Clues for Dr. Coffee, page 5
Stacked Deck
Dr. Daniel Webster Coffee, chief pathologist at Pasteur Hospital, looked up from his microscope and frowned at the un-godly and unscientific sounds blasting into his office through the closed door from the laboratory. Analyzing the din, he recognized the calm, pleading voice of Doris Hudson, his lab technician, and the shrill, excited expostulations of Dr. Motilal Mookerji, resident pathologist. He could put no name to the third voice—the desperate, tearful voice of a hysterical woman. Dr. Coffee arose and opened the door upon the broad, billowing rear of his Hindu assistant.
Pink-turbaned Dr. Mookerji was barring the way to a wispy, freckled, snub-nosed blonde. The two small children clinging to the skirts of her cheap print dress—a toddler of three and a solemn-faced boy of six or seven—began to wail in unison as the rangy silhouette of Dr. Coffee loomed in the doorway.
“Come in, Mrs. Woods,” said the pathologist. “Trouble?”
“This fat clown says you’re too busy to see me,” Flora Woods complained.
“Am of opinion,” Dr. Mookerji objected, “that lady in state of exophthalmic tantrum is perhaps unwelcome visitor because of potential homicidal tendencies.”
“She’s been very abusive, Doctor.” Doris Hudson slipped down from her tall work stool and smoothed the wrinkles from the back of her white smock. “She threatens to leave her children here with you.”
“Mrs. Woods,” Dr. Coffee began, “you didn’t—”
“Sure I did. And why not? You said they couldn’t keep my husband in jail because you were sure he wasn’t guilty. Well, he isn’t, but they have.”
“Yes, I know, Mrs. Woods. The way the evidence stands now, the police couldn’t do otherwise. But I’m still convinced—”
“Jerry didn’t kill this guy Pete Mannock or McMann, or whatever his name is. He didn’t kill anybody. Jerry wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
“I’m confident I’ll be able to prove it very soon, Mrs. Woods.”
“Soon! And who feeds the kids in the meantime? Oh, I can buy the grub. I can drive Jerry’s cab. I hacked for him that other time he was in the clink on account of McMann. But I can’t push a taxi ten-twelve hours a day and look after the kids, too. So maybe if you have to look after the kids, you won’t forget about springing Jerry like you promised.”
Dr. Coffee opened his mouth to rebuke the brash impertinence of this woman he scarcely knew, but, instead, he said nothing. There was something pathetic in her leftover, washed-out prettiness. Everything about her seemed fragile and tired except her eyes—deep blue eyes, as blue as a mountain lake on a summer evening, and as quick to darken in anger as the lake under a sudden thunder squall. Her whole being seemed centered in their vital, proud, stubborn depths.
“Very well, Mrs. Woods. I’ll ask my wife to look after the children while you’re driving the taxi.”
“You will?” The tone was incredulous. Then, quickly, Flora added, “Okay, then. I’ll pick ’em up at suppertime.”
Her hasty exit was marked by a renewed vocal expression of profound sorrow on the part of her abandoned children.
Dr. Coffee raked his long fingers through his tousled, sandy hair.
“Doris,” he said, “get Mrs. Coffee on the phone. Dr. Mookerji, what do they do in Bengal to stop brats from yowling?”
The Hindu resident flipped up the palm of his chubby right hand, reversed it, then repeated the rotating movement several times before he said, “Greatly fear am quite inexpert at comforting childish woes, Doctor Sahib. Would, however, welcome helpful hints.”
“Try letting the boy look through your microscope,” the pathologist said, raising his voice above the heartbroken duet. “Maybe the little girl will play with paraffin blocks. Doris will give you some old ones—”
“Your wife doesn’t answer,” said Doris Hudson unhappily.
“Am regretfully pointing out,” added Dr. Mookerji, “that on basis of laboratory operations to date, producing only negative results regarding innocence of vehement lady’s husband, prolonged custody of siblings is indicated.”
The howling increased.
“I’m sure I can prove Woods didn’t kill Mannock,” Dr. Coffee said. His voice was more hopeful than confident.
He retreated to his office and closed the door, half wishing that Police Lieutenant Max Ritter had not dragged him into the case. Well, he had not been dragged, exactly. He was always glad to act as unofficial medical examiner so long as the Northbank police had no laboratory and the city and county were at the ignorant mercy of an elected coroner who didn’t know an acid-fast bacillus from a hole in the ground. He had really come running when his friend Ritter got him out of bed one night a week ago to examine what appeared to be the scene of a murder. Great stars! Was it only a week since he had coaxed his overage, asthmatic, Cachexia Six across the sleeping town to a dismal apartment house in the low-rent riverfront district?
