The Lady in the Morgue

by Jonathan Latimer

  Doc Williams said, “Boy! you really got a foundation.”

  “Well, gentlemen,” Crane demanded; “which one of you are willin’ to sacrifice your integrity and get drunk so’s you can come with me?”

  It turned out they were both willing to make the sacrifice. So willing, indeed, that they had to flip a coin to determine which would be the victim. O’Malley won. He brushed aside Williams’ condolences, ignored his offers to take his place. He said, “Let’s have another round of sacrifices.”

  Crane asked, “Shall it be a Scotch sacrifice, or a rye sacrifice, or just a good old plain gin sacrifice?”

  They decided on Scotch sacrifices.

  Later they said good-by to Courtland and Williams. Courtland wanted to go to his hotel before meeting his mother and uncle, and Williams was determined to finish the work he and O’Malley had been doing. Crane and O’Malley hailed a Yellow cab. “Chicago Theater,” O’Malley directed the driver.

  “Now, you bum,” said Crane when they had started. “What’d you and Doc find out?”

  The cab went south on Clark Street and made a left turn at Washington Boulevard in violation of a traffic ordinance. O’Malley said, “I think we got your undertaker for you. At least we found a red-headed guy who’s an assistant in a joint on the South Side.”

  Crane caught sight of the lights of the Chicago Theater to the left, to the north, as they crossed State Street. They were going at right angles to the theater. “What are you trying to do,” he asked the driver, “creep up on the place?”

  “With these new traffic regulations,” said the driver, “to cross the loop you gotta go by way of Gary, Indiana.”

  Crane asked O’Malley: “What’s Doc going to do?”

  “He’s going to find out if the guy’s left-handed.”

  “Good,” Crane said magnanimously. “Couldn’t have thought of a better idea myself.”

  O’Malley was looking out of the back window of the cab. “Jesus!” he exclaimed. “I think somebody is following us!”

  They swung up in front of the theater, and a tall doorman opened the cab door. Crane paid the driver, said to O’Malley, “I hope it’s that cute little blonde.”

  Chapter Nine

  WHEN THEY came out onto the street again, a few minutes before midnight, air as hot and stale as the wind from an electric hair drier in a beauty parlor met their faces. They elbowed their way through the crowd under brilliantly illuminated theater signs on Randolph Street, pushed into Henrici’s where they each had two glasses of Planter’s punch. Then they took a cab.

  “Excuse me,” said the driver when Crane gave him the address, “but that’s a dive. You gentlemen would do better somewhere else.”

  “Listen,” said O’Malley, “if we’d wanted a guide we would of hired a rubberneck wagon.”

  “O.K., boss,” said the driver.

  As they pulled away from the curb Crane leaned back in the seat, closed his eyes and sang softly:

  “Don’t bring me posies when It’s shoesies that I need.”

  “What the hell made you think of that?” demanded O’Malley. “I ain’t heard that song for ten years, I guess.”

  “That Miss Ross. I keep thinking about her. What’s a dame like that doin’ without shoes?”

  O’Malley said, “Maybe she was Japanese.”

  They crossed the Clark Street Bridge and went at a good clip past the rundown section nearest the river. Later the street grew brighter, and there were cabarets, restaurants, and dollar-a-night hotels. As the cab slowed in front of Ireland’s, its windows filled with huge lobsters, sea turtles and solemn salt-water fish, O’Malley said:

  “I think we lost them guys.”

  Crane asked, “What guys?”

  O’Malley said, “Oh my God!”

  The twinkling sign above their heads was green and red and white, and it read:

  CLARK-ERIE—50 BEAUTIFUL HOSTESSES

  Paint long ago had been worn from the surface of the stairs, and each step was splintered and cracked. The steps creaked under their feet. As they neared the top they could hear the noise of a jazz band playing with plenty of volume and using a great deal of brass. At the rear of the second floor landing was a booth, with a counter along two thirds of its front and a steel cashier’s cage with a fat black-haired woman, in it. There was a sign in red paint over the cage reading:

  COSTUME BALL TO-NIGHT!!!

