Scott O’Hara

Sir Lancelot’s Crime Wave

Chapter One

Hard-Boiled Rover Boy

Lieutenant of Police Isaac Jamison gave the girl his most soothing smile. She sat on the edge of the chair placed beside his desk, looking at him with wary suspicion. She was young enough, with a face just a shade too wide for beauty, capable square hands, neat inexpensive suit. Isaac Jamison had noted the worn edge of the red leather shoulder bag, the alligator pumps, well-cared-for, but showing age. He guessed that this girl worked, understood the value of money, was willing to buy the best whenever she could afford it.

Her eyes were her best feature. Blue-gray, direct, without a shred of coyness. And she had the faint antagonism of the self-respecting person not accustomed to contacting the police.

“The man outside said you are a special assistant, Lieutenant. How much authority do you have?”

Isaac Jamison’s voice was low, with undertones of warmth. His voice was one of the reasons Deputy Chief Ringold had assigned him to this thankless job. His voice and his smile. His face had a long, bleak bone structure, severe, a thin-lipped mouth with the smallest hint of the fanatic, his beard blue-heavy under the dark skin. But the smile made him warm and human. He used it often in this new job, calculatingly, watching its effect.

He smiled and said, “Enough authority, Miss Dobbs, to refer you higher if this should turn out to be a large-scale crime wave you’re reporting to me.”

Some of the suspicion went out of her eyes and she relaxed a little. “Maybe I’m giving all this too much importance.” “Tell me about it and we’ll see.” He composed himself to listen. That was his job. Listening.

Ringold, the new Deputy Chief had said to him, “Jamie, we’ll have efficiency here. Every crackpot in the city wants to bend my ear. I can’t listen to all of them, and we can’t afford not to listen. One out of every fifty has something we should look into. So you do the screening. I’ll give you a nice office, a title that doesn’t mean anything, and you listen. You’re a smart cop, Jamie. You’re relieved of all other assignments.”

Protest had been no good. Ringold had listened to his objections with gradually increasing coolness and at last Jamison had stepped, knowing that it was no good to go on. His active cases were reassigned and he had landed behind the big dark desk. Case and Lobund called him ‘our new receptionist’.

The worst of it was that Jamison knew in his heart that Ringold was right. The big city department needed a phony special assistant to screen out the cranks.

In one month behind the desk, only two cranks had managed to bull their way through him to Ringold, and he had opened up two cases, one giving a little more dope on a known car-theft ring, the other resulting in the booking of an elderly landlady for extortion. The thing most disturbing to Isaac Jamison was that he had to turn the data over to the appropriate departments. Following through had been his doctrine for eight years with the department.

The girl looked down at her hands for a moment, as though to compose her thoughts, and said, “I’m a stenographer and file clerk for Ballou and Stark, a wholesale drug company. It’s large, as you may know, with about thirty in the office. A year ago they hired a salesman named John Kiern. I thought he was fresh at first. His territory is in the city here, so he was in the office a lot. He kept asking me for two months, and finally I went out with him.” She flushed slightly.

“He wasn’t like I had thought. He was... nice. I had fun. We got along nicely. We were even talking about marriage. But to tell the truth, he wasn’t doing very well as a salesman. They pay a small salary and then a commission scale. Some weeks he’d make sixty dollars and then he’d drop down to thirty or so. Along with the thirty-seven fifty I make, it didn’t seem like enough. I told him so and it hurt his pride. He began to act... well, queer. A month ago he changed. He told me that everything was going to be fine and I didn’t have to worry any more. He got me this ring.”

She held her hand out. It was a quite respectable diamond. Isaac guessed that it was a full carat.

“Nice,” he said.

“Too nice. I told him that the man from the store would probably be around to take it back. He laughed at me. He said it was paid in full. He acted as though he were on top of the world for two weeks. And then he disappeared.”

“Disappeared?”

“He just didn’t come to work. He left the company car in the lot. The attendant had the keys. All his display items were in the car. They’re still holding a check for him at the office. Back commissions. A small check.”

“You tried to find him?”

“He lived in a one-room apartment on Lincoln Avenue. Number 1281. I thought he was drunk, or something silly like that, and I waited three days before I went there. He had moved out and left no forwarding address.”

Jamison frowned slightly. Before he could speak, the girl said:

“I know what you’re thinking. That he got tired of me and sick of the job and just moved away. But I know that isn’t so. It couldn’t be!”

