The Fatal Foursome Read online

  “This way,” Morrissey told him.

  He led the way past tall silent shafts, flat ugly mausoleums and tombstones of all sizes and shapes. After a moment’s tramping, he signaled for a halt. The ground in front looked freshly turned.

  “This is it, Johnny.” He dropped the shovels to the ground. “I think we’d better tackle it in relays,” he suggested. “Like that one of us can be resting and keeping an eye out at the same time.”

  Liddell agreed, picked up a shovel. “I sure hope to hell I’m right,” he said. He shuddered involuntarily in the chill of the drizzle. “I’m beginning to doubt it more and more.”

  He stepped on the new grave, his shoes sinking in the soft loam. The shovel bit into the dirt. He was knee deep in a six-foot hole and breathing noisily when Doc Morrissey spelled him. Then Johnny took his turn again. They had been at work about an hour when Johnny Liddell’s shovel hit the casket with a hollow wooden sound.

  “That must be it, Doc,” he whispered. “Listen.” He tapped again.

  Morrissey jumped into the hole beside him. “Clear away some space at the head.” He pointed to the direction in which Liddell was facing. “That would be right about there. Clear it away so’s we can open the top piece. It’ll save time.”

  “Right.” Johnny went back to work with renewed vigor. After a few moments the top portion of the casket began to emerge. It was a brown metallic type.

  “No good,” Morrissey growled. “That type casket has a one-piece top, Johnny. We’re going to have to clear the whole thing.” He handed Liddell the flash-light. “Let me get in a few licks. You’ll need your strength in a few minutes.” He waited until Johnny Liddell had pulled himself out of the hole and stood on the side of the grave, then went to work.

  It took ten minutes to clear enough space around the casket to attach hooks to the handles. Doc Morrissey tossed the ropes up to Liddell, then clambered up.

  “Our only bet is to pull the coffin out. We can’t work down there. I don’t think we’ll have too much trouble.” He walked to the other side of the grave. “Pull it up to the level and we’ll slide her up that way.”

  But it took fifteen minutes of grunting, swearing and sweating on the slippery clay before the coffin finally slid out onto the ground. Johnny Liddell wiped the perspiration off his forehead and leaned breathlessly against the casket.

  “And I’m the guy who was going to come out here and tackle this thing alone. What’s next, boss?”

  Morrissey reached into his inside pocket, came up with a flat flask. “I brought this along in case of emergency and this, surer than hell, is an emergency.” He unscrewed the top from the bottle, passed it to Liddell, and then drank himself. “Well, now to work.” He recapped the bottle, returned it to his pocket. “Got those tools?”

  Liddell produced a jimmy and tire iron. He walked around the casket, felt along the edge until he discovered the joint. Taking the jimmy he forced it in, used it as a lever. The cover of the casket creaked complainingly as it was lifted. A hot, dry odor of decay rose from the interior.

  “It’s open, Doc,” Liddell said huskily. He was glad of the warm glow in his stomach that the liquor had left.

  The coroner stepped to the side of the coffin, turned his flash on the interior. Johnny forced his eyes to look, felt like being sick. Instead, he clenched his teeth, looked more closely at the skull.

  “Well, let’s check that hunch of yours, Johnny.” Morrissey said casually. He brought out the dental chart. “Multiple amalgam filling, rear lower molar.” He brought the flash closer, forced open the lower jaw, peered for a minute. “Check.” He consulted the chart again. “Fixed bridge holding right canine, bicuspid.” He studied the corpse’s mouth again. “Check.” He looked up. “That’s really enough to be certain, Johnny,” he said flatly. “That’s Randolph all right, and we’re in dutch.”

  Johnny Liddell wiped the heel of his hand under his chin. “I wouldn’t have believed it. It fitted so well….” He shrugged. “You’d better scram out of here, Doc. This is my party and I’ll take the rap.”

  “Horsefeathers,” Morrissey growled. “If there’s any rap to take, we take it together.” He checked one more notation on the dental chart, found it matched perfectly. “You know,” he said, “I didn’t want to admit it, but I really thought you were on to something there.”

  “You’re absolutely sure, eh, Doc?”

