Sugar Shannon

by Lawrence Lariar

  The dull glow from the hall showed me that the room was empty. I stood there flatfooted, letting my girlish instincts battle my brain. Reason told me to back away from Cantrell’s den, to return to the mob in the big room. But Abe Fine’s image rose up to stall me. He had marched down this same narrow hall a few minutes ago. He must be here, somewhere close, probably talking to Magda. I stepped gingerly into Cantrell’s room. There was a door on the far side.

  I leaned into it, listening. It moved slightly ajar under the pressure of my body.

  Somebody was talking beyond the door, whispering, mumbling.

  “Darling, darling...”

  “Never mind that routine, Magda.”

  “You must listen to me.”

  “What for? The same old lies?”

  “Listen, darling. Please?”

  “I’m not in the mood.”

  In the next moment, Magda Trent stepped into my line of vision. I saw her clearly, a picture of restlessness, her hands clutching the drapes, her body out of control. She was talking to Jeff Keck, pleading with him, her voice out of whack, tense and high and loaded with despair.

  “You’ve got to help me, Jeff.”

  “Got to? Why should I?”

  “Because I need you. Isn’t that enough?”

  “My dear Magda. Spare me the hearts and flowers routine, please.”

  “Don’t talk that way, Jeff. Don’t shut me out.”

  Now Jeff Keck stepped forward and I could see the tableau perfectly. He stood with his giant arms clasped across his chest. He stared at her, his keen eyes knifing her. He was obviously upset by her, annoyed by her hands. She held him with great urgency, her fingers hard on his brawny arms.

  “Darling,” she said breathlessly. “Take me. Now.”

  I heard a slap.

  “Don’t make me laugh,” Jeff Keck said.

  “Please, Jeff?”

  “Nonsense.”

  “Hold me, kiss me.”

  He slapped her again.

  “Relax, Magda. You’re not getting anywhere.”

  “Darling, darling...”

  Her voice dropped to a pitch of impossible hopeless ness. She began to rip her blouse away, clawing at the cloth until she was standing half nude before him. In the next instant her skirt fell away and it was an effort to watch the rest of her routine. She moved in close and began to move her body against him. She slid and rolled and turned her mouth up to be kissed.

  But Jeff Keck wanted no part of her.

  “You’re wasting your time, Magda.”

  “Listen—listen to me.”

  “You’re hysterical. You need some black coffee.”

  “No. Not coffee.”

  It was a tableau out of a nightmare. Magda fell to her knees, a lost siren. In that pose, she was something out of a masculine utopia. She had a divine figure, high and generous breasts, delightful hips, fantastic legs. She would be envied by all women, admired by all men. Yet, Jeff Keck only gave her the edge of his cool regard. Her charms were lost to him. He stood flatfooted, looking down at the woman who clutched his legs and sobbed her desire.

  “Is it what I think it is, Magda?”

  “It’s bad, Jeff. Very bad.”

  “Horse?”

  “That’s right.”

  “How long have you had the monkey?”

  “Not too long,” she sobbed. “I can’t remember, Jeff. What difference does it make? I need a fix. I need it now, before I go crazy.”

  “My God, is it that bad?”

  “It’s horrible.”

  He reached down for her now. Something had happened to him in the last few minutes, something had reached him, softened him. He pulled her to her feet and held her upright, his massive arms handling her easily. He stroked her hair and let her cry a little.

  “Relax, Magda. It’ll be all right.”

  “You’ll help me?”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “When? Now? Do you have a contact?”

  “I’ll find somebody,” said Jeff. “Get dressed and go back to your studio. I’ll manage to dig up somebody.”

  Back in the corridor, I stepped behind a few large crates and fought to allow my metabolism a new lease on life. There was something about the scene I had just witnessed that froze my female corpuscles. Magda Trent, a dope addict! Suddenly the catalogue of assembled facts fell out of my mental storehouse. My filing cards of theory scattered in the winds of confusion. A whole new avenue of thinking lay open for me now, a broad landscape of speculation that I must explore immediately. I froze where I stood, listening for the sounds of Magda’s departure. After a little pause, I heard a distant door open and close. She was leaving with Keck, by way of the rear exit.

  It was time to move. But my heart began to hammer with fresh abandon when I passed the door to the alley. Somebody was moaning out there, a gurgling, rasping sound that boiled up my arteries.

  I opened the alley door.

  Abe Fine was there, his body contorted into an embryonic knot, his lank legs doubled up under him, his hands clutching his stomach. He lay on his side, spluttering his pain into the concrete. Somebody had slapped him down. Somebody had hit him where no man should be hit, low enough to kill him.

  I ran back into Cantrell’s room and got some water. Abe sucked at the glass feebly, still unable to lift himself out of the pit of pain.

  “Who hit you, Abe?”

  “More water, Sugar. More water, please...”

  When I returned the second time he had managed to force himself upright and sat against the dank wall. He doused his face with the water and seemed to rally a bit after that. But pain still clawed at him, a deep and biting hurt that made him gasp and groan.

  “Who hit you, Abe?” I asked again.

  “I don’t know,” he whispered. “You’d better call an ambulance, please. He did something to my gut.”

