The Girl in the Cockpit

by Michael Avallone

  "Yeah," Tally chimed in from his corner where he was lounging against the four-drawer file. "You were going to catch a killer, you said. Tell us about that." Willie and Gus chuckled but their faces were somehow unamused. Johnny Ricco snorted and growled at them.

  "Don't push it. Any of you. He'll tell us. Won't you, Noon?"

  I swung a look all around the room, including all of them in the sweeping appraisal. I had a feeling I had asked the mountain to come to Mahomet but it was worth it. Sometimes, the most extreme measures and long shots will pay off for you, one way or another.

  "Yes, I'll tell you. There's something I want you to do for me. I could accomplish it with a phone call or maybe another way, but I think it will sound better coming from you. From Johnny Ricco, particularly. By the way, you guys hungry? We could send down for coffee and sandwiches—"

  "Skip the eats," Johnny Ricco said quietly. "Tell us."

  "Do you know who Bella Baldwin is, Johnny?"

  "Sure. The sexy canary who works for Conroy. She's all over the papers. Built like a brick junkyard. What about her?"

  "Man, the knobs on her," chortled Gus, and everybody laughed again.

  "Not me," Winchester averred stoutly. "I like that doll out there in your outer office, man. Black is beautiful when it comes like that."

  "I like her too," I said and Winchester took the hint and shut up. And again, laughter raced around the room but Johnny Ricco still wanted to hear what I had to say about Bella Baldwin. And my plan.

  "Glad somebody is keeping his mind on business," I said, nodding my approval at him. "Okay. Tonight, along about ten o'clock, I want you to go down to The Blue Lady and deliver a message for me. I'm not going to tell you what's in the note and you may have some trouble getting in to see her because the place is loaded with big and ugly bruisers. One in particular named Carlo Fargo. You stay out of his reach and don't give him any lip at all. He breaks arms and legs and things, just for the exercise. Do you think you could get to Bella Baldwin so she gets the note?"

  "Leave it to me," said Johnny, very proudly. "Is that all? Hell, we once got into the UN and left all the water running in one of the johns just for laughs. That good enough?"

  "They're polite at the UN. Conroy's club is a rougher spot."

  "We'll do it," Johnny Ricco snapped. "I said we would and we will. How come I don't get to see what's in the note?"

  "Just trust me. You'd gum things up if you read it. Now, can I trust you to leave the envelope sealed?"

  "I won't read it," he barked and I knew then he would. First chance.

  "Will you swear on your father's good name you won't, Johnny?"

  I had him there and he knew it. The Hawks did, too. They looked on in silent awe as Johnny Ricco made the pledge. No guy would go back on a swear-in like that. He couldn't. It was a solemn oath.

  "So that's Johnny's end," Winchester growled. "What about the rest of us? Don't we get to play, too?" He thrust his beard at me.

  "You sure do, Winchester," I smiled. "While Johnny is doing his bit, the Hawks will be running some other important errands——"

  There was a knock on the door. It was Melissa's soft tap.

  She came in, with a wide tray loaded down with coffee containers, a stack of fresh Danish and assorted buns. The Hawks all voiced their approval and Winchester, in spite of me, let out a long, low whistle. Melissa smiled, came to the desk and I cleared away an area for the sudden meal. Her eyes were happy to see I was in no sort of trouble at all. I kissed her silently with my lips.

  "Thought you men might be hungry. This man never eats at the right time, at all. But that's how he keeps his girlish figure, I suppose. Dig right in now. Leave the empties on the tray, okay?"

  She turned, heading for the door and along with the Hawks, too young to appreciate her, I could suddenly see she had the crackerjack figure of all time. I didn't think she was going to get out of the room, unscathed, and she didn't. Winchester, bless his vivid imagination, couldn't resist a farewell shot:

  "And-uh—how do you keep your girlish figure, lady?"

  He was putty in her hands. She paused, hand on the doorknob and the smile she gave him would have melted iron bars.

  "Keeping well ahead of runners like you, man."

  With the door closed, the howls of the Hawks rattled off the four walls. Winchester grinned in approval and Tally poked him in the ribs. Even Johnny Ricco was smiling for a welcome change.

