The February Doll Murders

by Michael Avallone

  “Talk, Ed. I know you want to.”

  “Shows, huh? Yeah, I’ve been thinking about Kyle and all this brouhaha about that bill.”

  “And?” She had attired herself in lounging pajamas, finding a loose Chinese-type kimona for me, the sort of thing a man could wear without feeling too chintzy. I felt more comfortable than I had in days.

  “Something’s occurred to me. The only something that makes sense.” I told her about Kyle’s history, Lynch’s condemnation, and the bill business in Le Havre, way back when. “You figure it out. This Silver Star war hero suddenly defects, drops out of sight behind the Iron Curtain, and all of a sudden, in 1966, he comes back home to me with a story about the dollar bill that has been in my possession for more than twenty years, and now I’m supposed to believe that ten names on that bill mean something important. It can’t be the bill itself. It was only an accident that that was my last one. It could have been any bill.”

  “So?”

  “So — this. I knew Kyle Crosby. I knew all those guys. In forty-four, there wasn’t one of them that knew the first thing about Communism, or anything political. All they wanted was for the war to end and get back home. So they signed the bill for me. For a real keepsake — for me. Get it? That buck wouldn’t mean a damn thing to anybody except me.”

  Her eyes showed her lack of comprehension. “I don’t get you, Ed.”

  “Follow this, then. A hypothetical case, based on my memory of a man who is a war hero. A simple country boy who loved the United States. Suppose he gets his face blown apart and does go sour on this country. Suppose he is sold a bill of goods, goes to Russia, and tries to adopt their way of thinking. Okay — Lynch says Kyle has been a Red agent all these years. Okay. Suppose he was. But also suppose that he gets disillusioned with it all, the way most of our defectors do sooner or later, and wants to come back home. He can’t, of course. They wouldn’t let him because he knew too much about their various dirty schemes. So what does he do? If it were me in Kyle’s place, I’d invent some reason. A gimmick or a story that would make them let me come back to this country. Something that could be verified, so they would feel justified in letting me stay here for a couple of weeks. Just so I could get over here and take my chances on running for good.”

  She had caught some of my wild notion now. I could see the way her eyes lit up.

  “I think I’m tuned in now. Go on.”

  “Well, he racks his brain. What story would be good enough? What would impress his Commie bosses the most? It might be something as subversive as hell — they’re always interested in plots that louse up the capitalists — but I’d say it would have to be something even stronger than that. Remember, Kyle’s story demands his presence in the good old U. S. A. So I say the answer has to be — money.”

  “Money?”

  “Yes, money. Why not? Suddenly he remembers this bill of mine. He remembers my name, me. I’m a definite connection, a link back to America. Something that could be checked out. There is an Ed Noon, and he does have a bill with Kyle Crosby’s name on it. But now there’s the real problem. What story can Kyle make up to justify his having to come back personally, rather than their sending another emissary? Think now, Mel.”

  She shrugged her eloquent shoulders. “I’m with you all the way so far, Ed, but when it comes to the fine little bits of things, I’m lost. You’ll have to tell me.”

  Maybe I was wrong, maybe I was reaching into fantasy to come up with the answer. I didn’t know. But I was pretty certain I was on first base and heading toward second.

  “Don’t stop now.” She smiled. “You were doing fine from where I sit.”

  “Maybe I’m crazy, but like I say I base all this on the kid I once knew. That man couldn’t stay turncoat too long.”

  She still didn’t get my drift.

  “Look,” I urged. “Remember Samarko asked me about markings on the bill? That’s what got me started on this line of thought. Suppose Kyle Crosby convinced his bosses that way back in forty-four, he and I, or all of us ten men, buried a pile of, say, Nazi bullion, or art treasures, or some other kind of war loot somewhere in Germany, and marked the grid coordinates on that bill, making a map of it. Wouldn’t that be enough to make them say — ‘Kyle, baby, go on over there, get that bill, and find that loot’?”

  She was thinking now. “That might make sense. But if it’s true, how is it you don’t know what the markings are? How does he get around that?”

