Kiss and Kill

by Lawrence Lariar

  “Why not?” I asked. “Was it because you were fiddling with Lila yourself?”

  Kutner recoiled. He whirled around and colored under the sting of it. He showed me his upper dentures in a nasty scowl. His thin fingers trembled on the edge of the desk. “Who told you that?” he growled.

  “A small bird, Kutner. What made you think it was a secret? Everybody down in the advertising group has a box score of your mattress dates with her. People enjoy watching an old sucker like you when he’s caught hold of a piece of tail as ripe as Lila.”

  “Quiet!” he whispered hoarsely. “Or I’ll throw you out of here, Conacher.”

  “Nuts. You’ll sit there and listen and like it. I’m not in this dump to play potsy with you, Kutner. I’m here to find out who killed Chuck Rosen, remember? The way I figure it, there’s a one-way street leading me to Chuck’s killer. That street leads me close to Lila Martin’s bedroom. And I’m in no mood to listen to lies, not even from you.”

  “I’m warning you again,” he said righteously, “to watch your language in here.”

  “And I’m telling you again to sit down, Kutner. You can’t frighten me, because I’m not taking orders from you. I was hired by Oscar Cumber, and I’m still on his payroll. Cumber wants me to dig up the background for the big heists in this store. Cumber seems to think I can crack the case for him. I had a long talk with Oscar Cumber before I came to work here. He gave me free rein in my investigations. You work here. That makes you part of my research.”

  Kutner wilted under the heat of my monologue. He sat down wearily. It was always the same with the military types. They ride you and rile you until threatened by a flank attack. Then they retreat and move up to the bill positions, where they can sit back and plan the next move. The way Kutner was scheming his next move right now.

  “You’re all wrong about me,” he said with even calm. “I no longer see Lila Martin.”

  “When was the last time?”

  “Over a week ago.”

  “You took her home?”

  “Naturally.”

  “You stayed for parlor games?”

  “Lila always invited me in,” Kutner said quietly, “for a nightcap.”

  “Did she discuss Chuck Rosen at all?”

  “I don’t remember hearing his name mentioned.”

  “You didn’t do much talking, did you?”

  Kutner arose in all his dignity. I had him where I wanted him, and he knew it. He gave me his back again, turning to the Empire State for comfort. His hands were clasped behind his back. The knuckles showed white under the pressure of his inner upheaval. “Have you had quite enough of this, Conacher?” he asked. “I wanted to discuss tonight’s problems at the pre-Christmas party. That was what I thought you came here for.”

  “You made a big mistake,” I told him. “I’ll supervise your stupid party tonight, Kutner. I’ll see to it that none of the newshawks do any shoplifting. But, I didn’t come in here to talk about your party.”

  “Interesting. Just what is the reason for your visit, Conacher?”

  “Chuck Rosen.” The name didn’t charm him. He would always react to it this way. He would always show me the face of a sorry tycoon, regretful because a death had happened at one of the store brawls.

  “What can I tell you?” he asked quietly.

  “Chuck saw you at frequent intervals?”

  “Only when we met in the aisles.”

  “He didn’t report progress to you?”

  “You know he didn’t, Conacher. If he had anything to report, he would have gone straight to Oscar Cumber.”

  “He might have told you a few of his ideas.”

  Kutner’s army face was clouding up with annoyance. “He told me nothing. Nothing at all. What are you getting at?”

  “Let it pass,” I said.

  He surveyed me with some curiosity. Something resembling a stiff and fleeting smile curved his thin lips.

  “You’re a strange man, Conacher.”

  “I get stranger as I get madder. And I won’t be happy again until I find the bastard who killed my partner.”

  “I’m sorry I can’t be of any help.”

  “You’ve helped,” I said.

  Then I slammed the door and walked out of there.

  CHAPTER 5

  I chewed the fat with a man named Folger, who headed up the Personnel Department of Cumber’s. He was a stiff goon with a filing-card mind. He remembered talking to Chuck Rosen not too long ago. About what? All kinds of things, but mostly research in advertising.

