I went through the desk quickly. I looked for the little things, the bits of evidence a man might forget when building a lie. I hoped to find some important crumb, something to throw at him when I saw him next, something to crack his wall of composure, to force him to level with me. The Mari Barstow case couldn’t be kept under wraps much longer. Silverton was hoping to bring her back before the newsmen smelled the story. It would shape up as a wonderful publicity break, of course, if I could guarantee that Mari was alive somewhere. It would have a happy ending, a climax that could be used to boost her television career. But always, always, the fear of her death must govern Silverton’s actions. “You’ve got to work faster, Conacher,” he’d told me the last time I saw him. “We can’t keep the reporters off this one for much longer. Somebody’s going to notice she’s gone.”
A clock chimed the hour from the bedroom.
Eight-fifteen!
The past half-hour had gone too quickly. There were three more rooms to explore; his bedroom, his den, and the kitchenette if I had the time. In the bedroom, stark simplicity was featured in the furnishings. Here again, an off-white wall gave some light to the room despite the gathering gloom outside. There was little to examine. Two modern chests yielded nothing but an insight to his taste in haberdashery, good silks and the usual Madison Avenue shirtings. The big closet held only his suits, coats and shoes.
His den offered even less for me. He had a wall of books, mostly fiction and technical tomes, all of which had the feeling of use; his desk was piled high with them, and more were on the floor near the window. I looked in vain for a framed photograph, but found nothing better than an ancient group picture of some boyish team or other, the youths dressed in shorts and sweatshirts. I gave the bookshelves a quick once-over-lightly. In a cabinet under the main set of shelves, I found a photograph album full of an assortment of shots, many of girls, occasional groups and family pictures. On the last few pages gaps appeared. Flato had removed several of the snapshots here. Mari Barstow? I hung over this album, probing for a clue to her.
A slight subtle noise jolted me. The outer hall? The bedroom? I moved out of the den quickly and stood flat-footed in the small hall between the bedroom and the kitchenette, feeling like a damned fool, trying to make up my mind which way to jump.
The bedroom was nearest but that would have been a mad plan. Out here I knew my way around, I knew that the big kitchenette closet would shelter me if anybody entered. Yet the bedroom pulled hard at me because I remembered another closet in there, just as big as the one in the kitchenette.
There was little time for planning my tactics. I skipped quickly into the kitchenette, aware that somebody was turning a key in the hall door at the same moment.
The smell of foodstuffs bit at my nose. Grocery storage cabinets in here? I snaked my hand up toward the shelves, feeling the cold of tins, and up higher the papered cartons. Right behind me, the soft buzz of some kind of machine sounded. An electric refrigerator? I began to sweat. Mrs. Timmerman would have to enter this closet if she intended to cook Flato some dinner. Out near the sink, her humming seemed strangely muffled and remote. But that could be because she was several feet away, and my door was only opened a crack, a small sliver of light that allowed me a view of a narrow vertical section of the living room, just to the side of the large screen.
And then the phone rang and Mrs. Timmerman walked toward the living room.
“Hello?” Her voice was high pitched and friendly. “No, Mr. Flato hasn’t come back from the studio yet. Who is calling?”
She clicked the receiver frantically.
“Hello?” she said again. “Hung up, the fool.”
I saw her staring at the phone for a moment. Then she shrugged and started my way, walking briskly and full of purpose. In another second she would have had her hand on the knob of the closet door. In another second she would have opened that door and seen me. I braced myself for her scream.
But the little noise at the hall door held her where she stood, blocking the narrow sliver of light with her bulk.
“Jan,” she was saying. “How are you, darling?”
“A little tired, as usual,” he said. I couldn’t see him. She moved away from the closet door to greet him in the hall. “You weren’t going to cook me anything, Gussie?”
“I promised you the French pancakes, Jan.” Her voice was full of motherly petulance. “You don’t want them?”
“You’re a sweetheart, Gussie. But I’m going out for dinner tonight.”
“I’m glad to hear it, dear. Do you good to get out for a while. You’ve been working too hard, much too hard.”
They continued to exchange pleasantries. Then the light went on and he crossed the edge of my crack of visibility. I felt like a kid at a peep show. Flato sat on the near end of the long studio couch idly reading his mail as he talked to Mrs. Timmerman. If either of them turned toward the terrace they would see the broken window pane in the door. I debated making a slow sneak for the hall. I debated, but I didn’t move.
“You had a phone call a few minutes ago, Jan.”
“Oh? Any message?”
“The idiot hung up.”
“Wrong number?”
“No, she asked for you, Jan.”
“She? Who?”
“Didn’t give me her name.”
“Are you sure it was a woman?”
“Well, she had kind of a husky voice.”
“Pituitary problem, no doubt.”
“What was that, dear?”
“Or a frog in her lovely throat,” he laughed quietly.
“You have so many girls,” Mrs. Timmerman commented. “How can you ever tell which is which?”
“I’m talented, Gussie. But she’ll call again. They always do. My fatal charm.”
There was a silence and then they were walking toward the hall door.
“Maybe I’ll make you those French pancakes tomorrow night, Jan?”
