Gilded Canary (20 page)

“
ESCA
,” Hook told him.

“What?”

“
ESCA
.”

“Look old boy, I don’t understand Latvian, if that’s what you’re throwing at me.”

“It’s a code word I came across last night. It was the last major chunk of the puzzle, and it took me a while to see it.
ESCA
. Short for Lafayette Escadrille.”

Raff looked genuinely confused.

“Could be you never saw it, Raff. It was a code devised to keep track of bettors. If the Feds should chance upon it, no one’s
real name would be found there.”

Raff opened his mouth to say something, appeared to think the better of it, and didn’t.

“Two-Scar Toomey was the fellow whose records I was looking over. The fellow you did your gambling with. And I guess somewhere
along the line he’d found out you had been in the Lafayette Escadrille during the war, so that was the code name he hung on
you.” Raff was casually dropping his hand. “Don’t,” Lockwood warned him. Raff stopped.

“A few weeks ago,” he continued, “you were down $5600. That’s a lot of money. Especially for a man on a small fixed income
with a need to live well. Maybe around that time you learned about Muffy and Jock. And so you got an idea. A way of paying
off your debt and getting a little revenge on your fiancée at the same time.”

“Raff—” Muffy began.

“He’s lying!” Raff told her.

“The jewels were worth big money. $50,000. So you didn’t have to steal them yourself. You told Toomey and let his boys take
care of it, and that way your debt was wiped out and your hands remained clean.”

“Surely you can’t put a case together based on this—on just suppositions and some jottings that may or may not have anything
to do with me.”

“Oh, I think I could. But I don’t really need to.” The Hook had stopped playing games and had drawn the .38. “First of all,
I don’t need to do anything, beyond recovering the jewels. My job’s already done.”

Relief began to show in the faces of the other three when Lockwood cut in. “But that’s my job as an insurance investigator.
I also have a job as a member of the human race.” He backed across the room, pistol ready, and took up a position near the
door, then leaned back against the wall.

“As a human being,” he said, “I feel I have to do more. As I say, I could probably put a case together about your setting
up the theft,” he told Raff, “but there’s no necessity for that.”

Raff tried to move to his right. Lockwood stopped him. “Stay where you are.”

He looked at Bunche, then Muffy, then back at Raff. “Stealing the jewels wasn’t enough for you, as far as getting back at
Muffy. You wanted to humiliate her as well. So you told Jabber-Jabber to plant the item with Winchell. And of course Jacoby
did just what you asked. He was desperate to ingratiate himself with Winchell, and he knew Winchell would be around a lot
longer than a second-rate, blue-blooded singer.”

“How dare you!” Muffy yelled at Lockwood, looking as if she’d been slapped. “I’m a goddamn good singer!”

He ignored her and continued, “And somehow you must have let slip to Toomey that Jabber-Jabber had done it, and so Toomey
had his men take Jacoby out.”

Raff looked at him steadily, and something about him seemed to have faded a bit. “I’d never meant—”

“No, probably not. It’s not likely you told Jacoby enough to incriminate you. Possibly you bragged to Toomey about the Winchell
item, never realizing how he’d take the fact that somebody else might know something. You he could depend on to keep your
mouth shut. Jabber-Jabber was an unknown quantity. And the fact that he had an in with Winchell, a guy who delights in trapping
crooks, was another factor working against poor Jabber-Jabber. The final one was that, as a two-time loser, Toomey couldn’t
afford another bust.”

It was nearing noon, and the sun was beginning to stream in, hot and strong. “But even Jacoby didn’t count for that much,
as far as your involvement is concerned,” he told Raff. “Your strangling of Stephanie Meilleux is all that’s needed to put
you away for good.”

Muffy gasped. “He—?”

“You’re mad!” Raff shouted, eyes blazing.

“No. I’m afraid you’re the one who’s mad. Or perhaps desperate is the better word. I never could figure out why Stephanie
left Muffy and attached herself to me. It made no sense, at least not until I realized it was you who’d set up the theft.

“Stephanie was in love with you, Raff, something you probably weren’t even aware of until the evening she called you.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“You’re a charming man, handsome. It must have been easy for her to become attracted to you, to fall hard, and then, later,
to feel sorry for you, knowing that her mistress was cheating on you. Love and sympathy. It was enough to make her do everything
she did.”