  “He? Who?”

  “A good question, Sugar.”

  “Cantrell?”

  But Abe Fine didn’t answer. He fainted dead away, his body sliding and slipping, his head striking the concrete with a sickening thud.

  I rode the ambulance back to South Side Hospital with Abe Fine. They brought him around after a while. He had been hit two damaging blows, a sneak slap behind the neck followed by a generous poke in the groin. They took him to a small room on the fourth floor and allowed me a few minutes before needling him into forced sleep.

  “Can you talk a bit, Abe?”

  “I know what you want, Sugar. My angle, right?”

  “Magda Trent is hooked?”

  “Magda has been hooked for some time. I’ve been watching her for the past two months. I’m after her pusher. I thought I’d grab him at Cantrell’s tonight.”

  “Him? Who?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But you suspected Cantrell?”

  “In my business you suspect everybody,” Abe said. “The way I see it, the pusher must have been on his way to deliver a fix to Magda when he bumped into me in that crumby hall back there. He got scared, hit me and ran. Whoever he is, he hits like a sledgehammer. Watch out for him, Sugar.”

  CHAPTER 14

  9 P.M. Saturday

  French alarm clock on my night table jerked me awake at nine. My head still felt like an empty closet and there was still a chill throbbing in the spot where I had been hit last night. But the sun was bright and the day looked good and I had much work to do.

  I eased over to Gwen’s bed and tugged at her sheet. She lay in her usually happy pose, her pert mouth smiling at some fickle memory of last night’s imbroglio with her Latin lover.

  “Up, concubine,” I suggested.

  Gwen moaned delightfully, hugging her pillow with the clutch of fantasy.

  “Again, Pedro,” she wh
ispered.

  “Pedro has returned to Havana.”

  “More, Pedro.”

  “You’re flipping, Gwen. You need coffee.”

  “Again, muchacho.”

  “Get up, you gland case. We have things to do.”

  “Why do you always fracture my dreams?” she pouted.

  “Up, girl. Life offers us more than bed-baseball.”

  “Not for me, it doesn’t. I’ll settle for seven innings a week with Pedro.”

  “He must twang a grand guitar, indeed,” I said. I pinched her firm little derrière and brought her to her feet, still complaining.

  “Pedro makes dandy music,” she yawned. “And what time did you wander in, my little chickadee?”

  “Very late.”

  “You’re chewing canaries again,” she said. “I haven’t seen that look on your face since the last scoop we made the time you beat out the Carstairs dame on that suburban sex story. You’ve got an angle?”

  “I may have. I saw Horace last night, Gwen. He seems to be moving in the same direction, a coincidence that gives me confidence.”

  “You saw him?” Gwen leered. “Any action?”

  “Mind your tongue, vixen. Horace and I only talked for a while.”

  “What’s wrong with the man? No guts?”

  “Bad eyesight. He might move my way with another pair of glasses. I’m working on it.”

  “How positively morbid,” said Gwen. “That’s your trouble, Sugar. You encourage the boys to intellectualize. You appeal to them in the back of their heads instead of somewhere more basic. You’ll never get anywhere making smart talk with men. You’ll never get anything but fancy prose and delayed passes. Listen, you want my advice—”

  “Please, Gwen. Not on an empty stomach.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong. It’s even good on an empty stomach. Try it some time, instead of so much damned fool conversation. You’d better experiment soon, chum, before your libido withers on the vine.”

  I shuffled into the john and examined my face for libido lines. At moments like this, Gwen’s humorous thrusts somehow managed to inspire my girlish imagination. In the small hours of the morning my mind awoke slowly and I could only begin the day with the dreamy contemplation of yesterday’s highlights. The little scene in Horace’s flat hung high in my memory, of course. It would be nice to make his toast and coffee. It would be elegant to knit him socks and sweaters. I showered, hoping to kill the dream images with iced reality. There were too many things to be done today, too many directions to follow, too many impossible threads.

  But I was still thinking of Horace while we nibbled our eggs and sipped our coffee.

  “A real brain, Horace,” I told Gwen, outlining his theories. She listened while I filled in the missing pieces for her, the events she had missed because of her yen for the Cuban Casanova. “But we’ve got the edge on him this time,” I continued. “Horace was fast asleep when I uncorked the dope angle at Cantrell’s party.”

  “Horace was not fast asleep,” Gwen said. “He telephoned here at four, the louse.”

  “What did he want?”

  “You, dreamboat.”

  “Did he say why?”

  “I didn’t bother to ask. I was pretty busy at the time.”

  I phoned Horace’s flat, but he was out. I tried him at his paper. He had been in quite early doing some research. How early? Seven. And after that, Horace had left for parts unknown.

  “Horace,” I remarked, “is getting hot.”

  “That will be the day,” Gwen said.

  “He must have uncovered a fresh lead.”

  “Any idea where?”

  “Not the foggiest, Gwen. But he was interested in the money angle of George DeBeers murder.”

  “Money angle? Break it down for me, darling. I can’t think on an empty head.”

  “Get dressed. I’ll tell you in the taxi.”

