The Body Looks Familiar Read online

  Corday gave a politician’s chuckle and waved the nightclub man to a seat. “I won’t tell your partners,” he promised. “Cigar?”

  “Have one of mine,” Palmer said. “They’re a gift from a wholesale liquor dealer. Quite unusual.”

  They lit each other’s cigars. Everything up to now had been manners, as formal as the preliminaries of a bullfight. Now, a silent bugle had blown, and it was the third part of the fight: the sword had come from its sheath, the playing cape had been exchanged for the red flag of death. When a D.A. sends for a nightclub owner, he is not inviting him to a game of tiddlywinks.

  Corday blew out smoke and said, “It’s the Arnaux matter. It’s been on my desk for three weeks, and I should have called you sooner; but it goes to trial next week, and you’ll have time.”

  Ronald Palmer frowned. “Arnaux? Let me see, that’s the young couple that got robbed and beaten up by a prowler?” The question mark said, strongly: “What’s this got to do with me, with the Zebra House?”

  “They are going to testify,” Corday said, “that they were a little drunk. It is an essential part of the case, my case. The burglar, a mug named Harris, is a three-time loser. I’m sending him up for life this time, and I don’t want any slip-ups. The bizarre behavior of the Arnauxs—for one thing, she had mixed a drink for Harris, offered it to him—is likely to prejudice a jury if they don’t know that the young couple had been drinking.”

  Palmer began to nod. He said, “Let me finish. They had been drinking at the Zebra House. And Mrs. Arnaux—she was Paget Stinnell, wasn’t she?—is under age.”

  Corday said, “Nineteen.”

  Palmer said, “Thanks for letting me know. If it becomes court record, the Alcoholic Control Board will have to act, I suppose.”

  “Well, I haven’t spoken to them,” Corday said. “None of my business. But if I were on the ACB, I know I’d act.”

  Surreptitiously, Corday glanced at his wrist watch. It was eight minutes past eleven. Eleven o’clock was the regular hour for Miss Hogan DeLisle’s maid to clean her apartment.

  He stalled, “I can’t give you legal advice, Palmer. It wouldn’t be ethical.”

  Palmer said, “I can see that. And I’ve got lawyers. Will it be necessary for you to ask the Arnaux kids where they got their liquor?”

  “Not I—” The phone rang, and Corday made his eye-brows say “excuse me” as he picked up the red phone that was direct with police headquarters. He said, “Corday,” and listened. Then he hung up the phone, carefully frowning, and said, “I’ve got to roll, Ronald. Homicide. And I don’t know when I’ll have time—” Impulsiveness was in every fold of his face as he said, “Want to come along, and we can talk in the car?” He was already moving to the door.

  “If I won’t be in the way,” Ronald Palmer said. He followed the D.A. quickly. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”

  Corday said over his shoulder, “I guess all citizens are interested in police work. It’s remarkably like the movies.”

  They were in the corridor now. Corday’s secretary listened in on and recorded all calls over the red phone; he didn’t have to tell her where he was going. She had already buzzed for his car to be brought around.

  Once in the car, Corday switched on the radio, the red light, and the siren. Traffic melted around them, and Palmer said, “This is fun.”

  “Glad to oblige,” Corday said. He laughed. “In more ways than one. The Zebra House pays big taxes to the county. Now, as I said, I have no intention of asking Paget Arnaux where she got her liquor. It isn’t pertinent to the case.”

  “Irrelevant and immaterial,” Ronald Palmer said. He dug his fingers into the upholstery as Corday took the car around a bus and into the wrong side of the street. The siren wailed and they cut back again around a traffic island.

  “That’s the legal expression,” David Corday said. “However, counsel for Harris might think there was something pertinent—relevant and material—in my not asking. He’s certainly going to cross-examine; he might cross-examine on that point.” He added wryly, “I understand until Harris threw his empty glass at Don Arnaux and knocked the wife down with a backhanded swipe, the kids had thought the whole incident too priceless for words.”

  “A fun thing,” Ronald Palmer said. “That’s the current expression. You don’t grow to love humanity, running a nightclub. Or being a district attorney either, I imagine. Who’s Harris’s lawyer?”

