The New Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction (110 page)

I glanced at him quickly, lowered my eyes and slowly lighted a cigarette. “That should clear up the whole case,” I said carefully, though I didn’t believe it. I still couldn’t tag Cambelli as the murderer.

“It should,” Grady put in. “But a couple of things have happened, Mike. You remember that big statue outside Schweingurt’s office?”

I nodded. He meant the Athena goddess. “It was to be delivered to the Lexington Foundation Museum,” I said.

Grady moved his head at Reilly. “Tell him, Reilly,” he said.

Reilly said, “The statue was delivered to the Lexington Museum the day after the murder. It was stolen from the museum that night!”

“Stolen?” I snapped. “People don’t steal something like that. They’d need a derrick. It weighed a ton!”

He lowered his eyebrows. “Just the same, it was either stolen or picked up its skirts and walked out of the place. It’s gone!”

Grady interrupted. “Tell him where the old gal went when she picked up her skirts.”

Reilly’s expression didn’t change. “To Mexico!” he said.

I didn’t say anything for a minute, dropped my cigarette into an ashtray beside my chair and picked up my drink. I couldn’t catch up with them and asked simply, “Mexico?”

Reilly bobbed his big head up and down. “The insurance company that covered it picked it up in a museum in Mexico City and flew it back to New York. And all this in a week . . . It doesn’t seem on the level.” He cocked his head to one side and looked at me narrowly out of his left eye. “Cambelli told us that Schweingurt hired you for a job the day he was murdered. We wondered if there is some information that we haven’t run across yet. Something you may know.”

I took a drink from my glass, made a face and glanced up at him. “About Cambelli having the Dionysus statuette in his room – did you get a tip on that?”

He raised his bushy brows, still looking at me with narrowed eyes, and said. “Yes. As a matter of fact, we did. Why?”

“From whom?”

“I don’t know. It was one of those things.”

“I see,” I replied slowly. “Do you know if this Dionysus statue was an original?”

“Yes, it was an original. A guy named Bramble from the Lexington Museum said it was an original. He’s supposed to be an expert on that sort of thing.”

“Was it broken?”

“No . . . I’m sure it wasn’t broken. Dr Bramble would have remarked about that, wouldn’t he?”

“Yes,” I agreed. “I guess he would have.” It occurred to me that Dr Bramble had insisted that Schweingurt’s Dionysus had been an original; but later that had been broken. I had seen the broken tip of the staff near the scene of the murder. I was sure of that. So another statuette had been switched in its place – possibly the original for the copy – and I wondered when this had been done.

The man who had posed as Leiderkrantz may have actually brought the original from Europe, switched it for a phony after I lost him that morning and brought the copy to Schweingurt. But he couldn’t have made the switch with Cambelli, because I had seen Cambelli in the galleries during that time, cleaning the Athena statue. Still, the original Dionysus had turned up in Cambelli’s room. He was either working with someone else, someone besides Leiderkrantz’s impostor, or the statuette had been planted on him to frame him for the murder.

Reilly suddenly said, “Are you holding out on us, Mike? That would be bad. You’re liable to lose your license if we catch you holding out on us.” His heavy, black eyes were smoldering.

I poured another drink.

I said, “I’m not holding out anything, Reilly. I’m in the dark. There’s an answer some place, but the Cambelli kid isn’t it. You don’t believe Cambelli is the murderer, do you?”

He moved his big shoulders and looked up. “I think maybe he was in on it. Where, I don’t know. But I think it was more involved than a robbery-murder job. It may be an inside job – which would mean Cambelli.”

I shoved the cork into the bottle and struck it with the palm of my hand. “This statue that was picked up in Mexico,” I said, “have you seen it since it was flown back?”

“No. It’s back in the Lexington Museum, as far as I know. Why?”

“You said yourself that something about that part of it didn’t seem on the level. It may be the clue we’re looking for. I think it would be a good idea to take a look at that statue.”

Reilly’s dark eyes brightened and he pushed himself from the chair. “You think we might find the answer there?”

I slipped out of the lounging robe and shrugged into a suit coat, strapped the shoulder holster under my armpit. “It’s just a hunch,” I told him. “Still, we may find something.”

