The Fatal Foursome Page 13

  Johnny Liddell cursed long and loud. He examined the bath and both closets before sliding the .45 back into its holster. He surveyed the damage with a jaundiced eye, turned over the wrecked suitcase, found the bottle of brandy intact, poured himself a stiff jiggerful. He started to drink it, decided against it, poured the jigger down the sink.

  Picking up the house phone, he called the desk, but the clerk couldn’t remember too clearly what his “friends” had looked like. He slammed the receiver back on its hook, stamped into the bathroom.

  He felt refreshed after a quick shower, found a clean shirt that hadn’t been too badly mussed. He stood in front of the mirror adjusting his tie when he caught a glimpse of motion out of the corner of his eye. He swung around, threw himself to the side. Behind the curtain, he could make out a shapeless figure on the fire escape. Two shots came so close they sounded like one. Johnny Liddell could see them chew pieces out of the dresser. There were two more shots. He managed to reach his .45, drag it down behind the bureau.

  He shot twice, heard the roar of the .45 and the clatter of glass. There were two more shots from outside the window. A sharp insect bit Liddell on the side of the head. He heard a roar like thunder. The room started to spin, and somewhere in the distance he could hear screams and running feet.

  The room spun faster. He was conscious that he was dragging himself to his feet. A sick feeling enveloped him, and the room started to tilt. The floor came up and hit him in the face. An inky black stain seemed to spread. It caught him, swirled him into its depths, and engulfed his entire consciousness.

  Johnny Liddell had the sensation that this was happening all over again. That it had happened before. Many times before. He tried to remember what had happened but the blinding flash of light in his skull chased all lucid thoughts before it.

  He tried to sit up. A pain started somewhere under his left ear and shot to a spot somewhere in back of his eyes. He tried opening them.

  A man was bending over him. He had a gun in his hand. Johnny tried to struggle to his feet, but the man pushed him back gently. “Take it easy, Mr. Liddell. You’ll be all right in a minute.”

  Liddell tried to focus his eyes on the man’s face. Recognition came slowly, but at last he realized that it was the house detective. Over his shoulder he could see the white, scared face of the room clerk.

  “Are—are you all right, Mr. Liddell?” the clerk asked in a scared voice.

  “What happened?” Liddell asked.

  The house detective shrugged. “I don’t know for sure, but from the looks of things, you walked in on a sneak thief. He must have shot at you. One of the slugs creased the side of your head.”

  “Get me a drink,” Liddell ordered. The clerk started for the brandy bottle, but Liddell stopped him. “Not out of that. Get one from downstairs.” He tried to pull himself to a sitting position.

  The house detective looked worried. “I’ll notify the police,” he said. “That is, unless you’d prefer that I didn’t?” he asked hopefully.

  Liddell shook his head, groaned. “Never mind the cops. I’ll take care of this myself.” He indicated for the house detective to help him up.

  Once on his feet he felt giddy. For a moment he thought he was going to be sick. He staggered to the chair near the window, sat down.

  “Didn’t see the guy that did it?” he asked weakly.

  “He must have gone down the fire escape,” the house detective volunteered. He moved aside as a bellboy rushed in with two double shots of brandy.

  Liddell gulped the first drink greedily. He gasped as it seared its way to his stomach. After a moment his head stopped spinning. He could feel something wet running down the side of his face. He put his fingers up to touch it, brought them down stained with blood.

  The room clerk trotted back into the room. “The house doctor is here, Mr. Liddell,” he announced.

  He was followed into the room by a wizened old man with a black satchel. As he walked up to Johnny, the Acme detective got a strong whiff of alcohol.

  “A little accident, eh?” he chortled cheerfully. He put his case on the floor, peered at the wound. He opened the satchel, took out some gauze, and a few bottles. He grunted once or twice as he worked on the wound, then leaned back.

  “Nothing to worry about,” he wheezed. “Just a skin break.” His roving eyes fell on the bottle of brandy. “Looks inviting. Mind if I try some?” he asked ingratiatingly.

  “Go ahead.” He watched morosely as the doctor poured the liquid into a water glass and prepared to down it. “I think it’s poisoned, though,” Johnny added.

