The Topless Tulip Caper

by Lawrence Block

  I very nearly turned around and left at that point, and if I’d done that I’d have been in trouble, because I wouldn’t have bothered wiping my fingerprints off the doorknob and a few other surfaces I’d touched. But something made me put my hand to his forehead. Maybe I sensed unconsciously that he wasn’t breathing. Maybe I was toying with the idea of shaking him awake, though why would I have wanted a wide-awake drunk on my hands? For whatever reason, I did touch him, and he was cold, the kind of cold that you’re not if you’re alive. Then I reached for his hand and it was also cold, and his fingers were stiff, and at that point there was no getting around the fact that Andrew Mallard was a dead duck.

  “But I can’t tell you what killed him,” I told Haig. “I counted five empty scotch bottles around the apartment, and that was without a particularly intensive search. If he emptied them all since the police let him go this morning then I know what killed him. Alcohol poisoning.”

  “He tended to leave garbage around,” Tulip said. “I went back once for some stuff and there were newspapers three weeks old, and lots of empty bottles.”

  “Well, he emptied one of them today. The whole place smelled of booze and he reeked of it. I don’t know if he drank enough to kill him.”

  Haig frowned. “You said he had been sick.”

  “You mean he threw up? Yes. Not a lot, though. Just a trickle.”

  “Hmmmm.”

  “He could have been poisoned. He could have had a heart attack or a stroke. I couldn’t tell anything from what I saw, but then I’m not a medical examiner, I don’t know what to look for. If his throat had been cut or if there was a bullet hole in his head I probably would have noticed. Then again, somebody could have strangled him or shot him in the chest and I probably wouldn’t have noticed. I didn’t want to disturb the body or anything.”

  “That was wise,” Haig said. “The police will determine cause of death and time of death. They are sound enough in that area. Any efforts you might have made would only have served to render their work more difficult.”

  “That’s what I figured.”

  “Did anyone see you enter the building?”

  “I don’t know. I wasn’t trying to avoid being seen. I made sure nobody saw me leave. Anyway it doesn’t really matter if they can prove I was there around 8:30. I don’t know how long he was dead, I don’t know how long it takes a body to lose body heat, but it was awhile.”

  Haig nodded absently, then leaned back in his chair. This time he kept his feet on the floor. His hand went to his beard and petted it affectionately.

  I turned to Tulip. The expression on her face was like the one I had seen last night when Cherry was killed, a sort of numb look.

  “It’s so hard to believe,” she said. “I slept with him, I lived with him. I was in love with him.” She stopped to consider, then amended this. “At least I thought I was in love with him. For a while. And then he got to be a kind of a habit, you know. He was there and he needed me, and it took awhile to break the habit. But it’s horrible that he’s dead. He was a very nice man. He was a loser, you know, but he was a decent sort of a guy. If he could ever have gotten ahold of himself he would have been all right, but he never quite managed to, and now he never will, will he?”

  I moved my chair away from the desk and closer to hers. She reached out a hand and I took it. Her hands were large—everything about her was large, for Pete’s sake—but her fingers were very long and thin, and the touch of her hand was cool. She got her hand around mine and squeezed. There was a sad half-smile on her face and her eyes looked to be backed up with tears she had no intention of shedding.

  “We shall have to play something of a waiting game,” Haig said thoughtfully. “Three possibilities exist. No, four. Mallard could have been murdered. He could have committed suicide. He could have had a heart attack or something of the sort. Finally, he could have committed a sort of involuntary suicide due to overindulgence in alcohol. I don’t suppose there was an empty bottle of sleeping tablets beside the bed?”

  “It’s the sort of thing I probably would have mentioned.”

  “Quite.” Haig heaved a sigh. I’d say he heaved it just about halfway across the room. “We’ll act on the supposition that the man was murdered. All deaths in the course of a homicide investigation ought to be regarded as homicides themselves until proven otherwise. It’s by far the best working hypothesis. Miss Wolinski.”

  “Yes?”

