McHugh, page 3
“In time. Whatever it is must be small, probably a paper. The guy who tossed the joint ripped pictures off the walls.”
“I’m slipping. I should have recognized your voice right off when you called here. Took me two or three minutes to wake up.” He fixed McHugh with a steady eye. “You take anything from that apartment?”
“Nope. I went there to talk with Nadine, saw the stiff and got out quick.”
“We know. You were in there eleven minutes in all.”
McHugh took his time getting a cigarette going. “Now that’s something I wondered about. Judging from the paper, you had a stake-out. You knew just when Nuss went in.”
“Wasn’t ours.” Foote referred to a typewritten report. “The missle outfit Stover was or is working for wants him pretty bad. They sent one of their security officers, a Harvey Lowell, out to look around. Now, Stover’s been having some money trouble lately. He’s got three or four girls around town, but this Nadine is the only one who could come up with a big hunk of cash in a hurry. Lowell took a chance that if Johnny Stover showed anywhere, it would be at Nadine’s pad, so he was sitting there. He saw Nuss go in but didn’t have any way of knowing where he was headed for. Likewise, he clocked you in and out.”
“Nadine left about ten-thirty,” McHugh said.
“He didn’t see her go. The alley behind the place where the garages are open on the next block over. We presume she went out that way. Likewise, that the killer went in the same way. The rear door to the building is locked all the time, but a Boy Scout would have it open in half a minute.”
“Uh-huh.” McHugh sucked on his cigarette. “What kind of money troubles does Stover have?”
“From what we know so far, between eight and nine thousand in bar and restaurant and hotel bills from here to L.A. Some of them pretty old. Frank Fenton, our gambler-about-town, is supposed to be holding seventeen grand in markers. We had a talk with him a couple of hours ago.”
“Fenton, huh? What’s his story?”
“He knows nothing. Admits Stover is into him but says he’s not worried about it, that Stover has always managed to come up with cash before.”
“It won’t be Nadine Andersen’s cash. You can tell Fenton that,” McHugh said grimly.
“That’s right. Be sure it stays in the family.”
McHugh reached across the desk and grabbed the front of Foote’s shirt. “A younger man would have no teeth at this point,” he said softly. “You’re not too old to spank.”
Foote wiggled loose. He inspected the place where a button had been. “Okay, okay. Just joking.”
“Forget the jokes. Tell your story.”
“Yeah. Well, there isn’t too much more. We know Stover needs money, and we know he’s needed it before and dug it up somewhere. We’d like to know where.” He wrote on a pad of paper, tore the sheet off and gave it to McHugh. “These are the broads he’s had more than one or two dates with in the past few months. We’re checking them out now. No reports yet.”
McHugh shook his head. “Makes me wonder what some people use for brains. Here’s a man who’s a chaser and needs dough. Presumably he’ll do certain things to get women and money. And yet he’s cleared for work on classified defense projects.”
“Don’t cry to me,” Foote said testily. “I never heard of the bum until he ducked out. He was a boy genius or something like that. Finished college at twenty, and I guess he looked like an all-American then. He went with a small electronics outfit that was doing some work for us. Came up with a couple of ideas that were patentable. Nineteen months ago we looked him over again and didn’t like what we saw. It wasn’t enough to can him, but we cut his clearance from ‘secret’ to ‘classified material.’ Incidentally, that’s been revoked, at least for the time.”
“The horse is gone already,” McHugh said curtly.
“Maybe not. According to the directors of the project he’s been on the past few months, Stover doesn’t know what he’s working on. They give him a set of specifications to meet, and he designs an electrical apparatus which will perform certain functions under certain conditions. He’d have no way of knowing what it might be used in.”
“Yeah?” McHugh curled his lip.
“That’s what they tell us.”
“I’ve got a hunch they better be right.” McHugh stood. “Hey! I don’t care how much suction you’ve got with Defense,” Foote said quickly. “I still want to talk with the Andersen girl.”
