Murder for Madame

by Lawrence Lariar

  I had a cup of coffee and fought for a short cut to Moore. On the third gulp I remembered Nat Webster. He was the art critic at The Gazette, but Nat was not at his desk.

  “Maybe I can help you,” his girl said.

  “I’m looking for Haskell Moore.”

  “You want to see his paintings? We have a list of places where the dealers are showing them. The man who has most of his stuff is Pleurot, down in the Village.”

  “The hell with his paintings,” I said. “I want Moore himself. Where does he live?”

  I heard her rustling through her files and then she was back on the phone.

  “I don’t seem to be able to locate any home address for him,” she said. “I’m afraid you’ll have to wait until Mr. Webster gets back.”

  “I can’t wait. You must know somebody I can see for the information.”

  “Why don’t you try the Barrel? It’s one of Moore’s hangouts down in the Village. I’ve seen him there often.”

  “Hangouts are dead ends lots of times,” I insisted. “Think. Anywhere else I can go?”

  “You might try Eric Fanchon. He collects paintings. He might know.”

  “Nuts. Where is this Barrel dump?”

  She gave me the address and I took a cab downtown. The Barrel was on a dead street, close to the inner core of the Village. It was tucked away in the basement, five steps down from the pavement level, a stuffy bistro that reeked of garlic and old hash, a roomful of tables made up of barrels with candle-lit tops, decorated in the proverbial artistic manner, as barren as a backhouse.

  It was too late for dinner customers and too early for the late drop-ins, the habitual Bohemian stiffs who start to drink at midnight and wind up on the flat of their faces at dawn. The place was empty of all humanity, save for a couple of young lushes who slurped their liquor at the far end of the small bar in the rear, cooing inanities at each other.

  The bartender was a florid Greek who spoke rusty English as though he were blowing his words through a straw. He knew nothing. He indicated the half-crocked girl who was busily engaged parrying the sly advances of her romantic escort.

  “Gloria Vola—she know everything,” he said.

  I interrupted the love duel. I tapped the young lady on the shoulder. Gloria Vola brushed my hand away as though it were a marauding fly.

  “Go away,” she said. “You bother me.”

  “I haven’t arrived yet,” I said. “Mind if I ask you a question?”

  She shrugged me off, not bothering to take her eyes off her enraptured escort. “I’m busy,” she said.

  “I only wanted to ask you a short one.”

  “Go roll your hoop, small change. Elmer!” Gloria said. “Fix him.”

  The lad slid off his stool and wobbled to his feet. He stepped forward, adjusting his waxed face to register belligerency. He was a pimpled artist, as thin as a fading consumptive. He waltzed up to me and pulled me off my stool. He held my lapels in a wavering grip. I allowed him his fun.

  “Stop bothering Gloria,” he yapped.

  “I haven’t started.”

  “I ought to break your head,” Elmer growled.

  “What for? All I want to know is where to find Haskell Moore.”

  “Who wants to know?”

  “My name is J. Edgar Hoover,” I said. “F.B.I.”

  “You’re lying like hell. They don’t hire midgets.”

  “Hit him one, Elmer,” the girl said. “He bothers me.”

  “No fights,” said the barman, skipping out from behind his mahogany wall. “Out of here, if it is fighting you want. You hear me, Elmer?”

  I said, “I’ll play it again, Buster. Do you know Haskell Moore?”

  The youthful lush burped in my face.

  “She is model,” the barman said. “She must knowing of him.”

  The girl weaved around at me, allowing me to appraise her big black eyes, leaning on one wobbling elbow as she laughed at me. The scene was becoming humorous, filled with a zany pitch that would have made me laugh if the tall artist weren’t annoying me with his insistent hands. He was working himself into the hysterical frenzy a drunk enjoys, the dizzy dramatics that would soon build into mayhem.

  My hands were free and I used them. I put one of them into his naval, deep, so that he grunted and groaned. He sagged in the middle and all the starch went out of him. He doubled up and spilled his guts against the bar. The Greek made all the noises appropriate for the occasion, holding his head with both hands and appealing to his private gods for help in the emergency. The girl watched it all with the calm detachment of a judge at a dog show, curling her lip as her hero showed his feet of clay.

