Fall Girl Page 6

  “Hmm. What did you get from the police?”

  “The murder bullet was from a forty-five-caliber pistol. Ballistics couldn’t match it with anything on file. The weapon hasn’t been found. Probably at the bottom of the river by now. Oh, yes. A nice set of your fingerprints was found on the inside of the washroom door.”

  Horton looked startled. “When I pressed my ear to the door,” he said ruefully. “I forgot that when I was wiping off surfaces. How’d they match them?”

  “Your record came in from St. Louis this morning. Describes you as a notorious con man whom half the police departments in the Midwest have been trying to nail for years. How did you ever manage seventeen arrests without a conviction?”

  “Genius,” Horton said bitterly. “I only take falls for crimes I don’t commit.”

  “Things don’t look good,” the colonel said. “According to your version of what happened, it seems likely the killer was a Manzetti gun. But how would you ever prove it?”

  “Where’s this Manzetti hang out?”

  “His headquarters is the Sixth Ward Athletic Club, down near the river on Gibbons Street between Second and Third. The club is party headquarters for the Sixth Ward. Manzetti’s committeeman for that ward, you know.”

  “No, I didn’t. Think you could find out from your reporter friend who the likely gunman would have been, if it was a Manzetti kill?”

  Colonel Bob looked dubious. “I can try. But you’re not planning a frontal attack on a force as powerful as Manzetti, are you? You’ll get yourself killed.”

  “I’ll get myself killed by the state if I don’t,” Horton said. “What’s there to lose?”

  At that moment a uniformed policeman appeared on the corner opposite them. He strolled across the street, swinging his club. The colonel buried his nose in his paper and Horton slouched down in his seat.

  The officer gave them a casual glance as he passed, then moved on.

  The colonel gave Horton a quizzical sideglance. “Well, you passed that inspection.”

  “Yeah,” Horton said, expelling a breath of relief. “But I aged a year. I have to clean this up, Colonel. I’m not going to spend the rest of my life hiding out in flophouses and dressing like a bum.”

  “Know how you feel,” the colonel said sympathetically. “I’ve had the same queasy feeling myself when a minion of the law glanced at me. And I’ve never been wanted for anything that would bring more than a couple of years. Must make clammy sweat spring to the brow, knowing the bluecoats want to start you walking that long, last mile.”

  Horton threw him a cold look. “Keep reminding me. I like to think about death row.” He stood up. “When can you see your reporter friend again?”

  “I’ll invite him over to the hotel for dinner tonight. Phone you at your room later if I learn anything.”

  “Fine,” Horton said. “And thanks for everything. I know all this is interfering with your own plans.”

  The colonel raised an eyebrow. “Matter of duty, old man. If we didn’t stick together in our lonely profession, where would we be? Don’t even mention it.”

  Horton gave him a grin of good-by and shambled off down the street with his hands in his pockets.

  CHAPTER XI

  AT NINE that evening, the colonel phoned. He didn’t preface what he had to say with either a greeting or an announcement of his name. If Horton hadn’t recognized his voice, he wouldn’t have known who was calling.

  All the colonel said was, “Phone me at Circle 3320 from a booth.” Then he hung up.

  Donning his cap and jacket, Horton walked a block to an all-night drugstore, shut himself into a phone booth and dialed the number. It was answered in the middle of the first ring.

  “This is better,” the colonel’s voice said. “Pay phone to pay phone. Don’t like talking through a switchboard.”

  “Learn anything?” Horton asked.

  “Manzetti has a number of hatchet men. But his top one is a character known as Joey the Cut. Legal name Joseph Ault. My friend thinks Manzetti would use him for anything important.”

  “Joey the Cut, eh?”

  “Yes. Childlike, the names some of these underworld people assume, isn’t it? In this case the man has a livid scar on his left cheek, but that isn’t the reason for his name. He had the name before he got the cut.”

  “Oh?”

  “The name comes from his onetime job of collecting Manzetti’s share of the take from illegal gambling dives. He came after the cut, you see.”

  “Uh-huh. Where’s he hang out?”

