SSC (1950) Six Deadly Dames (5 page)

He said dully, “So you're the moll in the case.”

“I wouldn't call her a moll,” Donahue said.

Roper did not look around at Donahue but he said, “Keep your oar out of it, Donahue.”

Then he walked heavily to the bureau, gripped Irene's arm.

“You look like the kind,” he said. “You look like the kind I like to get nasty with.”

Donahue put in, “Why, Roper, because a good-looking jane would never give you a tumble?”

Roper turned somberly. “You looking for a punch in the jaw?”

Donahue snarled, “Ah, grow up, copper. Keep that stuff for the coked wops you're used to slapping. I gave you a break. This little pinch is yours but you've got to handle it right. This girl steered me onto Babe Delaney for the Crosby kill. You've got the guy killed him. Why pick on the ladies?”

Roper looked at Irene. “You say Babe killed Crosby?”

She faltered, “Ye-es.” He shook her arm brutally.

“Why the hell didn't you come to the police?”

Donahue said, “She thought I was a real copper, Roper. When I told her dick-I didn't say private. She and Crosby were in love. She's sidestepped a bit, but she was trying for a straight and these bums got in her way. You can see she's a good woman.”

“Don't kid me, Donahue.”

“I wouldn't kid you, Roper.”

Roper dropped Irene's arm. His eyes hung somberly on Donahue. He said, after a minute. “Okey, Irish. You're a fast worker. If I was a younger cop, and ambitious, I might get God-awful sore. But I'm retiring soon. I'm used to routine.” He turned to Irene. “Get your things on, sister.”

Irene put on her mole coat and the dark cloche hat. Roper opened the door and waited in the hall. Irene went out. Donahue went out, snapped off the lights, closed and locked the door. He gave the key to Irene.

They were silent going down in the elevator. When they passed out into Broadway Roper said:-:

“We'll take a cab down if you'll pay the fare, Donahue.”

Donahue kicked the screen door open, walked in casually, and the screen door banged behind him. He drifted down the length of a beam of spring sunlight that came in through the door. He wore a neat pepper-colored suit, a gray soft hat, and he smoked a straight-stemmed shell briar.

He leaned indolently on the counter and said, “Hello, Mr. Friedman.”

The man got down from the high stool and approached the back of the counter. He was small, slim, with a young-old sallow face, horn-rimmed glasses, black curly hair. “What can I do for you?”

Irony was in Donahue's crooked slow smile. “Remember me?”

Friedman did not look Donahue in the eye, but he said, “No, I'm afraid I don't.”

“Well, don't be afraid.” Donahue drew his hand from his pocket and laid a large diamond on the showcase. “Then maybe you remember this.”

Friedman's eyes riveted on the stone. Lines appeared on his forehead. “I can't say I do.”

“Ah, cut out the horseplay, Friedman. Sure you remember it. And you remember me. A guy named Bonalino hocked it here a month ago. I came in with him when he took it out. You said at the time that you would give him eight hundred for it any time he wanted to sell it.”

“I said that?”

“You said that.”

Friedman shrugged. “Maybe I did. I can't remember everybody comes in here. A lot of people hock things here.”

“That diamond,” Donahue said incisively, “isn't worth eight hundred. Not seven. Not six. At best it's worth four hundred, which means that your top price would be two. Now when Bonalino hocked it you gave him two hundred and fifty bucks-”

“Say, who are you?”

“I'm a private dick. You remember me now?”

“Sure I remember you now.”

“Okey. How's to come across?”

Friedman frowned. “But I don't get what you're driving at.”

“Your brain's not as lame as that. I'll tell you what I'm driving at. The diamond that Bonalino hocked here was worth ninety thousand bucks. You duplicated it with this hunk of cheap ice. Bonalino doesn't know a diamond from a good hunk of crystal. You knew that much. When he came back here with me to get his ice, you gave him this.”

Friedman laughed. “Ah, be yourself, guy!”

