The Penny Ferry da-2 Page 3

  After discovering the human fingers in the dog's mouth, Mary had decided she'd had enough of sleuthing for the day and split for the Lucky Seven. Her brother and I found her in said joint, hiked up on a barstool with the other fellas, a shot glass full of clear liquid in front of her. She saw us come in out of the corner of her eye as she knocked back the shot and slapped the heavy glass down on the bar…She squinted at us menacingly.

  "You guys wanna start sumpin'?"

  "Mary, how many of those have you had?"

  "That was my third. I don't like to feel fingers when they're not attached to a guy. But I'm better now. Gonna have coffee."

  "I thought you didn't like gin," I said.

  "Don't. This is peppermint schnapps. Tastes just like a candy cane. Want one?"

  "No. You stay here. We just checked out the lower apartment of the house. It's been vacant for some time."

  "lt sure made it easy for them, Mare," said Joe in a low voice.

  "Hey, you didn't tell the guys at the end of the bar anything about-"

  "No. I just said we couldn't find him. Listen, come pick me up here when you're through. And it better be soon."

  She pounded the thick little glass on the varnished bar. "Bar-keep! Round four," she said.

  "Hey, thought you were having coffee now, Toots.'

  "Changed my mind. And don't call me Toots."

  We walked in the alley behind the little gray house that now looked ominous to me, that was too silent and cute. Too buttoned up. I was looking at the garbage cans in the alley. Then I looked at the asphalt. It was old and hard as rock. There were no impressions there. A light metallic-blue Chevy sedan swung around into the alley toward us. Its tires crackled on the loose cinders. A man was leaning out the driver's window, wearing a fedora. He yelled and Joe hollered back. Then I recognized Kevin O'Hearn, Joe's detective partner. The beefy Irishman squinted at both of us and spoke low.

  "You call the lab, Joe? They're up there now. Jeez, sumpin', huh? Poor Johnny…"

  "Hey, Kevin," I said, "can you give us a ride up the alley a ways? We're looking for something."

  "What?" asked Joe.

  "If you had the remains of a gas bomb what would you do with it? Would you carry it around in your back seat or trunk?"

  "Yeah right. Okay. Go slow, Kev," said Joe.

  We rolled along through the dismal alley choked with litter and sparkly with broken glass. I pretended I was one of the killers as I watched the garbage cans slide by the window. They all looked too full and too small. In the third block I saw the angular jaw of a big dumpster and told O'Hearn to stop. We all got out and had a go at the big metal container. We lifted up the heavy lid and tried to rummage around inside but it was chock-full of old plaster and lath boards. The stuff was all tightly packed and very heavy; I hated to guess what the whole thing weighed- probably about as much as a destroyer. We drove on for another block and ran out of alley. We were back on Broadway. I swore, and Joe suggested we try a few more alleys, since the labboys wouldn't want us getting in their way anyhow. We cruised around, never going more than ten blocks or so from the gray house. Joe and I both figured they'd have dropped the evidence off fast, not wanting it in the car.

  We struck pay dirt on the fourth alley. There was a dumpster there, filled with the usual trash and garbage. We grabbed an old fence board and snaked around in the mess awhile before we turned up a shopping bag with a canvas strap sticking out of it. I reached down and plucked out the bag by a corner. Inside were two army-issue gas masks. Canvas and rubber, brand-new, each in a little canvas carrying pouch. I kept rummaging with the fence board, turning over juice and booze bottles, beer cans, frozen-dinner trays, plastic garbage bags, and junk. Then I saw it.

  "Look. There's your bomb, Joe."

  "That can? Hey yeah. Look, Kev, it's all burnt. I see a horse on the side of it. A horse jumping over a fence."

  "It's a tobacco can," I said. "Kentucky Club. A tobacco can with a pry-off top is perfect; don't you see? The lid's a friction fit, and airtight."

  I drew out the scorched can carefully, holding it by the lip. It was a few minutes before we located the burnt and blown-out lid with the little metal sliding pry lever still attached. We looked at the can. A household electrical cord ran from its side right near the bottom edge. The hole had been made neatly; it was just the right size. Putty had been packed in around the cord. On the can's interior bottom the broken copper strands of the wire were fused solidly, and all around the wire ends was a white powdery ashlike deposit.

