McHugh, page 4
“Come on,” he said. “I’ll take you girls to dinner and prowl around some later. Got a key to Johnny’s place in the city?”
She flushed and reached into her purse. “Yes. Here.”
“I’ll throw it away when I’m through.”
The nod of her head was barely perceptible. They went into the motel.
McHugh stood for a moment just inside the door of Stover’s apartment, sensing that there was little of the man himself in it now. A fleeting glance told him that a cleaning woman had made at least one visit since Stover had disappeared. Ashtrays had been polished clean and placed on their tables with precision, and only the thinnest film of dust coated the furnishings.
The apartment house was a rambling affair of tinted concrete and glass, with a façade of Carmel stone. It had evidently been designed with efficiency and privacy in mind. There was a parking garage for tenants in the basement, with an automatic elevator from there to the seven upper floors. Half a dozen entrances served the building on street level.
Stover’s apartment had one bedroom, but had originally been built for two. McHugh moved silently through the rooms with their sleek modern furniture. The living room had a small, hooded fireplace with raised hearth. It was flanked by a color teevee console and an expensive-looking hi-fi. There were watercolor sketches on the walls, which were paneled in combed plywood. McHugh moved on to the bedroom. The bed was immense. McHugh inspected the headboard and decided Stover did much more than sleep in the bed. He identified remote controls for the phonograph and a smaller teevee set in the facing wall, a shortwave radio, a miniature icebox and bar. He conceded it was an excellent play pen. He began to search the room.
The large chest of drawers held only clothing, all placed neatly, and much in its original wrappers. A wardrobe closet that took up an entire wall yielded nothing but more clothes. Suits from Rogers Peet in Boston, silk shirts, handmade boots and shoes. A crash helmet and racing goggles were on a shelf, and several pale blue coveralls were folded beside them.
McHugh went on to what had been the second bedroom. He found it had been converted into a library and study. He opened the glass-fronted bookcases and inspected the titles. Many were technical works on electronics, physics and other fields of science. They appeared to have been read extensively. The rest dealt with automobiles and spanned half a century.
He turned his attention to a small desk and a bank of filing cabinets. The locks yielded quickly to a pick.
The desk yielded little of interest. There was a phone number index, but he had no way of knowing which if any of the numbers might have any significance. He slipped it into a pocket for future reference.
One file drawer, labeled Projects—Patents, was bare. McHugh guessed the FBI had emptied it. He went on to the others. Another held financial records going back over a period of years. They had been prepared by a public accountant, and indicated that Johnny Stover enjoyed a five-figure income.
The last cabinet was stuffed with manila folders. McHugh went through them quickly and decided old cars were as much a business with Stover as a hobby. There were nearly two dozen. Each minutely detailed the cost of restoring a car in labor and material, and there were photos of old Fords, Ruxtons, Stanley Steamers, Marmons, Cords and other makes long vanished. McHugh whistled at the margin of profit when he saw that a 1911 T-model Ford had been bought for $87.50 and eventually sold for $3,000, with a Detroit Electric thrown in.
The lastest folder was on the Pierce Stover had been driving when he disappeared. There were no pictures this time, but a copy of the magazine layout was included. So were lists of parts replaced and various items of labor. One showed better than four hundred dollars had been spent on a paint job. Stover had, according to the records, originally paid three hundred dollars when he bought the car from a Gabrielle Risdon.
The last sheet of paper in the folder listed names, telephone numbers and varying amounts of money. McHugh guessed it was a list of prospective buyers. He started to replace the folder, then noticed that there was no figure after one name. Bill Brixey. He considered the name, found something vaguely familiar in it. He found a piece of paper and copied the list. He flipped through the magazine pages again, studying the photo layout.
One showed a three-quarter view of the phaeton with a dark-haired, laughing girl behind the wheel. There was a professional brightness to her smile, and then McHugh recognized her.