  The coroner nodded. “Dead sure, Johnny. Want to take a look yourself?” He handed the flashlight and a metal probe to the detective.

  Liddell took Morrissey’s place at the side of the coffin. He flashed the light on the yellowed skull. The lower jaw hung open, white teeth catching the flashlight’s rays. With the probe, Johnny Liddell located one of the fillings marked on the chart. He tapped at the fixed bridge mentioned by Morrissey, started to go to another tooth, when a prickling sensation in the rear of his spine stopped him.

  He went back to the bridge, put the light close to it and with the probe yanked and pulled at it. It came away with a scraping noise like a knife being drawn quickly across a plate. Liddell winced but pulled harder. The bridge came away in his hand.

  “Look at this, Doc. One of the teeth that bridge was supposed to support is a real one. It only carried one tooth.”

  “What?” Morrissey squeezed in beside him and stared. “That’s funny. Let me have that probe.” He took the probe, checked the tooth more carefully. “That’s a sound tooth, Johnny,” he announced, looking up. “Let’s check a couple more replacements.” He consulted the chart again. “His right upper central should have a porcelain jacket on it. Let’s take a look.”

  Liddell held the light close to the teeth while Morrissey worked. After a moment the porcelain jacket was in his hand. He showed it to Johnny. A short peg protruded from it that fitted a drilled hole in the root of the original tooth.

  “I’m issuing an exhumation order on this body,” Doc Morrissey announced. “I don’t pretend to know much about dentistry but it looks to me as though this jacket has just been tacked on what was a sound tooth.”

  “You mean it’s not Harvey Randolph?”

  The coroner shrugged. “I don’t know.” He flashed the light in the corpse’s face again. “I don’t know, but I’m betting my dough alongside yours that it isn’t.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  THE ROOM was still half dark when Johnny Liddell awoke. The telephone was ringing. There was a fuzzy dark brown taste in his mouth that refused to be washed out by the tap. He walked over to the window and ran up the shade. The light hurt his eyes and he blinked. His watch said a quarter to eight. It took him minutes to realize he was in the coroner’s office.

  Doc Morrissey was snoring softly in his chair. The telephone rang again, Morrissey opened his eyes, stared around, then took the receiver off its hook.

  “Hello?” he said sleepily. “Oh, it’s you, Devlin. Where the hell you been? I’ve been trying to reach you all night. Oh, okay. Can you get over to my office right away? Yeah. Very important. Okay. I’ll wait.”

  Johnny let the tap water run into a glass, then held the glass to his forehead.

  “Oh, my splitting head,” he groaned. “Where the hell was Devlin all night?”

  Morrissey ignored the question and touched a buzzer on his desk. A few seconds later a trim and highly starched nurse stuck her head in the door. From her look, it was obvious she disapproved of Johnny.

  “Miss Martin, order us two breakfasts. Tell Miss McLennan to shoot Inspector Devlin up the minute he gets here.”

  They were just finishing breakfast when Devlin arrived. He looked tired, but still managed to convey an air of vigor that made Liddell shudder mentally.

  “About time you got here, Devlin,” Johnny growled. “Where you been all night? We rang you about fifty times.”

  Devlin champed away on his gum. “And every time you rang, you took another drink—from the looks of you. Well, if you must know, I spent all night in Los Angeles, helping to identify a bo
dy they dragged out of the drink. It had been in the water almost a week and when I saw it last night, it looked better than you do right now.”

  Johnny Liddell watched glumly while the inspector carefully hung his topcoat on the clothes tree. “Probably felt better, too,” he muttered.

  Devlin pulled a chair up, sat down and rubbed his palms together. “Well, let’s have the bad news. You two have been up to something.”

  Johnny Liddell leaned back. “Harvey Randolph isn’t dead.”

  Devlin’s grin froze on his face. “That ain’t even a good rib, Liddell,” he said.

  “It’s no rib, Devlin,” Doc Morrissey cut in. “Johnny here got a bright inspiration that a ringer was stuck in that car and messed up so bad that it would be identified by the stuff on it. He was right.”

  “You’re crazy, both of you.” Devlin forgot to chew on his gum in his excitement. “We checked Randolph’s dental chart. It was him all right. Everything on the chart checked perfectly.”

