Sugar Shannon

by Lawrence Lariar

  “A funny, funny thing,” said Sam. “George is what I’d call a production painter, know what I mean? He paints and paints, usually. When he’s working hard, he comes in here all the time, talking it up, discussing his problems with some of the lads who meet here. But lately, I don’t know. Maybe George stopped painting. Because he sure enough stopped talking.”

  It was unusual, too, for George to be late. At nine, I phoned his studio on Farnum Street. There was a long interval before he answered.

  “Hello?” His voice was sandpapered, muffled and hoarse.

  “George? This is Sugar.”

  “God almighty. Fell asleep, baby. Forgive me.”

  “Are you coming down to The Grotto?”

  “Can’t. I’m stiff. Crocked.”

  “Dandy,” I said, angry at him. “Call me up sometime when you’re sober.”

  “Wait! Don’t hang up. Please. I’ve got to see you. Got to.”

  “Send me a wire.”

  “Please, Sugar! I need your help.”

  “You’re doing all right on your own, George.”

  “I don’t blame you for being angry,” he said. His voice had dropped to a new low. There was fear and worry in him, a desperation that made him plead with me. “But I must see you. Now. Tonight.”

  “It can wait. You know how I hate your drinking.”

  “Can’t wait! Must see you. Must tell you—”

  His voice broke sharply and faded into nothingness. At that same moment there was another sound, a strange gasp, a muffled cry and a thud, as though he might have dropped the phone suddenly.

  “George!”

  He didn’t answer. I ran out into the Grotto and tore Gwen away from the beatnik folk singer and hauled her after me into the street. Farnum Street was only two blocks away and we ran up the flight of stairs to his studio, setting up a clattering echo on the way. His door was open and when I lit the lights I could hear Gwen suck in a sigh of horror.

  Because George DeBeers lay asprawl his large studio couch, his thin figure prone against the gold bedspread. The phone sat where he had dropped it, on the floor beside his lean hand. But he would never use the telephone again.

  Because somebody had knifed him into oblivion.

  CHAPTER 2

  9:32 P.M. Friday

  Lieutenant Hank Boyer moved his squad through their routine paces in George’s studio. He was an average-looking male, of medium height, medium weight and medium intelligence. He violated all the fiction patterns for detectives in the employ of the police. The usual city dick in story, movie or television moves with a plodding, unimaginative step. He is a flat personality, completely dedicated to his chores and determined to fight through to a solution of the dastardly crime. Not so with Hank Boyer. He spent most of his time watching me out of the corner of his sly right eye, obviously on the make and obviously more interested in me than Madame Justice.

  “How well did you know him, Sugar?” he asked.

  “Miss Shannon to you,” I said, “I knew George DeBeers well.”

  “Intimately?”

  “Watch your language, Boyer.”

  “What I mean is, you were a good friend?” He did not bother to blush and aimed his sharp black eyes at my inner woman.

  “Just exactly what do you mean?” I asked.

  “I’ll lay it on the line.”

  “I don’t care where you lay it,” I said, “but get the show on the road.”

  “Why were you here?”

  “George called me. He wanted to talk to me. Something urgent, he said. I phoned him and heard that he was drunk. Then something happened. He was hit. The phone went dead. I rushed over here and found him and called the police. Is that enough? If you want any diagrams, I can get Gwen to draw them for you.”

  “Clever,” said Boyer. “You two are very clever broads. So you arrived after the phone call. See anybody on the way up?”

  “Nobody.”

  “You know this building?’

  “I don’t make friends with buildings, Boyer.”

  “Funnier and funnier. You know what I mean. Ever been here before?”

  “Often.”

  “Why?”

  “Why not?” Gwen cut in. “I’ve got Senegambian news for you, Mister Policeman—there’s nothing can soften up a girl faster than an artist’s studio.”

  “I’ll remember that when I need a soft girl,” Boyer said without smiling, watching me for a reaction and getting nothing but my cold nose. “Now then, Miss Shannon, tell me this—how many times were you here?”