He abhorred television, but that face had been on the teevee screen in The Door late at night. The girl was Gabrielle Risdon. She did a late-evening interview show on a local channel—she dug up off-beat personalities five nights a week and picked their brains. McHugh remembered it as a so-so sort of thing, but at least better than late, late movies. He wondered what such a girl could have wanted with such an immense beast of a car and decided to find out. He looked up the television station in the phone book.
“Miss Risdon is in the building, but she can’t take any phone calls now,” the switchboard operator told him. “She’ll be in rehearsal at least another hour.”
“This is a police matter,” McHugh said. “I could come down there and talk to her, but that might mean a longer delay.”
“Hold on, please. I’ll see what I can do.” He waited a moment while the operator went off the line. Then a different voice was saying, “Miss Risdon speaking. What’s the trouble?”
“My name is McHugh. I’m investigating the disappearance of a man.”
“The few I have are all making muster, Mr. McHugh.” There was a trace of a chuckle with the words.
“Having seen your show, I can believe that Maybe you can’t help at all in this one, but my man was driving a car you sold him when he dropped out of sight A Johnny Stover.”
There was a moment of silence. When the girl spoke again, her words were crisp. “If and when you find Mr. Stover, do me a favor. Wring his neck.”
“You don’t like him?”
“Would you like someone who cost you almost two thousand dollars for camera work and a lot of headaches setting up a show and then canceled out?”
“Not very much. Tell me.”
“I haven’t time, Mr. McHugh. I’m having a horrible rehearsal. It’s worse than female disorders.”
“Give it to me in one line. Then I’d like to talk to you after your show tonight.”
He heard her sigh. “All right. That old Pierce wasn’t much when I sold it. I delivered it to Stover’s place near Half Moon and saw some of the cars he’d fixed up. Real jewels. I had the insane idea of using him and his insane hobby as a feature on the show. We shot a lot of film and had the script all worked up, and he didn’t make it.”
“I see. No explanation?”
“Nothing. Just a phone call a week ago. With nine hours to air time. Lord!”
“A week ago?” McHugh asked sharply. “You’re sure it was only that long?”
“There’s a heavy black ring around the date on my calendar.” He heard her say something away from the phone, then, “I’m sorry, but I can’t talk any more now. You can come by the studio later. Okay?”
“Sure. I’d like to see that film.”
“You can look. I’m saving that can. If you find Stover, bring him in and I’ll let you watch me beat his head flat with it. ‘By.”
McHugh thought a moment, then dialed the number of a saloon and pool hall in the Mission District. When the bartender answered he asked, “Pomper there?”
“Hold it. I’ll yell for him.”
McHugh waited. Pomper was a night creature of the city, a man who somehow managed to know what was going on at almost any hour in its darker fringes, a man with no teeth but good ears. He lived on whatever he made racking balls in the pool hall and swamping out.
“Yeah…hi…this Pomper.”
“McHugh, Pom. Got a dime?”
“Huh?”
“If you don’t, borrow one and call me right back from an outside phone.” He read the number off Stover’s phone. “Got that?”
“Sure, Mac. Won’t be a minute.”
McHugh replaced the phone. He went into the small kitchen, found a bottle of Scotch in a cabinet and took it to the study as the phone rang. He lifted it and said, “Yeah?”
“Yeah what? You want me to call and all you say is yeah?”
McHugh drank from the bottle, swallowed hard and grinned. “Okay, Pom. Know a Bill Brixey?”
“Sure. Everybody knows Willie Waddle.”
“I don’t. And that’s not the name.”
“Yeah, it is too. Bill Brixey. Call him Willie Waddle cause he walks like a goddam duck. Not so he can hear, though. He don’t like it much.”
“Okay, Pom. What about Willie? Who is he and what’s he do?”
There was a smack of toothless gums. “Bagman and juicer. Don’t work steady for any one outfit. A guy got trouble at the Hall he gets Willie Waddle to go see about squarin’ it, or, if there’s any beefs about territories, say, Willie gets the guys together an’ maybe it gets settled without busted heads. You know.”
“Uh-huh.” McHugh had Bill Brixey placed now—a heavy-rumped ambulatory buffer state between elements in conflict. “Know if he happens to have an interest in old cars, like collector’s items?”
