“Getting back to Little Lulu—”
She thought a bit. “Ed, it’s ridiculous! I can see Lucille putting ink in Paula’s toilet water or taking all the buttons off her coats. Or some such childish prank as that. But shooting her—”
“That’s just it,” I argued. “How much of a kid is she? You know, kids are simple. They see the effect first. Not the result, i.e., child drops sandbag off roof on head of passer-by. Passerby’s head is crushed to a pulp. Child says: ‘Oh, it looked so funny but I didn’t mean to hurt him.’ Got the picture?”
That bothered her. “I think I see what you’re driving at.”
I nodded. “The cops will too. And you can’t blame them. But I’m waiting to get a gander at this confession letter Lucille left behind. That might mean something.”
“I hope so. All this confusion, this—Ed, let me have a cigarette, please.”
“Chin up, Tucker.” I placed one between her luscious lips and marveled at their symmetry once more. She inhaled as I lit for her and our eyes met and held. “Whatever happens, I’ll see that the kid gets a fair shake.”
“Ed.” Her eyes misted for me and several shades of blue and violet left me with warm memories. “Do you love me?”
I laughed. “Only if you love me. Any other arrangement is fantastic.”
I was just straightening out from kissing her lightly on the lovely forehead when the office door threatened to fly off its hinges, and Hadley came roaring in with Sanderson behind him.
Hadley took a long, unlovely look at me, sailed his hat onto a wall hook and got behind his desk. Sanderson was smiling though and that surprised me. I guessed that James T. had identified the two dead gunmen, and for him the day’s work was over.
Hadley glowered a greeting at Helen Tucker. He riffled through some sheets in a big hurry, found one, folded it and settled back for a long visit.
“Either of you see these two guys before?” He had barked it out at us as suddenly as lightning.
“What two guys?” I asked innocently.
That slowed him down which was what I wanted it to do. He’d obviously been on his toes all afternoon and was feeling edgy. Edgy cops make me nervous. I told him as much.
We also told him that we had never seen either John Smith or John Jones before.
“Okay,” he said. He seemed satisfied. “That fits. They’re a couple of—”
“They were—” I amended, still slowing him down.
“They were a couple of New Jersey boys. Not much of a record except larceny raps and one bank heist. The Department doesn’t connect them with this Prentice thing at all.” He stared at me. “Ed, for the record, all we can put down is that someone who didn’t like you because of your past work had it in for you. Somebody’s relative or something. They just happened to come along at this time. They’re dead and you’re alive. So that closes that book.”
“Whatever suits the Department,” I said. “You’re saying all this, of course, on the strength of a confession letter written by a hysterical kid who couldn’t possibly have hired two goons to put a nasty old private detective on the rocks. That it?”
Sanderson made a noise in his throat. “I don’t like you. But you are fast, I gotta admit.”
Hadley smiled. A full-house-in-his-hands smile.
“On the nose, Ed. Take a look for yourself.”
He extended a dirty yellow sheet of paper across the desk. I reached for it. Helen Tucker came around to my side where she could look at it too.
It wasn’t much. But it was enough. The paper, just an oblong bit of scrap, had a child’s racing, laborious script crawling all over it like hen tracks. And it was just the sort of thing a dramatic kid like Lucille would write:
I am running away because I am afraid of what the police will do to me for what I did to Mother. Daddy, forgive me. I didn’t mean to hurt you.
Your loving daughter,
LUCILLE PRENTICE
A choked sob charged out of Helen Tucker. I handed Hadley the confession note.
“Thanks, Miss Tucker.” Hadley was his old smiling self again. “That tells me what I wanted to know. The French dame, that teacher, identified the handwriting for us. But I wanted to see what you said. No doubt about it now. The kid wrote the thing.”
“It’s Lucille’s handwriting,” Helen Tucker managed a whisper. “No question of it but—”
“That’s an awfully crummy piece of paper to write a confession on, Hadley,” I suggested.
He shook his head, the triumphant grin refusing to leave his face.