  “Good girl. Then he tells them that he put the marks on my bill without my knowledge, and before he could get the bill from me he got wounded and shipped back to the States. He could even claim that his war injury had made him forget about it all these years.”

  She looked doubtful. “It sounds logical, but maybe you’re just wishing too hard that your friend didn’t turn traitor all the way to the end.”

  “No, Mel, I’m not. That buck hasn’t anything on it but those names. Haven’t I looked at it often enough all these years? I made a conversation piece out of it at bars and parties whenever the subject of War Two came up. It has to be like I say. Kyle created a dodge just to get back to this country. Why else was he killed? Why did that Arnoff try to shoot us on the roof? Kyle must have given himself away somehow; they must have realized he was shamming. There’s no other explanation.”

  “And this Lola Langdon? What about her?”

  “She came with him. She can’t be an old girl friend from the States. So she came from Russia with him. Which means she is either a fellow traveler or someone he met on the boat or plane or what-have-you. Though I would say that they had known each other for years.”

  “All right, Ed. Where’s the bill now?”

  “Like I told Samarko. Kyle’s killer has it, and probably can’t make heads or tails out of it because it’s just what I said it is. A nothing. Just a dollar with names written all over it.”

  She sighed. “The dolls don’t help me think either. It’s all so mixed up.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.” I found my Camels on the coffee table and lit one for each of us. “The dolls were intended for Samarko because of that U. N. message on the spool in Cathy’s stomach. Okay, they were sent to me instead. Which means only one thing. Kyle sent those dolls because he is the guy I said he was, because he wanted this country to know about the threat to its security, to hear that plan in detail. What other explanation is there? I was shot, in sick bay, and they were running him down. He couldn’t call me or send messages. So he sent the dolls to the office by messenger. He sent all three dolls, one each day, for dramatic effect, to get my interest aroused. One doll I might have ignored. Not three, coming one day at a time.”

  “So you think Kyle’s killer has the doll, too.”

  “It adds up. He or she poisoned Samarko and Rollo tonight. Why? They were obviously in on the U. N. plan. And the bill deal? Only one reason I can think of. This unknown person wants all the action. He or she wants the loot that the bill leads to, and doesn’t care a fig for espionage plans. Or maybe she or he intends to sell out to the highest bidder. The Commies are always losing agents that way.”

  “I’d like to think you’re right about your friend, Ed. Must be hard to see a pal go over to the other side.”

  “It is.” I drew on my cigarette. “I just don’t figure Kyle for the Reds all the way.”

  “You could be right, but maybe we’ll never know.”

  I laughed. “We’ll know, all right. If I’ve nailed the truth about that bill, ye murderer will come looking for me asking the same boring questions that Samarko did.”

  “What about the F.B.I.?”

  “Lynch is dead cert that Kyle was a baddie. It would be hard to convince him otherwise. Especially after Miss Langdon redecorated my apartment the way she did. He was sure she was trying to cover up something. I am, too. What, I really can’t say.”

  Melissa shivered, drawing her lounging pajamas tighter about her slender figure. The material was silken and clinging, hugging the curves. S
he looked like a Playboy subscriber’s wildest dreams come true. I stared down at my coffee cup.

  “More coffee, Ed?”

  “No thanks.”

  “A penny for your thoughts?”

  I grinned. “Make it one American dollar bill, and you’re on.”

  “You must be tired,” she said. “This couch is comfortable. I’ll get you some blankets.” She unhooked her legs and bounced off the couch, heading into the darkened bedroom. She seemed like a buoyant sprite, as fluid as a dream.

  She came back loaded with quilts and pillows. “What time do you want me to wake you up?” she asked.

  “You stay home today,” I said. “And that’s an order. You’ve had enough overtime for one night.”

  “No, I won’t,” she said coolly. “It’s your case, and I’m your secretary.”

  “But, Mel —”

  “If it bothers you that much, give me a raise. You know, I have been meaning to ask for one.”

  I watched as she expertly and quickly set up the couch for business. I lit another cigarette. She looked too good and too perfect for the lechery now rampant in my brain.

