Wanted dead men, p.5
Wanted: Dead Men, page 5
“Why did they do it?”
“I suppose it had to be money, although I don’t know why. They made damned good money. Both of them owned better-than-average homes and the mortgages were paid.”
“Any vices?”
“Not that I know of, and I knew them both very well. They were devoted husbands and fathers and I doubt if they knew a horse from a cow or a pair of dice from cubes of sugar.”
“And then they both committed suicide,” I said, “within a period of two weeks. Why?”
“Again, I don’t know, March. I can only guess. We make periodic checks on security measures without any advance notice. We had just started such a check and it’s possible that they became frightened.”
“Are you sure that they committed suicide?”
He looked surprised. “Are you suggesting something else?”
“I’m not suggesting anything. I’m asking a question.” “Of course they committed suicide,” he said. “That was the official verdict. After all, they did have a sort of reason for suicide when they thought they were going to be caught. It couldn’t have been anything else. Neither one of them had any enemies.”
“That you know of,” I suggested gently.
“What do you mean? You don’t think they committed suicide?”
“I don’t know what I think,” I said. “It’s just that everything is too damned neat, too convenient. I don’t like things that are all wrapped and tied before you even get to them. Is there anything else you can tell me?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think so. As I told you, no one told me anything.”
“Who gave out the official verdict of suicide?” ,
“The local police. Captain Shaffner of Homicide. He’s a good man, but he wouldn’t answer any of my questions either. Maybe he’ll tell you more.”
“I’ll try,” I said. I stood up. “Can you give me the addresses of Halsey and Frame?”
“Ask my secretary,” he said wearily. He seemed depressed by our conversation.
“Okay, thanks,” I said.
I left him there, slumped behind the pile of papers on his desk.
The secretary wrote down the addresses for me and I took the elevator down to the ground floor. I took another look at the receptionist and reluctantly went out to my car. Business before pleasure, I reminded myself firmly.
The Robert Halsey house was the nearest and I drove to it. Lamarr had been right; it wasn’t a cheap house. The well-kept lawn was bordered with flowers and there was a hedge in front. A big, burly man was working on the hedge, although it didn’t look as if it needed trimming.
I parked in front of the house and started up the walk. Suddenly the man was in front of me, the hedge shears swinging loosely in his left hand.
“Looking for somebody, buster?” he asked. There was nothing friendly about his voice or attitude.
4
There was one thing certain; he was no gardener. In the first place gardeners seldom challenge visitors, but are more apt to give them a toothy smile and go on with their pruning. Also, I had never met a gardener who carried a gun, since it’s pretty difficult to hit a Japanese beetle with a .38. There was a bulge under this man’s left arm and I didn’t think it was a tumor.
“Yes,” I said politely. “I’m paying a social call on Mrs. Halsey. You may continue with your hedges, my good man.”
“She’s not seeing anyone,” he said. He’d moved around so he was blocking the walk to the house.
“It seems to me,” I said mildly, “that it’s a decision that’s up to Mrs. Halsey, not her gardener.”
“You heard me. She’s not seeing anyone.”
“Do you have any authority?” I asked.
“My authority is that I’m telling you to get out,” he said.
I didn’t have any doubt what his authority was, but I was also getting tired of being pushed around.
“Oh, well,” I said.
I started to turn and hit him. I missed the button, but I hit him hard enough to knock him down, the hedge shears flying from his hand.
Without trying to get up, he reached for the gun. I let him get it out of the holster and then I stepped on his hand. He let go of the gun and grunted with pain. He started to twist his body so he could grab my ankle with his other hand.
“I wouldn’t,” I said. “You’ll need a complete dental job if you try.”
He subsided and glared up at me. “Don’t push your luck too far, March,” he said.
I looked at him in mock surprise. “Ah, the man knows me. Now I don’t recall meeting any gardeners socially.”
His face was red with anger. “My orders were not to arrest you, but you’re making it difficult.”
“Orders? From whom? The State Department of Conservation? But I haven’t touched the hedge. If you have any other authority I suggest that you identify it.”
“Go to hell,” he said.
I ground my foot down on his hand until he gritted his teeth with pain. “As of now,” I said cheerfully, “you are merely an impudent gardener who is guilty of attempted assault with a deadly weapon. As a law-abiding citizen I have a right to defend myself.”
He continued to glare at me for several seconds, then the fight went out of him. “All right,” he said. He put his left hand in his pocket and came out with a leather folder and flipped it open. He was a government cop all right.
“Well, well,” I said. “They must be scraping the bottom of the barrel these days.” I took my foot off his hand. “You can get up, retrieve your gun, and put it back in its holster. But I’d move very slowly if I were you. I’m allergic to having guns pointed at me, even by cops.”
I stood back and waited. He got to his feet and picked up the gun. It was plain he was wishing he could use it, but he put it away and stared at me.
“Am I under arrest?” I asked sweetly.
“My orders were not to arrest you,” he repeated. He sounded as if he were choking. “My orders also were that you were not to see Mrs. Halsey under any circumstances. If you persist in your attempts I may then use my own judgment. I hope you try.” He bit off the last four words as though he were spitting out a bad taste.
