Strange Embrace

by Block, Lawrence

  “Do I tell them why?”

  “No. Just that I said so. They’ll find out soon enough anyway, but in the meantime they might as well stay in the dark. Call them and tell them no train, period. And don’t wait up for me. I’ll be a while.”

  “I’ll be up,” Ito said.

  “Don’t you ever sleep?”

  “Only in the winter,” Ito said.

  Johnny laughed and hung up, then looked across the desk at Haig. “That’s out of the way,” he said. “Now you’re supposed to ask me probing questions.”

  Haig nodded sleepily. “You kill her, Johnny?”

  “What!”

  “Well, I had to ask. It says so in the book. Any idea who did it?”

  “None.”

  “It wasn’t robbery,” Haig said. “She had a pearl ring on one finger and we found a few bucks in plain sight in a dresser drawer.”

  “Is it still there?”

  “Naturally. Cops only rob the living. Anyway, it wasn’t a burglar. Nothing ransacked. So it was sex or some personal-type motive.”

  Johnny nodded. “I can’t think of anybody who would have any reason to kill her,” he said. “Not offhand.”

  “Know much about her?”

  “Not too much.”

  “Let’s have what you know.”

  Johnny lit a cigarette. “Her name’s Elaine James,” he said. “It is now, anyway. She may have changed it somewhere along the line. She’s been in New York for two, three years looking for a break. The usual routine—temporary office help to pay the rent, a round of auditions that didn’t pan out. An occasional bit off-Broadway but never with a show that caught on. When I held open auditions for A Touch of Squalor she stood in line with a few hundred other girls. I took one look at her and saw that she’d be perfect for the lead if she could act worth a damn. So she read for it and she was perfect. A hell of a fine actress.”

  “So she could act. That all you know about her?”

  “Almost all,” Johnny admitted. “She came from a little town upstate. She was too young to have graduated from college and still spend two or three years in New York and die at twenty-two. Maybe she went to a junior college, I don’t know.”

  “We’ll find out.”

  “That’s the point—I don’t think there’s much I can tell you that you couldn’t turn up anyway. She lived alone. She was friendly enough with everybody in the show but none of them were close friends by any means. She hadn’t known them long enough for that.”

  “Was she sleeping with anybody?”

  “Not that I know of. I had a feeling she might be a virgin.”

  “Any reason to think so?”

  “Just a hunch.”

  “I didn’t think there were any virgins left in the world,” Haig said. “Well, we’ll find that out by morning when the Medical Examiner’s report comes in. That and other things. If she was raped. If she was pregnant. Anything like that, we’ll find out. You get yourself murdered and you don’t have any privacy at all. It’s one hell of a thing.”

  The big cop picked up a letter opener and began to clean his nails with it. “Let’s take the rest of the cast,” he suggested. “Maybe one of them had it in for her.”

  Johnny frowned. “That’s pretty hard to believe.”

  “Is it? If you know as much about them as you know about the James girl, they could all be orangutans and you wouldn’t know the difference. Who’s in the show?”

  “Carter Tracy is her co-star. Was her co-star. Hell, it’s wrong either way. How do you say it when it’s like this?”

  “Death fouls up tenses,” Haig said.

  “He’s the leading man. That does it. You know who he is?”

  “I’ve seen him in the movies, if that’s what you mean. Mostly late movies on television. Isn’t he a little old for our girl?”

  Johnny nodded. “He’s about fifty, I think. Admits to forty-two, which is impossible. See, the age difference was the point of it. The plot of the play spins around an ingenue type who falls for a smooth old bastard. Tracy plays the bastard and Elaine was supposed to play the sweet young thing.”

  “Sounds like typecasting. Tracy really is a bastard, isn’t he?”

  “He’s all wrapped up in his own ego,” Johnny said. “It amounts to almost the same thing. But he’s one hell of a good actor, and good actors are all egotistical. It’s an occupational disease. Besides, his ego hasn’t been up so high lately. He’s slumped. Hollywood doesn’t seem to think he’s a leading man anymore. He was ready to crawl for this part, figuring that it could make all the difference in the world to him. It’s an older part and a romantic role all at once, a handy bridge between two camps.”

