“Great suffering toads,” I remarked to myself.
Because I had left my hat in Flato’s apartment, on the first ledge of shelves in his food closet.
And I would now be forced to return and retrieve it.
I was on my way to the saloon door when a voice was raised at me.
“Conker!”
He sat in the corner, almost completely hidden from view by the wall of the booth. He raised his glass at me unsteadily and said what he thought was my name again. I stepped in closer for a better look at him and he began to laugh in the silly, unmirthful way a drunk enjoys himself.
“Conker!” he said again. “Don’t remember me?”
Then I remembered him. Clearly.
“Haddon,” I said. “Arthur Haddon, isn’t it?”
“On the nose, Conker. See? I remembered your name! Bright of me?”
“Conacher,” I told him.
“What I said,” he burbled, “Conker. Sit. Have one on me. Good boy. What is it? Scotch? Bourbon? Bloody girls? Martini? Name it.”
“Scotch. On the rocks.”
“Figures.” He shouted an order to the bartender. “Know something? Interesting theory I developed about men and drinks. Man gives himself away with his brand. Right? Tabbed you for Scotch right away. Interesting? I’m a Scotch man myself, Conker. Something about the affinity of certain alcoholic beverages for personalities. Bourbon man just isn’t a Scotch man. Martini man is something else again. Prissy? Lice, would you say? But we Scotch characters—”
I let Haddon run off at the mouth because I felt sorry for him. Men like Arthur Haddon sit on the brink of infinity. His was a giant name not too long ago when television was having its birth pains. He directed some of the big early shows, made good in pioneering the medium. He had talent, imagination and drive. And you needed the drive in the lusty, neurotic industry. He had hit the top, earned peak credits and peak money not too long ago. But when the advertising agencies took over, the great purge of the old warriors took place. The agency experts analyzed and probed the chores of the director. A man had to be young and clever. A man had to be strong and fresh. The rigors of putting together a show would kill all the older boys, ancient big shots like Arthur Haddon who had passed to the hoary side of forty. Talent or not, genius or not, the jobs were taken from them and handed to the shiny-eyed youngsters out of Princeton and Harvard and Yale and other institutions of that ilk. The career of Arthur Haddon was cut short in its prime. And to make it worse, he was retained by his network to sit at a desk and eat his heart out watching the young amateurs ruin some of the shows he had created.
And that was where I had met Arthur Haddon, at a desk outside the office of Oliver Silverton. He held a nonsensical job, a crumb of a job, a job worthy of any minor idiot in the building. He was in charge of unsolicited manuscripts. He spent monotonous days reading fantastic show ideas sent in by people who believed they had something to offer. He had shown me samples of the mail; weird suggestions for the medium, specialty shows for midgets and cripples, mad ideas for half-hour dramatics, impossible quiz show projects. And while he talked to me he sipped steadily from a bottle hidden in his desk. The interview with Silverton concerning Mari Barstow had been postponed a few minutes, because he told me at the outset that he knew her.
I took another stab at it now.
“I saw your friend Jan Flato the other day,” I said.
“Friend?” Haddon’s face soured on the word. He rolled the hooker of Scotch in his nervous fingers. “My friend? Flato? He was my office boy, know that? Hell, after Korea the crud hit me for a job. Had him running errands. Look at him now. My friend? Don’t make me laugh.”
I didn’t make him laugh, but he began to laugh on his own, a hysterical surge of hoarse guffawing probably inspired by some quick and drunken memory.
“Friend?” he wheezed. “There are no friends in the goddamned television business, Connick. Bunch of professional neurotics, brown-nosers, phonies, turds. But friends? Listen, a plumber has friends. A baker has friends. There are no friends in the competitive arts. Hear me? The truth, Conker. I hate them all, every one of the young, squirming, adolescent, crew-cut nobodies; the lousy, maggot-ridden, beat-generation lice. Direct? They couldn’t direct you to the little boys’ room. And that goes for the little jerk with the king-sized moustache, Flato. Mediocre. A nothing. And certainly no friend of mine. Imagine a small-time heel like Flato refusing to see me? Didn’t answer the phone just now.”
“He probably had a date for dinner. I hear he’s quite a devil with the girls. They tell me he’s making a big pitch for Mari Barstow.”
“Who? Say it again.”
“Mari Barstow.”
“Nonsensical idea. Mari? Crazy.” He put the glass down and shook a bit, moved again by an inner disturbance. He searched for something in the tablecloth design, blinking and frowning at it. “What a girl, that. But not for Flato, for God’s sake. Not for Flato.”
“Then the story’s wrong?” I asked. “She and Flato aren’t going around together?”
“Mari? She’s too busy going around with herself. Strange thought. Strange girl. Met her at Silverton’s party on Fire Island. Ever see her? Ever see her face? Her figure? Enough to drive a man insane, Conker. Lives on her neurotic drives. A tease. A nympho maybe. Listen, whatever she is, it couldn’t add up to Flato.”
“Have you seen her lately?”
“Not for me,” he laughed sadly. “I’m not big enough. Had a small investment in her, but that was for the birds.”
“Investment?”
