The Horrible Man

by Michael Avallone

  "You see what happens?" I said. "I called a cab for you. You don't go down there to catch it, the doorman will begin to wonder. He'll call back and then maybe I'll have to tell him you're in here threatening me and then he'll call the cops and—"

  "Bastard," she hissed, like she had in Arnet's apartment. "Stupid bastard. Are you a fairy or something —" She gathered herself together in an enormous huff.

  "Never mind what I am. As long as we both know what you are. Sister, if I had a ten foot pole I wouldn't touch you with it. So beat it, have your husband see me tomorrow and we'll let him decide what we do with the pictures. As for Tommy Spanner, I hope for your sake you didn't have anything to do with his dying. Correction. For Garcia Lopez's sake. Beats me how you can treat such a nice little slob the way you do and get away with it."

  "You'll be sorry," she hoarsed. "I got friends. The mob. I'll get you, Noon."

  "Sure you will. Don't slam the door."

  Five seconds later, she had vanished. Flouncing down the hall, out the front door. I watched from the windows, seeing the snow still cascading down. I saw her enter a taxi-cab like something out of a nightmare. The cab wheeled off and I wondered if the hackie, alarmed by stories and newspaper accounts of a murderous killer, was thinking he was seeing pink elephants. Mady Lopez was nothing to see if you had had a couple. Of course, hackies don't drink. They shouldn't.

  Which reminded me.

  I locked the front door again, re-built the Scotch and curled up with The American Way Of Death.

  Tommy Spanner's way of death, like Alice said in Wonderland, was getting curiouser and curiouser.

  SIX

  THREE GIRLS AND A GUY

  □ They say I don't eat right when I'm on a case. They are right. It's all coffee and sandwiches, quick bites and not long ones at that. I'm not a waiter, never was. The cigarette habit has me hooked solidly, too.

  The third day of the Tommy Spanner kill, I decided to act sensibly. A long, long day loomed. There were about ninety-five things to do. Melissa Mercer had done some of the spadework, digging down for the facts. I'd been up all night with the cigarettes and The American Way Of Death.

  The President might phone back and then again he might not. There was no sense in phoning him unless there was something to report. He was a busy man last time I heard. Hanoi, the bombings, the unkind cuts taken at him by everybody in the country who exercised his right of Freedom of Speech.

  So, deciding to act like a human being for a change, I left the Olds garaged on Ninety Sixth Street and took a cab to the office. I had breakfast in the Calico Kitchen on Times Square. The full treatment. Orange juice, two sunny-side up eggs, toast, Canadian bacon and about a gallon of coffee. Thus fortified, I walked the few blocks to the office. The snow had stopped, leaving a fine patina of frost over the crooked city. There was a bright contradictory sun again. But it was cold. The temperature reading about twenty-two degrees.

  I met nobody I knew in the streams of humanity walking north, south, east and west. It's amazing but you rarely do. The clock of circumstance and coincidence seldom works out that even.

  Melissa was surprised to see me so early.

  She was parked behind her electric typewriter, busy lining up typing-paper and carbon. She smiled. A golden girl smile. I flipped my porkpie onto the metal clothing tree by the door and bowed cordially.

  "Early bird," she winked at me. "Get the notes and stuff?"

  "Uh huh. You did a nice job and you got a raise. You can have fifteen minute coffee breaks instead of ten. How's the mail situation?"

  "Nothing but folders and circulars. The package hasn't arrived from the Daily News yet either."

  "Give them time. Nine-thirty is an ungodly hour. Ought to be here by twelve. Any calls?"

  She wagged her head. "Not even a wrong number."

  I made a luxurious smoke ring in the quiet air of the office. It was a good one. Large, symmetrical and artistic. It rose like a cloud, and then broke against the overheads.

  Melissa clapped her hands. "Do it again, you clever man."

  "Listen, dear secretary. I shall talk and you shall listen. I have to think out loud and I want you to play Watson. I'll have to get a bit vulgar now and then for which I apologise in advance. You've got a good mind. You're alert and hard to fool. So pay attention and stop me if I go too fast."