  "Take that goddamn thing away from your nose, Doc, you'll croak!" yelled O'Hearn. I thanked him for reminding me.

  "Wire's melted all over in here," I said. "It took a terrific amount of heat to do that. I'd say they used powdered magnesium, or flash powder. Maybe they mixed in some crude gunpowder too, for more oomph. This stuff here would be magnesium oxide."

  "How come you know all about that chemistry stuff?" asked O'Hearn belligerently. "Thought you were a doctor."

  "A lot of medicine is chemistry. In my work with teeth I deal a lot with metals and alloys… and their oxide residues come with the territory I guess."

  The cord was long, about twenty feet, and terminated in a standard-issue plug. They'd used current from Robinson's apartment to set off the lethal bomb. Seven feet from the plug, the wire on one side of the cord was stripped and cut. The wire on the other side remained whole.

  "See? Here's their crude knife switch," Joe said. Then, holding the wire ends about a half-inch apart by the insulation still cleft on the cord, he touched them together several times.

  "This opens and closes the circuit just like a switch in the cord. Now the ends of the wires in the can were joined to a fuse wire- a thin wire that'd heat up really fast as soon as house current was run through it. Then this wire is covered with an explosive substance, like flash powder."

  "Yeah, a rocket fuse," said O'Hearn. "But how 'bout the gas? Where does it come from?"

  "Don't know. There's lots of different kinds. Phosgene- that was the favorite of the Third Reich. Cyanide is probably the most widely used. That's what they use in prison gas chambers? "Then aren't there special military gases? Nerve gas? Paralyzing gas? Stuff like that?"

  "Yeah. But if it was homemade, which it appears to be, then cyanide is the best bet. All you need, if I remember right, is ferrocyanide crystals and sulfuric acid. You can get those chemicals. It's hard but it can be done. Then when they're mixed- bingo, poison gas. Sometimes it goes by the name prussic acid. Same deal though. Instant death. Let's take this stuff back to the house for a mock-up."

  The lab boys were all over the place. They had Robinson and his two dogs covered and placed on litters in the living room. The print guys were dusting windowpanes, doorknobs, chrome table legseverything that would take a print. They blew powder all over the place, swept big soft brushes over surfaces, lifted prints off with special Scotch tape. It was absorbing to watch them, like watching bricklayers or blacksmiths.

  One guy was working on the wallpaper that had been scorched in the hallway. He was delighted when we handed him the empty and burnt-out Kentucky Club can. When the can was placed against the wall under the small table the scorch mark began right above its lip and fanned out and upward. You could almost visualize the big flash the explosion had made, probably blowing the metal lid up against the table. The cord ran back under the carpet runner, under the bedroom door, and into the wall socket with some to spare. Enough cord was left for a person to stand behind the door staring through the peephole with the pieces of cut cord in his hands. When he sees Robinson come up the hall, he touches the wires together. Boom! Poison gas in the hall. Robinson falls, dogs charge the door in a death agony. We acted it all out. The pieces fit.

  The lab man fiddled with bottled solutions and test paper. He took scrapings from the can and the wallpaper.

  "Potassium-cyanide," he said softly as he watched the solutions change color. "Or prussic acid; take your pick of names. Lethal
within seconds."

  "What do you think, Larry? Pro job?"

  The man nodded and left, taking the evidence with him. We sat at the kitchen table now that the crew was through dusting. My brother-in-law sighed.

  "Nice going with the can and stuff, Doc. Gotta hand it to you. Well, the big boys got Johnny at last. A simple gas bomb, made with everyday things impossible to trace, but deadly, and built with a lot of experience. Poor guy. And I guess you're out of luck as far as the dental piece goes too."

  "Good God, Joe! Mary! She's been in the Lucky Seven all this time. Do you think-"'

  We hustled downstairs and around the corner. There was I quite a crowd around the bar now. It was getting on toward evening. Mary was nowhere to be seen. We asked the barkeep and he nodded in the direction of a crowded table.

  The men around the table were huddle-tight. They were yelling encouragement at invisible parties. We approached and saw two arm wrestlers at the table. One was a wiry guy about my age with rolled-up sleeves and tattoos. His arms were stringy and pretty thick. He looked strong. The other combatant was Mary. She seemed to be winning.

  The crowd's chatter increased. Money was changing hands. Mary's face contorted with effort and pain as she pushed to put the man down.

