Death of a Hooker

by Kane, Henry

  Nobody said, “Some broad passed out or something.”

  Through the peepholes of the adjoining perpendicular backs of the innocent bystanders, I got a flash of a woman lying supine, a woman in white, and an urge of premonition smote hard within me, and I forced my way through, and it was Beverly Crystal, and she had not fainted. She had been stabbed. The hilt of a switch knife protruded from her stomach around a widening red stain. None of the private Pinkertons had as yet shown up and nobody was doing anything except standing aghast. I noticed, somehow, instantly, that her handbag was not on her nor anywhere near her. As I knelt to her, somebody said, “Who’s he?”

  I looked up and I said, “I know her.”

  “Oh,” said somebody.

  And somebody else, of course, said, “Stand back. Stand back, everybody. Let the little lady have some air.”

  I touched her face and she opened her eyes and she recognized me. “Jeez,” she said, “I’m glad it’s you.”

  “What happened?” I said.

  She put her right hand into mine. Her right hand had a sheaf of many little strips of cardboard, each perhaps two inches by three inches, and they were held together by what felt like a rubber-band. “You take them,” she whispered. “They’re for you.”

  Transfer was made from her right hand to my right hand.

  “What happened?” I said.

  “For you,” she whispered weakly. “You deserve. For you. I give to you.” She drew deep of breath, gaspingly. I had to bend nearer to hear her. “I’m gone,” she said. “The son of a bitch killed me.”

  “Who?” I said.

  “Didn’t get … what he wanted. Cut away my bag first, but I had them in my hand. Cut away my bag first … then stuck me.”

  She was dying.

  “Who?” I asked. “Who?”

  “Pete … Pete … I’m dying….”

  “Who stuck you?” I said

  “Escort,” she said. “Winner … you got in your hand….”

  “I know who won the race, baby.” I put my lips close to her ear. “Who stuck you, Bev?”

  “Didn’t get what he wanted … you got….”

  “Who stuck you, baby?”

  “Escort … Escort … plenty loot … for you … all yours kid, you deserve … good kid, you … you tried to help Bev….”

  “Who stuck you, baby?”

  “Escort, Escort …” and she quivered, and died.

  And then the Pinkertons were there in a flying wedge and they pushed everybody away including me and then the doctor came and pronounced her dead and then the stretcher boys came and took her away and the crowd dispersed and I dispersed with them.

  I went to the infield, to a lonely bench in the afternoon autumn sun, and I crossed my ankles and opened my right hand. A sheaf of yellow mutuel tickets was bound within a thin double-twisted rubber band. I snapped off the band and threw it away. The tickets were all win tickets, all for the fourth race, the big race, the stake race, and they were evenly divided amongst three horses—only King Fleet was omitted.

  It came to me clear then, and it was beautiful.

  This was one fix that could not go wrong.

  King Fleet was odds-on. The other three had to be twenty to one or over. Bet the other three, and Earl Dunbar subtly but efficiently holds back the King, and you must win, but plenty.

  I examined the tickets. She had bet two thousand bucks each on Number 2, Number 3, and Number 4. I had advanced $6,000 and she had divided it impartially. I tore up all the tickets on Number 3 and Number 4. The remainder—all the tickets on Number 2—were mine. They could not belong to anyone else—there was no one else alive who had any claim to them. There were forty tickets, each was a $50 win ticket on Number 2—Escort. She had been cagy; she had not wanted to create comment or be pointed out. She had gone from $50 Sellers’ window to $50 Sellers’ window, accumulating her cache of tickets on every horse in the race except King Fleet.

  I rose up from my lonely seat in the sun and did precisely the same, in reverse. I went from Cashiers’ window to Cashiers’ window, presenting my $50 win tickets in modest groups, collecting without exciting too many congratulations from the grinning cashiers, all of whom, without exception, said, as they always say: “Glad to pay it out, pal. That King Fleet is a real bum. That Escort was a hot tip, I got it yesterday right from the feed bag, but like a dunce, I didn’t have the nerve to play the nag.”

