Which Way to Die?

Ellery Queen

MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM

1.

Corrigan had been held up in the Main Office squadroom by a laggard witness in an extortion case, so it was a quarter of six by the time he reached Maxie’s Businessmen’s Bar and Grill. A policeman’s lot was not a happy one. Even a pint in a desk drawer was tabu at police headquarters. To relax over an after-hours drink he had to fight Manhattan traffic halfway across town.

He found Chuck Baer waiting at the bar. The redhead greeted him with a growl. “You said five-twenty, Tim.”

“I would have stepped on the gas if you were prettier,” Corrigan said to him. “I damn near stopped for a drink en route to brace myself for the sight of you.”

Baer grinned at the bartender. “Give my grandfather an Irish.”

They made an odd pair. Tim Corrigan was two inches under six feet, with the build of a greyhound. He moved fast and fluidly, like a boxer. His angular features were very nearly handsome, in spite of the black patch over the left eye he had left in Korea. The other eye was brown and direct and, at the moment, twinkling; it was capable of turning into an instant icicle, and it had chilled a great many hoodlums. Captain Corrigan was what his colleagues at the Main Office called a classy dresser; he wore smart Madison Avenue-type suits that strained his paychecks—one of his few excesses. He could have stepped out of an advertising agency.

Chuck Baer was nothing that Tim Corrigan was. His height was the same, but there the resemblance ended. He outweighed Corrigan by twenty-five pounds, not one ounce of which was fat, poly-unsaturated or otherwise. No one would ever accuse him of pleasing a mirror. He had the mashed and lumpy face of an oldtime wrestler, with thick swarthy skin, a big nose, and a heavy mouth and jaw. His blue eyes and red hair were Irish, in contrast to the rest of him, which said Slav. Corrigan could never get over the fact that his ugliness attracted women. He shambled around like a bear in an ill-fitting suit, and the women fell for him in herds.

During the Korean business they had been a team in the OSS—the Deadly Duo, as they were known to a usually unawed group—and they had ample reason for sentiment. The two had saved each other’s lives half a dozen times during their service; it had been Baer who had carried Corrigan to an aid station when the shell fragment destroyed his eye. Neither had a lust for blood, but a job was a job, and their efficiency at it was legendary. Mustered out, Corrigan had been taken back by the Department in spite of his missing eye—a special case, and a tribute to the esteem in which he was held by the brass. Chuck Baer had opened a private detective agency. Their paths often crossed professionally; oftener socially.

“Can the Irish,” Corrigan said to the bartender. “Make it a gin and tonic.” Baer was drinking bourbon. The MOS man usually stuck to whisky, too, but it was an unseasonably warm day in May, and he wanted some frost in his glass.

“You know what?” Baer said, “Sundays should be changed by law to last for forty-eight hours. That way nobody would have to work on Mondays.”

“Then you’d beef about Tuesdays.”

Baer gave him an elbow in the rib. Corrigan flipped the sweat off his glass into Baer’s eyes. They both grinned.

They sat drinking and chewing the fat amiably. It lasted until six o’clock, when the bartender switched the TV over the bar to the six o’clock news. At the newsman’s first comment Corrigan and Baer stopped drinking to listen.

“The New York Court of Appeals today ordered the release from Sing Sing of life-termers Gerard Alstrom and Frank Grant. Invoking the recent Miranda decision of the United States Supreme Court, the Court of Appeals held that the confessions of the pair had not been admissible evidence because the defendants had not been informed of their rights of silence and to legal counsel at the time of their original interrogation by the police. In its decision the Court slammed the door on all possibility of a new trial by throwing out the conviction.”

Corrigan cursed. Baer said, “Shut up, will you?”

“I sent them up!”

“Let’s get this.”

“Four years and one week ago today Gerard Alstrom and Frank Grant, then nineteen-year-old roommates at Columbia University, were convicted of the sex-and-thrill murder of coed Audrey Marsh. The sensational highlight of the trial was the admission of the boys’ signed confessions, in which the defendants—both rated near-geniuses, with IQs in the one-eighties—stated that their sole motive in the murder had been to commit the perfect crime, as an ‘intellectual exercise.’ After trying unsuccessfully to have the confessions barred on the ground that they were obtained by police coercion, the defense switched tactics and attempted to get a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity. Found guilty of murder in the first degree, the youths were first sentenced to death. The sentences were commuted to life imprisonment when New York State abolished the death penalty. Three appeals were rejected by the State’s high court prior to this fourth and finally successful one.

“Another sensation during the trial was the revelation that the beautiful eighteen-year-old victim’s real name was Audrey Martello, and that she was the daughter of Joseph (Marty) Martello, alleged gang lord and officer in the Cosa Nostra. Presumably Miss Martello had enrolled at the University under a false name to avoid publicity.”

The newscaster went to another item and the bartender turned the sound down. A stout man near Corrigan and Baer gave the rest of the customers the benefit of a derisive snort.

“They were a hell of a lot safer in Sing Sing,” he announced. “Marty Martello ain’t about to let his daughter’s killers get off the rap. Five’ll get you ten they’re both found dead in an alley by next Sunday.”

A man in a loud sports jacket said, “And if Martello doesn’t get them, Harry Barber will. There was a profile in Sports Illustrated last month said Harry’s still carrying a torch for Martello’s kid.”

Harry Barber, early Vietnam war hero, currently star halfback for the New York Cougars, had been engaged to Audrey Martello at the time of the murder. The comment brought back to Corrigan’s memory the scene in the MOS squadroom when he had brought the handcuffed killers in. Harry Barber had been waiting there. With a roar like a gorilla the young athlete had sprung forward to grip their throats and beat their heads together like a pair of coconuts. At the time Barber had just made first-string halfback on the Columbia Lions and weighed a solid two-twenty. Three detectives had been unable to pull him loose. The handcuffed killers had both been unconscious when Corrigan, in desperation, knocked Barber cold with karate smashes alongside his bull neck.

Cynical comments about the release of Alstrom and Grant were running up and down the bar. There was general agreement with the stout man and the man in the loud jacket. The only differences that developed revolved about which would get to the released killers first, Martello or Harry Barber. The odds seemed to favor Martello, who had professionalism in such matters going for him.

“I wouldn’t be in their shoes for all the Red Guards in China,” Chuck Baer said. “Not with those two after them.”

“Not just those two,” Corrigan grunted. “Alstrom and Grant have more than Martello and Barber to worry about. We got ten times the usual crank mail during the trial, threatening to kill them if they weren’t convicted. I don’t remember when public indignation in this town ran so high. Some kook may decide to burn them in the name of justice.”

“Poetic justice,” Baer said. “Those two killed that girl for kicks. If that isn’t kooky I don’t know what is.”

“You sound as if you’d like to do it yourself, Chuck.”

“Not a bad idea.”

“You don’t mean that. I can’t think of any two citizens this republic would be better off without, but I don’t hold with lynch law.”

“This is better? Seeing them walk away free?”

“Yes, if lynch law is the alternative.”

Baer grinned all over his ugly face. “Saint Corrigan. I’d think, since it was your case, you’d be out for blood.”

“Regardless of personal feeling, I’m not about to sit by and see the administration of justice taken over by a hood like Martello and some schizo who thinks he’s been hand-picked by the Almighty to even the score. I think the courts are dead wrong in this case, but I’ve got to back them up, Chuck. And, if it gets down to that, so do you.”

“In the words of the immortal Sam, include me out.”

“No, I mean it.”

“That’s why you’re on the city payroll and I bill clients. If you think I’ll lose any sleep if they’re found dead in an alley, you’re nuts yourself.”

“I’m getting irritated with you,” Corrigan said. “If I thought you meant it I’d throw you through that bar mirror.”

“Man enough to try it?” Baer growled.

“Some day,” Corrigan mourned, and said, “Toss for the check?”

“I lose,” Baer said promptly, and tossed a bill on the bar.

He always did.

On Tuesday morning Corrigan picked up a paper from the newsboy on the corner outside headquarters. Upstairs in the MOS squadroom he opened the frosted-glass door with his name and rank on it and entered the bare ten-by-twelve cubby he called his office. It was furnished with a battered desk, a file cabinet, a couple of rickety chairs for visitors, and the grime of a generation. He sailed his hat onto one of the hooks of the clothestree, slumped behind his desk, and opened the paper.

The story on page one went into considerably more detail than the TV account. The two killers were not to be released until Friday because of some processing red tape. Reading between the lines, Corrigan knew that the real reason for the delay was to give the authorities time to plan adequate protection for the pair, probably at the insistence of the boys’ lawyers.

Gerard Alstrom’s lawyer was a man named Narwald, and Frank Grant’s was his partner Fellows, of the highly-touted law firm of Narwald, Fellows, Norton and Finch. Narwald and Fellows were quoted as praising the Court of Appeals decision as a landmark ruling, and a judicial notice to the police that coercive tactics would no longer be tolerated by the courts of New York State.

John M. Alstrom, Gerard’s father—the mother died shortly after her son’s conviction; she had had a history of rheumatic heart disease—had nothing to say beyond expressing his happiness at his son’s release. Mrs. Elizabeth Grant, widowed mother of Frank Grant, was quoted as reiterating her “unwavering faith” in the boys’ innocence; she had never stopped clamoring about the “forced” confessions. It was noted in passing that young Frank’s father, Leonard McGill Grant, had been John M. Alstrom’s partner in the brokerage firm of Alstrom & Grant and had died of a cerebral hemorrhage the night his son and Gerard Alstrom had been arrested.

Interviewed by newsmen, Harry Barber had been characteristically frank. He doubted, the pro football star said, that Alstrom and Grant would live very long outside prison walls. Asked to elaborate, he was quoted as saying: “I’m not threatening anybody. I’m just saying some mentally unbalanced person may decide that justice got a raw deal when those two were let go. As far as I’m concerned, they’ll get theirs in this world or the next. I’m betting it will be in this world.”

Asked if any woman had ever replaced Audrey Martello in his affections, Barber had said, “Oh, I date occasionally, but there’s no serious romance in my life. Anyway, that’s nobody’s business but mine.”

With wry amusement Corrigan noted that neither Harry Barber nor any of the other persons interviewed had made mention of the likeliest instrument of retribution, Marty Martello. The newspapers were sensitive about the laws of libel, and Martello had a team of lawyers on his string who were experts in the field; he was sensitive, too.

Martello had not been available for comment.

Corrigan threw the newspaper down and brooded. He was still brooding when Detective Second Grade Meisenheimer stuck his bushy gray head into the room, removed the inevitable meerschaum pipe from his mouth, and said, “Skipper wants to see you.”

“Urgent?” Corrigan mumbled. “I haven’t even read my mail yet.”

“He just said when you’re free, Tim.”

“So I’m not free,” Corrigan said.

He had a sour taste in his mouth.

2.

Corrigan thumbed through his mail. The obvious junk he scaled into his waste can unopened. Of the remaining three envelopes, one was a kickback from the Detroit police department on a routine inquiry of his. The second was an invitation to speak on law enforcement at a Lions Club meeting. Corrigan checked his calendar, saw he had the date open, sighed, and phoned to accept the invitation. He was a good speaker, and his appearance was impressive—“it’s the eyepatch,” Chuck Baer kept needling him—and Inspector Macelyn, chief of the MOS, encouraged him to accept such dates whenever possible in the interests of public relations. (“God knows,” the Inspector said, “we can use ’em!”)

The third piece was a post office envelope with the typed address: Capt. Tim Corrigan, Main Office Squad, Police Headquarters, Centre St., New York, N.Y. There was no return address.

Corrigan had received or had had shunted onto him over the years so many anonymous notes that he had developed automatic precautions to preserve fingerprints. The no-return-address gambit was usually the tipoff. If it turned out that the enclosure was anonymous, as suspected, the precaution made it that much easier for the laboratory.

He slit one end of the envelope, used a pencil eraser to pull out the single folded sheet inside, then spread the sheet flat with the eraser and the letter-opener. It was an anonymous note, all right. On twenty-pound bond, he noted, and watermarked FOUR STAR BOND, SOUTHWORTH CO. U.S.A., 25% COTTON FIBER. The message was neatly typed:

Dear Captain:

Since the esteemed Pooh-Bahs of the Court of Appeals have seen fit to make a travesty of justice by letting two psychotic killers loose on the defenseless public, I personally intend to make sure neither lives long enough to kill again. If I know your true feelings about these maniacs, you won’t try too hard to catch me.

Nemesis

“Nemesis” was typed, too.

The note was undated, but from the postmark the letter had gone through the main post office at seven o’clock the evening before. It must therefore have been written and mailed immediately following the six o’clock TV announcement of the Court’s ruling.

Corrigan was interested. After four years the anonymous writer remembered which officer had broken the case. The writer’s memory had to go back four years, because there had been no mention of Captain Corrigan either on TV or in the news item he had just read. It was possible that one of the other papers had mentioned him, but the news hadn’t hit the papers before seven o’clock last night.

Corrigan phoned the lab and got hold of Chief Technician Yoder.

“I’m sending over a crank note,” he told Yoder. “You won’t have to check my prints against any you find, because I haven’t fingered it. You still have the file of notes in the Audrey Martello case?”

“Sure, Tim. You know we never throw anything away.”

“See if you can match this one with one of the old ones.”

“I suppose we’ll get dozens,” Yoder said wearily. “After all the lab work I did on that case, I’m thinking about writing one myself. How’d the court decision hit you?”

“Where it hurts,” Corrigan said. “What makes it worse, we now have to give the sons all the protection other citizens are entitled to.”

“I’m glad it’s not my job. Well, send it over,” Yoder said. “I’m only up to my belly button in work.”

Corrigan hung up, used the eraser and letter-opener to refold the note and tuck it back into its envelope, then slid the envelope into a clasp envelope and took the clasp envelope out into the squadroom. Meisenheimer was writing a report at one of the desks.

“Send this over to the lab, Meis. It’s for Yoder. And tell the messenger not to get itchy fingers. This thing is to be checked for latent prints.”

From behind a billow of meerschaum smoke the big man said, “Crank, Tim?”

“It’s unsigned,” Corrigan said shortly. Not every unsigned letter came from a crank. Sometimes the non-signer only wanted it to appear that way.

Meisenheimer stared after him, shaking his head.

Corrigan crossed the squadroom to Inspector Macelyn’s office. He rapped on the door, and a bass voice said, “It’s about time!”

Macelyn was an ageless man who looked forty, could have been fifty, and was actually just past sixty. He could be as tough with his men as a Marine D.I., but he was also mother hen to every man in his department. If he could be said to have a pet, Corrigan was it. And certainly Corrigan felt close to him. The Inspector had been the prowl-car partner of Corrigan’s father in their youth. That was only part of the reason, however. Corrigan considered Macelyn an outstanding executive officer, and Macelyn knew that Corrigan was the best man on the Main Office Squad.

The Inspector took a cigar from his mouth and waved it at a chair before the desk. “Sorry I sounded off, Tim—I’ve been waiting. Sit down.” Corrigan took a chair, and waited. Macelyn said, “You’ve heard about the court decision in the Alstrom-Grant case?”

“Yes, sir. In fact, I just received the first crank note about it. I’ve sent it over to the lab.”

“They’re starting to come in so soon?” Macelyn growled. “Well, that’s an indication of what we’re up against.”

“We?” Corrigan said. “You mean Alstrom and Grant.”

“I mean the Main Office Squad. We’ve been handed the job of keeping them alive.”

“Oh, great,” Corrigan said with disgust. “For how long?”

The Inspector jammed the cigar back into his mouth. “It could be worse. For just long enough to get them from Sing Sing to wherever they want to go. I don’t know where that is, except that it’ll probably not be their homes on Long Island. For security reasons no advance information will be forthcoming. Only the two themselves, their parents, and their lawyers know their destination.”

“And I’m elected to play nursemaid?”

“The Commissioner specifically asked for you. Incidentally, they’re being released Thursday, not Friday. The Friday date was given out to throw a curve to anybody who might have ideas.”

“Like Marty Martello,” Corrigan said grimly. “It’s cutting it fine, but maybe it’ll keep me from having to fight my way through a mob of reporters. What’s the procedure?”

“I really don’t know. Except that you’re to ride up to Ossining with John M. Alstrom and Mrs. Grant. They’re using Mrs. Grant’s chauffeured limousine, I understand. You and the released men won’t be leaving Sing Sing in the limousine, however. You’ll be informed of how and in what you’re leaving when you get there.”

Corrigan frowned. “If I’m to be responsible for keeping those two alive, I’d like a part in planning security.”

“Sorry.” The Inspector’s head-shake sent cigar ash cascading down his vest. “Orders from above are to let the boys’ attorneys handle everything. I’ve been assured by the Commissioner that security measures will be adequate.”

“Then that’s that,” Corrigan said with a shrug. “At least they can’t blame us if something goes wrong.”

“I asked the Commissioner to make that very clear to Narwald and Fellows. Since we have no part in the planning, the lawyers are being informed that the police will fully cooperate, but we accept no responsibility if anyone gets to the two men in spite of our best efforts.”

Corrigan rose. “What time Thursday is this limousine leaving, Inspector?”

“Mrs. Grant is supposed to phone you. The Commissioner has already informed her that you’re to be the police officer on security.”

Corrigan’s Dick Tracy face showed nothing. “Then I’ll wait till I hear from her.” He shut the door definitely behind him.

While Tim Corrigan was reading the newspaper in his office, Chuck Baer was reading the newspaper in his.

The private detective’s office was larger than Corrigan’s; it was furnished with good furniture and wall-to-wall carpeting. The building was air-conditioned, but in mid-May the system was not yet turned on. Unfortunately, the weather was paying no attention to the calendar; it was another hot day. Baer had both his window and the door open to coax what little breeze there was into the office.

He had just finished the piece about the release of the young murderers when a man and a woman paused, in the hall and peered in. The man was about sixty, tall, lean, and distinguished-looking, and dressed to the nines. The woman was a desperate fifty, with a plump, well-girdled figure and fluffy blonde hair of the kind seen in does-she-or-doesn’t-she ads. Her skin had been labored over with superficial success. She might have been attractive if it had not been for the petulant lines drawing her mouth down. She wore a smart lavender suit Baer tabbed as a Paris original, a tiny gray hat, and white gloves. She reeked of money.

The man said, “Mr. Baer?”

The private detective rose. “Come on in.”

The man motioned the woman to precede him, and carefully shut the door behind them.

“If you don’t mind, Mr. Baer,” he said abruptly. “We want this to be private.”

“Sure,” Baer said. He waved them to chairs, and waited, willing himself not to sniff at the fat-smelling fee in the air.

“I am John M. Alstrom, Mr. Baer. This is Mrs. Elizabeth Grant. I presume you know who we are?”

The big man sat down at his desk carefully.

“Uh-huh,” Baer said. “I’ve just been reading about your sons.”

“I’ll get straight to the point,” John M. Alstrom said. “We’re very much concerned about our sons’ safety, as I’m sure you will understand. During their trial four years ago, a great many threatening letters were received by us, the police, the district attorney, and the judge. We’re naturally afraid some fanatic may attempt to assassinate them. And then, of course, there’s this Martello.”

“That horrible creature!” Mrs. Grant said. She had a sweet-cidery voice, with just a trace of fermentation. “He has no business being allowed to walk around among honest people. Everyone knows he’s responsible for dozens of murders. He’s a gangster.”

“I agree that Martello is more of a threat than the kooks who wrote the letters,” Baer said. “But even gangsters have feelings. The girl was his daughter.” There was something about Elizabeth Grant that he disliked on sight.

Mrs. Grant huffed. “Are you saying, Mr. Baer, that a man like that is capable of feeling a decent emotion? I think, John,” she said to Alstrom, “we may have come to the wrong person.”

“Now let’s not be hasty, Elizabeth,” Alstrom said; he looked uncomfortable. “Mr. Baer comes highly recommended.”

“I don’t care. Anyway, Frank and Gerard didn’t kill that girl. Those confessions were forced out of them.”

Baer’s bushy red brows elevated. He knew Tim Corrigan’s methods, and they did not include brutality where the rights of suspects were concerned. “If you don’t want me,” he said, beginning to rise.

“Sit down, sit down, Mr. Baer,” Alstrom said. “Mrs. Grant is naturally overwrought. What we came for is to hire you as a bodyguard for the two boys. The present plan is to take them from Sing Sing to a temporary hiding place for a week or so—that is, until the furor over their release dies down—then to quietly get them out of the country. We’ve been promised police protection, but we feel the boys will be safer with a personal bodyguard, too. The job should take no more than a couple of weeks.”

“Where is this hideout, Mr. Alstrom?”

John Alstrom shook his handsome head. “Sorry, but the boys’ lawyers have advised us to avoid all possibility of a leak by keeping it secret until the last moment. We would like you to ride up to the prison with us on the release date. You’ll be told the details then.”

Baer frowned. “If I’m to be responsible for your sons’ lives, I prefer to be in on the planning of the security.”

“I’m afraid that’s impossible, Mr. Baer. Those are the conditions. We’re prepared to offer you double your usual fee if you’ll accept the assignment.”

The private detective took a panatela from his humidor, twirled it in his fingers, and studied it. Then he threw it down. “In that case,” he said, “you’ll have to accept a disclaimer on my part. I’ll guard your sons, but I can’t accept responsibility for anything that happens to them.”

“Nothing will happen to them, I’m positive,” Alstrom said. “Mr. Narwald and Mr. Fellows and the boys have worked out a really brilliant plan.”

“But it’s their plan, not mine. Anyway, that’s got to be understood. Otherwise no deal.”

Alstrom looked impatient. “Agreed. Then you accept the assignment?”

“Yes,” Baer said. “They’re to be released on Friday?”

Mrs. Grant said fretfully, “Thursday morning, Mr. Baer. Friday was announced as a blind.”

“We’ll pick you up at eight-thirty Thursday morning,” Alstrom said. “A police officer from the Main Office Squad will also be coming with us.”

“Oh? Who would that be?”

“A Captain Corrigan. The same officer who worked on the case four years ago, as it happens.”

Baer hid a grin. He could imagine how Corrigan relished the assignment. It had to be an assignment; he could not see Corrigan volunteering for the job. Protecting the killers he had worked so hard to catch!

But the big man said nothing.

“I don’t understand why the Police Commissioner assigned him,” Mrs. Grant said in a whine. “He’s the man who beat those confessions out of Frank and Gerard.”

“Now, Elizabeth,” Alstrom said. “The boys never claimed anything worse than psychological pressure.”

“Well, he implied they’d be beaten if they didn’t confess—I don’t like that brute.”

Alstrom began to look testy; apparently Mrs. Grant was a cross he found hard to bear. “He’s an excellent police officer, Elizabeth. The man was doing his job. I can’t find it in my heart to hold anything against him.”

“You may act the Christian if you wish, John,” she said, all fermentation now. “But I shall never forgive him for putting my son in prison. My innocent son. And your innocent son!”

The uncomfortable expression on Alstrom’s face revealed something to Baer. There was no question in Alstrom’s mind about the two boys. Maternal blindness and a waspish character explained Elizabeth Grant, but John M. Alstrom was under no illusions. He knew the boys had killed the girl.

“I’ll save you a stop Thursday morning,” Baer said. “Suppose you pick Captain Corrigan and me up at Police Headquarters. It’s closer to my place than here.”

Alstrom rose with evident relief. “Of course. Thank you, Mr. Baer, for accepting the assignment. Come, Elizabeth.”

3.

Corrigan was on the phone when his door swooshed open and Chuck Baer came in, straddled a chair, and lit a panatela.

Corrigan said to the phone, “Okay, okay,” and hung up. He fixed the redhead with a stern glittering eye. “Didn’t your mother ever teach you to knock?”

“I didn’t have a mother,” Baer said.

“I know, you crawled out from under a rock.”

“My, my. Touchy this morning, aren’t we? Well, I can’t say I’m surprised. Having to play footsie with a couple of punk killers and all.”

Corrigan’s one eye looked startled. “Where did you pick that up?”

“I’m your nurse’s aide. John M. Alstrom and Mrs. Grant have hired me as those cute little tykes’ bodyguard.”

The brown eye hardened. “Why’d you accept the assignment?”

Baer looked at him.

“I have to protect those lice because I’m under orders. But you have free choice. Lowering your standards, aren’t you?”

“What standards?” Baer blew a stream of panatela smoke his way. “What’s the matter with you this morning? You’re supposed to be the guy who doesn’t believe in lynch law. Even killers have the right of physical protection against mobs and nuts and whatever. I’ve bodyguarded a hell of a lot of bastards I wouldn’t spit at. It’s a job. Were those two lawyers sent whimpering into the night because they defended Alstrom and Grant?”

Corrigan grunted. “My apologies.”

“It’s about time.”

“I guess this thing has me steamed up. To tell the truth, I’m glad to have you on the team. It may be a he-man’s job keeping the young gentlemen alive.”

“Martello?”

“And assorted bedbugs. I’ve already received one crank note—unsigned—from somebody who remembered I’d worked on the case.”

Baer pursed his heavy lips. “Must be one of the original letter-writers.”

Corrigan shook his head. “That was Yoder over at the lab I was talking to when you walked in. No fingerprints, and the typing and style don’t match any of the crank letters from four years ago. As a matter of fact, it’s the only really literate letter on the subject ever received. It was sure as hell written by someone who’s well-educated.”

“Fine. Now we have to worry about a literate nut.”

“Plus the usual assortment of illiterate ones. By tomorrow I expect a dozen more threat-letters.”

“Plus Marty Martello.”

“Plus Harry Barber.”

“You think Barber’s a real threat? The clean-cut All-American boy?”

“The clean-cut All-American boy damn near killed both of them the day of their arrest. I had to knock him stiff to break his strangle-holds on their throats.”

Baer looked surprised. “I never saw that in the papers.”

“It was covered up. The boys’ lawyers advised them not to press charges. They must have figured public sympathy would be with Barber. But if he was capable of trying to kill them—and believe me, he wasn’t kidding—then he’s still capable of it.”

“Sounds interesting,” Baer said. “Shall we start a pool on who gets them?”

“You not only had no mother,” Corrigan growled, “but that rock that fathered you had no sense of humor. Shut up and let me work, will you?”

At eight-thirty on Thursday morning Corrigan and Baer were waiting on the front steps of police headquarters. The private detective had a small valise at his feet; Corrigan had brought nothing. Mrs. Grant had informed him over the phone that he would not need a bag. After all the secrecy about the released men’s destination, this struck Corrigan as a stupid breach of security. Since he would not be gone overnight, it was clear that the hideout could not be far from Manhattan.

The limousine, a Lincoln Continental, arrived at 8:35. It was chauffeured by a huge square-faced man of middle age with bristling brows and a massive jaw. John Alstrom and Elizabeth Grant were in the tonneau.

Corrigan got a polite reception from Alstrom and a cold shoulder from the woman. Her open dislike did not bother him. He had learned four years earlier that Elizabeth Grant was an overprotective mother incapable of an objective viewpoint where her son was concerned. All he felt was pity for her predicament.

It was a seven-passenger job. The chauffeur stowed Baer’s suitcase in the trunk, Baer took one of the jump seats, and Corrigan elected to sit beside the chauffeur.

“How are you, Andy?”

“Okay, Captain,” the chauffeur said. He sounded as frigid as his mistress.

Andy Betz shared Elizabeth Grant’s attitude toward Corrigan, and for the same reason. He had a slavish faith in young Frank’s innocence. Betz, now in his mid-fifties, had been in the employ of the Grant family for twenty-five years—since two years before Frank’s birth. He was a phenomenon rare in mid-century America: an old family retainer. Devoted to the family, he idolized the “young mister,” as he customarily referred to Mrs. Grant’s son. It was hardly surprising that he looked on Corrigan with a hostile eye.

His hostility rolled off Corrigan’s back, too, but with a difference. The MOS man could only admire the unwavering loyalty from which Betz’s hostility stemmed. As far as Corrigan knew, the man had no life or interests outside the Grant family; at least he had not had four years ago. He was unmarried. He lived in a room above the garage on the Grants’ Long Island estate.

