Triple Slay

by Lawrence Lariar

  Triple Slay

  A PI Steve Conacher Mystery

  Lawrence Lariar

  CHAPTER 1

  At exactly 4:32 on the afternoon of June 7, 1958, a young woman named Mari Barstow left The Ridge Apartments on the fashionable East Side of New York City.

  The precise time came from the doorman who remembered looking at his watch as Miss Barstow left the building. He was positive about the time of day. He’d been about to phone his bookie a bet on a horse named Kiss Me Quick in a late race. The incident was indelibly stamped on his mind when Kiss Me Quick came in and paid $56.70 for the win.

  The doorman reported that Miss Barstow stood chatting with him for a few minutes. Miss Barstow remarked that it was a hot day. The doorman agreed and ventured that the evening might bring rain. Miss Barstow said that she hoped he was right. The past week had been uncomfortably warm.

  Miss Barstow walked off toward Second Avenue as the doorman rushed into the lobby to phone his bet.

  He was the last person to see Mari Barstow.

  At exactly 7:12 in the evening, two months later, I was entering the apartment of a man named Jan Flato. Mr. Flato was not at home when I got there. I didn’t expect him to be home. I knew Jan Flato’s habits well. For the past week or so I had studied Mr. Flato. Outside the skyscraper headquarters of the Universal Television Network on Sixty-Fifth Street, I had stood on a plant every night at about this hour.

  Standing on a plant does not mean loitering on a rose bush or digging one’s heels into a strawberry patch. It means waiting and watching and possibly following, a trade term used by all skip-tracers. In the business of skip-tracing, the seasoned investigator must use patience and stubbornness in his day-to-day work.

  I can remember a typical long wait a few years ago, a routine case involving a little man named Oscar Blarman who had abandoned his wife and four children and disappeared into the nether reaches of New York’s East Side. I tailed him to a giant tenement off Second Avenue, but could not put the fix on him because he simply didn’t appear for me. Yet, a small clue out of his wife’s description of him finally earned me my locate. Oscar Blarman was very fond of pickled pigs’ feet, an impossible item to purchase in the Hebraic delicatessen belt of that area. But I grabbed my man through a cooperative storekeeper who owned a Scandinavian delicatessen near Fourteenth Street. He reported a middle-aged woman who bought pickled pigs’ feet regularly. And the middle-aged woman was a middle-aged stray named Oscar Blarman.

  In the more dignified areas of police detection, the city dicks consider the art of tailing worthy of special straining so that their sleuths can do their prying without the fear of detection. Standing on a plant is as much an art as checking fingerprints. It can yield valuable information, which is what I wanted about Jan Flato—and it can provide the opportunity to search for still more information, which is why I was standing there now about to break and enter.

  And certainly I was hoping to find out a little more about Flato than he had offered me in his tight-lipped interview at the studio about ten days back.

  “Talk fast,” he had told me, not bothering to look up from the script he was fingering. “This is my busy time of day.”

  “It’s busy for me, too, Mr. Flato,” I said.

  “Really?” He mumbled the word to the manuscript, lost in some creative problem. “And must you louse up my rehearsal, little man?”

  “The name is Conacher,” I said, angry at him. Snide references to my size always make me boil. And the fact that Flato dropped the remark didn’t cool my blood pressure any. He was only inches taller than me when he stood. And he had added the extra height by way of elevated heels. “Steve Conacher,” I continued. “And I’m here on company business.”

  “Company? What company?”

  “The Universal Network.”

  “Come again?”

  “Mr. Silverton,” I said. “Mr. Silverton hired me for this job.”

  “Job?” His eyes sharpened. He had a skinny face, long in the nose and decorated with an oversize moustache. He reminded me of certain types of British soldiery given to cultivating such fantastic facial adornments. But the moustache didn’t detract. There was intelligence in his face. You had the feeling he would never stop thinking, even if he joined you in laughter. “What job, for God’s sake?”

  “I’m assigned to find Mari Barstow.”

  “Find her? Is she lost?”

