McHugh, page 12
“Shake the dust out of the cloak and Sharpen the dagger,” said Chapman. “The black bird flies tonight.”
“Do tell.” McHugh upended a wooden box and sat on it. “When and from where?”
“Looks like there’s been a change in plans. The Goose is at International, and the Dutchman says that’s fine. Still no word on time, but I’m supposed to stand by from sunset on.”
“Nothing on where you’re going?”
“Nary a word.”
“You horse him?”
“Hell, yes. I told him we might get weathered in, which ain’t the case, and that I’d have to file a flight plan. That’s when he looked at me with those pig eyes of his and called me a goddam liar, which is the case. I then play the ace and say I’m not about to take a chance on losing a two-hundred-grand flying machine for a lousy five grand, and the price is now twenty-five thousand. Took him a while to cool down, but he finally quit screeching like a wounded panther and paid up.”
“The whole twenty-five?” McHugh said, amazed.
“Half of it. Which I already got stashed and which nobody but you and me are about to hear of. I have the Internal Revenue laddies in mind in particular.”
McHugh whistled. “Any sign of the cargo?”
“Not yet. He said let him worry about that. But there is this. Instead of two, there’ll be three riders.”
“I don’t think you’ll ever get off the ground.”
“The Goose can make it. Up to you, Mac. You say don’t fly, she don’t flutter a feather.”
“Uh-uh. I’m deadheading this one. Remember?”
“What you been doing, chumly? You no get the word?”
“What word?”
You re chief rat in charge of cheese again.”
“The hell! Says who and since when?”
So sayeth the Great White Father about an hour ago. The general sounded like he got bailed out of a tight one.” Oh, joy, McHugh said finally. “Did he happen to say why?”
“From what I gather, friend Foote talked to his boss and fessed up that you’d dug up some stuff they missed. And Central Intelligence came up with a tidbit about something like six hundred thousand being put in a number account for the Dutchman at Bern but not knowing why. And the admiral you conned out of that plane yesterday raised hell, wanting to know why the Navy should break out a PBY and a wad of subchasers to cover the Goose. They’re all trying to cover themselves, and you fit real nice in the middle.”
The bastards,” McHugh whispered into the mouthpiece. “Hell, I guess I can’t blame them. They’ve all got to account to somebody. Our section doesn’t.”
“Yeah. Well, do I fly the Dutchman or don’t I?”
“I can play the Army game, too. Do whatever you think best.”
Bud Chapman chuckled. “I think best I get the rest of the twenty-five grand first.”
“But of course. But of course,” McHugh said. He hung up.
The FBI number answered on the first ring.
“McHugh, How come you’re not out swilling coffee?”
“Where’ve you been?” Foote sounded waspish. “In case you don’t know, you’re running the show now. And, dear leader, we need you.”
“Like you need a loathsome disease. I talked to the birdman. What else is new?”
“God, don’t you even own a radio?”
“I’ll get one when they work the bugs out.”
“Well, it’s been on the air for an hour. Harvey Lowell got it. He is oh, so dead.”
“Lowell…”
“The private man who was looking for Stover and the loot. Wake up.”
“Yeah. I got it. Where, how and why, if you know?”
“Down at Stover’s farm. He was beat about the head and shoulders with a blunt instrument, and roughly within the past twelve hours. Why, I dunno. If you want to make the scene, it’s untouched so far. Murrell is there fending the local gendarmerie off.”
“The scene of the crime always leaves me dumbfounded, but I might as well run down. I’ll try not to get in the way.”
“Oh, sure.” He heard Foote sigh. “You’re going to have a low idea of us, but I might as well tell you now. We had a couple of hot things going and couldn’t tie three men up in watching that place.”
“That I know. If you had a man on it, Lowell wouldn’t have gotten in there and been taken dead.”
“That’s not all. There’s something real interesting sitting in the barn.”
“Do I guess or do you enjoy punishing yourself?”
“It’s real pretty, that Pierce. Gloat, gloat, gloat”
“You remind me of a cartoon I saw once.”
