1962 - A Coffin From Hong Kong Read online

  “Just to keep the record straight, let me see what you have in your pockets.”

  I turned out my pockets, laying the odds and ends on the desk. He watched without interest.

  “If I had stolen her virtue,” I said, “I wouldn’t be carrying it around in my pocket.”

  He got to his feet.

  “Don’t leave town. I only need a puff of wind to throw you in the tank as a material witness, so watch yourself.”

  He walked out of my office, through the outer room and into the passage. He left both doors wide open.

  I collected my possessions and returned them to my pockets, then I pushed the door shut and sat on my desk and lit a cigarette. Right now they hadn’t a watertight case against me, but they did have something. A lot depended on what they turned up within the next few hours. Although Retnick was a birdbrain, I had a feeling the killer was framing me for the murder and would drop another clue in front of Retnick that could be a clincher. The disappearance of my gun could only mean the killer had shot her with it and it might turn up where Retnick would find it.

  I slid off the desk. This wasn’t the time to sit around shaking my head at myself. I had work to do.

  I locked up the office and headed for the elevator. Against Jay Wayde’s glass-panelled door, I saw Retnick’s shadow. He was talking to Wayde, collecting evidence against me.

  With a sense of urgency, I rode down to the ground floor, walked by the two cops at the door, then crossed the street to where I had left my car.

  I got in and slammed the door.

  I was now as jittery as a junkie. I had a sudden urge for a slug of whisky. Drinking before six o’clock wasn’t my usual routine, but this was something special. I slid across the bench seat and opened the glove compartment. As I reached for the bottle, my heart gave a big kick against my ribs and my mouth turned as dry as a sun-bleached bone.

  In the glove compartment lay my .38 police special and a lizard skin handbag.

  I sat staring, feeling a chill crawl up my spine. As sure as I was breathing, this handbag belonged to the dead Chinese woman.

  chapter three

  At the back of police headquarters there is a large yard surrounded by an eight-foot high wall. Here, the police park their patrol cars, the riot squad trucks and the fast cars that rush experts to any emergency.

  On one of the walls is a big notice that says in large red letters against a white background this park is for police vehicles only.

  I swung my car through the open gateway and parked carefully beside a patrol car. As I cut the engine, a cop appeared from nowhere, his red Irish face showing violent fury.

  “Hey! What’s the matter with you? Can’t you read?” he bawled in a voice that could be heard two blocks away.

  “Nothing’s the matter with me,” I said as I removed the key from the ignition, “and I can read—even the long words.”

  I thought he was going to explode. For a long moment he opened and shut his mouth while he struggled to frame words violent enough for the occasion.

  Before he could give utterance, I said, smiling at him through the open window of my car, “Detective Lieutenant Retnick, the Mayor’s brother-in-law, told me to park here. Take it up with him if you feel badly about it, but don’t blame me if you get yourself kicked humpbacked.”

  He looked as if he had suddenly swallowed a bee. For two long seconds he glared at me, his mouth working, then he stalked away.

  I sat staring into space for perhaps twenty minutes, then a car came into the yard and parked within ten feet of me. Retnick got out and started towards a door that led into the grey stone building that was police headquarters.

  “Lieutenant . . .”

  I didn’t raise my voice but he heard me. He looked over his shoulder at me. He stiffened as if someone had goosed him with a branding iron, then he came over fast.

  “What do you imagine you are doing here?” he demanded.

  “Waiting for you,” I said.

  He considered this, staring intently at me.

  “Well, I’m here—now what?”

  I got out of the car.

  “You searched me, Lieutenant, but you forgot to search my car.”

  He became very still, breathing heavily through his pinched nostrils, his hard watchful eyes alert.

  “Why should I search your car, shamus?”

  “You wanted to know what the yellow skin, as you call her, had in her handbag that had tempted me to shoot her in my office with my gun. You didn’t find it in my office nor in my pockets. I should have thought a really keen cop would have checked my car to make sure I hadn’t hidden the motive for murder there. So I’ve brought the car along just in case you wanted to be a really keen cop.”

