Violence in Velvet

by Michael Avallone

  Then I got back to Lucille.

  Her runaway clothes consisted of the pinafore dress, a babushka, and a trim, little fur-lined jacket that seemed two sizes too big for her. I got them off in a hurry. I remembered the pinafore. She’d worn it yesterday into Benny’s bar when I’d laid eyes on her for the first time. I wasn’t thinking of that now. I was thinking of the dead-yellow color of her curved-bow cheeks, the weak red of her penny-sized lips.

  Somebody else’s kid. Maybe a murderess. But I couldn’t have been more worried if she’d been my own. I can’t help it. I go for the little people.

  I did the best I could. I loosened all her clothes, underthings included, cleared the area around her throat, slapped her face, turned her over and started the little artificial respiration I still remembered from swimming classes in Roosevelt High.

  Helen Tucker came back with the water I had yelled for and pitched in. As scared as she was, Tucker knew what to do. I kept up the rhythm of my hands on Lucille’s diaphragm and Helen dabbed away constantly at her forehead, neck and wrists with a soaking cloth.

  Maybe it was us. Maybe it was a miracle. Or maybe we had just come along before it was really too late. But in fifteen minutes time, each second of which seemed like a death knell, Lucille’s long lashes moved and a small sigh forced its way out of her locked lips. I redoubled my efforts and Helen Tucker swabbed faster with the cloth.

  I waited. Waited until the short hairs on the back of my neck sat down and relaxed.

  Lucille opened her eyes. They moved slowly from my face to Helen Tucker’s, then back to mine again. Helen was crying. Short, fierce sobs.

  Lucille’s tiny lips parted.

  “Mister Noon—” Her voice was small too. “My head—it hurts.” She sighed again. “Something awful—why does it hurt so?”

  The relief rushed out of me with words. But I hid it.

  “Sure it does, honey. Gas is no good for anybody. Little ladies included.”

  Helen Tucker folded the kid in her arms, swaying with her, rocking with her like a mother might with her dead baby’s body.

  “Baby, baby—why? Why did you do this terrible thing? Don’t you know we all love you?”

  Lucille’s face clouded. Suddenly, she looked years older, even with tears fluttering childishly on her lids. She pushed Helen away with small, surprisingly stronger hands.

  “No, you don’t. Nobody does. Only my dolls love me.”

  Helen Tucker fell back, shocked.

  “Lucille! How can you say such a thing? Your father would never have gotten over this if Ed here hadn’t been so right about where you’d be.”

  I watched and waited. There was nothing I could do. This was strictly between two women now and I sensed it. And a guy that keeps his mouth closed when the girls are having it out doesn’t get in any trouble. And he learns plenty.

  Lucille’s chin was a Rock of Gibraltar.

  “No, he doesn’t!” If she had been standing instead of lying down, she would have stamped her foot. “And I can prove it! He doesn’t want me any more. He’s never wanted me! He wants you—!”

  From a kid her age, it was pretty hard to take. Pink, red and vermilion flamed in Helen Tucker’s lovely face.

  “Lucille!” She was too horrified to say anything else.

  Suddenly, Lucille had raised herself on one elbow, was staring at me, a pent-up something inside her, dying to be uttered. Out loud. To an interested outsider whom she must have liked.

  “It’s true, Mister Noon. Daddy hates me! Daddy—”

  “What proof, honey?” I said quietly.

  She pointed a damning finger toward the dressing room table. I stared at it, saw the three of us reflected in the gleaming mirror under the bright little bulbs.

  “In the dresser drawer. My drawer. Where Daddy always kept my candy and toys and things. I found it. When I came in. I wanted to wait for Daddy. I wanted to see him. Tell him why I ran away. But now, I don’t care for him any morel Not any more! Not ever—”

  “Is that why you tried to kill yourself, Lucille?” I limped toward the table, tossing the remark over my shoulder as if it wasn’t too important. To convince her what a crazy kid’s trick it really was.

  Helen Tucker’s tear-stained face looked at me from the depths of the mirror. Shock was written all over it in running mascara. I pulled open the drawer, rummaged.

  Lucille’s voice came out low from behind me.

