Kessler scowled sourly into the transmitter.
“That Kessler theory is holding its head up and taking nourishment very nicely, thank you!” he barked with elaborate irony. “We found a chunk of the fuse with a foundry label on it, a place in Jersey—”
Green interrupted: “Don’t tell me. Let me guess... Sallust used to work there, or anyway, he used to live in Jersey, or maybe he went to Jersey once to visit his aunt.”
Kessler snorted: “All right, all right. I say Sallust is a cinch for this job, you say not. I’ll bet — I’ll bet you fifty dollars.”
Green snapped: “Bet.”
Kessler cackled shrilly. “The clincher is that Sallust and his sister took a powder about a minute and a half before the boys in blue swept in. Their next-door neighbors heard them go out and from the timing it looks like it was a tip.”
Green sighed. “Maybe I’m the bedbug, after all,” he murmured. “And how about my first and most important question — what else have they dug up?”
“Nothing more that they could make sense of. They’ve got a lot of arms and legs that might have been Gino or Costain or who-have-you.” Green’s voice droned on: “I’m still curious about whether Gino and Costain got to Tony’s before the fireworks. Has anybody tried to locate them?”
“Uh-huh. Gino was supposed to leave for Boston on a late train, after he went to Tony’s. A business trip according to his wife. She don’t know whether he reached Tony’s or whether he made the train or not. She’s going nuts. Then I reached Costain’s girl and she said Lew started for Tony’s about midnight, said he was going to stop by a couple places first. She hasn’t heard from him since. She’s jumping up and down and yelling and screaming, too, and calling me back every two minutes.”
There was silence for several seconds, then Green’s voice concluded dreamily:
“Don’t forget, Blondie, that Lew Costain has, or had, more enemies than any other picked dozen highbinders in this town. Maccunn had one, or at least you’re trying to hang his chill on one. Whether Costain reached Tony’s or not, he was headed there, and in some strange way that seems more important to me than the fact that Sallust wanted Maccunn’s blood. With all due respect to the Kessler theory, of course... And don’t forget the fifty...”
The phone clicked, an electric period.
Kessler looked like he was going to take a large bite out of the transmitter for a minute, then he hung up slowly and turned back to his typewriter with enormous disgust.
Harley, the City Editor, was working feverishly, trying very hard not to whistle. He, for one, had hated Maccunn as a slave driver, and now it looked like he’d be moving into the big oak-paneled office on the seventh floor and be writing M.E. after his name.
He looked up as Kessler hung up the receiver, yelled: “Anything new?”
Kessler shook his head. “Nothing new, only that guy Green is losing his mind.”
Solly Allenberg, short and fat, was sitting in his cab near the corner of Forty-ninth and Broadway, when Green crossed the street to him.
Allenberg stopped short in the middle of a yawn and his face lit up like a chubby Christmas tree.
“Hello, Mister Green,” he croaked heartily. “Where you been keeping yourself?”
Green leaned on the door.
“I’ve been around,” he said. “How’ve you been doing, Solly? How are the kids?”
“Swell, Mister Green, just swell. The wife was asking about you just the other night. I told her—”
Green interrupted quietly: “Lew Costain’s been murdered.”
Solly’s thick mouth fell open slowly. “Murdered? What the hell you talking about?”
Green’s head bobbed up and down.
“He was at Tony Maschio’s tonight when the firecracker went off — he and Gino...”
Solly said: “I was just reading about it in the paper, but it didn’t say nothing about Mister Costain.”
“They hadn’t identified him when they snapped that Extra out.”
Green reached past Solly and clicked down the taxi-meter flag. “Let’s take a ride,” he suggested — “only let’s take it inside, where it’s warm and where we can get a drink.”
Solly tumbled out of the cab and they crossed the slippery sidewalk and went into the Rialto Bar. They both ordered rye. Green studied Solly’s reflection in the big mirror behind the bar.
“How long have you been working for Lew?” he began. Solly hesitated and Green went on swiftly: “Listen. I knew him pretty well, liked him. I intend to find who rubbed him out and you can help me, if you will...”
Solly gulped his drink. “Sure,” he blurted — “I wanta help.” He glanced at his empty glass and Green nodded to the bartender to fill it up.
“I never really worked for him,” Solly went on. “He was scared of cars — scared to drive his own car in town. He got the batty idea two, three years ago I was a swell, careful driver, so he’s been riding in my cab most of the time since. Whenever he’d light anywhere for awhile or go home an’ go to bed or anything like that, he’d tell me an’ I’d pick up what I could on the side. He paid me a flat rate of a sawbuck a day no matter what the meter read an’ some days he wouldn’t use me at all, so it worked out swell.”
“Did you take him anywhere tonight?”
“Uh-huh.” Solly drank, nodded. “I picked him up at his apartment a little after midnight an’ took him to the corner of Bleecker an’ Thompson Street. He said he wouldn’t need me any more tonight.” Green tasted his rye, made a face and put a twenty-dollar bill on the bar.
Solly said, “Don’t you like it, Mister Green?”
Green shook his head and edged the glass along the bar with the side of his hand until it was in front of Solly.
Solly regarded it meditatively. “I’ll be damned,” he said, “a swell guy like Mister Costain getting the works like that...” He picked up the glass.
Green was lighting a cigarette. “Who did it?”
Solly shrugged. “There is a lot of guys who never liked him, because they didn’t understand him. He was — uh — ec—” Solly stopped, tasted his fresh drink and tried again: “He was ec—”
“Eccentric?”
Solly bobbed his head.
Green persisted: “But who hated him enough and had guts enough to tip him over?” Solly drained his glass, then closed one eye and looked immeasurably wise. “Well, if you ask me,” he said quickly, “the guy who had plenty of reason to, an’ maybe enough guts to, was plenty close to home... Did’ja ever meet a fella named Demetrios — something Demetrios? A Greek — tall shiny-haired sheik with a big smile?”
Green shook his head.
Solly leaned closer. “He worked as a kind of bodyguard an’ all-around handyman for Mister Costain. Mister Costain liked him...” Solly’s voice dissolved to a hoarse stage whisper. “I happen to know that Demetrios an’ June Neilan, Costain’s girl, was like that” — he held up two grimy fingers pressed close together — “right under Costain’s nose.”
Green’s brows ascended to twin inverted Vs. “That’s a good reason for Costain to hang it on the Greek,” he objected, “but not the other way around.”
“Wait a minute. You don’t get it.” Solly’s face split to a wide grin. “I happen to know this Demetrios has tried to let Costain have it in the back a couple times, only it went wrong, an’ Costain didn’t even tumble to who it was. I happened to be in the right place at the right time.”
“Why didn’t you tell Costain?”
Solly stared hard at his empty glass.
Green smiled faintly. “Did Demetrios pay off?”
Solly nodded sheepishly. Green rapped on the bar and the bartender filled both glasses.
“It’s just like it always is,” Solly croaked philosophically. “Costain was crazy jealous of everybody except the right guy, an’ distrusted everybody except the guy who was holding the knife.”