  "Come on, Mare!" shouted Joe.

  "Hey, you know that broad?" asked a bystander. "Man, is she strong!"

  "And mean," I added.

  "Yeah?"

  There were three more shot glasses near her left hand, all empty. But then I saw a bottle snake in and out, and one of the glasses was full. Mary reached for it with her free hand and knocked it back. Now where the hell did she learn that? As her head went back she saw my face and slammed the glass down.

  "Hi good-lookin'!" she called. And lost the match.

  Her opponent, sensing her lack of concentration, made a final assault and slammed her hand down on the table. Some of the crowd booed, but I couldn't tell if it was directed at the opponent who took advantage or at Mary's defeat. A half-dozen guys were headed for the bar to buy Mary some more liquid candy cane; I stepped in and snagged her.

  "That's the nicest place!" she exclaimed as she tripped along the cracked sidewalk between us. We helped her negotiate it now and then.

  "Those guys were just trying to get you drunk, Mare. They weren't being nice," said Joe.

  "Right," I said. "They were just trying to get you drunk so they could get in your pants, right Joe?"

  "Absolutely."

  Mary stopped and weaved. She stared at us, squinting in incredulity.

  "Really? Really, you guys? They wanted to get in my pants?"

  "Yep," I said. "That's all they wanted. They just- hey!"

  She was heading back toward the bar. She wasn't dawdling either. We caught her and turned her around.

  "You gotta watch Sis… hasn't changed a bit since the old days."

  "What do you mean by that?" I asked.

  "Nevermine Charlie… jes' neveryoouuumine…" she said.

  When we rounded the corner O'Hearn was waving us over with his arm. Mary said she was tired. I parked her in Joe's car, where she stretched out on the back seat, Before I'd shut the door she was asleep. No more Lucky Seven for you, kiddo.

  O'Hearn swung his car around fast with Joe in front. I hopped in the back. Joe turned and looked at me.

  "Well guess what? They just found another stiff in a ruined factory off Western."

  "What?' What the hell is this, a Cagney flick? Joe, correct me if I'm wrong, but Lowell's not a murder town, is it?"

  "Naw. It's a tank town but not a murder town. It's scruffy and rough, but not mean. Killing is pretty rare up here; that's why I think the Mob's in on this one."

  "Factory we're goin to's an old textile mill," growled O'Hearn.

  "Found this dude inna chimney."

  "In a chimney? Look you guys, all I wanted to know was what happened to my dental work, and so far we haven't found out anything."

  "And sad to say you probably won't now. If it's not back at Dependable's office, I can't imagine where in hell it is. The murderers might have just grabbed everything. Shit- now I'm going to have to phone Sam Bowman and tell him that his partner and friend john Robinson has been murdered. I tell ya, my job's a barrel of laughs sometimes."

  "You think Johnny might have left the stuff he was carrying at his office?"

  "A chance. We'll check it out tomorrow. Turn here, Kev."

  We turned and saw a Lowell black-and-white parked over beyond the old factory gate, its blue lights winking. We drifted into the yard. It had all the earmarks of a hundred-year-old textile mill: huge chimney for the boilers, loading docks, sheds, long, low buildings with roofs of tar and corrugated metal, but mostly the mill itself, a huge building of dun brick with narrow, metal-frame windows, an old clock turret, and tiny street-level doorways. It had a wall around three sides. It was a brick penitentiary. It was dismal and deserted. It was a little frightening, perhaps made more so by the nature of our errand.

  The chimney was huge but unattached to the boiler room, which had been torn down when the plant was converted to electric power. There was a large jagged hole in the chimney's base where the flue had entered it. All around this opening lay piles of broken bricks, the remnants of the old flue bridges, which had collapsed. Some of these were yellowish-red; others were glossy black, indicating they'd been on the inner flue wall.

  A uniformed cop and a plainclothesman stood halfway up the rubble mound inside the chimney, which was about twenty feet across at its base. Their feet and pants were bright, their upper bodies dim in the darkness of the interior, and their faces invisible. We entered the old structure and began climbing the pile of bricks, mortar, and junk. Joe knew the detective and stopped for a second while O'Hearn and I went on up alone. On top of the heap was a dead man lying on his back facing straight up, his glazed eyes half-open. His mouth was drawn back as if he had died in pain. The reason for this was obvious: a giant reddish-brown stain on his shirtfront the size of an LP record.

