“Hello.”
The word was muffled, sleepy, full of phlegm, high-pitched irritation, a woman’s voice.
“Mrs. Simon?” I asked.
“Are you crazy? Who calls at this time? Only a lunatic.”
“I’m a friend of Jake’s. Steve Gant.”
“Let him sleep if you’re his friend.”
“It’s important. It’s an emergency,” I begged. “If I’m wrong, let Jake tell you.”
“What was the name again?”
“Gant. Steve Gant. He’ll know me.”
“I warned him,” she muttered. “I warned him to stop working for them …”
Her voice trailed off and there was a long silence, minutes that felt like hours.
Then Jake was on the phone.
“I’m sorry,” I told him. “I meant to call you earlier, Jake. It was impossible.”
“Sure, sure,” he said sleepily. “What do you want?”
“The hour. When she died.”
“I can only guess, Steve. I’d say about four-thirty.”
“That early?”
“At least. Maybe earlier, a little.”
“Maybe?”
“Because of what I found. You see, she didn’t die from that knife.”
“She didn’t?” I almost dropped the phone.
“She was drowned, Steve. I found water in her lungs.”
“And the stabbing?”
“A bluff,” he said sleepily. “Somebody wanted to make it look like a stabbing. There’s a small chance she might have been stabbed in the water, too. It’s possible both things happened at once, that she, was stabbed while swimming. But I think it happened the other way, in reverse. Because of the blood—the lack of blood around the wound.”
“Drowned first, then stabbed?”
“My theory, exactly.”
“Thanks, Jake.”
“It helps you?”
“It gives me a big pain in the butt,” I said. “But that’s what I need at this hour to make my brain work.”
CHAPTER 20
8:56 A.M.
Breakfast means many things to many people. To the man in the street, the wage earning slob, breakfast means a steady diet of commercial cereals, fruit juices and coffee, taken on the run for the bus, the trolley, the train or the ferry. He nibbled his Wheaties in the dim hours of morning, only to drink hot coffee again when he reached the office.
Breakfast, to entertainers, producers and others on the show business kick, means something else again. They awaken late in the day, long after the noon whistle has blown all normal workers into the drugstores for lunch. They blink their eyes into the mid-afternoon sun, stagger into the closet for stomach remedies, after which they usually enrich their digestive tracts with nothing more nutritious than coffee, cigarette smoke and a few odd burps.
At this hour in the morning, I expected Pazow to be deep in the arms of his mattress. I leaned into his doorbell on the plush frontier of Park Avenue, a small villa in the Lower Sixties, in a whitewashed courtyard as rustic as something out of a British novel.
A little maid goggled at me, trying to smile me back and away from the door. Mr. Pazow, she reported, could not be disturbed. She continued to throw the line at me as I brushed past her and beat her to the far end of the hallway.
Pazow was seated in his dining room, neat and dapper in a black silk robe. He nibbled a slice of toast, wide awake. He had been up for some time. He shook my hand in a friendly way and waved me into a seat alongside him. He instructed the maid to bring me a cup of coffee, as gracious as a host in a society movie. He offered me anything in the line of breakfast, suggesting a pair of imported kippers from his gourmet larder. I refused, content to slurp his coffee and admire his home until the trivial talk died away.
“How are you doing?” he asked at last.
“I’m on a merry-go-round.”
“Not getting anywhere?”
“I haven’t grabbed the gold ring,” I said.
“You look like the end of a hard night,” he said. “No sleep?”
“That goes double, doesn’t it?”
“Me?” He smiled and breathed deep, working to sell me the cordial host routine, the aristocrat nibbling the kippers, the rich boy in his town house. “I’ve had a fine night’s sleep, Gant.”
“Sure you did. And before that?”
“I don’t quite follow you.”
“I’ll make it easy for you. Was it the work-out with Ziggi that lulled you to rest, Pazow?”
