The Bedroom Bolero

by Michael Avallone

  She gave me an address which as I had figured was just a few blocks away. When she rose from the chair to see me to the door, we were at eye level which is an uncomfortable feeling with any woman.

  “I have another performance at two,” she intoned.

  “Once is enough, Miss Eleven. I’ll call you tomorrow morning.”

  “Not till twelve. I must get my sleep. This communication with the dead drains me.” She eyed me curiously. “Do you believe in the beloved dead, Mr. Noon?”

  “Sorry,” I grinned. “I like my people live.”

  “Pity.” Her shoulders made a good coat hanger. “You don’t know how much trouble you would save yourself if you ignored all human relations. The dead stay dead and don’t bother anybody.”

  “Like Mr. Orelob is a pain in the ass, you mean?”

  She was smiling when she closed the door in my face. I stumbled out of the whitewashed basement into the club proper again. The haze was greener than ever. Candlelight and whiskey and cigarettes threw a smoky unreality over the Halloween goings on. I searched for Howie, the waiter, and wasn’t surprised to find him at my elbow.

  He simpered, a tray of drinks in his pink hands.

  “Can I help you, Tiger?”

  “When you drop those off, come back. I want to talk to you.” He blushed for my benefit, nodded and broke the four minute mile all over again complying with my request. When he got back I pulled him over to one side of all the noise and talk. His eyes rolled heavenward when my fingers dug into his arm.

  “Swoon later. I want to ask you something.”

  “Yes, Ed.” The Ed was a sheer breath of romance.

  “You working here long?”

  “One of the regulars.” He looked proud. “The Cellar means a lot to me.”

  “Okay. Then tell me. When did Evelyn put this Bolero music into her act? A friend of mine was down here on her opening night and he didn’t say anything about that number. I was under the impression she used Temptation as her working music for the act.”

  I was frowning so he frowned too. He giggled.

  “We must be alike. You know that bothers me too. She never used that number until the night before last. And your friend was wrong, Tiger. The old number was The Danse Macabre. You know that one? By Saint-Saëns?” He started to do a mincing pirouette with his empty tray. I stopped him by squeezing his elbow again. His eyes showed some more white.

  “I thought so,” I said. “Howie, one more thing. Is there a fat guy named Orelob here now?”

  Howie made a face. His voice went a little shrill.

  “What do you want with that old thing? He’s disgusting —”

  I started to fish out my wallet. But I obviously didn’t need money to make Howie happy.

  “Oh, put that away, Tiger. I’d do anything for you.” He pointed again. “There’s Orelob. Though how you can stand him I don’t know.”

  “Thanks, Howie. You’ve been so good to me I’ll squeeze your arm again anytime you like.”

  Howie was giggling hysterically as I threaded my way through the green barrels where Mr. Orelob was trying to make his enormous bulk more comfortable in one of the barrel chairs. He was all by himself but he took up enough room for three people. The flickering candle before his fleshy, puffy Farouk face was as placid as a sleeping child’s.

  I had the feeling he knew I was coming.

  But I knew something he didn’t know.

  I knew that Orelob spelled backwards was Bolero and also that The Evil Evelyn was playing weird games with my time and Monks’ crimes. But before I was through with her, it was going to cost her plenty.

  A hundred bucks was good for a starter.

  5 — Mr. Orelob

  He saw me coming and his face unblanded in a hurry. I was trying my damnedest to look casual but I guess he was operating with a guilty conscience.

  I paused at his table staring down at him.

  “Orelob? Mr. Thaddeus Orelob?”

  He nodded, a mountain of fat, looking for a place to hide but he could never have fit under the table or anywhere else for that matter. I knew his type so I played him that way. He was too fat to move fast and visions of thinner men pushing punches in his thick midriff and running must have haunted him all of his avoirdupoised life.

  “Yes? That’s me. What can I do for you, sir?”

  The sir was a pathetic attempt to appeal to my manners. I reached down and grabbed a handful of a red tie which he’d have to have been an eccentric millionaire to have bought. A lot of naked nymphs were chasing each other over a field of crimson.