“Mind telling me why not?”

She lifted her chin. “I’m not the most fascinating creature in the city, Lieutenant, but I know that John Kiern was in love with me. It wasn’t a case of my being fooled by a line. If you want me to put it plainly, Lieutenant, he was on the hook.”

“I can’t exactly write that in a report, Miss Dobbs. How about relatives?”

“That was one of the things we have... had in common, Lieutenant. Both of us are completely alone. I have an older sister that I heartily dislike. She is in Alaska with her husband. He has two cousins in Omaha, but they weren’t in touch and he’s never seen them.”

“How long have you been with Ballou and Stark?”

“Three years. I reported for work there the day after my twenty-first birthday.”

“Tell me just why you came here.”

For the first time she lost her crispness. “Johnny was hard up, Lieutenant. And... and suddenly he seemed to have money. He didn’t report for work on a Monday, two weeks ago yesterday. The previous Saturday night he took me to a nightclub, and I know the evening cost him close to forty dollars. We had a Sunday afternoon date and he told me he was thinking of buying a car. He cancelled our Sunday night date because he said he had to see some people. I think, maybe because I always suspected he was a little weak, that he found some crooked way to get money. And I think he’s dead.”

Isaac Jamison raised one dark eyebrow.

“Dead?”

She didn’t sniffle and dig around in her purse for a handkerchief. She kept those blue-gray eyes on him while tears gathered in the lower lids, broke free, rolled down her cheeks.

“When you love somebody, Lieutenant, it makes sort of a bond between you. Lots of people know when somebody they love is in trouble. I woke up after midnight Sunday and I had been crying in my sleep. I went down to work in the morning and I knew that something bad had happened.”

“But you didn’t go to his place for three days?”

“Stupid pride, Lieutenant. I know that now. But he checked out early Sunday evening. It wouldn’t have done any good if I had gone.”

“Again, Miss Dobbs, there’s nothing I can put in a report.”

She quickly wiped her cheeks. “Does that mean that you won’t investigate?”

He shrugged. “I can take a description and turn it over to missing persons. Do you have a picture?”

She took it out of her purse. A snapshot, hand tinted. Jamison saw a fairly heavy young man smiling up at him out of the picture. He was blond, with a ruddy complexion, hairline beginning to recede. Though he didn’t look over twenty-six, it was easy to see what he would look like at fifty. The young man’s mouth was too small.

“What does turning this over to missing persons accomplish?” she asked.

“A description goes out on the wires. And the data is filed for comparison with any unidentified bodies that show up.”

“But there wouldn’t be an investigation?” There was resignation in her voice. But she still sat bravely, her shoulders squared.

He said, “Not on the basis of what you’ve given me. If there were more facts to go on.”

With a touch of anger she said, “I thought it would be this way.”

“The department is not exactly overstaffed, Miss Dobbs. If we were having a lull right now, I might wrangle an assignment of one man to do legwork on it.”

She stood up with a quick movement. “Sorry to have wasted your time, Lieutenant. May I have the picture, please.”

Jamison groaned inwardly. This was borderline. Less than borderline, actually. The girl was sincere and she had a strong conviction But Ringold would laugh at her two major premises.

He ran a strong hand back through his coarse dark hair. “Sit down, Miss Dobbs. Can you keep a secret?”

She gave him an odd look. “Of course!”

“Well, I’m just a dummy official set up here to comb out the cranks and please the public. I’ve been sitting at this desk for a month. If I try to refer this case for investigation, they’ll pat me on the head and tell me I fell for a pretty little package with a tale of woe.

“Look — I work from nine to five. At five I’m my own man. The deputy chief would hack off my ears with a dull knife if I went out officially on a case without his okay. But maybe I can dig up a little to add to your story. Then I give you the facts I find and you come in here and tell me those facts and maybe we get some action.”

Her voice was soft. “I don’t know how to thank you.”

“Remember, I’m no cop on this job. I’m a curious friend helping you get data for the cops.”

“It will be so good to have someone help, Lieutenant.”

“Can you take time off from your job?”

“A girl can have a headache.”

