Murder for the Bride (23 page)

“What do we do now?”

“Keep moving a bit, but not enough to get out in the clear. I don’t know what they have in mind, but they might risk a shot if you stand still enough. I think they want to grab you, not shoot you. As long as I’m here, I’m fouling the works.”

“How about walking up the street arm in arm?”

“I’ve watched the corner. There’s a car I don’t like parked up there, and another one I’m more certain of right down there. Don’t stare. Sixty yards or so down the block.”

“Who is rounding up whom?” I asked politely.

“Oh, the city is a bottle with a cork in it.”

“That’s nice to know.”

“We’ve talked a long time. They’ll be wondering. They picked up the Townsend girl.”

“How nice!” I said. “That little document everybody’s been so hot about is in her possession.”

The sharp eyes grew wide and her lips parted. “Oh, no!” she said.

“Oh, yes!”

“Where would she get it? You didn’t have it. We checked that.”

“I had it and didn’t know it.”

She glanced up the street and tensed a bit. “We’re going to have company, Bryant.”

I looked up the street. Two men were walking down the street. They were moving too slowly for men walking in that kind of rain. I took the revolver out of my shirt. She glanced at it and grabbed it.

“You might have mentioned it,” she said. She moved to the side, put the muzzle an inch from the lock, and blasted it. It packed the brass lock with lead. I worked the catch and took a dive at the door with my shoulder. It swung open and we went in fast. The last glance at the two men showed me that they had broken into a run.

I slammed the door. The lock was no good. There was a sliding bolt set into the frame. My thumb slipped off it the first time. I clicked it over just as a weight struck the door on the other side.

Student Type was already at the phone. She sat on the floor beside the phone table, the phone at her ear, waiting. She glanced at me and through me.

“Statch? This is Baker. You left me in a hell of a spot. Bryant showed. No. I haven’t had a chance to ask him yet. We’re in a state of siege in the Townsend apartment. But look. The hottest thing. You know, we let them take the girl, as per instructions. Did they take her where we hoped? Good! Statch, she has it. Yes. Just when we thought it didn’t exist, she has to have it on her. Sure. I understand. ’By.”

She hung up and winked at me, held out her hand. I pulled her to her feet. “We were hoping Widdmar would
have to come out in the open on this one. He still thinks he’s going to be able to make a run for it. His guard is down a little, so Jill Townsend was taken out there. This damn rain! I hate rain! No roundup has ever been so completely fouled up as this one, but on the other hand I guess they never had quite as much at stake before.” She sighed and ran her fingers through her soaking blonde hair.

“Why did you let Jill be taken like that?” I demanded angrily.

“Look. It’s hard to get something definite on a man like Widdmar. We had a job getting his house wired. We had to find Sammy a girl friend who would lure him out of the way while we planted the microphones. Then we gently guided you out there. It didn’t work. It didn’t give us a thing. You talked on that patio affair, out of range. We had a tap on his phone, and didn’t catch the number that was dialed. The sounds of violence sent us scrambling in all directions. But you moved too fast, and got away from us. There’s a lot I don’t know. I’m just a little cog. I do know that they moved in on Sipe’s place just about ten minutes after you left, and we’ve been hunting for you and the girl ever since. We were worried until we found they were watching this place. That meant Jill Townsend got away, and you probably got her away.”

“What put you onto Widdmar?”

“Ancient history. A dossier. A big file. Then a couple of years of legwork. The whole local organization was pretty well documented when the Renner woman came in here and gave them a reason for going into action. Since then things have been confusing as hell, and you haven’t made them any simpler. You should have been snared and put in a box as soon as you got back here from Mexico.”

“Who killed the Morin girl?”

She ran her fingers through her hair again. “I got scared out there on the sidewalk. When I get scared, I talk too much. I’ve been talking too much. No more answers from me, Bryant. My people ought to be here by now.”

We went to the front door, avoiding the view hole, and
listened. There was a brisk knock. “Who is it?” she demanded.

“Harley. Open up, Baker.” She nodded to me. I snapped the bolt over and pulled the door open. It was the elder, bulkier of the two Jones boys.

“Hello again,” I said.

