The girl put up an argument. She said Dr. Maybank was asleep and that it was against the rules to disturb him. I worked on her. She finally plugged in, waited a long while—about as long as it would take to wake someone from a sound sleep—and then started talking. She told Arthur that a man and a woman were downstairs to see him and that she hadn’t been able to brush them off. I told her to say that it was Kirk Douglas and Dana Warren and that it was important. She said it, then snapped the plug out and looked at us. She said, “He’s coming now,” and promptly lost all interest in us.
Dana said, “What a depressing place. I don’t wonder Arthur would want to use your apartment on his off nights.”
An ancient elevator stopped on the lobby floor. The door clanked open and Arthur Maybank stepped out. His eyes looked heavy with sleep. He had pulled trousers and a coat over his pajamas. His feet were encased in bedroom slippers.
Arthur never was an inspiring figure, but in this costume he was even less so. He was small and looked even smaller than his 135 pounds. His hair was sparse and old-looking in spite of the fact that he was only twenty-six. His coloring was mousy. He looked like a young man who had been slapped around by life. He certainly didn’t look like a Lothario.
I had known him for years. We were close without being intimate. He had scraped and struggled and sweated to get through college and medical school. He was serving his interneship without pay. They all do but most of them have a little income. Arthur didn’t. He was grateful as a pup for small favors, and I had let him use my apartment while I was away because I knew that it looked like a palace to him. It was because he had been buffeted so much that I had hesitated to drag him into the case.
He seemed surprised to see us. He shook hands with us, and smiled at Dana. She smiled right back, though I knew she wasn’t feeling much like smiling.
I apologized for waking him. He said that was all right. Whatever you did to Arthur was always all right. I said, “Can we sit down somewhere?”
We went to a corner of the lobby. We arranged three stiff wooden chairs in a little circle. I said, “I want to ask you something, Arthur. If the answer is Yes, it’s okay by me. But I want you to come clean.”
He nodded. “You know I will.”
“Sure I know.” I cast around for the right way of starting. “While I was away you used my apartment, didn’t you?”
“Sure. On my off nights. You don’t know how good it feels to get away from this joint.”
“I can imagine. What did you do in the apartment?”
He frowned. “Slept. And read. And just sat there figuring how lucky I was to get a break like that.”
“What else?”
“You’ll laugh. I fixed my own dinners. I’m a lousy cook, but they tasted wonderful. I even enjoyed washing the dishes. Then I’d sit in the corner and read and hope that some day I’d be successful enough to afford an apartment like that.”
I said, “Did you do any helling around?”
“Any what?”
“Any stepping? Briefly, did you entertain any girl friends?”
“I haven’t any girl friends,” he said simply.
I started over. “I’m driving at something. On the level, it’s fine with me if you did. I just wanted to know.”
He shook his head. “Even if I’d known any girls who would have liked to come up there, Kirk—I wouldn’t have done it.”
“Why?”
“Because . . . well, it wouldn’t have seemed right.”
“You aren’t embarrassed because Dana is listening, are you?”
They exchanged smiles. “I can take Dana in stride,” he said. “As a matter of fact, if I had been partying I’d probably boast about it.” A worried frown appeared on his forehead. He said, “Did you find something broken—or missing? Is that it?”
“No. But before I explain, I’ve got one more question. Did you ever hear of—a girl named Ethel Brower?”
I could see him thinking. Then he shook his head. “No, Kirk. Not that I remember. I meet lots of people here at the hospital. But if you mean it’s somebody I should remember . . . I don’t.”
“Did any girl show up at the apartment at any time you were there? Anybody asking for me, perhaps?”
“I never saw a soul.” He looked concerned. “I wish you’d explain all this, Kirk. You and Dana wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t important.”
I told him the story of Ethel Brower. When I finished, he said, “My God! And you thought maybe she was someone I’d been playing around with?”
“No, I didn’t. But I knew I didn’t know her, and I figured that if she’d been a guest of yours there, and if she had perhaps thought it was your apartment and had come back to see you . . .”
He seemed shocked. He said, “Is she still there?”
“No. They carried her to the morgue.”
“Would you like me to go over and take a look?”
“Better stay out of it, Arthur.”
He turned to Dana. “He should have told them about me.”
“Why?” she asked. “There wasn’t any sense dragging you in unless it turned out that you had known the girl.”
He said, “Gee! you’re a thoughtful pair.” He looked small and helpless. “Is there something I can do?”
“Yes. First, go back to bed. Second, forget the whole thing.”
“And,” finished Dana, “forgive us for waking you.”
We practically shoved him into the elevator and sent him back to his room. We stepped into the bitter cold of black morning. I said, “One block away there’s a diner. It’ll be warm there, and the coffee will be hot. Let’s go.”
The diner was hot all right. There was a long counter with stools in front of it. Behind the counter was a man in a greasy apron. He was tossing some hamburgers for a couple of truckmen. Onions were sizzling on the griddle.
I ordered two hamburgers and two black coffees. We were served and Dana started eating. So did I.
She said, “I wonder whether the police have talked to Ricardo.”
Ricardo!
