Murder for Madame

by Lawrence Lariar

  “The calls?” he asked. “Where did they from?”

  “I told you I don’t know,” Tiny said. “That’s truth.”

  “How many customers came into this dump tonight?”

  “There were only two.”

  “Who gave them the service? You?”

  “Anita and Rose.”

  “What time was that?”

  Tiny closed her eyes and thought back. “I’d say it was about two hours ago.”

  “Two hours ago when they got finished?”

  “That’s right. After that, Anita and Rose went out to do some shopping.”

  “How about the boys? How about the customers? Did you see them leave this place?”

  “They don’t come out through the hall,” Tiny said. “There’s another door, a side door that leads into the alley. Most of them would rather use that door. So the girls always let them out that way.”

  “You were at the front door all night? All the time?”

  Tiny nodded. “That was my job.”

  “I’m almost beginning to believe you,” Doughty said. “What about your boss? Did she ever take on any of the customers herself?”

  “I don’t know anything about her private life.”

  “I know,” I said. “Mary didn’t bother with the trade.”

  Doughty whirled on me. “You know too goddam much! What were you, one of her personal free riders? Or did she give you a special rate?”

  “You’ve got a dirty mouth, Doughty, and a mind to match. I’ve told you before that Mary Ray was a personal friend of mine. You’re stinking up the air with your dialogue.”

  He came at me, working his fists in a fit of temper. The sight of a big man playing tough always raised my hackles. It had happened before and it would happen again, the red rage of resentment that bubbled up in me whenever the tall boys, the muscle boys, threw their weight around too close to me. Doughty was built like a tank, broad and square and powerful, so that the impact of his larded frame made my knuckles harden and my hands knot into fists. I would have found it enjoyable to test a hard right to his navel, to fold his mighty frame in half, to cut him down to my size, so that I could put my knee in his gut and make his eyes pop. Behind him, I caught the quick bright light of Tiny’s eager eyes, watching and waiting for my next move. But only a sucker would have smacked Doughty. Instead, I swallowed my anger and laughed in his face. It was as good as a body blow. It hit him somewhere in his maggoty intellect and converted him into a caricature of sweating frustration.

  “What the hell are you, Conacher?” he roared. “The poor man’s Errol Flynn? The way you talk, you make this Mary Ray dame sound like something out of a corn opera. What are you trying to do—convince me that she was legitimate? An honest business woman—the owner of a beauty shop, maybe, or a restaurant or a knit goods store?” He paused, then appraised me slyly. “Maybe I got you figured all wrong on this one, Conacher. Maybe you really were one of her boy friends. Just how well did you know her?”

  “She was an old customer of mine. I did a skip trace for her a long time ago. That was all.”

  “When was the last time you saw her?”

  “Maybe a month ago. She invited me here to a party.”

  Doughty threw back his head and began to laugh uproariously at the ceiling fixture. “Well, now, isn’t that just dandy. So she had parties, too. A regular Elsie Maxwell type dame, eh? A real social butterfly, I suppose?”

  I said, “That’s right, Doughty. But you wouldn’t understand. She was way out of your league. Why don’t you take a trip over to The Gazette and ask for Nat Webster, the art critic. I’ve seen Nat at lots of her parties.”

  “What did Webster do—run around in a daisy chain?”

  “Webster came here to talk and drink her liquor and meet her friends. And Webster knew that a lot of her friends were his friends, too. Mary liked to listen to good talk, because she enjoyed intelligent people, Doughty. Maybe that’s why you were never invited.”

  “Go to hell,” Doughty said. “From the way you talk, I can understand why she made a fortune in this dump. Characters like you were her best press agents. Next thing you’re going to tell me that all her customers were college professors, or big shots from the Senate, maybe. I always thought that the brainy boys didn’t do so good on the mattress. I’ll have to check that with Stickman, my pal on the Vice Squad.” He bit at the end of his cigar and spat tobacco shreds at my feet. “So you were one of her buddies,” he said. “One of her intellectual playmates, is that it?”

