Untidy Murder Read online

  “Hey,” Flanagan said. “You. Where’d you get that?”

  Weigand stopped and turned, almost in one movement. Flanagan spoke like a policeman now. Mullins turned too.

  Flanagan was standing in front of a heavy woman of about sixty. She stood in broken shoes, in a dirty gray dress, with wetness spreading up from the hem in front. There was a bucket at her feet, as if she had been pushing it along with her feet.

  “Where’d you get it?” Flanagan repeated. He was pointing, now—pointing to a small blue flower tucked through a button hole in the dress, hanging dejectedly between the woman’s sagging breasts.

  “What’s it to you?” the woman said. “I didn’t steal nothin’.”

  Her voice was shrill, indignant. She even managed to lift her head. “What’s it to you?” she repeated.

  “All right, Flanagan,” Bill said, and moved back. “We don’t think you stole it,” he said. His voice was gentle. “It’s nothing anybody would steal.”

  “It’s a flower,” the woman said. “It’s nothing but a flower, mister. Wilted, too.”

  “I know,” Bill said. He was very quiet. “But we’d like to know where you got it.”

  “Out of a basket,” the woman said. “That’s where. Where somebody had thrown it away. That’s where.”

  “What basket?”

  “How would I know?”

  “Try to remember,” Bill said. His voice was still gentle, but now it was gently insistent.

  “Maybe the basket out there,” she said, and gestured heavily toward the reception room door. “Where Miss Snippy sits. She’d throwed it away, hadn’t she? What’s the fuss?”

  There was no fuss, Bill told her. There was no trouble. But he would like to have the little flower.

  “I don’t get it,” the woman said. She looked at what was in Bill’s hand and looked at him, and her eyes were unbelieving. “What’s the racket, mister?” she said. But her slow fingers fumbled with the flower, pulling it from the button hole. Bill told her there was no racket, but knew she did not believe him. He took the little flower and she looked at him suspiciously, and he smiled and nodded. Then, covetously but still with suspicion, she took the bill he held out to her. Once she had taken it, however, she seemed to feel that it paid also for her name and address, and Mullins wrote them down.

  “Look, Loot,” Mullins said, and then they were back in the reception room, passing through it. “You know you gave her five bucks, don’t you? Five?”

  “Why not?” Bill said. “Skip it, sergeant.”

  “O.K., Loot,” Mullins said.

  They were outside when Weigand turned to Flanagan.

  “This is it?” he said.

  “I think so,” Flanagan said. “It looks about right. I can’t swear to it, you know.”

  “Right,” Bill said.

  “Where does it get us?” Mullins wanted to know.

  Bill Weigand smiled faintly and shook his head. Probably nowhere, he said. But—the St. John girl, although she was clearly disturbed, upset, had picked it up off the floor of Wilming’s office and thrown it away in her own wastebasket. At least, she had if Flanagan was right. Merely because she was a neat person? Perhaps, but she would need to be an unusually neat person to be neat under those circumstances. Because there was some reason she did not want the flower to be found in Wilming’s office? That was more probable.

  “Suppose,” Bill said, “somebody she knew and was fond of had come in wearing a little blue cornflower in his lapel and had gone into see Wilming—just before Wilming went out the window. Suppose, when she found out what had happened, she didn’t want anybody to find out this man—figure it a man—had been in there. And then suppose she found out he had dropped the little flower. Wouldn’t that give her a reason for getting the flower out of there?”

  He looked at the two sergeants.

  “I think it would,” he said.

  The worst of it, Dorian thought, is that they are so stupid, so hopelessly stupid. So if there is a way out, they won’t find it. It would be better if they were intelligent men, even if they were vicious and cruel men. Little Piper was vicious, perhaps; perhaps he was cruel. But he was both, if he was both, in a grimy, futile way, and more than either he was afraid, now. And Farno, less afraid and cruel only, she thought, when cruelty was part of a routine, was only a little more intelligent than Piper. Neither had the imagination to find a way out of the difficulty into which they had stumbled. She would have thought, hearing this about someone else, that the stupidity of the two men would make the whole thing less frightening. But the most frightening thing of all was not to be able to trust to any intelligence. The most terrifying thing was to think that these men, merely because they were stupid—merely because they could not think of a simpler way out—might decide to kill her.

