Killer's Payoff

by Ed McBain

  He had, at first, been disappointed. The woman who emerged from the house in Peabody looked more like a dowdy librarian than a bawdy libertine. It was after he’d been tailing her for a while that he began to appreciate the warnings of his colleagues. It was the most annoying damned thing, not that it wasn’t also pleasant. The woman wore a suit that had surely been manufactured by Omar the tent maker. And yet, beneath that suit, there was the suggestion of vibrant flesh. The suggestion became more than that when the material tightened over her thigh as she stepped from her automobile, or molded the persistent flesh when she stooped to pick up her dropped purse. Lucy Mencken, no matter how she dressed, was voluptuous. And Willis did not at all mind tailing her, except that it was difficult to concentrate.

  The tail, that morning of July fifth, led him directly to the Peabody railroad station. Willis had not anticipated this. He hastily parked the police sedan alongside the red MG and followed Lucy into the waiting room. He hoped to get to the ticket window in time to overhear her destination, but she was just turning away from the counter as he entered the waiting room. He didn’t know whether she’d be heading north or south. South led to the city. North led to the next state and then beyond and beyond and beyond. For all he knew, Lucy Mencken could be heading for Canada, or the North Pole, where she planned to sell bootleg whisky to the Eskimos. Willis shrugged and went to the magazine stand, where he bought a copy of Manhunt. Under guise of reading the magazine, he watched Lucy Mencken.

  He was amazed by the number of men she fooled. Surely it did not take a detective to know what the baggy linen suit concealed. Surely John Doe could look at her face and detect sensuality despite the severe hairdo and the absence of makeup. And yet, hardly a man in the waiting room turned for a second look at her. Even when she sat and crossed her legs—and there was, for a moment, the flash of thigh, the exalted glimpse of well-turned knee and calf, before her hand lowered the skirt like a linen curtain—none of the men in the waiting room seemed to care very much. Willis shook his head sadly. We are raising a generation of unobservant, impotent robots, he thought. Thank God for Meyer Meyer, Sire.

  He could hear a train in the distance. Lucy Mencken looked at her watch, and then rose from the bench. Willis followed her onto the platform. She was, then, taking the southbound train. The last stop would be the city. Was that her destination, or would she get off at one of the stations along the line?

  The train roared into the station, hissing steam, sounding its horn. A rush of air caught at Lucy’s skirt. She backed away slightly, holding the skirt about her legs in a completely feminine gesture. She boarded the train and went directly to a smoking car. Willis followed her, and sat across the aisle and several seats behind her. When the conductor came around, he bought a round-trip ticket to the city. Then he sat back and read his detective magazine, glancing up every now and then to make sure Lucy had not moved.

  She did not move until the train reached the city. Then she rose and disembarked.

  This is great, Willis thought. We send a tail out to Peabody, and she leads the tail back to the city. Women, women.

  He did not enjoy being back in the city. The city was a hell of a lot hotter than the exurbs had been. He cursed his bad luck, and stuck with Lucy Mencken. She caught a cab just outside the station. Willis got into the cab behind hers. He flashed his shield and told the cabbie not to lose her. The cabbie did not. Lucy Mencken’s cab cut through the crosstown traffic heading toward the River Harb. It pulled up in front of an office building on Independence Avenue in midtown Isola. Willis paid his hackie and went into the building after her. He had to run across the lobby in order to get into the same elevator with her.

  She wore no perfume. He was standing close enough to her to detect that. He was standing close enough to see that her eyes were a clear blue flecked with tiny chips of white. He was standing close enough to see that her nose was spattered with freckles, and he suddenly wondered if she had originally been a farm girl.

  “Eight,” the elevator operator said.