  "Guess she told you, Winchester," Johnny rubbed it in. "Some chick, that one. Uh—" He was about to say something else but the eyebrows I had on him made him get back to the subject at hand. "You were saying something about errands for the guys?"

  So I told him. And them.

  —As all of them dipped into the coffee and the cake which Melissa had wisely decided to order on her own hook. The real Girl Friday. This was only one more reason why she would always be more than a secretary. The class must have been there from the very start.

  Johnny Ricco and his Hawks listened attentively while I gave them the news of the day. And of the night to come. Their eyes glowed and their comments were very enthusiastic as I outlined the details.

  I was giving them exactly the sort of caper that would appeal to a bunch of fast-growing, confused, aimless young men.

  It was better than Vietnam. Much better.

  It was better than any war. Anywhere.

  And best of all, it was a fight on the side of the angels.

  That alone was going to make it worthwhile.

  I knew.

  I was a kid myself once.

  Maybe I still am.

  Long after the last Hawk had flown from the office, it was a very peculiar afternoon. For one very particular reason. The phone did not ring once. Not so much as a wrong number. Unusual, to say the least.

  There was no call from Frankie Conroy, either to threaten me or to ask what I had done to Carlo Fargo. Or to even inquire as to why I had paid a visit to his possible secret flame—Terry Ricco.

  There was no call coming from Terry Ricco, either.

  Not so much as another invitation, or a plea for help or a where's-my-brother-Johnny? sort of worry. The hand grenade scare was a myth.

  There was no call from Captain Michael Monks, asking me about the hard time I'd given his two Headquarters men, or so much as a hint about the terrible fire on Tenth Avenue. Or grenade-throwing.

  Carlo Fargo did not come by the office to beat my head in. As he very well might have. He was stupid enough and mad enough to try a fool stunt like that. Unless he was home in bed with a headache.

  The whole afternoon was a vacuum of silence after the Hawks left, with only the sound of Melissa's typewriter performing some office chore of some kind. The golden sunbeams filtered down over the desk and I thought and thought and thought about the night ahead.

  I didn't use the telephone, myself.

  I didn't feel like it, much.

  There are times like that. Odd, quiet, incident-less times.

  I should have gone down to Headquarters and turned over the .45 to Homicide. The murder weapon. Johnny Ricco's Army model which had belonged to his old man. I was obstructing justice by delaying. It had to be the gun that did the killing if Johnny Ricco was telling the truth.

  Before we locked the office for the day, I had one last message for Melissa. It was something that I wanted her to understand. She had a right to know and I wasn't going to allow her to worry any more about me. Not for one more night, at least. I could save her that much.

  "Listen, crazy lady. And listen good. It's important."

  "It always is. What now?"

  "I'll be out tonight. All night maybe. And I don't want you to sit by the phone. Take a couple of sleeping pills if you have to but you won't be hearing from me until tomorrow morning."

  Her eyes got that sad look again. "Oh, Ed. The Riccos?"

  "Yes, I can wrap it up tonight, with a break. And it won't be too risky. Honest Injun. Besides, I got the Hawks to help me. So it'
s no lone-wolf deal. See how cautious I'm getting in my old age?"

  "Sure. You won't tell me anything else?"

  "I won't. I can't."

  "Promise me you'll also get the police to help. Mike Monks has a whole police force behind him, you know. He's paid for this sort of work——"

  "So am I, remember. It says so on my license."

  We kissed before we got into the hall elevator. A long, lingering job that made both of us feel a whole lot better. She watched me fondly as the car fell. Her glorious face was wistful.

  "You're never going to make it, Noon man."

  "Make what?"

  "Your old age pension. It's just not in the cards, for a man to keep on being so lucky. To keep on flirting with his own fate."

  "Well, now, Calamity Jane, it's like this——"

  We kidded around but even as I put her in a taxi, the sorrow somewhere inside her was unmistakable. I had a bad two minutes seeing her off and then the cab pulled away from the corner. She waved goodbye.

  I walked down the block, aimlessly, feeling invisible hands plucking at me. As if someone was trying to pull me back toward safety.