  “It’s awful, Mister Noon, to know that your daddy hates you, that he wants to—that he’d like you to be dead—like to—”

  The load was too much. Abruptly, she wailed right out loud, “He had no right putting it in my drawer!” and then the deluge came. In the mirror, I could see her collapse in a sobbing heap where she lay, could hear the terrible racked cries that tore at her little body. Helen Tucker rushed to her protectively like a mother hen.

  I took the thing out of the drawer. I held it in my hand. Stared at it, shaking my head.

  It was a terrible thing all right. A terrible thing for a little girl to find in the drawer of a dressing table of the father that she loved for her very own.

  It was a framed photograph of a beautiful girl, a girl with lovely blue eyes and lovely golden hair. She had a cute ribbon in her curls and her wide smile was full of warmth and beauty of love.

  Only she was about five or six years old.

  And the picture had an inscription on it:

  To my wonderful daddy—Guy

  From his loving daughter,

  TRUDY

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  The picture gave me the whole picture. Murder all around her and Lucille runs to her father for help and comfort. Putters around his room like a kid will in the place where her old man works and finds the photo of another little girl in her own special drawer. Her drawer. A beautiful little stranger who seems to have the same father. Bingo. Little girl tries the Swan Song act in retribution. Childish, of course, but so very logical to a child’s mind. It figured. But where did all the other pieces fit in?

  The pounding in my head matched the throbbing in my knee. I looked at a traveling clock that was propped on the table between a cold cream jar and a box of Kleenex. The hour that Hadley had given me wasn’t too far from being up. And it was getting close enough too for some backstage activities for the production of Kick and Sing. Like the cast showing up and all kinds of theatrical running around.

  Helen Tucker was quieting Lucille down. There wasn’t anything I could do except wait. I took my .45 out, checked it, and put it away again. I was getting jumpy myself. Something was up for grabs all right. But I couldn’t tell exactly what.

  I lit a cigarette and watched the ladies. Lucille wasn’t crying any more, but Helen Tucker’s face was knotted up in a frown that looked permanent. The kid’s photo in the drawer was a new one on her too. Guy Prentice sure got around.

  See what I mean about this love? You can’t let yourself go overboard until you’ve got the whole picture. Guy wasn’t supposed to mean anything to her any more. Wasn’t she my girl now? Oh, yeah. Just like a woman, she never wanted to be kidded about anything. Prentice sure was a fair hand with the ladies. But I couldn’t understand about the picture being left in Lucille’s drawer unless—

  I thought about it. I was still thinking about it and laughing sardonically to myself when he came in. When they both came in. Guy Prentice and Wally Wilder.

  Fine, I told myself. The whole cast of characters for The Prentice Murder Case. Excepting Stanley Breen and he was behind bars anyway. Good. It felt like showdown night anyway.

  Nobody said anything for a full moment. Everybody just stared at everybody else. I could suddenly hear the traveling clock on the table ticking its brains out.

  “Noon,” Guy Prentice said my name in a hoarse blurt of sound. “Thank God, you’ve found her—” He forgot all about his own bad leg and flung himself toward the tiny figure on the couch. He was too relieved to see Lucille recoil from him, too busy smothering her in his arms
, lavishing her with kisses, to notice her withdrawal.

  Wally Wilder’s huge smile went charmingly with the smart-looking gray suit he was wearing.

  “Good deal, fellah. Say, where have you two been?” He frowned at Helen Tucker. “Been ringing you all afternoon.”

  “Car ride, Wally,” I said. “Old friends of mine. Helen was lonely. So she came along. My friends insisted.”

  He checked our faces to see what truth he could find in my answer. He scowled slightly, but his grin didn’t go away.

  “As long as you found the kid. Noon, what do you think of this confession letter Lucille left behind? I’ve been talking to that cop Hadley. Thinks he’s solved the case.”

  “Lucille is a ten-year-old kid. That’s what I think.”

  “Same here.” His smile got two degrees warmer for me. “You’re okay, fellah. Now, little lady, what’s all this stuff you’ve been writing?” He turned cheerily toward the couch and Lucille, determined to use that form of child psychology that says you have to humor a kid out of silly notions. “I’m supposed to be the only author around here or haven’t you heard?”