Apartment 4-A had been a shambles when he arrived, but there was no corpse. There was only tall, dark, droopy-eyed Lieutenant of Detectives Ritter brow-beating a plump little doll-faced brunette while photographers’ flash bulbs glared at latent evidence and technical men crawled about looking for fingerprints. A rummage sale in a high wind, Dr. Coffee had reflected as he looked around the room: furniture overturned, drapes yanked down, cigarette butts and broken ash trays strewn about the floor, and blood spattered on the walls and upholstery.
“It’s on account of the blood I call you, Doc,” Max Ritter said, scratching one of his butterfly ears. “I remember that Smith case and how you always want samples while sticky. Since you’re here, though, meet Mrs. Mannock. Emily thinks somebody knocks off her husband. Maybe she’ll talk to you about it. She won’t tell me a thing. She don’t like cops. Do you, Emily?”
“Not since I met you.” The brassy voice didn’t fit the demure downcast eyes Dr. Coffee had first noted. Then he remarked they were no longer demure; they were defiant. And the doll-like mouth had become a sullen pout. “When I called cops, I thought you’d find out what happened to Pete, instead of just yammering at me. I can’t tell you nothing, because I don’t know nothing.”
Her long earrings flashed as she tossed her head. She was still wearing her hat, if you could call it a hat; a mere handful of beads flung into her short hair. The uneven squirrel-chewed bangs that were supposed to give her the gamin look made her appear even more brazen. Fringes of the theater, Dr. Coffee reflected; maybe a night-club dancer. She had the legs of a dancer. Pretty legs. Well-turned legs. She was well-turned all over, actually, and her close-fitting gray tailleur was cut to emphasize the fact.
“Emily’s a hashslinger,” Ritter said. “She won’t explain how a hashslinger owns two suitcases full of expensive togs with Paris labels, or why the dresses are packed in valises ready to go, instead of hanging in a closet.”
“Pete bought me those gowns when he was in the chips,” Emily snapped. “And they’re packed because we had a fight this morning. I said I’d leave him if he didn’t get a job right quick.”
“Now she talks.” Ritter chuckled. “Emily says she slings hash at Milton’s Cafe till eleven tonight. It checks. She gets home an hour ago. You tell it again, Emily.”
Emily sniffed. She touched up her pout and turned her head twice to peer into the mirror of her compact before she said slowly:
“I knew something was wrong the minute I started down the hall. The apartment door was half open—and Pete’s kept that door locked and on the chain ever since we came to Northbank—”
“How long ago, Mrs. Mannock?”
“About a month. Pete started acting scared almost right away. When I’d ask him about it, he’d only laugh.”
“What does your husband do, Mrs. Mannock?”
“He’s—well, he’s out of work right now. He wanted to come to Northbank because a friend of his lived here. I don’t remember the name, but it was somebody who owed Pete a lot, he said. He came here to square accounts. Well, when he couldn’t seem to locate this guy, I got a job so we could keep eating—”
“Okay, Emily, so you find the door half open. Then what?”
“Nothing, except I went in. When I saw the mess I got a stomach full of butterflies. I thought I was going to keel over, but I didn’t. I yelled, ‘Pete! Pete! Where are you?’ He didn’t answer. I ran around like mad, opening closets, looking under the bed, in the bathroom, everywhere. No Pete. So I called cops.”
Dr. Coffee opened the small black bag he had brought with him. He said: “I’d like a sample of your blood, Mrs. Mannock, if you please.”
“You can skip the blood test,” Emily said. “I’m negative.”
“Your arm, please,” said the pathologist.
“Look, Doc,” said Max Ritter. “When you start taking samples from the furniture and what not, will you skip those stains on the door? There’s a perfect set of prints there I want to save.”
Dan Coffee had been late to work the next morning.
“’Morning, Doctor. ’Morning, Doris,” he said, as he hung up his coat and thrust his arms into a white jacket.
“Salaam, Doctor Sahib,” said Dr. Mookerji. “Homicide season is no doubt reopening. Leftenant Ritter rang three times.”
“Max can wait. Anything cooking, Doris? Any biopsies ordered?”
