Larry Cutter turned his attention back to Saxon. The girl gazed at Saxon wide-eyed, her jaws still mechanically chewing a piece of sweet roll.
“Know who I am?” Saxon asked Cutter.
Cutter contemplated him for a moment before saying, “From descriptions I’ve heard, I’d guess you were Ted Saxon.”
Saxon shook his head. “I never even heard of him.” He crooked his left forefinger. “Come here.”
Puzzled, the man warily got to his feet. Rounding the table, he neared to within a couple of feet of Saxon and stopped. Saxon looked him up and down. It wasn’t necessary to search the man to determine he was unarmed. The only place he could have concealed a gun was in his robe pockets, and they were perfectly flat. Saxon holstered his gun.
Larry Cutter gazed at him in astonishment. “I don’t think I understand this.”
“You will,” Saxon said.
His right fist lashed out in a short, powerful hook which caught Cutter flush on the jaw and drove him clear across the room against the sink. For a moment the man groped at the edge of the drainboard for support, then his face turned blank and he toppled forward. He hit the floor with a crash and lay still.
Benton gave Saxon a buck-toothed gawk.
“I decided it was my turn for a change,” Saxon explained.
Tipping his hat to the blonde, he turned, stalked to the front door, and let himself out.
Chapter 19
There was a Thruway service area halfway between Buffalo and Iroquois, where you could gas up or dine without getting off the Thruway. Saxon stopped there for lunch. It was just 1:30 P.M. when he drove back into Iroquois.
Emily having worked until 7 A.M., he knew she would still be asleep. He drove over to Ben Foley’s house and found the former mayor home.
When they were settled with drinks in their hands, Saxon said, “I wouldn’t ask you to perjure yourself on the stand, Ben, but if there’s merely a police inquiry, would you furnish me an alibi for today?”
The plumb lawyer examined him quizzically. “Depends. Who’d you kill?”
“It would only be a forced entry and battery charge. I socked Larry Cutter on the jaw.”
Foley looked pleased. “Did he go down?”
“I knocked him colder than a carp. I suppose it was a childish thing to do, but I suddenly got fed up with him. I thought it was time he got pushed back for the way he’s been pushing me, then ran up against a rigged alibi if he tried to do anything about it.”
“Sounds like poetic justice,” Foley agreed. “I wouldn’t mind telling a white lie, so long as it’s not under oath. Just what happened?”
Saxon told him of the switch of tenants at the girls’ apartment and of the disappearance of Alton Zek from the Fenimore Hotel.
“All at once I saw red,” he concluded. “Here this strutting two-bit hood who doesn’t even know me first deliberately wrecks my career, then orders me killed. By instructing his hired hands in what lies to tell and bribing others to give false evidence, he arranges things so that if I even make a complaint, the police will think I’m having hallucinations. I found out where he lived and went over there. Farmer Benton, one of the goons who took me for a ride, answered the door. I disarmed him at gun-point and made him lead me to Cutter. Then I socked Cutter and left.”
Foley emitted a low whistle. “Forced entry, assault with a deadly weapon, and battery. I guess you do need an alibi.”
“I may not. He may not care to risk having me explain in court why I was mad at him. But just in case his resentment overcomes his judgment, I thought I’d better have one lined up.”
“You had Sunday dinner with Alice and me,” the lawyer said with a disarming grin. “You know, I lay awake half the night thinking about this thing, Ted. And it doesn’t quite make sense to me.”
Saxon raised his eyebrows. “I thought we had the whole plot pretty well figured out.”
“The reason for the rape frame, sure. But why did Cutter suddenly order you killed? From what you told Arn and me last night, I think we can reconstruct what happened something like this: the informer you talked to at the Fenimore Hotel contacted Sergeant Morrison and told him you were en route to see the Lowry woman. Morrison must in turn have got in touch with Larry Cutter. Cutter sent his two gunmen over to get the girls out of the apartment and to wait for you to walk in. Then, as you described it, there was a long wait for instructions. Your two captors didn’t even know what plans for you were until the messenger from Cutter arrived several hours later. Spider Wertz was the messenger’s name, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah. From the desk clerk’s description, I think he was also the man who spirited Alton Zek away from the Fenimore.”
Ben Foley rose and began to pace up and down, as if addressing his remarks to a jury. “So we have a picture here of indecision. It looks as if when he first heard from Morrison, Larry Cutter couldn’t decide what action to take. As an expedient, he sent his minions to get the girls out of sight and latch onto you until he could make up his mind. The long delay before the decision to dispose of you permanently suggests he may have been discussing strategy with someone — probably Sergeant Morrison. But why did they finally decide you had to be killed?”
“You’ve got me,” Saxon said. “I suppose a man like this Cutter automatically thinks in terms of murder as the solution to problems.”
Ben Foley looked doubtful. “Cutter’s no dummy. He’s proved that by the beautiful way he planned your frame, and also by the way he managed to cover up for his hired hands’ bungling of your attempted murder. I don’t think he’d order an unnecessary murder. And just what danger were you to him? If he wanted to prevent your pumping Morrison’s girl friend for information, all he had to do was to have her drop out of sight.”
After considering this, Saxon said, “He knew I had linked Morrison to him, because I asked Alton Zek if he knew of any tie between Morrison and Cutter. That sort of gave it away that I knew Cutter was behind my frame. Maybe he was afraid that since I knew why I had been framed, and by whom, I would be able to find evidence to prove it.”
“What evidence was there to find? The supposed rape victim is dead. The only way you could possibly prove that it was a frame would be to get Morrison or Coombs to reverse their stories. But you weren’t attempting to see either of them. You were merely visiting a call girl to whom Morrison was in the habit of steering business.”
Saxon stared up at the lawyer for a long time before carefully setting down his still half-filled glass. He said slowly, “It does seem that they got awfully excited about my seeing that girl. Maybe that’s the answer.”
“You mean she may know the details of the frame? Perhaps Morrison confided in her?”
“I just dredged up an even hotter idea than that,” Saxon said, rising. “I have to run along, Ben. I want to check something.”
The lawyer looked surprised. “What?”
“It’s such a far-out idea, you’d think I was crazy if I told you. I want to check it out first. I’ll either drop back or give you a ring this evening.”
The plump lawyer followed him to the entry hall. “All right, if you want to be mysterious. Here, let me help you with your coat.”
Saxon took the Thruway to Erie, Pennsylvania, making the seventy-some miles in an hour and fifteen minutes. He got off at the State Street exit and drove straight to police headquarters.
A middle-aged sergeant was on the desk. Saxon asked if Detective Everett Cass was on duty.
“Try the Detective Bureau squad room,” the man said.
Saxon walked down the hall to the Detective Bureau. The door opened just before he reached it and a thin, stooped man with a narrow, long-chinned face stepped out into the hall.