  It took a leg-wearying half-hour to surround the loot, but when I finally stood belly-against-bar imbibing a much-needed double Scotch, I had an additional $45,000 distributed in various pockets of my clothes, $39,000 of which was sheer net profit.

  The $6,000 I had brought to Beverly Crystal had turned out to be, after all, an investment.

  TWENTY-ONE

  I went home and I sat. I went home and I sat and I cogitated. I stood up and I took the money out of my clothes and piled it up neatly and then returned to sitting and cogitating. I stood up again and put some of the money away. It was too late to go to the bank. I put some of the money away. I kept out $6,000 and I kept out an additional couple of hundred for spending money, and then I took off all my clothes and drew a hot bath and sat in the hot bath and cogitated.

  Barbara Lund was dead and Astrid Lund was dead and Beverly Crystal was dead and I was on to something, it was waddling around in the recesses of my unconscious, but I did not know what the hell I was on to. And then suddenly it hit, and one hit hit another hit, and I swam out of my tub and dried and dressed and took up the $6,000 and the spending money and went to 69 East 69th Street and shoved my finger against the bell of 6G.

  Kiki Kalmar opened the door, a smiling expression of expectancy souring on her face as she said, “Oh, no! Not you again!”

  This time she was wearing scarlet toreadors and scarlet open-toed stiletto-heeled shoes but of course, on top, nothing but startling out-thrust bellicose breasts which heaved up nakedly but expediently as barricade against my entrance. She started talking again but her sentence remained forever incomplete. I reared back for elbow room and then I clipped her on the chin, not too hard but sufficient, and she went down with more grace than she had ever displayed in any of her dances. I closed the door behind me, lifted her, and carried her to the bedroom. I placed her in a chair from which she slipped but I let her stay because I was busy seeking an upper garment for her because I am a prude. I found a sweat shirt, slipped her into it, and readjusted her in the chair. I took a knife from the kitchen and cut cord from a Venetian blind. I cut the cord into appropriate lengths and bound her wrists to the chair and bound her ankles to the chair and bound her middle to the chair. In the bathroom I found toilet tissue (naturally) and bandaid. I stuffed toilet tissue into her mouth as an effective gag and sealed her lips with bandaid. When she came to, nothing would help her. She would be motionless and soundless.

  I placed another bedroom chair in readiness, opposite but not near her. I used the knife to cut the cord of another Venetian blind into proper length strips, brought more toilet tissue from the bathroom and more bandaid. I returned the knife to the kitchen, went to the living room, sat, and waited.

  I sat and waited. It grew dark. I put on a light and sat and waited. Once the phone rang. I did not answer. I sat and waited. And then the bell rang. I went to the door and opened it. The tall, dark, handsome man did not have a chance. As his jaw dropped in shock, the point of it got another shock. I belted him with all I had. It caught him clean on the button and he toppled toward me like a chopped tree. I ducked and let him fall. He hit with a thud. I closed the door, dragged him to the bedroom, sat him in the waiting chair, bound and gagged him with the prepared parapnernalia. I went to the telephone and called Parker. I said, “Lieutenant, this is Peter Chambers. There have been developments and I’ve got them packed up and waiting. Please come to 69 East 69th Street, apartment 6G, and come quickly. Bring Juan Fernandez and bring lots of your best cops. Please come quickly.”

  God bless Detective-lieutenant Loui
s Parker.

  He said two words.

  “All right,” he said.

  I was nibbling on Kiki Kalmar’s booze when my company came. Parker was flushed with the excitement of repressed curiosity. Parker was a smart and sensitive cop: he had dug the urgency in my voice over the phone. Juan Fernandez was pale but his eyes were alive and interested. His jacket was slung over his shoulders, sleeves empty; in the manner of a Hungarian impressario making a cape of his coat. The bulk of the sling in which he carried his left arm prevented his wearing the jacket properly. For the rest, there were silent uniformed cops and silent detectives.

  I went to work at once. I said, “Juan, do you know anything about Mrs. Barbara Lund’s will?”

  Parker caught his lower lip between his teeth, but he made no sound of reproval.

  “No, nothing,” said Juan Fernandez.

  “Well, you were mentioned in it.”