  “Countless.”

  “And what did you do here?’

  “I was busy looking at George’s etchings. What else?”

  “How about these pictures?” Boyer turned to survey the wall, his immobile face suddenly screwed into a sour contortion. He was obviously no enthusiast for modem art. He walked to the wall and stepped slowly down the line of paintings, giving each a special dose of his disregard. He circled the room slowly, making small and impertinent remarks about each canvas. Gwen and I watched him without interfering with his enjoyment. He would return in a moment and sum up his feelings about contemporary art in a few choice words. “These pictures, Miss Shannon,” he asked. “Are they any good?”

  “They’re great.”

  “What do they mean?”

  “They mean that George DeBeers was a fine painter.”

  “Dandy. You mean he sold this crud?”

  “Watch your language,” said Gwen, removing her glasses the way she always did when angered. “George DeBeers was one of the brightest young painters alive. But he didn’t paint for morons, Boyer.”

  “My apologies,” said Boyer without much sincerity. He walked to the wall and indicated an unfinished picture near the window. “How do you figure this one, girls?”

  “He never finished it,” Gwen said. “Even a Mongolian idiot could guess it, Boyer.”

  “Check. How about coming over here and taking a look at it.”

  We looked. It was a large and pleasant abstract, a design of pale blues and greens, obviously half finished.

  “How come he stopped painting this one?” Boyer asked.

  “It happens,” Gwen said. “Sometimes an artist works on several pictures at the same time.”

  “Okay. But I noticed something funny about all his paintings, girls. He dated them, see? He put the date under his signature on every painting in the studio. And they’re all more than six months old. Which means your friend George DeBeers didn’t do any painting for the past six months, right?”

  “The man has a brain after all,” I said, surprised by his discovery. He was right, of course. The paint on the unfinished abstract was hard and dry. “Obviously, George didn’t paint in this studio for some time. But that doesn’t mean anything. He might have used another studio.”

  “Whose would that be?” Boyer asked. “Maybe you can tell me something about his friends. Know any of them?”

  “George never introduced me to any of his friends.”

  “He must have mentioned one or two.”

  “Not to me,” I said.

  “What did you talk about?” Boyer asked slyly.

  “Sex. We spent hours discussing ways and means. Is that the answer you wanted, Lieutenant?”

  “What a broad you are,” he said, confused enough to blush a bit. He turned away from me and busied himself with the dismissal of his squad. They were finished with their routine now, but two of the detectives still lingered. Boyer whispered a few words to them and stared down at the couch where he had found George’s body. With his hat pushed back on his head he looked like a caricature of a police detective lost in deep thought. The sight of him irritated me, because he was straining too hard for an effect, putting on a show to convince me of his manliness and brain power. On him it looke
d foolish.

  “A knife,” he said. “The coroner says he was stabbed at least five times by somebody with a strong hand. A small, sharp knife.”

  “Horrible,” said Gwen, shivering. “This place gives me the screaming meemies. Why don’t we all go down for a drink?”

  “A knife,” said Boyer, disregarding her and nibbling at my belt buckle with his hungry little eyes. “Now which one of his friends would do a thing like that, Sugar?”

  “I wish I could help you, Boyer.”

  “Force yourself.”

  “I didn’t know George’s friends.”

  “Enemies?”

  “A silly question, Boyer.”

  “Give me a silly answer.”

  “Synghman Rhee,” I said. “George hated Synghman Rhee.”

  “Nasty,” said Boyer. “I never would have pegged you as the nasty type, Sugar. You always this angry?”

  “Only when a good friend gets murdered.” I was telling him no lie. The sight of poor George’s body on the bloody coverlet would stay with me for a long, long time. I had no emotional ties to him, no deeply moving memories. But he had crossed my path and stayed with me for a while and I remembered his soft good nature and his kindly soul. George DeBeers was a personality I could not forget. His murder shocked me, rocked me, bit deep into my feminine soul. He had a great talent, might have been one of the leaders in the modern art movement of his day. Somebody whacked him out of existence and the thought of his murderer angered me, moved me to a strange restlessness. It had nothing to do with Lieutenant Hank Boyer, of course. It would be better to soften for him. I might need him in the near future.