  That had come up in the hour or so since they had found out who she was. It had come up several times after little Piper had first mentioned it. It had never been wholly rejected.

  “We take care of her,” Piper said, with a kind of horrifying delicacy. “We take care of her, see, and then we get us some cement. What’s the matter with that?”

  “Maybe,” Farno said. “Only then we take care of a cop’s wife. Then what do we hide under?”

  She could see fear mount in Piper at that; she could see it in his eyes.

  “On account of,” Farno said, “when you’ve taken care of a cop and they catch up with you, it ain’t fun. They tell me when they get you in the chair they bounce you. You ever hear that, Piper?”

  “Jeez,” Piper said.

  “Turn the juice on and off and on and off, so you bounce,” Farno said. She could see that he was frightening himself. “And that’s after they get you there. That don’t count what they do first.”

  Piper didn’t say anything. He merely seemed to grow smaller, as if he were already trying to hide.

  “So far we ain’t hurt her,” Farno said. “Ain’t that right, lady? We ain’t hurt you.”

  “I’ll tell them you haven’t hurt me,” she said. “They won’t hurt you.”

  “That’s what you think, lady,” Farno said. “That’s just what you think.”

  “The way I figure it,” Piper said, “maybe we better let her go. Like this character says to.”

  She looked at Farno and thought he seemed to hesitate. But then he shook his head.

  “That way we sure get it,” he said. “Maybe we don’t get bounced up river, but we get it in a precinct. The way I figure it, if we let her go we sure get it, on account of she’ll tell them who we are. If she can’t tell them, it’s worse if they catch us but maybe they don’t. See?”

  “That’s what I said,” Piper said. “How they going to know?”

  “This character, see?” Farno told him. “This character didn’t figure on our gettin’ real tough. This character says to turn her loose, see? So if she don’t show up, this character makes out better if he sings. You gotta admit that, Piper.”

  Piper looked at Dorian. He looked at her with anxiety, with anxious hope, in his eyes.

  “Maybe when we let her go she don’t tell who had her,” he said. “Maybe she don’t want to get a coupla guys in trouble.”

  Farno laughed at that, and there was no use in Dorian’s answering. They wouldn’t believe her if she promised not to describe them, not to call them Farno and Piper. They would have to be even stupider than they were to believe that. There was nothing she could think of to say to make such a promise believable.

  “You try to do a favor for a friend and something like this happens,” Farno said, after a time. His voice was bitter. Piper looked at him with a new expression.

  “Listen,” he said. “You mean we got into this just doing a favor? You mean it don’t pay off? A while ago you talked different.”

  “We make a coupla dollars,” Farno said. “Mostly it’s a favor to this character. I ain’t saying we don’t get—” He broke off suddenly. You could see an idea groping its way through t
he unfamiliar territory behind his eyes.

  “What—?” Piper began, but Farno told him to shut up. Piper shut up. He continued to look at Farno anxiously. After a time Farno spoke slowly.

  “This character ain’t in such a swell spot,” he said. “We ought to figure that. If they pick us up, on account of we turn the dame loose and she sings, we sing about this character. We tells them how this character—” He stopped and nodded to himself. “So maybe this character will figure it will pay off to help us get out of town, see? Way to hell and gone out of town.”

  Piper thought about it. The effort churned his face. Finally he nodded.

  “Only what do we do with the babe?” he said. He jerked a thumb toward Dorian. “They’ll tear the town apart.”

  “I’ll show you,” Farno said. “Come here, lady.”

  There was no point in not going there. If she didn’t they would merely put their hands on her. She got up from the wooden chair on which she had been sitting and walked toward Farno. She was still walking when he said, “This ain’t personal, lady.” And as he said it, she saw his hand, doubled in a fist now, begin to swing. The next thing she saw was blackness.

  Pamela North put down her coffee cup, looked for a moment at nothing and then said, “At the Rogers’s. That’s it!”

  Jerry North said, “What’s it?”