“Work-out?” He eyed me curiously, a glitter of surprise and admiration under his heavy brows. “You certainly get around, don’t you?”
“No farther than you. Why did you slug him?”
“Something personal.” He lowered his eyes in the attitude of a sorrowful schoolboy caught with a girl in the cloakroom. “Something he called me, back at the club.”
“Something that bad?” I asked. “Something so nasty you had to visit him at his crummy night-club and paste him for it?”
“Let it go at that, Gant.”
“I’m not buying it,” I said. He was playing it to the hilt, a lousy actor with bad lines. This kind of drama always hit me hard in the gut. This kind of play-acting made me feel like a schnook. Anger sharpened my tongue. “I’m your boy, remember? You hired me to do a job, Pazow. I’m doing it. Even if it involves the gent who’s paying me for my labor. Crazy? Once upon a time I was sucked into a job by a creep. He tried to use me as a blind, a patsy, a blanket for his crummy plot. It’s a very clever routine, hiring a dick to cover for you. But not this boy, Pazow. Once I’m in the stew, I wallow in the gravy, up to my ears, all the way. People get the idea that a private investigator is some sort of a reformed con. I don’t like it. I don’t like that type of thinking. Now, let’s give it another try. Let’s forget the battle of wits and settle down to talking sense. It’s either that or I walk out of here.”
“Easy, easy,” Pazow said, affected by my spleen. “You’ve got me wrong, Gant.”
“I haven’t got you at all. Take a deep breath and tell me what you were doing at Ziggi’s a little while ago.”
“You haven’t guessed?”
“The manuscript?” I asked.
“Of course. The Cuban stinker had me pegged for Saxon’s lousy scandal sheet.” His voice hit the level of serious disturbance. His fingers found a knife near his rejected kippers and began to massage the cutting edge with unconscious diligence. “He was getting ready to deliver his filthy prose to Saxon. I thought it was time to move in.”
“A commendable thought. How did you find out?”
“Gloria.”
“She told you?”
“Don’t be whimsical.” He was sad and remote, not enjoying the memory of her. “She made it pretty obvious to me in the past week.”
“I thought you and she were washed up?”
“We never really made it, even when she was trying. We called it quits a long time ago. But Hell, you can’t ever really drop a woman like her. One encouraging word from her and she’d have me on a string again; I’d break both legs to make her happy. Two drinks with Gloria and she could have my bundle.”
“You had the drinks with her?”
“She went to work on me,” he admitted. “She threw me the old curves. Would you believe it that I fell for the routine again? I did. We went out together a few times, got drunk together. After that, I found myself talking to her. Oh, I’m a great talker, Gant. She pumped me dry. She made me think we were back in the old fog, two lovers again. And all the time she had me by the short hairs and was bleeding me for material. She caught me with my emotional pants down.”
“How did you tie her up with Saxon?”
“Easy.” He massaged his face. He lowered his head and fought for words, a schlemiel ready for the torture chambe
r. It was a long moment before he went on. “During the lovey-dovey interlude, one of the places we visited was The Pink Closet. You know it? An upper-class hangout for rich punks and snobs. She wanted to go there and it seemed funny to me. Gloria was always a basic girl, a lover of the simple pleasures, gin and sawdust, ham and eggs. But she insisted on The Pink Closet, this particular night. When we got there I understood why.”
“Saxon?”
“One of his hangouts, of course. I saw her detour to his table on the way to the powder room. It was a pretty quick thing, rigged to look like a casual meeting. But Gloria was no Mari Beranville. She couldn’t act at all. She was real ham in the clutch. All of a sudden it hit me like a dirty punch. All of a sudden I knew her angle. The next day, I spotted her with Ziggi on the beach, posing for some press pictures. Right then, I knew the answer. I figured it for a collaboration. I called her to my office and threw it at her.”
“That must have been quite a scene.”
