by Paul Ernst
“Would the motel manager have had her address?”
Ellen caught her lip between her teeth. She was wishing very hard that I could stop raking this over. And so was I.
“I hadn’t thought… I don’t suppose he did. So I guess he just bundled everything up and sent it to the Ring and Rose, and the proprietor there forwarded it to the last place Dick had worked. The Club Fifty. And that would mean the manager of the Fifty, Gar Checckia.”
“Might the suitcases, or whatever, just have been taken in at the Fifty and dumped in Dick’s former dressing room?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you know that Howard Denham went to Sea City, and knows about this, too?”
The silence was as if the room had suddenly got a thick cotton quilt wrapped around it. Ellen’s hand crept toward her throat.
“Howard?” she whispered. “He found out?”
“Everything. About two weeks ago.”
Ellen leaned back and closed her eyes for a moment. I waited, and she didn’t say anything. “Got any ideas on that?” I asked her.
She shook her head. I had a hunch she did have some ideas about it, and about the ten thousand in cash found on Denham; but if so, she wasn’t going to air them.
I said, “Someone besides you and Checckia—and recently Howard Denham—knew of the blackmail setup. Knew, and wanted to chisel in. That’s the one we want. How did you pay Checckia off? Did he ever send a messenger, or any third party, to collect?”
“No. I went to the club to see him.”
“You have no idea who else might have found out?”
“None.”
It seemed to be the works. I’d finally received answers to every question, and I felt like the head inquisitor in an MVD prison, and for my pains had found out nothing. Or at least it seemed that way at the time.
I said, “Thanks, my dear. You’re a grand girl and a game girl. There’s one more thing I want to ask you, but this is a personal question and you can tell me to go to hell if you want to.”
“Well?”
“Dick Rosslyn,” I said. “Is he still a factor?”
“He’s gone, isn’t he?”
“And forgotten?”
She looked toward a window, and I barely caught the words: “You start something and it grows and grows. It goes on and on.”
“And forgotten?” I persisted.
She said, “I think I’ll tell you to go to hell, Sam.”
I checked in at the office.
New York is headquarters for the insurance company that pays me for my noticing ability. (And a fat lot I’d noticed and achieved in this affair!) It has its own building, and the floor I work on is high up and I have a glimpse of the East River between towers from my window.
I reported to the vice president who is my immediate boss; there are twelve or sixteen vice presidents. I had notified him before of my awkward involvement in a murder case, which would take me away from my work for a little while. I told him now of my second involvement and how it had grown out of my effort to uncover something about the first.
He looked for a moment as if he might back hastily out of the office—a man this chummy with corpses might not be healthy to know. But he was nice about it; offered the company’s legal services and told me to take what time off I needed.
I sat by my window staring at the slice of East River and trying some more to find the key log in the jam. I went over everything Ellen had told me and decided again that it was barren soil. There’d been no hint in Ellen’s answers of what I wanted most to know.
That was—who besides the principals involved knew of the blackmail racket? And how had he found out?
Blackmail is a secret business. The blackmailee guards it with his life because a leak means ruin. The blackmailer guards it as zealously for financial reasons. It was certain that neither Checckia nor Ellen had confided in a third party. Said party must have found out elsewhere.
The obvious “elsewhere” was Howard Denham. He was in on this somehow, though he had entered the game quite late, and so he might have been the source—or even the third party. A lot pointed toward him; so much that I could be sure Ryan was on him like a bird dog, finding out where Denham had been at half-past two last night, among other things. I could leave him to the police.
Checckia, Ellen and possibly Denham. These were the only ones who knew.…
I sat up a little straighter. There was another who could have talked. That was the dead man, Dick Rosslyn, himself.
It is not every second-run dancer who can snare the affections of a girl like Ellen, from a family like hers. It was a thing to boast about, if Rosslyn had been that kind of man. Had he been that kind, and had he talked before he died?
“You should see the dame I’ve got on the line now! Brother! And a United States Senator’s niece, no less.”
