I asked her what the matter was. She tried to tell me, opened her mouth without getting any words out, then whirled in her seat and pointed. I followed the direction of the point. Two grim characters, short and dark and ugly, were grabbing a cab of their own.
“After me,” she stammered. “Trying to kill me. Oh, help me, for God’s sake!”
The driver was staring at us and wondering what in God’s name was happening. I couldn’t say I blamed him. I was wondering pretty much the same thing myself.
“Just drive,” I told him.
“You still want the Commodore?”
“No,” I said. “Just drive around. Well see what happens.”
He drove around while I saw what happened. He turned downtown on Broadway, held Broadway to 36th Street, headed east on 36th as far as Madison, then swung north again. I kept one eye on the girl and the other gazing out through the rear window. The girl stayed in her seat and the cab with the two grim ones in it stayed on our tail. Whoever they were, they were following us.
“They still got us,” the driver said.
“I know.”
“Where next?”
I leaned forward in the seat. “I’ll wager ten dollars you can’t lose them,” I said.
He grinned happily. “You lose, buddy.”
“I’d love to lose.”
The grin widened, then disappeared entirely. He had no time for grinning now. He instead devoted himself wholeheartedly to the task of losing our tail. He was a professional and he gave me my money’s worth.
He gunned the car north along Madison Avenue, slowed down a little, then shot through 42nd Street on the yellow light. The light was red for the boys behind us. This didn’t bother them. They ran the signal, narrowly missed a light pickup truck, and stayed with us.
The cab driver swore softly. He took a corner on two wheels or less, put the pedal to the floor for the length of the block, ran a red light on his own and went the wrong way on a one-way street. Then he ripped around another corner, shot along an alleyway between two warehouses, drove three blocks normally, and let out a long sigh.
“Ten bucks,” he said. “Pay the man.”
Our tail was gone, if not forgotten. I put a crisp ten dollar bill into his outstretched palm and watched it disappear. I turned to the girl, who was as wide-eyed as ever, if not so frightened. I noticed for the first time that she was quite beautiful, which was fine with me. If one is going to make a practice of rescuing maidens in distress, one might as well select lovely maidens.
“Oh,” she said. “Oh, thank you.”
I asked her where she wanted to go next. She was flustered. “I really don’t know,” she said. “I ... I was so frightened. They were going to kill me.”
“Why?”
She looked away. “It’s a long story,” she said.
“Then suggest a place where you can tell me all about it.”
“I don’t know where. They have my address so we can’t go to my apartment. I—”
The cab was still cruising in traffic and the meter had an impressive total upon it already. I thought quickly. There was a girl I knew rather well named Carole Miranda. She had an apartment on the western edge of Greenwich Village, and she was in Florida for a month or so. Which meant that her apartment was vacant.
I had a key to it. Never mind why.
“Horatio Street,” I told the driver. “Number Forty-nine, near the corner of Hudson.”
He nodded and headed the car in that direction. I had a few dozen questions to ask the girl but they would all keep until we got to Carole’s apartment. In the meanwhile we both sat back and enjoyed the ride. She fell back in her seat in an attitude of total collapse, which was her way of enjoying the ride. I looked at her, which was my way.
A beautiful girl. Her hair was short and jet black and it framed a pale oval face. Her skin was cameo white. Her small hands rested in her lap. She had thin fingers. Her nails were not polished.
It was hard to tell much about her figure. Her body was wrapped up in a heavy black cloth coat that left everything to the imagination. My imagination was working overtime.
“We’re here,” the driver told me.
“We’re here,” I told her. She opened the door on her side and I followed her out of the cab. The numbers on the meter were high enough for me to give him a five dollar bill and tell him to keep the change.
We stood on the sidewalk in front of a remodelled brownstone with a vaguely cheerful air about it. The windows had windowboxes which held flowering plants in better weather. The building’s wooden trim was freshly painted in bright reds and blues. A wreath of holly decorated the blue front door.
“Where are we?”
“A friend’s apartment,” I told her. “The friend is out of town. You’ll be perfectly safe here.”
This satisfied her. On the way to the door she held my arm and relaxed a little against me. I opened the front door, unlocked the inner door in the vestibule with one of the keys Carole had given me. We walked through a hallway lit with shaded blue bulbs and up two flights of stairs. The stairs squeaked in protest.
“This is exciting,” she said.
“It is?”
“Like an illicit affair,” she said. “Where is this place? The top floor?”
I told her it was.
“God,” she said. “Then it’s not so exciting. Nobody would be able to carry on an illicit affair after a climb like this. Besides, my nose bleeds at heights.”
We managed the remaining two staircases. I found the door to Carole’s apartment, hoped that she was really out of town, stuck a key in the lock and opened the door. I fumbled for a lightswitch, found it, and brightened the room.
“Now you can tell me all about it,” I said.
“I—”
“But first I’ll build some drinks. Wait a moment.”
She waited a moment while I remembered where Carole kept her liquor supply. I found a bottle of good scotch and a pair of glasses. I put the scotch in the glasses, kept one for myself and gave her the other. We clinked them together ceremoniously and drank.
