Inspector Queen’s Own Case (11 page)

“Belle's down in the Village—West 11th Street. Gloria's place is on 71st Street off Broadway, in a remodeled walkup.”

“The Sardella apartment,” he said promptly.

“That's my thought, because I'll get Gloria to sublet it to me for whatever her rent is, whereas Belle wouldn't hear of my sharing expenses.” Jessie looked at him. “What's your reason, Richard?”

“Geography,” he said sheepishly. “I'm on West 87th. We'd be less than a mile apart.”

“You want to watch this man, Jessie,” Beck Pearl said. “He's a regular wolf.”

“Don't I know it!”

He mumbled something about having to pack, and beat a retreat.

Jessie phoned her friend again to arrange for her stay in the West 71st Street apartment, paid for the calls over Mrs. Pearl's protests, and at last they were off in Jessie's car, Beck Pearl waving from her doorway like a happy relative.

“She's such a lamb,” Jessie said, turning into the Taugus road that led to the Merritt Parkway. “And so is Abe Pearl. Do you know what he said to me this morning before he left?”

“What?”

“He said you were a changed man since—well, since the Fourth of July. He seemed tickled to death, Richard. The Pearls have been very worried about you.”

He seemed flustered and pleased. “A man needs an interest in life.”

“Yes. This case——”

“Who's talking about the case?”

“You know, I do believe you are a wolf!”

They chattered happily all the way into New York.

Jessie had decided to take her coupé into the city because Richard Queen had no car, and his son's car was in summer storage. “What good is an assistant without a car?” she had said. “It isn't as if you still had a police driver at your disposal, Richard. My jalopy may come in handy.”

“All right, if you'll let me pay the garage bills.”

“Richard Queen. Nobody pays my bills but me!”

They stopped at the old brownstone on West 87th Street to drop his bags. Jessie got one whiff of the Queen apartment and threw the windows wide. She aired the beds, inspected the kitchen with horror, and began opening closets.

“What are you looking for?” he asked feebly.

“Fresh linen, a vacuum cleaner. You have to sleep here tonight! Who takes care of your apartment, anyway?”

“A Mrs. Fabrikant. She's supposed to have come in once a week——”

“She hasn't stuck her nose in this place for two months. You go on—make your phone calls, or whatever you have to do. I'll make your bed and straighten up a bit. First chance I get I'll do a thorough housecleaning. Imagine your son coming home to this!”

He retreated to Ellery's study with a warm feeling. He did not even think about the blank space on his bedroom wall, where his direct line to Headquarters used to be.

When he went back to the bedroom he found Jessie moaning. “It's hopeless. Take
hours
to do just this room properly.”

“Why, it looks as clean as a hospital room,” he exclaimed. “How'd you do it so fast?”

“Well, you'll be able to sleep here without getting cholera, but that's about all,” Jessie grumbled. “Fast? A nurse does everything fast. Did you get that man Finner?”

“Finally, after about a dozen calls. He'll be in all afternoon, he said. I didn't fix a time, Jessie, because I don't know how long you'll take getting settled.”

“Forget about me. I can't get into Gloria's place until 4:30 or a quarter of five, anyway. She's on an eight-to-four case.”

“But she's going away tomorrow!” he said, astonished.

“Nurses don't live like people. Let me wash some of this grime off, and I'll be right with you to tackle Mr. Finner.”

“You're going to tackle some lunch at the Biltmore first.
With
cocktails.”

“Oh, wonderful. I'm hungry as a wolf.”

“I thought I was the wolf,” he said gaily.

“There are she-wolves, aren't there?”

He found himself whistling like a boy to the homey sound of splashing from the bathroom.

The building was on East 49th Street, an old-timer six stories high with a clanky self-service elevator. His name was on the directory in the narrow lobby:
Finner, A. Burt 622
.

“Jessie, let me do most of the talking.”

“As if I'd know what to say!” Then Jessie thought of something. “I wonder, Richard …”

“What about?” he asked quickly.

“When we drove out to that rendezvous near Pelham the morning we picked up the baby, Finner drove right up behind where we were parked. I'd gone along to take charge of the baby. Finner may recognize me.”

