The Crazy Mixed-Up Corpse Read online

  He cursed. “It’s half, that’s what’s wrong. Half of the facts I need.” He took a big step in towards me and spread his hands, doubling them up into fists as big as cauliflowers. “There musta been something else besides this bill.”

  “Stop trying to scare me to death and make some sense.”

  That confused him. This time he blinked.

  “What are you driving at?”

  He took a cigarette from a plastic bowl on the end table and lit it with the ornamental lighter. It was heavy. The gesture seemed to calm him down a little.

  “Look,” I said. “I’m the one that’s in the dark. You’re the guy who was with T. T. Thomas when you found this mine. What are the numbers? Grid co-ordinates or something? And what’s El Ombre – the name of the mine, or what? Believe me, you’ve got everything I ever had that belonged to T. T. Thomas. So you have to explain this rodeo to me. Because I wasn’t invited and I don’t even have a ticket.”

  For some reason, Holly Hill was on my side.

  “Yeah. Tell him all about it, Drill. He’s a smart cookie. Maybe he could find the joker for us. We could cut him in –”

  “No dice, Holly,” Drill growled. “The stakes are too big. The less coyotes on the trail the better.”

  “You can keep your money, Drill,” I told him. “All I want is the news of the day.”

  “Okay,” he boomed. “I’ll tell you that much.” He took a deep breath and flung a scornful look at Tom Long. Then he got back to me again. He still looked scornful. “I told you about Texas. Me and Old T.T. found ourselves a big deal up in the hills. A cave-in on a trail too far off the main drag to be marked on any map. Well, we cleared it away ’cause we were on a uranium hunt. You heard of uranium, Noon? Worth a fortune these days. Well, we stumbled on an iron door buried in the side of the hill. Door no bigger’n that picture frame on the wall.” He jerked a thumb. There was a landscape of cows and grass on the wall, about three feet by four. I got the picture. “You know what we found in there? A cave a kid couldn’t walk around in without bending over. And we found jewels and gold cups and all fancy doodads. More’n I could count. There was tons of the stuff. I wasn’t ever much for history but I know Texas and all them Spanish fellers that settled down there in the last century before they run off to California or were run out by Texans. So old T.T. and me figured we’d finally found the pot o’ gold at the end of the rainbow.”

  “Sure,” I said. “But getting the pot home is the biggest job of all.”

  His eyes held new respect for me.

  “You called it, Noon. There we were. Me and T.T. Millionaires in a minute. But we’d been on the trail too long. Our food and water was about gone. Equipment all fouled up. Even the dang-fangled Geiger counter was busted and our pack mules had wandered off ’cause a desert storm whipped up while we were in the cave. It just wasn’t possible to do anything with it at the time. So what would you have done?”

  “That’s easy,” I said. “Carried everything I could in my pockets, marked it off on a map. Go back to civilization to recharge my battery and come back with a truck to cart the stuff away. That it?”

  He nodded. “Dead on the nose. We filled our pockets with the small gold trinkets, and resealed the door and covered it over. And T.T. marked it on the map. El Ombre was the name somebody had carved out on the inside wall of the cave. Seemed as good a name as any.”

  “So it wasn’t a mine really? Just a cache where somebody stashed a miniature Fort Knox.”

  “That’s it. Me and T.T. sold the junk we found to a local fence in Houston. We didn’t want no trouble with the cops or historical societies or junk like that. So we got a lot of folding money and did it up in style for a change.”

  “Finders keepers doesn’t always apply,” I admitted. “You did the right thing. But I still don’t understand what’s bothering you. Those numbers sound like latitude and longitude. But since this isn’t the sea and on land, they must be grid co-ordinates which should place it exactly for you. What’s the beef, Drill?”

  “Noon, I know Texas like the back of my palm. Them numbers would set me down in the heart of Dallas some place. And we were nowhere near Dallas.”

  “I see. Old T.T. got clever.”

  “Too clever.” Memory made him wince. “He saw Holly here and his eyes got bigger’n his brain. So he hightailed it for New York with her, thinking he could get back to the place whenever he had to.”

