5 Detective Novels Magazine Cover — page 28: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

28 [ RECALLED how she’d readily ac- cepted me as a lawyer but not the reason why I came. She’d acted as if she expected an attorney to show up sometime or other and make a deal. More and more, I began to think that Joan Haven was being paid off each month. She’d been drunk the first day I saw her. So drunk that when I returned, she couldn’t remember what she’d told me and seemed to be badly worried that she’d talked too much. Now Joan was gone, vanished. She’d apparently left of her own volition and not been forci- bly taken away, which merely added more mystery to too much already piled up. Then that phony Albert Moore who’d sent me to a hock shop and arranged to have it stuck up by a couple of gents who were going to shoot me down and make it appear that I’d been the victim of trigger-happy stickup men. That trick would have worked, too, if I hadn’t been lucky. That kind of luck might not last. Even if I called. the whole thing off, maybe. whoever arranged all this might still think I was dangerous. Most- ly, though, it was self-respect that made me determined to see it through. Hell, I’d killed a man. I wanted some- body to believe me when I said so. I paid off the cab driver, walked half a block beyond the tenement where Joan had lived, and then came back. The street was deserted. I entered the build- ing and was starting up the stairs when I remembered the mail boxes in the downstairs hall. I retraced my steps. Sure enough, the rusty one bearing Joan’s name had an envelope in it. It must have come today. I looked around furtively before I pried the ancient tin box open with a long key I carried in my case. The envelope fell out and landed on the floor. I scooped it up quickly and went upstairs fast. The door to Joan’s flat wasn’t even locked, but I knocked softly just in case a cop had been posted. There was no answer, so I walked in and turned on the lights. Nothing had changed much. The cops had gone through the joint and left it somewhat more untidy than it had been, though that would have been hard to notice. I winced at the chalk FIVE DETECTIVE NOVELS MAGAZINE marks that showed where the body had fallen and looked at the dark blob of dried blood only once. I studied the envelope in my hand then. It had been ‘postmarked right here in town at a midtown post office. There was no return address. Joan’s name was typewritten, and the envelope looked like the kind you can buy in any five-and-dime. I opened it and took out some bills— fifteen twenty dollar bills. Three hun- dred dollars. There was nothing else in the envelope, and the bills were old and could never be traced. So I’d been right. Somebody had been paying off Joan, someone who couldn’t risk having her involved in a killing, justified or not. I wondered why. Who- ever it was had even gone so far as to protect himself by forcing or paying for perjured testimony from Cora Kane, a cab driver, a waiter, and a head- waiter. I thought about going to see those three men but decided against it. I doubted that any of them would even give me the time of day. Chapter VI A LEAST I had something in my hand—three hundred dollars. It seemed odd that with an income like that, Joan would have permitted herself to fall as low as she did. Unless she was trying to forget something. Of course, the answer must be hidden in her past, so I started searching the apartment. Maybe the cops had missed an item or two, and if I could find even one meager clue telling me where Joan had come from, I might have a chance. It occurred to me that this place must have some kind of a super, and frequently these men knew much about their tenants. I’d discovered that in trying to trace skip cases. I went-down- stairs and found the stairway to the basement. A man in faded overalls and a greasy cap was rolling cinder barrels toward the back door. He stopped when I walked up to him, then wiped his face with a grimy arm. I said, “Are you the super?” He said, “Naw—I do this because I like to strain my guts heaving barrels around. Whaddya want?” MICLOOKS ‘a (C(O) (C(O)