The Black Dagger
A Marmalade and Sam Adventure
The “Black Dagger” Caper was back in nineteen forty-one, see? Right before us Americans stepped into the big human war against the Nazis. My partner Sam never did like the Nazis, even before that. The truth was he hated ‘em – in spades. Yeah. Even worse than I hate takin’ a bath.
The further he could get from them bums, the better he liked it. As far as he was concerned, they was nothin’ but another bunch of mob wise-guys, organized to take whatever they wanted, whoever it might belong to. That kind of stuff was pure poison to him.
It was something from deep down inside him, where he kept all the other secrets that made him the way he was. Not even I understood all of it, and I’m his buddy, see? His partner; his backup man: just about as close as you can get to somebody without wearin’ the same skin.
Part of it was that he just plain loved bein’ a Cop. It was his whole life, and he loved doing it his own way, and doin’ it here, in this country, in this city. And he loved the city itself. No matter how ugly some of it could get, it was still home, and we protected it with our lives.
But the Nazis was all about takin’ over and running the whole world like it was their own turf. Anything they wanted they just took, and anybody that got in their way ended up in the river. That was just wrong, dead wrong, and Sam was never gonna change his mind about that.
Because if they got their way, there wouldn’t be noplace left for honest Cops like Sam, guys who believed in the same law for everybody; Cops who weren’t afraid to stand between good folks and the darkness.
That’s what the badge he carried meant to him. With it he was somebody: Detective Lieutenant Sam McConnell, Metro PD. Without it, he’d just turn into dust and blow away. Then there wouldn’t be noplace for me neither, so there ya’s go. Nobody likes havin’ their world turned upside-down, see?
By ‘forty-one, the Nazis and their cronies had pretty much grabbed all of Europe, and they was startin’ to look this way. Folks on this side of the ocean was gettin’ scared that it could happen here too, and that was bad.
Scared humans are just one step away from a terrified mob, and that’s the most dangerous thing there is in the world, see? Scared humans can burn down a whole city in less time than it takes to tell about it. It was Sam’s job and mine to keep a lid on things so it never happened.
Sam figured that if the Nazis was serious about movin’ in on our territory, they’d already have spies lookin’ things over, see? Getting ready for the day they made their move. So we was always on the lookout, with both eyes peeled. Nobody made us do that. It was just the way we saw the job.
I’m from the Clan of Cat, see? We’ve got our own organization, different from yours. No offense to you humans, but I wouldn’t be one of ya’s for nothin’. Not for all the sardines that ever got stuffed into a can. Humans worry about too much extra malarkey all the time, and it gets in the way of the really important stuff. Some of ‘em never do get around to just livin’ the lives the Spirit Above gave them.
That ain’t for me, see? I like bein’ a Cat just fine, and I especially like bein’ Sam’s Cat. Me and Sam go back a long way together, since ‘thirty-four.
That was the year I was born, and it came close to bein’ the year I snuffed it, too. Yeah. When I was eight weeks old, some louse threw me into a trash bin on a freezing cold morning, just to get rid of me. It looked like curtains, for sure.
But for once, life came up sevens; Sam saw him do it. The creep bought himself thirty days in the slammer for cruelty to animals, and I ended up in the pocket of Sam’s overcoat, where it was warm and safe. Yeah.
Sam McConnell gave me back my life, see? And he gave me a name: “Marmalade,” on account of my color. We was partners from then on, and I went with him on all his cases, with my orange head sticking out of that smelly old pocket like he had a peach in there, until I got too big for him to carry around that way.
Even then I stuck to him like glue, wherever he went. I knew the chance would come to pay back what he’d done for me, and I was gonna be there for him. And any crook that wanted to hurt him had to go through me first. Yeah.
I know Sam put up with a lot of horse laughs and stupid jokes from the wise-acres at the Precinct House on account of me, but he just stared ‘em down. Even Captain Shaughnessy backed away from Sam when he got that look. If he wanted an orange kitten in his pocket, that was his business, see? If some pea-wit wanted to make somethin’ of it, well, he was welcome to try that.
I’d do the same for him too, in a heartbeat, and he knew it. Partners take care of each other, see? Make book on it, pal.
But ya’s asked about the Black Dagger case, not about me and Sam. It was Diane DiSalvo that tipped us off to begin with. She owned and operated the Bluebird Diner, a little breakfast and lunch place on ninety-second and South Cleveland. Sam had known her since the Depression, and she was the closest thing to a friend he had. Besides me, I mean.
The black dagger case went down in November, see? It was the ragged end of Autumn, and it was just startin’ to get really cold in the city, especially when the wind came off the river, like it was that day. The sky looked like lead, but it wasn’t quite ready to start rainin’ yet. Little gusts of wind picked up faded leaves and bits of trash and whirled them around in the air, and then likely as not dropped them right back where they’d been.
Sam and me had spent most of the morning just kickin’ around, seein’ what we could turn up. We knew the streets like the backs of our paws, every hiding place and hole where trouble was likely to start. That’s what it took sometimes, a couple of streetwise old alley cats prowling the city, lookin’ for whatever wasn’t right. Most days ya’s didn’t have to look very far.
But for once the old town was as quiet as it was ever likely to get, so we headed back to where Sam had left the car. An early lunch wouldn’t be bad on a chilly day, and besides, I knew Sam wanted to check on Diane, at the diner. She and Sam had been an item for a couple of years by then. She was sweet on Sam, and I knew he cared for her too, even if he never let nobody but me see it.
It was a quarter to eleven when Sam and me came out of the alley that opens onto Jefferson Avenue, just below the river bridge. We turned south down the sidewalk to where Sam had parked, three or four blocks away. He was driving the new Ford in ‘41, and he didn’t want it to draw a lot of attention to us as we made our rounds.
