The Case of the Bouncing Betty

by Michael Avallone

  I couldn’t help myself. I laughed. “Better hurry, pal. The lady here isn’t long on patience.”

  That moved him more than my gun. Seconds later, a cab swished up to the entrance like a launch washing up to the beach. I had pocketed my gun by that time only allowing the doorman to see the bulge of my hand on it in my pocket.

  “Turn around and face the club,” I hissed. “We’re not playing License Plates today. Turn I said.”

  His back was still turned to us as I pushed Betty Heck into the cab ahead of me and plopped in next to her. I tapped the driver on the shoulder.

  “Just get going. I’ll give you an address later.”

  Betty Heck was having a hard time catching her breath. The mass of flesh beside me was heaving and rolling with her wheezy breathing as the cab sloshed away from the curb fanning out water like a speedboat. It was still raining.

  I dug out my cigarettes and leaned back against my seat. My breath was coming hard too. The blood inside me hadn’t settled down either.

  I looked at her snub-nosed profile and the crazy curls dangling over her wide forehead.

  “Sister,” I said. “You should have been with the U.S. Army on Normandy Beach. That war wouldn’t have lasted two weeks.”

  Her head turned and her tiny eyes shone like marbles in her agitated face.

  “Noon, I love you. You’re a real man but–whatta we gonna do now? I’m scared I tell you. I don’t understand all this–”

  I lit a Camel and puffed on it. It felt delicious.

  “We drive around while you tell me all about you and Artel and Sleep-Tite. With all the trouble that’s been going on, it’s got to be more than mattresses. Or vases. Play ball with me and I’ll see you through this, Heck.”

  She started to twist her fat hands out of shape.

  “I wish I knew. I don’t understand. Why would anybody want to kill me? Why would anybody want to kill Mr. Artel? I just don’t understand any of it, Noon. It doesn’t make sense.”

  I looked at my cigarette. Then I looked at her. “Where did you say Sleep-Tite was located?”

  Her eyebrows went up. “Fortieth. Between Lexington and Park. Why?”

  “You got a key?”

  She nodded but her eyebrows still hadn’t gone down.

  “Good. It’ll work both ways. We can talk there and I can look around.”

  “But won’t it be dangerous? With all this stuff that’s been going on–”

  “I haven’t got any better ideas. I’m tired, I’m hungry, and I’ve had enough shooting for one night. I want to go back to being a scientific detective. Believe me, it’s better this way. Saves a lot of wear and tear on the chin.”

  She smiled. “You’re the detective.”

  “That I am,” I said. I leaned over and gave the driver the address. He grunted and swung his cab north at the next intersection.

  But it was just one of those days on my calendar when everything happens and nothing makes sense. When everything has a reason for happening but you don’t know what it is, where everything makes sense really but you don’t know what that sense is so it all seems like so much nonsense. Like people getting killed and fat frightened dames who mop up like Sherman tanks but still insist they’re terrified little girls deep down where it counts. Or like big gangsters who collect fancy, high-priced vases in between cutting throats. Yes, it was one of those kinds of days.

  I say that because when we reached Fortieth Street, we had to fight our way past blocks full of fire engines and fire-fighting hoses laid out like huge, ugly snakes waiting to strike. I stared out into the rain so hard my eyes hurt.

  Clouds of smoke, black, filthy smoke, were pouring out of a building buried in the very middle of the block. A mammoth flicker of red, hungry fire hung behind it. licking out at the night and the sky with frightening regularity. And the streets were alive with running, busy, rubberized men in those comical pointed hats with tails that so clearly stamp firemen.

  The driver flung a surprised look back at us. “This the address, buddy?”

  I didn’t have to hear Betty Heck’s choked moan to corroborate my doubts. I didn’t have any. We were on Fortieth Street. Between Lexington and Park.

  And the firm of Sleep-Tite was going up in smoke. Mattresses and all.

  Mattresses and what else?

  I looked at Betty Heck and sighed. I was fresh out of ideas and inspiration.