  “Listen, Boyer, I didn’t know George too well, but I may be able to give you some background,” I said.

  “Why not give it to me over a drink?”

  “A peachy idea,” said Gwen, whose keen ears could pick up the offer of free liquor from great distances.

  So Hank Boyer took us down to a nearby pub and I filled him in on the George DeBeers story.

  “George came to New York from a small town in Long Island,” I began. “Place called Baldwin. He began to paint at an early age, quit high school to apprentice himself to a painter named Higby, a portrait artist who took George to Italy for a few years. When DeBeers returned to New York, starvation gnawed at him. He found himself unable to earn a dime as a legitimate portrait painter. He grubbed around in the commercial art marts, taking on all manner of cheap jobs to that he could eat. It was at this time that he found help from Serena Armitage.”

  “Who is she?” Boyer interrupted. “A girl friend?”

  “You’ve got a one-track mind,” I told him. “Serena is old enough to be his mother.”

  “Don’t make me laugh. Show me an artist and I’ll show you a queer. Only last month we found a young ape down in the Village shacked up with a doll in her sixties. We cut his romance short when we found him whipping her for booze and reefer money.”

  “Serena Armitage runs The Grotto. And she’s too smart for tabloid love, Boyer. She staked George to free meals and took some of his paintings in return. Pretty soon he was able to drop some of his commercial hack work and try for serious painting. He began to earn real money.”

  “How long ago was that?”

  “A few years ago. Now he had arrived. He was ready to work the way he chose. He began to paint abstracts and almost immediately was picked up by Jacques Lambert.”

  “Picked up?” Boyer leered at us, not wanting to mention a homosexual synonym in the presence of two women. “You know this Jacques Lambert?”

  “Lambert is not a nance,” Gwen laughed. “Good God, you police characters are comical. And so ill-informed. Jacques Lambed owns one of the flooziest art galleries on Fifty-Seventh Street. And don’t ever question his virility, Mister Detective. He once chased me through an acre of woods at an outdoor art festival in Connecticut. Jacques may be short and fat, but he’s got the libido of a stallion.”

  “This character I’ve got to see,” Boyer said, making a note of the name. He leaned in toward me and managed to knee me with a gentle and provocative rub. “How about you and me taking a ride uptown, Sugar? You could introduce me.”

  “You’ve got a hard knee, Boyer. Remove it.”

  “We could have a bite and then pay him a nice friendly visit.”

  “Have a bite on your own.”

  “It was only a thought.”

  “You think too far out for me.”

  “Clever,” he said, still trying to coax me with his sly smile and rakish pitch. “Is there anything else you can tell me about this George DeBeers?”

  “I’ll let you know when I dig something up.”

  “You’re digging? What for?”

  “Because I’m angry, Boyer. I want to know who killed my friend.”

  “A crazy idea,” he laughed. “That’s my job, Sugar.”

  “You need help, lover boy. I’m giving it to you for free.”

  “You’re a funny one. But I like your style.” He struggled to adjust his face into a kindly grin, not wanting to irritate me now. It was an obvious pitch, a routine any girl in her teens learns to recognize among the high school lovers. He was softening up because he thought he had a prayer with me. He would keep pitching until the big moment opened for him, a time when he could try his hand at me after a few drinks. His eyes told me that his hopes were high. He had me pegged for a possible rabbit and would do his damnedest to waylay me.

  “Can I buy you another drink, girls?”

  “We’ll take a rain check on it, darling,” Gwen said, pinching his hard and bony cheek. “You’re cute, Mister Detective. Real cute.”

  And we bounced out of the bar, leaving Lieutenant Hank Boyer alone with his fast sagging ego.

  CHAPTER 3

  10:07 P.M. Friday

  Jeff Keck said: “A pair of doves! Welcome, wrens, welcome!”

