“Nevertheless,” declared Sansone, “his connection with Burke and Holmquist would give him an opportunity of meeting Lenny Fassio and Lenny’s boss mobsters. And his connection with Phil Linton would give him access to a lot of cops, including some top brass in the department.”
“This is plain damned silly!” flared Allan Walters. “Everybody knows that Mike Stella himself was payoff man in the numbers. That’s what the whole investigation was about!”
“You’re forgetting your rank, Detective Walters!” Sansone barked like a martinet on the drill field. “But under the circumstances, I’ll overlook the breach of discipline. Stella may have been payoff man. But he broke with Fassio and turned pigeon. That’s why he’s got a cement overcoat or is cut up in little pieces and stowed away in trunks. With the heat on, it was a lot safer to use a respectable lawyer as payoff man than to use a known mobster. Even Fassio hasn’t got enough money to corrupt the top men of Burke and Holmquist. But Ellison was a little man, with just the right contacts, and Fassio’s money would look mighty big to him. One cop even intimated that he’d been approached by Ellison in person, but that cop was under a cloud himself and nobody would take his unsupported testimony. When Phil Linton, who’d been retired for years and out of touch with departmental business, said he might have information about the payoff, it was a different matter. How would he get such information except through personal contacts? And who was he closer to than Abner Ellison, the boy he’d brought up, who had lived with him up to a couple of months ago?
“Now I can tell you something that I can vouch for. I saw Phil four days ago. He seemed mighty unhappy. He said he was going to see a certain person on Wednesday night. That was last night, the night he was murdered. He said he had to make sure, but he’d be sure after he saw this person, and he’d lay what he had before the commissioner. Well, he saw Abner Ellison last night and he won’t lay anything before the commissioner, because Phil Linton’s on a slab in the morgue right now.
“The way I figure it, it all ties in. The Fassio mob thought maybe Phil’s granddaughter knew something, too. Did she say anything last night to you that would indicate she knew, Walters?”
“No,” said Walters in a choked voice. “No, I’m sure she didn’t know anything.”
“You’d better be careful in dark alleys just the same, young man,” warned the inspector. “The mob must know you were with her and they may figure she talked to you. They may try to keep you quiet. But they probably think having the girl is enough assurance that you won’t squeak, even if you know something.
“Here’s what I think. Murder’s a lot simpler than kidnapping. They left chilling Linton to Ellison. But Fassio’s still got a few old-timers around, some of them just sprung from stir, who were experts in the snatch racket even before the Lindbergh law was passed. Those are the guys who got the girl. It was neat, siphoning the gas tank and all. Maybe they figure having an ex-cop’s granddaughter will help ’em make a deal with the police. Anyhow, they’ve got her where they can keep her quiet.
“We know from the hotel people that Ellison got in before twelve, that there was a telephone call for him, but that the party disconnected and a few minutes later a seedy-looking bird came in and left a sealed note for him at the desk. Soon as he got this note, he took off. It was probably word that the snatch was set and told him to meet somebody somewhere.”
The old man looked at Dab. “That’s it, Mr. Dab. I’ve let you have it.”
Dab was silent for a long while. “Tell me,” he said at last, “if I can find another meaning in these cards on the floor, will you give my version serious consideration?”
“Sure we will, Mr. Dab,” replied Romano. For once he wasn’t flippant. “We’ll get photos of these cards to you first thing in the morning, and we’ll listen to anything you have to say.”
“You needn’t bother sending me home in a police car,” said Dab. “I want to walk a piece. I can get a cab on Broad-way.”
Allan Walters accompanied Dab to the front porch. He was a large young man with wide shoulders, but somehow he appeared to have shrunk, to have wasted in a matter of hours. His taut face accentuated the size of his eyes which seemed to burn feverishly. The cheekbones were pronounced, the flesh glove-tight over them. His face is like a death’s head, Dab thought. He’s like a skeleton wearing a coat with absurdly padded shoulders. He’s dazed. I’m dazed, too. We’re both in a state of shock. Panic, even.
Walters laid a hand on Dab’s arm. He said, “Can you solve that puzzle another way, Mr. Dab? Can you, sir? She’s my girl. She’d have been my wife in just a few more weeks. I’ve loved her since we were kids. You’ve got to solve it, Mr. Dab. It’s up to you. If we find the murderer, we find the kidnapper and that means we find Pat. I’m a cop. I know about these things. When there’s a snatch, you have to catch them right away. Kidnappers wait twenty-four hours, forty-eight hours, maybe a little longer. But if you don’t find the victims quick, you find them dead. It’s Pat they’ve got, Mr. Dab. Can you find her? Can you solve that puzzle Phil Linton left for you?”
The dandyish gentleman with the waxed mustache looked suddenly very old and very tired.
“I don’t know, boy,” he answered. “It’s the toughest job I’ve ever tackled. I’ve not only got to do it the hard way. I’ve got to prove the easy, obvious answer is the wrong one. But maybe, if I have time . . .”
The big clock across the river flashed
TIC
TOC
It was four o’clock in the morning.
5
SHE AWAKENED to mote-swirling gloom and to silence that was almost complete.
A murky shaft of light, trembling with dust particles, stabbed down from a small, grimy skylight in the high ceiling. The place was cold, yet insufferably close and musty. There was a smell of old wood and dry rot that reminded her of the attic in her own home. Suddenly the silence shivered with the slightest of sounds. It was a fluttery, frightening little noise, the soft sound that the padded feet of rats make in woodwork.
Her head ached intolerably. A faint and cloying smell seemed to linger in her nostrils and her throat was very dry. She was nauseated. Her neck ached as if the muscles had been twisted. As the faint light swirled in front of her eyes like a smoky curtain, her head cleared a little. She became more acutely conscious of pain, discomfort, but now she could remember, and the disembodied, floating sensation was passing. I am Patricia Linton, she told herself. A while ago—or was it an age ago?—a young man named Allan asked me to marry him. We were in an old farmhouse and there was a checkered tablecloth and a candle was stuck in a wicker-covered bottle and the tallow had dripped down over the bottle’s neck in fat chunks and made fascinating basket-weave designs. Our dinners were very expensive because I peeked at the check and with the cocktails and the wine it came to nearly eighteen dollars and that didn’t even include the tip. You see, I can remember even small details very clearly. Then we were driving in the car. We were on a very dark and a very rough road and suddenly the car began to spit and cough and inexplicably we were out of gas. So I waited there inside the car where it was warm while Allan went back up the road to the darkened station to get a pail of gasoline to start the car. I thought how still and how dark the country was and how even the daughter of a cop and the granddaughter of a cop who knew something about judo might be just a little frightened.
Then there was a slight noise, as if the back door of the sedan were opening but before I could turn around, there was a strong arm around my neck, forcing back my head, and there was a piece of cloth pressed over my face, and the cloth had that hospital smell to it, that smell I could remember from the time when I was very little and Daddy was dying in a place that was all white and sanitary. And then I didn’t know anything at all. But once, it seems, I remember a sense of movement as if I were riding in a car again. I stirred and tried to open my eyes and see something, and I did see