“No biopsies,” said Doris. “But I see work in progress all over the place. Were you here all night again, Doctor?”
“I dropped in to run some precipitin tests,” the pathologist said, “which I couldn’t complete because we have no animal antiserum. I phoned the Medical Examiner’s office in New York and Dr. Wiener is sending me a lot with the pilot of Flight 905. So I want you to meet the noon plane from New York, Doris. Meanwhile, stain these slides and set up a micrometrie eyepiece so we can measure the corpuscles. I want Dr. Mookerji to look at them after he’s seen my makeshift homework of last night. Doctor, lend me your eyes.” …
The phone rang. “Lieutenant Ritter again,” Doris Hudson said.
“Hi, Doc,” said Max Ritters voice. “I got news.”
“I’ve got news, too, Max. Let’s meet at lunch. Raoul’s?”
“Today’s Thursday. What’s at Raoul’s on Thursdays?”
“Kidneys. Braised veal kidneys in red wine. Tempt you, Max?” asked Dan Coffee hopefully. Mrs. Coffee believed that kidneys were unfit for human consumption and refused to cook them at home. “Raoul’s at twelve-thirty, Max?”
“Okay, Raoul’s. But we don’t dawdle, Doc. This case sizzles.”
When the pathologist hung up, Dr. Mookerji was emitting queer clucking sounds at the microscope.
“Most curious.” Dr. Mookerji wagged his big head from side to side until the tail of his pink turban trembled. “Unnucleated cells are roundish rather than oval. Blood therefore did not originate with fish, fowl, good red herring, or reptiles. But while blood is quite obviously mammalian, am of unsubstantiated opinion that red corpuscles are somewhat smaller than human size. Correct, Doctor?”
“Right,” said Dr. Coffee, “and that’s as far as we can go until we get the antiserum from New York.”
The pathologist could sniff the pleasant aroma of Raoul’s rognons de veau from half a block away. As he climbed the narrow stairway to the diminutive second-story restaurant, he mentally reconstructed the savory processes that he knew went into the preparation of the dish. Raoul would slice veal kidneys wafer-thin, dust them with seasoned flour, brown them in a froth of butter with a few tiny onions, then simmer them in good red wine with a pinch of thyme, a bay leaf, a few mushrooms, and a clove of garlic.
The number of gnawed radish tops with which Max Ritter was setting up a chess problem on the red-and-white tablecloth told Dan Coffee that the police detective had been waiting for some minutes.
“Well, Max,” said the pathologist, unfolding a yard of checkered napkin, “it looks like your case isn’t homicide after all.”
“No?” Ritter impatiently brushed aside the radish tops. “Why not?”
“I think Mannock is still alive. I think this act last night is an insurance fraud he and his loving wife cooked up.”
“Why so, Doc?”
“That blood in the apartment can’t be his. It’s not human blood.”
“Huh.” The detective pondered this statement while Raoul himself served the kidneys from a steaming casserole and opened a bottle of Pinot Noir. “Sture of that, Doc?”
“Positive. Under the microscope the red cells are much too small. I checked with a precipitin test, and I got no cloudy ring in the test tube with my human antiserum.”
Ritter bit savagely into a crust of French bread. “Then why the hell should the bloody fingerprints on the door belong to a convicted murderer?”
“You tell me, Max.”
Ritter shook his head. “It don’t make sense,” he said. “Not with chicken blood, it don’t.”
“It’s not chicken blood, Max. That much I know. But it may be several days before I know more.”
“For once, Doc, I think you’re wrong,” Ritter argued. “Last night I wire the print classification to Washington and this morning the FBI answers me that the prints belong to a killer named Jock McMann who sneaks out of the Nevada State pen hospital a year ago with a high fever and a guard’s uniform. So I gotta decide if Jock McMann is Pete Mannock, the guy we look for, or if he is the guy who kills Pete Mannock. So I phone Reno and Washington and I beat the gums some more with Emily Mannock and I get an answer: McMann is Pete Mannock and vice versa. It’s like this.…”
Ritter had pieced together a bizarre tale of a bizarre character. Mannock, convicted of first-degree murder under the name of McMann, had come home from Occupation duty in Germany with a chestful of medals (some authentic); an uncanny skill with the dice and with the eight-millimeter Walther pistol he had liberated; an excellent recipe for hasenpfeffer, and a strong disinclination for hard work. He had made a few desultory passes at the slow-but-honest dollar, then fallen back upon his skill with the dice, a fall which landed him on his feet in Reno, Las Vegas, and other Nevada points where his virtuosity was appreciated.