“Sure. Let you know in a couple of hours.” McHugh left without listening to what Foote was trying to say.
“This thing is a stinker,” Inspector Kline said. “You don’t help it much, McHugh.”
McHugh stared past the detective’s head at one of the Hall of Justice walls. He wondered why public buildings always managed to create a grim atmosphere. “The girl knows nothing.”
“I’d like to decide that for myself.” Kline stared at McHugh through the bottom half of his bifocals and crushed a cigarette in an ashtray that McHugh considered a particularly ugly example of ironmongery. “I don’t claim she has any guilty knowledge. From what we’ve been able to learn, she’s a girl with class. The only person of doubtful reputation she seems to associate with is yourself. But for some reason, a hood got killed in her apartment. You say she got a decoy call a short time before it happened. Obviously, there is or was something in that place that more than one person had an interest in. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to want to ask her a few questions.”
“How about tomorrow?” McHugh said.
“Tomorrow, hell,” Kline retorted. “There’s a killer running around loose, and you expect me to sit here and not talk to a person who might have good information for us because it might upset her? Listen, McHugh—”
“I don’t care if she’s upset. I do care if she gets knocked off. This is a gang kill,” McHugh interrupted. “Make you a deal. You turn up Johnny Stover and I’ll have Nadine here in half an hour.”
“Stover,” Kline growled. “You want him, the FBI wants him and you’re fighting each other to see who gets him first. I’d like to have a few hours with him, too, just on general principles.”
McHugh raised an eyebrow. “You suggesting Stover is your boy?”
“Nuts! The FBI says he’s out of town, and they’re not often wrong. According to Foote, you got in this thing only because he’s tied up with the Andersen girl. But of all her steady associates, he’s the only one who’s done anything out of the ordinary lately. And because he’s some kind of precious duck to Washington, the San Francisco peedee is supposed to lay off.” He scraped a wooden match on the underside of his desk and got a cigarette going. “I’ve about decided to hell with it.”
“Meaning?” McHugh said in a mild voice.
“I can toss you in for obstructing justice. Concealing a potential witness. Failing to report a crime. Harboring—”
“I reported the crime. Now, let’s not talk about it any more because you know you won’t do anything. I don’t have to go into why you won’t.” McHugh crossed his legs.
Kline shrugged. “Maybe not this time. So why don’t you just go away? If you do, I might be able to close the case in spite of you.”
“Sure. Just tell me what you found in the apartment.”
“You were there.”
“I didn’t stick around to look for fingerprints or calling cards.”
Kline sighed. “The prints we found mean nothing. Some of yours, some of the dead guy’s on the stuff that was torn up. Nadine Andersen’s and Loris Andersen’s. Nadine’s and the stiffs were the only fresh ones. The inside doorknob had been wiped off.”
“None of Stover’s?”
“We found a few that could be his, but they’re old. Three or four weeks old, probably.”
“Knife clean?”
“Yeah. Wooden handle, and nothing on the blade. Landlord said it’s one of the set that belongs in the apartment. In other words, we got nothing. Nothing but a big desire to talk to the lady that lives in the joint.”
McHugh got up, stretched. “Sounds reasonable. Hang on a couple more hours. I’ll call you.”
The expression on Kline’s face as McHugh left said he didn’t believe it.
McHugh made no attempt to lose the black sedan that followed him from the Hall of Justice to his apartment. An identical car was parked a hundred yards from the building.
He took his time picking out clothes from Loris’ closet and neatly folded some of his own into a large cowhide traveling bag. He telephoned a women’s apparel shop where Nadine was known and placed an order. The clerk promised to have it ready for pickup within half an hour. Then McHugh called Inspector Kline.
“Nadine Andersen will walk into your office inside of three hours if you give a little,” McHugh said.
“Yeah?” Kline said doubtfully.
“Pull the tail off me and the stake-out off the apartment. When you’re through talking to her, see she gets into a cab—and don’t follow it.”
“When I’m through talking to her, there’s a chance I might want to lock the little darling up. No deal.”