  The words bounced out of his generous mouth. He stood in the doorway to his studio, a king-sized beatnik, complete with hairy arms, hairy jaw and a head alive with tanned skin, bordered by a fringe of carrot-colored fuzz. He filled the doorway. His massive frame was wrapped in a strange Japanese type of kimono that made him look like a Judo buff ready to take us both on in hand-to-mat combat. He stepped back a pace and bowed and waved us inside.

  Gwen said: “My, but you’re a large one, Mister Keck.”

  “All the better to please you, my little pigeon. Won’t you come inside? I have a model on the stand, but she’s posing prone and won’t mind a spell of rest.”

  The girl on the model stand was a buxom peasant of the Italian type, ponderous in the hips and Amazonian in the bust. She eyed us through sleepy lids, bored by our presence. She lay on her back amid a swirl of fabric, her broad buttocks a challenge to any artist’s hand.

  “You finished with me now?” she asked Keck in a drowsy voice.

  “I’ll never finish with you!” laughed Keck. He crossed to slap her playfully on her ripe derrière. “You are the symbol of man’s deepest desires, Gloria, the eternal vat, the food for man’s dreams. When I finish with girls of your type, I’ll be done with breathing, my little cockatoo.”

  “Sure, sure,” said Gloria. “But how about it? You want to keep posing?”

  “Perhaps we’d best continue in the morning,” said Keck. He strode to the sink in the corner and began to wash the clay from big hands. He had been working on a preliminary sketch of the big-ribbed model, a lump of unfashioned clay that sat on his modelling stand near the window. He couldn’t have been working long because there was no life in the clay, no suggestion of form or outline. He wiped his hands on the kimono and covered the stand with a large plastic bag.

  “Don’t I know you?” he asked, peering at me from beneath his shaggy brows. He mouthed every word with great exuberance, as though each statement he made had epic importan
ce. “You’ve got the face of an ingénue, a sugar and cream face, a face I’ve certainly seen before! The stage, perhaps? The motion pictures? On a magazine cover?”

  “You’ve hit it,” I said. “I’m the cover girl for The Plumber’s Gazette.”

  “A clever damsel, indeed,” Keck said. He crossed to the great window on the rear wall and pulled a drape that hid the skylight. He moved with the abundant vigor of a man who knows how to swagger. He would be a big deal on Muscle Beach, flexing his biceps for the gaping teenagers. He had a square face and tremendous shoulders that seemed perpetually braced to carry a great weight. His hands were big enough to throttle an ox. In the corner now, he bent over a good-sized kiln, fiddling with the equipment.

  “Terra cotta,” he said, “has to be watched. Fickle as a woman’s heart.”

  “What cute little cows,” said Gwen, beckoning to me from the far side of the studio. She chirped over a shelf full of small terra cotta animals, skillfully put together and loaded with whimsy.

  “Careful!” Keck shouted. He came our way with long and deliberate strides, his face high with color. “That stuff is delicate, my inquisitive little thrush. Here, let me put it down for you. Bone-dry clay can fall apart if you sneeze at it.”

  “Sorry,” Gwen said. “Did you make these cute items?”

  “I did. Does it convulse you?”

  “I’m dead, Mr. Keck. I though you did only the big stuff. I remember your last show at the Argus Gallery. You were doing things the size of Grant’s Tomb. Why the sudden switch?”

  “An intellectual question,” smiled Keck, grunting a hollow laugh and winking at her. “A man must eat, my little dove, and ceramic animals sell well in the tourist marts in Greenwich Village. Since the first artist caveman scrawled his lusty bisons on the cave walls, artists have been doomed to grub and grovel for their bread-and-butter money. I consider myself fortunate to be able to create these clay drolleries. They keep me in fodder and rent money. Can I sell you one? Or did you come here to window-shop?”

  “How much are they?” Gwen said. Her heart had a low melting point, especially for men of muscle. She nibbled at Keck with her wide-open eyes, as brazen as a nurse over a hot interne.