Corpse on the Grill
Fire Marshal Ben Pedley was a veteran at double-crossing Death. But this time, with his finger already on the firebug who had hung the butchered torso in Biddonay’s charred refrigerator, Ben didn’t have any more chance than the object that was Suzie’s only prop for her Snowball.
Dance in Hell!
Chapter One
Medals for Corpses
The Fire Marshal groped his way through the labyrinth of round tables on which were stacked a forest of upturned chairs. His electric torch penetrated only a few feet into the swirling fog of thick, cream-colored smoke. His feet slipped from under him; with an effort he managed to catch his balance.
The beam of his flashlight, turned down, disclosed a sheet of ice rutted with the marks of many skates. The marshal had known they put on a skating floor show here, but hadn’t been sure it was real ice or the imitation stuff that didn’t require freezing. He mumbled a curse through his smoke mask; this discovery didn’t make him feel any easier!
From the floor above him came the hoarse thunder of lancing streams from high-pressure nozzles; from the wintry street outside came a fury of noise — throbbing pumpers, motors shrieking sirens and the excited clamor of people being hustled out of their beds in the tenements to the west. But here, in the tremendous dining-room of this Broadway cafe, was neither flame nor the crackling of fire — only a soundless menace lurking in those oily wreaths of smoke.
His foot bumped a pulsing serpent of canvas. Marshal Pedley stooped, followed the hose with his hand until it snaked suddenly down a flight of stairs into darkness. A blast of icy air swept up the staircase and the smoke suddenly cleared. In its place a fine mist of cottony white floated lazily upward. Ben Pedley shifted his gas-mask, listened. The hiss of rushing water from the nozzle somewhere below was deep and steady, not the fierce, rushing roar of a bar-rigid stream played on wall or ceiling. He turned, ran back to the street.
A rubber-coated man in a black helmet was kneeling in a pool of water and broken glass, wrenching at a hose coupling.
The Marshal called sharply: “Hey, Eighty-six! Where’s Wilmot?”
The man lifted smoke-reddened eyes. “Down cellar, Marshal... refrigerating plant... boys having... little trouble.” He grunted with each turn of his wrench.
“I’ll say they’re having trouble. Got any extra waders on your wagon?”
“Nope.” The fireman moved away through the coiling clouds of smoke. “Only had two pair. Boys thought they might get a taste of that damned ammonia, so they took ’em.”
Pedley scowled at the apparatus down the block. The police emergency truck would be parked there, but the men on that squad would be busy getting the women and kids out of the tenements.
There might be an extra pair of hip-length rubber boots on one of the other hose company trucks — but there might not be — and now, when seconds might mean life or death for those men down in that ominously quiet basement, Pedley didn’t dare risk it. Still, he had seen the effects of ammonia fumes too often to think he could descend into that white inferno with nothing but wool and cotton on the lower part of his own body.
Across the street was a garage; Pedley sprinted for it. A shirt-sleeved man outside the office gaped up at the mushroom of sooty black blossoming from the top of the four-story restaurant building. Pedley yelled at the top of his lungs.
“Grease! Quick! Heavy grease! Snap it up!”
The man pointed to a pyramid of red and green cans. “Help y’self.”
“Open ’em up! Fast!” Pedley slid out of his coat, then slipped off his pants and shirt. He dug his fingers into the can the goggling garageman held out. Rapidly he smeared the buttery substance over his entire body. Grease might do the trick, if it was thick enough; if the heat of his body or the fire itself didn’t melt it too quickly. He got back into his clothes and dived back across the street, yelling to the engineer on the big sixteen cylinder pumper:
“Hey, Ninety-one! Round up a couple from the Emergency Squad; hustle ’em inside here, first floor!”
“Okay, Marshal.”
“And get an ambulance here by the door!” Pedley plunged into the cafe. Instantly the blanket of smoke cut off the sounds of the street, giving him an uncanny sensation of being all alone in the burning building. He cursed beneath his mask; maybe he was alone at that!
The cottony vapor was a little higher up the stairs now; the marshal jabbed his big electric torch at it; the light was reflected as from a whitewashed wall. There wouldn’t be much seeing through
Half-blinded by the luminous mist, Pedley tripped over a pile of debris — brick, timbers, broken planking. He knew then how the firemen had been trapped. Those high pressure lines, throwing better than a ton of water a minute, had poured enough dead weight up into the upper floors to weaken the structure; a retaining wall had given away and four good men and one of the best Deputy Battalion Chiefs in the department were probably pinned here under a four foot area of corrosive fumes!
He struggled desperately with the tumbled wreckage; found the first fireman face down with his hands around his groin. Pedley used his axe like a man gone berserk, tugged the unconscious victim loose, staggered back to the staircase.
A huge mountain of a man in one of the emergency squad all-purpose helmets came down toward him ponderously, poking the beam of a powerful battery lamp ahead of him. Pedley got close to him, lifted his mask an inch; shouted: “Wall down on the right. Four more men there.” The big cop nodded his helmeted head his waders vanished in the steaming vapor. The Marshal lugged his burden as far as the door, turned the fireman over to a white-coated interne, slogged back to the fume-filled cellar.
Three back-straining, heart-breaking trips he made, while the giant from the emergency squad was making two. In the end they had all five firemen up on the pavement. There were more doctors there now; one of them gave Pedley first-aid for ammonia burns.
“Take a good slug of vinegar water every five minutes for a while, Marshal.” The surgeon doused him with a neutralizing liquid. “Thing like this is damn dangerous. You ought to get over to the hospital for a going-over.”
“Yeah. Sure, Doc. I’ll take care of it.” The Marshal looked over at Deputy Battalion Chief Wilmot, who was trying to hoist himself up on his elbows, gasping and waving feebly at Pedley. He said, “Got a job here to look after first.” He reached Wilmot.
“Ben,” coughed the battalion chief, weakly, “There’s a body... down there.”
“Another one of your boys?”
“No... no. A
“Hell, you can’t be sure,” Pedley growled. “That’s up to the doctors. I’ll—” he started for the smoke-clouded door.
“Wait, Ben. This one’s dead, all right.”
“Where is it?”
“In that big ice box. Reason I know it’s dead, Ben... the damned thing didn’t have any head!” Wilmot coughed up a thin trickle of smoke. “Or any legs or arms!”
