Inspector Queen’s Own Case (14 page)

“All right, suppose we make a list and split it up. That would halve the time.”

“I'm not letting you out of my sight,” he said firmly. “Besides, I doubt if you could get access to hospital files, even in the places where they know you. I've got a natural in with this shield.”

On Wednesday afternoon, the third day of their hunt, they were leaving a hospital in the East 80s when Jessie said, “What's wrong, Richard? You've acted strange all day. You said yourself it's going to be a long search.”

He steered her across the street to her coupé. “I didn't think it showed,” he said dryly.

“You can't fool me. When you're worried about something you get all tight and quiet. What is it?”

“Watch. In the rear-view mirror.”

He started the Dodge and moved out into traffic, heading north. Jessie slid over close to him and kept her eyes on the mirror. As they passed a corner, a black Chrysler sedan badly in need of a washing moved out from the side street and turned in after them. For a moment it was just behind them and Jessie caught a glimpse of the driver's face. It was all jaw and cheekbone in sharp angles, hard and gray. The man was alone.

Then the Chrysler fell back, other cars intervened, and Jessie lost sight of it. But when the Inspector turned west a few blocks north of the hospital, Jessie saw the gray-faced man turn west, too.

“We're being followed.” Her mouth felt sticky.

“He's been on our tail all day.”

“A city detective?”

“City detectives generally work in pairs.”

“Then who is he?”

“A small-time private detective named George Weirhauser. Fleabag office near Times Square. Mostly divorce evidence jobs. He rates pretty low downtown—he's pulled plenty of shady stuff—but he's always managed to steer clear of open violations. Enough to hold on to his license, anyway.”

“But what's he doing watching us?”

“I don't know.” Richard Queen looked grim. “Well, there's no point trying to shake him with what he's seen today already. A tail can work two ways—he keeps an eye on us, we keep an eye on him. Maybe we'll find a use for him.”

“He looks awfully hard.”

“That's Weirhauser's stock-in-trade,” he said contemptuously. “It's all front, Jessie. Don't worry about him.”

Weirhauser tailed them until after ten o'clock, when they put Jessie's car away for the night in the garage on 70th Street where she had arranged for a month's parking. When they walked over to 71st and stopped before Gloria Sardella's walkup, the Chrysler drove past, picked up speed, and did not come back.

“Thank goodness,” Jessie said. “He makes me nervous. Won't you come up, Richard? I'll make some coffee.”

“No, you're going to bed, Jessie.”

“I am a little weary,” Jessie confessed. “And you're a dear to have seen it.—
Richard.”
She clutched his arm.

“Yes?”

“There's another one!”

“Another what, Jessie?” He seemed calm.

“Another man following us! I noticed him lounging around near the garage when we drove in. And now he's across the street in a doorway!”

“You certainly missed your calling,” he said.

“Richard, what are you doing——?”

He was guiding her by the elbow across the street toward the offending doorway. The man who had been watching them retreated into the dimness of the vestibule. To Jessie's consternation, Richard Queen marched her right in after him.

“Shame on you, Wes,” he said, chuckling. “Jessie, this is Wes Polonsky, ex-detective first grade, Automobile, Forgery, and Pickpocket Squad, retired.”

“Good heavens,” Jessie said. “How do you do, Mr. Polonsky.”

“Glad to meet you, Miss Sherwood,” the man said sheepishly. “Or maybe not so glad. I'm sure rusty.” He was a massive old man with a mashed nose and white hair and innocent blue eyes. He looked as if he had once been powerful, but his chest was sunken and Jessie noticed his puffy hands trembling as he lit a cigaret. “You going to take me off, Inspector? This is the first kicks I've had in eight years.”

“Don't be silly. This woman has eyes in the back of her head.” Richard Queen sounded proud. “Wes, we were tailed today.”

“I noticed a black Chrysler sedan ambling after you just now,” Polonsky said, “but I couldn't get a good look at the driver.”

“He wasn't around here last night, was he?”

“No. At least not in that car.”

“It's George Weirhauser.”

“That crum.” Polonsky made a disgusted sound. “Want me to run him off if he shows again?”