  “Mort Tucker,” Corday said. Ahead a group of city cars—some marked, some plain—clustered around the entrance to the Belmont Apartment Hotel. Corday cut his siren and left the red light on for a moment; then, to the dying wail of the horn, cut the red light and coasted into the slot a uniformed officer indicated.

  “Mort Tucker,” Palmer said. “I think I can get him to keep the club out of the case. And maybe I could throw a little legal business his way. Who’s the judge?”

  “Judge Minelli’s going to preside,” Corday said, beginning to get out of the car. “But I wouldn’t go near him. And be careful that nothing you do with Tucker looks like bribery.”

  Palmer joined him on the sidewalk, watched Corday nod in return to salutes from the patrolmen who were moving curiosity seekers along. Hurrying into the building, Palmer said, “I’m grateful for this, Corday.”

  “Standard procedure,” Corday said, pushing him ahead into the self-service elevator, now run by a patrolman. “My interest is in convicting Harris, not in making trouble for businessmen.” He turned, faced Palmer. “You know that about concludes our business,” he said. The patrolman’s ears were wide on his head; no cop could help but be interested in a conversation between two of the high and the mighty. “If you want to go on your way, I’ll get an officer to drive you back to the Civic Center to your car.”

  “I’m really interested in this,” Palmer said. “I’ve never seen a homicide squad work.”

  Corday said, “It’s likely to be gruesome,” and led the way out of the elevator.

  Hogan DeLisle’s little apartment was full and overflowing. Corday’s voice was irascible as he said, “Will someone pass the word to Captain Martin that I am here?” and a uniformed sergeant at the door said, “You, Levy, Abner, Jones, out of this and wait in the hall,” and three cops, two of them in the white coats of the ambulance division, crowded out and made room for the D.A. and his guest.

  Captain Martin of the Homicide Squad, Doctor Shaefer of the Medical Examiner’s office, Captain Fink of the precinct stood around the body. Chalk marks on the carpet indicated that the squad had started work; that and half a dozen exploded flash bulbs. The light powder of the fingerprint men was on everything.

  Corday joined the three head men and stood staring down at the girl. “You got anything?’” he asked Fink and Martin.

  Martin shook his head. An overly burly man, he had a surprisingly light voice, an Irish tenor. He said, “Maid found her. Registered as Hogan DeLisle, occupation actress, she said.” He had everyone’s eye on him, expectantly; but his mouth closed and stayed closed.

  Dave Corday looked around at the other men furtively, with suspense. This Captain Martin, head of Homicide, was a sort of legend; the police told stories about his incredibly clear head, lawyers proudly exhibited their scars after trying to twist him up on the witness stand, as though it were a badge of honor to be defeated by Captain Martin.

  The legend was strong enough for Dave Corday to feel a pang of terror; he almost expected Captain Martin to say in his famous laconic style, “Brought home by Jim Latson. Shot by Dave Corday,” and, perhaps, to add, “Handcuffs.”

  Like most lawyers, like most human beings, Dave Corday enjoyed talking. There was something frightening about Captain Martin—Captain B. L. Martin, he never used a first name—who seemed to loathe the sound of his own pleasant voice.

  But Captain Martin, having talked and stopped, remained silent, and the heavy-faced Fink took it up: “Real name—we found letters—Beverly Hauer, father’s on the assembly line
of a car factory in Detroit. Murder committed by party or parties unknown, dead on arrival—hell, he put six slugs in her bra-seer—Doc here says she croaked about two this morning.”

  “Within the hour either way,” the M.E. said.

  Corday shrugged. “A party girl. We find out who was paying her rent, we’ll probably find out she was blackmailing him.”

  Fink said, “The manager says she paid her own rent.” He nodded across to the corner by the window where a group of witnesses—one of them the maid in a striped uniform embroidered with the name of the hotel—huddled unhappily.

  Corday said, “Well, I’ll want the slugs. Photographs. Wire Detroit, pick up any mail to her folks that was en route at the time of her death, any recent letters from her. I’ll want—” He stopped. “Wait a minute. Palmer, want a look? You said you’d never seen anything like this.” He made a gesture around the group. “You all know Ronald Palmer, don’t you? Manages the Zebra House. We were talking business in my office when this call came in.”