  "I'll slow you down," she promised. She slid back from the desk typewriter, folded her arms and stared up at me. She had worn one of her green ensembles to work. A wool-knit dress with a roll collar and a thin choker of white pearls. I was reminded of Tops Billings' remark about taking her picture. She would have glorified any photographer's exhibition.

  "Okay. Here goes. I got a phone call from Tommy Spanner on Monday. He wanted to see me. He's rich, famous as a playboy, and up to here in money, headlines and willing women. So I go to his apartment. The cops are there, headed by your friend and mine, Captain Michael Monks. Spanner had been stabbed through the heart, and his killer left him in the doorway with his pants off. That's right. Shirt, tie, shoes—even his hair was combed. But the corpse was naked where it counts."

  "Time," she said, holding up her hand. "That information was not in the newspapers on Tuesday."

  "That's right. But not too unusual. The police and the papers can seldom spell out the abnormal things for reader consumption. I will remind you of the Boston Strangler. Nobody knew exactly what he did to his victims until the book finally came out last year. It was too gory from any standpoint. So the papers only discussed how the victims were strangled, not how they were sexually violated and abused."

  "Check. Go on."

  "So I saw Captain Monks. I didn't know exactly what Tommy Spanner wanted to see me about. Some vague talk on the phone about a female that was pestering him. He had had three dates that day with three chorus girls from the show, Hello, Suckers! They had all come and gone and there was a fourth doll coming later that night to fill out his day. A real rabbit's life, you might say, with bunnies to spare."

  Melissa nodded, ticking names off her fingers. "Pat Lambert, Freddi Farrar and Clara Kelly. And Christina Ralston. The police got a confession out of Miss Ralston when she showed up. The papers said she was jealous, Spanner was double-crossing her after promising to marry her and that caused the murder. Is that right?"

  "No. The externals are correct. Yes, the lady confessed, the cops do have her. But the truth which can't be printed is that Tommy Spanner was sexually deviated. Ambivalent, as it were. Also, and this is getting very important, he was not physically built to satisfy a woman." I held up the pinky of my right hand. "Do you understand?"

  She didn't blush but her eyes hardened slightly.

  "Considering what you asked me to do yesterday, Ed. And this little man who came in yesterday—is there a connection?"

  "You're on the right track, Mel, but not the way you think. Yes, Garcia Lopez's wife has turned out to be another of Thomas Spanner's former playmates. For money, kicks and you name it. But the real catch is that Mady Lopez was looked up by Mr. Spanner because he incorrectly thought that since she was married to a dwarf, she would be familiar with the personal problem of physically underdeveloped mankind. Mrs. Lopez tells me different but that's not important. What is important is what she told me about her hotel liaison with Mr. Spanner."

  I spelled that out quickly, telling her about the will business and Mady Lopez's unwillingness to divorce little Garcia because it might cost her a lot of loot. There was no point in going into the details about the apartment house raid and the photos taken there.

  "So Mr. Lopez told Mrs. Lopez about me. She came visiting, made her point about the will and I chased her out. And I've a good hunch the little guy will be here today to call me off the case and that will be that. But the hooker is—all of this plays into the curious attention I have had to pay to Tommy Spanner's corpse."

  She smiled. "I was going to ask you about that. And I do not want to see your pictures. But—" she paused.

 
; "Go on. Say whatever you think."

  "If Spanner's body is so important—if, mind you—then it strikes me you ought to talk to four other people besides Mrs. Lopez. Four people you know just had to know something about him personally. That would only be those three chorus girls and the Ralston woman."

  "Thank you," I said. "I just wanted to hear somebody else say it out loud." I edged off her desk, heading for the inner office. "Get Mike Monks on the phone, will you?"

  She chuckled and reached for the Ameche on her desk.

  Monks was in. He always is when the homicides start to pile up. His growl of good morning into the transmitter was a bark of three parts exasperation, two parts desperation.

  "Do you love me?" I asked.

  "What's this going to cost me now?"

  "I'm going to ask you some special favours that I want you to grant. And I don't want to have to tell you why I'm asking. You have to trust me again."

  I could hear him thinking. "Shoot," he said finally.