Pomper cackled. “Willie don’t even own a car. I hear he takes interest in young carhops.”
“Ever hear of him being interested in a guy named Stover? Johnny Stover?”
“Nah. I know Johnny. Know who he is, anyway. He had a chorus pony up in the Settlement for a while till she got taken down with a duck in the oven. Had to go over to Oakland to get it knocked.”
“Willie wouldn’t have made the arrangements?”
“Nah! Any broad stupid enough to lay there an’ worry instead of get up an’ wash, Willie wants no part of. Don’t get me wrong, McHugh. Anything Willie does, he’s all legal. So he can do so much.”
McHugh sighed and swigged at the bottle again. He was thinking it was time to eat. All of three hours had passed since he’d devoured a three-pound lobster. “Okay. But there’s some tieup between Will and Stover, because Stover had his name and phone number written down. Ask around.”
“Hell, McHugh, why me? You wanta know, why don’-cha just call Willie? He’s in the book.”
“Willie might not want to say.” McHugh got a cigarette burning. “Wander by The Door. Tell the barman I said give you twenty bucks for expenses.”
“You got a story, if I think it up myself. Call me here, huh?”
“Sure, Pomper.”
McHugh hung up. He thought the situation over and decided he was approaching the borderline between being irritated and being damned mad. General Harts undoubtedly had work for him to do, and the general was undoubtedly catching hell for granting him leave.
He doubted Johnny Stover’s disappearance was the result of anything beyond his own doing. Stover had managed to get his tail in somebody’s gate and was lying low.
Well, Stover had his tail in a second gate. McHugh’s.
Carrying the bottle, with the level of its contents drastically lower, McHugh moved restlessly through the apartment again, and then he found the stack of unopened mail. It had been lying in plain view on the hi-fi set He grabbed the envelopes, flipped through them quickly. Without hesitation, he went into the kitchen, hunted up a kettle, ran a small amount of water into and put it on the electric stove.
While he waited for the steam to begin, he pried ice cubes from the refrigerator, found a tumbler and built a stiff drink.
The teakettle began to whistle. So did McHugh.
Chapter 4
One at a time, he steamed the letters open. Three he quickly put aside. They were from car hobbyists. One was interested in looking at the Pierce, and the other two wanted to sell Stover cars. Another was from a vending machine firm and concerned design changes in a model on which Stover was evidently designing the electrical apparatus. There were bills from an exclusive men’s clothing store and a liquor store, both with Please typed in red letters across them. The last two were a bank statement and the monthly invoices from a gasoline credit card.
McHugh counted twenty-three canceled checks. The last balance showed nearly four thousand dollars in the account. He checked the dates. All but one had been written before Stover left San Francisco. The last one was dated a day after that and was made out to a Tony Tomasini in the amount of one hundred dollars.
He flipped it over and studied the endorsements on the back. Tomasini, whoever he was, had cashed it in a bar in Marina. McHugh knew the place—a small town huddled next to Fort Ord on the shore of Monterey Bay. He even knew the bar, Mortimer’s—a rambling frame place with an attached motel and liquor store. A soldier’s bar, a fun spot for the doggies on payday. He had been in it a few times when he had been loaned out to Army Intelligence.
Foote and Murrell had claimed there was nothing to indicate Stover had ever reached Monterey. Maybe not, but an unknown quantity named Tony Tomasini had made it to Marina with a hundred-dollar check of Stover’s.
McHugh went on to the credit card invoices. The most recent one was billed from Salinas, and the date was the same as that on Tomasini’s check. It indicated Stover had bought two recapped tires costing twenty-three dollars each, plus tax. McHugh slipped the card into his pocket and decided a trip to Monterey County would be in order.
He left the envelopes on the kitchen table, without bothering to reseal them.
He was about to leave the apartment when an eggbald man came through the door and pointed a large revolver at his belt buckle. McHugh stood still and lifted his hands shoulder-high.
“That’s nice,” the man said. “We wouldn’t want any trouble.”
