Inspector Queen’s Own Case (15 page)

Jessie suggested, “There's a door there says Superintendent.”

The old man grunted. They went over to the door and he rang the bell.

A heavy-set man in a collarless shirt, with a green paper napkin stuck in the neckband, opened the door.

“Yeah?”

“I'm looking for some information about one of your tenants, Miss Connie Coy.”

“I can't give out information about my tenants.” The man began to shut the door, but it refused to shut. He glanced down coldly. “Guys can get their feet knocked off that way. You want I should call a cop?”

The gold shield flashed in Inspector Queen's palm.

“That's a hot one,” the man grinned. “Come on in.”

“We can talk here. By the way, what's your name?”

“McKeown. Joseph N.”

“Do you know where Miss Coy is, McKeown?”

“Out of town. She left three weeks ago Friday. She was supposed to be gone only a week, but she didn't come back so I guess they held her over.”

“Oh, a professional engagement?”

“Yeah, she's a club singer. You know, a shantoose.” McKeown glanced sidewise at Jessie.

“Then she might be back any day?”

“I'd say so.”

“She live here long?”

“Seven-eight months.”

“Where's she singing?”

“Chicago.” McKeown peered over at the switchboard boy and lowered his voice. “Wha'd she do, Cap?”

“Nothing. She may have to be a witness in a case.”

“Glad to hear it,” the superintendent said. “Nice quiet gal. Too bad about her husband.”

“Oh,” the old man said. “She's got a husband?”

“A GI. He's in Korea. And he never even got to see his kid. He's still over there.” McKeown looked sad. “Hard lines getting your wife pregnant and having to ship out, then she has the kid all alone and loses it in childbirth in the bargain. Came back from the hospital all broke up.”

“I see,” Richard Queen said. “What hospital was she at, do you know?”

“Some Army hospital over in Jersey, she said. She was just beginning to show when she moved in here. Tough.”

“It certainly is,” Jessie murmured.

“Does she use her married name here in the building?”

“Yeah. Mrs. Arthur Dimmesdale.”

“How do you spell that, McKeown?” He took out a ballpoint pen and a wrinkled envelope with an Italian postmark. McKeown spelled the name, and the Inspector wrote it down on the back of the envelope.

Arthur Dimmesdale … Jessie thought, Where have I heard that name?

“Then I take it, McKeown, since Miss Coy—Mrs. Dimmesdale—didn't move in here till after her husband shipped out to Korea, that you've never seen him?”

“Never laid eyes on him.”

“Any idea of his branch of service? Rank?”

“I think she said he's a second looey in the Army.”

The old man made a note. “Couple more questions, McKeown, and I'll let you get back to your Sunday dinner. What's Miss Coy's apartment number?”

“5-C. That's on the top floor.”

“Apartment C, fifth floor. She live alone?”

“All by her lonely, Cap.”

“She ever have anybody sleep over?”

McKeown grinned. “This ain't the Barbizon, my friend. We don't keep a check. She don't run no brawls, and that's good enough for me.”

“Don't mention this to Miss Coy when she gets back, McKeown.”

“I get you, Cap.”

As they walked toward Broadway, Jessie said, “But where are we going, Richard? Why didn't we get into the car?”

“You've got to have your dinner, Jessie. There's a nice restaurant on Broadway and 87th——”

“That's not the reason. What is it?”

“I can't keep anything from you, can I? We were wrong about Weirhauser. I just spotted him in a parked car as we came out of the apartment house. He was trying to hide behind a newspaper, but I got a look at him.”

“I don't understand it,” Jessie exclaimed. “I've kept on the lookout for his Chrysler all day.”

“So have I. That's why we didn't see him. Don't turn around, Jessie. He's about to go into the apartment house.” Richard Queen steered her around the corner into Broadway. “He pulled a fast one today. Ditched the old Chrysler and tailed us in a new Ford.”

“How clever of him.” Jessie tried to keep her tone amused. “Then he's finding out right now that we've been asking for Connie Coy. If McKeown doesn't tell him, that pimply boy will.”

“More important, he knows we've found her. And by tonight, whoever's paying him to tail us will know it, too.” He was preoccupied as they entered the restaurant.

