The Alarming Clock Page 7

  Somebody snickered. Out loud this time. It was Ambruzzi He was a rugged-looking Italian boy but still just a boy. His eyes were wide with marvel at me. Cohn looked at him warningly and got up from behind the desk but Ambruzzi shrugged mammothly.

  He spread his hands. “I’ve heard of this Noon. From my pal Louis. Louis is in Monks’ precinct. Louis wasn’t kidding me. He said you gotta hear this Noon to believe him. Listen to him—the way he makes up funny things.”

  Cohn sneered. “He’s just a smart mug, Tony. They all are. Mac, I’ve heard enough. Let’s give him the sad news.”

  McAdoo smiled like he was enjoying the sudden emergence of his silent partners. But Ambruzzi had given me some vital information. McAdoo and his crew must have been called in because they were just in the neighbourhood. The way plainclothes men are even when the trouble is not necessarily in their precinct. Hell, if a dick calls in and is a few blocks away from a fresh shooting, he’s hailed right in. Headquarters can’t wait for the regularly assigned men. Not if they’re working on something else. But what shooting? I still didn’t know.

  “We’ll give him the sad news,” McAdoo said. “But I want to hear why he’s getting married. When he’s probably going to spend the rest of his life in the pokey. Tell me, wise guy. This bride-to-be of yours. She the waiting kind?”

  Was she. She was waiting for me right now downstairs in Benny’s. But I went along with the gag because McAdoo was finally getting around to what the trouble was.

  “She waited for me while I was in the army three years. And that was ten years ago. Ten and three makes thirteen. What do you think?”

  “Just like Louis said,” Ambruzzi cut in. “The man has an amazing mouth.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” Cohn said helplessly. “Let’s take him and get out of here. That hit-and-run stiff didn’t do my stomach so much good. Not with the new one coming right on top of it. Take a look behind your desk, wise man. Then let me see you talk your way out of that one.”

  Just as I had figured. They’d been in the neighbourhood on something and had been called in on my troubles.

  McAdoo smiled tight and moved out of my way. They all made room for me as I went around the desk.

  I hadn’t seen him when I had come in because the desk was so big and he was so small. His position didn’t help any either. He was all balled up like something you throw away. He had probably tried to get out of the way of what had his name on it but he hadn’t quite managed. Even from my brief examination, I could see he had been shot about three or four times at very close range. Mostly in the face. It wasn’t pretty at all. Even if I had known him, I never would have recognized him now. Even his mother wouldn’t have. His features had been blasted off.

  It was pitiful, really. He had been so small and huddled protectively like that behind my big desk, he reminded me of a small, frightened kid trying to hide from a nightmare or something worse. Only the nightmare had caught up with him.

  I straightened with an effort. I could understand Cohn’s queasy stomach. Coming on top of a messy hit-and-run case, this would have been hard to take. My empty stomach was rumbling warningly.

  “Anybody I know?” I asked them without turning around.

  McAdoo grunted behind me. “That’s for you to say. Cards in his wallet say Roland Ritz, resident Washington, D.C. The fingerprint boys and the M.E. will be here any minute. Then we want the whole story, Noon. All of it. And no more cute talk. Facts are what we want, understand?”

  I turned around. “Facts are what you’ll get, Mac. But believe me, you’ll never believe me in a month of murders.”

  “Try me,” he said again. “We’ve got all the time in the world.”

  I thought about Roland Ritz’s clock in my side pocket. Poor Ritz. The sand had run out of his glass.

  Chapter Ten

  I had a headache. A bad one. You can get that sitting around watching Headquarters go through its paces. The powder they dust with for fingerprints makes you sneeze. The flashlight bulbs popping and exploding all around you don’t help much either. And having an empty stomach and a mess of trouble surrounding you on all sides will really put you under. I felt like vomiting but I wouldn’t give Homicide the satisfaction. McAdoo’s leer all through it was only partially mitigated by Ambruzzi’s continual wonder in me and my exciting life. But Cohn still felt as bad as I did. Also, he was sick of the sight of my face. I couldn’t blame him. We both had had a busy day.

