"Spell that out."
"What did you expect, Eddie? A guy wants a wall like that, he wants the best photog in the business. That's me. Spanner asked me to do that wall. I was all set for it and then I bowed out. The usual reason. Spanner wanted me to take some pictures of himself and his broads. I never did that kind of work, never will. So what happens. He gets himself Lenny Lewis and finds out that Lenny won't either. So in the end he winds up with the kind of layout I would have done in the first place. One hundred thousand clams." He shuddered, for my benefit and his. "I could have bought a lot of cameras with that kind of loot."
I pointed at the pictures of Mady Lopez.
"You know her name?"
He probed his memory. "Yeah. Think so. Madeleine Smith. She was a stripper once in Union City. No talent. All flesh and nothing else. Married a dwarf. That nice little guy who works in downtown plays. Spic name. Let me see . . . Rodriguez, Ortiz . . ."
"Lopez. Garcia Lopez."
"That's the one. You know him?"
"Yeah." I got to my feet, walking to the wall. Jayne Mansfield smiled down at me.
"Oh, I get it now. You got these pictures for the little guy and you hate yourself in the morning. Is that it? Eddie, wise up. If I had this kind of wife, I'd want to know about it. You're doing the chump a favour."
"Sure I am. Which reminds me. How much do I owe you?"
He laughed. "Tell you what. If I'm ever sap enough to get married and the little woman plays this kind of backroom jazz on me, you'll be the first guy I run to to take some pictures."
I didn't get insulted. I had it coming and he didn't mean it the way it sounded.
"You got a deal, James Wong Howe."
His eyes lit up at that memory, too. "You said it. Remember 'On The Waterfront'? That's camera work, Eddie baby. Great composition. Black-and-white can't get any better than that."
"No," I agreed, staring down at the coloured perfidy of Mrs. Garcia Lopez. "It sure can't."
When the twenty minutes were up, I collected my dirty film and left, promising Tops Billings I wouldn't make it so long next time before I saw him again. He placed the twelve prints in a dry little envelope that I tucked in my inside shirt pocket. They burned against my chest.
I left him, puttering with some file cards and transparencies on his desk that he had to check out, taking the long walk down the wooden steps that Myra the redhead had about two hours earlier.
It was dumbfounding all the way.
The deeper I got into Tommy Spanner's personal life, the further away I got from the White House.
It just didn't, wouldn't, couldn't make sense.
It might never make sense.
FIVE
COME BACK, LITTLE SHAM US
□ Two other things happened that night.
The snow started to come down after dark, adding a serene white scrim to the lights of the city and the deep gloom of Central Park. I got a good look from my apartment windows. It was a pretty snow Soft, rhythmic and a cover-up for all the dirt and grime of New York's big face.
And the taxi-cab killer struck again.
I got that on the bedroom radio as I leafed through a pile of reports and papers I had found on my desk when I got back to the office after five. Melissa Mercer had gone home but she had worked like a beaver while I was out giving Mrs. Mady Lopez and Paul Arnet their screen tests. But the modulated tones of the WNEW seven o'clock news woke me up to the present.
Another defenceless cab driver had been found sprawled over his wheel, a bullet hole in the back of his skull, robbed and very dead. It was the fourth death of a hackie in a mere two months, but this time the killer had struck in broad daylight. All the other kills had come in the wee small hours. But Sam Ayleman had got his somewhere around five o'clock because his cab was found at six, illegally parked on Vanderbuilt Avenue. It was an amazing, mystifying murder. Vanderbilt is right behind Grand Central Station and that isn't exactly the Sahara Desert. It must average five pedestrians for every foot of walking space. Poor Monks. They'd be howling for his scalp again. City Hall, the terrified cabbies and the police brass upstairs.
Lindsay's Fun City had had more headaches in one year than Merrick has stage hits and actors who hated him.
On top of the Spanner mess, it had been a lousy week for Captain Michael Monks of the Homicide Department.
Music came on after the news and while Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass chased their Spanish Flea, I looked over Melissa's notes.
She had a nice neat handwriting, pretty close to perfect script. She wasn't only legible though; she was extraordinarily thorough.