  “Where all of them do. At the Sixth Ward Athletic Club. It’s sort of the hub of social life in that area. But it won’t do you much good to find him.”

  “Why not?”

  “He doesn’t even talk to his friends, let alone strangers. As a matter of fact, he’s rumored to have no friends except Tony Manzetti.”

  “How do you get in the Sixth Ward Athletic Club?”

  “You don’t, if you have any sense. But I suppose you’ll ignore my advice. You just walk in.”

  “Just like that?”

  “There’s a barroom on the first floor,” the colonel explained, “theoretically reserved for members and guests, but anybody can get in. Nobody checks the door. Manzetti uses the place as a means of cementing the political vote. Has low bar prices, throws a lot of free feeds. Workingmen from the Sixth Ward flock there. He wanders around playing the congenial host. Calls everybody by their first names, inquires about their families, buys lots of drinks on the house. Comes polling time, customers return the favor by voting the way he suggests. He delivers an overwhelming majority for the party every election.”

  “He just controls that one ward?” Horton asked. “What makes him so powerful, then?”

  “Biggest ward in the city. Contains eight percent of the total registered vote. Enough to swing local elections either way he wants. Gives him a say in the appointment of every important local office from the D.A. on down. Don’t underestimate the man.”

  “I won’t,” Horton said. “Anything else?”

  “Not about Manzetti. My reporter friend dropped another interesting little item, though.”

  “What?”

  “Quincy was married to a woman twenty-five years his junior. Gorgeous blonde named Velda.”

  “I know. I’ve met her.”

  “Oh?” the colonel said with surprise. “Anyway, it’s common gossip that at the gentlest push she’ll fall in the hay with anyone. Recently there’s been a rumor that Quincy was fed up to here. Had a private eye gathering divorce evidence.”

  “Yeah?”

  “If he’d gotten a divorce on adultery, he wouldn’t have had to pay alimony. Occurred to me that if Manzetti wasn’t behind this, she might have taken advantage of all the publicity about the threat to get herself off the hook and let Manzetti take the rap.”

  Horton said dubiously, “With a forty-five? Women usually don’t go for such heavy artillery.”

  “Maybe it was the only gun she had access to. And even discounting the divorce rumor, she certainly had a beautiful motive.”

  “What’s that?”

  “My reporter friend estimates Quincy’s estate will run upwards of a million dollars.”

  After the colonel hung up, Horton mused over the new angle of Velda being a possible suspect. It was certainly worth looking into, he decided. But the first order of business was still Manzetti.

  The Sixth Ward Athletic Club was less than two miles north of the Palais Royal. The Sunday-night closing hour for bars was midnight, so he had plenty of time. He decided to walk it.

  He wasn’t too afraid of recognition by anyone at the Athletic Club. In addition to his semi-shabby clothing, he now had a day’s growth of sandy-colored beard. With his cap hiding his crew cut, he resembled his newspaper description very little. He looked as though he might be a truck driver or a factory laborer.

  He reached the club just before ten. It was a rambling, three-story frame building, all
dark at this time of night except for the corner containing the barroom.

  Pushing open one side of a wide double door in the building’s center, he found himself in a dimly-lighted hallway. To his left was a door labeled “Gymnasium.” Ahead were stairs leading to the upper floors. To his right, noise spilled from the open door of the barroom.

  He went through the door into an enormous room crowded with tables and flanked by a bar which must have been forty feet long. Three aproned, shirt-sleeved bartenders were on duty. There weren’t more than three or four vacant places the whole length of the bar, and no vacant tables. Small-stakes games of poker, rummy and pinochle were under way at several of the tables. At others groups of men and women sat eating and drinking. Most of the women were dressed cheaply, and many of the men wore work clothes. There weren’t a half-dozen neckties in the place.

  The buzz of conversation, bursts of laughter and the clink of glasses created a subdued roar which enveloped the whole place.

  Horton moved into one of the vacant places at the bar and ordered a beer. He could understand the club’s popularity when the bartender set it before him. It was a fourteen-ounce stein, and the charge was a dime.

