Dead in a Bed

by Kane, Henry

  I refrained from riposte. I beat a retreat from further persiflage. I cuddled silently in a corner, jostlingly turning the pages of Charlie Medford’s appointment book to make sure I wasn’t crazy. After one last murmur from my piqued pilot—“Mama mia, how come all the oddballs get wished on me?”—the silence was complete but his glazed gaze through the rear-view whenever he got the chance was, although not baneful, painful. True, I was entitled, but I couldn’t take it, so I chewed my cuddle in the other corner where, unglazedly ungazed upon, I glazedly gazed upon Charlies Medford’s appointment book. No matter I tried to control myself, my hands trembled. Not matter I frantically sought for composure, it fitfully evaded me. No matter how slowly and logically I tried to assemble the facts, they erupted in an angry rash.

  All right. Slowly now. Steady away. Let us concentrate on names and initials but let us also concentrate on dates and times and places. There was an entry that linked Frankie Nigle to 515 Fifth Avenue. At Jack Medford’s place Information had vouchsafed information about a Nigle Realty Company at 515 Fifth. So? Even a cuddled boob in a bouncing cab could fancy himself an astute detective by arriving at conclusions that were long at the depot impatiently awaiting him—F. N. was Frankie Nigle and Frankie Nigle was Nigle Realty Company at 515 Fifth Avenue. Good? Great? Conceded? Fine. Now let us lay that away and turn to the page of June fourteenth in Charlie’s book where he had last inscribed the initials F. N.

  F. N. at 515, 12:10 P. M.

  Today was Friday, June fifteenth. Yesterday was Thursday, June fourteenth. Yesterday, Thursday, on June fourteenth, at twelve o’clock noon, Charles R. Medford had bilked his bank of a hundred thousand golden apples. He had gone to lunch affectionately attached to an attache case loaded with loot. The bank was situated at 500 Fifth Avenue. 515 Fifth Avenue was practically across the street. At twelve o’clock he had allegedly bilked the bank. At ten minutes after twelve he had an appointment across the street. Whatever that may prove to you—it proved to me that Charlie was no crook. For some reason he was carrying money to the Nigle Realty Company but if you were planning to steal would you make an entry in your appointment book as to where you were going on this cash and carry deal?

  “Not on your goddamned life,” I said.

  “What the hell is now?” inquired my cab driver.

  “What’s with you?” I said.

  “Why the hell you cursing, Mac?”

  “Who the hell is cursing, Mac?”

  “Look, pal, enough is enough. Cursing I don’t need from a passenger. Cursing I get plenty from my goddam missus at home.”

  The cab stopped.

  “You planning to throw me out?” I said.

  “Buster, if you please—did you want Five-fifteen Fifth?”

  “Yes I wanted Five-fifteen Fifth.”

  “This is Five-fifteen Fifth.”

  “Oh,” I said and climbed out and searched for payment and found nothing smaller than a five and gave him the five and did not wait for change.

  “Mama mia,” I heard him say as the cab took off but lurchingly.

  In the spacious lobby the huge directory was a jumble of the usual miniscule characters spelling out names and room numbers in type so small the whole appeared as a mosaic of abstraction in black and white fit for hanging (but hanging) in one of our modern galleries (where of course it would fetch a fabulous price if lavishly framed and appended with apt title such as Three Nudes Descending Into Two Hillocks And One Hump). There exists a leasehold conspiracy in the business-buildings of the City of New York to render the data of their directories all but invisible unless you come equipped with telescopic lenses. I moved in close on that big board, and peered long and myopically, until I was able to discern that Nigle Realty dwelt in 1602. Then I backed off and sturdily steered my course to a gilt-ridden elevator which performed swiftly and faultlessly under the guidance of an operator in the attire of an admiral and in the splice of a trice I was clicking my heels on a marble floor to 1602 which was a thick wood door with its lock contained in a strong brass knob impervious to the twist of my fist.

  So once more I strode the marble to the flagship and the admiral pushed his buttons and we hankered away in a zoomed plummet to the lobby where from a phone booth I called Knishey and spoke quickly. “Knish?” I said.

  “Yah,” he said.

