Violence in Velvet

by Michael Avallone

  Something was rotten about the whole thing. But it was close to three o’clock in the morning and my head was in no mood for Holmes-work. I finished my drink.

  “The cops will love this one when they come up with Mr. Breen in their routine investigation, Wally, Everybody has a motive for killing Paula Prentice. Guy, Helen. Even poor Little Lulu. And—”

  “Me, Noon?”

  “You, Wilder. Don’t be offended. The best way to stay alive on murder cases is to trust nobody, suspect everybody, and look out for Number One.”

  He got up and rubbed his chin. He stared down at me, his blue eyes suddenly no longer bright and babyish. And he looked bigger than an apartment house building.

  “See you around, Noon. It’s been fun.”

  “Hasn’t it?” I agreed.

  I watched his broad back recede from the bar. Benny watched with me. Then I helped him lock up before I stumbled across the street and up the stairs into the mouse auditorium.

  The ride up in the self-service elevator almost put me to sleep. But the mild jolt of the car on my floor, the third, snapped me back from oblivion. I stepped through the sliding doors, moving like a man in a dream.

  No man in a dream has ever been roused so brutally.

  I was four steps out of the car, digging for my office keys, when they rushed me. I never knew what hit me. In the shape I was, I didn’t have a chance.

  Four strong arms enveloped me like so many octupi and somebody fanned a funny-smelling cloth right over my mouth and pinned it. Chloroform.

  I got panicky. My heart tried to climb up out of my chest—I tried to yell. I couldn’t. I was half-dragged, half-carried down the length of the hallway.

  The way my head was being held back all I got was a beautiful view of the hall ceiling and the cracked plaster and the dismal bulbs that were all over the place.

  I tried to brake my feet, halt my forward momentum, but the chloroform was taking hold. I felt myself going. I struggled. Grunts and hoarse intakes of breath were all I ever earned from my unknown acquaintances. But they knew what they were doing.

  We reached the end of the hall and just one of the arms left me. It was exactly at that instant that I heard the most terrifying noise of my crowded lifetime.

  The window which I knew was at that end of the hall slid upwards with a cold, sliding, grating sound. The night air fanned in at me suddenly, whipping my clothes with a dread newness. A real scary change from the comparative mugginess of the narrow corridor.

  My head roared with chloroform noise and purple chloroform sounds. Everything inside was exploding.

  And then the four arms pushed. Pushed and shoved and I was suddenly free of them. Really free.

  I fell into the night, the neon heavens of New York City giving me the red light into hell.

  FIFTEEN

  Tiger woke me up. Tiger licking my face, Tiger’s red-hot tongue lapping at my cheekbone like I was so much spilled milk. I felt like so much spilled milk. That isn’t right either. I didn’t really feel anything at all. Except Tiger’s tongue and Tiger’s furry body nuzzling against my face, her feline insides purring like a time bomb.

  My view of the sky was limited. I was a face staring up at an inky black night from what seemed like a worm’s-eye view. I fought for clarity, tried to get my bearings. Tried to remember where I was and what had happened. But I couldn’t. There was only darkness and a stinking smell like a back alley and the warm body of Tiger.

  Tiger. Good old Tiger. The large gray stray that hung around the building. The cat that nobody wanted but nobody minded. Good old Tiger, I thought crazily. Somehow it felt better because Tiger was there with me. Wherever it was, wherever it might be. I had to be close to home, to friends, if Tiger was there. I closed my eyes, spinning away on a dizzy turntable of pounding pain. The night closed in again.

  The first five fingers of dawn were poking around upstairs when I came to. Tiger was gone. My mind reeled. I tried to latch onto something, grab hold of some straw to fight my way back with. I wasn’t dead. Or was I? And did a private eye go to heaven even if he thought he was a Robin Hood in a plain blue suit with a matching Colt .45?

  My eyes worked rapidly. Thick walls of confusion in my skull gave a little bit. I relaxed and tried to concentrate on what I was seeing. And smelling.