  Watching them cart Roland Ritz out in the basket was the capper. I spit into my handkerchief and fought off a flock of butterflies in my stomach.

  Finally, it seemed like a century later, there were just the four of us and a big bluecoat standing outside my door.

  McAdoo grunted.

  “Okay, Noon. Start at the beginning.” He produced a leather memo pad and a stubby pencil. “Where were you at five o’clock this afternoon?”

  “You sure you want to hear it, Mac?” I stalled. “It’s really a long story. Might bore you besides.”

  “Try me,” he said again.

  I didn’t want to leave the office. I wanted to find out about Alec without having to drag him into things. And Alma was still waiting for me downstairs. I had to stay put. And not in the lock-up either.

  “Suspected murderers are granted at least one phone call,” I reminded him. “Let me call up Captain Monks.”

  “No dice,” he frowned. “This is my show. Do I have to tell you this Ritz was plugged with a Luger? And we have your Luger. That’s what the M.E. said. And if Ballistics comes through with a positive, you’ll need God on your side. Not Monks.”

  He was right. Even though I knew Maxim’s Luger couldn’t possibly have killed Ritz. It had been miles away at the time. So had Maxim. That’s what I couldn’t work out.

  “Start some place,” McAdoo said. “We haven’t got all day.”

  “You asked for it, pal,” I said. “Okay. Try this on for size.”

  Cohn snorted through his nose but I waded right in. With the names and all the places. Hell, I didn’t care. I just wanted to stay put. I would have told them every story I ever knew or recited Gunga Din a hundred times just to keep the status quo. They listened with varying levels of interest. Cohn intrigued in spite of himself and his stomach, Ambruzzi wild-eyed with Italian awe, and McAdoo a bit cocked-headish about the whole thing the way Irishmen are at tall stories.

  McAdoo pressed a fresh cigar into his mouth when I had finished.

  “Alarm clocks, huh? I’ll say this for you, Noon. You sure live up to that rep of yours. But get your hat. We have to do it all over again for the police steno.”

  Ambruzzi was all for me. “Ten dollars he tells it exactly the same way. In exactly the same order.”

  “Tony, you simple slob,” Cohn rebuked him. “He’s just smart, that’s all. A professional liar has to be.”

  “Thanks for that anyway, Cohn,” I told him. He glared at me.

  Ambruzzi laughed. “A detective named after time mixed up with alarm clocks. It’s a scream. Eduardo Mezzagiorno—Ed Noon.” He laughed again. “My old man will strangle on his spaghetti when I tell him.”

  “Party’s over, Noon,” McAdoo said with finality. “Get your hat.”

  Well, they’d had their fun. I felt like a freak. They’d wanted a close-up of Ed Noon, funny detective in action and I’d given them a good show. But it was still their point. They were leaving. But with me. Which had been the whole idea in the first place.

  I sighed and got my hat off the wall peg.

  “Is this trip really necessary? Why don’t you call Monks or Hadley? Let me talk to them. I tell you I have to stay here. An important lead might develop—”

  “Sure, sure,” McAdoo agreed. “No doubt about it. Let’s go, huh?”

  We were starting to file out, one, two, three, four, when the phone started ringing. Ringing long, loud and insistently.

  Ambruzzi clucked wonderingly about how right his friend Louis was about me. Cohn threw up his hands
and McAdoo, worried-looking, said, “I’ll take it.”

  He got over to the phone in three strides, unhooked it, grunted a hello and listened carefully. Suddenly, with a great deal of respect. I lit up a cigarette, conscious of Cohn and Ambruzzi watching me closely. McAdoo was trying to say something but the voice at the other end of the wire must have kept cutting him short.

  McAdoo hung up by slamming the receiver. He eyed me for a long time. Then he just shook his head. Disgustedly, he rammed his hands into his coat pockets and shouldered up to me.

  “Your round, Noon. We leave without you.”

  Cohn bridled. “Who the hell was that—Eisenhower?”

