by Howard Fast
“I see.”
“Can you lose him?”
“For ten bucks, Captain, I can lose J. Edgar Hoover and forty G-men. Rest easy.”
We ripped out of the place, and Lucille reminded me that I had been telling her about Homer Smedly.
“Who runs the company,” I said. “You know what an insurance company deals with? Money. You know what they like? Money. The aforesaid Homer Smedly handed me a check for fifteen thousand clams, and I said I would bring him Cynthia, alive and unharmed. He said, quote, ‘And if you don’t, Harvey, you will wish you had never been born.’ That may sound like a bit of nasty rhetoric if you don’t know Smedly. Do you know what he is capable of?”
“I know that this cab driver is capable of murdering us, and he’s going to, Harvey.”
I have to admit that he was an excellent driver, or perhaps only a lunatic. While I had been talking, he crossed the parkway, and now he was screaming through a Queens suburban street at sixty miles an hour, the olive-green Dodge carrying Kelly trying desperately to hang onto his tail. My heart went out to our driver, who had no idea that a cop was chasing him and that if he were caught, he would do ninety days at best and maybe a hundred dollars more; and I felt it was my duty to offer him another five.
“Jack, goodby to them,” he chortled, took a curve on two wheels, raced into a cemetary, twisted and turned along a mile of cemetery road with which he was apparently familiar, came out on another suburban street, screamed along, doubled, doubled again, and then somehow shot into the parkway with the skyline of Manhattan in front of us. It was beautiful, and of Kelly, there was neither sign nor smell.
“You’re very free with your money when you’re buying mayhem,” Lucille said. “We could have had dinner in the Plaza—”
“We made it.”
“What?”
“We dumped Kelly.”
“If he had taken us to New York, I know thirty-three ways of losing your friend, Kelly, without risking our necks—and this is typical of you and every other American male weaned on television.”
“Lady,” the driver said, “you got a grudge against affluence?”
“Oh, tend to your driving,” Lucille said in despair.
“On driving I don’t need lessons, lady. But if I make a buck the hard way, a man must eat.”
I said nothing, and in due time we came to the Ritzhampton. “Thank heavens for that,” Lucille said.
“For what?”
“We’re alive.”
“Yeah. Sure.” I was thinking about my office, which I had not seen since yesterday morning. If I called Hunter, he would chew my ear off and demand that I put in an appearance immediately; but if I did not call, the whole thing might be off and I would still be out chasing my tail. So I decided to call Mazie Gilman, in research, who always knows all that is going on; and we went into the hotel where I used one of the pay telephones in the lobby. While I was dialing the number, Lucille waited outside the booth, the Donnell Branch forgotten and herself a permanent delinquent. Then Mike Jacoby the house detective came by. Out of a corner of my eye, I saw him fall all over himself when he saw Lucille. I watched him talking to Lucille while Mazie demanded to know where I had been.
“Canada. Yes, you can tell Hunter. I’m hot on the trail. What’s happened?”
“Nothing,” Mazie said, except that Hunter was swearing all over the place and sore as hell that he could not lay hands on me.
“Tell him he’ll hear from me late this afternoon.”
“It won’t satisfy him.”
“Tell him to drop dead,” I said.
But it was not as easy as that to get rid of Mazie, and while she was filling me in on every detail of the day, Jacoby and Lucille were chopping away with interesting talk, not a word of which I could hear, and then suddenly Jacoby bowed, kissed Lucille’s hand, and sauntered away. I guess I hung up on Mazie. I came out of the booth and asked Lucille, “Did I just see what I saw?”
“What do you think you saw?”
“Did I just see that jerk kiss your hand?”
“Yes, and I think it’s very sweet, very continental.”
“The closest he ever came to continental is Newark, New Jersey. Where did he go? I want to talk to him.”
“He went to get a razor cut. I talked to him.”
“A razor cut?”
“It’s a special kind of a haircut. It costs three dollars. He gets a regular haircut every two weeks and a razor cut once a month.”
“Good. You know his tonsorial habits from A to Z. But I want to talk to him now.”