I loved the old blue ’32 he’d had since I’d been with him, and Sam did too, but it was getting to be too much of a rust bucket. On New Year’s Eve of nineteen-forty, he celebrated by tradin’ it in on a brand new ‘40 model Ford Deluxe Coupe.
Captain Shaughnessy had finally put him in for a pay raise that year, so he had the dough, and it was the first new car he’d ever owned. It was all black, and so shiny I could see myself in it, with lots of extra chrome and fat, chunky, white wall tires.
With a bigger version of the same flathead V-8 as his old car, it had the zip to catch anything else on the street. That could be mighty important in our game.
There was even a radio on the dashboard that would pick up ballgames and the Mercury Theatre. Sam loved to listen to that, but Orson Welles was a little too stuck on himself for my taste. The Lone Ranger had better stories.
By then there was starting to be some money around again, so new cars weren’t as scarce as they had been a few years before. Everybody knew a war was coming, and the country was gearing up for it. The Depression was finally over, and good riddance, I says. Nothin’ spoils people’s good mood like standin’ in a bread line.
The Bluebird was still nearly empty when we parked out front and walked in, just before the noon rush. Diane came out from behind the counter when she saw us and slid up real slinky-like beside Sam. He had started letting her get away with that stuff, which meant a lot, coming from a guy like him.
Don’t get me wrong though. Sam’s got just as many feelings as any other guy, he just don’t know how to show ‘em. Diane understood that, and she made a lot of allowances for him. The whole town knew she was his girl, even if he never advertised it.
“What’ll you have, big fella?” she said, with them big blue peepers of hers all soft and round, like. It’s hard to tell with humans, but I think she might’ve had more in mind than just lunch. Yeah well, she could of picked a lot worse, if ya’s want my two cents’ worth.
She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek, and then backed off just a little, still smiling. Diane is a classy dame, see? She never pushes things too far. Besides all that, she loves cats, so there ain’t never been a problem about me being in there with Sam. Diane’s OK in my book, a real doll.
“Gimme a burger and fries. Extra mustard and hold the onions,” he growled, with the beginnings of a smile hiding just behind his agate eyes.
Sam was in a pretty good mood for once. Nobody at the Precinct had crossed his line in a while, and he hadn’t had to talk to Captain Shaughnessy yet that morning.
Diane winked at me, and went in the back to pass his order to Fred, the fry-cook, puttin’ a little bit extra into her walk while Sam was watchin’. Women’s skirts was getting’ a little bit shorter in those days, and she was really somethin’ to see. And I knew she’d have a piece of bacon, or maybe a crispy salmon patty saved back for me. Like I said, an OK dame.
Some other lunch customers started coming in about then, so Diane was too busy to talk while we dug into our chow, but when Sam got up to pay his check she waved him over. “Hang on a minute, Sam. I almost forgot; I’ve got something for you.” Sam nodded, then dug out a pack of Luckys and lit one up with a match from the jar on the counter, while she found what she was lookin’ for.
“Something” turned out to be a paper napkin with some human writing on it, or rather, just one word. My kind don’t do no writing, see? That’s strictly a human thing. One word looks pretty much like any other to me. But I could tell that what was written on that napkin wasn’t put there by nobody from around here. It was just… different, see?
I guess Sam thought so too, on account of he turned it around in his hands a couple of times and looked at it from different angles before he tried it. “Er… Erig… What is that, Di?”
“I think it’s German,” she said. “It’s not English, and it isn’t Italian either. I read that pretty well; my people come from northern Italy.”
“Yeah, I think you’re right.” Sam’s eyes got a little flintier than they usually are, and I could see the gears in his head start to mesh. “Germans,” he said, real thoughtful like. “Did ya’s see who left it here?”
“A couple of men who’ve been coming in for breakfast for the last few days,” she said. “I found it when I bussed the table at the corner booth. They always sit away from everyone else. Fred took their order, and he says they speak with some kind of a European accent. Both of us would know them if we saw them again.”
“Here we go again!” I says to myself. It wasn’t going to be such a quiet day after all. That was OK by me. Quiet days ain’t what me and Sam do for a livin’, ya’s know. Yeah.
Sam folded the napkin up and slid it into his inside pocket. Then he nodded his thanks to Diane and she batted her baby blues at him and smiled. We was off to the races again, as sure as Capone made bathtub gin.
“Races” was almost a true statement, as we cruised south down Cleveland Avenue in the new Ford. It ain’t easy keepin’ your foot off the gas when you got a new motor purrin’ sweet under the hood. You could see heads turnin’ as we sailed by with our shiny chrome tailpipes grumbling away.
I knew Sam almost wished he hadn’t bought such a flashy car. A detective hadn’t ought to draw that much attention to himself when he’s working, see? But the salesman made him a sweetheart deal, on account of him being a Cop. Sam didn’t have it in him to walk away without the keys in his pocket.
I had to admit I agreed, perched beside him on the new upholstery, lookin’ out the windshield at all the ordinary folks, while the radio played Glenn Miller. We passed three or four of my kind sittin’ on the curb and staring with wide eyes and pricked ears, and I could feel the envy coming off ‘em in waves. Sometimes life is sweet.
It took about twenty minutes to get back to the Precinct Station, but when we got inside, Sam didn’t bother taking off his overcoat. He went straight to Sergeant Flaherty.
Sean Flaherty, the grizzled veteran Cop who commanded the day shift uniforms, had the face of a prize-fighter and fists like wrecking balls. He looked like a boulder that had rolled down a mountain and come to rest behind the Fifth Precinct booking desk.