  McAdoo smiled thinly at him. “Pretty nearly the same thing. As far as we’re concerned. That was Mike Monks. Captain Monks. The boy wonder here is to be left alone. Whatever it is, no matter how screwy, or how the cards stack or how bad the evidence looks, Mr. Noon is a hands-off guy. We’ve been ordered off. Pronto.”

  I tried hard not to say I-told-you-so. I looked at the tip of my cigarette instead.

  Cohn cursed but Ambruzzi said, “Louis was right.”

  “To hell with it,” McAdoo bit down on his cigar. “It’s Monks’ aspirin tablet. Not ours. And I haven’t been on the force that long that I can tell a Captain to go and jump in the lake.”

  They shouldered out the way they must have come in but McAdoo had one last over-the-shoulder thought for me.

  “Ten o’clock, tomorrow morning. Headquarters. Monks wants to see you. Be early.”

  “So long, fellows,” I called after them. “It’s been fun.”

  But the door had already closed behind them and the last thing I heard was Ambruzzi still crowing about Louis’ description of me and Conn telling him to shut up.

  I waited five anxious minutes, giving them plenty of time to get out of the building. Then I barrelled out of my office, heading for Alec’s.

  The lights were still burning. I pushed in. He was nowhere in sight. Just like this morning when I had wandered in to ask him about the clock.

  And just like this morning, the same old repaired watches and tagged merchandise stared up at me from his work table. I looked around. No signs of a struggle or fuss. I let out some breath and turned all the lights off and closed his door. Hell, he must have gone to the hospital to have his cuts and bruises mended by competent hands. Sure, it figured. Roosevelt Hospital was only about five blocks away. He could have managed without too much trouble.

  I went back to the mouse auditorium for a last look around before getting downstairs to Alma.

  When I finished my survey, I was bothered all over again. Alec’s metal hooks were still where I had left them. On the leather couch by the front window. I tried to argue that he’d been too beaten to worry about taking those hooks with him. But it just wouldn’t wash. He’d have had to take them to get where he was going. No matter how beaten up he was. It would be just like me going some place without putting my pants on.

  I thought of something else. The alarm clock. I dug it out of my pocket and decided not to take it with me. I looked all around the office for a good hiding place. I laughed when I got it. I pulled a chair over, stepped up on it and put the clock right inside the platter-like arrangement that softened the direct glow of the three tubes of bulbs. Ray Milland had done that with a bottle of whisky in that movie where he was such a god-awful rummy. It would make as good a hiding place as any.

  I locked up the office and hurried downstairs. Things came bouncing back. Food, Alma—

  The street was plenty quiet now but I could see a very alert cop checking all the doors on my block. A patrol car, its headlights still stabbing the sidewalk, had one door hanging open and the low hum of police calls mixed up with some static filled the night air. I sauntered across the street as casually as I could, away from Benny’s because a crowd of rubber-neckers were standing in his doorway pointing up at my place.

  I went around the corner like sixty, cut through an alley, climbed a short fence and worked my way through a maze of backyard rubble to the tiny square of ground that backed Benny’s bar. I fumbled past an army of smelly garbage cans until I saw the light winking in the window of the little back room that Benny uses for his office to go over the receipts of the day. The office where Alma was waiting for me.

  Only she wasn’t. Even as I pushed the back door in, I could see she wasn’t. The room was emptier than campaign promises.

  Chapter Eleven

  It didn’t add up. Where could she have gone? Benny wouldn’t have stopped her if she mentioned my name. And knowing me and my penchant for odd capers and beautiful dames, Benny wouldn’t have batted an eye.

  I didn’t wait to think about it. I pushed through the tiny office out into the bar. I got a mild surprise. The bar was empty.

  Not empty really. But everyone who had been in the bar sitting over a drink was out on the sidewalk in the darkening night still seeing what the commotion had been all about. The police car cruised past the big window, radio still turned up. The citizens found a lot to jabber about. You couldn’t really blame them. Most of them lead dull lives, I supposed.

  I looked for Benny, spied his mountainous rear with the knotted apron strings ribbon-bowing his middle. He saw me at the same time and moved back into the bar in a hurry. Some of his rubber-necked patrons took his cue and started to file back in. After all, the shooting was a long time over and peace was once more reigning over the land.