The recall sounded; reserve apparatus clanged brassily away to their stations; the hose companies began taking up. A faint smudge, drifting up out of the gutted building through the cold night air was reddened by light spilled over street and sidewalks from hook and ladder headlights. Pedley slumped on the curb; an interne finished swabbing out the Marshal’s eyes with acid solution. The moisture streaming down the big man’s weathered cheeks was not tears, but might have been. He kept his head averted from the three figures lying motionless under rubber blankets beside the smouldering structure.
Wilmot and one other member of Company 86 had been rushed to the hospital; with breaks, they’d live. But those three were ready for the undertaker and a post-humus citation for bravery in line of duty. Three good men gone to their graves, Pedley thought bitterly, because some nameless maniac had used arson to hide a murder. For, murder it must be if Deputy Chief Wilmot was in his right mind.
An enormously stout man with a round face that was white with misery shuffled past the police lines. He wore shabby slippers, striped pajamas and florid bathrobe. He pointed at the blanketed figures.
“They... dead?”
Pedley nodded.
“Dreadful!” The fat man stared miserably up at the smashed windows, the smoke-stained brick. His eyes came to rest on the neon sign which the hose-streams had miraculously left intact. The tubing, under the bloodshot eyes of the fire engines, glowed faintly:
He turned sadly to the marshal. “Wipes me out. Yeah. I’m Bill Biddonay.”
“Own this joint?”
“Most of it. With this,” he gestured, wearily, “I’m washed up. But God’s sake,” he pulled his bathrobe tighter, “I can start again. Those poor guys—” his voice was harsh — “they don’t get another chance.”
Pedley got to his feet, painfully. “D’you live over the cafe?”
“Sure. Third floor. Fixed up a couple rooms there. I don’t guess there’s much of my stuff left. I was asleep when I heard the engines roll up.”
The Marshal eyed him, coldly. “Covered by insurance, weren’t you?”
Biddonay shrugged. “
“That’s the way to look at it,” Pedley agreed. “Bad enough to lose men as the result of carelessness. But when the fire was set—”
“Yeah.” Pedley went toward the building. “C’mere. Want to show you something.”
Biddonay followed, snuffing and puffing, through the dining-room. They crossed the ice covered dance floor past the orchestra dais, on down the stairs to the basement.
Chapter Two
Snowball in Hell
The portable suction fan which the emergency squad had hooked up in the adjoining building by now had cleared the basement of the deadly white fumes. But the acrid bite of ammonia still gnawed at their nostrils.
“For God’s sake, what happened?” the
“No. Somebody used a hammer on one of the compression valves. Opened it up so it couldn’t be shut. Nice idea. Like to have that slug stripped naked in a roomful of ammonia for about ten minutes.”
“
“That’s what I got to find out.” Pedley stalked to the tremendous cold room, occupying the far end of the basement. The heavy glassed-in door was closed tightly, but one of the glass sides of the big ice-box had been shattered by the force of the hose. The floor of the refrigerator was piled with tubs of butter, cloth-wrapped hams, buckets of lard. A few racks of lamb, some loins of pork and one quarter of beef hung on meat hooks. The Marshal stepped through the aperture in the smashed glass.
“Boys broke in here to find that ammonia leak, Biddonay. They found something else.” Pedley pointed to a piece of meat which was almost concealed by the beef carcass. It was gray-fleshed and smooth-skinned, with raw, red stumps where the legs and arms had been hacked off. The torso was impaled on a steel hook just above the breast-bone. Blood had congealed in a purple-black clot across the open wound that had been a neck.
“Almighty!” breathed the cafe owner. “That... was a... a man! Ah—” he made a strangling noise, looked away.
“Nothing to put on the front page of the papers. No.” Pedley swung the grisly object on its hook. A chunk of flesh had been cut from the back of the corpse, about three inches above the waist; the white cartilage of the ribs had been bared. “What you make of this?”
Biddonay groaned; his face puckered up as if he was suffering from toothache. “Somebody... cut a piece of meat right out of that thing!” He leaned against the wall and covered his face with his hands.
“Looks like a butcher had gone after a piece of sirloin.” Pedley’s mouth tasted as if he’d been chewing old pennies. “Come on, let’s get out of here. Air’s bad.” He led the cafe man out; Biddonay sagged heavily against him, stumbled drunkenly.
“What on God’s earth,” the restaurant owner mumbled thickly, “would anyone do a thing like that! Even a crazy man wouldn’t...”
“Not likely.” The Marshal swept his flashlight around the cellar. “In all the years I’ve been doing the detecting for the Fire Department, I’ve never run across a blaze set by a lunatic. Children, yes. Dimwits, sure. And pyromaniacs might be cracked, according to these psychoanalysts, but in court, they’re just plain criminals. Anyhow, no pyro ever set a fire to hide a corpse.”
Biddonay mopped sweat off his moon-face with the inside of his sleeve. “That... thing... wasn’t in the cold box at nine o’clock tonight. I was down here with my wholesaler; he dropped in for dinner.”
“What time’d you leave the cafe?”
“ ’Bout one. We close one-thirty.”
Pedley grunted. He stalked back upstairs, the fat man moaning along behind.
In the kitchen Pedley paused in front of the wide brick grill. “Cook over charcoal, eh?”
“For steaks an’ chops, yeah. The range is for roasts and bakework.” Biddonay wet his lips and swallowed hard.
The Marshal put his flash on the water-soaked and blackened mess in the fire pit. Charcoal gave a terrific heat, Pedley realized; it would crisp any flesh to a black and brittle ash in a few minutes. Even bone would be consumed to a warped and twisted bit of char. But those things on top of the drenched coals still held the shape and semblance of human bones. The Marshal picked them out, laid them on the stainless steel surface beside the grill.
“Somebody,” he said grimly, “has been having himself a cannibal barbecue.”
Biddonay shivered, bent over the blackened objects on the dresser. “Legs an’ arms, huh?”
“I’d say so.” Pedley fumbled in the wet, gritty mess of the fire pit. “But no skull.”
“Well, the guy must have had a head. Where is it?” Pedley climbed up on the iron grating, peered behind the bricked-up grill. There was nothing there that could have been a human head. But the boarding of the wall directly behind the fire-box was an ebony cinder. This was where the fire had started, then; someone had left too hot a fire in the grill — probably left the electric bellows turned on to give an extra intense heat in order to reduce the bones to ash. The brick wall at the rear of the grill had become red-hot; the sheathing had ignited and the flames had gone up inside the walls to the higher stories. The Marshal clambered down.
