by John Roeburt
I gave her Tad Barrett’s address as we walked toward Ken’s big Lincoln. I offered to drive but Steffy said, “The power steering’s like dialing a telephone.” She gunned the motor and we were off. She sat peering through the big one-piece windshield and swishing wipers. She was enjoying herself like a little girl, like a high-school kid with his first jalopy. Hell, she was only twenty. All the way down Bedford Avenue to the Williamsburg Bridge I wished I could knock some sense into her. She was probably wishing she could do the same to me.
* * * *
Tad Barrett seemed surprised to see me.
“Jason Chase! I read what happened to you. I thought you’d be in the hospital a while yet.” He palmed the dottle from his pipe and shook hands with me. “Sit down. I’ve got a little news for you, but you won’t like it.”
“I’ve plenty to tell you,” I said, “but let’s hear your’s first.”
“That poor kid Stedman must have talked before they killed her.”
“Yeah? What makes you think so?”
“Three new clients visited me today, all about the same thing. The Kincaid papers. They’d received threats of blackmail about some of their answers to the professor’s questions. If you know anything about those questions, you know why they couldn’t go to the police.”
I nodded and waited.
“I wanted to be sure, so I called a couple of friends of mine in the shamus racket. The same thing. It’s all over town and it means a lot of trouble for a lot of people.”
Barrett swiveled around in his chair and pulled a file drawer open. He withdrew a folder with the one word Kincaid on the file tab and shoved it across the desk at mo. He’d made copies of three blackmail letters and I lit a cigarette and studied them.
The first one went:
Mr. Drew Greer,
Greer Export Company
New York, New York
I have in my possession your answers to the Kincaid questionnaire for the forthcoming book, Twentieth Century Morality.
No doubt your wife would be interested in learning what really happened in Montevideo in January of last year.
Also, the Federal Government probably would like to learn how an importer manages to bring South African diamonds to the United States tariff-free, via South America.
I am not a hasty man. No one has this information but myself, and the Kincaid people, of course. Is it worth $25,000 to you? I will contact you again.
There was no signature.
Barrett shook his head grimly. “Greer’s big,” he said. “His import-export business is worth millions and from what he tells me his record is spotlessly clean. Or was spotlessly clean.”
“Why do people like that take a chance answering the Kincaid questionnaire?”
“Why?” Barrett shrugged. “Why does a man do anything? Maybe it’s like a big financier who makes a fortune legally but amorally, then decides to give a few million bucks anonymously to charity. Maybe Greer and the others figured this would be a worthy cause, exposing certain trends without getting themselves personally involved. Of course, the publicity surrounding the Kinsey books helped. Everyone knew the research work was coded. Everyone was sure it was safe. No one dreamed he was answering deadly questions. How many times have you heard people say they wished Kinsey—or now, Kincaid—would interview them!”
I looked at the other letters. They were essentially the same, with only the names and incidents changed. I recognized the name of a young legislator on the way up, a man his party was grooming for the governor’s mansion or, some said, Capitol Hill. Barrett told me the third man owned a seat on the stock exchange.
“These men could scrape together twenty-five thousand each without too much trouble,” Barrett explained. “But they’re afraid the blackmailer won’t stop at that figure. My guess is he won’t, either.”
I was thinking of Jo-Anne again, all alone and crying for help that night on South Street. They’d hurt her and made her talk, then killed her. Puggie and Five O’Clock? Guido thought so—and got himself killed for thinking it. It wasn’t just Puggie and Five O’Clock, though. They were fungus; garden-variety thugs. There had to be someone behind them. Wompler? Could be; but if Emma was right, Wompler didn’t even have the brains to blackmail Ken successfully, and had to settle for helping Ken blackmail himself.
“Barrett,” I said, “when I first mentioned Wompler, you acted like you never heard of the guy—”
“Should I have?”
“My brother hired you to locate some shakedown pictures, didn’t he? You mean to say he never told you about Wompler?”
