Betty Heck literally bounced out of her chair. She could move when she had to. She squeezed into the closet faster than Jackie Robinson ever stole second base. I went over to the desk, scooped up the .45 and advanced on the door and all that noise.
Between hand-pounds, I swung it open easily and stepped to one side.
The six footer in the entrance looked silly with one knuckled fist before him ready to pound again. But there was nothing silly about the wide set of his shoulders, the aggressive chin that jutted out from beneath an equally impressive hawk nose. There wasn’t a thing silly about his clothes either. His coat was camel hair, his Homburg pearl gray and he and his tailor must have reached an understanding a long time ago. His clothes fit him the way clothes ought to fit a man without making him look like a show horse.
He stared at me wordlessly. Without taking his hat off, he swept past me, made the center of the office in no time at all and then swung around to face me.
“Do come in,” I said sarcastically. “But please don’t sit down. I was on my way out and I can only spare you a minute.”
His eyes took in the .45 poking out from my hand and a contemptuous smile pulled his mouth over to one side.
“Put that toy away and stop acting like Dick Tracy,” he barked. “Where is she?”
I let the .45 dangle floorward without putting it away.
“You’re too old to play Twenty Questions, friend. Where is who?”
He took a step toward me, his hands outspread. Just the way he did it told me he’d slugged it out toe-to-toe in his time.
“I’m a busy man, fellah. Don’t fool with me and that’s a warning. You know who I mean. I’m looking for Betty Heck. Don’t stall me, either. I know she’s here.”
I showed him raised eyebrows.
“Heck? Betty Heck? You’re kidding. That’s not a name, it’s an exclamation. Either way, I cannot call her to mind.”
His tensed shoulders relaxed and he smiled. His smile was far more dangerous than his bark. Something about his face told me that too. Without haste, his right hand went into his inside pocket almost wearily, expertly producted a leather billfold that screamed of the best hotels, Pullmans, ringside on opening night and high octane living.
“Look, Noon.” His bark hadn’t gone away. “I’m a busy man. Fifty bucks if you produce her and forget everything she told you. Either that or let me see her. I can’t have her running around to private detectives with these wild stories of hers. She could cause me a lot of unnecessary trouble.”
I shouldered my gun and shrugged.
“She left five minutes before you got here, Mr. Artel. And if she was here, you couldn’t see her for fifty bucks. I don’t know where you get your information but fifty bucks is not my price.”
His eyes, hard black marbles, opened shrewdly at my use of his name but the rest of my idealistic talk also made them roam scornfully over the very obvious second-hand glory of my office furniture and equipment. Then he was looking at me again. He made me feel second-hand too. I didn’t like that. He was exactly my height but he looked fitter than a four letter college man even though I could see he had about ten years on me.
He still hadn’t put his wallet away.
“What did she tell you?”
I smiled. “Aren’t you going to ask me what my price is? Suddenly, I’m not in a hurry to run my errand.”
“Look, Noon,” he came back at me again. I could see he was taking my measure. “Let’s not lose our heads. Miss Heck works for me. For some fool reason, she thinks someone is trying to kill her. I think she’s imagining things. And I do know I don’t want the police running all around my office sticking their collective noses into things, asking questions. Do I make myself clear?”
I pretended to look pained.
“Good heavens, Mr. Artel. Don’t tell me Sleep-Tite mattresses are filled with straw. I did so want to believe that lousy commercial of yours.”
Mr. Artel’s aggressive chin jutted out another full inch.
“If you’re trying to be funny, I’ve got some news for you. You aren’t. Grow up. I can make this worth your while.”
I got back behind my desk. I like to discuss business from that position. Seems a helluva lot more natural anyway.
“Sit down, Mr. Artel, while I fill your ears with the news of the day. Bear with me. I do get to the point sooner or later.”
He grunted and sat down heavily in the chair only recently vacated by his vanishing mattress tester.
“What is the point?” His sarcasm was monumental.
