Death Dives Deep Page 9

  It was no good. My mind was spilling in all directions. I've been jammed into a corner before. Nothing unusual about that. And I knew no one was going to go to work on me with a rubber hose or deny me water for twenty-four hours, but I was damned uncomfortable. The F.B.I. is a lot different from police headquarters and all the old gags about citizen's rights, calls to lawyers and the usual democratic privileges can be carefully and politely withheld from you all under the guise for the good of the country. Even if the Mayor of New York was a friend of yours he would walk on tippy-toe if the Government was investigating you. That's the way the Democracy crumbles. I hadn't bucked Raleigh or Hopton taking me in, subpoena or not, because it wouldn't have done any good.

  A door opened on the far side of the room, next to a tall gloomy four-drawer file, and a man walked toward me. He was smiling. He nodded at me and took the swivel chair behind the long, uncluttered desk that was the main piece of furniture in the room. We couldn't have been on the street side of the building. There was only one window and it didn't look out on any scenery. Just another wall of stone and brick. But the room was pleasant, heated and kind of plush as offices go. I drew on the Camel with an air of casualness I didn't feel and waited for the man to open up.

  He was silver-haired to a fault, like something out of a fancy ad that pushes whiskey and the latest in men's clothing fashions. He was thin enough to seem underweight but actually he was a perfectly lanky specimen in a dark gray woolen suit with a striped red tie and a black sweater of some kind under his jacket. His face was parchment brown, as hairless as an Indian's, and his teeth were white and even and his eyes were a piercing brown. With a face that was screaming for a moustache, his thick black eyebrows looked misplaced. I felt as if Caesar Romero had marched in on me to sell a Petrocelli suit. The smile was Romero wide and showing the faultless teeth.

  "We are not going to record the answers to my questions. This is off the record. For now. It will remain that way only dependent on what you tell me and what I think of what you tell me. Do we understand each other?"

  His voice was almost apologizing for bringing me but I wasn't fooled. He had a fluid voice, unhurried, melodious. He looked at the tips of his fingernails and I wasn't surprised at all. He was the picture of a man not in a hurry, who had all the time in the world.

  "Shoot," I said and didn't look at him, stubbing the dying Camel to death in a glass ashtray that lay between us on the desk.

  "You are Edward Noon?"

  "Yes."

  "You're a private investigator with an office on West Forty-sixth Street?"

  "Yes."

  He had been a fooler, all right. The questions were coming at me, rapid-fire, full-tilt and with barely a second's hesitation.

  "Are you working on a particular case for one of your clients now?"

  "No. Business has been poor."

  "We can easily check that, you know."

  "Privileged information, sir. And while we're on the subject, who the hell are you?

  His smile was without humor. Or pleasure.

  "Forgive me. I'm O'Malley. Frederick. I'm in charge of this—shall we say, department?"

  "Let's. What are you investigating?"

  His eyes jumped and I had scored a point off him.

  "Please. I'll ask the questions. Then we'll find out if you have the right to ask any. Fair?"

  "It's your territory. But I hope you make it snappy. As I told Raleigh and Hopton, I have a date tonight. And it's not to go dancing with the F.B.I."

  He rocked forward in the swivel and pyramided his hands and drilled both black eyes at me.

  "All right. We'll do this one, two, three."

  "I'm game."

  "Thank you. A man named Jesus Killy was shot to death outside the elevator in the building where your office is located. He was killed by a man you may have known under the alias of Dandy Jaxon. Is there anything you want to tell me about that?"

  "I was away from my office most of the day. How could I know?"

  "That's not what I asked you."

  "Maybe not, but it's what I'm telling you."

  "You're being evasive."

  "How do you make that out?"

  His fluid voice almost laughed.

  "All right. I'll put it to you directly. What do you know about the shooting of Jesus Killy?"

  "Not much. Only what you've told me. Is there really a man named Jesus Killy? Hard to believe that."

  He leaned back in his chair, his cool eyes regarding me above the tips of his fingers. There was a tightness about his cordial smile now that meant trouble.

