“I didn’t. You’ve got the whole truth and nothing but the truth on that. I mean, if in playing around with the case and doing my own investigating and question-asking, I come on anything that you missed, it’s my own business. I mean, until I get enough of it to beat you out on cracking the case.” Bline said, “Let’s take it as of now. Right here and now. Will you give me your word of honor on the answer to one question?”
“If I answer it at all, I’ll answer it straight. It isn’t, by any chance, whether I’m the Ripper, is it?”
“No; if you are, I wouldn’t expect a straight answer. So I’m asking this on the assumption that you’re not. But by God, Sweeney, if you won’t answer this, Blade or no Blade, I’m going to take you in and work on you. And the same goes if you do answer it and I ever find out it wasn’t straight.
“Do you know or even think you might know, who the Ripper is? Either by sight or by name, do you even suspect anybody?”
“No, definitely not. Unless it’s Doc Greene, and I haven’t a damn bit of reason for that except that I’d like him to be.”
Bline sat back. He said, “Okay, then. I’ve got a lot of men under me on this, and besides that we’ve got the whole police force keeping an eye out. If you, all by yourself, get anything we miss, it’s your baby. It’d probably get you a knife in the belly, but that’s your business.” Sweeney said, “Fair enough, Cap. And for those kind words – especially about the knife, I’ll even forgive you for taking my razor and penknife without telling me, and scaring the pants off me when I found them gone. Why didn’t you leave a note?”
“Wanted to see how you’d react. If you’d been the Ripper, and found them gone, you’d have probably been even worse scared; you’d like as not have taken it on the lam and we’d have picked you up. You know, Sweeney, I’ve just about decided you’re not the Ripper.”
“Awfully sweet of you, Cap. But I’ll bet you tell that to all the boys. By the way, have I been tailed while you thought I was it?”
“Today, yes. Hadn’t got around to you yet yesterday. But I’ll pull the guy off of you now, I guess. Especially now that you know about it.”
“I might suggest you put him on Doc Greene. Say, was it Doc’s salesmanship that made you suspect me to begin with?”
Bline grinned. “You two really do love one another. Is that enough of an answer to your question? Well, what do you say we go in out of the rain? She’ll be on in ten minutes.”
They found Nick and he took them past the big waiter who guarded the portal. The gravel-voiced torch singer was at it again as they threaded their way through barely navigable aisles among the close-packed, crowded tables. No tête-a-tête tables tonight, Sweeney noticed; at least four people were at every table and five or even six were at some of them. Two hundred people, more or less, were jammed in a room whose normal complement wasn’t much over half that number.
They had barely started across the room when Sweeney felt his arm gripped from behind and turned. Bline was leaning his head close. He had to yell to make himself heard above the music and the noise, but pitched his voice so it wouldn’t carry past Sweeney. “Forgot to tell you, Sweeney. Keep your eyes open in here. Watch the faces and see if you see anybody you remember being by that door on State Street. Get me?”
Sweeney nodded. He turned and started following Nick again, but this time kept watching as many faces along the route as he could. He didn’t think he’d remember anybody who’d shared Wednesday night’s spectacle with him; all he’d’ really seen outside the door had been the backs of heads. But it didn’t hurt to try, and Bline’s idea that the Ripper might have come around to the front and joined the crowd seemed quite reasonable. Also, he agreed with the thought that the Ripper might have come here tonight.
Nick led them to a table where three men sat; one chair was empty, tilted against the table’s edge. He said, “I’ll send over a waiter with another chair; they can crowd you in here. Same to drink, both of you?”
Bline nodded, then said, “Sit down, Sweeney. Want to talk to an outpost or two before I squat.” Sweeney took the chair and glanced at his three companions, all of whom were watching the singer and paying no attention to him. One of them looked familiar; the others were strangers to him. He watched the singer. She wasn’t bad to watch, but he wished he didn’t have to listen to her, too.