“Lord, no,” McHugh said.
The man came farther into the room, kicking the door shut behind him, and looked hard at McHugh.
“Nuts,” he said curtly. “I should have figured it would be you. You’re McHugh.”
“I’m McHugh. If it makes a difference, why don’t you quit pointing that thing at me?”
McHugh eyed the man steadily. He was short and wide, very wide, with the thick neck of a wrestler. There were wisps of grayish hair at his temples, but the face had a button nose and cherubic look. All except the eyes. They were heavy-lidded, with brows that were startlingly black—competent eyes that said cop.
The gun went into a shoulder rig, and the hand that had held it reappeared, flipping a leather case open. “Harvey Lowell. I’m a pee-eye.”
McHugh’s hands came down. “You were staking the Andersen girl’s place when I came in last night.”
“Check. Like a cat watching the wrong way into a mouse house. If there was two of me, I could have kept an eye on the back door and maybe done some good.”
“The way it goes,” McHugh said sympathetically. “You must want friend Johnny a lot to pop up here tonight. How about a drink?”
Lowell ran thick fingers over his scalp. “The outfit both of us works for wants him. His liquor any good? If it is, the answer is yes.”
McHugh led the way into the kitchen. He got out more ice, emptied the remaining Scotch into glasses and handed Lowell one.
Lowell tasted the drink, nodded and sat down at the table. He looked at the stack of envelopes. “Why in hell did you bother to steam them if you weren’t going to stick them closed again?”
“I was. It just didn’t seem worth the trouble. Glue leaves a lousy taste.”
“Particularly after Scotch,” Lowell said agreeably. “Find anything interesting?”
McHugh decided to give a little and see if anything came back. “Stover was in Salinas the day after he left here. He bought a couple of tires on a credit card.”
“Hell, that I know. He was also in Morgan Hill and Seaside.”
“Oh?” Morgan Hill was roughly halfway between San Francisco and the Monterey Peninsula. Seaside was one of the cities on the Peninsula. “Sure?”
“Some stations are slower than others in getting their credit card sales slips in to the district office. The FBI had city and county cops all the way from here to San Luis Obispo check every gas pump. Stover gassed up at Morgan Hill the day he left and in Seaside the following day. He also collected a parking ticket there. It hasn’t been paid.”
“But you’re looking for him here.”
Lowell shrugged his heavy shoulders. “It’s as good as any place else. At least in the city I got contacts. You want to know what I think, I think Johnny-boy stashed that wagon some place because it’s too easy to spot. It’s not tough to rent a car or get hold of one some other way. And there’s always buses and airplanes.”
“They’re being watched.”
“Sure. Now. The guy was gone a week before anybody started to look for him. Hell, he could have come and gone whenever he felt like it until then.”
“Except that nobody saw him.”
“Yeah. Nobody.” Lowell emptied his glass and looked sadly at the empty bottle. “Suppose there’s any more of this stuff?”
McHugh got up, found another bottle and built new drinks. He put a good load in Lowell’s and said, “You didn’t just happen to show up here tonight. You knew somebody was in this pad.”
“I’m paying an old lady across the court twenty a day to let me know things like that.” Lowell’s voice was becoming fuzzy, and he missed the end of a cigarette when he tried to light it.
McHugh held a light for him and watched his eyes as he said, “What happens when you find Stover?”
Lowell took another swallow of his drink and shrugged. “Hell, I dunno. My boss just said find him. He gets the can, I suppose. They don’t go for this jackassing aroun’. Not when Uncle is payin’ five million bucks for skyrockets.”
“Which I happen to know don’t depend on Johnny Stover,” McHugh said sharply. “His security clearance was cut back months ago, and it’s been yanked entirely now. You couldn’t even take him into the plant. If they want to fire him, they’ll have to meet him at the gate to do it”
“Huh!” Lowell said. He blinked at McHugh.
McHugh poured more liquor into Lowell’s glass and said, “Let’s put it on the table, friend. You’re looking for this guy on your own, just like I am.”