“I did talk to him, Harvey.”
“Not your talk. Mine. You know that. I wanted to ask him whether Cynthia and the count came back here. Hell—there are twenty things I wanted to ask him.”
“Of course they did—and that shows how clever you are, Harvey. Never would it have occurred to me. But never. They came right back here, just like homing pigeons.”
“And?”
“And nothing. They are right here. Upstairs in the bridal suite.”
“Now?” I demanded excitedly.
“Now. Of course, Harvey. And isn’t that wonderful—all that money you are going to make.”
I looked at her strangely. “What’s all this about money?”
“Don’t you think we work well together, Harvey?”
“I think it’s time you stopped being sick and went back to the Donnell Library. When is Jacoby coming back?”
“After his razor cut, he goes to lunch. He asked me to go to lunch with him. He said he would take me to the Colony. He said he’d bet his last nickel that you never took me to the Colony.”
“He’s a great house detective. He sure is. All right, you can either stay here or go back to work. I’m going up to the bridal suite.”
She gripped my arm, looked me square in the eye, and said coldly, “You would do that, Harvey Krim. After I run the whole race with you—you dump me. Only a rat would do that.”
“I’m only thinking of you.”
“I go with you or I make a scene,” she said.
“You wouldn’t do that.”
“Try me.”
“You go with me,” I said.
We went to the elevator, where I told the operator, “Seventeenth floor—bridal suite.”
“Are you announced?” the elevator operator wanted to know.
“Of course I am announced,” I said, and made a note to point out to Lucille afterwards that a calm sense of assurance and imperturbability could pass one in almost anywhere. At the seventeenth floor, there was a small landing with three doors.
“The one in the middle is the Executive Suite,” the operator explained. “The one on the right is the Presidential Suite. The one on the left is the Bridal Suite.”
“Anyone else been up except the count and his bride?”
“Not for the Bridal Suite. But there’s been a lot of strange ones for the Presidential Suite.”
“Don’t tell me the President’s here?”
“He don’t stay at this hotel, Jack. What’s presidential in there is the price.”
His board was flashing, and as much as he might have desired to stay there and gape at Lucille and share my bright wit, he had to get about his business. It surprised me how many people enjoyed watching Lucille.
“Well,” I said to her, “here it is. Cynthia come home.”
She held my arm for a moment. “Harvey—”
There was a new and different note in her voice, and I looked at her curiously.
“Harvey—it’s not right.”
“It never is.”
“Don’t you feel anything? It’s not right. You want to hear something—music, voices. I don’t hear anything.”
“Soundproofing,” I said. The little foyer had a rich rug, tapestry-vinyl walls, a bench in the neo-Greek style, and a tiny table that supported a vase of fresh flowers. “Well built, posh.”
“How did we get up here so easily?” she wanted to know.
“The elevator.”
“Harvey, don’t be a nut. Do you have a gun?”
“Are you crazy? What would I do with a gun?”
“You’re a private eye, aren’t you?” Lucille demanded. “Don’t private eyes carry guns?”
“I’m an insurance investigator.”
“Harvey, wait for Jacoby.”
“That’s a laugh. Jacoby—the continental op. That’s pretty good, isn’t it. You know, continental manner—”
“For heaven’s sake, Harvey, don’t spell out your silly puns. All I want to know is why we can’t get Sergeant Kelly or that man Rothschild. What are cops for? Do you know, I never saw a film about this kind of thing where all the trouble couldn’t have been avoided by calling the police. You know that. The film comes to a point where everyone in the audience with an ounce of intelligence is muttering, Call the cops, call the cops. But no. The idiot hero that someone in Hollywood dreamed up knows better. He doesn’t have to call the cops. He goes on himself, and then wham—!”
“I told you to wait downstairs,” I whispered angrily.
“OK, Harvey.”