  The doctor put the glass down as though it had suddenly become electrified. He made a distinct struggle to regain his dignity, glared at the patient and picked up his belongings. “Nothing to worry about,” he repeated. He stole another look at the bottle, then at Liddell. “I’ll have to get along. Another emergency, you know.”

  He trotted out of the room, and disappeared down the hall.

  “Another emergency, he says,” the house detective sneered. “At the bar, that’s where it’ll be.” He looked at Johnny again. “Feel all right now, Mr. Liddell?”

  Johnny nodded. He picked up the second of the jiggers the bellboy had brought him, downed it. He was beginning to feel more like himself. He got to his feet, felt dizzy for a moment, and caught hold of the back of the chair. After a second, the dizziness passed.

  “Sure, I’m all right,” he said. “Whoever it was couldn’t have been too smart. He should’ve known you can’t down a private dick by shooting at his head.”

  The room clerk bustled over. “Anything more we can do?”

  “No,” Johnny Liddell grinned wryly. “I think you’ve done enough. I only wish you’d told me this room fronted on a rifle range when you rented it to me.”

  After the clerk and the house detective had gone Johnny Liddell sat down in the chair for a moment. His legs still felt a little wobbly, but his head was beginning to clear. He still had a dull ringing in it but the mists in front of his eyes were fast dissipating. After a few minutes, he pulled himself out of the chair, staggered over to the bureau.

  The deep scars where the gunsel’s bullets had chewed pieces out of the bureau were plainly visible. He spent a few minutes searching for a bullet before he dug it out, found it was hardly scarred or misshapen. He put it carefully in his pocket.

  He staggered back to the table next to the telephone, picked up what remained of the bottle of cognac. Taking care not to smear up any possible prints, he wrapped it in a towel. Then, taking the receiver of the telephone off its hook, he gave the operator Doc Morrissey’s number.

  “Coroner’s office.”

  “This is Johnny, Doc.”

  “I’ve been expecting you, Johnny,” Morrissey said.

  “And I’ve damn near been expecting you—in your official capacity,” Johnny retorted. “I’ve just had some guy shoot up my room and damn near take the top of my skull off.” He scowled at the wrapped bottle. “And to add insult to injury, I think the louse poisoned the only cognac I’ve been able to buy in this town.”

  Morrissey’s voice was solicitous. “You’re not drunk, are you, Johnny?”

  “Not yet, I’m not,” Liddell promised. “But I’m going to be before the night’s over.” He leaned heavily against the table. “I think I’ve got this case licked, Doc. I got the whole picture now. The trick is going to be to get it in good enough shape so’s a jury will see it, too.”

  “Want to put off that visit over here tonight, Johnny?”

  “Nope,” Liddell informed him. “I’ll be over in about an hour.”

  He dropped the receiver back on the hook, fell across the bed. In a few minutes, he was snoring lightly.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  DOC MORRISSEY clucked sympathetically when Johnny Liddell walked into his office. The detective’s hat sat sideways on his head, a mass of white bandage on his temple throwing it off balance.

  “Quite an effective disguise
.” The coroner grinned. “Don’t tell me, I know what you’re made up as.”

  “Very funny,” Johnny Liddell growled. He dropped into a chair, tossed his hat onto the desk. He didn’t protest too strongly as Doc Morrissey undid the bandage over the wound on his head, peered at it critically.

  “Nothing to worry about,” Doc opined. “The bullet evidently was a richochet or had been deflected before it hit you. Most of its steam had been dissipated, otherwise it would have done more damage than just crease the flesh that way.”

  “It did enough damage to suit me,” Johnny grunted.

  “Come, come. Let’s not dramatize ourselves, Mr. Liddell. Trouble is the sawbones who put that dressing on it made it look worse than it really is.”

  He went to his desk, opened the bottom drawer and brought up his satchel. In a few minutes he had transformed the thick wad of bandages into a neat little patch. Johnny took a look at the effect, brightened immediately.

  “How come you took so long getting here, Johnny?” the coroner asked. “I expected you around nine or ten.”

