The February Doll Murders

by Michael Avallone

  “No, thank God,” Lynch said. “I don’t have to tell you that. When the report came into my office, I thought it might be. No, the murdered man was Max Arnoff, a top Red agent. Crosby did us a favor on that one. But it raised all kinds of problems. Why had one Red agent tried to kill another? That got our hopes up. Maybe Crosby had finally seen the light and was coming back to America to make amends.”

  “Maybe he was,” I said. It was the first nice thing about Kyle he had said.

  “We have no proof on that score. Even enemy agents for the same country have gotten involved in some personal scrapes. But we had to cover the whole thing, what with the U. N. situation and the whole international mess. So we blocked all tracers to Wisconsin on Crosby, as well as to us. Which is why your Captain Monks has had no luck pinning Crosby’s background down.”

  “You called Kyle a dirty traitor,” I reminded him. “I’ll agree with you on one count alone. The defecting. But you’ll have to back up the rest of that charge.”

  Lynch’s expression now wore a smile that can only be classified as being sorry for me.

  “Okay, Smiling Jack,” he murmured. “I’ve told you about an American who ran away in forty-seven and stayed in Russia for almost nineteen years. Helping them, siding with them. Is it so farfetched for me to imagine that he may have been indirectly responsible for a good many subversive activities on this side of the water since then? I ask you.”

  “You haven’t any proof.” I was right, but my argument sounded weak even to me.

  “Forget it,” Lynch said. “Now we’re up to the present and why we’re talking to you. Why did Kyle Crosby look you up? Why does a Red agent call a private detective as soon as he gets to America after being gone so long?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “Maybe. I don’t know for sure. It couldn’t have anything to do with you guys.”

  “Let me be the judge of that,” Lynch said sternly.

  “Okay.” I sighed. “What difference does it make now? You guys know anything about short snorters?”

  The three F.B.I. men looked at each other and then at me.

  “Well, it goes like this. In Le Havre, in the sad winter of forty-four —” I gave all of it to them. The bill business, all the names, and all the mystery of its disappearance. It was a brief, unfunny account. I didn’t feel funny at all. Nor flip anymore. I couldn’t be with Kyle Crosby sitting dead in my living room.

  Lynch whistled. “Wonder what it can mean.”

  “You tell me.”

  “Noon, don’t be an idiot,” he barked. “The man I was telling you about didn’t come all this way for old time’s sake. There must be something about that bill and all the names on it that is extraordinary.”

  I laughed harshly. “Kyle wasn’t anywhere near the Reds in forty-four. The closest he came to them was reading about the Cincinnati Reds in the paper. And they play baseball, remember?”

  His eyes narrowed. “What about that bill, Noon? Think.”

  “Think,” I echoed. “You kidding? It was green, it was the same old Washington single I’d been looking at all my life. Of course, it was the old size — you know the greenbacks have shrunk since the Federal Reserve notes that the Treasury issued. What’s there to think about? It can’t be the bill itself — The answer to the riddle must be in those ten signatures of ours.”

  Brad spoke up. “That Monks and his men should have been here by this time, Lynch.”

  “Give Michael time,” I said. “He’s a busy man.”

  Lynch scowled again. “That bill. It’s fascinating. You had it, then you saw Crosby and the shooting occurred, and then you didn’t have it. Which means he copped it. And now he’s dead, so it follows that his murderer now has the thing. Why?”

  “Those kind of questions I can ask myself, Lynch.” I eyed him a little less venomously. After all, he had his work to do, same as me. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

  “What?”

  “Her,” I said, indicating the sleeping lovely on my couch. “If Kyle was lying, then she was lying. She backed him all the way on his story about Wisconsin and a wife and three kids. And that nurse routine has to be a phony. Let’s wake her up and play True Confession.”

  It was a great idea. Lynch thought so, too. So did Brad and Nameless. There was only one thing wrong with the notion. Lola Langdon was about three minutes ahead of us.

  Sometime during the gabfest she had come to, overheard our conversation, and made up her own mind about things.