“Fine. Tomorrow pick the likely jewelry stores and tramp around until you find the one that sold Kiern that ring. Take his picture along. Make up a song and dance. When you find the store, quit right there. I’ll ask the questions later. It’s three-fifteen now. Go back to the office and see if you can get your hands on a complete list of all the customers Kiern called on. If you can make it, I’ll meet you at six under the clock in the lobby of the Pritchard.”

He walked her to the office door. She was taller than he had thought.

Before he opened the door he said, “This will be strictly personal, not official. Keep that straight, please.”

The building superintendent at 1281 Lincoln was a limp and languid young man with a surprising and carefully modulated basso profundo voice.

He stood in the hallway and said, “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“Is it so tough to understand?” Jamison asked. “Kiern was going to marry my cousin here, Miss Dobbs. If he’s run out on her, he wants a good bust in the nose. All I’m asking you is how he acted when he left. I want to give the guy the benefit of the doubt.”

The superintendent glanced again at Corrine Dobbs. He coughed, ran a thumbnail along one side of his hairline mustache. “Well, Mr. Kiern seemed in a bit of a hurry. He had ten more days rent coming. But he seemed very... gay. I told him I had to check the inventory and check for breakage. His apartment was furnished, you know. He gave me twenty dollars and said he was in a hurry and that money, plus no refund on his rent, should cover everything.”

“Was he drunk?”

“I believe he’d been drinking, but I wouldn’t say he was drunk.”

“When you cleaned out the room, did you find he’d left anything?”

“Nothing important. Some receipted bills, movie stubs, a third of a bottle of bourbon, two soiled neckties. Everything was thrown out but the bourbon. The janitor got that.”

“Did he have any guests the last few days he was here?”

“I really couldn’t say.”

“Was he alone when he left here?”

“His car was parked out in front. I told him not to park it in front of the entrance, but he always did. It had the name of the company he worked for on the door, you know. There was somebody in the car waiting for him.”

“A woman?”

“I think it was a man. It was dark, you know. I didn’t go out to the car. I glanced out and got the impression someone was smoking a cigar. The glowing end of it was bigger than a cigarette.”

“He carried his own bags out to the car?”

“Yes, there were two of them. He was whistling as he went down the walk to the car.”

“He did the driving?”

“He got in the car on the other side, so I would imagine so.”

“What did he say about a forwarding address?”

“He said he would stop and pick up any mail that might come, though he wasn’t expecting any, and when he stopped he would leave his new address.”

“That would indicate that he was staying in the city?”

“It looks that way to me.”

“Thanks,” Jamison said. “Thanks a lot.”

“It’s nothing, really. Glad to oblige,” the superintendent said. He favored Corrine Dobbs with another look that approached sly amusement.

Out in Jamison’s car, Corrine said, “Ugh! He’s an awful little weasel, isn’t he?”

“Did you mind being Woman Scorned?”

“Except for the way he looked at me, no. We... we aren’t getting anywhere, are we?”

“One mysterious citizen with cigar, Corrine. He would have the answers. Now we hit the parking lot. Do you know the attendant?”

“Yes. The company let the salesmen use the cars in the evening. We used to park it there when we went to the movies. His name is Charlie something and he’s an old man with a bad limp and something wrong with his mouth.”

“I’ll park a block away then and go back and see what I can do on my own.”

Chapter Two

Song and Dance

He left her in the car. The lot was at the rear of the office building where Ballou and Stark rented a full floor. The tiny gate house was brightly lighted and the lights gleamed on a sign that read: Not open to the public.

Jamison’s heels were loud on the gravel. The old attendant put down his magazine. He had a scar that bisected both lips and twisted his mouth. His speech was thick and hard to understand. “Something, mister?”

Jamison took out his wallet, flashed the gold-and-blue enamel badge. “Traffic Division, pop. Understand you park Ballou and Stark cars here.”

“Three of ’em.”

“Know the men that drive them?”

“Guess I do.”

“Two weeks ago last Sunday one of those Ballou and Stark cars went through a red light at about eight o’clock in the evening. The witness didn’t get the license number. Have any idea which one it was?”

“Hard to tell, captain. All three of ’em were out, I think. No, let me see, now. Mr. Gardner’s car was in. He put it in early. He’s the sales manager. That leaves two out. Mr. Brank had one and some new salesman, blond fella, had the other. Mr. Brank is the head salesman of the company and he helps Mr. Gardner in the office, I think.”

“Know when those two came in?”

