The thin man scowled, nodded. "Just finished working him up. The doc"s in talking with the lieutenant now." He nodded his head toward the morgue. "You can go in if you like."
Liddell nodded his thanks, headed for the white enamelled door set in the back of the office. As he pushed the door open, a blast of hot, carbolic-laden air enveloped him. At the far end of the room, a small group of men were huddled around one of several white examining tables. Liddell recognized the homicide lieutenant he had encountered in Laury Lane"s house earlier in the evening.
Lieutenant Murray showed no signs of enthusiasm as the private detective walked up. He muttered something in a low voice that caused his companion, a short rotund man with a thatch of untidy white hair, to look up.
"You Dr. Mizner?" Liddell addressed the short man.
The medical examiner nodded, studied Liddell curiously. "You were the employer of the dead man?"
Liddell nodded, looked from the M.E. to the homicide man and back. "I thought maybe you might have something to clear the kid. Some evidence that he died before she did or that he didn"t fire the gun? Anything that I can hang my hat on."
Dr. Mizner nodded. "We"ve got plenty for you, my boy. He was dead before that bullet ever hit him." He nodded to the canvas covered bulge on the table. "Death was caused by a depressed fracture at the base of the skull." He picked up a sheaf of papers, riffled through it. "The woman didn"t kill him, either, from the looks of it. We did a dermal nitrate test soon"s we brought her in. Negative."
"Doesn"t mean a thing," Murray growled. "Lots of negative reactions show up even after you do fire a gun."
The M.E. shook his head. "Not in this case. Some guns with a tight breech don"t kick back nitrates, but we did a test on this gun. The test showed positive." He looked over at Liddell. "I"ve just finished telling the lieutenant that I won"t go along with his theory of the killing."
Murray growled deep in his chest, glared at Liddell. "Okay, so you prove to me you"re right and I"ll admit I was wrong. I"ve checked both Arms and the girl"s manager, Murphy. They both claim your story about a big diamond deal is for the birds. Got a better story that"ll stand up?"
Liddell shook his head. "Arms threw the fear of G.o.d into Murphy. He got him on the phone right after you checked him. They got together on a story."
"It"s your word against theirs. Can you make it stick?"
Liddell tugged at his lower lip with thumb and forefinger. "I don"t know. The retainer was paid in cash, and Murphy insisted that it be kept just between Tate himself and me. But he did admit the story in front of a witness."
"Good. Who?"
"His girl. She was at his place when I got there. She"s a redhead from the 1954 Revue. 1954 Revue. Her name"s Claire Readon." Her name"s Claire Readon."
Murray tugged his notebook from his pocket, copied the name into it. "Know where she lives?"
Liddell shook his head. "No, but it shouldn"t be hard to find out. Joe Gates is the press agent for the show. He knows where all the girls live. Sometimes he has to work up a party at a moment"s notice." Liddell pulled out his wallet, fingered through the cards. "He"s at the Edison Hotel. Has a combination office and apartment there." He consulted his watch. "It"s about 5:10 now. We should be able to get him."
"Not we. I"ll get him," Murray growled. He stamped out of the morgue into the M.E."s office. After a few minutes he was back, his face long.
"Get him?" Liddell wanted to know.
The homicide man nodded. "I got him."
"He tell you where to reach her?"
Murray nodded. "Bellevue morgue. She was killed by a hit-and-run driver about three o"clock this morning."
The Hotel Lowell was on an old stone building on a side street off Seventh Avenue on 47th Street. Its facade was dirty and neglected-looking. Inside, the lobby was dingy, lightless and dusty. A couple of discouraged-looking rubber plants were placed around it in an attempt at decoration, and half a dozen chairs were scattered in strategic places in a futile attempt to make it look cozy.
A gaunt, grey-haired old man with a pince-nez on a sleazy black ribbon stood behind the registration desk, looked askance at Johnny Liddell"s unshaven chin, deep lines of fatigue.
"Miss Readon has had an accident. She"s not here." He stopped picking his teeth, sucked at them noisily. "Matter of fact, I hear she"s dead."
