Poisons Unknown Page 4

  He dusted the glass with the black powder, examined the prints that showed up critically, and selected the best three. Then, holding the transparent tape taut, he pressed it down over one of the powdered fingerprints. He lifted the tape cautiously, cut it near the roll, transferred it to one of the celluloid strips. He took it to the window, examined the lifted fingerprint, and was satisfied. He repeated the process with two other prints, then replaced powder, tape, and the celluloid strips in his valise.

  Back at the table, he picked up the glass and was about to rewrap it in his handkerchief when he heard a slight noise outside his window. He swung around and dropped to one knee.

  Behind the curtain, he could make out the dim outline of a man’s figure. There was a smash of glass, then two shots that came so close together they sounded like one. Liddell could see them chew bits out of the table near his head. He dove behind the dresser, reached for the bottom drawer where he’d parked his .45, and dragged it out.

  Liddell hugged the dresser for a moment, then stuck a cautious eye around the side. The man on the balcony threw two more shots and two holes appeared in the wall over Liddell’s head as if by magic. He pulled back, blasted the only light fixture in the room off the wall, throwing the room into darkness.

  Then snaking his arm around the dresser, he squeezed the trigger twice and winced at the heavy roar of the .45. Somewhere a woman screamed in shrill French; there was the pounding of running feet. There was no return fire from outside the window.

  Liddell waited for a ten-second count, crept from behind the dresser, flattened himself on the floor. There was no sign of anybody on the balcony. Cautiously, .45 shoved out in front of him, finger taut on the trigger, he inched toward the window.

  The balcony was empty. Liddell threw up the sash, leaned out. Through the ornamental grillwork, he caught sight of a figure with its leg thrown over the far end balcony. He fired at him, the slug screamed wildly as it ricocheted off the metal of the grille.

  The man with the gun swung around the last fan-shaped guard screen and reached the end of the balcony. He raised his hand. There was a vicious spit; his hand seemed to belch orange flame. It spat twice more. Once it gouged a piece of concrete from the wall close enough to Liddell’s head to sting him with the splinters.

  He pulled his head in, rushed for the door, flung it open, and slammed into a big man coming in. The man dug the muzzle of a .38 into Liddell’s midsection. “All right, Jesse James. Drop the artillery,” he ordered.

  “Get out of my way, I’m—”

  The man’s voice was hard, low. “Drop it or I’ll drop you.”

  Liddell shrugged, dropped the .45, watched the big man kick it into the darkness of the room. “He’s going to get away,” he growled.

  “Maybe. But you’re not. Inside.” He slid his hand along the wall until he encountered the overhead switch, flicked it. Nothing happened.

  “I had to blast it,” Liddell told him. “I was a sitting duck in a lighted room.”

  “There’s a lamp on the dresser. Try it—but don’t try anything else,” the big man told him. “You won’t be a sitting duck—you’ll be a dead duck if you do.”

  Liddell walked over to the dresser and snapped on the lamp, spilling a yellow light into the room. Outside in the corridor, heads started to pop cautiously from half-open doors, ready to be jerked back if the shooting started again. At the far end of the hall, some of the hardier souls came out of their rooms and huddled in groups, staring down to where the big man kept his gun trained.

  The man with the gun stared around Liddell’s wrecked room, whistled. “Been having quite a ball. Fireworks and all. A little early for the Mardi Gras, isn’t it?”

  “You the house dick?” Liddell wanted to know.

  “That’s me, McGinnis. Who’re you?”

  “Liddell. Look, Mac, do you have to hold that gun on me? It makes me nervous looking into that end of a heater.”

  “Lucky thing for you it’s you that’s nervous, not me. When I get nervous, I start shooting.”

  “You’d be making a big mistake. This is my room—”

  “If I make a mistake, I’ll apologize. You usually go around with a gun in your fist?”

  Liddell grunted. “I’m a private detective. I’m down here on a case.”

  The house man nodded amiably. “Been doing some target practice, no doubt?”

  “I didn’t shoot the room up,” Liddell told him patiently. “Some guy out on the balcony tried to pot me. I got to the window just as he hit the end of the balcony. I thought I could head him off if I got to the stairs fast enough.”