“Brank come in about midnight. The young fella was in earlier. About nine I’d say. He isn’t around any more. They got another new one. Good thing. The one that left was a smart punk.”

“How did he act that night?”

“He drove in too damn fast as usual. I was all set to give him hell when he came out of the lot.”

“Didn’t you?”

“No. He parked it over in the back corner — heard him whistling back there. Then some damn kids started slinging rocks at the cars over in the front corner there. I don’t get around so good with this leg, captain. I went over to chase the kids. When I came back, that young fella was already through the gate here and over across the street in the shadows.

“He’d tossed the car keys in on the floor of the shack here. Too damn important to put ’em on the table and keep an old man from having to bend over. I yelled after him not to drive in here so fast. But he didn’t hear me, I guess. He was still whistling.”

“So it was Brank or Kiern, eh?”

“That’s his name! Kiern. How come you know it, captain?”

“I checked with the office, pop. Who is your nomination for running the light?”

“I’d say Kiern. Brank is as old as I am and he drives the car like it was full of eggs. But Kiern doesn’t work here any more, I guess. My Lord, you people really run down these traffic cases, don’t you?”

“Routine, pop. Thanks a lot. Did you catch the kids?”

“Me? Hell, I never even got a look at ’em. Instead of messing around with somebody running a light two weeks ago, you ought to haul in these brats denting good cars with rocks and busting them with eggs and such. I told Mr. Gardener about it a hundred times.”

He was still grumbling as Jamison walked back on down to where he’d left his aged coupe. He climbed in behind the wheel, gave Corrine a cigarette, waited for the dash lighter to pop out.

“Did you get anything?” she asked.

“Hard to say, Corrine. How good a business does Ballou and Stark do?”

“Why... I suppose it’s all right. The big drug companies sell direct to the retailer. We handle lines for companies that sell on a national scale, but are too small to have a sales force. Of course, it’s a pretty competitive business. We maintain bulk warehouses at key points for some items, and merely send orders on to the manufacturers for others. It’s a very old firm. Mr. Ballou has been dead for twenty years. Mr. Stark is retired and lives in the south of France. What has that got to do with it?”

“I don’t know yet. There’s a warehouse here?”

“Quite a big one. On Front Street near the docks. Lots of times the local salesmen go down there and pick up small orders and deliver them directly.”

He smoked in silence. Some latent alertness in him had been aroused.

She said, “Lieutenant, you’re looking quite grim, you know.”

“You’ll be calling me that at the wrong time. Make it Jamie.”

“Then Jamie is looking grim.” She touched his arm. “Please tell me if you think I might be right... about Johnny.”

He brushed her question off by saying, “We can’t do any more tonight. I’ll take you home. But first we’d better eat.”

“You’re my guest.”

“Nonsense! I’ll pay.”

“Dutch, Jamie, or I insist on being taken home...”

At ten o’clock Isaac Jamison, alone in the apartment he shared with Carl Case of Homicide, searched through the desk drawers until he found the large-scale city map he was looking for.

He spread it out on the desk top, the phone book beside him. Kiern had checked out of his apartment at seven-thirty. He had left the car at the lot at nine. No suitcases had been found in the car and Charlie, the attendant, would have noticed if Kiern had been carrying any.

With a red pencil, he drew an X where the apartment house was, another at the parking lot. The distance between them was about thirty city blocks and, since it was necessary to angle across town to get from one to the other, he calculated the average driving time between the two as about twenty-five minutes. That gave Kiern sixty-five minutes to dispose of the bags.

Corrine had given him a neatly typed list of all the customers Kiern had been authorized to call on. He checked the addresses in the phone book. The hundred and twenty drugstores were all in the southeast portion of the city. It took him an hour to mark them all with a red dot.

Then he carefully shaded the entire area. Kiern’s territory had been a kidney-shaped area taking in several suburban shopping areas plus what could be called a slum area. It was that portion of the city furthest from the waterfront.

By driving with respectable speed Kiern could have gone from the apartment out to the middle of his territory, spend ten or fifteen minutes there, and then driven back to the parking lot in midtown.

Of course there was always the possibility that Kiern could have gone directly to the railroad station, checked the bags, returned the car to the lot and then gone on to take a train out of town. But it would have made more sense to take the bags to the lot, hail a taxi outside the lot. It would have saved time and trouble and there were plenty of cruising cabs in the area of the parking lot at night, as it was only a block or so from the theater district.