  Lucy stepped forward. Willis stepped forward with her. The doors slid open. Lucy stepped into the corridor. Willis waited until she was out of the car, and then followed. He made a great show of studying the numbers on each door he approached, as if he were looking for a specific office. Lucy walked directly to the end of the hall, opened a frosted-glass door, and entered. Willis waited a decent interval, and then went to the end of the hall. The lettering on the door said:

  806

  PATRICK BLIER

  Photographers’ Representative

  Willis moved away from the door. He walked back to the elevator banks, and then flipped open his pocket pad and jotted down the number and name that had been on the door. He rang for the elevator and went down to the lobby. He checked the building to make sure there was only one entrance, and then went to the phone booths from which he could watch the elevators. Rapidly he dialed Frederick 7-8024.

  “Eighty-seventh Precinct, Sergeant Murchison,” the voice answered.

  “Dave, this is Willis. Is Hawes upstairs?”

  “Hold on a second, Hal. I’ll check.”

  Willis waited.

  “Eighty-seventh Squad, Detective Hawes,” Hawes said.

  “Cotton, this is Hal.”

  “Hi. How’s the tail?”

  “Fine. You should see it.”

  “Pretty?”

  “A diamond, once you chip away the coal.”

  “Where are you?”

  “In the city.”

  “Where’s she?”

  “1612 Independence Avenue. That’s below the Square, midtown. She’s in Room 806 with a quote photographers’ representative unquote named Patrick Blier. Shall I hit him or maintain the tail?”

  “Stay with her, Hal. Buzz me when she leaves, and I’ll go down to see him.”

  “I’ll leave the message with the desk,” Willis said. “I won’t have time to exchange cordialities or I’ll lose her. She travels like a bunny.”

  “Okay. I’ll ask Dave to let me know as soon as he gets your call. Stay with her, Hal.”

  “I’d love to,” Willis said.

  “You horny bastard.”

  “Horny? I’m red-blooded.”

  “I’m tired-blooded,” Hawes said. “I’ll be waiting for your call.”

  Patrick Blier, Photographers’ Representative, was a bald man with a hooked nose. The first impression he gave was of a giant bald eagle. He sat behind his desk in a cubbyhole office the walls of which were covered with photographs of girls in various stages of dress and undress. A metal plaque on his desk announced the fact that he was Mr. P. Blier, in case anyone should accidentally think he was Miss or Mrs. P. Blier. To further eliminate doubt, Patrick Blier wore a transparent sports shirt, short-sleeved, and his chest was matted with thick black hair. His arms curled with the same black hair. A lesser man might have cracked under the pressure of all that hair everywhere but on the head. Patrick Blier didn’t seem to care. He was bald, so he was bald. So what?

  “So what do you want?” he asked Hawes when he stepped into the office.

  “Didn’t your receptionist tell you?”

  “She said a detective was here. You a city cop or a private eye?”

  “City.”

  “I get a lot of private eyes. They want my clients to take pictures for divorce cases. I explain to them that I ain’t in the habit of breaking down bedroom doors. Private eyes are disgusting. Ain’t nothing sacred? What do you want?”

  “Some answers.”

  “You got the questions?”

  “Loads of them.”

  “Speak. I’m busy. I got requests up to here. I’m gonna have to get a bigger office, so help me God. Phones ringing all day long. Editors coming up day and night. Models pestering me. Jesus, what a rat race. What do you want? Speak. I’m busy.”

  “Why was Lucy Mencken here?”

  “Who the hell is Lucy Mencken?”

  “She was here a little while ago.”
>
  “You’re nuts. Lucy Men—you mean Mitchell? You mean Lucy Mitchell? Is that who you mean?”

  “Yes.”

  “So where the hell did you get this Mencken from? Say what you mean, will you? I’m busy.”

  “Why was she here?”

  “Why, what’d she do?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Then why should I tell you?”

  “Why not?”

  “First tell me what she done.”

  “Blier, I don’t have to bargain with you. I asked a question. I’ll ask it one more time. Why was she here, and what did she want?”

  Blier studied Hawes for a long moment.

  “You think you scare me?” he said at last.

  “Yes,” Hawes answered.

  “You’re right, you know that? You scare the hell out of me. Where the hell did you get that white hair? You look like the wrath of God, I swear to God. Jesus, I’d hate to meet you in a dark alley. Boy!”