Some of the uniforms said the Sarge had been on the Police Force so long his badge number only had one digit, but that was a dirty lie, see? I hopped up on his desk and looked at his badge one time, and there was two. Yeah.
He might have looked like a battered old palooka, but I happen to know he that could speak and write at least four human languages, including the Irish Gaelic of his grandfathers.
Even more germane to the situation than that, he was a cat lover, and regularly carried sardines in his lunchpail. He wasn’t stingy with ‘em, neither. The Sarge was a regular stand-up guy, in my book.
Sam unfolded the paper napkin Diane had given him and handed it to him. “What do ya’s make of that, Sean?”
“German,” he said without hesitation. ‘Ereigniskette.’ He said it “Ehr-Eye-G’niss-Ketta,” and his lilting Irish brogue made the German sound even stranger. “It means a chain of events. One thing causes another to happen, like a chain reaction.”
“There’s somethin’ else too, down in the corner,” he said, holding the paper up to the light in his big, scarred paw. “Looks like they was writing on another paper of some kind on top of this one, and it left an impression. Hard to make out,” he said as he squinted, “but it looks like some kinda code. ‘U-97’,” he finally said.
“Thanks Sean,” Sam said, with his eyes glinting like chips of dark brown agate. “I owe ya’s one.” The Sarge grinned and went back to what he was doing.
“Yep,” I says to myself. We was definitely back in business! Sometimes a quiet morning is just an omen that the afternoon is about to get lively. That was just fine with me. The hotter this business gets, the better I like it. Yeah.
“Spies,” Sam said to himself as Flaherty turned back to his paperwork. “Nazi spies!”
“What spies?” laughed Captain Shaughnessy, who had walked up behind him while he was talkin’ to the Sarge. “Not Nazis again, Sam. Ya’s need to get hold of yourself. I think you’re crackin’ up.”
Sam whirled around with mayhem flickering just behind those agate eyes. Everybody in the Precinct knew better than to come up behind Sam like that. He hated that, see?
But Brian Shaughnessy loved to do it anyhow, just to ruffle his feathers. I think he enjoyed seein’ just how far he could push Sam before he blew his stack. Someday he’d go an inch too far and wish he hadn’t.
Not today, though; Sam had known the Captain was back there even before he opened his cake hole. I’d snagged his trousers leg with my claws a couple of seconds before that, see? It was our private signal that somebody was behind him. Partners cover each other’s back, always.
“Well now Brian, maybe it’s spies and maybe it ain’t. Seems like I read someplace it was my job to figure out which.”
“Is that so?” the Cap shot back at him. “I thought you was workin’ strictly homicides these days. Speakin’ of which, the YMCA just called in a stiff in one of their weekly rooms. You and that orange dust mop go check it out whilst ya’s are restin’. See MacElroy, the manager, in room 218.”
Sam glared at Shaughnessy for a moment, with a low, rumbling growl that sounded like mountains moving. I snarled and spat. “Orange dust mop,” was I? I’d show that mug a thing or two! That was one insult too many, and undeserved besides.
Then Sam muttered “Yeah, yeah,” and turned away before one of us did something all of us would regret later.
Shaughnessy’s Mama ought to have taught him better manners than that. One of these days when I had the time, I’d take care of it for her. Yeah. But there ain’t no sense kickin’; Sam was right to walk away from him. It was a dirty shame I couldn’t clean his clock for him then and there, and that’s the dyin’ truth.
Sam locked eyes with me and jerked his chin toward the door. I could actually hear his teeth grinding together. So much for his good mood. Somebody always had to push him just an inch too far. Sergeant Flaherty shook his head sadly as we stomped out the front doors.
Orange dust mop indeed! Call me “Marmalade,” or don’t call me at all, see? Sam gave me that name, and it’s good enough to use!
The YMCA was a 25-minute drive from Fifth Precinct Station, South on Madison and then east on Freedom Boulevard, almost to the dockyard. That was long enough for driving the new Ford coupe to brighten Sam’s mood, so I wasn’t particularly worried about him. Before we got to where we was goin’, he was whistling a number we’d heard on the radio.
The port area was a dangerous neighborhood, full of the usual pickpockets, shylocks and easy women. The longshoremen they preyed on were a tough crowd, but they usually left the “Y” alone. It was a clean place to play dominoes or get a cheap room by the day or the week, and nobody wanted to endanger that, see? There was almost never any trouble there. A suspicious death was something way out of the ordinary. Yeah.
We found MacElroy having a smoke out front while he waited for us. He straightened up as we pulled up and parked. He was a tall, blocky guy around sixty, dressed in dungarees and a leather jacket. I saw a Marine tattoo on back of his scarred hand when he waved to us, the eagle and globe thing, ya’s know. He was lookin’ the Ford over as we got out.
“Dave MacElroy,” he said as he and Sam shook hands. “Call me ‘Mac.’ That’s a nice car. New?”
“Yeah, since last January,” Sam said. “The name’s McConnell. You the one called in a dead body?”
“I never owned a car. Spent most of my life in the Marine Corps. Ya don’t get much chance to drive around, standin’ watch on the battlewagons and cruisers.”
“I don’t imagine you would,” Sam answered. “You got a dead body here?”
“Yeah,” he said, coming back from his memories. “In room 218, upstairs.” He pointed at me, which I liked about as much as Herbert Hoover liked Roosevelt. “We don’t allow no pets on the premises.”
“That’s ok, then,” Sam said with a mildness I knew he didn’t feel. “Marmalade ain’t no pet. He’s with me.”
“Suit yourself, then.” Mac took a moment to “GI” his cigarette, scattering the leftover tobacco and wadding up the paper into a little ball, which he put in his pocket. “‘Dis way,” he said.
