Long Live the Dead (36 page)

The mayor was gone now. The job of special investigator no longer existed. And after six months in the hospital, six more months in a convalescent home out West, Ed Corley was a slow-moving, transparent ghost of his former self.

He walked slowly along Firth Avenue, through the drizzle.

Behind him a wiry, white-haired little man moved methodically from a drugstore doorway on the far side of the street, to tail him. In a parked sedan at the corner of Firth and Murray, two other men came to life and exchanged scraps of words. In the Minmar lobby, still-another man stepped into a telephone booth and gravely slotted a coin.

The wolves were watching. Waiting. This was at nine o’clock.

At ten, Harlan Grossman downed his fourth drink in half an hour, put a match to his eleventh cigarette and resumed his pacing of the living-room carpet in his expensive suburban home. Sweat glistened on Grossman’s high white forehead. He dabbed at it with a handkerchief. His round, fleshy face was colorless.

Grossman could stand just so much of this, and no more. He lacked the stability for enduring suspense. The moments crawled by now and he cursed the phone for not ringing. Damn Rigney! Why didn’t he report?

Grossman tried to comfort himself and soothe his nerves with a cool analysis of the situation. He had done all he could, hadn’t he? His private trouble-shooter, the white-haired little man, Abel Rigney, was on the job and could be trusted to end this suspense at the first opportunity. Nick Vierick’s boys were on the job, too. It was just a matter of time.

But time was precious. If Ed Corley got a chance to open his mouth and talk for even ten minutes to the right people, the fate of Harlan Grossman was sealed.

Grossman stopped before a mirror and stared at his reflection. Talked to it, in a voice tense with fear. “I could pay him a visit myself,” he whispered. “By God, that’s it! I could talk to him, hand him a song-and-dance about a lot of innocent people who’d be blasted if he turned on the heat too soon. That would give the boys time—”

It seemed a good idea, perhaps because Grossman had drunk too much and was in a mood to snatch at straws. He went to a window and looked out, and heard a downtown clock strike eleven. “I’ll wait ten minutes more.”

He waited five, and the minutes were hours.Then the mutter of the rain against the windows got him. The silence of the house set up a reactionary shriek inside him. He snatched his coat and hat from the hall closet, stormed out to his car at the curb, and drove downtown.

He entered the Minmar at twenty past eleven and forced himself to walk slowly through the empty lobby, past the desk and the sleepy-eyed clerk, to the stairs. He knew the number of Ed Corley’s room. Two-one-nine. Rigney had reported that much, damn him, earlier in the evening.

The second-floor corridor was as empty as the lobby. It should be, of course. The Minmar was a small hotel, far removed both in spirit and distance from the pretentious hostelries of the bright-light district.

Grossman nervously paused before the door of two-onenine and raised his hand. He wet his lips, caught and held his breath. He knocked.

The unlocked door creaked open a couple of inches when his knuckles made contact. Grossman stepped back, startled. But the door stopped swinging, stopped creaking, and there was no further sound except the noise of his own harsh breathing. The room was dark.

Grossman furtively pushed the door wider and stepped over the threshold. “Is—is anyone home?” he asked. No answer. The hall’s dim light filtered in to reveal a floor-lamp near the door. He switched it on.

H
e closed the door and advanced to the center of the room, stood there looking around. Until tonight, Harlan Grossman had prided himself on his lack of nerves. Now he was jittery. His hands shook and he was hypersensitive to every slightest sound—the whisper of the carpet under his feet, the muffled noise of a car moving along the street outside.

Mopping his forehead, Grossman sat down to wait. He sat facing the door, in the overstuffed chair under the lamp. His gaze roved the room again, stabbing at seedy hulks of furniture, at the stains on the wallpaper. It was an old-fashioned room, a small room. The walls were too close, too crowding. The window, to Grossman’s right, was a grimy rectangle opening on an interior court.

“I’ll tell him he’s got to give me twenty-four hours,” Grossman schemed. “I got to have that, I’ll tell him, or else a bunch of innocent people will go down with me. If I lay it on thick I can convince him. Then Rigney—or Nick’s boys—will have time enough.”

He began to get over his jitters. “Why, hell, it will be easy! Ed Corley was always a sucker for a sob story. If I just shed a few phoney tears, it will be a cinch!”