  “Jealous, Doughty?”

  “I can’t stand it,” Doughty said. “Is that what brought you up here tonight, little man? Why did you come to see her? Maybe she had a crossword puzzle she wanted you to help her with? Was that it?”

  “That’s it,” I said. “I was going to read her some Shakespeare.”

  “Very funny. You’re killing me, Conacher.” He walked away from me and stood over the little desk. He plucked out one of the handkerchiefs and crumpled it in his big fist. He opened his hand and began to talk to the handkerchief. “So you were an intimate friend of hers? That leaves you wide open for almost anything, Conacher. A personal friend would know plenty about the dame and all there is to know about the house. Even if you didn’t come here to fiddle with the dames, you knew the lay out of this dump. A character like you could come in through the alley and open the side door and walk up here to her bedroom.” He paused to cross the room and beckon to one of the cops in the hall. The cop handed him something in a handkerchief. Doughty advanced to me and showed it to me. “Instead of carrying a volume of Shakespeare you could have come up here with this in your pocket.”

  It was a knife. It was an odd knife, thin and unusual, featuring a narrow blade that was held by a delicate bone handle, colored dark brown and unadorned by any of the customary decorations found on skivvies used for mayhem. The blade itself was created for cutting, but not flesh. A stain of crimson flooded the steel, up to the handle.

  I said, “Where in hell did you snatch that, Doughty?”

  “Don’t you know?”

  “I never saw it before in my life.”

  “We’ll find out, soon enough,” Doughty said. “My boys will check it for fingerprints. Maybe they’ll find Conacher’s on it?”

  “You’re knocking yourself out. Why would I carry an item like that? That’s a professional tool of some sort.”

  “You’re a professional.”

  “That looks like an artist’s knife,” I said.

  “Maybe you’re an artist on the side,” Doughty said. “I don’t trust the intellectuals, Conacher. Did you go downstairs at all?”

  “I came in through the front door, and right upstairs. I never went down. You found the knife down there?”

  “In the back, near the alley door.”

  “So I dropped it and then came back up here?” I asked laughingly.

  “Maybe. It could fit. You climbed up here and into her room. You could walk right up to her and maybe she’d greet you nice and cute. She’d ask you to sit down and then you’d start the intellectual routine. But in the middle of the smart patter, when her back was turned, you could pull the knife and jab it into her and take your time about it. Then you could slip out into the hall and down the steps to the alley door again, and out into the street. A clever intellectual type like you could wipe it all clean by taking a short walk for himself and then coming back, maybe in an hour or so. That would be a real intellectual way of doing it.”

  “Very clever,” I said. “And after I came back, and walked in here, what was my intellectual method of knocking myself out? How did I bean myself?”

  “That’s a good intellectual question,” Doughty said. “So now I’ve got to find a good intellectual answer. It may take me a little time, but I’ll keep working at it.”

  “Let me know how you make
out.”

  A cop came in from the hall and said, “Two of the dames just walked in. You want I should bring them up here?”

  “I’ll see them downstairs,” Doughty said.

  I followed him into the hall with Tiny and we watched him go down. She was dry-eyed now, but not yet over her emotional upset. I waited until the last cop had returned to Mary’s bedroom. Then I walked away from the stair landing with her, toward the rear of the house. I had her by the arm and she did not resent it.

  When we were at the back of the hall, I said, “I want to talk to you—but not here.”

  “What are they going to do with me?” she asked.

  “Nothing. Doughty can’t hold you. They may take you downtown for a bit of questioning, but they’ll let you go after that.”

  “I want to see you,” she whispered, digging her nails into my arm. “It’s important.”

  “Whenever you say.”

  “There’s a bar over on Sixth Avenue, called the Rebus. They know me over there. Wait for me there, will you?”