There was an ornamental brass knocker on the door. It sounded three clear notes when I used it. The door opened. I entered. Lucille entered behind me, and then the door closed behind both of us. A tall, sunburned man stood alongside the door. He was at least six-foot-two. He wore a gray suit with very narrow trousers, embossed cowboy boots with silver inlay, and a broad-brimmed cowboy hat. In his hand, he held a forty-five caliber automatic pistol, fitted with a silencer. He smiled at us without parting his lips, nodded, and motioned us into the living room with his gun. Perhaps you have never considered how expressive a small motion with a gun can be; let me assure you that it is a complete essay, detailing all the history of the motioner’s relationship to guns. This one had a long and intimate relationship, and it gave me no desire to test the accuracy of my guess. I went into the living room and Lucille followed me.
In the living room was the object—or objects—of my search. A tall, well-made young lady was sitting in a chair—in a sort of semi-catatonic state. A body lay stretched out on the floor, and it did not require a second look to realize that this was Count Gambion de Fonti, né Valento Corsica. He had been a neatly-groomed and not uncomely young man, and he wore a white carnation in his lapel, which made him look rather like a toppled department store dummy. Except that dummies do not bleed, and he had bled rather profusely from three bullet holes in his chest.
And sitting here and there around the room were four other men, one of them incredibly obese. The name popped back into my mind from somewhere, “Fats Coventry.” It was an odd name. Then I remembered what Rothschild had said.
Chapter 11
The fat man pointed to an unoccupied loveseat. “Sit down, folks,” he drawled. “Make yourselves easy and comfortable. Don’t be strange. This here is just a friendly little gathering.”
We sat on the loveseat. Cynthia came out of her catatonic state to look at us, and I said, “You’re Cynthia Brandon, right?”
She began to bawl. One of Lucille’s hands found mine, and she whispered, “Harvey, I’m scared.”
“Now, now, honeychild,” the fat man said, “you’re among gentlemen. Southern gentlemen. No reason to be alarmed.”
The three men who had been sitting down when we entered rose now, and at a nod from the fat man, approached me.
“Frisk him,” the fat man said.
“I don’t carry a gun.”
They went over me quickly and expertly.
“Lady’s purse,” the fat man said.
They went through Lucille’s purse.
“Clean,” said the very tall, tight-lipped smiler who had ushered us in.
They were all dressed alike—gray flannels, Texas style, narrow trousers, padded shoulders and quilting on the pockets of the jackets. Their expensive pearl-gray hats were parked here and there around the room, and they all wore cowboy boots and string ties and diamond pinky rings. Except for one who was very young and quite short, they were all oversized, all lean, all in their late thirties or early forties.
“Myself, I’m Fats Coventry,” the fat man said, “and you may have heard of me somewhere in the pasture, Brother Krim—”
“How do you know my name?”
“I believe in knowing what I must know, Brother. Let me introduce the boys. The gentleman who admitted you is Joey Earp, the Descendent. No real relationship to the Earps, but some wit dubbed him the Descendent and it stuck. Feller over there is Jack Selby, whom we call Ringo, and next to him, that pale feller, he’s Freddy Upson, the Ghost. Little feller’s Billy the Kid. That’s all—Billy the Kid. But don’t allow size or demeanor to confuse you, Brother Krim—no, sir. How many men you killed, Billy?”
“Nineteen.”
“How old are you, Billy?”
“Nineteen.”
“When you going to be twenty, Billy?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Going to make a mark for every year of your life, Billy?”
“Sure enough.”
“How’d you make nineteen, Billy?”
“Gunned that there foreign son-of-a-bitch stretched out on the floor.”
Cynthia wailed.
“Shut up, honeychild,” said the fat man. “How you reckon to make a score of twenty, Billy?”
“Reckon to gun down that creep sitting there on the sofa, but I can’t rightly do so until tomorrow. Don’t that make sense, Mr. Coventry?”
“Sure does. You’re a good boy, Billy.”
“How can you just let him lie there like that?” Cynthia cried out suddenly. “How can you sit here and talk and let him lie there like that?”
“That’s a thought,” Coventry admitted. “Couple of you boys take him out to the kitchen and put him in a closet or cupboard or something there.” Earp and Upson lifted the count, hands and feet, and marched him out of the room.