  She was right, of course. She was always right.

  I should have quit long ago. Quit when I was way ahead of the game. But I hadn't and here I was, still going out into the daylight like an aging Don Quixote with a P.I. card and gun to match, tilting against the System. All the systems. As if I was still a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed young buck, full of beans and brave ideas. The Ed Noon of 1952.

  I'm still young enough, of course, but I wasn't Johnny Ricco. Or any of the Hawks, for that matter.

  I could never be that young again. Maybe nobody could.

  Maybe that was the sad part of the entire Ricco case.

  We are all too soon old and too late smart.

  I kept on walking, making silent plans for the party I had planned for the night. A rather special private party.

  The. party that would put the finger on John Junkyard's killer.

  Him.

  Or Her.

  DUET

  Terry Ricco's East Sixty-Fifth Street apartment house, or whatever it really was, stood like a huddled woman in the night. It was nearly three-thirty in the morning and the mad wheels had been spinning all night. I'd laid all my schemes a la mice and men and, if they gang aft a-gley, well, to hell with Robert Burns, too. A man can only try his best. I had shot the wad on a desperate gamble that might or not pay off.

  The vigil I had kept in my parked Buick just down the block from the front door of Terry Ricco's place was the loneliest watch of all time. I'd begun it at midnight, counting on the habits of all gangsters, swinging ladies and nightclub singers everywhere. Everything else had been set in motion. The letter I had given Johnny Ricco to deliver to Bella Baldwin, one way or another, had been very short and not at all sweet. Friends like me nobody needs but Bella Baldwin would see red and get the message, if her behavior the night I'd seen her in action in Conroy's back office was any indication.

  Frankie will be in Terry Ricco's bed when the club closes. Get wise. You're being played for a sucker.

  A Friend.

  I had gambled on Bella Baldwin not showing the note to her boss and lover. Gambled that she was hot-headed enough to want to see for herself. To catch him with his pants off. I've met a lot of Bella Baldwins. I was sure she'd swallow her rage and wait to strike.

  The rest of it was a little harder.

  Getting Frankie Conroy to go see Terry Ricco to be in a position to be caught. But that gamble was not as risky as the other. I also knew Terry Ricco now. She had had an affair with Frankie and had told him about the hand grenade—or at least, my visit. That had to mean something. But just to play it safe, I hedged my bets. Which was the use I had for all the other Hawks besides Johnny Ricco.

  They pestered and bothered Terry Ricco all that day. With some trick phone calls where they hung up and said nothing. And other calls, where they threatened her with more hand grenades and worse. Johnny went along with it because he felt that whatever I had planned was worth it if it meant nailing Papa's murderer. I was pretty certain that Terry would call Frankie again begging for some kind of protection. At least, I was pretty sure she'd want to see him that night for one reason or another. That, too, was worth trying. Considering all that I really thought and felt about Frankie and Terry. And their love affair.

  At any rate, I hit a couple of numbers on the board.

  When three o'clock came, a fast-moving taxi wheeled up to the building. A tall, well-dressed, overcoated, restless figure alighted and hurried inside. There was no street light in front of the place but it looked like Frankie Conroy, without a bodyguard, and looking like he was behaving the way a man with an alias does. After he'd gone in, I gave him about a cigarette's worth of time to get settled in. Then I locked the Buick, sauntered down the block and waited maybe five minutes more. It was a quiet night, the block was sleeping and the crosstown avenues of Madison and Park were almost free of traffic. Time enough. I ducked into the boxlike hallway with the glass door beyond which lay the entrance to Terry Ricco's home-away-from-home.

  There was no one on deck. The interior of the building was soft and quiet. A pale lamp suffused the downstairs hall. I dug out a set of the best skeleton keys in town and went to work swiftly. They solved both locks with ridiculous ease. The one to the inside of the house and the one to her apartment. I had a bad second wondering if it had been chain-locked. But I was ready for that, too, having brought along a complete set of small Jimmy Valentine precision instruments. But it wasn't.

  I inched the door open, an eighth at a time. Very slowly.

