Dames Fight Harder

by M. Ruth Myers

  He swallowed.

  “Now I’ve got a business proposition for you. Just for a week or so, while your face is so banged up no one’s going to buy a paper from you anyway. I need somebody to answer my phone. I’m out a lot, and I can’t afford to miss any calls right now. I’ve paid a week’s rent for you at a place with rooms. If you’re interested, you can work it off answering my phone and maybe doing another thing or two around here. I won’t pay you anything more except enough for meals and maybe a magazine now and then. What do you say?”

  His mouth was opening to accept without even thinking when the phone rang. I grabbed it before Heebs could take it into his head to show off his skills.

  “Maggie Sullivan.”

  A woman cleared her throat.

  “Miss Sullivan, this is Miriam Minsky. Rachel’s mother. I... One of my daughters believes if you met our family, it might make it easier for you to help Rachel.”

  It took a second to find my voice.

  “It might. Yes.”

  “Could you come for coffee with my daughters and me tomorrow? I know it’s short notice, but—”

  “It would help me considerably, and I know you have some sort of, ah, religious days about to start. What time?”

  “Half-past three? If you have things you’d like to discuss with Rachel afterward...”

  “I’ll be there. And thank you, Mrs. Minsky. Thank you very much.”

  The nature of the invitation, as well as its unexpectedness, made me forget Heebs’ presence until he spoke.

  “Did you just break a case, sis?”

  “Umm? No. Something that may help, though. Let’s get going.”

  “It’s early.”

  “Not much, and I have a date tonight. I want to primp.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  “Based on my impartial survey, you’re the second prettiest girl in the room,” Connelly murmured in my ear as we moved to the hypnotic strains of “Dancing in the Dark” at Hotel Miami.

  Leaning back a few inches to see his face, I lifted an eyebrow.

  “And number one is...?”

  “The girl selling cigarettes. I’ve a weakness for redheads.”

  The cigarette seller was middle-aged and the red so obviously out of a bottle a blind man could see it. I laughed.

  On rare occasions I felt pretty, but never beautiful. I almost did tonight. On Ione Jenkins’ last trip to New York, I’d given her money to buy me something swanky at a discount place she’d told me about. I was wearing her selection, a steel blue jersey number with a darker appliqué edged in sequins on one shoulder. Or maybe it was Connelly’s arm around me that made the difference.

  The music brought us to the end of the dance floor and we turned. I missed a step.

  “Maggie? Anything wrong?”

  “That man coming in. He works at Rachel’s site.”

  It was Hawkins, dressed in a suit with his hair slicked, looking out of his element and all the more belligerent for it as he glared at the maitre d’. The head of the girl with him came to his shoulder. She was looking around in awe.

  “Big bruiser,” Connelly observed.

  “Yeah, and I’m wondering where he got the money to turn up here.”

  “Shall I go and inquire?”

  I pretended to consider. “He might take exception.”

  The music stopped. We returned to our table. Hawkins wasn’t satisfied with the first one he was shown to, and the waiter led the way to a second. As soon as he sat down, Hawkins looked around. His eyes came to rest on me and he gave an unpleasant smile. Surely he wasn’t following me. I would have noticed him, and he’d have to go home and put on a suit and find a date, assuming he wasn’t married. I resolved not to let Hawkins’ presence spoil my evening.

  Our second cocktails of the evening arrived.

  “I took my physical today,” Connelly said casually. “Selective Service.”

  I looked up in dismay.

  “You needn’t worry,” he said with a wry smile. “They wouldn’t have me. Some nonsense about rheumatic fever might have weakened my heart.”

  “You never said anything about getting a draft notice.”

  “I didn’t. I meant to enlist. Water under the bridge now.”

  “The chief will be glad not to lose you.”

  “And you?”

  The tip of his finger touched mine on the table.

  “Yeah. I’m not going to pretend I’m not.”