He made another X, after looking up the address of the Ballou and Stark warehouse. By taking a crosstown thoroughfare, a man could drive from Lincoln to the warehouse, and then downtown to the lot in possibly five or ten minutes more than would be needed to drive directly to the lot. That would give Kiern an hour, more or less, at the warehouse.

Jamison looked down at the map and it was as though he were suspended high over that city on a Sunday night two weeks before. The little black sedan was down there on the street. It waited. Kiern got in it and drove off. Where did he go? And why? If he already had a new address, it would seem reasonable that he would have given that address to the building superintendent.

He was still sitting there at midnight when Carl Case came in. Carl sat down, tenderly took off his shoes and groaned. “Oh, you lucky, lucky guy. I get a car from the department and then I can park it within a mile of where I want to go every time. You have it soft, lad. Soft.”

“Want to trade?”

“I didn’t until today. Joe told me you were locked in for a long time today with some very nice stuff.”

“Joe talks too much. She’s a nice girl.” Jamie took a deep breath. “I took her out to dinner to talk over her problem.”

Case gave him a look of burlesque surprise. “Jamison, the woman hater! Jamison, the strong and silent man! Dating girls now! The earth has faltered on its majestic orbit around the sun. I am speechless.”

“I wish you were.”

Case padded over in his stocking feet and looked over Jamison’s shoulder at the map. He stopped smiling. He said:

“Jamie, you and I are friends. You got a rough assignment. But just between us coppers, let me suggest that you don’t go hero for some babe, without orders.” Jamison quietly folded up the man and stuffed it in his shirt pocket. He lit a cigarette and leaned back. “Homicide needs people with long noses,” he said.

Case flushed, turned and went into his bedroom. In a little while Jamison heard the roar of the shower...

Jamison got some information on the phone, made an appointment, skipped his lunch to keep it. Roger Leesh, the C.P.A., was a burly young man with his big hands, a lurid sports jacket and a customer’s smile.

Jamison took the chair Leesh indicated. He said, “I made it sound over the phone as if this were official business, Mr. Leesh. It isn’t. I’m acting as a private citizen with no authority whatsoever. I found out you audit the books of Ballou and Stark. I know that your relationship with your clients is confidential. So you can tell me to go to hell.”

Leesh grinned. “I like that! Right to the point. Look at it this way, Lieutenant. Some time you might come in with authority. The truth is, I wouldn’t feel right about answering questions. Some questions. Try a few. If I don’t like them, I’ll hedge.”

“Ballou and Stark makes money?”

“If it were a corporation instead of a limited partnership, I wouldn’t be in a rush to buy up a lot of stock.”

“It will keep on going for a long time?”

“Call it the transfusion method. Money is the blood of business. Mr. Gardener, one of the partners, is a transfusion expert.”

“Do they worry?”

“They don’t seem to. That’s not my business. Maybe it’s a hobby with Mr. Stark. Maybe he sends Gardener the transfusions. I wouldn’t know.”

Jamison thought in silence for a time. He said, “No more questions.”

“That was a lot easier than I expected, Lieutenant. I don’t have to say anything about your keeping the mouth firmly closed, do I?”

“Not a word.”

“Now I’ll ask one. Is there any danger of my losing a client?”

“There’s always that danger,” Jamison said...

During the afternoon, during a lull in the procession of people who considered themselves too important to get traffic tickets and had to be disillusioned, Jamison called a salesman friend of his, asked some questions, jotted down terminology on a scratch pad.

And then he called Mr. Gardener. He said, “My name is Hunt, sir. I’m lining up wholesale houses for a new product called Lynadrine. We—”

“We can’t take on any new items at this time,” Gardener said bruskly.

“But we’re spending upwards of a million in national advertising, guaranteeing you a local sale of at least a hundred thousand dollars a year, with an eighteen percent gross profit to your firm, Mr. Gardener.”

“The offer is attractive, Mr. Hunt, but we find that our present lines are all that we can handle at this time. Thank you for thinking of us.” The line clicked dead.

Jamison hung up the phone, slouched in his chair and frowned at the far wall.

At six he met Corrine. She had taken the day off, and found the jewelry store, had the name and address of the clerk who had made the sale. The clerk was young and lived with his parents. They caught him just as he was on his way out.

