John D. MacDonald

A Criminal Mind

Argen checked in just before lunch and they told him he was wanted back at the hospital. At first he thought the girl had died and then he realized that if she had, they would have told him and would have assigned somebody to work with him on the case. He was glad she hadn’t died. They had acted pretty gloomy about her chances but Argen knew that when they were young like this girl, like this Helen Matthews, the longer they hung on the better the chances were.

He stopped at the hospital desk and told the girl his name and she said a Mr. Matthews wanted to see him. That was Mr. Matthews over there.

Matthews was in one of the small alcoves off the main waiting room. He looked up as Argen walked toward him and then stood up quickly. He was a trim man in his fifties with a silver-hair look of importance and expensive, conservative clothes. He looked both nervous and belligerent.

“You’re Argen?”

“Detective Sergeant Paul Argen,” he said, and sat down. Matthews stood for a few seconds, then sat down on the edge of the chair facing Argen.

“They let me look at her but they won’t let me stay in the room with her. I wanted her moved to a better room but they won’t move her. I want to know about this. I want to know how such a thing can happen.”

He’s used to pushing people around, Argen thought. People like me. “I can tell you all we know. It isn’t much. An old guy was walking his dog. The dog found her and started whining and sniffing and the old guy lighted a match and made sure it wasn’t just another drunk. They get drunk and crawl off in those little parks up there and pass out. Precinct got the call at three minutes after ten last night.”

“Last night!” Matthews said. “Why wasn’t I notified? Why the delay?”

Argen sat stolid and expressionless in the chair and let the questions hang in the air. He was a big man, thick-waisted, heavy-footed, meaty. He sat there in his baggy blue suit and felt stubborn. When he felt stubborn there was nothing on earth that could move him.

“Why don’t you answer me?”

“You want to listen or you want to ask questions?”

Matthews made a helpless gesture and said, with exasperation, “All right. All right. I’ll listen.”

“The prowl car was there in three minutes. The old guy showed them the body. When he’d lighted the match he’d seen the blood on her hair, so the ambulance call was already in. She was face down, her head turned to and left, and she’d been hit over the left ear and a little bit in back, so it looks like she was hit from behind, so the guy who hit her was maybe left-handed. From the marks she’d been dragged from where he hit her, dragged maybe twenty feet by the wrists. He probably hit her while she was on the sidewalk. It’s dark and quiet there and maybe he was following her, waiting for the right spot. There wasn’t a purse or identification of any sort. I got to the hospital after they’d taken her up for the emergency operation. They let me look her clothes over. I saw the Boston label in her suit and I saw her clothes were good stuff.

“Precinct detailed some men to the area. I went back to help. Usually you find the purse after the guy strips it. We figured it was straight robbery because he didn’t mess with her at all. We didn’t have any luck. We quit and I went back at daylight and I found the purse. He’d thrown it into a clump of brush and the strap had caught and it was maybe seven feet in the air. We’d been putting the lights on the ground and missed it. The purse didn’t hold a print. There was no money in it. He’d left her identification, so when I got back they put in a call to you.”

“I got the first flight I could.”

“Now I’ve got some questions. Where was she living here?”

“She was just down on a shopping trip. She’d been here three days. She was going to stay a week or ten days. My office made her reservation for her. At the Patterson. Helen needed a change. She and the man she was going to marry broke up. It was pretty unpleasant all the way around. She was restless and depressed.”

“Any chance he followed her down here?”

“Here? Oh, no. He was on leave. He’s with the State Department. He flew back to Paris three weeks ago.”

“I guess it’s just what it looks like. He followed her because she looked like money and then he rapped her so she wouldn’t yell. He maybe used a spring sap. And he’s no expert. They’re tricky. You build up a hell of a blow with just a quick flick.”

“This man that operated, this Doctor Schatz — is he competent?”

“This is a good hospital. He’s a resident surgeon, and he specializes in brain surgery.”

“He looks too young to be good. He can’t have had much experience.”

“You want to get experience fast, I guess you get it in a place like this, Mr. Matthews. I better go pick up her stuff from the hotel. Where do you want I should send it?”

“Check it right there in my name. I’ll register later. My office made a reservation for me.”