“It wasn’t much,” Pazow said. “As I’ve said, she was no actress. She tried. She gave it a few lines, the usual corny shock and surprise. But she shifted gears pretty quickly when I offered to buy her off.”
“Dandy,” I snapped. “Why tell me this now? Why didn’t you let me know sooner?”
“Because I thought I could handle the Saxon thing myself. Once I knew where the dirty prose was hidden, I figured I could handle Ziggi.”
“And that was why you slugged me in his dressing room?”
“My apologies.”
“You hit pretty hard,” I said. “It was the way you hit me that queered you, Pazow. Only a boxer would hit that way.”
“It was wasted effort,” he said. “The story I found in his room was not the one I was looking for.”
“Louder and funnier. You mean there was still another story?”
“An exclusive tale. A personal history of me.”
“You found it at Ziggi’s?”
“The original and a carbon.”
“I’d like to see it.”
“Too late.” He pointed beyond me, into the living room. Somebody had made a small fire in the fireplace recently. There were a few browned crumbs of burned paper under the andirons. “It’s dead now, Gant. Ziggi will never be able to reconstruct it out of his maggoty intellect. It was Gloria who was the writer, don’t you see?”
“Did you tell anybody else about all this?”
“I’m afraid I did,” he admitted. “I’ve discussed it with several people. In the beginning, I thought I could pump Mari. She might have gathered that Gloria was involved with Saxon. Or maybe she knew, anyhow. What the hell, they roomed together.”
“Who else?”
“Chuck Bond. Max Orlik.”
“How did Chuck take it?”
“They were very angry, both of them.”
“Angry enough to butcher her?”
“God, I don’t know,” Pazow said, alarmed. “You don’t think that either of them …?”
“I don’t know,” I said, getting up. “I don’t know about any one of you now, Pazow. In the beginning, this thing didn’t seem to have motive. That’s what got me dizzy when I started. Right now, my mind is making a switch. I’m backtracking and starting all over again.”
“You’re not insinuating that I might have killed her?”
“It’s an interesting thought,” I said at the door. “I’ll let you know pretty soon.”
CHAPTER 21
9:16 A.M.
It was a great day for breakfast interviews. In Chuck Bond’s bachelor nest, I found him enjoying a domestic repeat with Jean Russicoff. He was surprised to see me. And she was as unembarrassed as a bride caught with her percolator dripping. They faced me across Chuck’s terrace table, two obvious lovers after a night of bliss. She sat close to him, his hand on hers, a tableau I hesitated to fracture.
“Coffee?” she asked. “I make it well.”
“I’ll buy one,” I said. “I’m half crocked with the stuff right now, but it’s supposed to keep a man awake.”
“We’ve been up all night, too,” Chuck said. He waved to a stack of morning papers, all of them opened to the theatrical section. “The critical boys were very nice to me, Steve.”
“They thought he was great,” Jean added brightly. “Just wonderful.”
“Not bad,” I said, “when you consider the tension you were under last night.”
“Maybe it helped,” he said. “I always seem to work best when I’m quivering.”
“And now? Are you still quivering?”
“A little.” He fixed me with his little boy grin, the open, blue-eyed smile that rocked all the girls. He had the type of face that sells sincerity. It came through without effort, a glow that made you want to be his friend. You look at a character like Chuck Bond and go for him. You ask no questions, show no doubts. But I had seen too many boyish pans like his under the police lights. There is a breed of psychopath that lives off their sympathetic kissers, that woos you and wins you without a word. Over the years, even seasoned cops can be conned by these cute boys. Over the years, even I could have been wrong about Chuck Bond.
“I haven’t had much time to talk to you,” I said.
“Talk? About what?”
He was giving me the look again. He was laying it on, the starry-eyed, innocent bewilderment. Only this time he had company. Together, they were like a couple of kids waiting for Papa to tell them the facts of life. She wrinkled her beautiful brow just enough to make me feel like a heel. She squeezed his arm and leaned into him and they exchanged unhappy glances. I had invaded their dream world. I had landed them without a parachute, flat in the wastelands of cold reality.
