A Body for McHugh Read online

  McHugh, polishing glasses, flagged the barmaid down.

  “Georgie, was that table cleaned just before the gal came in?”

  “Sure. Why?”

  “Get me the fingerprint stuff out of the back room.”

  She went away. McHugh moved down the bar and leaned across it at Koolwyk. In a low voice he said, “What’s the angle, Dutchman?”

  “Hah?” The round face with its pouched eyes looked up. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  The words were not said with conviction. McHugh got a cigarette going. Georgia came back with the print set, and McHugh motioned her to leave it on the bar. He fixed the fat man with eyes that had no softness in them now.

  “You’re sticking around, and it’s not because you like my booze. You’re thinking up a way to cut yourself a piece of whatever this amounts to.”

  “I know nothing about it,” the older man said heavily. “I sit here and drink my beer and a man is killed.”

  “I get an impression you know who he was. Or maybe why he was here. I have a feeling that if you keep this to yourself, you might just get taken out of circulation for a while. There’s a Senate subcommittee coming to town next week. To look into the possibility of foreign intelligence action here in San Fran. Now, if the senators were to hear you are a pretty active old guy, they might just ask you some questions. Like, how did you get into the States in the first place, and where your money comes from.”

  Flaccid lips fastened themselves on the bottle. The Dutchman shook his head. “The FBI clears me. You know it.”

  “They let you work. Just because the guy who takes your place if you’re ever picked up might be smarter. Dutchman, you are not smart. But I can make one telephone call and you’ll be on a boat in the morning. You like it here? Or would you rather go back of the Curtain again?”

  It was almost chilly in the bar, but beads of sweat formed on the gray forehead. “I don’t know who he is. I don’t know who he worked for, or what he was to do. I know very little, McHugh.”

  “So tell me very little.”

  “Just I hear that a man who is down in Mexico wants to get into the States. He made some contacts in Mexico City. An American fishing boat slipped in to the coast somewhere, I don’t know where, and the man went aboard. This was some time ago, a month I think. He had money. He was landed at Monterey within the week. The operator of the boat is a Sicilian, a man named Girolamo. I understand he has done such things before.”

  “Uh-huh,” McHugh muttered thoughtfully. The killing had the mark of the Order of the Brotherhood—the legendary Mafia. The dead man had not appeared to be a Sicilian. He had more the look of a Northern European. But why would the Brotherhood dispose of the man in this manner? It would have been easy to knife him at sea and drop him over the side. It could depend on the man’s actions after he slipped into California.

  “The name of the boat?”

  “Rosa.”

  “Why was he going to Monterey?”

  The Dutchman spread his pudgy fingers and examined the wrinkled knuckles. “I can only guess. It is the boat’s home port. It is not patrolled as San Francisco is.”

  McHugh nodded assent. He knew the Monterey situation. A couple of hundred boats worked out of there, from the small harbor on the lee side of the peninsula. The Navy had its Postgraduate School there, and the Army had Fort Ord and the Language School at the Presidio. The Monterey Peninsula had more than its share of Military Intelligence operators. They were bartenders and cab drivers and house men in the poker parlors of Seaside, and they listened constantly, but there were things they were not likely to hear.

  They would not hear a converted purse seiner rub softly against the fueling dock at Moss Landing, around the rim of the bay, and they would not hear the crepe-soled footsteps of a boat puller stepping ashore. And if they did, what of it? The man, whoever he was, would have carried proper papers.

  McHugh scowled. He didn’t think the Dutchman was holding out on him. The Dutchman had pointed the finger at the Order of the Brotherhood, had given names. This alone was enough to take his life if it were known.

  Girolamo. And the Rosa. The names ran through McHugh’s mind without stirring recollections. He poured himself another drink.

  “Okay, Dutchman. Go on home.”

  Koolwyk gulped the last of his beer and reached for the stained felt hat on the stool beside him. “You will not—”

  “I won’t say a word,” McHugh replied. “Scram.”