  An odor of garbage pails and unclean ground hit me on all sides. Heaven couldn’t smell like this. If it did, the ad men were all wet. And it wasn’t Fire and Brimstone Number Five either. It was plain old New York stink and smell. I felt like shouting, even if I couldn’t. It was good to be alive.

  A length of broken clothesline danced above me. Somebody’s undershirt, a towel and two pairs of socks lynched in the breeze. I moved my head a little. The high walls of surrounding buildings fenced me on all sides. I tried to remember a familiar brick or window but I couldn’t.

  I tried to get up. A stabbing spear of white-hot agony knifed up my left leg and exploded in my side. I could feel the tears spring to my eyes, heard the involuntary yelp of pain that squeezed out of my dry throat. I cursed. I cursed because I always do when I think I’m acting like a baby. Big tough me.

  Minutes later, it seemed like hours, somebody turned his radio on. At that time of day, even a low-tuned set can sound pretty loud. The strains filtered down to me where I was, buried in some crummy-smelling back alley, and I knew where I was for the first time.

  “… the most beautiful girl in the world … isn’t Garbo … isn’t Dietrich … just that sweet trick…”

  It sounded to me just then like the Star-Spangled Banner. I knew the radio and who it belonged to. Alec St. Peter, the vet without hands, whose office was just down the hall from mine. Alec, a nice young handicapped kid, who ran a watch repair business all by his lonesome because he had brains, moxie and plain old everyday intestinal fortitude to make a go of it. I’d always liked Alec. Right now, his radio sounded like it was calling me back from the grave.

  Watches. I stared down at mine. The crystal was gone now and the minute and hour hands had jammed in a fixed position at 3:05. Some of the past came back with a noisy bang.

  The two-man rush in the hallway, the chloroform and the deep six out of the third-floor back window that hadn’t been my idea. And the chloroform. I tongued my lips gently. They were cracked and split. It figured. Chloroform applied raw is strong medicine.

  Pride. I was too ashamed to call Alec for help. I felt like a chump. Like a baby who’s lost his candy because he was paying more attention to showing off with it than eating it.

  I tried to raise myself to one knee. The knife up the left leg buried itself in my side again. I bit my cracked lips and stopped only when I tasted some blood. It was going to be rougher than I thought.

  It seemed even lighter now. I could make out the two big metal garbage cans that Olaf the Super was always banging around at one time or another. That and something else.

  One corner of the alley was strewn with about four or five rolled lengths of rug, all thickly corded and banded for the garbage detail. Two were standing as tall as Sequoias against the wall of the alley. The other three were scattered around like a Pick-Up-Sticks game. I measured the distance between them and the window that had let me out of the building.

  Crazy world, isn’t it? I’d never been gaga about Mr. Nakoomian, the rug dealer who made life on our third floor no picnic. The old coot was a crank and a character. But right then and there I was full of love for him. Love for three rugs he had decided to get rid of the day before. Three rugs and a clothesline that had probably broken my fall and saved my worthless neck.

  I inched off the ground and staggered erect. The shooting pains came back again but a little duller this time. Dulled by familiarity. I tried to straighten out. No soap. My left leg just trailed under my hip. I couldn’t put my weight on it. I hopped, one-legged, to the fence that bordered the alley and fell against it. My heart pounded with the effort. I took a breather.

  I flexed my arms, experimented with
my back, fingered my face. So far everything was in working order. There was a mean scratch running down my left cheek that was inlaid with dried blood. But that could wait. I hadn’t broken anything—yet. I tried my left leg again. No good. Not a wiggle in a carload.

  I bent down as far as my cramped insides would allow and rolled up my left trouser leg. I kept on going until I found what I was looking for.

  Just above the kneecap was a bruised lump of flesh that was almost the size of a golf ball. Not bad but not too good either. I tested it gingerly. My fingers might just as well have been so many straight pins. Pain pulled my lips back again, forced out a whimper. I cursed. Harder than before.

  The left knee had taken the worse part of the tumble. As near as I could figure, it was a bad hemorrhage of the blood cells. It might take days to go down. And I had so many things to do.

  I made it out of the alley by hopping and using the walls and my hands to make it easier where I could. I felt like a snail going nowhere. A snail would have made better time at that.

