The Horrible Man

by Michael Avallone

  Spanner. Dead.

  Christina Ralston. She killed him.

  The Misses Farrar, Kelly and Lambert. Three playmates, all ciphers as far as I was concerned.

  Garcia Lopez. He wanted a divorce.

  Mady Lopez. She wanted to stay married because of a will of Tommy Spanner's that might include her.

  Paul Arnet. French lessons. Anything else? I didn't know.

  Lenny Lewis. He had produced the wall motif of glossy, classy bold nudes on Spanner's haremish walls. Tops Billings had lost the job.

  Terry Clark. Filling in for Cal Wylie. What could he possibly gain by shipping dead cats that served as threats and Hands Off messages? An innocent bystander, perhaps.

  Stallings Spanner. Tommy's rich Daddy. What did he know about the son he was burying tomorrow?

  The Chief. Mr. President. The Number One Man of these United States. What the hell could possibly interest him about Tommy Spanner's corpse?

  I didn't know. The not knowing was going around in my head like a carousel of insanity.

  Captain Michael Monks. The lid's on, Noon, and you'd better believe it. No handouts, no passing info to an old pal. Tie that one for novelty.

  I wondered if Monks would ever call back, confirming an appointment with the Ralston dame. She might be all she was supposed to be but I wanted to make sure for myself. Also, there was the matter of M.E. reports and the statements of the Misses Kelly, Farrar and Lambert. They were beginning to sound like a vaudeville turn. Fancy songs and snappy patter.

  The time got lost. I got lost with it. Melissa didn't come back into the office for a long time. When she did, it was to announce that Mr. Garcia Lopez was outside, wanting to see me. I nodded to her and swivelled around in the chair behind the desk, facing the entrance.

  Lopez bounced in, with his springy little walk and got up in the client's chair again. He had changed hats as well as suits. He was attired in a sombre dark outfit with only a red foulard tie and a grey Homburg to liven up his scene. The sad expression was gone from his handsome face. He almost looked happy. Almost. A touch of eternal triste lingered about his well-shaped mouth.

  "I talked to Mady," he said. "Yesterday. She made a clean breast of everything."

  I skipped an obvious pun. "You forgave her, I suppose."

  "I did. The Bible says—well—you know what the Bible says. Besides, it's finally different now. I made her understand how much she meant to me and me to her. She's really brighter than she looks, Mr. Noon."

  "Of course she is. Did she tell you about me, her and Paul Arnet?" I let him have that with both barrels. He took it with his chin held high.

  "Yes. It's straight shooting from now on. Nothing to hide. I know you have some pictures. I don't want to see them. I just want you to destroy them. I'll take your word for that. And I'm willing to pay you another hundred dollars for the right to ask you to do that."

  I opened the right-hand drawer of the desk, taking out the damning prints and the gory negatives. I passed them across the desk to him. He didn't reach for them. His eyes were on me.

  "You're six feet tall, Mr. Lopez. You always will be."

  The compliment embarrassed him. He lowered his gaze.

  "Did Mrs. Lopez tell you anything else about her reform programme? I wouldn't burn those photos if I were you. No, don't ever look at them but keep them all the same. Just in case she breaks your heart again. You don't owe me any more money. The advice is free of charge, too."

  He smiled, a little too bravely I thought.

  "You're being very kind, Mr. Noon."

  "I am. And it isn't easy. Take the pictures and say good-bye."

  He did. They disappeared into a pocket of the dark suit. He clambered down off the chair, extending his stevedore's mitt across the desk.

  I could see the top of his head but I had no idea what his head was made of. He was either being extraordinarily foolish, exceedingly big about Mady Lopez's inherent smallness of soul and character or he knew something I didn't.

  "You're sure I don't owe you more money, Mr. Noon?"

  "My word on it. The slate is clean. I hope you got what you were looking for."

  "I think I did—with your help. After all, I will be in a better bargaining position with Mady. I can destroy the pictures and never tell her that I did. As you said."

  "That's the ticket. Wear the pants."