“Yeah?”
“Odd-looking object in pastoral scene. Title—A Gloat in a Field of l-Told-You-So’s.”
The sound that came from the receiver was inhuman.
Chapter 12
Harvey Lowell had gone down fighting, McHugh decided as he studied the ex-cop’s body. The nose had been smashed, the lips split and four teeth knocked out. The knuckles of his left hand were broken, with a high, narrow ridge across them. McHugh thought he had died when the left side of his head was caved in; no man could possibly live with a two-inch dent above the ear. There was a mousy-looking deputy coroner saying things about a skull fracture.
McHugh ignored him and asked Murrell, “Anything hot, like a signed confession?”
“Nah! All we’ve done is stand around with our fingers up our noses waiting for you. The sheriff’s men are checking the area to see if they can turn up anyone who saw comings and goings. Usual routine, and it probably won’t turn up a thing. All these farms around here are set way back from the road just like this one. You’re in charge—what do you think we should do?”
“Bury the poor bastard,” McHugh growled. “How the hell should I know? I’m not a cop.”
“Well, we agree on something.”
“But he was,” McHugh said with a nod toward the body. “He knew what the hell he was looking for. I guess he found it and got scragged.”
“Well, do we tell them to go ahead and move him?”
“Yeah. But just a minute.” McHugh walked around the body. It lay roughly in the center of the living room floor, and the room was big, as they are in many old California ranch houses. There were a few chairs, a library table and a couch, all ranged along the walls. There was enough space in the uncarpeted center of the room to hold a barn dance. No way to tell if the fight had begun in this room or had started elsewhere and ended here. There was no doubt about the ending, though. Lowell had bled heavily from the nose and mouth, and he lay in a reddish-brown pool. He wore an unpressed tweed suit of a green-gray shade, what had been a white sport shirt and crepe-soled shoes. There was something obscene in the way the late afternoon sun shone through the window and reflected on his bald head.
McHugh squatted down for a closer look at some smudges on the jacket and passed his fingers over them lightly. They felt like grease. He opened the jacket and went through the pockets.
“We went over him already,” a deputy sheriff said. “His stuff is on the table there.”
“Anything that looks like it wasn’t his?” McHugh asked.
“An old book. Owner’s manual for a car. There’s stuff like that all through the house. He could have picked it up, or might even have brought it with him.”
McHugh went to the table. There were the usual personal effects—a comb, wallet, keys, card case, mechanical pencil and two ball-point pens, a small address book and leather-backed loose-leaf notebook. He went through the address book without seeing anything significant. Lowell had made his notes in what looked like, a combination of shorthand and code. McHugh put the notebook aside for future consideration.
Blood had stained the edges of the owner’s manual. McHugh flipped it open and saw that it gave specifications and operating instructions for eight-cylinder Pierce-Arrow cars built in 1934. The name Fred Watkins and a San Francisco address and phone number had been written across the flyleaf. He compared the writing with that in Lowell’s address book and decided they were identical.
He gave the book to a deputy. “Radio your base station and have them-call this-guy. Find out if he owns this book and let Lowell take it or what. If he dummies up, call the FBI in San Fran and have him grabbed.”
“Yessir.” The door slammed as the deputy went to his patrol car.
“Any sign of forced entry at any of the buildings?” McHugh asked.
“None,” somebody replied.
“So how’d Lowell get in?”
“Back door was unlocked when we got here. Maybe he found it the same way,” Murrell said.
“Well, how long ago did he get it?” McHugh asked the deputy coroner.
“The sooner you let me cut him up the sooner I’ll know.”
“Guess.”
“I don’t like to.” The mousy man shrugged and blinked his little eyes. “Ten hours, anyway. Could be fourteen.”
“Nice and scientific,” McHugh growled.
“Autopsies are nice and scientific,” the coroner’s man retorted. “Maybe if you’d let us go ahead and do one, you’d find out what you want to know. Who the hell are you, anyway?”
