THE CAST OF CHARACTERS
… according to their alliteration
Ed Noon
the private peeper
Opal Trace
the bothered brunette
Dean
the polysyllabic professor
Spider
the mean menace
Fat Harry
the fat four-flusher
Marlene Kelly
the righteous redhead
Duffy
the train timer
Schnapps
the dashing dachshund
Peters
the baggage boy
… and some of them get obliteration
THE CASE OF THE VIOLENT VIRGIN
Ed Noon Mystery #7
Michael Avallone
STORY MERCHANT BOOKS
BEVERLY HILLS
2012
Copyright © 2012 by Susan Avallone and David Avallone. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the author.
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Story Merchant Books
9601 Wilshire Boulevard #1202
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http://www.storymerchant.com/books.html
For Michael Avallone Sr.
From Michael Angelo Avallone Jr.
Sculpted with love and affection
–Angie
Contents
Copyright
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
CHAPTER ONE
Rain is pretty. Even death in the rain has a pretty sound although nothing could be more miserable or lonely or damp. But rain has a lot of uses. Besides selling a lot of raincoats and umbrellas and galoshes and making the proprietors of small stores very happy, rain can drag you into the nearest bar to get out from under. Especially if you’re wearing a brand new cadet-gray suit. And if you really feel like sipping some of the joy juice, that’s so much velvet.
Rain is also the reason I met Opal Trace and took the craziest train ride of my private eye life. Opal Trace didn’t die in the rain but she came damn close to it.
The rain came down on a Wednesday in November. They got together upstairs and decided to have a real bawl. It rained steadily all morning and afternoon. What I mean rained. Bucketsful, gallons and waterfalls. By the time daylight died, Manhattan was a storm-tossed stone jungle. Sheets of aqua pounded the pavements, canopies all over town sagged under a heavy water load and taxicab fleets did a whopping business.
A two hundred pound dame wanted her husband back and gave me fifty bucks to follow him for one full day’s work. She thought he was straying and wanted proof because she loved the guy and her fears and worries about him were driving her nuts. So I was out all day, with her insecurity adding to my social security. I staked out near his office and made an hour-by-hour check on him. He was as thin as a wafer and as clean as Christmas. At least for one wet Wednesday in November.
He had breakfast alone in Nedick’s on Madison Avenue, clocked in for his office job at nine sharp. Lunch time, he was in Nedick’s again. Still alone. He didn’t telephone anybody or meet anybody. I struck up a conversation with the cute blonde who typed in his office and she gave him a clean bill of health. She thought he was a real, quiet, nice guy. But I stuck on the job until he went home at six. Then I called his wife, told her to lose some weight, make breakfast for the guy and forget it. The husband was okay for today.
But I was way off my usual beat. Somewhere on Madison Avenue in the Thirties. In the pouring rain without my trenchcoat, my Buick, or my usual good humor. I needed a pick-me-up real bad. Sure, I had fifty bucks but I was blue from the cold and lonely besides. And the cadet-gray suit was having a rocky maiden voyage.
So I stumbled into this dimly-lit bar on the avenue and met Opal Trace. And sudden death. And a lot of other things.
It wasn’t a much different bar from any other. The long polished counter, row upon row of bright bottles, a big frosted glass mirror in the usual place and a white-jacketed bartender. Throw in a garishly lighted juke box, one monument to Alexander Graham Bell and four or five green leather booths and that ties it. The juke box was muting Elvis Presley, loving that girl tender over and over again, so that you could hardly hear it. Which didn’t bother me in the least.
But it did bother the girl in the transparent raincoat down at the far turn of the bar. She was facing the street and looking right through me as I walked in.
“Can’t you turn that thing up?” she demanded of the bartender. As I swept the rain from my fedora, her voice went right into my ears and stayed there. Not in a way that you wanted to complain about. The words were soft and velvety, like a caress. My ears seemed to tingle with the harmony that poured out of her throat box.
The bartender spread beefy pink hands and shook his butch hair-cut at her.
“I told you before, lady. The box ain’t been working properly. Repair man’s coming tomorrow.” He said it like he’d said it five times already.
“You said that,” she purred in reply. Her voice would have put a blues singer to shame. “But I didn’t believe you. Now I do. That box has seen my last quarter.”
“Suit yourself,” the bartender grumbled. He padded toward me, wiping down the bar as he came with a dish towel that was tied to his apron. “What’ll it be, Mac?”
“Martini,” I said. “Very dry.”
He nodded and went to work. I made myself comfortable on the stool. My wet clothes were plastered to my fanny. I shifted, throwing a glance at the woman as I did. She was the only other patron of the joint right now. Which figured. It was too early. The office buildings were just closing shop.
My eyes met hers and stopped. They had to. You just didn’t look into eyes like those and turn away. Her voice was one thing. Her eyes were something else again. And she wasn’t looking through me this time. I was getting a long once-over too.
