Killer Mine Read online

  “Enough to stand an inspection from the fire department? Or how about a review of…”

  “What’re you after?”

  “Blonde named Helen who works at the Lazy Daisy.”

  “Upstairs. Number three.”

  I walked past her and up the creaking stairs, found the door with a metal 3 tacked to it and knocked. Nobody answered and I tried the knob. The door swung inward on a wall of heavy perfume hanging in the musty air and the gentle rumble of Helen’s snore.

  She was stretched out on a bed completely naked, the covers kicked to one side, her mouth open and slack. Her nickname described her well. If she had been larger topside she would have had to walk on all fours. I pulled the covers back over her and shook her awake, listening to her mouth obscenities.

  Finally, her eyes focused on me, her mind worked up a tirade to throw at me, then she recognized me and tried to shrink down beneath the blankets. Her voice was almost a whisper. “Regan… what… I didn’t…”

  “Don’t sweat it, Helen.”

  She got a little more nerve then. “What right have you got to… listen, you got a search warrant or something? You looking for…” Then she saw the expression on my face and whimpered.

  “What’s your deal with Al Argenio, Helen?” I asked her quietly.

  “Al? What’s it to you?”

  “If I ask you again it’ll be the hard way. No trouble making a nice soft twist like you speak up. You should know that.”

  Helen tried to swallow but her mouth was too dry. She shook her head trying to get the meaning of things and failed. “Nothin’s with him and me. So he chases after me alla time. I got tired of it. Alla time breaking things up when I got somethin’ goin’ with somebody who’s got some dough. A dozen times I got a guy who’s willin’ to spend it on me and he steps in and busts it. Alla time promises from him and that’s all. I got tired and told him to blow. Him and his promises. Thinks he’s gonna make it big and gimme what I want. Like hell. He ain’t gonna make nothin’. So whatta I get? Lousy stocks he gimme for a present. Thinks they’re hot stuff and it’s paper. If he’d blow it on the ponies he might make it, but them damn stocks. You wanna see what he gimme? Look in that top drawer.”

  I took her advice and pulled open her dresser. A bundle of blue certificates held together with a rubber band were in the corner. Oil, gold, uranium stocks issued by strange-sounding companies were in the packet, all paying for somebody’s exploratory work and a paid vacation. Buddy Al had a vice, all right. There were thousands like him that kept the sharpshooters in Cadillacs and fancy apartments.

  “He find you yet?” I asked over my shoulder while I jotted down the stock names.

  “If you did, he will. Now I got more trouble. He wants me he better come up with somethin’ real. Right now I got a guy…”

  “Save it,” I said.

  As I went out she yelled, “You tell him…”

  But I shut the door on her and went back downstairs. Annie Schwartz was waiting with her fat arms crossed over her heavy chest trying to force a scowl through the fat wrinkles that seamed her face. “Quick, wasn’t it?” I said.

  Once I got back to Manhattan I called Jerry Nolan at the precinct station and asked him how he was making out.

  He sounded tired and irritable. “Nothing in the files here. I’m checking out the departments upstate and in Jersey but it’s going to be a while before I get anything.” He paused, took a breath and added, “How long can this thing wait?”

  “It can’t, Jerry. Stay on it. Argenio there?”

  “He came and went.”

  “Alone?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “Just curious. I’ll call back later.”

  I held the receiver down, dropped in another dime and dialed the Police Academy building. The officer at the PBX board who took my call told me Argenio had left a few minutes ago. I said thanks and hung up without giving him any more information.

  Then I stood there and grinned a little bit. The bits and pieces were falling into place very neatly.

  Going past the guys who worked in the lab wasn’t easy. Until the trial that afternoon was over I was still a suspended cop better to stay clear of, no matter how good my record had been. A few nodded hello and two stopped to talk a minute, but most discreetly ducked out of the way and left me alone.

  Ted Marker was over by the window, picking the charred remains of clothes from a cardboard box that was labeled as having come from a burned vehicle. I said, “Hi, Ted.”