  “Who else?”

  Johnny looked at Haig. He was taking brief but careful notes on a legal-sized pad of ruled yellow paper. “I suppose Jan Vernon is next,” Johnny said. “Know her?”

  “Name rings a bell.”

  “She hasn’t made any movies recently. She was a starlet in Hollywood for a while, then switched to Broadway. She had the lead in The Levantine Factor and good supporting roles in Under Black Skies and Last Thursday.”

  “What is she? The prim and proper type?”

  Johnny laughed. He pictured Jan in his mind, thought of the sleepily voluptuous figure, the pouting mouth, the lay-me look that never left her eyes, not even when she was doing something as prosaic as counting her lines.

  “Not exactly,” he said. “Not quite prim and proper. In our play she’s cast as Elaine’s older cousin. The one who’s been around until she’s a little frayed at the edges. Carter Tracy bangs her while he’s making the pitch for Elaine. Get the picture?”

  “Uh-huh. Tracy banging her off-stage as well as on?”

  “Damned if I know. If he isn’t, he can’t be trying.”

  “Another case of typecasting?”

  Johnny shrugged. “Who knows? You never know what to believe in this business. Everything is a rumor. She’s supposed to have figured in a few choice parties out on the Coast. The orgy set, you know. A little marijuana and a little juice and away we go. There was an arrest, according to this rumor, but she was under contract at the time and her studio managed to put the lid on it. The rumor routine may be so much nonsense, but if she’s got more morals than an alley cat then I’m Jack the Ripper.”

  “That leaves the question open, friend. Keep going.”

  “Reuben Flood is the lead’s father. The name won’t even ring a bell, but you’d recognize the face. He’s been in a few hundred movies and God knows how many plays. A trouper all the way, one of the best damn character actors in the business. Stan Harris plays the lead’s older brother. He’s a young kid, just starting out. The part is a small one and he’s right for it and that’s about all I know about him. Tony Foy has a bit part—he’s another young hopeful—and there are maybe five or six walk-ons. That takes care of the cast.”

  “Understudies?”

  “Uh-huh. But don’t ask me who they are, because I’d have to look them up to tell you. And don’t think that Elaine’s understudy killed her to inherit the part. She wouldn’t get it. The understudies are just insurance in case one of the cast comes down with a bad hangover or something. They wouldn’t serve as permanent replacements.”

  Johnny drummed his fingers on the desktop, pausing to think things out. The little recitation he’d given was fine for Haig’s notebook—it filled up plenty of yellow paper. But it wasn’t going to nail any killer to the wall.

  Hell, it was just a matter of form. In the morning the Medical Examiner would establish that Elaine had been raped and then murdered and the killing would be designated a pointless sex slaying. That would make fine copy for the tabloids, but it would also mean that there would be no way he could help. If the killer were caught at all, it would be police procedure that did the trick—not one Johnny Lane.

  “The director is Ernest Buell,” Johnny continued. “A temperamental guy maybe a little bit nuts. He’s been in one rest home or anoth
er off and on for fifteen years. He isn’t a complete nut, though. It’s just that he gets depressed. It seems to be an occupational disease. A few weeks away from Broadway and he’s all right again.”

  “What they ought to have,” Haig said, “is a rest home for cops. Lieutenants in particular. For days when I get depressed.”

  Johnny laughed. Then he thought about the girl, Elaine, and about the fiend who had killed her. The laughter died.

  “To hell with it,” he said. “I could tell you what color cat our assistant stage manager has and who planned the lighting and a million other damn fool things and it wouldn’t get us anywhere. What it boils down to is that I don’t know anything. Somebody killed her. I wish he hadn’t. Period.”

  “Sure, Johnny. It’s a mess. I ask questions because I have to. Then we find out it was a sex killing and we have to start all over again. We throw out a net and catch perverts, and we make all the perverts tell us what they were doing at the time and with whom, and maybe we get the bastard and maybe we don’t.” He held up his sheet of notes. “This,” he said, “I could throw it in the garbage and it wouldn’t matter.”