En route to Ossining, Corrigan sat half faced about. Conversation was minimal. Mrs. Grant was largely silent with resentment, and Alstrom seemed immersed in thought. Even Chuck Baer was infected, and the fact that Mrs. Grant objected to his cigar smoke did not make him communicative. There were long periods during which Corrigan did nothing but glance at the road ahead and back through the rear window.

They were some ten miles out of the city when he spotted the tan Buick sedan a few hundred yards behind them. As far as he could tell, it contained no one but the driver; Corrigan could not even make out if it was a man or a woman. When it steadily maintained its distance over the remaining twenty miles to Ossining, it took no Sherlock Holmes to deduce that it was a tail.

He did not mention it to the others. The tailing driver would know he had been spotted if Alstrom and Mrs. Grant turned to peer back, as they undoubtedly would.

When they reached Ossining’s town limits, the Buick shortened its distance to half a block. It held that relative position until Betz turned into the street going by the main gate of the prison. As Betz slowed down, the Buick picked up speed.

Corrigan said, “Chuck,” and jerked his thumb. So they were both looking that way when the car passed. It was a man behind the wheel, wide-shouldered, with rugged, handsome features. He was hatless and wore his blond hair in a crew-cut.

Baer looked startled. He opened his mouth, then shut it at Corrigan’s head-shake. There was no point in upsetting Mrs. Grant and Alstrom. The Buick had disappeared by the time Andy Betz backed into a parking place and they got out of the limousine.

To Corrigan’s surprise, Betz joined them on the sidewalk. Mrs. Grant noticed.

“Andy’s anxious to see Frank, too,” she said coldly. “They’re very close.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Then Corrigan spotted the black Cadillac across the street. There were four men in it. His brown eye sharpened.

“Excuse me,” he said to Alstrom. “Mr. Baer and I had better check out that car over there. You and Mrs. Grant go on ahead, sir. We’ll meet you in the Warden’s office.”

Alstrom, Mrs. Grant, and the chauffeur stood frozen.

“Who is it?” muttered Alstrom.

“Probably nobody to concern us, Mr. Alstrom. But under the circumstances I think it’s a good idea to look over a parked car with four men in it. Please go on in. We’ll handle whatever it is.”

Corrigan and Baer waited until they were admitted through the main gate.

Then Baer said, “That was Harry Barber driving the Buick.”

“Yes,” Corrigan said. “But right now I’m more interested in the Cadillac.”

They crossed the street. The Cadillac’s windows were open. Baer laid both paws on the front sill on the driver’s side and gave the man behind the wheel a once-over, not lightly. Corrigan stared into the rear.

Marty Martello sat on the far side. He was a dark man with swimming black eyes and a Mediterranean face. Masseurs had kept his body sleek except for a slight middle-age paunch. Curly black hair graying at the temples and the expensive custom-tailored clothes he wore gave him the look of a banker, or an aging character actor.

Between Martello and Corrigan sat a squat, wide man with a pea-head and the muscles of a wrestler. He had come by them more or less honestly before Marty Martello took him on as a bodyguard; he had wrestled professionally under the monicker of Little Jumbo. His legal name was Leroy Barth, Corrigan knew; he had had occasion to check Barth’s yellow sheet more than once.

Corrigan was acquainted with the two men in the front seat as well; he had had both on the pan several times on suspicion of everything from simple assault to homicide. The tall skinny one in the driver’s seat was Benny Grubb, once wheel man for a stickup ring before he fell into the safer and more lucrative job of wheeling the mighty Martello.

The other occupant of the front seat, a wiry character with a knife-scarred face and totally dead eyes, was Al (the Acid Kid) Jennings. The nickname had been well earned. Tossing acid into the faces of union organizers had been his M.O. in his labor-racketeering days.

Corrigan looked them over one at a time, deliberately. The three hoods with the racketeer chief glanced at him stonily, once, then looked away. Martello did not look away. He returned stare for stare. If he was bothered by the icy eye examining him he did not show it. Perhaps he was more concerned than he allowed to appear. He was the first to break the silence.

“Something on your mind, Captain?” He had a soft, almost womanish, voice.

“Something,” Corrigan said. “Aren’t you a long way from home, Marty?”

“You want to know what I’m doing here?”

“I went to school, Marty. I can add one and one.”

Martello exposed white teeth. “Why not? Call me nosy. I want to see if four years’ hard time has made any changes in those scum that killed my daughter.”

So much for amateur planning. Corrigan wondered how many others had seen through the subterfuge. Harry Barber, now Martello. The news media weren’t on the ball on this one. The place should have been crawling with reporters and cameramen.

“I think, Marty,” Corrigan said, “it would improve your public relations if you ordered Benny here to turn right around and keep going till you hit the city.”

“That’s if you was me,” Martello said. “But you’re not.”

“I’m asking you nicely.”

“What law am I breaking, Captain?”

Corrigan struck his head through the rear window, causing Little Jumbo to draw back hastily.

“You got no jurisdiction here,” Martello said. His eyes had slitted.

“Marty,” Corrigan said in a soft voice, “don’t make me get tough with you. The two of us could take your three goons on with one hand tied behind our backs.”

“Yeah, man,” said Chuck Baer.

“You gonna give us a sample of police brutality?” Martello asked. “This isn’t your turf, Officer.”

“I’m not telling you, Martello, I’m asking you. Just this once: You going back?”

Little Jumbo glanced out of his elephant eyes at his employer. The pair in front stared rigidly ahead. Martello seemed to be weighing something.

Corrigan and Baer waited patiently.

Finally the gang lord said in an even, slightly thick, voice: “Get going, Benny.”

4.

They found Alstrom, Mrs. Grant, and Andy Betz in the Warden’s office. The released men’s attorneys, Narwald and Fellows, were there, too.

The lawyers were equally well-fed-looking and red-faced. They might have been brothers. Narwald was completely bald and Fellows had gray hair cut theatrically long at the neck. They were a slick pair.

The Warden said, “Hello, Tim.” Corrigan introduced Baer. Neither said anything to Narwald and Fellows, who both had a mingled look of triumph and anxiety that was almost comical.

“They’re being processed, Tim,” the Warden said. “They’ll be along any minute.”

A few moments later a guard brought in the two young men.

Corrigan and Baer looked them over curiously. Prison often speeded up time where non-habitual criminals were concerned. These two were astonishing. At twenty-three neither looked a day older than he had looked at nineteen. The only appreciable difference was in their weight. They had both been well-fleshed at the time they had murdered Audrey Martello. Now they were lean and fit as athletes.

Gerard Alstrom looked remarkably like his father. He was the taller of the pair, with a sharply intelligent face and thick blond hair. The typical Nordic—with the typical Nazi mentality, Corrigan thought. The hair was cut short in prison fashion, as was Grant’s. Frank Grant looked nothing like his mother. He was a skinny kid with a delicate build and probably tipped the scales at no more than one-thirty-five. He wore thick-lensed glasses over eyes that had a perpetual peering look; Corrigan remembered the same look from the trial. His hair was black. With a young beard and tight pants he could have passed for a Greenwich Village poet.

Elizabeth Grant flew to her son like a mother eagle defending her young. Frank submitted to her embrace with no enthusiasm; if anything, he looked bored.

“Okay, Mother, okay,” he said.

“Oh, Frankie, Frankie …”

“It’s enough.” He pushed away from her. Corrigan could have pushed his face in. The clinging variety of love his mother bore him was probably a pain, but elementary decency should have dictated at least an affectionate toleration. This punk had the decency of a mink.

From the corner of his eye he caught the expression on Baer’s face. So Chuck wanted to push his face in, too. Well, we don’t have to love him, Corrigan reminded himself, just protect him. And he mentally called the Commissioner a disrespectful name.

John M. Alstrom was no uninhibited bird of prey. He put out his hand to his son almost timidly. Gerard shook it briskly.

“Son,” was all the father said.

“Hi, Dad,” the young man said, far more easily. It would take a great deal to ruffle this bird’s feathers.

Frank Grant had turned to Andy Betz with a look that could almost be described as affectionate.

“Hiya, you ugly old ape,” Frank said. He seized the chauffeur’s hand and pumped it. “It’s good to see that mug of yours again.” So there was at least one human being, Corrigan thought, for whom Frank Grant had human feelings. It interested him.

Betz looked back at his mistress’s son with dumb, adoring eyes. Corrigan could only think of a St. Bernard reunited with his master after a long absence.

“It’s great to have you back, young mister,” Betz said hoarsely. “Just great.”

“I’ve missed you, Andy.”

“Me, too!”

“Why don’t you two go into a waltz?” Gerard Alstrom said, grinning.

“Shut up,” Frank Grant said in a low hiss. Gerard shrugged and smiled, but Corrigan noticed that he said nothing more. So Frank was the leader of this two-man death squad. He had suspected it four years ago. It was odd, because Gerard could have broken Frank in two.

Frank glanced at Corrigan. “The human bloodhound.”

“You remember me, I see,” Corrigan said.

“I’ll never forget you.” It was said in a light, almost mocking tone, but for some reason it made Corrigan prickle.

“Captain Corrigan is to be your police guard to … where we’re going,” Narwald, the bald attorney, said to young Grant. “This other gentleman is Mr. Chuck Baer, a private detective we’ve engaged to act as your personal bodyguard until you leave the country.”

Neither young man said anything. Gerard Alstrom seemed indifferent, and Frank Grant had a sneer on his face.

Corrigan turned away from them abruptly. But Baer forestalled him.

“Isn’t it about time Captain Corrigan and I were let in on the security?” the redhead said.

Fellows, the gray-maned lawyer, said, “Mr. Alstrom and Mrs. Grant will return to New York in the limousine. Narwald and I have our own car. A driver is waiting in the yard with one of the prison cars. You and Captain Corrigan, Mr. Baer, and Frank and Gerard will leave in that one.”

“Going where?” Corrigan asked.

“To a farm about ten miles from here. That’s only a brief stop. You’ll find a helicopter waiting there, piloted by Mr. John Alstrom’s personal pilot. He’s absolutely trustworthy. Besides, he doesn’t yet know where he’s to fly you.”

Corrigan frowned. “How does he find out? Baer and I don’t know, either.”

“Gerard and Frank will direct him. Actually, he’s merely to lift you to a vacant landing field about twenty miles away, where you’ll find another car waiting for you.”

“Where do we go from the field?” Baer demanded.

“Gerard and Frank know that, too. Gerard has the keys to the car you’ll find there.”

“You mean we’re not to know our final destination?” Corrigan said.

“No, no,” the bald lawyer said. “It’s an apartment building in the East Eighties in Manhattan.”

Corrigan and Baer looked at the lawyer as if they could not believe their ears.

“The last place an Unimaginative clod like Martello would think to look,” Gerard Alstrom said with a laugh. “He’ll expect us to head for some hideaway out of state. Cute, eh?”

Corrigan glanced at him. Gerard’s tone suggested that the plan had been his. He had probably sold the two lawyers on its merits, with the help of the parents. And Frank.

Corrigan said dryly, “He may be more imaginative than you think, sonny. He wasn’t fooled by the announcement that tomorrow is your release date. Baer and I just chased him and three of his hoods away from out front.”

Gerard’s smile vanished. Young Grant began to nibble his nails. John Alstrom and Elizabeth Grant seemed stunned. Corrigan was disgusted with all of them.

“Why didn’t you arrest them?” Mrs. Grant demanded shrilly.

“On what charge, Mrs. Grant?” Corrigan said. “They weren’t even double-parked. You people had better get it through your heads that this is no game of tag. Martello is shrewd and he’s a cold killer. This is what comes of leaving a professional’s work to an amateur. The helicopter gambit is a good way to shake a possible tail, but after going to all that trouble you mean to plop the boys down in the heart of Manhattan, within spitting distance of Martello or anyone else who thinks justice suffered a kayo when they were set free. So I go on record here and now: I disapprove the plan. Your smartest move would be to cancel the arrangements you’ve made, let me and Baer take over, and let us start making new plans from scratch.”

Attorney Fellows said quickly, “You haven’t seen the place where the boys are to hide out, Captain. It’s as impregnable as a fortress. And you say yourself that with the helicopter lift no one can tail you there.”

Corrigan shrugged. “You’re calling the shots. But I want to repeat what I understand the Commissioner has already told you. Since we’ve had no part in planning the security, the Department can assume no responsibility for what happens.”

“That goes for me, too,” Baer said. “In spades.”

“I assume,” the other lawyer, Narwald, said in an edgy tone, “that won’t keep you gentlemen from putting forth your best efforts to protect our clients.”

Corrigan merely looked at him. Baer said, “You can have my resignation right now.”

“Gentlemen, gentlemen,” John M. Alstrom said. “We’re all nervous. May I suggest we stop taking up the Warden’s time?”

The Warden had been sitting back watching and listening without expression. He said nothing at all.

“Okay, let’s get the show on the road,” Baer growled. “I’ll need my valise from the limousine trunk.”

An unmarked sedan with a man in ordinary clothes was waiting in the walled yard. Andy Betz retrieved Baer’s valise, and Baer tossed it into the sedan trunk and climbed in beside the two freed men. Corrigan got in with the driver.

The gate detail waved them through, but Corrigan said to the driver, “Just hold it a minute,” and he and Baer got out, walked through, and checked the street. It was clear both ways. Then Corrigan and Baer jumped back in, even before the gate closed.

“Don’t drive too fast,” Corrigan told the driver. “You two sit well back, in the corners. All right, what are the directions?”

“Drive south,” Gerard Alstrom said to the driver. “There’s a farm about ten miles down. We’ll point it out when we get near it.”

Frank Grant said, “And remember, fuzz, you’ve got two mighty precious hides to protect.” He seemed to be enjoying himself.

Corrigan paid no attention to him. He and Baer were too busy keeping watch on their route. Neither spotted a tail.

Gerard greeted the helicopter pilot familiarly; the man’s name was Cope. Not until they were airborne did young Alstrom give Cope his flight instructions. This time their destination was a deserted field edged by a secondary road. Corrigan judged that they were a mere eight or ten miles north of New York.

A locked Ford sedan was parked on the shoulder of the road. The helicopter took off and left them standing there.

“No tail—right, Captain?” That was Frank, transferring the sneer from his face to his voice.

Corrigan made no reply. Frank shrugged; Gerard took a key from his pocket, unlocked the car, and climbed under the wheel.

“Hold it,” Corrigan said. “I’ll drive.”

“No, Captain,” Gerard said. “I will. I haven’t felt a wheel under my hands for over four years.”

“You’re a reckless driver.”

“How do you know?”

“All smart-alecks are.”

“One down,” Gerard said. “I’m not a reckless driver at all. Reckless driving is for the birds. What do you think of that?”

“Then show me,” Corrigan grunted. He got in beside Gerard; Frank and Baer sat in the rear.

About a mile from the field the secondary highway ran into Route 9. Gerard turned south toward the city. Whether he had been pulling Corrigan’s leg or telling the truth was irrelevant. He drove carefully, which was all Corrigan cared about.

There was no conversation until Gerard suddenly said, “Tell me something, Captain. How does it feel to knock yourself out getting a case up against somebody, only to find your chicken walk home free a few years later?”

“Not good,” Corrigan said.

“You were pretty lucky,” Gerard said. “If that stupid dog hadn’t dug up that flower bed, the body would never have been discovered.”

Corrigan said, “If you geniuses had bothered to check the kind of fertilizer your father’s gardener used, you never would have buried her with a dog on the premises. Bone meal draws dogs the way sugar does ants.”

Gerard looked irritated. From the rear seat Frank Grant said, “Why don’t you keep your big mouth shut, Gerry?”

“What d’ya mean, why?” Gerard demanded. “Corrigan knows we killed her, Frank.”

“You’re a fool,” Frank said softly.

“Oh, stop acting superior,” Gerard snapped. “We can’t be tried again. Double jeopardy. For all the harm it can do, I can yell it through a loudspeaker on Times Square on New Year’s Eve. In fact, that’s an idea. What do you think, Captain? Could we get into trouble pulling a stunt like that?”

Corrigan did not answer him.

“The captain isn’t feeling conversational,” Gerard said.

“You’re not only a fool, Gerry,” his partner-in-murder said, “you’re a loudmouth fool. Hasn’t it occurred to you that while Corrigan and Mr. Baer here were pretty sure we did it, you’ve now removed all doubt?”

“So what?” jeered Gerard. “Fat lot of good it’ll do ’em.”

“Well, don’t be so free with your confessions in front of our folks, especially my mother. And Andy. Mother, Andy, and your father are probably the only three people in the United States who think we’re innocent, and I’m not sure about your father.”

“Hell, he knows we did it. He’s smart. Smarter than that doting mama of yours and that fathead of a chauffeur. Dad knew it before Corrigan did.”

“You know something, Alstrom?” Chuck Baer said. “Your pal is right. You’ve got a mouth like a steam whistle. I knew you were a can of worms, but I’m wondering how long I’m going to be able to take you. Not long.”

“You shut up and do your job!”

“Nobody tells me to shut up, killer,” Baer said in a perfectly even voice. “Taking your dad’s money isn’t going to stop me from shoving your teeth down your throat. And don’t forget it.”

“Watch the road,” Corrigan said. “You’re beginning to drive erratically, Gerry.”

Frank Grant chuckled.

“What the hell are you chuckling about?” Gerard Alstrom cried. “You think you’re so goddamn brainy. You want me to tell you something, Frank? That brilliant plan of yours stank! If we had followed my suggestion of cutting her up and cremating the pieces in the lab’s electric furnace, there wouldn’t have been anything for that hound to dig up.”

“We would have had to break into the lab,” Frank Grant said. “If the watchman had caught us with a sackful of human remains, we’d have had it then and there.”

“We could have killed him, too.”

“He was armed and we weren’t. Besides, the lab was burglar-alarmed. I took the calculated risk. The burial was less dangerous.”

“It put us away for four years! I never should have let you talk me into it.”

“You let me talk you into it because I’m a born leader and you’re a born follower,” Frank said.

“I’ve got a two-points ad on you in IQ!”

“IQ scores can vary ten points just because of metabolism alone. A slight cold or a heavy lunch—almost anything—can affect the score. Anyway, what’s two points? Intelligence consists of other factors than IQ.”

“What factors?”

“I just told you. I’m a leader and you’re not, Gerry. You’ll have to excuse this little set-to, gentlemen,” Frank Grant said mockingly. “They kept us pretty much separated in prison. This is really the first chance we’ve had to get things straight.”

“Ah,” Gerard said with disgust. “I’ll put it to you, Captain. If you had your choice of brains, whose would you pick, Frank’s or mine?”

“That’s no choice,” Corrigan said.

“What d’ya mean?”

“Give me a third alternative—say, a vulture—and I wouldn’t have any trouble.”

Gerard cursed. Frank laughed. Baer spat out the window.

“You’re making our bodyguard dislike us, Gerry,” Frank said “You’d better hope we don’t need him.”

“I don’t dislike you, son,” Chuck Baer said. “You can’t dislike somebody who’s sick in the head. But you sure as hell don’t have to want to inhabit the same planet. You’re both as paranoid as they come. It’s lucky I have a cast-iron stomach. Just being in the same car with you two makes me want to throw up.”

“Some bodyguard,” Gerard Alstrom snarled. “Who picked this knight in shining armor, Frank?”

“Your father,” Frank Grant said.

“Drive,” Corrigan said. Poor Chuck. He had to take these two for a couple of weeks. He thanked his lucky stars that his chore ended on delivery in Manhattan.

5.

The apartment house was the highest building in the area; it rose eleven stories. The sight of it touched a chord in Corrigan’s memory, but the melody eluded him.

Young Alstrom drove down a ramp into a vast basement garage. There were over a hundred numbered parking slots outlined in white paint. At the far end another ramp led to a lower parking level.

Only a scattering of cars occupied slots in the middle of the working day. No one was in sight.

Gerard braked to a stop at the bottom of the street ramp. “Our space is supposed to be number one. Should be right here somewhere, if they have any kind of sensible numbering system.”

Frank peered both ways through his thick glasses. “Over there, Gerry.” He pointed to the right.

Gerard swung the car into the space and cut the engine. He was about to get out when Corrigan said, “Hold it. Chuck, you stay in the car with them. I want to take a look around.”

He got out and checked the basement, paying particular attention to the parked cars. They were all empty. There was an elevator on one wall, with an open door near it. He went to the doorway and looked in. It was the furnace room. The enormous steam boilers were cold at the moment. A huge air-conditioning unit droned steadily. There was an incinerator, and several workbenches laden with tools. Through an open door across the furnace room he caught a glimpse of a lean, gray-haired man in a striped jump-suit sitting on a cot reading a copy of Playboy; he had it open to the center fold.

Corrigan went quickly back. “Okay,” he said. The pair and Chuck Baer got out of the car, and Gerard Alstrom locked it. From the confident way in which their charges moved about, Corrigan got the impression that they had been thoroughly briefed to the setup. Probably neither had been here before.

Corrigan said, “There’s a maintenance man in the room off the furnace room, Chuck. For what it’s worth, when you get a moment you might arrange for him to tip you to any new tenants who move into the building. Or ones who got here very recently.”

Baer nodded.

Gerard jabbed the elevator call-button. Corrigan and Baer blocked their way when the door opened, but the elevator was empty.

It was self-service.

“Which floor?” Corrigan said.

Gerard did not deign to answer him. He pushed the 11 button, and they sailed up. When the door opened, Corrigan got out first. The way was clear.

“Where now?” Corrigan said.

The blond one crossed the hall to another elevator. There was a telephone on the wall beside it. Obviously a house phone; instead of a dial, it had a single push-button.

Gerard pushed the elevator button. When the door failed to open he reached for the wall phone, but at the moment the elevator opened, and he hung up and stepped in. They followed.

Impatient, Corrigan thought. So he’s not the Fearless Fosdick he makes out to be. Frank Grant seemed content to let his friend take the lead.

The elevator car was much smaller than the one they had come up on. Its capacity was about six passengers. There were three buttons on the control panel. One said “U,” one “D”; the third was red, an emergency button.

Gerard pushed the “U” and the car rose to the roof. They stepped out into a small windowless foyer with a single door opposite the elevator. There was nothing in the foyer but a mail chute, and a trash chute that must have led to the basement incinerator.

Gerard opened a toggle switch on the wall near the elevator.

“Immobilizes the penthouse car at the roof,” he explained. “Anyone getting off at eleven has to phone from there and identify himself; only then do we send the car down. Clever, eh?”

“How about going in?” Baer growled.

Gerard unlocked the apartment door with another key, opened it, and led the way into a large living room furnished in far-out modernism. There was a real fireplace to the right, a door to a hall in the left rear corner. Through a sliding glass door that ran almost the width of the room, Corrigan could see a wrought-iron lawn table on a genuine lawn. The lawn went to flower beds that edged the three-foot-high wall at the roof line.

This was not just a penthouse apartment, Corrigan thought. It was a private house, surrounded by lawn, and all on a rooftop. Apparently the elevator shaft and the foyer were central in the building, for the living room ran the entire width of the house. The hall in the corner must lead to rooms on the opposite side of the elevator shaft.

Chuck Baer set down his suitcase. Chuck was looking incredulous.

At a movement in the doorway from the hall, Corrigan and Baer spun about, hands snatching their guns.

It was a woman.

She was a tall brunette in her late twenties, with a fashion-model figure in every department except the bust, which was formidable. Jet hair framed a face of pale, almost Spanish, beauty. Her large eyes were a striking violet-blue, not Spanish at all.

“Hello, Tim,” she said. She had paused in the doorway, and it framed her. She had a throaty voice which seemed natural, not cultivated. Corrigan could see that Baer, who had a discriminating eye, was impressed; the redhead’s lips were framed in a silent whistle.

“Norma,” Corrigan said. In spite of himself his blood raced. She had always had a powerful hold on him. He realized now that he must have been bracing himself for this encounter for some time; it had been inevitable.

Gerard Alstrom had started toward the girl with outstretched hands. She did not respond, and he halted, flushing.

“Hello, Gerry,” she said, very cool. “You’re still running lucky, I see.”

“You call four years in prison luck, Sis?” Gerard said. It was almost a snarl.

“Yes,” she said, and turned to nod at Frank Grant.

Corrigan rather enjoyed the scene. He knew Gerry Alstrom’s arrogance of old; to see it struck down by someone who refused to be impressed by it was a consummation he had often devoutly wished. The brief exchange told a long story. She was Gerard’s sister, older by a few years, and she took a dim view of the way he had climaxed his young lifetime of riding roughshod over people. She must feel great shame for her blood-relationship with a sadistic killer.

“Oh, Norma,” Corrigan said. “I want you to meet Chuck Baer; your father and Mrs. Grant hired him to bodyguard these two. Chuck, this is Alstrom’s sister, Mrs. Christopher.”

“This job is picking up,” Baer said. “Mrs. Christopher, I hope you’re going to be occupying these premises, too.”

She smiled at him. There he goes again, Corrigan thought. He never stopped being baffled by his friend’s attractiveness to women.

“I’ll be here, Mr. Baer,” Norma said. “But it’s not Mrs. Christopher.” She glanced at Corrigan. “I’ve taken my maiden name back, Tim.”

“I didn’t know you’d been divorced.”

“I wasn’t. It was an annulment.”

“How did you manage that?”

“It’s easy. All you have to do is commit perjury.”

“Perjury?” Baer said. He sounded sad.

“Oh, come, Mr. Baer. The wife gets on the stand and testifies that before marriage her husband agreed to have children, but now refuses to. He takes the stand and admits the charge. The judge knows that they’re both lying, but he grants the annulment. In this case it was Charles who was tired of me, but he was nice enough to play the villain and let me get the annulment.”

Her brittle, derisive manner disturbed Corrigan. It was new. Four years ago, when he had met her in connection with the Audrey Martello murder, he had found it necessary to clamp a lid on himself. He had been instantly attracted to her face, her figure, her little-girl sprightliness, a kind of naïveté that most girls lost in early adolescence. Not only was she a sister of one of the killers, but she was also married, and she seemed radiantly in love with her husband. How Charles Christopher could have tired of her was beyond him.

“I’m sorry it didn’t work out, Norma.”

“Why?” she said lightly. “I find freedom wonderful.”

“If you two are through celebrating Old Home Week,” her brother said sullenly, “I’d appreciate seeing where we flop. I hope the beds are soft. Don’t you, Frank?”

“Soft, shmoft,” Frank Grant said. “Who wants to sleep? Speaking of freedom, Gerry, do you realize we are? Free?”

“How free is free?” Corrigan said. “Seems to me you’ve just exchanged one prison for another.”

“Olé,” Norma Alstrom said softly. “Well, come along. I’ll give you the grand tour.”

To Corrigan’s embarrassment she beckoned him and, when he went to her, took his hand. Frank snickered; Corrigan could have belted him. He withdrew his hand as soon as he decently could. Norma glanced at him, arched her brows, and smiled.

There was a dream-kitchen off the hall, and a large bathroom, and a book-stacked study with Union League-type chairs and lamps, and then a rear hall which served three bedrooms.

The first bedroom Norma showed them was large, with twin beds and masculine wallpaper. French doors looked out on the lawn. Corrigan noticed that the flower beds hemming the roof parapet extended to this side, too; they must run all around the roof.

“This is the only bedroom with its own private bath,” Norma said, indicating a door. “The rest of us will have to use the one off the hall.” She glanced at Baer. “I hope you don’t mind roughing it, Mr. Baer.”

The redhead grinned. “Sight unseen, it beats the outhouse behind my pad. But who are the rest of us? Someone else going to be staying here?”

“Just Frank’s mother. She and I will share the room at the end of the hall. You’ll have the one next door, so you can be near the boys.”

“Isn’t Dad going to be staying here?” Gerard demanded.