“What are we going to do, Richard?”

He squeezed her arm. “Have dinner.”

He took a table commanding a view of the door. But the private detective did not appear.

Over the chicken noodle soup Jessie said, “Do you think she's really married?”

He shrugged.

“Maybe that's why she had her baby under the name of Exeter, Richard. And told the super she'd given birth in a New Jersey hospital when she actually had the baby in New York. If she's married and her husband wasn't the baby's father …”

“She'd use a phony name at the hospital if she wasn't married, too. I'll check Washington first thing in the morning on a Lieutenant Arthur Dimmesdale.” He stopped talking until the waiter removed the soup plates. “Either way we slice this, Jessie, it comes out the same. If Connie's married, Dimmesdale isn't the father. If she's an unmarried mother, and invented Dimmesdale to make life simpler for herself at the apartment house, we've still got to look for the man who got her pregnant.”

“And for the other man,” Jessie said grimly.

“Which other man?”

“The man who's hired that private detective to shadow us.”

He buttered a roll and remarked, “They might be the same man.”

Jessie looked surprised. “That's so, isn't it? Or … Richard! Do you suppose Weirhauser's client could be Arthur Dimmesdale?”

“From Korea?”

“
Don't
smile. Suppose the husband does exist. Suppose Dimmesdale knew he hadn't left his wife pregnant. Then some snoopy ‘friend' writes to Korea that Connie's having, or had, a baby. He's furious. He goes AWOL, or wangles a leave or something—anyway, gets back to the States. First he traces the baby to the Humffreys and murders him——”

“That would make him a psycho, Jessie. And what about Finner's murder?”

“When Michael was murdered, Finner might have figured the husband did it, pussyfooted around, and decided he was right. If Finner then tried to blackmail Dimmesdale——”

But the Inspector was shaking his head. “I'm pretty sure, from the way Finner reacted, that he'd had no idea the baby was murdered. Hold it.—Fine, waiter. Yes, just the way I like it. Jessie, dig into this roast beef.”

There was no sign of George Weirhauser when they left the restaurant. They walked back up to 88th Street, where they had parked Jessie's coupe, and Richard Queen rubbed his jaw.

“He's gone.”

There was no sign of Weirhauser's new Ford, either.

“Well!” Jessie said. “That's a relief.”

“Is it?” he said oddly. “It probably means that instead of his client knowing tonight that we've located Connie Coy, he's learning it right now.”

When he came downstairs from Jessie's apartment that night he strolled up the street a way and then suddenly pulled open the door of a blue Studebaker parked at the curb and climbed in.

“Evening, Inspector,” Polonsky said.

“See anything of a gray-and-salmon Ford this evening, Wes?”

The retired officer looked concerned. “I thought Weirhauser was driving a black Chrysler.”

“He switched on us today.”

Polonsky swore. “Somebody's been teaching that punk his trade. I couldn't say I didn't, Inspector. I wasn't watching out for Fords.”

“Neither was I.” The Inspector began gnawing on his mustache. “Wes, what ever happened to Pete Whatzis? You know, the Pete you used to team up with.”

“Pete Angelo? Pete's wife died two years after he retired. His married daughter's husband got transferred to Cincinnati, the younger daughter is away at college, and his son's a Navy career man. Pete worked for a protection agency a few years and then quit.” Polonsky sighed. “At least he tells everybody he quit. He was fired on account of his age. Age! Pete Angelo could still wade into a gang of street corner hoodlums and stack 'em like cordwood.”

“Ever see Angelo?”

“All the time. He lives here on the West Side. We meet in the cafeteria, have four cups of coffee apiece, and tell each other how good we used to be.”

“Then Angelo's not doing anything?”

“Just going nuts, like the rest of us.”

“Do you suppose I could get Pete to handle a plant for me?”

“Inspector, he'd throw his arms around your neck and kiss every hair on your mustache.”

“Can you think of any other retired cop who'd be willing to team with Angelo? I'd need them both right away.”