“Just this.” I pyramided my fingers. “Miss Heck is my client now by virtue of hiring me to protect her for a hundred dollars. She thinks someone is trying to lower the boom on her. I think so too. Beyond that, I can tell you no more. There is a strong bond of secrecy between a private consultant and his clientele that just can’t be broken. Now what can you possibly add to that or expect from me? If you have anything to say I’ll listen but please remember I’m working for Miss Heck. I’m on her side.”
He sneered. “For a hundred bucks.” He sneered again. “If I made it a hundred and twenty-five, you’d be on my side.”
“Not for a thousand, Mr. Artel. I don’t like your clothes, I don’t like your office politics and I don’t like your manners. Behave yourself or I’ll throw you out on your ear.”
He controlled himself with an effort. His breath came hard. Somehow I had him by the short hairs. Betty Heck had tipped me off about her trouble. And Betty Heck and Sleep-Tite were as close as me and my skin. Or so it seemed.
“Look, Noon. I’ll give you two hundred bucks to forget everything she might have told you here today. I want you to drop her case. It’s a perfect set-up for you, isn’t it? Two hundred bucks without any leg-work, no phone calls, no late hours. No questions asked. What do you say? I’ll handle Betty from my end of things.”
I stopped pyramiding my fingers and lay my hands palms-down on the desk pad.
“I can’t hear a word your saying, Satan. You don’t tempt me one itty bit.”
His eyes narrowed. “I can be a rough customer, Noon. Think it over.”
“You don’t scare me either.”
“Three hundred. That’s as far as I’ll go.”
“Sorry, Mr. Artel. You can’t go far enough to suit me. Your money doesn’t charm me at all. But you and the firm of Sleep-Tite do. Why are you so afraid to have the cops hanging around your office? You fronting for a Commie organization or something?”
“Go to hell.” He showed me two rows of white teeth.
I grinned. “All private eyes go to heaven, Mr. Artel. They’re needed up there. You’d be surprised how many angels misplace their haloes.”
He rose to his feet heavily like a guy who was ready to eat nails. I got to my feet too. I have a complex about being hit when I’m sitting down.
He leaned across the desk and for the first time I noticed the man-about-town carnation bursting from one camel-haired lapel.
“Your halo’s in hock, Noon. You’re a peanut vendor, my friend. You’ll always be working for peanuts. Private consultant, my ass. I laugh at mugs like you. You two-bit keyhole peeper! How the hell do you expect to get ahead if you turn your back on three hundred dollar bills that beg you to reach out for them?”
He was getting under my skin now with his Big Time Operator chatter and I never have exactly gotten used to being called names right to my face. But I hung on to my temper. I was proud of myself, the way I was hanging on. I showed him my chummy smile again.
“I’ll bet you haven’t shaved yourself in years, Mr. Artel. No, I don’t think so. Your type of guy goes to the barber shop all the time. That way you never have to look at yourself in the mirror. Easier on the nerves, I guess.”
That did it. If it needed doing at all.
His face purpled magically, his shoulders exploded under the fancy camel hair coat and his right hand shot out like an express train. Across the desk right at my Early Greek profile. But I was w
ay ahead of him.
I sidestepped easily and his knotty fist punched nothing but the atmosphere of the room. The punch had come up from his shoes with all his muscular weight behind it. That threw him off balance without my face to rebound from so that he sprawled heavily across the desk. Off-stride and floundering for a brief instant.
I nudged the inkwell out of his way before he could make a mess of things as he scrambled back to his feet.
I was coming around the desk fast, set to hustle him out the front door when it happened. One of those little things, a pin-point of time that messes up your life and future a helluva lot more than any spilled ink-well could.
A shot crashed out. Just one. As loud and as clear and as sudden as a dinner gong going off in the wilderness. And just as startling.
The glass from the office window split into a thousand flying, falling fragments. And before the last shard of crystal scattered across the floor rug, Mr. Artel had stiffened like a compressed spring, then recoiled slowly to a standing position where he swayed for an instant, staring at me stupidly. Swaying like a drunk at five o’clock in the morning on Times Square. Staring at me as if I’d done him wrong.