“Sure, I remember the guy. What’d he do? Steal the dough to buy the ring? It cost him nine hundred and fifty.”

“How did he pay?”

“Cash, mister. Cash on the line. All in fifty dollar bills.”

“Did he act any different than any other customer?”

“He seemed happy and he told me that the ring was for the most wonderful girl in the world and he was whistling about ‘Happy Days Are Here Again’. Say, miss, you’re wearing the ring, aren’t you? Yeah, that’s the one. What gives?”

Jamison thought fast. He said quickly, “If you see the man again, please don’t mention this little visit. Miss Smith wants to borrow a small amount on the ring and I wanted to check and see if the purchase price was as she said.”

The clerk looked wise. “Uh... Oh, sure. Never saw you in my life. How about a lift downtown if you’re going that way?”

Chapter Three

Smoke Screen

Corrine looked haggard and worried, and she had no appetite. Jamison pushed his coffee cup aside and lit a cigarette. She said, “Why don’t you let me in on what you are guessing?”

“How do you know I’m guessing anything?”

“At first you were casual, and even... amused. Now you’ve tightened up. You must be thinking something.”

“Tell me what you know about Gardener.”

“Mr. Gardener? He’s nice to work for. He manages the office as well as being sales manager. He’s married and has a nice house outside of town. He isn’t a slave driver.”

“What does he look like?”

“Fiftyish. Tall and a little heavy. Youthful clothes. Suntan all year round. Don’t ask me how.”

“Do the men like him? The salesmen?”

“Oh, yes.”

“He seems well off?”

“I guess he makes a very good salary, and also he owns some of the firm, you know. But why are you asking me all this?”

“Corrine, if you have a haystack and you suspect there’s a needle in it, the best method I know is to keep rolling around in the haystack until something sticks you.”

“Felt anything yet?”

“Not yet. Does Gardener seem interested in his work?”

“Very, Jamie. A long time ago he was a pharmacist, before he got into sales work. I guess he’s clever. He maintains his own lab down at the warehouse and makes up a special product called Gardener Headache Powders. He’s so anxious for the product to catch on that he does all the sales work himself.”

Jamison had the cigarette between his thumb and first finger. He looked steadily at Corrine. Slowly he became conscious of having squeezed the cigarette so tightly that the paper tore.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

“The needle, honey. The needle.”

“Is there enough... to refer the case to one of your divisions?”

“Not quite enough.”

“Can we get more?”

“If I’m right, we can get a lot more.”

“When, Jamie?”

“Ballou and Stark is closed now. Can you get back in there?”

“Why, yes. I have a key. But—”

“Let’s go...”

Gardener’s office door was locked. Jamison cursed softly. He told Corrine what he wanted. She went to the supply cabinet, found extra desk pads that had been printed for Mr. Gardener’s use. “From the Desk of A. William Gardener.”

She rolled it into her typewriter. Then she had to go and look up the name of the night warehouse man.

Her fingers were brisk on the keys as he dictated.

“Seaton,

I have asked Miss Dobbs to make an early delivery for me tomorrow to a dealer who is out of Gardener Powders. Please turn over a case of the powders to Miss Dobbs.”

She found Gardener’s signature. Jamison turned the sheet upside down and carefully drew the signature.

“I don’t get it,” Corrine said plaintively.

“Just be a good girl and do as I say...”

The entrance to the warehouse was at the blind end of an alley, with a high loading platform. Jamison backed his car to the loading platform, helped Corrine out, jumped up, gave her his hand, pulled her up.

A feeble light shone through the wired window of the office door at the side.

Corrine said, “Shouldn’t I go in alone?”

“I’m just a guy to carry the box, Corrine.” He hammered at the office door. He paused and listened, heard the slow steps coming toward the door. The bolt was shot back. The door opened and a sleepy, elderly man looked out at them.

Corrine said, “I’m Miss Dobbs from the office.”

“Oh, sure. Didn’t recognize you. Come on in.” They stepped into the office and the man shut the door. He yawned, took the note which Corrine handed him.

He moved his lips as he read. Then he looked at Corrine angrily. “Wish he’d make up his mind. Keeps a man confused all the time. Gave me hell a while back for giving out them pet powders of his and told me that no one gets ’em but him, and then he goes and writes this.”

