspect was extremely fond of fish food, and frequently patronized a certain restaurant on Bourbon Street.
With a snapshot of the suspect they drove to the restaurant. The manager nodded when he saw Balli’s picture.
“Sure, he comes in here a lot,” he said. “Angelina’s his girl friend.”
“Is Angelina a redhead?”
The man raised his eyes in ecstasy. “And what a redhead!”
They discovered that Angelina’s last name was Prima, and that her father ran a tavern on Calumet Street, and lost little time in getting to the address. Papa Prima blanched when he learned that his daughter’s lover was a married man wanted for the murder of his wife.
“But that can’t be!” he exclaimed, horrified. “My girl and Joseph are going to be married someday.”
“Don’t bet on it,” advised Dowie. “Where is your daughter now?”
Prima kept shaking his head. “She’s with Joseph. They left for Rayne early this afternoon.”
Dowie returned to his office where he put through a call to the Acadia parish authorities in Rayne. He gave them complete descriptions of the wanted pair and requested that they be picked up on sight.
He felt confident that it wouldn’t be long before Balli would be in custody, and he was right. At three A.M. the next morning word came from Rayne that the couple had been apprehended.
Jordan and Dupre brought them back to New Orleans later that day. The girl was stunned when she learned of her lover’s duplicity. She swore she had no idea he was married.
Meanwhile, Balli, grilled incessantly for eight hours, finally broke down and admitted his guilt.
“Yes, I killed her,” he sobbed. “She and the kid were in my way. I couldn’t go on living with her any more. That’s why I got into the house the back way, strangled her when she wasn’t looking and went back to my cab. Nobody saw me. Then I cut myself on the wrist and let blood splatter on the cushions so that you’d think I had been murdered, too.”
“Didn’t you know it would get into the papers and that your girl friend or her parents would read about it?” asked Dowie.
Balli grinned. “You think I’m dumb, eh? Everybody thought my name was Joe Garcia, even Angelina. It was a wonderful idea, but something musta’ went wrong.”
Joseph Balli was indicted ten days later on first degree murder charges and will be tried sometime during the Fall term. Meanwhile he has lots of time to rue the day he began preferring redheads to blondes or brunettes.
D. L. Champion
D. L. Champion contributed some of the most offbeat private-eye series ever published in Black Mask and Dime Detective. His characters included a midget investigator; a hard-nosed, legless ex-cop; a gaudily dressed Mexican PI; and “the unchallenged world’s champion penny pincher.” Champion never made the leap to book form when the pulp market collapsed in the early 1950s. That is why he isn’t better known today. He turned, instead, to true crime (it paid faster!), and he published as many as fifteen stories a month under a dizzying slew of preposterous pen names, until his death in 1968. This story about a most unlikely femme fatale is one of his best.