Ever see a pair of glims that have the history of the world in them? You know–misery, shame, heartbreak, sudden death, tragedy. And happiness, pride, triumph, life and comedy? Well, that’s what the girl in the raincoat had in her eyes. It’s a tall order all right. But she had all of those things in her eyes. They danced and died, held you and let you go, murdered you and gave you life. In a single stare.
It was a little nerve-racking. When my martini was ready, I gulped half of it down, thankful for a legitimate reason to take my eyes from her. But the action must have amused her. A low musical laugh filtered from her end of the bar. The bartender looked at me and winked. He screwed the tap handle in front of him and bent over as if it needed repairing like the juke. But he had something on his mind.
“This one beats me. Came in here about an hour ago. And put away six stingers like they were water. And still as sober as Eisenhower.”
I smiled. “Elvis Presley all she likes?”
He made a face. “Look at her. Real ritzy looking. Maybe thirty. Maybe twenty. Those clothes she’s wearing didn’t come from Macy’s either. You figure it out.”
“I will,” I told him. “Mix me another one.” I gave him the fifty dollar bill to break into littl
e ones. He made another face.
The juke box went silent and I turned to look at the girl again. She was fishing in a large, blue calf purse for something, then seemed to change her mind and went back to her drink. The tall cocktail glass in front of her was almost empty.
I caught her unforgettable eyes again and smiled. The honest smile. It was a corny opening and older than H. B. Warner but I wanted to get a closer look at those eyes. It was just possible I was seeing things. It had been a dull, dreary day.
She started to look bored and she was about ten stools down from me but I’m a game guy. I had met women before. All kinds.
“We seem to be shipmates,” I said a trifle loudly and evenly. “Can I buy you a drink?”
She sat up straighter in the transparent raincoat and the big eyes lit up like lanterns in a snowstorm.
“Can implies capability,” the blues-singer voice husked back at me. “Such as whether or not you have the money to buy a drink. You paid for your martini with a fifty dollar bill. So you certainly can buy a drink. Whether or not you can buy me one depends on choice and possibility. So the correct form is may I buy you a drink? A gentleman should realize and appreciate the difference.”
“Can you set that to music?” I asked. “It would sound lovely with a counterpoint of bongo drums.” I went back to my martini completely cured. Ladies of the Lecture and Proper Precise Syntax lose my business faster than if they had halitosis. I got 95 in English myself but I don’t hit anybody over the head with it.
But the reflection of her in the corner of the big mirror behind the bar knocked me for a row of Four Roses. She was doubled up, laughing to herself as if I were Fred Allen reincarnated. I tried not to smile myself but I did.
She stopped choking with mirth, lifted herself off her stool and glided over to the one next to me, the blue calf purse swinging from her arm. She didn’t glide exactly. She wobbled like a sailor on shore leave.
“You can and you certainly may buy me a drink,” she husked throatily again. “Stinger, please.”
Stinger it was. The bartender was right. She had them confused with water. She drank them like water.
“My name is Ed Noon,” I said.
She smiled. “Opal Trace.” She laughed. “It would have been a wonderful name for a race horse.”
“Or a beautiful woman. I’d say you were a beautiful woman.”
“I’d rather have been a beautiful race horse. With a handsome jockey who was proud of me. Proud to ride me.”
It wasn’t a dirty crack. I looked at her.
We were elbow to elbow now so that I caught a sweet essence of crushed lilacs mixed with soft rainwater. She made smelling a pleasureable thing again. Up close, the fantastic eyes were as large and as round as baseballs. Deep brown, the deepest brown there is. Matched with her raven black hair neatly bunned to an oval face, she was a knockout. Claire Bloom without the English accent. And it wasn’t a face you could stare into very long unless you had something brilliant to say. I didn’t have anything brilliant to say. I went back to my dying martini.
The bartender had mentioned her flash clothes. A blue tailored suit showed through the folds of the transparent raincoat. It had Paris model written all over it.
Opal Trace eyed me up and down. Her red mouth curled.
“I’ve got an idea about you,” she said suddenly.
I grinned. “I’ve got several about you already. But you couldn’t possibly mean the same thing …”
Her eyes shifted. “I’m serious, Ed.”
“What’s your idea?”
She moved on the stool putting her body in play. And even the raincoat couldn’t hide the fact that her body was something to play with. If her eyes were like baseballs, her breasts took you from sporting goods to something like ripe canteloupes.
“I’ve done a stupid thing, Ed,” Opal Trace musicaled. “I’m tight. Very tight. I know I don’t seem so. But once I get up from this stool and leave, I’ll stagger like a lush.” She took a deep breath. “I’d like you to escort me to Grand Central. It’s important that I catch a train. The right train. Don’t laugh but–it’s a matter of life and you know what.”
I looked at her. It could be the stingers talking. But I didn’t think so. Her ever-changing eyes had suddenly gone tragic again. Deep tragic.
“You’re kidding, Opal. And it’s only fair to tell you that I’m a detective for a living.”