Lucille took a deep breath, let go of my hand, and said to the fat man, “You are the most extraordinary person, Mr. Coventry, if I do say so. You’re totally amoral, aren’t you?”
“Just what kind of brand you trying to put on me, Missy?” he asked good-naturedly.
“Don’t call me Missy! Don’t you dare!”
At that point, I put in a silly TV line, and as frightened as I was, I was still somewhat mortified at saying, “You don’t think you are going to get away with this, do you?” Lucille looked at me in amazement. “Oh, hell,” I said with disgust. “This is New York City. This is the Ritzhampton Hotel. This is Madison Avenue. What kind of nuts are you?”
The fat man nodded good-naturedly. “You’re a maverick, sure enough, Sonny,” he said. “You know, I own this hotel.”
“What do you mean, you own it?”
“Bought it two months ago for seven million dollars. How about that, Big Joey?” he said to Earp. “Is it the gospel truth or is it not?”
“Gospel truth,” Earp replied.
“And Jacoby? You know Jacoby—the house dick?”
I nodded dumbly.
“He works for me. Amiable boy, but not much between the ears. I’m his boss. That’s why he’s so amiable.”
“You know,” Lucille said now, “you don’t have to kill us. We didn’t see you kill the count.”
“Count? Lord, lady, he ain’t no count. He’s the head of an organization they call the Mafia. You ever heard of the Mafia, Missy?”
Lucille looked at me. I looked at her. “Oh, heavens to Betsy, I am scared, Harvey,” Lucille whispered to me out of the side of her mouth.
Fats Coventry grinned and said to “alias Ringo”, “Dry, Ringo. How about you get into the kitchen and fetch me a bottle of diet-Pepsi.” Ringo hotfooted it into the kitchen and Coventry explained to me, “Watching my weight these days. I never used to before, but I reckon it’s time I thought about some of these new-fangled things like cholestorol.” The Pepsi returned in Ringo’s hand, in the bottle and without unnecessary elegance. Cov
entry tilted the bottle back and drained it in one long, gurgling swallow. Then he put the bottle aside delicately, patted his stomach and observed that there was something mighty American and homelike in a soft drink. “It’s as natural as apple pie,” he said. “I don’t allow no hard liquor on the roundup or when the hands are working ’round the corral. No, sir. Work and liquor don’t mix. Soft drink’s different. A hand wants a soft drink to quench his thirst, he’s entitled—don’t you reckon so, Harvey?”
Now it was “Harvey.” I nodded and watched him thoughtfully. His cowboy talk was strictly Hollywood cowboy talk; his performance was strictly a performance; but his “hired hands” were real enough, and the guns they carried were no frontier Colts but modern automatic pistols equipped with the best and most effective silencers. His “hands,” as he called them, were apparently disciplined and efficient; and all in all, he added up to more than a Texas hoodlum on the bigtown make. I tried to recall some facts about the Coventry gang, and all that I could remember was the name. Texas was out of my territory and such has been the mushrooming of the Dallas insurance companies that New York concerns are not picking up as much business in Texas as they might.
“Tell your little lady that we ain’t going to execute the two of you—leastways not tomorrow. Billy the Kid looks to being twenty years old over the next twelve months, and that’s plenty of time to put a notch or two in his gun.”
“Harvey?” Lucille whispered.
“I think so,” I said. “I imagine he’s telling us the truth, kid. Just take it easy.”
“I like you, I do, Harvey,” Coventry said. “Sure enough.”
“How do you know my name?”
“Hell to sundown, Harvey, that’s like ABC. You sure enough forgot that Jacoby, the house dick, works for me. No. No, he don’t know who I am. He’s a nice, honest young feller. But I know a good deal about you. I just happen to know that you’re the smartest insurance dick in New York City and that the little lady here is Lucille Dempsey and that she graduated this here Radcliffe College up in Harvard Yard or wherever the hell it is and that now she works in the New York Public Library—all of this here information out of Jacoby, who’s downright crazy about the girl.”