  “You will remain here this evening. There is a reasonably comfortable bed in the guest room. Wong Fat will change the linen for you. There is a murderer on the loose and he has already demonstrated that he can gain access to your apartment. I would be remiss in my duties if I permitted you to spend the night alone. I will brook no argument.”

  “I wasn’t going to argue,” Tulip said.

  “Oh? Then you are a rational woman, and I am delighted. Mr. Harrison always resists my urgings to spend the night. But he too will stay here.”

  “No argument,” I said.

  “Oh? Extraordinary.”

  I didn’t see what was so extraordinary about it. Anybody who wouldn’t welcome the chance to spend the night under the same roof as Tulip needed hormone shots.

  “Wong will make up the couch for you,” he went on. “But first you have some places to go and some people to see.”

  Buddy Lippa was wearing a sport jacket that would have kept him safe in the hunting season. It had inch- square checks of bright orange and black, and I had the feeling that it glowed in the dark. He was also wearing blue-and-white striped slacks, a canary silk shirt, and a troubled frown. “You’re gettin’ to be a regular,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s such a good idea. Bein’ as you’re underage and all.”

  “I showed proof of age last night,” I reminded him. “I can’t afford another ten.”

  “Oh, I wasn’t lookin’ for that. All it is, the boss might get tired of seein’ you. Say, you happen to know when Tulip’s gonna be workin’ again? The two bimbos we got on tonight are strictly from Doggie Heaven.”

  I told him Tulip wasn’t sure when she’d be returning to work. He let me through and I went up to the bar and ordered a bottle of beer. Jan uncapped it and poured it into a glass for me. “How’s Tulip?” she wanted to know. “Is it true she was arrested? Are you really a detective? Do they know who murdered Cherry?”

  I said, “She’s fine. Yes, I am. No, they don’t, but Leo Haig is working on it.”

  She squinted for a moment and assigned the three answers to the three questions. She started to say something else but some clown from Iowa was tapping his glass impatiently on the bar to indicate that it was empty. She moved off to take care of him. I looked up at the stage and watched a rather skinny blonde move around. She had a vacant expression on her face and whatever music she was dancing to was not the music they were playing. I guessed that she was tripping on something, either mescaline or speed. Whichever it was she probably did a lot of it, which would help to explain why she looked like she was suffering from terminal starvation. Her ribcage was more prominent than her breasts.

  “Jesus, you again.” I turned around and it was Gus Leemy and he still looked like a bald penguin, except now he looked like a constipated bald penguin. “Finish the beer and move on,” he said. “Guys like you could cost me my license. No hard feelings, but I want to stay in business.” He accompanied this last sentence with the most unconvincing smile anyone has ever flashed at me.

  “I could cost you your license anyway,” I said. “How long do you think you’d stay open if Leo Haig decided to go after you? There’s a racket going on in your own club and you don’t even know about it. You should be more worried about that than about me drinking a beer.”

  His eyes widened. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

  “Of course you don’t. That’s the whole point. I think you’d better show up at Leo Haig’s office tomorrow at three-thirty in the afternoon.”

  “What’s it
all about?”

  “Three-thirty tomorrow,” I said. “That’s when you’ll find out.”

  He started to say something else but changed his mind. He gave me a long look. I held his eyes for a few seconds, then turned back to my beer. If he’d kept up a barrage of questions I don’t know exactly where I would have gone with them. It’s easy to say no comment to a reporter, but reporters don’t have Buddy Lippa around to hit you if you give them a hard time. I think this may have been running through his mind. Anyway, he decided against it and left me to drink my beer in peace.

  I moved down the bar to where the waitresses came to pick up their drinks. I sat there nursing my beer Maeve O’Connor came over after a few minutes to order three whiskey sours and a pousse-café. Jan said she didn’t know how to make a pousse-café and it was no time for her to experiment. Maeve said she’d see what else they’d settle for and went away. She hadn’t noticed me, which was sad. She came back and said to change the pousse-café to a stinger, and I said hello, and she smiled as if genuinely pleased to see me. Which was nice.

  I asked if her boss was around. She said he’d dropped in earlier but had left about an hour and a half ago.