  “Had a couple of things to do, Doc. First of all, I needed a little sleep. Then I had a hunch that the brandy in my room was poisoned, so I lugged the bottle over to Identification at headquarters to see if my visitor left any prints. I also dug one of the bullets out of the wall and left it at Ballistics to be compared with the bullets from the murder gun.”

  Doc Morrissey nodded his approval. “That’s using your head—for more than a moving target. Now what’d you have in mind this afternoon when you set up a meeting between you, me and Devlin tonight?”

  Liddell shrugged his shoulders. “I thought we could put some skull work into this case and break it before it got any more complicated.”

  Doc sank into his chair, leaned back and rested his feet on the corner of the desk. “I’ve been giving it plenty of thought, Johnny, and I’m ready to admit I’m a bit stumped.”

  “Yeah, I know how you feel. That’s why I figured if we talked it out, we might hit on something.” Johnny Liddell found a cigarette, stuck it in his mouth, and lit it. “Think it might help to let the newspapers know Randolph’s still alive and to put everybody on the lookout for him?”

  “No,” Doc Morrissey stated flatly. “If Maurer worked on that monkey, Johnny, you can be sure nobody will know him. Maurer was tops in his field and when he did a plastic even the subject’s own mother wouldn’t recognize him.”

  Johnny nodded. “I know. But I’m not his mother. I think I could lay my hands on Harvey Randolph tonight.” He smoked for a second, waiting for a reaction, but got none. “Okay. Why don’t you ask why don’t I?”

  “All right. I’ll bite. Why don’t you?”

  “Because I’d have trouble making you and Devlin and anyone else believe I wasn’t squirrel bait. I couldn’t prove it. Don’t forget—the only one who knew definitely what Randolph was going to look like when the bandages came off was Maurer. Got that? The only one. And that includes us.”

  They lapsed into a brooding silence. Suddenly Liddell jumped as though he had been shot.

  “Holy cow, what an idea!” he exclaimed. “Doc,” he said to the startled coroner, “you used to dabble some in plastic surgery, didn’t you?”

  Morrissey nodded. “Just a little. That’s how I got to know Maurer. He was chief on facial surgery in the hospital where I served my interneship. He was always after me to take plastic surgery more seriously, but I could never quite see it.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought.” Johnny was painfully serious now. “Any of the nurses or attendants in this place who are Harvey Randolph fans?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Good. Find out if they have any pictures of Randolph. Some front views and some profiles.”

  “And if they have?”

  “Then get them in here pronto. I’ll show you how you can spot Randolph in a crowd.”

  Morrissey shook his head, then shrugged. He picked up the phone. “Hello. This is Dr. Morrissey. Do you know anybody in the hospital who’d be likely to have pictures of Harvey Randolph, the movie actor? Okay, call me right back.”

  He hung up the phone. “I hope the bullet didn’t affect your brain, Johnny.”

  “It did. Made me smart like a fox, Doc.” Liddell crushed out his cigarette. “Just keep your fingers crossed that this hunch of mine pays off. If it does, we’re going to hand somebody the stiffest jolt they ever got.”

  The phone rang. Morrissey grabbed it. “Yes?” He handed it to Liddell. “For you.”

  The private detective put the phone to his ear. “This is Liddell.”

  “McMasters at headquarters, Mr. Liddell. Lieutenant Marsicano in Identification asked me to tell you that we found only two sets of fingerprints on that bottle. One set was yours.”

  Liddell swore under his breath. “The other set isn’t important. That house physician at the flea bag I laughingly call a hotel poured himself a drink out of it.”

  The voice on the other end of the phone didn’t change in tone. “We’d better get a stomach pump over to him right away then. That bottle was loaded with strychnine. A good-sized slug of that brandy would kill an elephant.”

  Liddell nodded. “I stopped him from drinking it. I had a hunch that bottle was booby-trapped. Thanks, McMasters. You haven’t got any word for me from Ballistics, have you?”

  “Nope. Want me to connect you?”

  “Yeah,” Johnny told him. While the receiver clicked, he poured himself another drink. The connection was finally made.

  “Ballistics,” a new voice announced.

  “This is Johnny Liddell. I left a bullet there to be compared with some you had on file. Any luck?”