  "A—I want the coroner's official report on Tommy Spanner. Then I want to be allowed to see the body if it's still in one of your air-cooled drawers. B—I want to have five minutes with Christina Ralston. C—I would appreciate seeing the statements of those three chorus girls that spent the day with Tommy Spanner before he was killed." I got it all out in a rush because I knew he was going to explode. But he didn't. That was startling.

  One icy word came back at me. "Why?"

  "You promised you wouldn't ask, Michael."

  "I promised nothing! Are you crazy, Ed? I'm up to here with Tommy Spanner. His old man has pushed every button he owns. The body is leaving here today. Hush-hush and nobody looking. He's being cremated on Friday. That's tomorrow. And have you ridden in any taxi-cabs lately? This damn phone has been going since yesterday—" He ran down, his voice softening. "Look, this isn't like you. I know you're not chasing down a fee so give. The Department is satisfied Ralston knifed Spanner. No argument. We have the confession, the proof and it will all stand up. Now what's this all about?"

  I brushed by that. "Okay. The body I can't see. What about the coroner's report and the statements of those dolls or did Old Man Spanner put the lid on that too?"

  "Sorry, Ed. Confidential And it won't be used in court. The inquiry will just settle for the murder wound and a certified killer. What else is new?"

  I sighed. "You won't let me talk to Christina Ralston, is that it?"

  He paused. "Dunno. I could swing that. You could be a reporter or a columnist. Let me think. She's in Bellevue Psychiatric. Psychotic—yeah, maybe. But I repeat—why?"

  I took a deep breath. "Make you a deal."

  "No deals. You know better, Ed."

  "You're right I do. Sorry. But if you can wrangle a visit to Ralston, I'll put you in my will. Mike—"

  "Still here but just about ready to hang up. Go ahead."

  "Is there anything in the medical report and the girls' statements worth knowing? You know—something they can't put in a newspaper?"

  He swore. He's been swearing at me for years. I'm like his pesky kid brother or a son he both admired and got irritated as hell with.

  "You're holding out again, Noon!" he barked. "You couldn't ask a question like that unless you already knew what to look for!"

  "Then there is something unusual?"

  "Dammm you, you know there is!"

  "And you're not going to tell me, right?"

  "Right! So long, Ed. I'll call you back about Ralston."

  My ear ached when I hung up. He had slammed the receiver down at his end. But he had left me with something to think about. The police, the Medical Examiner and the girls, either singly or all of them, had disclosed something about Tommy Spanner's body that had not made the newspapers. And it wasn't the little item that both Monks and I had agreed on Monday last.

  What makes a corpse interesting?

  Why would a man in the White House be extremely interested in that body being buried properly? And why had that very famous man expressed the thought that if the body were cremated, that would be the happiest solution of all?

  It was something to think about? Sure, it was. Because it expressed the obvious question that came next. It had nothing to do with the corpse's clothes or outer or undergarments. It would have to do with the corpse itself. Something about Tommy Spanner's skin, flesh and collection of anatomy was the whole key and answer. But what? It couldn't be his identity—that was too celebrated, too well-known. No, it followed that Mr. Spanner's worldly remains contained a secret. Something. Anything.

  But what?

  Had the Medical Examiner, the police, the chorus girls or the murderess determined what that secret was? Did his murder have anything to do with the secret? Or was it just like Monks said—a pervert had led a nymphomaniac on and suffered the final consequences for which there is no remedy.

  Ai chee wow wah, as Tops Billings had said, staring at Mady Lopez's fantastic earthly endowments. Quo Vadis, Noonus?

  There was a break in the early morning routine. The package of newsworthy goodies arrived by special messenger for the Daily News. I watched Melissa sign for it, tip the kid a quarter from her purse, and carry the box into my office. I had left the door ajar and witnessed the whole transaction. The messenger was a young boy with a Beatles hair-cut and a tired, woebegone look as if he was just marking time into manhood.

  Melissa placed the carton on the desk. It was about a foot square and five inches high. Brown wrapping paper, gummed tape and my own name splashed across the top of the box in black marking ink.

  The return address of the News building with Terry Clark hand-scribbled over a printed label was on the left-hand corner of the parcel.

  "Wow," Melissa said. "Enough there for a week's . reading."