McHugh glowered at the phone. “I don’t much care if you do lock her up, but I don’t think you will. But I don’t want her followed to where I’ve got her stashed, and I’ sure don’t want any word of where it is to leak to the papers. Fair enough?”
“There’s usually a gimmick.”
“No gimmick,” McHugh retorted. “Hell, I’m giving you the girl. I just want you to turn her loose under certain conditions.”
“Suppose we decide she needs police protection. What then?”
“Then keep her in protective custody. Don’t let her walk around and get dead.” McHugh hung up.
He mixed a tall bourbon and soda at the small bar in the kitchen and watched the street below from a living room window. In a few minutes the two police cars rolled away. He sipped the drink, spun the ice cubes with the tip of his finger and decided it was time to check in. He took a key from his pocket, unlocked a small cabinet and lifted out the telephone that was inside.
The phone had a scrambler attachment and was on an open line to Washington. “McHugh.” he said when the message center operator came on. “General Harts, please.”
The general was a brigadier with a voice that sounded like it came from the depths of an ice cave. McHugh could picture him in the stark, windowless room in the depths of the Pentagon as he said, “Harts here. Report, McHugh.”
“No lead yet to Stover. Known hoodlum dead at the hands of a party unknown. I’m looking.”
“The assignment’s canceled. Turn over whatever you may have to the FBI.”
McHugh took the phone from his ear and stared at it in amazement. Discipline struggled with his natural inclination to think for himself.
“Yes sir!” he snapped. He took tune to light a cigarette. “May I ask why?”
“It shouldn’t be necessary,” Harts said.
“Just to be sure there are no misunderstandings, General. In the past my judgment’s been enough reason for the department to back me up.”
“McHugh, I…” He heard Harts sigh. “I know that. But this just isn’t our case and you know it Stover just happens to be a friend of a Friend as far as you’re concerned. His disappearance is clearly a matter of internal security, and he’s J. Edgar’s baby. As for the killing, whatever it amounts to, it’s the concern of the local polices. I’ve had hell raised with me because you’re hiding a witness and going around with a thumb to your nose. We can’t justify it, so we can’t have it Agreed?”
McHugh lowered himself into a chair. He told himself that he should not be surprised. What Harts said was true; each federal agency, fearful of being gobbled up in whole or part by another, jealously guards its field of operation. He was out of his field.
“Agreed, sir,” he said finally. “I have a little more than four months’ leave due. If you’ll refer to my final report on the last assignment, you’ll see I requested that it be granted, effective three days ago.”
There was an uncomfortable silence. “I haven’t read your report in full,” Harts said finally. “You anticipated the situation.”
“I did. I thought we might tough it out but, if we can’t I’ll take the time off.”
“There’ll be a flap,” Harts said. “Might as well be over you as anything else. Leave’s granted.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Don’t get in a jam, McHugh. You’re on your own. A civilian.”
“Naturally,” McHugh replied. “Good-by, sir.”
He cradled the phone and locked it away. He felt only mild annoyance at his change of status. He sipped his drink thoughtfully and experienced a tiny bit of satisfaction.
As a civilian, he would be acting for himself and not for the Federal government. He would be able to do whatever he felt should be done, as long as he was willing to stand the consequences.
He considered a potential list of things to be done.
At the top was the matter of finding Johnny Stover and beating the pure hell out of him.
Chapter 3
Nadine took a taxi to the Hall of Justice. McHugh followed in the station wagon, parked it in the official lot and went in with her. Jim Murrell was in Inspector Syd Kline’s office. He smiled broadly at McHugh.
“Nice of you to bring her in, McHugh. You can wait outside,” Murrell said.
“I’ll sit in,” McHugh replied.
“You’ll sit out,” Murrell said. “If you don’t believe me, call your boss. You’re off this one.”
Nadine looked nervously at the two men. McHugh winked. “Miss Andersen wants her attorney present.”