“There’s not enough room,” Norma replied without looking at him. “He’s taken an apartment on the eleventh floor. Mrs. Grant’s chauffeur will live in with Dad, so we’ll have someone to run errands. The plan, as I understand it, is to have as few outsiders as possible come to the apartment, even delivery and service people.”

“Whose idea was that?” her brother asked. “It’s smart.”

“Dad’s.” She shrugged. “Not mine, I assure you. I’m just along for the ride. I can’t break Dad’s heart any more than it’s already been broken. So if you have any idea I’m in on this because of you, Gerry, forget it.”

Her tone was as cold as a hanging judge’s. So she had never shared Mrs. Grant’s conviction that the boys were innocent, or her father’s pretense, Corrigan thought.

She did not speak to Frank Grant at all.

The ex-jailbirds were opening closets and dresser drawers. They were full. Someone—probably Mrs. Grant—had gone to a great deal of trouble. There was something sick about the whole thing, and suddenly Corrigan wished he were back in his cubby off the MOS squadroom, in the realm of decent crime.

6.

Chuck Baer’s was a smaller room, with a double bed. Baer tossed his valise on the bed, glanced around, and announced that the room was fine.

“We may as well complete the tour,” Norma said.

They looked into the last bedroom, another twin-bed affair. Again French doors led onto what Corrigan had mentally come to designate as the back yard, although it actually faced the street that fronted the building.

“I want to take a look outside,” Baer said.

They stepped through to the roof, Norma closing the French doors behind her.

“The apartment is completely air-conditioned,” she explained, “so the windows and doors have to be kept closed at all times. At night they can be locked as an added precaution, although I don’t see how anyone could possibly get up here without using the penthouse elevator. That’s why this place was chosen.”

Corrigan and Baer looked over the wall. To get close enough to it to lean over, it was necessary to step into the loam of the three-foot-wide flower beds. They trod carefully.

There was a sheer drop on all four sides. There were no fire escapes. The wall was as free of handholds as glass. To climb up from the eleventh floor unaided would be physically impossible.

“How do people get out in case of fire?” Corrigan asked.

“There’s a fire stairs at the eleventh floor,” Norma said. “Of course, if the electricity went out, no one could get down from the roof to the eleventh, but the fire inspectors seem to have missed that.”

Baer was dissatisfied. “This place isn’t as foolproof as it looks. A cat-burglar with a nylon rope and a gang hook tied to it could stand on a windowsill on the eleventh and toss it up to hook onto the parapet. All he’d have to do then is shinny up the rope.”

Frank Grant tittered. “You’re way out, man. The original occupant of this penthouse built the building. He thought of that when he had the plans drawn up. The windows of the top five floors are solid plate glass with ventilator louvers only a mouse could get through. They don’t open; with air-conditioning they don’t have to.”

Corrigan suddenly remembered why the building had bothered him. He had never been in it before, but it had been pointed out to him years ago.

“This used to be Marty Martello’s penthouse!”

“Right,” Frank said with a twisted grin. “Back in the days of gang wars, when a fortress was a must for the top bananas. But since the Cosa Nostra has outlawed that sort of thing, the big boys don’t need such protection anymore. Marty sold the building about three years ago and bought that big estate of his on the Hudson. I read about it in a feature article at the time he made the move.”

Corrigan stared at him. “So this place was your idea?”

“Sure. When old Narwald and Fellows were discussing where to hide us out for a couple of weeks, I remembered the article and suggested they find out if the penthouse was vacant. It was, and they rented it through an intermediary.” He looked delighted with himself. “What a joke on Martello!”

“Didn’t it occur to you that since he planned the place, he knows the layout of the building thoroughly? Maybe he’s got a trick or two up his sleeve you know nothing about” He squinted at Gerry Alstrom. “You’re both supposed to be geniuses. Why didn’t you think of that when Frank didn’t?”

Young Alstorm’s lip curled. “We conferred on it, fuzz. Anybody with an ounce of the gray stuff would figure Marty planned it to be impregnable. Anyway, we’ve got the psychological advantage. Would he even dream that we’re holing up in the very place he built?”

“You’re wasting your breath on him, Gerry,” Frank said. He snickered again.

I’ll have to get out of here, Corrigan thought, before I bang their pinheads together. At the same time he had to admit—to himself—that for a would-be assassin to get to the roof apartment in this setup would be very difficult, if not impossible. And Martello had seen to it that no one could draw a bead on him from a nearby rooftop. He had made a careful note of the buildings in the neighborhood, and there was not a roof within rifle range that, with normal precautions, could be used as a vantage point for a shot. The tallest building in the area was a nine-story apartment house directly across the street from the side that he had mentally tagged as the “back yard.” The flower bed running all around the place served as a psychological deterrent from stepping close to the wall. And only from close to the wall would anyone be visible to a sniper stationed on the roof of the nine-story building.

A phone rang in the apartment, and Norma went to answer it. She was just hanging up when they joined her in the living room.

“Dad and Mrs. Grant and the two lawyers,” she said. “They’re down on eleven.”

Chuck Baer closed the toggle switch in the foyer which allowed the elevator to be hauled down to eleven. A few moments later he trailed John Alstrom, Elizabeth Grant, and Narwald and Fellows into the living room.

Corrigan waited. When they had traded clichés with Norma, he said curtly, “Did you people drive here directly from Ossining?”

They looked at him, surprised by his tone. Narwald said, “Why, yes, certainly.”

“Even after I told you that Martello and a carful of his hoods were waiting outside the prison?”

The lawyers seemed startled. Fellows pushed manicured fingers through his gray mane. “You said you had run them off, Captain Corrigan. Naturally we thought …”

He could not keep the disgust out of his voice. “And I was starting to think you’d worked out a pretty good security setup. Don’t you realize what you’ve just done? You’ve blown the whole thing. You bank on it—Martello, and probably Harry Barber, too, know exactly where the boys are.”

“Harry Barber?” Mrs. Grant said shrilly.

“He tailed your limousine to Ossining, Mrs. Grant.”

“You didn’t mention that,” the elder Alstrom said nervously.

“What good would it have done? I didn’t want to worry you and Mrs. Grant. And I’ll remind you that neither Mr. Baer nor I was let in on the arrangements. But even if I’d known them, I doubt if I’d have thought any of you so stupid as to make up an elaborate plan to get the boys here without surveillance, and then to come here yourselves with everything but a brass band, right on our heels. An eighth-grade dropout would have known better.”

“See here, Captain,” Alstrom said, flushing. “I don’t care for your tone.”

Corrigan fixed Gerard’s father with his hard and glittering eye. “And I don’t care for your arrangements, Mr. Alstrom. Or the so-called headwork that went into them. You insisted on keeping us out of them. Well, it’s your plan. You live with it—if you can.”

Alstrom was speechless. Even Norma seemed impressed. It was Narwald the Bald who finally broke the ice.

“I’ll admit, Captain, that was pretty dull-witted of us. But it seems to me we’re still perfectly safe. Even if we were followed, this is a fortress. Nobody can get up or in here except by admittance.”

“And what about when you’re ready to ship the boys off?” Corrigan asked. “How do you expect to get them out of here? A sniper could be waiting in any of hundreds of windows within rifle range.”

Baer was beginning to look worried. No one said anything. The redhead was just starting to open his mouth when Frank Grant piped suddenly, “A helicopter. There’s enough room on the roof to land one.”

Corrigan doubted it. He shrugged. “Well, gentlemen, it’s your problem. Work it out any way you please. At this late date I have no suggestions.” He glanced at Baer. “Except one, Chuck. Keep them away from that parapet, especially on the bedroom side of the roof.”

“I’ve already made a note of that,” Baer said. “Those flower beds are off-limits, you two. Step up to that wall and your heads will be clear for a shot from that nine-story roof.”

Corrigan looked at John Alstrom. He was still red. “No hard feelings, Mr. Alstrom. I’m sorry if I sounded teed off. I guess I suffer from the old pro disease, dislike of amateurs.”

Alstrom sounded mollified. “I can understand your resentment, Captain. I see now that it was a mistake not to let you people do the planning.”

“Well, it’s too late to worry about it now, sir. At least the boys couldn’t be in better hands than Chuck Baer’s, so long as they follow his orders. The big problem is going to be to get them out of here. When the time comes, maybe we can help.” He turned to Baer. “I’m going to run along, Chuck. Better bring that elevator car up again after I get off at eleven.”

He made for the foyer. Norma touched Baer’s elbow.

“Let me talk to him for just a minute, Mr. Baer.”

Baer nodded. “Just give a yell when he’s ready to go down, Miss Alstrom.”

Norma caught Corrigan at the elevator.

“Temper,” she said. “No one’s ever talked to my father in that tone before.”

“I apologized, didn’t I?” Corrigan said gruffly.

“That surprised me, too. You’re not the apologizing type.”

“I suddenly remembered he was your father. It’s hard to make time with a girl when you’re insulting her old man.”

Her eyes widened. “You’re trying to make time with me?”

He took both her hands. “What do you think?”

“I didn’t think. Oh, I suppose I’ve flirted my tail in your direction once or twice, but that’s only doing what comes naturally. Tim, you’re not serious?”

“Why are you so surprised? You’re a damn attractive chick. How available are you?”

“To you, any time.”

She kissed him lightly on the cheek.

Corrigan wondered if this might not be a good time to go into action. But the social raillery in her voice stopped him. It was the expected give-and-take, the voice said. For some reason that was not enough for Corrigan this time; he had had plenty of practice playing that game, with usually pleasant results—but not now. He wondered why.

“I didn’t get a chance to talk to you alone, Norma. I wanted to tell you how sorry I am your marriage broke up.”

“What’s there to be sorry about?” she asked, hard as a diamond. “Charles simply couldn’t take the sensational publicity that enveloped us when that psycho brother of mine and his pal Frank Grant put us into the headlines. His choker-collared New England people cut us dead, of course. Charles was faced with the choice of sticking with the psycho’s sister and all the attendant hooraw or crawling back into the womb of his blueblood family. Considering what a weak sister the guy is, I suppose I can’t blame him.”

Corrigan blamed him. He saw now the basis of Norma’s brittleness. It was a defensive coverup for what the Martello case had done to her life. He wanted very much to put his arms around her and hold her tight.

But, being Corrigan, he merely said, “I’m sorry, kid,” and turned to the elevator.

She pulled him back. “Don’t waste your sympathy, Tim. I’ve made the adjustment, I really have.” The hell you have, Corrigan said silently. “And it does have one advantage, as I was saying when you made that sneak change of subject. I’m available.”

He grinned at her. “I’ve made a mental note of it,” he said. “I didn’t follow up because I won’t be sure of my schedule till I get back to my office. I plan to drop by tomorrow some time. Maybe we can work something out then.”

“Why don’t you come for lunch?” she suggested. “I’m doing the cooking during this campout, and in all modesty I’m pretty good.”

“What time?”

“Twelve-thirty?”

He glanced through the arch with a frown. “What’s holding up Chuck?”

“I told him I’d signal when I was through with you,” Norma giggled. She raised her voice, “Mr. Baer?”

7.

Corrigan studied the street in both directions, scanned the windows of the opposite building. He could detect nothing suspicious. But the innocent appearance of things failed to comfort him.

There was no taxi in sight, so he walked the block to the nearest subway entrance and stood all the way downtown. At the entrance to headquarters he glanced at his watch and saw that it was a few minutes to one. He got his car out of the police parking lot and drove to a haunt of his for lunch.

On Friday morning Corrigan decided to do a good deed. He was sidetracked by two new cases until after eleven, so it was eleven-thirty before he got to the apartment building where Harry Barber lived. He was not sure he would find the football star in; the Cougars’ spring training windup was about due, but exactly when Corrigan did not know.

The apartment was on the second floor of an old five-story on Fifth Avenue. Somebody was home; he could hear footsteps after he rang the bell.

The door was opened by a perky little blonde in a white sweater, skintight silver lamé slacks, and silver halfboots with oriental toes. She had big blue eyes, a sprinkle of freckles across a cute little nose, and a naturally cheerful expression. She was just on the attractive side of plumpness.

His immediate impression was early twentyish, but he had once been taught by an artist how to judge age. The barely visible tiny lines at the corners of her eyes told him that she was a good ten years older.

“Is this Harry Barber’s place?”

“That’s right.” She examined his black eye-patch frankly. “You must be Captain Corrigan.”

“I didn’t realize the fame of my pirate patch’d reached your age group.”

“Isn’t that sweet.” She exposed perfect teeth. “Harry’s mentioned you, Captain. He kind of thought you’d be around. Come in.”

He stepped past her into a small, crowded, rather lush room. She took his hat and dropped it on an end table.

“Harry’ll be back any minute. They were having skull practice this morning; he doesn’t have to go back this afternoon, so he’ll be home for lunch.”

“I didn’t know Harry was married.”

She laughed. “He’s not. I’m a friend. Pat Chase.”

“Hi, Pat,” Corrigan said. “With a friend like you, who needs friends?”

“I didn’t know the police department bred diplomats, Captain. Or was that a left-handed compliment? Anyway, sit down.”

“Could you make it Tim? I’m an old friend of Harry’s, and this isn’t an official visit.”

“I’m glad to hear that.” She twitched her plump shoulders in a mock shiver. “Harry says you’re a regular bloodhound when you go after somebody.” She sat down on the sofa opposite, and cocked her blonde head nicely. “Now, really, Captain—Tim, I mean—aren’t you wondering about me?”

“If you say so,” Corrigan said amiably.

“I’m the next-door neighbor. Also Harry’s part-time cook when I don’t have an assignment, like now.”

“Assignment?”

“I’m a photographer’s model. I’m the cornfed gal straddling the horse, with the wind blowing my hair across my face. Or the one vaulting the net waving a tennis racket. You must have seen me dozens of times.”

Corrigan had neither the time nor the inclination for browsing through ads, but he thought now that she looked familiar. Chalk one up for the subliminal effects of the advertising art.

She giggled. “I’ll tell you a trade secret, Tim. They practically have to tie me onto the horse, and I never played a set of tennis in my life.”

“I’ll guard it with my life, Pat.”

He found himself liking the girl.

He glanced around the room. There were certain feminine touches in the decor totally out of keeping with a pro football player’s image, and a bachelor at that. Pat Chase’s next-door neighborliness obviously was not restricted to an occasional romp in the kitchen.

Corrigan was rather surprised. The scoop on Barber was that he had gone sour on the sex since Audrey Martello’s murder. Besides, Harry was only about twenty-five; Pat Chase must be seven or eight years his senior. On the other hand, it would be unnatural for a man as young and virile as Barber to remain celibate. Corrigan, with a great many years on Barber, found it impossible himself. Barber had probably picked an older girl for two reasons: The difference in their ages would be no bar to a satisfactory physical arrangement, and at the same time it would minimize the danger of another emotional involvement. He had been badly burned, and he would tend to avoid the fire post-Audrey.

There was no mystery about the blonde’s position in the affair. In their thirties women began to worry about their attractiveness, and a younger lover could fill an important need. Besides, Harry Barber was a handsome and famous guy—shacking up with him no doubt gave her a sense of victory in the eternal manhunt.

Corrigan pushed the matter from his mind as none of his business. A portable typewriter caught his eye. It lay on a card table near the windows, in its carrier, with the case open. He could see the word ROYAL.

The anonymous threat-letter popped into his head. It had been the work of a literate person. Harry Barber was a college graduate, and he would certainly have remembered the officer who had worked on the case. Corrigan found himself rejecting the thought. Harry wasn’t the kind to write anonymous notes. His M.O. was to jump into a situation with both feet and think about it later.

“I haven’t seen Harry, except from the stands, in over a year. Why did he think I might drop around, Pat?”

“What did you want to see him about?” the girl asked clearly.

Corrigan smiled. She was going to defend him like a mother hen.

“As I said, this isn’t official. But off the record, I’d like to know what he was doing in Ossining yesterday.”

She screwed up her cute nose. “He thought you spotted him! It isn’t what you think.”

“What do I think, Pat?”

“That he was there because of the release of those two crazy killers. It was pure coincidence, Tim. He just happened to have business in Ossining.”

“Like what?”

She shrugged like a pussy. “You’ll have to ask Harry. I’m not the prying kind of neighbor.”

Corrigan leaned far forward and took her hand. “I’m here because I like Harry, Pat. I’d hate to see him get into trouble. Revenge is for clucks. I know how he feels …”

“Harry wouldn’t do a foolish thing like that,” she said quickly. “He was mad as hops when the release was announced, but it was more at the Court of Appeals than at Alstrom and Grant.”

“I doubt he’s forgiven them,” Corrigan said dryly.

“Who said anything about forgiveness? Harry doesn’t pretend to be Jesus Christ. How would you feel about two animals who slaughtered the girl you loved for no other reason than to see if they could get away with it? And for whatever kicks they got out of it?” Pat Chase withdrew her hand; to his surprise she was actually vehement. “He still loves Audrey.”

Making it hard, if not impossible, for the girl next door to serve as anything more than a bed partner, Corrigan thought. But then the door opened and Harry Barber came in. He was a striking figure of a man, with “superb athlete” written all over him. He towered six inches above Corrigan and was half again as wide. He was hatless and wore a yellow sports shirt which revealed corded arms covered by curly blond hair; his skin was weathered by the sun and wind, not by a gym lamp. There was something open about his face; it would be hard to distrust him. Corrigan, who did not usually go by surfaces, found his caution nodding.

“Captain Corrigan! Great to see you again.”

He shook Corrigan’s hand gently, as a strong man should. Corrigan thought: He’d be a very tough guy for a little man to fight, even a little man with OSS and police training.

“How goes it, Harry?”

“On the field? We could use a couple of three-hundred-pound linemen.”

“I mean how are you?”

“Hungry. How about staying for lunch?” Barber turned to Pat, who was standing silently by waiting. He stooped and kissed her on top of her shining head. “Started anything, Pats?”

“A frank-and-bean casserole in the oven. There’s plenty for a guest.”

“Thanks, but I can’t stay,” Corrigan said. “Lunch date. I just stopped by, Harry. I imagine you can guess why.”

The football player glanced at the girl and she made a face. “He spotted you, Harry.”

“It was one of those things, Captain,” Barber said. “This trick knee of mine. My old brace was wearing out, and the manufacturer happens to be in Ossining.”

The caution hardened. Corrigan gave him the fisheye. “No mail service? You skipped practice just for that?”

“They have to be fitted,” Barber said patiently. “Want to see the brace? And you can check with the company.”

Corrigan said, “Look here, Harry. I don’t doubt you stopped off and bought a new brace after you saw me. But I spotted your car twenty miles south of Ossining, and I know a tail when I see one. You were following Mrs. Grant, probably have been ever since that court decision.”

Barber shook his head. “You’ve got me all wrong, Captain.”

“All right, Harry,” Corrigan said. “But will you take some friendly advice? Don’t try anything.”

“You think I’d risk prison for those lice?” Barber said. “I’ve had plenty of time to cool off. Anyway, they’ll be taken care of by Audrey’s old man, that hood Martello.”

“Don’t bank on it, Harry. We’re covering Marty and his mob like a roll of adhesive tape.”

He retrieved his hat, then paused at the door to tell Pat Chase he was glad to have met her. She said she was glad, too, in a subdued voice.

8.

Corrigan unhooked the phone at the elevator on the eleventh floor and pressed the button in the middle of the dial.

Norma answered, but it was Chuck Baer who met him when he stepped off in the penthouse foyer. Corrigan approved. He knew Baer’s quality on a job; no doubt the private detective had insisted that no one but he was ever to touch the switch that operated the penthouse lift.

“How’s it going, Chuck?”

The redhead made a face. “If it wasn’t for Norma, I’d be stir-crazy. I may marry her.”

“Go find your own chick. This one’s mine. I mean I’m going to give it the old college try.”

“Yeah,” Baer said. “Every time I back her into a corner, she wants to talk about you. I think I’m wearing her down, though. I’ve been telling her the truth about you.”

“That can only make her love me more.”

“Not the way I tell it,” Baer said. Then they grinned at each other and went into the living room.

Gerard Alstrom was seated in a chair before the cold fireplace reading a book, but not as if he enjoyed it. Elizabeth Grant was on the settee mooning fondly through the sliding glass doors at her son and Andy Betz, who were slouched at the lawn table on the roof. Young Grant and the chauffeur had a cribbage board between them, and Frank was dealing the cards.

Mrs. Grant acknowledged Corrigan’s arrival with a distant nod. He nodded back, just as distantly. Gerard raised one hand in a thumb-to-nose salute. Corrigan ignored him. The pair on the roof glanced around and immediately went back to their game.

Corrigan looked around. Baer read his mind. “She’s out in the kitchen knocking out a soufflé, Tim.”

At that moment Norma, in an apron, appeared in the doorway to the hall. “Hi,” she said. “Lunch in five minutes. Mrs. Grant, would you ask Frank and Andy to break up that silly game? We’re going to use the lawn table.”

“With pleasure.” Elizabeth Grant jumped up. “They’ve been at it since breakfast. I might as well have stayed on Long Island for all the attention I’m getting from my son.”

She stamped out, the picture of neglected motherhood.

Gerard said, without raising his eyes from the book, “If that stupid woman didn’t bug him so much, maybe Frank would pay some attention to her. How he can stand her is beyond me. All mothers should be strangled at birth.”

He made no attempt to lower his voice. The sliding doors were open, but Elizabeth Grant gave no indication that she had heard him. She was stooping over Frank, fondling his hair. He pushed her hand away.

Norma said quickly, “There will be seven of us, Tim, and the lawn benches only accommodate three on a side. Would you and Chuck put a couple of straight chairs out there so we’ll have more elbow room?” She went back to the kitchen quickly, too.

Each man picked up a chair and carried it outside.

“So it’s Chuck now,” Corrigan said.

“I try to make a little progress each day,” Baer said modestly. “When I talk her into addressing you as Captain, I figure I’ll be in.”

John Alstrom, it appeared, was at his office that day.

The soufflé was excellent. Otherwise, lunch was unpleasant. Elizabeth Grant pouted over her son’s pointed lack of attention; for most of the meal she delivered a monologue about the sacrifices she had made for him. Frank listened with frequent glances at heaven. Corrigan could have kicked him. She was undoubtedly hard to take, but that she deeply loved her son was beyond question; he could have paid some attention to her out of common decency, if not affection. Who else gave a damn about him? But he treated her as if she were a despised dog, to be ignored or kicked as the fancy took him. He won’t miss her till she’s gone, Corrigan thought, when he has to face the world unshielded. If he lives that long.

Norma Alstrom hardly touched her lunch. She seemed under a deep strain. As soon as the last one, who happened to be Mrs. Grant, set down her coffee cup, Norma abruptly rose.

“Gerard, you and Frank clear the table. I have to talk to Captain Corrigan.”

She took Corrigan’s hand and led him around to the other side of the house. As soon as they were out of earshot, Norma inhaled. “I don’t know how much more of Elizabeth Grant I can take. She keeps up that martyr pose all the time. No wonder Frank is unbalanced.”

“What’s Gerard’s excuse?” Corrigan asked.

She looked at him.

“Sony,” he said. “You can’t expect me to love him because he’s your brother. He’s a killer, too.”

“You’re right,” Norma said, and shook her head. “Elizabeth thinks they’re innocent, and of course Andy Betz does, too. Tim, they really did it, didn’t they?”

“You know they did, Norma. If you thought Gerard was innocent, you wouldn’t blame him for ruining your marriage.”

“I suppose it’s unnatural to hate your own brother. But how many girls have psychos for brothers?”

“Why do you stay here? You certainly don’t owe Gerard anything.”

“For Dad’s sake. He would never understand if I turned my back on Gerard. Gerry’s only going to be in the country for a couple of weeks more, and I may not see him after that for years, if ever. Besides, I’m needed for practical reasons.”

“Practical?”

“You haven’t seen any servants here, have you? There’s no room for help to sleep in, and Mr. Narwald and Mr. Fellows said it would be too great a security risk to have them trooping in and out. So I’m elected. Mrs. Grant and I were supposed to share the chores,” Norma added with a laugh. “Elizabeth’s never used a dust cloth in her life. She doesn’t even know how to make a bed properly. Meet Norma, girl-of-all-work.”

They had paused near the wall on the bedroom side of the building. Corrigan scanned the sky. “Do you know when the boys are supposed to leave here? And where they’re going?”

She shook her head. “They’ve kept it a secret even from me. All I know is, they plan to travel under false names for a couple of years, maybe longer. I don’t see how they can ever come back here with any hope of safety as long as that Martello man is alive.”

You’ve got it pegged right, baby, Corrigan thought. With Marty Martello still breathing, Gerard and Frank had to go through life braced for a bullet in the back—or worse—at any moment of the day or night.

“What you need, Norma,” Corrigan smiled, “is a breather. How about getting away from here for a few hours?”

“Oh, that would be wonderful!” Her face lit up like a Midway. “Do you think we really could?”

“Let them feed themselves one night.”

“There’s a supply of frozen dinners in the freezer …”

“That’ll do it. Can you be ready by seven?”

“Oh, yes!”

“I’ll be here.” Corrigan glanced at his watch. “Meanwhile, I’d better be getting back to the job. Thanks for lunch.”

She looked years younger.

He had started toward the house when he stopped. The building across the street … Chuck Baer was probably checking its roof every once in a while to make sure no sniper appeared; but as long as he was so close to the wall Corrigan decided to make a check himself.

“Just a minute,” he said.

To see the roof across the street he had to get close to the wall. Corrigan carefully set his right foot in the center of the flower bed and leaned far forward, palms gripping the edge of the parapet.

A man was standing at the wall of the other roof. He was in the act of taking a pair of binoculars from a case. The figure was wiry and looked familiar, but at that distance Corrigan could not make out his features.

He pushed away from the parapet and stepped back out of sight of the other roof.

“Are there any binoculars in the house, Norma?”

“I have some opera glasses in my room.”

“Get them—fast.”

She ran. A moment later she reappeared with a pair of rhinestone-studded opera glasses. Corrigan adjusted them by focusing on a gull sailing overhead. Then he stepped into the flower bed again, on the same footprint, and directed the glasses at the roof across the street.

The wiry man’s binoculars were aimed directly at him. The man immediately lowered them, made quickly for the roof door, and disappeared. But not before Corrigan had got a good look at the scarred face. It was Al Jennings, the one known as the Acid Kid.

Corrigan stepped back and returned the glasses to Norma.

“What is it, Tim?”

“One of Martello’s hoods was on that roof across the way using high-powered binoculars,” he said grimly. “That ought to remove all doubt about the limousine’s having been tailed here from Ossining.”

He started toward the other side of the house. Norma hurried to keep up with him.

“What are you going to do, Tim?”

“Something I should have done before,” Corrigan said.

9.

The dishes had been cleared from the lawn table; Frank and Andy were back playing cribbage. Baer, puffing on a panatela, was kibitzing. Mrs. Grant and Gerard Alstrom had retreated to the living room.

Corrigan drew Baer aside and told him about the Acid Kid on the roof across the street.

“I’m going to drop by Martello’s and straighten him out, Chuck. I suggest you announce that the street side of the roof is off-limits to everybody.”

“Including me,” Baer said. He added wistfully, “I don’t suppose it would be a very good idea for me to leave the boys here alone while I came along?”

“No.”

Baer and Norma accompanied him to the elevator. As Corrigan stepped into the car, Norma said, “See you at seven, Tim.”

Baer glared at him.

Corrigan grinned and pushed the down button.

Martello’s front for his numerous illegal activities was The Martello Realty Company. It occupied the entire top floor of a twenty-five-story office building on Madison Avenue.

Among the “salesmen” on the “staff” of The Martello Realty Company was a phalanx of junior executives in the Cosa Nostra known by the police to direct bookmaking activities, numbers banks, prostitution, narcotics distribution, and other non-realty activities. The soldiers of the Family were all licensed real estate salesmen, however, and there was nothing the police could do about their consorting at the offices where they ostensibly worked for honest wages. The company did, in fact, engage in its professed business. In addition to his soldiers, Martello had a staff of legitimate employees; these did the actual work of running his real estate enterprises.