  Down the hall, the elevator clanged to a stop. The doors slammed open, and the desk clerk bustled up the corridor, face white. “What’s going on up here, Mac?” he asked the house detective.

  The house man didn’t take his eyes off Liddell. “Know this guy?”

  The clerk peered around the big man’s shoulder, saw Liddell, and nodded. “He’s a guest. This is his room.” He started dry-washing his hands agitatedly. “I’m terribly sorry about this, Mr. Liddell. Mac didn’t know you. He—”

  McGinnis shrugged and stuck his .38 back in its holster. “Sorry, mister,” he told Liddell. “Can’t take any chances, you know.”

  “What happened, Mr. Liddell?” The room clerk turned watery eyes on the private detective.

  “Man says somebody tried to blast him from the balcony,” McGinnis told him. “Guy got away.”

  Liddell nodded glumly. “You’re sure I didn’t have any calls or visitors, eh?” he asked the night clerk.

  The clerk coughed nervously and wet his lips with the tip of his tongue. His eyes hopscotched around the room, avoiding Liddell’s gaze. “A call did come in for you just after you got back. They said not to bother you—they just wanted your room number. They were going to send something over.” The motion of his hands became more agitated. “I thought nothing of it, so I gave them your number.”

  “And they damn near gave it to me.”

  There was a brief commotion in the hallway as two men pushed their way through the curious group that had gathered near the doorway. One of the newcomers was in uniform, the other in plain clothes.

  “All right, folks. Nothing to see in here. Get back to your rooms,” the man in plain clothes told them. He shoved his Western sheriff-type hat on the back of his head, nodded to the uniformed man. “Break it up, Ed. Get the hallway cleared.”

  He stepped into the room, closing the door behind him. He nodded to the house detective and turned to Liddell. “I’m Hennessy. Detective sergeant.” His eyes roamed around the room, noted the bullet-scarred dresser, the smashed window. “Looks like you’ve been having some trouble.” He whipped a leather notebook from his pocket. “Let’s hear about it.”

  “Sneak thief, sarge,” the house man told him. “Mr. Liddell here apparently walked in on him. He threw a couple of shots, went out the window, ran along the balcony, and got away.”

  The plain-clothes man grunted, walked over to where Liddell’s .45 lay against the wall, picked it up in a handkerchief, and held the barrel to his nose. “This yours?” he asked Liddell.

  Liddell nodded.

  “Pretty heavy iron to be packing,” he commented. “Must have been expecting trouble?”

  “I always carry it. It’s licensed. I operate a private agency in New York.”

  The sergeant raised his eyebrows. “Oh, a big-town op, eh? Got anything that says so?”

  Liddell reached into his pockets, brought out his credentials, and handed them over. The plain-clothes man riffled through them, copied some information into his notebook, handed the papers back. “You check in at headquarters?”

  Liddell shook his head. “Just got in this afternoon. Didn’t have time.”

  The sergeant considered it, shook his head. “You’ve been in long enough to make somebody mad.”

  “It was a sneak thief.”

  The plain-clothes man snapped his notebook with a scowl. “Lo
ok, Liddell, maybe I’m only a small-town boy, but don’t get cute with me.” He jabbed in the direction of the window with his pencil. “The glass is on the floor inside the room. That means it was broken by somebody outside. Somebody who was waiting for you.”

  Liddell shrugged. “It doesn’t figure. I’ve only been in town a few hours.”

  Hennessy stuck the notebook back in his hip pocket. “Don’t mean a thing. Don’t take some guys as long as others to get unpopular. Some guys got a knack for it.” He dropped Liddell’s .45 into his jacket pocket. “Suppose we take a run downtown and have a talk.”

  “What about?”

  The plain-clothes man shrugged. “We’re the curious kind. We like to know who’s buzzing our territory.”

  “I’m very sorry about all this, Mr. Liddell.” The room clerk looked on the verge of crying. “Is there anything I can do?”

  Liddell jammed his hat on the back of his head. “Yeah, when I come back from the Bastille, have my stuff moved to another room. One that doesn’t front on the municipal firing-range.”