  Uncomfortably I recognized that it made a difference when the vague abstraction of men going off to war changed to the concrete image of someone you cared about. Now I understood

  why a woman down the hall from my office had fought tooth and nail in behalf of isolationism. She couldn’t bear the thought of her only son going.

  Connelly smiled at me.

  “Let’s dance some more.”

  What he’d told me made me gladder than ever to be in Connelly’s arms. Twice more in the course of the evening I caught Hawkins staring at me. Whatever his reason for being here, I wasn’t going to waste thought on it until tomorrow.

  “Since it looks like you’re going to be underfoot,” I said over dinner, “what have you heard about kids on the streets at night? Or seen when you’re working that shift?”

  “Kids?”

  I told him about Heebs, and my conversation with Lulu. He hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary.

  When the hour grew late and we left the restaurant, Hawkins made no move to follow. He noticed our departure though, and favored me with another malicious smile.

  Connelly usually drove when we went out together. He’d started to talk about getting a car of his own, but the war had put an end to that as production of new cars stopped and prices for used ones rose. At the widow’s house where he rented an attic room, he came around and opened the passenger door for me to get out.

  “Thanks, Mick. It was the loveliest night I’ve had in years. Maybe ever.”

  “Me too. Aren’t you going to walk me to my door and say a proper goodnight?”

  I laughed. “Sure, why not?”

  The springtime weather was holding. Somewhere close at hand a flowering bush filled the night with light, sweet scent. At the foot of the wooden stairs leading up to his outside entrance, he slid an arm around me and gathered me to him. We kissed lightly, and then more deeply, exploring each other as we never had. My hands slid under his jacket. He cupped me against him more tightly than we’d been on the dance floor. The kisses grew deeper. Our breathing quickened.

  Abruptly his mouth left mine.

  “Come up with me, Maggie.”

  ***

  In the upstairs hall at Mrs. Z’s the next morning, I leaned against the wall with a towel on my shoulders, waiting with some of the other girls for my turn in the bathroom. By unspoken agreement, no one took a bath in the morning. You washed your face, brushed your teeth and did your business. No dilly-dallying.

  While I waited, my thoughts floated aimlessly between extremely pleasant memories of Connelly’s arms around me when we were dancing, and regret about saying no to him at the end of the evening. It hadn’t been from fear of losing my virginity. I’d given that up to curiosity when I was in high school. The experience had been disappointing. I had a feeling with Connelly it would be anything but.

  When I was with Connelly I didn’t feel alone; I felt safe; I felt part of something I wanted to grab and hold forever. And I feared that I might lose myself if I did. So instead, I’d caught his face in my hands and given him a quick kiss, and walked to my car.

  The bathroom door opened. Familiar smells of toothpaste and Palmolive soap puffed out. It was my turn.

  When I got to my office, Heebs was sitting on the floor outside my door. Hampered by his sprained ankle, he got awkwardly to his feet.

  “Say, that place I’m staying is okay. There’s a bed and a chair and space enough to turn around without hitting your elbow if you don’t do it fast. There’s even a room downstairs where you can read
or play cards.

  “I was in by eight like you said. Good thing, too. I could hardly keep my eyes open long enough to wash my face. I probably ought to have another pair of drawers, sis, since I’m working for you. So I can wash the other pair out every night.”

  “Sure. Okay.”

  I’d laid down some ground rules before dropping him at the place he was going to stay yesterday. In addition to being in by eight every night, he wasn’t to have any words with the braggart who’d taken over his corner. The kid would give it back when the time came, I assured Heebs, without adding that I intended to see to that personally. Most important of all, he wasn’t to do anything if he spotted any of the boys who had beaten him. He was to let me know where and when he’d spotted them, if he did. I hinted that the police were interested in them and didn’t want them scared off. It seemed like a smart fib.

  Since more than a dozen hours had passed, and Heebs hadn’t been in the best of shape when I dispensed them, I had him repeat the rules back while I fished out money for underwear.