If Dick had bragged before some friend who later observed Ellen coming unhappily to the Club 50 and conferring with the manager of that unlikely spot, the friend might have put two and two together. It seemed a thing worth sniffing around, and I thought I’d start with a man who might help direct the sniffs and whom I wanted to see on another matter anyhow.
The bull fiddle player, Barkasy.
Barkasy stayed at another of the dozens of small Manhattan hotels patronized mainly by show people. I phoned up and he wasn’t in his room, and I looked in the dining room and found it closed, and then I looked in the lounge and grill.
He was in there with a fellow whose back looked familiar and who, I saw when I got closer, was the player who sat next to Barkasy on the 50’s orchestra dais. Robert Hallwig. He looked pretty tight. Barkasy didn’t.
Barkasy said when I joined them, “Well, well. Cates. You remember him, Bob? Insurance, in some way I don’t quite get because he pals around with the police.”
“‘Pals around’?” I repeated. “You should have been with me in Ryan’s office this morning. I am not, to put it mildly, in good odor.”
“Who is?” said Barkasy, grimacing.
Hallwig broke out of his glassy-eyed state. “Grilled me!” he said aggrievedly. “Shoulda seen it. ’D think I knocked off somebody myself. Where they get off, puttin’ the blocks to ’n innocent citizen?”
I revised my former estimate. Hallwig wasn’t just tight, he was completely swotted.
“Bob and I,” explained Barkasy, “have been celebrating our unemployment. And I wish I’d learned to lay bricks when I was young.”
Hallwig’s chin slipped off his hands and came near cracking the bar. He had obviously celebrated some before he got here. “Par’ me,” he said, with the dignity of a hotel manager caught at a keyhole. He braced his chin back on his cupped hands, and it looked to me as if he then went to sleep. I turned back to Barkasy.
“Tough luck about the Fifty closing. But I suppose it’ll reopen under other management before long.”
Barkasy’s shrug was philosophical. “Probably. Anyhow, there are lots of places now to turn a musical buck. Even TV.”
“I suppose Ryan’s been at you about last night?” I said.
“Has he!” Barkasy sipped his drink. “Was that what he had you in his office about this morning?”
I nodded. “My caudal appendage is as deep in the ringer as anybody’s. More than most—I was at Checckia’s apartment last night, I’m sorry to say. In fact I’m the one who phoned Homicide to come and inspect the new morgue tenant.”
“The hell you say!”
“Yeah.” I showed him the back of my head. “I got this lump in a hassle on the stairs with the guy who came out of Checckia’s apartment leaving Mr. C. prone.”
“I’ll be damned! The fella that bumped off Checckia gave you that?” He didn’t go on with it, but his eyes asked the natural question.
“No, I don’t know who it was,” I said. “The light was out and the stairwell was darker than a dead miner’s mule. I didn’t see a thing, just felt. But I did get a hunch, and that was, that it could have been
somebody from the Fifty.”
“How do you figure that?”
“I really don’t know. I keep asking myself. Maybe it was smell—I don’t smoke much, and my nose is good. Maybe I smelled starch or something. From a dress shirt.”
“Lots of people wear ’em, at that hour, but let’s assume you’re right. So?”
“So have you any idea who, of the club gang, didn’t go home when the club closed but went to Checckia’s apartment instead?”
Barkasy sighed. “If you knew how many times Ryan asked me that, and in how many ways—”
“And?”
“No. I was one of the first to leave. Hallwig, here, and I shared a cab with my fiddle. I dropped him at his place and came on here to my own.”
“Nobody went to Checckia’s door while you were getting your cab?”
“I don’t think so. But I can’t swear to it because I wasn’t paying attention.”
I dipped into the Scotch the barman had brought. “Oh, well, it was another matter I wanted to bring up, anyway.”
“Like?”
“Like you and Dodge Duffy. You remember night before last you and I and Duffy were at that table by the door for a minute? And you made a crack about not being able to remember which employees had gone backstage, if any, because you were used to them running in and out?”
Barkasy grinned. “Yes. Dodge didn’t like it much.”