She spilled what was left of her drink. Her mouth curled again and the tragedy left her eyes with hardness moving in.
“Cop? You? That’s a scream …” She started to laugh. It wasn’t her nice laugh.
“Save the sarcasm. I’m a private detective. I get thrown out of police stations.”
That sobered her for some reason. A crafty gleam filled her eyes. It was amazing how the slightest shading could alter their personality.
“Okay, Ed. I’ll make it a business deal then. Fifty bucks if you help me get to Grand Central by eight o’clock. I have to be on the eight-fifteen for Chicago.”
It looked like a fifty dollar day all around. First, the 200 pound wife and now this tall slick-chick who was going for a train ride. It never rains but it pours fifty dollar bills.
“It’s a very easy way to make money,” I admitted. “Fifty bucks to go for a car ride to Grand Central. Must be pretty important.”
She didn’t miss my meaning. “You want to know more, is that it? You want a story–all the details.”
“Not necessarily. But if I’m helping a beautiful Red spy out of New York, I would like to know that.”
She laughed. Her nice laugh. “No spies this time. Just a dull, familiar story. I’m running away from a brutal husband.”
“Would it put the kibosh on our brief but pleasant acquaintance if I said I didn’t believe you?”
“No.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“You’ll do it though? You’ll take the fifty?”
“I’ll do it though and I’ll take the fifty.”
She relaxed and looked at her watch. She tucked her raincoat sleeve back with an elegant white hand. The watch that flashed on her slim wrist could have financed two Broadway plays.
“Swell,” she caroled. “Now we can take it easy for a half hour and have another drink. God, how I need it.”
I didn’t ask her why. Just motioned the butch haircut bartender over and ordered two more. The bar was still empty, not counting Opal Trace and me. And the keeper of the bottles.
“Got a cigarette, Ed?”
I took my pack out and extended it toward her. She looked at me before she reached for one of the white cylinders. Then she took my hand in hers and guided the butt up to her mouth. I lit it for her. Her eyes gleamed weirdly in a face that was breathtakingly beautiful.
Just then something died within me. I’d seen eyes like hers before. And now I remembered where.
She was a hophead. A junkie. A dreamer. Now I know what she meant by the train. Knew why she needed an escort on a rainy night in Manhattan.
Opal Trace was a dope addict. The lovely girl in the raincoat who said she was running away from her husband had a monkey on her back.
And now, she might just be trying to make a monkey out of me.
“In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree …” I stopped quoting and sipped my martini. It was my way of counting up to ten. Beautiful dolls who use the white stuff make me mad.
“Come again?” she giggled. “That sounded like poetry.”
“It was,” I sighed. “The stuff dreams are made of. Any other kind of stuff is a fake.”
“Stuff?” She wrinkled her nose and her eyes surrendered. “You know, huh? I kind of thought you were a smart customer, Ed. You look smart. Must be those thoughtful looking eyes of yours.”
“I’m great I am.”
She tried to outstare me. “How did you know?”
How did I know? It doesn’t take much learning if you’re used to Broadway and professional people. I
f you’ve spent most of your adult life in the bars, or done the midnight to dawn shift like I have, you see show people and queers and down-and-outers who use the stuff and you know.
The eyes tell you most of all. If there aren’t those tiny needle marks on the forearm to tip you off. The pupils are contracted all the time, and there is either a general listlessness or a high excitement with a complete letdown of nervous tension that will tab a user for you.
Opal Trace had beautiful eyes. Beautiful eyes with contracted pupils. But she didn’t look helpless yet.
“Sure I know, Opal,” I said. “But what kind are you? Do you sniff the tea or smoke marijuana? Or are you the worst kind of all–a mainliner? A lovely dame like you shouldn’t have to stick needles in her arm to have fun.”
She drew fitfully on her cigarette. All it reminded me of now was the last smoke of the condemned man. Correction. The doomed girl. I’d seen a play once that dealt with dope and downfall. The play was a flop but I still remembered what it had been about. It wasn’t nice.
“Skip it, Ed,” she whispered low. “Fifty dollars to take me to the station. Nothing else. I don’t want sermons.”
“You’re right, of course. Who needs a reformer on a rainy night in a bar? But tell me, Opal–if you’re really in trouble, maybe I can help. I’m great at moving furniture.”
Her eyes smiled for me. A defeated smile.
“Are you, Ed? I’ll bet you can do just about anything you want. It must be great to do just about anything you want.”
That’s trouble talk if I ever heard it. “Nothing’s that bad, Opal.”
“All you have to do is put me on a train, Ed. Don’t make my headaches your headaches.”
“Your headache is better looking than mine. Don’t be a chump, lady. If you’re in a jam of some kind …”
She shook her raven head.
“You’ve made your point, sweetie. You want to help me. That’s swell and I appreciate it, believe me. But forget the Galahad routine. Nobody alive could buck the Dean …” She clammed up as soon as she mentioned the name. “I need another drink.”
The Case of the Violent Virgin Page 1