  While he did, letter perfect, I went to the oak file cabinet to get him a tablet. I didn’t want the messages he took to get mixed in with the jottings and lists I had on mine, or worse, a page of mine to get ripped out. When I opened the drawer of the oak file cabinet, a pencil rolled off the top. Oblivious to some question Heebs was asking, I bent to retrieve it.

  Pencils came in handy at a file cabinet. They were better than a finger for sorting through files. You could stick one in to mark where you’d removed a folder. But I’d learned a long time ago not to leave one on top because as soon as I opened a drawer it would roll to the floor. If the women who cleaned found a stray, they put it in the pencil holder on my desk. Between the time Heebs and I left together yesterday and when we came in this morning, someone had been in my office.

  ***

  Being an early bird did pay off in worms. Winfred Lamont, the nervous one among the other bidders on Foster’s project, was in when I called. He didn’t seem thrilled at the prospect of renewing our acquaintance, but said if I could get there in the next half hour, he would spare me a few minutes.

  I took just long enough to give Heebs some basics. I showed him the list of most used numbers in the front of my phone book, and the temporary list I’d attached to it.

  “With anybody named Minsky, get all the information you can and tell them I’ll call as soon as I get back. That shouldn’t be more than an hour, hour and a half. If Joel Minsky calls, or someone from his office, tell him where I was headed in case he wants to try and reach me there. This goes for the whole time you’re working here, by the way.”

  He scribbled furiously on his pad. Reassured that the kid would manage, although possibly in a less-than-conventional way, I took off.

  Two men in workmen’s clothes were leaving the nuts-and-bolts side of Lamont’s construction office when I arrived. One backed a pickup truck around to the side of the building while his pal ambled after him. I parked and went in the door to the fancier part.

  “Mr. Lamont said to bring you right through,” his Girl Friday said, jumping up to comply. No sooner had we stepped through the archway into the short hallway leading to his office than we could hear him on the phone.

  “Don’t think for a minute I’m going to— You told me I didn’t need to— What if I can’t, huh? What if I can’t?”

  His secretary rapped discreetly on the door and cleared her throat.

  “Mr. Lamont? Miss Sullivan’s here.”

  “Someone’s here,” he snapped. A minute later, he opened the door.

  “Come in.” Despite his attempt at a smile, he looked furious. Red flushed his cheeks.

  “Bad start to the day?” I asked mildly.

  “Oh, er, family squabble. You know how that can be, I expect. Some days it sounds tempting to be an orphan.” His chuckle was forced. “Sit down. What was it you wanted to ask?”

  “When we talked last week, you said that even if an overture were made to you to take over Gabe Foster’s project, you didn’t have the wherewithal to hire more men. Shortage of funds, I believe you said.”

  “That’s right. I’m not proud to admit it, but there you are.”

  “That makes me wonder why you tried to hire workers away from Rachel Minsky’s site a day after she was arrested.”

  “I... Wherever did you get that idea?”

  “From the men on the site.”

  “They - they misunderstood.” His eyes flicked nervously to the family photographs on the wall behind him, avoiding my gaze. “I wasn’t... That is, I just thought one or two of them might be interested in guaranteed work since - since there was no telling what would happen on that project. I’ve lost one man to the draft and one to factory work. Anybody will tell you that’s happening.”

  I waited. He shifted irritably.

  “I suppose I might have hired a third if I could. Just in case.”

  “In that case, I hope the foreman didn’t hustle you off by the arm the way he did Phil Clark when he tried to poach workers there.”

  “Clark?” If possible, he was redder now than when I’d come in.

  “You didn’t know he went there?”

  “No. No, of course not. Why would I? He’s a-a rival.”

  “Scuttlebutt? You fellows in the construction business seem fond of that. Which makes me wonder why you didn’t tell me about the story Foster spread about Miss Minsky.”

  He colored, as I’d known he would.