  “Why was she here?”

  “She wanted some pictures.”

  “What kind of pictures?”

  “Cheesecake.”

  “What was she going to do with them?”

  “Paste them in her scrapbook, I guess. How the hell do I know? Do I care what a dame does with her own pictures? What do I care?”

  “These were pictures of her?”

  “Sure. Who’d you think? Marilyn Monroe, maybe?”

  “What kind of pictures?”

  “I told you. Cheesecake.”

  “Nude?”

  “Some were nude. The rest were almost nude.”

  “How nude is almost nude?”

  “Pretty nude. As nude as you can get without getting nude. As a matter of fact, nuder than if she was entirely nude, if you know what I mean.”

  “Who took these pictures?”

  “One of my clients.”

  “Why?”

  “To try to sell, what do you think? I sell to all the men’s magazines. I handle other stuff, too, not only cheesecake. I don’t want you to get the idea I only handle cheesecake. I do photographic essays. That is, I handle them. My clients shoot the actual stories.”

  “Which client took these pictures of Lucy Mitchell?”

  “A guy named Jason Poole. He’s a good man. Top-notch. Even these pictures were good, and he took them a long time ago.”

  “How long ago?”

  “Ten, twelve years ago.”

  “Which?”

  “How do I know? Who remembers that far back? She walked into the office today, I thought I was seeing a ghost.”

  “I’m not sure I’m following you, Blier. Suppose we start from the beginning.”

  “Oh my God, I’m busy. How can I go way back to the beginning?”

  “By going there,” Hawes said. “I’m busy, too, Blier. I’m busy investigating a homicide.”

  “That’s murder?”

  “That’s murder.”

  “She done it?”

  “Start from the beginning, Blier.”

  “The beginning was about ten, twelve years ago. Maybe longer. Let me think a minute.” He thought a moment. “The war was just over. When was that?”

  “1945.”

  “Yeah. No, wait a minute, the war wasn’t over yet. The first war, the one with the bastard. That was over.”

  “You mean Hitler?”

  “Who else? That one was over. We still had to clean up the Pacific. Anyway, it was around then—1944,1945. Around then. I was sitting in the office alone. I didn’t even have a receptionist at the time. Just me. I had an office, I wanted to change my mind I had to go outside to do it. That’s how big it was.” Blier laughed at his own devastating humor. “I was eating a sandwich. Pastrami on rye, from Cohen’s. Delicious pastrami. In walks this doll. An absolute doll. A doll you could die with. With this doll, you could put me on a desert island for the rest of my natural life without food and water, so help me. Just her alone, and I’m a happy man. That’s the kind of a doll she was.”

  “Lucy Mitchell?” Hawes asked.

  “Who else? With straw sticking out of her ears. Straight from the farm, and milk-fed. Oh mister please, I get weak. These big blue eyes, and this body, this body sings, it plays sonatas, it’s an orchestra with strings, Jesus I get weak. She wants to model. She says she wants to model. I say did you ever model? She says no she never modeled but she wants her picture in magazines. I visualize a fortune in pinups. I can see this doll decorating barracks from here to Tokyo. I can even see her decorating Japanese barracks! Her I wouldn’t even deny the enemy, the bastards. But her I wouldn’t deny them. I send her up to see Jason Poole. He takes a string of pictures. He can’t stop the shutter from clicking. Click, click, he shoots away all night long.”

  “Go on,” Hawes said.

  “He gets these marvelous pictures of this marvelous doll with this body that makes concrete limp. I can visualize a fortune. So what happens?”

  “What happens?” Hawes asked.

  “Next week I’m out of business. Some snotty underage dame sues me for selling cheesecake for which she gave me permission to sell. How was I supposed to know she’s underage? I’ve got these lovely pictures of Lucy Mitchell, but I ain’t got no office any more because this other snotty dame sued me out of existence.”

  “What happened to the pictures?”

  “I don’t know. Things got shuffled around. When I opened the new office, the pictures were gone. I never seen them in a magazine, either, so I know they ain’t been published.”