  “I’ll see you,” Johnny said. He stood up. “You’ll have to solve this one without me, Sam. But let me know when the ME report comes in, right?”

  “Of course,” Haig told him. “And you keep your crew of hams in town until they’re cleared.” He smiled sadly. “You won’t be able to go into action for a while in any case, will you? Not with your leading lady waiting to be replaced. I guess it’s been a bad night all around, huh?”

  Johnny agreed with him.

  Ito was still up. Johnny got rid of his hat and coat and found a chair to sink into. Then he gave Ito a full summary of the night’s activities. The butler’s face remained impassive.

  “Hell of a thing,” Ito said. “If whoever raped her waited one more day she’d have been all right. She’d have been out of town.”

  “I know. It’s quite a coincidence.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I don’t know. Somehow I can’t swallow the sex-killing bit. I’ve got a theatrical mind, Ito. I want a plot to dovetail neatly. The police have the right idea. They question everybody until one person looks wrong. They throw questions at half the town until one guy can’t answer them straight. And nine times out of ten the first one they pick is guilty.” He lit a cigarette. “I want it more complex than that, damn it. She—she died in a strange way. She couldn’t have put up much of a fight at all. She looked almost peaceful, for the love of God! As though she’d been sleeping when he…cut her throat.”

  “Does she always sleep nude?”

  “How the hell would I know? All right, you can stop laughing at me now. I fell for it. Any calls while I was out?”

  Ito told him there were none. Johnny finished his cigarette, then stood up.

  “I’m going to sleep,” he announced. “I’ve got a hell of a lot to do tomorrow. I’ll have to check out all the girls around who might be candidates for Elaine’s part. If I find a fast study in a hurry we may be able to open in time.”

  “Really?”

  “Really,” Johnny said. “With only two weeks for the leading lady to learn to tell her lines from her behind, we’ll be lousy in New Haven. But we can straighten it out in time for the New York opening. Look, it’s six now. Do you think you can be up by noon?”

  “I’ll be up at ten. Should I wake you at noon?”

  “Yeah, wake me at noon,” Johnny said. “But how in hell will you manage to be up at ten?”

  “You know, we Orientals are wonderfully industrious,” Ito said. “And inscrutable. You can never tell what we’re thinking—”

  “Go get some sleep,” Johnny said, then headed out of the room.

  Chapter Three

  JOHNNY LANE CAME OUT OF SLEEP slowly, groggily. Ito was shaking him, attempting to be both gentle and firm at once. Johnny’s eyes opened and the light was painful.

  “Go away,” he said sourly. “Go join your honorable ancestors or something.”

  “Mr. Lane—”

  Johnny groaned. “God,” he said. “It can’t be noon yet.”

  “It isn’t.”

  “What the—”

  “It’s eleven-thirty, which is close. And you have company. A visitor.”

  “Haig?”

  Ito shook his head. “Not even close,” he said. “A woman. An attractive woman. She insists that her name is Jan Vernon and that she has to see you at once.”

  “What does she look like?”

  Ito thought it over. “She looks as though she was slept with not long ago.”

  “Then it’s Jan,” Johnny said, grinning. “And she probably was. Tell her to sit down and relax while I try to turn back into a human being. She probably needs some coffee. Me, too. With vitamins in it.”

  “Vitamin B for bourbon?”

  Johnny nodded. He wondered how long it would take him to wake up. Quite a while, he decided.

  A shower helped. So did a shave. He brushed his teeth to remove their fur coat and splashed cold water on his face. He dressed in a hurry, putting on a sport shirt and a pair of light flannel slacks. He broke his shoelaces trying to tie them, threw the shoes away and put on a pair of loafers instead.

  A hot cup of fortified coffee was waiting for him in the living room. So was Jan Vernon.

  “Johnny,” she said, “I’m scared.”

  “I’m exhausted,” he told her. He sat down and took a sip of the coffee to clear away mental cobwebs. There was a lonely cigarette in the tray on the coffee table. He lit it and smoked, studying Jan at the same time.