“Sorry, Ed. Nothing cute about this one. Overly sensitive kid rejects a new mother because she loved the old one too much. Her old man doesn’t have time for her. So the kid works up a good irrational hate. And since this kid comes from a family of actors, it works out just fine. A big scene, a loaded gun in the house. And that’s it. Open and shut.”
“Just like a door that opens one way. Look, Hadley. I don’t say it doesn’t add up. But let me bother you a little. Prentice has no memory of that gun being loaded. Now who sells bullets to ten-year-old girls? She certainly doesn’t find them on the ground.”
“Don’t be a sap, Ed. Prentice lied to us about that. He didn’t want to admit the gun was loaded.”
“Okay,” I kept right after him. “What about this Stanley Breen? It might be that getting yourself arrested for attempted murder isn’t as bad as getting arrested for a real murder. Oh, I forgot. He was madly in love with Paula, wasn’t he? He told you boys that.”
Sanderson rumbled again. “Don’t you never stop clowning, Noon?”
“Not when the script stinks, James T. And I can’t buy this one. There’s a large rat in it someplace.”
Hadley shook his head.
“Rat or no rat, the theory holds. The kid’s our man. I’ve got a city-wide alarm on her now. And when she’s picked up, we’ll see what she has to say for herself.”
“Where’s Guy Prentice?”
Hadley and Sanderson matched looks. Hadley winced.
“He’s home prostrate with grief. He can’t believe the evidence. But in spite of all that, he’s doing his show tonight. How do you like those apples?”
That got Helen Tucker angry for some reason.
“Lieutenant, you don’t understand. Guy is a real actor. His presence in the show means a lot to everybody working in it—”
“Sure, sure,” Hadley waved his hands. “The show must go on. I appreciate that, Miss Tucker, but it’s still screwy. If my wife had been killed yesterday and I found out my kid did it today, there just wouldn’t be anything else for me.”
She glared defiantly. “You just don’t understand what it means to be an actor. Nobody does.”
Sanderson snickered. “You said it, lady,” was his contribution.
I got out of my chair and leaned over the desk.
“Hadley, I’d like to make a little bet with you.”
He scowled up at me.
“Policemen don’t make bets,” he said icily.
“Since when?” Before he could answer, I went on. “Well, anyhow, I think I can tell you where Lucille Prentice is right now. This minute.”
They all stared at me. But only Helen Tucker was staring in admiration. Hadley and Sanderson were just too skeptical for words.
“Go ahead, Ed,” Hadley suggested. “Where might she be?”
“Spare me your sarcasm, Hadley. I’m trying to do you a favor.”
He made a face. “Spill it. I haven’t got all day.”
I smiled down at him. That warned him. His expression collapsed into a weary mold. He shook his head sadly.
“You want to make a deal? Is that it?”
“You get the idea. I tell you where Lucille Prentice is and you let me work it out my own way. I want an hour’s starting time without police escort. Fair enough?”
He looked at me a long time. He fumbled with a mechanical pencil.
“Okay. You got a deal. But you tell me now where she is—I mean w
here you think she is—and you’ve got your one hour. No more, no less.”
“Okay,” I said. I waded right in. Up to my neck. “Lucille Prentice is in the only place where she thinks she’ll be safe from a mad killer. Where she at least wants to think she’ll be safe from a mad killer. The poor kid. I’d hate to be in her shoes. The grownups all around her have been acting like the bad people in a nightmare.”
“Spit it out, Noon,” Sanderson ordered.
I lit a cigarette knowing I had everybody’s attention.
“She’s with her father,” I said. “Or rather where she knows her father is going to be.”
“Where the hell is that?” Hadley blurted impatiently.
I let out some smoke.
“Guy Prentice’s dressing room down at the Fifty-Third-Street Theatre. The star’s dressing room. The one with the star on the door.”
They stared at me as if I’d gone loco.
“Daddy,” I said. I spelled it for them. “D-A-D-D-Y—”
TWENTY-SIX
It sounds like a cockeyed idea, doesn’t it? The whole New York Police Department out in force looking for a little girl that ran away. A murderess—self-styled. Well, I wasn’t buying it. Any of it. Lucille was a frightened, hysterical little kid and that was that. A crazy, mixed-up, frightened, hysterical little kid.
