Case of the Petticoat Murder by Jonathan Craig

Author:Jonathan Craig [Craig, Jonathan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Crime
Amazon: B000E4B7BI
Goodreads: 9396180
Publisher: Gold Medal
Published: 1958-01-23T21:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

EVEN with Stan's expert jockeying, it still took us more than twenty minutes to reach the Village. By the time we'd parked the Plymouth half a block beyond Corchetti's and walked back, my watch said seven twenty-three.

It was, for most of the Village's residents, a favorite time of day—a time when the Village is, perhaps, more nearly characteristic of itself than at any other. The tourists don't swarm in until later, nor do the uptown New Yorkers who tour the bars and observe the natives.

“You ever been in this place before?” Stan asked as we stepped into Corchetti's.

“Not unless they've changed the name since then,” I said.

“Then you haven't,” he said. “Nobody's changed anything in this dive since the day before the world began.”

There was a long bar with a sprinkling of after-work drinkers, a larger number of round-the-clock drinkers, and two very young girls who didn't look as if they were old enough to be drinking there at all. Against the wall opposite the bar was a row of narrow booths with very high backs, and, midway between the booths and the bar, a half dozen tables about the size of a breadboard.

“Yesterday's tablecloths and last week's sawdust,” Stan said as we approached the bar. “And if you're wondering what that slush is you're wading in, it's liquor. There's more of the stuff on the floor than there is in the glasses.”

“No Johnny Farmers here,” I said, glancing about.

“And no Mary C., either,” Stan said. “No femme junkies at all, so far as I can see.”

“Take a look in the can,” I said. “I'll brace the bartender.”

While Stan walked out to the men's room, I found a space at the bar and beckoned to the bartender.

Unlike Stan, I look like a cop. I look so much like one that I'm rarely or never taken for anything else. Whether this is a curse or a blessing, I've never decided. Perhaps it averages out pretty close to fifty-fifty.

The bartender came over immediately. “Yes, Officer?”

“Seen Johnny Farmer around lately?” I asked.

He was a pink-faced, balding man with a few long strands of graying hair brushed across the middle of his skull from left to right. “I don't know a Johnny Farmer, Officer,” he said.

I gave him a fast description, and he nodded.

“There couldn't be more than one man that unlucky, could there?” he said, grinning. “He was in, Officer.”

“He been in here before?”

“Not when I've been on duty. A man with that much height and that kind of a face would be hard to forget.”

“How about Mary C.?” I said. “She been in today?”

“She practically lives here, Officer. Today she was in about the same time as this Johnny Farmer.”

“But they didn't leave together?”

“No. Mary left a little while after.”

“You know where I can find her?”

“I know where you could try. She goes for this Italian coffee. Told me she drinks eight or ten cups of espresso a day.” He picked up a couple of empty beer glasses and dropped them in the tank behind the bar.

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