  Darkness showed. Deep, almost pitch darkness. There was none of that weird red lighting. I stepped inside, shut the door and held my breath until my eyes got accustomed to the gloom. My skin crawled a little. It never is too easy doing the second-story-man routine.

  The room ahead of me was blacker than coffee. I could make out none of the old familiar posters, wall decorations and screwy furnishings. It was as if nobody was home. I tip-toed forward, careful not to brush up against anything, or stumble. I advanced slowly. I knew when I reached the living room because I could now sense rather than see the deep thick red rug. And I could smell that mystifying perfume of Terry Ricco's. Now it sniffed like fifty dollars a drop, instead of ten. She was home, all right. But she wasn't down here. I turned, remembering where that railingless stairway was. Or rather its general direction. The sound-deadening rug guided me forward. And another very large, very helpful clue. That invisible hi-fi was playing somewhere. But tuned low, soft and faint, as subtle as a Chinese mobile, barely moving. The music was indefinite. I started to climb the stairs, a continuation of that luxurious, piled carpeting. It was as if I had my shoes off. Slowly, I unholstered my .45. It was a helluva time to go calling, I suppose, but there was no way past it. I had news for Terry Ricco. I knew who murdered her father. Almost from the beginning.

  The rare and delicate perfume and the hardly-audible music led me up into the higher reaches of that insane pad of hers. The fragrance and the volume increased the farther on I went. And suddenly, the stairway ended. There was a floor level and, no more than three yards away, a door. A wedge of pale-yellow light sliced out toward me like a shaft of beckoning rays. I crept toward that door. The music was close now. I could hear a violin crying its strings out, with a muted trumpet keeping counterpoint. I almost laughed in the darkness.

  It was a weird place and a weirder time to hear the theme music from The Godfather. Some roots go deeper than even I had guessed.

  Of course, Terry Ricco could have been just a Brando fan. But I didn't think so. She owed no allegiance to anybody. Not that girl.

  Which had been the trouble in the first place.

  I took a deep breath and entered the shaft of yellow light.

  Quick like a bunny, and not the Playboy variety.

  I walked in on them. Cold. But my voice was probably as cheery as a sales
man with a new line of merchandise. And just as unwelcome.

  "I know you hate people who do this sort of thing," I said, "but I had to come. The time has come, too. For a lot of things."

  Terry Ricco, lying on a satin coverlet, suddenly jumped as if I'd shown up with a tarantula in each hand. Her red mouth opened as if to scream but no sound came. Her long, golden hair hung like a mess of damp clothing down in Frankie Conroy's face, who was some where beneath her, a total victim to her, the room, the time of night. The mood. There was a heavy reek of love-making in the atmosphere, that peculiarly funny aroma when it is somebody else's love-making. The room was garish, red-walled, with a mirror in the ceiling and more of all that nutty furniture that now looked somehow obscene. The window was the picture kind that might have overlooked a backyard or something like that. It was tinted blue, like a Polaroid lens. And I had the feeling it couldn't be looked through. I approached the bed very slowly, careful not to take my eyes off either of them. The bed was posterless. With a night table on either side for design.

  "For the love of——" Terry's sexy voice wafted up from the bed, piqued, annoyed, but not altogether upset. There was a lazy, almost reckless note in her voice. "What the hell brings you?" Her tone changed suddenly, just like that. She sounded as if she wanted to swear and swear terribly. And Frankie Conroy, Gentleman Frankie, slight of build, long and naked, rolled away from her, thin hands racing toward the night table on his side. There was a pearl-handled, sleek .38 lying there, and in his startled haste Frankie's bony knee had somehow jabbed directly into Terry Ricco's warm, golden-fleshed stomach. She let out a low moan of pain and anger. It sounded like a curse.

  "Touch that," I said, my .45 pinning him where he lay, "and I'll blow you into the next borough. Don't try me, Frankie. I could pay you back for Fargo right now."

  Terry had just as suddenly gotten modest. She pulled away from her gangster bedfellow and drew the satin coverlet over her nudity. Only her great, heaving breasts showed. There was a look so wanton and glazed in her fine, gorgeous face, she seemed high on something. The pale lights of the room showcased her great beauty in all departments. She looked more like Vera Miles than ever, in the low lighting.