  Benny motioned me to the far end of the bar. I joined him.

  “Ed,” he wheezed out of his fat. “Somebody shot a guy in your office. The beat cop told me. That true?”

  I nodded. “I’m afraid it is, Benny. It’s old home week all over again with me and Headquarters.”

  “Ed!” he reproached me. “Can’t you stay outa trouble just once? We’re both gettin’ too old for this kinda stuff.”

  “We’re not getting any younger,” I admitted. “But forget the sermon just this once. Tell me, didn’t a good-looking, half-naked doll come in here a while back and ask to use your back room? I told her to mention my name—”

  Benny shook his head, his small eyes working in his smooth fat face. “Cut it out, Ed. Always clowning. Don’t you ever take anythin’ seriously?”

  “This is serious, Benny.” The sudden chill I felt inside worked over my words. “Are you sure you didn’t see her?”

  “No.” He got worried along with me. “Was it important?”

  I smiled at him to help him stop worrying. I was worried enough for two people. But Benny was always worrying about me. The same way you’d fret about a younger brother who was always getting into hot water. He was my biggest helpmate in my chosen profession. Aside from cheese sandwiches, an occasional beer and an often martini, Benny’s soft drink emporium was my other office. My second home.

  “I’m hungry, Benny,” I changed the subject. “I’ll take whatever’s in the ice box. And a beer. A big beer. I’ve got some thinking to do.”

  He knew me like a brother. He padded away towards his tap and I started burning some mental wood.

  Where the hell was Alma if she hadn’t come into the bar? She couldn’t have been snatched in the few minutes I had turned my back on her. Or could she? Or had she been kidding all along about her connection in the whole wild set-up? Or—I didn’t want to think along those lines. So I skipped it and thought about other things.

  Alec St. Peter was off somewhere. Snatched or getting mended? I didn’t know for sure. Come to think of it, I didn’t know much about anything right now. Somebody else had all the answers.

  Me and my crazy cases. This clock thing was one for the books. All sorts of things were happening because a guy named Roland Ritz had left a crummy alarm clock with me for safekeeping. Or was it clock-keeping? I pushed my twisted sense of humour out of the way and looked at the round-faced one looking down from the back wall of Benny’s bar. It was nearly eight. And since ten-thirty this morning, everything had happened. Right down to the topper.
Roland Ritz dead in my own office with his kisser blown half-off. I’d never even met the guy but now his dead body was on my doorstep and the problems he had had while he was alive and kicking were now all mine. Like that crazy clock I had stashed in the overheads in my office. And he wasn’t Maxim’s corpse. He couldn’t be. Maxim had been sleeping my Sunday punch off on a basement floor miles away when it happened. The picture was getting crowded. And now with Alma getting in on the disappearing act, everything that could happen had happened. The situation was as bad as it could be.

  Benny came back with a cold platter of sandwiches and hot coffee before I fainted dead away from malnutrition. I pushed my problems out of the way and dug right in. Seldom has such simple fare as ham and cheese on rye tasted like roast pheasant. I had three big sandwiches and two cups of coffee before I came up for air. I lit a Camel and settled back while Benny fetched me another coffee.

  Thinking about Maxim reminded me of two things. I pushed the plates and cups out of the way and dug them out of my pockets. The ostrich leather wallet and the black leather book. I decided to go through the wallet first.

  The only important thing in that was money. About two hundred dollars, mostly in twenties. It was just a billfold really and except for a few business cards with other people’s names on them, there wasn’t anything else of value to me. The dough I could use but I hoped the little black book would pay off in something else besides cash.

  There was nothing unusual about the book itself. Standard soft leather diary-type thing you could pick up in any stationery store. That didn’t mean anything but the fruit was at the bottom of the bowl.

  I flicked through it. Maxim, it seemed, was a diary keeper. And diary keepers are slightly conceited. You have to be to record so much “I this and I that.” I skipped through pages and pages of nothing. But then around February the twenty-sixth, things picked up. Maxim had stopped making entries two days ago. Probably been too busy having handless vets beat up and chasing around after alarm clocks.