  “You don’t remember any of it?” I asked.

  “Chuck Rosen was only in here once,” Folger explained. “He happened to pick a day when I could give him very little time. This department is a hornet’s nest on certain days. Rosen came in on just such a day. He seemed interested in the cards on everybody in Advertising. He questioned me about whether I knew any of them intimately. Of course, I don’t. Then Rosen availed himself of my files and spent the rest of the time on his own.”

  “Exactly why I’m here,” I admitted. “But I have a few personal questions for you myself, Folger.”

  “I haven’t much time today either.” He smiled sourly. “But I can give you a few moments.”

  I felt my collar wilt. This lad could bring out the beast in me. I said: “Keep your tail under control, Folger. My visit is a bit different from Chuck’s, remember? I’m chasing a murderer.”

  “You certainly don’t expect to find him here?”

  “I may find a lead here.”

  “A lead to what, for heaven’s sake?”

  “Let me ask the questions, will you?” He was giving me the starched-back treatment, the wide-open eyes and the gawking mouth, as if I had just stabbed his wife. I got out of my chair and put my pratt down on the edge of his desk. I leaned in and let him feel the heat of my breath. He almost pushed his head through the wall trying to get away from me, he was that prissy. “Relax, Folger,” I told him. “And let’s start all over again.”

  “Over? Where?”

  “With Chuck. Beginning with your chat with him. He walked in. He asked you questions. What were the first questions he asked?”

  “He asked about the Advertising staff,” Folger said, tight-lipped. “As I’ve already explained to you before.”

  “Think some more. Anybody else?”

  Folger thought. He had a thin lower lip that seemed to be tasty meat for him to munch. He munched and thought. He took off his horn-rimmed glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He closed his eyes. When he opened them, finally, something resembling an idea burned under his vague brows.

  “Come to think of it,” he began, “Rosen did ask some other questions, too. He was quite interested in Sigmund Hess, our ex-jewelry buyer.”

  “What did you tell him about Hess?”

  “Nothing that he couldn’t have found in the files. Hess was a trusted buyer, a fine fellow.” He clucked a sympathetic cluck. “Fell ill a while back, and had to quit.”

  “What bothered him?”

  “I don’t rightly know. I didn’t know the man that well.”

  “He was leaving town?”

  “So he said.”

  “But he didn’t mention his destination?” I asked. “Maybe he needed a place like Arizona? Asthma? Anything like that?”

  “I really don’t know.” He lifted his phone to talk to somebody in the store. He managed to make it a tremendous production, to impress me with his importance. He hung up and smoked jerkily. “Is there anything else, Conacher? I’m really quite busy.”

  “Kutner,” I said. “Also Pettigrew, Wilkinson and Carpenter. Sutton, Martin and Debevoise. Aside from those names, there isn’t a thing in the world you can do for me.”

  “For heaven’s sake,” he gushed. “I’ve already told you—”

&nbs
p; “I know. You aren’t acquainted with any of them personally. So let’s just gossip.”

  “Gossip?” Folger’s flaccid face slowly reddened. “About who?”

  “Let’s start with Kutner.” I held up a hand to silence him, knowing the line of his dialogue before he spat it out. “I realize Kutner and Wilkinson came from Chicago recently. I also realize you don’t know either of them. But talk travels fast in the trade, Folger. Gossip is routed over the personnel grapevine in every big business. As head of Cumber’s Personnel, your ears must be loaded with all kinds of fancy yarns about the imported talent. You hear about a man’s reputation in a variety of ways. That’s the kind of nonsense I want to talk about with you. Any of it. No matter how stupid or silly it sounded to you, I want to hear it. And that goes for the whole Advertising tribe. But let’s start with Kutner.”

  Folger coughed. He began to load the air with the usual clichés an underling throws away about the big czar in the outfit. Kutner was a truly great man. A marvelous merchandise authority. An expert in supervising the staff and getting cooperation from them. A man of great goodness and awareness concerning his employees. A social man. A friendly man.