“The ones you gave to Kiern?” Jamison asked softly,

“Yeah. How the hell did I know the lad was lying to me when he said Mr. Gardener asked him to get them? How did I know the lad was trying to be a ball of fire on the job by muscling into the boss’s private product?”

“He seems to have changed his mind again,” Jamison said.

The man cackled. “Little forgetful, though, ain’t he? Had that wire cage built and never did give me the key for it. Let’s see what he says.”

The man went over to the narrow stairway, leaned into it and yelled up, “Mr. Gardener! Hey, Mr. Gardener!”

Steps were heavy on the stairs. Jamison bit his lip. A bad tactical error. They should have asked first if Mr. Gardener was in his private lab. Gardener appeared, first neatly shined shoes, then stained white smock, then a puzzled, heavy face.

“Miss Dobbs!” he said. “What’s wrong?”

Seaton answered for her. He held the note out and Gardener took it. Seaton said, “Mr. Gardener, I got to know just how much authority I got here. You give me hell for letting Kiern take them powders and then you send me these orders.”

Jamison moved two careful steps back toward the door, watched Gardener’s face as the man read the note. It was a heavy, unreadable face, evenly coated with an almost metallic tan.

“You didn’t give me no key for that stuff,” Seaton said, his tone querelous.

Gardener gave Corrine a keen look.

“I don’t understand all this,” he said evenly. “This certainly looks like my signature. But I didn’t write this order. Who is your friend?”

Jamison turned quickly to Seaton. He said, “Where did Mr. Gardener send you Sunday night two weeks ago when he came here with Kiern?”

Seaton had backed toward the oak rolltop desk. There was a slow accumulation of tension in the small room. Seaton said, “He sent me to the office to get his cigar case from on top of his desk. But it wasn’t there.”

Seaton, with surprising speed, snatched open the desk drawer, pulled out a heavy .45 automatic, held it with unwavering steadiness pointed directly at Jamison’s chest. Without taking his eyes from Jamison, he said, “If you didn’t write that note, Mr. Gardener, then they come here to steal something. We’ve got a lot of valuable drugs here. I’ll cover him and you use the phone to call for the cops.”

Gardener stepped down into the room from the last step. He said gently, “Before I bring the police in on this, Miss Dobbs, possibly you could tell me what it’s all about.”

“And when you came back without the cigar case, Seaton,” Jamison said, “Mr. Gardener was here alone. He told you that Kiern had to leave, didn’t he?”

“So what, mister?”

“So you have a small private pier at the other end of the warehouse. How deep is the water off the end of it?”

“Thirty feet,” Gardener said. “Who are you, sir? You don’t look the type to be mixed up in a drug theft. Nor does Miss Dobbs.”

Jamison realized that it wasn’t going well. Gardener was too self-contained, too careful to strike exactly the right note. Jamison looked steadily at Seaton and said:

“Mr. Kiern is at the bottom of that thirty feet of water, and Mr. Gardener put him there.”

Corrine gasped, turned so that Jamison saw her strained face, her staring eyes. He hadn’t wanted to do it that way.

“Quite a smoke screen, sir,” Gardener said easily. He moved to Seaton’s side, gently took the weapon from Seaton’s hand. “You walk up to Chambers Street, Seaton, and see if you can locate a policeman. I’ll watch these two.”

Seaton scratched his head. “Now why in hell would he say that about Kiern? Seemed funny to me that Kiern would take off on foot from here. He didn’t like walking much.”

“Do as I tell you!” Gardener said, a note of strain creeping into his voice.

“Why not use the phone?” Seaton asked mildly. “And what made you act like a crazy man just because I let Kiern take a case of a dozen bottles of those powders of yours?”

“Do as I tell you, or you go off the payroll as of right now,” Gardener said. A certain firmness about Gardener’s mouth had fled. His underlip sagged loosely and Jamison saw the pinch of nostrils as Gardener breathed heavily.

“These people make more sense than you do—”

Seaton was standing at Gardener’s left. Gardener pivoted, his arm straight, the heavy automatic like a stone in his big hand. It smashed full against Seaton’s mouth. Seaton fell back against the convex curve of the desk, his knees buckling, sliding without haste down to the floor.

Jamison made a quick step toward Gardener, halted, off balance, as the muzzle of the gun swung back to cover him.

The polished front had cracked, had fallen away. Gardener stood in an atavistic crouch, hate and desperation in every thick line of his face.

