Sugar Shannon

by Lawrence Lariar

“Listen, Sugar. I’m not such a bad guy, am I? Maybe you and I could do business.”

  “What kind of business?”

  “All kinds. Starting with this deal.”

  “What can I tell you?”

  “Level with me,” he said. He had me leaning away from him, unable to cope with his physical sincerity. He was the type of goon who must breathe in a girl’s ear to convince her of his masculinity. “What were you looking for up here, Sugar?”

  “You want the truth?”

  “Of course.”

  “I dropped in to talk to Lambert. I wanted to ask a few questions about George DeBeers.”

  “Questions? Such as?”

  “His relationship with Marianne Fry.”

  “Relationship?” Boyer retreated to nibble on the word. He found the taste of it loaded with vinegar. His face clouded over with genuine befuddlement. “What are you getting at? You figure DeBeers was living with that little tart? That sounds crazy as hell.”

  “She was an attractive baggage,” I said. “But you’re quite right when you say that George was not her type. You see, I knew George pretty well myself. That’s why his intimacy with Marianne Fry at certain intervals puzzles me. And that’s why I came up here to discuss it with Jacques Lambert. After all, he was probably closer to George than anybody.”

  “Except Magda Trent,” Boyer said, dropping the line in his most sophisticated way, as casual as a hit on the head. He was testing me for reaction, of course. He was baiting the trap for me.

  So I took the bait.

  “Poor Magda,” I said. “She’s a sick one.”

  He eyed me testily. “You know her well, too?”

  “I met her yesterday. I can live without meeting her again today.”

  “Now what does that mean?”

  “Simply that Magda is not my cup of tea.”

  “Tell me more about Magda,” he said, resuming his usual wolfish pose, one arm over the chair behind my back, the other poised and ready for a frontal attack. There was an impending pimple blooming under his ear and when he leered at me a little tic bounced up near his eye. He was preparing himself for a big play now. It came through in his lowered voice, his glistening eye, his meaningful smile.

  “Boyer,” I said. “You are the hottest thing in police pants to come my way. Remove your hand, please.”

  “Listen, Sugar. I could be awfully nice to you.”

  “Of course you could.”

  “I could help you with your story.”

  “With your right hand?” I asked. “The way you’re helping me now?”

  “Maybe I’ve got something really big for you.”

  “That I believe. The questions is, do I want it.”

  “What a brain,” he laughed, delighted with me.

  “You’re clever, too.”

  We exchanged innuendoes and I let him move in close. He would be easy to soften if I gave him his head. A girl gets to know the Boyer types. They are the conventional apes, the grabbers and the oil merchants. They woo you and make stabs at you over a drink at the bar. They dazzle you with alcoholic generosity, waiting for the key moment, the titillating second when you drop your guard and allow a rambling hand to massage your kneecap. They ply you with corny dialogue, working their points toward the bedroom, the motel, or any other convenient mattress. They can be dangerous at the bed level. The idea is to keep them on the hook, holding them off with coy promises.

  “How about dinner with me tonight, Sugar?”

  “I have a date,” I said. “But I might break it.”

  “Break it.”

  “I’ll do my best.” I waxed a bit moody on the line, studying my fingers as though they held the secret of the Russian air bases in Outer Mongolia. “If only I could get a fresh angle on Lambert,” I sighed. “He’s an absolute blank to me, Boyer. He just doesn’t seem to fit into the DeBeers story.” I lifted my eyes and gazed at him soulfully, play-acting at Little Miss Naiveté. “Can’t you help me with anything, any small piece of information?”

  “What’s in it for me?”

  “Don’t be mean, Hank.”

  “About that date tonight,” he beamed, reacting to my use of his first name. “Is it a deal?”

  “I promise to do my best.”

  “Good enough. I’ll give you a big crumb about our friend Lambert. I grilled Cantrell early this morning and the nance sang for me. He told me he saw Jacques Lambert following Marianne Fry after she left DeBeers’ studio last night.”

  “Golly,” I said. “That’s a startling development. Tell me more, Hank.”