  “Well, I guess that’s all for tonight. Unless you got some marshmallows you’d like to toast–”

  Some joke. Rain or no rain, the fire had gotten a good head start now. A skyfull of red flames licked up into space hungrily. But Betty Heck wasn’t listening. Her fat flushed face was pressed against the window of the cab and one puffy hand was tugging excitedly at yards of my coatsleeve.

  “Noon!” she bellowed. “Wait a minute! There’s Lois–I’ll be damned! Lois Hunt!” Before I could even hear half of it, she had the car door open and was leaning out, yelling into the smoke and rain and confusion like a bull moose calling for its mate. “HEY LOIS! OVER HERE! LOIS–”

  The cab driver and I just exchanged glances as men will in times like that. I shrugged and lit another cigarette. Sleep-Tite had been my last trick in today’s bag and that one was burning away right in front of my eyes so I did care one way or another about Betty Heck pursuing her own social life.

  I started caring right away. There was a commotion at the cab door and Betty Heck huffed and puffed away from me and a very nice arrangement of arms, head and legs fell in between us. The car door slammed and Betty Heck screamed at the cab driver to get moving. With an injured air, masked by a weak grin, he did. The cab eased into gear and headed out the way we had come, past the long line of snake-like fire equipment, red trucks and red, running men.

  I smelled Lois Hunt before I got a good look at her. It was a nice smell. Freshly watered flowers mixed in with rainwater and three parts of her own personal perfume. I craned for a look at her but she and Betty Heck were jabbering away at each other like a pair of monkeys.

  She was a brunette. Real brunette with a perfectly moulded profile that was accentuated by one of those crazy pony tail hairdos. I decided that on her it looked good. I didn’t have to see the hip that was pressed into my side to know that she was also a generously stacked young lady.

  But she had a mouth like a trip-hammer and right now she and my fat client were going at it like a pair of rival criminal lawyers. They were yammering away to raise the roof right off the cab when I cut in:

  “Stop! Time! Down, girls. Hold your horses for Pete’s sake and give a guy a break. You two sound like a boiler factory–”

  I suddenly got a full face view of Miss Lois Hunt. Her nose looked just as exquisite from the front and her red mouth could have been a shade fuller. But there was nothing wrong with her eyes. They were sea green but they were seeing red right now.

  “Who the hell are you, honey?” she wanted to know. “Me and my friend here are having a discussion.”

  I smiled sweetly. “You’ll discussion yourself right into the lock-up at that tone of voice. Look, Miss Hunt, I’d like to ask you a couple of questions–”

  The pony tail swished as she swung around toward Betty Heck.

  “Say, Betty, who the hell is this guy? Your boy friend or something?”

  Betty laughed nervously. “That’s Ed Noon. I hired him to look out for me. You know–like I told you–” She paused helplessly. I didn’t get it.

  Lois Hunt snorted and threw her head back. “Betty, you’re kidding! These things only happen in the movies–”

  I decided to take charge. I don’t like hen parties. What man does?

  “Look, Miss Hunt. I’m all out of popcorn and I’m not waiting around for the cartoon. So shut up and listen. Somebody’s tried to lower the bridge on your girl friend three times already. Her boss got killed this morning and now his place is burning down into a lot of toothpicks. So stop struggling and answer a few questions. Or don’t you want to co-oper
ate?”

  She didn’t want to do anything except cry. One minute she was staring back at me defiantly, the next, her eyes filled with tears and her head fell forward into her hands. They were strong and capable looking hands but her shoulders started to heave like a kid’s when he can’t go to the ball game.

  I looked unbelievingly at the mountainous Betty Heck looming large beyond her. I was non-plussed. Betty’s fat face was puckered sympathetically.

  “I should have told you, Noon. Mr. Artel and Lois were gonna get married in a couple months. I didn’t know if she knew or not–aw, honey–” She paused to throw an arm as big as an ironing board around the crying girl next to her.

  When I don’t know what to say or do, I smoke. A lot. I chain-lit one to the one in my mouth. Miss Hunt’s sobbing upset me even though I didn’t care if she lived or died as little as ten minutes ago. I took to watching the street lights whizzing by. When women are crying and you can’t comfort them, there’s nothing left to do but twiddle your thumbs. There was some solace in the street signs. We were heading downtown and the rain was gradually letting up.