  He smiled wanly at that, turned around after crushing my hand again and walked out of my life. To all intents and pitiful purposes. I stared at the door, wondering. The giantess and the dwarf. Where would they wind up and was their connection with Tommy Spanner as obvious and unmeaningful as a mere wild hotel affair?

  My phone rang. Not the red-white-and-blue one that I wanted to ring. The black executive model.

  It was Mike Monks. Talking low, confidential and with the barest trace of satisfaction in his tone.

  "It's visiting day at Bellevue. You can have a half-hour with Christina Ralston. Two-thirty on the fifth floor of the Psychiatric. I'll be there too. But you can talk to her alone. You have a special police pass. Me."

  "What made you change your mind?"

  "I could change it again," he said warningly and then he sighed. "Ed, you got a noodle for these things. I never knew what it was but it's that half-crazy instinct of yours. We're buttoned up down here. From the top on down. Somebody's sitting on this one. Maybe it's the Spanner money talking loud and clear. But it's open and shut. I have my murderer and that's all I'm supposed to do. But still—I respect your funny mind. She might talk to you. Women usually do. Even the screwy ones. So you got a half-hour with Ralston. Meet me."

  "Will do. And thanks."

  "For what?" Once more he hung up loudly. His fatherly or older brother feelings for me always got the better of his judgement.

  I felt a little better about things until I remembered the cat in the box. It was screaming for disposal.

  As distasteful as the job was, I repacked the box, re-taped it and got it ready for taking out of the building with me when I left. I tried to keep from breathing as I did the job but some of the foul stink got to me anyway.

  I took the Times and wadded the box in that, too.

  Melissa came in a little later when I buzzed her on the squawk box.

  "Going out again?"

  I told her about the appointment at Bellevue with Monks, asked her to close out her file on Garcia Lopez and his wife and mark it Completed. I was sure I'd seen the last of them as regard the unfaithful wife angle. I didn't expect any trouble from Paul Arnet. That kind usually stays underground, hidden and ready to lash out only when cornered. The cheaters don't fight.

  "I hope you're going to get rid of that box, Ed."

  "Nearest little basket. I want my city clean."

  "Take care of yourself, boss man. Somebody down there doesn't like us today."

  I pecked her on the cheek, she squeezed my shoulders briefly and I left for the day. My last view of Melissa Mercer was the sight of her at her desk, hands pyramided before her, arms resting on the elbows. Her eyes were sad, almost like a mother's sending her son off to school for the first day. I didn't like that look. It made me feel helpless, like I didn't know what I was doing.

  Maybe I didn't. The President's phone call had launched a whole beehive of going-around-in-circles activity. I hadn't known where to begin and where to end off. It's not a very wholesome feeling.

  A blast of cold air hit my face when I hit the street. The thermometer had dipped sharply again. Typical screwy March weather. I headed for the silver-grey litter basket near the door of the building. It was practically empty, a sad commentary on sloppy, careless New Yorkers. I dropped the cat in his carton coffin into the basket, wondering again who could have sent it. It was a crummy stunt, an old one, but damn effective. The cat's crushed carcass was hard to forget. A little persuasive psychology on any count. See the cat. See his crushed furry little body. Ed Noon is a crushed furry cat.

  I turned my collar up, looking for a
cab. The street was the usual boardwalk of action panorama for the city. Trucks, cars and small foreign jobs cruising. Horns blaring. Passers-by, men, women, teenagers and delivery boys keeping one jump ahead of the threat of a walking bottleneck. It's a block of restaurants, theatrical registries, agencies and clothing and record shops. I haven't seen that block deserted at any time of the day.

  A cab nosed out from the herd, angled inward and braked to a halt at my shoe-tips. I stepped off the sidewalk, tugging the side door. The cabby's head was turned away from me.

  I didn't see the man lying on the floor of the rear of the cab until he looked up at me mildly, his eyes expressionless, and said:

  "Get in. Sit down. Don't move. The gun is hair-triggered. As well as silenced. We'll take you where you want to go."

  I got in. I sat down. I didn't move.

  I believed him. Without another word, the cab cleared the kerb, aiming towards Sixth Avenue. Grey skies above threatened more snow.