  Her decision was something that looked like a cigarette lighter but was definitely a gun. About .22 caliber was my guess, as she suddenly sat up very straight on the couch and aimed it at all three of us.

  Lynch, who had started toward her to follow my suggestion, abruptly braked to a halt on the rug. His hands went up in pure reflex action. Ditto Brad’s and the no-name agent’s.

  “Don’t make the mistake of thinking this is a toy,” she said in a thin, brittle voice. “The bullets are tipped with a poison that kills within minutes. Your hands, too, Mr. Noon. Nothing matters to me anymore, so I have nothing to lose. Up I said!”

  Talk about James Bond and sweet mothers of espionage. Mata Hari had just ridden again.

  Only her name was Lola. And whatever Lola wants, Lola gets.

  I raised my hands, damning myself for three kinds of fool for not having frisked her purse in the taxicab. Lynch and his boys should have been kicked, too. Fine F.B.I. men they were.

  They hadn’t even disarmed me.

  For men who earned our coffee and cake being investigators, we had all behaved like little boys who don’t know the rules of the game. But it happens, friends, it happens.

  “Mr. Noon,” Lola Langdon hissed in a snake of words, “I’m not going to tell you again.”

  She didn’t have to.

  I raised my hands higher this time, the way she obviously wanted them. And gave up my last hope of reaching for my .45.

  7

  The Dame Called Lola

  “Registered nurse, huh?” I sneered. “That’s some hypodermic needle, lady.”

  “Don’t know about her,” Lynch said blandly enough. “She came to town with Crosby, all right, but I haven’t got a line on her at all. Only got her name just today from our lookout men in the Port Authority.”

  She didn’t pay any attention to us. She was on her way to the door, forcing us back by training the .22 on us. Her matching mink pillbox and coat made it all seem like a funny scene out of some Terry Thomas English crime comedy.

  Even seen under such conditions as these, she was a fascinating-looking dame. If you like them tall, cool, and armed with a deadly weapon.

  “Don’t call me again,” I rasped sarcastically, “unless you’re going to stay a little longer next time. This walkout routine of yours is beginning to hurt my feelings.”

  She paused before the door as if she wanted to take one last look at Kyle. I couldn’t believe it, but there was actually a sorrowful expression on her lovely kisser. You could see it in the dark, wide eyes, the lush, mobile mouth.

  “Fool,” she said in that low, sibilant voice. “Kyle said you always played the fool — why did he ever think you could help him? I knew in my heart he was wrong.”

  “Go on, beat it,” I said. “Run out. Whatever game you’re playing, the F.B.I. plays for keeps. Remember that, Miss Mata Hari.”

  She was about to say one last thing when a high, keening wail filled the night from somewhere outside. Her eyes jumped, and so did the .22, but not enough to make it interesting.

  “Lovely sound, isn’t it, Lola?” I laughed. “That’s Captain Monks sneaking up on you.”

  “We could rush her,” Brad said in a flat, tight voice. “She couldn’t get all four of us with that thing.”

  “Be yourself,” Lynch said with surprising level-headedness. “Even if she got just one of us it wouldn’t be worth it. Not even if it was friend Noon here.”

  She
didn’t wait to hear more. She flung one last despairing look at the corpse and then she was gone, whisking into the dark foyer like a shadow. The front door slammed.

  Lynch was the first to speak. “Nobody runs after her,” he said flatly. “Brad, phone in. We can pick her up in no time at all. And tell them about that toy she’s carrying.”

  I could see his point. He was right. She was a cinch to avoid the oncoming cops, too. No sense in alerting Mike Monks. Lola could be out of the building before the siren got any closer than the front sidewalk. It was getting louder, though.

  Baffled, I sat down on the couch and stared at Kyle again. All through everything, a dead man had sat frozenly while all of us had moved around him, trying to make heads or tails out of his death.

