Corpses in the Cellar Read online

  Lockwood’s eyes went sharp. “Did he have any trouble opening the doors?”

  “I don’t—Jeez, I don’t know.” Brannigan scratched his head. “What’re you driving at, Hook?”

  “Nothing, Jimbo. Just laying all the groundwork I can.” He moved toward the bodies, took another drag on the Kool, and then, one after the other, pulled back the blankets that had been placed on the corpses a few moments before.

  “Well?” Brannigan asked when he was done.

  “The girls used to be pretty,” Lockwood remarked flatly.

  “Nobody there familiar to you, either?” Brannigan asked.

  “No, not really. Although as the years go on, they all begin to look alike.”

  “ ‘They’?” Brannigan inquired.

  “Innocent victims,” Lockwood said. He made a slow tour of the rest of the club, and moved toward the exit.

  Brannigan, who’d been chewing his lip saying nothing, jerked his head up as he saw his friend start toward the stairs. “I’ll come on out with you,” he said. “I’m through here.”

  The two of them slowly went up the stairway, alert to whatever they might find. The doors were shut as they reached the top, and Lockwood opened them carefully, stopping them when they had fully caught the light.

  In a moment, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a jackknife, and then a handkerchief.

  Brannigan stood there impassively as Lockwood carefully put the knife to the door, scraping at it slowly and with precision, holding the handkerchief near, depositing the scrapings into it from time to time.

  Finally, he stood up, put the knife into his pocket, folded the handkerchief, and handed it to Brannigan. From Brannigan’s expression he knew he didn’t have to explain. The big man’s eyes had gone opaque and dangerous. “I’ll get this to the lab for you, Bill. And if it’s what you think it is, I’ll check with Eddie Black, and find out whether or not the doors were open.”

  Chapter Three

  Debbie wasn’t there. Just the old man, uncomfortable, apprehensive as he let him in, a little frail as he showed the way into the enormous living room. Ceilings at least twenty feet high, Lockwood judged. High ceilings should cool a room down, but the place was still oppressively hot, even with half-a-dozen fans going. It looked as if it were going to be a bad summer.

  “Drink?” Grand asked, moving to the cocktail bar.

  “Irish and soda if you’ve got it,” Lockwood requested, and waited as Mack Grand ploddingly went through the motions. He was a small man, maybe five foot six inches, Lockwood judged, stocky, without suggesting either fat or strength, and bald, fluffs of white circling the large bare spot at the top of his head. However, his eyes were aware, and his lips full and sensual, as if whatever power that had once been contained in that body had retreated to those few inches between chin and forehead.

  “Cheers,” Grand toasted mechanically, after handing one of the glasses to Lockwood. He waited while Lockwood sipped, and then asked, “Now what can I do for you?”

  “I want you to tell me everything you know.”

  “My wife informs me she already told you all that.” It was said quietly, without anger or malice.

  “There has to be more to it than that.”

  “A fire is a fire, Mr. Lockwood.”

  “And arson is not just a fire.”

  “Arson?” Grand’s brows arched, and his eyes widened. “The police never said—”

  “I’ve just left the police. They’d only just determined that it was arson.”

  “I don’t understand—” Grand said, giving the appearance of genuine confusion.

  “All the bodies were found in the main part of the club, at the cellar level, far from the stairs.”

  “Yes?”

  “It didn’t make much sense because people don’t usually die that quickly in a fire. And since there were no marks on the bodies…” Lockwood pulled out the Camels and offered them to Grand, who shook his head no, and waved Lockwood to feel free to light up.

  The cigarette tasted good, blotting away the remaining traces of menthol, and Lockwood waited a moment to continue. Then, “So I checked the exits, and found nothing. Nothing, that is, till I got to the front doors. There were things stuck to those doors…”

  He rose, and walked to the window. Below he could see all of Central Park, green, throbbing with life. What was there in people that moved them to destroy? Why all the waste, the useless, unnecessary waste? He sighed, and turned back to the club owner. He wasn’t being paid to reflect. “I had them checked out at the police lab. They were what I suspected they were. Bits of clothing and human flesh.”