  “Where we met the Helmses,” Pam said. “Or Helms. Whichever is right. He was a lot older than she and you were very interested. Dark hair and eyes, very pretty figure, a black dress with a lot of detail around the neck, a Jensen necklace and black suede shoes with open toes. Very sheer stockings and you could see her toe nails through and they were painted a dark red. It was—oh, a year and a half ago. Remember?”

  “No,” Jerry said.

  “Well, you did then,” Pam told him. But she did not press it. “There were a lot of people for cocktails and some of them stayed for dinner, but I don’t think the Helmses did. And I’m not sure it was really Mr. Helms, when I think of it.”

  “Listen,” Jerry said, “I thought you said—”

  “Oh, I’m sure of Mrs. Helms,” Pam told him. “But maybe her husband was somebody else. I mean, the man I thought was her husband. A tall man who looked a little like Walter Hampden, only younger, but not as young as Mrs. Helms. The Rogerses will know. I’ll see.”

  With that she got up from the restaurant table and went toward the telephone. She went into the booth, which Jerry could see from where he was sitting, and in less time than he expected came out again and back. She was engaging to watch. She did not sit again at the table when she reached it, but stood looking at Jerry. She said, “They’re coming over. Come on.”

  “Here?” Jerry said.

  “To the apartment,” Pam said. “For a drink. The other was too long for the telephone, and there was a man waiting.”

  They walked the few blocks to the apartment; Jerry got ice and bottles and they had sat only a little while, waiting, when the Rogerses came. The four of them circled, buzzing faintly, and settled in chairs, with glasses.

  “We’ve been wanting to see you,” Pam said. Rogers’s thin, mobile face twisted pleasantly.

  “Well, when it came it was sudden,” he said. He grinned at Jerry.

  “You know Dorian Weigand?” Pam said, to both the Rogerses.

  “Dorian?” Mrs. Rogers said, and remembered. “Of course,” she said. “Used to be Dorian Hunt? And married your detective?”

  “Not ours,” Pam said. “The city’s. Well, she’s been kidnaped or something. Just now. This evening.” She looked at the Rogerses and was very serious. “We’re fond of her,” she said. “Very fond of her.”

  Rogers looked at Jerry North, as people sometimes did after listening to Pam, and Jerry nodded.

  “I’m sorry,” Rogers said, and Mrs. Rogers said they both were.

  “A long time ago you had a Mrs. Helms,” Pam said. “At a party. A black dress with detail and a silver Jensen necklace.”

  “Jensen?” Mrs. Rogers said. “Yes, I suppose it was. Beatrice Helms. I think it was the night she brought that Wilming man.” This last was to her husband. “The one you thought was odd, remember?”

  “Wilming?” Jerry repeated. “Paul Wilming?”

  Mrs. Rogers nodded and said, “Why?” Rogers merely looked at Jerry North.

  “Don’t you read the papers?” Pam said.

  Rogers shook his head. He said never the afternoons; the Times, yes. And he waited.

  “Wilming was art editor of Esprit,” Jerry said. “He jumped out of his office window this noon. Dorian was there. Then a couple of hours ago, Dorian failed to come home. Now it seems possible Wilming didn’t jump. And that Dorian has got in trouble because she knows something. Helms, so far as I know, is merely a man who was in the next office.” He paused.

  “Actually,” Pam said, “I thought Mr. Wilming was Mr. Helms. At your party, I mean. It was just a place to start.”

  “Start?” Mrs. Rogers said.

  “Helping Bill,” Pam said. “If something has happened to Dorian because of Mr. Wilming.”

  The Rogerses nodded, simultaneously.

  “We just knew there was a Mr. Helms,” Mrs. Rogers said. “He was in the Navy then, I think. A combat artist or something like that. We met Bee Helms around somewhere, asked her because we were short of women, and then she brought Mr. Wilming. A tall man who looked as if he might have been an actor.”

  “And wasn’t any more,” Pam said. “I remember. I don’t know why I thought he was Mr. Helms. Did he act like it? I mean—”

  The Rogerses spoke almost simultaneously this time. Rogers said, “No.” Mrs. Rogers said, “Yes.” Then they both laughed. They could, Rogers told them, take their choice.