  5

  JOHNNY LIDDELL SQUIRMED on the hard wooden chair in City Hall. His watch showed the time to be 1:10. He lit his fourth cigarette in a half hour from the butt of the last one, swearing under his breath.

  He glared at a frosted-glass door that stated District Attorney—Private in gleaming gold leaf. Finally he got up from the chair and walked over to a railing-enclosed space where a male stenographer was typing out a deposition.

  “How long they figuring on keeping me here? I’ve had a bad day,” he complained.

  The male stenographer looked up, scowled at him. “Look, it’s like the story of the Chinaman and the two guys to hold him. I don’t like it, either. I don’t get no double time for overtime. Go on over and sit down. When they want you, they’ll call you.” He went back to his typing.

  The intercom on the stenographer’s desk buzzed. He flipped the button. “Yes, sir?”

  The intercom chattered back at him. He nodded, flipped the button to off.

  “They want you now.” He nodded toward the glass door. “And if you’ve had a bad day, mister, from the way the boss sounds, the night’s not going to be exactly a breeze, either.”

  Liddell dropped his cigarette to the floor and ground it out. He walked over and entered the room, closing the door behind him. Hennessy, the detective sergeant, lounged comfortably in a wooden armchair across the desk from a tall thin man in a loose-fitting tweed jacket.

  “I’m Wilson, the district attorney.” The man behind the desk pasted a smile on his thin lips but made no effort to get up. “I’m sorry if you’ve had to wait.” His tone didn’t bear out the words. “You know Sergeant Hennessy?”

  Liddell nodded. “I wouldn’t exactly say we’ve struck up an undying friendship, but we’ve met.”

  Wilson nodded. He touched the tips of his fingers together, studied Liddell. “The sergeant thought we should meet. So there would be no future misunderstandings. You understand?” He smiled again, but it consisted merely of a twisting upward of the corners of his mouth. The cold expression in his eyes was unchanged. “Won’t you sit down?”

  Liddell crossed the room and dropped into an armchair facing the desk. “I don’t know what this is all about, Mr. Wilson. An attempt was made on my life. I fired back in self-defense. I have a license for my gun.”

  The district attorney nodded. He was tall, loose-jointed. He wore his hair long, parted low on the left side, little kinky curls over his right ear. His nose was broad at the base, inclined to a slight hook, his dark face hinting at traces of mixed blood generations back. “No one questions your right to defend yourself. The only question that does occur to me is why it would be necessary.” He held his well-manicured hands out, palms up. “You’re a stranger in town. We’re concerned.”

  Liddell nodded. “I’ll bet.” He pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. “Okay?”

  The sergeant shifted in his chair. “Look, Liddell, don’t give us that persecuted act. This is no third degree.” He reached over to the edge of the desk, picked up a card. “The Benton Agency registered you yesterday as an op. You didn’t get here until today. You’re not here twenty-four hours when there’s gunplay. We want to know why.”

  “Maybe I looked like rich pickings for a sneak thief. He was giving my stuff a going-over when—”

  “In the Delcort? Rich pickings? The only thing you could pick up in that flea bag couldn’t be sold on the open market. It might be traded, but—”

  Wilson cut him off with a gesture from a well-manicured hand. “I think we’ll get further if we stop underestimating each other’s intelligence, sergeant.” He leaned back and refolded his hands across his chest. “Certainly, Liddell, you don’t expect us to believe that a sneak thief attempted to rob you, closed the window, then shot through it?”

  Liddell smoked silently, offering no comment.

  “By the same token, we don’t expect you to believe that every time somebody defends himself against felonious assault in New Orleans, I come to my office for a midnight conference on it.”

  “What do you want me to tell you?”

  The district attorney leaned forward. “Who that man was on the balcony and why he tried to kill you.”

  Liddell sighed. “I went all over that with the sergeant.”

  “Suppose you go all over it again with me?” There was a hard note in the district attorney’s suave tones.

  “Well, I came back from a date—”

  “With?”

  “Gabby Benton.”

  The sergeant snorted. “His boss,” he told the D.A. “Naturally, she’d back him up on anything.”