  “It’s too much for me, Drill. Why would a guy write a set of wrong figures on a bill if he’s the only one that intends to see it? It doesn’t make sense. He couldn’t count on getting caught by you.”

  His smile was deadly. “He knew I was hot on his trail. T.T. was no dope. Which is why I let him mark her off in the first place. But those numbers are no good, I tell you. They must tie in with something else.”

  Holly Hill snorted impatiently.

  “Well, I don’t get it either. You were there before, Drill. You ought to be able to go right back to the spot and find it.”

  I shook my head at her for him.

  “Holly, you could know something is buried in Central Park but if you didn’t know the exact spot of earth, you’d spend the rest of your life digging. Drill told you it was an unmarked area they went into.”

  “Women ain’t ever got any sense,” Drill muttered. Just for once, he was sharing an opinion with me. “Think, Noon. You make heads or tails outa this bill, maybe we can cut some pie after all.”

  Tom Long stirred in his chair. The move was so abrupt that three pairs of eyes swung in his direction. Mine, Drill’s and Holly Hill’s.

  “I knew it,” Drill breathed fiercely. “Damned if I didn’t know it. The chink knows something.”

  “Come on, now,” I said. “All he did was move around in his chair. You can get tired just sitting.”

  “Drill’s right,” Holly Hill snapped. “I was watching him. His eyes lighted up like searchlights all of a sudden. Pump him, Drill.”

  “Drill him, Pump,” I sighed wearily. “Groucho Marx would have loved that one. Look, you two. Let’s cut out all the rough stuff. Four people are dead already and –”

  I was interrupted. But not by the person I expected to interrupt me. Tom Long was sitting up and speaking to Drill.

  “No. Big man is right, Mr. Noon. His friend did leave valuable thing with me. I have it.”

  “But, Tom –”

  “I no tell you before. No think important. Now I know. It has been too much trouble. Too much death.”

  Carver Calloway Drill had heard enough. He towered above Tom Long’s chair like a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day balloon.

  “Spit it out, slant eyes. I could still go back and find that kid of yours if I have to and I can do better than blowing up stores if I have to.”

  Tom Long’s expression was something that no written words could have described as he stared up at Drill.

  “No need to say that.” His voice was still dead. “You bad man. Friend to you was kind. So kind. He good to Tom Long and children.”

  “Don’t gas to me about T.T.” Drill was booming again. “Just hand it over.”

  Tom Long’s little hands apologized. “Not here. In my store. You come. I give.”

  “What is it, anyway?” Holly Hill wanted to know.

  The little hands spread wide enough to hold a small dog. “Two-dollar bill. Me partners with Mr. Thomas. Kind man ask me to hold for him. I hold. But now want no more. No more trouble. You come. I give to you. You leave family alone.”

  Before Carver Calloway Drill could answer him or push his face in, the door chimes went into action again. I kept my face frozen as Drill whirled on Holly Hill with a question written all over his face. But deep inside of me my heart hammered. It had to be that fine old watchdog of the New York Homicide Squad. Captain Michael Monks.

  It wouldn’t be Western Union …

  Holly Hill’s eyes left mine for a split second, which gave me just enough time to use the cigarette lighter on the desk f
or something else besides an ornament or lighting cigarettes.

  I flung it like a dart. And Holly Hill was the dart board.

  TWENTY-TWO

  She didn’t duck fast enough. Damn it, she didn’t duck. The heavy silver body of the thing thudded off the side of her head like a baseball. And I had that terrible flood of guilt that a pitcher must get when he dusts a batter off. Not meaning to hit, just wanting the batter to fall away from the plate. To keep from digging in.

  Holly Hill’s eyeballs rolled and she hit the floor as if she’d been sandbagged by a passing aeroplane. The .45 went off in her hand and lead whined around the living-room. Tom Long leapfrogged over the green divan and cowered behind it. There wasn’t time to see anything else. Carver Calloway Drill was coming at me with everything he had, trying to tug a gun free from his hip while he was doing it.

  The door chimes were still disturbing Beethoven in his grave when I rushed to meet him. I was strictly outclassed in the bare measurements class but I couldn’t let him reach the hardware store.