The chair arrived, as did the drinks, before Bline came back. Sweeney moved over to make more room, and Bline said, “Sweeney – Ross, Guerney, Swann. Anything doing, boys?”
The one called Swann said, “Guy over at the corner table acts a little screwy; I been keeping an eye on him. The one with the carnation in his buttonhole. Maybe he’s just a little drunk.”
Bline watched that way a while. He said, “Don’t think so. The Ripper wouldn’t call attention to himself dressing up like that and wearing a flower, would he? And I don’t think the Ripper’d get drunk.”
“Thanks for that last thought,” Sweeney said.
Bline turned to him. “See anybody might have been there that night?”
“Only the guy across from me there, the one you introduced as Guerney. Isn’t he one of the boys from the squad car?”
Guerney had turned back at the sound of his name.
He said, “Yeah. It was me that creased the dog.”
“Nice shooting.”
Bline said, “Guerney’s one of the best shots in the department. His partner’s here, too. Kravich. He’s at the bar out there, watching ‘em as they come and go.”
“Didn’t notice him.”
“He noticed you. I saw him start toward you when you came in the door; then he saw I was with you and turned back. Sure you haven’t seen anybody else that–”
“No,” said Sweeney. “Shhhh.”
The emcee was on stage – it had turned out to be actually a stage, although a small one, about eight feet deep and twelve feet wide – and was building up an introduction to Yolanda Lang and her world-famous Beauty and the Beast dance. Sweeney wanted to hear.
Not that it was worth hearing. The emcee had dropped his corny humor and was being cornier by far. It was pathetically bathetic, Sweeney thought. He tried now not to listen about the brave courage of the courageous little woman who had risen from a bed of pain to answer the call of her art and the demand of her public, to do for them the most wonderful, the most sensational dance in the world, with the aid of the most wonderful trained dog in the world and the most courageous, who had courageously saved his mistress’s life at the risk of his own and who had also been injured but courageously had
Sweeney couldn’t take any more of it. He said to Bline, “Who does the bastard think he’s introducing – Joan of Arc?”
Bline said, “Shhhh.” Sweeney listened to forty-five seconds more of it and then, mercifully, it ended; nothing can last forever, not even an emcee with an unprecedented opportunity to go dramatic.
The lights dimmed, and the room was quiet. As miraculously quiet as though two hundred people were holding their breath. You could hear the click of the switch as a spotlight went on, from somewhere in the back of the room, throwing a bright circle of yellow light on the left side of the stage. Everyone watched the yellow circle of light. A drum began to throb and the tone and pitch of it pulled Sweeney’s eyes away from the stage and toward the three-piece orchestra; the three-piece orchestra wasn’t there.
Rather, two-thirds of it wasn’t there; the pianist and the sax-player had left the platform. The trap-drummer had left his traps and sat before a single kettledrum, a big one, turned low. His only weapons were two drumsticks with big well-padded heads.
Smart, thought Sweeney, and he wondered if Yolanda or her manager deserved the credit for that idea. Resonant rhythm without music. And not even the lousiest drummer can corn up a kettledrum with padded sticks, set out of reach of his cymbals, blocks and bells.
The drum throbbed a slow crescendo and the spotlight dimmed; you caught a flash of movement in the dimness, then as the yellow circl
e blazed bright again, she stood there full in its center, stood poised, unmoving.
And she was beautiful; there was no doubt of that.
The picture Sweeney had been carrying in his mind had not been exaggeration, not in the slightest. He thought, now, that she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. And by the collective catch of breath of the audience, he knew that he was not alone in thinking so. What, he wondered, was she doing in a dive like this, on Clark Street in Chicago? Even if she couldn’t dance–
She wore a gown exactly like the one she had worn for the scene in the hallway, except this one was black and that had been white. This one was better, Sweeney thought.
Contrast of black and white. It was strapless, molded to every curve of her body.