A. Called Captain Monks. He wants to know why you want to know who is claiming Spanner's body. Officially, the family has been notified but someone is putting a tight lid on all extra information about Spanner. Monk says: Hands off!
B. Cal Wylie of the Daily News is in Denver covering the murder trial of Dr. Walter Athens. He has been promoted from the City Desk. However, one Terry Clark was very co-operative and says he will forward a file tomorrow by special messenger. He said you wouldn't remember him but you, he and Wylie shared a press box at the '61 World Series and he won one hundred dollars from you. He had the Dodgers.
C. Called Stallings Spanner at Hempstead. Didn't talk to him. A butler named Whipley talked to me. Mr. Spanner was in seclusion. However, I was told (politely) that if I was indeed a fiancee (which one?) of the late Thomas Spanner, I should come to the Faraway Hills Of Rest in Hempstead on Friday at twelve o'clock. Tommy Spanner was not Catholic; it seems he will be cremated and no one knows what will become of his ashes. I got this information from Whipley by reading between his lines. He finally hung up on me when I began to sound too much like a sobsister.
D. Garcia Lopez phoned a couple of times while you were out. He sounded nervous and upset. I told him you were doing your best (hah hah). He wants you to call him when you can. His number is 956-788. He lives in the Peter Stuyvesant area.
E. How about a raise?
Your girl Friday,
Melissa Mercer
With the notes there was a large, thick copy of Simon and Schuster's The American Way Of Death. The Mitford book. It was a glossy Cadillac printing job, the cover showing the dollar sign transformed into a floral wreath. The book had been a wonder in its best-selling day. Something that had set the undertakers and phonies of the country on the warpath. I was surprised Miss Jessica hadn't been run out of town on a rail. She hadn't only exploded a sacrosanct myth, she had reamed, steamrollered and dry-cleaned it forever and a day. I wanted to brush up on my reading now that the President had told me to be very particular about Tommy Spanner's remains. I might find out something worth knowing about the care and disposition of a body.
Meanwhile, there was the problem of the disconsolate dwarf. Garcia Lopez, his king-sized Mady and the facile French instructor, Paul Arnet. It was the most meaningless, sordid little bit of eye business I'd been in in years. The four flaming pictures I had snapped for posterity, were safely ensconced in the top drawer of the bureau in the bedroom. I didn't want to look at them any more. I'm not interested in coitus on film, French movies, underground movies or the tired imagination of Andy Warhol and the cult. Maybe that's why I'd been off my feed since I left Tops Billings' studio. I had been unpleasantly reminded what a basically grimy business I was in. Not even the so-called glamour of presidential agent and being a crusader with his halo in perpetual hock for twenty years had been able to eradicate the feeling.
I solved the feeling with some good Scotch. I skipped the Beefeater martinis. That drunk I didn't want to get. I had some reading and thinking to do. The Scotch would just take the edge off my mood.
I settled down with the book, a well-built Scotch on-the-rocks and a Camel, all set to launch into the hypocrisies and deceits of the Twentieth Century. And then the doorbell chimed. I'd taken nothing but my tie off since I'd come home. I was still wearing my suit coat and harnessed .45.
At the door, I opened the Jud
as window. A tiny, grilled slot that allowed you to see who the bill collector was that you wanted to dodge. Without him getting a good look at you. I got a mild jolt.
Mady Lopez's face, the lower half of it that is, since she was so big, was right outside my door. There was no mistaking the soft baby face, the meaningless features and the smell of that damn cheap perfume.
"We're not taking subscriptions to Life today and I don't need free dance lessons from the Fred Astaire Studio," I said. "Now what else do you want?"
"Let me in," she rasped. "I gotta talk to you."
"I don't gotta talk to you, Mrs. Lopez. Beat it."
"Please, guy. It's a matter of life and death. I'm at the end of a rope."
"Isn't it always? And the rope isn't built that could hold a monster like you. Beat it, sister. You can talk in court." I had visions of myself and Two-Ton Tillie waltzing around in my living-room and I was definitely not interested.
She put her head down, mouth closer to the grill. I saw her red mouth, small white teeth, sensed the jungle stink of her.