“Who’d have access to this joint after closing, Biddonay?”
“We don’t permit anybody back here in the kitchen except the chefs and the waiters.”
“Well, you had a key to the front door, didn’t you? And this partner you mentioned a minute ago?”
“Herb Krass? Sure. We both got keys. But I was in bed and Herb went home around midnight...”
“Which one of your employees is supposed to lock up after the rest’ve gone?”
Pedley snapped, irritably.
“When me or Herb ain’t here, Pete Donnelly closes up. He’s cashier. ’Course, he’s got a key, too.”
“Where’s a phone? Give this Donnelly a bell. Tell him I want to see him down here right away.”
“Sure.” Biddonay looked away. “But Pete ain’t the kind of lad to harm a flea, much less chop up a guy.”
The Marshal followed to the office, a little water-soaked, soot-stained cubbyhole off the corridor leading to dressing-rooms for the entertainers. There were a couple of ash-smeared desks, swivel chairs, a black iron safe piled high with old and soggy
“Pete? Hello, Pete? This’s Bill... yeah... all hell’s bust loose. We hadda fire, Pete... The whole shebang’s burned down... just now... They only put it out a few minutes ago. And that ain’t all. There’s a—” the cafe owner glanced up at Pedley’s outstretched palms.
Pedley said, “Shush on the killing, Biddonay.”
The fat man nodded, unhappily. “Listen, Pete. There’s a guy from the Fire Department down here with me now. He wants you should get down here right away... I don’t know what for; I suppose he wants to ask you some questions. Hurry it up, now, Pete.” He hung up, as a blue-uniformed man in the regulation cap of the Fire Department came into the office and saluted Pedley.
“E. T. Jewett, fireman, first class. Company Eighty-six. Inspection duty, sir.” The man’s narrow, tight-lipped face was tense with worry.
“These premises on your beat, Jewett?”
“Yes, sir.” The fireman rubbed his chin, uneasily. “I checked the floorshow here, tonight. About eleven-thirty, wasn’t it, Mr. Biddonay?”
The cafe man sighed. “Guess it was. Seems a year ago.”
Pedley took out a notebook. “What time’d your tour end, Jewett? Twelve?”
“Yes, sir. Everything was okay here, then. How’d she start, do you know, sir?”
“Overheated wall behind the charcoal grill. Hike out and tell that cop to ring his station. We’ll need the medical examiner, homicide boys, and one of the lads from the Bureau of Identification. Then come back down cellar.”
Jewett’s eyes opened wide. He saluted again and hurried away.
The Marshal said curtly: “Let’s go down to your private morgue, Biddonay. See if we can put the finger on that corpse.”
The fat man labored to his feet, mumbling something about not wanting to set eyes on the damned thing, much less a finger. They went downstairs, into the nose-tingling ammoniacal vapor. They searched the rest of the refrigerator first, for the missing head. They had found nothing when Jewett rejoined them. The fireman expelled his breath in a long whistle of repugnance.
“Somebody had a screwy sense of humor, huh?” he said. “To hang that thing in here like a chunk of mutton? He was a big guy, wasn’t he!”
“Big,” Pedley answered, “and powerful as a bull. Look at those shoulders. Don’t see chest muscles like that very often.”
Biddonay pointed to a number of garnet-colored scars on the back of the torso, about the level of the shoulder-blades. “What were those marks?”
Pedley’s mind went back through the years to a body that had been fished out of the ashes of a great conflagration; the cadaver had been marked in the same peculiar way. And that body had been identified.
“Mat scars,” he suggested. “They might be scars from a canvas-covered mat. Sort a wrestler gets from having his shoulders scraped by some two hundred and fifty pounder on top of him.”
“A wrestler!” Jewett frowned. “Say, Mr. Biddonay—”
“I don’t know any wrestlers,” the cafe man muttered, hastily.
“That big black-haired guy who comes in two, three times a week and tries to date Snowball Sue,” Jewett cried. “Looks like an ape who needs a shave.”
Biddonay shut his eyes, shook his head. “I don’t notice every customer in the Ice-taurant. I couldn’t remember ’em
Pedley went close to him, grabbed the fat man by the back of the neck, pushed his face within an inch of the gruesome thing on the steel hook. “Don’t hold out on me, mister! Not when there’s murder and arson involved and three of my department buddies are sleeping on a slab! You talk! You talk straight and quick — or I’ll put you where you’ll be glad to have even this bloody hunk for company!”
Biddonay stammered. “It’s only I don’t want to give you a wrong steer. I’m not certain—”
“Who’s this wrestler Jewett described?”
The cafe man shuddered. “An ugly lummox they call Gorilla Greg. I don’t know who he is. I don’t know anything about him except that Sue kids him and calls him Gorilla.”
“Who’s this Sue?”
“Our snowball dancer,” Biddonay moaned.
“You know,” Jewett put in, “she comes out after them chorines do their strip tease on skates; she ain’t wearing a stitch except she’s holding this big snowball, and of course while she skates around the snowball begins to melt—”
“Shut up,” barked Pedley. “What’s her name?”
Biddonay looked at the floor. “Name is Sue d’Hiver. She’s a swell kid. She wouldn’t harm a flea.”
“Where’s she live?”
“Over on the East Side somewheres. The address’d be up in the cashier’s ledger.”
The Marshal got his arm, shoved him toward the stairs. “Let’s get it, fella. I might want a word with this mouse.”
Chapter Three
Gorilla Greg
They went up to the office. Biddonay opened the safe with fingers that rattled the combination dial. He pulled out a black and red ledger. “Here y’are.”
Pedley read:
“This cashier of yours lives just around the corner, eh?”
“That’s right.”
“Funny he hasn’t showed up.”
“Is queer.” The cafe man snuffled dismally.
“Give him another buzz,” Pedley suggested.
Biddonay stuck a pudgy forefinger in the phone dial, spun it seven times. There was an odd, puzzled look in his round eyes; after a bit he held the receiver away from his ear so Pedley could hear the operator ringing. “Nobody home.”
The marshal growled: “Give him another couple minutes. If he doesn’t show up, we’ll have to go after him.”