She was barefoot; the black gown her only visible garment. No ribbon, no gloves, no bolero; this wasn’t to be a gradual strip tease like other strip teases; it would be one blinding flash from black to white, from cloth to flesh.
The drum throbbed.
You thought she was a statue there, and then – so gradually that you weren’t sure at first – she moved. Merely to turn her head.
And when it was turned your eyes followed hers. You saw, as she saw, what crouched in semi-darkness on the other side of the stage. It was Devil, the dog; only he wasn’t a dog at all now. He was all devil. He crouched there, his jaws slightly parted in a silent snarl of bared white teeth, his yellow eyes luminous in the dimness.
The drumbeat died down to almost-inaudibility. And in the almost-silence, the dog snarled loudly. It was the same sound, exactly the same sound, that Sweeney had heard before, two nights ago. It had put a cold chill down his spine then, and it put a cold chill down his spine now.
Still half-crouched, the dog took a stiff-legged step toward the woman. He snarled again and crouched to spring.
There was a sudden quick movement across the table from him that pulled Sweeney’s eyes from the tense drama on the stage. And at the same instant that Sweeney saw the movement, Bline’s big hand reached across the table and grabbed Guerney’s arm.
There was a gun in Guerney’s hand.
Bline whispered hoarsely, “You Goddam fool, it’s part of the act. He’s trained to do that; he’s not going to hurt her.”
Guerney whispered back, “Just in case. In case he does jump her. I could get him before he got her throat.”
“Put back that gun, you Goddam sap, or I’ll break you.”
The gun went slowly back into the shoulder holster, but Sweeney saw, out of the corner of his eye, that Guerney’s hand stayed on the butt of the gun.
Bline said, “Don’t get trigger-happy. The dog jumps her; it’s part of the act, Goddam it.”
Guerney’s hand came out from under his coat, but stayed near his lapel. Sweeney’s eyes jerked back to the stage as a sudden intake of breath from the audience backgrounded a yip from a woman at a table near the stage, a yip like a suddenly stopped scream.
The dog was leaping.
But the woman moved, too, one step aside and the dog flew past her and down, alighted and turned in a flash of brownness, crouched again, and now she was in the middle of the stage as he leaped. Again she was not there when he landed.
And Sweeney wondered if that was going to go on indefinitely, but it didn’t. That was the last time. The dog – as though convinced that leaping was futile – crouched now in the center of the stage, turning as she danced around him.
And she could dance; well, if not superlatively; gracefully, if not significantly. The dog, now no longer snarling, pivoted, his yellow eyes following every move she made.
Then, alongside the now-tamed dog, the Beast, Beauty sank to her knees and put her hand upon the dog’s head, and he snarled, but tolerated the caress.
The drum throbbed, the beat accelerated.
And then, as Yolanda gracefully rose to her feet, facing the audience from the center of the yellow circle of light that already, but very gradually, was starting to fade, the dog padded behind her. It reared up, as tall as she, and then as it started downward its teeth caught the tab sewed to the tag of the zipper and pulled.
And the black dress, as had the white one, fell suddenly into a circle about her feet.
She was incredibly beautiful despite – Sweeney thought – the fact that she was overdressed. Overdressed in a narrow, transparent bra of wide-mesh net, diaphanous as dew and confiding as air, that seemed to accentuate rather than conceal the beauty of her voluptuous breasts; and in a G-string which, in the slowly fading light, might not have been there at all, which needed to be taken on faith in the integrity of Chicago’s vice squad; and one more garment: a six-inch strip of black adhesive tape, slightly slanting, across her white belly just below the navel. And somehow the contrast of that black on white made her seem even more naked than she had seemed when – two nights ago – Sweeney had seen her actually so.
The drumbeat faded slowly. Yolanda raised her arms – her breasts lifting with them – and spread her bare feet apart; the dog, from behind her, walked between her legs, halfway, and stood there with her astride him; his head raised to look out over the audience as though daring any man to approach that which he now guarded.
“Cerberus guarding the portals of Heaven,” Sweeney whispered to Bline.