“A few hours. A fantasy. Have another drink, Connick?”
“Not now, thanks. I’ve got to be on my way.”
“Drop by again. At my office, I mean. Any time.”
“Good night, Haddon.”
I detoured back along the row of brownstones, wondering whether Flato had already left for his date. I had been with Haddon for almost a half-hour, seduced by his interesting talk about the television world. It might pay off for me to see him again, and soon. He might know much about Mari Barstow.
Nobody saw me duck into the narrow alley and make my way back to the tiny terrace behind Jan Flato’s living room. Here the darkness seemed deeper, the yard a box of heavy shadows except for the small block of light from his living room. I hesitated before trying the door. The Venetian blinds were drawn tight, but by kneeling to the lowest slat I could see a part of the floor.
And what I saw made me jump.
There was a girl on the floor.
She lay on her side, her head away from me, her face completely hidden. From my angle the perspective was forced, but the view of her behind told me much about the rest of her figure. Her skirt had pulled up above her thighs. She had good legs.
I kneeled there like a fool, listening for everything and nothing. Above me in some distant apartment, a baby squealed and gurgled. Somebody laughed. An animal tinned a noise on the forage for garbage. It occurred to me that I was listening for an interior sound, something that might tell me Flato was in there with her. It occurred to me that my logic was ridiculous. Would Flato allow girls to lie around on his living-room floor?
I went in quietly and leaned over her, felt her pulse and found her alive and as shapely as I imagined she would be. Up close, there was the smell of liquor on her, too heavy to be the result of casual drinking.
Her face seemed vaguely familiar. An actress? A celebrity of some sort? I guessed her to be in her early twenties. She had russet hair, cut short in the popular Italian style. Her features were delicate, her nose pert, her lips fresh and unpainted. She wore a simple outfit, a black sweater and tweed skirt. She had a fine figure.
I picked up the small black bag near her.
Linda Karig. Her driver’s license gave her address as East 65th Street. That would place her within a quick walk of this apartment. Her bag held the u
sual amount of feminine folderol; a cosmetic bundle, a change purse, cigarettes, matches. I dumped it all back into the bag and shook her gently.
She came awake in an offbeat way. No cliché remarks. No great surprise. Instead, she pulled back and away from me, squinting at me through alcoholic eyes, trying to bring me into focus. It was a shame to soup up those eyes. They were startlingly beautiful; cat’s eyes, a light gray, soft and girlish. She raised a hand to her mouth as reality swept over her.
“Easy,” I said. “Take it easy.”
“Good God,” she said. “I must have fainted. After I came out of there.”
“Out of where?”
“There.” She gestured weakly toward the hall. “In the bedroom. Haven’t you seen?”
“Show me,” I said.
“Please, no. I couldn’t.”
“Then tell me.”
“Jan. He’s been hurt.”
I stepped away from her and went into Jan Flato’s bedroom. He was on the floor, his face down on the rug. The pose was ridiculous, like a man about to do his evening pushups, like a drunk asleep after a drink too many. The trouble was that he could neither be drunk nor athletic, not with the terrible crimson stain on his back. He had been knifed from behind, a vicious stab that must have leveled him before he could turn to face his assailant. His undershirt was bathed in blood. He was dead.
Linda was on her feet when I returned to the living room. She puffed nervously on a cigarette, giving me the full strength of her troubled eyes.
“No,” she whispered. “He isn’t dead?”
When I nodded she seemed to wilt and stumble and I went to her and held her erect, not wanting her to faint again. She clung to me. She was shaking with shock, fighting to stay with me, “Not dead. Not dead,” she mumbled over and over.
I got her a shot of bourbon from the trick bar in the corner. She took it hungrily, downing it with a masculine gulp and taking a second.
I said, “Go into the john and douse your face with some cold water, Linda.”
“My name,” she whispered. “How in hell do you know my name?”
“Later. First, the cold water.”
“Now,” she said stubbornly, still clinging to me, her icy hand on mine. “Who are you?”
“Don’t fight me,” I told her. “Fainting women give me a feeling of inadequacy. You look pale enough to play Camille.”
“Funny idea.” She marched unsteadily to the bathroom. It gave me time to grab my hat out of Flato’s food closet.
She returned looking much better—fresher, brighter. She had a simple kind of beauty; a good face, pure oval and unvarnished with make-up. There was still the feeling of looseness in her, enough to move her unsteadily. I wondered how she would be sober.
“Feel better?” I asked.
“I’ll never be the same,” she shuddered. “Not after seeing him in there—”
“You know what comes next?”
“Games?” she smiled. “You play games?”
“Not with a dead body around, Linda. I’ve got to phone this in to the police.”
“You mustn’t.” She was at my arm, holding it away from the phone desperately. She was still drunk enough to lay into me with dramatic abandon, letting me feel her soft curves and animal warmth. “You don’t think I killed him, for God’s sake?”
“It doesn’t matter what I think, Linda.”
“There you go again. My name. How on earth do you know it?”
“My business,” I said.
“Business?”
“I’m a detective,” I said. “My name is Steve Conacher and I’m in the skip-trace business, which means I find missing people for other people who don’t want them missing.”
