Masters Of Noir Vol I Part 1

Masters of Noir.

Volume One.

by Various.

IDENt.i.tY UNKNOWN by JONATHAN CRAIG

The cheap furnished room in the brownstone where the girl had been murdered was so cramped that it was hard for Walt and the a.s.sistant M.E. and me to keep out of each other's way. The photographer and the other techs had finished half an hour ago and gone back to the station house. I'd put a patrolman at either end of the third-floor corridor to keep the crowd back. From the noise that came up both the front and back stairs, it seemed that half of New York's west side must be down there.

The building super was talking to the two ambulance attendants in the hallway just outside the door. He was beginning to rub on my nerves. The M.E. had stripped the girl, of course, and the super was trying his d.a.m.nedest to get a clear gander at her.

"Relax, Jacobson," I told him. "You've seen young girls before. Wait for us down the hall."

He gave me a hard look, but he moved away.

The M.E. pulled the sheet up over the girl's body. "That's it," he said.

I motioned for the ambulance attendants to take her away. When the body was gone, and I'd shut the door, the M.E. sat down on the side of the bed and lit a cigar.

"She had a lot of living left to her," he said. "She was about eighteen, I'd say. No older." He shook his head. "d.a.m.n shame."

"You find anything besides those lumps on her jaw?" I asked.

"Not a thing, Dave. I won't know for sure till I post her, of course, but right now I'd say the cause of death was a fractured skull."

"Those b.u.mps didn't look so bad though," Walt said dubiously.

"That doesn't mean much," the M.E. said. "When a person's. .h.i.t hard enough on the chin, the force of the blow is transmitted to the point where the jaw hinges on the skull. That causes a fracture, and a lot of times it's fatal. The brain's a semi-solid, Walt, and it doesn't take much to damage it, or even tear it away from the skull altogether."

I nodded. "The skin wasn't broken, so the murder weapon was probably somebody's fist. And besides, if the killer had used a club or something, say, he'd have hit her almost anyplace else but on the jaw."

The M.E. took a deep drag on his cigar. "How'd you boys make out?"

"No good," I said.

"No identification at all?"

"Not a bit."

"That's odd."

"Yeah," Walt said. "The only clothes in the room were the ones she had on. Nothing in the closet, not even a suitcase. And nothing in the dresser. No letters. No anything. She must have used this room for something else besides living in it. We did find a purse, but there wasn't any identification in it. If she had any identification at all, then it must have been in a wallet, and somebody took it along with him."

"You're sure she wasn't attacked, Doc?" I asked.

"I can't be positive until I get her downtown, Dave. But I'd say no. There's no evidence of that at all. Her lipstick was a little smeared, you noticed, so she'd probably been kissing somebody. But I don't think there was anything more than that."

"I've got a hunch this is going to be one of the tough ones," Walt said. "It just smells tough, if you know what I mean."

The M.E. got up and walked to the door. "Well, the sooner I get started on the autopsy, the sooner I'll know whether I can give you any more help."

Walt went over to the open window and sat down on the sill. "You got any ideas, Dave?" he asked.

"Just the shoes," I said.

"The shoes? What about them?"

"The rest of her clothes are going to be hard to trace," I said. "They're nice enough, but they're just like a million other garments. They aren't expensive, and all they've got in the way of labels is the manufacturer's name. They could have been bought in any of a thousand places, all over the country. But the shoes are something else again. They're Jules Courtney shoes, and that makes them just about the most expensive shoes she could buy."

"So?"

"They can be traced. The Jules Courtney outfit stamps all their shoes, not only with their trade name but with the name and address of the retailer to whom they're s.h.i.+pped. This girl's shoes were bought at a store in Atlanta, Georgia, Walt."

"Fine. Nothing like an out-of-town corpse on your hands."

I moved toward the door. "Let's take another crack at that super."

We left a patrolman in the murder room and took the super down to his living quarters in the bas.e.m.e.nt.

He was middle-aged, surly, and about half drunk. "I told you guys I don't know nothing about the girl," he said. "She come in looking for a room last Friday. She paid me a week in advance, and that's all I see of her."

"You told us before that you didn't know her name," I said. "How come? You had to sign a receipt for the rent, didn't you, Jacobson?"

"Receipt? h.e.l.l no, I don't sign no receipts. It's too much trouble. If people don't like the way I run this house, then they can go live someplace else."

"She didn't even tell you her name?"

"I told you once. No. She asked me for a receipt, and I said no dice-so what'd I care what her name was?"

The wall behind Jacobson's bed was covered with photographs torn from magazines and newspapers. Nothing but girls. Some in bathing suits and some nude. Walt walked over to look at them.

"Kind of like the ladies, eh, Jacobson?" Walt said.

"All right, so I like girls. Who doesn't, for G.o.d's sake?"

"We've talked with the other people on the third floor," I said. "n.o.body knew the girl at all. n.o.body had seen her. They'd never even heard her in there. She have any company, so far as you know?"

He shook his head. "As long as the tenants don't bust up the furniture, I don't ask no questions. I don't spy on them. I just plain don't give a d.a.m.n what they do. Maybe she had company, maybe she didn't; I don't know."

"You mean to say you had a girl living in your house almost a week, but you never saw her but once, and never heard any of the other tenants say anything about her?"