“All right.” Raff was trying to bluff it out. “Just what
was
it she did?”

“Somehow she must have found out you were involved in the theft. An overheard phone call, perhaps. She was in love with you
and willing to do anything to protect you, probably in the forlorn hope that somehow, as time went on, the two of you would
become close. Something she said to me made me realize she was afraid of me, that there was a relentlessness about me, she
felt, that would keep me on the case until it was solved. So she stayed with me, did everything she could to hinder me.”

He turned toward Muffy. “The
petit mal
seizure when I was chasing One-Eye. That was one example. She had no idea who he was, just was afraid that somehow or other,
if I caught him, he might lead me back to Raff.”

A little bit of loyalty had lodged itself somehow in Muffy. “Raff couldn’t have done it,” she said, flatly.

“He did. Finally, one night, when we were talking to Winchell, she realized I wasn’t going to let her come along, and that
I might be on the trail of something. So while we were at the Stork with Winchell, she excused herself, said she was going
off to the powder room, and instead called Raff. For the first time she told him that she knew he was responsible for the
robbery, told him that he’d have to throw me off now that she was unable to.”

He turned to Raff. “And so you ‘accidentally’ bumped into me at the club.”

Raff was impassive. “Keep talking, Lockwood. Maybe somewhere along the way you’ll actually drop a truth or two.”

“You drove with me out to Long Island. And in the potato field, after I’d finished with Petey Ahearn and Elmer, you took a
shot at me. You could have taken another maybe, but didn’t. I don’t know why. Maybe you froze, but I suspect somehow you thought
better of it. You didn’t really need me dead at that point, since there was no way of knowing whether or not you’d be caught
by me. But you did know that Stephanie had the goods on you.

“As I say, Stephanie was in love with you, but by that point her love may have been wavering a bit. Perhaps you sensed that,
perhaps you just didn’t want to take any chances. So after we returned to the city, you waited till you knew I was gone. Called
once probably, when I was there, and hung up when I picked up the phone. The next time, I imagine, Stephanie answered. And
you went up to my apartment, and when you got the chance, strangled her.”

Raff had gone white. “I tell you, you’re crazy.”

“It’ll be easy enough to prove: my madness or your guilt. I was told the cops got several nice sets of fingerprints. Very
clear. All the same pattern. Now that they’ve got someone to match them up to, there should be no problem.” Lockwood picked
up the phone on the desk beside him. “And now,” he told them, “it’s time to call the police.”

It happened too fast for him to see it coming. Raff, in one lightning motion, had grabbed an ashtray off the table alongside
him and flung it at Lockwood. The Hook took it in the chest, the phone thunking to the floor, and before he had the gun up,
Raff had sprung through the bedroom door, the .32 in his hand exploding at Lockwood.

Lockwood leapt behind the sofa that stood out from the wall and fired back. Two slugs thudded into the wall behind him, and
he realized Bunche was shooting at him, too.

He flung himself to the far side of the couch, leaned out quickly, and got off two shots, one in the direction of Bunche,
who was behind the other couch, and one at Raff. He ducked back as the cross fire came at him again, and Muffy began screaming.
It sounded like fear, rather than pain. “Stay down!” he yelled at her.

He raised up behind the couch, getting off two more quick shots. He had to keep them away from the door, had to chance their
clipping him as he exposed himself, and barely got down in time to escape the four bullets that were pumped at him in return.

He couldn’t stay behind the couch any longer. Bunche or Raff could advance on him without his seeing. If he gained the opposite
wall, he’d be out of Raff’s line of vision and could concentrate on Bunche. Quickly, he broke open his gun and added new ammunition.
Couldn’t expose himself with just two rounds left in the chambers.

A bullet tore through the back of the couch, and he leapt for the opposite wall, wheeled, arm straight before him, and pumped
out two shots as he caught a glimpse of Bunche. Raff, of course, could at any moment pop out of the bedroom and try slinging
lead at him, but that was a chance he’d have to take.

Bunche’s head came up, and they exchanged two quick shots. Lockwood felt searing pain in his right arm as Bunche’s bullet
tore into his flesh. Damn. He couldn’t afford any more of those. He’d have to act quickly.