  His face tightened with fury.

  “Listen, you son-of-a-bitch,” he mouthed. “I don’t take smart talk from a cheap peeper. I’ll get Pulski to handle you! He’ll take the shine off your wit! You’re too goddam smart to stay in one piece!”

  “Better look in the car first before you feed me to your meat grinder, Lieutenant. Look in the glove compartment. It’ll save time.” I stepped away from the car, letting the car door swing open.

  His eyes smouldering, Retnick leaned into the car and yanked open the glove compartment.

  I watched his reactions. His fury died. He didn’t touch either the gun or the handbag. He looked for a long moment, then turned to me.

  “Is that your gun?”

  “Yes”

  “Her handbag?”

  “It adds up, doesn’t it?”

  He studied me, puzzled.

  “What the hell’s this? You ready to make a statement admitting you killed her?”

  “I’m laying the cards face up as they’re dealt to me,” I said. “I can’t do more than that. It’s up to you what you make of it.”

  He bawled to the cop guarding the gate. When the cop came over, Retnick told him to get Pulski fast.

  While we waited, Retnick again looked at the gun and the handbag without touching them.

  “I wouldn’t give two bits for your chance of survival now, shamus,” he said. “Not two bits.”

  “I wouldn’t give two bits myself if I hadn’t come here to show you what I found,” I said, “but since I’ve come, I’ll gamble two bits but no more.”

  “Do you always lock your car?” he asked, staring at me as his brain creaked into action.

  “Yes, but I have a duplicate key in the drawer where I keep my gun. I didn’t look but I bet it isn’t there now.”

  Retnick scratched the side of his face with a rasping sound.

  “That’s right. When I looked for the gun, I didn’t see any key.”

  Pulski came pounding across the yard.

  “Give this car the works,” Retnick said to him. “Check everything. Careful how you handle the gun and the handbag. Better let Lacey look at the gun. Get moving.”

  He nodded to me and we walked across the yard, up the three steps, through the doorway into a dimly lit white-tiled passage that smelt the way all cops houses smell.

  We tramped down a corridor, up a flight of stairs, down a corridor and into a room the size of a hencoop. There was a desk, two chairs, a filing cabinet and a window. It was as cosy and as comfortable as an orphanage’s common room.

  Retnick waved me to an upright chair while he eased his way around the desk and sat in the chair behind it.

  “This your office?” I asked interested. “I’d have thought you being the Mayor’s brother-in-law, they would have fitted you up with something more plush.”

  “Never mind how I live: concentrate on your own misfortunes,” Retnick said. “If that’s the gun that killed her and that’s her handbag, you’re as good as dead.”

  “Do you think so?” I said, trying to make myself comfortable on the upright chair. “You know for ten minutes, maybe even longer, I struggled against the temptation of ditching the gun and the handbag in the sea and if I had ditched them, Lieutenant, neither you nor al
l the bright boys who take care of the law in this city would have been any the wiser, but I decided to give you a break.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I didn’t ditch them because they had been so obviously planted in my car. It all adds up to a plant—the whole set-up. If I had ditched them, you might not be able to break the case.”

  He cocked his head on one side: he was good at doing that.

  “So I have the gun and the handbag: what makes you think I’m going to break this goddam case?”

  “Because you’re not going to concentrate on me, you’re going to look for the killer and that’s what he doesn’t want you to do.”

  He brooded for a long moment, then he took out his cigar case and offered it to me. This was his first friendly act during the five years I had known him. I took a cigar to show I appreciated the gesture although I am not by nature a cigar smoker.

  We lit up and breathed smoke at each other.

  “Okay, Ryan,” he said. “I believe you. I’d like to think you knocked her off, but it’s leaning too far backwards. I’d be saving myself a hell of a lot of trouble and time if I could believe it, but I can’t. You’re a cheap peeper, but you’re not a fool. Okay, so I’m sold. You’re being framed.”