  “The other waitress,” I said. “Is that Rita Cubbage?

  The girl who was working last night?” Maeve nodded. I’d like to talk with her,” I said. “Ask her to stop by for a minute.”

  Rita Cubbage turned out to be a black girl wearing a blond wig. I hoped she took it off when she left the club; most of the Times Square hookers wear wigs like that, and if Rita walked down the street with it on she probably got a lot of offers.

  I said, “Hello. My name’s Chip Harrison and I work for Leo Haig.”

  “The detective,” she said. “Maeve told me. You were here last night, weren’t you?”

  “Yes, but were you? Not with that wig.”

  “No, I left it off last night. Do you like it?”

  “It’s striking,” I said.

  “You don’t like it.” She grinned. “That’s all right. Neither do I. But it boosts the tips, if you can dig it. My hair’s normally in an Afro and it puts the dudes uptight because they figure I must be terribly militant. This way they figure I put out.”

  I asked her about what she had seen last night, and what she knew about Cherry and Tulip and the other people involved in the case. She didn’t seem to know very much. There wasn’t much point to it, as far as I could see, but I invited her to come to Haig’s house at three-thirty. If he wanted a party, the least I could do was provide a full list of guests. She copied down the street address and put the tip of the pencil between her lips, a sudden frown of concentration on her face.

  “Something,” she said.

  “You can’t make it?”

  “Oh, I guess I can. Something just on the tip of my tongue and now I can’t get hold of it. You know how that’ll happen?”

  “Something about last night?”

  “No, goes back a few days. Damn.”

  “Maybe it’ll come to you.”

  “I just know it will,” she said. “What I’ll do, I’ll sleep on it. Then in the middle of the night it’ll come to me.”

  “Keep paper and pencil on the table next to your bed so you can write it down.”

  “Oh, that’s what I always do. I’ll be sleeping, and all of a sudden something’ll pop into my head, and I’ll write it down. Only thing is half the time the next morning I won’t know what it means. Like one time I woke up and there was the pad of paper on the bedside table, and what it said on it was, ‘Every silver lining has a cloud.’ ”

  “That’s really far out.”

  “Yeah, but what did I have in mind? Never did figure that one out.” She winked. “See you tomorrow, Chip.”

  I went back to my beer. When Maeve came to pick up an order of drinks I gave her the same invitation. “And tell your boss it would be a good idea for him to show up, too. Three-thirty at Haig’s place.”

  A few minutes later I got to extend the invitation to Jan Remo. I waited until she was pouring me a second beer and then I told her the time and place. If her hand shook any, I didn’t notice it.

  “Three-thirty,” she said. “I suppose I can make it. I’m having my hair done earlier but I should be through in plenty of time. But what’s it all about?”

  “Mr. Haig doesn’t tell me everything,” I said. “If I had to guess, I’d say he intends to trap a murderer.”

  “I thought the police solve murders.”

  “They do, occasionally. So does Leo Haig.”

  “And you’re his assistant.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Does Mr. Haig know who killed Cherry?”

  “I told you he doesn’t tell me everything. That’s one of the things he hasn’t told me.”

  She broke off the conversation to fill a drink order, then got Maeve’s attention and asked her to handle the bar while she took a break. “You won’t have to do much,” she said. “If you don’t push drinks at them they don’t order much. Just cover for me while I go to the head.”

  I chatted with Maeve for a few minutes. Not about murder or other nasty things but about her career in show business and how she had a driving need to make a success of herself. I was pleased to hear this. Ifs a theory of mine that women with one driving need have other driving needs as well, which tends to make them more interesting company than other women. I don’t know how valid this is, but I guess it’ll do until a better theory comes along.

  We didn’t have all that much time to talk before Jan was back. They stood side by side for a moment, both of them rather spectacular to look at and both of them redheads, and a part of my mind started thinking idly in troilistic terms, which I gather is a fairly standard male fantasy. I suppose it’s something I’ll have to try sooner or later, but I have the feeling it wouldn’t be as terrific in actuality as it is in fantasy, because it would be hard to concentrate and you wouldn’t know which way to turn. At any rate, I was fairly certain I wouldn’t get to try it with Maeve and Jan. I had the feeling they were less than crazy about one another.

