Death of a Hooker

by Kane, Henry

  “So?” said Parker.

  “It comes to me, sitting in the bathtub. Kiki Kalmar is there at the table while Vinnie is shaking Paxton loose from his ethics, and she hears about Olaf being in that will for half a million. Kiki is a broad who has never made it big, and is dying to. She’s working in a club with Danny Danzig who has never made it big, and is dying to. Danny is handsome, Kiki is a pushover, and they have probably made it big together—in bed. So she propositions him, as he stated for your tape recorder. If he knocks off the old lady, the will sets—Olaf is in for a half million. If he then knocks off Olaf—Kiki is his one next of kin—and she comes into that half million. Share and share alike—they grab two hundred and fifty thousand each.”

  Parker lapped at his drink, nodded. “Chain reaction, right there in the bathtub.”

  “Yeah, and it spreads out beautiful. Danny the Dancer is in town right from the beginning of any of the trouble. He doesn’t stay with Kiki—shuns her like plague; he doesn’t even stay in a hotel where many people can see him; he stays in the comparative privacy of a whore’s pad.”

  “And the first step is the bump of the old lady.”

  “Yeah, he missed killing Fernandez, because he’s an amateur, but that need not be fatal to the overall plan, as I’ll explain. Next step is Olaf. That one they planned carefully. Olaf was in a recent jam over that Boligula thing. So, first, Danny jumps him and mentions Veneto’s name. That will be the foundation for Olaf’s murder—will put the heat on Veneto and off anyone else. When I came to Kiki asking her to talk to Olaf about getting protection, she’s as happy as a lark. The thing is in the works. I know that there’s been an attack and that attack seems to be from Veneto. So when Olaf is killed, I can come to the front with the mug-attack Veneto supposedly inspired. She doesn’t talk to Olaf about police protection because she doesn’t want him to have that protection; Danny is out for him that night. I happen to be with Olaf and Danny gets overexcited and misses. In the meantime, there are developments.”

  “And how—developments!”

  “The old lady is dead, and her will is firm. Olaf gets half a million, but Astrid gets about fifteen million. Now Astrid is dead, and Olaf is her brother, and she has no will, and right now Olaf Kalmar figures to come into maybe sixteen million bucks. Now, when Danny knocks him off, Kiki comes into real big numbers. They have to work it out keen, and plan it out keen, which is why Danny was coming here today.”

  “And the race track deal?”

  “The guy’s a larceny-guy and he’s close in on a good thing. There are millions in the offing, but right now he’s got no loot, and here’s an easy pickup of forty-five thousand. So he pulls the bit on Beverly Crystal and he’s fuming because he’s come off out of the money. That’s about it.”

  “Beautiful,” said Parker.

  “He missed Fernandez, but once he makes the bump on Olaf, he’s out. He slips back into Chicago, and what have you got? You’ve got Fernandez, an eye-witness, but no one to put his eye on. Danny lays over in Chicago, time passes, Danny fattens up a bit, Fernandez is released, more time passes, memory grows dim, and the eye-witness crumbles to nothing. Kiki then gets her inheritance, she splits the hunk with Danny, and everybody lives happily ever after—except the dead ones and the coppers who now have two more unsolved murders for their books. Nice, huh?”

  “Beautiful,” said Parker.

  “Thank you,” I said, reaching for the compliment, “that is, if you mean me.”

  “I do mean you, son. Beautiful job, beautifully thought out, and brought to beautiful culmination. You are a private richard and I am, in a sense, a public richard, and down at Headquarters I’ll get all the credit for this, but you stand thirty-nine thousand dollars to the good for four days while I still receive my fixed salary, so I suppose, in a way, it’s kind of even up. Nevertheless, my compliments.”

  I could not have glowed more effusively had I been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.

  TWENTY-THREE

  First stop was Olaf because I had been granted permission by Parker to break the thing to him myself. Patricide is one of the more reprehensible forms of the reprehensible act of murder, as is attempted patricide, as is attempted foster-patricide, and, although I have never been a father (that I know of), I imagine it must be most reprehensible to dear old dad. So I wanted to break it to him myself, as gently as I could.

  Olaf was not at the kiosk; his assistant was.

  “Where’s the boss?” I said.

  “Went to a funeral.”

  “At night?”

  “No, this afternoon. You know, that old lady’s funeral. Also—maybe you don’t know—his sister got knocked off. All in all, it’s no day for him to work, so I took over today full time. If you really want him, I figure you’ll find him at home.”

  I took up a newspaper, paid for it, folded it beneath my arm, and went to Olaf. When I rang his bell, he used the peephole before he opened the door. And when he opened the door, he was a sight to behold. Laconic, preoccupied, he was in the midst of work. He grunted a greeting, returned to work, and I followed. I tossed aside my newspaper, sat down, and watched. He was brushstroking a canvas on an easel, a palette of paints on a small table beside him. It was a hot night and he was dressed for this quirk in our crazy New York climate. He wore no clothing except brief athletic shorts but strapped across him was a shoulder holster weighed down by a gun. If there were not so many overtones of tragedy, it would have been funny.