  CHAPTER 16

  4:03 P.M. Saturday

  The merry-go-round shot into high gear for Gwen and me. The jigsaw pieces were fitting into place, the all-over design ready to reveal itself. But the final picture sickened me. The cast of characters belonged in a nightmare.

  “Whither?” asked Gwen.

  She jerked me back to reality. The cab was speeding downtown, toward the Village. I had instructed the cabby to take us to Washington Square, a hub point from whence we could move in many directions. I was allowing my mind a carefree pause, an interval of introspection and quiet. I needed a strong direction. I needed a goal and instead my head was crowded with destinations. Three? Four? And all of them in or near Greenwich Village.

  “Stop here, cabby. Next corner.”

  “Whither are we headed?” Gwen asked again.

  “Not we. You. You get off here.”

  “Jolly. Where am I going?”

  “Serena’s bistro.”

  “Suppose I’m not thirsty?”

  “You’ll manage a few,” I said. “I’ll phone there in five minutes to check with you. I want to make sure that Serena is with you.”

  “Stop sounding like a television heroine. What’s up?”

  “I’m doing some snooping. I’m visiting Serena’s apartment.”

  I checked The Grotto later and Gwen informed me that Serena was behind the bar. I instructed Gwen to wait for me there.

  Then I climbed the steps to Serena’s flat. It was a charming house located on the southern edge of the Village on a street that smelled of class and upper bracket rentals. The hall was tiny. On the mailboxes only three names. Serena’s nest was on the second floor. There was a fire escape at the rear of the corridor and I entered by way of her kitchen window. An orange cat stared at me from atop her refrigerator, then slid away into the living room as though conducting me on a guided tour.

  I moved quickly through the kitchen, checking the two closets and finding nothing. In the living room there were no hiding places, nothing but a mélange of rococo furniture and thick Persian carpeting, a symbol of bad taste. I paused to let the room whisper to me. Rooms are people. People are rooms. Only an expert decorator can mask the true personality of his client with fancied up decorations. Serena’s flat was a paradox. It screamed mediocrity, it stank of the buckeye in art and upholstery.

  It gave the lie to her interest in modern painters. On the walls, framed in gilt, a collection of chromos out of the early century; cupids and doves and the curlicued scenes of saccharine slop so popular in Victorian nests.

  I backed away from this into Serena’s bedroom. Here the décor seemed staged by an expert at feminine frippery. The entire-room swam in pink, a color that suggested the honeymoon suite in a brothel. On the bed, a profusion of silk pillows of various shapes and sizes. On the wall, a French bedroom picture, complete with Pierrot chasing a befuddled Pierette through a sexy glen.

  Again, her bedroom closet yielded nothing but the strong smell of dusting powder, perfume and cosmetics. There was nothing here but the overpowering stench of Serena’s cloying character.

  Until I looked under the bed.

  Because I found all the missing paintings there, the complete stock from her little office at The Grotto.r />
  I stood there studying the paintings for a long time. I let them talk to me, test me, challenge me. I slid them out on the rug and eyed them, one after the other, until I hit the Hudson River painting by George DeBeers. It was a little masterpiece, a work that sang with authenticity, an antique done by a great talent, so deftly, so skillfully that its technique belied its age. George had the ability to paint in a thousand ways, from Rembrandt to Picasso. Yet, in addition to this talent, he was gifted with the supreme spark of originality in his contemporary work. The paradox clawed at my imagination.

  Until a small bell began to ring.

  And I got out of there.

  Fast.

  Mardall Lane beckoned me again. Even in broad day-light the little street seemed loaded with sickness and despair. Along the littered sidewalks two small girls played with their dolls, children with ragged clothes and grimy faces, gamins out of a slum clearance movie. They turned their inquisitive faces my way as I passed, wise in the eyes and chattering like monkeys.

  On the far side of the street, a vagrant from out of the Bowery leaned over a garbage can in search of redeemable offal. He was lost in his own world of grab and grub.