  He waited until Koolwyk had left, then carried the fingerprint kit to the table the girl had used. The table top itself offered nothing—it was wooden, rough-finished, scarred by years of use. Carefully he went over the ashtray, dusting the silver-gray powder over it. He blew gently, then used a soft brush. He used a magnifying glass and swore softly to himself. There were prints, but they were smudged, useless.

  There was a match cover beside the ashtray. McHugh remembered that the girl had tried to make a lighter work, had used matches when it didn’t. He turned the cover over slowly. It was from a place called the Stirrup Cup in Carmel Valley.

  The Dutchman’s story took on added weight. Carmel Valley was just below Monterey, a slender dogleg cutting back into the Santa Lucia range of mountains. McHugh pocketed the matches.

  “Wanta close it up, boss? Looks like the night’s dead now.” Benny was washing down the bar with soda water and a cloth.

  “Yeah. Count the cash and go home. Where’s Loris?”

  “Back room, having a sandwich with Georgie.”

  McHugh took the fingerprint kit back and stepped through the curtained doorway.

  Loris stood by the drainboard of the small sink, a fragment of roast beef sandwich in her hand. Georgie was counting her change.

  “Might as well go home, Georgie,” McHugh told her. The barmaid nodded and went through the curtains.

  McHugh sliced a chunk of beef from the roast and ate it with his fingers. He was conscious of Loris’ green eyes on him.

  “You’re off again,” she said with certainty.

  McHugh shrugged, swallowing. “Right now I’m just a bit curious about a couple of things.” He told her what the Dutchman had said.

  “That’s all it takes. You get a bit curious and there’s bound to be turmoil, tumult and shouting.”

  “I’ll let it coast until morning, see what Kline has to report.”

  Kline report!” She threw her head back, laughing, showing good teeth. “He wouldn’t tell you how to get to the Ferry Building.”

  “I don’t want to go to the Ferry Building,” McHugh said, grinning. “Kline will tell me what he knows about the chappie who got dead on my doorstep. He won’t be able to help himself.”

  “I’d like to listen. Are you coming home?”

  “Not yet. I want to ponder. You take the car.”

  “So I see you at dawn, if at all.” She got a raincoat, brushed her mouth across his and left by the back door.

  CHAPTER 3

  MCHUGH DARKENED THE DOOR, leaving only the night light and the jukebox neon on. He took quarters from the cash drawer and fed the juke. The opening movement of the Sleeping Beauty Ballet filled the room, and he hummed the melody softly to himself while getting a bottle of Scotch and a glass. He walked to the end of the bar, climbed onto a stool, rocked back against the wall and poured his first drink.

  His mind sought the possible significance of the dead man; but this was a moot point until his identity and purpose had been established.

  Street killings were not rare in this part of San Francisco, a few short blocks away from the tacky district surrounding Turk and Market streets. The dead man could be a nobody—a nobody who had gotten rolled, perhaps some distance from The Door, and had managed to stagger or crawl toward the lighted entrance.

  But there was the matter of the clothes labels torn out, and the matter of the missing girl, Cecille Marie Harnois or whatever her name might be. And there was the Dutchman’s tale of a man and a fishing boat. Was this
man who now lay on a slab at the city morgue the same man?

  Possible. McHugh’s training would not let him rate it as probable until he had more information.

  Briefly, he considered the possibility of routing Brigadier General Burton Harts out of his Washington bed. He quickly rejected it. The diminutive, dapper Harts had the temper of a wolverine when aroused without justification. No, Harts would expect McHugh to be able to report the case concerned the national welfare or security before being consulted.

  McHugh was pouring himself a second drink when the heavy latch on the door rattled. Somebody kicked at it.

  “All closed up,” he yelled.

  “It’s me. Harvey.”

  Go down to Rubens. He’ll sell you some musky.”

  “I got somethin’ ta tell ya, McHugh.”