  I relaxed.

  “But don’t count on me,” he went on. “The trouble will be to convince the D.A. He’s an impatient bastard. Once he knows what I’ve got on you, he’ll move in. Why should he care so long as he gets a conviction?”

  There didn’t seem anything to say to that so I didn’t say it.

  He stared out of the window that gave onto a view of the back of a tenement building with badly washed laundry hanging on strings and baby carriages on balconies.

  “I’ve got to dig around before I can make up my mind about you,” he said finally. “I can book you as a material witness or I can ask you to stick around voluntarily. What’s it to be?”

  “I’ll stick around,” I said.

  He reached for his telephone.

  “I want you,” he said when a voice sounded over the line.

  There was a pause, then the door pushed open and a young plain-clothes man came in. He was the eager-beaver type. I could see, so far, police work hadn’t soured him. He looked at Retnick the way a friendly dog looks for a bone.

  With an expression of distaste, as if he were introducing a poor relation, Retnick waved to me.

  “This is Nelson Ryan: a shamus. Take him away and keep him amused until I want him.” He looked at me. “This is Patter-He’s just joined the force: don’t corrupt him faster than he need be.”

  I went with Patterson down the corridor and into another small room that smelt of stale sweat, fear and disinfectant. I sat down by the window while Patterson, looking puzzled, squatted on the edge of a desk.

  “Relax,” I said. “We’ll probably be here for hours. Your boss is trying to prove I murdered a Chinese woman and he hasn’t a chance to prove it.”

  His eyes bugged out as he stared at me.

  Trying to put him at ease, I offered him the half-smoked cigar Retnick had given me. “This is a museum piece. Would you like to have it for your collection? It’s Retnick’s. You have a museum?”

  His young, eager face turned to stone. He looked almost like a cop.

  “Listen, let me tell you something. We don’t like . . .”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I said, waving my hand to cut him short. “I’ve heard that one before. Retnick tells it better. I stir up the dust. I get in your way. I bother you boys. Okay, so what? I make a living the same as you. Can’t I kid you a little or are you that sensitive?”

  I grinned at him, and after a moment’s hesitation, he relaxed and grinned back. From then on we got along fine.

  Around lunchtime a cop brought us a meat pie and some beans which we ate. Patterson seemed to think the pie was pretty good, but then he was young and hungry. I toyed with mine and sent most of it back. After this so-called lunch, he got out a deck of cards and we played gin rummy for matches. After I had taken a whole box off him, I showed him how I was cheating him. This seemed to shock him until I offered to teach him how it was done. He made a very enthusiastic pupil.

  Around eight o’clock the same cop brought more meat pie and more beans. We ate the stuff because by now we were so goddam bored we would have eaten anything just for the hell of it. We played more gin rummy and he cheated so well he took a whole box of matches off me. Around midnight, the telephone bell rang. He picked up the receiver, listened, then said, “Yes, sir,” and hung up. “Lieutenant Retnick is ready for you now,” he said getting to his feet.

  We both felt the way people feel when the train at last steams out of the station and they can stop talking the way people talk when seeing people off at a station.

  We went down the corridor to Retnick’s office. Retnick was sitting at his desk. He looked tired and worried. He waved me to a chair and waved Patterson away. When Patterson had gone, I sat down.

  There was a long pause as we stared at each other. “You’re a lucky guy, Ryan,” he said eventually. “Okay, I didn’t think you killed her, but I was goddam sure the D.A. would have thought so if I’d turned you over to him. Now I can persuade him you didn’t do it. Consider yourself a lucky son-of-a-bitch.”

  I had been in this building for fifteen hours. There had been times when I had wondered if I had played my cards right. I had had moments of near panic, but now hearing what he said, I relaxed, drawing in a deep breath.

  “So I’m lucky,” I said.

