You Can't Catch Me

by Lawrence Lariar

  “Rico Bruck wouldn’t butcher a dying beetle,” I said, remembering his history. “And neither would Gilligan. Anybody else come in with them from Chicago?”

  “You think Rico brought in some of his boys?”

  “I wouldn’t put it past him,” I said, and started for the door.

  “Where are you going, Mike?”

  “Up to the Waldorf to ask Rico a few questions.”

  “Wait for me,” said Izzy, and grabbed his coat and hat.

  CHAPTER 18

  The Waldorf-Astoria

  10:58 À.M.—July 19th

  Rico Bruck had a high and airy suite at the Waldorf, one of the finest in the tower. I leaned on his bell and waited for him. We were waking him early, and I enjoyed the chore. The bell rang for a full five minutes before the door opened a crack and a voice that was not Rico’s inquired, “What the hell do you want?” A gruff and sleepy monotone, half whisper, half sand.

  I pushed hard at the door and felt it slam up against flesh, after which the whisper became a shout and I moved inside to face a familiar ape.

  It was Elmo, the big doorman from the Card Club. He held his nose and reached out for me with a hairy paw. I slapped it down and sidestepped him. He growled an indecent word at me and his pig eyes struggled for some decision in the crisis. He stepped back toward the living room, working his huge arms in the gestures of a wrestler preparing for the lunge.

  I said, “Forget it, Elmo. Go wake the boss.”

  “You know this gorilla?” Izzy asked.

  “Elmo and I are old pals. Aren’t we, Elmo?”

  “Out,” said Elmo, working his jaws for an impressive mask of menace. “Scram. Before I get sore and slap you around.”

  Izzy stepped between us and tapped the big man on the chest, a quick movement that surprised Elmo and threw him off guard for an important instant. “Do what the man says, Elmo. And do it fast, or else I’ll have to take you down to see a man. Downtown. And the man is a nasty policeman, who’ll ask you questions about where you were yesterday. You got the answers ready, Elmo? Or do you want to talk them over with Rico?”

  Sometimes a mouse can give an elephant pause. The leathery jaw of the giant dropped open, revealing an impressive array of gold in the uppers. Something a little stronger than surprise came to life on the iron face, a mixture of fear and doubt. Elmo had a tic, high up on his left cheek, close to the eye. The muscle began its rhumba bump, and Elmo stepped backward slowly, retreating before Izzy Rosen’s belligerent purpose.

  Then Rico came in. He appeared through the door on the right, tying a knot in his sash and adjusting it on his spare frame. He was bedecked in splendor, a dark blue silk robe, with the initials R. B. in gold embroidery, small enough to be seen over on Madison Avenue. We had tugged him from between the sheets. He repressed a yawn and stepped jauntily into the room.

  “Wells,” he said. “It’s about time you showed.”

  “Where’s Gilligan?” I asked.

  “Gilligan stays at his own dump—the Brentworth.”

  “Get him.”

  “What for? I don’t need him.”

  “You may need a lawyer,” I told him, “sooner than you expect.”

  “Forget it,” Rico said easily. He lifted the phone and began to order breakfast, inviting us to join him and ordering an extra pot of coffee even after we refused. He stared up and said, “Who hit you, Wells? Anybody I know?”

  “You took the words right out of my mouth, Rico. Who hit me?”

  I was looking at Elmo. He stood behind Rico, legs spread in the posture he used at the door of the Card Club. He licked his lip and glared at me. My words bounced off him. He was as emotional as a chimpanzee listening to a recital of Shakespeare. Rico turned his way and the ape eyes only flicked at his boss for a breath of time. But there was nothing in them, nothing at all.

  “You’re wondering about Elmo?” Rico inquired.

  “He wasn’t in your little act last night,” Izzy said.

  “Elmo was with me ever since we got here.”

  “Can you prove it?”

  “What the hell for?” Rico said testily. His face was sallow and half asleep. He needed a shave badly. He looked tired and weak, a little man with a big worry. He lit a cigar and sucked at it for a minute, allowing it to quiet his inner man. He turned my way and shook his head at me, almost apologetically. “Listen, Wells, I don’t blame you for flipping your wig. You got every reason in the world for giving me a bad time. But you’re wrong about the deal. You’re dead wrong.”