“It would be a dumb trick to lam out, Marshal. An’ Pete ain’t dumb, at all.”
A black limousine slid to the curb in front of the restaurant. Four men got out, carrying valises, camera cases, tripods, flash guns.
Pedley said: “Homicide boys’ll take over here, but you better come with me, Biddonay. I’ll put you under technical arrest as a material witness.”
“For the Lord’s sake—”
“Hold on, fella. Material witness arrest means the cops won’t be able to drag you downtown for a day of questions and answer stuff while I need you to run down this arson business.”
The stout man seemed relieved. “It’s just I don’t like the idea of being arrested, is all. Besides, I won’t be much use as a witness, will I? I don’t know anything about the fire. And I’ve only seen this Gorilla lug a couple times here in the restaurant. I never talked to him—”
“Don’t worry about your testimony.” The Marshal opened a closet door, peered inside. “This is your joint; you hire the help; you were first on the scene after the crime was discovered. That’ll be all I’ll need. Except I’ll want you to shag over to Donnelly’s with me, if he doesn’t get here directly.”
“I can’t go like this.” Biddonay wiggled his toes in the slippers. “My clothes is upstairs—” he gestured, palms out.
Pedley tilted his head toward the closet. “Who belongs to those duds?”
“The tux? That’s Herb’s. I couldn’t get into that.”
“Try it. Better than going around like you are.” The Marshal went out to meet the headquarters men. He explained the setup briefly and wound up, “All that’s left of it in the ice-box is the torso. Arms and legs went on the grill. Might look around for the skull. I’m going over to the cashier’s; he’s supposed to be the last man here, the guy who closes up.” He didn’t go into detail about the wrestler or the snowball dancer; Jewett would do that, anyhow, and the homicide squad liked to do things its own way. And they made a fetish identifying corpses before rounding up suspects...
The murder experts trooped down to the basement; Pedley went back to the office. Biddonay was dressed. The pants were skin-tight and an inch too long. The coat wouldn’t button, but there were shiny patent leathers on his feet and a soft dress-shirt under the coat.
“I buzzed Herb,” the fat man frowned. “He wasn’t home. Mrs. Krass was there. She don’t know where he is. I told her to have him come right over soon’s he shows up.”
“That’s right. Thought you said your partner went home early.”
Biddonay pursed his cupid-bow lips, comically. “Herb likes to buck the tiger, once in a while. Prob’ly where he is now.”
Pedley was noncommital. “He’s lost his shirt, anyway.”
They walked a block and a half, found 966 a shabby redstone rooming house. An angry woman in a bedraggled dressing gown answered the bell after a while, subsided after a glance at the gold badge in Pedley’s palm.
“Second floor front is Mr. Donnelly. I hope there ain’t anything wrong?”
The Marshal didn’t satisfy her curiosity. He borrowed her keys and went upstairs.
Biddonay panted: “Hell of a place to live. Pete can afford better’n this.”
Pedley knocked, without result. Then he used a key.
By the light of a cheap lamp on a center table, they saw the cashier lying face down on top of the bedclothes. He might have been asleep, save for the wedge-shaped wound on the back of his head. A thin red ribbon trailed down the back of his neck, across his pajama coat.
The Marshal barked: “Stay outside, Biddonay. Don’t want you smearing up any prints in here.” He gave the room a rapid once-over. Nothing seemed to be disturbed; there were no signs of a struggle, and no indications that the bureau or the wardrobe in the corner had been ransacked. The man’s clothes were neatly piled on the back of a chair by his bedside; the suit had been hung on hangers in the wardrobe. He put a hand on the dead man’s wrist. It was cold, but not yet stiffened in
He lifted the head. Donnelly’s eyes were open; the man hadn’t been killed in his sleep. By the placid expression on the corpse’s features, Pedley guessed that the cashier hadn’t even known he was going to die.
Pedley knelt, looked under the bed and behind the wardrobe. No sign of a weapon. He went to the bureau, opened the drawers with his hand covered by a handkerchief. He found shirts, sox, underclothes; a bank-book with eleven hundred dollars as the last balance; some old baseball scorecards and theatre programs. There were gloves, handkerchiefs, cuff links — stuff you’d find in half a million rooms like this.
Under a folded sweater in the bottom drawer, Pedley found a photograph. It was a glossy print of a nearly nude girl, with a figure that could stand that kind of photography. She wore only a white fur cap, white mittens and skating boots with wooly socks. She was poised on skate-toes; she held in her mittened hands a white ball about the size of a basket-ball. The Marshal took it over to the door and asked, “This the mouse who does the snowball dance?”
Biddonay exclaimed, “Why... why sure! That’s Suzie. But I never saw this. What would Pete be doing with her picture?”
“Maybe he went for this mouse.”
Biddonay gaped. “I’d never dreamed.”
Pedley picked up a newspaper from the table, slid the picture in between the folds. “The guys who go for Suzie seem to get treated pretty rough, mister. Suppose we ask her why.”
Downstairs in the hall, Pedley used a slot phone to call Biddonay’s office. To the plainclothesman who answered, he said: “When you’ve finished at the
He hung up. He questioned the landlady as to possible visitors to Donnelly’s room; got nowhere. She couldn’t keep track of everyone who came in her house at that hour of the morning, could she?
Biddonay said: “I think Pete’s mother lives somewhere upstate. We better send her a wire.”
“Up to the Bureau of Identification,” Pedley replied. “They’ll find her address in his things, probably. Here comes the death watch; let’s grab a cab.”
They went out as the Homicide Squad came in. Ten minutes later a taxi dropped them in front of 12 Griswold Place. A new apartment with a river view, it boasted too much chromium and plate glass and stainless steel for the Marshal’s taste. Miss Suzanne d’Hiver occupied Apartment 7B. They used an automatic elevator; there was no night man visible in the lobby.
Pedley listened at the door of 7B for a minute, and heard voices. They ceased abruptly when he buzzed, but it was a full minute before a girl’s voice called:
“Who is it?”
“Fire Department.”
The door opened, revealing a flaxen-haired, pleasant-faced girl with wide-set mint-green eyes and sensuous lips. The negligee she wore hadn’t been designed to conceal her curves.
“Mr. Biddonay! Is something wrong?”