Stupefied, I reached out for him. But he pushed my hand away, let out a low moan of something and then hit the floor like a man who was never going to get up again.
To add to the pretty little scene, Betty Heck came bouncing out of the closet like a runaway basketball, screaming at the top of her lungs. Even coming out of all that mountainous fat, the sounds weren’t exactly insulated.
Her, I did reach. And fast. I swung her around, flicked a palm across her plump face. Her voice choked off on a moan but her eyes goggled down at the last of Mr. Artel.
I got back to him almost reflexively. Any ideas of First Aid were out. I could see that. I stared down at the ugly, widening stain in the upper part of his coat for a long time. Right through the heart. A dead shot.
Betty Heck’s shocked voice quavered out ridiculously small and piping behind me.
“Is he–is he–?”
“He is,” I said wearily, getting to my feet. “As is as is can be. Knocked off by an expert. Through my window. High-powered rifle from the looks of it.”
She started to wail all over again.
“I told you there was trouble, Mr. Noon. I told you–”
“You did,” I said icily. “And there is. But stay away from the window, for Pete’s sake. They might have been gunning for you. Or whoever was sitting in the client’s chair. And please don’t get hysterical on me. Because, lady, I need you now. We’re in this thing together, Elizabeth. Right up until the payoff.”
She wrung her fat, sausagey fingers. “Whatta we gonna do? Whatta we gonna do?”
I wiped the perspiration off my forehead.
“When I’ve got that figured out, I’ll let you know. In the meantime, shut up and let me think. Our friend with the rifle might still be hanging around–”
A voice behind us, a very disagreeable voice, said:
“Get ’em up, cowboy. And leave them up. You too, Fatso.”
Without making the mistake of trying to turn around, I got them up. Way up. It looked like the Life And Hard Times of Edward Noon was really off to a flying start.
I turned around slowly. I didn’t exactly know what to expect. It might be the cops but I never believed it for a second. Guys dying right under my nose and dames screaming behind my back had upset my thinking so much I don’t think I could have spelled my own name right then if I’d been asked to.
Betty Heck wasn’t helping any either. She was wailing away in back of me, the original scared Fat Girl and poor Mr. Artel was as stiff as they come on my office floor.
The two guys who had eased into the office quietly didn’t help my frame of mind any. Big, ugly, blue-black .45’s gleamed out of their right hands and if there is any man-made weapon in the United States and the whole of the universe that I have any respect for at all, it is a .45. Especially when it’s pointed at me. Most especially when my own .45 is still on my desk practically miles away from my shooting hand.
I managed a sigh. I was one up on them. I knew they weren’t cops. That was one point in my favor. But that still gave them a .44 point edge.
They couldn’t be cops because one of them was a hammered down five feet wall of flesh with two distinguishing features. A face that was a puffy mask of scar tissue and the aforementioned .45. His partner wasn’t much prettier but he was a head taller and slightly less ex-pug in looks.
I found my voice somewhere between Betty Heck’s damn blubbering and wailing.
“House rules, men,” I said. “You have to check those things on the way in. Guns make me nervous and you can see what it’s doing to the lady here. I promise you’ll get them back on your way out.”
“Dry up,” rasped the midget who would never have made the required height for a policeman. That was all he was telling me. He was only telling me once. His rasp had told me that much.
He stepped around me swiftly for his bulk, his hand flashing. Betty Heck stopped wailing on a meaty thuck of sound. “Pipe down, Fatso. Nobody’ll get hurt if you pipe down.”
I liked the sense this made and decided to let them lead off the conversation.
The taller one of the two had made a somewhat satisfied survey of the dead Mr. Artel, turning him over on his side with one indelicate shoe tip.
“Is he dead?” The shorter one had moved back to his partner’s side, flinging a look down to the floor. Then his eyes came up on me again. He had slits for eyes with lumps of scar tissue surrounding.
“The worms have got him already, Bucky,” Tall Boy said. “He’s out of the picture altogether.”
The news didn’t sadden Bucky at all. A chortle escaped him. Then he jerked a barn-door wide shoulder at Betty Heck and me.
