The Bedroom Bolero

by Michael Avallone

  “Did you get a look at any of them at all, fellah?” The same old words. Number One on the beat cop’s list of rote questions.

  “No,” I heard myself say. “It was sort of dark. Three men. About thirtyish. Tall. Wearing suburban hats. Overcoats. Just three punks.”

  “What started it?”

  Melissa Mercer started to babble until I pressed her arm warningly.

  “They made an insulting remark about the lady here.”

  “Oh.” The cop’s voice registered no opinion at all. “Well — you okay? Lose your wallet? If you want to register a complaint —”

  “No,” I said. “Skip it. Forget it. They’re gone and the hell with them.”

  “Better look after your face.”

  “I will. Thanks.”

  “Don’t know what the city is coming to —” The cop mumbled some other fleeting and unhistorical remarks and disappeared with the rest of the bad things of the last half hour.

  Melissa Mercer looked at me.

  “Ed, I’m so sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “For me. If you hadn’t hired me, you wouldn’t have had to do what you did. And now your face is all bloody and —”

  “You forget it too.”

  “I can’t. I see your face and I want to cry.”

  I laughed harshly. “Got a pocket mirror on you? I’ll take a look and maybe I’ll join you.”

  “It’s not funny,” she said a little angrily.

  “No it isn’t,” I agreed drily. “But you stop apologizing to me for being black. For one thing, I don’t like it. Don’t you know this was a put-up job? A cheap excuse to go to work on me.”

  She was fumbling for the mirror. “What do you mean?”

  “Somebody figured a beating was as good as a killing. If you hadn’t helped me with that secret weapon, I’d be in the hospital right now for a long time. It’s cheaper than a bullet and doesn’t get the cops mad at you. Who’d notice if I was beaten up by three guys in a fight over my pretty secretary?”

  She got the pitch and she handed me the mirror. Like I said, she was no dope. But the bafflement wouldn’t leave her eyes.

  “That’s terrible. Who’d do a thing like that?”

  “When we get to Headquarters, you may have a few answers that will explain everything better than I can.”

  I shut up and screwed the mirror up to the street light where I could look at the damage. It wasn’t too bad but it wasn’t good either.

  A trickle of dried blood was running out of both nostrils like a thin red line on a map. The corner of my mouth was lumped as if a bee had stung me. My right eye scared me. I touched my cheek bone and winced. It felt like a fracture if I was any judge.

  “Want me to hold the mirror?” Melissa said in a tender voice.

  I nodded. She stood before me, piquant and adorable, propping the hand mirror. I straightened my tie, re-set my fedora and wiped my face as best I could. Apart from the look of nicely flattened and battered beefsteak, I would pass. My ribs ached and my arms felt like they might after bowling nine lines but Headquarters beckoned.

  “Come on, Melissa. Let’s go see Mike Monks and then I’ll buy you that dinner I promised you.”

  We found a cab and as I handed her into the lighted interior, she kissed me lightly on the bruised face.

  “You’re a bug,” she said. “But I like you.”

  Monks’ office was as I remembered it from my last visit a few months back. The same old four-drawer files, a portrait of John F. Kennedy and a large bulletin board of every precinct on the island of Manhattan. He was alone when we came in. When he saw my face, he frowned. He nodded hello to Melissa Mercer whom he remembered and then looked at me questioningly. I explained it all away in five minutes while Melissa looked a little self-consciously at her fingers.

  Mike could tell by my comments I didn’t really want to discuss it so he dropped the third degree.

  “I was thinking over what you said about initials, Ed.”

  “I thought you’d get it.”

  “T.T. By that I assume that you think this nut is spelling out a word.”

  I lit a Camel. Melissa didn’t want one. She was somehow awed by Monks’ official but friendly scowl.

  “Why not? If he can rig a red room with corpses and a Bolero record playing, then the alliterative initials of the three lady nudes must mean something.”

  Monks sighed. “Dawn Dark, Eve Ellingham, Alice Albin. D-E-A. And if a T.T. shows up and an H.H. —” He paused meaningfully. “Yeah. It could be the word DEATH we’re working on.”