  “Have you seen her lately?”

  “Whether I’ve seen her or not wouldn’t establish her as missing,” he smiled. “The fact is, I haven’t seen her lately.”

  “Nor has anybody else, Mr. Flato.”

  “Is that peculiar?” He laughed, a short unimportant snort, half amusement, half disgust. “Silverton knows Mari’s reputation. Didn’t he tell you she was a flibbertigibbet?”

  “All Mr. Silverton said was that she’s missing.”

  “Mari’s a funny girl, Conacher. You did say Conacher, didn’t you? Odd name. Well, Mari takes great pride in her individuality, if you get what I mean. Likes to be considered a character. Gets sudden whims and impulses. And follows through on them. She might very well be in Atlantic City, Las Vegas, or Flatbush.”

  “Silverton seems to think she should come back,” I said. “Isn’t she scheduled on your show in two weeks?”

  “She is, indeed. But why the big worry? She’ll make it.”

  “Will she? Silverton says he’s protecting the company’s investment in her. I’m no television fan myself, Flato, but I can understand his point of view. She’s had a pretty lousy press, hasn’t she?”

  “Mari loves a lousy press. She’s got a publicity fixation. She’s probably the hottest singer in television and yet she seems to be working overtime to kill herself. I’m thinking of the Judy Garland walkout she pulled in Vegas. And for what? The press boys found her taking a moonlight swim with some punk Hollywood juvenile.”

  “She sounds mixed up,” I said:

  “The understatement of the year,” he laughed.

  “Silverton wants to avoid any more bad publicity. If I can’t make a locate on her by rehearsal time, he’s got Sally Tucker ready to come in.”

  “I suppose old Oliver is right,” said Flato. “Mari is the hottest piece of property in the business today. The network signed her to a fabulous deal, and she’s due to make a million bucks if she plays it Silverton’s way which means sweet and pure and no more side-trips into fantasy land. She’s a female flibbertigibbet, Mari is. You know her history? Hell, when Silverton found her she was only a routine girl vocalist with the Tony Granada band. She was so fresh in the business that she had no agent, and that’s pretty green, brother. Silverton signed her and then gave her a spot on the ‘Sunday Shindig.’ You know the rest. His confidence paid off. She has a terrific talent. Ever see her perform?”

  “I’ve never seen her at all.”

  “A walloper, Conacher. She sells a song. Nobody like her.”

  One of his staff men came over and handed him a script and they buzzed and argued about a certain spot in the coming show. Flato handled him with quiet discipline, firm in his opinions but without heat. He would be a hard man to reach. “Bad day at Black Rock,” he said to me. “Can you come back, Conacher?”

  “There are a couple of things you can tell me now, Flato. For instance, how well you knew Mari Barstow.”

  “The past tense?” He screwed up his mouth, sour on the idea. “You don’t think she’s dead, for God’s sake?”

  “I didn’t say she was.”

  “I know her casually, Conacher, to answer your question.”

  “On the outside?”

  �
�Now what in hell can that mean?” he laughed. “I’ve been out with her a couple of times, sure. Drinks. Dinner, that sort of thing. Mari’s pretty easy to know.”

  “Often?”

  “Please,” he sighed airily, bored with me. “A television director mixes with all sorts of people. It’s part of my job. But it doesn’t mean much, believe me. It’s as casual as shaking hands most of the time. Mari and I were acquaintances, that’s all.”

  “Know her for a long time?”

  “I met her last year, over on Fire Island. Party at Oliver Silverton’s.” One of his staff boys ran over and interrupted with a running monologue on something connected with a comedian. “If you’ll excuse me, Conacher,” Flato said. “This is rather important—”

  “I’d like to talk to you again—and soon.”

  “Try me on Wednesday afternoon, will you?’

  But Flato had been tied up on Wednesday and there was no way to break through the iron curtain set up to bar visitors from the inner cubicles of the television moguls.