“My name’s Roy Markham,” I told her.
She said: “Oh.”
“Now it’s your turn. But you’ve got to tell me a great deal more than your name. You’ve got to tell me who you are and who those men were and why they were chasing you.”
“They wanted to kill me.”
“Start at the beginning,” I said. “And let’s have all of it.”
She asked for a cigarette and I gave her one, lighted it for her. I took one for myself, then sipped more of the scotch. We sat together in silence on Carole’s big blue Victorian sofa for a few moments. Then she started.
“My name is Linda,” she said. “Linda Jeffers. I live here in New York. On East End Avenue near Ninety-fourth Street. Do you know where that is?”
I nodded.
“I’m a secretary. Well, just a typist, really. I work at Midtown Life in the typing pool. It’s just a job but I like it, sort of.”
I waited for her to get to the point. While she was on her way there she told me that she was twenty-four, that she’d come to New York after going to college in southern Illinois, where her family lived, that she wasn’t married or engaged or going with anyone, that she lived alone. This was all interesting, but it hardly explained why a pair of thugs wanted to murder her.
“You see?” she said suddenly. “I’m just an ordinary person, really. Just like everybody else.”
I could have told her that was not true. She had taken her coat off, and she was wearing a mannish paisley shirt and a black wool skirt, and the body that filled them was not at all like everybody else. It was a superior body.
Her waist was slim, her bust full-blown and good to look at. She had very long legs for a short girl, and when she crossed them I could see that they were as good as they were long, with trim ankles and gently rounded calves. It was a fine body and it went nicely with her fine face.
“Just
like everybody else,” she repeated oddly. “Except that they want to kill me.”
“Who are they?”
“A man named Dautch. I don’t know his first name.”
“Was he one of the ones following us?”
She nodded. “The shorter one.”
“And why is he after you?”
“It’s very simple,” she said. “I saw him kill a man.”
Four
“IT WAS the most horrible thing that ever happened,” she told me, her eyes wide and her voice trembling. “I was home at the time. It was three days ago. Monday evening. I live in a building kind of like this one. Except I live in a room, not an apartment. Just a furnished room. It’s a nice neighborhood and the rent’s cheap enough for me to afford and—”
“You saw a murder,” I reminded her.
“Yes. It was at night, around nine. I was in the hallway on the way back to my room. There’s no bathroom in my room, I just have this furnished room, and—”
She actually blushed. I didn’t know American girls still knew how to accomplish it. I told her to go on.
She did, in a rush. “A man named Mr. Keller had the room at the end of the hallway. His door was open. There were two men in there with Mr. Keller. They were arguing, shouting at each other. I heard Mr. Keller call one of them Dautch. That’s how I know his name.”
“What were they arguing about?”
“I’m not sure. Money, I think. Mr. Keller kept saying he didn’t have it and the two men kept on arguing with him. Then the other man—not Dautch—hit Mr. Keller in the stomach. Mr. Keller let out a moan and started to fall forward. Then he straightened up and went straight for Dautch.”
“And then?”
She closed her eyes for a second. She opened them and looked at me, her face a mask of fear. “It happened very quickly. I heard a click. Then Mr. Keller stepped back with a horrible look on his face. He put his hands to his chest There was blood coming through the front of his shirt. He started to say something. But before he could say a word he fell over onto the floor.”
“What did you do?”
“I’m afraid I must have screamed or something. Because all of a sudden Dautch and the other man were turning and looking at me. Dautch had a bloody knife in one hand. I don’t know what would have happened next. But I ran into my room and locked the door. I even pushed the bed in front of it. I was scared they were going to kill me the way they killed Mr. Keller.”
“But they left you alone?”
She nodded. “One of them wanted to break down my door and take care of me. That’s the way he said it. But the other told him they couldn’t waste time. I just stayed where I was and prayed. I was sitting on the edge of the bed to make it harder for them to open the door. Then I heard them going down the stairs. It sounded as though they were dragging something heavy.”
“Keller’s body?”
She shuddered. “It must have been. I ... I stayed right where I was for about half an hour. I was scared stiff, too scared to move. Then I moved the bed out of the way and, unlocked my door and went back to see if Mr. Keller was still there. I thought I could help him if he was still alive. But I knew he was dead, I was sure of it. Anyway, I thought I could call the police.”
“The body was gone.”
“That’s right,” she said. “There . . . there wasn’t even any I blood on the rug, nothing to show that anything had happened. I even started to think it was my imagination or something. I knew I couldn’t call the police. They would tell me I was crazy. I kept reading the newspapers to see if they found Mr. Keller anywhere. But they didn’t.”
“So you never got in touch with the police,” I said. I thought it over. “Well, I can do one thing for you. I can find out if Keller turned up.”
“How?”
“By calling the police and asking them. That’s simple enough, wouldn’t you say? Could you give me a full description of the man?”
She stared at me for a moment or two, then described Keller for me. I went over to the phone and dialed Police Headquarters. I asked for Hanovan at Homicide. He answered the phone gruffly.