“If I try, I’ll see her,” I said quietly. “I am, however, perfectly willing to co-operate—which is more than I can say for any of your bunch. But I’m tired of being pushed around by a bunch of amateurs and you may quote me in your report. If you’d identified yourself in the beginning, I would have left quietly. But don’t throw your weight around; you don’t weigh that much. What’s the idea of sealing Mrs. Halsey off? Her husband wasn’t involved with any classified material.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I just have my orders. Now get out of here.”
“I suppose the same orders apply to Mrs. Frame?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Well, it’s nice to see the taxpayers’ money spent so wisely,” I said. “Are you a gambling man, Percival?”
His face reddened again. “My name is Hayes,” he said stiffly.
“I’ll make you a bet,” I told him. “You have a whole little army of smart boys, but I’ll bet you ten bucks that I find the answer to all of this before you do.”
“Get out,” he said hoarsely.
“Sure. Give my regards to the boys—and I do mean boys—back in Washington.” I went to my car and drove away.
Obviously there was little point in trying to see Mrs. Frame. I stopped at the first gas station and looked up the police department. I phoned and got the address of Homicide. It still wasn’t quite lunchtime so I drove directly to the building that housed Homicide.
I stepped up to the desk sergeant, a beefy individual who was a duplicate of twenty sergeants to be found at the desks of twenty city police departments. He looked at me with suspicion, as if he were certain I was there to confess I had just murdered my wife.
“I would like to see Captain Shaffner,” I said.
It increased his suspicion. “What about?” he asked.
“My name is March,” I said. I took out my identification and held it so he could see it. “I represent Intercontinental Insurance of New York. I am here in regard to a case with which Captain Shaffner is familiar. I’d like to talk to him about it for a few minutes if he can spare the time.”
The sergeant wasn’t impressed, but he knew better than to make a decision on his own. He picked up the phone and passed my words along to the Captain. When he hung up his expression indicated that he wasn’t too sure about the Captain’s sanity.
“He’ll see you,” he said. “Go down that corridor. It’s the second door on the right.” He went back to examining what seemed to be the squeal book—but I suspected that there was a comic book inside it.
I reached the second door on the right and knocked. A voice told me to come in. I opened the door and walked into a room filled with cigar smoke. It took a few seconds for my eyes to adjust and then I saw the Captain seated at a battered old desk puffing away at a cigar. An ash tray on the desk was filled with cigar butts, some of them still smoldering. The Captain was a little on the heavy side, but I was surprised to find him younger than I had expected. He seemed to be about my age and I had a strange feeling that there was something familiar about him.
“Come in and shut the door,” he said irritably.
“Too much fresh air?” I asked as I closed the door behind me.
“Everything happens in fresh air,” he growled. “Did you ever hear of anyone being murdered in a smoke-filled room? No. It’s always out in the open or in a nice, clean room. If the place is filled with anything it’s the smell of good home cooking—and blood. But not smoke.” He swung his chair around and squinted at me. “Five murders in the last week and not a single damned clue— not to mention a squad of men who couldn’t find an elephant in a phone booth. And you want to ask me some questions? You’re an insurance investigator, huh?”
“Yes,” I said.
I was still trying to get a good look at him. There was also something familiar about his voice.
“No damn good,” he said. “I never met but one insurance investigator that had any brains at all and he was a sonuvabitch. A double-dyed, purple-headed sonuvabitch. Somebody probably killed him a long time ago—out in the fresh air—so there are no more insurance dicks worth anything. What do you want?”
Then I got in. I knew why there was something familiar about him. It made me smile, but the smoke was so thick he couldn’t see it.
“Captain ShafEner,” I said, “were you in the so-called late war?”
“Of course I was,” he said, sounding annoyed. “What’s that got to do with it? I thought you were here about insurance.”
“There was,” I said carefully, “a Lieutenant Shaffner assigned to OSS. He was assigned to a mission behind enemy lines primarily because he’d been a cop before entering the Army:' It was a two-man mission and the other man was a sergeant. The mission was successful, but on the way back the lieutenant ^got trigger-happy like all cops. The sergeant knocked him out, threw him over his shoulder, and carried him back across the lines, and then explained that the lieutenant had been knocked out by concussion from a grenade. ... Of course, you didn’t weigh as much then.”
He was leaning forward, trying to peer through the swirling smoke. “What did you say your name was?” he asked.
“Milo March.”
“You sonuvabitch,” he roared. He jumped out of his chair, groped his way across the small office and grabbed my hand. “You sonuvabitch,” he repeated. “Where the hell have you been? You know, I came to in that damned field hospital and never did see you again. Were you the one responsible for me getting that Purple Heart for the so-called concussion?”
“I recommended it,” I admitted.
“Caused me more trouble than anything else in my life,” he said. “I insisted that nothing of the sort had happened and they almost turned me over to the nut doctors. Then, when the war was over, my children kept wanting to see the scar from my wound. Hell, I couldn’t tell them I got it because some lousy sergeant hit me on the chin.” I laughed. “You earned it—in a way.”