  He grinned and pushed the box away. “You got plenty of nerve, Pat.”

  “For this job I need it.” I reached in my pocket and took the slugs out I had dug from my wall and held them out to him.

  “Comparison job?”

  “Nope. Chemical analysis of the powder and metal.”

  “Against what?”

  “They were fired through a silencer. Unless it was cleaned thoroughly, which is unlikely, the same traces will be on the silencer.”

  “Maybe,” he said. “Where’s the gimmick?”

  I told him and watched the funny expression come over his face. “You’d better be sure, Regan.”

  “What can I lose? You can get to it, can’t you?”

  “No trouble. It makes me feel squeaky, that’s all.” He looked at the slugs again, his mouth tight. “What can it prove?”

  “A link in the chain.”

  I went to turn away when I saw his books on the shelf. One had a slip of white paper marking off a page and I caught the word SENTOL on it. Ted said, “All the available information is right there.”

  “And you don’t think it was Sentol?”

  He gave a slight shrug. “You never should have passed out. I told you that. Not unless you had a bellyful of aspirin.”

  I swung around. “What?”

  “Aspirin has a nullifying effect on the stimulant effect of Sentol.”

  “Ted,” I said. “I had six aspirins before I went into the Climax that night.”

  His eyes tightened up again. “You sure?”

  “Hell, I can prove it. I bought them and took them right there in the drug store on the corner of the block. The clerk gave me a drink to wash them down.”

  “That could have done it, then. But where did anybody get that damned drug?”

  I let out a small laugh. “I bet I can guess. Want to work it out with me?”

  “Damn right.”

  “When they found the FS-7 at the Ross and Buttick warehouse, see who was on the detail. The records of assignment are available. Then check and see if any Sentol was in that consignment.”

  Ted gave me a startled look and snapped his fingers. “Wait a minute, Regan. For that last part I don’t have to look. I remember it because we tested it in the lab. I was on vacation, but I saw the reports my assistant made out. Damn, I had forgotten about that.”

  “Then get on the first part.”

  “Will do.” He paused, cleared his throat and said, “The trial’s today, isn’t it?”

  “This afternoon. Three o’clock.”

  “Check back afterwards.”

  “Either way it goes?”

  “Either way.”

  I reached George Lucas’ office just before noon and caught him at his desk going over his arguments in my behalf at the trial. He looked up, waved me to a chair and said, “We got a rough one here.”

  “Argenio going to appear?”

  “He doesn’t have to. His signed report is enough.” He put his pencil down and stared at me. “Why?”

  I told him what I thought and watched him absorb it with interest. When I was done he said, “You’re taking long chances with guesswork.”

  “It fits.”

  “Wait till it’s proven.”

  I threw the notes I had taken from Helen the Melons’ room on his desk. “How can I get some fast advice on those stocks?”

  “Try your other lawyers, Selkirk and Selkirk. They’re in that business.”

  “Give them a call.
”

  I listened while George put the call through and rattled off the list. There was a short wait while the elder Selkirk fed him back the information, then he hung up. “They said don’t buy in. It’s junk. Goes at a high price and brings back nothing. Like trying to pull an ace out of a deck with one try. Occasionally one comes through, but the odds are against it, sucker stuff.”

  “What was the stuff worth?”

  “About twenty grand worth in that list. That all?”

  “As much as I know about.”

  “The trap is tightening,” he smiled mirthlessly. “You think there’s more?”

  “You can ask around. He might have a safety deposit box. If you want I know a guy who owes me a favor and wouldn’t mind going through his place looking for it”

  “Don’t take the chance.”

  “Maybe we won’t have to.” I got up and reached for his phone. “Mind?”

  “Help yourself.”

  I told his secretary to get me Jerry Nolan at the precinct station and perched on the desk while I waited for him to answer. He came on and said, “Nolan here.”

  “Regan. What’s new?”

  “Nothing. Now let me eat my lunch.”

  I said, “You remember the dentist that confirmed the false teeth he made for Marcus?”