I hated it when humans pointed at me, but I let it go for now. Business came first. MacElroy led us into the lobby, and then up a flight of stairs and down a dingy corridor.
Room 218 was the usual bachelor’s crib, a narrow bed, a straight wooden chair and table, and a chest of drawers. There was a rusty radiator near one wall for heat. The only unusual thing about it was the bed. It was soaked with blood, on account of the dead guy laying on it with his throat slit.
I started nosing around, sort of sizing the joint up, while Sam took a look at the stiff. There wasn’t much to see on the floor, just some dust bunnies and a couple of Hershey wrappers. But then my eye caught the glint of somethin’ else under the edge of the radiator. It was the kind with stubby little iron legs that held it a couple of inches off the floor, see?
I started raking under there with one paw and snagged what I’d seen. It popped out finally, and I could see that it was a bullet. Not the kind Sam uses in his service .38, but different, a little shorter.
I called, and Sam turned around. “What’s cookin’, little guy?” Then he saw what I’d found and got down on one knee for a closer look. He nodded his approval of my detective skills, and dug out his handkerchief to pick it up, in case there was any prints.
“Parabellum,” he muttered. “Nine-millimeter. Fits a German pistol.”
“We don’t allow no firearms on the premises,” Mac barked, like the old Marine non-com he’d certainly been. “No smokin’, no cookin’ in the rooms, no dames, and definitely no guns.”
“I’d say ‘dis guy here didn’t care much for your rules.” Sam folded the bullet up in his handkerchief and stuck it in his pocket. “Do ya’s allow telephones on the premises?”
“There’s a phone in the lobby for the residents,” Mac said, not getting the joke. “Two fifteen-minute calls a day.”
“Well, use one of ‘em, and call the Fifth Precinct. Tell the dispatcher Sam McConnell said to send a Medical Examiner and a couple of uniforms. I want to know more about the knife that gave this character his new ear-to-ear grin.”
He moved over to the chest, and was looking inside the drawers one by one, being careful in case there was any prints. I could tell by the look on his face there was nothing in any of ‘em.
Whoever punched this chump’s card had cleaned the joint out, but good. If there was a pistol to go with the bullet I’d turned up, the killer had it now. Sam looked the room over real good, filing away everything he saw in his head. Sam never wrote anything down, See? He didn’t need to; his memory was like flypaper. Anything that went in, stayed there.
“Now,” he said when MacElroy came back, “What do ya’s know about him? Other than you found him dead, I should say. Did he have a name?”
“He signed himself ‘Henry Miller’ when he registered. Didn’t say much, but he sounded German. I heard them guys talk before. In the Great War, after Belleau Wood. He had a suitcase wid’ him when he came in. Been here a couple of days. He never caused no trouble until now.”
“Well, I’ll bet he wishes he hadn’t,” Sam said, looking at the amount of blood that was soaking the bed. “I don’t see any suitcase. What did it look like?”
“It was brown leather, about so long,” MacElroy said, holding his hands about two of my body lengths apart, not counting tails. “It was brand-new, still had that ‘new leather’ smell to it.”
At least the old Marine was a good witness, I said to myself. Most humans ain’t, see? They blunder around thinking about everything except what’s in front of their eyes. They don’t see nothin’, and what they do, they don’t remember. A cat can’t afford to act like that. If he did, he’d get bitten in half by the first big dog or flattened by the first fast car that came along.
“Wait downstairs for the M.E. and the guys from my Precinct,” Sam said to MacElroy. “Don’t go noplace, and don’t let anybody else in here, see?” The old Marine Sergeant all but snapped to attention, and nodded crisply. Then Sam looked at me and pointed to the door.
We headed for the Ford, and I knew exactly where we was going. Straight back to the Bluebird Diner. Yeah.
“I don’t know about this, Sam,” said Diane DiSalvo, about three quarters of an hour later. “Dead people make me faint. I mean really. I’m not kidding. I couldn’t even look into my grandpa’s casket at his funeral.”
We was getting out of the car again, back at the Y, see? There was a beat-up Chevrolet panel truck marked “County Medical Examiner” and a couple of black-and-white cars from the Precinct parked out front this time.
“I’m sorry Di,” he said, putting his hands on her shoulders and giving her a quick squeeze. “I wouldn’t do this to ya’s if we didn’t absolutely have to know”.
“It’s okay, Sam. I know you have to do your job. Can I hold Marmalade? He always makes me feel better.”
I leaped into her arms, as the best answer to her question. I liked Di too, and I’d do anything she needed me to. Then we entered the building and climbed the flight of stairs to the murder scene.
In room 218, one of the uniforms drew back the sheet that had been placed over the body. “Henry Miller” didn’t look any better than he had the last time I’d seen him. A human without the spirit that makes him a living creature ain’t a pretty sight. I’ve seen plenty, working crime scenes with my partner, and that’s the sorry truth.
“Oh golly!” Diane squeaked. “It’s him.” She turned her head away in a quick jerk that sent her blonde hair flying. “It’s one of the guys from the corner booth! Get me out of here Sam, please!”
“Sure thing, Doll. We’ll get ya’s back to the car and my little buddy will stay with you. I’ll have to come back up here for a few more minutes. There’s still a couple more questions I need to ask.”
I could feel her shaking all the way down the stairs, and she was hugging me so hard I could barely breathe. I didn’t mind, though. In a better world, nice people like Diane wouldn’t have to look at recently murdered corpses.
For that matter, there oughtn’t to have been any recently murdered corpses to begin with, but anybody who ever lived around human beings knew better than to expect that. Humans could think of more reasons to kill each other than any other creature on the earth, and that’s nothing but the gospel.
A Cop’s job was to keep a lid on all that mayhem however he could, and me and my partner tried hard to do that, every day. That was all anybody could do in a world full of trouble, see?