Barrett laughed. “Look, let’s get this straight. You’re Ken’s brother, so I guess I can tell you. He didn’t hire me to look for pictures. He’s paying me to pretend to look for them. He let it be known to his wife—and some others, I guess—that he’s put this agency on the trail. If anyone queries me about it, I’m supposed to say yes, I’m on the case, and making progress.”
“And you take work like that?”
He shrugged. “It’s a living.”
“Barrett,” I said, “there’s something else. That man of yours who visited Wompler’s apartment. Did he ever report anything about picking up Jo-Anne there?”
“You asked me that night. He’s a good man. Working for me twelve years. He says he never even saw Jo-Anne, and I believe him.”
All right, I thought, so Wompler was a liar. But Audrey—did she love Wompler so hard that she would lie too? Was she maybe playing little games of her own—games with the Kincaid papers?
“What do you have to tell me?” Barrett was saying.
“Plenty. First, my brother’s sister-in-law is on her way to Wompler’s about the blackmail pictures Ken hired you not to find. Second, Guido had something, all right. He smelled out two hoods, Puggie LaBetta and Five O’Clock McGuire. They killed him for it.” I gave Barrett the details of what happened that night. “So far,” I went on, “Wompler’s my only other lead. He was supposed to be blackmailing my brother…”
“Was?”
“It’s a long story. Anyhow, he knew Phyllis Kirk. He knew about the Kincaid papers, even knew she had them. I’ve got to follow it up, and I intend to. I came here because I was wondering if you knew anything about LaBetta and McGuire.”
“We keep a little rogues’ gallery of our own on file so I can use my police contacts for more important things. Let’s take a look.”
Barrett led the way into another room, its walls lined from floor to ceiling with file drawers. “No LaBetta,” he said a few minutes later, handing me an old newspaper clipping which included the police lineup picture of a man. “Here’s your Five O’Clock McGuire, though.”
The clipping was about a young gunsel the D.A.’s office was looking for in connection with extortion. The thug’s name was James (Five O’Clock) McGuire and there was a picture to prove it. Five O’Clock had a long narrow face; his jaw was enormous, with a scar starting at the left corner of his bloodless lips and getting lost in the shadow under the right side of his angrily jutting chin.
“Think you could recognize him?” Barrett asked. “That was twelve years ago.”
“Unless they did plastic surgery on that scar since then, I’ll know him. Guy about your age, thirty-five, thirty-six? Yeah, when I see him I’ll know it.”
I thanked Barrett and went outside to wait for the elevator.
I felt the need of something warm to drink because my muscles were suddenly tired and aching a little and I could feel a chill coming on. First I thought it was only because I’d been in bed a few days, then I suspected I was coming down with a cold. Well, you could catch worse things in the hospital.
I got my first gesundheit from the elevator operator in Wompler’s office building.
Chapter Fourteen
Wompler wasn’t in, but I found Audrey posing for the photographer as a white amazon reared by the matriarchal Tchambuli tribe of green-jungled New Guinea, meeting an explorer from Boston for the first time. The jung
le set, I decided, might look convincing enough in black and white, but the explorer was something straight out of Abercrombie & Fitch, and Audrey had borrowed her leopard-skin leotards and long blonde hair from the pages of Congo Comics. She held a prop knife in her hand and the explorer was teaching her one of the more subtle arts of Boston society, known as smooching.
“So now they’ve got leopards in New Guinea,” I said, reading the location data off the photographer’s info sheet.
“If it isn’t Mr. Chase,” Audrey said tartly. “Are you married?”
“No, but…”
“I was thinking if you were you probably wouldn’t peek so much.”
“I don’t see Wompler around,” I said.
“He just went out.”
“Well, I also wanted to see you.”
“You’re seeing.”
“Alone.”
“Do I have to?”
“You don’t have to do anything. I have something to tell you, that’s all.”
“About what?”
“Your boyfriend, Wompler.”
Audrey’s gaze was level and steady. “Come on,” she finally said. “We can use his office.”