  “Chambers again.” I had no stomach for haggle now and waived all wiggle toward higgle. Properly prostrate, I laid it right out on the line. “If you can get to Five-fifteen Fifth Avenue within the next ten minutes and open a simple lock for me, there’s an additional fifty bucks for you. Okay?”

  “Yah,” he said.

  “I’ll be waiting for you on the sixteenth floor.”

  “Yah,” he said and nine minutes later he hiked up his sleeves, did his magic, and shrugged that he was done.

  “That check will be for a hundred,” I said.

  “Yah,” he said and went away and I turned the knob, entered, but did not go far. What I had tried to pull on Hockin Chynik was now being pulled on me, but better, because this was a wider door with a bigger swing. I heard a rustle and then I was hit, hard but not too hard, on the back of the head, and as I whirled about, crumpling, I fought with every fibre of my being to keep my eyes open, and I saw him—I saw him!—before the door closed behind him and the darkness opened for me.

  TEN

  I AWOKE UNREFRESHED from enforced sleep. It had been a short nap: the patient was hardly under before he was up. Of course the anesthetic had been local and lightly applied: this Frankie Nigle —if the guy I had seen was Frankie Nigle—had a delicate touch and small malice, or so I thought as I came out of the ether. I was to suffer a marked change of that opinion within a very few minutes. Meanwhile I touched the front of my hand to the back of my head and it came away with a diagnosis of mild lump and no abrasion. Reassured, I got to my feet, surprisingly unwobbly, and looked about.

  I was in a splendidly accoutered outer office with all the appurtenances of achievement from red-mahogany walls to grey-steel secretary’s desk to red-mahogany filing cabinets to water cooler with a grey-steel base and a push-button contrivance for the popping out of sanitary paper cups. I pushed a button and popped a sanitary cup and drank sloppily and curled the cup to a sanitary ball and pitched it with antiseptic accuracy for a rimless two-pointer in a red wicker basket. I dutifully yanked at the drawers of the filing cabinets all of which of course were closed and then gave my attention to two doors in the rear wall. There was a door on the right and there was a door on the left and being a detective and therefore accustomed to rapid deduction I rapidly deduced that the door on the right was the entrance to the right-hand inner office and the door on the left the entrance to the left-hand inner office. Do I hear applause?

  As a good American, I went first to the right. I opened that door to a well-furnished room, immaculate and undisturbed, with a large electric-clock showing the time to be five minutes to four. Immaculately undisturbed rooms leave me immaculately undisturbed, so I went—you should pardon the expression—to the left. The room on the left was neither immaculate nor undisturbed. Along one wall there were newspapers in a pile about three feet high, and up front centre, upon the long flat side of its parallelogram, lay a shiny-new black steamer trunk. Close examination showed that it was ticketed to Miss Antoinette Kooz, Beverly-Hilton Hotel, Beverly Hills, California (no return address) and closer examination revealed that the trunk was not yet locked. I lifted the lid and found Charlie Medford.

  Charlie was stacked for shipping. He lay on one side with his knees tucked to his chin and his arms crossed over his chest. He was tightly lodged against the buttress of many crumpled newspapers so that he would not jiggle on his journey to Antoinette Kooz. I pulled out the papers and plucked out poor Charlie. He was very dead but not yet smelly with a small round hole between his eyebrows which served as an exclamation point for the expression of utter astonishment on the rest of his face. Charlie had been punctured by a pellet from a sma
ll-bore weapon and judging from the attitude that had stiffened on his face nobody could have been more shocked by the news of his death than he. He was wearing a charcoal-grey suit, button-down white shirt, black knit tie, and black shoes. His pockets had been emptied and there was no sign of his attache case.

  Just then a sudden rap of knuckles on the outside door caused me in consternation to lean upon Charlie but Charlie was in no condition to support me. We both fell across the steamer trunk but I was able to get up. Hurriedly I debouched from the inner office, delayed for the closing of that door, darted across the outer office and opened the door to a swarthy man in a vizored cap.

  Smilingly he announced, “Railway Express.”

  “Railway!” I expressed.

  He mistook bewilderment for bedevilment. “I know we was to be here for the pickup at five o’clock, sir. Only we was passing through on a job here in the building, and I figured if the shipment was ready we could knock off two birds with one stone.”

