now?”
“Nothing I can’t put off. This case will be in Daly’s hands for a while. Why?”
I took his arm and walked him around the block to my car. We got in and headed toward my apartment.
The mailman was just coming out when we got there. I opened my box and drew out the envelope I addressed to myself at the college and ripped it open. I explained to Pat I had to get the piece of charred evidence out of the hands of those hick cops while I could and he agreed that I did it right.
Pat knew the ropes. He put in three phone calls and when we reached the bank a guard ushered us into the office of the president. By that time he had already received the court order by phone to permit us to inspect the box listed on the slip.
It was there, all of it. Evidence enough to hang George Kalecki a dozen times over. I was really grateful now that I had put a slug into him. The guy was a rat, all right. He had his fingers in more than I had suspected. There were photostats of checks, letters, a few original documents, and plenty of material to indict George Kalecki for every vice charge there was, including a few new ones. But nothing else. Where George had gone there was no need for a court. Hal Kines had tied him up in a knot with both ends leading to the hot squat if he had tried to make a break.
Pat ran over the stuff twice, then scooped them all into a large envelope, signed for it and left. Outside I asked, “What are you going to do with the junk?”
“Go over it carefully. Maybe I can trace these checks even though they are made out to cash and don’t show the signature on the reverse side. How about you?”
“Might as well go home like I planned. Why, got something else?”
Pat laughed. “We’ll see. I had the idea you might be holding out on me, so I wasn’t going to tell you this, but since you’re still playing it square I’ll let you in on something.”
He took a pad from his pocket and flipped it open.
“Here’s some names. See if you know anything about them.”
Pat cleared his throat.
“Henry Strebhouse, Carmen Silby, Thelma B. Duval, Virginia R. Reims, Conrad Stevens.” Pat stopped and waited, looking at me expectantly.
“Strebhouse and Stevens spent a stretch in the big house,” I said. “I don’t know
“You did. Well, you’re not much help, so I’ll tell you. Each one of these people is in city or private sanitariums. Dope fiends.”
“That’s nice,” I mused. “How did it get out?”
“Vice squad reported it.”
“Yeah. I know they’ve been on something like that, but it’s funny it didn’t reach the papers. Oh, I get it. They haven’t found the source yet, huh? What is it?”
Pat gave me a wry grin. “That’s what Daly would like to know. None of them will reveal it. Not even under threat of imprisonment. Unfortunately for us, some of them have connections too high up for us to try to extract information the hard way. We did get this, though, the stuff was delivered to them via a half-witted little guy who didn’t know from nothing.”
I let my breath go out hard. “Bobo!”
“Exactly. They’ll be able to identify him—if they will. Maybe his death will make them clam up even tighter.”
“Damn,” I said softly, “and while they’re under treatment we can’t push them. Our hands are tied very neatly. There’s a tie-up, Pat, there has to be. Look how closely all this is connected. At first glance it seems to be loose as hell, but it’s not. Bobo and Kalecki . . . Hal and Kalecki . . . Hal and Eileen . . . Eileen and Jack. Either we’ve run into an outfit that had a lot of irons in the fire or else it was a chain reaction. Jack started it going and the killer knocked him off, but the killer had to cover up something else. From then on it was a vicious circle. Brother, have we run into something!”
“You’re not kidding. And we’re standing right in the bottom of the well. Now what?”
“Beats me, Pat. I see a little light now, a few things are falling into place.”
“What?”
“I’d rather not say. Just little things. They don’t point in any direction except to tell me that the killer has a damn good motive for all this.”
“Still racing me, Mike?”
“You can bet your pretty white tail on that! I think we’re in the home stretch, but the track is muddy now and bogging us down. We’ll have to plod through it to firmer ground before we can start whipping it up.” I grinned at him. “You won’t beat me out, Pat.”
“What do you bet?”
“A steak dinner.”
“Taken.”
I left him then. He grabbed a cab back to the office and I went up to my apartment. When I took off my pants I felt for my wallet. It was gone. That was nice. Had two hundred berries in my billfold and I couldn’t afford to lose it. I put my pants back on and went down to the car. Not there, either. I thought. I might have dropped it in the barber shop, but I paid that bill with change I had in my side pocket. Damn.
I climbed back in the car and turned it over, then headed south to Charlotte’s apartment. The lobby door was open and I walked up. I rang the bell twice, but no one answered. Someone was inside, though, and I could hear a voice singing
“What’s the matter,” I asked her, “doesn’t the bell ring anymore?”
“Sho’ nuff, Mistah Hammah. Ah think so. Come in. Come in.”
When I walked in the door Charlotte came running out to meet me. She had on a stained smock and a pair of rubber gloves. “Hey, honey,” she smiled at me. “You sure made that trip fast. Goody, goody, goody.” She threw her arms around me and tilted her head for a kiss. Kathy stood there watching, her teeth flashing whitely in her mouth.
“Go ‘way,” I grinned. Kathy turned her back so I could kiss her boss. Charlotte sighed and laid her head against my chest.
“Going to stay now?”
“Nope.”
“Oh , . . why? You just got here.”
“I came to get my wallet.” I walked over to the sofa with her and ran my hand down behind the cushions. I found it. The darn thing had slipped out of my hip pocket while I was asleep and stuck there.
“Now I suppose you’re going to accuse me of stealing all your money,” Charlotte pouted.
“Idiot.” I kissed the top of her blonde head. “What are you doing in this outfit?” I fingered the smock.
“Developing pictures. Want to see them?” She led me to her darkroom and turned out the lights. As she did so, a red glow came from the shield over the sink. Charlotte put some films in the developer, and in a few moments printed up a pic of a guy sitting in a chair, hands glued to the metal arms, and a strained expression on his face. She flicked the overhead on and looked over the photo.
“Who’s this?”
“A clinical patient. As a matter of fact, that is one that Hal Kines had released from the charity ward of the city hospital to undergo treatment in our clinic.”
“What’s the matter with him? The guy looks scared to death.”
“He’s in a state of what is commonly known as hypnosis. Actually there’s nothing more to it than inducing in the patient a sense of relaxation and confidence. In this case, the patient was a confirmed kleptomaniac. It wasn’t found out until he was admitted to the city ward after being found nearly dead of starvation on the streets.
“When we got to the bottom of his mental status, we found that in childhood he had been deprived of everything and had to steal to get what he wanted. Through a friend, I got him a job and explained why he had been like that. Once understanding his condition, he was able to overcome it. Now he’s doing quite well.”
I put the pic back in a rack and looked the place over. She had certainly spent enough fixing up the darkroom. I saw where I was going to have to earn more than I did to support a wife who had such a lavish hobby.
Charlotte must have read my mind. “After we’re married,” she smiled, “I’ll give all this up and have my