Out of the corner of his eye he could see Muffy, flat out on the floor, still half naked, her arms covering her head, sobbing.
Then he noticed the mirror hanging behind the couch that hid Bunche. It was huge and heavy, and he aimed carefully at it.
He took a chance, a big chance, and got off three quick shots.

The glass of the mirror was still exploding into the air as he raced across the room, taking a shot at getting across before
Raff could pull the trigger.

He leapt atop the couch, pistol pointing down at Bunche, whose arms were still over his face, trying to protect himself from
the shower of glass. “Drop it!” Lockwood yelled.

Bunche ignored him, the pistol coming up fast, and Lockwood sent off his final bullet, catching his foe between the eyes.
Bunche’s own shot, a split second too late, fired off wildly into the ceiling, as his arm jerked out of control.

Lockwood was behind the couch now, crouched over the dead man, waiting for Raff to fire at him, hastily trying to reload,
then finding he was out of ammunition. Quickly, he seized Bunche’s pistol, pulling away the dead man’s fingers, and then realized
there was no sound, aside from Muffy’s crying and the whir of the giant window fan.

He raised his head, ducked, then raised it again, a foot farther down the couch. Nothing. No sounds came from the bedroom.
Slowly he rose and quietly moved toward the bedroom entrance. Could it be he’d put one into Raff? He glanced toward the door
of the suite. Still closed. No way Raff could have got through there without his seeing him.

A foot from the doorway, he leapt out sidewise, gun ready, but there was just blank wall. He sprang forward, whirling in mid-air,
and pointed his pistol at the entrance again, but nothing was revealed from this angle either. He backed up, then raced for
and through the bedroom entrance, dropping into a crouch as he hit the floor, .38 leveled, but again he saw no one. Quickly,
he checked the bathroom, then the closet, then darted toward the open window, its curtains waving feebly in the light summer
breeze.

He looked to the right, saw nothing, then whipped his head to the left. A foot was disappearing into a window about thirty
feet down the narrow stone ledge that circled the building. He turned and dashed out of the suite, past a dazed Muffy, who
was just beginning to raise herself off the floor. He made a quick right down the corridor, and heard a heavy door slam. He
raced to the end of the high-vaulted hall, tore open the brass exit door. Echoing out came the sound of rapid footsteps. He
ran in and listened for a second, and judged the sound to be coming from below.

He leapt the stairs four at a time, .32 at the ready, but not gaining on the footsteps, which must have already been two or
three floors below. His heart was pounding, lungs beginning to burn, and still he ran.

Then he heard the footsteps stop. There was a flurry of sound, then a banging, as if Raff were kicking at a door. Sometimes
these fire stairs led to dead-ends, Lockwood remembered, to doors that were locked from the outside. He stopped for a moment,
listening, but all was silent. He began the descent again, still swiftly, but trying to keep the sound down. He reached the
next flight and then the next and finally what seemed to be the bottom. Still no Raff.

“Don’t move.” It was Raff’s voice. “You were moving so damn fast, you never saw me in the shadows up here on the landing.”

He heard Raff come down a step or two, no doubt to assure himself of his bullet going precisely where he wanted it to.

“I’m really sorry about all this, Hook,” Raff told him. “I never thought of myself as this kind of person. Oh, not one of
your greater saints, certainly. A little hanky-panky here, a bit of flim-flam there, but nothing serious. When you come down
to it, what I did with Muffy’s jewels wasn’t that much either, but it was by far the darkest thing I’d ever done.”

Raff had moved down the rest of the stairway, and now Lockwood could feel the muzzle of the gun, pressed against his spine.
He still had the .32 in his hand, but at this point it might as well have been a pop gun, for all the good it could possibly
do him.

“I’d always thought of myself as someone with courage. I laughed it off, but dammit, it did take courage to take those planes
up in the air when the Germans came in. And I did take my plane up, again and again.

“But then I came back, and I built a world I didn’t want to lose. It was a good life in its way. Oh, certainly nothing important
could ever come of it. Some would call it useless and beneath respect, but I didn’t feel that way. It was a comfortable life,
an aesthetic life: beautiful homes, beautiful women, good food. I was quite happy in its midst, and how many people can say
the same for their lives? So when Stephanie called, you can understand my feelings.