“Gussie, you’re an angel.”
He moved back to the living room after Gussie departed. He dialed a number at once, finger-tapping his impatience as he waited. Then he reached over to the hi-fi and turned it on; a soft progressive jazz number, piano and base and guitar and drums, quiet thumping.
“Hello?” he said. “Helen?”
There was a conversational pause. And then—
“Just rolled in, doll. Did you phone a little while ago? You didn’t? Then it must have been my eager beaver date. I’ll brush her off and then pick you up. Won’t take me long. ’Bye, now.”
He hung up and stood there staring at the phone for a moment. He turned his body my way and lit a cigarette and seemed to be meditating a weighty problem. His usually pleasant face wore a deep scowl. He was still frowning when he started past my hiding place, aimed for his bedroom. I heard him in there, whistling the hi-fi tune.
Then I moved out of my hiding place. Fast.
I eased through the living room, thankful for the steady whacking noise from the hi-fi combine. I let myself out the way I had arrived, through the door to the terrace and across the dark garden and into the black alley to the street beyond.
CHAPTER 2
Sometimes I do damned fool things.
A good investigator is supposed to operate with all his wits. He takes great pride in his carefully planned chores. He considers prudence, foresight, and concentration all-important in his day-to-day movements. There is never any room for blundering or bumbling. And that was why I got off my stool in the bar at the corner of Flato’s street and mumbled an obscenity and cursed my absent-mindedness.
“Great suffering toads,” I remarked to myself.
Because I had left my hat in Flato’s apartment, on the first ledge of shelves in his food closet.
And I would now be forced to return and retrieve it.
I was on my way to the saloon
door when a voice was raised at me.
“Conker!”
He sat in the corner, almost completely hidden from view by the wall of the booth. He raised his glass at me unsteadily and said what he thought was my name again. I stepped in closer for a better look at him and he began to laugh in the silly, unmirthful way a drunk enjoys himself.
“Conker!” he said again. “Don’t remember me?”
Then I remembered him. Clearly.
“Haddon,” I said. “Arthur Haddon, isn’t it?”
“On the nose, Conker. See? I remembered your name! Bright of me?”
“Conacher,” I told him.
“What I said,” he burbled, “Conker. Sit. Have one on me. Good boy. What is it? Scotch? Bourbon? Bloody girls? Martini? Name it.”
“Scotch. On the rocks.”
“Figures.” He shouted an order to the bartender. “Know something? Interesting theory I developed about men and drinks. Man gives himself away with his brand. Right? Tabbed you for Scotch right away. Interesting? I’m a Scotch man myself, Conker. Something about the affinity of certain alcoholic beverages for personalities. Bourbon man just isn’t a Scotch man. Martini man is something else again. Prissy? Lice, would you say? But we Scotch characters—”
I let Haddon run off at the mouth because I felt sorry for him. Men like Arthur Haddon sit on the brink of infinity. His was a giant name not too long ago when television was having its birth pains. He directed some of the big early shows, made good in pioneering the medium. He had talent, imagination and drive. And you needed the drive in the lusty, neurotic industry. He had hit the top, earned peak credits and peak money not too long ago. But when the advertising agencies took over, the great purge of the old warriors took place. The agency experts analyzed and probed the chores of the director. A man had to be young and clever. A man had to be strong and fresh. The rigors of putting together a show would kill all the older boys, ancient big shots like Arthur Haddon who had passed to the hoary side of forty. Talent or not, genius or not, the jobs were taken from them and handed to the shiny-eyed youngsters out of Princeton and Harvard and Yale and other institutions of that ilk. The career of Arthur Haddon was cut short in its prime. And to make it worse, he was retained by his network to sit at a desk and eat his heart out watching the young amateurs ruin some of the shows he had created.
And that was where I had met Arthur Haddon, at a desk outside the office of Oliver Silverton. He held a nonsensical job, a crumb of a job, a job worthy of any minor idiot in the building. He was in charge of unsolicited manuscripts. He spent monotonous days reading fantastic show ideas sent in by people who believed they had something to offer. He had shown me samples of the mail; weird suggestions for the medium, specialty shows for midgets and cripples, mad ideas for half-hour dramatics, impossible quiz show projects. And while he talked to me he sipped steadily from a bottle hidden in his desk. The interview with Silverton concerning Mari Barstow had been postponed a few minutes, because he told me at the outset that he knew her.
I took another stab at it now.
“I saw your friend Jan Flato the other day,” I said.
“Friend?” Haddon’s face soured on the word. He rolled the hooker of Scotch in his nervous fingers. “My friend? Flato? He was my office boy, know that? Hell, after Korea the crud hit me for a job. Had him running errands. Look at him now. My friend? Don’t make me laugh.”
I didn’t make him laugh, but he began to laugh on his own, a hysterical surge of hoarse guffawing probably inspired by some quick and drunken memory.