Argen promised to keep in touch with Matthews. By showing his credentials he got up to the third floor. The private nurse hired by Matthews came to the door of the room and said that Dr. Schatz was with the patient. Argen could see into the room. It was a two-bed room. The other bed was empty. He saw the girl’s face for the first time. The features were delicate. Her complexion was a dirty gray in contrast with the white gleam of the bandage that entirely covered her head. Schatz was thumbing up her eyelid and shining a light into her eye. He turned and saw Argen, then gave the nurse instructions and came out.

Down the corridor they walked, side by side. Schatz was young and blond and tall and he looked weary.

“How’s she doing?”

“All right so far. Sergeant.”

“You want to make a guess about the odds?”

Schatz shrugged. “Give her one in five. It was a hell of a blow. And a hard place to work.” He stopped and touched Argen with his finger, touched him above and behind the left ear. “Right here. The hone is thick there. But it was smashed. Splinters driven through the dura into the brain tissue. I had to saw out a piece bigger than a silver dollar, stop the bleeding, find the splinters, pin a plate over the hole. Four-hour job.”

“If she makes it, will she be okay?”

“Hard to tell. I’d say yes. Whoever hit her was trying to kill her.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“I can’t help that.” They had paused by the elevators. Schatz smiled tiredly and said. “Mr. Matthews is getting some top people in to look her over. I don’t have a goatee and glasses on a string, and the only accent I’ve got is Indiana. So he’s unhappy.”

“When can she talk?”

“Not for forty-eight hours anyway.”

The Patterson Hotel was an enormous, glossy building, a favorite spot for businessmen to hold their conventions. Argen arrived at one-thirty after a quick lunch. The lobby was busy. Argen found one of the assistant managers, a tall man with nervous mannerisms and the superficial good looks of a floorwalker. He showed his credentials and explained his mission. The assistant manager wore a strained and wary expression until he found out that the hotel did not seem to be involved. He went behind the registration desk and Argen waited.

He came back in five minutes and said, “That was Miss Helen Matthews, spelled with a double t. She made a reservation for ten days. Her father has stayed with us for years. She checked out yesterday, Sergeant.”

Argen stared at him blankly for a moment. “Can you find out what time?”

“I looked at our copy of the receipt. She paid in cash. She checked out at nine o’clock yesterday evening. So I’m afraid we can’t help you any further than that.”

“Who brought her stuff down?”

Argen followed the man over to the bell captain’s desk, heard him say, “Andy, would you know who went up to handle a checkout on twelve twenty-one at nine last night?”

The fat bell captain turned back the pages of a tattered notebook, ran his thumb down a column. “Simmins. He’s on four to midnight.”

The assistant manager looked inquiringly at Argen. “Thanks,” Argen said. “I’ll stop back.”

When Argen got back to headquarters, Lieutenant Fowler wanted to see him. Fowler was a year from retirement and had the ponderous poise of a Southern senator. He said, “This Matthews has been pulling on all the strings he can reach. Seems he went to school with lots of big people. One stinking sergeant doesn’t satisfy him. A squad of captains he wants. So now I am officially personally in charge of the case. To him it sounds better. You carry on like before. Only drop the other stuff and stick with this exclusive. You want a partner?”

“Not yet.”

“How does it look?”

“Not as easy as it did. Before, like I told you. I figured she ate alone in one of those fancy little French places up in that neighborhood and it was a nice night so she felt like walking and she looked like money, and somebody wanted the money and hit too hard. But they hit way too hard, so hard it looks like on purpose. And now I find she checked out at nine from the hotel. It makes her awful damn busy to check out, find a place to put the luggage, and get fifteen blocks uptown in time to get hit on the head so the old guy can find her a little after ten. It smells a little different now.”

“You handle it careful, Argen. This Matthews knows heavy people. They could fall on us.”

“I better get a picture and start checking those restaurants.”

“I think I’ll give you a partner anyway. It’ll look better. How about Shimler?”

“He gets in my way. Give me one of the kids. Brock, if he’s loose.”

Fowler had Brock pulled in off a juvenile knifing and detailed him to the Matthews case. Argen and Brock went down the street for coffee and Argen briefed him. Brock asked the right questions. He was a slight dark young man with an adenoidal look of abysmal stupidity. Argen knew he was one of the most promising young ones they had. He had cop sense. Argen had thought a lot about cop sense. He knew he had it, but he didn’t know how to describe it. It was a sort of restless irritability when facts didn’t fall into a predictable pattern. And an urge to nudge and nibble the facts until they fitted. Plus the knack of making intuitive guesses, wild leaps that had nothing at all to do with the facts.

