“I wouldn’t know,” Coffin Ed said. “I figure him for a halfwit too. But so was Al Capone.”
“All that this proves is one thing,” the narcotics lieutenant said. “That this case is not finished; not by a damn sight. Not with a fortune in heroin floating around.”
“For us it’s just begun,” the T-man said.
“I’ve got a hunch we’ll find it,” Coffin Ed said.
“A hunch? What hunch?” the homicide lieutenant asked.
“If I told you, you’d laugh.”
“Laugh!” the homicide lieutenant exploded angrily. “Laugh! With eleven people whom we know of already dead from this one caper, and five kilos of pure poison loose in New York City, and we haven’t even scratched the bottom of it. Laugh? What the hell’s the matter with you? What’s your hunch? Let’s hear it.”
“I’ve got a hunch that Gus is coming back and then we’ll find out where it’s at.”
In the dead silence which followed, the detectives could feel their hackles rise. They stared at him wih blank, deadpan expressions.
Finally the T-man said, “Well, at least no one is laughing.”
23
The dick stationed on the front door came in and said, “A Railway Express truck just pulled up out front. I think they’re delivering something here.”
“Get back and keep out of sight,” the homicide lieutenant said quickly.
“If it’s what I think, we ought to clean up here,” Coffin Ed said.
The detectives looked at him curiously, but they did as he suggested. Quickly they moved the table and chairs back into the janitor’s flat and then split into two groups. Some remained there and the others rushed to the other end of the corridor and stationed themselves in the laundry.
Ears were pressed to the closed doors, listening for footsteps. But after the faint sounds made by the opening and closing of the front door, the silence was prolonged.
Then they heard a faint rap on the basement floor, followed by a slight scraping sound as though some small object had been place there stealthily.
Doors were flung open and detectives rushed into the corridor with drawn pistols. They stopped in their tracks as though they had all run into an invisible wall.
A black giant, so black he looked dark purple in the bright light, the blackest man any of them had ever seen, crouched over a large green steamer trunk that hadn’t been there before.
It was the giant who inspired their first amazement. He was dressed in the kind of uniform the Railway Expressmen wear, but it was so small on him the coat wouldn’t button, the sleeves ended halfway down the forearms and the pants halfway up the legs. His purple-black feet were encased in blue canvas sneakers, and a uniform cap sat atop kinky hair that was decidedly purple.
Pink eyes darted this way and that from the black-purple face. And then the giant started to run.
“Halt!” several voices cried in unison.
But it was Coffin Ed who stopped him by shouting, “Give up, Pinky. We got you.”
“Pinky!” the homicide lieutenant exclaimed. “My God, is this Pinky?”
“He’s dyed himself,” Coffin Ed said. “He’s really an albino.”
“Now I’ve seen everything,” the T-man said.
“Not yet,” Coffin Ed said.
The detectives surrounded Pinky and the homicide lieutenant snapped on the handcuffs.
“Now we’ll get to the bottom of this,” he said.
“Let’s open the trunk first,” Coffin Ed said. “Give us the key, Pinky.”
“I ain’t got it,” Pinky whined. “The African’s got it.”
“All right, let’s break it open.”
A dick got a crowbar from the toolroom and pried open the lock.
When they lifted the lid only a jumble of soiled laundry was at first visible. But after pulling it aside, a corpse was revealed. It was the corpse of a small gray-haired man with a small wrinkled black intelligent-looking face. He wore a suit of spotless clean blue denim coveralls and black hip boots.
Everyone began talking at once.
“It’s Gus,” Coffin Ed said.
“His neck’s been broken,” the T-man said.
“This makes twelve,” the homicide lieutenant said.
“Maybe the bundle is underneath,” a dick said.
“Don’t be silly, Benny Mason’s had this trunk,” the narcotics lieutenant said.
“Is this your hunch?” the homicide lieutenant asked Coffin Ed.
“More or less.”
“How did you figure it?”
“You’ll see.”
The homicide lieutenant addressed Pinky. “Why did you kill him?”
“I din kill ’im,” Pinky denied in his high whining voice. “The African and that woman killed ’im.”
“Why did you bring him back here?” Coffin Ed said.
“So they’d be punished, thass why,” he whined. “They killed my pa and they got to be punished.”
Coffin Ed turned to the homicide lieutenant. “That’s how I dug it. Why would he put in that false fire alarm if he even knew about the H? He just wants to get Gus’s wife and the African charged with murder.”
“They done it,” Pinky insisted. “I know they done it.”
“Let’s skip that for a moment,” the homicide lieutenant said. “The question is where did you find the trunk?”
“At the dock, where they took it. They was going to take him on the ship and throw him in the ocean so nobody’d ever know what happened to him. But I done beat ’em to him.”
“That’s a cunning lick,” the homicide lieutenant said. “When Benny saw there was only a corpse inside, he had it delivered to the wharf.”
“Let’s first find out what he did with the junk,” the T-man said impatiently. “Every minute counts on that angle.”
“We ought to get to that slowly,” Coffin Ed suggested.
“The African and the woman are dead, Pinky,” the homicide lieutenant said quietly. “And we know they didn’t do it. So that only leaves you.”
“Dead? Is they both dead? Sure enough dead?”
“Dead and gone,” Coffin Ed said.
“So you may as well tell us why you did it,” the homicide lieutenant said.
Pinky looked at the corpse for the first time and tears welled in his pink eyes.
“I didn’t go to do it. I didn’t go to do it, Pa,” he addressed the corpse.
He looked up first at the homicide lieutenant, then at the circle of blank white faces. Then his gaze came to a rest on the ugly brown face of Coffin Ed. “He was going ’way to Africa and he wouldn’t take me with him. I ast him and I begged him. He was going take that yellow woman and he wouldn’t take me, and I’se his real ’dopted son.”
“So you killed him.”
“I din go to kill him. But he made me so mad. I ast him again just ’fore he went out fishing-”
“Fishing?”
Everyone became suddenly alert.
“What time was that?’ the homicide lieutenant asked.
“ ’Bout half past ’leven. He put on his high boots and got his line and net and went eel fishing. Thass what made me so mad. He’d ruther go eel fishing in the black dark than lissen to me. So I waited and when he come back I ast him again. And he tole me to go away and leave him alone. He say he was too busy to lissen to foolishness.”
“Had he caught any eels?”
“He caught five big black eels. I don’t know how he done it so fast but he had ’em in his fishnet. He must ’ave caught ’em before and left ’em in the river ’cause they was all stone dead.”
“How big were they?”
“Big eels. ’Bout two — three pounds, I reckon.”
“Eel skins stuffed with heroin. Waterproof. That’s a clever dodge,” the T-man said. “Only a Frenchman would think of it.”
“What was he doing when you talked to him the last time?” the homicide lieutenant kept hammering gently.
“He were looking in his trunk for somepin. He had it open looking in and I ast him once more to take me with him and he tole me to get the hell away from him. I just ’tended to shake him a little and make him lissen and ’fore I knowed it his neck broked.”
“And you put his body in the trunk and covered it with soiled clothes from the laundry and brought it out here in the hall, then you went and put in the false fire alarm so you could accuse his wife and the African of his murder.”