Dead on the Level (10 page)

Casey’s interrogation was in no class to compete with the janitor’s chagrin, and he soon found himself alone in the hall with only the retreating shuffle of a pair of tired feet echoing up from the stair well. So Groot was gone, three or four days gone—and then Casey remembered. Four days ago Darius Brunner had given the detective a check for over twelve hundred dollars; a few hours later he was dead. A man couldn’t concentrate on murder as hard as Casey had been doing for the past few days without acquiring a morbid imagination, and what he was thinking now made him want to get inside that office more than ever.

He pulled a silver-plated lighter from his inner coat pocket, a little offering from the redhead before she learned he was such a bad risk, and was preparing to think the problem out over a cigarette when a better idea suggested itself. In one trouser pocket he found a small penknife. He couldn’t open a lock with it, not directly, but he could and did slice a wedge of rubber from the heel of one shoe and then tuck the wedge under Groot’s door, leaving just enough rubber exposed to catch the flame from the lighter. He needed a few minutes to get the rubber burning, but there was plenty of time. When the janitor returned with a new bulb, Casey was standing under a light that hadn’t burned out and was giving a good imitation of a man studying his wrist watch.

The janitor climbed the stepladder, inserted the bulb, nodded with satisfaction when the light spilled out over the hallway, and then sniffed the air.

“Somethin’ burnin’,” he said.

“What’s that?” asked Casey.

“Smells like rubber.”

“Maybe there’s a short somewhere.”

“Smells like—” The man came down from the ladder and went over to Carter Groot’s door. “It’s in here.”

Casey had been right about the keys. One of them did fit the door, and he was right behind the janitor when it went into the lock. The little man headed straight into the office, but Casey paused long enough to kick the stub of smoldering rubber out of sight and then snapped the latch so the door wouldn’t lock again. The rest was easy. He moved on down the hall and waited until the janitor returned, folded up the ladder, and grumblingly shuffled away. When even the echo of his footsteps had faded on the stairway, Casey walked into Groot’s office.

It was a long way from being a showcase of prosperity. Beyond a small reception room, the furnishings of which were few and ancient, he found an undecorative flat-topped desk, a well-worn swivel chair, and a couple of steel filing-cases. A weak wash of November sunlight filtered through the rain-streaked windows, accenting a four days’ accumulation of dust and the somewhat peculiar condition of one of the filing-cabinets. Casey looked closer and then understood why one of the drawers on this particular cabinet stood slightly open. After what had been done to the lock, it would never be the same.

For just a moment he had the uneasy sensation of somebody staring down his collar, but whoever had remembered that Groot would keep a carbon of his report probably had come and gone days ago. He slid open the drawer and thumbed through the neatly labeled portfolios, knowing all the time that what he sought wouldn’t be there. Brown, Bymer, but no Brunner. No evidence at all to indicate the subject, the purpose, or the conclusions of an investigation instigated by the dead man. No evidence, and no Carter Groot. And this, Casey decided, constituted an interesting combination of facts.

Now, at least, he had something to go on that was a lot more convincing than an imaginative kid’s accusations; or was it? Was it really convincing to anybody but Casey Morrow, who was practically begging to be convinced? All he’d found was a busted filing-cabinet and evidence of a missing report that must, by this time, be reduced to a harmless ash. Also on the debit side was the uneasy suspicion that Carter Groot wasn’t going to be so easy to find. He tried the desk. None of the drawers were locked, but neither were they particularly interesting. For the most part they were empty, but in among some envelopes and a cross-country bus schedule he ran across a small ledger containing some penciled notes that seemed to be in code until he studied them closer. Then they became columns of itemized expense accounts. Near the back of the book Casey found what he was looking for:
Brunner, Darius, ret. fee $250.00
, followed by a series of figures that added up to twelve hundred, eighty-seven dollars, and forty cents.

It wasn’t that the ledger told him anything he didn’t know, but it did put it in writing. Casey slipped the book into his coat pocket and eyed the bus schedule. There was always the possibility that the illusive Mr. Groot had merely gone off on another assignment, as the janitor seemed to think, but the schedule was no help at all. Nothing checked, no item underlined. Reluctantly, Casey accepted the fact that there was nothing more to be learned here. He would have to do a little more leg work if he intended to find Carter B. Groot.