  Lucille was ready for him. Her father had disengaged himself from her and was holding her off and just looking at her affectionately. He was still too relieved to see that she had just come through a bad time. She made a face at Wally Wilder. He looked surprised.

  “Guy—” Helen Tucker said crisply, the career-woman terseness back in her voice again. “There’s something we must tell you—”

  “Save it, Tucker,” I cut in. “Not now.”

  Wally Wilder sniffed out loud.

  “What’s that peculiar smell in here? You kids been toasting marshmallows or something? If you were, they must have burned. Smells terrible.” His eyes roamed. “Hey—the window’s broken—”

  “Okay, Sherlock,” I sighed. “You’re damn ungrammatical for a guy who earns big dough writing for a living. The window’s not broken. The glass in the window is.”

  “What’s that got to do with the price of eggs?” He glared at me cheerfully.

  Guy Prentice passed a slim, aristocratic hand over his forehead.

  “Gentlemen, please. What is all this blather? I’ve got a show to do tonight—” He was tired. Damn tired. His topper was the best coat money could buy and his scarf was a masterpiece of elegance, but he was sagging in them. “Now, will you please leave me alone with my daughter for a few minutes? I want to ask her about that ridiculous letter she left for the police—”

  “It’s not ridiculous!” Lucille snapped.

  “Darling—” he chided her.

  I put my cigarette out. I coughed.

  “No dice, Prentice. We’ll have to go over the whole thing. Here and now. Show or no show.”

  His eyebrows arched for me. A slight sneer played with his mouth corners.

  “Really, Mr. Noon. Don’t extend your talents as far as being a bore. It doesn’t become you. I’ve paid you to protect my child. And you have. For which I am eternally grateful. But there are limits—”

  “They’ve been reached, Mr. Prentice.” I locked glances with him. “Tucker and I got here just in time to prevent Lucille from gassing herself right out of your life. In the trunk. With your little gas cooker.”

  That stopped him. His mouth stalled on a hot rejoinder dipped in venom and his eyes took in the things I had mentioned. His nose gave him the rest of the evidence. Helen Tucker’s dejected nod nailed down the last board for him. Wally Wilder whistled increduously.

  “Lucille—” Guy Prentice’s voice wavered like a drunk. He turned to her, begging her to call the rest of us liars. “Is this true—what Mr. Noon is saying?”

  Lucille’s answer was very nearly a whisper.

  “Yes. I wanted to kill myself.”

  It should have sounded funny. But it didn’t. Guy Prentice didn’t think so either.

  “Lucille!” He gasped. “Why would—”

  “Because you hate me!” she came right back at him. “And I wrote that letter to protect you. Because you’re my daddy and I love you. And because Mr. Noon said you were a Grade A suspect—” She slowed down, exhausted. “You don’t love me anymore. Ever since Mommy Marion went away, you don’t act the same way. And when I saw that other little girl’s picture in my drawer—”

  That was it. She might just as well have thrown something at him. His shocked eyes pleaded with her.

  “Picture in your drawer? When?”

  He hadn’t said “What picture?” He had said “When?”

  Lucille, as young as she was, sensed the difference, hated the difference. Her black little eyes shone with cold fury.

  “It’s true! You killed Mommy and you wanted to kill me!”

  Speech was something he couldn’t handle any more. He stood, tongue-tied and voiceless. He stared dumbly at her. Then at me.

  “It’s still in there,” I said. I indicated it. “In Lucille’s own special drawer. Where somebody wanted her to find it, see it and get upset about it.”

  Like a stone man, he went to the drawer, took the photo out as if it were made out of precious jewels and looked at it. Then he placed it face down on top of the table. He turned and looked at Helen Tucker. Something stiffened inside of him. He seemed to take on an extra gland. Fire roared up inside of him, belched from his mouth in a fierce funnel of sound.

  “You couldn’t wait, could you, Helen? You had to tell her this way. I should have known that child was a fixation with you. You couldn’t let me break it to Lucille gradually. You sweet-faced contemptible bitch!”