  “Don’t ask me what it means, Mike. But all maniacs follow some kind of pattern, don’t they?”

  He nodded and poked a sausage finger at his bulletin board. The borough map pinned there was marked with large black X’s.

  “Now you got me doing it. I tried to figure it out by location. You know — maybe try to second guess where the next stiff might turn up. But you can see for yourself. It adds up to nothing.”

  Riverside Drive, the Village and West Eighty-Sixth Street, the sites of the three Bolero murders, formed no appreciative design like an initial or a letter or a symbol. Not nearly as much as the “Q” arrangement of the cheap lights and wall socket attachment did. And that could really mean nothing.

  I smiled at Melissa Mercer and winked in spite of how bad my face felt. A smile was the rack.

  “What did you want to see me about, Mike?”

  He indicated a heaping pile of forms on his desk.

  “We’ve been busy. I told you about the cantharides routine. You can’t get that stuff by walking into a drugstore. So we checked with all the hospitals and every doctor in the city. Reports coming in steadily. So far nothing.”

  “But?”

  He grinned sourly. “We’ve also covered all there is to know about the girls. We came up with something that all three had in common. Besides bad hearts and dying the way they did.”

  I know Mike. He had found something. As slim as it might be, he had come up with a hole card and he was just about ready to flash it.

  “Don’t stop now,” I begged.

  He grinned wider. “All this talk about maniacs. Well, I thought a lot about that. We checked with all the hospitals in town and we’re still sending tracers as far West as Chicago. Just in case some escaped mental patient is on the town. I’ve had my men going over case histories on loonies around the clock. You know. Anybody with a mental aberration about music or red rooms or a sexual screwiness that might suggest these kills. So far nothing. But — we did find out that Dawn, Eve and Alice were all in Bellevue at one time to do something about their heart conditions.”

  This time I frowned. But Monks was looking at a report on his desk which he referred to with satisfaction. Melissa looked like she was holding her breath.

  “In 1961,” Monks said, “Dawn Dark passed out in a restaurant on Second Avenue and they hustled her to Bellevue which was just around the corner from the restaurant she was working in while she was studying in the daytime to be a dancer. She remained there for a whole week before they released her. They told her she had a functional murmur that meant no dancing if she wanted to keep on living. Eve Ellingham had a heart attack which worried the hell out of her enough to make her admit herself as a patient. That girl saved her money. Could have had a specialist according to the job she had and all we found about her home and career. She went in for free treatment and advice and then left after three days. Ditto the Albin girl. She was at the hospital nearly a month for convalescence before they released her. But there’s the common denominator. All three of those girls were in Bellevue to have their pumps looked at. It has to mean something.”

  I must have thought of it just in the manner he did. I put out my cigarette slowly. Melissa was watching both of us carefully with all the quiet intensity she would have given a championship ping-pong match.

  “Mike,” I said slowly. “Please tell me that you’ve found a girl who’s been there last year wit
h the initials T.T.”

  “Yes, Ed. I have. A Thelma Torrance.” He chuckled like a ghoul considering the import of the joke. “And an H.H. Hilda Hale. And if your theory is correct, all we’ve got to do is watch these two girls and we’ll nail this customer before he can play another record.”

  Melissa Mercer shivered almost audibly. Her green suit seemed to crackle with empathy.

  “Excuse me but if that’s true, you shouldn’t waste another minute. You should bring those girls in and talk to them now —”

  “Way ahead of you, Miss,” Monk said not unkindly. Still grinning at me, he reached across the desk to his intercom and pressed a buzzer. “Jimmy, send in Miss Hale and Miss Torrance. I’m ready for them now.”

  “Michael,” I said. “You may go to the head of the class.”

  10 — Paint the Room Red

  Hilda Hale and Thelma Torrance were both frightened. Maybe because they were both very young or simply had never been in a police station before. It was hard to tell. My battered puss and Melissa Mercer’s presence in Monks’ office might have confused them even more. No matter how innocent of crime a person may be it is difficult to retain your social equilibrium when you know a cop is going to ask a lot of questions.