  “Just a minute, Mr. Liddell.”

  After a second a new voice came on. “Hello, Liddell? This is Fogarty of Homicide. Where’d you get the bullet you brought in?”

  “It was pumped at me this afternoon. Why?”

  “It matches perfectly with the bullets in Doc Maurer and those other two monkeys we’ve been investigating. I want to talk to you about it.”

  Liddell nodded. “Sure, sure, Fogarty. Why don’t you come on up to the hotel and have a nice chat?”

  “I’ll be right over,” Fogarty growled. Liddell could hear the receiver bang as the Homicide man broke the connection.

  “Tsk, tsk,” he said. “And I didn’t even have time to tell him that I wasn’t at the hotel now.” He replaced the receiver on the hook, took over the armchair he had vacated.

  “Anything important?” Morrissey wanted to know.

  Liddell repeated the gist of the two conversations. Morrissey frowned.

  “The killer must think you’re getting pretty hot, Johnny, when he goes to all that trouble to stop you. He won’t stop there.”

  Johnny Liddell leaned back. “He don’t even know how hot I am. If this hunch of mine works out, we’ll have the arm on him by morning.”

  The phone rang two sharp peals. Morrissey picked up the receiver. “Yes, this is Dr. Morrissey. You did find someone? Who? Who is she?” He nodded, then asked, “Does she live in? Good. That probably means she has them in her room. I wish you’d ask her to lend them to me. I’ll see that she gets them back first thing in the morning. Swell. Thanks a lot.”

  He flipped the receiver back on the hook. “You’re in luck, Liddell,” he grinned. “Martha, one of the maids, shares your passion for Randolph. The switchboard operator is going to try to persuade her to part with a couple of pictures for a few hours. Trouble is, she probably sleeps with them under her pillow.”

  Liddell didn’t deign to answer. “Something tells me that Pretty Boy Randolph has overreached himself this time, and there ain’t gonna be any script gal on this scene to yell for a retake.”

  The pictures arrived within ten minutes. As soon as the male orderly who delivered them had left, Johnny snatched them and studied them. He snapped his fingers. “It’s going to work, sure as hell.” Taking one profile view and one full face, he laid
them side by side on the doctor’s blotter. “What’s that look like?”

  “A rogue’s gallery portrait, for one thing,” Morrissey snapped. “What the hell is it supposed to look like?”

  “Don’t get it yet, eh?” Liddell pointed to the blotter. “You’ve got the length, width and depth of the guy’s face in those two pictures. Right?”

  Doc Morrissey concentrated with a puzzled frown. “Well?”

  “In those notes Doc Maurer left, you have the actual measurements of the features. So using all three, you’ve got a pretty damn accurate picture of Randolph.”

  “As he used to be,” Morrissey reminded him gloomily. “Hell, we didn’t have to go to all that trouble. Any one of ten million fans could have told you that. I’ll bet that maid Martha knows the exact measurement of his nose, how many hairs in his eyebrow and every other detail about him.”

  “Sure, sure. But Martha can’t make a bust of Randolph that will have all the exact measurements. You can.”

  “What the hell for?”

  Liddell pounded the desk in his exasperation. “Don’t you see? Once you have that bust with all the measurements, you’re in exactly the same position Doc Maurer was the night Randolph walked in on him for the operation.”

  “Good God, you’ve got something, Johnny.”

  “Sure,” Johnny Liddell almost yelled in his enthusiasm. “Then all you’ve got to do is perform the same operation, make the same alterations in features and you’ve got a bust of the killer as he looked when the bandages came off.”

  Doc Morrissey pounded him on the back. “That’s it, Johnny.” He yanked his keys out of his pocket, unlocked his filing cabinet, brought out the folder on the Maurer killing. As soon as Liddell had found the slip of penciled notations left by Maurer, Doc Morrissey folded the remaining papers back into the envelope, locked them in the filing cabinet. “Let me take another look at those figures, Johnny.”

  He sat studying the notes for a few minutes, stole a look at the pictures on his desk, made some rapid calculations. “It was Randolph,” he declared. “Of course, it’s pretty rough figuring, but the original measurements look about right.”