  “Am I?”

  Elmo said, “I can prove I was with Rico.”

  “Shut up!” Rico barked.

  “Why not let the man talk?” Izzy asked. “Go ahead, Elmo. Tell us.”

  Elmo held back, staring at his master with the eyes of a mastiff who awaits a trainer’s command. What he saw gave him pause. He blinked his optics and swallowed hard and lapsed into his former state of animation, as mobile as a stone in a quarry and twice as emotional.

  “Listen to me, Wells,” Rico said. “Listen and think. You know the score on this deal, if you use your head. I called you in to tail the fat slob to New York. Why did I do this? You remember why? It was because somebody phoned me in Chicago and told me the bastard was carrying the Folsom cluster to a New York fence. And who sent him to New York? There’s only one hood on earth who could have engineered that Folsom heist. That man is Monk Stang. Now, follow me. Follow me close. Who would rub out the fat man? Monk, of course. Monk had one of his boys tail the fat man to your hotel room. Frenchy Armetto, maybe. Or maybe Max. It fits that way.”

  “It could fit in other ways,” Izzy said.

  “Never,” said Rico.

  “You could have done the job.”

  “Kill it,” Rico almost shouted, grinding out his cigar with a vicious gesture. “I told you where I was all day yesterday, Rosen. I can prove it.”

  “A half a million bucks is a load of loot,” Izzy said quietly. “Even for you it’s big money, Rico. Big enough to invent fairy tales.”

  Rico got up quickly and lunged for Izzy. But I was alongside him in time to grab the little punk and freeze him in his tracks. I jerked him up short, holding him hard and tight, pulling his fancy lapels up until his head stuck out like a turtle on a log. I tugged the robe tight around him and shook him. Elmo was coming toward us. I lifted Rico and threw him at his gorilla. They bumped. Hard. Hard enough to knock the breath out of Rico Bruck.

  He fell forward and grabbed the back of the nearest chair. Elmo was passing him, but Rico held out a hand and waved him to a quick stop. Then Rico coughed, a high and raspy fit of breathlessness. He straightened and adjusted his robe and stared at me wearily.

  “All right, Wells,” he almost whispered. “Let it pass. Because I don’t blame you, like I said. You got every reason for slapping me around. You see, I understand. But you’re wrong. You’re all wrong. I put you on a job because I trusted you. Listen, if you still think I bumped the fat boy off, I’ll make you another deal. I’ll prove I’m right and you’re wrong. If I bumped the fat boy, I got the Folsom cluster, right?”

  “Right.”

  “But I haven’t got it. So I’ll pay off if you find it for me, understand? Whoever bumped fatso has the stones, right? You find me the murderer and I pay you ten grand.” He let himself slide back into a chair. “Now do you believe me?”

  The door to the hall opened and John Gilligan came in, followed by a boy with a wagonload of breakfast. Gilligan almost ran across the room to his client, bending over him with the worried look of a father over an injured brat. There was something off key in his solicitude. Gilligan was out of character, this slipping from his dignified routine for such obvious buttering up of Rico. It was well known in Chicago that Gilligan earned a fat retainer from the little gambler. But the tableau didn’t make sense. Izzy tossed me an
appreciative wink.

  “What’s happened?” Gilligan asked us angrily. He did not move from Rico’s side.

  “Rico will break it down for you,” I told him, and started for the door, followed by Izzy. I paused in the hall to look back at the scene behind me. Gilligan was frozen in his pose, with one arm on Rico’s shoulder. Bruck only stared at us weakly and pushed himself to his feet.

  “Remember what I told you, Wells,” he said. “Ten grand for the murderer.”

  “What are you saying, Rico?” Gilligan asked, his regal voice hushed and tight with anxiety. “What’s the deal?”

  “Wells knows what I’m talking about.”

  “Wait a minute, Wells.”

  But we were out in the hall before he finished his oily dialogue. And I slammed the door in his face.