Sam came back out about ten minutes later, with a look on his face that told me he was thinking hard. As he got in beside Diane, he said, “The slashed throat wasn’t the only thing that killed him. They found a stab wound to his heart that me and Marmalade didn’t see the first time. The M.E. said it was made by some kind of long dagger, double edged.”
“Oh, Golly,” she said again. “Sam, I didn’t know a human body had that much blood in it. I think I’m gonna be sick,”
“Sorry ya’s had to see that, Di. I’m gonna take ya’s straight home.”
“No,” she shook her head. “Take me back to the diner. There won’t be many customers this afternoon, but I need them all.” She took a cigarette from her purse and lit it with a little silver lighter.
“Sam,” she said when she got it going, giving her head a quick toss to flip her blonde hair out of her eyes, “This might not matter much, but you ought to know. That man always wore a little stickpin in his shirt collar when he came into the Bluebird. I noticed it because it was so odd: a little gold skull and bones, with tiny diamonds in its eyes. No bigger than a button.”
Sam thought that over for a couple of seconds and said, “He didn’t have any stickpin when I looked him over. Are ya’s sure about that?”
“Absolutely,” she said. “I saw it every time he came in. I’m saying something because it wasn’t there just now. Just so you’ll know.”
Just then there
was a commotion at the front door of the
building. MacElroy and the guy from the Medical Examiner’s Office, with a
couple of uniformed cops helping, were hauling the body outside on a stretcher.
“Hang on a minute,” Sam said, and got back out. He jogged over to where they was loading the stiff into the back of the M.E.’s meat-wagon and drew back the sheet from the man’s face. He nodded and came back to the car.
“There’s a little hole in his left collar wing where some kind of jewelry used to be,” he told Diane. “Looks like you was right. We might want ya’s to draw a sketch of the thing later, but I’m gonna take you back to the Bluebird for now.”
She nodded gratefully. “Anyplace but here!” She was still trembling and hanging onto me for dear life. That was ok by me. I liked my tough-guy image, but I was always a pushover for Diane, see? If I could make her feel better, I would.
Well, that’s what a Cat’s for, ain’t it? If a guy can’t sit in a nice dame’s lap and let her pet him when she’s upset over something, he ain’t worth his tuna fish, I says. Yeah.
After we got Diane safely back at work and made sure she was gonna be okay, we headed south again in the Ford. Sam was quiet and stoney faced, thinking hard. I knew the signs and left him alone. As I stared out through the windshield, I was beginning to have a bad, sick feeling about the whole case.
I’ve spent all my life with humans, but I have to say I don’t really understand them. Even the best of them are a mystery. Us Cats are simpler creatures, see? We don’t fight or kill for the same reasons they do. That was always true from the beginning of time, and probably always will be.
But this! What kind of a person coldly slashed another’s throat, and then stabbed him in the heart, just to make sure he was a goner? And then boosted his collar-pin! This was no loan shark taking revenge for a missed payment or two, or even a mob hit. This was a whole different kettle of fish. Yeah. This was pure evil.
In the far south of the Precinct, just above the line between it and Midtown, there was a row of pawnshops and jewelry stores that ran for three or four blocks on Trenton Boulevard. Sam knew all the guys that ran those businesses, and was friendly with a couple of them, so it didn’t surprise me when he pulled up and parked in front of a place we’d visited many times before.
It was a small storefront pawn brokerage and jewelry shop, with a sign that said “Abraham Lebowitz” below its three hanging brass balls. Lebowitz had been around since he’d immigrated here during the depression. He was one of the few people Sam was on really familiar terms with.
I won’t say they was bosom buddies, but they liked to play chess and sip whiskey together on occasion. Sam always said chess was the only game worthy of a thinking man, and we had spent many a pleasant evening here, as he and Lebowitz matched wits across a board.
As we got out of the coupe, I saw Lebowitz’s Cat companion, a pretty young tortoiseshell named “Kitty Meydl,” gazing at us through the glass of the front window. Meydl was a good friend of mine, so I always enjoyed a visit to this shop.
“Shalom aleichem,” She greeted me as we came through the door, with its tinkling bell. “And peace to you as well, Meydl,” I answered. “Ma nishma?”
“Not much.” She gave an expressive feline shrug that was a pure pleasure to watch. “Humans come in to buy, and others to sell. Abraham earns enough to supply our needs. The neighborhood has been quite peaceful, very different from where we lived before. No real crime near us.”
“That’s good to hear. The rest of this burg should be so lucky. Me and Sam are workin’ on a murder this afternoon. Happened close to the waterfront. It was bad. Real bad.” She conveyed her sympathies with a flick of the ears and downcast eyes. We strolled to the back of the store with our shoulders touching, conversing in the silent manner of our kind, and leapt up on the counter, rejoining our humans.
Sam was questioning Meydl’s human companion as we talked. They were sitting in a couple of wooden chairs and leafing through a big manilla folder of newspaper clippings and pictures. Sam lit up a Lucky with a match from his pocket, while the older man puffed at his pipe. After a few minutes the man pointed to one creased photo and asked in a heavy accent, “Is this what your Diane saw?”
“I think so,” Sam said. “That’s just about what she described. What is it, Abe?”
“An Abwehr pin, in gold with diamonds,” Abraham Lebowitz answered, with a sharp edge to his voice.” He pronounced it “Ahb-Vair.” “The man who wore this was a high officer in the Abwehr, a secret agent of the Nazi Party.” Now his voice was flat, and cold. There was pure murder in his dark eyes.
“I thought I had seen the last of these creatures when I left my old country. Now they are here in America, it seems. This is not good, my friend This is what cost me everything I loved. This is why I left my home behind me, to begin again here.”