  When he saw what I was up to, he forgot about his hip pocket and brought his big hands up.

  I came at him fast, looking for all the world as if I was going to throw a right. At the last second, I lowered my head and butted. He didn’t expect that because he knew my head was in no condition to serve as a battering ram. But I butted anyway. Real hard, ignoring the lump under my scalp.

  It hurt like hell, but the billygoat trick worked.

  I caught him in the solar plexus and had the satisfaction of seeing him stagger back until the end table behind him cut his legs out from under him. He fell like a piano from a snapped cable.

  He was trying to get up when I bounded around the table. He looked as big as two Sherman tanks now that he was mad. I didn’t wait for him to make his feet. I was giving away too much as it was.

  The chair in my hands came down with everything I had behind it. And it didn’t splinter or break away, the way they do in TV Westerns. Carver Calloway Drill’s face disappeared from view as the chair met his head. Then he rolled over and went to sleep on the floor.

  I got to the door just in time. They were just beginning to get some ideas about knocking the door down. I swung it open.

  A whole arsenal was staring me in the face. Police Positives, sawed-off shotguns, and my old friend, the sub-Thompson. But there was also my other old friend, Captain Mike Monks. And his face was negative.

  “Welcome home,” I said. “And come on in.”

  “Hold it, men,” Monks said wearily. “If Noon is still on his feet, that means he’s in control.”

  They all shouldered in like the small army they were. Monks sighed and drew me to one side. Pretty soon, Holly Hill’s apartment was a beehive of police activity.

  Tom Long came out from behind the divan with his small hands raised in surrender and a couple of the plain clothes men started to do something about reviving Holly Hill and Carver Calloway Drill.

  “Mike, I thought you’d never get here. But I’ve got everything and everybody connected with this crazy case. Wait till I give you the details –”

  “Save it, Ed.” His frown was enormous. “You’re under arrest. You’ve broken too many rules too many times.”

  I stared at him. His eyes weren’t friendly.

  “Mike, I tell you I’ve cracked this thing for you. I can tell you all about that crazy stiff you got in the morgue. Don’t you want to –”

  “Save it for Headquarters,” he snarled. “Allison!” He had turned to one of his top-coated colleagues. “Cuff this guy. And if you let him out of your sight, I’ll have you pounding a beat in Brooklyn.”

  Monks had no more to say to me. Allison cuffed me without comment. And as the shiny bracelets encircled my wrists, I buttoned my lip. Something was on Monks’s mind besides my stepping on his toes so many times. But I didn’t know what.

  I still didn’t know what until we had reached Headquarters. The cops piled the whole bunch of us into three cars and we took the long, dreary ride down to the big grey building where Captain Monks made his home.

  We wound up in Monks’s office. Not all of us. Just Tom Long and Holly Hill and Carver Calloway Drill. We were all in handcuffs. And there were two big detectives standing at the door to make sure that nobody tried anything funny. The drive downtown had snapped Holly Hill and Drill out of it. But they looked awful. Two bigger hangovers didn’t exist anywhere in the world.

  “Close the door, Allison,” Monks barked as he moved around the desk to his worn leather swivel. “And let’s wrap this thing up.”

  Allison did as he was told. I stared at the handcuffs on my wrists and looked up at Monks.

  “This is no way to treat an old friend, Mike,” I reminded him. The clean white bandage above his left eyebrow made him look ludicrous. But he was nobody to laugh at.

  “You need a lesson, Noon. And that’s just the first one. And before I begin this discussion let me say that anything you say can be used against you as evidence.”

  That threw me. “Evidence of what? I told you who shot who –”

  I didn’t like the crafty look on his face. “That hasn’t anything to do with shooting.”

  “Then what are the charges?”

  He pyramided his fingers.

  “The bomb squad did a thorough job on Tom Long’s store. We know how the explosion started. Somebody planted a home-made time bomb. Two pounds of nitro starch. It’s a miracle nobody got killed.”

  He was confusing me. He could see he was confusing me.

  “Your office clock was used to time the bomb off,” he finished.

  TWENTY-THREE

  The office was quieter than Grant’s tomb.

  “Come again,” I said.