“Let him be. Just don't let him get near Miss Sherwood.”

“Okay, Inspector.”

“But what is all this?” Jessie demanded. “I don't understand, Richard!”

“Now don't get mad, Jessie,” he said placatively. “I ran into Wes Sunday night while I was walking home from your place—he lives in this neighborhood—and, well, Wes was saying how sick he was of being idle——”

“I'd get me a job,” Polonsky said apologetically, “but it's impossible for a man my age to find anything.”

“So,” Richard Queen said, “one thing led to another, and before I knew it Wes was begging me to declare him in.”

“And that's how Mr. Polonsky came to be my guardian angel, is it?”

“Since Sunday night,” the ex-detective said, beaming.

“It's only for the night trick, Jessie. The times when I'm not with you.”

“It's very sweet of you, Mr. Polonsky,” Jessie said in a low voice.

The second old man said, “It's my pleasure, miss.”

Jessie slept soundly that night.

They struck the trail in the seventh day of their search.

It was at one of the big general hospitals on the West Side, in midtown. The old man was going through a file of baby footprints when Jessie felt him stiffen. He turned a pocket magnifying glass from the hospital record he was examining to the photostat and back again several times.

“We've found it, Jessie,” he muttered.

“I don't believe it! Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

The name identifying the set of footprints was “Baby Exeter.”

“Let's see what they have on the mother.”

He came back with some scribbled notes, and they sat down on a sofa in the waiting room.

“Mother's name Mrs. Willis P. Exeter, maiden name Lois Ann Edwards. Phonies, of course. Address … this house number on East 55th is misleading, Jessie. It's actually a small residential hotel. My guess is Finner maintained a room there under the name of Willis P. Exeter—probably had a number of such rooms around town under different aliases—and simply assigned one of them with a ‘Mrs.' attached to every girl he did business with, for purposes of hospital registration.”

According to his notes “Mrs. Willis P. Exeter” was twenty-four years old, white, with blond hair and hazel eyes. She had been admitted to the hospital on May 26th at 9:18
A.M.,
the baby had been born on May 27th at 3:56
P
.
M
., and mother and baby had been discharged on June 3rd as of 10:15
A
.
M
. The woman had occupied a semi-private room in the Maternity wing.

“I wonder if the doctor was in on it,” Jessie said balefully. “What's his name?”

The old man shook his head. “Finner worked through legitimate doctors who never knew he existed. He simply sent the girl during her pregnancy to this doctor under the name of Mrs. Willis P. Exeter, armed with a phony background, and the doctor took care of her in good faith. All Finner had to do was use a different doctor for each girl, and he was all right. No, this tells us nothing.” He squinted at Jessie. “Ever work this hospital?”

“Yes.”

“Then you'd probably know the floor nurses in Maternity.”

“Some of them.”

“Why don't you go up and scout around? Maybe you'll run into one who remembers this girl. It's only three months back.”

“What excuse do I give?”

“You're helping to trace Mrs. Exeter for a lawyer. She's come into an inheritance and the lawyer can't locate her.” He grinned. “That one never fails.”

When Jessie came back her eyes were sparkling. “Genevieve Fuller. She'll meet us in the Coffee Shop in ten minutes.”

“I certainly do remember Mrs. Exeter, Mr. Queen,” Nurse Fuller said. Jessie's friend was a small lively woman with gray hair and inquisitive eyes. “She was so sad all the time. Hardly said a word. The other patient in her room thought she was a drip, but I knew there was something special about her. Pretty girl in a kind of hard way. She had the sweetest baby. A little boy.”

Jessie took a gulp of coffee.

“Did she ever tell you anything about herself, Miss Fuller?” Richard Queen asked.

“No, and I didn't press her. I knew she'd had some tragedy in her life. Do you know her husband never showed up once?”

“Really?”

“Some men! I'd drop in on her when she was in heavy labor, and she'd grab my hand and cry, she was so glad to see a sympathetic face.
No
one showed up. No parents, no sister, no brother, no friends—what kind of family she comes from I can't imagine. They must be animals.”