  Ito was right, he decided. She definitely looked as though she had been slept with, and recently. The black hair that cascaded over her shoulders managed to look mussed up, even when every strand was in its place. The mouth pouted even when she smiled. And the eyes beckoned provocatively even when she was scared, which she obviously was now.

  “I’m scared,” she said.

  “You heard about Elaine?”

  She nodded, her face grim. “Some policeman came banging on my door in the middle of the night.”

  “Haig?”

  “That’s the one. He was halfway through the story before I figured out what he was talking about. At that point I started to shake. I’m still shaking.”

  “It was something to shake about,” Johnny told her. “A pretty rugged scene.”

  “You found the…body?”

  “Uh-huh. Didn’t Haig tell you?”

  “He probably did. I was a little out of it at the time. Johnny, are we still going through with the show?”

  He nodded. “Sure,” he said. “We may get going a week late at the outside, but I doubt it. I’ll call around and dig up another lead. I know it sounds ghoulish but that’s show biz, to coin a phrase.”

  “The show must go on?”

  “Uh-huh. A lot of backers have a lot of dough in this. Why? You sound like you think we ought to dump the thing, Jan.”

  The eyes clouded, then turned to the floor. “Maybe we should,” she muttered. “Maybe we should.”

  “Huh?”

  She sighed. “I told you I was scared,” she said. “I’m not scared because I’m a woman and a vicious killer is walking the streets. That’s garbage. I don’t scare that easily, Johnny. I’ve got a better reason than that.”

  He was interested. “Okay,” he said, “let’s hear it.”

  “I’m scared because I’m in A Touch of Squalor.”

  Johnny stared at her. “You heard me,” she went on, “Somebody has it in for this show, Johnny. Somebody who wants to keep us from opening in the worst way. I don’t believe this sex-nut story. I don’t believe it at all. I think Elaine was murdered because she had the lead in the show.”

  “You been smoking the wrong kind of cigarettes again, Jan?”

  Her temper flared. “That was a damn lie,” she snapped. “And if you’d wait a goddamn minute you’d find out what I’m talking about.”
/>
  “I’m sorry.”

  “You should be. I’ve had three phone calls,” she said. “Three times a male voice has told me to drop the show cold or get my head handed to me. I was supposed to quit or get killed—that was the message.”

  “And you didn’t tell me about it?”

  “I thought it was a gag. An actor making jokes. It’s the kind of joke an actor makes, isn’t it?”

  “I suppose so. Did the—this voice—did it say anything else?”

  “Just that somebody important didn’t want the show to open. That was all. Johnny, I didn’t even think about it the first time. The second time it wasn’t funny anymore but it still seemed like a gag. When the third call came I was pretty teed-off. I gave the guy on the other end of the phone a few choice directions and slammed the phone down hard enough to hurt his ear. Then later on I was thinking about it again. I was with Elaine and I mentioned the calls to her. I asked her if she thought they were a gag.”

  “How did she take it? Did she laugh?”

  “Like you laugh at a funeral, that’s how she laughed. She went white in the face and her hands started to shake. I told her to relax, it was only a joke, and besides, I was the one he was threatening. And she repeated that of course it was a joke. And she calmed down, or put on a good act.”

  Johnny nodded. Maybe Jan wasn’t out of her head at all. Maybe she had gotten hold of something—something not very pretty.

  “Well, Johnny, what do you think?”

  “The same as you, probably. She must have received similar calls herself. And when you told her she wasn’t the only one…”

  “She took it seriously.” Jan sighed.

  Johnny closed his eyes and tried to think straight. He was damned if he knew who would want to keep a play from opening. There were people who tried to make sure plays closed early—they called themselves critics—but few who didn’t want a show to open in the first place. It didn’t make any sense.

  What if he postponed rehearsals a month and delayed the opening by that much time? The backers would not be able to wriggle free; the money was already committed. The delay would run into a certain amount of money but the play was a strong enough property to carry through.