  “You heard me. Your clock. I’ve seen it often enough. I never though you’d mix with murder, Noon.” He was calling me Noon for the benefit of his men. But he was calling me something else and I didn’t like it.

  “You calling me a bomber, Monks? Have you lost your mind?”

  He shook his big head. “All I know is that you and Long here have been thicker than thieves since this whole mess started. What am I supposed to think?”

  Tom Long coughed. His small head wagged.

  “No. Big mistake. Mr. Noon know nothing about this.”

  Monks shifted his attention. He frowned at the little man who’d almost killed him, even accidentally.

  “Suppose you tell us about it, Long.”

  Tom Long lifted his head proudly. “Me know Mr. Thomas. Buy little girls toys. Him leave dollar bill with me. Look worried. Say he come back soon. Make me rich. No more have to work hard with laundry. No come back. Then all bad things happen.”

  Monks was making notes on the calendar pad on his desk.

  “You didn’t know anything else, Long?”

  “No.” Tom Long’s eyes glittered with honesty. “Never ask. I believe Mr. Thomas. He good man.”

  Monks grunted. “You willing to swear that Ed Noon here never knew anything about you and Thomas?”

  “Me swear. Mr. Noon good man. Also kind to Tom Long and family.”

  “Tom,” I interrupted. “I wish you’d told me about you and Thomas before. I might have been able to help.”

  “I’m glad he didn’t tell you,” Monks growled. “You’ve been enough of a nuisance already. This big kind man he keeps mentioning – is that the carved-up stiff?”

  “It is. T. T. Thomas. I told you about him on the phone.” I turned to indicate Holly Hill and Carver Calloway Drill, who were alternately glowering and sulking in their chairs. Drill looked as if he’d love to drive a steamroller over me. “Allow me to introduce two of the late Mr. Thomas’ very dear friends. Holly Hill of Blue Turkey fame. And Thomas’ partner and buddy, Carver Calloway Drill. The big bad man from Texas.”

  “Shut your fool mouth,” boomed Drill. “I ain’t talking to nobody till I see my lawyer.”

  Monks smiled his Police Academy smile.

  “I’ll let
you know when you can see a lawyer.” He folded his arms. “Now somebody tell me all about T. T. Thomas and his naked corpse. And this dollar bill. What in hell was everybody looking for so badly?”

  Holly Hill and Carver Calloway Drill exchanged glances. He shook his big head at her. She shrugged, which meant they weren’t going to say anything. Which left it up to me.

  Monks growled again. “Well. Somebody say something. And quick. We haven’t got all day.”

  I cleared my throat.

  “If you can stand it, I’ll run through the whole thing for you. Just once. I couldn’t do it twice. It would confuse me too.”

  “Big mouth,” Holly Hill sneered. I smiled at her.

  “It wasn’t big enough this afternoon,” I said in a very ungentlemanly way. “Remember?” That shut her up and some red started to climb into view on Carver Calloway Drill’s face.

  “Go on, Ed,” said Monks. I was Ed again. The world was getting back to normal.

  “Okay.” I sailed right in, starting with Carver Calloway Drill and T. T. Thomas stumbling on the Spanish treasure during their uranium hunt. How they got back to Texas civilization with pockets full of gold loot which they fenced for operating money. How T. T. Thomas discovered the body beautiful in Holly Hill wiggling her way around with a travelling circus. How he decided to Go East and doublecross Drill, with Holly hanging on to his purse strings. Not knowing she was a no-good bitch with gangster pals like Ace. Not even caring that Carver Calloway Drill was hot on his trail with vengeance burning in each eyeball because T.T. was the only one who had the map marked precisely as to location of the fortune. And the doublecross got under way. And T.T. panicked, leaving an open trail for Drill to find him, even though he had made friends only with a simple Chinese who ran a hand laundry. And after he’d been chopped up by his old buddy and the map was still missing, all the nonsense with the Long family had started – possibly, because he had mentioned to Holly how he’d made friends with Long. Or maybe because she knew he’d had his laundry done there and connected the two bits of information in her mad search for the map. Drill had come along too late to know about Long. So he had killed T.T. first, in a messy, terrible way.