This Way for a Shroud

The big man came forward with a rasping gasp, then straightened up and went straight back down the long flight of stairs to land on the back of his head and neck with a crash that shook the building.

Conrad stood for a second looking down at the big man as he lay, his arms and legs thrown wide, on the lower landing. He didn't bother to go down. No one of that weight could fall as the big man had fallen without breaking his neck.

As Conrad turned to Flo's apartment he heard the wail of approaching police sirens.

He walked into a long, narrow room, gaudily furnished as a sitting-room.

Across the divan bed, wearing only a pair of black nylon stockings held up by a pair of pink, rose-decorated garters, lay Flo.

An ice-pick had been driven with tremendous force into the side of her neck. He didn't have to touch her to know she was dead. The job had been done expertly; a professional job. The point of the ice-pick had punctured her spinal cord.

He swore softly under his breath, rubbed his sore shoulder, then groped for a cigarette.

He was still looking down at Flo when two prowl boys, guns in hand, burst into the room.

CHAPTER THREE

CAPTAIN HARLAN MCCANN of the Police Department was a bull of a man whose close-cropped, bullet-shaped head sat squarely on a pair of shoulders as wide as a barn door. His brick-red, fleshy face looked as if it had been hewn out of granite. His restless, small eyes were deep-set, and when he was in a rage, which was often, they glared redly, and struck a chill into the toughest mobster or policeman who happened to cross his path.

This night he was out of uniform. He wore a dark brown lounge suit and a slouch hat pulled well down over his eyes. He drove his Lincoln along Lawrence Boulevard, his big hairy hands gripping the wheel as if he had someone hateful to him by the throat.

He swung the car into Pacific Boulevard and drove along the sea front, passing the brilliantly lit hotels, the Casino, the night spots, the neon-plastered Ambassadors' Club until he reached the far end of the front where the Paradise Club, hidden from casual passers-by by its fifteen-foot walls, overlooked the moonlit ocean.

He swung the car down a narrow lane that ran alongside the east wall and drove for a quarter of a mile, his headlights stabbing the thick darkness that now lay around him. From time to time he glanced in his driving mirror, but he could see no lights of any following car behind him. Ahead of him iron gates suddenly appeared in the glare of his headlights, and he slowed down, reached forward and flicked the lights on and off four times; twice fast, twice slow.

The gates opened and he drove through, pulling up by the guard-house.

A thick-set man wearing a peak cap peered through the window at him, raised his hand in a casual salute and waved him to drive on.

McCann engaged gear and followed the circular road to the club. He pulled up at a side door and got out. Another man in a peak cap slid into the driving scat and drove the car to a nearby garage.

McCann walked up the stone steps to a massive door, rapped four times, twice fast, twice slow, on the bronze knocker, and the door opened.

"Good evening, sir," a voice said out of the darkness.

McCann grunted and moved forward. He heard the door shut behind him, then lights sprang on. He continued down a long passage without looking back, paused outside another massive door and knocked again, using the same signal.

Louis Seigel, Maurer's personal bodyguard and manager of the Paradise Club, opened the door.

Seigel was tall and' dark, and notorious for his good looks. Ten years ago he had been known to the police and to his fellow mobster as 'Louis the Looker', but since hooking up with Maurer he had acquired more dignity, and the tag had been dropped. He was around twenty-nine to thirty years of age, squarejawed, blue-eyed and sun-tanned. An old razor scar that ran from his left eye to his nose gave him a swashbuckling appearance, and his carefully cultivated smile that showed big, gleaming teeth, was a devastating weapon against women, and women were Seigel's principal interest in life.

"Come in, Captain," he said, showing McCann his teeth. "The boss will be out in a minute. What'll you drink?"

McCann looked at Seigel out of the corners of his hard little eyes.

"A Scotch, I guess." He found it difficult to be civil to this smooth, goodlooking hood. He glanced around the luxurious room, lavishly furnished in excellent taste, and moved ponderously over to the mantelpiece and set his great shoulders against it.

Seigel walked to the bar, fixed a Scotch and soda and brought it over.

"The boss was a little surprised at your message. He had to cancel a theatre date. No trouble, I hope, Captain?" he said, handing the glass to McCann.

McCann gave a short barking laugh.

"Trouble? That's not the half of it! If you guys don't handle this right, the whole goddamn lid's coming off – that's how bad it is!"

Seigel raised his eyebrows. He disliked McCann as much as McCann disliked him.