  "Probably xeroxed a lot of clippings and columns for me. Remind me to call Clark to thank him. Got your scissors?" She went for the shears in her desk. Tommy Spanner's newsworthy life might unearth a lot of hidden information between the lines. I didn't know what but I could only try. I remembered Terry Clark only vaguely as a pair of horn-rimmed glasses and a mop of black, untidy hair in the Press Box at Yankee Stadium. I remembered the hundred smackers I had lost to him a lot easier. Koufax and Company had ruined the Series for me and the Bronx Bombers.

  Funny world, all right.

  I was thinking about Baseball, the national pastime and Life had another joke up her sleeve. Oh, Life's a woman, all right. Nothing and no one else could be so perverse.

  Melissa Mercer came back with the shears, the gum tape was pried open swiftly and I got the package wrappings off and the lid of the box up.

  Mel took one fast look and screamed.

  I tried to hang onto my breakfast.

  Terry Clark's package from the News building was a devil box. Even a Pandora would have run howling into the night. The box held horror and ugliness and all the darkness that can come out of man's twisted thinking.

  The box held a cat's carcass. A smashed, broken-boned lumpy mass of fur and gutted viscera. The putrid stink of messy sudden death was all over the thing.

  The poor animal's glassy-eyed ruin of a face stared back up at me. There was an incredible amount of slimy pale yellow ooze saturating the sides of the carton.

  I closed the box quickly, replacing the lid, going over to Melissa Mercer who was quietly having the grand shakes on the other side of the desk.

  Dead cat or no, I had gotten the message.

  SEVEN

  WHAT PRICE GLORY?

  □ The sun was still shining. Its golden rays sluiced through the slatted blinds, slicing ribbons across Melissa's face. I took my hands off her when she waved me away. She was taking huge gulps of oxygen, her trim figure still vibrating in the green sheath dress.

  "Okay now," she breathed. "It was the damnedest thing to see. Some friends you have."

  "Terry Clark never sent that. Not with his address on the package. It's a substitute. Ten to one the real package is still coming."
<
br />   "Should I call—" She was moving to the phone, her good secretary instincts still functioning in spite of the large jolt to her nervous system.

  "Don't bother. Neither Clark nor the News will know a blessed thing about a dead cat in a box."

  She was still incredulous, not daring to look at the package on the desk.

  "Was there a message? Note—anything?"

  "No. And there doesn't have to be. I got the message."

  She blinked. "Ed, what do you mean?"

  "Curiosity. It killed the cat. I'm being warned to lay off."

  "Lay off what?"

  "Tommy Spanner and anything that relates to him. Sure is persuasive. I haven't seen a cat in that shape since I was a kid playing stickball on Metcalf Avenue in the Bronx."

  She shuddered. "Who could be so crazy or so powerful to work a switch like this? It seems so—organised—so high and mighty—"

  "I'll buy that. But get it out of your mind for now. I'll put the damn thing in the corner behind the waste-basket for now. We'll throw it out later. I mean I will. I've got some thinking to do. Spanner's date at the Faraway Hills of Rest is tomorrow in Hempstead. I still intend to be there."

  "No, Ed!" It jumped out of her. Unrehearsed, a cry for help, a worried thing.

  "No, Mel? You want me to sit still for a stunt like this? I do and I might as well close up the store tomorrow. If they can scare me, I'm no good at my job. I couldn't be your boss. You see that, don't you? I have to take the risks if I care to call myself a detective."

  She didn't say anything to that. Just shook her head, her eyes staring at me. Then she murmured something in her throat and moved to the connecting door, leaving me alone at the desk. I let her go. If she wanted to be by herself for a few minutes or simply had to toss her cookies, I wasn't going to stop her. There are some things people have to do by themselves. Getting over the shakes and whammies is one of them.

  I looked at the red-white-and-blue phone on the corner of the desk. The urge to call the Chief was a civil right I had to fight back. There was nothing to tell him; I hadn't done the job yet. Mr. Spanner had not gone to his final resting place. All I had was time on my hands and confusion in my brain. The dead cat wouldn't go away. Somebody had sent it. Somebody was warning me. Who? Who could be, would be so interested? Or was it just a savage memento from any one of a thousand old enemies? I didn't think so. The timing was too neat, too precise. It dovetailed neatly into the core of the Tommy Spanner business.