“Well, did he go back? During Larry Mansfield’s number or the Misses Club Fifty number?”
“You’ll think I’m a moron, but I honestly can’t remember. As I’ve said, people who don’t belong to the place—sure. I can tell about them. But you don’t much notice people who do belong there. Between us, I’m pretty positive that Dodge did not go back—I can’t think when he would have had time for it. But it was interesting to put a tack in his chair.”
“He put one in yours, too.”
“Oh, me! He wouldn’t know if I or anyone else in the band had gone back. With the spot in his eyes I doubt if he can even see the doorway. Plus the fact that he needs glasses and is too vain to wear them.”
Hallwig stirred into life again. “Slave driver,” he muttered.
“He loves Dodge, too,” remarked Barkasy.
“Contract’s coming up,” mumbled Hallwig. “Dodge’s goin’ to Checckia’s ’n see about it. If Gar renews, he’s shtu—stupid.”
“Gar won’t be bothering,” said Barkasy. “Remember?”
Hallwig closed his eyes again. I said to Barkasy, “You knew Dick Rosslyn, didn’t you?”
“Some,” said the bull fiddle player.
“Nice guy?”
“One of the best.”
“Who were his close friends? Would you know?”
Barkasy was silent for a moment, at the end of which he looked mildly surprised. “I can’t seem to remember any. Real pals, that is. I suppose he must have had some, but I don’t remember any coming to the Fifty.”
“Anybody at the club he might have got loose-tongued with?”
Barkasy stared at me and in his eyes reappeared some of the reserve and skepticism. “Dick was not loose-tongued. I don’t mean he was secretive, but he didn’t go around flapping his lip.”
“Not even about women? A lot of men talk a little about the women they know.”
“I said he was a nice guy,” snapped Barkasy.
“But if you didn’t know him very well—”
“I guess I knew him as well as anybody else at the Fifty. And I never heard him mention a woman’s name. Not once.”
“Come on-a my house,” crooned Hallwig, swaying on his stool. “My house, my house…”
“Good idea,” Barkasy said. “I’ll put you in a cab.” He got off his stool and slid a hand under the fellow’s arm. “I’d let you sleep it off in my room, but I have company coming. If you can call Dodge Duffy company.”
“Duffy?” I repeated.
“Probably wants to know if I’ll stick with him while he tries to get us a spot, or if I’m going to work out for another band.” There was frost in Barkasy’s tone. He’d said all he was going to. “Come on, Bob “
He helped the trumpet player to his feet and urged him toward the door. I sat a moment longer, staring at my Scotch.
Find out who were Dick Rosslyn’s closest friends and see if he had talked to one of them about Ellen Keppert. Then investigate that one. Fine. But if Barkasy could be believed, Dick was a man with few or no intimates, and he was not the type to brag even to these of his feminine conquests.
So—back to a fresh start on that hoary old query: Who besides Checckia could have found out about Dick and Ellen?
And how?
It was four in the afternoon now, and I was at as loose an end as was the afternoon itself. I wandered out of Barkasy’s hotel and started walking, and found that without orders my feet had pointed me toward the Club 50.
The place looked even less salubrious by day than by night. The shoebox of a building it was in seemed shabbier; the street seemed more littered; the people in the neighborhood more harried and unprosperous. I got to the club entrance and, still on impulse, went down the three steps to the door. I tried it, and it was locked.
I went along the walk and got to the other door, the kitchen and service entrance, and this was not only unlocked but showed signs of activity: men going in empty-handed and coming out with burdens. A minute told the tale. The Club 50, closed for no one could say how long, was unloading its perishables from the kitchen.
I stood a moment watching them, then moved closer and looked inside. A fellow in a white apron was supervising the emptying of refrigerators and chilled bins. I went in and up to him.
“Work here?” I said.
He was a sulky-looking brother, broad at the beam as those who work in kitchens often get. “What’s it to you?”
I showed him my insurance card. Adjuster. It had nothing whatever to do with anything at all, but a casual layman could not he sure of this.