  Having focused all their attention on the nightclub man, he stepped back, giving Palmer a clear view of the dead girl’s face.

  Palmer looked, and Corday heard him catch his breath; but when Palmer finally spoke, he said, “I’ve seen dead bodies before. Car accidents. I guess this is the first murder though.”

  “That’s one thing,” Captain Martin said. “This is one we don’t have to call an alleged murder or a possible murder or homicide. Six slugs in her… Take another look, Mr. Palmer. She ran in your circles.”

  Palmer said, “Yes.” Corday, listening for it, heard caution in the words; but the others wouldn’t be able to. He bent over. “Yes,” he said. “I think I’ve seen her… But, really, my maitre d’, my captains, could do a better job. I’m in the office most of the time. Unless she was involved in a row or wanted to cash a check, I wouldn’t know her.”

  Fink said, “That one cashed no checks. She was strictly a girl for the deposit window. Twenty-three years old, and eighteen thousand dollars in the banks.”

  Corday said, “Well, it’s one commodity men have always paid for. Let’s see. I’ll want a careful file of all the fingerprints in the apartment, even the maid’s. Until you make an arrest, I have no idea whom I’ll have to prosecute. You know my slogan, gents: You catch ’em, I send ’em up.”

  “This one won’t be hard for us,” Captain Martin said. “She fancied her looks. Seven different poses of herself in the bedroom. I’m having them all copied, toted around the city to places she could have been. Places like yours, Mr. Palmer, like expensive clothing stores. We’ll turn up her boy-friend, and he’ll be the man. After that you’ll have it tough, Dave.”

  Corday said, “Oh?”

  “Money,” Martin said. “He’ll have heavy sugar. That kind is hard to send up.”

  “We’ll do it,” Corday said. “I think that’s all. Coming, Palmer?”

  Palmer nodded, and they turned away. But they were stopped by Latson; in fact, Corday had already seen him come into the room before he made his good-by speech. The lower ranking officers near the door gave way for the deputy chief as they had not for the district attorney.

  Latson walked right up to the girl’s head, said, “Sorry. Traffic Two had a four-car crash, I got away as soon as I could. What we got, Martin?”

  Captain Martin was older than his superior, longer on the force. But his voice was quietly respectful as he said, “Murder, Chief. Murder one or murder two”—meaning premeditated, or unpremeditated—“that’s all we don’t know. Party girl. Probably blackmailing someone.”

  Latson nodded, shoved his gray felt hat back on his head, put both hands on his hips as he bent over. “Good looker,” he said. And then, “Well, hell. That’s Hogan DeLisle. I’ve dated her myself. Hey! That’s too bad. She was fun.”

  He straightened up, looked around. “I—” he said, and then he saw Palmer and choked a little. “What are you doing here, Palmer?”

  “We were talking business in my office,” Corday said. “The Arnaux case, you know, Latson. We finished it up in the car coming here when I got the call, and I invited Palmer up.”

  Jim Latson laughed. “You’ve got damn funny ideas of how to entertain a friend, Dave.” He straightened up, looked around the circle. “Well, Marty, you don’t need me, except to say what you need on this case the department’ll give you. Off-duty men and all. We’ll want a quick windup, a clean case for Dave here.” He looked at Palmer, the only outsider there. “Not that we don’t always want that, but it’s more a matter of what we can get… There are just so many men in any given police department.”

  “I know how it is,” Ronald Palmer said. “And in my business, I’d just as soon not see taxes go up. So don’t apologize to me, Chief.”

  “I wasn’t,” Latson said flatly. He stepped away, looked at the medical examiner. “Don’t bother with special copies to me, Doc. I’ll look over Marty’s shoulder. And I imagine the sooner your boys get the body out, the better the management here will appreciate it. We’re cluttering up their lobby downstairs.”

  Captain Fink said, “I’ll get my men back on patrol right away, Chief.”

  Latson nodded, and started for the door after Fink. From the corner the plaintive voice of the manager said, “How long will you want this apartment bottled up, Chief?” He was speaking to Latson, was obviously glad that authority had finally boiled down to one man who could be spoken to.