"How about a room-mate? Understood she shared a room with another girl in the show." Liddell consulted a pencilled note on the back of an envelope. "Leona Sabell." He looked up. "She in?"
"Who"d you say you were?" the old man demanded.
"Tell her I"m a detective working on her room-mate"s accident." He interpreted the look of disbelief in the room clerk"s eyes. "A private detective. Insurance."
His disbelief washed out, the old man sat down at a neglected looking keyboard, jabbed in a key, talked into the mouthpiece. He tugged out the key and nodded. "She"s in 312." He lost interest in Liddell, went back to an open copy of the Mirror. Mirror.
A blonde opened the door to 312 in response to his knock. She was wearing a hostess gown that clung closely to a figure he considered worth clinging to. Her thick, glossy blonde hair was caught just above the ears with a bright blue ribbon, then allowed to cascade down over her shoulders.
"You the insurance d.i.c.k?" She looked him over, stood aside and followed him into the small living room.
"Cozy place you"ve got here." Liddell tossed his hat on an end table.
"It"s a dump and you know it," the blonde contradicted him. From close up she looked older than she had in the dim light of the hall. The bright table light mercilessly exposed the fine network of lines under her eyes and the losing fight her makeup was waging with the lines at the sides of her mouth. She looked tired. "You didn"t come up here to write the place up for House Beautiful. What"s on your mind?"
"Claire."
The blonde"s lower lip trembled slightly. "The poor kid. Did they get the one that did it?"
Liddell shook his head.
"What kind of a rat can he be? To hit a kid and let her lay there in the gutter to die like a dog?" she said bitterly.
"I don"t think she was. .h.i.t there." Liddell picked up two cigarettes from a cup on the coffee table, lit them, and pa.s.sed one to the girl. "I"ve had a good look at the place. My guess is she was driven there and dumped."
"Why do you say that?"
Liddell shrugged. "No sign of skid marks, for one thing. For another, when a car plows into somebody, a lot of dirt is dislodged from under the fender. No dirt. In fact, no signs of a hit-and-run."
The blonde stood with the cigarette halfway to her lips. "What are you trying to tell me?"
"I think the kid was murdered. Her body was dumped there in an attempt to make it look like a hit-and-run." He took a deep drag on the cigarette, let the smoke dribble from his nostrils. "She was crossing from north to south on a one way street, yet the fracture is on the left side of her skull."
"So?"
"The street runs east. If a car tagged her, it would have thrown the right side of her head against the curb."
"Unless it was going the wrong way on the one-way street."
"Unless it was going the wrong way on the one-way street," he conceded. "But my guess is that there was no car."
"But why should anyone go to all that trouble to kill a kid like Claire? She didn"t have an enemy in the world. Everybody was crazy about her."
Liddell watched while the girl crossed the room. The tired lines in her face weren"t duplicated in her figure. "You were with her last night. Up at Murph"s place?"
The blonde nodded. "Four of the other girls and I."
"What happened?"
"Nothing. Murph picked us up at the stage door after the show. We went up to his place. I left the party about two with the rest of the girls. Claire stayed on."
"She didn"t leave the party at all?"
The blonde shook her head. "n.o.body did."
"You"re sure of that?"
"Positive. It was a pretty good party, but n.o.body left until it broke." She took the cigarette from between her lips, studied the carmined end. "Of course, some of the girls and their dates wandered off into other rooms for awhile, but n.o.body left."
"Claire wander off?"
The blonde caught her full lower lip. "No more than anybody else. They were in Murph"s study for awhile."
"Where"s that located in relation to the living room?"
"You"re blowing up a dry well, mister." The blonde shook her head. "The study"s at the back of the apartment and they would have had to cross the whole living room to get out. I"ll swear on anything you want that neither Claire nor Murph left that apartment for even ten minutes."
"How long did Claire know Murph?"
The blonde shrugged. "Six or seven months. She met him at a party over at Lee Stevens" place. There were a lot of radio people there. Claire thought Murph could help her break into radio."
"Why?"
"He was a big wheel in radio until he took over the Lane dame. I guess he"ll go back into it. He has a lot of connections. Claire thought he could help her." She took a last nervous drag at her cigarette, then crushed it out. "The poor kid. She wanted so much-and the way she had to end up." She shook her head. "I think you"re wrong. There"s n.o.body had any reason to hurt that kid. She never did a thing to a soul."