  “Sit down, ladies,” Monks said agreeably enough. “Thank you for coming. You may find it the smartest thing you ever did. We have every reason to believe both your lives are in danger, so everything you can tell us will be of great help.”

  Both girls looked at each other, trying to smile. I studied them as they sat down in two of the chairs that were ringed about the desk. Monks made introductions. Hilda Hale turned out to be the taller and heavier one. She was a blonde who had obviously recently dyed her hair. Black streaks still showed. Her face was nice if you like the apple-cheeked, full-lipped puppy type of beauty some women have. The dress she wore was a checkered flare skirt with matching black woolen sweater. A single strand of pearls and a black patent leather handbag completed her costume. When she sat down and crossed one ankle over the other, I could see why she wore a flare skirt. Her legs were shapely but beefy, a sure indication she had heavy thighs.

  Thelma Torrance was about an inch shorter but at least thirty pounds lighter. A slender, pocket-size brunette with a sharper face. Her eyes were wide, the nose was a lovely hawk and her mouth well-formed. The skin on her face reminded you of moonlight and cocktails. Hilda was all daylight, sunshine and a swim in the pool.

  They both found some comfort in Melissa Mercer’s presence in the office. Monks permitted himself a smile.

  “Don’t be frightened.”

  “I wish you’d explain what this is all about,” Thelma Torrance tried to smile. “You policemen have a bad habit of asking for people and then making them wait around for hours until you begin talking.”

  “Yeah,” Hilda Hale backed her up. “How about it, Captain? Give us the score.” Both their voices were very young too. The sound of the early twenties. Bright, unfuzzed and eager.

  If it had been a rundown on a baseball game, Monks couldn’t have given them a more complete play-by-play. He outlined the whole mess from the first day when the killer had left Dawn Dark naked on the floor of a red room with the Bolero spinning out its erotic message. I listened all over again. When you’re baffled, it’s a good idea to do just that. Sometimes the speaker lingers unconsciously over a point that you should have considered and didn’t. Also, you find out what aspect of a case impresses another brain beside your own. With Monks, it seemed to be the simple peculiarity of all three of the victims having red rooms. He seemed to underscore that point more than once.

  All through the recital, Hilda Hale and Thelma Torrance grew steadily paler. When Monks had finished, we rapidly found out why.

  “My God,” Thelma Torrance blurted. “I don’t believe it —”

  “Don’t you read the papers, Miss Torrance?” Monks asked mildly. “All this can be corroborated.”

  “I know, I know,” she wailed. “It’s just that it’s so awful. And it doesn’t make sense and —”

  “Wait a minute,” Hilda Hale interposed. “It can’t be a coincidence. Not after all you said, Captain. Holy Mackerel, Andy!” Something suddenly struck her right between the layers of grey tissue.

  Monks nodded as if agreeing with himself about something.

  “You both have something to tell me? It couldn’t be about a red room, could it?”

  Both women gaped at him. “How did you know?” Hilda Hale gasped.

  “It wasn’t that hard. Remember I’ve been working on this longer than anybody else. You’d better tell me about it. One at a time. You first, Miss Torrance. Might as well stick with the alphabet just like our maniac friend.”

  Thelma Torrance’s brunette head wagged, confused.

  “It’s just that about a week ago I got a call. From a paint company. They said I’d been picked out of the phone book. I’d won a prize which consisted of having any room in the house painted free of charge. It seems they were demonstrating a new product — you know how those things are. Well, I thought it was a gag and hung up. But the next day, this salesman called.”

  I leaned forward. “Can you describe him?”

  She looked at me in surprise, turned to Monks but he nodded. “Oh, not too tall. Slight. Blond hair. Mustache I seem to remember but it was so light. You know how blonds are. Well, he said he was from the company and he had his equipment with him. A big, black suitcase. I let him in and he went on and on about the Bostwick Paint Company and a new wonderful paint compound that lasted two whole years before you needed a second coat. Well, he was so nice and since it was for nothing, I gave in. A woman’s always got one room in the house she’d like to do over.”