  “Yeah.” He slid down in his chair and groped for a cigar. Then realising he had a dead one between his teeth, he took it out, sneered at it and dropped it into the trash-basket. “I’ve had practically the whole of The force working on this thing for the past fourteen hours. We’ve turned up a witness who saw you in your car at two-thirty this morning on Connaught Boulevard. The witness happens to be an attorney who hates the D.A.’s guts and he had his wife with him. His evidence would blow a great big hole in any case the D.A. might have cooked up against you. So, okay, you didn’t kill her.”

  “Would it be nosey to ask if you have any idea who did kill her?”

  He offered me his cigar case: this time I could afford to refuse. As he put the case back in his pocket, he said, “It’s too early yet. Whoever he is, he’s played it neat. No clues: no nothing so far.”

  “Didn’t you get a line on the Chinese woman?”

  “Oh, sure, that wasn’t hard. There was nothing but the usual junk a woman carries in the handbag, but we got her spotted at the airport. She came from Hong Kong. Her name is Jo-An Jefferson. Believe it or not, she’s the daughter-in-law of J. Wilbur Jefferson, the oil millionaire. She married the son, Herman Jefferson, in Hong Kong about a year ago. He was recently killed in a car smash and she brought his body back for burial.”

  “Why?” I asked, staring at him.

  “Old man Jefferson wanted his son buried in the family vault He paid this girl to come over with the body.”

  “What’s happened to the body?”

  “It was picked up at the airport by a mortician at seven o’clock this morning, acting on orders. It’s at his parlour waiting interment.”

  “You checked that?”

  He yawned, showing me half his false teeth.

  “Listen, shamus, you don’t have to tell me my fob. I’ve seen the coffin and inspected the papers: everything’s in order. She flew in from Hong Kong, arriving here at one-thirty. She took a taxi from the airport to your office block. What beats me is why she came to see you immediately she arrived and how her killer knew she was coming to see you. What did she want with you?”

  “Yeah. If she was from Hong Kong, how would she know I existed?” I said.

  “Your idea she telephoned for an appointment around seven after you had left your office is out. She was in the air at that time. If she had written, you would have known about it.”

  I thought for a moment.

  “S
uppose Hardwick met her at the airport? He called me from the airport at six. Suppose he waited for her to arrive and told her he was me. Suppose he went on ahead while she was clearing the coffin through the authorities and slipped the lock on the outer door. A lock isn’t too hard to slip and then waited for her to join him.

  He didn’t seem to like this idea much: nor did I.

  “But what the hell did she want with you?” he demanded.

  “If we knew that we wouldn’t be asking each other questions. How about her luggage? Did you locate it?”

  “Yeah. She checked it in at the left-luggage office before leaving the airport: one small suitcase; nothing in it except a change of clothes, a small Buddha and some joss sticks. She certainly travelled light.”

  “Have you talked to old man Jefferson yet?”

  He pulled a face.

  “Yeah, I’ve talked to him. He acted as if he hated my guts. I think he does. That’s the hell of marrying into an influential family. My brother-in-law and Jefferson get along like I get along with a boil on my neck.”

  “Still it has its compensations,” I said.

  He fingered his pearl stickpin.

  “Sometimes. Anyway, the old goat didn’t let his hair down. He said he wanted me to catch the man who had killed his daughter-in-law, otherwise there would be trouble.” He stroked his beaky nose. “He draws a lot of water in this city. He could make trouble for me.”

  “He wasn’t helpful?”

  “He certainly wasn’t.”

  “How about the Express messenger who delivered the three hundred bucks to me? He could have seen the killer.”

  “Look, shamus, you’re not half the ball of fire you think you are. I checked on him: nothing. But this is interesting: the envelope containing the dough was handed in at four o’clock at the Express headquarters which as you know is across the way from you None of the dim-witted clerks can remember who handed it in, but the instructions were to deliver it to you at six-fifteen.”

  “You checked Herron Corporation to see if Hardwick works there?”

  “Yeah. I’ve checked every goddam thing. He doesn’t work for them.” He yawned, stretched, then stood up. “I’m going to bed. Maybe tomorrow I’ll strike something. Right now I’ve had enough of it.”