Bline said, “Huh?”
The drumbeat faded, and the light faded and then went out and the stage was dark. When the lights went on, the stage was empty.
And the lights went on brightly all over the room, and the floor show was over. People applauded madly, but Yolanda Lang did not return, even to take a single bow.
Over the noise, Bline asked Sweeney, “How’d you like it?”
“It, or her?”
“It. The dance.”
“Probably symbolic as hell, but symbolic of what, I don’t know. I don’t think the choreographer did, either. If there was a choreographer. My idea is that Doc Greene figured it out. It’s just crazy enough – and just smart enough – for his fine Italian hand.”
Bline said, “Greene’s not Italian. I think he’s mostly German.”
Sweeney was spared answering because Guerney had turned around and Bline was looking at him balefully. He said, “You Goddam fool, for a plugged nickel I’d make you turn in your gun and go without one.”
Guerney flushed and looked foolish. “I wasn’t gonna shoot, Captain, unless–”
“Unless the dog jumped at her. And he did, twice. Good God, but that would have been a stink for the department.”
Sweeney felt sorry for the squad-car copper. He said, “If you had shot that dog, Guerney, I’d have stuck up for you.”
Bline said, “And a lot of good that would have done him, unless you could have got him a paper route carrying the Blade.”
Nick saved Guerney further embarrassment by appearing at their table. He said, “Another round of drinks is coming, gentlemen. How’d you like the show? Sure is a well-trained pooch she’s got, ain’t it?” Sweeney said, “He showed more self-control, under the circumstances, than I would have.”
“Me either,” Guerney said. He started to grin, but caught Bline’s eye and found he was still in disgrace. He said, “Gotta see a man about a – I mean, I gotta go to the can. Excuse me.”
He threaded his way off between the tables. Nick slid into the vacated chair and said, “I’ll stay a minute till he gets back. Did you notice anything during the show, Captain?” Sweeney said, “Everything the G-string didn’t cover. You know, sometime I’d like to see her without anything on.”
Nick stared at him. “Huh? I thought, according to your story in the paper–”
Sweeney shook his head gloomily. “Gloves,” he said. “She wore long, white gloves.”
Bline snorted. He said, “This guy has a one-track mind, Nick. What did you mean, did I notice anything during the show?”
Nick leaned forward. “Only this; that part where she’s posed there, still, facing the audience and front-stage-center, with the light fa
ding out. Look, I shouldn’t take a chance changing my own show – not that it matters; we could get a crowd here to listen to her sing Annie Laurie in a diving suit – but I been worried about that. I don’t want her killed either, and if the Ripper should show here, that’d be his chance.”
“Maybe, but how?”
“The audience is in the dark, almost dark anyway. And if he decided to throw that shiv of his, it’d be hard to tell just where it come from.”
Bline looked thoughtful and then shook his head.
“Sounds pretty remote, Nick. Unless he’s already a knife-thrower, and it’s a million to one against, it’d take him months of practice to learn. And I don’t think he’d use a gun – guys like that stick to one weapon and one style of using it – and I don’t think he’d try to kill her in a crowd anyway. I think the big danger point is on her way to and from here, or at her place at night. And we’re taking care of that.”
“For how long?”
“Until the Ripper’s caught, Nick. At least as long as she’ll be playing here, so you don’t need to worry.”
“You have someone go through her flat before she goes in when she goes home?”
Bline frowned. “Look, Nick, I’m not telling anybody exactly what precautions we’re taking or not taking. Especially with a reporter sitting here who’d put it in the paper so the Ripper would be sure to know.”
“Thanks,” said Sweeney, “for demoting me from suspect to reporter. But that suggestion of going through her flat before she goes into it is good, if you aren’t already doing it. If I were the Ripper and wanted to get her, I wouldn’t try it on the street again; I’d be under her bed waiting for her. Say, does Devil sleep in the same room with her?”
The Screaming Mimi Page 12