  Latson said, “How long’s her rent paid up?”

  “First of the month.”

  “That’s twelve days. Ought to be enough. You can clean up, redecorate, whatever you do, on your own time; you would for a live tenant moving out.” He was at the door now. He straightened his hat, said, “Give Dave Corday a nice clean case now, boys,” and left.

  Corday said, “Palmer and I were just leaving,” but he moved slowly enough so that they did not have to share the elevator with Latson. The man’s assurance, his ease, had shocked Corday. He had at least expected Latson to take charge of the case himself, to stay in a position where he could suppress the wrong kind of evidence.

  He was shocked but, riding down with Ronald Palmer, he took a little cold comfort. Palmer obviously had known the girl, had probably known that she had been at the Zebra House with Latson the night before. It was why he had maneuvered Palmer so skilfully into the scene.

  It hadn’t been hard; there was always some reason the chief trial deputy could find for wanting to see a nightclub manager, a bar owner. But it had apparently come to nothing, and that was what amused Corday.

  Because if Palmer planned on blackmailing Jim Latson, he was in for some very uncomfortable moments. So was Jim Latson, which mattered more to Corday; but Latson’s discomfort would be as nothing compared to Palmer’s; his would go quickly from mere discomfort to the dire plight of a man reaching out to pet a Pekingese, and finding his hand on the back of a wolverine.

  As Corday and Palmer went through the downstairs lobby, the reporters and photographers had broken through the thinning cordon of Captain Fink’s men. Corday had to stop four or five times to say, “No comment. See Captain Martin,” before he got to the car. He drove Palmer rapidly back to the Civic Center.

  Chapter 4

  NOW HOMICIDE was in charge of the case. That meant Captain Martin and his small squad of regulars, plus a few of the utility men always on duty at headquarters and available for any division that needed them.

  Two of these utility men were named Lyons and Koch, and Captain Martin had given them their orders: “The basement.”

  Koch, who was thin and worried about his hairline, looked at Lyons, who was stocky and athletic, and sighed. They had been lent to Homicide before; they knew Captain Martin and his terse orders. What he meant was, “I want you to give the service department of this hotel a thorough search. Go through all the lockers of all the help, question everybody, get me lists, inventories, floor plans, backgrounds, criminal records if any, and do it now.”

  W
hat they found down below was a small but efficient unit. Although the apartment hotel had no dining room, room service could be had at any hour, and to order. It was nothing for the Belmont to furnish Chinese pheasant with truffles at four-fifteen in the morning.

  With drinks. Also fresh linen, as many times a day as you wanted it.

  This was daytime, and no personnel were on shift who had been on when Hogan DeLisle was murdered. But the executive housekeeper gave Lyons and Koch a list of night personnel, a master key to the lockers, and her blessing.

  It was unpleasant work. Koch found one busboy’s locker that apparently hadn’t been emptied in a year; when he unlocked the door, filthy clothes came cascading out, and he swore as he pawed through the sweat-caked linen, searching for nothing.

  Koch said, “Waste of time. If this was robbery, it’d make sense, working down here. Only it wasn’t.”

  His partner looked up, grunted. “Here’s a screwball. Night floor waiter. He’s got a book for translating Lithuanian into French, and one for going the other way.” He slammed the locker door shut again.

  “This guy never takes anything home,” Koch said. He shoved the busboy’s dirty clothes back into the locker, kicked the door shut and went over and washed his hands. “Two more lockers and we can move over to the women’s locker room.”

  “That’ll be fun,” Lyons said. “Stop bitching. If this had been short of homicide, we’d be working for Cap Fink. Martin’s easy to get along with.”

  Koch opened a locker for himself, one for Lyons. “Sure,” he said. “Martin’s easy to get along with. All you gotta be is perfect.”

  Lyons reached in the locker and took out a box. “Maybe the lady’s diamonds’ll be in here,” he said, “and we can all go home. Well, when Martin gives you an order, it sticks; later on he don’t pretend he told you to do something else.” He had opened the box, pulled something out. He gave it a casual glance, and then, perhaps because he had been talking about Captain Martin’s high standards, he held the object close to his eye and squinted.