  “The bird is knocked off but the shipment isn’t ready.”

  “Come again, sir?”

  “The shipment isn’t ready.”

  “Okay sir. Yes sir. Then we’ll see you at five o’clock, hey?” He smiled again. “You can’t get killed for trying. Goodbye, sir.”

  I closed the door. Charlie had been killed for trying—whatever the hell he had been trying. I went back to the inner office, skirted Charlie, draped myself in the expensive chair behind the massive expensive desk, and sewed up a call to the Beverly-Hilton in California. No person to person. Direct. Frankie Nigle had dashed off with a hundred thousand dollars. I was certain he wouldn’t mind if I dashed off one lousy long-distance call to California. If he did mind …

  “Go ahead, New York,” said the operator.

  “Beverly-Hilton?” I said.

  “Beverly-Hilton Hotel,” said the switchboard.

  “Miss Kooz, please.”

  “What was that name, sir?”

  “Kooz. Antoinette Kooz.”

  “Just one moment, sir.” Through the pause I heard the sibilance of rustling papers. “I’m sorry, sir. There is no Antoinette Kooz registered here.”

  “I didn’t think there was.”

  “I beg pardon, sir?”

  “Thank you.” I hung up.

  I luxuriated in the luxurious desk-chair, tilting it back on its nonsqueaking expensive fulcrum, trying to knit together some of my wooly ideas. Charlie Medford was dressed in exactly the same clothes he had worn when he had left Jack’s studio for his Wednesday night appointment at eleven o’clock. Charlie Medford was, notoriously, a fastidious man: he would never wear the same outfit on successive days. Yet he had worn the same oufit to work on Thursday when he had eloped with his bulging attache case, as witness the fact that he was lying here now in those selfsame clothes. Wednesday night, therefore, had been a long night—good or bad—and he had been too tired or too drunk or too sleepless to have the energy to change; else, perhaps he had not gone home at all on Wednesday night. Either way no cogitation on my part could possibly bear fruit—so I quit that dappled orchard as plumbed out of any currant of clue for me. Next!

  Next was Thursday. On Thursday at noon Charlie had crossed the street, from bank to realty company, on the short journey that was to be his last. He was carrying the money which, of course, was the reason for the bullet between his eyes. There was a deal of trust going on between him and Nagle—a fiduciary deal —and he was shocked to death by the bullet as was written in that final look of astonishment on his face. But that was Thursday and today was Friday and Charlie was still here. That one was not too tough to tear apart.

  When you are saddled with a dead body you just don’t canter off, else you’re liable to hear the hoof-beats of the posse behind you. Nigle had a body on his hands and a body is no buddy when you need room for movement. It takes time to cop out on a corpse. Why Nigle had not prepared in advance?—once again I was in the dappled orchard that yielded no fig for me. Perhaps he had not planned to kill Charlie. Perhaps that been a sudden unexpected gambit in the gamble of expediency. Whatever, he was stuck with a cadaver and you just do not cooly clear out on a cadaver if you wish to keep clear of the hot breath of the law. It takes time to make arrangements and when the funeral is out of a business office there is always the threat of the innocent charwoman.

  It takes time for the purchase and delivery of a steamer trunk, it takes time for the purchase and delivery of stacks of yesterday’s newspapers, and it takes time for the conveyance and safe deposit of a hundred thousand bundles of joy. It takes time for Railway Express to pony up an appointment and Railway Express will not lay a special track just because you have a tie with an urgency. Also the inevitable tick of necessary personal chores must bug at you like chiggers. And so time stretches out from Thursday to Friday and the body of your business has its remains in the office. So what about the charwoman?

  The cleaning-ladies do their dirty work in the dust of the evening. You cannot risk leaving death as debris else a pall will settle on your funeral arrangements before you have consigned the corpse to whatever its eventual embalmment. There is no way to circumvent a charwoman except by being physically present and waving her off with, “Not now, not now, please, I’m busy.” But you cannot rest on that. More than likely, like it or not, she will be back later at night brimming to the bosom with mops, pails, shovels, vacuum cleaners, and good intentions. A charwoman, like a vampire, disappears only at dawn: Frankie Nigle must have stayed over with Charlie Medford until Friday morning, protecting them both from the innocent fangs of the invading charwoman.