“Yeah, Suzie.” The fat man sighed. “A lot is wrong. The spot burned down tonight; three firemen lost their lives. And—”
“I want to ask a couple of questions, Miss d’Hiver,” Pedley cut in.
“That’s perfectly dreadful. Come right in.” She seemed shocked at Biddonay’s news. Still, she was in show business, the Marshal realized — she might be putting on an act. The cafe proprietor introduced them.
“Better give out with the answers, Suzie,” Biddonay counselled. “The truth, the whole truth, you know.”
She said she understood. She watched Pedley warily as he gazed around at the ultra-moderne furnishings of the apartment.
“Someone here with you? Thought I heard voices,” he inquired.
“I had the radio on. I turned it off.”
“Oh, that was it.” The Marshal thought she was lying. “You know a big guy they call Gorilla Greg? A wrestler?”
“Gregory Scanopolous? I ought to.” She nodded calmly. “He’s my husband, you see?”
Biddonay cried: “You said you weren’t married. That’s what you told me and Herb!”
“Sure I did. A wedding ring wouldn’t go so good in the snowball dance business, Mr. Biddonay.”
Pedley interrupted: “You’re not living with this Gorilla gent now?”
“No. We called it a day. Been separated for two years now. He used to beat me up.” She said it quite without venom.
“Why’s he keep going to the
She rubbed thumb and forefinger together. “He’s broke. Greg used to make fair dough out of circusing with one of those cross-country wrestling troupes. But he strained his back; he couldn’t wrestle one of the Quints, now. So I give him a few pieces of change, now and then. I hate his guts, but I wouldn’t want to see anything happen to him.”
“No?” The Marshal heard a scraping noise from somewhere outside the living-room; it sounded like a dog scratching at a door. “Somebody did—. And gave your husband a workout on a butcher’s block. With a cleaver.”
Chapter Four
The Skull Container
She didn’t scream. She put the back of one hand to her mouth and squinted as if the light hurt her eyes. “Killed him?”
“Dismembered him,” Pedley said. “Burned his arms and legs in the charcoal fire at the restaurant. You wouldn’t know anything about that?”
“No.” She turned her back so they couldn’t see her face, but the Marshal didn’t miss her glance toward the bedroom. “Not a thing.”
Pedley palmed his automatic and approached the bedroom, cautiously. Five feet away he paused; a roomful of men were stepping toward him in the darkness. They were all alike; they were all like Pedley himself. Suzie’s bedroom was walled with mirrors. He switched on the light; saw his own reflection from a dozen angles. But there was no place to hide in that room. He stepped into the bathroom, shoved back the shower curtain. Nothing. There were two closets, both empty. He swivelled quickly to find Suzie watching him with fascinated intentness.
“I give you my word there’s no one hiding in my apartment,” she said, unsteadily. “And unless you want to ask me some more questions about Greg...”
Pedley tried the kitchenette. No dice. But there was another door opening out of the kitchenette. There was no keyhole under the knob. A fire door. Opening onto a flame-proof stairwell; a door knobless on the outside, so no intruder could get into the apartment from the internal fire escape. He yanked it open.
There was a movement in the gloom outside. The Marshal reached out, grabbed a coat lapel and jerked into the room a thin, bony man with pinched and harassed features set in hairless skull.
“Yeah?” growled Pedley. “And who in the hell are you? What are you doing out there?”
Suzie spoke up, sharply. “He’s my brother.”
The bald-headed man snarled. “I’m Jimmy Yalb. This is my sister’s home; I gotta right to step out on the fire stairs if I wanna.”
Pedley slammed the fire door, pushed Yalb roughly into the living-room. As he shoved the eavesdropper past Biddonay, the cafe man yelled:
“Suzie’s brother! He’s a lying so-and-so, Mr. Pedley. He’s the bake-chef at my restaurant, that’s who he is.”
Yalb tugged away from Pedley’s grasp, rushed belligerently at Biddonay. “Yes and no thanks to you, either, you big tub of lard.”
“Jimmy!” Suzie screamed.
“If it hadn’t been for Mr. Krass,” Yalb spat out, “I’d have been bounced a dozen times.”
The Marshal watched Biddonay redden with rage. “You bet you would, Yalb; I’ve never trusted you. And now I know you’re Suzie’s brother, I’ll trust you even less.”
Yalb rumbled hoarsely, deep in his throat; he twisted swiftly out of his coat, eluded the Marshal’s grip, lunged fiercely at Biddonay. There was a short-bladed knife in his hand. He struck once at the cafe owner before Pedley could stop the blow. Biddonay screamed fearfully, reeled back. He struggled desperately to defend himself with his bare fists. The blade of the knife licked out like a snake’s forked tongue. Biddonay clutched at his side, stumbled, pitched sideways against a heavy center table, went down to his knees and stayed there, squealing like a stuck porker. Pedley closed in on Yalb.
The girl kept shrieking at the top of her lungs: “Don’t, Jimmy, don’t! You can’t fight the law.”
But Yalb tried. He butted the Marshal’s chin with his hard bald pate; he kicked, gouged, used a knee where it would maim a man most easily. He dropped the knife and clawed at the Marshal’s eyes with vicious talons. Pedley clipped him across the side of his face with the barrel of his automatic. He had to hit the chef five times before Yalb let go his teeth-grip on the Marshal’s wrist. He sagged to his knees, clutching at the detective’s coat to keep from falling to the floor.
The Marshal gave him one extra belt with the gun-barrel, to make sure the man wasn’t possuming. Mr. Yalb wasn’t.
“Now then,” Pedley gritted. “Get up on your feet and let’s level on this.”
Biddonay rolled over on his stomach and got his knees under him, but remained with his head down, his chin touching the carpet.
“He cut me!” the fat man moaned. “He stabbed me. Look!”
Pedley got his arms under the
“That’s a belly wound,” the plump man blubbered. “I’ll get blood poisoning—”
“Stop squawking. That’s a flesh wound. Couple of stitches and you’ll be good as new.” He motioned to the girl. “Ring the
She nodded silently.
The Marshal turned to Yalb, who was crouched on his haunches leaning against the wall. “You didn’t hack your sister’s husband to pieces with this thing.” The Marshal picked up the knife at the spot where the blade entered the handle. “What’d you use?”
Yalb snarled: “I never touched the lousy ape. I had plenty of reason to, but I never touched him.”