He took up another photograph in his wrinkled hand. “And this, or a weapon very like it I should say, is almost certainly what killed your murder victim.” Sam took it like it was dirty, and gazed at the thing with his agate eyes. “It could well be,” he said after a moment.
“It is.” Abraham confirmed. “You can be sure of that. This is the personal weapon of an officer of the Schutzstaffel. Hitler’s own SS gangsters. Find this, and you have your murderer.”
I reared up on my hind legs to see it, an image of a long black dagger with a curious symbol inlayed in silver on its ornate hilt, like a twisted cross. It was evil, a thing out of deepest darkness. I can’t exactly say how I knew that, but I was sure of it, just as sure as I knew my own name. I shuddered, involuntarily.
“Nazis,” Sam said, more to himself than anyone else. “I knew it all along. Nazi spies.” His agate eyes were cold and hard.
“What is it, Marmalade?” Meydl said in a small voice, feeling the tremor pass through me. “Trouble,” I said. “Bad trouble.”
Sam and Abe were still talking. Sam was showing him Diane’s paper napkin with the German word, and the mysterious code numbers U97 barely visible, impressed into its corner. Sam had rubbed a pencil lead across them, so they’d show up better.
Abraham frowned and said, “These are not a code, my friend. The U97 is an Unterseeboot, a submarine of the German Kriegsmarine. I would say that this secret agent has completed his mission in this country. U97 is to be his transportation back to his masters. As to why he murdered his companion, who can know the minds of people like this?”
“I gotta get back to the waterfront,” Sam suddenly barked, with a strange look in his eyes. “Thanks, Abe. I owe ya’s one.”
“More than one, I should think,” said his friend, with a crooked smile. “But while you are here, I have what you ordered.” He handed Sam a small object, which he slid into his inside pocket with a nod of thanks. “Mazel tov!” Abe said with a grin. “I wish you happiness!”
Sam nodded again, and then motioned to me with his hand and headed for the door. As I leapt down from the counter to follow him, Meydl called after me, “Please be careful, Marmalade. And visit me when you can!” “Always!” I answered.
Forty-five minutes later, autumn’s early darkness was falling as we got out of the new Ford to walk the last few blocks to the waterfront. I knew Sam didn’t want its headlights to give us away to whoever might be waiting there.
He checked the loads in his .38 service revolver as I took my place beside him, then put it back in his pocket. With us was Sergeant Sean Flaherty, who we’d just picked up from the Station. He held a heavy black Thompson submachine gun cradled in his arms, its oily gleam showing in the Ford’s dome light. Sam softly shut the car door, and the night covered us.
The salt air coming off the harbor was icy cold now, and the leaden sky hid the moon and stars. The wind whipped little stinging bits of sleet into our faces. With only a few lights along the wharves, we walked in a darkness so thick it could almost be felt.
I started shivering, partly from the wind, but more from the thought of what we might be facing in a few minutes. There was evil here. I could feel it, an evil that was darker than the night which had enveloped us, and we were the only ones who could stop it.
I pricked my ears as we stepped out on the quay. There was a series of metallic clicks coming from somewhere in the darkness ahead of us, almost like someone tapping. Tap, tap… tap, tap, tap.
I cuffed softly at Sam’s leg to let him know. “I hear it,” he whispered. “Dis way,” he murmured to Flaherty, almost invisible beside us. “Spread out,” he commanded, and the Sergeant moved off to his left, but I stayed right beside him.
We were creeping out as silently as we could onto one of the long, timber wharves that ran out from the quay now, and the strange sound was getting clearer. Now I could see a bit of light, pointed away from us, out over the water. It flashed with the taps, on and off… on and off.
There was a human there, barely visible on the end of the wharf. Beside him was the brown suitcase MacElroy had seen at the Y. He held a sort of tin box with a lever he was working up and down. That was the source of the sound I heard. It was a shuttered lantern, meant for signaling!
Sam motioned to us with his palm down: wait! Flaherty crouched down behind a wooden bollard, his Thompson at the ready. I stayed beside my partner. He drew his revolver, slowly and silently.
Now there came an answering series of flashes from far out across the dark, windswept harbor. The Nazi submarine was there, see? Right out there in the harbor, just like Lebowitz said! The U97, waiting for its passenger! Yeah!
I heard the sound of oars, magnified in the darkness. Long minutes passed, as we held our breaths and shivered in the night. Sleet was beginning to hiss into the water now. Now a boat appeared dimly, coming toward us. I could barely see it. Even with my Cat’s eyes, as its oars quietly splashed the rolling surface. There were three humans in it, sailors from the hidden U97, rowing almost silently. Closer, and closer. Now it was only a couple of yards away from the end of the pier.
It was time. I bunched my muscles, ready for anything.
“Police! Freeze!” Sam shouted, shattering the silence. A powerful flashlight sprang to life in his hand, pinning the German spy and his friends in the boat in its merciless glare.
The SS spy whirled with a pistol in his hand, and shots rang out as he opened fire at Sam. I sprang full into his face, shrieking the battle cry of my kind. He screamed and tried to fight me off as my claws sank deep, but I stuck to him like bad credit.
His gun clattered down on the dock, but I wasn’t through with him yet, see? The rat shot at my partner! Nobody does that, see! Nobody! Believe it, pal! I fastened my sharp teeth into the flesh of his throat and hung on for dear life as he flailed madly. He wasn’t goin’ noplace. He shot at Sam!
More shots came from the men in the boat now, but a deafening burst from Sean Flaherty’s Thompson silenced them and punched a row of holes in the boat along its waterline. It began to settle lower into the water immediately; it could never make its way back to the submarine now. Spent brass cartridges from the Tommy gun clattered off the dock and rolled into the water.