  “When I walked into my room,” Liddell ignored the interruption, “I thought I noticed something or someone on my balcony. The glass broke, and he started throwing lead. I ducked behind the bureau, fished my gun from the bottom drawer, shot back at him.”

  A quick flash of annoyance wiped the last vestiges of simulated good nature from the district attorney’s face. “You haven’t told us who the man was or why he was there, Liddell.” He snapped up the cover of a humidor, selected a fat Havana, bit the end off it, spat it at a square leather wastebasket. “Suppose we come to that part.”

  “I don’t know who he was,” Liddell told him flatly.

  “What are you doing in New Orleans?” Hennessy shot at him.

  “I was brought in on a case that Gabby Benton was afraid was getting too big to handle alone.”

  “What case?”

  Liddell considered, then decided to play it straight. “A man disappeared. A man named Brother Alfred. We’re trying to find him.”

  Wilson rolled the unlit cigar in the center of his mouth and fixed the private detective with the cold glare of his eyes.

  “That happened in another parish. That has nothing to do with the city.”

  Liddell shrugged. “You know that. Now I know it. But maybe the guy who tried to get me doesn’t know it.”

  “Possibly you consider this episode amusing,” the district attorney told him. “I don’t. We will not stand for out-of-town gangsters or,” he shrugged, “private detectives using this town as a dueling-ground. That went out a hundred years ago. This town is law-abiding, and we intend to keep it that way.”

  Liddell nodded. “Suits me. Having guys use my hide as a private shooting-gallery isn’t exactly my idea of fun, either.” He leaned over, crushed his cigarette out in a metal ash tray on the corner of the desk. “Can I go now?”

  Wilson studied him coldly. “You’re free to go any time you wish, Liddell. We have no charges against you—yet.”

  “My gun?” he asked Hennessy.

  The sergeant looked to the district attorney quizzically.

  “We understand each other, Liddell?” the district attorney asked. “There is to be no shooting, no gunplay.”

  “I’ve got a license for the gun.”

  “Exactly. You have a license for the gun. That does not give
you the license to use it indiscriminately.” He flicked his eyes from Liddell to the sergeant. “Give him his gun, sergeant.”

  Hennessy nodded. “It’ll be up any minute.”

  Liddell scowled. “You had it with you.”

  “That’s right.” The sergeant nodded. “But I sent it down to ballistics. We want a couple of slugs on file. It’ll make it a lot easier to keep tabs on you.” He chewed on the end of his thumbnail, staring at Liddell morosely. “I don’t have to remind you that the only permit issued is for that particular .45?”

  Liddell didn’t answer, returned his stare.

  “If you have any other guns with you, I’d advise you to turn them in. Because if we catch you with an unlicensed gun in your possession, Liddell, I’m personally going to toss you into the calaboz and throw away the key.”

  • • •

  The clerk at the Delcort waved Johnny Liddell down excitedly as he came in the lobby. Liddell stopped by the desk on his way to the elevators.

  “Is everything all right, Mr. Liddell?” he wanted to know anxiously.

  “Just peachy dandy. Look, just let me get some sleep. I’ll give you all the details some other time.” He held out his hand. “What room did you move me to?”

  “Room three-forty. You won’t need a key. Miss Benton is up there.”

  “What do you mean Miss Benton is up there?”

  The clerk’s hand started to tremble. He steadied it with his other hand, tried a confident grin. It didn’t fool even him. “She—she came in about a half hour after you left. Somebody must have told her about the shooting.” He cast a baleful glare at the house detective, who was lounging on a chair in the corner reading a newspaper. “She came right over.”

  “You’re sure it’s Miss Benton?” Liddell growled.

  “Oh, yes. Positive.” The clerk’s head bobbed like a cork on a stormy sea. “I know Miss Benton for many years. She—uh—”

  Liddell nodded. “I know. She uses this place for her setup raids. Okay, as long as you’re sure.”

  Liddell took the elevator to the third floor, followed the corridor to 340. He listened outside the door for a moment, slipped the .45 from its shoulder holster to his right-hand pocket. Then he pushed the door open.