“Yeah, I work here. Or did.”
“When the club was in operation,” I said, “at what time did the front door open?”
“About four,” the man said, standing aside as a trucker wheeled past with a load of broccoli. “For the cocktail trade, if any.”
“This door. When was it open?”
“All day. Some of us here from nine o’clock on, gettin’ stuff ready for Parrino, the chef.”
I felt a little inner prickle. “So anything delivered to the Fifty, anything at all, whether it was kitchen stuff or not, would be taken in here at the service entrance?”
“That’s right. Say, we’re busy as hell here now—”
“I can see that. How long have you worked here?”
“About six months.”
Six months. That didn’t do me any good. I said, “This Parrino. He’s the head chef, isn’t he?”
My man nodded impatiently, eyes all for the traffic in edibles.
“You know his address?”
The man gave it to me, I thanked him, and then I wasn’t just strolling any more. I took a cab and my manner, if not my words, must have conveyed the message that if the fellow didn’t let the grass grow under his chassis he might get a nice tip.
12
PARRINO, Joe, lived so far up on Fifth that he could have spit into Harlem. The buildings here were pretty scaly, save for a scattered few. He was in one of the few, and could have lived in a far better one, I surmised. Chefs get paid well.
I rang the bell, the apartment door buzzer made a noise like a kid giving you the razzberry, I went up to the second floor. Parrino was in the hall doorway, a great big fellow with an enormous stomach, a double chin, and black, mattress-like hair. He had black eyes, too, and these surveyed me with the look of one who has few cares, none of which are of a nature to lead to apprehension when an unknown calls.
“You’re Mr. Parrino of the Club Fifty?”
“Was of the Fifty,” he said, “till they killa the manage’.”
&nb
sp; “Could I have a word with you?” I handed him the insurance card.
Parrino looked at the card, handed it back, and looked at me with a bushy black eyebrow elevated. He wasn’t stampeded or fooled at all.
“Oh, well,” I said, “you can always try. Can I have a few words with you anyway?”
He grinned and I grinned. I liked Parrino.
“Sure, sure,” he said, with the amiability of a big man with too much fat on his frame to be rancorous about things. He stepped back. “Maria. Visit’s.”
A large woman came from a back room to the Parrino parlor. She also looked carefree and contented, and she also grinned at me. “This Joe,” she said, jerking a broad thumb at him. “Is he giving with the phony accent?”
“Now, Maria—”
“First Avenue,” shrugged Mrs. Parrino. “But he thinks he gets more money as a chef if he acts like he’s fresh out of Naples.”
Parrino spread his hamlike hands. “Could I tell? Maybe this character wanted me for a job. Or knows of one.”
I laughed; it was easy with these two. “No, Joe, no job. I only wanted to ask some questions. About the Club Fifty, and the service entrance, and about last June when Dick Rosslyn got killed.”
Joe lost his jolly look, and Mrs. Parrino sat down slowly in a chair and tapped a cigarette on her thumbnail and lit it.
“Nice fella, that Dick,” Joe said. “He was out here more than once for a dinner the way I can really cook one when it’s for friends instead of customers. Him and Rose, too. A damned shame. They were nice kids.”
“Nice,” I agreed, “and also attractive. Dick knew a lot of girls, I suppose?”
Mrs. Parrino eyed me. “I suppose. He worked awfully hard, at his dancing, though. And I know how hard they work when they take it seriously… Believe it or not, I was a dancer once. He didn’t have too much time for fun.”
“He could have had plenty of dames,” Joe said. “More than one of the club customers batted her eyelashes at him.”
“You mean you wouldn’t personally know of any he had?”
Parrino looked me up and down in a sort of pitying way. “You aren’t acquainted with the right people, mister, seems to me. At least you don’t know any Dick Rosslyns. If you did, you wouldn’t ask that. Nobody could tell if he knew a lot of dames, or a few dames, or no dames at all. He didn’t talk about such things. Gentleman, if you catch. If you don’t, just look it up in the diction…”