  “How soon?”

  “As soon as I can slip out of here.”

  I gave her the nod and walked downstairs. In the living room Doughty was standing over Anita and Rose, enjoying their wide-eyed reaction to his questioning. I tapped him on the shoulder.

  “Do you want me anymore, Doughty?”

  “I got no use for intellectuals, Conacher, you know that. But stay around where I can find you.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” I said.

  I stepped into the hall and past the cop on duty and out into the street.

  CHAPTER 5

  I walked for an hour, on a wide detour to the Rebus, groping for the right approach to the deal. Things had happened fast, from the moment Joy Marsh slid alongside me in Tim Coogan’s. She was the beginning of it and I had the feeling that there would be no end to it until I ferreted her out, so that I could question her and find the reason for her sudden mission from Mary Ray’s. My mind backtracked to the last quick sight of her outside Tim Coogan’s bar. What urgent fear clouded her eyes? She had been moved to flight by the electric entrance of the chauffeur, and she might continue to move from now on, into some small and hidden room in a dark corner of the city, or out and away where I could not hope to find her—beyond the city limits, in some remote corner. Joy Marsh taunted me, forcing me to a sudden turnabout, so that I found myself hurrying to meet Tiny at the Rebus.

  The Rebus was an undertaker’s dream—a symphony of black. The trick canopy over the sidewalk fooled you. The yellow canvas sparkled on the street, illuminated by a spotlight from a second-story window. The bistro was located on a quiet street whose shops featured a select variety of wares: antiques, custom-built furniture, imported food and assorted specialties for milady’s wardrobe. But the shopkeepers had gone home long ago and their store windows were dead. The yellow canopy of the Rebus shone in the gloom like a bright corner of a stage set.

  Once inside the front door the atmosphere of the Rebus crept up and overpowered you. The small lobby was as interesting as a closet. The walls were padded and tufted with black cloth, festooned with occasional silver buttons in the manner of a giant mattress that had been lifted from somebody’s bed and used for wallpaper.

  On the right side of the entrance lobby, a hole in the wall became a hat-check girl’s niche, and even the girl behind the counter had been selected to blend well with her background. She had ebony hair and eyes to match. I tossed her my hat and crossed the corridor to the edge of the bar.

  Business was slow at the Rebus. Over in the corner of the main room a lazy-looking pianist banged out boogie-woogie. He had the soft pedal down and the music seemed to come through a filter, muted and dull. There was a small dance floor in the center of the place, big enough to accommodate a dozen midgets. The tables near the floor were empty, but there were a few gay parties on the cushioned seats against the wall. I counted three cozy couples in various stages of revelry, and two noisy quartettes, all male and well liquored, probably visiting jerks from out of town. I turned my back to them and ordered a Scotch from the bartender.

  I had a ten dollar bill in my fingers when he delivered my drink.

  I dropped the bill to the bar and allowed him to admire it sleepily.

  I said, “I’m from out of town; Scranton. A friend of mine told me about this place.”

  “That was nice of him,” said the bartender.

  “He was crazy about it. Especially the girls.”

  “He met some nice girls here?”

  “That’s what he told me.”

  “He wasn’t kidding,” said the bartender. Now he had a glass in his hand and began to polish it. “A fellow from out of town could have himself a good time, mister—a real good time with a nice type girl. But you don’t want to fool around with the cheapies. From girls like that you’re liable to get yourself a good sickness. You don’t want nothing like that. You want something special, something you don’t have to worry about. Right, mister?”

  “Why, sure,” I said.

  “This friend of yours. When he came in here, did he tell you he got something special?”

  “He said it was terrific.”

  “How long ago was he in here?”

  “Maybe six months or so,” I said.

  “Times have sure changed,” said the bartender, shaking his head sadly at the glass and returning it to the shelf behind him. “Maybe he got something in here for ten bucks, it could be. I wouldn’t swear to it because I wasn’t here then. But now everything is different; you got to figure on inflation, I guess. We got nothing cheaper than twenty.”