  Brad was at the phone again, giving crisp instructions, his gaze on me, apparently wondering what made me tick. The third agent, whose name I now learned was Clyde because of something Lynch called out to him, was in the kitchen somewhere rattling around in the closets like a noisy rat. I was trying to think, wondering exactly what was going to happen next. Lola’s exit had taken away the one person who might have been able to clear up a few things. I had fully intended to keep her with me all night until I learned something, no matter what the neighbors might think. I hadn’t imagined that Lynch would run her in. He’d said he hadn’t had anything on her. So why had she run? It didn’t add up. She certainly was not the confused, hysterical type. She’d gotten the drop on us with all the poise of a Dillinger.

  And where for the love of Mike Monks was that dollar bill?

  I didn’t know. Nobody knew.

  Lola Langdon, who might have known, was now among the missing. I stretched out on the couch, getting the cramp out of my muscles, my mind still trying to digest the awful truth that Kyle Crosby was a Red agent. Kyle? Old Bing with the froggy throat, the gunner who had fired on Nazis and spoken wistfully about a farm in Wisconsin after the war. That didn’t add up, either. It would have been far easier to believe that Gene Kelly has been doing all that marvelous dancing all these years with a wooden leg.

  Monks and a bevy of plainclothesmen were marching through my apartment, making with the official attitude, when I roused myself from my thoughts. Lynch was in close conclave with Mike, pointing with his finger and flashing his F.B.I. license and cards. Mike’s investigators flocked around Kyle Crosby’s body.

  They sounded like a herd of elephants. Sighing, I shifted my position on the couch. It was then that my elbow brushed against something I didn’t expect to find.

  A purse. A black patent leather purse. For a moment I tried to remember if it was the one Lola had had the .22 in. After all, I do entertain the ladies now and then at home, but — yes, it was hers. I remembered having seen her carrying it. I examined it quickly. Funny that she should leave it behind, even considering the strain she was under. Women, as a rule, just don’t ever forget their handbags.

  I could see Monks shaking his head in my direction as he listened to what Lynch had to say to him. Heedless, I ripped open the purse and searched it.

  Some search. There wasn’t a thing in it. Not so much as a loose hairpin. It seemed the only thing the bag had contained was the cigarette lighter, .22 caliber model.

  Which was extremely odd. It was a very large handbag as those objects go. And the .22 would have rattled around like a loose marble in the interior. Unless —

  “Find something?” Lynch and Monks had joined me. The F.B.I. man was eyeing me with something akin to respect. Mike had probably given me a good report card.

  “Yeah. Hi, Mike, welcome to This Is My Life.”

  “You can keep it,” he grunted. “Trouble and you are twins. F.B.I., no less. What gives, Ed?”

  “Our vanishing lady left her handbag. Now, why would she do a thing like that?”

  Lynch winced. “She had nothing on her mind but getting out of here, Noon.”

  “Did she now? She had to open this bag to get the gun out. Would she have dropped it again?”

  He shrugged. “I never saw her dig it out. She got the jump on us while we all thought she was sleeping it off on the couch.”

  “Exactly,” I agreed. “So why leave it? And look how big it is. Would a dame like her carry a gun in such a large bag and nothing else?”

  “Well,” Monks rumbled, for Lynch’s benefit. “What are you driving at, Ed?”

  “I don’t know. But if there was something else in this bag and Lola left it the way she did — where is that something else?” I began to probe about the couch, spilling the pillows, fanning my fingers into the linings along the bolsters and framework. I came up with nothing.

  Lynch chuckled. “I suppose you think she left us a tip? Say a dollar bill, maybe?”

  “No,” I said. “I wasn’t thinking of that. I was thinking how Kyle is the key to this whole business, how his identity makes all the difference to everybody. Who he is. What he is. To us, to them. To Lola. Is it possible —” An idea took hold of me. A thoroughly frightening idea, which took me between its cold, clammy fingers and shook me like a rat.

  “Noon,” Lynch commanded, “say what you’re thinking. No matter how harebrained it seems.”

  “Okay,” I said, making up my mind. What the hell. If I was wrong all I’d get was the horse laugh. If I was right, well, that was important enough to put myself out on a limb. “Will you all humor me? For say an hour at least. I want everyone to clear out of this apartment. Into the hall, anywhere but in here; and Mike, call the bomb disposal boys. Call me nuts, call me anything — but I think Lola Langdon left a bomb in this apartment before she hightailed it out of here.”