The elevator discharged Corrigan on the twenty-fifth floor into an ordinary reception office. A middle-aged woman with a glistening hairdo occupied a desk beyond an aluminum railing. She gave him a customer-greeting smile, but Corrigan noticed that her once-over was sharp.

The smile grew forced as she recognized him. It was not Corrigan’s first visit to The Martello Realty Company.

He swung through the gate and held his I.D. up to the receptionist’s eyes.

“If you’re looking for Mr. Martello,” the woman said, “he isn’t in.”

Corrigan went by her to the hall door behind her desk. She turned quickly in her chair. “You can’t go back there until I phone to see if it’s all right, Captain—”

“It’s all right with me,” Corrigan said, “and that’s what counts.”

He turned down the hall to his left (on the right were the offices where legitimate business was transacted). The left side was only a few yards long, ending in an unmarked frosted glass door. Corrigan opened it and walked the length of a corridor with doors on both sides. At the very end there was another frosted glass door with the word PRIVATE on it.

He opened this door and stepped into an airy, plush office. A svelte enameled blonde with upswept eye makeup sat behind a desk; the eyes made her look like a cat. Lounging in chairs, studying girlie magazines, were Little Jumbo Barth and Thin Man Benny Grubb.

The blond was just hanging up a phone. She looked flustered. “I’m sorry, Captain, but Mr. Martello isn’t in.”

Corrigan looked at the two men. They stared back at him.

“Then what’s his muscle crew guarding—his ghost?”

He headed for a door beyond the secretary’s desk. Little Jumbo bounded out of his chair and stepped between Corrigan and the door.

“Got a search warrant?” He croaked like a frog.

Corrigan was conscious that Benny Grubb had got to his feet and was moving in behind him.

Obviously Martello had issued instructions that he was not in to Captain Corrigan in case Corrigan came visiting. It hurt Corrigan’s feelings. He was ordinarily scrupulous not to tread on the constitutional rights even of hoods; their lawyers were too good. In most cases he would have said no, but he could get one; would have used the blonde’s phone; then planted himself where he was until the warrant got there.

But he was not in a reasonable mood. Because his attitude toward Gerard Alstrom and Frank Grant was all antagonism, he had to overcompensate. He knew Martello was in his office, and he was in no mood to take Little Jumbo’s arrogance. Besides, he was fed to the eyebrows with Alstrom’s and Grant’s.

“Get out of my way,” Corrigan said to Barth.

Little Jumbo bared large, dirty teeth in a grin and fell into a wrestling crouch. A sharp breath from behind him reminded Corrigan of the danger from Benny Grubb.

He whirled and slashed the edge of his right hand into Grubb’s Adam’s apple just as the Thin Man was throwing a rabbit punch. Grubb slammed backward, caromed off the edge of the blonde’s desk, and sat heavily on the floor. He stayed there, making strangling noises and clutching his throat.

Corrigan sidestepped a lunge by the ex-wrestler, stuck out a foot, and tripped him. Barth broke the fall with his hands, rolled aside, and bounced to his feet again. He launched a diving tackle.

This time Corrigan did not sidestep. As Barth’s huge hands reached to encircle him, his knee whistled up and collided with the man’s heavy jaw.

Little Jumbo fell to his hands and knees; he stared up at Corrigan, shaking his head. Corrigan gave him the savate. His shoe landed solidly under the chin, snapping the bullet head up and straightening the ex-wrestler on his knees. Then he toppled over on his side and lay still.

“No wonder he retired from wrestling,” Corrigan said conversationally to the blonde. He was not even breathing hard.

She stared at Mm wide-eyed. Corrigan glanced at Benny Grubb, who was still gripping his throat and gasping. Then he opened the door to Martello’s office and stepped inside.

The mobster was seated behind a captain of industry’s desk before a picture window which framed New York’s skyline. His dark face turned darker as Corrigan closed the door and put his back against it.

“Usually you’re not so inhospitable, Marty,” Corrigan said. “The only reason I can think of for your stupid ‘not in’ act is that you know why I’m here.”

Martello said nothing. Corrigan advanced to the desk and leaned on it.

“The Acid Kid phoned you that I spotted him on the roof, right?”

Martello located his voice. “You got no right busting into my private office, Corrigan. I could have you boarded for this.”

“Then I’ll give you some extra grounds,” Corrigan growled.

He vaulted the desk and hoisted the racketeer to his feet by his lapels. Martello raised both hands weakly, but he offered no resistance. Something in his liquid eyes boded ill for somebody—probably, thought Corrigan, Little Jumbo and Benny for allowing the great one to be manhandled like a punk.

Corrigan held on, emphasizing his point by a little shake. “Get this straight, Marty. If I spot any more of your hoods around that hideout, I’ll have you behind bars even if I have to frame a charge against you. Any comment?”

Martello’s hands were still raised protectively, but there was no fear in his dark face.

“Why do you care what happens to a pair of psycho killers, Captain?” he asked softly. “You know they killed my Audrey.”

“I’m sorry about that. From what I understand, you brought your daughter up to be a decent human being, which is about the only thing you’ve got going for you when you face the Man upstairs. But this is a matter of principle. Organized society isn’t about to turn over the administration of justice to the Mafia.”

“What justice?” Martello asked bitterly. “They let the psychos go.”

“I could explain to you why it happened, but I doubt you’d understand. I’m just telling you, Marty. Hands off those two, or else.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the mobster said sullenly. “You think I’m crazy? If they were hit, the finger would point straight at me.”

“Then why the stakeout?”

“So I’m interested in their plans. Is that a crime?”

“Remember what I said, Marty.”

He released his grip on the man’s lapels. Martello brushed at the wrinkled cloth of his three-hundred-dollar suit.

“Okay, I got the message,” the racketeer said. “Now get out of my office.”

“If I have to come back, Marty, you’re leaving with me in cuffs.”

He left quietly. Benny Grubb was on his feet, but he was still massaging his throat and gulping. He scurried out of Corrigan’s way with a murderous glance.

The blonde was kneeling beside the still unconscious Little Jumbo, trying to revive him.

And what did that accomplish, Corrigan asked himself as he headed for the elevator, except to make me feel better? As Martello had said, the finger would point unwaveringly his way if young Alstrom and Grant were hit Probably the mobster’s immediate plan was merely to keep track of the two killers—specifically, to learn where they were headed when they left the penthouse and under which aliases they intended to travel. Martello could afford to wait. With his Mafia connections, he could as easily have the pair burned in Timbuktu as in Manhattan. And far more safely. That was his plan, all right. Or was it? Was Martello’s personal loss influencing his judgment? It was possible. He was reputed to have idolized his daughter, an only child.

When he got back to his office, Corrigan phoned Chief Technician Yoder at the police lab to ask what kind of typewriter had been used in the anonymous note Corrigan had sent over the day before.

Yoder said it had been done on a Royal portable.

Coincidence, Corrigan thought as he hung up. It must be. Harry Barber was too nice a guy to send unsigned threats, like some crank.

Then why had he bothered to check?

10.

That night Corrigan and Norma had a ball. He did not get her home until nearly three, an hour not appreciated by Chuck Baer, who had to stay up to let her in.

During the following week Corrigan took Norma out twice more; since he had to make duty the following mornings, he got her home at more reasonable hours.

By the time the next weekend rolled around, Norma had settled in, like a habit. Corrigan found himself expecting to see her regularly; he began to take their dates for granted. On Saturday she invited him over for lunch. As he was leaving, he said, “Around seven?”

“Hey, we’re getting used to each other,” Norma smiled.

Corrigan considered this. “I guess we are. I kind of like it, Norm. Do you feel in a rut?”

“In a pleasant one. I’d forgotten what it felt like to depend on a man.”

It had been a long time since Corrigan had taken a woman for granted. His romances tended to be one-night stands. He wondered uneasily if he should pursue the relationship; it could get dangerously intimate. But then he shrugged. He was enjoying himself too much to let his natural skittishness spoil a good thing. He decided to ride it out and see what happened.

The only further threats against Gerard Alstrom and Frank Grant were seven more anonymous letters. Only one had been addressed to the police. One had been sent to the district attorney. The other five were received by the Court of Appeals; the justices had turned them over to the police.

The seven letters were semi-literate, none, was typed and, according to the lab, all had been written by different per sons. The technicians were able to match three to similar letters received four years earlier, but this proved a dead end, since they had never established the authorship of the original notes.

There was no further evidence that anyone was watching the penthouse.

Life there had developed its own routine. Gerard spent much of his time reading. Frank and Andy Betz endlessly played cribbage. Mrs. Grant continued to harass the household with her untiring complaints about her son’s neglect. Norma, when she was not cooking or doing chores, spent most of her time in her room.

Chuck Baer, for lack of anything better to do, developed a panatela cough. When Andy was off on an errand, he played cribbage with Frank Grant, who always trounced him. It did not improve Baer’s disposition.

Gerard’s father went to his office daily; he visited the penthouse only for dinner and for a short time each evening. He had grown old-looking and ill.

Baer had been informed that his assignment would end some time during the week.

On Sunday evening, the tenth day of the siege in the penthouse, Corrigan took Norma to dinner. Because he had to be at work early the next morning, he got her back by eleven.

He found himself reluctant to let the evening end. The unseasonably warm weather persisted; it was a heavenly night; there was an absurdly full moon.

He kicked himself for not having suggested a nightcap at his apartment, a suggestion he had been working up to for the last two dates. He had not made it because he sensed that Norma was only just beginning to break out of the shell in which she had imprisoned herself following the breakup of her marriage; she was more likely than not to pull her head in again if pushed too hard. Tonight there was a special glow in her eyes. But he discovered it too late. Corrigan had to settle for second-best; he decided to stick around for a while.

Everybody but Baer had gone to bed. The redhead was in the front room grumpily watching TV. Corrigan politely inquired if they were keeping him up.

“Yes, as a matter of fact,” Baer said. “I can’t go to bed until I’ve let you out and immobilized the elevator. How about saying good night, pal? The news stinks.”

“Watch your television, will you? I feel like a moonlight stroll on the roof. How about it, Norm?”

“I’d love it, Tim.” The glow had deepened.

Baer said, “How long you planning to stick around?”

“Oh, a while,” Corrigan said vaguely.

“Say an hour?”

Corrigan glanced at Norma. She said, “It’s only eleven, Chuck. You won’t be leaving before midnight, Tim, will you?”

“I guess not,” Corrigan said promptly. “Why not stretch out on the settee, Chuck?”

“I’m going stir-nutty. If you’re going to be here anyway, Tim, how about if I duck out to a bar for a half hour or so?”

The suggestion found Corrigan may simpáticó.

“You poor bastard,” he said to the redhead. “Sure thing, Chuck. Go ahead.”

Baer muttered something about Greeks and gifts and switched off the TV. “I just have to put on a tie and my jacket.”

Corrigan took charge of the buttons while Baer rode down to the eleventh floor; he brought the car up and immobilized it at the roof. When he got back to the living room, the sliding glass doors were open and Norma was on the roof. He joined her, shutting the doors behind him.

Norma was standing at the lawn table. She was wearing a white strapless gown which clung to her figure as though she were charged with static electricity. In the moonlight her bare shoulders looked like Chinese ivory.

Corrigan took her hands and drew her to him. Her arms slipped around his neck and she raised her lips.

It was not their first kiss. But its predecessors had been mere good-night pecks on the way up in the elevator, inhibited by the knowledge that Chuck Baer would be standing there when the door opened. This was the first moment they had been alone without fear of interruption.

Corrigan could feel the girl turn to fire in his arms. She writhed against him and made a little moaning noise. He was feeling pretty good himself. But she broke the kiss and pulled away. She whispered, “Not here, Tim. It’s too bright.”

It was bright. Light from the living room streamed through the glass doors; they might as well be embracing in a spotlight.

She took his hand and drew him around to the other side of the house. The bedroom windows here were all dark and draped.

“This is better, isn’t it?” she whispered.

“Perfect, baby.”

She settled into his arms. This time the kiss left them gasping.

“Let me get my breath!” she giggled. She sank to the grass and pulled him down beside her. The grass was cool and dry.

Corrigan pressed her back. His lips buried themselves in her throat, then moved down. Norma melted like a candle, sighing.

And then she turned rigid. There was a sound as of a latch turning a few feet away. She pushed Corrigan off and scrambled to her feet. He was just jumping up when one of the French doors to Norma’s and Mrs. Grant’s bedroom opened.

Elizabeth Grant, in a quilted robe, her bottle-blonde hair in curlers, blinked out at them.

“Oh, it’s you, Norma,” she said. She ignored Corrigan. “I couldn’t imagine what that funny noise was. It sounded like someone in pain.”

Corrigan could have throttled her.

“Sorry we disturbed you, Elizabeth,” Norma said; her voice was muffled. “We’ll be more quiet.”

She moved in the direction of the wall. Corrigan glanced back as he followed. Mrs. Grant sniffed and pulled the French door shut. He heard her latch it again.

Norma halted at the edge of the flower bed and looked up at the full moon. She was very pale. When Corrigan put his arm around her waist, she slipped away and glanced back at the house. Damn that Grant woman! he thought. That was thirty for tonight. He made no further attempt to recapture the mood.

“On our next date we’re going to my apartment,” he growled. “Nobody’ll be popping out of the woodwork there!”

“I’m sorry, Tim. I guess she scared me.”

“Sure,” he said.

She glanced over her shoulder. “Let’s go back to the table. I think Elizabeth is watching us through the drapes.”

“Frank must get his nastiness from somewhere,” Corrigan said glumly. “Okay, Norm. Wait. As long as we’re on this side, I’d better make a check of that other roof.”

He peered about in the moonlight and located the footprint he had left in the flower bed. He stepped into it, braced himself against the parapet, and peered across the street.

The roof of the opposite building was bright as day under the moon. There was no one on it. Corrigan pushed himself back and stepped out of the flower bed.

“Nothing,” he said. “Now all I’ve got to do is wait for Chuck to get back.”

“I’m sorry, Tim,” Norma murmured. Then she smiled and slipped her arm through his. “Next time your place. I promise.”

They were sitting at the lawn table, feet on one of the benches, sharing a cigarette, when the house phone rang inside. It was one o’clock. Corrigan got to it before the third ring.

“I’m back, lover boy,” Baer’s bass voice said in his ear. “How’d you make out?”

“None of your goddam business,” Corrigan growled. “Chuck,” he said to Norma, who had followed him; and he went into the foyer and closed the toggle switch beside the elevator. A moment later Baer stepped off the car. Corrigan opened the switch again.

Baer grinned. “I take it that means you struck out.”

Corrigan opened his mouth to make a profane suggestion.

It was never made.

Somebody screamed in one of the bedrooms. The scream was so full of terror that it disguised the sex of the screamer.

Corrigan and Baer raced.

11.

Norma, paralyzed, was left behind. As they dashed into the hallway leading to the bedrooms, there was another scream. This time its sex was determinable, and its origin. The yell came from Frank Grant’s throat, in the bedroom the two boys occupied.

They heard the bathroom door in the boys’ room slam. Corrigan reached the bedroom door a step before Baer. He threw his shoulder against it and bounced off. It was locked.

They heard someone crash into the bathroom door inside, then the clatter of some metal object falling to the floor. There was a muttered curse in a voice Corrigan failed to recognize, then heavy footsteps pounded across the room away from them, which meant toward the French doors.

Corrigan and Baer worked together like parts of a machine. So when the MOS man spun past Baer and raced back up the hall, the private detective had no need to ask questions. He knew that, with his heavier build, he was delegated to break in the bedroom door while Corrigan circled around to cut off whoever had just fled from the bedroom.

Halfway down the hall Corrigan almost collided with Norma. She skipped into the bathroom out of the hall to let him pass, and he tore on by. An instant later he was across the living room, had rolled open the sliding door, and was racing around the corner on the roof.

Gun in hand, Corrigan skidded to a halt on the bedroom side of the house. One of the French doors to the boys’ room stood open; no light showed from inside. There was no one in sight. The only sound he heard was the thud of Chuck Baer’s beef hitting the door from the hall.

Corrigan ran around the entire perimeter of the house.

No one. Nothing. Whoever it was had got away. He deliberately put out of his head the question of how. That was for later.

Now he snatched a pencil flashlight from his pocket, flicked it on, and stepped through the French door to the scene of the commotion. Just as he did so the hall door crashed open and Baer flew in. His momentum carried him to the middle of the room, where he landed on hands and knees. The big man jumped to his feet and darted over to flip on the light switch.

Corrigan put away his gun and flash.

One of the twin beds was empty. The covers were piled on the floor as though the occupant had leaped out of bed in panic. The other bed still held its occupant.

Gerard Alstrom lay almost on his back, one leg off the bed, a hand still gripping the thrown-back covers. He was wearing pajamas of a poisonous green, the coat of which gave a grotesque Christmas effect: there was a glistening, ragged red circle in the heart of the green.

The mouth and eyes were both open. Corrigan knew a dead man when he saw one, but force of habit made him go through the motions. Then he straightened up to glance about the room.

A thin-bladed knife, its haft covered by black friction tape, lay on the floor near the bathroom door, which was closed. The knife looked homemade to Corrigan. Its pointed blade, some six inches long, was bright with fresh blood.

This was all Corrigan had time to see before his attention was diverted.

Norma Alstrom had come to a halt in the doorway from the hall. She had her hand to her lips, staring. Now Elizabeth Grant, pincurled and quilted, seized Norma by the shoulders from behind and hurled her to one side. The older woman rushed into the bedroom to glare down at Gerard Alstrom. Her mouth was as open as his, but hers was writhing in horror.

“Frank!” she shrieked. “Where’s my Frank?”

“Take it easy, Mrs. Grant.” Corrigan strode over and tried the bathroom door. It was bolted. “Frank? You in there?”

“Captain Corrigan!” The relief in Frank Grant’s voice was a short story all by itself. Thank God we’ve got a door between us, thought Corrigan; he’d kiss me.

And then he was butted out of the way by a charging Elizabeth Grant. She grabbed the doorknob with both hands, pulling violently.

“Frank! Darling! Open the door! It’s Mummy, Frank dear! Frank! Did they do anything to you? Are you all right? Frankie, please, please … open for Mummy …”

Corrigan took her firmly by the shoulders. “We have no time for hysterics, Mrs. Grant. Your son sounds perfectly okay. It’s Mr. Alstrom who’s going to need help. Now will you please go back out into the hall and stay there? Mr. Baer and I have work to do.”

The woman turned on him with eyes flashing pure hate. But when she saw the look in that one brown eye she bit her lip, stepped aside, and went out. Norma was still standing in the door; her hand was still at her mouth.

From the bathroom side of the door Frank’s shaky voice whimpered, “Is he gone, is he gone?”

“Uh-huh, whoever it was,” Corrigan said. “You can come out now, Frank.” He said swiftly to Chuck Baer, “Either the guy can fly, or he’s still on the premises. Stand guard over Frank and the women, Chuck, while I search the place.”

The bathroom bolt turned over and Frank darted out. His pajamas were purple; he was barefoot; his dark hair was disheveled. Without his thick glasses his face looked naked, defenseless.

At sight of her son, Elizabeth Grant started back into the room. She was halted by Corrigan’s cold glance. He was on the way to the doorway.

“Are you all right, honey?” she asked in a choked voice.

“Fine, Mother.” The boy went over to the dresser near his bed, took his glasses, and set them on his face. His hands were trembling.

Corrigan went past the two women into the hall. He searched the other two bedrooms, opening closets and looking under beds. Then he checked the study, the other bathroom, the kitchen, and the living room. In the foyer he found the toggle switch still open, which meant no one could have used the elevator. He went out on the roof and circled the house again. Then he re-entered the murder room by the French door. Baer glanced at him and he shook his head. Both men looked puzzled.

Elizabeth Grant was all over her son like a nesting eagle. Frank was actually clinging to her.

“I told you to stay in the hall, Mrs. Grant,” Corrigan said. “If you keep getting in the way of my investigation, I’ll lock you in your room.”

She scuttled out.

“Are you all right?” Corrigan asked Norma. Her skin was bluish pale, but otherwise she seemed steady enough.

“I’m all right, Tim … Poor Gerry.”

“I’m sorry, Norm.”

“In a way I’m not,” she said in a high soprano, not like her own voice at all. “He’s carried death around with him since he was a little boy. He used to torture a kitten I had, and cut the heads off our turtles. I know it sounds heartless, but he’s better off dead.”

Corrigan went to her. “Go make that woman a drink or some coffee, Norma. You both need it. And don’t worry, it’s safe enough here. Whoever did it is gone. Don’t ask me how he did it, unless he was Superman and flew away.”

Norma drifted off, a zombie. Corrigan shut the bedroom door. It did not latch; Baer had burst the keeper from the frame.

“Okay, Frank,” Corrigan said. “What happened?”

“Can’t he be covered up?” Frank said. He was trying not to look at the body on the bed. “Or shut his mouth, or something.”

“He can’t be touched yet,” Corrigan said. “We’re in a hurry, Frank. What’s the scoop on this?”

The thin young killer shivered like a wet puppy. “It … You’ll think I’m batty, Captain. It wasn’t a man.”

“A woman?” Chuck Baer said incredulously.

“No, no, I mean it wasn’t—wasn’t human.”

“Come on,” Corrigan said, “you’re hysterical. What do you mean it wasn’t human?”

“I’m telling you, Captain! It was some kind of—some kind of monster.”

“A monster!”

“A great big hump-backed sort of bug.”

Corrigan and Baer exchanged glances. The boy gave every evidence of fear; he was not being a smart-aleck. He seemed to believe what he was saying. He stood there in the vile purple pajamas shivering as if he could not stop.

“Start at the beginning, Frank,” Corrigan said in a calming voice. “Tell us everything that happened.”

“A sort of snapping sound woke me up. At the time I couldn’t imagine what it was, but I realize now it must have been the lock on the French doors. Is it broken?”

They went over and examined the lock. Sure enough, there was a jimmy mark where the doors met. The catch of the lock had been broken off clean.

“All right,” Corrigan said. “Then this bug came in?”

“It looked like a bug. The room was pitch dark, so I only saw its silhouette against the sky as it stepped in. It had a great, hunched back, like a beetle, and long feelers stuck out from it, like the antennae of a bug. I’m telling you!”

Corrigan and Baer stared at him. “I wasn’t having hallucinations,” he said stridently. “That’s what the thing looked like!”

“Okay, it was a monster from outer space,” Corrigan said. “Then what?”

“It moved toward Gerry’s bed.” Frank shuddered again. His eyes, magnified by his lenses, suddenly became terrified again. “It was just an accident that it went that way first,” he whispered. “What if it had decided to start on my side of the room?”

“Then we’d be talking to Gerry instead of you,” Corrigan said deliberately. “Go on, Frank. Then what?”

Frank licked his lips. “It was too dark to see what was going on over on Gerry’s side of the room. Anyway, just the sight of the thing scared me witless. I was kicking off the covers and sitting up when Gerry let out that awful scream.”

The boy hugged his thin shoulders. “I panicked. I think I screamed, too, though I’m not sure. I know I jumped out of bed and made a dash for the door. Then I heard the thing spin around and head for me. I knew I could never get the door unlocked and open before it got to me. There was nothing else I could think to do but change direction, bolt into the bathroom, and slam and lock the door. When I think of the narrow squeak I had … It hit the door, then I heard something drop.” His distended glance went to the knife on the floor. “The knife, I guess … Then somebody started breaking down the bedroom door. The thing made a kind of growling noise, and I heard it running out.”

Corrigan studied him. Finally he said, “You don’t really believe this thing was an oversized bug, do you, Frank? You’re supposed to be super-intelligent.”

Frank’s dark skin grew darker. “It didn’t happen to you!” he yapped with a flash of the old Frank. “It was dark, and I was half asleep, and that thing looked like a bug, I tell you!”

“Look like isn’t is,” Chuck Baer remarked. “Use your head, Frank. You know it wasn’t anything out of the TV set. What do you suppose it could have been?”

Frank said suddenly, “A man dressed up in a monster costume!” He looked almost pathetically relieved.

“Now you’re cooking, buddy boy.”

“Assuming it was a man in a costume,” Corrigan said, “try to describe him.”

“I only saw his silhouette against the moonlight for a few seconds. But he was big—I’d say well over six feet, and so wide he nearly filled the doorway. When he turned his body to move toward Gerry’s side of the room, I saw him for a couple of seconds in profile. He had a big hump on his back and a long, tubelike thing protruding from each shoulder. They kind of curved around in front of him. Just like a bug’s antennae.”

In absolute seriousness Baer said, “You sure they weren’t wings?”

Frank seemed offended. But when he saw Baer’s expression he said, “No, not wings. Not wings.”

Baer looked at Corrigan. “Some kind of flight suit, Tim,” he said, “cockeyed as it sounds. Maybe a chopper with a ladder hoist hovering over the roof.”

“We’d have heard the prop,” Corrigan said, shaking his head. “My guess is a rope with a gang hook on the end, in spite of windows that don’t open for five stories down. Soon as I phone this in we’ll give that wall a real hard time.”

“Something tells me,” Chuck Baer said, “that the hard time is going to be on the other foot.”

Corrigan glared at him and headed for the phone.

12.

Eight minutes later Corrigan joined Baer outdoors. Frank Grant remained inside with the women. His ratty shoulders were drawn in, as if he were in a corner. He drank black coffee with both hands.

The two men started with the wall to the left and examined it inch by inch from an imaginary line extending to the rear of the house. The moon was still bright enough for them to see by, but to make sure they missed no scratches made by a gang hook, Corrigan shone his flashlight on the top of the wall along its entire length.

They found no scratches. They found nothing at all.

But when they checked the wall overlooking the street, they struck pay dirt.

Only a few feet from Corrigan’s old footprint in the flower bed—where he had stepped earlier to peer over at the roof across the street—they found two large, deep prints of a man’s shoes. The shoes must have been size twelve or thirteen, Corrigan thought.

On top of the wall, immediately above the prints, imperfectly outlined in ridges from soil which had adhered to the shoes, were two fainter footprints. Beside the right print lay the smeary impression of a bloody hand, where the killer had evidently grabbed the outer edge of the wall to pull himself up.

The conclusion was as unavoidable as it was beyond belief. The killer had darted from the bedroom, made straight for the wall, climbed up on it, and stepped off into space.

“What the hell?” Corrigan muttered.

“I don’t believe it,” Baer said.

“Neither do I, Chuck. But here it is.”

Corrigan placed his foot precisely into the footprint he had made, leaned forward, and peered over the parapet. Baer moved a dozen feet to the right, set his huge right foot in the middle of the flower bed, and looked, too.

A mile down, it seemed, a taxi drove by; it looked like a hurrying ant. A mile down and a block away two men were strolling across the street.

Otherwise there was nothing alive or dead in sight.

“Not a damned thing,” Baer said. “You see anything, Tim?”

“You know I don’t,” Corrigan snarled. But then he sucked in his breath. Baer looked at him and followed the direction of his glance. Corrigan was staring across the street at the roof of the nine-story building.

“What is it, Tim?”

“Something on the roof over there,” Corrigan muttered. “I can’t make it out, but whatever it is it wasn’t there a short while ago. I checked that roof while you were out having a drink.”

The object lay almost exactly halfway between the edge of the opposite roof and the roof exit through which the Acid Kid had made his getaway the previous week. The moonlight was just tricky enough to distort its shape. But they could make out a pair of what looked like motorcycle handlebars emerging from a substantial central blob.

“By God,” Baer said softly. “The hump and antennae the kid saw.”

“Yes.” Corrigan shoved himself back. “Chuck, you wait here. Don’t take your eye off that thing. I’ll be right back.”

He ran back inside, sped down the hall, and dashed into the bedroom shared by Norma and Mrs. Grant. The rhinestone-studded opera glasses were lying on one of the dressers. He took a shortcut back through the French door of the bedroom.