The address Casey finally wormed out of the janitor turned out to be that of a yellow brick apartment house with a cement porch, a fancy glass-paneled door, and an unhappy landlady. As he expected, Groot wasn’t at home. He hadn’t been around since Monday. Monday night? Well, maybe he was in, maybe he wasn’t. The landlady had troubles enough without watching all the comings and goings of her tenants. But whenever Groot returned she’d be sure to spot him.

“November’s rent he hasn’t paid already,” she complained bitterly, “and here it’s almost December yet!”

Casey knew an opening when he heard one. “Now that’s too bad,” he sympathized. “I sure hope my old pal isn’t having financial troubles. I’d be glad to help him out if he is. Maybe he’ll be back soon. Maybe I should wait.”

A pair of sharp, calculating eyes were sizing him up. His clothes were good, his shoes expensive, and the wrist watch he consulted with such a flourish had cost plenty.

“I really shouldn’t—” She hesitated.

“Oh, Carter won’t mind! We’re old friends.”

“Well, I wouldn’t want Mr. Groot to miss seeing his friend. I guess it’s all right if you wait inside.”

The landlady got the key and let Casey in. The place was about what he’d expected; elaborately decorated in 1929 and hardly touched since. But Casey hadn’t come to admire the drapes. First he examined the closets. Groot’s wardrobe wasn’t exceptional, but the presence of a well-worn Gladstone on one of the shelves rather discouraged the idea that he had gone off on a business trip, unless he’d been in too much of a hurry to pack. Next came the bathroom, and even Groot’s toothbrush and razor were there.

Casey wandered through the apartment looking for nothing and everything. The bed hadn’t been slept in, but a newspaper draped carelessly over the arm of an overaged wing chair caught his eye. A small table stood beside the chair and on it was a radio, an ash tray full of cigarette butts, and a half-empty glass of bourbon. It was the bourbon that bothered Casey; he didn’t like seeing a drink abandoned that way. He sat down in the chair and tried to get the picture. Groot would have been sitting there having a nightcap (the paper on the arm was an evening edition), a cigarette, and maybe listening to the radio. He reached out and flicked on the table set. It hummed for a minute and then a dry voice began giving out code numbers to a cruising squad car. A nightcap, a cigarette, and the police calls.

And then it was all clear; it couldn’t have been clearer painted with oils.

Casey checked the dateline on the newspaper, but he knew that it had to be Monday. It had to be Monday night, because it was on Monday night that Darius Brunner had been murdered. And it was on Monday night that Carter B. Groot, who had just hauled down a nice fee for digging up a lot of dirt about someone whose scalp Brunner was after, had sat in this chair and heard the call that spelled homicide at Brunner’s address. Casey could only imagine what was in the detective’s missing report, but Groot, knowing who had reason to want Brunner dead, must have had quite a start when he heard that message.

At this point the picture fogged. What did Groot do then? He could have gone to the police, which he obviously had not. He could have gone into hiding, an unlikely reaction for a man in his profession. He could, and here Casey suspected that he might be confusing the man with Casey Morrow, have toyed with the idea that his silence might be golden if marketed to the party involved. An idea like that could be dangerous, but without knowing Groot, what kind of man he was, what he wanted out of life, it was all guesswork.

It was while he still sat there guessing that Casey, more or less absently, drew open the small drawer in the chair-side table; and there, in among some old racing forms, he found a handful of snapshots and a cardboard photo folder from one of the local night clubs. The snapshots were monotonously similar. In each a smiling, dapper man of about thirty-five posed with either one or both arms around a girl. Sometimes they were on the beach with the man holding out his chest and sucking in his stomach (the girl never had to do anything but relax) and sometimes they were posed against a snow drift or on a park bench; but in each snap the girl was different, the man the same. Mr. Groot, Casey concluded, led a very interesting life.

But what was really interesting was the photograph inside the folder. It was the same smiling man, all right, this time with one hand clutching a highball and his free arm wrapped around the curvaceous shoulders of a beautiful blonde in a gown with a plunging neckline. As soon as Casey could get his eyes above the neckline, he recognized the blonde. She was none other than Lance Gorden’s secretary, Miss Nardis with the big brown eyes.