"You wanna know about Tommy Spanner, don't you? I can tell you things—please—I don't wanna stand out here in the hall talkin'—"
"Okay," I said. "I'll open the door. Please remember I have a gun. You got some ideas of rough-housing me, I've got a gun. I could shoot you and be perfectly in my rights. Understood?"
"Yeah, yeah. Please, for God's sake—"
I undid the chain latch, stepped back and gave myself plenty of room. She sailed in, her immense size filling the foyer. She didn't look back but flounced down the hallway. I locked the door again, .45 out and followed her.
She didn't turn around until she was in the big living-room. Her eyes swept around the place as if she expected to find Garcia Lopez hiding in the bookcase or perched like a monkey on the genuine chandelier dangling overhead. She had found time somewhere to change her clothes. The tarn, the boots, the fur jacket had metamorphosed into a green sheath dress that fitted her like a frankfurter skin. Even with flats, she was staring down at me, her hands on her hips. A clutch bag that would have accommodated the Lone Ranger's Silver, dangled over one arm. Her wide waist was belted with a black buckled job out of Katherine The Great. A thin dark rain cape was slung from her shoulders. She was an incredible sight. All that size, the Shirley Temple doll face and the utter hardness of her eyes made her an awesome construction of Mother Nature's.
"I'm not going to offer you a drink," I said. "You came to talk. Talk. How did you know where to find me?"
She didn't take her eyes off me now. They raced from my face to the .45 idly gripped in my hand.
"Gar told me. Gar told me everything when I got home. He asked me to forgive him for hiring a cop to follow me."
I sighed. "Great. Simply great."
"You shouldn't have come at me like that. In Paul's place. I coulda killed you. Anybody would. No woman wants to be seen like that except by the man who's interested in her personally. I mean—" She tossed her head at me. "Would you like somebody spying on you while you were getting your jollies?"
"Jollies. Please. I'll throw up. If that's all you came to tell me, good-bye for ever. I am sorry though. You got the little guy properly ring-nosed. You win. I suppose tomorrow he'll come to the office, buy the pictures back and you and he can continue unfaithfully ever after."
She sneered. "Who are you? Jesus Christ or something? Why should you care. Gar's my husband. He understands me. Like he understood about Spanner. I'm really surprised he went to you in the first place."
She was talking low, all in a rush, but her voice was like muted thunder. It echoed off the four walls. I stepped back again, putting more space between us, finding a wing chair to sit in. I gestured her to sit down. She did, collapsing the long lounge with her tremendous body.
"Mady Smith. A stripper who washed out. You marry a dwarf. You step out on him. You horse around with a perverted millionaire playboy. And now you take and give French lessons with a gigolo afraid of honest work. I'm supposed to admire you? I'm supposed to think you are in love with Garcia Lopez?"
"Think whatever the hell you want, mister. I want those pictures. I know Gar can buy them back from you but I don't want him to see them. I have some pride."
"Some, yes." I eyed her. "Where's Mr. Paul Arnet now? I do hope I didn't hurt him."
She tasted her lower lip with a wicked, pink tongue.
"He'll live. Forget him. What about the pictures?"
"What about them?"
"I'll buy them from you. Or—I'll trade." She started to undo the dark rain-cape, thrusting her built-in howitzers at me. It was like staring into the mouth of hell. "I wasn't kidding today. What I told you. I can take you around the world and back. You aren't a bad-looking guy. Fact is, I kinda dig you. Paul is a squirt compared to you."
She was so unintelligent it was painful. I didn't bother to argue with her.
"My deal is with your husband. The pics are his if he wants them. If he doesn't, I'll just throw them into the nearest sewer. I don't need your money. But—"
Her eyes jumped. It was a tiny giveaway. The tell-tale mark of greed, fear and hidden guilt.
"But? Go on—I'm interested in whatever you're thinkin'—"
"Good. Answer me two questions. In order. Without making up the answers. Today you also said you couldn't afford to be divorced from Garcia Lopez? What did that mean? I know it wasn't love so what does it really mean?"
"I—" She hesitated. The pink tongue sucked around her lower lip again. It was supposed to make me lie down, curl up my toes and bark like a dog but she could never sell me anything. Not even a drink of water if I was dying on the Gobi.
"The pictures," I said.
She nodded quickly. "I can't get rid of Gar. I have to stay with him. If I do—I'll collect a fortune when Tommy Spanner's will is—whatchacall—probated."