"That's right. How many times do I have to tell you?"

"How about when you took towels and linen up there?"

"Towels and linen ain't due till tomorrow."

"Where were you last night?"

He moistened his lips, staring at me. "You got nothing on me, copper."

"Answer the question," I said.

"You going to take me down?"

"I'll d.a.m.n well take you down if you don't open up."

"I ain't saying till I have to."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"The people I was with-well, I don't want to cause no trouble."

"How would you cause them trouble?"

"If their husbands knew I'd been with them, there'd be trouble."

"These are two married women, you mean?"

"Yeah."

"Two of them, Jacobson?" of them, Jacobson?"

"Yeah."

"Come on," I said. "We're going down to the station house."

"Now, wait a minute. You can't-"

"I'm tired of fooling with you. On your feet."

He chewed at his lower lip a moment, glaring at me balefully. "All right. What the h.e.l.l. I was in the first floor rear with Mrs. Cressy and Mrs. Austin. Their husbands work at night, up in Queens someplace. I was there all night."

The M.E. had told us the girl had been murdered about midnight, give or take an hour either way.

"Listen," Jacobson said, "if Cressy and Austin find out I was up there, they'll-"

"We're just interested in where you were," I told him. "If your story holds up, that's as far as we take it."

"I never left the room," he said. "There's a bathroom goes with their place, so I didn't even-"

"Those two couples live together?"

"Yeah. They share the same apartment."

"We'll check," I said. "And meantime, Jacobson, don't run off anywhere."

"Don't worry," he said. "I got nothing to hide-except I sure as h.e.l.l hope you won't tell-"

"It's a little late to fret about that," I told him. "Come on, Walt."

We checked with Mrs. Cressy and Mrs. Austin. They said Jacobson had been in their apartment until a little after five o'clock that morning. Both of them were sure he hadn't left the apartment, even for a moment. That canceled out the super, at least for the time being. Neither Mr. Cressy nor Mr. Austin was home, and their wives told us the men often stopped at bars after they got off work, and that sometimes they didn't get home until around noon. Both were very anxious that we not tell their husbands they'd entertained Jacobson.

We talked to as many of the other tenants as we could find, and then I left Walt to round up the others while I went over to check with the Missing Persons Bureau and send a wire to the Chief of Police at Atlanta. There wasn't much I could do with the wire. I concentrated on giving the best physical description I could of the girl, mentioned the Jules Courtney shoes, their size, color, style, and the name of the store where they had been bought.

There had been nineteen women reported missing in New York during the last twenty-four hours, I found. I skimmed through the sheaf of flimsies and discarded all but two of them as soon as I glanced at the data on their s.e.x and color. Either of the two remaining reports could have fitted the murdered girl. It happens that way sometimes, though not often. I went back to the heading of the one on top and read it through again more slowly.

There wasn't much in it to help me decide.

POLICE DEPARTMENT.

City of New York REPORT OF MISSING PERSON.

Surname: Olsen; First Name: Thelma; Initials: G.

Nativity: Norway; s.e.x: F; Age: 17; Color: W Address; Last Seen At: 418 W. 74th, Mnhtn. Leaving home address Date and Time Seen; Probably Destination: 5/3/54 Unknown Cause of Absence; Date and Time Reported Unknown 5/4/54 6:20 A.M.

I went clown the PHYSICAL (NOTE PECULIARITIES) column. Everything checked. There were no peculiarities. But the CLOTHING column told me that Thelma Olsen had been wearing a blue cotton dress with small red figures, high heeled shoes, no coat or jacket. The murdered girl's dress had been blue, but it had been silk jersey, not cotton, and there had been no figures. In itself, that didn't mean too much. Descriptions of women's clothing, especially if they're made by a man, can be pretty far off. We'd had plenty of cases where men couldn't remember whether women were wearing dresses, or skirts and sweaters. Women, on the other hand, are seldom wrong about clothing, and they can usually give an extremely accurate description of it, even after a lapse of months, or even years.

I read down to the s.p.a.ce for REMARKS: Girl is on probation on possession of narcotics charge (marijuana), no other arrests or convictions. Looks much older than true age. Once, when fifteen, pa.s.sed as eighteen and toured country with dance orchestra. Father has long record of D&D arrests, four short-term sentences.

The report had been filed by telephone with the MPB by the girl's father.

When I read the second report, I discovered I'd missed something. The girl fitted the description, all right, but her weight was given as 145 pounds. The murdered girl had been, at the most, about 115. There was the possibility of error, but it looked as if Thelma Olsen was my best bet.

Before I left the Missing Persons Bureau, I called the a.s.sistant M.E.

"Nothing much, Dave," he said. "She hadn't been attacked. That's for sure. And she did die of a fractured skull, as I thought. We found a dental poultice in her mouth, tucked down between a lower left molar and her cheek."

"Look like she'd been to a dentist recently?"

"No. There's an abrasion on the gum, and she probably was troubled with it from time to time."

"Doesn't seem to be much point in checking dentists, then."

"I'm afraid not. She's never had any restorations or extractions. This dental poultice acts as a counterirritant. They're sometimes pretty effective."

"You know the brand?"

"I'd guess offhand it's a Feldham poultice."

"Yeah. I've used them myself. Anything else?"