  “I’m looking for you,” I growled in my best jealous lover voice. “You stop hanging around Evelyn or I’ll knock your teeth down your fat throat —”

  “But there must be some mistake —” He was gurgling, the fat face showing sweat in the green-shaded lights.

  “Sure there is and you made it. Now you leave Evelyn alone. I’m warning you. Get me?”

  “Let go of my tie — you’re choking me —” I was. His eyes were marbles of fear. The tables around us started to stare, gawk and take sides. I let go of the tie. Orelob collapsed against his barrel. He rubbed the rolls of soft fat around his collar.

  That’s all there should have been to it. Mr. Orelob, true or false, had certainly not lived up to the advance billing that Evelyn Eleven had given him. If he was an accomplice to her scheme, I had caught him totally off his feed. Either way, he certainly was not the professed terror of The Cellar. I was all set to make things definite by going through his wallet when everybody in the club got together and blew their candles out. The sudden darkness was as startling as the end of the world might have been. For two or three seconds a dark, black, bottomless void filled my eyes. Weirdly, a chorus of voices began chanting the words you always hear when somebody knocks another year off the calendar.

  “Happy Birthday to you. Happy Birthday to you …..”

  Before I lost what wits I had left, matches spluttered into life from points all over the club and lighted candles put the world back on its feet. I blinked at the table where Mr. Orelob had sat trembling under my tyranny. He was gone. For all of his size and lack of speed, he had gotten out of The Green Cellar in two pulls of a private detective’s leg.

  The club was rocking with giggles, laughter and men clapping their hands and whistling. At my shoulder a low laugh made me turn.

  Howie’s thrilled face surrounded shining eyes.

  “Something, huh?”

  “What is?”

  “The feature of the evening. Blowing out the candles. It’s done all the time. But nobody really knows when. Everybody gets a slip of paper when they get a table. A different time every night. Gee. It’s wonderful to see, isn’t it? A happy birthday for everybody in the world.”

  “Howie,” I mocked. “I didn’t know you cared.”

  “I care,” he said gravely. “Orelob skipped out on you. You want to know where?”

  “The front door, of course. Where else?”

  His smile was positively wicked.

  “Kiss me and I’ll tell you.”

  “You don’t tell me and I’ll kick you.”

  He looked hurt. “Tiger, don’t talk like that to me. I’m your friend.”

  “Then stop playing games. Which way did he go?”

  He winked. “Evelyn’s pad. Do you know where it is?”

  “I know. But what makes you so sure?”

  “He couldn’t buy a newspaper without getting the money from her first. He lives with her. A gay one and a Butch. Now, isn’t that sweet?”

  I liked him in spite of his obvious shortcomings.

  “What’s his name when it isn’t Orelob?”

  “My, Tiger, you are smart. What makes you so smart?” He shrugged. A very masculine gesture for the Howies of our time. “Everybody just calls him Fats. A rose by any other name.”

  I stuffed a ten-dollar bill in his handkerchief pocket before he could go shy on me again. “Thanks, Howie. If you ever want t
o straighten out, call me up, and I’ll give you my little black book.” I moved fast to the check room, turned my 13 on an orange ticket in for my porkpie and went up the stone steps to the sidewalk. Even before I left I could see Howie gazing wistfully after me. The hatcheck chick sniffed disgustedly at me and stuck her tongue out at Howie. He was cursing fluently when I shut the atmosphere of The Green Cellar out of my nose and breathed the clean night air.

  A police squad car cut into the curb in front of the place as I stood on the pavement digging out my cigarettes. A familiar voice fog-horned from the open window.

  “Noon! Over here!”

  It was Monks. His face was puckered and sleepy, a scowl turning his mouth down. I recognized Sanderson, James T., squinting sourly from the driver’s side.

  “Mike — you raiding The Green Cellar?”

  “Climb in. This won’t wait.”

  “How’d you know I was here?”

  “Pulled rank on your phone answering service. A dame named Flo Cooper gave me your last message about this new client. I figured you might be here. Worth trying considering our call is five minutes from here.”