“Just a jerk that got in the middle of something,” McHugh said absently. His eyes were on the smears of grease on Lowell’s clothing, and he looked speculatively out the window at the big barn. He stooped beside the body, rolled the stiffening form partly on its side and peered at the back. There was more dirt or grime worked into the clothes, but it was lighter than the smears on the front. He ran his fingers over it and muttered, “Dirt. Just dirt.”
The door banged, and the deputy who’d been sent to use the radio said, “They got Watkins. He lent Lowell the book, all right. Two, three days ago.”
“Anything else?”
“Just that he said he didn’t know Lowell. The guy apparently found him through a classic car club and asked for the loan of the book. Watkins said sure, as long as he got it back.”
McHugh was growing weary of car collectors, particularly those addicted to Pierce-Arrows. “This Watkins a car nut, too?”
“He says no. He does own a Pierce, and he gets a couple offers a year.”
“Okay. Thanks.” McHugh took the manual from the deputy and leafed through it. One page near the center was ridged, as if the book had been doubled back on its binding. There was nothing on the page except a stripped-down chassis, photographed from above, with various components identified by number.
He studied it carefully, mentally comparing the pictured machine with the jumble of parts of the one Stover had dismantled in Seaside. Transmission. Steering gear. Axles. Wheels. Frame rails. Tubular cross members. Engine…
“Far as I’m concerned you can wrap it up in here,” he told the others. To Murrell he said, “Why don’t we go take a look at that beautiful beastie?”
The converted barn looked about as it had in the teevee movie. McHugh found a switch, and strong lights flooded the interior, bounced off chromed headlights and bumpers and were reflected in rich paint jobs on half a dozen restored cars. The Pierce was parked nearest the big double doors, headed out. He circled it, noting the near-ivory paint job that looked a foot deep, the softness of the red leather upholstery, the burnished adjustment knobs on the two windshields.
“Dam thing even smells new,” he muttered as he stooped and peered beneath the wide running boards. He looked around, saw a big floor jack, got it and pumped the rear end of the car off the ground. Shoving a couple of horses under it, he scouted up a creeper board, kicked it across the floor and lay down. He pulled himself under the car and inspected it inch by inch with the help of a borrowed flashlight.
“Ballpeen hammer, somebody,” he said.
A hammer was handed down. McHugh swung it lightly against various parts of the chassis, listening to the sound as it rang against the varying thicknesses of metal. Satisfied, he scooted himself out from under, brushed at his clothes and said, “You can let her down now. Murrell, want a ride back to the city?”
Murrell fell into step beside him, and they went to the car. “Mind letting me in on the secret?”
“What secret?” McHugh said innocently.
“You beat on that ironmongery and came out grinning like a Chessy cat,” Murrell groused as they drove from the farm. “I know that grin. It means you’ve figured something nobody else thought of.”
“Could be. Could be too that it’s wrong as hell.” McHugh switched the headlights on.
“Can’t afford to be wrong at all when you pin a murder on somebody.”
“Not talking about murder,” McHugh said, swinging the car left onto the Skyline.
“I thought,” Murrell said irritably, “that you came down to look into a murder. If you didn’t, a lot of guys wasted a lot of time today waiting on you.”
“A secondary thing,” McHugh said. “Let the local cops worry about the kill. We’re looking for close to half a million in gold.”
“So you lay on your duff under an old heap and bang it with a hammer.”
“Didn’t hit it rich, either,” McHugh said tolerantly. “If I’m right, we will before the night’s out.”
“Who’s ‘we’?” Murrell demanded.
“All us Federal types,” McHugh said. “And for God’s sake stop fidgeting. I’m not out to steal anybody’s curtain calls. I’m not even allowed to get my name in the papers, which you know. I want just one thing out of this.”
“There’s always a gimmick.”
“No gimmick. I want Johnny Stover. Alone. Not for very long.”
“I know that tone of voice. We can’t let you do it, McHugh.”
“Do what?”
Murrell turned on the seat and eyed McHugh’s heavy profile. “Kill the guy. Even if you have reasons.”