“Didn't she ever say anything that might give us a clue to her present whereabouts, Miss Fuller?”

“No.” The nurse looked around the Coffee Shop, lowering her voice. “But I'm practically a hundred per cent sure Exeter wasn't her real name!”

“Is that so?” Inspector Queen said. “Well, now, that may account for it. Why did you think that?”

“Because from the second I laid eyes on her I knew I'd seen her somewhere before. Only I couldn't place her. Then one morning she gave herself away.”

“How?” Jessie exclaimed.

“Oh, I didn't let on that it meant anything to me. Just made an offhand remark about what a nice voice she had.
You
know.”

“But I don't, Gen! What's her voice got to do with it?”

“One morning,” Genevieve Fuller looked around again “—it was the day before she was discharged—I was passing her room when I heard somebody singing in a low, sweet, sexy voice. It really gave me a turn. I looked in, and darned if it wasn't this Exeter girl. The screen was around her bed and they'd brought her the baby for a feeding—that's another thing I liked about her, a girl in her line insisting on nursing her own baby, not like some of the parasite sluts we get around here who sit around Schrafft's all day in their minks while strangers prepare their children's formulas. They seem to think God gave them breasts for just ornaments——”

“In her line, Miss Fuller?” Richard Queen prompted.

“I started to tell you. She was nursing her baby and
singing
to him. Well, you can't fool me about voices. You know, Jessie, what a bug I am on pop singers. Well, I'd have recognized that voice anywhere. You can have your Rosemary Clooneys and Dinah Shores and Jo Staffords and Patti Pages and Doris Days—oh, they're very good, of course, and they're a thousand times better known than this girl, she's only made a few recordings, but she'll hit the top one of these days, you mark my words, she'll be the biggest seller of them all instead of just somebody a few people rave about.”

“And her real name is——?”

“I'm not sure it's her
real
name, Mr. Queen. Her professional name is Connie Coy.” And Nurse Fuller leaned back, narrowing her eyes to get the full effect of her revelation. She seemed disappointed. “Anyway, I figured she was incognito, and I wouldn't have let on for the world. Besides, as I say, I knew she was in some kind of trouble. But I'll swear on a stack of Bibles that was Connie Coy, the nightclub singer. And you say she's come into money! I think that's wonderful. God bless her. Too many people with real talent wither away on the desert air unseen. When you find her, Mr. Queen, will you tell her I'm her absolute number one fan? And what a darling baby she has! …”

When Genevieve Fuller had left, the old man said, “Connie Coy. Ever hear of her, Jessie?”

Jessie said, “I haven't been inside a nightclub since December 18, 1943. No, Richard.”

But he ignored her sally. “If it wasn't Sunday, I could get her address in any one of a dozen ways. As it is, we'll have to hold it over till tomorrow.”

“I know a thirteenth way,” Jessie murmured.

“What's that?”

“Look in the phone book.”

He stared at her. “Sometimes, Jessie,” he said solemnly, “I wonder what I ever did without you. Excuse me!”

When he came back he was waving a slip of paper.

“It's up on 88th near West End Avenue,” he said exultantly. “After you, Commissioner!”

“Still no sign of Mr. Weirhauser,” Jessie remarked as Inspector Queen started the car. They had not caught a glimpse of the black Chrysler all day.

“Funny,” he muttered.

“Maybe he doesn't work Sundays. Or he's been called off the job.”

The old man said nothing. But he kept stealing glances in his rear-view mirror all the way uptown.

The apartment house was turn-of-the-century, a fancy production of stone scrollwork and false balconies, cracked and weatherstained, with bleached awnings that had once been striped, scabby iron-grilled doors, and a sidewalk chalked over with hopscotch squares. The whole building cowered as if it were ashamed.

They entered a lobby powerful with food odors. At a wall switchboard, doubled up on a three-legged stool under a 25-watt light, sat a skinny pimpled youth in a uniform too large for him, reading a comic book.

“Who you want?” The boy did not look up.

“Miss Connie Coy.”

“She ain't in.”

“When do you expect her?”

“I dunno.”