Hadley kept his word all right. He gave me one hour. He pushed out that lower lip of his at me, timed his watch and said: “Okay, move out. But I still think you’re wrong, Ed.”
I didn’t feel wrong. I felt very right. Like a guy who suddenly knows where every one of the fifty-two cards in the deck are.
Helen Tucker came along. I couldn’t blame her for two good reasons. She didn’t want to wait behind in Hadley’s cold office for one thing; for another, she was just as interested in Lucille as I was. She had to be.
I certainly wasn’t doing much to earn my money. As far as protecting Lucille went, I was shooting blanks.
We took a cab to the Fifty-Third-Street Theatre.
Helen Tucker and Ed Noon. Quite a combination. A lovely girl in a red-spangled dress. A beat-up guy with a bum leg and a puffy face. A pair of new lovers, all concerned and confused about a little girl who had supposedly blasted her mother’s face off at close range with a scatter-armed .45 calibre automatic.
Tucker didn’t say one word during the drive. I kept my lips buttoned too. We just held hands and thought about Lucille and the Prentices and sudden death. Maybe we thought about each other too. I can’t vouch for both of us. But I know I did. I was thinking about the early part of the day when there was warmth and love and no more being alone in the world.
It had been a great feeling all right. It still was, but I was afraid of it. I’d run the long, lonely road most of my days. I didn’t know how to handle the soft things in life. Love had nailed me down a couple of times already, but the nails had been nails and things had happened.
And the dames had kept on going. And so had I. Without them.
I took a good look at Helen Tucker. She was something, okay. Something a guy like me always wants but doesn’t think he rates. Rates—rats. I got mad at some of the humble thoughts I was thinking and started to rub my sore knee. Soft music, Professor. I was getting dotty in my old age.
First things first. And Lucille was the first thing.
I barked at the cab driver, feeling the pressure starting to settle in on me. Getting myself unstrung was the worst thing I could do right now. Relax, Noon, old boy. Relax. You’re a long time dead you know.
The cab driver saved my bacon and his own by pulling up to the Fifty-Third’s fancy front before I sweated off much more weight. I paid him off with a bill, took Helen Tucker’s soft hand in mine and led her onto the sidewalk. I felt my leg give a little under me. I was going to miss the umbrella that John Jones had ventilated for me. But besides that, I felt better. We were where we should be. I hate postponements when something has to be done. It’s like those trips to the dentist that you keep putting off.
“Okay, Tucker,” I said low. “Act natural and lead the way. Backstage. Just a friendly visit to see dear old Guy.”
Something defiant flashed across her face. Then it vanished.
“All right, Ed. This way—”
She was a lovely magnet. So I acted just like a hunk of metal. I tagged along behind her skirts through the big glass doors, onto the plush carpeting of the Fifty-Third’s ritzy interior, into the rear environs of the finest showhouse in town. She smiled and nodded to the attendants, the usherettes, the stage crew and the million and one watchdogs that were crawling all over the place. It was still more than an hour until curtain time and the empty theatre seemed like some ancient arena where gigantic and world-shaking events would take place every night at a certain time. As we padded down the long aisle toward the rear of the house, I shook off the whispering voices that seemed to come down from the empty galleries above us. It was as if the sounds and noises of yesterday hung poised in the atmosphere, ready to ring out, if you could just make the proper contact through your own private medium.
There was a hushed, velvety magnificence about the elegantly modeled vastness of the place that set things humming in my brain. But I just pulled my hat down over my ears and kept up with Tucker.
Soon we were hurrying down the narrow, low-bridge ceiling of the underpass that led to the dressing rooms.
“Ed,” Helen Tucker seemed to whisper too. “Do you really think she’ll be here?”
“She’ll be here all right. If she isn’t, I’ll throw away the book on Child Psychology. She’s got to be.”
“I hope so. Oh, I hope so.”
“Guy ever show up this early for a show? Or is he a last-minute actor?”
She smiled tiredly. But she was glad to talk about something less important.
“It’s his habit to reach the theatre about an hour before the curtain rise, get in costume and then take a brisk stroll around the block. Then he walks right in on cue. Letter-perfect, as always.”