“Don’t go stupid on me,” I told him. “Didn’t you expect some chatter from me after what happened in your cabana? Didn’t you think I’d be interested in your ideas, your sentiments … your movements during yesterday evening?”
“But I told you, Steve.”
“You told me nothing. Nothing about our beautiful corpse.”
“Corpse?” It was Jean who reacted now, pulling away from him and holding a frightened hand to her mouth.
“Gloria Clark,” I said. “Chuck didn’t tell you she was murdered?”
“Louse,” said Chuck. He got up suddenly, annoyed with me. He moved restlessly to the edge of the terrace. “Couldn’t you save it?” he asked the skyline. “Did you have to spill it when Jean was here?”
“Jean’s a big girl.”
“Murdered?” Jean asked herself. “What a horrible thing. Who’d do a thing like that? Why?”
“Stock lines,” I said. “There are lots of people who’d enjoy putting Gloria away. Including a few women.”
“Cut it,” Chuck skipped to my side and laid a hand on me. He was tough and mean. He was so tough that he angered me. I flipped his hand off my arm.
“Which women?” Jean asked.
“Let’s start with you.”
“I said to cut it.” Chuck hopped between us as though he might cut me out of her life that way. Anger brought two red splotches to his boyish cheeks. He was fighting down the yen to take a poke at me, battling for his lady love. “Either cut it, or leave,” he said.
“You’re breaking my heart, Chuck. Sit down before I slap you down. What do you think we’re doing, playing potsy? There was a woman murdered out at Pazow’s, remember? And there’s a fathead cop named George Newberry who’s itching to pin the rap on you, unless I can change his mind.”
“Rap?” He backed off. Jean joined him in a fresh tableau, an illustration out of The Saturday Evening Post, holding fast to each other as their world began to spin. “He really thinks I killed her?”
“He found a knife under your mattress.”
“But that’s crazy. What can it mean? He did fingerprints on it. He couldn’t have.”
“Prints, shmints. A smart killer wears gloves.”
“Crazy,” he said again. “I’ve been framed.”
“Newberry laughs at the idea.”
“And you?”
“Sit down,” I said. “That’s why I came up here. I’ve got to be sure, Chuck. I’ve got to be damned sure of where I stand.”
“God, you think I’ve lied to you?”
“It could be a theory. Did you?”
“You’re a horrible creature,” Jean shouted at me. “I thought you were Chuck’s friend. What are you trying to do to him?”
She was another girl when rage lit her face. She was strong and noble and more beautiful in an exciting way. It was her strength that came through in the clutch, her flaming spirit, and her overpowering loyalty to him. For a flickering second I thought she might slap me, kick me, even spit at me. But she subsided when she felt his hand on hers again. She retreated to the table and sat there, glowering at me.
“Easy, baby,” Chuck said. “I see what he means. I didn’t give him much he could use last night.” He paused, avoiding her eyes. “Much about Gloria, I mean.”
“She knows what you mean,” I said. “Don’t you, Jean?”
“That Chuck dated her?” she asked with a show of arrogance. “Of course I knew it.”
“And you loved Gloria for it?”
“I hated her. I despised her for what she was trying to do to Chuck.”
“Hated? Despised? Strong words.”
“I loathed her, detested her,” she added warmly. “Better?”
“Better and better. Women have been murdered for milder verbs.”
“Oh, please,” Chuck begged, joining her in the recoil, almost catching her as she retreated under the impact of my frankness. “Why don’t we let Jean go home, Steve? Why can’t you skip all this corn? You don’t think she had anything to do with Gloria, do you?”
“She gets around,” I said. “And she’d go pretty far for you. She’d go all the way. I caught her in Ziggi’s dressing room last night, did you know? She was on the prowl for his dirty essay. Isn’t that true, Jean?”
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