  I was halfway through the cigarette when some sanity was restored to our little group.

  “Got another cigarette, mister?” Lois Hunt’s eyes were red from crying but the ball of her chin was tilted proudly. I gave her one. She let me light it for her.

  “How did he die?” she asked suddenly but she was staring straight ahead.

  “Not nice,” I said. “But swift and neat. Shot with a rifle from outside my office. But we can skip the discussion about it until later. There’s no hurry now.”

  Betty Heck coughed. “We’re goin’ to my place, Noon. We can talk there. I figured your office is no good now–”

  “You figured right. Between the cops and Bim Caesar, we’d never know who’d drop in on us.”

  Nobody talked much after that. Suddenly, the only sound in the world was the dry sobbing of Lois Hunt sitting between me and the heaviest client ever to employ the services of the Noon Private Detective Agency. I felt uncomfortable and tired. But pretty soon the uncomfortable feeling was replaced by one of relaxation. The interior of the cab was dry and warm.

  Minutes later, the cab braked to a halt just beyond Washington Square, on a side street with a row of four story houses framed against the dark sky and the high lights of the Third Avenue El.

  Betty Heck squeezed out of the cab, Lois Hunt followed and I gave the driver a bill and some change. He winked at me sympathetically and I smiled back at him blankly. He had us all figured out. A poor man stuck with two crazy females and not enough men to go around. I let him figure it out that way. Sometimes a cab driver’s life can be pretty dull.

  Lois Hunt had stopped crying. She paused on the stoop winding up to the front door of one of the four story jobs.

  “Gee, Betty. I haven’t been here in years. Still having trouble getting heat–?”

  Betty Heck swore heartily and pretty soon they were both lost in the female side of things. I just tightened my coat around me and tagged along behind. I followed them up the stairs, mulling things over in my head. I had a lot of questions to ask the Hunt girl. One of them had to do with her knowledge of her future husband-to-be, Artel. Now the husband-never-to-be. The other had to do with Fires, Their Causes and Conditions. And just how in hell she happened to be in the neighborhood when Sleep-Tite went up in smoke.

  I should have guessed at least part of it. Going up the stairs toward the Heck domicile, it leaked out. Miss Hunt had been the bookkeeper for Sleep-Tite.

  Bookkeeper. Keeper of the company records. Records, maybe, better not looked at. That was one good reason to have a fire.

  I made up my mind to tackle it from that point as soon as we settled down upstairs. The Heck-Artel-Caesar-Sleep-Tite fiasco was getting more puzzling by the second.

  “Boy,” Betty Heck puffed. “Home at last. This is it, Noon.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Betty Heck’s apartment was an eye-opener. She might have been the fattest thing in skirts, she was certainly not the daintiest dame alive and she would have had every reason in the world not to care too much about the things around her but for the record, the Heck haunt was the neatest, cleanest, freshest three-room affair I’ve ever been invited into, broken into or been thrown out of.

  I couldn’t repress my amazement. I guess it shone in my eyes. Because Betty Heck grinned at me as she hung up our wet things in the bathroom.

  “Not what you expected, eh, Noon? I dunno. For some reason, everyone expects fat people to be sloppy. Maybe I’m sick of that notion, maybe that’s why I take extra special care of the place–”

  She did. Like I say it was only three rooms, not small either, but every bit of white was spotless, the curtains were stiff with cleanliness and I would have been hard put to detect dust under, over or on anything. The decor was simple but nice. Neat end tables, an orderly book cabinet, a colorful antique secretary and all the tiny vases and ash trays and junk like that showed signs of loving care in their arrangement around the place. Betty Heck put Bim Caesar to shame in the interior decoration department.

  I smiled to make up for my obvious surprise. “Better Homes And Gardens, I salute you.”

  Lois Hunt laughed and settled down on the red velvet lounge with an ease that seemed customary with her.

  “Betty’s the cleanest gal I’ve ever met. And believe me, I roomed with some prime slobs in my time. All the way back to college.”