Corrine Dobbs said, her voice oddly placid, the voice of a person who talks in the midst of sleep. “Then you did do it, Mr. Gardener. You killed Johnny. I don’t know why you’d do a thing like that, but I knew he was dead. All along I’ve known it.”

She stepped toward Gardener. “Back up!” Gardener said, moving the gun toward her. Gardener’s voice was a thick, damp whisper.

“I thought you were a good boss to work for. Isn’t that silly? He bought me this ring, you know.” She held her hand out as she took another step toward him.

Jamison had watched this type before. He saw the tanned finger tightening on the trigger. He knew that Gardener, in spite of fear and panic, was thinking of the percentages. His hope lay in killing all three, trumping up a story of attempted robbery. He saw resolve on Gardener’s face.

In a flat, mechanical tone, Jamison said, “I’m a cop, Gardener.”

The new factor was injected into the boiling equations in Gardener’s brain. The new factor slowed the reflexes, gave rise to momentary hesitation.

As Jamison saw the faint waver of the gun barrel, he drove forward in a long frantic dive, straight-arming Corrine in the shoulder as he passed her, sending her spinning into a far corner of the room.

The deafening smash of the heavy weapon, pivoted down as he dived for Gardener’s knees, drew a white line of fire across Jamison’s left leg, numbed his left foot. His shoulder smashed against Gardener’s knees, toppling the man back.

Once his hands were on Gardener, Jamison worked with quick skill. One slug was slammed up against the ceiling as the small bone in Gardener’s wrist cracked. He thudded a knee up into Gardener’s bulk, heard the gun slide away. Pinning Gardener’s throat with his left forearm he smashed the man heavily and perfectly on the angle of the jaw.

Jamison lay on the hospital bed on his stomach and looked without amusement at the way Ringold shook with muted laughter.

“He couldn’t have shot you in a better place,” Ringold said. “Just where I would have shot you myself.”

“Lay off,” Jamison said softly.

Ringold sobered. “I talked to the girl. She puts up a good fight for you, Jamie.”

“How is she?”

Ringold shrugged. “Shock. Okay now. The report you dictated came out pretty close. He opened up nice. The kid was too eager. He got Seaton to give him a case of the powders. When he went out with them to sell them in his own area, he carries a bottle in his hand. The guy in the store takes the bottle and gives him a fifty. This Kiern catches on quick.

“Seems Gardener was taking standard medicines, cooking out the tiny amounts of dope, accumulating it, bottling it as his private powders and unloading it. Around two hundred bottles a month at fifty per. Kiern got wise and put the arm on him. Gardener told Kiern that with the kid’s help he could expand. He told the kid he wanted him in a better section of town and had an apartment for the kid to look at. He softened him up by giving him some more money.

“At the warehouse he slugged him, rolled him on a dolly onto the pier, wired scrap to his ankles and to the luggage and dumped the works off the end. The kid came to just before Gardener dumped him in.”

“I had to guess the place,” Jamison said. “He didn’t have much time, so it had to be there.”

“If you had enough to go on, Jamison,” Ringold said, “you had enough to refer it to Homicide. What did you have?”

“Gardener being too careful. He wanted the parking lot guy to think that Kiern left from his own car. So he drove in fast. He whistled like Kiern. From the back corner of the lot he threw rocks to draw the attendant away from the gate. Tossing the keys in on the gatehouse floor didn’t sound like Kiern. Then I found the firm was losing money, and yet keeping on one hell of a big staff. Cover up. Tell me, is that enough to take to Homicide?”

Ringold fingered his chin. “No. I guess not. But why break it yourself?”

“I didn’t. Honest, I just wanted to get hold of one of those bottles and turn it in to the lab. When I get out of here, do I have to be receptionist?”

Ringold stood up. “Happy birthday. I’m giving that detail to Carl Case for a while.”

“I don’t know how to—”

“Are you trying to thank me? You’re going into traffic for six months. By then you’ll appreciate being a receptionist again. And you’ll be quicker to ask permission to chase wild geese.”

Jamison was still groaning when he heard Corrine’s soft voice at his elbow say, “Darling, does it hurt that bad?”

Content

Scott O’Hara
Sir Lancelot’s Crime Wave

Chapter One Hard-Boiled Rover Boy

Chapter Two Song and Dance

Chapter Three Smoke Screen