“So call him when you go out the door,” Kline said. “But please go out the door. I mean it, McHugh.”
“Naturally. I’ve already had the word. I’ve also been a member of the bar thirteen years. I’m representing Miss Andersen. Let’s get on with it.”
Kline looked hopefully at Murrell. Murrell shook his head, sadly. “It’s true, Syd.”
“I knew there’d be a gimmick,” Kline growled. He picked up a microphone, switched a tape recorder on and spoke rapidly. “Investigation of Gordo Nuss homicide. Parties present Inspector Kline, FBI Agent James Murrell, Miss Nadine Andersen and her legal counsel, Attorney McHugh. Interrogation of Miss Andersen follows…”
It was late afternoon when they left Kline and Murrell had no more information when they ended than they had had when the session began.
McHugh was satisfied that Nadine knew nothing about the dead man or where Johnny Stover was. He had also picked up several leads from the investigators’ questions. He put Nadine in a cab, gave it a three-block start and followed in the station wagon. There was no indication that they were being trailed. When the cab was seven blocks from the motel, McHugh passed it and pulled into the curb. The taxi stopped at the next corner, and Nadine walked back, got into the car and sank back against the seat.
“Do we have to be so dam tricky?” There were taut lines at the corners of her mouth as she spoke.
McHugh pulled into the line of traffic, chewing the end of a slender cigar. “There were some bad names brought up. Friend Johnny knows a lot of trouble guys, from the sound of it. They want him, and they must want him a lot to rip your place up for some lead to where he’s gone.”
Hands moving jerkily, she took a cigarette from her purse, put it between her lips and lit it with the dashboard lighter. “McHugh—I just don’t understand it. Johnny never mentioned any of those people. I was watching your face, and I know you know them, but I…”
“Uh-huh, little sister,” McHugh replied. “That’s what bothers me a little. You know I don’t think much of your man. To me, he’s just out for all he can get from everybody he can get to. But, for some reason, in the past couple of months a bunch of hoods have taken an interest in him. Kline and Murrell threw a lot of names at you, but only one of them means anything. Dexter Orland.”
He pulled into a parking lot beside a liquor store. “McHugh, I never heard of the man,” she said.
He stopped the motor. “You were just a baby and I was barely in high school when he went out of circulation. In the middle Thirties, Dexter Orland was Mr. Rackets in Southern California. This was a wide-open state in those days. Slot machines, punchboards, girls, gambling ships, a bookie on every corner. Orland was a tall dog until he got in a beef and drew a murder second bit. Up to a couple of years ago, he was in Folsom. Now he’s out, and he’s kept his nose clean as far as the parole board is concerned.”
“But, McHugh, why—”
“Yeah. Why?” McHugh got out of the car. He went into the liquor store and bought what he considered essentials. The bottles filled a large shopping bag, which he put behind the seat of the car. He drove out of the lot.
Orland’s broke,” he said flatly. “The Treasury boys saw to that. They moved in, took his house, his cars, dug up a bunch of safety deposit boxes and other places where he’d ratholed money. But he still manages to live big, supposedly on loans. Only who’d lend him money, and why?”
“Good lord, McHugh, I don’t know!”
He chuckled. “Sure you don’t. And we don’t really care. All we’re interested in is turning your man up.”
“I’m not…She chewed her lip. “McHugh, I’m not sure now I want to go any further with this. I’m not exactly washing my hands of Johnny, but it might be better to wait. If he needs me, he’ll manage to let me know.”
They were turning into the motel drive. McHugh parked and cut the engine. He lifted the bottles out and said, “Little sister, I don’t care what Johnny Stover might need. I do care about a man getting killed in your apartment.”
She shut her eyes tight, and he saw the knuckles of her clasped hands whiten in her lap. She was small and beautiful and frightened—frightened because she had been confronted by violence and simply could not comprehend it. Nadine was one of the few truly gentle persons McHugh had ever encountered. Gentle, he thought, but gentleness is not weakness; it often requires great strength.