  Helen Tucker’s face exploded like a sunburst.

  “Guy! Control yourself—the child! You don’t know what you’re saying—”

  “Don’t I?” He fairly spat at her. “Our own little Trudy. Your little Trudy. You’ve always been jealous of Lucille and the fact that Trudy had to be kept secret for fear it would spoil my career. What do you really love the most, Helen? Myself or wealth? Security and position?”

  Wally Wilder’s big bulk heaved between them.

  “Hold on, Guy. This is crazy talk. Helen wouldn’t—”

  “He’s not crazy,” I said, putting my back to the door. I took my .45 out, pointed it at all of them. “Stand away from her. She’s a killer. A cold-hearted killer. And a guy’s a chump to fall in love with her. The biggest chump in the world.”

  That shut Wally Wilder up faster than dying would have. His big kid’s face tried to change shape.

  “What? You all gone nuts or something in the last five minutes?”

  Helen Tucker’s back was to the dressing table. Suddenly, Wally Wilder fell across my line of vision. I cursed and moved fast. But not fast enough.

  The nickel-plated .22 was shining like tinsel in her well-formed feminine fingers. It wasn’t pointing at me though. It was half-centered toward the couch, leveled at Lucille. The kid’s eyes were as round and as wide as the moon.

  “Go ahead, Ed,” Helen Tucker’s voice cracked sharply. “Shoot. But I’ll still hit the child before you hit me. So make up your mind. It’s me or her. Which will it be? I’m waiting for your answer.”

  I gave it to her. I lowered my gun and tossed it onto a nearby soft-cushioned chair. I raised my hands slowly.

  “All right, sweetheart,” I said. “But you’re breaking my heart.”

  TWENTY-NINE

  A couple of people’s worlds had ended. Guy Prentice for one, although I didn’t feel sorry for him; Wally Wilder for another. Me? I couldn’t say right then. I can’t say even right now. What do you really feel when the private world falls in on you? And all the hopes and dreams that you wrap up in somebody else come out so many broken things? Maybe I was better off than Guy Prentice and Wally Wilder. I’d only known her two days—even if it seemed like a lifetime.

  I had at least wondered about the wonderful girl. Doubted my good luck. But not them. And now the answer was standing right in front of them where they could see it. Where they could watch her aim a loaded gun at a poor l
ittle kid and realize that every stunning, hard, sharp line of her body and head shouted to the housetops that she would shoot if she had to. If it meant freedom and getting away.

  We all looked at her and she got angry when she read the cold sarcasm in my face.

  “You better get moving, Tucker,” I said. “Hadley and his boys will be here any minute. And Guy does have a show to do. You wouldn’t want them to give all that money back at the box office, would you?”

  “Shut up,” she said coldly. She reached for her purse, got it, and moved warily around us toward the door. Wally Wilder moved like an automaton, his hands gradually raising, his eyes never leaving her.

  “Helen,” he pleaded. “This can’t be true. You didn’t kill Paula. You couldn’t.”

  I watched her reach the door. Where could she go? As long as the kid was all right. She was on the run now. The cops would find her sooner or later. Let her go. The sooner the better before somebody tried something silly. I flung a quick glance toward the couch. Sure enough. Lucille wasn’t frightened. Just excited, the way a kid would be.

  Guy Prentice’s aristocratic voice was cold and damning.

  “Certainly she killed Paula, Wally. I should have known. Paula wouldn’t divorce me and Helen didn’t care for a Back Street existence. And then there was Trudy, wasn’t there, Helen? Your precious darling that meant so much to you. You did mind Lucille, didn’t you, Helen?”

  I laughed out loud. I couldn’t help it. I’m just built that way when I hear something funny.

  “Mind Lucille?” I sneered in her face as she passed me. She had one hand on the door handle now. “She hated Lucille. Hated her like she hates women. Women that got in her way and between her and what she wants out of life. Pregnant Paula was the last straw, so why not pin it all on little Lucille so little Trudy could have a free path back into the life she deserved? The pattern was just right, A new woman in her father’s life, a new baby on the way. Just the sort of thing an overly sensitive kid might do something about. Especially a child who already felt unwanted.”