  “Bomb!” Lynch ejaculated. “That’s crazy!”

  “Sure it is, but will you do what I ask?”

  “Come off it, Noon.” He laughed derisively. “You letting her get to you with that guff about poisoned bullets and fancy weapons? Why should she do such a wild thing?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, my gaze traveling over the couch and the carpet and the space between Kyle Crosby and where Lola had been. “All I know is she vamoosed pronto, and I think the gizmo must be very small and very powerful. And none of us would know what to look for. And time’s a-wasting —”

  “Lynch,” Monks said quietly. “Listen to him. He’s been right too many times. I believe him. Come on, men.” He called to his bevy of helpers and motioned them to leave the apartment. “Drop everything and let’s get out of here.”

  Brad and Clyde bridled at the order, flinging looks at Lynch. He was struggling with himself, but faced with Captain Monks’ quick acceptance of my request, he shrugged his shoulders.

  “Okay, Noon. One hour. What harm can it do?”

  “None except make me look silly if I’m wrong.”

  “An ounce of prevention,” he said tonelessly, and in that second I liked him more than I had all night.

  It took maybe ten seconds for all of us to quit the apartment and get out in the hallway. Monks sent one of his men down to the lobby to phone headquarters. A bomb disposal unit was alerted in sixty seconds flat.

  The hallway wait was a murderous thing. Maybe ten men standing around, smoking cigarettes, looking at each other nervously. Worse, Kyle Crosby, complete with butterfly chair and jutting knife, kept us company. Mike sent some of his men to adjacent apartments to warn the occupants to get out. Luckily it was still early in the evening and nobody was home, which is not unusual for a bachelor-type apartment house like the one I live in.

  Time ticked on.

  My Camels formed an endless chain of smoke spiraling in the corridor. The elevator doors parted and we all jumped. Two grim-faced men emerged, carrying black leather satchels and a long mine-detecting device similar to the ones used in the war. We made way for them, and they headed for my apartment door without making small talk. I couldn’t blame them. It’s a tricky business, finding and dismantling explosive devices, and a man is smart to keep his mind on what he is going to do and how he is going to act.

&n
bsp; Some of the cops had begun to get restless and were eyeing me jeeringly. Lynch said nothing, and Monks was busy cleaning the fingernail of one large thumb with a paper clip.

  The first sound of the bomb was like muted thunder, a low roll of noise, which suddenly swelled into a gigantic mushroom of violence. The door of my apartment shuddered, and the bomb disposal men flattened to opposite walls, holding their ears.

  That was it.

  One big blast of thunder and explosive detonation, and it was all over. My door lost one of its hinges and hung like a loose tooth to one side of a gaping jaw. Smoke swirled and eddied, flinging dust, splinters, and debris out into the hallway. Everybody ducked, but — everybody was safe.

  Amid the shouting and swearing, Lynch looked at me soberly. “One I owe you, mastermind. Don’t let me forget it.”

  I smiled. “Don’t worry, I won’t. Not until I find out exactly why Lola wanted to destroy the body of the man she loved. Not to mention us.”

  Not even the ruin of the little place I had called home could drive that mystery out of my mind.

  8

  The Mouse Auditorium

  I got back to the office just before midnight. Nobody got much sleep that night. I was not going to see the sun come up over Central Park West. The apartment was a shambles. Luckily the walls hadn’t caved in, but the rest of my living quarters had been literally bulldozed by the blast. Whatever Forget-Me-Not Lola Langdon had left behind, it had been more than enough to break my lease. Chairs, bed, tables, bookcases, occasional pieces — not even the Salvation Army would have been interested now. And had Kyle Crosby’s body been sitting in the center of my living room, he’d be just a memory, too. The blast had centered there. This was obvious from the terrific impact and scorch burns, as well as the depressed floorboards. Only the large size of the room, which had not confined the explosion, had kept matters to a point where we could do something to keep a fire from spreading.