“Roy Markham,” I told him. “I’m looking for an unidentified corpse, male, around thirty-five, dark brown hair, sallow complexion, going bald in front, about five-eight, medium build. You turn up anything like that since Monday night?”
“Why?”
“I just wondered.”
“To hell with you,” Hanovan snapped. “Listen—”
“You listen,” I said sweetly. “I’m supposed to receive full cooperation from all police officers. Don’t you remember? Now give me a little of that cooperation, damn you.”
He was silent for a long moment. Then he said he would check. I held the line while he disappeared for a few minutes.
“Nothing,” he said finally. “Nothing even close on the unidentified list. Nothing even close on the identified list. You gonna tell me what this is all supposed to be about or should I guess?”
“You may guess,” I told him. “And thanks very much for your cooperation.”
I hung up and turned to Linda. “Your Mr. Keller hasn’t put in an official appearance yet,” I said. “So evidently there’s little point in your contacting the police.”
“How come they told you that?”
“We’ll get to that later,” I said briskly. “Let’s get back to this fellow Dautch. He was after you tonight. Is that the first you’ve heard of him since the murder?”
“No. He ... he called me the next day. At least I think it was him. I picked up the phone and a voice told me to forget everything I saw last night or I would get hurt. Dautch rang off before I could say a word.” She paused. “I’ve had a few more calls like that since then. Always the same voice. Sometimes he’s been very . . . explicit. About what would happen if I didn’t forget Keller. He said filthy things, things he would do to me.”
“And then you saw him tonight?”
She hesitated. “I ate a late dinner downtown tonight. I had the feeling that somebody was following me but I didn’t see anybody. But I didn’t want to go home. I went to a movie by myself on Broadway. And even in the theater I felt that there was somebody watching me. It’s a terrible feeling. The picture was lousy but I stayed for the whole double feature. I was afraid to go home. And then finally I had to leave.”
“And you saw Dautch?”
“That’s right. That’s how I . . . landed in your lap, I guess. That’s what happened, isn’t it?”
“Worse things have happened.”
She smiled. “You’re sweet,” she said. “Anyway, I was on Forty-second Street and I saw him, him and the other man. They were behind me and I looked at them and they looked at me. I don’t think they were going to try anything. I think they were just following me waiting for a chance to get me alone. I ran for the nearest cab. It happened to be the one you were getting into but I didn’t let that stop me.” She grinned. “I just hauled open the door and hopped inside. I don’t think it was too ladylike but I wasn’t worried about it then.”
I thought it over. There had to be something I could do for the girl but I was damned if I could put my finger on it. A man was trying to kill her and all she knew was his last name. I could try to find out who he was, could try to discourage him from bothering her any more. I could find out more about Keller and try to solve things completely—by sending Dautch to the chair.
But all that would have to wait until morning.
“Now it’s your turn,” she said. “Roy, all you did was call the police and they told you everything you wanted to know. Are you a policeman?”
“Not exactly.” She looked at me questioningly. “I’m a private detective,” I explained.
“That sounds exciting.”
“Sometimes,” I said.
“What are you working on? Can you help me? Or are you busy? Or do you just do divorce snooping and things like that?”
So I told her about it, because there was nothing much else to do a
nd because I felt like talking. I ran through my initial discussion with Edgar Taft a night earlier, told her about my pursuit of wild geese in New Hampshire told her about the phone conversation with Taft, the return to New York, the game we were playing with the man in Bedford Hills.
“Then you’re not doing anything,” she said slowly. “You’re just pretending to look for a killer.”
“Not exactly.”
She looked at me.
“I’m not entirely convinced of this suicide,” I said.
“But if the police—”
“The police are occasionally wrong. You’ve got to consider their position. There’s an enormous temptation to write off a homicide as a suicide whenever possible. It makes their work a good bit easier.”
“That’s terrible!”
I shrugged. “I’m sure they believe it’s a suicide,” I said. “It certainly follows an established pattern. But I don’t think they’ve investigated as diligently as they might.”
“Then you’re going to waste your time looking for a killer who doesn’t exist?”
“You could call it that.” I smiled. “To be truthful, I suspect the suicide verdict is the right and proper one. I suspect my hesitation to accept it stems more from a personal distaste for getting paid for work without performing it. Edgar Taft has hired me. He’s paid me a sizeable retainer and will pay me more. I can’t abandon the case, much as I’d like to. So I might just as well give value in return, if it’s possible.”
She was silent. I looked at her and saw how pretty she was. I wondered where Dautch and his friend were, and what they were doing. I wondered why Keller had been murdered.
“Besides,” I said, “there are a few points here and there that bother me. People in Cliff’s End seemed reluctant to talk to me about Barbara Taft. There was a secret somewhere that no one was saying anything about. God alone knows what it might be. Probably just my imagination. But I want to take a closer look.”
“You’re not going back up there?”
“Not yet. Not until we straighten out this Dautch-Keller business, anyway. But I’ll probably get back there in time. I’d dearly like to delay my trip until the spring, though. It’s cold in New Hampshire.”
You Could Call It Murder Page 4