  Two Filipinos wearing light-gray Hart, Schaffner and Marx suits were leaning against the counter drinking orange crush from bottles and talking to an unshaven man with a bandage over one ear. The woman had yellow tickets on a roll. She asked, “How many?” Her voice had no inflection at all, no rise in tone to mark an interrogation.

  Crane leaned against the steel bars. “How many what?” he inquired.

  Small eyes gelid, the woman examined him.

  Crane turned to O’Malley. “She wants to know how many,” he said. “What do you think of that?”

  O’Malley reached over Crane’s head and seized one of the bars, and pulled himself to the counter with a tremendous effort, as though he were breasting a gale. “Tell her there’s two in our party,” he said. “Ask her if she’d like to join us.”

  The woman’s face was watchfully sullen.

  “I’d rather she didn’t join us,” Crane said. “I don’t like her looks.” He cocked his head, examined her. “Too fat.”

  Leaving the two Filipinos, the man with the bandaged ear came over to them. His face was furious. “You bastards can get out of here,” he said. “We don’t want your business.”

  O’Malley, with an air of pleased surprise, said: “Well, well, look who’s here!”

  Crane pulled ten dollars out of his pocketbook, shoved it under the curved opening of the cage. “Madam, I am sorry,” he said. “Give us that many tickets.”

  “Better not, Mame,” the man with the bandaged ear warned her. “These guys are crocked to the gills.”

  With no change in her plump, impervious face, the woman handed Crane a long block of tickets. The man watched them, frowning. Crane gave half the tickets to O’Malley, started for the burgundy-colored velvet curtain hanging across the hall at the end opposite the stairs. O’Malley said to the man, “It’s been a great pleasure,” and shoved himself from the cage and followed Crane.

  Taking hold of the curtain just below the sign NO CHEWING GUM OR LIQUOR ALLOWED, Crane swung it open, stepped inside, tried to peer through the strange, red-glowing semi-darkness of the ballroom. Trumpet notes from the orchestra, going hot and heavy and raucously on “I’m a Ding-dong Daddy from Duma,” beat against his ear drums, almost obscured the sush-sush of leather on the waxed floor. There was in the torrid, heavy, humid air a sickening odor; a combination of human sweat, penny-a-squirt perfume, gin breath. Red and green and orange crepe paper, cut in strips, hung from the ceiling everywhere, like Spanish moss.

  “My God!” whispered O’Malley in Crane’s ear. “What kind of a joint is this?” His hand hurt Crane’s shoulder. “What’ve them dames got on?” He pushed up beside Crane. “For God’s sake, look!”

  Crane was looking. He shook his head, looked again. He said, “Either we got X-ray eyes, or those babies are dancing in their underwear.”

  They finally decided the girls were dancing in their underwear. Each one had on a brassiere, silk panties, silk stockings and high-heeled slippers. There was a line of flesh on each girl from breast to hip and from one third the way down their thighs to their knees. The men were mostly Filipinos, and they were all completely clad.

  Crane felt sobered and a little disgusted. He noticed, however, that some of the girls were quite pretty. O’Malley didn’t say how he felt. He signaled a tall blonde who was dancing with a red-haired girl, boldly put his arm about her bare waist and plunged out into the crowd on the floor. Crane noticed the blonde had pimples on her face, on her back. She had a good figure, though.

  The red-haired girl came up to him, asked, “How about it, honey?” She
was a trifle plump and her face was heavily powdered and rouged. She had on green silk panties.

  Crane said, “Sure.” His right hand rested on a bulge of warm flesh just above her hip; his left hand, holding her right, instantly became damp. He said, “It’s hot, isn’t it?” They moved out onto the floor and presently he asked “You don’t have to dance like that, do you?”

  She said, “What’s the matter? Don’t you like me?”

  “I’m crazy about you,” he said. “I just don’t like to dance that way.”

  Under their heavy coating of blue-black mascara her eyes were surprised and angry. “Okay,” she said. “It’s your dime.”