  You might say there isn't room for a man to lie down on the floor of a taxi-cab without being seen or at least cramped. You're so right. Only a boy could manage it. A very small boy or a man built no bigger than a boy.

  Like Garcia Lopez.

  The gun seemed as big as he was. A .357 Magnum and there was a snout-like object that could be a silencer fastened to the muzzle of the thing.

  "Little man, what now?" I said dryly, trying to think, trying to cover up my ineptitude with a bum opener. My brain was stalled on the tracks, waiting for a green light.

  I should have kept my trap shut. I realised that when the first, sickeningly sweet invisible vapours got to me. By the time I realised the cab windows were shut tighter than a drum and that Garcia Lopez was holding his breath, I was too late. My nostrils blazed, my lungs ached.

  It was better than sodium pentothal, I guess.

  I don't remember going to sleep.

  The City, the crowds, the skies, the back of the cab-driver's head all vanished as swiftly as you turn off the light in your bedroom.

  The cab driver needed a haircut.

  EIGHT

  THE NINTH LIFE

  □ Curiosity killed the cat. A cat has nine lives. A cat can look at a king. I saw a dead cat and that is that. Cats and cat proverbs, axioms, maxims and fables. Take your pick.

  I woke up and felt anything but catsy. I could not have smiled like the Cheshire cat. I would like to have disappeared at will as he could and did—but I couldn't. They wouldn't let me. They being the vast, unnameable, unseen ones who had once more ticketed me for the oblivion of a last ride.

  Funny, how little you can remember. The enforced sleep had been painless. All I remembered was little Garcia Lopez curled up with a big gun at my feet. A taxi-cab with a faceless driver. West Forty Sixth Street and grey skies.

  Whisky woke me up too. Damp, wet, pungent whisky sloshing in my face, running down my chin, making my clothes smell like a brewery. That was the first thing I was conscious of. Alcohol, sudden, unexpected and startling, burning my lips, trickling down my throat. A burning, stinging, wide-awake sensation. There's something vicious in being force-fed a bottle of rotgut. There always is.

  I opened my eyes. Or rather they came open. Broad daylight struck me in the face. Blindingly fresh and new and unreal. I came to, my head reeling, my lips still scalding from burning whisky.

  It was something new. One of the oldest rub-outs in the books. When you want to kill, eliminate or at the very least, discredit somebody in public life—or private for that matter—simply douse in whisky, place at wheel of automobile in motion in a nice dangerous place and let the accidents fall where they may. Stir wildly.

  Even as far as understanding flashed messages into the brain that was so recently hors de, there was very little I could do about it. The roar of the car motor was like the thunder of a thousand dive bombers. I fought the drugging effects of the alcohol that was making the universe reel, as the songs say.

  "They" had set up the fake traffic accident, like major leaguers.

  The very first thing I saw was the bridge. Tall, impressive, miles wide and fully glorious in a drunken haze. The Verrazzano Bridge that connects Staten Island with Brooklyn. I was bearing down on it, feeling light, airy and disconnected. It lay across my vision like the pearly gates of doom, its beautiful skeletal outline thrusting like a toy for King Kong across a glittering, blue-green ocean of water.

  Car horns behind me ripped out warnings. Blasting, shrilling, bleating like wounded animals. The wheel of whatever car I was in was glued to the palms of nerveless fingers. The plastic was hard and sticky. I shook my head violently, trying to clear it. Trying to see the road, the dashboard, the danger. I couldn't. I was shooting along, lost in two lanes of automobiles, hurtling along the Belt Parkway that bordered Brooklyn. It had to be the Belt—that was all I could think of. That and the wheel and trying to get my damn foot off the accelerator. I couldn't for some reason. And my hands were paralysed on the steering wheel. I had awakened in the middle of a nightmare.

  There was a diesel truck ahead of me. Coupes, sedans and a panel truck. Behind was only a cacophony of shrilling, honking horns. The car that contained me was a runaway rocket of destruction. For my eyes only, the road was a side-saddle, shifting, an insane kaleidoscope. I had to be only a spin of the next tyre from the end of the line. I couldn't think or even focus. There was only one thing I could do. I did that much before complete nirvana set in. Groping, I found the ignition key, praying it had been left in and not broken off. It hadn't been. Gritting my teeth and not feeling any pain at all, I switched the key off. That was the last thing I remember doing.