  “Now let’s bury the garbage,” I said. “And start digging.”

  “I’ve told you what I know.”

  “Then I’ll tell you what I’ve heard. A few small birds told me that Kutner has always been a bit of a lecher, a ladies’ man, a roué, an ancient wolf.”

  “I wouldn’t know about that aspect of his personality.”

  “He’s also a gay bird,” I continued. “A bit of a gambler. A horse lover and a card lover and a lover of the wheel. Right?”

  “There have been stories, of course—”

  “Tell them to me.”

  “Well,” Folger began, fumbling around in his supply chest for the correct words to use when describing the boss who might fire him if the words ever got back to his ears. “Well, now, it’s true that Mr. Kutner has been seen in many gambling places. He’s supposed to have lost a small fortune in Puerto Rico at the wheel.”

  “How long ago?”

  ‘Tm not sure,” Folger said with a show of honesty. “The way I heard it, perhaps a year ago.”

  “Perhaps. And Kutner also plays the steeds?”

  “So he does.”

  “And Kutner and Wilkinson are cast in the same mold?”

  “So they are.”

  “And Sigmund Hess?”

  Folger arched his eyebrows and shook his head dumbly. “I know no gossip about Hess.”

  I thanked him and went out of there. I took the escalator to the Jewelry Department and exchanged a bit of chit and chat with the new buyer, a burly ox named Ludekens. Ludekens could tell me little about anything. He was fresh on the job and not at all anxious to dig his own grave. He beat about the proverbial bush when I mentioned all the others in my long question-mark list.

  I backtracked into the Sales Department, idling down the aisles to make small talk with some of the girls who knew Hess. Skip-tracing can be a pain in the tail when the bird you hunt may be hiding in the tall trees. A driving curiosity nudged me forward in my search for information about Sigmund Hess. He was somebody I wanted to meet personally, to pin into a chair and ask all kinds of slyly rigged questions. Why had he quit in such a hurry? What ailed him? Asthma? Pneumonia? Cancer? Or did he take a powder for another, less physical reason?

  “Great guy, Sig,” said the redhead in the ring section.

  “You gals all call him Sig?”

  “The others, maybe they didn’t.”

  “You’re a special friend of his?”

  “Don’t get nasty, mister.” The redhead heaved her hip at me arrogantly, fluffing her hair and making like she was nasty. “Just so happens, Mr. Hess and me were pretty good friends, is all.”

  “Ever go out with him?”

  “So what if I did?”

  “Where?”

  “That’s my business.”

  “Business is good?”

  “Fresh!”

  So Sigmund was another gay blade, a sharpie with the girls in his department. Three other wrens of assorted ages and types also told me subtly that Hess wasn’t too fussy in his choice of feminine companionship. It gave me nothing but a slim clue to his personality, a shred of nonsense to add to my bottomless pit of deductive fluff.

  I went uptown and checked his brownstone. There was a square sign tacked to the front door:

  FOR SALE

  Asherton and Kruppa

  I made a note of the address of the real estate agency and then idled around the neighborhood.

  You stick your nose into a strange door and ask strange questions. You wander willy-filly, jerking yourself into the role of the subject you want to locate. You pause occasionally, to think like him, to let his habits work on you. A man like Sigmund Hess would have a favorite market, a grocery store, a butcher and tailor and shoemaker. You figure him as a big money man, this Hess, up in the higher echelon of the Cumber ranks. You wander a few blocks from his brownstone, casing the trafficked streets where the shops are.

  And then you’re in a market: Gordiolla’s Fancy Fruits, Vegetables and Groceries.

  Mrs. Gordiolla herself, a square-cut broad in her middle fifties, wrapped in a dirty white apron and a clean white smile.

  “Mister Hess?” she responded. “No, I never met him at all, mister.”

  “Good customer?”

  “The best.”

  “Who bought his groceries?”

  “His maid, it was.”

  “You know the name of the maid?”