“Maybe,” Argen said, “this Simmins can tell us where she was going, especially if he put the stuff in a cab.”

Before they went to the hotel Argen phoned the hospital and managed to get Matthews on the line. His daughter’s condition was unchanged. He agreed to phone Boston and have his secretary take his daughter’s picture, a recent one, from his desk and air mail it down, special delivery. Argen told him about the checkout. Matthews said that was damned nonsense. Argen said he had checked it and it was the truth.

The assistant manager let them talk to Simmins in an office in the credit department. Simmins was a balding young man with wise, sad eyes. He sat on the edge of the chair and meditatively cracked the knuckles of his oversized hands.

“I don’t know,” he said. “You say it was a woman?”

“A young one. Blonde. Room twelve twenty-one she was in. And it was nine o’clock. Come on, you ought to remember blondes.”

“Just a minute. It’s coming back. I went up and she was all set to go. She came down in the elevator with me. I waited and she paid and then she wanted a cab.”

“Which entrance?”

“The main one. She give me a buck.”

“Where did she tell the cab to go?”

“I didn’t hear her say anything. I guess she told him after he got moving maybe.”

“Simmins, this is important. She got herself hit on the head. Maybe she’ll die from it. You got to remember more about her. How did she act?”

“I don’t know. Maybe nervous like. You know, like catching a plane or something.”

“How was she dressed?”

“She had something black on.”

“Wasn’t she wearing a gray suit?”

“No. I’m sure of that. It was black hut I don’t know if it was a suit or a dress or what. It was black.”

“What was the luggage?”

“Two suitcases. Gray, I think, with a stripe. And some big packages like from stores, tied together. Packages the shape clothes come in.”

Brock asked his first question. “Boy, she opened her purse to get that buck for you. Can you remember what color the bag was?”

“Black, too. With some shiny things on it. You know, round shiny things like scales, sort of.”

“Sequins?”

“Yeah. That’s what they call them.” Argen nodded approvingly at Brock. “Simmins, what would you say about this girl’s looks? Was she class?”

“Class? No, I wouldn’t figure that. She looked a little rough, you know what I mean.”

“How old?”

“Thirty, maybe.”

They let Simmins go back to work after telling him they might have to question him later. They told him that if he remembered anything more about the woman, he should get in touch at once.

Argen said to Brock, “Now we got a new kind of thing. The wrong clothes, the wrong pulse, the wrong woman. Somebody checked her out. It’s a big place. It wouldn’t be hard to do. The thing is to get hold of the key. There wasn’t any key in the Matthews girl’s purse when I found it. Let’s figure it this way, Willy. Say she got thumped on the head about eight-thirty or so. The guy finds a hotel key in the purse. He gets hold of his girl friend and has her check out of the hotel. I don’t like it. You tell me why.”

Brock scowled and tugged at his ear. “It doesn’t fit good. How would they know there wasn’t somebody else in the room? And with the key, why not just go through her stuff and take anything that was worth while? It sounds more like when she got hit, she got hit hard on account of whoever hit her knew she had to stay out a long time so the stuff could be gotten out of the room.”

Argen nodded. “And one more thing. She’d been here three days. Those rooms go for fifteen a day. Paying forty-five in cash isn’t in character with the guys who would slug her for the dough in her purse. This time of year it isn’t dark until eight-fifteen or so. The timing had to be close. I don’t like the direction this thing is moving. It begins to smell bigger. Know what I mean?”

Sergeant Argen phoned the hospital and found that Matthews had left for the hotel. The girl’s condition was unchanged. They waited for Matthews and went up to his room with him.

Argen explained that they had found out that some other woman had checked Helen Matthews out of the hotel. He asked whether Helen had had any item of substantial value and size with her.

“I know that question sounds pretty funny, Mr. Matthews. But I got to account for all the luggage being taken.”

Matthews seemed subdued by the long hours of waiting. He shook his head wearily. “She had nothing like that. I don’t know what you’re driving at. She has some valuable jewelry that belonged to her mother, but that’s in the lock box. She didn’t bring it down here. I want to know who did this terrible thing. Why isn’t Lieutenant Fowler here working on this?”

“He’s working on another angle, Mr. Matthews.”

“You people just don’t seem to be taking this seriously. She may... may not...”

Brock and Argen left the hotel. They stood near the main entrance, and Argen looked thoughtfully at the constant stream of people coining and going.