“Not likely, but I'm glad you remembered to tell me.” He looked thoughtful. “All right, we'll use it just on the chance. And, Jessie.”

“Yes?” Her heart was beginning to thump.

“It's going to cut some corners for us if Finner thinks I'm still with the Department. Don't act surprised if I make like a police officer.”

“Yes, sir,” Jessie said meekly.

Six-twenty-two was on the top floor at the other end of the corridor from the elevator. The corridor had dirty tan walls, and there was a smell of old floor polish and must.

The old man smiled at her, then suddenly opened the door.

A. Burt Finner half rose behind the desk in the small office, scowling.

“Come in, Miss Sherwood,” Richard Queen snapped. “It's all right, he won't bite you. He's an old dog at this game, aren't you, Finner?”

Jessie stepped into the office gingerly. She did not have to act scared. She was.

The fat man crashed back in his swivel chair. As far as Jessie could recall, he was wearing the same wrinkled blue suit and sweaty white shirt he had driven up in that morning near Pelham. The dingy office was stale with his odor. There was nothing in the room but a burn-scarred metal desk, a sad-looking imitation leather chair, a costumer leaning to one side with a dirty felt hat hanging from it, an old four-unit filing cabinet with a lock, and the swivel chair creaking under Finner's weight. No rug, nothing on the walls but a large calendar put out by a baby foods company showing a healthy-looking infant in a diaper. The blind on the single window was limp and streaked. The walls were the same grubby tan shade as the corridor, only dirtier.

Richard Queen shut the door, took Jessie by the arm, and steered her over to the unoccupied chair.

“Have a seat, miss,” he said. He looked coldly at the fat man. “Now.”

“Wait a minute.” A. Burt Finner's little pale-blue eyes went from Jessie to the old man and back to Jessie. He seemed puzzled. My face looks familiar to him, Jessie thought, but he can't place it. She wondered why she was so nervous. He was just a fat man, not at all dangerous-looking. Maybe it's his professional relations with women, she thought. He doesn't leer; he's seen it all. “What is this? Who are you people?”

“I phoned you two-three hours ago,” the old man said. “Remember the $64,000 word I dropped, Finner?”

“What word?”

“Humffrey.”

The moon face widened. “Oh, yes. And I told you I didn't know what you were talking about.”

“But to drop in, anyway, you'd be here all afternoon.” Richard Queen stared at him with contempt. “Well, here we are, Finner. You're up to your fat face in real jam this time, aren't you?”

“Who are you?” Finner asked slowly.

“The name is Queen.” He brought out a small flat leather case and flipped it open. A gold shield glittered for a moment in the sunshine struggling through the dusty window.

Finner blinked.

The old man put the case back in his pocket.

“Inspector's shield,” Finner said. “Well, well, this is a real pleasure, Inspector. And this lady is——?”

The pale eyes turned on Jessie again. Jessie tried not to fumble with her skirt.

“Don't you recognize her, Finner?”

“No.” The fat man was worried. He immediately broke into a smile. “Should I, Inspector?”

“I'd say so,” Inspector Queen remarked dryly, “seeing that she's the baby nurse who was in the Humffrey car that day.”

“What car, what day, what baby?” Finner asked amiably. “And that about somebody named Humffrey. I don't know anybody named Humffrey.”

“Counselor, you and I will get along a lot chummier if you cut out the mullarkey and start recollecting your sins. Miss Sherwood, is this the man you saw pull up behind the Humffrey limousine on a deserted back road near Pelham on Friday morning, June 3rd, behind the wheel of a Chewy, and hand over to Mr. Alton K. Humffrey of Nair Island, Connecticut, a blue blanket wrapped around a week-old baby?”

“That's the man, Inspector Queen!” Jessie said shakily. She wondered if she ought to point at the fat lawyer, the way they did in movie courtrooms, but she decided against it.

“The lady is mistaken.” Finner beamed, and cleared his throat. “She never saw me in any such place at any such time doing any such thing.”

“How can you lie like that?” Jessie cried indignantly. “I saw you with my own two eyes, and you're not exactly an ordinary-looking man!”