  The building elevator seemed like the gates of paradise when I finally reached it. I puffed inside, wheezing like a dying man. It took all my remaining strength to punch the button that marked off my floor.

  The ride up was intoxication. I closed my eyes, feeling the relief of not moving washing over me like a cooling rain. I pulled myself together with an effort and managed to get out without fainting. My head didn’t feel any too good either. It felt like Wally Wilder’s personal punching bag.

  I slid along the wall down the narrow corridor and brushed up against the door of my office. It seemed like the twentieth century had come and gone before I finally found my keys and pushed the door in.

  I swayed in the semidarkness of the office, not caring about putting the lights on, not even thinking about putting them on. I caught myself, drag-footed it over to my desk, fell over the telephone. I clawed slowly for the receiver.

  It came up in my fingers, feeling like a bag full of heavy stones, each one bigger than the other. I dialed with shaking fingers. Dialed wrong three times before I finally got it right.

  The buzz and click of the receiver almost put me to sleep again. I waited, hearing every second of time explode like a depth charge in my head.

  Then a sleepy voice said irritably:

  “Yes, who is it?”

  I pushed my tongue away from my teeth.

  “Dave—it’s Ed Noon—I need you, Dave—” I’d never heard my voice like that before.

  “Oh, Ed. It’s six-fifteen. Have a heart. Can’t you see me in my office? I’ll be there at nine—”

  I felt a mean grin cracking my already cracked lips. I got hold of my crumbling pride.

  “Dave, this is me. Ed Noon. The guy who knew you before you graduated to a Park Avenue clientele. So bring your little black bag, Kildare. I need a doctor … bad—”

  Dave Rossiter’s bedside manner came across the wire.

  “Why, Ed. What’s the matter?”

  I had time for only one last message before the lines went down.

  “Won’t you join me, Groucho? I’m coming apart.…”

  He was starting to splutter into the receiver at his end when I fell like a dying comet.

  SIXTEEN

  The smell of antiseptic brought me to. That and the smell of a pretty strong cigar. And the sound of running water. Street noises helped too. A horn squalled somewhere, and the clang and clamor of a Manhattan morning pierced my eardrums like an overture from the opera.

  I got my eyes open. It was a pleasant experience. I was feeling no pain, the intoxication of enforced slumber still holding me in its merciful hands. I didn’t try to fight back either. I shifted my head toward the sound of the running water and the smell of the antiseptic and the strong cigar.

  Dave Rossiter was standing over the tiny sink, washing his thick, stubby fingers. His broad familiar back and hairy arms and the balloon cigar jutting from his thick-lipped mouth made me smile. He was flipping a towel across his wet hands when he saw me.

  The cigar rotated over to the other side of his mouth and he grunted. His tiny eyes, buried under yards of bushy eyebrows, glinted in anger.

  I laughed weakly. He cursed.

  “Hypocratic oaths, Dave?” I smiled, feeling my lips crack. “Thanks for coming.”

  He snapped the towel to the rack angrily and came over to the leather couch he must have put me on, rolling down his sleeves.

  “I should have said to hell with you, that’s what. You would have learned your lesson. Look at you. Four years ago I thought you were a pretty good-looking guy. Here, take a good look at yourself.” He whipped out a small mirror from his black bag which was parked somewhere out of my sight on the floor. He slammed it into my hand. “You look disgusting now. Like a punch-drunk pug. Scar tissue over your left eyebrow, forehead getting too many wrinkles—”

  “Me and Spencer Tracy. Real character—” I took the mirror and shut up. I almost didn’t know the face that stared back. A long angry streak ran down my cheekbone, my lower lip was toothmarked from left to right and my nose had ballooned in size overnight. My unkempt hair was pointing North, South, East and West. And none of the twains were meeting anywhere. I was one pretty picture.

  “What the hell did you do, Ed? Fall down a flight of stairs? You must have, you smelled like a brewery.”

  “Let up, Dave—” I handed him back the mirror. “I’m on a job. I was strong-armed last night. They pushed me out the window down the hall. I guess I must have bounced.”