The museum was a huge, impressive-looking brownstone between Fifth Avenue and Madison in the Sixties. The dull glow of a street light flickered dimly off the heavy iron bars at the windows; and here and there the motionless form of a statue was silhouetted against the darkened glass. A guard at the massive front door glanced at Reilly’s police shield, sighed wearily and said, “Another dick! What’re you guys doin’, holding a convention here?”

Reilly glanced at me over his shoulder, raised his heavy eyebrows and then walked into the building. Another guard led us through a dimly lighted hall to the rear.

Dr Homer Bramble’s office was not unlike that of Max Schweingurt. There were a large walnut desk, cases of richly bound books, a thick expensive rug, and odd bits of bric-a-brac, statuary, rock samples and the like. Bramble himself complemented the room. He was a tall, cadaverous-looking man in his sixties, with thick gray hair and piercing black eyes. He had a thin, tight mouth in a pinched, gray face; and his clothes, old-fashioned, of rich black broadcloth, were dust-flecked and ill-kept.

He fixed heavy black-rimmed pince-nez on his long nose as we came into the office, cleared his throat and stared coldly at us.

Reilly said brusquely, “I’m Lieutenant Reilly from Police Headquarters, Doctor Bramble. We’d like to see the statue you purchased from Max Schweingurt.”

“The one that was returned from Mexico City,” I put in meaningfully.

Bramble glanced at me, a wary sarcasm in his sharp eyes. He removed the pince-nez, letting it drop on the black silk ribbon that hung around his neck. “The museum is open at ten o’clock tomorrow morning . . .”

“I beg your pardon,” Reilly interrupted him, “I said we were from Police Headquarters.”

Bramble shrugged. “Very well.” He pressed a button on his desk, picked up a sheaf of papers and, ignoring us, hunched forward on his desk and began to study the papers intently.

In the tense silence I heard the faint sound of footsteps coming toward a door, not the door through which we had entered from the hall, but one to the left of Bramble’s desk. The others seemed to pay no attention, if they heard at all, and I looked at Bramble. In the light from the desk lamp, I saw his eyes darken and a tense expression came over his pinched face. His fingers turned white at the knuckles as he gripped the papers in his hand. I glanced back at the door. The knob turned slowly; then, before the latch clicked, the knob turned back again. The footsteps retreated almost soundlessly away from the door. I watched Bramble wipe a nervous hand across his forehead. The papers trembled in his fingers.

At that moment, the guard who had ushered us to see Bramble came into his office.

Bramble, looking up, said hoarsely, “Take these men to the Athena statue.”

I caught Reilly’s eyes and nodded significantly.

Reilly said sharply, “You too, Doctor,” and added, “if you don’t mind.” The tone of the detective’s voice told Bramble that if he did mind, he’d probably be dragged along anyway.

Bramble’s thin lips drew back against his teeth. He pushed himself from his chair, muttering angrily beneath his breath as he led the way. I stepped aside as Reilly and Grady followed. As they turned into the corridor, I ducked swiftly back into the room and through the door I had been watching a moment before.

I played a narrow beam of a pencil flashlight about the short hallway, narrow and dusty, and followed it till I came to another door at the end. This opened upon a steep, worn stairway which led down into solid blackness. The stairs creaked eerily beneath my cautious step, and I stopped, turned out the flash and held my breath. I could hear nothing. The dank, musty odor from the basement put an unpleasant taste in my mouth, and the dust smarted in my nostrils. Snapping on the flash, I went on down the stairs with each step seemingly shrieking louder in the smothering silence.

At the bottom of the stairway, some instinct seemed to prompt me. I switched off the flash. The blackness pressed down upon me like a great cat. I took three steps slowly, carefully; and my foot struck something. There was still no sound.

With my foot, I felt around in the dark and touched that something again. An icy coldness trickled along my spine.

Using the flash again, I shielded it with my hand and crouched down. A man lay on the concrete floor at my feet. A dead man. He looked about thirty or thirty-five years old, was wearing an ordinary brown suit and had light-brown hair. He was lying on his side, but his clothes were covered with dirt and his shoes were scuffed as if he’d been dragged here. His head had been smashed in horribly and the blood stained the collar and sleeve of his suit coat. I swept the light to the stairs. No blood marks there. He had not been killed upstairs, apparently.