Suzie held out the phone receiver. “Here,” she said dully, and when Pedley took the phone, she knelt down on the floor beside her brother, caressed his face with her hands.
The man on the phone was Jewett. He said the homicide boys had taken all their pictures and powdered everything for prints and removed the remains. They had left a patrolman on guard, and the fireman was awaiting Pedley’s instructions.
“You run my car over here.” The Marshal gave him the address. “And then you can take a guy to the hospital.”
Biddonay snuffled, “Jeez, I’ll bleed to death before then.”
Pedley racked the receiver, went over to the girl and pushed her away from Yalb. “Nothing wrong with your brother; he’ll have a jaw ache for a while and his face’ll be black and blue, but—”
“Sure.” The chef bared his teeth. “Beatings don’t bother me. I’m used to ’em. That big Gorilla used to beat me, way he beat Sis.”
She said: “Hush, Jimmy — don’t!”
The Marshal got hold of Yalb’s collar, yanked him to his feet. “Stand against the wall; fold your arms on your chest... that’s the idea. Now, what time did you leave the
“Twelve o’clock. I ain’t s’posed to work after twelve. Ask him,” Yalb sneered at the restaurant owner.
“Where’d you go after twelve?” Pedley wanted to know.
“I come over here.”
“Jimmy has a key,” Suzie corroborated.
“You been here ever since?”
“Yair. Maybe you think you can prove different?”
Biddonay twisted his face up in a lopsided grimace. “Ask him where he hid down cellar.”
Pedley turned on the stout man. “I’ll manage to figure out my own questions, Biddonay. While I’m at it, how come you got such a grudge against your star’s brother?”
Biddonay told him, sitting there hunched over with his hands pressed tightly to his midriff like a Buddha with a bellyache. He didn’t like Yalb because he made lousy pastry; also, he was dirty looking and insolent. Sure, Biddonay’d tried to fire him, but he didn’t hold any grudge against him, or hadn’t until he’d learned Yalb was Suzie’s brother. He didn’t mind Suzie; she was a swell kid and a good draw at the cashier’s desk. The snowball gag was a good moneymaker. He didn’t even mind Suzie’s playing around with anybody she wanted to, including Herb Krass. Sure, his partner was probably footing the bills for this apartment they were in right now.
The girl didn’t try to interrupt; she merely watched Biddonay with fear and disgust in her eyes. But Yalb unfolded his arms and, with his hands hooked in that curious, talonlike attitude, started for the restaurant man. Pedley lifted the muzzle of his gun, said:
“Do I have to put you out of commission, fella, or will you be nice?”
Yalb retreated to the wall again. Biddonay went on, eyeing Jimmy Yalb.
“What Herb does is his business; what Suzie does is strictly up to her. But when I find out that Herb has hired one of Suzie’s relatives to work in my kitchen, to spy on me behind my back, I don’t like it. So I wouldn’t trust Yalb and I aim to have a showdown with Krass, believe you me.”
There wasn’t any need for Pedley to check the story with the girl. She didn’t attempt to deny it, but she didn’t seem ashamed or embarrassed, either.
There was a buzz at the front door. Pedley answered it. Jewett stood there, gawking in at the tableau: Biddonay hunched over, idolwise, the girl slouching on the arm of a divan, and Yalb rigid against the wall. Pedley pointed with his gun:
“Take this gent down to City Hospital; tell ’em to post a cop over his room. I’m holding him as a material witness.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And then run this lug down to my office in the Municipal Building. Tell Barney to keep him in the cooler till I get there.”
“Right.”
Pedley said: “Take a cab. I’m going to need my car to hunt Krass.”
“Sure, Mr. Pedley. Say—” Jewett spoke in an undertone, held the door open while Biddonay walked with short, toed-in steps to the elevator. “They didn’t find that skull, but they found the thing it was carried out in.”
“Yeah?”
“ ’Member those leather cases for carrying bowling balls? It was one of them. They opened it up, found a lot of blood and stuff inside.”
“But no head?”
“Un-hunh. The butcher must’ve delivered that somewhere else.”
The door closed behind Yalb and Jewett; the elevator hummed down. Pedley turned to the girl. He said, “Biddonay doesn’t look like he’d be much good on a bowling alley. How about your friend, Krass?”
“Yes,” she said, harshly. “Herb is a kegler. He’s nuts about it. That don’t make him a murderer, does it?”
“It might,” Pedley said. “You get some duds on; we’ll go find out.”
Chapter Five
Pedley Looks at Death
She didn’t move. “Listen, Mister Wise. You don’t want to make me go to Herb’s. What have I got to do with it?”
“You’re in it already, babe. Climb into your clothes and make it fast!”
She stared wildly at him, ran into the bedroom, slammed the door.
She came out in five minutes, pert and trim in black skirt and scarlet sport jacket. She didn’t seem to want to talk. They went downstairs, climbed into his car.
On the way over to Krass, she said, dully: “You can horse me around all you want to, but I wish you’d leave Jimmy alone. He hasn’t done anything!”
The Marshal grunted. “He wouldn’t be the guy who sliced a steak off your husband’s body and cooked it on that charcoal grill then.”
She whimpered as if Pedley had struck her; he’d wanted to jolt the truth out of her, at that. “I wouldn’t believe it,” she cried, “if I hadn’t told Herb about Gregory threatening to expose us — Herb and me — unless he got a wad of money.”
“What’d Krass say?”
“Herb said that if my husband tried blackmail,” she shuddered, “after abusing me for years, he’d carve Greg up and serve him to me... on toast.”
They pulled up in front of a half-timbered double house; Herbert R. Krass occupied one wing. He was home; he let them in. He was a tall, gaunt-framed man with iron-gray hair and steel-gray eyes; there was apprehension in those eyes.
He wasn’t surprised to see the Marshal, but Suzie’s presence startled Krass.
“I heard about it, Suz.”
“You did?”
“Yuh. Guy phoned here about five minutes ago. For you,” he scowled at Pedley. “From a hospital. Said his name was Jewett.” He handed the Marshal a slip with a ward number on it. The detective got on the phone, while Suzie and Krass whispered together in the living-room.
Jewett answered in a voice thick with pain and rage. There’d been an accident on the way to the hospital. That rat, Yalb, had started a fight in the cab; a window had been smashed back of the driver’s head and the glass had cut the taximan, making him run into a parked truck. In the confusion, Yalb had got clean away. The fireman had notified the police. He, himself, had a broken collar-bone. Biddonay had gone to the hospital with him; Jewett was ready to go up to the operating room to have the setting...