  I nodded to show I was listening and took a deep chair near a good lamp. I had sized up Lois Hunt as best I could. She got over things easily was one conclusion. Another was that her love affair with Artel might have been just that. From what I remembered of him before he died, he looked like a wolf to me. I hadn’t figured him for the marrying kind. Although even wolves get tired of running. Watching Lois Hunt up close in a good light, I could see where a wolf might slow himself down just enough to get caught. She was built to break a man’s resistance down.

  “How’s the coffee in this restaurant, Betty?” I asked.

  “Just going to make some, Noon. We could use it after what we been through.” She bounced toward the kitchenette. “You two can get acquainted while I burn some water.” She disappeared from sight. As tiny as the kitchenette was, it worked the miracle of hiding her from sight.

  Lois Hunt stared across the room at me from the depths of the lounge.

  “Hi, Noon.”

  I faked a pained look. “Everybody pulls that one on me since Gary Cooper won the Academy Award. I can think of a lot of jokes about the name Hunt. Want me to try or are you all right for questions now?”

  She shrugged but something flashed in the sea green eyes.

  “Ask away, honey. Questions never killed anybody. I don’t have to answer them either, if I don’t want to.”

  “That’s true. But you can appreciate what answers, the right answers particularly, mean to a guy in my line of business.”

  She smiled. It made her mouth look thinner.

  “Go ahead. Try me.”

  “Good.” I took a deep breath. “How long did you work for Sleep-Tite?”

  “Three years. Connected with them as soon as I came to New York. Detroit’s my home town. But I don’t like Detroit. I like New York.”

  “Hooray for our town. Sleep-Tite’s been a pretty successful outfit if I hear that radio commercial right. You got anything to say that’s not so?”

  The smile she gave me was frosty. “I only keep the books, Mister Noon. I don’t sell the mattresses.”

  I matched her smile. “You make entries in the ledger. You know whether they’re red or blue. I know numbers are just numbers to a bookkeeper after a while but red ink isn’t hard to remember.”

  She shrugged. “Business was terrific. The company was expanding.”

  “That takes care of business as usual. Now for the other side of the picture. I hope you don’t mind my asking you this but since you were Mr. Artel’s personal bookkeeper and h
is future wife–did he have any other outside business interests that might interest a guy in my line of business?”

  She suddenly stirred as if I had made a dirty remark. Her eyes flashed.

  “I do mind your asking me, Buster. What the hell are you driving at?”

  “Please, Miss Hunt,” I spread my hands. “I only want to know if he dabbled in oil wells or the stock market or maybe bought rare vases. Or collected coins or postage stamps. I want to know if he bet heavily on the horses or was crazy for poker. Don’t flip. I’m trying to help.”

  She settled back again. “Why?”

  I got to my feet. I can talk better when I’m standing.

  “Look, lady. Your Mr. Artel was mixed up with Bim Caesar in something. In case you don’t know, Bim Caesar is one of the worst crooks this town has ever known. Now I don’t know what that something was. But that something got your man killed. I’m trying to find out what it was. If I find out it was cards or ponies, then I know Bim Caesar is lying and that he killed Artel because of a bad debt or a broken promise. But it doesn’t look like Bim Caesar is lying. Because he didn’t kill Artel and it doesn’t explain away two other things. The attempts to bump off your girl friend Betty and the burning down of Sleep-Tite tonight. And while we’re on the subject–”

  “Don’t ask me,” she snapped.

  “Ask you what?”

  “Don’t ask me what I happened to be doing in the neighborhood tonight. You’ll never believe me.”

  I smiled tightly. “Try me.”

  She took her time digging into her purse and popping a corktipped cigarette into her mouth. I watched her light it up methodically. Then her eyes came back to mine. Her sea-green stare was level.

  “I got a phone call from Bart telling me to meet him in front of the building. He said it was important.”

  That one caught me off base. “Bart? Who’s Bart?”

  Her return grin was cold. “Bartholomew Artel–remember?”

  Almost reflexively, my glance went to my watch. “What time was that?”