I followed the leopard-dotted leotards into Wompler’s office and watched Audrey sit down, crossing her long, sturdy legs. There was a lot of leg visible, because if you take a T-shirt and sew the middle of the hem together for a crotch, that’s a pair of leotards.
“I try to mind my own business,” Audrey told me, “but you keep asking Willie things about blackmail. A girl gets curious.”
“That’s what I wanted to talk about.”
“You’re not going to start swinging?”
“Listen, Audrey. This was strictly between Wompler and me, but you poked your two cents in…”
“You said you wanted to tell me something.”
“I’m just explaining why you got shoved, that’s all. You’re damned right I want to tell you something. You’ve got a crush on Wompler, haven’t you?”
“I don’t see where that’s any of your business. Why don’t you wait here, if you want to see Willie? Or come back later?” Audrey uncrossed her thighs and stood up. It was going to be now, right now, or our interview would end almost before it got under way.
“Willie’s been making time with another woman,” I said.
Audrey sat down hard and didn’t bother to cross her legs. She slouched over, let her arms dangle between her thighs, laced her fingers there and stared at them. “You’d better tell me the rest of it,” she said sullenly.
“That’s where the blackmail comes in. Willie made it with a gal named Julia Chase.”
“Your sister?”
“My sister-in-law.”
“Listen here, mister. If you’re making this up, you’re going to wish you never came here.”
I gave her one version of it.
“Listen. Willie was blackmailing my brother, Julia’s husband. He’s a pretty big wheel and he couldn’t afford the kind of bad publicity Willie could give him. The shakedown was possible because Julia—”
“You don’t have to say any more.” The long fingers untwined, formed fists, smashed down on the flesh of the thighs. “Just get out of here.”
“There’s more I want to tell you.”
“Get out! Please get out.”
“Uh-uh. You know Steffy Grujdzak?”
Audrey looked like a big, graceful jungle animal trapped in her first cage. Maybe she did belong in New Guinea and leotards at that. “She’s a good kid. Don’t tell me he also slept with her!”
“Hell, no. Steffy is Julia Chase’s sister.” I told Audrey how Steffy had come to work at Wompler’s with the idea of somehow putting a stop to the blackmail, then wound up contributing to it by posing for pictures which could be used as proof of her sister’s adultery.
“That’s a coincidence,” Audrey said.
“What is?”
“Steffy was in this office with Willie right before you came in. Not fifteen minutes ago. I was outside on Set Five, so I could hear. They talked for a while, then Willie got a phone call. He acted like he wasn’t happy over the message, but he hung up and made a phone call of his own. Then he left—with Steffy.”
“What were they talking about?”
“I couldn’t hear the words. Only that Willie sounded upset.”
“Where did they go?”
“Search me, Mr. Chase.”
I sneezed. Audrey God-blessed me. I honked my nose. The cold was in full flower.
In the back of my mind, something was nibbling, trying to clamp its teeth and catch hold. Something that would answer a lot of questions, something I should have known but didn’t. It was like trying to remember the name of someone you’d met casually years ago. I lit a cigarette and tried to think. The smoke scraped against my throat harshly and made me sneeze again. My head was big as a balloon but heavy as lead. The thing was on the tip of my mental tongue but wouldn’t allow itself to be spat out.
“Try to remember,” I pleaded with Audrey. “Didn’t you hear anything of his phone conversation?”
“Just the tone of his voice.”
“Damn! Did he say he was coming back later?”
“He’s got to come back. He wants to do some paste-ups for the next issue of Hush.”
“When?”
“Tonight, probably. He often works at night. Are you going to wait for him?”
I looked at my watch. Quarter to six. Through the window I could see it was dark outside already. The rain had finally lost its fight with the temperature and turned to snow. Elsewhere in the loft of an office I could hear Wompler’s hired hands bustling about and getting ready to leave. “Let me make a couple of phone calls,” I said. “Then we’ll see.”
Audrey nodded and stuck around to listen while I dialed Ken’s apartment and spoke to Julia. “This is Jason,” I said. “I was wondering if Steffy’s home.”
