brownstone was cluttered with a kind of tool shed, a wooden pigeon coop, and the tall brick doorway shelter down. The pigeon coop was in direct line with the repaired windowpane.
I went down in the elevator, along to the building across the alley, and up to the roof door. I used my keys to open it, stepped out into the sun. The Kezars’ open window was just across the alley, the wooden pigeon coop was at least six feet wide. I went over every inch of the coop. It had been four months, there had been snow and rain, the wood of the coop was old and soft, and the bullet had gone in cleanly. But I saw it.
High up on the rear wall of the coop through the wire mesh and above the top roost. It was that close to having missed the coop and flying so far no one would ever have found it. Life can be a matter of an inch. A large bullet, from the look of it, buried in the gray wood and almost invisible even up close. No one could have seen it from Kezar’s window, even if anyone had been looking. No one had. Not until now.
A vital bullet. Not three shots that night, but four. I had heard only three, so when had the fourth been fired? Why hadn’t I heard it? Now I was getting excited.
I went down, back to Kezar’s building, and up to the sixth floor again. The door to the stairs was close to the door of 6-C. I went down the stairs to the landing where the one gun, the. 45 automatic, had been found. I searched the floor and the walls as high as I could reach. I looked for any crevice, anything loose, any hiding place. There was nothing.
I hung out the window on three landings. Nothing was loose outside, nothing was hanging-the police wouldn’t have missed anything hanging anyway. I lit a cigarette, studied the stairwell that stretched silent up and down. If I’d just shot a man, was in a hurry to leave a gun on the stairs as if dropped, what would I have done? Just thrown it down.
I went up to the turn of the stairs between the landings of the fifth and sixth floors. A gun thrown from here would have been found on the fifth floor where it had been. I looked around the bare half-landing. There was noth… the banister post! One of those heavy metal posts spaced along all stairway banisters, hollow, six to seven inches square, with a domed metal cap!
I pulled at the cap, cursing my one hand. It shifted, but wouldn’t come off. If I couldn’t get it off…? I looked closer at the cap. There was a recent dent where the sleeve fitted over the post, holding the cap tightly on.
Back in 6-C, I searched the kitchen until I found a hammer. On the half-landing again, on my knees, I hit up at the cap on the hollow post. Once, twice. It flew off and fell with an echoing clang and clatter down the silent stairwell. I stood up.
The small, foreign automatic was wedged down inside the hollow post. Everyone wanted a bonanza. I had mine!
I pulled the gun out by the barrel, wrapped it in my handkerchief. It could still have fingerprints. It would have been hidden in a hurry, time needed to bang the banister cap tight, probably with the heavy. 45 the police had found.
Up in 6-C again, I went to the telephone. I called Captain Gazzo. He was out. I talked to his female sergeant, “Get him on the radio, it’s urgent. Tell him I found the second gun that shot Sid Meyer. Tell him to find Irving and Jenny Kezar, pick them up, bring them to their apartment on East Seventieth.”
I hung up, sat down to wait. I was nervous. If I was right, I’d solve more than just Sid Meyer’s murder. I’d close the books on all the murders. The whole answer.
My throat was dry as a desert. I went out to the kitchen to see if the Kezars had a cold beer in the refrigerator. Two steps into the kitchen, I sensed the shape behind me. Too late.
Weak from the months in the hospital, the blow on my head knocked me flat. Out for maybe a minute, then aware of movement in the living room, the outer door closing. I struggled up. Too late, no way to catch whoever it had been now. Kezar? Jenny? Who else? Someone who had come in and hidden while I was on the stairs.
I swayed out into the living room. The small automatic was gone from the table near the telephone- handkerchief and all. In the kitchen I found some beer, drank it in gulps. They had the gun. Did I have enough without it? I wasn’t sure. I…
The telephone rang. Calling to gloat? No-Captain Gazzo.
“I picked them up, Dan. Be there in half an hour.”
“You found them? Both? Where?”
“Kezar at his office, Jenny at his club. I’m on my way.”
I hung up, sat. They couldn’t have hit me and been where Gazzo found them. Then who had hit me, taken the gun? Why? I sat and went over it all in my mind. I was sure. Yet…?
Someone had the gun, but as the day darkened outside toward evening, I realized that I had one advantage-Kezar and Jenny couldn’t know I’d lost the gun. With the rest, and a little luck and fast talking, it could be enough to corner them.
When the outer door opened and Gazzo herded them both in, I looked straight at Irving Kezar.
“I’ve got the whole thing, Kezar,” I said. “I know it all.”
CHAPTER 27
If I needed more proof, Jenny Kezar’s ashen face would have been it. The heavy, ugly woman aged another ten years in the cheap old blue coat she wore again. Irving Kezar had more experience, his round, acne-scarred face told me nothing.
“What the hell do you know?” Kezar said.
Gazzo let me talk. I told them the whole story of the big deal in Wyandotte-Ramapo Construction, Ultra-Violet Controls, Mr. Kincaid, Charley Albano, Kezar, Lawrence Dunlap and all. Even Andy Pappas’s laughing remarks to Stella, that showed Andy knew all about the dirty affair. Gazzo nodded. Kezar shrugged.
“So what, Fortune?” the pudgy lawyer said. “It’s not your business, and New Jersey isn’t even Captain Gazzo’s jurisdiction. Anyway, we’re all legal, all covered if no one talks.”
“Murder in New York is Gazzo’s jurisdiction,” I said.
“What murder?” Kezar said.
“Sid Meyer’s. There weren’t any gunmen. Meyer wanted to be cut in on your Wyandotte affair, so you killed him.”
“You’re crazy, Fortune. You saw me leave.”
“Clever,” I said. “When you got here with Meyer, Jenny was in another room. Sid pulled his ace threat on you. You got into a fight and shot him. Probably a mistake, but he was dead, and you and Jenny were with him. You’d spotted me tailing, knew I’d be downstairs. But you got lucky. A small gun, close to Meyer, the windows closed with the drapes shut, and me in the lobby at the moment-the shot wasn’t heard. You sweated, but when I didn’t come up, you cooked a plan right then to use me.
“Your gun is registered to you, I’ll bet, but you had another gun around that couldn’t be traced-from a hood friend, I expect. Meyer was a little man. You opened the window, propped it up, broke a pane, and hung Meyer on the frame with a wooden coat hanger. Meyer had ripped your Chesterfield, you didn’t want to be wearing it when the police found you, so you changed coats. You broke the door chain, went down to the lobby, made sure the janitor saw you leave as well as me.
“Up here, Jenny gave you a few minutes-sewed your Chesterfield while she waited. Then she shot Meyer again with the forty-five, unhooked the coat hanger, pushed him out. A big gun, the windows open now, the shots would be heard at least by me. She got out fast down the stairs with both guns. You knew about the loose cap on the banister post. Jenny slipped your gun inside the post, hammered it tight with the forty-five, dropped the forty- five on the fifth floor, went down to another floor, and waited until she heard me go up. Then she appeared as if she’d just come in.”
Kezar licked his lips. “Christ, I sound real smart. So why not just carry my own gun away if it was so dangerous?”
“I might have stopped you downstairs, kept you with me after the faked shots until the police came. There you’d be, with the gun. You don’t take unnecessary risks. That’s why you left the gun in the post all these months. It hadn’t been found, it was safer to leave it than risk moving it with the police watching.”
Kezar’s face glistened. He looked at Gazzo, tried to grin. “I’d get so mad over Sid wanting a piece of the