  "Empty your pockets, please. On the desk in front of me."

  "Do I have a choice?"

  "You do not. As of now, you're a material witness, let's say. Which gives me the right to make such a request."

  "What about my one telephone call to a lawyer? This is still a democracy according to what I read in the papers. Do I have to help you incriminate myself?"

  "You do." There was steel in the melodious voice. His eyes hadn't left my face, as if he were trying to find the lies, the evasions. The stalling tactics. I was wasting his time and mine and we both knew it.

  Oh, I could make a phone call and get a lawyer and maybe a writ of habeas corpus, but there wasn't a good enough alibi in the world to justify my not showing him what I was carrying. Killy's kill could be a Federal case now and who was I to stand between Hoover and Justice?

  "I'm going to hate myself in the morning," I said. "Maybe you will too." But I carefully and slowly stripped all my pockets of what they were holding. My billfold, car keys, office keys, cigarette lighter, a pack of Camels and a memo pad. And worst of all, Dandy Jaxon's brown leather job. The one I had been unable to get rid of because of the eagle eyes of agents Raleigh and Hopton.

  As I expected, O'Malley's shrewd eyes batted a trifle when he saw the two billfolds.

  "Two billfolds, Mr. Noon?"

  "I eat out a lot," I said, feeling the rope tightening around my defenseless throat. The President was maybe dying and nobody else knew my cover. And nobody would believe me if I blew it to save my neck.

  I waited for his reaction as he thumbed first through my wallet. Then he came to the brown leather one.

  It was gruesome in a way to stand there and watch O'Malley while my career and free time hung in the balance. I wasn't exactly sweating, but my cool was rapidly disintegrating. How would you like to be holding the ID card of a murdered maybe-F.B.I-agent under the same circumstances? I also wondered how long it would take for Dandy Jaxon's dead body to be identified by the police.

  "Well, well, well." Frederick O'Malley's silvery head cocked at me with all the poise of a loaded revolver in the hands of a professional assassin. "What have we here?" He held up the card. It seemed to glint.

  "You tell me," I demanded, drily. "Is there a Walter Adams or is Dandy Jaxon just a great forger who likes to carry around F.B.I. ID cards?"

  O'Malley shook his head at me. The wonder in his eyes refused to go away. It was as if he had stumbled on uranium and I was it.

  "You're a rare man, Mr. Noon. Rare and rather foolish. Where did you get this card?"

  "If I tell you will you believe me?"

  "Talk. Now. Let me make up my own mind."

  "What can I tell you?" I very certainly couldn't tell him about the President or Harry Healey or the water people or any of that incredibilia. So I had to improvise. Fast. "I went to see a female client on West Fifty-third. She wants me to check on her husband who walked out on her a week ago. She thinks he's still in town. I can't tell you the client's name. Privileged information. Well, I was leaving and this guy came reeling into the hallway, all shot up. He died before he could tell me anything. So I skipped and——"

  "Left a corpse without calling the police and took his wallet along because you're the type who does that sort of thing." O'Malley laughed mirthlessly and his nice eyes hardened. He rocked forward and rested his elbows on the desk, still waving the card in my face.
"Mr. Noon, this is the Bureau. Not a Manhattan precinct or the idiot factory. You'll have to do much better than that."

  "I went back to my office to call the police——"

  "Seven blocks away in all that snow?" He shook his head. "It won't wash. Why didn't you go to the nearest phone or commandeer a passing car? No. And why did you take the wallet?"

  "I wanted to protect my client. This could have been her husband. When I saw it wasn't, I was going to hand the wallet over to the law. She had shown me a photo of him in the apartment."

  I felt as lame as my story sounded. O'Malley looked keenly disappointed in me. His gentlemanly air made it hurt twice as much. His disapproval, I mean.

