Inspector Queen’s Own Case

“I can’t keep anything from you, can I? We were wrong about Weirhauser. I just spotted him in a parked car as we came out of the apartment house. He was trying to hide behind a newspaper, but I got a look at him.”

“I don’t understand it,” Jessie exclaimed. “I’ve kept on the lookout for his Chrysler all day.”

“So have I. That’s why we didn’t see him. Don’t turn around, Jessie. He’s about to go into the apartment house.” Richard Queen steered her around the corner into Broadway. “He pulled a fast one today. Ditched the old Chrysler and tailed us in a new Ford.”

“How clever of him.” Jessie tried to keep her tone amused. “Then he’s finding out right now that we’ve been asking for Connie Coy. If McKeown doesn’t tell him, that pimply boy will.”

“More important, he knows we’ve found her. And by tonight, whoever’s paying him to tail us will know it, too.” He was preoccupied as they entered the restaurant.

“What are we going to do, Richard?”

He squeezed her arm. “Have dinner.”

He took a table commanding a view of the door. But the private detective did not appear.

Over the chicken noodle soup Jessie said, “Do you think she’s really married?”

He shrugged.

“Maybe that’s why she had her baby under the name of Exeter, Richard. And told the super she’d given birth in a New Jersey hospital when she actually had the baby in New York. If she’s married and her husband wasn’t the baby’s father...”

“She’d use a phony name at the hospital if she wasn’t married, too. I’ll check Washington first thing in the morning on a Lieutenant Arthur Dimmesdale.” He stopped talking until the waiter removed the soup plates. “Either way we slice this, Jessie, it comes out the same. If Connie’s married, Dimmesdale isn’t the father. If she’s an unmarried mother, and invented Dimmesdale to make life simpler for herself at the apartment house, we’ve still got to look for the man who got her pregnant.”

“And for the other man,” Jessie said grimly.

“Which other man?”

“The man who’s hired that private detective to shadow us.”

He buttered a roll and remarked, “They might be the same man.”

Jessie looked surprised. “That’s so, isn’t it? Or... Richard! Do you suppose Weirhauser’s client could be Arthur Dimmesdale?”

“From Korea?”

“Don’t smile. Suppose the husband does exist. Suppose Dimmesdale knew he hadn’t left his wife pregnant. Then some snoopy ‘friend’ writes to Korea that Connie’s having, or had, a baby. He’s furious. He goes AWOL, or wangles a leave or something — anyway, gets back to the States. First he traces the baby to the Humffreys and murders him—”

“That would make him a psycho, Jessie. And what about Finner’s murder?”

“When Michael was murdered, Finner might have figured the husband did it, pussyfooted around, and decided he was right. If Finner then tried to blackmail Dimmesdale—”

But the Inspector was shaking his head. “I’m pretty sure, from the way Finner reacted, that he’d had no idea the baby was murdered. Hold it. — Fine, waiter. Yes, just the way I like it. Jessie, dig into this roast beef.”

There was no sign of George Weirhauser when they left the restaurant. They walked back up to 88th Street, where they had parked Jessie’s coupe, and Richard Queen rubbed his jaw.

“He’s gone.”

There was no sign of Weirhauser’s new Ford, either.

“Well!” Jessie said. “That’s a relief.”

“Is it?” he said oddly. “It probably means that instead of his client knowing tonight that we’ve located Connie Coy, he’s learning it right now.”

When he came downstairs from Jessie’s apartment that night he strolled up the street a way and then suddenly pulled open the door of a blue Studebaker parked at the kerb and climbed in.

“Evening, Inspector,” Polonsky said.

“See anything of a gray-and-salmon Ford this evening, Wes?”

The retired officer looked concerned. “I thought Weirhauser was driving a black Chrysler.”

“He switched on us today.”

Polonsky swore. “Somebody’s been teaching that punk his trade. I couldn’t say I didn’t, Inspector. I wasn’t watching out for Fords.”

“Neither was I.” The Inspector began gnawing on his mustache. “Wes.”

“Yeah?”

“Whatever happened to Pete Whatzis? You know, the Pete you used to team up with.”

“Pete Angelo? Pete’s wife died two years after he retired. His married daughter’s husband got transferred to Cincinnati, the younger daughter is away at college, and his son’s a Navy career man. Pete worked for a protection agency a few years and then quit.” Polonsky sighed. “At least he tells everybody he quit. He was fired on account of his age. Age! Pete Angelo could still wade into a gang of street corner hoodlums and stack ’em like cordwood.”

“Ever see Angelo?”

“All the time. He lives here on the West Side. We meet in the cafeteria, have four cups of coffee apiece, and tell each other how good we used to be.”

“Then Angelo’s not doing anything?”

“Just going nuts, like the rest of us.”

“Do you suppose I could get Pete to handle a plant for me?”

“Inspector, he’d throw his arms around your neck and kiss every hair on your mustache.”