I grinned grimly. “I hope he didn’t take any brisk strolls yesterday. Between the first and second acts. The cops won’t like that locked dressing room and headache routine now that the Breen incident is out of the way.”
We had reached the tall, thin door that gleamed a bright gold star right into your face as you looked at it. Helen Tucker tried the doorknob briefly. It was locked.
“I have a key,” she said. I waited while she fished for it, watching and enjoying the grace she could put in such a commonplace activity. She had class all right. And it wasn’t all Finishing School class either. Some of it had been born with her.
I was surprised to see that the lights were on inside. Not only the overhead room lights but the tiny bulbs that bordered Guy Prentice’s dressing table were all lit up like a window display. Something in the room smelled too. Not just the grease paint and cold cream aroma you’ll find in such a place. Something else. Something much different. I tried to peg it for what it was.
I closed the door softly. Helen Tucker walked to the center of the rectangular room and turned. She looked at me and shrugged helplessly.
“I guess you were wrong, Ed.” Her nicely pinched nostrils suddenly puckered with the smell I was trying so hard to pin down.
“Am I?” I said. I walked to the one closet in the joint, pulled the door back wide. A long tier of costumes, a row of hats and a shoe rack that was loaded with footwear of all sizes and shapes mocked me. I probed slowly between the clothes. No Lucille.
Helen Tucker frowned. “Isn’t there a funny odor in here?”
“Odor is right, Tucker. I wouldn’t call it an aroma. It’s such a faint smell though. Smells like—” I stopped. The answer was on the tip of my tongue, but it just wouldn’t come down from the crowded attic where I store my brains.
“The trunk,” I said. “Where’s the trunk?”
She looked at me as if I’d lost my mind. Her violet-blue eyes got worried in a large hurry.
�
��Trunk?” she echoed like a robot. “What trunk?”
I was too busy looking for it to answer her. Trunks. Large, big, steamer-type trunks that I always knew actors to have. A wardrobe trunk. Where the hell could it be in such a small room? I hunted frantically now, impelled by some feeling of urgency I couldn’t have explained to myself. That and that funny odor that had hit me as soon as we had come in.
Suddenly, Helen Tucker blurted fearfully.
“Ed!—over there! Guy hid it behind the desk. It’s empty—he has all his stuff in the closet because the play’s a long run!”
I didn’t wait for the rest of it. I swung the desk out of the way with an effort. There was the trunk, packed in close to the corner. Big as life. Big enough to accommodate a lot of things. The desk had been catty-cornered to hide it and yet make room for it.
I tugged the lid up, flipped it back against the wall. Now I knew what that funny smell had been. Something inside me curled up and died. Like when you see something pretty awful like a messy traffic accident.
Crumpled up in the roomy interior of the thing, as limp and as indescribable as a rag doll, was Lucille. The Small Lucille. She never looked smaller.
Clutched in one tiny hand, close to her face, was a gas cooker. One of those tinny little gadgets that you pump up by hand and can make a fast cup of coffee on or heat a pot of water. Only Lucille hadn’t used it for either.
With the lid of the trunk open, the smell of confined gas rushed up at me, choking my nostrils.
TWENTY-SEVEN
I’ve run up against a lot of things in my time, but the gas act was a new one on me. So I did a lot of things all at once, not knowing whether they were right or wrong. Not caring a helluva lot either.
I scooped Lucille up out of the terrible trunk, raced her over to the leather couch that L-cornered the dressing table. I had to move fast. I was worried.
I tried her pulse, felt a faint flicker, none too confident that it wasn’t mine instead of hers. I cursed, shouted instructions to Helen Tucker, a stunned Helen Tucker, whose limbs refused to move until I propelled her toward the tiny bathroom. I kicked the hall door open, rushed to the window, fought with the stuck lock on the frame that opened into a dark back alley. It wouldn’t budge. I dug for my .45 like a maniac, got it out and slashed away repeatedly at the four panes of glass until there was no glass left. Nothing but lovely, cold October wind sucking in and airing out the room.
Violence in Velvet Page 14