  “Dr. Leonard Shipp. Now can I go eat?”

  “Sure. See you later.”

  I hung up and told George I’d be back in an hour to go over things with him. He wanted me to stick around, but there wasn’t enough time left any more. Things were beginning to move and I had to keep them going. I found Dr. Shipp listed in the directory and grabbed a cab to his West Side address, made him leave a patient to come out and talk to me, smelling of whatever was going on in his sterile white-tiled room.

  He was a tall, angular man with impatient eyes behind his bifocals, annoyed at the interruption and wanting to get it over with quickly. He was the type who took the word “Police” at face value and didn’t bother to ask about a badge.

  “You had Leo Marcus as a patient for some time, didn’t you?”

  “I thought that was all over.”

  “Other pertinent details have come up.”

  His head jerked in a curt nod. “Mr. Marcus was a patient for some years. I extracted all his teeth and made the plates for him. There was no doubt about it. They were specially made and quite expensive. In fact, I made two sets for him.”

  “Oh?”

  “Very common procedure. A lost or broken set can be very embarrassing.”

  “No difference?”

  “They were identical.”

  “Thanks, doctor.”

  I left him and went back outside. One thing I knew. I had seen all of Leo Marcus’ personal effects when they escorted me through his house to have me reconstruct my actions as far as possible, and there were no other plates among them.

  Regardless of George’s advice, I contacted Walter Milcross at the run-down hotel he called home, a four-story corner building on Eighth Avenue that was due for demolition soon. He was in and working on the junk jewelry he palmed off to the tourists as hot merchandise worth a lot more than the asking price, trading on people’s naturally larcenous instincts. From the color TV and the new suits hanging in his closet he was doing pretty well at it.

  A long time ago I had gotten him out from under a bum rap with a lot of off-duty work and he never forgot it. When I told him I wanted him to go through Argenio’s apartment he looked a little startled, but figured that it would be an easy job as long as nobody was there. A quick check with headquarters got me the information that Al was out in Freeport, Long Island, processing some detail of the Scipio case and wouldn’t be back for a few hours. That was enough for Walter. I told him what to look for and if anything else turned up that didn’t look kosher, to hang on to it. Walter dropped his tools, picked a jacket from the closet, tucked a pair of gloves in his pocket and walked me downstairs to the corner where we split up.

  I looked at my watch. It was almost one o’clock.

  Overhead the grey sky that seemed to cut the taller buildings off at their middle rumbled like a tank being split and the rain filtered down to wash the arena clean enough for the slaughter to begin. I walked across town to George’s building and went up to his office. He hadn’t come back yet, so I went into his office and picked up his phone.

  But Jerry Nolan had gotten back. The tiredness had gone out of his voice, replaced by a guarded tone. “Got something this time, Regan. Guy from Jersey City who answers the description is missing. He was an itinerant stevedore who went heavy on the booze. Just before he disappeared he was flashing a big roll around, but never said where he got it”

  “How close does it fit?”

  “Perfectly. He had a medical record on file with a local doctor, but no identifiable physical characteristics. His prints were in the F.B.I., file from having worked the shipyards during the war. There are police photos in the mug books and some newspaper full-length shots taken when he was arrested in a barroom brawl over there.”

  “It’s coming, Jerry.”

  “You know what I feel like?”

  “I know.” I said softly. “It stinks. It always does.”

  Whatever it was, it rose up in me, that hot, tingling feeling that was pure hate. My hands were wrapped into tight knots that would hardly come loose to dial another number. It was me they wanted, but it wouldn’t be me they’d get. The whole skein was coming unraveled, laying itself out so you could see it in its entirety and not hidden inside a tight ball of fluff.

  Ted Marker answered my ring and I knew that he had come up with it even before he said, “It checked, Regan. I found the gimmick where you said it would be and the chemical analysis nailed it. The detail assignments were in the files and he was there, all right. Do I pass this on?”

  “Not yet, Ted.”

  “Why, Regan? Damn it, we can’t let him go roaming…”

  I stopped him. “Because that doesn’t get me out, that’s why.”

