Corpse on the Grill

“Herb Krass? Sure. We both got keys. But I was in bed and Herb went home around midnight...”

“Which one of your employees is supposed to lock up after the rest’ve gone?”

Pedley snapped, irritably.

“When me or Herb ain’t here, Pete Donnelly closes up. He’s cashier. ’Course, he’s got a key, too.”

“Where’s a phone? Give this Donnelly a bell. Tell him I want to see him down here right away.”

“Sure.” Biddonay looked away. “But Pete ain’t the kind of lad to harm a flea, much less chop up a guy.”

The Marshal followed to the office, a little water-soaked, soot-stained cubbyhole off the corridor leading to dressing-rooms for the entertainers. There were a couple of ash-smeared desks, swivel chairs, a black iron safe piled high with old and soggy Racing Forms; a glass-front bookcase filled with a row of Moody’s Manuals, some small silver cups, a few paper-covered Spalding pamphlets on bowling and two round, black leather cases for carrying bowling balls. Biddonay sagged into one of the padded chairs, dragged a phone across the desk toward him, dialed.

“Pete? Hello, Pete? This’s Bill... yeah... all hell’s bust loose. We hadda fire, Pete... The whole shebang’s burned down... just now... They only put it out a few minutes ago. And that ain’t all. There’s a—” the cafe owner glanced up at Pedley’s outstretched palms.

Pedley said, “Shush on the killing, Biddonay.”

The fat man nodded, unhappily. “Listen, Pete. There’s a guy from the Fire Department down here with me now. He wants you should get down here right away... I don’t know what for; I suppose he wants to ask you some questions. Hurry it up, now, Pete.” He hung up, as a blue-uniformed man in the regulation cap of the Fire Department came into the office and saluted Pedley.

“E. T. Jewett, fireman, first class. Company Eighty-six. Inspection duty, sir.” The man’s narrow, tight-lipped face was tense with worry.

“These premises on your beat, Jewett?”

“Yes, sir.” The fireman rubbed his chin, uneasily. “I checked the floorshow here, tonight. About eleven-thirty, wasn’t it, Mr. Biddonay?”

The cafe man sighed. “Guess it was. Seems a year ago.”

Pedley took out a notebook. “What time’d your tour end, Jewett? Twelve?”

“Yes, sir. Everything was okay here, then. How’d she start, do you know, sir?”

“Overheated wall behind the charcoal grill. Hike out and tell that cop to ring his station. We’ll need the medical examiner, homicide boys, and one of the lads from the Bureau of Identification. Then come back down cellar.”

Jewett’s eyes opened wide. He saluted again and hurried away.

The Marshal said curtly: “Let’s go down to your private morgue, Biddonay. See if we can put the finger on that corpse.”

The fat man labored to his feet, mumbling something about not wanting to set eyes on the damned thing, much less a finger. They went downstairs, into the nose-tingling ammoniacal vapor. They searched the rest of the refrigerator first, for the missing head. They had found nothing when Jewett rejoined them. The fireman expelled his breath in a long whistle of repugnance.

“Somebody had a screwy sense of humor, huh?” he said. “To hang that thing in here like a chunk of mutton? He was a big guy, wasn’t he!”

“Big,” Pedley answered, “and powerful as a bull. Look at those shoulders. Don’t see chest muscles like that very often.”

Biddonay pointed to a number of garnet-colored scars on the back of the torso, about the level of the shoulder-blades. “What were those marks?”

Pedley’s mind went back through the years to a body that had been fished out of the ashes of a great conflagration; the cadaver had been marked in the same peculiar way. And that body had been identified.

“Mat scars,” he suggested. “They might be scars from a canvas-covered mat. Sort a wrestler gets from having his shoulders scraped by some two hundred and fifty pounder on top of him.”

“A wrestler!” Jewett frowned. “Say, Mr. Biddonay—”

“I don’t know any wrestlers,” the cafe man muttered, hastily.

“That big black-haired guy who comes in two, three times a week and tries to date Snowball Sue,” Jewett cried. “Looks like an ape who needs a shave.”

Biddonay shut his eyes, shook his head. “I don’t notice every customer in the Ice-taurant. I couldn’t remember ’em all—”

Pedley went close to him, grabbed the fat man by the back of the neck, pushed his face within an inch of the gruesome thing on the steel hook. “Don’t hold out on me, mister! Not when there’s murder and arson involved and three of my department buddies are sleeping on a slab! You talk! You talk straight and quick — or I’ll put you where you’ll be glad to have even this bloody hunk for company!”

Biddonay stammered. “It’s only I don’t want to give you a wrong steer. I’m not certain—”

“Who’s this wrestler Jewett described?”

The cafe man shuddered. “An ugly lummox they call Gorilla Greg. I don’t know who he is. I don’t know anything about him except that Sue kids him and calls him Gorilla.”

“Who’s this Sue?”

“Our snowball dancer,” Biddonay moaned.