Danger Is My Line Page 6

  “Maja say what kind of trouble?” I hollered over the slipstream shriek in the fly-windows.

  “No, but that’s where George Brandvik lives.”

  A few minutes later we pulled up in front of the Central Arms. Baroness Margaretha set the hand-brake but left the motor idling. I opened the door on my side of the car.

  “You’re not coming?” I said.

  “You know why I can’t. But I trust you.” She blew me a kiss, gunned the Volvo’s motor and sped away.

  Mr. Thwaite had the Central Arms’ long counter all to himself. He was reading a copy of the Congressional Record. He looked up at me, showing his teeth. “Yes, sir?”

  “You keep long hours. Brandvik in?”

  “I believe so, sir. But he is not alone.”

  “A blonde about five-two or -three?”

  Mr. Thwaite blinked. “Why, yes sir, but how did you—”

  “Four-eleven,” I said. “It’s still on the fourth floor, right?”

  “Yes, sir. I’ll an-”

  “Don’t announce me. I’ll go right up. She works for me. We’ll surprise them, eh?”

  He nodded doubtfully, but. his nose had returned to the Congressional Record by the time I was jabbing at the elevator button.

  To the right of the elevator on the fourth floor the corridor was well-lighted by three two-bulbed wall brackets. To the left it was dim because the nearest bracket contained no bulbs and the red light glowing over the fire door at the end of the corridor was too far to help. As I got out of the elevator a middle-aged woman wearing a black and white chambermaid’s uniform came out of the supply closet across the corridor, grumbling to herself, “Electricians. Them and their, union.” She was clutching a couple of blue and yellow light-bulb cartons to her bosom. She saw me. “You the electrician? It’s all right, I got some spares. What will they think of stealing next?”

  “Somebody stole the bulbs?”

  “Oh, then you ain’t the electrician? Of course somebody stole the bulbs. Funny kind of a souvenir, ain’t it?” She stopped at the first wall bracket to screw in two bulbs. Grumblingly she came back past me and the elevator and shuffled along the corridor until a right-angle turn hid her from sight. When she was gone I stood for a moment in front of 411, then knocked. There was no answer. The door wasn’t a perfect fit, and I could see a thin line of light at the threshold. I knocked again. Still no answer. I tried the knob. It turned.

  I went in and shut the door behind me. The night-table lamp was lit, and the bigger lamp on the desk. Someone had made the sofa-bed up for sleeping, but it hadn’t been slept in. Someone had gone through the dresser drawers, strewing George Brandvik’s few possessions on the floor.

  The second drawer from the bottom was pulled out. Two ties dangled out of it. And Maja Kolding sat there on the floor in front of it, her arms and her head bending into the open drawer, as if she too had been found there, and pulled most of the way out, and left to dangle. Her shoulders jerked convulsively when I touched her. She made a little whimpering sound, like a dog that had been kicked and expected to be kicked again. I kneeled beside her. “Maja,” I said, “what’s the matter?”

  She whimpered again, but made no other response. “What’s the matter?” I said more sharply. “Where’s Brandvik?” Then, slowly, she turned her head toward me. Her wide eyes stared blankly with white showing all around their irises. Her lips moved, exploring for words but not finding any. Her right hand came up out of the drawer and pointed, limply. What it pointed toward was the bathroom door, so I went over there.

  The door was open and the bathroom light, a fluorescent fixture over the medicine cabinet, was on. It was a small functional bathroom with a toilet, a sink, a square yard or so of tiled floor and a bathtub too small for anyone but a pre-adolescent.

  Knees doubled and head and shoulders clear of the water, George Brandvik was taking his last bath. The water level reached his armpits. The water was a dark pink mouthwash color. A look of surprise and terror stamped Brandvik’s features, holding the mouth open lopsidedly, widening the eyes but showing only their whites because the pupils had rolled back in death. I could see three puncture-wounds in Brandvik’s bare chest, but there might have been others. From one of them the last of Brandvik’s blood coiled sluggishly up through the water, like red smoke. At the bottom of the tub, winking up at me through the pink liquid, was a slim bronze letter-opener.