  Within seconds, the mad old world took one more throw of the dice. The vehicle ahead, a large robin's egg blue Chrysler, got bigger and bigger in my windshield. I saw the terrified faces of the passengers staring back at me as if I'd gone mad. A tow-headed kid and a woman.

  And then the dice dropped. I came up craps.

  And the world seemed to be a place where everybody was hitting his damn horn and the funny shriek of twisted, crumpling metal filled the ear-drums.

  I blacked out again.

  The Brooklyn cops were very nice to me. They didn't rough me up or Third Degree me. Even though I didn't pass two tests. Not only couldn't I walk the chalked straight line on some precinct station floor, I filled up a balloon with enough alcohol to keep fiveBowery bums warm for a whole week-end. I was in a drunken fog, unable to think straight or talk without climbing over the consonants. All I did find out through a maze of voices was that I, Edward Noon, a licensed investigator from Manhattan was guilty of driving while intoxicated, the car wasn't registered in my name. It was a '63 Ford that had been reported stolen from in front of a grocery store on Avenue Mand I had only missed getting killed on the Belt (and killing other innocent people) because the Ford had come to a crazy, unscheduled stop on the ramp of the Brooklyn side of the Verrazzano Bridge. A motorcycle cop from the bridge had seen it all, raced to the scene, summoned a squad car from the 18th Precinct and now I was safely behind bars where I couldn't hurt my fellow man. There was a judge named Sabatelli mentioned who was going to give me holy hell because his favourite whipping boys were drunken drivers. I heard all that from a burly cop who held my hand all through the sobriety tests. Finally, my head cleared up enough for me to request the one phone call the state laws allowed me. I was supposed to call my lawyer. I called Captain Michael Monks instead. I didn't need a lawyer. I needed a good cop who was a friend. Luckily, I reached him at his desk. He was ready to call me all kinds of names for standing him up at Bellevue after arranging a difficult interview with Tommy Spanner's murderess, but something in my voice got through to him. He hung up in a hurry.

  One hour later he was standing with me before a desk sergeant, signing things and taking full responsibility for a drunken pal. Sometime, after that, we were heading back to Manhattan, with the first shades of evening pulling down in a hurry. Monks had come in a private prowl car with siren screami
ng I guess. Mercifully, the siren was quiet on the way back. We were alone in the car, his driving, natch, since who would trust a drunken bum at the wheel, running wild on Belt Parkway?

  Only I knew he wanted to hear it from Big Eddie. So I told him, leaving out the single fact that it was little Garcia Lopez who had set me up for the kill. That was one I had to think about.

  "The horseshoe kid," he muttered, eyes on heavy traffic, wheeling the big car like an expert through Prospect Park onto the Grand Army Plaza. A stream of vehicles were heading north. "You ought to sell them to other people. One of these days you are going to get killed, you know it? Your luck can't hold out for ever. I've never seen such luck."

  "Spanner's funeral is tomorrow," I said.

  "Yeah. In Hempstead. So what?"

  "He'll be out of your hair, then. You've got the Ralston dame. Open and shut like you said. But I'm thinking."

  "That's always helpful," he admitted sourly.

  "You know me. You came down here knowing me. Knowing I didn't get loaded to go joy-riding on the Belt, miles away from home. So knowing me and believing me, what do you make of a dead cat sent in the box by messenger and a tired can of peas like a faked drunken driving bit?"

  He glowered, shooting me a side glance. "You've guessed already."

  "A little. You said somebody was clamming up on the case. The upstairs boys had the lid on. Sure, I guessed. Somebody's pushing buttons. Somebody big. To do that, you either have to have a lot of money or a lot of connections."

  "Think out loud," he said. "I'll string along with you."

  "Stallings Spanner is a billionaire. Three out of ten people in the country are walking around in Spanner shoes right now. His no good son was a shame and a disgrace to him. Now the son is dead. Killed by a sick girl. It's a scandalous mess. He's had enough grief in life with Tommy. He doesn't want any more now that the kid's dead."