Pedley frowned; this whole case stank to Heaven. Things kept slipping out of his fingers: Donnelly dead; Jewett hurt; Yalb taking a powder! One thing was sure: the next lead Pedley got his hands on, he wouldn’t let go of!
He had hold of Krass, now. He put the fat man’s partner over the jumps. Krass had no alibi; he’d been in New York from the time he left the
Mrs. Krass was there to back him up. She was a good looking woman with henna-dyed hair and a figure that might once have done for the front line of the chorus, but was now too buxom. She appealed to the Marshal:
“You’ve got to believe Herb. If he’d wanted to put anything over on the law, he could have said he’d been home here with me, ever since leaving the restaurant, don’t you see?”
Pedley said: “He might not have dared to, Mrs. Krass. If he’d established a phoney alibi like that and then someone showed up on the witness stand who’d happened to spot him on Broadway, or say over at West Fifty-first, it would be a one-way ticket to Sing-Sing sure.”
“What,” asked Krass, “is all this malarkey about Fifty-first Street?”
“Your cashier got himself murdered tonight, too. Sometime after the fire broke out. So you see,” the Marshal reached for his handcuffs, “I’ll have to take you along.”
Mrs. Krass buried her face in her hands, rushed sobbing from the room.
Suzie got between them, held onto Pedley’s arms. “You’re making a mistake, mister. Don’t arrest Herb. You’ll only get all this in the papers...”
The Fire Department’s chief investigator shoved her aside, gently. “That’ll be the least of it,” he agreed. “And the less fuss you make about it now—”
There was a
The part owner of the
He fell heavily, keeping his grip on Krass and sending home one bone-crushing blow to his prisoner’s jaw. There wasn’t time to get out his gun; the Marshal felt another terrific, nerve-numbing blow on top of his head — and that was all he felt.
It was dark and damp and cold. Pedley’s whole body ached so that it was torture to move. When he did attempt it, he found his movements were tightly restricted. His right arm was strapped to his side with surgeon’s tape; his mouth had been plastered up with the same adhesive and his feet bound together. His left wrist was locked in one half of his own handcuffs; the other half of the bracelets had been snapped around a two-inch water-pipe running from floor to ceiling.
There was a cement floor under his feet and a rock wall at his back; he knew he was in the basement garage of the Krass house, even before he distinguished the low purr of the motor.
So that was the idea: the locked, unventilated garage; the running motor... Easy, painless death! And there wasn’t anything to do about it, except take it. Krass’ wife had begun that attack on him because she must have suspected her husband was guilty. Once they’d started it, Pedley supposed they could think of no alternative course than to put him out of the way. And yet...
He strained at his bonds. It was hopeless. There was no way of telling how long it would take for the CO to take effect. He had heard that the only warning you got was a splitting headache; but he had that already. And he couldn’t guess how long he’d been down here.
A drop splashed down on his face. It felt cool, refreshing. He looked up. Dimly, he could make out a faucet in a T joint on the riser above his head. Water! If he could get that faucet open, there might still be the slimmest chance.
He slid his handcuffed hand up the pipe, stood on tiptoe. He could just touch the lower rim of the faucet wheel. It was rusted! It stuck! It took him an eternity to force it open enough to permit a slow trickle down on him.
Pedley shifted so the water would drip on the tape at his right side. He squirmed and wriggled with every ounce of effort he could command. At first he thought it would be useless, but gradually the adhesive began to give.
Chapter Six
The Man with the Key
The purr of the motor was louder now, or it seemed so to the Marshal. By the time he had managed to wrench his wrist free from the gummy tape, the pounding in his ears was thunderous, either from the motor or the thumping of his heart.
He tore at the bindings around his ankles, ripped the sticky bandage loose. He let the water splash on his upturned face a second, then shimmied up the pipe, using his feet and left hand to grip the metal, until he could turn the faucet on full force.
He got it wide open. Then he gripped the T pipe with the fingers of his right hand, got the ball of his thumb across the jet of the stream. Would it reach?
The spurt of water hissed out in a thin fan, toward the hood of the sedan. Pedley jockeyed it so the jet hit the side louvres. The sound of the stream hitting the metal of the hood was music to his ears.
But there was no certainty it would reach a vital connection, dampen the wires, get to the distributor. It might... and that was all the chance he had.
He felt himself getting noticeably weaker. It took strength to maintain his grip on that pipe; he couldn’t last much longer. The motor droned away, unconcernedly.
He altered the angle of the jet. There was a sputter, a miss. He clung to the pipe with the grim determination of a drowning man clutching a branch. Finally, when his hold was loosening and he was beginning to slip down the pipe, there was complete silence.
He’d done it! The invisible, death-dealing fumes wouldn’t come pouring out of that exhaust any longer. If there wasn’t already too much poison in the air...
He climbed up with a final effort and shut off the water. Puddles on the floor gurgled as they ran to the drain.
The Marshal left the tape on his mouth, rearranged the bindings around his feet so they wouldn’t seem to have been disarranged, at first glance. He turned over on his side, so that his right arm would be against the wall.
Then he waited. Hours it seemed...
The footsteps came slowly down, gritting on the cement floor of the garage. Pedley could just make out a vague shadow moving in silhouette against the deeper blackness.
Pedley kept his muscles limp, relaxed; simulating as nearly as possible the lifeless corpse which he should have been. The fire detective could hear the murderer’s stertorous breathing, could feel fingers probing his throat for his pulse. Then the Marshal snapped into convulsive action.
His right hand shot out, clutched the shadowy figure fiercely by the neck. At the same instant, using his steel-locked left hand as leverage, Pedley threw his legs around the man’s body in a scissors grip.
Blows rained on the Marshal’s face and neck, fingernails clawed viciously at his eyes. But he held on to the windpipe in his grasp, squeezed the murderer’s midriff punishingly with his leg-hold. It was over in less than sixty seconds. The man went limp. Pedley let the deadweight sag to the floor, crouched down beside it. He fished through the man’s pockets, found the key to the handcuffs, let himself loose. Then he ripped the tape from his mouth, jumped for the faucet, turned it on and drank from the icy cascade that poured down on him.