I searched his pockets. There was an insurance investigator’s identification in his right pocket. Some envelopes and papers in the inside pocket of his coat, I glanced through hurriedly. There were a couple of personal letters, a railroad timetable and a telegram reading:

CHECK ALL OVERSEAS CABLES FROM LISBON TO BRAMBLE LEXINGTON MUSEUM NEW YORK BETWEEN THREE AND SEVEN AUGUST.

It was signed by the Central-Union Indemnity Company.

I searched for some other information concerning the telegram, a verification of it, perhaps, but found nothing. The dates between the third and seventh of August were before Schweingurt had expected the Dionysus to come from Europe, many days before in fact. And I wondered if such communication between Bramble and Lisbon referred to the Dionysus, or to something else. The insurance company, as far as I knew, was not concerned with the Dionysus statuette, and probably didn’t even know about it. It was interested, however, in the Athena statue, particularly in the quick removal of the statue from New York to Mexico City.

In the tense seconds it took for these thoughts to rush through my churning mind, my flashlight rayed over the dusty concrete floor, picked out a scattered trail of bloodstains and followed it behind a stack of wooden crates. The place was cluttered with huge boxes, grimy art objects, some with only enough ancient clay chipped and washed away to be recognizable as statuary; others were covered with canvas that had become damp and odorous. The fetid, musty smell parched my throat.

I followed the bloodstains behind the crates, stooping low. Some warning sense caused me to pull the gun from my shoulder holster. I gripped it. My hand was hot and wet against the cold metal.

I thought I heard the faint scuff of a footstep behind me. I started to whirl, but in that instant I was struck violently across the shoulder. I fell, sprawling against the crates. My arm went numb and the flashlight slipped from my lax fingers and clattered across the concrete floor.

The swishing sound of a heavy weapon slashed by my head as I ducked away from my former position. There was a splintered crash from the crate beside me as the object landed. I crouched in the darkness, brought my gun up and fired blindly. The bullet
whanged
off the solid wall opposite me, ricocheted through the basement and whined menacingly close to my face, embedding itself in a box behind me.

The attacker whirled, frightened by the shot, and I sprang in his direction from where I had been hiding against the crate. The force of my body smashed him to his knees as he struggled frantically to keep his balance. I caught a handful of hair and brought the gun down. We rolled across the narrow space of floor. His feet shot out and caught me in the stomach, exploding the breath from my lungs. The pain in my shoulder was torture. I shot out my left fist, felt my knuckles rake his face. I brought the gun around again. The force of the blow tingled all the way up my arm. He rolled away from me, and I scrambled to my knees and went after him. And then I realized he was lying very still.

I stayed in that position about thirty seconds, maybe more, waiting for him to move. The gun in my hand was pointed toward the figure, shrouded in darkness. My finger was tense on the trigger. The man did not move. His breathing, loud in the stillness, was the breathing of a man unconscious.

I got up, wondering if the sound of the shot had been heard upstairs and why Reilly and Grady weren’t down here by now. My flashlight still glowed near the crates where it had dropped; and when I picked it up it was wet and sticky with blood. I rayed it over the spot, saw where the trail of blood ended and smiled grimly, thinking of how really far the trail had come. Before me was a Grecian statue, its canvas covering partially thrown off. The goddess, Athena. The statue that had been smeared with Max Schweingurt’s blood. And now the dark goddess stood above the blood of another victim, the insurance investigator who had discovered her here.

I went back to the unconscious man on the floor and swept a beam of light over him. He was beginning to recover consciousness.

The man struggling dazedly in front of me was the one who had posed as Leiderkrantz! He looked up at me, fright so stark in his eyes that it give him a crazed look. He dropped his head, shaking it weakly, and started to feign unconsciousness. I was not in the mood to let him play possum. I prodded him roughly with my foot.

“Get up,” I ordered. I stabbed the revolver into his ribs.

I pressed the buzzer on Bramble’s desk and sent the guard after Reilly. Then I sat down, placed the gun on the desk in front of me and wearily lighted a cigarette. The man I had met as Leiderkrantz sat near me, nervously rubbing his hands together and staring sullenly at the floor.

Reilly didn’t look friendly when he, Grady and Bramble came into the office. He looked at me narrowly and said, “It’s no good, Mike. We went over the statue with a fine-tooth comb. We couldn’t find anything suspicious.”