He ignored me. The two men who had come running down the sidewalk were climbing into the back of a sedan. Two cars had converged on the car parked up the street. Two men and a woman were coming out of a doorway across the street, their fingers laced at the backs of their necks.

“So soon?” Baker said.

“The time has been moved up,” Harley said. “Come on.” We followed him up to a black sedan. A stranger sat behind the wheel. Baker and I got in the back, soaking the upholstery. Harley took his hand mike off the hook and reported in, stating that I had been taken into custody, adding that seven strangers had been pulled in. I didn’t like being grouped with the strangers. Harley’s words had a cool sound.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“We’re dropping you at the Federal Office Building, Bryant.” He turned in the seat as the car moved slowly to the corner.

I made my voice as patient as I could. “Look. I have had what might be called a bad time. I have had my ribs busted. I have had shotguns go off in my face. I have had a knife held on me. I have found out that a guy I considered my best friend is no good. My wife was killed, and another girl was killed, and Haussmann was killed, and Siddman died, and Sipe was shot, and Straw Hat had his throat chewed out. I’ve killed a dog, for which I am sorry, and a man in a dark suit, for which I am not very sorry. All in all, I am beginning to lose my patience, Harley. You’re heading for Widdmar’s house. I would dearly like to go along with you. Maybe I’ve made you a lot of trouble, but where did you get the tip that Jill has that paper or document you want? How about it? If you say no, I’m going to open this door and
get out, no matter how fast you happen to be going at the moment.”

Harley looked at Baker. “Of all the china-shop bulls I ever saw …”

“We’ll get there after the windup, anyway,” Baker said convincingly.

“Five thousand guys in this town the Renner woman could have married,” he said.

“Who found Haussmann?” I asked him.

“That one you call Straw Hat—we knew him as Smith—he could have answered a lot of questions.”

“I didn’t get him. The dog did. Besides, my next wife is going to be a newspaperwoman. Don’t you want attractive coverage in the press for your noble efforts?”

“This may surprise you, Bryant. There’s going to be no coverage at all. Just enough to clear you of three murders, and put Smith in your shoes, and have him killed avoiding capture. For the rest of it, nobody knows a thing.”

“Let him come along, Harley,” Baker said. “And give me your coat or something. I can’t stop shivering.”

Harley muttered something to the driver. We began to make better time. We hit the water hard enough to send solid sheets over onto infuriated pedestrians. The siren began to growl, to work its way up through the octaves. I glanced behind us and noticed that we were the lead car of a caravan.

By the time we straightened out on Airline Highway, the siren was a high-pitched, constant scream.

I yelled in Baker’s ear, “How many are you rounding up?”

She gave me a wide-eyed shrug.

I could see that from now on I was going to be told less than nothing. I kept telling myself to relax. I kept telling myself that they wouldn’t take any silly chances with Jill’s life. I tried to lean back in the seat, but I kept hunching forward as though I could make the car go faster.

As we slewed hard and hit Tram’s drive, the siren off, Baker said, “I told you so. All over but the stenographic reports.”

I had underestimated the number of people involved. There were five cars already in Tram’s drive. We made three more. Harley and Baker got out. The driver stayed where he was. They seemed to have forgotten me. I followed them in. The front door was wide open.

As we went down the hallway, I heard Tram’s booming voice. “Now, look! All this is completely ridiculous! Those two men brought Miss Townsend here. I didn’t send for her. They forced their way in here, waving a gun in my face.”

They were gathered in the big lounge. Tram looked brown and rubbery and innocently worried. Two men stood against the wall, their hands at the backs of their necks. Jill sat in a deep chair, her face green pale. Tram was pacing and waving his arms.

A man with crisp white hair, a lean, distinguished face, and an air of authority said mildly, “Come now, Widdmar. This merely delays things. I assure you that we have enough.”

One of the men standing by the wall said in a heavy accent, “He is right. We forced our way in here. He protested.”

Jill met my glance and smiled weakly. She looked at the man who could have been cast as a society lawyer by Metro. “Mr. Widdmar knew I was being brought here,” she said firmly.

“Is that any way to treat an old friend, Jill?” Tram complained.