  “Anything wrong, Ed?”

  “Nothing,” I lied. “You’re a wonder.”

  “You aren’t exactly commonplace yourself, Mr. Noon.”

  “Check.”

  We both laughed. Suddenly there was a silence between us. A timeless nothing in which all I was aware of was the supremely proper rightness of this girl. This time. This place.

  She was very simpatico. The wire that ran from her brain ran like radar into mine. A tired, almost defeated smile played at the corners of her mouth. “Oh, Ed,” she murmured wearily.

  I started as if she had slapped me in the face. “What’s wrong?”

  “You,” she said simply.

  “Me?”

  “You. I can see it in your eyes, and if you start one more blat about civil rights, I’ll crown you with this pillow.”

  I coughed, taking her hands in mine. “Look. There’s always rules of some kind about these things. I know what you’re going to say. I’ve got too much heart, too much goodness, and all the rest of that crap. But honestly, Mel, how can I tell you what I —”

  She was shaking her head slowly so that I had to stop. Her cameolike face, caught in the soft glow of the lamps, was radiant and exquisite. Sad, too.

  “Yes,” she said. “You’re all of that. But you also have one of the most annoying habits on God’s green earth, Ed Noon. Know what that is?”

  “What?” I asked, feeling egg all over my face.

  “You talk too much,” she whispered softly, dissolving against me, her face turned up to my chin. “And you never do stop thinking about everybody else except yourself.”

  “I —” I stopped talking. There was no more to say.

  “Think of yourself now. And me. And don’t think about anything else. It might surprise you that right this minute there is nobody else in the world but us two.”

  “You could be right,” I hedged.

  “I am right,” she said fiercely. “And you know it!”

  I had known all the time that she was. I had merely been taking the coward’s way out. Rationalization. And it didn’t work.

  Come murder, come sudden death.

  Come dolls, come Kyle, come confusion.

  Come, seven!

  How does anything stack up against the private, intimate world of two people whose breath of life will have no effect whatsoever on the eternal movement and design of all things in the universe?

  I didn’t know. Nobody knows.

  I didn’t want to know. Nobody else wants to know, either.

  Melissa and I had our own answer for the Klan.

  “Ed?”

  “Listening.”

  “One question and I’ll never ask you another.”

  “Don’t be so grim. What question?”

  There was a pause of only a second.

  “You still in love with Alberta Carstairs?” Alberta Carstairs. The fiancée. Tall, wonderful. The clear-eyed young modern promised to me, now off in Europe somewhere tying up her own elusive rainbows.

  “Sure. When she gets back from this last tour of the Continent with her batch of brand-new designs, all for the glory of Gloria, Incorporated, we’ll set the date. Why?”

  “Nothing.”

  Melissa’s head was a soft weight in the crook of my arm. Her shoulders touched my skin. The dawn patrol of gray poking fingers was beginning to tickle the West End windows. A new day was in the making.

  She murmured at my chin. A sleepy nothing I couldn’t understand.

  “Come on, now. You must have had a reason for that question.”

  “Yes, I did. You’ll never get married, Ed. Not you. You’re too curious, too wild about life ever to tie up with just one of us. You don’t understand that about yourself, Ed, I think. But it’s true just the same.”

  “You calling me a sex maniac?”

  She giggled happily. “Not on your life. You’re a lover. The real old-fashioned kind. They don’t hardly make that kind anymore.”

  “What are you trying to tell me, Mel?”

  “The only difference is you’re in love with life, Ed. You don’t love life.”

  “There’s a difference?”

  “There is,” she said very sagely. “Surprised you haven’t found that out about yourself a long time ago. Maybe that’s why you’re so special. You’re one of a kind.”

  Once again I had no answer for her.

  The people that understand you, really understand you, don’t ever have to listen to any of your feeble attempts at self-defense.

  You couldn’t kid them, anyway.