We looked at each other. We didn’t say anything. But the name “Ricardo” was hanging between us in the steamy air.
CHAPTER VII
WHEN I tumbled into bed, the little white clock told me it was half past five. I didn’t feel sleepy but I hoped I was, because I didn’t want to lie there thinking. I’ve got good muscles and fair nerves, but murdered ladies were new to me, and being the subject of police investigation was new, too.
I was lucky. I went to sleep. The next thing I knew two taxi drivers were arguing like crazy in front of the apartment house entrance, and it was ten minutes before noon. I got up, closed the windows, turned on the heat, put some coffee in the percolator, drank some orange juice, and climbed back into bed to wait for the apartment to warm up.
The warming-up process took about the same length of time as the coffee. I got up again, poured myself a cup of it, took two scalding sips, lighted a cigarette, and then went to the door and picked up the Sunday paper. I looked at the big headlines on the first page. There was nothing about me or Ethel Brower. That was inside, on page six.
And even on page six there wasn’t much. It seemed that a very unimportant lady had expired in the apartment of an even more unimportant man. Probably murder. The article gave my name, age, former army service and profession. It stated that the police were following leads and that I wasn’t under arrest. Max Gold had given out the story nicely. It didn’t read dirty. Apparently the young lady had dropped in for a social call on a perfect stranger and had been strangled. It didn’t make sense, but then I couldn’t figure it, either.
Halfway through my second cup of coffee the buzzer sounded and I opened the door for Lieutenant Max Gold. He gave me a cordial good morning, nodded to my invitation to join me in a cup of coffee, and then said, “How’s tricks this morning, Douglas?”
“I don’t know. I just finished reading about myself. It was decent of you to hand it to the report
ers that way.”
“I aim to please.” He smiled. “Any hunches?”
“No.”
“Still can’t remember the dame?”
“No. But I feel certain that I never met her, even casually.”
He said, “What I’m here for: Maybe you were playing cute last night on account Miss Warren was along. Maybe you do have some fun on the side.”
“Try again, lieutenant.”
He sighed. “I wasn’t sold on it myself. But sometimes a man will take chances on covering up rather than let his girl know he’d stray.” He glanced around the apartment. He said, “I been checking on Ethel Brower. She doesn’t add up to be the kind of girl anybody would want to murder. Of course we haven’t finished, but I think we got the essential dope.”
I still didn’t say anything. Gold went on:
“The house where she was living is a nice, respectable, quiet place in the Eighties between West End Avenue and Riverside. Cost her $90 a month. Furnishings to match. Adding everything up, I figure it cost her about $250 a month to live. That ain’t dough, but it ain’t hay, neither. She’s been there a couple of years. Had so few visitors the doorman and elevator ops can’t peg any one in particular. Personal effects don’t tell us a thing. Check book didn’t tell us anything, either. Balance seemed to stick between $500. and $1,000. Lived alone. Didn’t work. Maybe she had a small income, and maybe somebody was laying it on the line for her. I’ll know more tomorrow when I get a report from her bank . . . whether her deposits were by cash or check. So far she comes out zero. The stuff we got at her apartment looks just the same as she did.”
“And there’s nothing more to tie me up with her?”
“Nope. We dusted for prints. Yours weren’t among those present.”
“Why are you telling me all this?”
“So you’ll get the idea we’re playing on the same team. Let’s say you didn’t kill her. Let’s even admit you didn’t know her. You just the same rock along for a lot of years and nothing happens to you. Then all of a sudden somebody slaps a hundred grand in the bank for you—and they do it smooth. A girl drifts up here and gets knocked off in your best chair. It could be you’d try to help us to help you.”
I said, “I wish I could. I’m more than a little apprehensive.”
“You don’t look like a guy who would scare easy.”
“You’d be surprised.”
“What you scared about?”
“If I knew, I wouldn’t be scared. I just have a feeling that I haven’t heard the last of this.”
“You got something there, buddy. If you’re leveling with me somebody has chosen you to play patsy. Meanwhile, if anything comes along, telephone me. Homicide Bureau. And if I’m not there, call Centre Street and ask ’em to find me.” He got up and put on his hat. “You’ll have reporters in your hair. You can tell them just what you’ve told me. Except maybe it would be better not to mention the bank angle. Also there’ll be an inquest. You can leave out the bank story there, too. But tell the rest of it like you say it happened.” He grinned at me and put his hand on the doorknob. But he didn’t turn it. As though as an afterthought, he said “You and this lad Ricardo ever tangle?”
I shook my head.
“Him and Miss Warren don’t play house?”
“No. You can check on that.”
“I did already.” The smile he gave me was warm. “But if I was Ricardo and was married to a classy chick like that, I wouldn’t like having another guy trespassing.”
He went out. It was his opinion and he was entitled to it. I sat down and started wondering whether I’d figured Ricardo wrong. I knew how Dana felt about him, but how could I be certain as to what he felt about her. It was a new idea and not very reassuring.