"Did she ever mention Louis Arms?"
"The hood that runs that joint out on the south sh.o.r.e?"
Liddell nodded.
"Never. I"m sure she didn"t know the guy. Why?"
"I don"t know. I have a hunch Arms could be the guy who had her killed."
The blonde"s jaw dropped. "You"re crazy. Why would a big shot like Arms knock off a kid that"s hardly got the hayseed out of her ears? This was her first year in town."
"I don"t know. Arms doesn"t like to leave loose threads hanging around. Maybe Claire was a loose thread." He reached over, took another cigarette, chain-lit it from the one he held. "She ever mention Laury Lane?"
"Just that Murph was her manager. I don"t think she ever met her. Lane was pretty snooty, you know. Didn"t mix with chorus girls." She ridged her forehead, regarded him through narrowed eyes. "How would she be a loose end?"
"I don"t know. All I know is that Arms is pretty anxious to keep something pretty quiet. One by one the people who knew about it are waking up dead. Maybe he thought Claire knew about it."
The blonde shook her head. "I never heard her mention the guy"s name, and she used to spill the works to me. Like I was her old lady or something." She continued to shake her head. "I never heard her mention his name."
Liddell got up, walked over, recovered his hat. "Okay, Lee. That"s what I wanted to know. Maybe I"ll be seeing you around."
The blonde split her soft lips in a grin. "If you don"t, it"s your fault." She pulled herself up from the couch, paid no attention to the expanse of thigh the open gown revealed. "Do you have to go?"
Liddell nodded. "Yeah. You see, there are only two people left who know what Arms is so anxious to conceal. I"m going to pay a visit to the other one."
Mike Murphy had aged ten years in ten hours. His hair was rumpled, there were discolored sacs under his eyes and the dark shadow of a beard glinted on his chin as he opened the door to Liddell.
"Liddell! I"ve been trying to reach you. Did you hear about the redhead?"
Liddell nodded, walked into the apartment, closed the door behind him. "I heard. I"m also convinced it was no hit-and-run."
The big man headed for the bar, found the bourbon bottle empty, settled for some scotch. He tossed it off. "You think it was murder?"
Liddell nodded. "A pretty sloppy murder, at that."
Murphy nodded, paced the room. "Sloppy or neat, the result"s the same. The kid"s dead." He stopped, stared at Liddell. "But why? She didn"t know a thing. I told you I didn"t tell her anything."
"Maybe she overheard or took part in a telephone conversation that made her dangerous."
Murphy licked at his lips. "You-you think when Arms called here? How could he know she was here?"
Liddell walked over to the bar, helped himself to a drink. "I don"t mean that call." He drained his gla.s.s, set it down. "The earlier call."
"I don"t follow you, Liddell."
"I got a call around one or one-thirty. It was a girl. She said she was Lane. Asked me to get out there right away."
"So?"
Liddell shrugged. "Lieutenant Murray checked the local operator. Lane never made a call to New York that night." He poured some more liquor into the gla.s.s, swirled it around. "Funny, huh?"
"A scream. Sounds like you"re making out a case against yourself. Then you didn"t get a call?"
"I got the call all right. And it"s not me I"m making the case out against."
"Who then?"
"You. That call was made from right here."
The big man"s jaw dropped. "You crazy? You said yourself you heard the shot. What are you trying to pull, Liddell?"
Liddell grinned humorlessly. "Shows how dumb I really am. I thought it was a shot." He looked at Murphy. "That"s what I was supposed to think. That way it set the time of the kill and gave some people an alibi."
"Look, Liddell," Murphy growled. "I can account for every minute of my time. From show break at eleven right through to-"
"Nice big place you"ve got here," Liddell cut him off. "Living room, couple of bedrooms. A study, too?"
The big man"s eyes narrowed. "Get to the point."
"I"ll bet the study"s pretty well set up. Ping pong, maybe. Big leather chairs. The works, eh?"
"There a law against being comfortable? What"s the furnishing of my study got to do with it?"