  “You and Marat,” I said tonelessly to the dead man, and turned away because there was nothing else to see. A ghastly face stared at me, lips parted slightly, eyes slitted evilly. I lurched away from it, reaching for my gun. The face jerked back too. It was my own face in the medicine cabinet mirror.

  Maja Kolding screamed.

  This time I got the Magnum all the way out and ran back into the bedroom. The hall doorway stood ajar, and a big man filled the doorway. He had a gash on his forehead, just below the hairline. He was rocky. With a big left hand he braced himself against the doorframe. In his right hand he held a gun just like mine—a Magnum .357. He was the big beefy guy that looked like an ex-football tackle.

  “Drop it, Drum,” he said, “or I’ll shoot you where you’re standing. Come on, drop it!”

  I dropped my Magnum. He moved toward me. Maja began to cry. “You bastard,” he said. “Was it you out there on the fire stairs?”

  He didn’t wait for an answer. He was still groggy from whatever had hit him. He stumbled close to me and either took a wide, awkward swipe at me with his gun or swung his right arm clumsily for balance. Either way, he could have hurt me. I grabbed his extended arm and turned my back toward him, putting a double wristlock on him and applying pressure. He could drop the Magnum or get his elbow broken. He let his gun join mine on the floor. I released his arm and he lunged at me, swinging bare-handed, and fell to one knee when he missed. I kicked both guns away from him.

  “Cut it out,” I said. “You’re out on your feet. There’s a dead man inside. Brandvik. In the John.”

  I retrieved both guns while he went to see, putting my own in its holster and holding his in my hand. He was gone a long time. I heard water running in the sink. He came out with his face and hair dripping wet. He looked a little better but still hit both sides of the bathroom doorway coming out. He blinked when he saw the gun in my hand. Then we stared at each other.

  “Jesus,” he said. “The water …”

  I held the Magnum out butt-first because I would have to do that sooner or later either with him or with someone else. He looked surprised as he jerked it out of my hand. He looked even more surprised as he jammed it down into his own shoulder holster.

  “She the girl who was running away from the bombing in Georgetown, huh?” he said.

  I nodded.

  “But you couldn’t tell us her name then, huh?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “So she could come up here and kill Brandvik too,” he said bitterly.

  “I didn’t kill him,” Maja said almost inaudibly.

  “Drum, you want to know what you got?” the Federal man asked me.

  “I know what I’ve got,” I said.

  He sat down on the sofa-bed and reached for the phone. “You got more trouble than a private dick can afford,” he said.

  9

  DETECTIVE LIEUTENANT Martin J. MacArthur, who arrived twenty minutes later, agreed with that diagnosis. He was a tall, bespectacled cop in his mid-thirties with hair clipped to a short peach-fuzz to camouflage incipient baldness. He introduced himself the way most people offer congratulations. “I’m Martin J. MacArthur,” he said ecstatically. “District Homicide.”

  “Huggins, Counter Espionage,” the ex-football tackle grunted. “Body’s in there.”

  Martin J. MacArthur strode with energetic enthusiasm into the bathroom, followed by a dour-faced sidekick who never uttered a word. They returned a few minutes later, Martin J. MacArthur smoking a cigarette in a long amber holder. “I saw what happened to him, Huggins,” he said. “Now, what
happened to you?”

  Huggins fingered the gash on his forehead. “I cut myself shaving,” he said.

  Martin J. MacArthur laughed enthusiastically. “Come on now, Huggins. What’s the real poop?”

  “I cut myself shaving,” Huggins repeated.

  I smiled. MacArthur smiled a little. MacArthur’s silent buddy didn’t smile at all. “What the hell is this?” MacArthur demanded, still not pugnaciously.

  “Anything you get you’ll have to get from the boys upstairs,” Huggins said. “Me, I don’t know a thing—yet.”

  “You’re kidding,” MacArthur said, a good deal less enthusiastically.

  Huggins shook his head.

  “You say you’re with one of the F.B.I. agencies,” MacArthur snarled suddenly. “Let’s see something to prove it, wise guy.”