  She began to laugh suddenly, and got off the stool and took her drink to one of the tables, where she continued to giggle at the sad plight of her escort. I joined her there. She gulped her drink and leaned into me, murmuring an indistinct criticism of Elmer’s pugilistic prowess.

  “Big strong little man,” she said. “I like them strong… You an artist? Maybe I can pose for you.”

  “You work around here much?”

  “All the boys know Gloria. Best in the Village, Mister F.B.I.”

  “You’ve posed for Haskell Moore?”

  She made a face at the suggestion. “I spit on Haskell Moore.” And she spat. “I spit on all the old men, see? They don’t play my way. I wouldn’t go near that old lily, understand?”

  “Where does he live?”

  “You want him, or Gloria?” she asked petulantly.

  “Him now—you later, sweetheart. Where can I find him?”

  “Pleurot would know,” she said, closing her eyes and swaying back against the chair. “Pleurot Gallery, around the corner. Pleurot hangs him all the time.”

  I got out of there and circled the block quickly. Pleurot’s was a small art emporium, a window full of paintings and sculpture. The store was closed for the night, but the bell in the hallway indicated that Mr. Pleurot lived above his shop. I pressed it and waited, but nothing happened at all. I stood there mouthing small and angry epithets at Pleurot, the Village, and the entire art world. When I left the hall, Gloria Vola was waiting for me on the pavement.

  “Gloria will show you where to find him,” she said, and took my arm for the sake of her stability. “The old dog hangs out over at Eric’s all the time. You know Eric? It doesn’t matter. Eric knows me. Eric will tell me.”

  She led me through a side street, into an alley, around a corner and past a row of two-story barns that had been converted into studios. The liquor had unhinged her tongue and she treated me to a running history of Eric Fanchon, the little millionaire who lived among the artists because he had always wanted to be a painter. Eric’s parties were well known in the Village—two-day orgies that attracted the cream of the aesthetic world, along with much of the skimmed milk, because Eric wasn’t fussy. He opened his doors to all of them and sat back to enjoy the horseplay, indulging in nothing stronger than ginger ale while feasting his guests with the finest in food and drink. It was Eric’s joy to bring hilarity to the denizens of the Village. It was his pleasure to stand by as an observer of the high jinks.

  Eric’s house was a dignified mansion, out of the cheap rent section of the Village, close to the busy lane that was Fifth Avenue. Gloria piloted me up the stone steps and advanced for the buzzer under the silver name plate. I held her arm. Against the splendid façade she was as out of place as a skullery wench dancing in the Stork Club.

  “Eric knows me,” she said lightly. “Eric also knows Haskell Moore.”

  “Advance and be recognized.”

  She leaned into the doorbell and there was only a short wait before a white-coated houseboy squinted out at us through the door. He was a Philippine youth with a face full of hospitality, showing Gloria his broad white smile as though she lived upstairs. He said nothing at a
ll, waving us inside in a dignified way and then closing the door silently behind us. He indicated a broad couch in the vestibule, and Gloria spread herself on it, as much at home as a relative after Thanksgiving dinner. The entrance hall was square and roomy, done up in a lush décor and featuring many paintings, arranged in no set design, but well-lit and interestingly hung. They were all originals, culled from the modern schools of artistic endeavor—a gallery of big names including Dufy, Marin, Klee, and a dozen others from the upper brackets of the graphic great. I looked them over quickly, searching for Haskell Moore’s handiwork. I looked in vain.

  Eric Fanchon bounced out into the hall while I was examining his display. He came at me with his hand out, a fat little gnome. He was my size, but he outweighed me by a few barrels of lead. He had a round head, flabby in the jowls and almost bald above the ears. The few hairs he owned were combed skillfully on the bias, in the manner of a barber who works hard to convince his customers that he owns more fuzz on his pate. He had buried eyes, dull blue under the shadows of his brow. His nose was sharp and owlish.