  I climbed into the back seat. Monks’ voice had that tell-tale ring to it.

  “Another phone call?”

  “Yeah. Same voice. Same words. Only another girl’s name and another girl’s address.”

  Funny I could only think of one thing.

  “The Ellingham girl. Bad heart like you figured?”

  “Hell yeah. The M.E. didn’t wait till morning.”

  Sanderson shot the car around a corner while I relaxed on the back seat, my mind racing.

  Mr. Orelob or Fats would have to wait.

  6 — Killer’s Bolero

  The third corpse was a woman too. Also, the alliterative pattern of name had been repeated too. Her name was Alice Albin. She looked about twenty-five or more and the nakedness of her body was just as upsetting when viewed on the floor of a red room where there was no furniture save an automatic record player with only one disc on the turntable. The circular track of cheap electric lights made another garish curve around her body until it Q’d into the wall.

  A voice had said to Monks on the telephone. “Alice Albin is listening to the Bolero, policeman. Better hurry to 15 MacDougal Street befores she dies laughing.”

  When we walked into the open door of her apartment, the slow, sinuous beat of the Bolero was filling the murder room, which was just off the living room.

  Monks pulled the plug of the player out of the wall in deep disgust. Sanderson cursed and all we could do was look at each other. Not even so much as a pun escaped me. This was a helluva murder case. One that could keep both boys and the Department busy till doomsday.

  “Three.” Monks’ voice was a croak of regret. “Three young dames. Three Boleros. Three sets of double initials. A ‘Q’ design with the cheap lights. A red room on all three kills. And if this kid doesn’t have a bum ticker too then I’m Queen of the May.”

  I had to help him. “Not so loud, Mike. This is the Village.”

  He grinned sourly. “You were right about the record. It’s been the same one each time. Koussevitzky’s version with the Boston Symphony. But whether it’s pertinent or this maniac just ran out and bought a dozen of them wholesale I don’t know.”

  “Three in less than forty-eight hours.” I shook my head. “And so elaborate too. Well, it helps.”

  Monks eyed me curiously. “Helps what?”

  “This had to take some planning in advance. How could you count on three girls having bad hearts, red-painted rooms and record players? As well as living alone and a dozen other coincidences that you couldn’t gamble on if you planned to kill them. And if you haven’t got any leads at all after the last two, then this is a pretty clever operator.”

  “No,” he rumbled wearily. “No clues at all. No prints. No murder weapon. That Dark girl’s place and the Ellingham joint must have both been wiped down clean after the murders. All the things that should normally have prints on them were clean. The doorknobs, the phone, the water glass in the bathroom, everything with a handle. Even the record players were spotless.”

  Sanderson coughed. “Better call in now, huh, Cap?”

  “Yeah, Jimmy. Call in. I’m beat.”

  I edged toward the door. Monks’ head jerked.

  “Where you going, Ed?”

  “Thought I’d go on home. I can’t help you. Besides, the naked and the dead make me nervous.”

  “Sure. And Ed.”

  “Listening.”

  “Think of something will you? The papers are going to slaughter us with this. We covered the first one with a simple news announcement skipping all the details. But Ellingham was all over page one tonight and this one will really set the town on fire.”

  I hadn’t seen the morning papers. I knew what he meant.

  Newspapermen love to punch panic buttons. It sells newspapers. I left Captain Monks and Detective Sanderson, James T., to their official grief and walked quietly out of the building.

  I met no one on the stairs. When the sirens screamed and heavy shoes murdered the hallway, a lot of sleeping tenants were going to get an eye-opener. Homicide on your doorstep is a lot different from the murder that happens in somebody else’s neighborhood. But I had to see a fat man about a girl.

  Evelyn Eleven’s pad, as Howie had referred to it, was a basement apartment just a few stone steps down from the sidewalk. She obviously liked cellars. There were two big windows, closed off with thick drapes of some kind and then the front door disappeared under the high overhang of the front stoop. The building was one of those Village freaks. It looked like a brownstone but the brown was a cheap spray job to cover molding white brick and stucco wall. The door was black with a knocker of brass designed like a cat. I rapped with it three times.