  “I don’t—” Grand’s voice faltered, “I don’t understand.”

  “Simple enough. The people in that club had tried to get out. Had pressed their bodies against the hot steel of the doors. Were crushed against the doors, probably by the people behind them, till bits of them sizzled, and stuck.”

  Grand looked sick. He sat for a moment hanging his head, and then looked up at Lockwood. “But why does that make that arson?”

  “Two reasons. One, the bodies weren’t found on the stairs. They’d been moved to look as if they’d never gone near the front doors.”

  “But why?”

  “That should be obvious to you. The doors were locked from outside.”

  “But they couldn’t have been.”

  “Shouldn’t have been, perhaps. But they were. Nothing else could have kept them shut, no way they could have just jammed.”

  “But if they were locked, how did the firemen—the doors weren’t damaged.”

  “Even before the firemen got there, the doors were open. Even before the first person on the scene—a policeman—got there, the doors were open.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Lockwood took a drag on the Camel. “Whoever did it opened the door before the cop got there, dragged the bodies down to the cellar, and left.”

  “Impossible. He’d have been burned to death. I saw what the stairs look like.”

  “My guess is the decorations went quickly. The stairs probably burnt out in minutes. When the firemen got there they were fighting flames along the sides of the cellar; the more substantial stuff.”

  “My God.” Grand looked about him, helplessly. “Who could ever do such a thing?”

  The detective returned to the couch, and sat. “That’s what I’d like to ask you,” he said, quietly.

  Grand stared at him dumbly for a moment, then offered, “How could I possibly know?”

  “It’s your club. Somebody torched it. Deliberately.”

  Grand finished his drink in one quick gulp. “I don’t see how I can help you.”

  “Mr. Grand, I have to warn you—until my investigation can proceed to a satisfactory conclusion, there’s no way my company is going to pay off on your insurance.” Lockwood stabbed out his butt. “And at the moment, I’m nowhere near that conclusion.”

  The old man’s arms dropped to his sides, and he faced Lockwood directly, all defenses seemingly down. “All right. I can’t think of anything. But if you want to ask questions, go ahead, if you believe it’ll help.”

  “Vinnie Griese,” Lockwood said.

  Grand’s eyebrows shot up. “What?”

  “There’s been word out for some time that Griese’s been trying to muscle into your club. Some people even say he’s done it.”

  Grand’s eyes narrowed in anger, and his lower teeth showed, as he spat out the words, “Griese’s got nothing to do with my club! Nothing!”

  “Okay,” Lockwood said, soothingly. “Okay. But what about the rumors that he wanted a piece of the action?”

  “Mr. Lockwood, everyone in New York seems to want a piece of my club. Hoodlums like Griese, cops on the take, columnists expecting freebies everytime they drop in with a party of twelve…”

  Lockwood persisted. “How recently was Griese after you?”

  “I don’t know. A month ago, two months… at my age, it’s ha
rd to keep track of time.”

  “You turned him down?”

  .”Of course. He’s nothing but a lamebrain punk. What good could he do me?”

  “The standard offer is protection.”

  “I can protect myself.” Grand stood up, glass in hand. “Drink?”

  Lockwood shook his head no, and Grand walked over to the bar and poured himself another, a stiff one.

  “When you told him no, did he make any threats?”

  “Sure,” Grand said, still at the bar. “Sure, he made threats. People like him, they’re always making threats.”

  “You didn’t take them seriously.”

  “Mr. Lockwood, I’m not an idiot. Of course I took them seriously. With a mental case like Griese, you know anything’s possible. But I also shrugged it off. I’m a club owner. That kind of stuff goes with the territory. In the old days, it used to keep me up nights. You get older, you shrug it off, and,” he added wryly, returning to his seat, “you let other things keep you up nights instead. At my age, you don’t sleep too good, no matter what.”

  Lockwood continued to dig. “Were any of the threats about a fire?”