  13

  The Real Gone Dolls

  I left her sleeping on the comfortable bed near the big windows and departed, putting the door on the lock so she would be safe. I had a lot to think about. There was plenty that needed doing. The mouse auditorium was my next logical stop. Monks would probably be burning up the lines trying to reach me. I was sure that the fire at Exotica, Unlimited and two poisoned corpses had come to his attention sometime during the night. I didn’t know how he’d do it, but I was gloomily certain he’d hook me up to the events somehow. I wasn’t too sure about Lynch, either. There was no telling how much F.B.I. interference was being run on this case.

  And there was, of course, Lola Langdon. The last living link, to my knowledge, of the whole case. First Max Arnoff, then Kyle Crosby, and now Samarko and little Rollo. A regular slaughterhouse of stiffs. It was enough to give a man pause.

  There was one stop I had before the office, though. I made it. Number Five Terrace Gardens.

  It was moderne, deluxe, and newfangled. All potted plants for that phony Miami Beach effect, and a lot of mismatched mirrors and tall gilded urns. But it was posh, with a uniformed doorman at the revolving-door entrance and a pencil-moustached, carnationed manager at the desk in the lobby. Behind him a chubby switchboard operator with a pretty face was expertly moving plugs around.

  They connected me with Amos Glass’s room right away when I told them I was from the police department. I talked to old Amos on the extension phone.

  “Mr. Glass, this is Ed Noon again.”

  “Noon? Noon —” I could hear him trying to remember. I took a wild plunge.

  “I’m a friend of Kyle Crosby’s,” I said.

  “Oh.” That seemed to absolutely flabbergast him.

  “It’s important we talk, Mr. Glass.”

  “Oh — all right.” The tone was grudging, realizing it was trapped. “You come on up, Mr. Noon.”

  Amos Glass looked like he sounded. Weathered and aimed for a long life. There was a whipcord energy to his lean old body, and a twinkling hostility to his eyes that seemed characteristic. He waved me to a leather lounge chair and asked me if I would care to join him in a martini. I said yes, and I was glad to see that he poured the gin from a Beefeater bottle. In the martini league, a home run every time.

>   “So you know Kyle?” he inquired archly. “Well, what about it, young fellah?”

  I held my wisecracks down to a minimum. Amos Glass was not the type. I told him I was the Edward Noon who had called the other day about the doll deliveries and Fast Service, Incorporated. He cut me off.

  “I know all that,” he said testily. “I only let you up here because you mentioned my nephew’s name. So the secret is out. Couldn’t understand all this nonsense, anyway. That’s why I lied to you then. But what’s this all about now?”

  I told him again about my receiving the dolls and learning about his checks through the messenger service. What I wanted to know was when he had seen Kyle, and what reasons Kyle had given him for the doll deliveries. I wanted to be sure that Mr. Glass didn’t know more than was safe for him.

  Amos Glass cracked his knuckles. A bony, grim sound in the midst of his well-furnished suite of rooms. His lean old face was curious.

  “Put the case of a man who hasn’t seen his nephew since the last war. Young fool. Dropped out of sight. Never knew where he went. Then he showed up that day. I was shocked. His face —” Glass shrugged. “I’d heard he’d been hurt. I thought he might want money from me after all these years. My sister’s boy, he is. She’s been dead some fifteen years, rest her. But Kyle was always a strange boy. He asked me to arrange to have these three dolls sent to your office. Said you were an old friend and he wanted to tickle your curiosity. You like dolls, my boy? Curious hobby for a man as rugged looking as you appear to be.”

  “I like pretty things,” I admitted.

  “That so? Well, I sent you the blasted things. Kyle said I wasn’t to let on should anyone make inquiries. That’s why I put you off. Oh, I didn’t mind the money or the bother. I never had done anything for my nephew. But I’ve put away so much money since my time on the Street — you know Wall Street, young fellow?”

  “A bit.” I changed the subject. “There are no more dolls, then?”

  “No,” he declared with emphasis. “Three to begin with, and that was all. You did get them, I trust.”

  “Yes, I did. Thanks.” I stood up. He remained seated and stared up at me. A funny light was showing in his eyes.