  “Hell, they can’t try you again. They…”

  Once again, I cut him off. “One more call to make. I have to find that stuff I collected on Leo Marcus. It’s the only thing to shake off the negligence angle they’ll slap me with at the trial. I want it all straight and in the record.”

  “I hope you know what you’re doing,” he said. “Where are you?”

  “Safe enough. In George Lucas’ office.” I hung up.

  George Lucas came through the door and piled into his chair behind the desk. He saw my face and drew back at what was written there. “Regan…”

  “It was Al Argenio who took that shot at me. He got the silencer from one of the exhibits of confiscated weapons at the Police Academy and tried to pot me.”

  “Proof?” he asked simply.

  “Availability. He was seen coming out when he returned it to the case.”

  “But he probably wasn’t seen doing it. He’d make a point of that.”

  I shook my head and looked out the window. “He was assigned to the detail that searched the warehouse where the FS-7 and the Sentol was uncovered. He got hold of some of the stuff and delivered it to the right people for a price.”

  “Conjecture, Regan.”

  Slowly, I turned my head and looked at him. “He had made a broad a gift of stocks worth twenty grand.”

  George leaned back, not wanting to get too close to me for some reason. “He was on the force long enough to save that much if one of his investments did pay off. It’s not impossible and it’s damn near unprovable. He could claim that money came from anywhere.”

  He was saying things that put a sour taste in my mouth. “It was a vice with him. Some have it for gambling… cards, the ponies… some have it for dames or liquor… he was one of the funny ones who got eaten alive by playing the stock market. It was a joke around headquarters. His paper was always turned back to the financial page.”

  George shook his head. “If he wore gloves when he shot you
a paraffin test would show nothing. Loose stock investments would show nothing. It won’t hang together, friend.” He cleared his throat and went on. “If he boobytrapped your place with that sleep gas you’d need witnesses. Argenio is as much a pro as you are. He knows all the angles. He wouldn’t let himself be seen. No, Pat, the only thing that will save your tail is finding that Marcus evidence in his possession.”

  “I’m waiting for something on that,” I said. But that sinking feeling was there nevertheless. George was right. It wasn’t enough, after all. I got up and stared out the window peering through the rain at the little people going to their seats to see the circus, not knowing what show was about to play and not caring either. Any show was good enough. Tomorrow the papers would headline it and they’d have a vicarious thrill at having been in the same locale where it had happened.

  The phone rang sharply and George picked it up. He said something then turned to me. “For you, Pat.”

  I said, “Hello?”

  “Walter Milcross, Mr. Regan. I’m down the street from his place. Easy job, but I didn’t find nothing. Couple of stock certificates I lifted, but none of them papers. The place was clean. I would of spotted any place he stashed them only nothing showed.”

  All the life seeped out of me. “You’re sure now, Walter?”

  “You know me, Mr. Regan. Nothing in that place that even was off color outside the finger in the ink bottle.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, crazy, ain’t it? I poked in this here inkwell… people stash keys in them for safe-deposit boxes sometimes thinking nobody wants to get dirtied up with ink and I pulled out a finger. A real one. Damndest thing I ever saw.”

  “Where is it, Walter?”

  “In my pocket wrapped up in an envelope. Like maybe he’s queer for fingers? I knew a guy once…”

  “Bring it over here, Walter. You give it to George Lucas.”

  “Sure, Mr. Regan, but about them papers… you want me to…”

  “You did enough, friend.”

  I hung up. The hot feeling was back. I didn’t need the rest. George sat there patiently while I dialed Ted Marker. I told him what I had and told him to contact Jerry Nolan with the information. George heard it all and his face had a sickly white pallor around the nostrils. Then Ted said, “Pat… Argenio got back about an hour ago. He was in the file room and saw the papers with the detail assignments on them and wanted to know what it was about. Edson didn’t know what was going on and told him I had requested them. I already checked around for Argenio and he’s nowhere to be found. Edson said he looked like he was ready to kill somebody.”