“Hands up! All a ya’s! You in the boat, up on the dock! Right now!” Flaherty bellowed, his Kilkenny brogue harsh in the night. They scrambled to obey, up onto the pier as their boat sank beneath them. Flaherty motioned with the muzzle of his Thompson.
“Let him go, Marmalade,” Sam grunted. I knew he was hurt; at least one of the SS man’s shots had clipped him. I obeyed my partner and left the dirty rat clutching his throat and crying, writhing on the dock in his own blood. It was less that what he deserved. He shot Sam!
I could see where the spy’s bullet had ripped his trench coat in the upper chest. It was a bad wound. “Get the suitcase,” he gasped to the Seargeant, who quickly complied, still covering everyone with the Thompson. “Hang on to it. Our murder evidence is in there. Shoot any Nazi louse who moves a hair,” he ground out. “I’ll frisk ‘em soon as I get my wind back.” He sagged to his knees.
“Federal Agents!” an amplified voice thundered from behind us, freezing us all in our tracks. “FBI! Everybody stay put!” A blinding searchlight glared from one of the sheds along the quay, turning the scene instantly to broad daylight. “You Police stand down now. We’ll take it from here.”
Twenty men in dark suits burst from the sheds and offices along the quay and swarmed out onto the dock. Some of them carried Browning automatic rifles, while others brandished pump shotguns. The foreigners, one of them wounded, were quickly taken into custody. One of the newcomers flashed a gold Federal badge at Sam and then extended a hand to help him to his feet. “I’m Special Agent Lee Bridges, Northeastern District, Foreign Espionage Division.”
“I’ll take that suitcase,” another said sharply to the Seargeant. Sean Flaherty just stood there and shook his massive head. “My Lieutenant ain’t told me to do that,” he stated flatly. He stood four inches taller than the G-Man and had at least 40 pounds on him.
“Order your man to stand down, Lieutenant,” Agent Bridges commanded.
Sam faced him eye to eye. “There’s criminal evidence in that case, Bridges. Evidence to the murder of one Henry Miller, committed in this city. I mean to have it.” He stood granite-faced and unblinking, though I could see his blood beginning to pool at his feet.
“I know all about your murder, Lieutenant McConnell. Your Captain Shaughnessy filled us in on that less than an hour ago. And the dead guy’s name wasn’t Miller; it was Heinrich Müller, of the German Abwehr Intelligence organization. Our friend here with the claw marks on his face is Walther Berchthold. He’s an agent of the Nazi SS. We’ve been tracking these two for a while. You can book him for the killing, but the Federal espionage case takes precedence.”
Sam stood as unmoving as Teddy Roosevelt’s face on Mount Rushmore. “I still got a murder to solve. That Nazi louse there did it, and he’s gonna be prosecuted for it. I don’t care if his name is Kaiser Bill, and I don’t care what else you got on him.”
It was an impasse, but I knew Sam was hurt bad. He was beginning to shake. Somebody had to give way here, but quick. I kept my eye on him, but I was also watching the scum who’d shot him. Sooner or later, there was gonna be some justice for what he’d done, I swore it.
It was the G-Man who blinked first. “All right Lieutenant,” he said. “What do you need?”
“Theres a long black dagger in that case, with the prints of a murderer on it, and the blood of his victim.” Sam gasped. “It’s got a Nazi swastika on the hilt.”
“Ok, you got it. Your man can open up the case and get the murder weapon, but nothin’ else.” The Seargeant set down his Thompson and did so, and the awful thing emerged into the glare of the FBI’s lights. It was a weapon as purely evil as the Devil ever forged, and it radiated hate in waves that I could actually feel. A Cat’s senses are different from yours, see? And that Nazi dagger set off alarms in all of mine. It was straight out of the darkness.
Flaherty held it with thumb and forefinger only, until he could get it into a Department evidence bag. I could see that the rest of the case was full of papers. Blood from the dagger was on some of them, dried an ugly brown. The Sarge clapped it shut and handed it over to the G-men without saying anything more.
“And now we’re gonna get you to a doctor,” Bridges stated. “That guy punched your ticket pretty good.”
Sam nodded tiredly and slumped to the ground. I could see he was losin’ way too much blood. I forgot about the killer I had brought down and leapt to his side.
I stayed with him all the way to the hospital, but they shut me out of the room where the Doctors were digging the slug out of his chest. Some kind of a stupid “no pets” rule, and of course I didn’t have no way to tell them I wasn’t one. They put me in a nasty broom closet that stank of pine cleaner and ammonia, but I didn’t stay there long. Sean Flaherty came and got me, and we went to the waiting room together. He’d driven Sam’s Ford to our place and then come straight on in a taxicab.
The Sergeant slowly shook his head, as he sat slumped beside me. Sam couldn’t die, I said to myself. He just couldn’t. He was my partner. He was my friend. Besides, he was too tough to just roll over and quit. It was gonna be a long, long night. Finally, I curled up in the Sarge’s lap. He left once to call Diane, and she came in around midnight.
It was three agonizing days before Sam started to come around. I was there for all of it, and so was Diane DiSalvo. After I had a couple of disagreements with the hospital people, they insisted that she “take charge of me,” but that was ok. Diane wasn’t goin’ noplace and neither was I.
Captain Shaughnessy came in a couple of times, and the Sarge was there on and off, but mostly it was just me and Di. And my partner, layin’ there like he was dead, with a machine doin’ all his breathin’ for him.
There’ve been lots of times in my nine lives that I’ve felt low, but I think those three days were the worst. If I lost Sam there was no point left in livin’, no reason to carry on at all, see? It was just curtains, that’s all. I’d probably just slink off and die in some alley.