“I've built a whole career, miss,” the fat man remarked, “on being just that. However, my memory could be failing. Got anything else to give it a jab, Inspector? Like, say, a corroborating witness?”

“Three, Finner,” Inspector Queen said, as if he were enjoying himself. “Mr. and Mrs. Humffrey are two, and their chauffeur—white-haired party with rosy cheeks—he's the third.”

“The chauffeur driving the Humffrey car that morning, you mean?” Finner said reflectively.

“That's right.”

“But how do you know he'd corroborate this lady's identification, Inspector? I don't see him here.”

“Well, we can soon find out. Mind if I use your phone?”

Finner said, “Skip it.” He sucked his rubbery lower lip, frowning, then swiveled to clasp his hands behind his overlapping folds of neck and stare out the window. “Supposing I was weak-skulled enough to admit having been there that day,” he asked the window, “then what, Inspector?”

Jessie glanced at Richard Queen. But he shook his head.

“You mean, Finner, what do I have?”

“Put it any way you want.”

“Well, it's like this. You work deals with an angle. You specialize in unmarried mothers. You shop around for a buyer, you arrange for the girl to give birth in a hospital under a false name, with a phony background, you pay the girl—with the buyer's money—and you take possession of the baby when the mother is discharged from the hospital. Then you turn the baby over to your buyer, collect the balance of your fee, probably furnish a forged birth certificate, and you're ready for the next client. It's a sweet racket, Finner, and the sweetest part of it is that everybody involved has a vested interest in protecting you. You see, I've been looking you up.”

“I haven't heard a thing,” Finner said, still to the window, “and I'm listening with both pink ears.”

“I'm not passing judgment on the dirty way you earn those fins you scatter around the night spots, Finner,” Richard Queen said. “Some day the boys are going to prove it on you. But if it's the black-market baby rap you're worrying about, right now I'm not interested in you at all. I'm after other game.”

“What do you mean?” Finner spun about so suddenly the spring under his chair squealed.

“You're going to tell me who the Humffrey baby's real parents are.”

Finner stared at him. “Are you kidding?”

“Tell me, Finner,” the old man said.

Jessie held her breath.

The fat man laughed. “Even supposing this junkie jive you been popping around the premises were the McCoy, Inspector—and I'm not admitting a goddam thing—why should I tell? An operator in a racket like that—I'm told—works on a confidential basis. Run off at the tonsils and you're out of business. You know that.”

“I know you're in this up to your top chin, Finner,” Richard Queen smiled. “Of course you know the baby's dead.”

“Dead, uh?” Finner squinted along the top of his desk and hunched down to blow some dust off. With fascination, Jessie watched his fat lips working. “Seem to recall reading about some baby named Humffrey up in Connecticut being found suffocated in his crib. Was that the same baby you're trying to hook me up to, Inspector?”

“That's the one.”

“Tough. I got a soft spot for kids. Got three of my own. But so what? It was an accident, wasn't it?”

“It was a murder, Finner.”

Finner's bulk came up like a whale surfacing. “The hell you say. I read the papers, too. Coroner's jury brought in a verdict of accidental death. The case is closed. What you trying to pull on me, Inspector?”

“It was a murder, Finner.”

Finner swallowed. He picked up a steel letter-knife from his desk, made as if to clean his fingernails, put the knife down again.

“New evidence?”

Richard Queen said nothing. He merely kept looking at the fat man's fat hands.

Finner's hands vanished below the level of the desk.

“Look, Inspector,” he said rapidly. “You got me on something of a spot here. Without incriminating myself in any degree, you understand, maybe I can get some information for you. About the kid's real parents, I mean. One of my contacts might …”

“I don't care what you call yourself, Counselor. I want those names.”

“Tell you what. What's today?—Thursday. Maybe I can do even better for you, Inspector. I'm not promising, see, but maybe.”

“Maybe what?”

“Maybe my contact can get them right here in my office for you.”

The old man's lips drew back. “That would be just dandy, Finner. When?”

“Say this Saturday. That's the 20th. Four
P
.
M
. okay with you?”