  Then Maeve went back to her tables and Jan said, “I guess I’ll be there tomorrow, Chip. But there’s really nothing I know. Nothing that would help.”

  “You were right here when she got killed,” I said “Didn’t you see anything at all?”

  “The police asked me all that.”

  “Well, maybe you saw something and didn’t know you saw it. I mean, you know, it didn’t seem important at the time.”

  “I didn’t even see it,” she said. “I was pouring a drink. The first I knew something was wrong was when everybody took a deep breath all at once. Then I turned around and Cherry was lying on the stage and that was the first I saw of it.”

  “Well, I think you should come tomorrow anyway.”

  “I will.”

  I finished most of my beer and decided I could live without the rest of it. I left some change on the bar for Jan, decided it was a puny tip and added a dollar bill. I nodded a sort of collective goodnight on the chance that someone was looking my way and I walked to the door and out onto Seventh Avenue.

  I thought about a cab and decided I would take the subway instead. The AA train stops at Eighth Avenue and Fiftieth, so I started uptown, and I walked about ten steps and felt a pair of hands take hold of my right arm. I was just getting ready to find out who owned them when two more hands took hold of my left arm and a voice said, “Easy does it, kid.”

  I said, “Oh, come on. It’s the middle of Times Square and there are cops all over the place.”

  “Oh, yeah? I don’t see no cops around, kid. Where are all the cops?”

  Collecting graft, I decided. Sleeping in their cars. Because I couldn’t see a single cop anywhere. I heard a calypso verse once that maintained that policemen, women, and taxi cabs are never there when you want them. It’s the God’s honest truth.

  “We’re just gonna take a nice ride,” the voice said. They were walking me along an
d they had my arms in a disturbingly effective grip.

  “Suppose I don’t want to go?”

  “That would be silly.”

  “Getting in a car would be sillier.”

  “Now what you got to do is use your head,” said another voice, the one on my left. “A man wants to talk to you. That’s all there is to it. He says not to hurt you long as you cooperate. What the hell, you’re cooperating, aren’t you? There’s the car right around the comer, and you’re walking to it like a nice reasonable kid. So what’s the problem?”

  “Who’s the boss?”

  “The guy we’re going to see.”

  “Yeah, right,” I said. We walked up to the car, a long low Lincoln with a black man behind the wheel. He was wearing sunglasses, his head was shaved, there was a gold earring in his ear, and he had a little gold spoon on a gold chain around his neck. That’s either a sign that you use cocaine or that you want people to think you do.

  I said, “Look, tell me who the boss is or I don’t get in the car.”

  “If we want you to get in the car, kid, there’s not a hell of a lot you can do about it.”

  “I can make it easier,” I said. “Just tell me who we’re going to see.”

  One of them let go of my arms and stepped around to where I could see him. He wasn’t much to look at, but he didn’t have to be to do his job. He looked like a hood, which stood to reason, because that was evidently what he was.

  He said, “What the hell, you’ll know in ten minutes anyway. The boss is Mr. Danzig. You gonna get in the car now?”

  “Oh, sure,” I said. “I mean, why not? I was supposed to see him anyway.”

  Twelve

  I DON’T KNOW what I expected exactly. He had already surprised me. I’d had the impression that he was very small-time, not important enough to have a couple of musclemen and a driver working for him. Of course he could have hired them for the occasion from Hertz Rent-a-Hood, but somehow I doubted this.

  But whatever I had expected, he wasn’t it. He was waiting for me in a penthouse apartment on top of a high-rise on York Avenue in the Eighties. One whole wall of the living room was glass, and you could look out across the East River and gaze at more of the Borough of Queens than anyone in his right mind would want to see. He was doing just that when we walked in, all dolled up in a black mohair suit and holding a glass of something-on-the-rocks in his hand. When he turned to look at me I got the feeling he was disappointed that it was only me and not the photographer from Playgirl magazine.