  We moved downtown. I brought Gwen up to date, the monologue a healthy thing for my own mental machinery. I ran through the incidents of last night, probing the events for a clue to Horace’s direction. The pieces of the puzzle were scattered and hopeless. It would take time and thought to bring certain elements of the case into proper perspective. The entire affair had burst into a fresh light at Cantrell’s brouhaha early this morning. The fact that Magda was hooked opened an entire new road of logic. My problem was to travel down that road at a faster clip than Horace.

  “Where are we going?” Gwen asked.

  “We’re checking Serena’s bistro.”

  “Checking? For what?”

  “Everything and anything. But first, let’s make sure that she’s still in her apartment.”

  “Forget it,” Gwen advised. “Everybody in the Village knows her habits. Serena arrives at her bar in time for the late afternoon drinkers. She doesn’t open until noon.”

  On the street where Serena’s pub stood, we saw nothing but emptiness and air. The early morning is a time for the lackeys, the cleaners and scrubbers, the flotsam of business. A garbage truck rattled down the street. At the far end, a linen service man unloaded his wares and walked inside. After a while he returned, wiping his mouth, a sure sign that the bartender was not around. I held Gwen at my side. It would be best for one of us to remain on the street.

  “You,” I told her, “will hold the fort out here.”

  “Dandy. What fort do I hold?”

  “Our fat friend across the street.”

  There was a man standing under Serena’s canopy, a sort and tubby lad in overalls and dirty shirt. He carried a broom which he wielded with lazy ineffectiveness. He massaged an invisible spot on the pavement, his pudgy arms moving in slow motion.

  “Take care of him, Gwen. I’ll go in through the alley.”

  The boy with the broom was staring at Gwen’s approaching figure in bug-eyed admiration when I moved beyond the edge of Serena’s building and slipped into the narrow concrete corridor. Straight ahead, the sun lit the edge of the small tree in her yard. There was a door through the cherry wood fence that led me directly to the tiny terrace behind her room. Here the shadows were cool and the silence startling. This was the spot where last night’s burglar must have found himself just before he broke the glass and walked inside to take Serena’s paintings. I stood there, letting the place talk to me. A fickle wind riffled the leaves of the little maple. Under the tree I was safe from all curious eyes beyond the yard. There were rows of tenement windows back there, dozens of them, but a knowing thief would realize that he could move freely here.

  A cat slid in from some secret hiding place and stared at me with wise eyes. From some remote apartment, a baby yowled. I turned my back to the yard and gave the window my serious attention. Looking inside, the whole of Serena’s desk was visible. It would be easy for a marauding visitor to squat here watching Serena’s movements, awaiting the moment when he could enter and pilfer. He would be well hidden behind the wall of low shrubs, impossible to see from inside a lit room.

  I moved to the door. It was easy to lift the latch through the cracked glass. Inside, the smell of morning airlessness grabbed at my nose, a stale, dirty odor, the legacy of last night’s smoking and eating and drinking. I went to work on Serena’s desk at once. It was a modern affair, a Formica top with a small row of drawers on the left side, all of them narrow and ridiculous. I found nothing in her desk to interest me.

  But the wall held me. I studied it, working my memory over it, counting off the number of paintings Serena had placed here. The job was not too difficult. There were dusty shadows outlining the spots where they had hung and the picture hooks still remained. Seven picture hooks. I closed my eyes, fighting to remember the sizes of the paintings. They were all on the smallish side. Could a lone man carry off this artistic loot? Would it be easy for an average-sized male to transport the small load of pictures
through the streets of the Village?

  “Hello, Sugar.”

  The sudden greeting almost lost me my panties. I whirled toward the door. It was Horace, standing out on the tiny terrace and smiling knowingly at me.

  “Curious about the robbery?” he asked.

  “Just browsing,” I said. He stepped inside, as casual as bacon and eggs. His face seemed tired, loaded with fatigue. But his eyes looked keen and alive, a symptom of his enthusiasm for work of this sort, stories that required cerebration all the way down the line.

  “You were considering the pictures, Sugar?”

  “Not exactly,” I lied. “I’m more interested in the thief who carried them off.”

  “Any ideas?”

  “None. You?”

  “A suggestion,” he said. “It seems to me that the ideal pilferer would be a local man, somebody who could pass unnoticed in the streets, an artist, perhaps?”

  “Not necessarily,” I countered. “There’s an easy way out, without stepping into the street at all. He could have walked through the yards and ducked into any number of cul-de-sacs, stashed the pictures and then removed them one at a time.”

  “Logical,” said Horace. “But isn’t the entire affair rather pointless, Sugar? Pictures are not normal goals for thieves. What type of robber would entertain the idea of a fine arts pilferage?” He smiled so hard that he almost laughed, amused by some inner thought he wouldn’t let me share. “My point is this—he would have no way to get rid of his loot, don’t you see? Which conjures up a strangely humorous picture in my mind. I see the burglar, alone in his evil abode, sullenly studying the pictures he stole and wondering where he might easily dump them. I see the whole affair as a bit of nonsense, unless our man is an artist of sorts.”

  “That makes it easy,” I said. “There must be at least five thousand artists in the Village area”

  “Not quite, Sugar. But there are quite a few.”