“We’d better settle this, Lon. And fast. We can’t afford to get mixed up with this kill.”
“You’re right, Bucko.” The taller Lon re-aimed his .45 at my stomach about three buttons up from my belt buckle. “Know what a slug from this cannon would do to your insides at this distance?”
“Grand Central Station,” I suggested. “And just as noisy.”
That made him smile. But he wasn’t really amused. The smile washed off.
“Artel give you anything, buddy? Anything at all?”
I shook my head which was some trick because my upraised arms were beginning to get heavier than derricks.
“Not even the right time. I just met the man. Fact is, if you were to leave right now with me holding his corpse in my lap, I would spend the rest of my life being in the dark about the whole business of his coming here in the first place.”
He didn’t appreciate my remarks at all. His scowl told me so.
“Can it. We tailed Artel here. Fatso got here before him. She must have given you some kind of sales talk.” He repointed the gun for emphasis. “Try again and fly right this time. Killing guys never bothered my sleep at all.”
I smiled thinly. “I’ll take your word for it. Okay. I’ll tell you this much. Miss Heck here hired me for a hundred bucks because she thinks somebody’s trying to put her six feet down in the ground. If you can tie that in with the late Mr. Artel, go right ahead. I’ve got nothing to go on so far and would welcome any suggestions.”
He stared at me because my patter was formal and ridiculous and he didn’t know where the one ended and the other began. Either way, he couldn’t be sure. He ignored me and scowled at Betty Heck.
“Is he giving me straight goods, Fatso?”
She had been moaning silently to herself, fretting her fat, worrying about everything. But Lon’s suddenly directed attention on her made her nearly bounce a foot. She shivered fearfully and rolls of fat undulated under her light, silken dress. But nothing came out of her mouth except moans of affirmation about the honesty of one Ed Noon.
Lon grunted sarcastically and got back to me again.
“What about Fatso here? Artel give
her anything?”
“Not from where I sat. Why don’t you ask her yourself?”
“Why don’t you stop cracking wise, big mouth?” Bucky growled, his slitted eyes pouring fire out at me.
I stopped cracking wise. Taking guys bigger than himself apart would be a pet pastime with the Buckys of the world. Psychologically, it figured.
Lon grinned again, his eyes re-settling on Betty Heck. I could see what his pet parlor game was. Frightening the ladies. The fatter the better. My fingers itched to close around the .45 lying on my desk.
“Listen, Fatso,” Lon grated. “You worked for the clothes-horse on the floor. I know you. Artel was goofing on my Boss in a two-way deal. If you know anything about it at all, you’ll save yourself a going over.”
That was the topper in a day of bad scares for Betty Heck. What she knew or didn’t know about Mr. Artel was never going to come out at this meeting. Things had just piled up too fast for her. All four hundred and forty pounds of her was quivering on the hook. Like two enormous sides of ham swaying in a fast-moving delivery truck. She was J-E-L-L-O. Her thick tongue was fighting to climb out of her mouth and even though I couldn’t see it in her huge throat, I knew her Adam’s apple was going up and down like a yo-yo.
“I–I–” she blubbered. “He–he–” It was pitiful. I felt my gorge get up off its backside.
“Come on, lady,” Lon snapped. “We ain’t got all day. We’ll beat it out of you.”
“Well, you–I–” She couldn’t help it really. Fear had paralyzed her vocal cords.
Lon moved in closer to her, the .45’s nose raised club-fashioned. “Look, what did you and Artel want a private cop for? Was Artel trying to throw a monkey into Bim Caesar’s set-up? Was that it? You’ll tell us or you’re going to get awfully hurt.”
Betty Heck’s fat cheeks puffed out. Her eyes appealed to me. She wanted desperately to tell him something, anything as far as I could see, but nothing would come out. Try as she might, she couldn’t break through the sound barrier that fear had set up in her throat.
Bucky made a disgusting noise in his chest, rumbled noisily, reversed his .45 in his big fist and bounded agilely toward her. He grabbed one of her arms and looked back at Lon like somebody’s pet ape.
The Case of the Bouncing Betty Page 2
