Free Death House Doll by Day Keene Page B

mill and in five days the kid in the death house would be dead and the murder of a lad named Stein would be transferred from the alive to the closed file.
    There was a lot more of this and that, including a picture of Miss Gloria May. There was no doubt about it. She was the same blonde whose taxi fare I’d paid. She
couldn’t
have been in the apartment. It had been another girl whom I’d heard crying.
    I read on down the page. There was even a couple of columns by local prominent sicky-ackys attempting to rationalize the wild “accusations” I’d made against Joe LaFanti by explaining the devious ramifications of war neuroses and battle fatigue. Their explanations didn’t make any more sense than LaFanti’s statement. Like the cop in the prowl car had said, even if I was suffering from battle fatigue, which I wasn’t, there wasn’t anything wrong with me that a bottle and the right dame wouldn’t cure.
    Out of the whole mess of interviews, I liked Captain Corson’s statement the best. All he had to say was, “No comment.”
    At five of ten I tucked the gun I’d taken from Tommy between my belly and my belt, buttoned my coat over it and walked down the stairs to the lobby. There was a new clerk behind the desk. He looked up from the morning paper he had spread on the counter, made a fish mouth at me like he was about to say, “Hey,” or “You there,” then changed his mind and looked back at the paper again.
    I walked on out to the street and whistled down a cruising cab.
    The driver tipped his flag as he swung in toward the curb and opened the door for me. “Where to, sport?” he asked.
    I gave him Mona’s lawyer’s number, “Two twenty-one South La Salle.”
    As I closed the door I looked back at the hotel. The day clerk was standing in the doorway, comparing me to the picture on the front page of the paper. When he saw me looking at him, he hot-footed back into the hotel. I wished I knew whom he intended phoning, Captain Corson or Joe LaFanti. Not that it made much difference. Both of them wanted me.
    Emerson’s reception room was small but well furnished. The girl behind the desk said, “Yes. Mr. Emerson came in just this moment. Do you have an appointment, Mr. —?”
    I gave the same name I’d used at the hotel. “Cole. Jim Cole,” I told her. “And while I don’t have an appointment, it could be a matter of life and death.”
    She looked skeptical but said she would see if Mr. Emerson would see me.
    I liked the guy on sight. He was small and dark and cocky. More, he knew his way around. He waited until his girl had said the name I’d given her, then came out from behind his desk and leaned against it, looking at me.
    “I rather expected you, Duval,” he said, “but being as hot as you are I doubted that you’d make it.”
    I asked him how he knew who I was.
    He grinned. “That’s simple. I looked at your picture all the way in from Evanston this morning. Besides, your brother’s boy looks just like you, you know.”
    It made me feel kind of good. “No, I didn’t know,” I told him.
    He offered me a cigarette. He was no longer smiling. “All right. Let’s have it, Sergeant. What’s it all about? You’ve stirred up more hell in one day than I’ve been able to raise in six months.”
    I gave it to him straight. I told him why I had come to Chicago and about the promise I’d made Johnny. When I’d finished, he said, “You’re leveling.” It wasn’t a question. It was a statement. He continued, “I’ll draw up the necessary papers right away.” He made some notes on a pad. “Now as to this business in the morning papers. How much truth is there in the printed account?”
    “Not a hell of a lot,” I told him. “LaFanti and two of his hoods did force me into his car, a blue Club DeVille at the point of a gun. They did slug hell out of me in his apartment.”
    “Why?”
    “Because they thought the kid in the death house had told me something.”
    “What?”
    “They