  Johnny Liddell nodded. “Too perfectly. So me and Doc rechecked them last night.”

  “How could you? Randolph was buried two days ago.”

  Doc Morrissey pushed away his coffee cup, leaned back and studied the ceiling. “Never heard of unburying a guy, Devlin?”

  “Oh, oh.” Devlin ran his chunky fingers through his hair. “I knew if you guys kept on that joy juice you’d get yourselves in trouble sooner or later. You mean you went out to the cemetery and dug him up?”

  “That’s right,” Johnny said. “Not only that, but we busted open the coffin and took a look at that dental work. It was all faked up to match with the chart.”

  Doc Morrissey nodded. “You needn’t look at him like he’s seeing pink elephants, Devlin. That body in the coffin is a clever fake. Somebody went to the trouble of putting caps on teeth, fillings in teeth and phony bridges into that mouth just so it would superficially check with Randolph’s chart. It was almost foolproof.”

  Devlin jumped to his feet. “In that case we can still keep you guys out of jail. We’ll get an exhumation order, and …”

  “Sit down, Devlin, and relax,” the coroner ordered. “I’ve already taken care of that. Even explained that it should be done at night to avoid creating a sensation. Some of my boys went out there last night and picked him up. The dental chief has been with him for a couple of hours already.” He consulted his watch. “They should know something by now. Let’s see what they’ve got to say.”

  He picked up the phone, gave an extension number of the dental chief surgeon. In a moment he was connected.

  “Dr. Hammerschlag? Morrissey. Get a chance to give that stiff a going over? Good. What’d you find?” For the next few minutes he confined his conversation to grunts and nods. After a final vehement nod, he thanked the dental man, hung up. “That does it, boys. The dental work in that stiff’s mouth was all phony. Hammerschlag X-rayed the jaw and even found one false tooth with a filling in it. He’s prepared to kick over the identification. Says he’s sent for Randolph’s dentist and that he’ll clinch the fact that it wasn’t Randolph.”

  Devlin had gone completely white. “This case gets worse and worse. First the guy’s dead, then he ain’t dead. If that wasn’t Randolph’s body, whose was it?”

  Johnny Liddell found a cigarette, lighted it and filled his lungs. “Probably some derelict Sal Moreno picked up and kept on ice. Moreno had a sweet racket and probably stole thousands from the insurance companies. He was in the market to provide these tailor-made stiffs for guys who wanted to collect on their insurance while they could still enjoy it. Even had a dentist to fake up dental work so’s it would check.”

  The inspector nodded. “And he provided this one for Randolph. Then where is Randolph?”

  “There you’ve got us,” Liddell admitted. “My guess is that when you find Randolph, you’ll have the answer to this whole tangle.”

  “You don’t think Randolph is the killer behind this, do you, Johnny?”

  Liddell tapped some ash off his cigarette. “I stopped thinking, Devlin. Every time I get a theory in this damn case and it seems to fit all the angles, something happens with a bang, and I’m off to the races again.”

  Doc Morrissey rang for Nurse Martin, waited until she had gathered all the dishes and left. “What gets me is, if he isn’t the killer, why hasn’t he come forward?” he asked.

  Devlin chewed savagely on his ever-present gum. “That’s screwy. You can’t make me believe Randolph is behind all these murders,” he declared flatly.

  “Why not, Inspector?” Johnny wanted to know. “You don’t mean to tell me you’ve fallen for that baby face of his?”

  The inspector shook his head. “No, I haven’t fallen for it. But I know his face, and so does everybody else in the country. Why that guy’s pan is better known than the face on a dollar bill. He’d be recognized the minute he came out in the open. He might have breezed in to pull one of those killings without being seen, but it’s stretching it too far to believe that he could have shown up in three different places at three different times and pulled a killing without anybody spotting him.”

  The coroner agreed. “You’ve put your finger right smack on the point that’s been bothering hell out of me, Devlin.”

  “I’ve thought of it, too,” Liddell admitted. “Of course, it’s just faintly possible that Randolph hasn’t been doing the killings. Maybe he’s being held….” He shook his head disgustedly. “That’s nuts. I’m as sure that he killed Mona Varden as if I had seen him do it. And if he did the Varden killing, he did the others.”