  “Nah. That kind don’t have no imagination,” Grand said, for a moment slipping into night club vernacular. “Just a lot of ‘you’ll be sorrys’ and ‘wait and sees’. If Griese set the fire, the reason he was so long getting around to it is that it probably took him a month to come up with the idea.”

  “You may be underestimating him.”

  “Punks. They’re all punks,” Grand snarled, shrugging it off.

  “All right,” Lockwood said. “Anyone else who could have done it?”

  “Sure,” Grand grinned, without much humor. “My ex-wives. Only they’d have made sure I was in the place.”

  “Who else?”

  “You don’t quit, do you, fella?” Grand asked, amusement mixed with exasperation.

  “That’s my job, Mr. Grand. It’s the nature of it. Going one step at a time, touching all the bases, just kind of slogging through. You’ll find I’m not easy to shrug off.”

  “That’s for certain. Okay. Who else, eh? Let me see…” He took another swallow of his drink. “No, that’s it.”

  “You’re sure? No one else you know who might have done this—even for vindictive reasons?”

  “Vindictive…” Grand considered. “Well, all right, you want vindictive, I’ll give you possible vindictives, but I wouldn’t worry too much about them, if I were you. I fired a couple of people last week.”

  “Who? Why?”

  Grand laughed, “I’ll bet you’re good at what you do, Mr. Lockwood. You certainly know how to strip things down to their essentials. Okay, who? A waiter, Len Claypool. Why?. For cheating on the tabs. Who else? Tawny Tourette, the head chorus girl. Why? For moral reasons.”

  “Moral reasons?”

  “Beyond that I don’t want to go.”

  “Do you know where I can reach them?”

  “Sure. They’re in my book. I’ll copy down their addresses. Don’t either of them have a phone, I don’t think.”

  “You mentioned your ex-wives as possibilities,” Lockwood said, as Grand took out his fountain pen.

  “Just a joke.”

  “What about your present wife?”

  Grand’s pen stopped in mid-motion. “Don’t be stupid.”

  “Just a question.”

  “A stupid question.” Grand was getting edgy. “Look, I’ve got things to do…”

  “Your wife said you’re normally at the club at three-thirty in the morning, going over the books,” Lockwood continued, voice level, eyes coolly on Grand, watching him.

  Grand glared, and reddened. “So what?” he asked aggressively.

  “So where were you at three-thirty yesterday morning?”

  “I don’t have to answer all this.”

  “My company doesn’t have to pay you, either. Not a single penny of that $100,000 policy,” the detective said. “I’ve already told you that.”

  Grand slumped back onto the couch. “Okay. For no reason at all, I decided to leave early, all right? Life’s full of odd little coincidences like that.”

  Lockwood continued to study Grand. It was hard to tell whether or not he was lying. “What time did you leave?”

  “About three. Maybe a little before.”

  “Mmm. And what time did you get home?”

  Grand looked at him. In the distance, Lockwood could hear the fans whirring. “Three-thirty, maybe a quarter to four.”

  “That was a long cab ride.”

  “It was-a beautiful evening. I walked.”

  “Stop anywhere?”

  “No. I’m an old man. I don’t walk fast.”

  “No one saw you along the way?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “How about the doorman?”

  “The doorman doesn’t stay on that late. No need.”

  Lockwood nodded. “All right, Mr. Grand. I want to thank you for everything.”

  “Now do I get the dough?” Grand asked, mostly sarcastic, but with a little bit of hope propped up behind the words.

  “Not quite yet,” Lockwood told him. “I’m afraid I’ve just begun.” He finished his drink and rose. “Thanks for the addresses.”

  Chapter Four

  Claypool wasn’t home, so Lockwood drove on to the next suspect’s home. Tawny Tourette lived in one of those new apartment houses that lined Riverside Drive, and The Hook’s black and silver Cord, he thought as he drew up to the building, fit right in with the neighborhood environment. One of the tonier areas of the city, Lockwood mused. Tourette couldn’t have been too happy about suddenly losing the rent money.