  At Marianne Fry’s house a girl sat on the stone steps, a ginger-haired tart who meditated over her handbag. She looked at me with hard eyes, measuring me, cataloguing me and finding me out of bounds in her social register. She slid inside the dim doorway before I reached the house. She would be on her way back to a miserable sex pad, to sleep away the day and await the night. I knew the habits of these professional prostitutes. I had done a series of articles on them, a summary of sex in the big city. They were simple to explore, easy to interview. It was the borderline slut who made tough copy. It was the Marianne Fry type, the occasional tramp, the social tart who refused to describe her customs and mores.

  And that was why I had returned to Marianne Fry’s nest. She was a challenge, an oddity in the cast of characters. Why did George DeBeers enjoy—her company? Why had he held her at his side on his big nights, his monied nights?

  The superintendent of 875 Mardall Lane was a fat old number, dressed in a potato sack Dior and full of a steadily burning fury. She gave me the dirty end of her mouth until I appealed to her womanhood with a ten dollar bill. She pocketed the money and stood there, arms akimbo, waiting for my first question. When it came, she closed her eyes and let fly with a well-oiled monologue.

  “I never could figure that one, never. I got all kinds in this dump. Listen, I ain’t running The Waldorf here and I know it. The girls got to have their fun and if they don’t get too noisy upstairs, hell, why not? But that Marianne Fry, now. I don’t figure her no common whore, you might say.”

  “How did you figure her?”

  “A bar nut.”

  “You mean she hung out in bars?”

  “That’s where I first met her,” said the old lady, pausing to lick her reminiscent chops. “Down at McCloy’s Bar, on the corner. Kind of a family place, you might say, local place. Night I met her she was sitting there at the bar, bending an elbow. She blew me to a rye and I can’t slate her for that. Then a man came over and bought her a drink and that was it. You know the type? All of these dames hang out in bars to get picked up. What else would they be waiting for? Show me a woman alone in a bar and I’ll show you a would-be whore. Unless the woman is my age, naturally. Me, I’m only in there to talk to people. But the young ones, they bar hop for quick lays or maybe the chance to fool around with a strange man. I’ve seen all kinds down at McCloy’s. Some of the ones who make it big with the boys are in their thirties and forties. Listen, I saw a woman there one night, pretty as somebody’s mother, best-looking woman I ever saw, all gray hair and a face like a magazine cover, maybe forty, forty-two or thereabouts. Well, what I mean is she looked clean and beautiful until she had a couple of gins and got herself picked up by one of the local nuts. What was she looking for, I asked myself. Well, pretty or not pretty, they sit around bars looking for real trouble. And that was the way I figured Marianne Fry, too.”

  “You mean Marianne wasn’t a common whore?”

  “That’s exactly what I mean. Oh, she was loose, all right. She was loose as my uppers. But she had a good heart. She would always slip me a bonus when she had the money.”

  “She made lots of money?”

  “I didn’t say that. I said she had it once in a while.”

  “Boy friend?”

  “I never asked her,” shrugged the old lady. “But she didn’t make her money working steady. She must have landed herself a sugar daddy.”

  “But you never saw him?”

  “Him?” she laughed, showing me a row of gold tipped teeth in a mouth of crimson liver. “Marianne didn’t specialize, like I told you.”

  “You can’t remember seeing one of them?”

  “It ain’t easy.”

  ‘Squeeze a little,” I said, and shoved a five into her greasy palm. “Concentrate.”

  “A skinny guy,” she said. “A bum, he looked like.”

  “Remember his name?”

  “That makes it tougher.”

  “Cantrell?”

  “No dice.”

  “George?” I asked. “Was it George?”

  “That’s him. I remember she called him George one night.”

  “How long ago?”

  “Maybe a month ago.”

  “You saw him come in?” I asked.

  “In and out,” said the old biddy.

  “What time of day was it?”

  “Afternoon. Maybe three, three-thirty.”

  “Was he with her long?”

  “Not long enough for what you think,” she said, her teeth glistening in an evil smile. “He came and went out. He was with her maybe fifteen minutes, not enough time for even a rabbit.”