  Activities recommenced on Friday and Charlie was almost ready for shipment to the nonexistent Antoinette Kooz. when I barged in. Once Charlie was en route, Nigle could dispose the arrangements for his own dispersal. He would have the time and the freedom to make his moves unencumbered unless Railway Express suddenly discovered it was doing duty as a hearse, and there was small likelihood of that. The human body takes time to rot; bodies have lain around for weeks before being discovered; many days must pass before the odors are sufficient to arouse attention—by then Frankie Nigle would have thoroughly vanished. That completed my cerebrations, such as they were, right or wrong, except for one question—why had I been conked rather than croaked—and that answer came quickly. Nigle had heard me fiddling with the outside door and then I had gone away, he hoped, for good. But I had returned. He did not know what I had reported or to whom or who or how many would follow my entrance. Once I came in, he had to get out—and take his chances. His sweet plan had struck a sour note and he was now on the run, playing it by ear as he went along.

  That was it. I could be wetter than a porpoise on purpose, but those were my conclusions and I could drown with them unless a raft of new facts rescued me. Of one conclusion, however, I was certain. I had seen Frankie Nigle and Frankie Nigle had not seen me—provided that guy on the run was Frankie Nigle. When I had opened the door, he had been behind it. Once I had entered he had been behind me. He had had no opportunity to see my face. He had conked, I had whirled, but he was running, without a backward glance. I had seen him. He had not seen me. And he had no idea that I had seen him. That gave me some kind of advantage, I was certain, but what do you do with an advantage when there is no one to take advantage of? You got up off your chair and you do a tour of exploration hoping to find some peg on which to hang your advantage.

  I found nothing.

  A tool-box in a cabinet in the right-hand room provided me with a cold chisel and a hot hammer with which to wreak wreckage and before I was through the place fairly reeked of wreckage. I broke open all the filing cabinets. I broke open every locked drawer of every desk in the joint. I went through more files than a hardware clerk taking inventory. I scanned more correspondence than a lonelyhearts editor during a full-moon in a leap year.

  Nothing! I found one incongruous item—a length of brand-new rope in the bottom drawer of the desk at which I had been sitting —but I
found not one speck of material concerning Nigle Realty. There was a great deal of material—all the goods in a way of speaking—about a Universal Import Limited, an agency purchasing merchandise in bulk from foreign factories on behalf of numerous individual clients here. The Limited of Universal was apparently strictly construed—the firm was limited to one man: Sam Silverman. I learned that Sam had a thriving business, that Sam had left on April First for a six-months’ trip to Europe, but I could discover no link or tie or collar or cuff that could connect Universal Import to Nigle Realty.

  I was finished. I laid away hammer and chisel and took up the phone. I called Jack Medford, Jack Medford was not at home, and I was relieved. I had attempted to do my duty and I was happy that it ended as only an attempt. I detest being the harbinger of disaster. The kid would find out soon enough. There was no hurry. There was nothing he could do. Let him enjoy whatever he was enjoying while he had the time. I sighed and started to call the cops and then tucked the receiver back in its cradle. Cops! You push your luck with cops and your luck can push right back at you. You can be pushed into a detention pen and you can languish there in lingering dudgeon until your sprightly lawyer finally springs you but even wholesale that costs in time and money. You can be questioned and cross-questioned until you are cross with wrath and cross-eyed with fatigue and then it begins all over again. I didn’t need it. I couldn’t use it. This had been a day of death and I had emerged so far as a mild hero. Pisk, Bartlett, Chynik —but now Charlie Medford. How would I explain my finding him? How would I explain not turning my information over to the cops, my barging in solo, my letting this Frankie Nigle wriggle loose?

  I was finished here. I was done. I was all through. But my friend was lying dead over a steamer trunk. There was nothing more that I could do but there was certainly a hell of a lot more that cops could do—so it was pertinent that I turn over all of my facts. I sighed again and lifted the phone again and called Homicide. I pinched my nostrils together and squeaked in a thin soprano: “Lieutenant Parker, please.”