by John Roeburt
“Happily we’ll never know. I feel relieved already, sort of clean,” Rose said, kissing me.
“A hundred grand bath,” I mumbled.
“The big bubble bath we… You louse, you have me making the decision so you can throw it in my face when we’re broke!”
I pulled her to me. “That’s the idea. When we’re about seventy and so ragged we have to steal a coconut for eats, I may mention it.”
“Mickey, do you agree with me about giving it to Jacques?”
“Sure.”
“For true? You sound too casual.”
“How do you think you sound? Whatever you decide, Rose, goes for me. I mean that.”
“Then we’ll do it.” She kissed me again. “I’m glad you see it my way.”
Holding her with one hand, the other on the wheel, I really did mean it. For a guy like me to have a movie beauty for a wife and a boat like the Sea Princess, it figured I could dismiss a hundred thousand as if it was a popcorn ball…I think.
BEAUTY CAN KILL, by Michael McCretton
Copyright © 1962 by Michael McCretton.
CHAPTER ONE
Joe, the moon-faced car-jockey, waved cheerily at me as I swung the Jag into the parking lot. It was pouring like a champ, and I squinted through the downpour trying to find a parking place close to the building entrance. Naturally, there wasn’t any. I have an office in the building, but that doesn’t seem to count with the single-minded army of housewives who take over the lot every morning.
Finally, I pulled in between a big Caddy and a Buick, undoubtedly giving the little Jaguar a complex, and cut the engine. The rain dared me to open the door and I ignored it and lit up. The Jag’s small interior became crowded with a Camel fog while I patiently ridiculed a fleeting impulse to make a dash for the building. I don’t mind rain. In fact, I even enjoy it—when it has the decency to wait until I’m in a warm, dry bed somewhere. But at ten o’clock in the morning, in the open, in a downpour, forget it. The black trench coat covering my vulnerable person was made of two-hundred-dollar treated silk; and although it was probably made with the thought in mind that rain might someday touch it, I wasn’t about to test the tailor’s confidence.
I was taking a long, dissatisfied drag on the cigarette and silently cursing the sadistic rain gods when my salvation arrived. The door was jerked open and I looked up to find Joe smiling down at me from beneath an out-sized umbrella.
“’Morning, Mister Winters. Nice day for ducks, huh?”
His heart was in the right place but I questioned his wild-life philosophy. Nobody could like a day like this. But I smiled at him anyway. He was much too happy and his yellow grin was just about the last straw—but who am I to sneer at a gift horse?
“Nutty,” I mumbled and went into the usual contortions of hauling my 200-plus out of the Jaguar’s steely grip.
Sometimes I wonder why I bought the thing in the first place. I guess it was ego. Private-eye-man-about-city and all that sort of thing.
I grabbed Joe and we ran for the building without missing a single puddle, which seemed to be par for what was beginning to look like one of those days.
I left my guardian at the plate-glass entrance with a happy Saint Bernard look on his pie face and pushed my way into the warm lobby. My suit, a favorite Italian friend of mine, was drooping at the cuffs and my shoes felt like they needed baling.
Sloshing to the elevator, I punched the up-button and waited. It could be a long wait. The building in which my office is located, while not being pretentious by any means, is still passably modern. When I moved in it was pretty seedy and sort of senile, but the owners re-groomed it a couple of years ago and it’s in pretty good shape now. All but the elevator. Somebody forgot the elevator. My office is on the seventh, and only because my legs would never forgive me if I did otherwise do I go through a daily skirmish with the thing.
After returning from a possible trip to heaven and back, the red light above the floor indicator came on giving me a baleful stare, and the arthritic doors crept open challenging me to enter. I did and apologetically touched the 7-button.
I could have read a book on the way, but finally the monster threw me out on the seventh floor, where I squished down the hall to my office.
I stopped for a second outside the ribbed-glass panel of the door, like I always do, and patted the bold, black letters that some genius had painted on the ribs:
COLEMAN WINTERS PRIVATE INVESTIGATIONS
I know it’s conceit, but I can never look at the lettering without getting a charge. I unlocked the door, blew the sign a kiss, and went on in.