  “How often did you see him here?”

  “Five, six times, maybe. But that don’t mean he didn’t come when I was out shopping. It also don’t mean she didn’t have other regulars, not rabbits like that George guy, but real customers, bed wallopers you can be sure. Sometimes I’d see them coming downstairs early in the morning, plenty of them beatnik nuts. She knocked them out, those skinny ones. They came down looking like they were put through the wringer. That Marianne sure was a big one, a strong one.”

  “Can you give me the key? I’d like to look at her room now.”

  “Don’t need no key,” she giggled. “Left the room wide open since they took her away. Terrible smell in a place with a dead body, you ever notice? Terrible.”

  We had been standing in the rear of the ground floor hall. Behind me, the street door was hidden by a series of large cabinets, old fashioned chests out of a long dead bedroom. But my ears picked up the sound of footsteps easily. Somebody was running upstairs. Somebody who wore carpet slippers, or sneakers or heelless shoes. The sound was a shuffling, softening thump.

  I hopped up the stairs after her.

  When I walked in on her, Magda Trent was leaning over the couch, playing games with the cushions. She moved in a deliberate, a desperate way, completely unaware of my presence. I let her finish with the couch and begin on the small desk near the window. I let her advance to the kitchen and extend her search to the refrigerator.

  “Looking for a snack?” I asked.

  She whirled on me, as startled as a Democrat caught in a Republican caucus.

  “You again?” Her pretty face froze in an angry scowl. She was no dramatic star. She reacted out of natural reflexes, her eyes snapping at me, her lush mouth petulant. She shook back her shock of unruly hair. “What in hell are you doing here, snoop?”

  “A good question,” I said. “Want to swap answers?”

  “Get lost, will you? I’m busy.”

  “You’re more than busy, Magda. You’re sick.”

  “I said to beat it.” She turn
ed on me again, this time hot with rage. She was having trouble with her muscles. Her face twitched and her hands clutched air frantically. “Want to leave under your own power, or shall I put you out?”

  “I’m in no hurry.”

  “I’m warning you. I want to be alone.”

  “Did you lease Marianne’s room?”

  “Shut up!” Her voice cracked and broke on the line. She was under way again, this time exploring the two small cupboards over the kitchen sink. She groped among cans and boxes, sending a small cascade of groceries clattering to the floor.

  “You’re wasting your time, Magda.”

  “Out of my way!” She swept past me, bouncing back into the living room to attack a small cabinet near the tiny hall. Her mouth moved in a spasmodic mumbling, a whispering, a soliloquy out of a madhouse. “Got to, got to, got to find it,” she sang.

  “Not here, Magda.”

  “The hell you say.”

  “I know what I’m talking about.”

  “Drop dead.”

  But she was mumbling to herself again, on her way into Marianne’s bedroom. She leaped at the bedding and ripped it off the mattress. She began to squeal and mew, making odd animal noises as she explored the pillow slips and flung the pillows across the room.

  “You’re out of luck, Magda. You won’t find anything here. The cops cleaned out the place.”

  “To hell with the cops.”

  “They’re experts at finding dope.”

  “Get out of here, snoop.”

  “You’re not listening to me,” I said. “Why don’t you slow down and talk for a minute? Tell me about George, for instance. Tell me where he got all the money for your habit, Magda.”

  “Got to find it, got to,” sang Magda, in the closet now.

  “George must have bought the stuff in wholesale lots for you,” I went on. “Because he seemed loaded with loot whenever he met Marianne. Poor George. Is that why he wanted to get away, Magda? Is that why he wanted to see me last night, to spill his guts about the lousy dope business?”

  “Got to, got to find it,” she gurgled.

  “Didn’t Keck get you enough this morning?”

  “What?” She slumped wearily to the mattress, her wonderful figure a caricature of despair, her eyes fogged and dull. “Don’t be a fool, snoop. George DeBeers was no addict, no dope addict. And Keck? What did you say about Keck?”