  Devlin’s eyes looked alive with interest. “Why?”

  “When I first talked with Mona Varden, she was selling me on what a tough boy this Harvey Randolph really was. His real name was Angie Petrillo and he was a New York East Sider. Or did you know that?”

  “We have a pretty good idea of his background.”

  “Good. Then you know that Randolph served a jolt in the reform school for being too handy with a shiv. Cut some little playmate to ribbons, if I remember correctly. Whoever did the Varden job was a guy who was plenty handy with a knife and got pleasure out of using one.”

  Devlin picked up the telephone. “I doubt if that school would have any prints on Randolph, but it might pay to …”

  Johnny Liddell interrupted. “You can save yourself the phone call. There are no prints of Angie Petrillo on file.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Well, how does this sound? When Goodman took over handling his affairs, he agreed to use some pull and get the prints out of circulation. He came through on his part of the bargain, delivered the prints to Randolph.” He took a deep drag on his cigarette, dropped it on the floor and ground it out. “There are no fingerprints of Harvey Randolph in existence as far as I know.”

  “What do you need fingerprints for?” the coroner asked. “Certainly you know what the guy looks like.”

  “Do we?” Johnny Liddell challenged. “There have been three murders. The guy who did them must have walked into those buildings and gone up the stairs or up in an elevator. He must have been seen by somebody, yet nobody has come forward to say they’ve seen Harvey Randolph. And with all the publicity in the papers lately, you can be sure that if anybody saw him, they’d come forward.”

  Inspector Devlin nodded. “Yeah. But don’t forget he was an actor. Not a good one, but an actor. What would be more natural than for him to use make-up, put on a disguise?”

  Liddell was not convinced. “I can’t buy that, Devlin. I can’t picture Randolph in crepe whiskers and a pair of horn-rimmed glasses. And don’t forget that being an actor doesn’t mean he’d know how to work up a good disguise. They’ve got make-up men who take care of that for them.”

  Doc Morrissey sat rigid. He stared at Johnny Liddell as though he had never seen him before. “My God,” he murmured. “Maurer!”

  Devlin threw up his hands in disgust. “That’s all this guy can talk about, Doc Maurer. All right, so he was a fr
iend of yours, but …”

  “But nothing,” Morrissey roared. “Don’t you see how it fits? Don’t you see how beautifully it fits? It answers everything.”

  The inspector looked to Johnny Liddell, found no enlightenment in the puzzled frown on his face, looked back to Morrissey. “What the hell are you talking about now?” he demanded.

  “Look.” The coroner shook with excitement. “Maurer was murdered right after performing a plastic operation. That blubbering idiot in Homicide, Fogarty, insists it was a gang killing and that Maurer had been patching up gangsters and not reporting. Horsefeathers!” He raced on. “It struck me funny at the time that somebody could be so anxious to change his face. There were no real manhunts on, nobody was really hot. Yet, somebody was anxious enough to change his appearance that he killed an inoffensive old man like Maurer.”

  “Maurer,” Johnny said softly. “By God, Doc. You might have something there at that.”

  Inspector Devlin shrugged, raised his hands palms up. “This may make sense to you two guys but it certainly don’t make sense to me. Suppose you tell me about it in words of one syllable so I can join the party and bust a blood vessel with you.”

  Morrissey made a visible effort to get himself under control. “Look, Devlin. Randolph wanted to disappear. At any rate, he wanted to change his appearance so that nobody would recognize him. He goes to Maurer, gets him to do the job, either by pretending it’s part of a role he’s going to play, or more likely at the point of a gun. After the operation, Randolph pays off with lead.”

  Devlin chewed it over for a few moments. “You know better than that, Doc. Those movie guys live for those pretty pans of theirs. He’d rather fry in the hot seat or squat in the gas chamber a dozen times than get that perfect profile of his messed up.”

  “Don’t be a damn fool, Devlin,” Morrissey yelled. “Of course he wouldn’t have any permanent changes made. Just temporary changes, alterations that can be removed by a simple operation, provided it’s performed in a reasonably short time.”