  "Stab wound," said the detective to Joe. "Opened him up real good. No I.D. or wallet, but it's not robbery."

  The man was young and handsome and looked Italian. His clothing was expensive and well cut. His hair appeared to be styled, and he wore soft calfskin loafers with tassels. Dead or alive, he was surely out of his element on a rubble heap in a ' mined factory chimney in Lowell, Mass.

  The four of us stood on the talus cone and stared at the faded elegance at our feet. The scene was eerie, surrealistic. Far above a shaft of dying sunlight plunged across the sooty blackness of the chimney top like a theater spotlight. It struck the curved wall up near the lip, and the white patch of light lay there in a bent ellipse. From the darkness overhead came the faint squeaking of swifts, their wing flutters and echoing power dives. Now and then dark specks flitted across the shaft of light, twittering. The rubble cone rose up inside the dark circular walls like a grotesque Paleolithic altar. And the corpse on it a sacrifice, his sightless eyes staring up at the circle of light a hundred feet above. The scene could have been on the cover of a sci-fi paperback, painted by Frank Frazetta.

  Behind me I heard the clinking and clacking of broken brick as Joe climbed up to join us. I wanted to leave.

  "What makes you think it wasn't robbery?" asked Joe.

  " 'Cause they didn't take the gold watch. Take a look, Joe- that's some clock the guy's wearing."

  The watch was round, with a red onyx face and Roman numerals. The body was gold, the band lizard. Around the gold face was engraved, in bold classical letters, BULGARI-ROMA. Joe stood up and looked at the corpse.

  "Yeah, I'd say it's not robbery, too. But I've got a different reason. Look here."

  He took the man's other wrist and drew the arm up, exposing the hand.

  It was missing two fingers.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  We stood staring at the corpse for quite a while, not saying a word. He was the guy who'd iced Johnny, and we did not like him. Fina
lly O'Hearn broke the silence.

  "Rich," he said.

  "Yeah. Rich and Italian. I bet he didn't even speak English," said Joe.

  "How can you tell?" asked O'Hearn.

  "He just looks it. No, wait. Maybe he was educated in some snooty English prep school. Or maybe he spent a year at Harvard. But he's rich, just like you said, Kev, and he's Italian. He's as Italian as fetticcine al burro."

  "Mmmmm," said O'Hearn. "As Italian as linguine with clam sauce."

  "Yeah. As Italian as rigatoni bolognese," I added.

  "Or chicken tetrazzini."

  "Veal Marsala."

  Then silence for a minute.

  "I'm hungry," said O'Hearn.

  "Me too," I said.

  We stumbled back down the rubble heap and headed for O'Hearn's car. Joe stopped to talk to the detective, who was writing in a pocket notebook. I sat in back; O'Hearn turned around and faced me, resting his pale triple chin on the seat back.

  "Well Doc, nice quiet Saturday afternoon, eh? Coupla stiffs up in Lowell, Mass. Any ideas? I thought it was a straight Outfit hit until a few minutes ago. Now I'm not so sure."

  "It looks like an Outfit hit, then a double-cross from inside. Do you think they fought over the loot?"

  "Naw," he said. "Johnny Robinson was small time, money-wise. The Outfit would never squabble over loot that small. Frankly, I don't think it's a question of loot at all. I think Johnny did something they didn't like, like maybe blew the whistle on them. It wasn't loot."

  Joe got in and we drove over to the Robinson house. Mary was still sacked out in the back of Joe's cruiser, so I got up in front with Joe. Halfway home Mary sat up and said she was going to be sick. I helped her from the car; she felt cold and clammy to the touch. She staggered over to the side of the road and got rid of all the peppermint schnapps. She groaned and retched, and tears streamed down her face.

  "Doesn't taste as good coming back up, does it, hon?"

  "Oh Charlie. Ohhh… Why do I ever drink?" she wailed.

  We got her back in and covered her with Joe's sport coat. At home we woke her up and got her inside on the couch. Then Joe threw a handful of coarse cornmeal on the butcher's block, spread it deftly with a few broad sweeps of his big hand, threw the pink-gray slabs of raw meat down, and began to pound them. He hit them gently with a wooden mallet, not a steel one. Steel tears 'em up too much, he says. The meat began to flatten and spread out. He wanted them wafer-thin.