  “I don’t believe in spreading gossip. It would demean me as much as the person who started it.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Heebs had fielded three phone calls in my absence. One wanted to sell me insurance, one was a wrong number, and one was a woman wanting me to find her missing cat.

  “I took down her name and her number and told her you’d call back to set up a time to come in,” he said proudly, handing me the slip he’d written.

  “You did great, Heebs, only I forgot to tell you I don’t look for dogs or kitties.”

  “She says it’s real valuable, sis. I could do it, I bet. I’ve helped you out three or four times now. I know how—”

  “You need a license, Heebs, for which you first need experience, either as a policeman or guard or store security.

  “Now listen. Are you in good enough shape to go across the street and get a sandwich when you get hungry? Here’s some money. I want to take a gander at something at Market House and I’m not sure when I’ll be back. Maybe before noon and maybe after.”

  Or maybe in the next fifteen minutes if Freeze threw me out on my ear.

  ***

  “You want to look at Foster’s financial records?” he repeated staring at me. He had his hat on and was standing behind his desk, but I wasn’t sure if he was coming or going. Boike was on the phone.

  “I know it’s a lot to ask, Freeze.”

  “Yeah. It is.”

  Taking a cigarette from his mouth, he contemplated it for a moment.

  “What is it you think you’ll find?”

  “I don’t know. Honestly.” I considered it some myself. “I want to get an idea how much a contract like the one for that project he was working on is worth. What the expenses are. Whether his bank account was getting fatter because he’d been getting bigger contracts, or even a different sort of contracts. Does that make sense?”

  “Yeah. Maybe.”

  “I have data on some other construction projects around here. Maybe if I get a picture of Foster’s doings and compare it with those, something will pop out.”

  Freeze scraped his teeth across his lower lip while wrinkling his nose. He was thinking.

  “If I let you look through them, you’ll share anything you do come across with me?”

  “Cross my heart.”

  He did the business with his teeth and nose again.

  “Not sure I should do it, but it’s coming at it from a different angle, not what Boike and I look at. And like you said a while ago, we’
re short on help. I’ve got to lend a hand to the auto theft boys, and Boike’s off to have another go at Foster’s widow. Those three boxes there.” He pointed. “Nobody’s using the desk they’re on. Don’t take them out of the building.”

  ***

  As soon as I undid the lid of the first box, I had a feeling I’d bitten off more than I wanted to chew, never mind my ability. Invoices. Payments. Receipts. For nails. For lumber. For permits and inspection fees; for moving piles of dirt around; electricians, plumbers, taxes and wages. You name it. His cancelled checks on personal and business accounts were just the tip of a very large iceberg.

  From time to time one of the other detectives sharing the room with Freeze or Boike came in or left. They talked on the phone. One pecked at a typewriter. Most looked at notes they’d made on pads like the one Boike carried. Two left and returned shortly carrying mugs of coffee, confirming the rumor that they kept a hotplate somewhere in the building. The one at the desk nearest me was working his way doggedly through a pleated file. Occasionally he held one of the sheets it contained in front of his desk lamp and squinted.

  My eyeballs felt as though they’d been scoured by the time Boike returned. Two hours had passed.

  “Learn anything?” he asked.

  “Yeah. That I’m glad I’m a one-person operation and the only supplies required to do my job are pencils and brains.”

  “And bullets. You use some of those.”

  “What about you?”

  “I decided I don’t blame Foster for having a girlfriend.”

  “Why? Is the wife a shrew?”

  “She cries.”

  “You’d be suspicious if a newly widowed woman didn’t cry, wouldn’t you?”

  “I don’t mean she just cries about the deceased — how wonderful he was, and she doesn’t know how she’ll stand it sitting down at the table without him. She cried about how she’d ordered a new sofa and he won’t get to see it. She cried about how his secretary and the poor clerk who’s struggling to keep his office stumbling along keep calling her for decisions. I don’t think it’s even crossed her mind to be grateful to them. The woman can’t get two sentences out without turning on the waterworks.”