“I'm being myself, sweetheart. We've got a letter from the Anglo-Continental Indemnity Company, of London and Geneva. They're looking for that hunk of ice, and this is not it.”

“I don't get you at all.”

Donahue wagged his finger. “Listen. A guy named Alfred Poore and a jane named Irene Saffarrans brought the diamond over here from France. Poore lifted it from a dowager duchess in Cannes this winter past. Coming over, the jane planted it on an artist named Crosby. They were afraid of the Customs. Crosby got knifed to death by a guy named Babe Delaney, who made Poore and the Saffarrans jane let him in on the racket. He'd found things out. Poore gunned for Delaney and I got Poore and they sent him to the Big House. Nobody concerned got the ice. “It turned out that the ice had been planted in one of Crosby's hats, and when he got home Crosby gave his janitor, a guy named Adler, some old clothes-among them the hat. The Saffarrans jane got clear after Poore went up, and she hooked up with a guy named Bruhard. Bruhard bumped off Adler in Grove Street, got the hat but not the diamond. Adler had got the hat cleaned. Bonalino worked in the hat-cleaning store, and when he took the lining out he found the ice. He hocked it here. Bruhard got gunned out in Forty-second Street, the jane got ten years. Nobody concerned got the real ice. Do you get me now?”

“No, I don't. I loaned Bonalino two-fifty on this diamond. He paid me two-fifty and got the diamond back. That's all I know, and you can believe it or lump it.”

Donahue's voice rose-“I don't believe it and I'm not going to lump it!”

“Listen, master-mind.” Friedman leaned on the counter and laid narrowed eyes on Donahue. “I don't know what your game is, but it's not on the up and up. I don't know what the hell you're talking about, and I don't have to carry on a conversation with you. Why don't you get a brainwave and take the air?”

Donahue got interested. “So you've decided to get tough, eh? Trying to brazen it out, eh? Well, pipe this, sweetheart: It won't work. That diamond was worth ninety thousand bucks till it reached here. Do you want to play house with me or do you want me to go to Headquarters and tell what I know? They don't know that Bonalino hocked it. They think he had it in his possession from the beginning. I kept back the news to clear Bonalino.”

“Go to Headquarters.”

“Yeah? You keep books, you know. You're supposed to enter every article pawned here. You know that, don't you?”

“Sure.” Friedman swung a ledger on to the counter, flipped the pages, stopped, turned the ledger around so that Donahue could read it, and laid a finger on an entry.

“There it is. I valued it wholesale at eight hundred. I loaned two-fifty on it. My books are okey. Go to Headquarters.”

Donahue looked up at him, smiled without humor. “Your brain's not lame, Friedman-not at all.”

“There it is-in black and white.”

“Okey. But I don't believe everything I read. Be seeing you some more, baby.”

Donahue went out wearing a sultry look that was not without chagrin.

Asa Hinkle, the Interstate in person, looked up from his flat-topped desk when Donahue entered and said:

“You look down-hearted, Donny, my boy.”

Donahue paced the floor a turn or two, scowling. He was baffled, and now that he was away from unfriendly eyes, his manner showed it. “That guy Friedman wasn't born yesterday.”

“Oh, that's it!”

“I felt like caving in his mug.”

“Only a city dick can do that-and get away with it. What did he say?”

“Nothing worth a damn. He made the entry in his book okey. The guy's solid and he knows it. He valued it at eight hundred. If anybody argues he can say
that
was what he valued it at. There's no proof he had the real diamond. No proof at all. It's changed hands so much that anyone might have fluked it.”

He dropped the bogus stone on the desk. “I guess you can let the Police Commissioner have it back. It didn't work.”

Hinkle took off his diplomatic pince-nez. “That diamond must be in America, Donny. Poore and the Saffarrans woman know stones. They wouldn't have tried to bring in a fluke.”

Donahue squinted. “What do you want me to do-go down and see Friedman again, get him in the back room and punch him around until the yellow runs? I'll do it! By God, I'll do it!”

His dark eyes glittered, his fists were rocks at his sides.