“This is a big, busy place in a big, busy town, Willy. I think I’m getting a new idea. I can feel it turning over in my mind like a half-asleep dog. Let’s get some coffee.”

They got coffee at a counter and carried it to a hack booth. Argen borrowed one of Brock’s cigarettes. “Let’s start some fresh thinking, Willy. I think we made this check-out gimmick too fast. If it was careful planning that means there was something big in it. If there was something big, we hit the back trail too easy. Now let’s figure it another way. Let’s say we can’t make an identification on the girl. We got no way of knowing where she was staying. Sooner or later somebody checks on her and finds she checked out without leaving a forwarding address. It looks like she took off. It goes to missing persons. They make the morgue check. By then it’s cold. It looks like we shouldn’t have handled it so fast.”

“Now I think I know where you’re going. Somebody wanted her dead. But we got no good reason for anybody wanting the Matthews girl dead.”

“And that assistant manager I talked to. He checked and came back and he said the name was Helen Matthews with a double t.”

They finished the coffee and walked back to the hotel. The assistant manager he had talked to before was there. He was about to go off duty, and his annoyance was obvious.

“I don’t see how the hotel is involved in this,” he said.

“Some other woman checked out the Matthews girl, paid her bill and carted off her stuff and it happened after the girl was hit on the head. So stop acting like we come here to clean the drains. You go find out what other Matthews you’ve got in this place right now or had in the last few days. Female Matthews, friend.”

The man skittered away. Argen winked at Brock. He was nervous about his guess and he hummed a monotone that he thought was a tune.

The assistant manager came back with a sheet of paper from a note pad. “There is a Mrs. George Mathewson from Duluth. She checked in the day before yesterday. And a Miss Ellen Mathews from Philadelphia. She has been here for more than a week.”

“Bingo,” said Argen. “Now get me your best house man.”

The house man’s name was Fuller. Argen had met him years before when he had worked at a different hotel. Though Fuller had been born and raised in the city, he looked as if he had just walked out of a Grange meeting. His red neck was crisscrossed with plow-boy wrinkles and he wore steel-rimmed glasses.

Argen told him what he wanted and Fuller said it would take maybe twenty minutes. He was back in fifteen and the three of them sat in the small office.

“This is a blonde,” he said. “A little one. Cute and hard as a stone. She’s got a Miami tan that’s fading on account of she hasn’t been out of the room, near as I can tell, since she got here. The bellhops figure she’s hiding from somebody or something. She’s a gin drinker. She tips good. The hops say she isn’t what you call overdressed when you go in there. She’s got the TV, and she calls for a lot of service. Ice, food, bottles, magazines. No outgoing phone calls, and nobody can remember mailing anything for her. The hops like to get that number, that ten-o-nine. Every time, she opens the door with the chain still on, takes a look, then closes it and takes the chain off. It’s an outside room, but she keeps the blinds nearly closed and the room lights on. What are you on her for?”

“We don’t know yet,” Argen said. “I figure the name is a phony. Now how about this. Suppose somebody calls the switchboard. Says have you got a Miss Ellen Mathews registered. What’s the room number? You give that out?”

“Sure.”

“Does the girl explain if she’s got, say, an Ellen Mathews and a Helen Matthews registered?”

“Maybe, maybe not. If she’s rushed, maybe she doesn’t notice.”

“Let’s go look her over.”

When the elevator stopped, the two men walked down to ten-o-nine, and knocked. She opened the door on the chain and looked out at them, frowning. She had hard blue eyes and a sulky mouth. She wore yellow pajamas, and she wasn’t much over five feet tall. The television set was on behind her.

“You Ellen Mathews?” Argen said.

“What’s it to you?”

“Police. Take the chain off. We’re coming in.”

Argen saw that she was a little high. Not drunk. Just high. “We get a warrant if you want it that way. But we come in sooner or later.”

“So what’s the charge?”

“Illegal possession of stolen property.”

He saw the slight widening of her eyes and knew he had scored. “You’re crazy as hell.”

Argen turned to Brock. “Go fix up the warrant. Willy. Fuller, you get the nippers in case we have to cut that chain. I’ll camp right here.”

The mouth grew more sullen. “So all right. Big men, aren’t you? A big deal.” She slammed the door, and Argen heard the rattle of the chain. When she opened it again it opened wide. She turned her back on them and padded over and turned off the television set. Argen left the door open.