  "The man on this card is Arthur 'Dandy' Jaxon. We know who he is. You seem to know, too, yet when I asked you about him, you played ignorant. Very well. No, there is no Walter Adams to my knowledge, but even if there was in some other department in another city, this is the face of Jaxon. A man with no scruples, who runs a private detective agency wherever he happens to be and is not averse to all and any methods of turning an illegal dollar. Up to and including espionage. We have had our eyes on him for some time, letting him roam free because we have tried to prove he was working with the Cuban Government. All right. All you need to know. If he's dead, that's our hard luck. But you—you will have to give me better reasons than you have to explain your connection in all this."

  I out-stared him. "May I ask a question?"

  He nodded, still angry but holding it down beautifully.

  "Why did you send Raleigh and Hopton to pick me up?"

  "We know Jaxon went to your building to see you. We know he murdered Killy. You being gone all day from your office, we've been looking for you."

  "If you know all that, how did Jaxon get away from your men who must have been shadowing him? He was smart, but he's too big and like a bull in a china shop to pull a Houdini."

  "He did, at any rate." O'Malley's lips twitched. "But if you say he is dead . . . " Suddenly, he turned to a black squawk-box on the desk and flicked a switch on. I reached for one of my Camels in the pack in front of him and he made a face. But he let me smoke. He waved me to a corner of the room, indicating his talk was confidential. I shrugged and went and stood in the corner. I turned my back on him. Behind me, I could hear his voice, low, urgent but unhurried.

  It couldn't have been more than a few minutes but it seemed like ten when I heard him raise his voice to call me back.

  If he had looked firm and disapproving before, now he was enigmatic. He was once more the silver-haired, luxuriously-tailored product who had entered the office a short time ago. The Romero smile was back in business. He looked almost apologetic for causing me so much trouble. Little warning buzzers of alarm went off in my brain.

  "When were you born?" he asked politely. A complete change of subject.

  I told him. The month, the day, the year.

  "Where exactly?"

  "Manhattan. Bellevue Hospital."

  "What was the code name you had painted on your armored car in Europe during World War II?"

  "Gehrig," I said. "Our troop had to begin with the letters g e. So the team jeeps—mortar and machine gun—were Gershwin and Gentleman Jim." I could never forget a detail like that one.

  He nodded, pleased. "One more question. Think hard. What was the lowest mark you ever scored on your high school Regents' examinations?"

  I couldn't resist a smile. He was checking on me for some reason, questions only I could have answered, but it was funny all the same.

  "Too easy. I got a 39 on my Italian Regents' and Mr. Nicastri never forgave me. I borrowed his pen to take the test. What are you getting at, Mr. O'Malley?"

  He didn't answer. "Take off your jacket and shirt. If you have a bullet-wound scar on your left shoulder and a beauty mark under your right pectoralis, you won't have to listen to me much longer."

  "You won't take my word for it?" I had them, all right

  "Sorry, I can't."

  It took me just a minute to do the strip act. Frederick O'Malley watched me patiently. When his eyes confirmed what he had asked for, I redressed. He indicated I should refill my pockets. But he didn't return Dandy Jaxon's brown leather wallet with the trumped-up ID card. I didn't expect him to.

  "That's all, Mr. Noon. You're free to leave."

  "No more questions?"

  "None. Officially, this office has severed all connections with you as of this moment."

  I pondered that. I thought about the squawk-box. And miracles, and last minute reprieves. I was as confused as ever.

  "You won't tell me why? Or how?"

  "I can't." He jerked his silvery-haired head at the door. "You can find your way out. You won't be stopped."

  He wasn't going to tell me anything else no matter how hard I tried. I could see that. His bronzed face had iced over and the dark brows were as fixed as twin landmarks.

  "Did they find Jaxon's body?" I asked, with my hand on the knob to the little room.

  "Jaxon?" His frown was a masterpiece of acting. "Who's Jaxon? Goodbye, Mr. Noon."

  There was no more to be said. Somebody had pulled all the magic wires, pressed the magic buttons and magically I was walking out of the New York headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Investigation a free man. I knew only one thing for a fact. All the questions he had asked me had to be on my very private qualifications dossier; the one that only the Chief should have had access to. It was either a good sign or meant the very worst. But Frederick O'Malley had no more to say to me.