  And he had a tongue to match.

  “Good evening,” he said, taking my hand in his. His grip was as warm as the feel of a mackerel’s behind. “It’s a pleasure to see you again.”

  I said, “You don’t know me, Mr. Fanchon. I’m with Gloria.”

  He saw her then and skipped to the couch and reached down for her hand, kissing it with the grace and devotion of a courtier at a state function. “Of course,” he said. “Gloria. How are you, my dear?”

  She was on her feet, swaying delicately as she enjoyed the fruits of his refinement. “Hello, Eric. Remember me?”

  “You’ve been here often, my dear. The last time you came, it was with Ben Tremaine, wasn’t it?”

  “You’ve been peeking,” Gloria said, waggling her finger at him. “I didn’t come with Ben, but we got together later.”

  “A fine painter, Tremaine,” Eric Fanchon said, closing his eyes and licking his lips over a memory that might have been enjoyable. “A good technician, isn’t he, Gloria?”

  “He’s a worker, all right.”

  “And this gentleman?” Eric asked, indicating me with a gentle nod of his head. “Is he your latest?”

  “Not quite,” said Gloria. “But maybe.”

  “You want to—ah—stay here with him?”

  “I’d love it,” she giggled. “But he’s a businessman. He wants you to tell him where Haskell Moore lives.”

  “And why does he ask?” Eric addressed his fingernails.

  “His paintings,” I said. “I’m interested in his art.”

  “You collect?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Poor Haskell, he’ll be happy to see you. He was in here only this evening, discussing his forthcoming show with me.”

  “Really? What time was that?”

  “Haskell was here rather early—at about seven.”

  “Did he stay long?”

  Eric Fanchon turned his turtle eyes my way. He gave me a slow and methodical examination, concentrating on a spot somewhere between my eyes, deep behind the frontal lobe. He stared at me dreamily, enjoying the pause.

  And then he said, “Why do you ask?”

  “He interests me. He’s a hard man to locate. Why isn’t he listed in the phone book?”

  “Haskell always prized his privacy.”

  “He’s certainly exclusive. I’ve been on his tail all day.”

  “Poor man, I sympathize with you. And now you’ve found him at last.”

  “Have I? I want to talk to him, right away.”

  “Haskell abhors haste. You are in a hurry to return somewhere?”

  “Cleveland. I must get back there tomorrow.”

  “I see.” Eric said, his cherubic smile glowing with a strange light. “You confuse me, my boy. There is a quality about you that I cannot exactly place. How shall I say it? The closest I can come to you is this: that you are not a businessman at all. You impress me in the way that I react to—ah—a process server. Do I make sense?”

  “You make lots of sense,” I said. “But you’re off the beam and lost in the woods. I’m a detective.”

  “A detective?” He stepped back delicately and appraised me with a sudden change in his facial apparatus. His little mouth formed a perfect O and he was laying on with the dramatics. “How uncanny of me.”

  “You’ve got a keen eye, Mr. Fanchon.”

  “Thank you. And how did you happen to come my way in your search for Haskell Moore?”

  I jerked my thumb over my shoulder toward Gloria. “She led me here. But I would have wound up here sooner or later. Nat Webster sent me to you.”

  “I know Webster well. And Webster is familiar with my collection. He would know that I have recently acquired three of Haskell’s originals.”

  “You have a big name in art circles, Mr. Fanchon. Do you consider Moore a good painter?”

  He shrugged it off. “Sometimes a collector buys merchandise on a gamble. Haskell has talent, I suppose. I’m not one of his frantic admirers, but I allow that he is worth collecting on the basis of probabilities.”

  “And he was here on business tonight?”

  “We talked. Is there any reason why I must tell you anymore?”

  “Plenty. We’re wasting too much time with the fancy chitchat,” I said. I let him see that I was no longer in the mood for smart patter. I came to a slow boil, up close to him, so that he could measure the anger that was blossoming inside of me. I said, “Your friend Haskell Moore is wanted for murder!”

  Eric Fanchon batted his eyes at me, obviously hard hit by the sudden change of wind in our bluster and blow routine.