Baer had not moved from his uncomfortable leaning position. Corrigan again carefully placed his foot in his personal footprint in the flower bed, leaned his elbows on the parapet, and raised the opera glasses to his good eye. Time had worked its miracle; he could see perfectly in spite of monocular vision.

“What is it, Tim?” Baer demanded. “Can you make it out?”

“Looks like some kind of scuba-diving equipment,” Corrigan mumbled. “Except that it seems to have three tanks instead of one.”

He pushed away from the wall and tossed the glasses over to Baer.

“Keep your eye on that thing in case anybody tries to lift it before I get there,” he said. “I’m going across the street.”

Passing through the apartment, he learned that Elizabeth Grant had taken it upon herself to telephone John M. Alstrom’s apartment on the eleventh floor. Alstrom and Andy Betz were dressing and should be right up.

“I wish you hadn’t done that, Mrs. Grant. I didn’t want anyone else tramping around here until the Homicide people arrived.”

“But Gerard was his son! If it had been Frank …” Mrs. Grant clutched her son’s neck and pulled him to her. For once he did not reject her. He had graduated from coffee to brandy and had a big snifter to his lips; his mother’s clutch made him splutter, but he said nothing.

“Mrs. Grant is right, Tim,” Norma said. “It’s Daddy’s right. I … couldn’t phone him myself.”

“Well, maybe I was wrong,” Corrigan said. He was always irritated with people who brought personal considerations into an investigation, then with himself for remembering that he was human, too. “Look, I can’t wait right now. Tell your father not to go into that bedroom; he won’t enjoy what’s in there, anyway. Norma, would you come with me?”

She followed him docilely. Since her brother’s death she seemed to have withdrawn a long, long way. If she felt any grief, it did not show. She was just bracing herself, he thought, for another ordeal.

In the foyer Corrigan said gently, “Let me down to the eleventh floor, Norma. On second thought, I’ll wait there till they show up.” He closed the switch and stepped onto the car. “Don’t forget to close the switch again when your father and Andy get up here.”

She nodded.

Corrigan jabbed the “D” button and the door slid shut.

The elder Alstrom and Andy Betz were hurrying along the eleventh floor corridor toward the penthouse elevator when Corrigan stepped out of the car. Alstrom had pulled trousers and a suit coat over his pajamas; he was still in bedroom slippers. The chauffeur had put on shoes, slacks, and a shirt; he had even slipped into a leather jacket and taken the time to comb his hair.

Alstrom was almost as dead-pale as the son lying upstairs. He halted in front of Corrigan, fine lips twitching. “How could you let this happen, Captain? Is this the protection our police provide? And where was Mr. Baer? I don’t see how …”

Corrigan said in a gentle voice, “I’m damned sorry your son is dead, Mr. Alstrom, but let’s get something straight. You were repeatedly advised that, since you refused to let us have any part in planning security, neither the police nor Chuck Baer could accept responsibility if anything went wrong. We did our best under your rules. Apparently they weren’t good enough.”

Alstrom made a shuddering effort to control himself. “All right, Captain. I’ll concede that. But that setup upstairs is impregnable. How could this have happened?”

“We don’t know yet, Mr. Alstrom.”

“Is my young mister all right?” Andy Betz croaked.

Corrigan nodded and motioned the two men into the elevator. “Before you go up, Mr. Alstrom, I want something clearly understood. You and Andy are to stay in the living room. You’re not to go back and look at your son, and you’re not to step out on the roof. Clear?”

“Clear,” Alstrom said stiffly.

He pushed the “U” button and the door closed.

A prowl car pulled up just as Corrigan got to the street. A middle-aged officer with a growing front porch and a lean, younger man jumped out of the car.

Corrigan flashed his I.D. “Corrigan of the Main Office Squad. You men here in answer to the homicide squeal?”

“Yes, sir,” the older cop said. “I’m Sergeant Hooker and this is Patrolman Kent.”

“You come with me, Kent. Sergeant, go up to the penthouse and stand by until Homicide gets here. You’ll find a private detective named Chuck Baer up there keeping an eye on the roof across the street through a pair of opera glasses. Just leave him be. He’s doing it on my instructions.”

“Yes, sir,” the sergeant said.

“Take the elevator to the eleventh floor. Then cross the hall to another elevator. You’ll find a phone on the wall next to it. You have to call the roof so someone can send the elevator down. Probably a Miss Alstrom will answer. Tell her who you are and that I sent you. And don’t touch anything.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Let’s go, Kent.” Corrigan hurried across the street to the building opposite. It was 1:30 A.M.

He and the young officer took an elevator to the ninth floor, followed a hall around two turns, and finally came to a door with FIRE EXIT over it. There was no handle on the roof side of the door. Corrigan used a packet of paper matches as a wedge so they could get back in.

The first thing Corrigan did on the roof was glance across the street and up. At the parapet of the other rooftop he could see the glitter of the opera glasses focused his way. He waved to Baer, and only then did he walk over to inspect the object of his hunt.

He had never seen anything quite like it before. There were three small metal tanks attached to what looked like a fiberglass corset. Two short metal tubes hung out of it, downward and at a slight outward angle from the middle tank. Two thicker metal tubes, about the diameter of motorcycle handlebars, curved upward and forward and ended in grips.

“Any idea what this is?” Corrigan asked the uniformed man.

Kent shook his head. “Some kind of diving equipment, maybe?”

Corrigan grunted. There was some stenciling on the fiberglass corset; he directed his pencil flashlight at it. It said: BELL AEROSYSTEMS CO., INC. He produced a handkerchief, covered his palm, took hold of one of the handlebar-like tubes, and turned the device over. He pushed aside the straps, evidently used to buckle the corset into place, in order to inspect the inner side of the corset.

There was something stenciled there, too: 305TH AIR NAT. GUARD.

Patrolman Kent, craning, exclaimed, “That’s the National Guard Air Force unit out on Long Island, Captain. I know what this thing is now!”

“What is it?”

“A Buck Rogers belt!”

Corrigan rose from his stoop and looked the young officer over. “Come again?”

“The Air Force has been experimenting with this thing for some time, sir. They’ve put on demonstrations at air shows all over the country. It’s a one-man rocket belt that allows a man to jump the length of a football field, or even over buildings. I’ve seen it on TV a couple of times.”

Corrigan glanced over at the apartment building across the street. The distance from rooftop to rooftop was about three hundred feet. The length of a football field.

So that’s how it was done, he thought. The killer had actually flown over and back!

“We won’t move this till the lab crew has a chance to look at it. You stay here and guard it, Kent I’m going back across the street.”

“Yes, sir,” Kent said.

Maybe Chuck and I were lucky they didn’t let us arrange the security, Corrigan thought as he left. Who’d figure a stunt like this? He felt his spine crawl. It took real dedication for a man to launch himself into empty space with nothing but some tanks and a nozzle, or however the thing worked. Real dedication.

Only revenge explained it.

13.

Corrigan found the penthouse crowded. Sergeant Hooker had stationed himself in the foyer to let people in and out. In the living room Norma was serving coffee and sandwiches to the Grants, Andy Betz, and her father. And Baer stood gabbing with Sergeant Dave Bender and his partner, Marty Kinn, of Homicide.

The burly Bender greeted Corrigan in his usual dour manner, lanky Kinn with his usual friendly grin. “You sure give us doozies, Tim,” Kinn said. “But I’ve got it solved. The killer was Captain Nice.”

Bender frowned at Kinn’s levity. “Chuck’s given us the rundown, Tim,” Bender said. “What was that contraption across the street?”

“The killer got in and out of here,” Corrigan said, “with a Buck Rogers belt.”

Everyone looked at him. Bender said curtly, “Cut the comedy.”

“I’m serious, Dave. It’s a device the Air Force has been experimenting with. The killer jumped three hundred feet from the roof across the way, then escaped by the same route. I left a cop guarding the thing.”

Young Grant, still clutching his snifter, had been listening with an avid air. He ran over, slopping the brandy.

“Of course!” he said excitedly. “The Bell Rocket Belt! I’ve seen pictures of it. I would have recognized it if the room hadn’t been so dark.”

Bender said incredulously, “You mean that thing that lets soldiers jump over streams and trees? The thing they demonstrated at the air show in Jersey a while back?” He shook his head. “I’ve been in this racket a long time, but this one is for the books.”

Marty Kinn snorted. “Now I’ve heard everything. Killers flying through the air like Superman! The job isn’t tough enough.”

John Alstrom said heavily, “When Can I see my son, Sergeant?” He did not seem interested in the discussion.

“When the medical examiner is through, sir. It won’t be long.” Bender turned back to his partner. “Let’s see how the lab boys are doing.”

Corrigan and Baer followed them.

In the hall they ran into a young doctor from the medical examiner’s staff. He had just emerged from the murder room.

“Anything special, Doc?” Bender said.

“Nothing earth-shaking. He must have died practically instantly—the puncture is dead center in his heart and he didn’t bleed much; it would have gushed out if his heart had kept pumping after he was stabbed, but there was just moderate seepage. You’ll get a detailed report after the autopsy.”

“That knife lying on the floor the murder weapon?”

“I don’t think there’s much question about it. But we’ll tell you definitely after the p.m.”

He moved on. Bender called after him, “On your way out, Doc, would you tell the boy’s father he can take a look now?”

The four men crossed the bedroom, heading for the roof. The M.E. had pulled a sheet over the face of the corpse. Outside, three men in civilian clothes were at the wall overlooking the street. Only one was working, Mauthe of the police lab. He was just lifting moulage impressions of the two large footprints in the flower bed. The other two, Powers of Fingerprinting and a civilian photographer Corrigan had seen before but whose name he didn’t recall, were standing near Mauthe, watching.

“You get everything you need?” Bender said to the man with the camera.

“I took shots of the body, the broken lock, the footprints, and the palm print. You want anything else?”

“That ought to cover it.” Bender turned to the fingerprint man. “How about you?”

“That palm print is too smeared to show any ridges or whorls,” Powers said. “No prints on the knife. I did lift a couple from the French door, though. I’ll have to print the other occupants of the house to see if they’re theirs.”

“Well, go do it,” Bender said.

Powers looked at Baer. “You’re one of the occupants, aren’t you?”

Corrigan said, “Neither of us touched the door. Anyway, our prints are both on file downtown. You can pull them there.”

The fingerprint man picked up his kit and camera from where they lay on the lawn and went into the house.

Mauthe was packing his gear. Bender said, “Anything interesting?”

“Largely negative,” the lab tech said. “The knife looks like a homemade job from a cheap stainless steel steak-type knife. We’ll probably be able to pinpoint the company that manufactured it, but I’d guess it’s a common brand turned out by the tens of thousands. The tape wound around the handle is common friction tape sold everywhere. I’d say your chance of tracing it is about the same as Chuck here making number one on the ten best-dressed men list.”

“Thank you, Beau Brummel,” the redhead said. “Classic case of the pot calling the pot a pot.”

“I’m in a clutch of comedians,” Dave Bender growled. “How about those footprints?”

“Size twelve-and-a-half-D shoe—not too common. Look for a real big guy. Also for a Goodyear rubber heel with a gouged-out place in the right heel.”

He probed in the paper sack, brought out one of the moulage impressions, and pointed to the heel.

Chuck Baer said in a funny way, “Twelve-and-a-half-D. Know who wears a size like that?” and answered himself. “At the start of the football season they always list physical measurements on the sports page for every member of the Cougars. I’m a Barber fan and I know his by heart. Harry Barber wears twelve-and-a-half-D.”

After a moment Marty Kinn said, “He was an infantryman in Vietnam, too. Did they use those rocket belts there?”

No one knew. Corrigan said, “I think it’s the Air Force experimenting with the thing, anyway, not the infantry.”

“Maybe we’d better see what kind of alibi Barber has for tonight,” Bender said. “Marty, phone in a pickup on him.”

Corrigan said, “And you’d better check out Martello’s top hatchet boys while you’re at it.”

“Yeah,” Bender said. “That would be his bodyguard, Little Jumbo, and his wheel man, Benny Grubb, for openers. Anyone else, Tim?”

“The Acid Kid. Martello’s likelier to use him for a hit than the other two.”

“Have the three of them pulled in,” Bender said to Kinn. “We may as well make a clean sweep. Pull Martello in, too.”

The lanky Homicide man grinned. “He’ll love that at this time of night.”

“The hell with him,” Bender said. Kinn went off, and Bender said to Mauthe, “There’s a gadget across the street I want you to look at, Mauthe. It’ll have to be checked for prints, too, so we’ll wait till Powers is through.”

The lab man said, “I’ve got all night.”

It was 2:30 A.M. before the investigation at the penthouse was completed. In the meantime Gerard Alstrom’s body had been packed off to the City Morgue, and his father and Betz had returned to the eleventh-floor apartment.

Since the killer had abandoned his rocket belt, it seemed unlikely that he would make an attempt to return for Frank Grant. But neither Baer nor Corrigan was in a mood to take chances. The private detective had Frank’s bed moved into his room. Corrigan stationed Sergeant Hooker and young Kent on the roof and arranged for two other officers to relieve them when their tour was over.

“Probably unnecessary,” he said to Baer. “The guy can’t be lousy with those rocket belts. But just in case he has another one. We’d look like bigger damn fools than we already do, Chuck, if he came back and killed Frank under our noses.”

Baer nodded. “Why do you suppose he abandoned the belt on that roof over there?”

Corrigan shrugged. “Couldn’t very well wear it on the street, and it’s too conspicuous to lug around. Also, it served its purpose at least as far as the Alstrom kid was concerned. This joker knows we’ll be on the alert against a return visit by air. He’ll have to figure on getting Frank some other time, some other place.”

As a murder, the crime was the responsibility of Homicide Division, but Corrigan felt a vested interest in the case. He was especially keen on learning if Marty Martello was behind the Alstrom murder after Corrigan warned him off. He therefore followed Bender’s and Kinn’s car back to Homicide.

It was 3:00 A.M. when they got there. They found Martello and his three soldiers under guard in the Homicide squadroom. The racketeer looked impeccable; only his usually clean-shaven jaw, now dark with three o’clock shadow, betrayed the haste with which he had dressed.

The four were seated at one of the long tables under the watchful eyes of two uniformed men. When Bender, Kinn, and Corrigan walked in, Martello’s liquid eyes shimmered at the MOS man. Little Jumbo Barth and Benny Grubb both looked at him with hatred; the memory of their last meeting evidently still rankled. The dead eyes of the Acid Kid regarded him without expression.

“Is this on your order, Captain?” Martello squeaked.

“I’m just an interested bystander,” Corrigan said. “Sergeant Bender is in charge of the case.”

Martello turned his attention to the burly Homicide officer. “What case? I haven’t done nothing.”

Bender leaned on the table; his hard face was inches from Martello’s. “We’re operating under a new set of rules around here, Marty. You already know your goddamn rights better than any lawyer, but I’m required to explain them to you anyway. You and your three punks are not required to answer any questions, and if you do your answers may be used against you. You’re all entitled to counsel, and if you can’t afford it, the State will furnish each of you a lawyer free.”

Benny Grubb snickered. He looked away when Bender glared at him.

“I think we can afford our own counsel,” Martello said, relaxing. “In fact, I phoned Max Besser before I left home. But we got nothing to hide, Sergeant. Me and the boys is always willing to cooperate with the law. What’s your beef?”

Bender straightened up. “Tell me where you all were about two hours ago.”

“I was home in bed,” Martello said. “With my wife. We hit the sack about midnight. Before that we entertained guests.”

“What guests?”

“Benny and Al and their girl friends.” Martello waved at Grubb and the Acid Kid. “They left the house around a quarter of twelve.” He nodded toward Little Jumbo. “Leroy was there, too. He lives with me.”

Kinn said wearily, “Cozy. You alibi each other.”

“There are substantiating witnesses,” Martello said calmly. “My wife, and Benny’s and Al’s girls!”

Bender looked at Grubb. “All right, Benny. Who’s your girl?”

“Rose O’Donlan,” Benny Grubb said promptly. “She lives over in Brooklyn with Al’s girl, Frieda. Al and I drove the chicks home—we had my car—then I dropped Al off at his place, and I got home around two A.M. I’d just checked in when the fuzz called.”

Bender looked at the Acid Kid. “Frieda what?”

“Frieda Kimmer. Apartment 203, Sterling Apartments, Sterling Place.” He had a voice like a robot.

Marty Kinn jotted down the information in a notebook; his expression suggested that it was a waste of the taxpayer’s money. As it was. If the alibis were rigged, the girls would have been closely briefed on what to say; no amount of police questioning was likely to change their stories.

Martello and his Family had unbreakable alibis for every occasion.

14.

Corrigan had been studying the suspects as Bender questioned them. He automatically dismissed Marty Martello as the killer; Martello never made his own hits. Generals did not man the artillery.

None of the others fitted Frank Grant’s description of the killer. He had described the man as over six feet and broad.

Little Jumbo was broad enough, but he was as squat as a gorilla. Benny Grubb was tall enough, but he was pencil-thin. With one reservation: The fiberglass rocket belt could have made him look broader. Wiry Al (the Acid Kid) Jennings was neither tall enough nor broad enough to fit in either category.

There was no guarantee, of course, that Frank’s description was accurate. He had got a mere glimpse of the man in a dark room. And it was Corrigan’s experience that frightened witnesses tended to exaggerate the size of criminals.

Still, the twelve-and-a-half-D shoeprints indicated a large man. Even then, the killer could have deliberately worn oversized shoes to leave a false clue.

Corrigan said to Little Jumbo, “What size shoe do you wear?”

The ex-wrestler glowered at Corrigan.

“Want another knot on your jaw?” Corrigan asked sociably.

Martello said in an irritated voice, “Tell him, Leroy. I said we was cooperating.”

“Eleven-C.”

Corrigan looked at Grubb. “What size do you wear?”

“Nine-and-a-half-B,” Martello’s chauffeur said grudgingly.

Corrigan looked at the Acid Kid.

“Seven-and-a-half-A,” Jennings said. He added suddenly, “I got aristocrat’s feet,” and chuckled. It was as if a corpse had laughed.

“Nine-D,” Martello volunteered.

Corrigan ignored him. “Any of you ever had any military service?”

“I was in Korea,” Little Jumbo said, not without pride.

“What branch?”

“Air Force.”

Bender and Kinn looked quickly at each other. Grasping at straws, Corrigan thought. They were doing the same thing he was: hoping someone else than Harry Barber would turn out to be the guilty man. The fact was, the pro halfback was their number one suspect.

Dave Bender growled, “How about you other lice?”

Al Jennings shook his head. Grubb said, “I was in the National Guard a few years back.”

Bender pounced on that. “Where?”

“Long Island. The 305th Air National Guard.”

“Well, well,” the sergeant said softly. “How long ago was that, Benny?”

“Five-six years. Sixty-one and sixty-two, it was.”

“What was your job?”

“Ground maintenance. Buck private.”

Kinn said, “Ever use a Bell Rocket Belt?”

Benny looked puzzled.

Corrigan said, “I don’t think they were invented that far back, Marty.”

Kinn made a face. “It couldn’t be that easy.”

It had to be one of those complicating coincidences that cropped up every once in a while in a case to bug the investigator, Corrigan thought. If Grubb had stolen a rocket belt from his old outfit, he would hardly have been so ready to volunteer the information that he had once belonged to it. The killer could not have been unaware that 305TH AIR NAT. GUARD was stenciled inside the belt. That let Benny Grubb out.

Bender looked Corrigan’s way and shrugged his silent agreement.

Just then a portly man in a sleek two-hundred-dollar Italian suit and thinning gray hair bustled into the squadroom.

“Right on time,” Marty Kinn said, looking at his watch.

Bender said, “Never mind making with the writs, Counselor. They’re all yours.”

Marty Martello got up and stretched. His henchmen followed suit.

“We cooperated, didn’t we, Sergeant?” the racketeer said to Bender. “The least you can do is tell me what this is all about.”

“Glad to oblige, Marty,” the Homicide man said. “It’s about young Gerry Alstrom’s murder.”

Benny Grubb and Little Jumbo Barth managed to look surprised. The Acid Kid’s face registered nothing.

Martello’s dark face split in a smile. “Now that’s news worth getting out of the sack for! How about the other creep?”

“He’s still breathing. Now take your punks and get the hell out of here.”

Martello smiled from the teeth out. “Sure, Sergeant.”

They left the squadroom quickly, followed in a saunter by the lawyer, who had not opened his mouth. There was a silence. Finally Bender said, “What do you think, Tim?”

Corrigan shrugged. “You’ll check Grubb’s National Guard record out tomorrow, Dave, but I’m betting it comes to a big fat nothing. So far it looks to me like Harry Barber.”

Bender said sourly, “It’s going to leave a hell of a hole in the Cougar backfield.” He turned to one of the uniformed men. “What about Barber? Is somebody bringing him in?”

“He wasn’t home,” the officer said. “His place is staked out, Sergeant. They’ll grab him when he shows.”

The news depressed Corrigan. Where could Barber be at this time of night? Driving around brooding over having committed murder, most likely.

He said, “I’m heading for home. My working day starts in five hours.”

But when he got outside, Corrigan had a change of mind. It had suddenly occurred to him where Harry Barber was. Might as well make a night of it, he thought.

There was a man seated in a parked car a few yards from the entrance to the apartment building where Harry Barber lived. Corrigan stooped to peer in. He recognized the stakeout man as a detective attached to the Homicide Division.

“Hi, Stoyle,” he said. “You on Barber?”

“Oh, Tim. Yeah. That boy keeps late hours for an athlete. It must be four.”

“About a quarter of,” Corrigan said. “He may be up there in another apartment. His girl friend lives next door to him. I’ll check it out and let you know.”

“Want me to come up with you?”

“No,” Corrigan said. “I don’t expect any trouble. Harry’s a friend of mine.”

He went into the building. It was a five-story oldie with a tiny vestibule, and the vestibule was locked. He located Barber’s mailbox and pressed the buzzer. When the buzzer played dead after three more rings, he looked for Pat Chase’s name. The girl was listed in 209. He pressed the 209 button.

There was no immediate response. He rang once more. Then the lobby door buzzed, and he pushed the door open and went upstairs.

Pat Chase’s door was the second from the top of the stairway. She had the door open a crack and was peeping out. She wore a white quilted satin robe and her blonde hair was tumbled about her round, pert face. Even without makeup she didn’t look her age. She must use a lot of face goo, he thought.

She looked at him in sleepy surprise. “Tim. What on earth do you want at this time of night?”

“I’m looking for Harry, Pat. Is he here?”

She managed to look indignant. “What do you think I am? You can see I was in bed.”

“Pat, this is important. Is he here?”

“Of course not. Tim, please, I need my sleep—”

A large hand reached past the girl’s shoulder, grasped the edge of the door, and pulled it open. It was Barber, in pajama bottoms. Curls of blood hair covered his big chest and shoulders. His muscles were long and smooth; to Corrigan he suddenly looked formidable.

“Don’t be an idiot, Pat,” Barber said. “Captain Corrigan wouldn’t come around in the middle of the night if it wasn’t important. Come in, Captain.”

The girl clutched her robe about her and stepped back. The robe parted, and she grabbed at it. She was wearing nothing underneath.

“You should have backed up my fib, Harry,” she said angrily. “Don’t you care anything about my reputation?”

“He’s a cop, not a snoop for some lousy rag,” Harry Barber grinned. “I doubt if he gives a hoot in hell whether you have a reputation or not, Patso. Come on in, Captain.”

He stepped aside, and Corrigan walked in. He found himself in a small living room identical in layout to Barber’s next door, but decorated in pastel pink. Barber shut the door, and Pat Chase flounced over to her sofa, where she plumped down and tucked her bare feet beneath her.

The football player rubbed a hairy shoulder. There was a half smile on his face, but he did not seem to be enjoying himself. It gave him a watchful look.

“All right, here it is,” Corrigan said. “Harry, how long have you been in this apartment?”

“That’s none of your business,” the girl said sulkily.

Corrigan continued to look at Barber.

“She says it’s none of your business, Captain. Can I compromise a lady’s honor? I just came over a minute ago to borrow a cup of sugar.”

“Okay,” Corrigan said. “Get your clothes on.”

“What for?”

“You’re under arrest on suspicion of murder.”

The halfback and the blonde gaped at him.

“I have to warn you that anything you say may be used in evidence against you. You’re not required to make any statement, and you’re entitled to legal counsel before answering any questions. Want to phone a lawyer?”

“Hey, wait a minute!” Pat squealed. “What is this?”

“I just told you. He’s under arrest.”

“Who am I supposed to have killed?” Barber asked slowly.

“I think you know, Harry.”

The big man scratched his crew-cut. “Must be Frank Grant and Gerard Alstrom. Somebody got to them, huh?”

Corrigan felt sickish. Damn! He said, “Get your clothes on.”

“Listen,” Pat said feverishly. “The hell with my reputation. Harry’s been here since seven P.M., Captain, and we’ve been in bed together since ten.”

“You wouldn’t be making that up, would you, Pat?”

“It’s the truth! He was here for dinner and he hasn’t been out of my sight since. Oh, except for about three minutes just before ten, when he went next door for his pajamas.”

“That right, Harry?”

The big man said, “If you want the whole truth and nothing but, she left me alone for about ten minutes around eleven o’clock.”

“Harry!” The girl was crimson.

Corrigan looked from one to the other. “What for?”

“All right,” Pat cried to the football player. “If you insist on advertising our most intimate secrets.” She turned back to Corrigan. “He means I went into the bathroom. For hygienic reasons.”

Then she started to cry.

Corrigan felt a vast relief. It was hardly the sort of alibi a girl like Pat Chase would make up on the spur of the moment. He had questioned too many suspects and witnesses over the years not to be able to sense the truth when he heard it. This one had the ring of authenticity.

Nevertheless it had to be polished off.

“I know you’re fond of Harry,” he said to the weeping girl. “But if you’re helping him cover up, remember that accessory to murder is a felony. If you’re lying, you may lie yourself into prison for a long stretch.”

“I’m not lying,” she whimpered. “Do I have to show you the damp douche bag?”

Harry Barber laughed. “Here’s a chick who really goes all out for a guy,” he said cheerfully. “Thanks, Pats. You’re tops.”

She jumped off the sofa and ran into the bedroom, sobbing.

Corrigan could have clipped him.

15.

“You didn’t have to be so damned cheerful,” Corrigan said. “That girl’s no tart, Harry. It took a lot to make her admit she’d been in bed with you.”

“Oh, hell, a chick is a chick,” Harry Barber said. “They all love it so much they want to surround it with a great big curtain of mystery. Pat’s okay, or she will be when she grows up. If she ever does. Well, where do I stand?”

“I’m accepting your alibi for the time being unless something else turns up. Are you familiar with a device called the Bell Aerosystems Rocket Belt?”

“The Buck Rogers belt? I saw it over at the New Jersey air show a few months back.”

“Ever use one?”

“Me?” Barber laughed again. “I was a doughfoot. The infantry doesn’t have fancy gizmos like that. We mainly crawled—when we weren’t slogging the terrain.”

Corrigan nodded. Barber sounded in the clear. “One last thing, Harry. I’d like to have a look at your shoes.”

Barber looked at him blankly; then he shrugged and went into the bedroom. Corrigan could hear his voice, too low-pitched to make out the words, saying something contrite to the girl, and her muffled reply.

Barber returned with a pair of huge black oxfords. He handed them to Corrigan.

“She’s still upset,” he said. “Hell, I apologized, didn’t I?”

The shoes were fairly new and the size markings had not yet rubbed away. Baer had been right. They were size twelve-and-a-half-D.

He turned them over to inspect the heels. They were of leather.

He handed them back. “I suppose you have more shoes in your pad.”

“Sure. Eight, nine pair. What’s this about?”

“I’d like to see them.”

Barber shrugged. “Just a minute.”

He took the shoes back into the girl’s bedroom. When he returned, he was wearing a dressing robe. He preceded Corrigan to the public hall and, taking a key from the pocket of his robe, unlocked the door to the next apartment.