  “That’s an awful lot of money,” I said.

  “You pay for what you get. You also pay for where you get it. They must have sent your cheapskate friend to a house.” He sighed sadly and poured himself a small glass of soda. “I wouldn’t send my worst enemy to one of those dumps.”

  “It wasn’t so bad,” I said. “He told me it was kind of nice—a brownstone place, over on the East Side. An old house, sort of.”

  “What was the number? Did he tell you that?”

  “He didn’t remember.”

  “The street?”

  “He couldn’t recall that either,” I said sadly.

  The bartender leaned my way and tapped my arm with an affectionate pat. “Listen, mister, that pal of yours is kidding, see? What he told you just don’t make sense.”

  “I guess you’re right,” I mourned, allowing him to feel the full force of my histrionic gloom. And then I brightened suddenly. “But Joe—that’s my friend—he couldn’t have been kidding. He even remembered the name of the gal he had that night. Her name was Joy Marsh.”

  “Now I know your friend’s a liar, mister.” He began to laugh softly at the humor of my plight. “This Joy Marsh is someone I used to know, up until maybe two months ago. A terrific piece. But expensive, see? You know why? It’s because this Joy Marsh used to work over in one of the best places in town. Your friend was leveling about the brownstone, all right. But he was all loused up about the rates. He had to pay at least twenty-five bucks to get inside Mary Ray’s dump.”

  “The hell with Mary Ray,” I said. “How about the girl? She could come over to my hotel room, couldn’t she?”

  “Who? Joy Marsh?”

  “That’s right. I’d be willing to pay the twenty-five bucks for her that way.”

  “Not a chance. She’s all washed up, that Marsh dame. She quit the racket.”

  “You mean she can’t be reached anymore?”

  “She left Mary Ray’s maybe two, three months ago. It happens once in a while with the girls, mister. They get a guy and settle down, somewhere outside the big town. You’d be surprised how well some of them turn out.”

  “Did Joy Marsh get married?” I asked.

  “Jesus, does it have
to be Joy Marsh? I can put you next to girls the same quality as Joy, maybe even better,” I listened to him avidly, as he described a few of the lush numbers on his list. I gave him the full treatment, laying on with the hick amazement.

  He excused himself when the phone rang at the other end of the bar. He spoke softly for a while and then his voice rose and he twisted his body so that he could look back at me and scowl.

  But he had finished scowling when he came my way.

  “You know who that was?” he asked pleasantly, as though we were both conspirators in a giant joke. “You know who just phoned here?”

  “Tiny?”

  “Mister, you are a detective,” he said. “You sure had me fooled with that farmer routine from Scranton. And that ten dollar deal. Where did you learn it?”

  “I’ll change it a bit,” I said. “How would you like to fold that ten bucks away in your pants?”

  “It wouldn’t kill me.”

  “It’s all yours. All you have to do is give me something on Joy Marsh.”

  “Something?” He threw out his hands in anguish. “Who the hell knows anything about her? She just disappeared, that’s all. Nobody’s seen her around.”

  “How about her boy friend?”

  “Never knew him,” he said. “Who was he?”

  “I’m asking the questions, not answering them,” I said pleasantly. I slid the ten dollar bill along the bar top until it touched his fingers. “You can have it anyhow, because you’re good company.”

  “Thanks.” He beamed. “You mind if I ask you a loaded question? What for are you looking for Joy Marsh?”

  “I like her. I like the way she works. Now, what was the message from Tiny?”

  “Jesus, I almost forgot,” he said. “Tiny wants you should come over to her place instead of seeing you down here. She said right away.” He wrote down her address and winked at me and showed me how much he thought of her by making significant sounds with his tongue. “I understand she’s pretty new in the trade and hot.”

  “I’ll let you know,” I said, and went out of there.