The Case of the Running Bag - Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Paranoia Doesn't Mean You're Wrong

The Lieutenant entered with another plain-clothes detective and several uniforms. Sanders looked at the body from different angles while the other detective walked over by me. The Lieutenant had a couple of uniforms start knocking on doors while he had others block off the body. Then he came over to me and told the other detective to pick up my gun with a handkerchief.

“Jeez, Watcher,” said Lieutenant Sanders, “I know I told you to keep your gun handy, but I didn't expect you to shoot someone before we got together this evening.”

“It wasn't my idea, Lieutenant. I was perfectly willing to talk to the man, but clearly, he had other ideas. He tried to break in earlier, so I suspect there is something in here he wanted to get his
hands on really bad.”

“How did you know it was him? It could have been someone else.”

“Did you smell him? I passed him by the elevator and got more of a whiff than I wanted. When I got to the door, the odor was really strong and there were jimmy marks on the door jam. I wasn’t sure if he was going to come back or not, so I got the Colt and loaded it. I heard someone at
the door. I got up to see who it was. He broke in and was raising his piece. I chose not to be the one to end up dead.”

“How you know he's giving you the right scoop, Lieutenant. Maybe he shot first,” said the detective with Lieutenant Sanders.

“I did shoot first. I wasn't going to wait to see why he was raising his weapon. He was breaking in, and I was in his way,” I replied.

“Sergeant Simon Church, this is Jonas Watcher. Now go over and take a look at the body,” said Lieutenant Sanders.

Simon obeyed and stopped short wrinkling up his nose. “Pew, that's Perfume Eddy, we got a warrant on him. He's a small-time crooked son of a bitch. We suspected he was a button man, but what was he doing in this part of town? This ain't his usual haunt.”

“Still think Watcher's not giving it to us straight?” asked the Lieutenant.

“Maybe they was in it together.” Simon wasn't going to let it go.

“In what together? Simon, try not to think. Just go down to the lobby and see to it that the Coroner gets up here to the right place, I don't want someone having a heart attack if he knocks on the wrong door.”

Sanders turned to me.

“It almost happened once. Someone answered the door and he said he was the Coroner and asked where was the dead body? The poor sap almost provided him with one.

“Let's you and I go back into the office, I know you haven't done any sleuthing, it's been a little more than an hour since we last talked, but maybe we can figure out why this mug was here.”

“I have a file that may be part of this, something that turned up before I was at the precinct.”

I opened up the secure drawer and retrieved Mrs. Stanton's file, sans the check. Then we settled down into the client chairs to go through it. The Lieutenant didn't need to know everything. I tossed the file onto the desk and we sifted through the papers.

It was a detailed report from National Investigators, Inc., a high-end detective agency. They had operatives, not tecs. They were big back East and were moving to the West Coast. Their aim
was to take on the Pinkerton's to be the big gorilla in the industry. The report was on Martin
Stanton, Mrs. Stanton's husband.

The Stanton's were well-to-do, but the Parks, Mrs. Stanton's maiden name, were in the area of super-wealthy. When Martin Stanton refused to become an attorney and join his father's firm, he was disinherited. The recently married couple didn't care. Mrs. Stanton had inherited money from her grandmother and an aunt, and that didn't include the possible money from her living father, who doted on his children.

Stanton wanted to be an artist, and he actually had some talent, but he was studying more and painting less. Apparently, he was more interested in his models. One day he up and disappeared. A couple of months later, National found him in Miami, Florida and they let Mrs. Stanton know where he was. She didn't ask for a divorce; in fact, she went to Miami and met with him. They spent some time together, and she went back to New York. After that, she sent him a monthly allowance and continued to visit him from time to time. That went on for a while, then he
vanished again.

National was back on the case, and they found out he was in New Orleans, but they never actually contacted him. He was there several months before he skipped again. It took National another couple of months to find him again, this time in Los Angeles.

Elizabeth Stanton had to be the most persistent woman there was, or maybe she was just gullible. She sent him money in Los Angeles, despite the fact, she hadn't seen him since Miami. When he moved to San Francisco, he let her know where he was going but gave no forwarding address. He
told her she could get in touch with him in care of General Delivery at the main post office.

“Now she's in San Francisco to do what?”

I stared at the Lieutenant. Suddenly his eyes got really big.

“We'll need to contact National,” he said.

“How come?” I asked.

“Look at the bottom of the last three reports,” he said.

They were signed off by a senior operative of National named Sam Parrish. Was there a faint echo of a woman's laughter in the air?