  Huggins got out his I.D. card. MacArthur read it. “I’ll take your word about District Homicide,” Huggins said.

  “He’ll take my word,” MacArthur said.

  “I can’t talk,” Huggins explained. “I’ve been told not to, MacArthur. I only work here.”

  MacArthur was still snarling. “Who found the corpus?”

  Huggins didn’t say anything.

  “The dame?”

  Maja was still sitting on the floor. She was crying silently now, her shoulders moving. MacArthur went over to her and touched her. She didn’t look up. A shudder passed over her.

  “Lay off her,” I said. “It won’t do any good now.”

  “You his sidekick?” MacArthur asked me belligerently.

  “I’m a private detective.”

  MacArthur straightened slowly and faced me. “This I eat,” he said slowly. “This I eat with relish. A private eye. You find the corpus, shamus?”

  “You don’t have to answer him,” Huggins told me, “until we get the jurisdiction straightened out.”

  MacArthur ignored him. “I asked you a question, shamus.”

  “I saw the body before you did and before Huggins did,” I admitted.

  “You came here why?”

  “Working for a client.”

  “Working for a client,” MacArthur aped my words for his silent partner, as if translating. “He have a name? This client?”

  “Of course,” I said.

  Huggins laughed.

  “Goddammit, I want some co-operation!” MacArthur shouted, his face three inches from my face.

  Patiently Huggins told him, “We’re working on something big, MacArthur. Something out of your jurisdiction. We’ll co-operate—when we can. I haven’t the authority.”

  “That don’t mean a shamus can give me lip!” MacArthur shouted. “Soon as the lab crew gets here, we’re taking him downtown. And the dame.”

  “I guess you can do that,” Huggins admitted. The detective’s attitude had almost, but not quite, made Huggins my ally.

  “What’s your client’s name?” MacArthur asked me.

  “Maybe he’s working with a Federal Agency,” Huggins suggested.

  “Yeah? Is he or isn’t he?”

  Huggins lit a cigarette. “Listen, mister,” he said. “You think we don’t like to co-operate with the cops, you’re wrong five ways from Sunday. But I can’t right now.” He flicked ashes on the carpet. “Not that I would have, the way you came in here throwing your weight around.”

  “I came in here smiling,” Mac Arthur said. “Is he or isn’t he working with you, Mister Huggins, sir?”

  “What the hell,” Huggins said. “Go ahead and take him downtown. Maybe he earned it.”

  “The dame comes too,” MacArthur said.

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “She’s a foreign national with diplomatic immunity.”

  “Then call the State Department.”

  “We’re working with the State Department,” Huggins said.

  That left MacArthur just one whipping boy. “Shamus,” he told me, “you got a bellyful of trouble.”

  It was a small room and a small three-legged stool and a very large light shining in my eyes. There were five or six of them throwing questions from all directions. I couldn’t see them. I could see their cigarette smoke thick in the bright yellow light. I could smell it, heavy on the still, hot air. I sat very still on the small stool, trying not to look at the bright light.

  “Who’s the client?”

  “Ask the F.B.I.”

  “What were you doing at the Central Arms?”

  “Answer him when he talks to you, Drum!”

  “Working for a client.”

  “What client?”

  “Ever have your paper pulled on you, Drum?”

  “Once. In Virginia. I got it back.”

  “It could happen again. Who was the girl?”

  “A foreign national with diplomatic immunity. Huggins told MacArthur.”

  “Mister MacArthur to you. Ever been in trouble with the District police?”

  “A private eye can’t work in trouble with the police.”

  Paper rustled. “It said here we pulled your paper on you once, too.”

  “Same case. Because Virginia did.”

  “Who’re you protecting, Drum?”

  That was a good question. If Huggins had let Maja Kolding go downtown with the homicide cops, I might have told them everything I knew. But what I knew wasn’t much, and since the Bureau kept Maja Kolding I figured that meant they knew a lot more. I wanted to find out what it was. I knew I wouldn’t if I opened up to the cops.