  Numbers of people were wandering around the room, some table hopping, some standing behind card players watching the play, others merely carrying drinks to tables. Horton decided it wouldn’t be conspicuous for him to make a circuit of the place. Carrying his beer, he wandered among the tables looking the men over. He spotted no one with a scar such as the colonel had described.

  He had no trouble tabbing Tony Manzetti, however. The man swaggered around the room like a benevolent tyrant, slapping backs, roaring friendly insults and buying drinks. He was a short, wide, powerfully-built man with heavy features and a broad mouth which was perpetually split in a grin to expose large, beautifully-white teeth. His complexion was dark and his hair clung close to his scalp in thick, dark ringlets. He was in his shirtsleeves, but the gray trousers he wore suggested that the suit of which they were a part was in the two-hundred-dollar class. His shirt was white nylon and he wore a dark-red silk necktie with a diamond-studded, gold tie-clip. Horton judged he was about forty-five.

  Horton was returning to the bar when he heard Manzetti roar, “Hey, Joey’s here! Now watch the joint jump.”

  He turned to see Manzetti near the door with his hand on the shoulder of a new arrival. There was no doubt that it was Joey the Cut. A livid scar ran the length of the man’s left cheek, from ear to chin.

  Joey Ault was tall and bone lean, with eyes deepset in a pale, thin face. Apparently Manzetti’s remark was in the nature of a joke, because everyone around him laughed dutifully.

  Joey didn’t join in the forced mirth. His expression remained humorless.

  Manzetti gave his number-one hatchet man a friendly pat on the back and moved on to shout a comment to one of the groups of card players. Joey the Cut made his way to the bar.

  Horton waited until the man picked a place, then moved to the bar next to him. Setting down his beer, he said, “Boy, it’s really crowded tonight, isn’t it?”

  Joey gave him a bare glance. “It always is,” he said. He ordered a shot and a beer from the bartender.

  Horton waited until he had tossed off the shot, drunk half his beer and ordered another shot before he ventured another remark. Then he said, “It’s a wonder any other bar in town gets any business, the way Tony gives this place away.”

  The dour hatchet man, after his brief reply to Horton’s first comment, had looked straight ahead and paid him no further attention. Now he looked sidewise and studied Horton for a moment.

  “It’s his place,” he said finally.

  “Oh, I wasn’t kicking,” Horton said. “I like it. Hardly ever go anywhere else.”

  Joey looked forward again, tossed off his shot and finished his beer. Horton drained his beer also and signaled to one of the bartenders.

  “Buy you a drink?” he asked Joey.

  The man glanced at him again. “Why?”

  Horton shrugged. “Why not? Tony’s been buying me drinks for weeks. Ever since the first time I came in here. Thought I ought to buy somebody a drink for a change.”

  “Why don’t you buy Tony one?”

  Horton frowned at him. “What’s eating you, mister? All I’m doing is trying to be friendly. You want a drink or don’t you?”

  Joey regarded him without expression. Finally he said, “Sure, I’ll have one.”

  The bartender drew two beers and poured a shot for Joey. Horton paid for the drinks.

  “Luck,” Joey said, and took a sip of his beer.

  Horton said, “Drink hearty,” and sipped his.

  With a curious mixture of apology and pride, Joey suddenly said, “Nobody buys me drinks, usually. You must be new around here.”

  “About a month,” Horton said. “Why don’t they buy you drinks?”

  “Know who I am?”

  “I heard Tony call you Joey.”

  “I’m Joey Ault.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Horton said in a slightly different tone. He put a faint touch of awe in it. “I’ve heard of you.”

  “Then you know why nobody buys me drinks.”

  Horton looked at him. “Not me. Why?”

  “They’re afraid of me,” Joey said matter-of-factly.

  Horton cocked an eyebrow at him. “Why? I’m not.”

  Joey’s face became very still. He stared at Horton unblinkingly. In a soft voice he said, “You’re a brave man.”

  Horton looked puzzled, then let his expression clear. “Hey, you took me wrong. I mean, why should I be? I’ve got no beef with you. I get along with everybody. I’m not trying to be brave. Just friendly.”

  “Oh,” Joey said, relaxing. He drank half his whisky and chased it with a gulp of beer.