My office is neither large nor small. It’s just kind of cozy. It has a sort of lazy effect without being downright sloppy. There is a reception room of sorts—about as big as a large closet and stuffed with a comfortable couch, two stuffed chairs, and a stack of Playboy magazines. I don’t have a secretary; not that I can’t afford one, but I just don’t dig the potential distractions.
When I’m at the office I’m usually there to work.
The connecting door that leads to my private office is always left open when I’m not closeted with a client, so there is usually no need for a receptionist. Anyway and besides, this way I can see who’s sneaking off with my Playboys.
With my damp trench coat on a hanger and my stingy-brim hanging from a hook on the clothes tree, I felt alive for the first time that morning. I dropped onto the cushion behind the desk. My desk, as one of my more imaginative friends once observed, is as wide as a double bed—a huge and heavy mahogany monster with friendly cigar burns and memorable battle scars picturesquely adorning the stained top. Otherwise, my office is about what you’d expect for the building. There’s a wine colored rug, about medium thick, two modern bucket chairs with wrought-iron chassis (I was stoned when I got talked into them), a couple of skinny lamps standing around for effect, and a bookcase in the corner crowded with impressive titles that have never been touched. My one deviation from the prescribed office-protocol scene is the big, blond Hi-Fi set over against the side wall under the imitation Picasso.
Good progressive jazz is a mania with me, and I keep a rack full of albums within reach all the time. It is mornings like the present one that I fight the elements and fate with a Gerry Mulligan riff or two.
From the depths of the desk chair’s cushions, I pushed the remote button and the set came to life, dropping the bottom record on the turntable. It turned out to be a Dave Brubeck thing with a lot of counterpoint between Brubeck and Paul Desmond, his alto man. Listening to it, I slowly emerged from my weather-beaten shell.
I got up when it ended and went into the bathroom that comes with the office. I hardly ever shave at the apartment, primarily because I’m hardly ever awake before I reach the office, so I keep an electric razor at both ends.
The mirror on the medicine chest above the sink didn’t tell me a thing I didn’t already know, and I stared at it with ten o’clock revulsion. I don’t think I’m ugly, exactly. I mean, my sex life is never actually stifled, but anytime before noon on any given day I’m just not well.
My reflection frowned at me and looked even worse. I’ve got the kind of face that looks it’s best in a nightclub, late at night, under indirect lighting. I’ve got black hair that tends to curl coyly, so I keep it close-cropped in a sort of half-hearted crew cut. My face is a rough extension of the rest of me, which has been big since I was fifteen. I used to play right guard in high school and college, and the more lumps I used to take, the bigger I seemed to get. Anyway, I’m not very pretty, but most times I can scout up some feminine approval somewhere. Bless their near-sighted, little hearts.
I buzzed my way through a fast shave and was improving my sagging sex appeal with a bottle of Old Spice when the phone rang in the office. I jumped back inside, plucked the phone off its cradle, lowered myself into the desk chair’s cushioned embrace, and answered.
“Winters, investigations.” I smiled.
“Mister Winters?”
/>
I allowed that it was.
“Mister Winters, I’m calling for Mister Alistair Neal. I’m sure you’ve heard of him?”
Her voice was scratchy, like soprano sandpaper, and I guessed her age at about sixty; spindly, gray and competent.
“Yes,” I assured her. “Of course I’ve heard of Mister Neal. What can I do for him?”
“This is Miss Trossett, Mister Neal’s private secretary. He asked me to call and request that you come to his office at the Harding Building sometime this morning.”
“Oh?”
That was an articulate reply if I ever heard one.
“Miss—ah—Trossett?”
“Yes?”
“Miss Trossett, I’m sure that whatever Mister Neal desires from me would be better off discussed in person, but I’m afraid it’s impossible for me to come down there to see him. You see, my clients usually come to me. That, if you’ll pardon the pun, is why I have an office.”