IT WAS EXACTLY two minutes past twelve when Audrey Nardis stepped out of the elevator and into the main-floor lobby of the Brunner Building. She was wearing a brown fur coat that was too expensive if she’d paid for it herself, and not expensive enough if she hadn’t, a green suit, and an expression of searching anxiety. Casey waited until she had reached the arched doorway to the street before he stepped out from behind a near-by pillar and took her by the arm.

“Looking for someone?” he asked.

She turned with a start and the brown eyes widened. “Oh—” she said. “Oh! Its you!”

“So you remember me.”

“Do I remember— Say, Mr. Gorden wants to see you!”

Casey managed to steer Miss Nardis out into the street. The noon-hour rush was on, and under the circumstances he rather liked the idea of lots of company. “That’s funny,” he murmured as they started walking to nowhere in particular, “I didn’t think he cared.”

“Oh, but he does! ‘If you ever lay eyes on that phony newspaperman again,’ he told me, ‘scream for a cop’”

“I wouldn’t do that.”

“What do you want, anyway?”

Casey stopped and looked up and down the street. “Lunch,” he said. “Where can we have lunch? I’m starving.”

“Don’t give me that! You either start talking or I start screaming.”

That, of course, was a chance Casey had to take, and at the moment Miss Nardis seemed quite capable of carrying out her threat. But she was curious, a condition he’d counted on heavily. He took a firmer grip on her arm and started walking again, this time toward a drugstore he’d sighted down the street. “I intend to talk as soon as we get a chance,” he explained. “That’s why I called you this morning. Just so we could have a nice long talk.”

The drugstore was almost filled when they elbowed their way in, but Casey shoved an irate shopper out of the way and snagged the last booth. It was far back and in the corner, nice and private and noisy enough to cover any conversation. He guided the girl in and then sat down across from her. She was angry, all right, but puzzled, too. He had sounded very mysterious over the phone. “Never mind who this is,” he had said. “I’ll be waiting downstairs when you get off for lunch. For your own good, you’d better be there.”

Now she was tapping a menu against the composition table top and glaring at him in a way that did nothing at all for his ego. “I’m listening,” she announced, “but so far I haven’t heard anything.”

“So Gorden wants to see me,” Casey mused. “Did he tell you why?”

“He said you were no newspaperman, that’s all I know.”

Casey nodded soberly. “As a matter of fact,” he said, pulling the photograph folder from his coat pocket, “I’m not.”

“Then what’s this all about? Why the big push?”

“All for your own good, believe me.”

He had the folder opened now and finally Miss Nardis stopped glaring at him long enough to notice. She looked a little surprised and bewildered when she saw what it was, but not a bit scared. “What’s this for?” she demanded.

“Do you know that man?”

“I look as though I know him, don’t I? It’s Barney.”

“Barney?”

“Barney Carter. What of it? He’s just a guy.”

“Do you know where he is now?”

Audrey Nardis seemed to have a built-in, automatic guard that went up in all the right places. She wasn’t a trusting soul; what’s more, she remembered Casey only too well. He had no way of knowing just how much Gorden had told her about their brief but explosive meeting, no more than necessary, probably, but she seemed well aware that Casey wasn’t playing for the home team.

“Why should I know where he is?” she parried. “I’m not looking for him.”

“His wife is.”

“His wife!” Casey had guessed right for once. That did it. “Barney never told me that he was married,” she protested. “I didn’t know he had a wife!”

“That’s tough,” Casey said, “because now that she’s seen this picture, she’s looking for you, too.”

Those brown eyes were getting bigger all the time. “But that’s ridiculous! That picture doesn’t mean anything!”

Casey didn’t say anything for a moment; he was letting her have more fuel for that burn she was nursing. Without proper encouragement she might close up tight. He just sat there, half smiling at her discomfort and grateful, for once in his life, for poor service. Then, when she started tapping that menu on the table again—

“Where’s Barney?” he asked.

“Listen,” she blazed. “I told you he’s nothing to me! How should I know where he is? I’ve only seen him a couple of times in my whole life!”