  She turned out to be a good dancer and they moved easily about the floor, swishing past other couples and whirling on the turns. When the piece ended and she started to leave him he held her hand.

  “That wasn’t so bad,” he said. He gave her five of the yellow tickets. “How about another?”

  She stared at him coldly, but she left her hand in his.

  The orchestra began to play “My Disposition Depends on You” from Hit the Deck, and he put his arm around her waist again. He always danced well when he was drunk, and the music seemed excellent, too. He wondered if he would have thought so, sober. The trumpet player had long black hair, and it fell over his eyes when he bent down over his instrument and then fell back of his ears when he raised it to the dark ceiling. He swung off on several wild, inspired riffs, and when the orchestra came to the part of the song which goes:

  “Sometimes I’m happy,

  Sometimes I’m blue,

  My disposition

  Depends on you …”

  he barrel-housed the “you-ooo” with wailing blue notes that sent shivers up and down William Crane’s back.

  Entranced, he slowed the pace of their dancing, watched the man, “He can play!” he said.

  “He plays a gang-o-horn,” the red-haired girl agreed, “but you oughta hear the boy on the sax swing it when he’s feeling right.” Her voice was friendlier.

  As they continued to dance Crane examined the other couples. They moved their feet very little, shuffling about on one spot, sometimes with their hands out to the side in the conventional ballroom manner but more often with the woman’s arms about the man’s neck and his around her bare waist, Apache style. The women stared over their partners’ shoulders, their expressions rapt, contemplative, oblivious, while the men, mostly, stared down at the women’s faces. There was practically no conversation except among the extra girls, who danced together, taking short, jerky steps.

  After several dances, Crane said, “I’ve got a friend who comes up here a lot. He asked me to give a message to one of the girls.”

  The red-haired girl glanced up at him suspiciously. “What’s her name?”

  “That’s the trouble,” he said. “I’ve forgotten.”

  “Well, what does she look like?”

  He thought for a while. “I think he said she was dark.”

  “That’s a big help.” They paused for one of the thirty-second intermissions, and she accepted five more tickets. “There are only about forty dames up here with dark complexions.”

  “Wait a minute. I think I remember her last name.” He pulled at his lower lip with his teeth. “I think it’s something like Alone, or Adone, or something.”

  “You don’t mean Angela Udoni?”

  “Sounds something like it, all right.”

  She pulled him a half turn to the left. “That’s her, over there with the grease ball in the purple suit. The black-haired girl.”

  Miss Udoni was dancing with a Filipino in a suit which certainly looked purple. She was slender, and she had on yellow silk panties and a yellow brassière. He couldn’t make out her face in the dim light. Back of her, all at once, he caught sight of the man with the bandaged ear and another man, slender and dark. They were staring at him. He looked around for O’Malley, found him just as he and the tall blonde with pimples came to a sudden stop on the floor. The blonde pulled herself out of O’Malley’s arms, slapped his face sharply, walked away from him.

  “For God’s sake!” exclaimed Crane.

  He stopped dancing. “You’ll have to excuse me. I think my friend is in trouble over there.”

  He went over to O’Malley, asked: “What happened?”

  Other couples were looking curiously at O’Malley, who was rubbing his face and grinning. “I insulted her.”

  “Christ!” said Crane. “How could you?”

  O’Malley said, “We were talkin’ about theme songs, and I said the chorus of hers ought to begin: ‘You’re the acne of perfection,’” There was an angry red mark on his cheek. “So she slugged me.”

  “Listen,” Crane said. “We’ve got to get to work. I’ve located the gal, but the management doesn’t seem to like our looks.” He pointed to where the man with the bandage and the slender man were standing. “Keep your eyes open, and I’ll see what I can find out from Miss Udoni.”

  He located her by her yellow brassière and tapped her partner on the shoulder. “There’s a guy out in the hall wants to see you, buddy,” he said, making his voice gruff. “I think it may be a copper.” He put his arm around Miss Udoni, shook his head at the Filipino’s puzzled face. “Better be careful.”