A shadow moved at the window, but Grossman did not see it. He was mired in thoughts of what he would tell Ed Corley. Perched on the fire escape outside the grimy glass, the shadow slowly straightened and peered into the room.

It was the white-haired little man, Abel Rigney.

He saw the lamp burning yellowly beside the overstuffed chair. He saw Harlan Grossman’s legs, and the back of Grossman’s head. The chair hid the rest.

The white-haired little man slid a revolver from his pocket. Carefully he fitted a homemade silencer, shaped like a musical sweet potato, over the muzzle. A little while ago, things had looked pretty dark, he mused. Ed Corley had given him the slip down on Nixon Street somewhere. “But they always come home to roost,” the little man thought. “You just got to be patient.”

He pressed the gun delicately against the glass and took aim at the back of Grossman’s head. He squeezed the trigger—once, twice, thrice—with the cool deliberation of a man shooting tin ducks in a target range. Then, without undue haste, he noiselessly descended the fire-escape, dropped into the court and walked away.

A little while later he stepped into a cab and gave the driver Harlan Grossman’s suburban address. Grossman would be relieved, he mused, to know that Ed Corley was dead.

E
d Corley came out of the Elite Bar on Nixon Street at twenty past twelve. He was tired, and his limp was more pronounced. He looked both ways along the street, hunched his coat collar higher and turned south. It was still raining.

In a sedan parked at the opposite curb, some fifty yards distant, a sallow man nudged his dozing companion. “He’s on the prowl again, Joe. Let’s move.”

The stocky, block-shouldered man at the wheel looked at his watch, cursed softly, and put the sedan in motion.

Ed Corley walked along Nixon Street, under neon signs and street lamps. This was a middle-class neighborhood of middle-class theaters, restaurants, dance-halls. The lumpy rhythm of a boogie-woogie piano seeped from a second-floor casino. Hot odors of deep-fried food emerged with a noisy foursome from the opening door of a restaurant. Traffic was thin but steady. A drunk weaved along, peering gravely in store windows.

Ed Corley turned left into Mabel Street and entered a small, brown-front eating place noted for its Armenian food. The sedan turned left into Mabel Street and slowly stopped with its tires hugging the curb.

“One damn joint after another,” the sallow man muttered. “What the hell
is
he up to?”

“Plenty, most likely. Go phone in,” Joe said.

The sallow man let himself out of the car and walked back to the corner, to a seedy drugstore. There he shut himself in a booth and spat disgustedly on the floor while dialing.

“Lester, chief. Drugstore corner of Nixon and Mabel. He’s in that Armenian dump.”

The answering voice of Link Latham was an angry snarl. “What’s the matter with you two saps? Does it take all night to snag a man off the street?”

“Now listen, chief—”

“Listen yourself! I told you what to do and how to do it. Do I have to attend to every damned little detail personally?”

“We ain’t had a decent chance at him yet,” the sallow man snarled back with rising bitterness. “It’s too early and he’s been stickin’ close to the bright lights.”

“There are no bright lights on Mabel Street!”

“Well—maybe not. Maybe when he comes out of this Armenian dump we’ll get him.”

There was silence for an instant, then the voice of Link Latham came thoughtfully, with less venom. “Listen, Lester. Is he alone?”

“Yeah, chief. There ain’t been a soul with him since he left the Mimnar.”

“Good. Watch him, but don’t make a move until I get there. I’ll see this through myself—then there’ll be no hitch.”

Lester went back to the sedan. “The boss is comin’ down himself,” he announced.

Joe sluggishly turned his head, raised an eyebrow. “Yeah?”

“Mm.”

“Well, well,” Joe said. Without further comment he centered his attention on the door of the Armenian restaurant.

Ed Corley had not emerged when Latham arrived. Driven by a lantern-jawed chauffeur, Link Latham got out at the corner, walked up to the sedan. His own car purred away again.

“He still in there?”

“Still in there,” Joe said.

“Take a look at me,” Latham ordered softly. “Will he know me?”

The two hoods looked him over and were surprised. Link Latham hardly resembled a big shot racketeer in this garb. He wore a threadbare coat, a battered brown hat, scuffed shoes. The three-carat diamond was missing from its customary place on his left little finger. Link Latham was physically as huge as before, but less impressive. His eyes blinked behind ill-fitting glasses.