  “No,” Mrs. Rogers said. “Jim’s probably right. He usually is. He just acted like a good friend, I guess. She said something about his being an old friend of Don’s. Don being her husband. Wilming struck me as the kind of man who lives all his life with his mother.”

  “Actually, I gathered he had,” Rogers said. “I’m not sure it makes him a ‘kind of man.’” He looked at his wife, considering. “I won’t pretend I don’t know what you mean,” he said. “But he seemed to me to have the kind of heavy, solid manner which is apt to be confusing. A manner like that seems to indicate a man’s emotionally—well, dull. I’m not sure that’s always true.”

  “He seemed pompous,” Mrs. Rogers said. “Slow and heavy and pompous. As if he never caught fire.”

  “That’s precisely what I mean,” Jim Rogers said. The Norths looked at each other and, in spite of not feeling much like it, smiled. The Rogerses were apt to do this. They were apt to talk things out, and particularly apt to talk people out. They were capable of forgetting the presence of anyone else. “When a man has a manner like that, there’s a tendency to underestimate him. Specifically, in this case, there’s a tendency to think he was merely an old friend of Bee Helms’s. It can serve as—”

  The Rogerses, and Mrs. North too, looked at Jerry in surprise, because he spoke quickly, as if no one else had been speaking.

  “Wait a minute,” he said. “I do remember. I remember both of them. I went downstairs to get my coat, and they were there—Wilming and Mrs. Helms. He had both his hands on her shoulders and was looking at her, and she was shaking her head. And I caught the tail end of something—something she had been saying. Something like ‘it’s really no go,’ or ‘it’s really somebody else.’ I don’t remember. I remember thinking she was telling him to forget it, to lay off.”

  The three of them looked at him.

  “And you forgot that until just now?” Pam said. “Jerry!”

  “Well,” Jerry North said, “after all it was a party.” He turned a thoughtful gaze on nothing in particular. “So many things happen at parties,” he said, to no one in particular.

  5

  FRIDAY

  9 P.M. TO SATURDAY 12:55 A.M.

  Bill Weigand dropped the faded little blue flower o
n his desk and stood for a moment looking down at it. Then he sat at the desk and looked at the opposite wall. In the moment of relaxation, his face was old. Mullins, who had come in behind him, looked at Weigand’s face. Then he spoke.

  “I know how it is, Loot,” he said, “but all the same, did you have any dinner?”

  Bill shook his head without answering.

  “Coffee, anyway,” Mullins said. “Coffee and maybe a sandwich.”

  Bill said nothing for a minute. Then he said “Right,” in a dead tone. Mullins went out into the corridor and yelled. He came back. “Wanta see Stein?” he said. Bill nodded. Detective Sergeant Stein came into the office. For a moment he waited. Then Bill Weigand pulled his gaze away from the wall, seemed to shake himself. His face lost part of its appearance of age. He looked at Stein.

  “Well, Dave?” he said.

  “The pickup’s out for the Lavery crowd,” Stein said. “Nobody yet. But do you want to see the counselor?”

  “Does he know anything?”

  Stein shrugged.

  “You know the counselor,” he said. “He knows something. He thinks maybe he knows something. He wants to know something. Like most stoolies.”

  “Right,” Bill said. He looked again at the little blue flower, and shook his head. It wasn’t much. It was only a guess that it was anything. It didn’t even have to be what the St. John girl had picked up.

  “O.K.,” Bill said. “Let’s listen to the counselor, Dave.”

  The man they called “the counselor” was a small man, and he smelled a little of a good many things, notably of alcohol. He had red-rimmed eyes and gray hair in a fringe around his head. He wore a shiny black suit with a tear in the right trouser leg, and a shirt frayed down from the collar band. He wore a wing collar, peculiarly filthy, and no tie. He was also a graduate of Columbia University and he had been a lawyer for ten years before he was caught buying up jurors. Now there was a flop-house downtown where the police could find him when they wanted him. He was a little drunk now, but he was always a little drunk. He bowed to Weigand. He said, with a good accent and in a husky voice, “Good evening, lieutenant.” Bill looked at him and, as always, felt a faint starting of something that was almost fear. It was frightening to think how the bottom could drop out of life.