  “Me?” said Juan.

  “Mrs. Lund considered you a fine and decent man. She left you twenty-five thousand dollars. No strings attached. Free and clear. All for you.”

  The astonished Juan’s mouth opened so wide you could see his red tongue jiggling within. He turned his head toward Parker.

  “Will you verify that, lieutenant?” I said.

  “What Mr. Chambers said is a fact,” said Parker.

  Juan’s eyes came back to mine. “She considered you fine and decent,” I said. “She remembered you in her will. You’re going to be a rich man. You’re going to have a nest egg. Now, in all conscience, you’ve got to do something for her.”

  “What?” he said. “What must I do?”

  “Identify her murderer.”

  “But I cannot … I have not seen … I do not know….”

  “I’m going to show you a guy. If he’s the murderer, you’re going to say so. If not, you’re going to say not. But you’re going to stand up like a man, without fear or trembling, and you’re going to tell the truth. Now come with me, all of you.”

  I led them to the bedroom and ripped the bandaid from the man’s lips. He spat out the tissue and he was about to speak when he saw Juan and his eyes glazed over with terror. Juan stood rigid with finger pointing.

  “This is the man who killed Mrs. Lund,” said Juan.

  His finger was pointing at Danny Danzig, The Dancer.

  TWENTY-TWO

  They took The Dancer to one room and Kiki to another and expert interrogators went to work, Parker shuttling up and back, and within a short time both dancers were babbling the usual torrents of recrimination, one against the other. Oral statements were delivered into portable tape recorders and then Parker’s cops took them in, Juan along with them, and we were alone once again, the lieutenant and the eye, both operating on the same side of the fence, albeit with different instruments.

  I filled him in on details from the time I had been retained by Astrid Lund on Tuesday. “So you see,” I said, “I had three prime suspects, each with excellent motive and each fitting the general description furnished by Juan Fernandez—Mr. Vinnie Veneto, Mr. Mickey Bokino, and Mr. Roy Paxton. And one by one, they dropped out.”

  “How?” said Parker.

  “You eliminated Veneto.”

  “Me?” said Parker.

  “When you delivered that lecture on professional murder. The job on Mrs. Barbara Lund certainly was not professional by your standards. Vinnie Veneto is a prime professional, by any standards. So … off the list went Veneto.”

  “And Bokino?”

  “Astrid Lund wanted the old lady dead, and Bokino was logical as her choice of executioner. He was in a jam to Vinnie, and if he did the job for Astrid, she could quickly get thirty thousand dollars for him on the strength of her being the heiress to millions. Oscar Berger, of Berger, Berger and Fenwick, would come across with thousands, hundreds and thousands if necessary—for a judicious hunk of fee, of course—as advance monies on her vast inheritance. But Bokino denied that he was the gun, and the ensuing developments supported him. He got no thirty thousand dollars, he had no hope of help from Astrid, he remained in his jam with Vinnie, and he ran like a jackrabbit when the auditors came. So Bokino was out, but he had given me Paxton, and Paxton shaped up great for a while. Paxton was a guy with a couple of ex-wives draining away on alimony, and a pretty expensive girl friend to follow around. He needed money, Bokino had said that Astrid had given him a note for a hundred and fifty gees, and when Berger verified the existence of that note, I was certain I had put salt on the tail of the right bird. But then came that confrontation scene—”

  “What confrontation scene?”

  “Paxton and Fernandez, face to face—which cost me five hundred bucks.”

  “Cost you …?”

  I felt myself blush and lowered my eyes in fitting accompaniment. “Fernandez’s relatives in Puerto Rico, if Fernandez has any relatives in Puerto Rico, did not retain Lawyer Paxton. I did.”

  “Why, you son of a—”

  “Louie, please! Remember my five hundred bucks down the drain in the interests of justice.”

  “You paid him five hundred?”