“He won’t’ die,” McHugh said grimly. “He’ll just wish he could.”
The car sped north, fighting the oncoming mass of homeward-bound commuters.
“You’re sure you’re right about this, honey?”
Loris halted in the corridor outside Nadine’s new apartment. “I’m sure, McHugh, and I’ve found out some more. Nadine cashed roughly six thousand in bonds today and bought traveler’s checks.”
“Too bad,” McHugh muttered. He leaned on the bell.
“Who is it?” Her voice was muffled by the wall.
“Me, honey,” Loris called.
The door opened. The smile on Nadine’s delicate face froze when she saw McHugh. He watched her throat move as she swallowed convulsively. “Hi, McHugh,” she managed to say.
“Hi, babydoll.” McHugh grinned, pushed his way into the apartment and reached out with a big hand to rumple her hair.
A door slammed. Feet pounded in running steps. There was a yell that ended abruptly, followed by a solid thumping sound that was not repeated. A door opened.
“Get him, Benny?” McHugh called.
“Like it was rehearsed.” Benny came from the rear of the apartment, walking heavily.
He was dragging Johnny Stover behind him, coat collar held firmly in Benny’s right fist. Stover groaned and tried to get his feet under him.
“Drop him,” McHugh ordered.
Stover was unceremoniously dumped on the living room carpet. He rolled, got to his knees, then to his feet, and he fingered the back of his skull. He seemed to be having trouble focusing his eyes.
Nadine was staring from the lean blond man with the sharp profile to McHugh and back again. She hesitated, then headed for Stover, saying angrily, “McHugh, just what do you think—”
Loris caught her and yanked her around. “You shut up!”
Loris shook her until Nadine’s head was a blur. “I said shut up. You started this party, little sister. Now it’s McHugh’s turn to have a good time. Come on!”
She pulled Nadine to a closet, yanked the door open and grabbed the first garment her hand touched. It was a mink jacket. Nadine looked from it to the plum-colored sweater and snug black Capri pants she wore and said, “Loris! I can’t—”
“Listen—just what the hell—“ Stover began.
Without taking aim, McHugh cuffed him. Stover cartwheeled over the back of a sofa and collided with the wall behind it. He lay flat and shook his head.
“Honey, get her out of here,” McHugh said curtly. “Before I say things I’ll regret later.”
Nadine’s eyes flared, wide and angry. “McHugh…”
“Out!”
“Come with me, Nadine,” Loris said. Her voice was almost tender. “I know you’ve got troubles. We’ll talk about them down in the car.”
As the door was closing behind them, Nadine looked back with tear-moist eyes and said shrilly, “Johnny…”
The door closed solidly. Johnny Stover staggered to the sofa and collapsed on it. He rubbed his head gingerly and poured hate at McHugh through gray eyes that were narrowed to slits.
“Want me to stick around, boss?” Benny asked, with a glance at Stover. “He’s docile enough.”
McHugh was methodically removing his jacket and shirt. “Wait outside. I want no witnesses.”
Benny winked and went out. McHugh’s thick biceps rippled in the overhead light as he went for Johnny Stover. He grabbed Stover by the lapels of his corduroy jacket, yanked him upright, spun him around and backed him against a heavy table that was against the wall. The table top was at the level of Stover’s hips.
McHugh rammed his right leg hard between Stover’s, pinning him. With almost lazy motions of his hands he began to slap Stover’s face: Stover tried to bring his hands up to protect himself, and McHugh chopped him hard between neck and shoulders, then rammed his rigid thumbs into Stover’s armpits.
Stover screamed then, a scream that was squashed by the calloused hand that bounced off his mouth. His lips broke open, and blood flowed.
“Mac—for God’s sake!” he pleaded.
“Shut up!” McHugh continued to use his open hands until Stover’s head rolled loosely and his full weight slumped against McHugh. McHugh let him drop, looked around for the bathroom, found it and turned the shower spray on cold in the tub. He dragged Stover to it and dumped him in, then sat on the commode waiting for him to revive.