“You’re a friend of Jan’s, then?”
“Not quite. I was investigating Jan Flato.”
“But why?”
“I’m looking for Mari Barstow.”
“No.” The name provoked her into a fresh reaction, half surprise, half amusement. “You didn’t expect Jan to tell you where Mari is?”
“Then you know Mari?”
“We’re old friends.”
“Sister, you’re in real trouble.”
“Because I know Mari?”
“Because you’re here, now, after fainting away, after discovering Flato dead in his bedroom. You’re a big girl. You’d better have a solid story for the police.”
I was still standing there with one hand on the phone and the other hand inactive at my side, because she leaned into me and clutched my wrist, holding me away from the telephone.
“Please,” she begged. “Will you listen to me, Conacher? A thing like this could ruin me. Completely, do you understand? Do you know why? I’ll tell you why. I’m an actress. God, it’s tough enough to get good work these days with some of the vermin television producers. I’ve only just begun to make progress. I’ve played second lead on several big shows. I’ve worked hard. I’ve earned good reviews. Some of them tell me that I haven’t far to go before making it. I mean, even in the movies. Can you see how a scandal like this could ruin me? Just because I happened to have a date with Jan tonight. That’s the truth, but the police will never believe it.”
“When did you make that date with Flato?”
“Yesterday.” Her voice was coming apart, cracking. She trembled, so violently that Ï thought she might pass out again. “Must we talk here?” she whispered. “Can’t we leave?”
“Not until I call this in to the police.” What she did next couldn’t have been acting. She sank to her knees and buried her head in her hands and just kneeled there, not weeping, not saying a word, her body completely lost in her agony. She remained that way while I dialed the number, and looking at her I felt suddenly sorry for her. She had been trapped in a situation completely out of her control, a foolish girl on a date to make time with a television director. The situation didn’t add up. If she had knifed him, she would be another girl, a girl with enough intestinal fortitude to carry her away from the scene of the crime without collapsing in a silly faint. If she had knifed him, would she be kneeling at my side now, waiting for the police to come and take her?
Then the voice of the desk sergeant was greeting me.
And I was saying: “Police? I want to report a murder.” I gave them the Sixty-Fourth Street address. “Never mind my name.”
And I was helping her to her feet.
“Let’s get out of here, Linda. We’ve got some talking to do.”
“You’re a good man, Conacher,” she said. “This means a lot to me.”
“It means plenty to me, too,” I told her. “It means that I’m breaking the law. It also means that I’ll lose my license if the city police ever find out about this.”
In Linda’s apartment she went at once to her kitchen and emerged with a bottle and two glasses, her own already filled and sipped.
“Drink, Conacher’?”
“You could do with some coffee.”
“Don’t preach, for God’s sake.”
“Put down the liquor, Linda.”
“And don’t order me around.”
“No liquor,” I said and took the glass out of her hand. “I can’t use you drunk.”
“My, my, my. You are the strong type, aren’t you?”
“Not really. Not any more than you’re the weak type. Forget about drinking for a while. We’ve got talking to do.”
“Sane and sensible,” she said, sitting beside me on the broad studio couch. Anxiety was beginning to shake her again. Something resembling color had crept into her cheeks, but nothing permanent, nothing healthy. She was much too pretty for dipsomania, just about the prettiest lady drinker I ever saw. She had intelligent eyes and she tried to use them with some purpose now, staring at me, appraising me. “You’ve been very good to me, Conacher. Very sweet. But I r
eally don’t have to answer your questions now. Not anymore.”
“Muddy thinking,” I said. “You’re all wrong, Linda.”
“What can happen? You’re the only one who saw me at Jan’s. It would be your word against mine.”
“You’ve been reading too many bad television scripts. There are certain rules in my business, hard and fast rules. One of the most important ones is this: I must cooperate with the police at all, times. Sound funny? That’s because the fictional detective is always battling it out with some iron-jawed police chief, fighting to prove the cops a bunch of morons. Nothing could be further from the truth. The top man down at headquarters is Dave Cushing, a very clever detective and a good friend of mine. I’ve known Dave Gushing for years because I’ve been in business for years. He knows me as a respectable business man who happens to operate in his line of work. Dave Gushing and I have gone to police benefits, civic lectures and Yankee ball games together. I want you to understand the relationship. Dave Cushing has lots of respect for my opinions, and he certainly would never question my good faith in a thing of this sort. He will be glad to use any information I may offer him. You can imagine how happy he’d be if I phone, him and tell him I happened to find a girl in Flato’s place. He’ll pick you up and sweat you out under the lights down there.”
I prolonged the monologue, watching her closely, aware that she was going through a basic struggle with herself, her eyes alive with fright. She had intended to outsmart me, to walk away from the mess quickly and easily. She had assumed that her fantasies concerning crime were cunning and clever. And now the thin wall of confidence began to crack. She collapsed in tears, a lonely little girl again.
“I’d better call Dave Cushing,” I said.
“Please, Conacher.”
“Why should I go out on a limb for you, Linda?”
“Do you think I killed Jan Flato?”
“I don’t want to think it.”
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