  Horton chuckled. “You think I was trying to choose you? Do I look that nuts?”

  For the first time something approaching a smile appeared on the hatchet man’s face. It wasn’t quite a smile, but it was definitely a pleased look.

  CHAPTER XII

  HORTON HAD struck exactly the right chord with Joey. He had flattered his reputation without exhibiting fear of the man. And he was being companionable. Except for the patronizing, back-slapping way he was treated by Tony Manzetti, no one ever offered Joey companionship. They were all too scared of him. He responded as a love-starved spinster would have responded to a wink and a wolf whistle.

  The man actually became garrulous. He poured forth opinions, unfolded the history of his life, and told several dirty jokes. And he insisted on buying drinks. Horton had three beers he didn’t want.

  Joey meantime had three more boilermakers. Ordinarily drink only made him more morose, but tonight he expanded. His thin features became flushed and his face assumed a fixed grin. The bartender serving them watched him in amazement.

  By eleven-thirty, Joey was in a state of alcoholic bliss. Laying a hand on Horton’s shoulder, he said, “Heard Tony tell a good one the other day. This’ll kill you.”

  Horton decided it was time to steer the conversation where he wanted it. “Tony’s a card, all right,” he said. “Lucky, too. Sure glad that killing yesterday turned out so good for him.”

  “Huh?” Joey said.

  “That Quincy guy. Sure is lucky the cops know who did it. After that threat, the finger would have pointed straight at Tony.”

  Joey blinked owlishly. “Wanna know something?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “Ev’body thinks Tony sent that threat. Even some of ‘a boys. He don’t allus tell ‘em everything’s going on, see. But me, I know.” He tapped his chest. “I’m’a boss’s righthand man. He don’t keep nothing from me.”

  “No fooling?”

  Joey wagged his head back and forth. “Not one l’il thing. And you know what?”

  “What?”

  “Tony din’t send that note. The guy who killed Quincy did.”

  “You mean the hot-check artist?”r />
  Joey laughed. “He wasn’t no hot-check artist. Old Man Maytum from Rice City National phoned the cops when he seen the paper. Tole ‘em the guy had fifteen gran’ on deposit there. His checks was good.”

  “I’ll be darned,” Horton said.

  Joey’s voice sank confidentially. “Know what Tony thinks?”

  “What?”

  “This broad Quincy was married to set the whole thing up. Hired this guy to do the job. He hadda record in Missouri a mile long.”

  “A bad one, eh?” Horton said.

  “A pro. Way Tony figures, the Quincy dame knows the firs’ place the cops look when a guy gets bumped is at his wife. So she throws a curve. Has her hired gun drop off that note the night before the job. Then ev’body’s supposed to think Tony ordered it.” He looked a little aggrieved. “Like Tony would pull a deal that sloppy.”

  Horton didn’t say anything. He was thinking that the colonel wasn’t the only one who had cast a suspicious eye at the blonde Velda. He had the hopeful thought that perhaps the police were considering her, too. Then he felt depressed again as he realized this wouldn’t take him off the hook if their thinking followed the same line as Tony Manzetti’s. It would just revise their theory of his motive.

  “Only the guy loused up,” Joey went on. “He’d bought a car, see. Just a few minutes ‘fore he hit Quincy’s place. He hadda have an excuse to hang around. Tony figures maybe some other customer was there, and he hadda stall till they left. So he says he wants to sell the car. Then he goes off to the washroom. Quincy’s s’picious, so he phones the place the guy bought the car. Tells the other car dealer all about it. The guy comes out of the washroom and shoots him while he’s still talkin’ onna phone. He don’t know Quincy has tole the guy he’s talking to who he is. So the whole deal backfires. You see—”

  The amazed voice of Tony Manzetti interrupted. “Whataya’ know!” he boomed. “The Sphinx is actually talking! A mile a minute, too. What’s with you, Joey?”

  Horton turned to find the racketeer right behind them. A tingle went along his spine as he wondered how much Manzetti had heard. But apparently he hadn’t caught the substance of the conversation, for the only expression on his face was one of jocularity.