I’m nothing if not independent. A headshrinker would probably tell me it’s a petty form of reversed snobbery. But whatever it is, it’s fun.
“I understand that, Mister Winters,” she continued, “and Mister Neal respects your natural dislike of any procedural interruption. But it is very important that he speak with you today, and an overcrowded schedule here makes it impossible for him to come to you. I’m sure you understand and will deviate this one time.”
I let her listen to nothing for a second while I pictured the eight digit figure I’d seen in a recent article stating an approximation of Mr. Alistair Neal’s worth.
“Are you there, Mister Winters?”
I erased the figure and came back to the mouthpiece.
“Yes, Miss Trossett, I’m still here.”
“Well, as I said, this is of personal importance to Mister Neal, and I’m sure you can find the time to come and see him. You have been highly recommended to him, and naturally, he is prepared to compensate you for your time and inconvenience.”
She had successfully twisted my arm. I mean, there are snobs and there are snobs.
“All right, Miss Trossett. I’ll try to dispose of whatever pressing matters I have here and be at the Harding Building by eleven-thirty. Will that be satisfactory?”
The sandpaper smiled, and I pictured a double row of perfect false teeth.
“Yes. That will be fine, Mister Winters. We’ll be expecting you. Good-bye.”
“Good-bye.”
I hung up and grinned at Picasso. Maybe this morning wasn’t entirely ruined after all. Remembering the pressing matter I’d mentioned to Miss Trossett, I pulled the inlaid lever at the left of my knee and my tiny bar slid out from its hiding place in the bottom of the desk.
The promise of a client like Alistair Neal called for something and the something became a double Scotch. I leaned the cushions into a half reclining position and sipped past the ice cubes as I checked the mental filing cabinet I call a mind.
Alistair Neal was the president and major stockholder of Dutchess Cosmetics, one of the biggest cosmetic firms in the country. He had an estate the size of a young continent out on Long Island somewhere and a town house here in the city. Mrs. Neal was the perennial hostess of the gossip columns and they seemed to be knee-deep in society and very comfortably happy according to public report. But it was obvious now, considering the phone call, that there was a cloud in sight somewhere.
The Neal’s had an only son named Bradley, who, if I remembered correctly, was pretty well acquainted with the gossip columns himself. Maybe that was the clinker. Bradley was about my age, in his early thirties, and seemed phenomenally prone to lawsuits. Paternity type suits, especially. I recalled a couple of his publicized court tangles with cosmetic-seeking chorus girls.
Alistair Neal was a boot-strap tycoon who had come up the hard way, earning every penny he made through sweat and determination. Now, in his old age, it was understandable that he might frown upon the antics of a playboy son with nothing on his mind but the shortest route up a twenty-year-old leg.
I sipped the Scotch and felt the pleasant tingle as it trickled down to my stomach. All this wool-gathering was fine, but I still wondered where I came in. Dutchess Cosmetics wouldn’t exactly fall into the category of normal clientele for Cole Winters, private investigator; and while I usually enjoyed a better than average existence, my clients were seldom so financially astronomical.
In my half-prone position, I had swung the chair around to muddle over the phone call with the view from my window, so I had my back to the door. The first hint I had of the presence of someone else in the office came as I was in the middle of a long, preoccupied sip of Scotch.
“Cole Winters, you heel!”
The Scotch finished its journey to my stomach a little faster than expected as I straightened and swung around.
It was Toni Dahl—girl burglar.
“Toni!” I cried, trying to hide the glass as I got up. “What a surprise!”
She stood just inside the door, glaring at me with that pin-up anger of hers. At times like this her five-feet-four inches looked lethal.
“I’ll bet it is!” she snapped. “And don’t bother to hide the glass. At ten o’clock in the morning! Cole!”
She stamped one of her tiny black pumps and looked beautiful. She was wearing a beige trench coat that was belted around her nineteen-inch waist, pulling the material tight and making the fact that she was a girl indisputable. The rain had put stars in her long, midnight curls and she looked positively edible.