Hinkle smiled, shook his head. “Donny, don't be so thoroughly Irish.”

Donahue turned away, growled, “That's an old one of yours!”

“Some day you'll knock your brains out,” Donahue called.

“Oh, hello, Donny.”

Libbey changed his course, came over and flopped down in a chair facing Donahue. Drink had sapped the color in his cheeks. Drink had given him that young-old face. The crown of his hat was dented in, and his tie was crooked against his collar. He reached for the bottle of red wine beside Donahue, poured a water-glass full, swallowed it without a pause. He smacked his lips.

“How's the ravioli?”

“How's the wine?”

“I don't like wine.... Hey, Skinny, bring me a Bacardi cocktail, and I don't mean rosewater.... Well, wine is all right, Donny, if there is nothing else but water around. I feel depressed. That louse Sweeney is God's most ungrateful man. I telephone him immediately after the murder happens and what does he do but wisecrack and accuse me of being drunk. I'm going to throw the job and get down to writing a novel.

“Who got gunned out?”

“A fellow gave pennies and baubles to little kiddies. It's a shame, Donny.”

“Around here?”

“Fourteenth Street.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah. A hockshop man, Friedman.”

Donahue looked up. “How'd it happen?”

“Nobody knows. Some guy just came in, apparently, and blew him apart and went away, taking with him some loot-possibly. At any rate, there was a chamois gem bag on the floor near the pool of blood.”

“What time?”

“About eleven, I guess.... If you could see the pool of blood-”

“What's the cop on the job think?”

“Who... Roper?”

“Roper on it?”

“Yeah. Great mind, that Roper... for a moron. Well, what the hell could he think? What do I think? What does anybody think? Look now: Murder and robbery, of course. But of an odd nature. There is the chamois bag lying beside the pool of blood. But it appears that the safe was not rifled and nothing stolen from it. Then what? Well, either the chamois bag was flung down in disgust by the murderer-thief, or it was discarded after he had taken something out of it. In the latter case, it's plausible to assume-to assume that Friedman had something shady in his possession. What was it? Who knows? Ah, my son, that is the mystery.... Well, it's about time, Skinny!”

Libbey tipped the Bacardi cocktail against his lips and drained it at two swallows.
“Encore,
Skinny.... How's to, Donny?”

“No, thanks. And what does Roper think exactly? Did he figure things out that way?”

“No. God, no! Roper? Pardon me if I seem to chortle.... How's the ravioli?”

“Fine.”

“Think I'll have some spaghetti. By the way, I kidded our friend Roper a bit. I said to him, quite offhand, 'If you find it hard, Roper, look up Donahue.' You should have seen him! And do you know what he said? He said, 'When-; ever I look that palooka up, it'll be to put bracelets on him.' I said bracelets were kind of effeminate; you might object. He spit on the floor, showing how he was brought-or dragged-up.... Gripes, Skinny, you take long! A guy would think this belly-wash was custom made.” Donahue paid his check and got up.

“So soon?” Libbey asked.

“I've got places to go.” Before he left the speak, however, he made a telephone call. “Hello, Ames?... Listen, Billy. This is Donahue.... I'm jake. Say, can you meet me in Fritz's in fifteen minutes?... Oh, something. I'll tell you then.... Great, Billy!”

When Donahue stepped from the booth there was a hard smile on his face. He walked briskly to a subway station and walked impatiently for a northbound train. His manner was eager and alert. He was smiling when he went down into a basement speak on Thirty-sixth street.

Ames was standing at the bar. He was a medium-sized man, blond, casual, smiling. “Hello, Donny.” He was lazy-voiced.

“Listen, Billy. D'you hear about that kill in Fourteenth Street?”

“Yeah. We got it over the precinct. Mob job, eh?”

“I wouldn't know. There's a possibility it wasn't. Want to do something for me?”

“Any time.”

“Find out who was released from Sing Sing recently, and if any of the guys was a cell-mate of Alfred Poore.”

“That all, Donny?”

“That's all.”

“Have a drink?”