  I had next visited Mari Barstow’s apartment, and showed the superintendent Oliver Silverton’s impressive letter identifying me as a “staff investigator” working for him in Public Relations. It was an important piece of equipment, a useful tool on a case of this sort where certain doors might have to be opened without fuss or delay.

  The Ridge Apartments was a mammoth building, only recently erected in the upper Seventies and as modern as tomorrow’s headlines. The superintendent had led me into a spacious layout, four rooms, furnished in the rather stiff and formal style I always associate with department store furniture windows and tasteless customers. The rooms seemed barren and lifeless, the walls holding no pictures, the tables still slick and shining and unused for anything but show. Her bedroom was as sterile as the rest of the place an oversized bed, two low chests and a rug thick enough to sleep on. Had she ever used this place? Had anybody used it?

  Downstairs, the doorman had said: “Miss Barstow looked okay when she left. What I mean is, she wasn’t running or anything—just taking off, natural like.”

  “Any luggage?” I asked.

  “A small bag.”

  “Overnight?”

  “I guess you’d call it that. Brown leather, it was.”

  “Yet she didn’t talk about staying away?”

  “Not to me, mister.”

  “Ever see this man with her?” I showed him the press photo of Jan Flato given to me by Helen Calabrese, Silverton’s secretary. It was a casual shot, out of the studio files, a close-up that featured his thoughtful smile, his heavy brows and the fantastic moustache.

  He studied the picture for a long moment, coming to a conclusion with Irish decisiveness. “He’s been around. Couple of times. Saw him when I was on night shift, mister. You know how I happen to be so positive? The crazy moustache. My boy grew one just like it when he was in England during the war. You know, the British aviation type, real crazy at the ends. This man reminded me of my boy a little; that’s why I remember him.”

  “He took her upstairs?”

  “He did that.”

  “Drunk?”

  “Not so I could notice it.”

  “He stay with her for a while?”

  “I didn’t time them,” said the doorman with a smile.

  “He came down before breakfast?”

  “He came down in a couple of hours. Long enough to see her etchings, if that’s what you mean, mister.”

  “That’s what I mean.”

  And that was why I was visiting Jan Flato now, uninvited.

  His flat was on the ground floor of a redesigned brown stone in that new section of the East Side so popular since they tore down the old Third Avenue Elevated tracks.

  I had let myself into Flato’s place by way of the small terrace outside his living room windows. All the remodeled houses in this neighborhood featured gardens, fancied up for outdoor living should the rustic mood strike the sophisticates and drive them out for fresh air. The flagstone terrace was prettied up with wrought iron furniture that had seen much use. There was a door to the living room on the right side, close to the cherry sapling fence that screened the alley. The door was no problem. I cracked one of the small panes of glass and opened it easily.

  Once inside, I stood quiet for a while. Breaking and entering is not my business. The police frown on investigators who flout the law, but this research couldn’t have been done any other way. Still, unlawful procedures always upset me. I am no television type. All the fictional devices frighten me. Guns do not make me feel heroic. I had a fairly happy childhood and did not hate my father which leaves me on the good side of the psychiatric couch, only a normal neurotic with natural fears and quirks. Working at my business of skip-tracing requires patience, logic and a certain amount of good luck. In many ways a good investigator can be compared to a good business man. Both take pride in servicing the customer. The business man supplies merchandise. The investigator supplies facts.

  And I was entering Jan Flato’s flat to collect facts.

  So I stood there, just looking around the narrow living room and letting it speak to me. Alone in a strange place, my ears were sensitive to sounds. There was movement around and about me. In the hall? Upstairs? A radio sang from somewhere through a few thick walls, the tune dead and nothing but the thumping rhythm coming through to me. From far outside, beyond the garden wall, the muffled buzz of traffic. Closer, in the alley, a tinny clank, probably a cat browsing in the garbage. And up close, deep inside my ears, the hammering of my heart, the personal bop that always comes when excitement hits me. Caution held me. Caution and my memory of Mrs. Timmerman.