  McHugh sighed. He did not particularly like Harvey Dunn, who owned the decaying mansion across the street. It had been converted into one-room apartments a generation before, and had been a five-dollar house before the cops closed San Francisco down. But he knew Harvey Dunn would continue to kick on the door until allowed in or thrown bodily into the street. McHugh didn’t feel like getting wet just to get peace.

  He slid back the heavy night bolts on the massive door that gave the bar its name. The Doors door was of oak, hand-hewn and four inches thick, bound by flat iron straps. It had been rescued from the crumbling ruins of a Spanish mission church, and it lent an air of permanency to the run-down saloon. Harvey Dunn ducked inside.

  He was a round man, running to fat in the middle, with a bloated face and stringy, dull-gray hair. He wore a soiled leather jacket open at the front to show a T-shirt, worn thin and stained by food. His wash pants had not been washed, and his shoes were water-soaked. He shook himself, peered myopically around the bar, saw where McHugh had been sitting with the bottle and made for the adjoining stool.

  “What is it, Harvey?” McHugh removed the bottle of Scotch from his reach.

  Dunn looked pained. “Understand you had a little trouble tonight. Guy killed.”

  “So?” McHugh’s nose wrinkled at the smell of the man.

  “The cops come around, askin’ what I seen.

  McHugh considered this. The slob of a man lived in a second-floor front room of his apartment house. Night after night he would sit in the room, watching television, drinking whatever there was to drink and watching the comings and goings of people at The Door. It was possible he had information; it was improbable that he was offering it free.

  “So? What did you see and what did you tell them you saw?”

  Harvey Dunn shivered, slapped at rainspots on his jacket. “Lousy night. Man could die of pneumonia or somepin’. An’ I should tell that Kline anythin’—like hell. When he ran the vice squad he usta come round an bounce me just for somethin’ ta do.”

  “Okay, Harvey. It better be worth it.”

  McHugh hoisted himself across the bar, got the coffee pot, an almost empty bottle of bourbon and a mug. He slid them at Harvey. Eying the level of the liquor with disappointment, the man splashed some into the cup and topped it with the black coffee.

  “Just what I seen. Keep an eye on this dive, you see a lot of strange comin’s an’ goin’s.”

  “Get to it.”

  “Yeah. Well, ten, maybe fifteen minutes before I hear the cops comin’, I see this guy. He comes in a cab, stops a ways down the block. The cabbie goes off, an’ this guy stands in a doorway a little, then turns his coat collar up an’ heads up the street. Just before he gets to your place, here comes this car. He stops. I guess he’s talkin’ with whoever’s in it. He gets in.”

  “He got in? What kind of car?”

  “Yeah, he got in. I dunno what kinda car. Not too much light, an’ with the rain an’ all I just think it was a black sedan. Maybe a Pontiac or Olds. So he gets in an in a couple of minutes he gets out again. He don’t walk so good, kind of all hunched over, but I figger at the time it’s maybe on account of the wind an’ the sidewalk bein’ slippery. He goes down the steps, an’ that’s the last I see of him.”

  “The car—what about it?”

  It took off. While the guy was goin’ down the steps. I watched it, an’ so I thought he’d went inside until I see the cops pull up.”

  “How many people in the car?”

  “Hell, I dunno. You know how it is when it rains. Whoever he was, he got inna back seat.”

  “And he came in a cab.”

  “Yeah. A Checker, if I remember.”

  “What else do you remember, Harvey?”

  “Nothin’...what else would there be?” As though afraid McHugh was going to confiscate the liquor now that he was out of information, the man poured the rest of it into his cup and gulped at it. “The guy come in a cab, he got in a car, he got outa the car an’ fell down dead.”

  “What about a girl? You see a girl before that?”

  Harvey Dunn rubbed his stubbled chin. “Yeah. Come to think of it, I did. Had a raincoat with a hood on it, went in maybe half an hour before.”

  “Tell me about her.”

  “She had a car. She parked it up the street an’ went in.”

  “See what kind of a car?”