  The skin over Miss Udoni’s hip was smooth and firm, and her muscles were supple. Her shoulders were rounded, but he couldn’t see her face very well. She danced beautifully.

  “How come you don’t dance like the others?” he asked.

  She said, “I do if they ask me to.” Her voice was fresh, her enunciation cultured. “Do you want me to?”

  “God, no!” They were passing the orchestra, and he was surprised to notice the trumpet player watching him. “I’m no wrestler.” He sniffed appreciatively. “Nice perfume, that Shalimar. Expensive, too.”

  “How did you know?” She raised her head until her eyes met his. He saw they were gray-green.

  “I know everything. I know your name is Miss Udoni. Angela Udoni. That’s pretty.”

  He felt her back muscles stiffen under his hand. “How did you know my name?” Her voice was suspicious but not unfriendly. “Did you just make up that story about the man wanting to see Pedro?”

  “Pedro?”

  “The boy who was dancing with me.”

  “Yes. I made it up.” He danced evenly, smoothly. “I noticed you on the floor—I like yellow, you know—and I asked the girl I was dancing with who you were. Then I came over. You look very nice in yellow.”

  She blushed, pressed closer to him so he was unable to see her brassière. “You needn’t make fun of me. I’m just earning a living.”

  “I’m sorry. But I think you do look nice.”

  She didn’t reply, and they danced silently for a while. Suddenly he saw coming toward him from the curtained entrance, the slender man. With him was Tony, the boy who had pulled the gun on him in his room at the hotel. They were coming toward him, not hurrying, but moving rapidly. In a line that would intersect their course before they reached him, and moving still faster, paced O’Malley. The orchestra was playing “Lullaby of Broadway,” and outside an automobile horn was honking.

  Crane swung Miss Udoni around and danced towards the end of the floor opposite the entrance, away from the two gunmen. In the center of the floor, in the midst of swaying couples, O’Malley encountered the pair. He planted himself in front of them, spoke to the slender man. They halted, answered him furiously, motioned for him to get out of their way. From the entrance fifty feet away, almost running, came Pedro the Filipino, and the man with the bandaged ear. Pedro looked as though he were going to cry.

  Outside the horn had stopped honking.

  The slender man attempted to push O’Malley out of his way. O’Malley struck him lightly on the chest with his left hand, then let him have a stiff right to the chin. Whirling in a half turn to the left, the slender man lost his balance, sprawled upon the floor. The boy had the automatic pistol in h
is hand. He crouched, sidled around his companion’s form, spoke as though he was spitting. Crane could hear him say:

  “Nobody’s going to stop me this time, you son of a bitch.”

  The man with the bandaged ear and the Filipino were running now, right behind the boy. Their feet pounded the floor. O’Malley’s face was joyful. He shouted, “Good work, boys; you’ve got him now.”

  The boy swung around like a coral snake to face the running feet.

  O’Malley leaped, threw his arms around the boy, reached for the pistol. There was a hollow report and the Filipino, still running, his angry, almost weeping eyes fixed on Crane and Miss Udoni, plunged headlong onto the floor, slid twenty feet across its polished surface on his face, bowled over two couples like a well-trained blocking halfback, and came to a stop almost at Crane’s feet. He was either dead or unconscious.

  Someone by the curtained entrance screamed:

  “The police!”

  More than a dozen men, some of them in uniform, ran into the room. O’Malley had the boy’s pistol, was beating him across the face with it. The slender man was trying to rise from the floor, comically, because his feet couldn’t get traction on the wax.

  Crane seized Miss Udoni’s hand. “A raid!” he said. “How can we get out of here?”

  She said, “Through the girls’ dressing room. There’s a fire escape.”

  They ran toward the dressing room, but the attendant with the bandaged ear got in front of them, said, “No, you don’t.”

  Crane hit him on the bandage with a tremendous roundhouse swing, and he faded away.

  Gas burning under a red globe set red shadows flickering in the dressing room. Back of a large, half-opened window Crane could see the fire escape. He said, “Come on.” His hand hurt.