During the early afternoon a couple of reporters showed up. I followed Max Gold’s advice, and didn’t mention the bank. I didn’t mention Dana, either. The reporters seemed only mildly interested. They made it clear that the only reason they bothered with it at all was because there wasn’t any logical explanation of how the girl got into my place and who killed her. They listened to what I had to say, looked the place over, and confined their comments to “Whaddaya know about that?” and “It’s screwy as hell, isn’t it?”
Waiting for the phone call which I knew would come in sooner or later from Dana, I went over to my drawing board and tried to concentrate on some work. Nothing doing. I knew I’d be all right in the office when the work was laid out for me, but this little extra stuff I’d been doing at home had lost its savor. I was glad when Dana called about three o’clock; I was glad to taxi over to her place; I was glad to get my arms around her.
We did a lot of talking, but couldn’t cook up a single new idea. Finally, we agreed that we’d discard the whole thing unless a fresh thought came along.
At 7:30 I took her to the club. We sat at my pet corner table near the corridor and took our time. We didn’t start eating until after the dinner show. Ricardo changed from tails to street clothes and paused at our table. He said, “Nice publicity you got this morning, Douglas.”
I looked at him and nodded.
He said, “I didn’t know you were a chaser.” He smiled under his thin moustache. “Though I should have, seeing that you and my wife have been playing around so long.”
That was supposed to infuriate me, and it did, but I tried not to let him see it. He went on, “A cop has been talking to me. Fellow named Gold. He was asking about you and Dana.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I gave it to him the way I see it. It would have been fun to play the outraged husband, but I figured it wouldn’t get over. Then he wanted to know where I was last night.”
“What did you tell him?”
“Nothing very impressive. I was at a movie—just like you said you were. He didn’t think that was much of an alibi.”
He waited for me to say something. He was disappointed. 1 had a headful of ideas but that’s all they were. After a while Ricardo moved away. “Have fun at the inquest,” he said.
I turned in before midnight and slept soundly. At the office Monday morning the boys started firing questions at me. I played it Max Gold’s way. The big bosses called me in and asked me about it. I told my story and they seemed to believe most of what I said. I felt foolish and impotent, and I couldn’t escape the conclusion that they couldn’t quite swallow the idea that I’d never even know the Brower woman.
The inquest was undramatic and astonishingly brief. They asked me a lot of routine questions. The verdict was that Ethel Brower came to her death at the hands of a person, or persons, unknown.
I ate alone, had a telephone conversation with Dana, grabbed another long night’s sleep, and by Tuesday the newspapers and the rest of the world appeared to have forgotten me and my troubles. That evening, after leaving the office, I went to the Caliente to wait for Dana. I got there at eight o’clock, said a brief hello, and sat at my usual corner table.
Dana came back long before time for her act. She was dressed to go on and she looked like a million dollars. We talked about where we’d eat later, and while we were discussing it there was a commotion near the entrance. The paying guests quit looking at the lovelies on the floor, and every eye in the place was focused on the party of four which swept in and accepted a ringside table from a head waiter.
There were three men and one woman in the group, and it didn’t require any Sherlock Holmes instinct to grab the idea that ifr was the girl who was getting the attention.
She was tall and statuesque. She had lots of curves and had them in the right places. The dress, which she wore under an ermine wrap, wasn’t calculated to leave you guessing.
She had honey-blonde hair and eyes so deeply blue that they looked like sapphires. Her skin was clear and very blonde. Her hair-do was the formal kind with a lot of set waves and tight little curls. There was one curl falling over her forehead, but I had a hunch that even this little detail was studied; that it represented a consci
ous effort to look careless.
Her three escorts waited for her to remove the ermine wrap. She took her time about it. She knew that people were staring. She loved it. I didn’t know who she was, but I’d been around enough to realize that she must be something extra special.
She was lovely, if you like that sort of loveliness. Smooth and confident. Her lips were full and sensual. Her bored smile was rehearsed. She couldn’t have been more than twenty-two.
I glanced at Dana. Her eyes were sparkling and she was shaking her head as though she couldn’t believe it.
Scarcely had the young lady seated herself when two photographers appeared. Nobody paid any attention to the show. Flash bulbs popped. And a waiter, passing our table en route to the kitchen, said aloud, “I’ll be damned! It’s her all right.”
I said to Dana, “What is it?”
She looked at me incredulously. You don’t know?”
“I do not. And apparently I’m the only ignorant person here.”
“That,” she said, “is twenty million dollars!”
“Has it got a name?”
“I’ll say.” She smiled at me. “You poor, unsophisticated man. That is Candy Livingston.”
I promptly joined the Starers Club. “Candy Livingston!” I echoed. “Twenty million bucks and a chassis like that!”
Dana said, “The papers have been full of her recently. But maybe not where you’ve been.”
“Even there they didn’t exactly ignore her,” I said. “Hasn’t she recently returned from being kidnaped?”
“About ten days ago. They paid a half million dollars’ ransom.”
“Could be,” I commented. “Who paid it?”
“She did. She’ll never miss it. But what surprises me is how soon she’s stepped into circulation again.”
I said, “She doesn’t look like the shrinking violet type.”
“She isn’t. But this has been a different sort of publicity.”
“Tell me about it. I’m quivering with eagerness.”
Love Has No Alibi Page 5