Brock found it in the closet, on the high shelf, a heavy brown suitcase. He brought it out and put it on the bed. The girl pointedly ignored them. It wasn’t locked. It was half full of male clothing, and half full of money.

“You count it?” Argen asked.

“Eighty-six thousand.” she said, “but I’ve been using some. Some small change.” She turned, a fresh drink in her hand. Her face changed, grew flushed. She cursed with a range and fluency that Argen was forced to admire. The vituperation was directed at one Sammy Prine, and the general idea was that Sammy should be locked up forever, locked up until he rotted.

“So why should we lock up Sammy?” Argen said, grinning at her.

“How else could you know? He knew and I knew. That was all. Nobody else knew the name I was using here. He said stay until he showed. He said be careful. Stay in the room. Big deal. So you pick him up and he folds.”

“Who was in it with him?”

“Didn’t he tell you? Harry Brohman. The Tampa bank three weeks ago. If I told Sammy once I told him a hundred times this Brohman isn’t the kind of guy you can cross and stay healthy. But don’t worry, sugar, he says. Brohman is a punk, he says. We take it all. You take it with you. That’s safer. We meet here. Then we go to Canada and he’s got contacts and we go to Spain. Big deal. I shoulda took off with all of it, and believe me, I thought about it. But you can’t hit me very hard. I didn’t have a damn thing to do with the job. I wasn’t along on it, even. I stayed in Miami and I can prove it. You can’t make it heavy.”

“I don’t know about that,” Argen said. “Get some clothes on. Willy, phone a car over here and we’ll take her in. And while you’re on the phone, tell them to give the dope on Brohman and Prine to the F.B.I. They’ll want to put out a pickup, and they’ll want this money.”

The girl stared at him in consternation. “Don’t you have Sammy?”

“I never even heard of him, honey.”

“But how—”

“It’s too long a story.” He patted her shoulder paternally. “Now you trot in the bathroom and put some clothes on in there.”

It was weeks before the loose ends were tied up, and the commendation placed in Argen’s file. By then the Matthews girl was well enough to be taken back to Boston. Prine was found first — what was left of him — in a roadside swamp in South Carolina. He was identified by his prints. He had run from Brohman, but not fast enough. He had been tortured before being killed. Brohman was picked up as he came out of a movie house in Biloxi. Though armed, he was taken without a fuss. He was positively identified as one of the two men who had taken the Tampa bank. He refused to talk. Finally, however, he realized that he could not escape a life sentence as an habitual criminal. Then a promise that he would not be prosecuted for the murder of Prine convinced him he had nothing to gain by silence. And he was eager to get his New York contact in trouble. The man, a known criminal named Shalgren, had ruined the whole thing by picking the wrong girl. Brohman told how he had caught up with Prine, had extracted the information from him, had made telephone contact with Shalgren. Brohman hadn’t wanted to risk entering New York, where he was wanted on a local charge.

He made a deal with Shalgren. Get the money and bring it to Biloxi for an even split after expenses.

Shalgren was picked up. It took two days to break him. He had followed the wrong girl. He thought she didn’t seem the type, but she was young and blonde, and the unremarkable coincidence of two similar names in a huge hotel never occurred to him. He got hold of a woman who would do exactly as she was told. He staked her out close to the hotel. He got to her the second evening, taking money and room key. Shalgren’s woman, for her hundred dollar fee, checked out the luggage and turned it over to Shalgren at Penn Station. When he checked it over, he saw something was wrong.

After it was all over, and Shalgren had been given a six-year sentence, Argen had coffee with Willy Brock. Argen complained about the cases he was being assigned to lately.

“You want another one like the Matthews deal?”

“Not right away, Willy. You know, I keep thinking how sweet that would have been if Shalgren had clubbed the right girl, and hit her just a little harder. Nobody reports her missing. The name is a fake. She’d already checked out of the hotel. A real clean operation, with no loose ends. It seems kind of too bad.”

“Paul,” Willy said, “sometimes I think you got a criminal mind.”

Argen stared at him with exaggerated shock. “You just finding that out? That’s why we’re both good in this business.”

“Me too?”

Argen got up heavily. “Sure. So far you’re on the petty theft level, but with time and a little luck, maybe you’ll work your way up.”

“Maybe all the way to sergeant?”

“Even that.”

After Argen had left, Brock realized that once again his nearly new pack of cigarettes had disappeared from the table top.

Content

John D. MacDonald
A Criminal Mind