First, he locked the killer’s wrist to the pipe from which he, himself, had just won release. Then he dragged the unconscious figure under the shower. There was a deep groan; the man opened his eyes and stared up with a mixture of cold malignity and shocked astonishment.
“This is where we came in,” Pedley growled, “with me damn near out on my feet and you wandering around like you’d lost your best friend.”
“What’s the matter with you?” snarled the man on the floor. “I come down here, find you kayoed and wonder whether I ought to call a doctor. And you tear at me like a wildcat. What’s the idea?”
“Idea is, it’s all over, Biddonay. All except the little room where they sit you with your back to a switchboard.”
“Because I tried to save your life?”
“Because you tried to kill me, you potbellied buzzard. And tried to make it look as if your partner fixed my wagon, instead of you. How the hell did you get out of the hospital?”
“What difference does it make whether I stayed in the hospital?” The fat man walked on his knees around the water pipe the way a dog roves on a chain. “I been takin’ it, all night, now. From the fire, from that louse, Yalb. And now you. I’m the big loser in this thing—”
“I thought you were, until I got my gray matter going. You said you were all washed up. Remember?”
“Well...”
“You were. Only before the fire. Not after. You’re practically broke, way I figure it. You mentioned the take was okay at the restaurant. But you didn’t seem to be spending much dough on wine, women or such. And when I saw that row of Moody’s Manuals there in the bookcase in your office, I should have known.”
“I’ve had ’em for years,” Biddonay protested.
“You got the 1941 edition damned early, then. The guys who use Moody’s much are generally stock-market brokers or suckers who think they’re wise boys.”
“Is it a felony to own securities, now?”
“Your trouble was you didn’t own ’em. Maybe you had ’em, but you lost ’em.”
“Okay, crystal gazer. Suppose I am strapped. What of it?” Biddonay nursed his wrist, where the bracelets chafed it.
“Why, you might have tried to get more dough. The logical place for you to try and get it would be to gyp your partner. And if you figured you’d gone as far as you could, along that line, without being found out, you might try to get out of your fix by putting Krass out of the way.”
“I never even saw Herb,” Biddonay jeered, “after he left the place at midnight.”
“You wouldn’t have to. You could get Krass in a jam by killing that wrestler in such a way that everyone would pin the blame on your partner. That would send Krass to the burner and leave you to take over the
“You fat-headed fink!” the restaurant man yelled. “I never knew anything about this Greek wrestler!”
“Oh, sure. Sure you did. Jewett knew you did.”
“You couldn’t even get Herb to believe a frame-up like that.”
“Maybe I could, fat boy. I could point out to Krass that you’d heard him talking on the phone to that wrestler. That would have told you where your partner was supposed to meet the Gorilla and cross his palm with silver.”
“Ha!” Biddonay chuckled hoarsely. “And again ‘Ha’!”
“You like it? Here’s more. You beat it over to this hotel where they had the date. You got there before Krass did, maybe quarter of twelve or so. The Greek was there; you gave him some song and dance about Krass meeting him in your rooms above the restaurant. Right?”
Biddonay stared at him, slack-jawed. “You son of a—”
“Well, it’s close enough. Anyhow, you got Gorilla Greg to come back to your rooms. After the joint closed you got him to come down to the cafe, prob’ly on a pretext of meeting Krass then. When you got him there, you killed him, chopped him up into soup meat, put the legs and arms on the fire so it would look as if the murderer was trying to conceal his crime — though
The light in the garage was stronger, now, but Biddonay’s face seemed to be still gray, like the sky at false dawn.
“I suppose I cut that steak out of the wrestler’s back, too?”
“Who else, Biddonay? You heard about the threat Krass made, about serving Suzie’s husband to her on toast, if he caused too much trouble.”
“Hell! If you ain’t just been hitting the pipe and dreaming this up, whyn’t you slap me in a cell?”
“I want to get a coupla things straight first, fatso.”
“No kidding! Just ask me. Anything at all,” the prisoner sneered. “Be glad to oblige.”
“Okay. About that phone call to Pete Donnelly. I know you killed your cashier. I suppose it was because he was wise, or getting wise, to your financial finagling. You must have killed him before the apparatus got to the blaze, because you’d have to have time enough to get back to your rooms from Fifty-first Street and change out of street clothes into pajamas. Then you came down into the street, looking all worried and upset and I don’t wonder, with that evening’s work behind you.”
“You’d have to go on the witness stand and testify that I talked, in your presence, to Pete after the fire was over. And that I was with you all the time from that moment till we found poor Donnelly’s body.”
Pedley shook his head. “All I could swear to is that you called a number and talked to somebody. It might have been a Chinaman at a Chopsuey joint for all I heard. It wasn’t the cashier.”
Biddonay beat his head against the iron riser. “Listen to the lunatic! He don’t even believe his own ears.”
“Yeah. I do. When I hear something. I didn’t hear the guy on the other end of your wire, then. And I can’t prove that you dialed a different number the second time you called Donnelly. But I know you did.”
The restaurant man began to sob great gusty sobs that shook his tubby figure like jelly. “Couple of hours ago, you weren’t talking this way. You put the pinch on that rat-faced Yalb. And now—”
“Now I think just the same about Yalb as I thought then. Suzie’s brother is scared, dumb and rattled. He got sore at you for throwing off on his sister, and cut you for it. We’ll get him for that; he’ll probably still be serving time when you’re waiting for the reprieve that won’t come. But Yalb isn’t a wholesale butcher, like you.”
“Why me? Why not Krass? Why not?” the fat man shrieked. He was pouring cold sweat.
“Krass wouldn’t have used that bowling ball case to carry the Greek’s head out of the cafe, for one thing. It would have been too much of a giveaway. By the way, what’d you do to scare Herb off?”
Biddonay shook his head, without answering.
“You’d want him to take it on the lam because you’d need somebody to act as fall guy, and Krass had to get the chair if you were to come out ahead on the money end.”
The fat man broke down and blubbered piteously, pawing the air with his free hand as if he was trying to beat off a wasp.
The Marshal started for the stairs. “Say, there’s always a little silver in the lining...”
The proprietor of the
“You won’t have to worry about that new wardrobe, Biddonay. You wouldn’t want to spend a lot of dough on a suit they’re going to rip up the legs and arms in a few weeks.”