“Friend?” he wheezed. “There are no friends in the goddamned television business, Connick. Bunch of professional neurotics, brown-nosers, phonies, turds. But friends? Listen, a plumber has friends. A baker has friends. There are no friends in the competitive arts. Hear me? The truth, Conker. I hate them all, every one of the young, squirming, adolescent, crew-cut nobodies; the lousy, maggot-ridden, beat-generation lice. Direct? They couldn’t direct you to the little boys’ room. And that goes for the little jerk with the king-sized moustache, Flato. Mediocre. A nothing. And certainly no friend of mine. Imagine a small-time heel like Flato refusing to see me? Didn’t answer the phone just now.”
“He probably had a date for dinner. I hear he’s quite a devil with the girls. They tell me he’s making a big pitch for Mari Barstow.”
“Who? Say it again.”
“Mari Barstow.”
“Nonsensical idea. Mari? Crazy.” He put the glass down and shook a bit, moved again by an inner disturbance. He searched for something in the tablecloth design, blinking and frowning at it. “What a girl, that. But not for Flato, for God’s sake. Not for Flato.”
“Then the story’s wrong?” I asked. “She and Flato aren’t going around together?”
“Mari? She’s too busy going around with herself. Strange thought. Strange girl. Met her at Silverton’s party on Fire Island. Ever see her? Ever see her face? Her figure? Enough to drive a man insane, Conker. Lives on her neurotic drives. A tease. A nympho maybe. Listen, whatever she is, it couldn’t add up to Flato.”
“Have you seen her lately?”
“Not for me,” he laughed sadly. “I’m not big enough. Had a small investment in her, but that was for the birds.”
“Investment?”
“A few hours. A fantasy. Have another drink, Connick?”
“Not now, thanks. I’ve got to be on my way.”
“Drop by again. At my office, I mean. Any time.”
“Good night, Haddon.”
I detoured back along the row of brownstones, wondering whether Flato had already left for his date. I had been with Haddon for almost a half-hour, seduced by his interesting talk about the television world. It might pay off for me to see him again, and soon. He might know much about Mari Barstow.
Nobody saw me duck into the narrow alley and make my way back to the tiny terrace behind Jan Flato’s living room. Here the darkness seemed deeper, the yard a box of heavy shadows except for the small block of light from his living room. I hesitated before trying the door. The Venetian blinds were drawn tight, but by kneeling to the lowest slat I could see a part of the floor.
And what I saw made me jump.
There was a girl on the floor.
She lay on her side, her head away from me, her face completely hidden. From my angle the perspective was forced, but the view of her behind told me much about the rest of her figure. Her skirt had pulled up above her thighs. She had good legs.
I kneeled there like a fool, listening for everything and nothing. Above me in some distant apartment, a baby squealed and gurgled. Somebody laughed. An animal tinned a noise on the forage for garbage. It occurred to me that I was listening for an interior sound, something that might tell me Flato was in there with her. It occurred to me that my logic was ridiculous. Would Flato allow girls to lie around on his living-room floor?
I went in quietly and leaned over her, felt her pulse and found her alive and as shapely as I imagined she would be. Up close, there was the smell of liquor on her, too heavy to be the result of casual drinking.
Her face seemed vaguely familiar. An actress? A celebrity of some sort? I guessed her to be in her early twenties. She had russet hair, cut short in the popular Italian style. Her features were delicate, her nose pert, her lips fresh and unpainted. She wore a simple outfit, a black sweater and tweed skirt. She had a fine figure.
I picked up the small black bag near her.
Linda Karig. Her driver’s license gave her address as East 65th Street. That would place her within a quick walk of this apartment. Her bag held the usual amount of feminine folderol; a cosmetic bundle, a change purse, cigarettes, matches. I dumped it all back into the bag and shook her gently.
She came awake in an offbeat way. No cliché remarks. No great surprise. Instead, she pulled back and away from me, squinting at me through alcoholic eyes,
trying to bring me into focus. It was a shame to soup up those eyes. They were startlingly beautiful; cat’s eyes, a light gray, soft and girlish. She raised a hand to her mouth as reality swept over her.
“Easy,” I said. “Take it easy.”
“Good God,” she said. “I must have fainted. After I came out of there.”
“Out of where?”
“There.” She gestured weakly toward the hall. “In the bedroom. Haven’t you seen?”
“Show me,” I said.
“Please, no. I couldn’t.”
“Then tell me.”
“Jan. He’s been hurt.”
I stepped away from her and went into Jan Flato’s bedroom. He was on the floor, his face down on the rug. The pose was ridiculous, like a man about to do his evening pushups, like a drunk asleep after a drink too many. The trouble was that he could neither be drunk nor athletic, not with the terrible crimson stain on his back. He had been knifed from behind, a vicious stab that must have leveled him before he could turn to face his assailant. His undershirt was bathed in blood. He was dead.
Linda was on her feet when I returned to the living room. She puffed nervously on a cigarette, giving me the full strength of her troubled eyes.
“No,” she whispered. “He isn’t dead?”
When I nodded she seemed to wilt and stumble and I went to her and held her erect, not wanting her to faint again. She clung to me. She was shaking with shock, fighting to stay with me, “Not dead. Not dead,” she mumbled over and over.
I got her a shot of bourbon from the trick bar in the corner. She took it hungrily, downing it with a masculine gulp and taking a second.
Triple Slay Page 2