  “I said it was from the relatives in Puerto Rico. I had to make the fee big enough so that if he refused—he was it. He had admitted taking that note from Astrid, he had admitted promising to have the old lady bumped, but he claimed all of that was bull just so he was able to get that note out of her—for services rendered. So I brought him together with Fernandez, face to face, and I was there, and it was no go. I’ve been in the business for a long time, just as you have, and maybe Paxton would be able to dissemble, but not Fernandez. I brought them together, face to face—and they were not fellow conspirators. I had spent five hundred bucks, and my last suspect had dropped out from under me.”

  “And so?” said Parker.

  “And so I was finished, disgruntled, dispirited, out of the box.”

  “And when did this Danzig come into your figures?”

  “Today,” I said. “Late this afternoon. A second murder, which we won’t be able to pin on him, triggered me to the prior murder, which we have been able to pin on him.”

  “Spoken like a true private richard,” said Parker. “Fancy, but incomprehensible.”

  I borrowed some of Kiki Kalmar’s booze and mixed drinks for both of us. I gave him the pitch on the sure-pop race that had been run this day at Belmont. I told him that Danny, The Dancer, had known about the deal and that he had accompanied Beverly Crystal to the track. I told him of the death of Beverly Crystal.

  “I’ve heard about that,” he said. “It came in over the teletype.”

  I told him about my experiences at the track and I told him about my sitting in a hot tub and cogitating. He looked bored but the hell with him: every aspect of every story cannot be all crescendo. But when I came to the point, he was all the way back with me, quivering like a lad on his first date in the back seat of his father’s car.

  “She had told me who had killed her,” I said, “and I had mixed it up with horses at the track. She had told me! I kept asking her and just before she died I had said, ‘Who stuck you, baby?’ And she had said, ‘Escort, Escort,’ and I had thought she was still talking about that damned horse, but sitting in that hot tub, it had hit me. She had answered me. Her escort—the guy who had taken her to the track—the guy who knew all about that sure-pop horse race—Danny Danzig.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” said Parker, encouraging me.

  “He had used a switch knife, he had cut away her handbag which he figured contained tickets worth forty-five thousand bucks, and then he had shoved the knife into her. I had a murderer, but I could never prove it.”

  “But how—Lord in Heaven—did you tie him in to the Lund thing?”

  “Good question,” I said, “and the only answer is the psychological nonsense of chain reaction. A murderer who could not be proven a murderer remained as a nub in back of my mind as my thoughts drifted to my friend Olaf Kalmar and certain recent attacks on him. Then I thought about Ki
ki Kalmar, to whom I had come pleadingly to talk with her foster-father about getting himself some police protection.” I gave him the details on that, quickly. “But she had not talked with her foster-father, and I wondered why not, why shouldn’t she; what would she have to lose? And then an item that had been lurking way down deep inside of me, casually imparted and casually received—the crux of it all!—suddenly exploded like a mushroom bomb in my brain.”

  “What?” said Parker, on the edge of his seat. “What, damn you?”

  “Listen real good now, pal of my heart.”

  “Real well,” he corrected.

  “Oh, how I hate an educated policeman,” I said.

  “I’m listening real good,” he said.

  “This goes way back to why Vinnie lent two hundred thousand clams to Astrid Lund. He told me, I heard it, and it went right over my head, of course.”

  “What, what?” said Parker.

  “The scene, the Copa Danzig in Chicago. Danny Danzig is working there, in his brother’s joint, as a straight dancer, and Kiki Kalmar is working there in her fishnet strip dance. Paxton is there and Vinnie is pouring champagne for Paxton and Kiki and all the while pumping Paxton about the old lady’s will to learn how Astrid figures in it. Paxton is ethical with most people—I mean, as a lawyer he’s as ethical as any—but Vinnie has given him plenty of business and Vinnie isn’t an ordinary guy. Pretty soon Paxton opens up and Vinnie learns that Astrid is the major beneficiary under the will.”

  “What’s that got to do with Danny the Dancer?”

  “Now hold it. Remember, this is Vinnie telling me these details, because I asked him why he went for two hundred thousand to Astrid. He tells me what Paxton told him about the will and there’s one item he mentions which, because my mind wasn’t on it at the time, goes right over my head.”

  “What item?” said Parker.

  “That Olaf Kalmar is in the old lady’s will for five hundred thousand dollars—a half million bucks.”