Riggs is Here | Page 3

hat off the foot of the bed.
The fire was in the Freeman Warehouse. Twin fire hoses, fat with water, led in through the wide double doors at the loading platform. Smoke in thick streams poured out and coiled up the face of the wooden building.
As Tommy climbed the platform and slipped through the doors, the two hoses sagged and collapsed as the water was turned off. Smoke hung thick inside the big warehouse, but the fire was out. The lights on the overhead beams were dim, yellow spots that turned the firemen into ghostlike figures.
He followed the hoses to where the fire had burned hot for a few minutes, charring the wall. Four big packing cases lay there, three sides burst open, the excelsior that had spilled out of the heaped in black, smoking clumps. He heard the husky fire captain from the Jackson Street station say:
"This here's a job for the arson squad. Joe, you better put in a call."
Arson squad! Tommy's eyes brightened at that. Maybe here was a chance--
He began poking around, keeping out of the way of the firemen, choking a little bit as the smoke worked into his lungs. The crudeness of the attempt at firing the building gave him the idea that it must have been an afterthought of something else. And he began wondering where old Pop Dillon, the night watchman Carey had been talking to the day before, was.
He moved away, headed slowly toward the back of the building. He strained his eyes through the smoke-laden air, seeking something--he wasn't sure what--to give him a steer to what had happened.
He found it--but with his feet, not his eyes. He was passing a six-foot stack of paper-wrapped tires, new auto tires piled neatly, one on top of another, when his foot skidded on the floor. He grabbed at the stack of tires to steady himself looked down--and shuddered.
His foot had slipped in blood! There was enough light to show its deep-red color as it seeped from beneath the bottom tire and ran out across the dry floor boards.
"Well!" He whispered the word, as though he depended on saying it to steady himself. He lifted his eyes from the thick pool to his hand, which rested on the stack of tires. When he removed it, fast, his heart was beating in heavy thumps.
Fifteen feet away was an empty box. He carried it over, climbed on it! looked hesitantly down inside the pile of tires. It was dark in there. He made out the soles of two shoes that faced up toward him.
A match showed him more. A man--Tommy was certain he was the watchman, Pop Dillon--had been dumped headfirst in there. He could make out his hips and the pallid flesh of one hand, and down at the bottom, he could see the white hair on the side of the man's head.
At the front of the warehouse, Tommy found the fire captain. Thickly he said: "Better send for homicide. There's a guy back there--"
Lieutenant Barnelley arrived with half a dozen men of the homicide and lab squads. He said: "Hello there, Tommy. Don't tell me you landed a job with Carey, at last?"
"Not yet." Tommy's grin was lopsided. "I-- there's a dead guy back here!"
"Yeah, I gathered that." He went back to the stack of tires and stared down at the corpse. "A hell of a place to dump a guy," was his only comment.
While his photographer was setting up a camera to shoot the inside and outside of the tires, the lieutenant strode all the way back to the rear of the warehouse. Tommy followed him.
There was a small glassed-in office. Barnelley found the light switch, snapped it on. The sight of a half-eaten sandwich lying on the desk made Tommy choke. The picture of the other half lying in the stomach of the dead watchman was too vivid.
The wall at one end of the office was concrete with a steel door open a few inches, set in its center. The homicide cop pushed the door wide to show the fireproof storage vault behind it. Three wooden boxes stood on the cement floor. Their tops had been ripped off, and labels on them: BECK FUR COMPANY.
For the next twenty minutes Tommy stood back, watching and admiring the smooth routine of investigation. Barnelley called Inspector Dean of the burglary squad, said: "It's another one of those warehouse jobs--thirty thousand bucks' worth of furs. You better get over here. Yeah. sure, tell Carey."
Tommy asked, remembering that Jeff Carey had talked with the watchman the day before: "Does International Agency cover for the insurance company on this warehouse?"
"Yeah!" Barnelley told him.
Tommy watched them lift the tires one by one off the stack, watched Pop Dillon's body uncurl and stretch out on the floor. He slipped up