  I left the building as quietly as I had come.

  In a lot of ways, I was worse off than I had ever been since the damn investigation started. I didn't know which way to turn now. And worse than anything, I didn't know whether or not the President was still alive, dying or dead.

  Or where Harry Healey, Serena Savage and Arvis Healey had fled to.

  Or who had killed Dandy Jaxon-Walter Adams and why.

  Or if the sixty-two pages of manuscript were on the level.

  Or if there were such things as the water people.

  Or whether pigs had wings.

  In a thoroughly Alice mood, I stumbled out into the snowy wonderland of New York nighttime.

  There was no light to be found in the sky either.

  No light at all.

  Only the snow and darkness and acute bewilderment

  STATION IDENTIFICATION

  THREE days passed.

  Three spans of twenty-four hours in which nothing happened, nobody called on me, nobody got in touch and I very quietly went mad. For awhile back there, I had had my two unaware feet solidly planted in the midst of Harry Healey's troubled puzzle and then all of a sudden all the clocks stopped and the wires went dead.

  I checked into the mouse auditorium for three days and fretted and fumed. The world had opened up and swallowed Harry Healey, his Serena and his Arvis. The mundane and routine universe of the private detective agency yielded no clients, no urgent summons from Washington and no further interest from the F.B.I. I wasn't even tailed, nor was my phone bugged. I was a private citizen again.

  And all it did was snow, snow, snow.

  With the falling walls of white closing down on the windows and trapping Manhattan in a veritable blizzard, I lost touch with humanity and my fellow man. Santa Claus was having the track really greased for his ride in on Christmas Eve but I was in no mood for sleigh bells, toys and holly. I felt like a lousy Scrooge surrounded by an army of happy people and charitable souls.

  A postcard from Puerto Rico made me feel an inch better. Melissa Mercer was having a fine time on her holiday and had paused to send me a summery scene from San Juan. Looking at her neat scrawl on the back of the card, I got the blues. I missed her like hell.

  TV, the radio and the newspapers did little to brighten the horizons. With a nation standing by, hoping for the best, the President was in the Naval hospital at Bethseda. He had had a walloping coronary and was still in the oxygen tents, and
the bulletins that were released almost hourly were still labeled "critical." The red-white-and-blue phone was a mockery. I wondered if I would ever talk to him again. And somewhere in the nowhere of my doubts and puzzlement, all I could think of was where had all the principals, the heroes, heroines and possible villains of Harry Healey's wild manuscript gone?

  Back to Florida, to Key Alma and Skeleton Key to see what they could see—or what?

  Had the water people got to them at last?

  Or had they really gone to South America, like Serena Savage had wanted to, and were hiding out among the bananas and coffee beans? I just didn't know.

  I still couldn't guess or figure what Frederick O'Malley had heard on the squawk-box that had caused him to drop the case. And me. Somebody had given him the hands-off edict, obviously, but who? Who else knew that I was some special kind of operator who had to be given his head? And a free hand.

  But I did call Michael Monks of the Homicide Department. I had to. He hadn't seen fit to buzz me and that alone was suspicious. I'd been very much involved in two killings and it was surprising he hadn't come around asking me questions.

  He's generally in when I call and this time was no exception. His friendly growl, which masks a great friendship for me, tried to play dumb, but I wouldn't let him. We had known each other too long.

  "No lectures, Michael?"

  "I'm busy, Ed. What are you talking about?"

  "The shooting in this building. How come you haven't faithfully dragged me down for a third degree?"

  "Not in my jurisdiction. The F.B.I. took over that one. So what else is new?"

  "There was another stiff named Jaxon over on West Fifty——"

  His laugh was short and curt. "Since when do you go looking for trouble? That's also Federal business. You want to know, go ask the Bureau. But take my advice. Spare them your jokes and repartee. They're not as tolerant as I am."