  CHAPTER 19

  Sixth Avenue

  2:32 P.M.—July 19th

  We split the freight on the deal, Izzy and I. We broke apart and channeled our efforts into different streams, the loose ends in the life of Sidney Wragge. We chewed it over a slow lunch, because it was a challenge and a gut ache to both of us. Especially me. A private investigator should know his way around the dead ends. A working shamus is reluctant to play the role of patsy, fall guy, or just plain dope. My head ached with an itch of angry frustration, because of the incident in Lucy Spain’s nest, because of the smell of my assailant, the sneaking crumb who had slashed her lovely torso. The skulking horror in her bedroom filled me with a fit of heaves, a budding sympathy for the girl who was Linda Spain. She was outside the stinking mess for me. Her honest monologue about her morals and the life she led, her frank and open pitch for me—all these things closed her away from any guilt or involvement in the strange story of Sidney Wragge. And thinking of Linda Spain, I knew that I would never rest until the pieces of the puzzle were set in place.

  Izzy went off to pick up what he could at the Kimberly Building.

  A lead is a lead. I thumbed through the phone book list of auction emporiums on Sixth Avenue, finding only one in the uptown area. A cab deposited me before a small and evil-smelling dump, loaded with a variety of junk brought there from the odds and ends of the storage warehouse overflow. The window was dirty with dust. A galaxy of assorted oil daubs lined the glass, paintings of sheep in mangers, dead fish and lobsters, plus the usual tripe in academic landscaping. I had more than a casual interest in the art section. Once, long ago, when my caricaturing was a prime ambition, I had deluded myself with dreams of an attic and a painting career. There was nothing much left of the old drive now, but the love of fine arts still remained alive in me. I stood outside the auction room for a long pause, studying the types of pictures sold here. It might well be the place where Sidney Wragge had purchased his gift for Linda Spain.

  A swarthy gnome in a filthy apron emerged from the shadows in the rear of the place when I entered.

  “The boss,” I said. “He in?”

  “You’re talking to him, mister.” He squinted at me in the gloom, rolling his head for a better view of me in the quick and efficient appraisal of the master salesman. “Anything I can do?”

  “A picture. I want to buy an oil picture.”

  “Excellent. I got some good stuff back here.”

  He led me through narrow corridors of stacked furniture, frames, bric-a-brac and metallic ornaments and lamps. The way to the art section was devious but purposeful, a round-about tour through the stock so that I might see something I admired on the way. I admired nothing. There was a long window facing the yard in the rear. Against the sill, art blossomed in a hundred canvases, running the gamut from starchy nudes to muddy marines, complete with four-masted schooners.

  “Now,” said the merchant, “just what kind of a painting you want, mister?”

  “Landscapes. I like landscapes.”

  “Landscapes with animals?”

  “Landscapes with trees.”

  “Only trees?” he asked. “I got better ones with animals, sheep and cows, also with buildings. Farmhouses, like.”

  “Trees,” I insisted. Sometimes a painter specializes in one type of chromo. The man who had created the daub in Linda Spain’s living room was only a semi-pro. It could be that his entire stock had been found in some dusty corner of a warehouse. In that case, the auctioneer might handle the whole inventory of his work. He would be easy to recognize. I remembered his dirty browns and vivid greens, the color of sick and dying vegetation, the hallmark of the amateur who yearns to paint foliage with some degree of naturalism. Such handling of paint would be easy to spot.

  We started through the stock. The little man sweated as he displayed his wares, holding each up to the light from his yard and making small clucking noises of appreciation as he tried to sell me his enthusiasm. For over a half hour he toiled for me. Then he faced me wearily, mopped his brow and shook his head sadly.

  “Listen, mister, what do you want? Leonardo da Vinci, maybe, for my prices?”

  “I’ll know it when I see it.”

  “Look for yourself,” he said. “I’m too old for such pastimes.”

  I looked. He left me to my pleasure, answering the brassy bell at the front of the store. I flipped through the paintings carefully, studying each for some clue to the artist I wanted. There was a series of marines, after a while, primitive boats on primitive oceans. The green of the waves held me. Was this the same artist? And then I hit a painting of a shore line, with the trees bending over a blue lagoon. I was home.

