Green Ace by Stuart Palmer Page A

and let Marika cast the cards for me like she did sometimes.”
    “You fell for that stuff too?” Piper looked disgusted.
    “And why not? She never charged me nothing, and she had the Gift, all right. Once she gave me a message about beware of a dark lady, and sure enough three weeks later a Spanish girl who’d just moved into 2B got arrested for peddling marijuana. And once Marika gave me a long shot at Pimlico, at least she told me it was a lucky day for number two and number five …”
    “Okay.” The Inspector looked at his watch. “Go on, Mrs. Fink.”
    “Well, when she didn’t answer the second knock, I said to myself—”
    “Just tell us what you did.”
    “I listened. And then I heard somebody on the other side of the door. They must have slid the bolt, because when I outs with my passkey and unlocks the door, I find it won’t open. Then a cold shiver runs up my back spine. So it’s happened, I says to myself. Somebody’s heard about her money, and got to her. Because it was no secret around the neighborhood that Marika paid everything in cash and had no truck whatever with banks.”
    “She didn’t trust banks, not even with federal insurance of savings?”
    “If you don’t put your money in a bank you don’t have to pay no income tax,” Mrs. Fink pointed out with deep worldly wisdom. “Once when I came to collect the rent, Marika went into her bedroom and I heard the rattle of a tin box and then she came out with the cash. So while I had my ear to the door I heard that same noise in the bedroom, like somebody in a desperate hurry fiddling with the lock. So I knew it really was a burglar.
    “I screamed bloody murder and went down the stairs two, three steps at a time. Mr. Bagmann was just coming out of his door in a bathrobe to see what was the matter, and we both went down and woke up Roy, that’s my husband. We all went back through the basement and up the rear outside stair fast as ever we could. Marika’s kitchen door was wide-open and swinging in the wind, and all the lights were blazing. When I rushed in here and seen her flat on her back on the floor, weltering in a pool of blood and breathing her last, I said to myself—”
    “Skip what you said!”
    Mrs. Fink bridled. “Well, I bent over her and I heard her say ‘Mother’ with her last gasp. Then she gave up the ghost.”
    The Inspector glared over his shoulder at Miss Withers, who had come out of her corner and was making frantic gestures. Then he turned to the sergeant, indicating Mrs. Fink. “Okay, take her downtown and after the statement’s typed up have her sign it. Then tomorrow let her look through the picture files, especially burglary and crimes of violence against women. Maybe she can pick out that nose for us.”
    “Oscar,” whispered Miss Withers softly in his ear, “the woman is lying. Marika couldn’t have been conscious or lived more than a few seconds with her head bashed in.”
    From the doorway came Mrs. Fink’s jibing “Wass you dere, Sharlie?”
    Then at last Miss Withers and the weary Inspector were alone except for a uniformed cop who would be on guard here until relieved in the morning, and who already had his eye on an easy chair and was wishing they would be off.
    “Nothing wrong with the Fink woman’s hearing,” remarked the schoolteacher thoughtfully. “Perhaps she really did hear the money-box being ransacked on the other side of a thick oak door and away off in the bedroom. But as for her recognizing the murderer in a rogue’s gallery photograph, I have my doubts. Try her on a picture of Jimmy Durante, or Cyrano de Bergerac or even Pinocchio.”
    “There you go again, trying to make simple things complicated!” Piper exploded as he struggled into his topcoat. “This is an open-and-shut case if there ever was one, and well have the murderer in our hands inside of forty-eight hours. Mrs. Fink gave a good description of him, even if she did romanticize a little about Marika’s last