“You know,” he said, “I tried to have you courtmar-tialed for hitting an officer, but that almost got me a Section Eight, too. It seemed that nobody in the frigging Army ever heard of a Sergeant March.”
“Sorry,” I told him, “but there was a good reason for that. I was a permanent member of the OSS and my actual rank then was Captain.”
“You sonuvabitch,” he said once more. “You know, it probably took me two years to realize that you had saved my life—and your own—that night. I’ve often thought about it.” He chuckled. “As a matter of fact, I used the same tactics on a young detective a few years ago and got a promotion out of it. This calls for a cele^ bration. Hw about coming out to the house for dinner tonight? Maybe my wife will finally believe the story I told her.”
“We’ll talk about it later,” I said. “I didn’t realize that I knew you when I stopped in. I intended to sit here and ask you some questions and hope you’d answer them. Under the circumstances, and since it’s about noon, suppose I take you to lunch and we can talk then. If you know a place where we can talk without being overheard.” “That’s a great idea,” he said. “To hell with the five murders. I know just the place. Let’s go.”
He struggled into his coat, grabbed a hat, and led the way out of the office. I was grateful for that first breath of fresh air. We went down the corridor and stopped for a second by the desk sergeant.
“Tell Farnsworth to worry about the five murders,” the Captain said to the sergeant. “I’ll be back later.” “Yes, sir,” the sergeant said, but he sounded stunned. We left the precinct building and walked for about a block, finally turning into a little restaurant and bar. There were booths along one wall and we headed for the farthest one. The owner came from behind the cash register and hurried to meet us.
“It’s been a long time, Captain,” he said.
“Yeah,” Captain Shaffner said. “We’ll take the last booth, Angelo. Don’t put anyone in the booth next to us.” “Of course, Captain,” the man said.
We sat down in the booth and the Captain ordered a beer. I had a martini. The Captain looked at me searchingly after we were served our drinks. “So you’re back to being an insurance investigator?” he said. “How come you didn’t stay in and end up in that fancy-pants CIA?” “I’d had enough,” I said. “But I’m still in the Reserves and every once in a while they drag me back for a job. There isn’t much I can do about that.”
“You still look pretty much the same. A little older, maybe, but not much.”
“You look much the same, too,” I said, “except for about fifty pounds?”
“It’s that desk job,” he said defensively. “The only exercise I get is writing memos and_ answering memos and yelling at my detectives.” He took a long pull at his beer and then looked at me. “What can I do for you, Milo?”
“I’m not sure you can do anything,” I said. “I’m only hoping. I’m working for Intercontinental Insurance in New York—on three cases which seem to be related. The first one was in Connecticut. A new invention important to missile control was stolen and its inventor was either kidnaped or killed.”
I stopped to light a cigarette and then went on. “The other two cases were here. One was at Crossen Plastics, where three inventions, all classified by the government, were stolen and two men were killed—accidentally, it says here in small print. The third case was at Santee Chemical. Again three inventions were stolen. Valuable but not top secret. This time two men committed suicide— according to the official verdict.”
We ordered two more drinks and were silent until the waiter brought them and left.
“Much insurance?” the Captain asked.
“At least four million dollars, maybe more.”
“How’re you making out?”
I smiled. “I’m not only working for the insurance company. I’m supposed to pull a lot of hot chestnuts out of the fire while wearing a blindfold. A very important government man asked me to do what I could to solve their end of the problem—the one that fifty of their men can’t. But he wouldn’t give me any information and every time . I try to dig up something I find he’s stopped me from getting it. Even in the case of Santee, where nothing was classified, he’s blocking me.”
“How?”
“Just one example,” I said. “This morning I tried to see Mrs. Halsey. Her husband worked for Santee and all the thefts were strictly industrial. But there was a government man pretending to be a gardener who was there to keep me from seeing her.”
“What did you do?”
“Knocked him on his ass and when he pulled his gun I stepped on his hand and stayed that way until he identified himself. But it didn’t get me in to see Mrs. Halsey.” He laughed. “I wish I could have seen that.” He brought out a cigar and lit it. “I think I know how you feel, Milo. I worked on the Santee and Crossen cases. I’ve been a cop all of my life, except for that Army stretch, and I’m now in charge of Homicide, but I’ve never been treated like such an outsider. Those smart Washington boys did everything but take my badge away from me.”
“I don’t suppose they told you anything they discovered?”
“Not a word.” He puffed on the cigar. “They tried to keep me sitting peacefully at my desk, but I did a little work on my own—while they were busy and after they were finished. I don’t know if I found the same things they did. They didn’t tell me what they found and I didn’t tell them what I found. Seemed fair that way.” He chuckled.
“Do you mind giving me some information?” I asked. “Well, I guess I wouldn’t normally say anything—at least, not right away. I have an idea that the government men wouldn’t like it. But I owe you something for that Purple Heart. I don’t know anything about the thefts themselves, but I know a little about what happened afterward, maybe even a few things they don’t know in Washington. I’ll answer any questions you want to ask, but do me one favor.”
“What?”
“Forget where you heard the answers.”