  Mrs. Timmerman owned the brownstone and lived in the front rooms on the ground floor. She was a pleasantly curved matron, on her way into middle-age but still retaining enough of her girlish bloom to trap a masculine eye. She had a round face, not fat, not lean, a face that could have been startlingly beautiful fifteen years ago. She was the talkative type, quick to tell me of her admiration for Jan Flato. She considered him more than a tenant. She personally took care of his flat. She cooked occasional meals for him.

  All this information Mrs. Timmerman had volunteered a couple of days ago when I’d explained that I was out on an assignment for Life.

  “We’re doing a big picture story on old brownstones, Mrs. Timmerman,” I’d told her. “What we want to show is how great they are when they’re redesigned with good taste. Yours is an outstanding example.”

  Mrs. Timmerman had taken the bait and shown me through her place. I’d waxed enthusiastic from the moment we entered Flato’s flat, making much of the decor and discussing the many changes wrought by her architects. She’d responded to my questions affably, allowing me plenty of time to memorize Flato’s layout. She was particularly proud of her star tenant, almost motherly in her affection for him.

  “Mr. Flato is a famous television director,” she’d informed me. “He does that big Saturday night variety show and he has the highest ratings. Have you seen it? You must have seen it. Jan works too hard, poor boy. I keep telling him to take a rest, ease up a bit. But you know show business people—work, work, work, all the time.”

  She’d rattled on while I made my mental notes.

  “Jan’s more like a son than a tenant He’s been with me for over ten years now, came to me after Korea when he was just getting started in television. Wonderful person and I can’t do enough for him. Honestly, it’s a pleasure to do things for him. Here’s the kitchenette. Isn’t it darling? I cook for him, too, whenever he lets me. Take a look at this closet. You don’t find them that big in the new apartments, do you?”

  Evidently Mrs. Timmerman would not be cooking for Flato tonight. It was already almost 8:00 and his schedule would keep him at work until his first run-through, which ended at a little after 8:30. It was his habit to walk home from the nearby te
levision studio immediately after the rehearsal. He would arrive at about 8:37, as he always did on the many occasions I had followed him here from the studio.

  Yet, you never can make book on human behavior, and that was why my nerves bothered me now. I fought down the feeling of urgency. It was important to go over his apartment with great care. The mind is out of focus when pressure takes over, when fear shakes it. It was with some effort that I forced myself to slow down, to stand flat-footed in the center of his living room and just soak up the surroundings.

  Jan Flato was a man of good taste. The typically long and narrow living room had been designed with great care, the walls stark white, the carpet a cool blue. The glaring whiteness gave the place a feeling of airiness, an outdoor quality that sang of space and cleanliness and masculinity. Outside, dusk was shadowing the houses beyond the small yard, but there would be some light for a while, enough to do what I had to do. Yet, I held back from all action, still trying for the calm that would help me on my search. On the walls, several large paintings a man could live with and enjoy from day to day. On the right, a long couch, tastefully covered in a tweedy material. The tweed motif was picked up in the occasional lamps and promoted further by a large screen at the far end of the room, partially obscuring the doorway into the small kitchen and dining-room arrangement.

  From out in the hall, a woman’s voice filtered through to me. Mrs. Timmerman? The voice faded and died somewhere out there toward the front of the house. A remote door clicked shut. Somebody had gone out into the street.

  The little noise moved me to action, not frightened, not rushing, but anxious to get the first leg of my job finished. Jan Flato had a modem desk near the big window. I began there, fingering the leather book lying neatly upon the green blotter: a new book for his phone numbers, probably bought since the search for Mari Barstow began. I reached this conclusion by a simple route. An old telephone list carries the marks of age, the certain signposts that tell of use; the personal doodles, erasures, changes and notations. But these phone numbers were written in a librarian hand, neatly lettered, precise and orderly. It interested me that some attempt had been made to make it appear as if the entries had been put in the book at various times: Flato had used more than one pen for the copying job. It was an index to his mind and temperament. He would be a thorough man, a clear thinker, a man of logic and precision. I thumbed the book to the letter B. Why wasn’t Mari Barstow there? Was he trying to set up the fact that she was only a casual date?