  More paper rustled. “Chester Drum,” someone read from across the room, using a light I couldn’t see. “District License 138. We had a pickup order on you tonight, Drum.”

  I didn’t say anything. They let the silence build. Then one of them punctured it. “A man named Baker was blown up in his car in Georgetown last night. Bomb wired to the ignition. Your fingerprints were found on the door of that car, Drum.”

  “What about it?”

  “You do the job on Baker?”

  “For the same client you won’t name?”

  “Who’s the client, Drum?”

  It went on. Their voices got hoarse. They smoked too much and I didn’t smoke enough. I heard a water-tap gurgling and someone swallowing. I was hot and thirsty. They left the tap running longer than necessary.

  “This foreign national with diplomatic immunity, she’s a blonde, right?”

  When I didn’t say anything I heard MacArthur’s voice. “A blonde.”

  “Germany?” one of them asked me.

  “Norway?”

  “Denmark? They got a lot of blondes in Denmark.”

  “Maybe he wants a drink,” one of them said.

  Someone grunted. I thought it was MacArthur. I felt the sudden shock of cold water against my face.

  “Finland?” MacArthur said.

  “Lower Slobovia,” I said.

  Someone hit me. I went over backwards off the stool. I got up and saw the stool in the light. It hadn’t overturned. I sat down again. They threw more questions which I didn’t answer. Telephone calls, I thought. There would be telephone calls, right now, humming over the wires between the Bureau’s headquarters and the office of the Inspector in charge of District Homicide. The two buildings weren’t a half mile apart. The cops third-degreeing me knew that. And maybe they knew—maybe MacArthur had told them—I’d be out of their hands in a little while. If MacArthur told it the way MacArthur would have told it, they would resent that.

  “What’s the blonde’s name?”

  “Ever been in the lineup, Drum?”

  “No.”

  A door opened and shut. I heard footsteps. And soft voices talking. The big light went out. I blinked in darkness. Pretty soon there were other lights going on around the room—on a desk here, overhead in a green metal shade there. The only voice I heard clearly was MacArthur’s. He was exasperated. He said, “Christ Almighty, you don’t mean it?”—and I knew I was on my way out of there.

  I never learned which one of them was the Inspec
tor. They all filed out, not looking at me any more, until I was alone in the room with MacArthur.

  “On your feet,” he said.

  I got up.

  “Someday you’ll make a mistake,” he said, “and we’ll jump all over you. I’ve seen smart-alec private dicks come and go.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Now I got to do something that hurts,” MacArthur said. “I got to drive you over to the F.B.I. and leave you there with the lawyers and accountants. Ain’t that a pain?”

  We drove there in silence, MacArthur and I in the rear of a police sedan, a driver up front. It was a warm night, and traffic was heavy. In the ten minutes it took, Martin J. MacArthur re-arranged his personality. He delivered me to the Bureau enthusiastically, his deep-set eyes clear and guileless behind the thick lenses of the glasses he wore.

  But he insisted on a receipt for the merchandise.

  10

  HE WAS A REAL BEAUT, wasn’t he?” Huggins said.

  We were seated in the same room as last night, with the same gun-metal gray desks and filing cabinets. The small, dark guy was there, and the one called Sam.

  There was also a stenographer from the night steno-pool.

  I sipped my coffee and smoked my cigarette. “They sweat you much?” Huggins said.

  “Yeah.”

  “It figures,” Sam said.

  “He had it coming,” Huggins said without malice.

  Sam got up, went to the window, looked out on darkness and the lights below, and said, “But you didn’t tell them anything?”

  “You wouldn’t have wanted me to, would you?”

  “Two men have been killed, Drum. You wouldn’t be here if it was a case District Homicide could wrap up. You’d be held, right now, tonight, as a material witness to murder. Don’t forget that.”

  I said I wouldn’t forget it.

  “They found your fingerprints on Wally Baker’s car.”

  “They were happy to tell me that.” I shrugged. “They’d also find my prints all over his house. I was his friend. I visited him last night and I took his wife home for a while tonight. We ate dinner there.”