There were ten pairs of shoes on Barber’s closet floor. Two had rubber heels, but neither was a Goodyear, and there was no gouge.

“I guess that does it,” Corrigan said. “May I use your phone?”

“It’s in the living room.”

The phone sat on the card table, beside the portable typewriter. The lid of the carrying case was still up.

He called Homicide. Dave Bender answered.

“Aren’t you in bed yet, for God’s sake?” the Homicide sergeant asked in surprise.

“I’m at Harry Barber’s, Dave.” He explained the football player’s alibi, and informed Bender that he had checked Barber’s shoe supply and that the pair worn by the killer was not among them.

“I’ll bring him in if you want,” Corrigan said, “but I don’t see what it would accomplish. I don’t think he’ll run anywhere.”

“All right, Tim. Just tell him to stay available. Oh, as long as you’re there, you may as well pull the stakeout, too.”

“Will do.” Corrigan hung up and said to Barber, “You’ve got a reprieve, Harry. But don’t take off without first checking with headquarters.”

“Think I’m an idiot?” Barber grinned. “Can you tell me what happened?”

Corrigan idly punched the space bar on the typewriter. It would all be in the papers tomorrow, anyway, he decided.

“Only one of the boys is dead,” he said. “Alstrom. Frank Grant managed to lock himself in a bathroom before the killer could get him.”

Barber made a face. “Excuse my cold-bloodedness, but it’s too bad he didn’t cream them both. How’d this guy get to them, Captain?”

“They were hiding out, under guard, in a supposedly attack-proof penthouse. Somebody used a Bell Rocket Belt to jump over to the roof from another roof across the street.”

“You’re kidding!”

Corrigan shrugged. “It’s what we’ve got, Harry. A real nut case.”

He pushed the space bar a few more times, then hit the return lever. His eye fell on a stack of bond lying beside the machine. On impulse he picked up a sheet and held it to the light.

The watermark read: FOUR STAR BOND, SOUTH-WORTH CO., U.S.A., 25% COTTON FIBER.

Another coincidence, he thought uneasily. It was a common paper, available at most stationers’.

The coincidences of the anonymous note’s having been typed on the same kind of bond, and of Barber’s owning a Royal portable, were too glaring to pass up. Corrigan ran a sheet into the machine and typed, “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” Then he depressed the shift lock and typed the same line in capitals.

“What are you doing?” Barber asked. He seemed merely curious.

“Taking a typing sample.” Corrigan pulled the sheet from the machine and folded it.

“Why?”

“I received an anonymous letter recently threatening to kill Alstrom and Grant. It was typed on a Royal portable and it was on the same bond you use. Just thought I’d check it out.”

The big man frowned. “You accusing me of writing anonymous letters?”

“Not really,” Corrigan said cheerfully. “But I’m a cop, Harry. We try not to miss any bets.”

“I’m not sure I like this, Captain!”

Corrigan hiked the brow over his good eye. “Want the sample back?”

“You didn’t even ask my permission,” Barber said hotly. “That’s an invasion of privacy! And I haven’t seen any search warrant.”

Corrigan drilled him with the brown eye. “I only took the sample out of habit, Harry, not because I believe you wrote that letter. But you’re making me wonder if I may not have been a little too much of a Cougar fan. You really want this sample back?”

The one eye and the two eyes clashed. It was the two eyes that looked away. “It must be the hour, Captain,” Barber said with an abashed grin. “I get loaded for bear when I lose my shut-eye. I’m sorry.”

“Forget it,” Corrigan said. Sleep, he thought. When had he slept last?

Barber went out with him. The football player obviously meant to return to the girl’s apartment, because he snapped the light off before he shut the door.

“What would you have done if I had insisted on a search warrant?” he asked Corrigan suddenly.

“Phoned for one. Then dragged you and the typewriter down to headquarters for making me go to all that trouble.”

Barber grinned. “And I’d have deserved it. The sample won’t match your anonymous note, though. It’s a comforting thought.”

“I hope you’re right, Harry. Good night.”

Outside, he told the waiting Stoyle that he could knock off and return to Homicide.

It was nearly five when Corrigan finally reached his bachelor pad at the Brookfield. Two and a half hours later his alarm clock went off. At eight thirty he logged in at the MOS, then headed for the lab.

He found Yoder absorbed in examining the Bell Rocket Belt.

Yoder glanced up, started to look back at the belt, then, looked up again.

“I’ve seen darker circles,” he said, “but only on a slab in the morgue. Hangover?”

“Overwork,” Corrigan groaned. “Get anything from that contraption?”

“No fingerprints. We’ve figured out how it works, if that’s any help.”

“Not to me,” Corrigan said. “It’s not my case. But I’ll listen out of just plain nosiness.”

“These two outer tanks contain H_2O_2 under pressure,” the technician said. “H_2O_2 is hydrogen peroxide, in case you’ve forgotten your high school chemistry. These two pipes that look like handlebars are the controls. By twisting one handle grip, the operator controls flight direction. The other controls rocket thrust level.”

He tapped the middle tank. “This one’s a gas generator. The way the thing works is that hydrogen peroxide is forced into the gas generator under pressure, where contact with a catalyst decomposes it into steam. The steam issues from these twin jets on the bottom, giving the thrust. The jets angle outward enough so that protective clothing is unnecessary. You could use it wearing a business suit.”

“How far could you fly with the thing?”

Yoder shrugged. “This seems to be an early model, so I can’t say. I checked on the more recent belts, and operators have gone eighty feet up and several hundred yards in a single jump. With two full tanks, power is good for about twelve minutes’ flying time. You could keep moving from jump to jump a long way, I’d say.”

Corrigan shook his head. “This thing could become a problem if it got into the wrong hands. Bank robbers coming out of a bank and flying six blocks to the getaway car—I can see it all now.”

“Let us pray,” said Yoder piously, “that the good guys will have them as well as the bad guys.”

“Amen.” Corrigan took the typing sample from his pocket. “Here’s what I really came by for, Yo. Will you run a comparison of this sample against that anonymous note I sent you?”

“The one addressed to you?” Yoder glanced at the sample. “Check back in an hour or so.”

“Were you able to turn up anything else from the deal last night?”

“Nothing great. The only fingerprints on that French door belonged to Frank Grant and the dead kid. The murder weapon had been ground down on an emery wheel from a stainless steel knife manufactured by the Black Cutlery Company of Buffalo. They turn out about a million of ’em a year. The tape around the handle was common electrician’s tape.”

“You,” said Corrigan, “are a rat fink.” He left looking glum.

16.

When Corrigan got back to the MOS, Meisenheimer told him that Inspector Macelyn wanted to see him. Corrigan found the Inspector reading a newspaper.

Macelyn pointed his cigar to a chair, and scaled the paper over to him.

“Have you seen this, Tim?”

The news of young Alstrom’s murder was there in gaudy detail, including the address of the penthouse. There was a photograph of the building, although none of, the penthouse itself. There were also pictures of the roof of the building where the rocket belt was found, and a drawing of a man flying between the two buildings along the course of the traditional dotted line.

There was nothing on the questioning of Marty Martello and his henchmen, although the article recapitulated the story of Audrey Martello’s murder four years before and identified her as the racketeer’s daughter. Harry Barber was mentioned as the dead girl’s fiancé, but nothing was said about his being under suspicion in the Alstrom murder. According to the story, the police had no clues to the killer but were “working on leads.” The inference was obvious: either Martello or Barber might be implicated in young Alstrom’s weird death.

A private bodyguard had been employed to protect the boys, the story noted, but he had been “in another room” when the killer struck. There was no mention of Corrigan’s having been present. Apparently Dave Bender, who was quoted as the spokesman for the police, had decided to suppress that information.

Tossing the paper back, Corrigan said, “So much for secret hideouts. Now everybody and his Aunt Minnie know where the surviving killer is.”

“He’s as safe there as he’d be in jail,” Inspector Macelyn grunted. “The Commissioner considered protective custody, then decided against it. Instead he’s ordered the guard you installed to be maintained around the clock until they can sneak young Grant out of the country. Mrs. Grant says that will be in a few days now. He’s to be taken under guard to an as yet undisclosed airport, then will be flown by chartered plane to a secret destination.”

Corrigan said, “You’re telling me all this for a reason, Inspector. Have we been handed the case?”

“You guessed it, Tim. The Commissioner is concerned about possible adverse public reaction to the killing. The Department wasn’t responsible for security, and so far no one has blamed us for letting young Alstrom get it, but if they learn that a cop was actually on the premises when the murder occurred, we may take some lumps.”

“I wasn’t there officially,” Corrigan argued. “It was sheer accident, Inspector.”

Inspector Macelyn made an impatient gesture with his cigar. “You know the facts won’t mean anything if some rag decides to use the incident as a springboard to sell more papers. The Commissioner wants the case cracked before the facts leak. So naturally we’re elected. We always get the hot potatoes.”

Corrigan made a face. “Has Homicide been notified they’re off the hook?”

“Yes. A messenger is bringing the case record over. It’s probably on your desk.”

Corrigan rose. “I may as well get right on it.”

“Any ideas?” Macelyn asked. He did not sound hopeful.

“A vague one in the back of my head. Those footprints and Frank Grant’s description of the killer pointed so straight to Harry Barber that Homicide and I were pretty sure he was our boy. But he turns out to have a strong alibi. Does that strike you the same way it does me, sir?”

Macelyn took a comtemplative puff on his cigar. “A deliberate frame?”

“Yes. Barber’s shoe size has been printed in the sports sections for anybody to read. It’s just the sort of nastiness Martello would pull to take us off his back.”

“Pinning it on an eel like Martello is going to take some doing, Tim.”

“As if I didn’t know,” Corrigan said, and left.

He found the case folder from Homicide on his desk. A note clipped to it, signed by Homicide’s day-watch commander, said: “305th Air Nat. Guard hasn’t been contacted yet. We dropped everything when we got word the case was transferred.”

Corrigan skimmed over the record. There was nothing in it he did not already know. Except that Rose O’Donlan and Frieda Kimmer had both been questioned and had verified the alibis of Al Jennings and Benny Grubb. And that had been predictable. When you dealt with customers like Grubb and the Acid Kid, you assumed the alibis were rigged, and a fat lot of good that did you.

Corrigan glanced over the morning teletype, then looked up the number of the 305th Air National Guard on Long Island. He called and asked for the commanding officer.

A crisp voice said, “Major Conners.”

“This is Captain Corrigan of the Main Office Squad, New York City police, Major. I’m calling in connection with the murder of Gerard Alstrom last night. Have you read about it in this morning’s paper?”

“Yes, Captain.”

“Then you know that the killer gained access to the penthouse by using a Bell Aerosystems Rocket Belt.”

“Yes. Quite an idea.”

“One item didn’t appear in the paper, though, Major. Stenciled on the inside of the belt was ‘305th Air National Guard.’”

The major said in a startled voice, “My unit?”

“That’s right.”

“But we don’t have any belts.” Major Conners hesitated. “Wait a minute. We do. A pair of them. But they’re early models and have been in storage for years. They go back to 1961. The Bell Aerosystems Company has been experimenting with it for a long time. I’ll check with our supply officer and phone you back, Captain. If that belt should turn out to be one of those consigned to storage here, there will have to be an investigation. What’s your number?”

Corrigan gave him both the numbers of police headquarters and his extension. He was about to hang up when it occurred to him that his last night’s dismissal of the information that Benny Grubb had once belonged to the national guard unit now merited reconsideration. If the belts had been around since 1961, they had been available to Benny after all.

“One thing, Major,” Corrigan said. “Back in 1961 and 1962 a Benjamin Grubb was attached to your unit. Would you check his record and see if he could have had access to the belts?”

“Benjamin Grubb. I’ll call you back, Captain, as soon as I have anything.”

Corrigan had just hung up when the phone rang. It was Yoder from the lab.

“I thought I’d better not wait,” the technician said. “Your typing sample matched the original note.”

“What!”

“Didn’t you expect it to?”

“No. I was just covering a possible angle. I’ll be damned!”

So much for intuition, Corrigan thought as he hung up. He had been so sure Harry Barber was incapable of writing a crank letter that he had felt sheepish about checking it out. This called for a complete turnabout in his thinking. If the football star was the kind who could write threat notes, he was capable of having manufactured an alibi. Although the girl …

He called the Communications Center on the top floor of the headquarters building and put out immediate pickup orders on Harry Barber and Pat Chase.

An hour later Communications called back. A prowl car had been sent to the apartment building where Barber and the Chase girl lived. When there was no answer from either apartment, the officers had summoned the super to let them into the apartments. Both betrayed evidence of hurried departure.

Snowed by a couple of amateurs! Corrigan thought. He had swallowed their act hook, line, and sinker.

He ordered all-points bulletins and locals on the pair and gave the girl at Communications their descriptions. He told her he would try to scare up photographs of both.

When he hung up, Corrigan looked out into the squad-room. He motioned to Detective Meisenheimer.

“Got a detail for you, Meis. I want photographs of Harry Barber and of a woman named Pat Chase. Barber’s you can get from the morgue of any newspaper. The girl is a photographer’s model. Hit the agencies.”

Meisenheimer took the meerschaum from his mouth. “What do I do with them?”

“Run them up to Communications for reproduction and distribution. There’s already an APB and a local out.”

Major Conners had not phoned back by noon. Corrigan was getting ready to go for lunch when Meisenheimer stuck his head into the little office.

“Got photos of both,” the bushy-haired detective announced. “I’ve already delivered them to Communications.”

“That’s fast work, Meis.”

“I’m a fast worker.”

“I wish,” Corrigan said gloomily, “I could say the same.”

17.

After lunch Corrigan stopped in at the penthouse. Baer admitted him. Elizabeth and Frank Grant and Norma Alstrom were sitting about the living room. Through the glass doors Corrigan could see two uniformed men seated at the lawn table on the roof.

“With this police protection, Chuck, you’re hardly needed around here any more.”

“What I’ve been telling Mrs. Grant,” the redhead said. “I’d like to get away and do something constructive. It’s bad enough having a client killed. Not being able to do anything about it is worse.”

“It’s only for a few more days, Mr. Baer,” Mrs. Grant said. “And I feel better having you sleeping in the same room with my Frank.”

“With two officers on duty around the clock, Mrs. Grant, your son ought to be safe.”

“Of course I am,” young Grant snapped. “Baer didn’t do a hell of a lot protecting Gerry—he didn’t do anything. Let him go, Mother.”

Baer flushed scarlet. Corrigan saw the look in his eye, which took him back to Korea and certain tight situations. But the big man controlled himself. The truth is, Corrigan thought, Chuck feels guilty. He had probably been berating himself ever since the night of the murder for having slipped out for a couple of beers. The fact that he had left his old buddy on guard in his place would be no solace to Chuck. He had let a client down, which in Chuck’s book was the ultimate disgrace.

“I’ll stay on if you insist, Mrs. Grant,” Baer said in a tight voice. “But in this case I have to agree with Frank. You’re wasting your money. Those are two fine officers out there. Nobody’s going to get past them.”

Mrs. Grant looked torn. “Captain Corrigan, do you really think it would be safe?”

“Yes.”

“Frank, you’re sure …?”

“The sooner he’s out of here,” young Grant said in his endearing way, “the better sonny-boy’s going to like it. I can’t stand the sight of him. What’s more, he snores.”

“Well … all right, Mr. Baer. I’ll let you go.”

With remarkable promptness Baer said, “I’ll go pack my valise.”

He disappeared. Corrigan glanced at Norma. “How was your father taking it this morning?”

“He’s quieted down. He’s given up the apartment downstairs and moved back to the Island.”

“Where’s that leave Andy Betz?”

“I was going to have Andy move into the room where Gerard and Frank were sleeping,” Mrs. Grant said. “But since Mr. Baer is leaving, I’d rather he slept with Frank.”

“Where is he? Betz, I mean.”

Mrs. Grant looked helpless. “He hasn’t checked in today. Oh, dear. It isn’t like Andy not to report for work.”

“You haven’t had him drive you anywhere since you got here, Mother,” Frank sneered. “And when he’s here, all you do is beef because we play cards. He probably took the morning off.”

“Well, he could have phoned …”

Chuck Baer returned carrying his valise. “You going back to headquarters, Tim?”

“Yes.”

“You have to go by my place. Drop me off?”

“Sure.”

Corrigan called one of the officers in to send them down on the elevator and make sure the switch was opened again when the car returned to the roof. Norma accompanied them to the foyer.

“You look as though you didn’t get much sleep last night, Tim.”

“A couple of hours.”

“Then I don’t suppose I’ll see you tonight?”

“Not tonight, I’m afraid. I’ll phone you when I’ve caught up on my shut-eye.”

“Make it soon.” She sounded desperate.

On the way down, Baer grunted, “That chick is after you, Tim.”

“I’m after her, too.”

“You’re not serious!”

Corrigan laughed. “I haven’t had my cutaway fitted yet, Chuck, if that’s what’s worrying you.”

“Then it’s just the old chase?”

“Something like that.”

Baer looked relieved. “You’re safe. As soon as the nice ones find out the guy isn’t thinking of the wedding march, they dump you. The nice ones, I mean. Is she a nice one?”

“Yes,” Corrigan said, and let it go at that.

Baer began to look worried again. But he had troubles of his own, and he lapsed into silence.

It was broken by Corrigan as they got into Car 40 NYPD—Corrigan’s unmarked black Ford. “By the way, Chuck. The Alstrom case has been lifted from Homicide. It’s now in the lap of yours truly.”

“No kidding! Bring me up to date.”

He was as startled as Corrigan had been when he learned that Harry Barber had been tagged as the author of the unsigned crank note.

“Seems out of character, somehow,” Baer commented. “I still can’t see Barber as a killer.”

“Then why did he run?” Corrigan muttered.

“Panic. He knew you were going to find out he wrote that note.”

Corrigan said, “I’m not convinced. That wouldn’t put him in nearly as much hot water as a disappearing act. Taking a powder makes him our prime suspect. He must have realized that.” He shook his head. “I just don’t know.”

When Corrigan dropped Baer, the private detective said, “I’ll pick up my car and drive down to your office as soon as I drop off this bag.”

Corrigan waved and drove off.

When he got back to his office, he found a note that Major Conners had called. He called back immediately.

“One of our rocket belts is missing, all right, Captain,” the major barked. “I’ve started an investigation to try to track down whoever was responsible. I don’t think it could have been the Benjamin Grubb you asked me to check on, though.”

“Why not, Major?”

“Both belts were accounted for on our last monthly inventory, which was only three weeks ago. So the missing belt had to have disappeared since that time. Grubb resigned from the Guard in 1962. Some of the men still remember him, and I made a point of asking if he’s been around since the last inventory. No one recalls seeing him.”

“I guess that’s that.” Nothing works out in this damned case, Corrigan thought. “Will you let me know the result of your investigation?”

“I certainly will. We’re as anxious to get to the bottom of this as you are.”

Baer walked in as Corrigan hung up. The redhead reached for a chair and a panatela.

“That was the C.O. of the 305th Air National Guard,” Corrigan told him. “One of their rocket belts is missing, and he’s digging to find out how it got away. Benny Grubb seems to be in the clear. He hasn’t been around there since 1962, and the belt was still in the supply room three weeks ago.”

“So where do we go from here?”

“I guess we’re stymied until we net Harry Barber and the Chase girl. Unless you have any ideas?”

“One I could be working on,” Baer said, belching smoke. “If Martello was behind this, maybe some rumors will be shooting along the grapevine. I have a pretty good contact.”

“Then check it out, Chuck.”

“I’m on my way,” Baer said. He left a wake of smoke behind him.

Corrigan wound up the paperwork on some other cases. It was two-thirty when he finished. He was dying for sleep. He was about to take a catnap at his desk when the phone rang.

It was Norma Alstrom. “Sorry to disturb you at work, Tim. Are you busy?”

“I was just considering a nap,” he said. “What’s up?”

“Oh, Elizabeth is all upset and has been taking it out on Frank by listing her maternal sacrifices again—they’ve just flounced back to their rooms. I was bored, Tim. I wanted to talk to somebody.”

“What’s Mrs. Grant upset about?”

“Andy Betz phoned her. He’s quit.”

“When was this?” Corrigan was surprised. It was a case lousy with surprises.

“Shortly after you left. She really took it hard, poor thing. He’s been with the Grants for twenty-five years. He was practically a member of the family—lived on the estate, in an apartment over the garage. He spent the morning moving out.”

“What explanation did he give, Norma?”

“None. Which upset her even more.”

Corrigan muttered, “Funny that he’d pull this right after the murder. I wonder if there’s a connection.”

“How could that be, Tim?”

“I haven’t the foggiest. But I’ve learned in this racket that when a witness in a murder case starts behaving out of character, it’s worth checking out. Do you know where Andy’s moved to?”

“He gave Elizabeth a new address to which to mail his check. She wrote it down on a pad. Just a minute. I think it’s right here … Here it is.” She read off a Greenwich Village address.

Corrigan wrote it down. “I think I’ll pay a little visit to Mr. Betz.”

“Andy couldn’t have had anything to do with the murder, Tim. He worships Frank.”

“Frank wasn’t murdered,” Corrigan pointed out. “I have to run this down, Norma. Thanks.”

He hung up, logged out, and got Car 40 from the parking lot. He headed for Greenwich Village.

The address Norma had given him was a three-story brownstone. According to a tenant chart beside the front door, Betz’s was the basement apartment. It had a separate entrance at the bottom of some concrete steps. No one answered Corrigan’s ring.

He climbed back to the upper entrance and rang. An elderly woman with a crab-apple face and four teeth answered.

“You the landlady?”

“I’m all filled up,” she said.

“I’m not looking for a rental, ma’am. I’m looking for your new tenant, Mr. Betz.”

“Oh, him. He walked up the street about an hour ago.”

“Which way?”

The woman pointed east. “There’s shopping in the next block. Maybe he went there.”

“Thank you.”

He decided to walk on the chance that he might spot the ex-chauffeur en route. The block consisted of identical brown-stone buildings. At the intersection there was a dime store, a delicatessen, a shoe repair shop, a bakery, and a bar.

He crossed the street and looked into each store. Andy Betz was in none of the first four.

Flaking gilt lettering on the window of the bar announced Noah’s Bar and Grill. The interior was too dimly lighted for Corrigan to make out anything through the window. He went in.

18.

It took Corrigan’s good eye a while to adjust after the sunny street. The bartender loomed.

“You’re just in time, bud,” the bartender said. “A live one is standing the house. What a character! Been popping for an hour. What’ll you have?”

“Nothing,” Corrigan said. “I’m looking for someone.”

The bartender shrugged and waddled back to the far end of the bar.

“Seven eighty-five,” Corrigan heard him say.

The lined-up patrons came into focus. The man who had bought drinks for the house was big and square-shouldered. He was turned from Corrigan, but the powerful build looked familiar. Corrigan went over and tapped him on the shoulder.

It was Andy Betz, all right. The man’s heavy face was flushed with booze; his little eyes were glassed. More than half-seas over, Corrigan decided. It might be a break.

“Well, well, if it ain’t the captain,” Betz said. His voice was thick. “You’re just in time for a drink, Cap’n.”

“Some other time, Andy,” Corrigan said. “See you privately for a minute?”

“What about?”

“Let’s go on over to a table.”

The big man groped for a shot-glass of whisky and a beer, and announced to the world, “Be back in a minute, gents.” As he moved off, the bartender counted out change on the bar.

“This his?” Corrigan demanded.

“Uh-huh. Change from a twenty.”

Corrigan took it and walked over to where Andy had seated himself. He dropped the money on the table and sat down.

“Hey. Thanks.” Betz tossed off his whisky and chased it with a gulp of beer. He left his money where it was.

“Powerful combination,” Corrigan said amiably. “What are you celebrating, Andy?”

Betz shrugged. He started to reply, and changed his mind. He finished the beer.

“Understand you quit your job.”

The glazed eyes shifted. “Where’d you hear that?”

“Miss Alstrom told me.”

Betz shook his head violently, as if to clear it in a hurry. “So I quit my job. So what?”

“Sudden, wasn’t it?”

The man said carefully, “Took me twenty-five years. Call that sudden?”

“Why did you quit, Andy?”

“Decided to retire. Anything wrong with that? Be my own man for a change. High time, I’d say.”

“You’re throwing away a lot of eating money for a guy who’s unemployed, Andy. The bartender says you’ve been popping for this bunch of freeloaders for an hour.”

“It’s my money!”

“Sure. Where’d you get the bankroll?”

Betz glared at him. “I could buy and sell you, Captain. For twenty-five years I been getting free board and room on top of my pay, and piling seventy-five percent of it in the bank. I’m loaded, brother.”

Corrigan laughed. “My mistake. I thought some rich uncle just left you a bundle.”

“I got no rich uncles,” the man growled. “I got enough saved to live like a duke the rest of my life. That’s why I quit, Captain. I says to myself, why the hell work any more? Say, I need another drink. How about a shot, Captain?”

“Not for me, and not for you,” Corrigan said. “Till I’m through with you. You see, Andy,” Corrigan said, putting his elbows on the table and boring into Betz with the eye, “I still can’t get over the feeling that it was kind of sudden. You didn’t even resign in person. You did it by phone. After twenty-five years. Strikes me Mrs. Grant deserved a little more consideration than that. I’m interested in heels, Andy. Although you didn’t strike me as one. Are you a heel, Andy?”

An alcoholic tear appeared in a corner of Betz’s right eye. “I guess you’d say that, Captain, I guess that’s what I am, all right. The Grants always treated me good. I just couldn’t face her, and that’s the truth. You’re right, Captain. Heel.”

“Andy, you’re covering up like mad. Why did you quit all of a sudden?”

Betz blinked. “Need another drink.”

The man got up and lurched over to the bar. Corrigan picked up Betz’s change and followed him. He dropped the money on the bar in front of the ex-chauffeur. “You forgot your money again, Andy.”

Betz picked at the bills, fumbling. “Bartender, give everybody another drink. How about a drink, Captain?”

Corrigan left him there.

Chuck Baer was waiting when Corrigan got back to the MOS.

“You look like bad news,” Baer said.

“Just puzzling, Chuck. Andy Betz has quit his job. I just came from a session with him. He’s tanked up in a Greenwich Village bar and spending money like the CIA.”

Baer hiked his red eyebrows.

“Claims he’s been loaded for years and has just decided to quit and spend some of it,” Corrigan said. “It could be on the level at that. I needled him some, but it didn’t work. He just seems ashamed that he couldn’t find the guts to quit in person. I don’t know, Chuck.”

“You believed Harry Barber, too,” Baer remarked unkindly.

“Maybe I’m losing my grip.”

“You’ll be crying on my shoulder next. You look like hell, Tim. Better get a night’s sleep.”

“I plan to get one tonight. Did you see your contact?”

“Yeah. Some rumors flying around, all right. My boy is a runner for a couple of bookies. Hardly big time, but he gets into a lot of places where the shots hang out and he has a remarkable set of ears.”

“You don’t have to present his credentials,” Corrigan said sourly. “What’s he come up with?”

“He says the scoop is that Marty Martello was behind the hit. Nobody really knows. It’s just spec.”

Corrigan made a disgusted noise. “I can get spec without leaving my office.”

“Well, I told him to see if he could dig up something hard. With this guy you never know. He could come up with a lead that aims straight at Martello.”

“A lot of nothing, Chuck. If Martello did order the hit, no two-bit informer is likely to get anything on it.”

“You’re in a mood, you are! You know what, Captain? The hell with you.”

Corrigan growled something that might have been an apology. “It’s almost log-out time. How about a drink at Maxie’s?”

“I’ll think about it,” Baer growled back. But he got to his feet. He wasn’t feeling like a happy boy himself.

On Tuesday morning Corrigan got to his office feeling like a reasonable facsimile of a human being. His first act after reading the morning teletype was to phone the Communications Center.

But there was nothing yet on Harry Barber and Pat Chase.