Pete Mannock worked both sides of the tables. For a while he was a croupier, for he had charm, dexterity, and sartorial appeal. However, he also had a habit of going off after work in a jeep well stocked with girls and bourbon to shoot rabbits in the nearby sagebrush with a Walther pistol. At sunup the jeepful of girls, bourbon and dead rabbits would off-load at Pete’s bachelor quarters, there to breakfast on hasenpfeffer marinated after a previous expedition. Inasmuch as the ceremony was often accompanied by the launching of rockets, the burning of red fire, and the discharge of ritual volleys from the Walther, a practice apt to attract the state police and nearby fire departments, most casinos regretfully decided that Pete was not really croupier material.
On the other side of the table Pete was not a success. He seemed to have lost his G.I. touch with the dice. He began drawing to seventeen at blackjack. And he developed an unswerving loyalty to a complex roulette system which ate voraciously into his reserve—so voraciously that he had to give up his predawn desert safaris.
To keep up his standard of living, Pete had knocked over a casino at closing time one night when the house was even further ahead than usual. Unfortunately he was surprised while departing with the swag and had to shoot the assistant manager. He got away in a taxi and successfully cached some $40,000 before he was caught. The taxi driver turned state’s evidence, claiming he did not know he was aiding and abetting robbery and murder, and got off with six months. Pete was lucky to get life. A few months after the cabbie was released, Mannock had escaped.
The FBI picked up traces of Pete Mannock’s flight—always one jump behind—in Ogden, Denver, Kansas City, Omaha, Miami, Houston, and Chicago. Somewhere along the line he had married Emily—probably illegally, since he was using an assumed name.
“This cabbie’s name is Jerry Woods,” said Max Ritter. “Emily claims she doesn’t know if Woods lives in Northbank or not. I say he does, and that’s why Pete Mannock is scared nights. And I say Jerry Woods rubs out Mannock either for self-preservation or because he didn’t get his cut of the forty grand. And I predict that before the sun sinks in the golden West, my boys will find out what name Jerry Woods is hiding under. Will you pass the kidneys, Doc?”
“Sure, if you’ll pour me some Pinot Noir. Max, why are you so positive that Jerry Woods is your man?”
“Because the assistant manager of that Nevada casino is shot with an eight-millimeter Walther,” the detective had replied, “and they never find the Walther in Nevada. Because we find an empty cartridge in the Mannock apartment last night which by the ejector marks is fired from a Walther eight-millimeter. But again we don’t find the Walther. So I say this Jerry Woods is the weapons carrier right from the start.”
“It’s a puzzler, Max.” Dr. Coffee had stared thoughtfully into the ruby depths of his wineglass. “Did the neighbors hear any shots fired?”
“Well, yes and no. Most of the tenants don’t hear a thing. They’re asleep. Two tenants don’t hear a thing but they’re awake. One guy remembers hearing something like a shot, but he thinks at the time it’s, a truck backfiring. Another guy is watching a Western film on television; he says he wouldn’t notice one shot more or less, on screen or off. So write your own ticket.”
Dr. Coffee had raised his glass. “Let’s drink to the right answers, Max.”
Lieutenant Ritter had indeed located Jerry Woods before sundown through the astute expedient of looking him up in the phone book. Not only was Woods using the same name, but he was following the same trade of taxi driver and was married to the same loyal, self-effacing wife who had stood by him when he went to jail in Nevada.
Woods and his wife had denied everything—Woods indignantly; his wife tearfully, while her two children clung to her skirts and howled. Woods was a balding, stocky, cocky little cabbie with a squint in one eye, a half-smoked cigar behind one ear, and a profane adjective perpetually on his full lips. He swore he had not seen Jock McMann since Nevada. No, he hadn’t heard the man was in Northbank, and, what’s more, he didn’t give a good goddam. No, he had never heard of anybody named Mannock on River Street or any other street. Emily Mannock? Never heard of her. No, he didn’t own a Walther. He had never fired a pistol in his life and he didn’t expect to, not even at that goddam slob who had almost wrecked his life. All right, so he’d been sucked into a lousy deal once, but he’d paid for it and no hard feelings. He wasn’t packing a grudge against that slimy so-and-so forever. He had enough goddam worries just making a living for the wife and kids. And if anybody thought hacking in Northbank was a goddam bed of roses.…