  “Yeah. A little. Station wagon, red an’ white.”

  “Happen to see her when she drove off?”

  “You kiddin’? The car’s still there.” He grinned with wet lips. “Looked like she might have a cute tail. Thought maybe you’d latched onta it an’ that’s why you didn’t wanta open up. Sure you ain’t got her stashed in the back room?”

  “Damn sure. Show me that car.”

  McHugh unbolted the door and they stood in the dark, pelting wetness of the sunken entryway. Harvey Dunn peered into the night.

  “Yeah. Still there, see? Fourth one up.”

  “Okay, Harvey. Go on home. And forget this.”

  “Still a cold night. That dump of mine is about as warm as a grave.”

  “Okay. Wait.” McHugh went into the bar and found a half full bottle of bourbon he considered almost undrinkable. “Take this. And remember—forget what you told me. The guys in that car might not like the idea of having a witness.”

  “You know it.” Dunn climbed the short flight of stone steps to the street and melted into the darkness.

  McHugh relocked the front door, walked the length of the bar and got his suit coat and raincoat and hat. From a drawer behind the bar he took a stubby pistol and slid it into the raincoat pocket. He let himself out into the alley behind the building. This was the way the girl had left, and he wondered where she’d gone.

  Where and why.

  The alley mouth was less than a hundred feet to his right, and the street on which it opened saw a lot of cruising cabs, even on nights like this. Likely she had caught a cab and abandoned her car. He turned right at the street, and then right again at the next corner. This put him on the same street as The Door, and the girl’s station wagon.

  He found a convenient doorway and stepped into its shelter.

  The street was deserted, and there were no lights in Harvey Dunn’s room. McHugh was sure the fat man would be watching from the darkness, even though there was nothing to be seen. The light from the corner electrolier did not penetrate the rain as far as the parked car.

  He took a pencil flashlight and a flat piece of thin spring steel from an inner pocket. With a final glance around, he moved swiftly across the sidewalk, headed for the car.

  There was enough light here to see that the front seat was empty, the rear seats folded down. The back end was heaped with the clutter that station wagons seem to come equipped with. He tried the doors but found them locked. Playing the thin flashlight beam across the front seat, he saw the glove compartment door hanging open. He snapped the light off and used the piece of spring steel to pry the wind wing on the driver’s door open. He reached inside and found the doorhandle. It swung open, and he slid inside, closing the door quickly after him.

  He was bending over the steering wheel, t
rying to read the registration tag on the post, when the back of his head caved in.

  There were three of them. Three men in a room that smelled of mold and filth, with walls that were a sickly gray. It was illuminated by a single drop cord with a tin reflector over the bulb. The bulb was within three feet of the floor.

  McHugh lay on the floor. Through the glare of the light he was able to see only three pairs of legs. They looked like ordinary legs, clothed in ordinary trousers and shoes. He cursed himself bitterly for not checking out the back end of the station wagon first.

  “He’s awake,” a voice said from beyond the curtain of light. It was not a coarse voice, but it had a ring of deadly purpose.

  His head throbbed; he was sure a lump the size of an egg was located behind his right ear. It had been an excellent sap job. His arms and legs were not tied, but he felt kitten-weak. He tried to sit up, to push himself back against a wall. Dizziness closed in on him, and he slid face-forward into the grit of the warped wooden floor.

  “Just sit still, mister,” the voice said again. “We won’t hurt you...unless you make us.”

  McHugh steadied himself. He knew the gun was gone from his pocket, but he could still feel the bulge of his wallet. He boosted himself to a sitting position and eased back against the wall that was behind him.

  “I hurt already,” he said. “What the hell is all this about?”

  “Don’t be cute, or you’ll grow a real crop of lumps. Where’s the package?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  A foot came further into the light. It was encased in a brown shoe with a good shine. It kicked McHugh in the face, on the cheekbone just below his right eye. He felt his flesh split and blood flow.

  “The package,” the voice repeated. “You either got it or you know where it is.”