  Under the stoop it was nearly pitch black, only a shaft of yellow from the street light behind me hitting part of the door. The light moved as the door pulled inward. A woman’s head appeared, the chain lock on the door looking like a necklace of some kind below her chin. The face seemed young and attractive. But there was something familiar about the face.

  “Who is it? What do you want?” The honeyed accents of out-of-town. Like Brooklyn or maybe Connecticut.

  “I want to see Orelob.”

  “You got the wrong place, mister.”

  “Fats knows who I am —”

  “Beat it.” The door started to close but couldn’t because my size nine was wedged carefully. “Get your foot out of there —”

  “Sister,” I said evenly. “I’ve got a gun in my pocket. You open that door or I’ll blow you and it into the next world.”

  I was taking a chance. She might scream. But she didn’t. She shrugged, jerked the chain noisily and stepped back as I fanned the door open.

  “Do you always call on people at three in the morning, mister?”

  “No. But Fats appeals to me.”

  “You didn’t look like the type.”

  “I’m not.” The hallway was warm but still too dim for comfort. “After you.”

  She moved ahead of me. A tall girl but not too tall. It was her costume of gold lamé house jacket and lounging slacks that did it. Her head was a bouffant ball of blonde. In another room which was wall-to-wall red rug and dark brown furniture, she paused by a coffee table and helped herself to a cigarette from a silver box. She looked at me over its king-size length after she lighted it. I suddenly realized she had to be Evelyn Eleven’s sister. It was the same face and figure but with more meat on it and natural wholesomeness. This Garbo had the vitamins.

  “Where’s Fats?”

  She studied me. “Are you a cop?”

  “I’m a friend of Evelyn’s.”

  She nodded her head as if agreeing with herself.

  “I thought so. She sure digs strange people. New York isn’t bad enough but she has to be in show business and live in the Village besides.”

  “Where’s Fats?”
>
  “First tell me what you want him for. I won’t stand around and watch you beat him up no matter how queer he is. I’ll scream for help. You were bluffing, weren’t you? You haven’t got a gun.”

  “Get funny and you’ll find out in a hurry.” I looked around the place. The living room ended, opened into a wide kitchen of sorts. Against the kitchen wall, I could see another door. It was closed. It looked locked.

  “Wait a minute,” she said casually, seeing my eyes. “Why did you call him Orelob?”

  “It’s a name he used tonight for a peculiar reason. And since it is such a strange name, it’s peculiar you should remember it when I only used it once.”

  “Not too hard to remember that name, mister. Evelyn was once married to a man named Orelob. My brother-in-law.” She smiled thinly. “I was surprised to hear you use it. Ev hasn’t seen him in three years and they didn’t part friends. I thought maybe he was making trouble again about the divorce she got in Las Vegas.”

  “You can tell me your biography later. Tell Fats to come out here and talk to me. I won’t eat him.”

  She laughed. “He’d probably jump for joy if you would. He’s the fattest fairy I’ve ever seen. They sure make them big in this town.” A frown compressed her eyebrows and she looked beautiful. “Say, what is your name, mister?”

  “Ed Noon.”

  “Like in High?”

  “Like in High. Now can I see Fats?”

  She stopped being inquisitive, crossed the living room into the kitchen and banged on the door that looked locked. I was right. She murmured something I couldn’t hear but as frightened as Fats obviously was, it must have been “Open sesame.” He filled the doorway, his eyes meeting mine over forty feet of basement apartment and he tried to smile. The bouffant blonde came back with him. He was sweating visibly but his face was all heh-heh and I-was-only-kidding.

  “Fats, I want to talk to you. Just talk.”

  He shuddered.

  “It was a joke, you see. Just a joke. Evelyn said it would make you laugh when you found out.”

  “Okay, I laughed. Now I’m asking questions.”

  He looked wanly at the blonde, then back at me.