  The picture featured a frame out of the last century, as gaudy and fussy as an old maid’s bib. And all the other paintings by the same man were enclosed in the same antique type of frame. I studied the brush strokes and concentrated on the color. The foliage and grass sang with overtones of nausea, the same sticky treatment as the chromo in Linda Spain’s flat. I whistled the proprietor back to me.

  “This is for me,” I said, showing my delight by cocking my eye at it under the light.

  “A nice job,” he agreed. “Good painting.”

  “Funny that the artist didn’t sign his name. It can’t be worth much.”

  “Lots of good artists don’t sign their work,” argued the owner. “Like when they do sketches and stuff like this. But that don’t mean the sketches aren’t worth money. Not at all.”

  “How much for this one?”

  “For you—fifty dollars.”

  “That’s too much,” I said thoughtfully rubbing my nose and stepping back to squint and peer at it through half-closed eyes. “Still, maybe it matches. Maybe it’s like the one Sidney bought.”

  “You have somebody with another one?”

  “A friend of mine told me he bought one like this,” I explained. “I want to get an extra one to surprise him you understand. But Sidney’s painting didn’t have a frame like this.” I put the painting on the sill and gave it another dose of slow scrutiny. “I’ve got to make sure this is the place where Sidney got his.”

  “Sidney who? Maybe I’ll remember.”

  “Wragge,” I said. “Sidney Wragge, a very fat man.”

  “Of course,” the owner said without pause, snapping his dirty fingers. “I remember the man. Sold him one maybe a month or so ago. It’s a good thing you mentioned he was fat. A fat man you can’t forget so easy, right? I even remember the picture—a landscape, it was. Also, I put a different frame on for your friend. The whole deal was sixty-five dollars. I’ll do the same for you.”

  “You say you framed the picture for him? Have you got the record of the sale in your files?”

  “Record?” he exploded, throwing out his hands in a gesture of frustration. “Who keeps such records? What do you want records for? You don’t believe me? You don’t believe I sold your friend a picture? Listen, I just happened to have a frame around that looked better on the picture, so I threw it in. A store like this, we don’t keep such records. Si
xty-five bucks was the deal, like I said.” He watched me for some reaction to his powerful sales drive. I continued to thumb my chin and look doubtful. And then the spark of a fresh and convincing light flooded his tired eyes. “Look,” he spouted, “I’ll prove I know your fat friend, even if I don’t know his name. You go to him and ask him didn’t he buy a Chinese incense burner here. That, my friend, will settle it.”

  Sidney Wragge had bought the picture here, along with the Chinese monstrosity. But the deal set off a thousand doubts in my hammering head. Good taste is an obvious possession, sometimes. Taste will come through in a man’s personality by way of a hundred signals in his normal behavior. Sidney Wragge talked like an Oxford professor. Sidney Wragge dressed in the dignified pattern of a man of discernment. He had conducted himself with the calm and controlled gestures of an upper-crust gentleman. Why, then, would he stoop to the purchase of such baubles, such obvious gewgaws? Was it because of his great love for Linda Spain that he suddenly forgot his breeding? Could it be possible that he deliberately bought this tripe to please her? The business of the changed frame suggested that Wragge might have tried to improve the effect of the chromo by surrounding it with something more modern in the way of a framing job. Nothing on earth can alter the effect of a really bad painting. Sidney Wragge would know this, yet he had paid fifteen dollars extra for the new frame.

  I said, “Did my friend ask for the new frame?”

  “Ask? I sold him a new one because the old one was too cracked, too beat up.”

  “You’ve been a great help,” I told the little merchant, and held out a ten dollar bill for him to admire. “This is for you, my friend.”

  “But I haven’t sold you anything yet,” he said, amazed.

  “You’ve sold me plenty.”

  I left him shaking his head and beaming at me and then staring at the money in befuddlement. He had merchandised only a small and challenging idea, but the thought was well worth the investment. I filed the idea away in my cluttered brain and walked quickly out of his den of discards.