I blinked. "Again. Very, very slow."
Mady Lopez leaned back against the lounge, eagling it with her arms. She crossed her knees and great gobs of curves and flesh shone palely across the room.
"You heard me. He was a great guy. The papers made him out a playboy. A lover. A great dick. Well, Broadway knew he wasn't. Knew he was queerer than a three dollar bill. I don't wonder his past caught up with him. Poor bastard. Never shoulda tangled with a nympho. They'll tear your heart out if you lead them on and then don't deliver—"
"Skip the lectures. Get to the point. Why are you an heiress where Tommy Spanner is concerned?"
She sighed. "You ribbing me? You heard about him and me at Lake Placid. It was all over town. He took me down there, rented a whole hotel floor and played weird games with me. Then he broke down like a baby. Cryin' all night. He needed a headshrinker, that guy. All the headshrinkers in the business. He had problems. He was no bigger than your pinky." She held up her own and made a face. "That was why he'd looked me up in the first place. He knew about me being hitched to Gar. Figured I had that problem. That Gar was like him. He shoulda lived so long. Gar's hung like a horse." She took a deep breath. "Well, for once in my life I was smart. I didn't laugh at him. I didn't call him names. He believed me. He liked me. He sent me back to Gar with a ten thousand dollar cheque to keep me company. His personal cheque. Gar don't know about that. I'm saving it for a nest egg. But here's the beauty part. Spanner said he was putting me in his will. But with one catch. If I ever divorced Gar, it would—you know, cancel out the loot. A codicil, he called it. Now you catch on, mister? If Gar divorces me I may be out of a fortune. Of course, I don't know until the will is read."
"It's amazing," I said.
"Ain't it though? Crazy world, like I'm always tellin' Gar. Spanner all that dough and no joy stick to make it worthwhile. You can't buy a Peter."
"That's not what's amazing. You are. You just gave the cops a perfect motive for killing Spanner."
She sniffed, as if she couldn't care less.
"The cops got the one that did that. The Olson dame. Or was it Ralston—I forget whic
h. Come on, now." She said that wheedlingly. "You give Mady the pictures and I'll sweeten your pot any way you like. With money or laughs. Or both. You got the deck and I'll play the game any way you want it."
I'd gotten a headache listening to her. As interesting as the resident devils of one Thomas Spanner was, what in the name of hell did it have to do with my assignment? I couldn't think straight. It was an orgy out of the Satyricon with dancing dwarfs, Amazon nogoodniks and sick, sick, sick!
I aimed the .45 at her.
"Go on home, Mady. I'll think about it "
"Don't be a sucker, Eddie."
"Don't call me Eddie or anything else. You've got about as much sex appeal for me as Frankenstein. Sorry. It's that kind of world."
"You—" She hissed at me, straightening on the couch. "A crummy saint, are you? That's what you all say—if I had you with your clothes off and doing what I wanted, I'd have your tongue hanging out and you know it. You're just afraid to put yourself to the test. Or are you a pinky boy too and afraid I'll see and find out? Come on, baby. It's snowing, the night is young and I got all the time in the world—" With that, she did let the rain-cape fall. She began to run up the sheath skirt, all the way to her hips. Her white, no-stocking thighs, were like two gargantuan hams hanging from the spiked hooks in a butcher's shop.
"Out," I said. "Right now."
"Look at me, Eddie . . . see . . . how nice and big they are . . . so soft . . . they're yours, Eddie . . ." She began to croon softly, like the most professional of call girls. She had somehow unearthed one of her fantastic breasts from the folds of the sheath skirt, unbra-ed and as ripe as fresh melon. A famous wit once said that women's mammaries came in but three classifications, if one were thinking of horticulture. Poppies, floppies and sloppies. Mrs. Mady Lopez nee Madeleine Smith, soon to be a millionairess, definitely fit Grade Three.
I uncradled the phone while she was admiring herself. I got Pete in the lobby, asking him to call a cab. My guest was leaving. I hung up. She stared at me, open-mouthed as I talked. Fumbling, outraged and snarling, she re-dressed what she had begun. Her eyes scalded me with contempt.
The Horrible Man Page 4