“No. I thought she was with you, Jason.”
“She was earlier. You don’t know where she is?”
“Probably delayed by the snow. She drives Ken’s Lincoln like a motor bike, though. I hope she’s careful. Why don’t you come on over and wait here for her, Jason?”
I said no, and jabbed at the phone cradle with my fingers until I got another dial tone. Then I dialed again and heard Emma Grujdzak say, “Hello?” I was glad it wasn’t Pop. Steffy wasn’t there, either.
“Listen,” I said, debating with myself and coming up with an answer I didn’t like. “As soon as Pop gets home, have him call this number.” I gave her Wompler’s Plaza number. “Tell him it’s about these murders and the Kincaid papers. Tell him he’d damned well better call as soon as he comes in the door.”
“Steffy is in trouble, isn’t she?”
“Don’t worry, Emma. Don’t you worry. I won’t let anything happen to Steffy. Promise.” Yeah, promise. Right now, all I could do was sit on my duff and wait for something to happen.
“Are you sticking around?” Audrey asked me when I hung up.
“Yeah, I’ll wait.”
“Good. If you were lying before, me and Willie are going to break your neck.”
“And if I was telling the truth?”
“Then you and me are going to break Willie’s neck.”
“It’s all yours,” I said. “I only want information.”
Audrey called downstairs for some supper, and when I wanted to pay for it she said it could go on expenses. Audrey ate daintily, but still managed to put down four sandwiches while I was picking away at two liverwursts on rye which tasted like exactly nothing—me and my stuffed nose!
It was a long wait, but finally Wompler walked in. At seven fifty-five.
I jumped up.
Audrey jumped up.
“Where the hell did you take Steffy?” I shouted at the top of my voice.
“What kind of business is this, you playing around with Julia Chase?” Audrey screamed.
We hollered simultaneously, and Wompler didn’
t get it. He knew something was wrong, though. He looked at me and looked at Audrey and turned around, heading for the door. Audrey pounced across the room and blocked the door with a little leopard skin and a lot of Audrey skin.
“He says you’ve been making time,” she told her Willie.
He looked small next to her, almost as small as Guido.
“To hell with that,” I said. “Where’s Steffy? Where’d you take her?”
“You,” Wompler said, pointing a finger at me, “are getting to be a nuisance. Audrey, if you throw that bum out of here, I can explain everything.”
I grabbed the damp lapels of Wompler’s coat and shook him. For a time we listened to the change rattling in his pockets, then I let go and said, “Start talking.”
He might have, but then Audrey followed my example and shook him.
“You got a phone call,” I said, “then you made one. After that, you went out with Steffy. Where is she?”
“Deny it about Julia Chase, you no-good little rat!” Audrey cried, still shaking him.
I locked the door and then gently but firmly got hold of Audrey’s wrists and pulled her away.
“Sit down and listen,” I said. I wasn’t fooling now. There was no time. I sneezed and shoved Audrey in the general direction of a chair. I rapped my knuckles against Wompler’s mouth. His head bobbed like a punching bag and he began to whimper. I was sure Audrey could do the job just as well but it might take her longer. I slammed Wompler against the locked door and waited until he bounced back and rapped his mouth again. A thin trickle of blood had emerged from the corner of his lips, running down over his chin. His eyes begged me to stop but his teeth were clamped together defiantly, so I kept at it.
After a while, he slumped forward in my arms. He didn’t seem to weigh more than his suit and coat and maybe a good pair of brogans. Suddenly his head came up and butted my chin, making me bite my tongue. I yowled and yowled again when he kicked my shin and whirled around, clawing at the door. Before he could open it I got him by the scruff of the neck and pounded his face against the paneled door with the words Wilson Wompler, Publisher, stenciled on the reverse side.
I wasn’t feeling proud of myself and began wondering how long Wompler would remain silent. His head made a dull noise against the wood and the door shook in its frame. I spun him around and let go. He slumped to the floor in a sitting position and Audrey got a paper cupful of ice water from the cooler and splashed it in his face.