It wasn’t fair. Here we go again, he thought, and phoned Major Conners on Long Island.

“We haven’t a clue yet, Captain,” the major said. “But Sergeant Betz is hard at work on it.”

“Who?” Corrigan said. He thought he hadn’t heard right.

“Our supply sergeant. His name is Arnold Betz.”

Corrigan was silent. Finally he said, “Is that spelled B-E-T-Z, Major?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Is the man’s record handy?”

“It’s next door in the S-1 section.”

“Would you pull it and see if there’s any mention of his being related to an Andrew Betz?”

The major sounded startled. “Hang on.”

Several minutes passed.

“Yes, there is, Captain,” the major said, sounding excited. “Next of kin is listed as Andrew F. Betz, an older brother, care of Mrs. Elizabeth Grant—”

“Bingo!” Corrigan said. “I suggest, Major, you place Sergeant Betz under arrest on suspicion of theft.”

“My God. You think I’ve been having the thief himself investigate the theft?”

“I’m afraid you have. If you’ll hold him, I’ll be out to question him as soon as I can get there.”

“He isn’t here now,” Major Conners said, in the tones of a sick man. “He’s not one of the permanent personnel. Most of our Guardsmen pull duty only a couple of nights a week. He’ll be here tonight, though. He isn’t scheduled, but while this investigation is going on I’m having him come in every night.”

“This can’t wait, Major. Do you know where to reach him?”

“Well, yes. He manages a gas station during the day.”

“Then I suggest you contact the local police and have him picked up. I’ll take the responsibility.”

Major Conners sounded relieved. “All right, Captain, if I may quote you to the locals. But what makes you sure he’s the guilty man?”

“I’ll” explain when I get there.”

Corrigan jumped up, went over to the door, and motioned to Meisenheimer violently. When the detective ran in, Corrigan had Andy Betz’s name and Greenwich Village address on a sheet of scratch paper. He handed it to Meisenheimer.

“I want this man picked up, Meis. If he’s not at that address, try Noah’s Bar and Grill. It’s one block east of where he lives.”

“Description?”

“Fifty-five, about six-two, two hundred and twenty pounds. Dark hair speckled with gray. Heavy features. And if you find him in the bar, he’ll probably be loaded.”

“What’s the charge?”

“Suspicion of receiving stolen property will do as a starter,” Corrigan said grimly. “We might upgrade it to murder after interrogation. I have to run out to Long Island. Hold him here till I get back.”

Meisenheimer left fast, and Corrigan rang Chuck Baer’s office.

“Doing anything, Chuck?”

“Answering the correspondence that accumulated while I was hibernating at the penthouse. Nothing I can’t postpone. What’s up?”

“Have to run out to Long Island.”

“For what?”

“The Air National Guard supply sergeant who let that rocket belt slip through his fingers is Andy Betz’s younger brother.”

“I’ll be damned!” Baer said. He chuckled. “So far you’re batting three for zero. Some intuition.”

Corrigan told him what he could do with his intuition.

“Hey,” Baer said.

“Just be out front in ten minutes.”

19.

The 305th Air National Guard facilities consisted of a small hangar at one end of a dirt airfield, and a few dreary buildings. A single training plane was parked outside the hangar.

Corrigan stopped Car 40 before a crackerbox with a sign stuck in the ground reading: ADMINISTRATION. Inside, the two men found a uniformed sergeant behind a desk stippled with cigarette burns.

Corrigan showed his I.D. “I’m here to see Major Conners, Sergeant. He’s expecting me.”

“Yes, sir, he told me,” the sergeant said. “This way.”

He led the way to a door lettered: COMMANDING OFFICER. He knocked, and a voice said, “Come in.”

They went in. The sergeant went out. He rather pointedly, Corrigan thought, shut the door behind him.

A square-shouldered man with close-cropped gray hair rose from behind a desk. He was wearing a uniform with a gold oak leaf on the collar. He was frowning and looked worried.

In a corner sat a sullen-looking man of about forty, in civilian clothes. He was big, though not as big as his brother. There was a strong facial resemblance. A stocky police officer with sergeant’s stripes on his sleeve sat beside him.

The policeman rose when Corrigan and Baer came in; the man in civilian clothes remained seated.

“Captain.” The major offered a strong handclasp. “This is Police Sergeant Finch.”

The Sergeant said he was glad to meet Corrigan. It sounded like more than an amenity.

“Chuck Baer,” Corrigan said. “Mr. Baer is a private detective who has an interest in this thing.”

The major and the police officer both nodded. Corrigan looked at the seated man.

“This is Arnold Betz?”

“Yes.” Major Conners sounded decidedly uncomfortable. “He denies knowing anything about the rocket belt, Captain. I hope this isn’t a foulup.”

“It isn’t.” Corrigan examined Arnold Betz. “You’re the brother of Andy Betz?”

“Yes, sir,” the man said. He was as sullen as a February day. But he was nervous, too. His fingers kept picking at his trousers.

Corrigan glanced at the police sergeant. “Has he been advised of his constitutional rights?”

“It’s automatic these days,” the sergeant said wryly. “We even tell jaywalkers.”

Corrigan turned back. “Did you know why Andy wanted that rocket belt, Mr. Betz?”

“I don’t know anything about how that belt turned up missing,” the man said in an aggrieved tone. “A darned thing. I’ve told the major—”

“You see, it would make a big difference if you knew. If you just stole the belt for your brother without knowing the use he intended to put it to, you’re only guilty of theft. But if you knew what he was going to do with it, you’ll take a bust for conspiracy to murder.”

Arnold Betz blinked.

“Andy says you didn’t know why he wanted the belt,” Corrigan said in a sneering way. “But in my book he’s trying to cover you. You knew all about the murder plan, Arnold, didn’t you?”

The man’s tongue came out and went in again. “You’ve already talked to Andy?”

“How do you think we found out where he got the belt?”

Some suspects could hold out indefinitely under interrogation. Others broke quickly. Arnold Betz was a quick breaker. Corrigan had not expected it to be so easy.

Betz flicked a glance at the major and away. They watched him struggle. No one said anything.

The man grew paler and paler. He said in a barely audible voice, “Andy didn’t kill that kid. I called him yesterday morning after I read about it in the paper. He told me he didn’t have a thing to do with it.”

“You called him where?” Corrigan rapped.

“At his home. He lived over the garage at the Grant estate. He said he was packing and would contact me when he got settled in a new place. He didn’t want to talk about it over the phone.”

“If he wouldn’t talk about it, how do you know he didn’t kill Gerard Alstrom?”

Betz swallowed. “He told me that much. He said not to worry, because he had nothing to do with the kid’s death. He said he hadn’t had any notion the use that was going to be made of the belt.”

Chuck Baer said, “You mean he got the belt from you for somebody else’s use?”

“Yes, sir. I guess.”

“What do you mean, you guess?” Corrigan snapped. “Did he or didn’t he?”

“I think it was for someone else,” Betz said miserably. “I mean because of what he said over the phone yesterday morning. At the time I really didn’t know why he wanted it.”

“You mean you went along without an explanation?” Corrigan said. “What did you do it for? The money?”

“It wasn’t just the money,” the man said in a whine. “Andy’s always been able to con me into things. Ever since we were kids. He’s fifteen years older than me. I got in the habit of letting him boss me around.”

Major Conners said, “There was money involved, though, Sergeant Betz?”

Betz averted his eyes. “Yes, sir.”

“How much?”

“Two hundred dollars.”

“Did Andy mention how much he expected to get for it?” Corrigan demanded.

“He didn’t tell me a thing. Except that I wouldn’t get in trouble.”

“How could you swallow that?” Major Conners asked angrily. “Even if the belt hadn’t been used in a murder, we have a monthly inventory. You knew that. The minute it was discovered missing, you had to know there’d be an investigation.”

Betz made a helpless gesture. “The two belts had been in storage so long, Major, nobody was likely to come looking for them except at inventory time. And as supply sergeant I made out the monthly inventory report. I figured I could just keep listing both belts indefinitely.”

Corrigan said to Major Conners, “That covers it, Major. Unless you have more questions?”

“One. When did this transaction with your brother take place, Sergeant Betz?”

“A few days ago. Last Friday night. He first contacted me about it the previous Monday, though.”

The major looked disgusted. “You can haul him away, Sergeant Finch. This isn’t a military offense, because the belt wasn’t government property. National Guard property belongs to the State of New York. He’ll have to be charged as a civilian.”

Corrigan said to Finch, “He’s all yours, Sergeant.”

“Won’t you want him as a material witness in your murder case, Captain Corrigan?”

“Eventually. We’ll let that be worked out between the two district attorneys’ offices. For now I’ve got what I need.”

When Arnold Betz had left in the custody of the police sergeant, Corrigan said to Major Conners, “Thanks for your cooperation. You’ve given us a big assist toward solving this thing.”

“Frankly, I wish I’d never heard of the guy,” the major said. “I like to run a tight ship, as the Navy boys say. By the way, have you ever seen a rocket belt in action?”

Corrigan shook his head. Baer said, “Neither have I, except once in a newsreel.”

“Would you like to?”

“Might be a good idea at that,” Corrigan said. “There’s somebody here who knows how to use it?”

“Our chief pilot instructor. He used to work for Bell Aerosystems. It was through him we originally got the belts.”

The major conducted them to the small hangar.

“We have only two training planes assigned to us,” Conners said fretfully. “Our equipment is largely on paper. We do have enough pilots to put a squadron of nine fighters in the air, however, if we were ever called to Federal duty and given the planes.”

Two men in fatigues were servicing the plane inside the hangar. A solid sandy-haired man, also in fatigues, was watching them.

Major Conners introduced the solid man as Captain Morrison.

“Captain Corrigan and Mr. Baer would like to see a demonstration of the Bell Rocket Belt, Alex,” the major said. “Got the time?”

“Sure, Major. I’ll have to check the belt and charge the tanks, though. Give me twenty minutes.”

The demonstration took place on the airstrip. Corrigan, Baer, and the major were waiting near the hangar end of the field when Captain Morrison came from the supply building wearing the rocket belt. He took up a position a dozen feet from the group and glanced over his shoulder at the major.

“All set, Major.”

“Go ahead.”

Morrison gripped the controls that curved over his shoulders and twisted one of the grips. Twin streams of vapor spurted from the jets at the bottom of the gas generator.

With a loud whoosh he rose gracefully into the air in an arc that lifted him a good forty feet from the ground. He maintained that altitude for the length of the field, then descended so gently that his knees did not even bend when he landed.

“Three, four hundred feet,” Chuck Baer guessed.

“About three-fifty to that point,” Major Conners said.

Captain Morrison turned and soared into the air again. He landed on almost the exact spot from which he had originally taken off.

He grinned at Corrigan. “Want to try it, Captain?”

“No, thanks,” Corrigan said. “I’d land on my head.”

“You might if you tried that long a jump the first time. But I could teach you to make jumps of only a few yards with absolute safety within a half hour.”

“How long would it take to become expert?” Baer wanted to know.

“I was in training for a month, Mr. Baer. I probably could have made a jump as long as those I just made within a week, but they wouldn’t let me. In my opinion anybody with a good sense of balance could master it in a few days of intensive training.”

Andy Betz got his hands on the belt Friday, Corrigan thought. It had been used on Sunday night. That allowed only two days for practice—if Andy had used it himself. It seemed far more likely that he had turned it over to someone with long-standing jumping experience.

“Thanks for the demonstration, gentlemen.” Corrigan glanced at his watch; it was after eleven. “We’d better head back to town, Chuck. We’ve got a lot to do.”

20.

Corrigan and Baer stopped for a quick lunch, and got to headquarters a little past one.

Andy Betz was parked at one of the long tables in the MOS squadroom across from Detective Meisenheimer. Both had plastic cups of coffee before them, and Meisenheimer was munching on a sandwich. The meerschaum pipe was not in evidence; the only times Corrigan had ever seen Meisenheimer without it was when he was eating.

The ex-chauffeur’s face was flushed and there was an aroma of alcohol around him, but his eyes were less glazed than they had been the day before.

Corrigan said to Meisenheimer, “He relatively sober?”

“Getting there,” the bushy-haired detective said from a mouthful. “He was pretty lofty when I located him in that bar at eleven, though.” He shuddered. “How can anybody drink boilermakers before noon?”

“He have lunch?”

“Didn’t want any. That’s his third cup of coffee.”

Corrigan said to Betz, “Know why you’re here, Andy?”

In a cavernous voice the man said, “This detective says for receiving stolen property. I don’t know what he’s talking about.”

“You explain his constitutional rights?” Corrigan asked Meisenheimer wearily.

The detective nodded.

“Okay, Andy,” Corrigan said. “I’ll lay it on the line for you. Your brother Arnold is under arrest by the Long Island police. He confessed to selling you that rocket belt for two hundred dollars. Is that true?”

Andy gulped the rest of his coffee and crushed the plastic cup in his fist.

“Well?”

“This cop says I don’t have to make a statement.”

“No.”

“Then I’m not going to.” The ex-chauffeur looked defiant.

Corrigan said patiently, “Arnold’s already confessed, Andy. What do you gain by clamming up? Arnold says you got the belt for somebody else. You tell us who, and it might make it a lot easier for you. Otherwise we have to assume you used it yourself. Which means you get tagged for a murder rap.”

The man ground his jaws. He remained silent.

Corrigan waited. He said suddenly, “What size shoes do you wear?” The man made no answer. “We can take them off and measure them, you know.”

Andy looked baffled. Finally he said, “They aren’t twelve-and-a-half-D.”

“How do you know the killer’s shoe size?” Corrigan asked swiftly. “It wasn’t in the papers.”

Andy fell all over himself answering that one. “I was there that night, remember? I heard one of the cops say.”

“All right. What is your shoe size?”

“Twelve-C.”

“Ever been in military service?”

Andy shook his head. “I got real bad flat feet.”

“Let’s get back to the rocket belt. Who’d you get it for?”

No answer.

“Willing to answer some questions but not others, eh?” Corrigan turned away. “He’s standing on his constitutional rights—partly. Meis, book him on suspicion of murder and shoot him into a cell.”

Betz opened his mouth. But before he could get anything out, the squadroom door opened and an officer brought in Harry Barber and Pat Chase. The football player wore a jazzy sports coat, tight slacks, and an open-necked jersey shirt. The girl was in a simple sun dress that came eight inches above her knees and left her shoulders and back bare; she had thong sandals on bare legs; her toenails were painted mother-of-pearl.

Pat Chase’s face was without color; she seemed on the verge of tears. Barber greeted Corrigan with a sheepish smile.

“Well, well, the coop-flying lovebirds.” Corrigan turned to the uniformed man. “Where’d they turn up?”

“In a rat-hole hotel over on the Lower East Side. Registered as Mr. and Mrs. Harry Babcock.”

Corrigan said to the football player, “Not very imaginative, Harry.”

Barber said earnestly, “This wasn’t what you think, Captain. I guess I shouldn’t have run, but I can explain.”

“We’ll get to your explanation in a minute,” Corrigan said. “Andy, do you know this man?”

“Sure,” Betz said. “It’s Harry Barber.”

“How do you know him?”

“I seen him on TV.”

“I mean do you know him personally?”

The ex-chauffeur shook his head. “I never saw him close up before. I been to see the Cougars play.”

Corrigan glanced at Barber. The halfback said, “I don’t know him. Am I supposed to?”

Corrigan said, “Okay, Meis. You can take Betz away.”

Meisenheimer led the big man out, Corrigan indicated seats, and Barber and Pat Chase sat down. Baer parked himself on a corner of the table, one leg dangling. The uniformed man took a chair at a nearby table. Corrigan did not sit down.

“Now you can give me your explanation,” he said to Barber.

The blond giant coughed. “It was because you took that typing sample, Captain. I panicked; I knew you’d trace that note to me and would think I was the killer. So I lied to you to stall for time. Pat didn’t want to run. She thought I should stick around and face you.”

Pat Chase said, “Oh, Harry, I told you!”

“Hold it, Pat,” Corrigan said. “If you’re not the killer, Harry, why did you write that note?”

“I blew my top when I heard the TV announcement of Alstrom’s and Grant’s release. I sat down, typed it out, and mailed it while I was still mad. When I cooled down, I realized what a damnfool stunt it was. But by that time it was too late.”

“Damnfool isn’t the word, Harry,” Corrigan said in his coldest voice. “You know what I think? I think anyone capable of writing a note like that is capable of carrying out the threat. You’re in a real jam, Harry. Your shoe size is the same as the killer’s. You’re the physical size of the man Frank Grant saw silhouetted against the sky. You tailed Mrs. Grant’s limousine to Ossining, and don’t give me that bull-flop about driving up there for a knee brace that day. Any reason you can think of why I shouldn’t book you for murder?”

Pat Chase said in a quiet voice, “One, Captain. He really was with me from seven o’clock on Sunday night.”

Corrigan looked at her. Her face was still pale, but her glance was unwavering.

He put a sneer in his voice. “After your disappearing act, Pat, why should I believe you?”

She moistened her dry lips. “I tried to talk Harry out of it. Believe me, Captain, I’m telling the truth. I’ll testify under oath that Harry wasn’t out of my sight from seven Sunday night until you showed up at four in the morning, that he was most of the time in bed with me. Even that!”

Her voice held the same ring of truth Corrigan had detected early Monday morning. If she was lying, she was doing it so effectively that a jury might well believe her.

He glanced at Baer, nodded in the direction of his office, and left the squadroom. Baer followed him.

He shut his door. “What’s your impression, Chuck?”

“If she’s lying, Tim, she’s one hell of an actress.”

Corrigan scowled. “Check. And I don’t think Andy and Harry were putting on an act about not knowing each other. And if Andy isn’t the killer, he should have shown some reaction when he was confronted by the man he sold that belt to. He’s no actor.”

“I don’t think either one was putting on an act,” Baer said. “Tim, I don’t think Barber’s our man.”

“Then why did he write that idiotic note?”

“He could be telling the truth there, too. People do stupid things when they’re mad. I once wrote a hot letter to one of the networks because a deodorant commerical teed me off.”

“The guy has to be neurotic, Chuck. Only neurotics write crank notes.”

“The world is full of them,” Baer said. “But how many are killers? I believe the girl, too, Tim. It takes a lot to make a girl like that admit publicly she was rolling in the hay with a guy.”

Corrigan sighed. “So do I, damn it. But I can’t just turn Barber loose. After his runout, the skipper would have my hide.”

“Can’t you charge him with something?”

“Nothing but criminal threat, I guess. Which is a bondable offense. He’ll just bail out. And if he should run again, I’ll look like a rookie. I might even get boarded.”

Baer grinned at him. “There are advantages to being a private cop. Why don’t you dump the decision in Inspector Macelyn’s lap?”

“Because in the MOS we don’t pass the buck. You stick your own neck out, and take the consequences.”

He went back into the squadroom, trailed by Baer.

Corrigan said to the officer, “Take this man downstairs, book him for criminal threat, and let him post bond.” He turned to Barber. “I’m accepting Pat’s story, Harry. But if you try to run again, I’ll crucify you. Understand?”

“I won’t run again,” Barber said in a subdued voice. “Thanks.”

“Don’t thank me,” Corrigan snapped. “If I thought I could make a bigger charge stick, you’d be behind bars. Thank this girl. She’s more than you deserve.”

He fixed his good eye on the girl. “I’m releasing you on your own cognizance, Pat. But remember, you’re a material witness. If you run again, it’s the pokey for you.”

“Yes, sir,” she said. She was looking happy.

He wasn’t even Captain now, Corrigan thought sourly. He was “sir.”

In his office, while Baer sat by, Corrigan looked up a number and dialed.

A feminine voice said, “Alstrom and Grant.”

“Is Mr. Alstrom there?” Corrigan asked. “This is Captain Corrigan of the police.”

“Just a moment, sir.”

When John M. Alstrom came on his tone was formal. “What can I do for you, Captain Corrigan?”

“Just called to ask a question,” Corrigan said. “Last Sunday night, was Andy Betz home all evening?”

“Yes, Captain. We both went to bed about eleven o’clock.”

“I assume you occupied separate rooms?”

“Of course.”

“Then it’s possible he might have gone out without your knowing it?”

“It’s possible, I suppose.” There was a long wait “You’re not suggesting that Andy could have had anything to do with Gerard’s death?”

“Just checking all possible angles, Mr. Alstrom. Thanks for the information.”

Corrigan hung up. He said to Baer, “Let’s go talk to Andy some more.”

21.

Betz was in a detention cell designed for two, but he was alone. He lay on his back on one of the drop-down bunks. When Corrigan and Baer stopped at the cell, Betz sat up and swung his feet to the floor.

Through the bars Corrigan said in a friendly way, “Still standing on your constitutional rights, Andy?”

Betz said, “Yeah,” definitely.

“Have you asked for a lawyer?”

The man shook his head.

“Why not? If you’re not the killer, I think a lawyer would advise you to talk You don’t want to be tagged for murder, do you?”

“I didn’t kill Gerard.”

“I’m inclined to believe you,” Corrigan said. “I can’t figure any motive.”

Betz seemed surprised. “Then why have you got me in jail?”

“I think you’re guilty of being an accessory, Andy. But maybe it’s only technically.”

“Talk English,” Betz growled. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Somebody hired you to get hold of that belt, but you didn’t know what it was going to be used for until after the murder. Then, when you realized you’d almost got your precious young mister killed, you weren’t able to face him or his mother again. That’s why you quit by phone and started drinking. Correct me if I’m wrong.”

A thoughtful expression appeared in Betz’s eyes, but he said nothing.

“You didn’t correct him,” Chuck Baer said.

Betz looked coy. “I didn’t think he was finished. How would anyone know I had a way to get hold of a rocket belt?”

Corrigan said, “One of Marty Martello’s hoods used to belong to the 305th. If he knew your brother was supply sergeant, there’s your answer.”

“Which one of Martello’s hoods?”

Corrigan said genially, “Andy, you sound as if you’re fishing for enough information to make up a story.”

“I’m trying to figure things out, Captain. Maybe the guy was a Martello hood.”

“What guy?”

“The guy I sold the belt to.”

It came so suddenly, so readily, that Corrigan and Baer both blinked. For all his experience, the MOS man was never quite prepared for the phenomenon of witnesses who decided to talk just when he was about to give up on them. But there was often a weenie. In cases like this it was wise to look the gift horse in the mouth.

“Okay, Andy,” Corrigan said, “now you’re being smart. Though I can’t figure out why you decided to admit it all of a sudden, after being willing to be parked behind bars rather than talk.”

“My brother Arnold confessed, didn’t he?” Betz shrugged. “I’m not going to take the rap for this other guy.”

“What guy, Andy?”

“I don’t know his name. I ran into him in a bar.”

“What bar? When?”

“Tracy’s, on Forty-second Street. It was late Monday night.”

“You mean a week ago yesterday?”

“That’s right.”

“Go on.”

“We started talking and he stood me a couple of shots. Then he told me he’d pay me five hundred dollars if I could get him a rocket belt.”

“Out of the blue? Just like that? How did he know you had access to a belt?”

For a moment Betz looked confused. Then his face cleared. “It’s all kind of foggy, because I was loaded. But now that I think of it, he worked up to it. We got talking about my brother being supply sergeant for the 305th.” He paused. “I think he brought that up, not me. How would he know that?”

“Maybe he knew all about you beforehand,” Baer suggested. “Maybe it was a deliberate contact.”

“Was he in the bar when you arrived?” Corrigan asked.

Andy thought for a moment. “He came in right after. Say, you think he was following me?”

“I think,” Corrigan said. “So you were discussing your brother, Andy. Then what?”

“He said he happened to know the 305th had two Bell Aerosystems Rocket Belts in storage, which nobody would miss because they hadn’t been used for years. If I could talk my brother out of one, he’d pay me five hundred bucks for it.”

Corrigan and Baer looked at each other. Baer said, “Sounds like Benny.”

Corrigan nodded. “When and where did you deliver the belt, Andy?”

“At the same bar last Friday night.”

Corrigan frowned. “You walked right into a bar carrying that contraption?”

“No, no,” Betz said. “I just met him there. I had it in my car. We went outside, transferred it to his car, and he paid me off.”

Baer said, “Did he give you any name?”

The man shook his head. “I think he introduced himself when we first started talking, but you know how it is with a guy you just meet. Two minutes later you can’t remember his name. It was probably a phony, anyway.”

“What did he look like?” Corrigan demanded.

Andy furrowed his heavy brows. “I was pretty drunk,” he said apologetically. “I don’t remember.”

Baer said, “You weren’t drunk when you delivered the belt Friday night, were you?”

“Well, no, but I was nervous. I didn’t look at him too good.”

Corrigan said, “Andy, you’re making this all up.”

“No—no, I’m not, Captain! I’m trying to cooperate. I’m just not much good on faces. He was above average height, I remember. Maybe as tall as me. But skinnier.”

“How old was he?”

“Thirty, forty,” Andy said. “I’m not much of a judge on age.”

“You’re not much on anything,” Corrigan said tartly. “I don’t suppose you noticed what kind of car he had, or the license number?”

“Just that it was a black sedan,” Betz muttered. “And new. All these new cars look the same to me. It wasn’t one of the big ones, though. Ford or a Plymouth, something like that.”

Corrigan shrugged. “Would you recognize him if you saw him again?”

“Sure thing,” Betz said confidently.

“Think you could pick out his picture?”

Andy looked eager. “I could give it a try.”

“All right,” Corrigan said. “I’m going to check you out and run you over to BCI to look at some mug shots. We’ll be back as soon as I sign for you.”

On the way Corrigan said to Baer, “What do you think, Chuck?”

“I’m not sure,” the private detective said. “A couple of times I got the impression he was feeling his way—making it up as he went along. But is he bright enough to pull anything like this?”

“He’s not loaded with brains. I got the same impression, but it doesn’t make sense. Why would he come up with such a wild story?”

“To get off the hook for murder, is why.”

Corrigan nodded glumly. They waited for a guard to let them out. “I can’t see him as the killer, Chuck. He handed that belt over to somebody. But why would he lie about who?”

“Who knows, Tim? Sometimes you get one that’s incapable of telling a straight story. Especially the dumb ones. They think all cops are out to get them.”

“Well, we’ll play it by ear and see what happens.”

The guard unlocked the door.

At the Bureau of Criminal Identification they sat Andy Betz down and had him go through mug shots. To test his reactions, Corrigan first showed him a book of miscellaneous criminals. He and Baer sat on the other side of the table and watched his face.

Betz turned the pages slowly and studied the photos with an air of profound concentration. He went through the entire book without giving a sign of intelligence, or even pausing to study a particular photograph closely.

“Not in here,” he said.

Corrigan tossed him four loose front-and-profile shots. They were of Marty Martello, Little Jumbo Barth, the Acid Kid, and Benny Grubb.

“Hey, this is Martello,” Betz exclaimed at the first picture.

“You know him?” Corrigan asked.

“Sure, from four years ago. He was out to the Alstrom estate the day the body of his kid was dug up, and I’d driven the Grants over there, too. Then I saw him in court a couple of times.”

“Is he the man you sold the belt to?”

“No.”

He scanned the photos of Little Jumbo, set the card aside, and studied the Acid Kid’s mugs. He set those aside, too. Then he stared at Benny Grubb’s front-and-profile shots.

“This is the guy.” He looked up in triumph. “This is him, all right!”

Corrigan let his breath out. Top hoods like Martello were so frustratingly above the law that it was every decent officer’s dream to bust one. If Benny Grubb could be tagged with young Alstrom’s murder, it was possible, even likely, that Martello could be tied in for conspiracy to murder. Benny was not the martyr kind. He would not take the rap without fingering the man who had ordered the hit.

“You’re sure now, Andy.”

Betz looked confident. “I’ll testify to it in court.”

“You’ll get your chance.” Corrigan rose. “Okay, Andy. Back to your cell.”

22.

The same middle-aged receptionist was on duty at The Martello Realty Company when Corrigan and Baer got off at the twenty-fifth floor.