  “That’s exactly what happened to me,” Hilda Hale blurted, eyes amazed. “Same company and same man. A skinny guy with a blond pencil mustache.”

  “Take it easy, Miss Hale,” Monks murmured. “You’ll get your turn. Go on, Miss Torrance.”

  She took a deep breath. “Well, there was one catch. He said the room had to be red. It was part of the rules of winning. I didn’t mind after I saw the color.” She shrugged. “Kind of a Chinese red that I always liked so I let him paint the room I’d been using as a storeroom for my luggage and odds and ends.”

  “Did the color have a name?” I asked.

  She smiled wanly. “A beautiful name. Bolero red.”

  “What happened then?” Monks urged her on.

  “That’s it. He took two hours to paint the room, then packed up his gear and quit. It’s a small room. Then he left. He didn’t talk to me much. I was in the kitchen ironing some things. He didn’t want any coffee or anything. Much less talk. He was a perfect gentleman. You would have thought he wasn’t even in the room.”

  “When was this?”

  She looked at the ceiling. “Friday, I think. About two weeks ago. It’s a nice color. Real warm. But —” She shivered.

  “Have a record player, Miss Torrance?”

  “What girl hasn’t who lives alone in the big city?”

  “Do you have a record of the Bolero?”

  “No,” she admitted. “I dig calypso and rock n’ roll. Never liked the longhairs. Too sad for me.” The picture of her I had painted vanished. I would have saddled exuberant Hilda Hale with those tastes. Monks made a few notes in his pad and Melissa Mercer looked more enthralled with it all than ever. I hoped she wasn’t hungry. The dinner hour had raced by long ago.

  “Miss Torrance,” Monks said, “would you mind telling us about yourself? We know about Bellevue and your heart trouble but what do you do for a living?”

  Her smile was tired and defeated. “I work at Ohrbach’s. Salesgirl. Never had much ambition. I was home that Friday with a bad cold.”

  “Any men in your life?”

  She shrugged. “Some. But all casual. No steady. I never keep one overnight if that’s what you mean. I’m only twenty-two, Captain, and I’m not exactly ready to settle down.”

 
; “Thank you for being so frank. Okay, Miss Hale. Let’s have your story.”

  Substantially, it was of the same cloth as the Torrance girl’s. A phone call about winning a prize. The arrival of the slight, mustached salesman with the black bag. The insistence on Bolero red and Hilda Hale yielding when she saw the color. It would go very nicely in the little room off the hall. The salesman had been just as quiet and just as efficient. The company had been called Bostwick Paint again. Hilda Hale’s red room had been completed on the Saturday following Thelma’s Friday.

  The only difference in the two stories was that Torrance lived in an apartment in the Peter Stuyvesant section and Hale had a four-room home on West Seventy-Ninth Street.

  About her private life, she was slightly embarrassed.

  “Gee, Captain. My boy friend’s overseas in Germany and I don’t date anybody at all. He’s gone seven months now and I just couldn’t do that to him. I’m a teller at Chase Manhattan on Fortieth. I guess you’d say I keep pretty much to myself.”

  I laughed. “Do you have a friend at Chase Manhattan?”

  She goggled at me. “Huh?” Then she laughed. “Nah. Nobody dates at banks. Too busy counting the money.”

  Melissa Mercer made a noise in her throat. We all looked at her. She smiled timidly. “Captain, I hope you don’t mind but it occurs to me that you haven’t asked these girls if they ever knew the victims. I mean if they all were in Bellevue at one time or another they might have run into each other, mightn’t they?”

  Monks looked stupid. Then he smiled that big ape smile of his.

  “Miss Mercer, you’re getting bad habits working with Ed here but you’re right of course.”

  “Gee,” Hilda Hale said. “I don’t remember anybody named Dark, Ellingham or what was that other girl’s name?”