The ex-detective pondered. Then he smacked the wheel. “Murph! I ran into him this past week. You remember Sergeant Al Murphy, Inspector—he used to be on radio car patrol in the 16th. Murph was retired this past June, and he told me he's still undecided what to do with himself. Never saw a guy so itchy.”

“Anybody else you can think of, Wes? I'd like two teams, one for the night trick, one for daytimes.”

“I'll bet Pete or Murph'll come up with a couple. When do you want them for?”

“If possible, starting tonight.”

Polonsky climbed out of his Studebaker. “You take this stakeout for a while, Inspector. I'll be right back.”

When he slipped behind the wheel again Polonsky was grinning. “Pete Angelo and Al Murphy'll meet you in the cafeteria on 72nd in fifteen minutes. Pete says not to worry, he can get you ten teams. Your problem, he says, is going to be to fight off the ones you can't use.”

Richard Queen sat there in silence. Then he pressed Polonsky's arm and got out. The old man in the car watched the old man on the sidewalk stride toward Broadway like a very young man indeed.

On Monday morning Richard Queen phoned to tell Jessie he had started the ball rolling on Lieutenant Dimmesdale with a connection of his at the Pentagon, and that he would have to stick close to his phone all day.

“What are your plans, Jessie?” he asked anxiously. “I haven't got you covered daytimes.”

“Oh, I'll be all right. I have some laundry and a few other things to do, and then I thought I'd hop a cab and give that bachelor's sty of yours the thorough housecleaning I promised. If you wouldn't mind my coming, I mean.”

“Mind,” he said in a fervent tone. “And here I was all gloomed up. But be careful on the way, Jessie!”

Jessie arrived a little past noon. At her ring he bellowed that the door was off the latch, and she went in to find him on the phone in Ellery's study, waving at her through the study doorway.

“Richard Queen, why didn't you tell me your Mrs. Fabrikant had been here? Or is this your work?”

He grinned and went on talking.

“Not that it still doesn't need doing,” Jessie sniffed. She hung her taffeta coat and her hat in the foyer, prepared to take her handbag into the bathroom, change into a housedress, and sail in. But when she got further into the living room, there was the gateleg table set for two with winking silver and fancy paper napkins. He had decorated a big platter artistically with assorted cold cuts, deviled eggs, potato salad, parsley, and tomato slices, and the aroma from the kitchen told her the coffee was perking.

Jessie turned the gas down under the coffeepot with the strangest thrill of proprietorship.

So they lunched tête-à-tête, and he told her that he had just finished arranging for an around-the-clock watch on Connie Coy's apartment.

“But who's watching?” Jessie asked, astonished.

“Four retired members of the Force,” he grinned. “Al Murphy and Pete Angelo signed up last night. Pete got Hughie Giffin for me this morning, and that was ex-Lieutenant of Homicide Johnny Kripps just now trying to climb through the phone. Murphy and Angelo for daytime duty, Giffin and Kripps for dark-to-dawn. And four better officers you couldn't find between here and the west forty.”

“Connie Coy is back, then?”

“No. That's one of the reasons I want the building covered. This way I'll know the minute she gets home.”

When Jessie came out of the bathroom after lunch, in a housedress and with her hair bound in a scarf, she found him washing the lunch dishes.

“Here, Richard, I'll do those.”

“You go on about your business. I'm a pearl diver from way back.”

But afterward he trailed her around the apartment in a pleased way, making a nuisance of himself.

“Haven't you anything to do?” She was washing the living-room windows, and she suspected she had a dirt smudge on her nose. “Goodness!”

“I'll go call Abe Pearl,” he said hastily. “Been meaning to do it all day.”

“Are you going to tell him about Finner's death and how it ties in with the baby?”

“I called Abe on that early last week.”

“You never told me. What did he say?”

“I couldn't repeat it.”

“Then Chief Pearl's not so sure about my optical illusions,” Jessie couldn't help saying.

“I'm afraid Abe's not sure about anything any more.”

He went into the study and called Taugus police headquarters.

“Abe? Dick Queen.”

“Dick!” Abe Pearl roared. “Wait a minute.” Richard Queen heard him say, “Borcher, shut that door, will you?” and the slam of a door. “Okay, Dick——”

“I thought you were going to call me back last week.”