  The elevator took him to the top floor. Tourette was in 12C, and her apartment door was already open, undoubtedly the result of his buzzing her apartment to gain entrance through the lobby.

  As he stepped out of the elevator, the door opened wider. He saw a tall, red-haired woman whose hardened eyes were filled with world-weary suspicion. She probably wasn’t even twenty-five, but show business could do that to you.

  “Miss Tourette?” he asked.

  “Do I know you?” she countered, using the old New York ploy of answering a question with another question.

  “My name’s Lockwood. My company had the insurance on the Palms nightclub.”

  She made a face. “I don’t work there anymore.”

  “That’s why I’m here.”

  She stared hard at him, mouth set. This one had a temper, Lockwood decided. Not the kind you want to cross.

  Another moment and she apparently made up her mind about him because she shrugged and drew the door all the way open. “Come in,” she said.

  Lockwood looked around as he entered. It was an apartment built with great taste, but furnished at a somewhat lower level of aesthetic judgment. The couch was covered in a leopard print, the walls blanketed with huge black and white semi-nude blow-ups of the apartment’s owner, interspersed with cheap, sentimental prints. The rug was something you sank into—like quicksand.

  He was only halfway in when she wheeled toward him.

  “Okay. I did it,” she said.

  “What?”

  “I did it. Isn’t that what you’re after? I’m just trying to simplify your job for you.”

  “You burned down the Palms.”

  “Sure, killed everyone. Thought Mack was in the place. He was the one I was trying to kill. It’s driving me nuts that I slipped up on the old bastard.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Because it’s what you want to hear. I’m a woman. I’ve been around. I know the only way a woman can get anywhere in this world is to give men what they want to hear. Whether it’s true or not.”

  “You’re telling me what you just said isn’t true.”

  “Of course it isn’t! But if it’ll make you happy, I’ll say it all over again. Tawny Tourctte. Always accommodating.”

  This looked as if it might take some time. “Min
d if I sit down?” he asked her.

  “Hell, no.”

  He picked a chair upholstered in floating cupids, and pulled out the Camels. “Smoke?” he asked.

  “That crap? You’re talking to a dame with class!” she said, picked up an ivory cigarette holder, snapped open a brass case, and grabbed a Herbert Tareyton. “I sing too, you know,” she explained. “Got to protect my throat.”

  She eyed the black and silver Dunhill lighter appreciatively as he lit her cigarette. “Nice,” she offered. “Looks as if you may have a little class yourself.”

  “I’ve got enough class to recognize class when I see it,” he said, smiling, running his eyes up and down her.

  “Thanks,” she said. “Quite a build, huh? I even excite myself sometimes. Stick me in front of a mirror, and I start breathing hard.”

  “You don’t take things too seriously, do you, Miss Tourette?”

  “Tawny. Don’t take them seriously? Christ, I take them too seriously. That’s why I’ve got to joke about them.”

  Lockwood considered her. “Why did you tell me you did it? What makes you think anyone did it?”

  “Why else would you be here?”

  “You’re a sharp one, Tawny.”

  “Have to be in my business. How can I help you?”

  “Mack Grand fired you last week.”

  “The bastard.”

  “Why?”

  “None of your beeswax.”

  “Mack said it was for moral reasons.”

  “Moral reasons!” Her eyes flashed fire. “That cheap little…”

  “You disagree?”

  “Yeah, I disagree!”

  “Care to say why?”

  She stared at him. “Jesus, you’re a cheeky bastard!”

  “They pay me to be.”

  Her eyes went wild, and then suddenly she laughed. “You’re okay, Lockwood. I like a fella with balls.”

  “It’s not an unusual condition, Tawny.”

  She went helpless at this, eyes squinching up, tears coming out of the corners, laughing soundlessly, stomach drawn all the way in. “Oh, gee!” she said, finally. “That’s telling me! I swear, Lockwood, they oughta bottle you. You’re a tonic.”

  “Good. Why did he fire you?”