But not before I settled accounts with Berchthold, the Nazi scum that shot him. I promised that to myself. There weren’t enough G-Men in all the world to stop me from getting to him.
From the look on Diane’s face, I think she felt about the same. She didn’t do nothin’ but cry the whole time, and gave up trying to patch her makeup sometime on the second day. The nurses kept trying to get her to go someplace and rest, but she just told ‘em all “Nothin’ doin’.”
And then one morning Sam opened his eyes. I saw it first and jumped up on the bed beside him. He weakly raised his hand and laid it on my head, and gave me a look that said everything that needed to be said. I started breathin’ again. The world started to turn beneath the sun again. My partner was gonna be okay. Yeah.
Then he saw Di and actually smiled. “What’s cookin’ Babe?” he said in a hoarse voice. She looked like she’d just been reprieved from a death sentence. She gave a weak little laugh and wiped her eyes for about the millionth time since the whole thing started. “Not much, Sam,” she said with a smile. “How about you?”
It took another two weeks for him to get well enough to go home. The Docs had patched him up real good, but that bullet had done a lot of damage to his insides. People came in every day to see him, and everybody quit tryin’ to get me to leave. Sam told ‘em to sit on it, see? I wasn’t goin’ noplace.
One afternoon that G-Man, Lee Bridges, came in and sat for a while. I knew he respected Sam a lot. He also explained everything he was allowed to about the case, even stuff that had gone on before the murder. There was a lot we hadn’t known about, not that it would’ve made any difference to how we did our jobs.
The two Nazi spies, Müller and Berchthold, had been here in the States around six months before anybody spotted them. They’d both gotten menial jobs at the University of Chicago, and Müller, using the name “Henry Miller,” had finally worked his way up to being an aide to an Italian Professor named Enrico Fermi.
Then one night the two of ‘em broke into Fermi’s office and grabbed some important scientific papers, the same ones I’d seen in Berchthold’s case on the night of the fight in the dockyards.
Bridges said they were papers about ways to build a huge, horrible bomb, one that could take out the whole city in one awful blast. That was what Sam and me had stopped. Yeah.
One big flash and a whole city full of people gone, just like that. Endsville. It was supposed to work by a chain reaction, way down in the atoms of something he called “uranium.” An “ereigniskette,” just like it said on Diane’s napkin from the diner.
With the stolen information in hand, the spies lammed out of Chicago and headed back to the coast, where they’d hoped to make it back to Germany aboard the submarine, U-97.
That’s where their plan started to unravel. The two of ‘em started to argue, on account of Müller had a case of cold feet. He’d decided he liked life here in the States. He wanted to call the whole thing off, burn the papers, and settle down someplace where he could lay low and live quiet for the rest of his days.
His partner Berchthold, the SS man, wanted no part of that. He was a loyal Nazi to the core, and finally killed his partner. He figured he could meet the sub himself and make his getaway before the murder came to light.
That’s where he made his big mistake. He never counted on running into Lieutenant Sam McConnell and his partner, namely me. There ain’t nobody ever gonna outsmart Sam on his own territory, and you can take that to the bank. The idiot didn’t even have the sense to get rid of Müller’s gold Abwehr pin. It was still in his pocket when we nailed him. I’ve known housecats with more brains than that!
I guess all of that stuff mattered more to the humans than it did to me. All I cared about was getting my partner back, see? That was the most important thing. The murder was solved, the killer was down for the count with my claw marks on his face, and Sam was gonna be okay. Yeah. Yeah!
But nothin’ ain’t ever simple with the humans, see? They always think they gotta complicate things, like there was somethin’ wrong with “simple and easy.” Captain Shaughnessy did; he put Sam in for a Departmental Medal of Valor, the very next day after the caper went down. Special Agent Lee Bridges did too. He sent a letter to the Chief of Police, with a copy to the Mayor, commending our actions in the highest terms.
And Diane DiSalvo did too. She sure did. She seemed to think what happened had changed things between her and Sam, or maybe settled something that had been brewing for a long time. One day she cleared all of the other visitors out of his hospital room so she could talk to him alone. Then she laid her cards out on the table.
“Sam, this has to stop. I’m not made for this kind of life. I get to see you and wait on you what, half a dozen times a week? A couple more if I’m lucky?” She shook her head, blonde hair flying, a determined look in her eyes. “That isn’t good enough for me anymore. You’ll have to do better than that. I want to take care of you all the time. When you come home from work, I want to be there for you. The good days and the bad ones too. Every day.”
She stood there with her hands on her hips and a face like a blue-eyed thundercloud, waiting for Sam to answer. Like I said, humans make things too complicated. The whole thing would have been a whole lot simpler between two of my kind.
“Okay by me, Kid,” he said with his best granite-face on.
“What?” She said, with her eyes about as big as they was ever likely to get.
“I mean you’re right. I wanted to ask ya’s proper-like, but now’s as good a time as any. Is my overcoat here?”
“What’s that smelly old thing got to do with this? Yes, it’s here. I saw it in the closet.” Now she was starting to get irritated, thinkin’ he was tryin’ to dodge the issue. Yeah. Humans are so dumb sometimes, it’s a wonder my kind ever put up with them.
“Check the left inside pocket,” he said. “There’s something there for you. At least there is if nobody’s gone through my clothes and lifted the thing.”
Diane turned, went to the closet and did so, and came up with a little black box in her hands, which I’d known all along was in his pocket. I was with Sam at Abraham Lebowitz’s shop when he bought it and put it in there, the day the whole thing started, see? Humans always have to make things so complicated.
“Open it up, Babe.” She did, and her face was like the sun coming up after a long dark night. It was a diamond ring. Sometimes life is sweet. Yeah.
END