“What’s the idea?” Joe said.

“We’re going to play this smart. Me, I’m going inside that dump and size things up. Now look. When Corley comes out, I’ll be on his heels, see? You move this car across the street and be ready. It’s raining, see, and if we do this right, no one will smell any trouble. Corley comes out. I’m right behind him. I shove a gun into his ribs and walk him to the car and push him in. That’s that.”

The two hoods exchanged glances. Joe said: “You want to be careful, chief. There’s a rod in Corley’s coat pocket.”

“Is there? What’s the coat look like?”

“One of them wrap-around raincoats, silver-gray, sort of.”

“I’ll take care of the rod,” Latham said. Turning, he walked across the street to the restaurant.

E
d Corley was lighting a cigarette at a corner table when Latham entered. A waiter was clearing dishes from his table. The waiter poured a cup of strong, black, oily coffee, straightened without comment and went away. Ed Corley stared straight ahead into space. There were a dozen persons in the place, and it had accommodations for only that many more. The light was bad. Cheap dark tapestries adorned the walls. The floor was concrete, painted black. Dim lights on each table provided illumination barely sufficient for eating.

Link Latham removed his seedy coat and hung it on a crowded coat-tree. He ordered coffee and a sandwich, his gaze furtively fixed on the man at the corner table. Something of the terror that had tagged him in the poolroom, when the news of Corley’s return had first been whispered to him, began now to creep into him again. What caused it was the sight of Ed Corley so casually, confidently sitting there.

Latham moistened his lips with a nervous tongue, put his hands in his lap and gripped his napkin savagely to keep the hands from shaking. His coffee came and he downed half of it in one gulp, scalding his throat. Had Corley seen him?

Ed Corley indifferently lit another cigarette, sipped his coffee, found it too hot and pushed it aside to cool.

Latham looked for the wrap-around raincoat, “silver-gray sort of,” and thought he saw it. It hung from one of the coat-trees scattered about the room, this one not far from the door. He could see no other like it, and further scrutiny showed him a suspicious-looking bulge in the right-side pocket.

He glanced fearfully at Ed Corley, but Ed’s back was turned. With an attempt to be casual, Latham stood up.

No one would say anything, of course. Plenty of times, in a public eating place, you hung your coat up and then went to get something out of a pocket. A handkerchief, maybe, or a pack of cigarettes. The place hummed with low conversation and was sufficiently crowded for his actions to go unobserved.

He walked over to the coat-tree and pawed aside the other coats to get at that bulging pocket. Once the gun was in his possession, he could walk up behind Ed Corley without fear. But he was nervous. His hands shook. A couple of coats flopped to the floor.

A waiter appeared at his side, scowling.

“Sorry,” Latham mumbled, the silver-gray raincoat now in his hands. “Looking for my cigarettes.”

The waiter said ominously: “You hung your coat over there.” He pointed. “I saw you.” He spoke gutturally, with an accent, and Latham was acutely aware of the omission of the customary “sir.”

“What?” Latham mumbled.

“You sure this is your coat?”

It was too much for Link Latham. First the nerve-wracking sight of Ed Corley so indifferently sipping coffee at the corner table, then his own frantic fumbling at the coat-tree—now this Armenian waiter guardedly accusing him. People were staring. A second waiter was closing in.

Latham sent a frantic glance at Ed Corley’s table and saw with a rush of relief that Corley’s attention had not been attracted by the incident. This gave Link Latham a measure of his old bravado. He shoved his thick arms into the coat sleeves, hauled a dollar bill from his pocket and flipped it to the floor.

“Listen, you,” he snarled. “I didn’t come into this cheap dump to be insulted. There’s for the coffee and sandwich!”

Then, with little bravado left, he fled.

The silver-gray coat flapped about him like a flag as he reached the sidewalk. He was actually running, though he did not know it. Too soon he reached the curb and braked himself. The curb was slick with rain. Latham slipped, fell to one knee and lost his balance in the gutter.

He was on his knees again when he saw the blunt black nose of the sedan bearing down on him. He screamed. Had the car’s headlights been turned on—which they weren’t—Link Latham’s face would have appeared as a chalky gargoyle in the glare of them. Terror stiffened him, and for three seconds he stared motionless into eternity.