  “Next time you’ll bounce into the cemetery.”

  I stared down at my leg suddenly remembering the golf ball over my kneecap. I couldn’t even feel it now. But the golf ball was still there. My trouser leg was rolled up where I could see it.

  Dave followed my gaze and grunted again. “I gave you a shot of penicillin. That lump will go down if you stay off that leg. But you won’t, will you?”

  I stared up at him. Stared up at Dave Rossiter, a doctor with a fine practice on Park Avenue. A guy about ten years older than me. We had shared a lot of cups of coffee and a lot of dreams when he was interning at Bellevue and I was tossing a coin between working for other people or working for myself. It seemed a century ago.

  Dave had lost more hair and smoked cigars now instead of cigarettes. And like he had said, I’d taken on scar tissue and some forehead wrinkles. I smiled at him. I guess I had changed too.

  “I can’t stay off the leg, Dave. I’ve got a job to do. Just like you.”

  He sneered. “Some job. They pay you money to take their beatings for them. Get out, Ed. Now. There must be something else you want to do for a living. Not this. Hell, what have we got a police department for?”

  “I asked myself that question years ago. I couldn’t give myself a decent answer. So I’m a detective. Besides, I like the hours.”

  He slid into a suit jacket that screamed of a successful business practice. I noticed his cufflinks and tiepin and fancy gold watch with chain to match for the first time.

  I moved my cramped body to an upright position and watched him prepare for leaving. He was well cast as a sawbones. He was every inch the capable medical man.

  “You think I’m nuts, Dave,” I said. “You didn’t think I was nuts six years ago when your unlamented first wife was putting you through the wringer until I got you the grounds for getting rid of her. You didn’t want a cop then. You wanted a private operator—and a friend. I was both.”

  His face softened.

  “Sure you were. And I’ll never forget you for it. But dammit—why go on like this? Today its just a banged-up knee Next week it might be something far worse.” He thumbed the cigar out of his mouth. “Look, you idiot, do you think I’d be wasting my breath on you if I didn’t think something of you?”

  “Sure, Dave. I appreciate that. But it’s one of those things. You picked your road. Let me pick mine.”

  “Okay.” He snorted with an air of finality. “I know you too well to ar
gue the point any further. But as a doctor let me tell you this—your engine is running down. You’re a dynamo, true. You’re still young and full of beans. But a head can stand getting hit just so many times. Your constitution can be recharged just so often. And then—there’s nothing left to revitalize. Keep it in mind.”

  I grinned. This was the old Dave. The doctor.

  “Thanks, Doc. How much do I owe you?”

  “A shot of rye and a little heeding of my advice. I’ll take the drink right now.”

  We shared a silent drink looking at each other. Dave stared at me a long time after he finished his drink.

  I changed the subject. “How’s the fair Amelia and little Gary?”

  His expression brightened. “Never better, thanks. Although I hate the weight you swing with my young offspring. He thinks you’re a cross between Dick Tracy and Roy Rogers. And Amelia thinks we don’t see enough of you.”

  “Give them my regards. Tell them I love them too. And I promise not to buy Gary a .45 for Christmas.”

  He sobered and buttoned up his coat. “You just stay off that leg. And take better care of yourself. You might be running out of horseshoes.”

  “Fair enough, Dave. What time is it?”

  He frowned but eyed his watch. “Nine-thirty.”

  I grinned. “I can’t see you to the door. But thanks again for coming.”

  He shook his head, put on his hat and shouldered out with a grunt of farewell. I watched him go with a twinge of regret. Funny how as you get on in life, you have so little time for old friends. That was the way the ball seemed to roll these days.

  I unstrapped my busted wristwatch and tossed it over to the desk. When I got around to it, I had some business for Alec St. Peter down the hall. The kid was a crackerjack watch repairman even if he did have just metal hooks for hands.

  Right now I needed something to use for a cane. I had to get down to Police Headquarters. I wanted to be up front when Guy Prentice had his ten o’clock appointment with Lieutenant Hadley. I was going to be late as it was. But I needed a barbershop and a restaurant real bad first. I needed repair even more than my watch did.