The moment she saw Corrigan she said in a positive voice, “Mr. Martello really isn’t in today, Captain. He isn’t even in town.”

Corrigan pushed through the wooden gate and headed for Martello’s private office. As he passed her desk he said, “We’re not looking for Marty this time.”

They went into the room marked PRIVATE.

The sleek blonde with the upslanted eyes was again hanging up her phone when Corrigan and Baer got there. She gave Corrigan a charming smile. “Mrs. Hakes told you he wasn’t here, Captain. He flew to Buffalo this morning.”

She actually got up and went over to the door behind her desk and opened it to show them that Martello’s office was empty.

“I told her we weren’t looking for Marty,” Corrigan said. “Didn’t she tell you?”

The Acid Kid and Benny Grubb were lounging in chairs. Corrigan went over and planted himself before Martello’s wheel man. Baer lined up beside him, blocking Al Jennings.

Corrigan said, “You’re under arrest on suspicion of murder, Benny. Sergeant Bender gave you the standard spiel about your constitutional rights at Homicide the other night, so you know how it goes. On your feet.”

Grubb and Jennings slowly came erect. The blonde stood watching, open-mouthed. Then she said in a complaining voice, “Are you going to start a fuss again, Captain?”

He paid no attention to her.

Benny said, “You’re nuts. I ain’t killed nobody. What hit you trying to stick me with?”

“Gerard Alstrom’s.”

“You know I got an alibi for that.”

“It just fell apart.”

The alibi had not fallen apart—yet. At that moment Detective Second Grade Meisenheimer was en route to Brooklyn to pick up the two girls who had furnished it, but until the girls could be broken down the alibi stood. Corrigan was just assuming that the alibi was rigged. He was confident his interrogation would get the girls to talk.

Benny Grubb fell for it He was being arrested, so Corrigan must have broken his alibi.

“Those stupid broads talked!”

Corrigan said as casually as if it didn’t matter, “They blew the whistle all right, Benny.”

“Listen, we didn’t set up the alibi on account of that kid Alstrom, Captain. That was a coincidence.”

Corrigan looked at him with genuine amazement.

“Honest,” Benny said. “Al and I were going to lean on a welsher that night. Nothing to do with the boss. Just a favor for a bookie pal. We never did find the welsher, so we didn’t need the alibi after all. When you tagged us, we just used it.”

“So it shouldn’t be a total loss, eh, Benny?” Corrigan looked over at the Acid Kid. “Your buddy’s admission tags you as an accessory, Al. You went along on the job, or you wouldn’t have planted an alibi, too.”

“Big mouth!” Jennings snapped at Grubb. “Dig your own grave if you want, but don’t pull me in with you!”

“He already broke the alibis,” Benny said feebly. “I was just explaining, Al.”

Corrigan said, “Both of you turn around and put your hands against the wall.”

“You ain’t tagging me with no bum rap,” Jennings snarled.

His hand flashed to his pocket. There was a snicking sound, and there was the hand with a seven-inch blade.

Benny Grubb threw a right at Corrigan’s jaw.

Several things happened in a blur. One of Baer’s mitts clamped on the Acid Kid’s wrist; the other grabbed him by the hair. The Kid’s feet left the floor as Baer swung him like a chicken. Then Baer let go, and the Kid sailed across the room, turning slowly in mid-air like a satellite, to crash into the far wall.

At the same time Corrigan’s knees flexed to let Grubb’s fist whistle over his head. Both his hands shot up to grab the man’s wrist; he turned his back on Grubb and heaved. The man flipped over Corrigan’s shoulder to land on his back, hors de combat.

Corrigan slipped cuffs on him, gave him a quick shakedown, and removed a .38 revolver from under his armpit.

“You did it again, you did it again,” the blonde said excitedly.

Baer ran across the room, picked up the knife Al Jennings had dropped, snapped it shut, and dropped it into his pocket. Jennings lay on his face, shaking his head. He pushed himself to his hands and knees.

The private detective hoisted him to his feet by the scruff of the neck, removed a snub-nosed Detective Special from a belt holster, and let go. The Acid Kid fell back to his hands and knees. After a few moments he crawled over to a chair.

The blonde said in the same high voice, “Wait till I tell Mr. Martello. You just wait!”

Corrigan ignored her. He jerked Benny Grubb to his feet. “You carrying cuffs, Chuck?” Baer shook his head regretfully. Corrigan jockeyed the weaving Grubb across the room, shoved him into the chair beside Jennings, and unlocked his left cuff. He snapped it around Jennings’ right wrist.

Grubb said, “Listen, Captain, I wasn’t going to make no break. I only followed along because this jerk did.”

“Who you calling a jerk?” the Acid Kid spat at him.

“You, you jerk!” Grub spat back. “We weren’t in any jam till you pulled a shiv on a cop. We could have beat this lousy bust if you’d kept your head.”

“Argue it out in a cell,” Corrigan said.

When they got back to the squadroom, Corrigan removed the handcuffs. He told the prisoners to sit down. Meisenheimer came in and gestured Corrigan over to a corner, beyond the prisoners’ earshot.

“They’ve bugged,” the detective told Corrigan. “The two broads. Moved two days ago and left no forwarding address.”

Corrigan cursed. “We’ll need them eventually to make this stick. Better put out an APB and a local, Meis.”

“Okay.”

“Then run over to Detention and check out Andy Betz. I want him here.”

When Meisenheimer returned with the oversized ex-chauffeur, Corrigan steered Betz over to where Martello’s men sat. He said nothing, letting Betz look them over.

He pointed to Benny Grubb. “That’s the man, Captain.”

Grubb said indignantly, “What’s he fingering me for?” Then his eyes narrowed. “Hey, don’t I know you?”

“Sure you do,” Betz said. “You gave me five hundred dollars for that belt.”

Grubb looked at Corrigan. “What’s he talking about, Captain? Who is this monkey, anyway?”

“You know who he is,” Corrigan said.

“The hell I do! I’ve seen him some place, but I don’t know where.” He glared at Betz. “Who the hell are you?”

“You know who I am. You knew before you latched onto me in that bar. I’m Andy Betz. The Grants’ chauffeur.”

Grubb looked enlightened. “Four years ago out at the Alstrom place,” he exclaimed. “When I drove the boss over there the day they found his daughter’s body. We gabbed some then. But I ain’t laid eyes on you since. Why the hell are you fingering me?”

Corrigan said, “Andy says that last Friday night, outside Tracy’s Tavern on Forty-second Street, you paid him five hundred dollars for a Bell Rocket Belt. So the only question is, Benny, did you use it to make that roof-to-roof jump yourself, or were you only the middle man?”

Grubb’s mouth hung open. “You’re way over my head, Captain. I don’t know what in Christ’s name you’re talking about.”

The same portly lawyer who had appeared at Homicide early Monday morning walked into the squadroom.

Corrigan said, “You’re a little behind schedule, aren’t you, Counselor?”

“Afternoon, Captain,” Besser said. He nodded to Baer and Meisenheimer, glanced briefly at Andy Betz, then turned his attention to Benny Grubb and the Acid Kid. “Mr. Martello’s secretary phoned me that you two had been arrested. Have you made any statements?”

Al Jennings shook his head. Grubb said, “Only that I don’t know what they’re talking about.” He indicated Bete. “This character says I bought a rocket belt from him. He’s fluffier than an angel food cake.”

Besser turned to Corrigan. “What are the charges, Captain?”

“Suspicion of murder for Benny. Accessory for Al. Plus a few assorted items, such as receiving stolen property, resisting arrest, assault on a police officer, and A.D.W. You plan to spring writs of habeas corpus?”

“Depends on the evidence.”

“Try this for size.” Corrigan pointed to Bete. “This witness identifies Benny as the man he sold the rocket belt to that was used in Gerard Alstrom’s murder. Benny and Al rigged alibis for the time of the murder; Benny’s admitted they were rigged. He did some talking—knowing his constitutional rights, by the way.”

The lawyer glanced sharply at Grubb. “Did you admit that?”

“Well, the alibis was already busted,” Grubb said uncomfortably.

The lawyer gave him a disgusted look. “You can’t assume murder just because a man bought a rocket belt, Captain.”

Corrigan grinned. “How many killers have you seen go up because a gun was traced to them, Counselor? It’s the same principle. I think any judge would accept the presumption if you want to force a preliminary hearing. Do you?”

The lawyer considered. “Not at this point,” he decided. “May I consult with my clients in private?”

“Sure,” Corrigan said. “Use my office.” He shrugged.

His shrug stemmed from the knowledge that this was the end of all fruitful interrogation; Besser would instruct both men to answer nothing without his approval of each question. They would get nothing more from Grubb and Jennings until the pair appeared in court.

As the lawyer and his clients disappeared, Corrigan motioned Baer beyond earshot of Betz.

“What did you think of Benny’s reaction to Andy, Chuck?”

“He sounded on the level.” Baer was looking worried. “Is it possible this troglodyte’s been pulling our leg?”

“I’m beginning to wonder.”

“Maybe we’d better work on him a little more.”

They drifted back to Betz, standing under the watchful eye of Meisenheimer.

Corrigan said, “Benny Grubb sounded pretty convincing about not-having seen you in four years, Andy. You sure you didn’t pull him out of a hat?”

“He’s the guy bought the belt from me,” Andy said doggedly. “What would you expect him to do, admit it?”

“How come you didn’t recognize him when he approached you in the bar?” Baer demanded. “You met him at the Alstroms’.”

“Look, that was four years ago and I didn’t even get his name. Can you remember every joker you talked to years ago?”

“He remembered you.”

“No, he didn’t. Not till I told him who I was. He was a stranger to me when I met him at Tracy’s. Anyway, he knew who I was before he ever approached me in that bar; he must have. He’s just putting you on.”

“Andy,” Corrigan said, “if it turns out you’re the one who’s putting us on, I’ll tie a can to your tail!”

“I gave you a straight story,” Andy said. “I’ll repeat it in court, what’s more.”

“Okay,” Corrigan said. He turned to Meisenheimer. “Take him back to his cell, Meis.”

But he looked dissatisfied. So did Chuck Baer.

23.

When Besser and his clients came out of Corrigan’s office, the MOS man said to the lawyer, “Well, Counselor? What’s the verdict?”

“We’re not going to force a preliminary hearing just yet, Captain,” Besser said, as if he were conferring a royal favor. “But my clients insist they’re innocent of all charges, including that of resisting arrest. They claim you and Mr. Baer roughed them up without provocation.”

“They do, do they?” Corrigan growled. “I suppose that calcimined blonde who’s supposed to work for Martello will testify to that effect?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” the lawyer said with a straight face. “If you push it, Captain, you may find yourself in more trouble than my clients. As to the murder charge and the accessory charge, we’ll discuss them in court in due time. Meanwhile, I’m advising my clients to submit to arrest without fuss and make no immediate application for bond.”

“Sounds profound,” Corrigan said. “Is that all you advised them?”

“Well, naturally they’ll make no further statements without prior submission of the questions to me.”

“You bet, Besser. I’m not handing you any grounds for dismissals. You want to be present at the booking?”

“Yes.”

“Then let’s go downstairs.”

Later, over their regular after-work drink at Maxie’s Businessmen’s Bar and Grill, Corrigan said, “I’ve still got a bug in my ear about Betz, Chuck. And yet I wouldn’t have thought he was bright enough to make it all up.”

Baer lipped his beer chaser. “If Benny and the Acid Kid weren’t involved, Tim, why did they rig alibis? Do you buy that yarn of theirs?”

“About setting up alibis for something that didn’t come off, so they used them? Could be. I’ve heard screwier.”

“Oh, come off it.”

“Anyway, I’m putting all this in cold storage till tomorrow morning. Tonight I relax.”

“Now you’re talking. How about we make the rounds?”

“With you? That’s not what I had in mind.”

“Oh. The Alstrom chick.”

“She’s not a chick.”

“Miss Alstrom, I beg your pardon. I thought you made it a rule never to mix business with pleasure?”

“This business,” said Corrigan with dignity, “is a pleasure.” He backed off the bar stool. “’Scuse. I’ll be right back.”

Norma herself answered the phone.

“Baby, I caught up on my sleep last night,” Corrigan said. “How about dinner for two?”

“Oh, Tim, I’d love it!”

“Pick you up at seven.”

They ate Spanish at a Greenwich Village restaurant Norma was subdued; her brother’s funeral was scheduled for tomorrow morning. She drank three glasses of sherry with her dinner and began to look flushed. Norma was not much of a drinker, and Corrigan wondered if she was preparing herself against his promise on their last date that on their next they would go to his apartment. If she has to steel herself, he thought, nothing doing! But maybe it was her way of trying to enliven her spirits, depressed by recent events and the shadow of the funeral. He decided to feel his way, and then grinned at the metaphor.

After dinner he took her to an untypical Village dive where a gypsy violinist played schmaltzy music and they could sip more sherry by candlelight. Norma sent the violinist away; she wanted to talk about the case. Corrigan decided that tonight was definitely not the night. He found himself giving her a blow-by-blow description of everything that had happened during the day.

He made only passing mention of the rocket-belt demonstration he and Chuck Baer had witnessed on Long Island. To his surprise, she returned to it. The belt seemed to fascinate her.

“Tell me all about it, Tim. How it works, and all that.”

“Well, there was a noise like fifty singing tea kettles starting to boil at once,” Corrigan said. “Then he went up in the air like a damn bird—”

When he stopped abruptly, Norma said, “What’s the matter, Tim?”

Corrigan’s brown eye was staring into space.

“What’s the matter?” Norma said again, concerned. “Don’t you feel well?”

Corrigan shook his head impatiently, and she became quiet Suddenly he snapped his fingers.

“It has to be!” he said, more to himself than to her. “It fits all the way.”

“What are you talking about, Tim?”

Corrigan said rapidly, “In the foyer of the penthouse there’s a little door in the wall next to the mail chute. Isn’t that an incinerator drop?”

“Yes. All the trash goes in there.”

“How often does the maintenance man burn it?”

“I haven’t any idea. Why are you interested in trash disposal? It’s not very flattering.”

“I just had a brainstorm. Norma … Do you mind if I take you home?”

“Well,” she said. “That’s frank enough.”

Corrigan reached across the table and caught her hand. “I was going to suggest my apartment, but this is urgent.”

She looked at him. “It’s about the case.”

“Yes. I just figured out who killed Gerard.”

Norma’s eyes widened. “Tim! Who?”

“Wait till all the evidence is in.” He released her hand and pushed his chair back. “That’s why I want to get back to your building. Maybe it’s still not too late.”

“Whatever you say, Tim.”

When they stepped onto the main elevator, Corrigan pushed the “B” button instead of “11.”

“The super?” Norma said, frowning.

“Let’s hope he isn’t an early-to-bed guy, Norm.” He looked at his watch. It was five past ten.

There was a light on in the furnace room, but the door of the apartment where the maintenance man lived was shut. Corrigan rapped, holding his breath. There was a shuffling sound, the door opened, and there was the lean, gray-haired man he had glimpsed the day he and Baer had brought Gerard Alstrom and Frank Grant to the penthouse from Ossining. He was in trousers, shoes, and undershirt. When he saw Norma he said, “Excuse me, Miss,” and drew back into the room. A moment later he reappeared wearing a plaid bathrobe.

Corrigan showed him his I.D. “I’m Captain Corrigan of the police department and this is Miss Alstrom, from the penthouse. What’s your name?”

“Jed Bonney. The tenants call me Jed.”

“How often do you burn trash, Jed?”

“Once a week. On Saturdays.”

Corrigan did not allow his elation to show. “Then anything that came down the trash chutes last Sunday is still not burned?”

“That’s right.”

“May I have a look inside your incinerator?”

“Be my guest.”

Bonney led the way across the furnace room to an iron door about two and a half feet square. He opened it, and Corrigan peered in. He could see little by the light from the furnace room. He produced his pencil flash and directed it through the door.

The incinerator chamber was some six by six by six. The bottom of the door was about three feet above the floor. There was trash nearly level with it.

“Listen to me carefully, Jed,” Corrigan said. “I’m going to have a police team down here first thing in the morning to sift through this stuff. You’re not to burn it, understand?”

“No chance of that, Captain. I’m the only one fires this thing, and I’m not due to turn it on till Saturday.”

“Okay.”

“What will they be looking for?”

“They’ll know,” Corrigan said. “Good night, and thanks.”

On the way up, Norma pouted. “You didn’t want to tell Jed. Are you going to tell me?”

“No,” Corrigan said, smiling. “If my guess is wrong, I’ll look stupid, and you’re one gal I want to impress.”

“That’s as tricky a turndown as this gal ever got,” Norma said. “You’re clever, Captain, you know that? Tell me this. If your idea pans out, will you phone and tell me tomorrow?”

The elevator door opened and they stepped out on eleven. As they crossed over to the penthouse auxiliary, Corrigan said, “I’ll do better than that, Norm. If it works out, I’ll be over in person.”

“Just to explain to me?”

“Well, no. To everybody.”

Norma stood on tiptoe and kissed him on the forehead. He tried to lower the boom, but she shook her head and gave him a little push, smiling. “You don’t give out, I don’t give out.” Then her smile faded. “The funeral is in the morning.”

“I’ll be out of town—if this works out—all morning. So it won’t be till after the funeral.”

“I won’t sleep tonight.”

“Think of me,” Corrigan said. “The way you’re holding me off, it’ll be like a sedative.”

She was learning how it was to be involved with a cop, he thought. She didn’t even ask where he was going.

The next morning, early, Corrigan arranged for a trash-sifting team and sent them off to the building with explicit instructions as to what to look for. Then he logged out, corraled Car 40, and headed upstate. He did not get back from Ossining until well past lunch.

On his desk he found a pair of large brown oxfords, in fair condition but far from new, and smelling of garbage. He examined the heels. They were rubber Goodyears. A small piece had been gouged from the right heel.

With a grunt of satisfaction Corrigan grabbed the phone and dialed Baer’s office. Chuck answered immediately.

“I tried to phone you earlier,” Baer complained. “They said you’d driven to Ossining. What’s up?”

“Plenty. You busy?”

“Nothing I can’t table.”

“Then I’ll pick you up in twenty minutes.”

“Where we going?”

“The penthouse. Be waiting out front, will you?”

“What’s this all about?”

But Corrigan hung up. He made one more call, to the Alstrom & Grant brokerage firm. When he got John M. Alstrom on the phone, he said, “There have been some developments in your son’s case, Mr. Alstrom. Could you make it to the penthouse in about half an hour?”

“Of course. I wasn’t planning to do much work today, anyhow. Gerry’s funeral this morning …” He sounded very old.

“I know, sir. I’d have been there, but this thing came up.”

“Can you tell me what it’s about, Captain?”

“Let’s wait till we’re gathered in the penthouse.”

The elder Alstrom sighed. “All right. Half an hour.”

Corrigan had just hung up when someone knocked on his office door. He yelled, “Come in,” and Max Besser opened the door. “What do you want, Counselor?”

The lawyer laid a pair of legal documents on the desk. They were writs of habeas corpus.

“Changed your mind, I see, Counselor.”

“Yes,” Besser said, smiling. “We decided you can’t break my clients’ alibis after all.”

He had found out that the two floozy witnesses had disappeared, Corrigan thought. Yesterday the development would have irritated him. Now he was only amused.

“You wasted your time, Counselor,” he said, smiling back. “I was just about to order Benny’s and Al’s release.”

The lawyer looked surprised. “Oh? May I ask why?”

“You have some objection?”

“No, no,” Besser said. “I just wondered why the change of heart. If you have a heart, Captain.”

“I decided they weren’t guilty,” Corrigan said. “Of course, I could be wrong.”

“My clients are never guilty.”

“We’ll see,” Corrigan said.

24.

At Detention, Corrigan arranged for the release from custody of Benny Grubb and Al Jennings. He also checked out Betz in his own custody.

En route to Chuck Baer’s office, Betz asked, “Where we going, Captain?”

“You’ll know when we get there,” Corrigan snapped.

John Alstrom had already arrived when Corrigan, Baer, and the ex-chauffeur got to the penthouse. Alstrom was with Norma, Frank, and Elizabeth Grant in the living room. One of the uniformed men was standing by; the other was on the roof.

Baer looked mad. Corrigan rarely kept anything from him in a case in which he was involved, but this time the MOS man was as close-mouthed as a hood just advised of his constitutional rights. The big man plumped himself down beside Norma, glowering. Andy Betz took a chair off to one side, rather delicately, as befitted even an ex-chauffeur.

“I’ll get straight to the point,” Corrigan said, his back to the fireplace, from where they were all within eyeshot. “I’m here this afternoon to make an arrest. The arrest of the murderer of Gerard Alstrom.”

Tension settled down. The only ones not affected were Baer, who was still sore, and the officer, who looked bored.

“But first,” Corrigan said, “the innocent parties deserve an explanation.”

“One moment, Captain,” Mrs. Grant shrilled. “You can’t possibly mean that someone in this room killed Gerard. Yet that’s what you’re implying.”

“It’s exactly what I mean, Mrs. Grant. Now, please, no interruptions. I’ll cover the evidence point by point. Let’s start,” Corrigan said, “with Andy over there.”

Betz started, as all eyes swiveled his way.

“Andy didn’t know he was involving himself in a murder,” Corrigan said. “It wasn’t until after Gerard was found dead that he realized how he had been used. The realization kicked him in the gut. He quit his job and went on a drunk. He could no longer face the family he had worked for for so many years.”

Betz’s eyes began to look glazed; he seemed to shrink in his chair. Elizabeth Grant regarded him with total incomprehension.

“At first I thought the reason Andy was so upset was because his act had endangered Frank’s life—he has a complex about Frank, idolizes him. But it all suddenly fell into place last night while I was describing to Norma a rocket-belt demonstration Mr. Baer and I witnessed. I realized that what had really upset Andy was the shattering of his idol.”

“I don’t think I follow this,” Alstrom said slowly.

“Let me go at this my way, Mr. Alstrom. Probably only two people in the world have believed all along that Frank and your son were innocent of Audrey Martello’s murder four years ago. Mrs. Grant was one, and Andy was the other. Now, all of a sudden, Andy realized that the boys had killed Miss Martello after all.”

Mrs. Grant swelled with indignation. “The highest court in New York State said they weren’t guilty, Captain Corrigan!” She turned her glare on Betz. “How did you come to that outrageous conclusion, Andy? I don’t believe it!”

Betz said nothing.

“Simple deduction,” Corrigan said. “He concluded that Frank was a killer because he now knew that Frank had killed Gerard.”

They seemed to be hit by a Shockwave. Mrs. Grant gaped at Corrigan as if he had just mouthed an obscenity. Norma shrank from Frank as if he had turned into a snake. John Alstrom looked from Corrigan to Frank Grant and back again in absolute bewilderment.

Betz continued to stare miserably down at his hands.

It was Frank Grant who broke the silence. Impossibly, he laughed. “You’re accusing me of breaking the laws of physics, Captain. You heard the killer run out on the roof while I was locked in the bathroom. Are you suggesting that I jumped from this roof to the one across the street with the rocket belt, ran down nine flights, ran across the street, took the elevator back to here, and somehow got myself back into the bathroom—all in the few seconds it took your buddy Baer to break through the bedroom door?”

“I’m suggesting no one ever used the rocket belt,” Corrigan said. “Some time between about eleven-thirty that night, when I happened to glance at the roof across the way, and one A.M., when the murder took place, Andy planted the belt on the roof for you. When he delivered the size twelve-and-a-half-D shoes I don’t know. He could have sneaked them in to you at any time over a ten-day period. The shoes were a smart dodge, by the way. Harry Barber’s shoe size is a matter of public record, and you knew he would be automatically suspected.” He glanced at Andy. “Where’d you get them, Andy? At some Goodwill store?”

Betz sat like stone.

Corrigan shrugged. “We’ll find out. What tipped me was remembering the noise the rocket belt made in use. If a killer had actually jumped in it from across the street and back again, at that hour, we’d all of us have heard the jets.”

“From indoors, with the windows closed?” Frank Grant jeered. But the tip of his sharp nose was white.

“We still would have heard it. You didn’t do your research thoroughly enough, Frank. The belt makes one hell of a racket.”

Baer said in a puzzled tone, “But how did he have time to do what he must have had to do, Tim, after killing Gerard? We were in that room in under a minute.”

“That was all an illusion, Chuck. Gerard had been dead for some time before we heard that first scream. The way I see it, Frank stabbed him while he was asleep; then he jimmied the lock of the French doors, put on the shoes Andy had smuggled to him, and planted the footprints. He dipped his hand in Gerard’s blood to leave that bloody palm print on the wall, carefully smearing it so that there wouldn’t be any identifying lines, then washed his hands in the bathroom. When everything was set, he let out that yell we thought came from Gerard, followed it with a yell in his own voice, and slammed the bathroom door from the bedroom side. When he heard us running up, he threw his shoulder against the bathroom door, dropped the knife, muttered a curse in an assumed voice, and stamped loudly toward the French door. Then he tiptoed back, went into the bathroom, locked it, took off his shoes, and hid them—I’d guess in the clothes hamper. Later, probably the first chance he safely got, he dropped the shoes down the incinerator, where they were found this morning. Tough break, Frank—I mean, no burning of trash but once a week. You didn’t do your homework, pal. And you an A student.”

The silence was charged like a scuffed rug. Elizabeth Grant’s expression would have defied Da Vinci. And John Alstrom was surveying his son’s co-murderer and murderer with a great sickness; it was too, too much. Norma closed her eyes, as if to shut out the sight of an obscenity. And Andy Betz, for the first and only time, made a sound, a muffled sound, but a sound. It was a curse.

“Tim,” Norma murmured. “Tell me. For the love of God. Why?”

“Because he still wanted to commit the perfect crime,” Corrigan said. “Right, Frank?”

Frank’s face was the color of plaster. But he had his voice under rigid control. “You can’t prove any of this, fuzz. It’s all speculation. Where’s your evidence?”

“It’s not all spec,” Corrigan said. “We’ve got the shoes, Frank. We’ve traced the murder weapon—Sing Sing uses stainless steel tableware manufactured by the Black Cutlery Company of Buffalo in the mess hall, and the homemade dagger was ground down from a knife made by Black. I drove up to Sing Sing today, and the Warden had your prison pals questioned. One admitted seeing you make the knife in the machine shop. I don’t know your original reason for making the knife—a jail break?—but when the Court of Appeals released you, you saved it for your perfect crime.”

Frank Grant disintegrated before their eyes. His face turned from white to red; his eyes bugged at Andy Betz.

“You talked!” he shrieked. “This dumb cop could never have doped it if you hadn’t talked! It was the perfect crime, and now you’ve spoiled it, you’ve spoiled it …”

Elizabeth Grant fainted. As Norma and her father jumped for her, Corrigan nodded to the police officer, there were two clicks, and Frank Grant stared down at his wrists. Then he collapsed in the chair with a look of stricken disbelief, as if this were all a bad dream he was having that had suddenly taken on bones and flesh.

“Andy didn’t talk, Frank,” Corrigan said softly. “He stayed loyal to you down to the wire. He even made a pretty intelligent try at turning suspicion away from you by falsely identifying one of Martello’s mob as the man who paid him to get hold of the rocket belt. That’s got to cost you, Andy.”

Andy Betz nodded, as if he had expected nothing less. But young Grant was beyond listening. He seemed far, far away.

Elizabeth Grant was sitting up now, eyes fluttering, making little groaning sounds. Norma was rubbing her wrists. The woman pushed her away, and Norma straightened up. She looked at Corrigan, and Corrigan looked at her.

“After all this, Tim,” Baer’s voice said in his ear, “I owe you a night on the town. How about tonight?”

“Not tonight, Chuck,” Corrigan said.

Tonight was for Norma. And, God and Norma willing, his apartment.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1967 by Ellery Queen

Copyright renewed by Ellery Queen

Cover design by Kat Lee

ISBN: 978-1-5040-1994-1

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