  “Not Haskell,” he said quietly. “I don’t believe it. You’ll have to work hard to convince me.”

  “I haven’t got time. The boys from headquarters can break it down for you later, after they’ve got it in the files. Meantime, I want to know where he lives. Now.”

  “I don’t know whether I should tell you. Are you saying that you are not from the police?”

  “You guessed it. I’m working privately on this deal.”

  “For whom?”

  “For me,” I shouted. I thumped him on the chest so that he stepped backward under the impact of my hand. “But some of my best friends are city dicks, Mr. Fanchon. Either you open up for me now, or I’ll send a few of them down here for a visit. They’ll get the information they need, and it could be that they’ll sweat some of that lard off your fat butt before they finish with you. My friend Doughty has a personal revulsion for the fat and wealthy. He’ll take a keen delight in handling you himself.”

  He broke down quickly, almost before I had finished my hot monologue. He had an address book out of his pocket and was thumbing it to the right spot. His hands were jittery on the book as he read off Haskell Moore’s address to me.

  I said, “How long did he stay here tonight?”

  “Not too long. An hour or so.”

  “Where was he going when he left?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  “And why did he come here?”

  “He was upset, the poor man.” Eric Fanchon stood in the broad doorway to the living room, his back to me, shaking his head mournfully. “But it doesn’t seem possible that Haskell would kill anybody. He is a gentle soul, really, a truly gentle soul. How can a man paint as he does and be suspected of such violence? It seems incredible.”

  “Upset about what?” I said.

  “Haskell didn’t quite explain,” said Eric Fanchon. “He was a bit under the weather, you see.”

  “Exactly how many sheets to the wind?”

  “Quite drunk.”

  “Stiff? So that his blubbering didn’t make sense?”

  “I suppose you might say so.” Eric Fanchon sat down and heaved a
monstrous sigh. “Although some of his meaning came through to me. Haskell was muttering vague gibberish about an exhibition that he had planned. He was having difficulties with it, it seemed to me.”

  “What kind of difficulties?”

  “I could not quite make them out. As I said before, he was intoxicated.”

  “He didn’t mention Mary Ray?”

  “He did, indeed,” the fat man said.

  “Did he say anything about having a fight with Mary Ray? An argument?”

  “Not a word.”

  “He’s going to tell me,” I said.

  When I turned for the door, Fanchon still faced the living room. Gloria lay on the couch, her buxom frame relaxed and her head nestling in her arms. She was asleep. She was out cold, snoring gently. She had fallen asleep during our conversation, a long time ago, overcome by the final thrust of her alcoholic adventures of the Barrel.

  I closed the door on her, abandoning her to the little fat art connoisseur.

  There were things I had to do—right away.

  CHAPTER 9

  Rain filled the sky and splattered and splashed high off the sidewalk. The storm broke in a rash of wind that caught the pedestrians on Fifth Avenue by surprise and sent couples screaming and giggling for shelter. I made a dash for the uptown side of the street and found a handy doorway and began to shout for a cab, along with a few dozen kindred spirits around and about me. It was a losing game. I cursed Haskell Moore for all of his eccentricities. I had assumed that he lived close to his familiar haunts in Greenwich Village. Instead, the address Eric Fanchon gave me was a longish trek uptown, on the east side of Central Park, off Fifth Avenue.

  Time went by. The skittering cabs rushed away uptown in a steady stream, each of them loaded with paydirt. I lit a cigarette under my sheltering doorway. I leaned back away from the downpour and took time out for thought.

  Haskell Moore had gone to Mary’s for some reason or other late in the afternoon. He had fought her with words. And he had returned to butcher her. He had used his artist’s knife, the lone clue that would hang him. The one witness to his maniac murder had been silenced, frightened into holding her evidence from the police. But this gambit would only delay his arrest. He would be smart enough to understand that his safety lay only in immediate flight, out of the city, out of the country, perhaps. I saw him in this electric moment, now, while I idled in a doorway. He came through to me clearly. He would be packing his belongings and preparing for flight.