  “How many pictures were there?”

  “About three dozen.”

  “Sexy?”

  “Mister,” Blier said softly.

  “And Lucy Mitchell came to you today to get those pictures?”

  “You could’ve knocked me over with a ten-ton truck. Man, has she changed. She looked like she just got out of a monastery for women. I told her I ain’t got the pictures. She told me I was working in cahoots with a guy named Sy Kramer. I told her she was nuts. I don’t know any Kramers except a guy named Dean Kramer who runs one of the girlie books. She wanted to know if this Dean Kramer was related to her Sy Kramer. I told her for all I know he could be related to Martha Kramer for all I know, does she think I’m the Library of Congress?”

  “What did she say?”

  “She wanted Kramer’s name and address. I gave it to her. What I don’t understand is this: why, after all these years, she suddenly wants the pictures back? This I don’t understand.”

  “And you don’t know anyone named Sy Kramer, is that right?”

  “What? Are you starting on me, too?”

  “Do you or don’t you?”

  “I don’t. I don’t even know Dean Kramer so hot. I sold him maybe half a dozen shots since the magazine started. He’s a very literary-type guy. He likes literary cheesecake.”

  “What kind of cheesecake is that?”

  “It’s got to have a story with it. A beautiful doll ain’t enough for Kramer. He needs a story, too. He thinks this way he fools his readers into thinking they ain’t looking at a beautiful doll, they’re reading maybe War and Peace, instead. Man, what a comedown this Lucy Mitchell was today. Why’s she wearing that old circus tent? Is she afraid somebody’s gonna whistle at her?”

  “Maybe she is,” Hawes said thoughtfully.

  “In the old days…” Blier paused, lost in his reminiscence. Then, very softly, almost reverently, he said, “Mister.”

  7.

  THE MAGAZINE HAD A very virile name.

  It occurred to Hawes as he stepped into the office that there was not a single virile word in the dictionary that had not been affixed to the front cover of some men’s magazine. He wondered when they would begin choosing titles like:

  COWARD, the magazine for you and me.

  SLOB, for men who don’t care.

  HE-HE, the magazine of togetherness.

  He smiled and entered the reception room. The room was lined with oil paintings of bare-chested men doin
g various dangerous things, paintings that had undoubtedly been used for magazine covers and then framed and hung. There was a painting of a bare-chested man fighting a shark with a homemade dirk; another of a bare-chested man loading the breech of a cannon; another of a bare-chested man scalping an Indian; another of a bare-chested man in a whip duel with another bare-chested man.

  A girl who was almost bare-chested sat behind a desk tucked into one corner of the reception room. Hawes almost fell in love with her, but he controlled himself admirably. The girl looked up from her typing as he approached the desk.

  “I’d like to see Dean Kramer,” he said. “Police business.” He flashed the tin. The girl looked at the shield uninterestedly, and then lazily buzzed Kramer. Hawes was glad he had not fallen in love with her.

  “You can go right in, sir. Room Ten in the middle of the hall.”

  “Thank you,” Hawes said. He opened the door leading to the inner offices and started down the hall. The corridor was lined with photographs of old guns, sports cars, and girls in bathing suits—staple items without which any men’s magazine would fold instantly. Every men’s magazine editor instinctively knew that every man in America was interested in old guns, sports cars, and girls in bathing suits. Hardly an afternoon went by on patios across the nation when men did not discuss old guns, or sports cars, or girls in bathing suits. Hawes could understand the girls. But the only gun in which he was interested was the one tucked into his shoulder holster. And his concern for the automotive industry centered in the old Ford that took him to work every day.

  There was no door on Room Ten. Neither were there true walls to the office. There were, instead, shoulder-high partitions that divided one office from the next. A wide opening in the partition which served as the front wall formed the entrance to the office. Hawes knocked gently on the partition, to the right of the opening. A man inside turned in a swivel chair to face Hawes.

  “Mr. Kramer?”

  “Yes?”