While the Lieutenant and I were going through the National file, the body had been examined and taken away. Some people had come in and done some cleanup. The police barricade had been taken down, and as evening was falling, everything was pretty much back to normal. The building Super had some workmen replacing the door. Simple Simon and the Coroner were still hanging around to talk to the Lieutenant. Simon went first.

“The uniforms and I talked with the other tenants, and other than their concern to get back to business, we didn't get much. One secretary down the hall seen the guy trying to break in and she
ducked away before any of the shots had been fired. She did put in a call to the police, and we have a record of it. It looks like the shamus' version of events is fairly accurate.”

That must have been hard for him to admit, I thought.

The Coroner started to give Lieutenant Sanders the details, but Sanders kept interrupting him.

“The cause of death was,” the Coroner started to say.

“Yeah, two forty-four slugs to the heart,” said the Lieutenant.

The Coroner sighed. “He had been drinking, did you know that!”

“No, I couldn't smell anything over the perfume.”

“I guess I got closer to his mouth than you did,” said the Coroner.

“That's not something I would let get around, Doc,” said the Lieutenant.

The Coroner harrumphed. “He had been in a fight recently. I suspect he won. You might want to look for the loser.”

The Lieutenant looked at me, “You didn't have an altercation with the gentleman before the gunfight, did you?”

“No, I couldn't have stayed within his vicinity long enough, and if we had been in a fistfight, he wouldn’t have come out the winner. And he would still be alive.”

I held up my hands, there was no bruising on my knuckles to indicate I had been in a fight.

“Doc, whoever fought with him didn't kill him,” I said.

“How do you know that?” asked the Coroner.

“Because I'm the one who shot him,” I said.

“Then what am I doing here?” asked the Coroner.

“A dead man was shot, Doc. You gotta be called.” said the Lieutenant.

“Then, it's a closed case,” said the Coroner.

“Not likely,” said the Lieutenant. “It is part of a bigger case, so when you get back to your lab, process him really good, I want to know where the blackguard has been for the last couple of days.”

“Okay,” said the Coroner, and he left.

“Simon, you look into his associates. He wanted in here bad. He was willing to kill for whatever he was looking for. Get some guys from the lab in here. I want every report read and notated, and I want to know what Mickey Philips was working on.”

"Okay, Lieu, I'm on it,” said Simon as he started to leave.

The Lieutenant stopped him. “Simon, give me the Colt.”

“Uh, Lieu,” Simon started to object.

“I'll see it gets to ballistics in the morning.”

Simon took the Colt from his belt and gave it to Lieutenant Sanders. He eyed me with a look of distrust. Then he left.

“I don't think he likes me very much,” I said.

“He doesn't. You’re smart. Don't underestimate him though.”

“By the way," I said, "I thought you couldn't look into Mickey Philip's murder."

“I can't, but I got a killing here. It might be related, might not. It does give me an in,” he said. “It looks like you don't have to go to Sacramento just yet. Ironically, your little shooting here was just what I needed to keep my superiors happy, at least for about forty-eight hours anyway.

"I still can't go digging into who killed Mickey in Sacramento, but I can look into what Mickey Philips was working on that brought Eddie here. I can gather background as to why this mug was breaking into the office. Why he might want to kill a partner of Mickey Philips. As I said, it's an in,
so I don't have to sit on my hands waiting.

“Look,” he continued, “you take Mrs. Stanton's file here and find out about...”

“William Mason,” I finished for him. “That works for me. Look, can I get my stuff out of here? I would just as soon as grab a room somewhere else. I'll let you know where as soon as I flop. I would rather not have any notoriety about what happened here, especially if I'm going to be of any use to you.

"Additionally, I don't want to scare Mrs. Stanton away. After all, she's my first client and maybe
our best lead as to what happened to Mickey Philips.”

“Yeah, that's okay. Just keep me informed.”

He handed me back my Colt.

“You may want to keep this just in case someone else comes around. But try using it as a threat rather than blowing someone else away, okay? And make sure ballistics gets that in the morning, or I'll come looking for you. You got about 15 minutes before the boys show up, so get your stuff and take off. I'll see they lock up.”

I went back to the desk and dropped the Colt into the bag, I pulled some stuff from the secure drawer in Mickey's desk and took Mrs. Stanton's folder. I turned back to the Lieutenant.

“National will be closed back East. They got an office here in the city?”

“Yeah, it's small," he replied." "I'll get you the information on it. Maybe they can get you a lead on William Mason.”

I smiled and nodded.

There was a residential hotel a couple of blocks away. I decided to go there. It was close to the office and the precinct, and right now that was just what I needed. I wanted a drink, but that was not going to happen. That would be that kind of stupid move that would probably cost me my life.