  “Why sure,” beamed Mrs. Gordiolla. “Nice lady. Colored lady. Her name was Rebecca.”

  “Rebecca what?”

  Mrs. Gordiolla raised a hue and cry around the confines of her market calling upon all the clerks for information. One after the other they repeated her story. Rebecca was simply Rebecca, a colored lady, middle-aged, who had gray hair and wore glasses and talked real nice. Classy, like an educated woman. Where did Rebecca live? Nobody knew. Rebecca rarely spoke much about her job, taking a great pride in the management of Sigmund’s household. She was a shrewd and careful purchaser, and not at all dishonest like some of the other domestics in the neighborhood who pocketed special fees and discounts while shopping for their masters.

  My meandering through the district revealed little concerning Sigmund Hess. Only the man at the stationery store ever really spoke to Hess, in the morning when the jewelry manager bought his daily newspaper, The New York Herald Tribune. Here, too, Rebecca made occasional purchases of pocket books, selecting only the classic titles and avoiding the trash.

  “Very nice woman, that Rebecca,” observed the newspaper merchant. “Well educated, too.”

  “Happen to know her last name?”

  “Never bothered to ask.”

  “Any idea where she lives?”

  “She lived with Mr. Hess, naturally.”

  “I mean on her days off,” I said. “Usually they have a room, or friends, or relatives. You know what I mean?”

  “Rebecca lived with him. All the time.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Well, she told me. Rebecca only took time off to go to a concert or a show. Thursdays and Sundays, but just for the entertainment. I’d always see her coming back home afterwards.”

  The office of Asherton & Kruppa, Real Estate and Insurance, was only a quick taxi ride away. The girl at the desk was surprised and delighted to be questioned by a detective. She responded to my queries with the bounce and verve of a contestant on a quiz show. Her name was Miss Mudiver, and she had a southern accent you could cut up and serve for cornpone and chitlins.

  “But Mistuh Hess sold his house, my deah,” she announced. “Didn’t you know that?”

  “I know from nothing. Whe
n was it sold?”

  “Just about two weeks ago the customer signed the closing. The customer expects to move in next month.”

  “The house is empty now?”

  “Mr. Hess sure enough gave us his key.”

  “How about you sure enough lending it to me?”

  “What all for?” she asked, her eyes bright with the excitement of a kid watching a television murder. “You all think somethin’s wrong in there, mistuh?”

  “I all want to check the place, that’s all.”

  “I shouldn’t had ought to do it,” she cooed. “My boss would simply kill me if he found out.”

  “It’ll be our little secret, honey.”

  “You all promise to bring it right back?”

  “In one hour,” I promised faithfully.

  She gave me the key and I beat it back to the brownstone and let myself in, avoiding the downstairs to save time. What I wanted lay up the narrow stairs. It was a routine layout, built in the period when the lower floors housed the scullery, the dining and living rooms and the pantry. Upstairs, I passed the master bedrooms, three of them, bathed in the gloom of late afternoon. Still another stairway wound up to the third floor at the rear of the narrow corridor. The place stank of stale air and old wood. On the top landing, a small square hall formed the entrance to the servants’ quarters.

  There were two rooms here. One of them was oversized, a strangely commodious maid’s room for the period in which the house was fashioned. Somebody had cut through a wall to enlarge this one. I wondered vaguely whether Sigmund Hess had done this service for Rebecca. A maple bed sat under a long window, attractive despite the fact that it carried only a raw mattress. The walls were papered in a colonial pattern, a design that spoke of good taste and dignity. The accompanying furniture, too, spelled refinement. On the dainty end table was the telephone and, alongside it, a well-thumbed leather book of numbers, most of them belonging to merchants on the shopping belt.

  I checked the little book carefully. My effort paid off under the letter “L.” There was a listing for The League for Cultural Advancement and, alongside it, the name: Luella Rimbert.

  I dialed the number and asked for Miss Rimbert. There was a short wait and then the rich, deep tones of Luella herself.