I came around the desk and kissed her while she was still stamping.
The pout was still there after the kiss, but her lips look like they are pouting all the time anyway. I guess she was supposed to be mad at me, only her eyes didn’t quite go along with it.
Toni is, by her own admission, my “almost steady”. I’ve known her for over a year, ever since I did some investigating for her father, and I guess it would be correct to say that she’s my girl. She is twenty-two, beautiful, intelligent—and her father’s yearly income reads like the national budget. She is stubborn, willful, possessive and very sweet. And sometimes I’m sure that I love her deeply. If I ever get married I am certain that Toni will be the bride. Otherwise, I am equally certain that I wouldn’t live through the wedding ceremony.
If I ever get married, that is.
I released her, reluctantly, and showed her what I hoped was an engaging smile.
“What are you doing out in the rain, kitten? At this hour of the morning. Staten Island flooded or something?”
Her eyes, which get black and smoky when angry, were beginning to get black and smoky again.
“I came over to see you, louse,” she said, glaring up at me. “But don’t get a fat head over it, because I’m leaving immediately. You can just go right back around that desk and finish getting drunk, you drunk.”
“All right,” I shrugged, “so I had a highball before the noon deadline. A little slug of Scotch and I’m drunk?”
“You promised, Cole!”
Naturally, she was right. The twelve o’clock abstinence deadline I had promised was her idea of how to keep me out of the alcoholic wards, which was ridiculous, of course. Anybody’d think I was a lush or something.
I left her stewing in righteous wrath and went back around the desk as directed. It did seem a little silly to be playing hide-and-seek with a highball. What was I, anyway, a mouse?
I picked up the glass and looked her right in the eye. I tried to make my voice sound firm and independent, but somehow it didn’t come out that way.
“Okay, baby, I’m sorry. The weather’s a drag. I got half drowned coming to the office. I’ve got a headache, and I felt blue, so—”
I gave the glass a forlorn jiggle.
The sparks dimmed a little in her eyes and she sighed, pulling the damp coat in interesting little wrinkles around her pointed breasts.
“What’s the use?” she asked somebody, maybe the Picasso, as she unbuckled the belt around h
er coat. “How can you trust a cad?”
She shrugged out of the trench coat and put it with mine on the tree in the corner. I should have been a gentleman, I suppose, and helped her with the coat. But after being a heel, louse, drunk, and cad, in that order, I just didn’t think it would fit.
She parked her pretty behind on the corner of the desk and silently stared daggers at the defenseless highball in my fist. She was on a Marjory Morningstar kick this morning, wearing a powder blue cashmere sweater that clung passionately to her high, firm breasts and a dark blue skirt with a pegged bottom that crawled up past her knee as she sat down, giving me a cheesecake view of a slim, rounded, nylon-clad calf.
“Well,” she sighed, removing my hand from her knee, “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. Mix me one.”
Actually, I wasn’t even surprised. Toni’s like that. One minute I’m an evil-doing lush, and the next minute she’s doing it with me.
I mixed her a short one and refilled my own. Things were back to normal.
“Skol.” I smiled.
She stuck her tongue out at me and took a tiny sip.
“Busy?” she asked.
I finished a swallow and studied her knee some more.
“Uh-uh. Not right now anyway. Why, something on your mind?”
I thought I was smiling, but I guess it was a leer. She pulled her skirt down over her knee, ending the show.
“Derail your one-track mind, darling. That’s not what I meant. I’m going shopping and I thought we might have lunch together.”
That’s life. It was a nice try.
“Sorry, sweets, I have to see a client.” I told her. “How ’bout dinner?”
“What kind of client?”
“A man client.”
“Hmmm.”
“Honest,” I swore, “Male, rich and urgent. Alistair Neal. His secretary just called.”
Toni’s eyebrows arched upward.
“Alistair Neal! What does he want with you?”
Her tone was degrading but I let it go. “Somebody told him what a fabulous detective I am and he decided to let me guard his gold money belt.”