She turned her smile on him. “I’m the old friend who first smelled something odd about you, Tram, and turned your name in nearly three years ago. Something odd about you and about your habits and—when you’re off guard—your way of thinking.”

Tram still looked like a cupid with a faint leer, but his eyes changed. His eyes changed to the eyes of a man who could do murder. And I remembered something. A funny thing. When it happened, it had gone right over the surface of my mind. But it had left a faint trace.

I went up behind the gray-haired man, pulling away from Baker’s restraining hand. I said, “If you want to clip him with something, would murder be all right?”

The man turned sharply. His eyes widened. Then he grew angry. “Who brought this man here?” he demanded. He glared at Harley.

“Hi, Dil,” Tram said softly, smiling.

“Please let me talk to you alone,” I said to the man.

He shrugged. I followed him into Tram’s bedroom. “What’s on your mind, Bryant?”

“What will happen to Widdmar? I mean with what you have on him?”

“He’s a citizen. A treason trial is a pretty delicate thing. He has money. It’s very hard to say, Bryant.”

“Look. When I was here, before I suspected Tram, we talked about Laura. I talked too much. I think he put something in my drink. Anyway, he said that maybe pliers and a wire coat hanger wasn’t a very merciful way to die. Zeck knew pliers had been used. Zeck told me. It wasn’t in the paper. So how would Tram know?”

He shook his head slowly. “That isn’t enough. It’s a pleasant idea to pin that on him, but it isn’t enough to go on. Besides, maybe the one who did it told him exactly how it was done. Smith was the assassin. We know he killed the Morin girl.”

“Do those boys change their methods? Why didn’t he use the same method on Laura?”

“That’s a pretty feeble point, Bryant. I can’t waste any more time on this.”

There was a brisk knock at the door. The society lawyer opened it and he was handed something. He examined it closely, his back to me. Then he turned toward me. He was hard-eyed and exultant. His hands were shaking. I saw that he held the rabbit, a tiny metal capsule, and a long thin strip of onionskin paper inscribed with tiny printing.

“The first real break,” he said softly. “The first genuine break in far too many years. See this? A nice list. Names and cities. About fifty of our cities, and the name of the kingpin in each one. The co-ordinator. The nice respectable citizen trying to put his knife in our back.”

“Is Tram’s name there?”

He squinted at the list. “Yes.”

“Will that help you jail him?”

He gave me a sad smile. “Who is going to testify to the authenticity of this list? It doesn’t give us a list of people to jail. It gives us a list of people to watch. A lot of them will have gone underground by now. A lot of these names are familiar. And a lot of them will prove to be people considered above suspicion. You can see why it was worth making an effort, Bryant. This little piece of paper explodes a system that took probably fifteen years to twenty-five years to build.”

“Then why not run a bluff on Tram Widdmar? He’s probably pretty rattled by now. Does he know Smith is dead?”

The society lawyer stared at the far wall and pursed his lips. He shrugged. “Nothing to lose, I guess. But he’s too clever. It won’t work.”

We went back in. Busy little men were going through every page of every one of Tram’s books. He was watching them with ill-concealed contempt.

The white-haired man said, “Widdmar, what Bryant has told us, added to what we already know, gives us a very interesting line of investigation. I think we’d better turn you over to the local police.”

“For what?”

“For the murder of Tilda Renner. You spoke too freely to Bryant about a pair of pliers being used. And Smith is eager to make a trade. We have the evidence on him for the murder of the Dvalianova girl. He seems to think he can give us enough so that you can be convicted of the murder of the Renner woman. Personally, I think that would be a very nice solution. Neat, so to speak.”

Tram laughed aloud. “Don’t try to bluff me.”

He seemed as much at ease as though he were surrounded by his friends at one of his own parties. He dropped into a big chair and beamed at all of us.

Jill stood up. She turned toward Tram. “And I’ll testify too, Tram. You see, I saw you come out of the apartment that night. I didn’t know then that you’d killed her.”

The room was very still. Tram’s face changed. His brown hand slid up from between the cushion of the
chair and the side of the arm. He reached Jill in one quick bound before anyone could move. He spun her around.

He said, “I’m walking out of here. Don’t try anything at all, or I’ll blow a hole in this girl’s spine.”