  “Did you hear about Astrid?” he said.

  “I know all about it,” I said.

  “You know—”

  “Probably more than you know.”

  “I know only what the police told me.”

  “You paint,” I said. “I’ll fill you in.”

  It was time for his liberal education. I told him the Astrid Lund story, all of it, from start to finish, touching upon backgrounds of which, I was certain, he was unaware. He continued painting, stoically. Then I said, “Also, you can remove that shoulder holster. There’s no more threat to you.”

  “You’ve spoken with Veneto?”

  “Veneto has nothing to do with it.”

  “But who….?”

  Then I told him the Kiki Kalmar story, all of it, interlaced with pertinent parts of the Danny Danzig story. Then hurriedly I piled on the saccharine: “You’re a rich man now, Olaf. You’re coming into millions, many millions. You’ll have to pay Astrid’s notes, of course—they’ll put in legitimate claims—Veneto and Paxton, but those amounts are piddling compared to the many millions which are, right now, devolving upon you. You’ll have to get yourself a good lawyer, of course, to take care of your interests, and I’ll be happy to recommend one. You’ll be able to devote your life to whatever you wish—painting, travelling—anything. You’re a young man. You’ll get married….”

  He put away his brushes.

  He removed the shoulder holster.

  He said, “I’m going to her.”

  “Whom?”

  “Kiki. Who else?”

  “Okay by me,” I said. “Only remember—she was behind these attacks on you.”

  “That boy, that Danny, probably talked her into it.” Blind father love, stupid, intransigent, somehow is admirable. But I shook it off. I wasn’t having any, thank you.

  “Quite the contrary, Olaf. She talked him into it.”

  “Well, they didn’t murder me, did they? I’m alive, aren’t I? A miss is as good as—”

  “They didn’t miss the old lady.”

  “He didn’t miss the old lady. He killed her—not Kiki.”

  “Sorry,” I said, “but that’s not the law. They planned it together, they worked it together, and she’s just as guilty as though she herself pulled that trigger.” I loved the guy but I had to lay it on the line for him. Better that he heard it from me, first.

  “Well, I’m going to her,” he said.

  “Naturally.”

  “I want to hear what she has to say.” />
  “She’ll give you some kind of con, as she always has.”

  “I’ll get her the best lawyers, the best—”

  “You can afford it now, pal.”

  “I’m going to get dressed. Will you wait for me?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  He went to another room and I prowled and looked at his pictures and drank some of his Drambuie and marveled at the kind of love, so damnably frequent, that directs the intended victim upon a beeline path of rescue for his very own assailant. Olaf’s reaction was not unexpected: he was going the way he was gaited. To him, Kiki was still the little girl, still the child he had adopted; but Olaf was nothing if not intelligent and the final explanation probably lay within him, unspoken, perhaps unrealized: guilt that he had failed her; guilt that he or his wife had been improper parents; guilt that somewhere along the line, trying for the best for the child, they had, somehow, instilled the worst. True or false, deep down, unspoken, perhaps not risen to the level of conscious thought….

  “I’ll be right with you,” he called.

  “Take your time,” I called back.

  I took up my newspaper, sat down, opened it, and got a tingle in my behind. The headline blazoned blackly: ANOTHER GANGLAND KILLING. The story: Michael (Mickey) Bokino, 36, General Manager of Gotham Loan Association, 500 Fifth Avenue, was fished out of the Hudson River late this afternoon, apparently a victim of gangland vengeance. There were four bullets in back of his head and he was trussed up in typical Mafia fashion. The body was discovered by two youngsters….

  Olaf came back. “I’m ready,” he said.

  I put the paper away and stood up.

  “Would you like to come with me?” he said.

  “No, thank you,” I said.

  When I gave my name to the Japanese, I was ushered in immediately. Veneto was in the drawing room with the walnut walls and the wine-red carpet. It seemed that he liked to match his clothing to the room. This time he was wearing a wine-red linen bathrobe and wine-red linen house slippers. “Ah, my boy,” he said, “when you hear it’s like with a bonus, you’re johnny-on-the-spot. Don’t blame you; don’t blame you in the least. I did not think you would disappoint me.”

  “I might, at that,” I said.

  “Yeah, that’ll be the day.”

  I sat down and lit a cigarette. I said, “I’ve been reading about Mickey Bokino.”

  “Yeah,” he said, closed his eyes, nodded, opened his eyes. “Yeah, me too. Seems he got drowned or something.”

  “Um,” I said. “But first he shot himself in the back of the head four times, and then he trussed himself up, and then he threw himself in the river and drowned himself.”

  “People pick funny ways to commit suicide these days.”

  “Funny, funny,” I said. “You can just die laughing.”

  “Maybe they just want to make sure. No? Huh?”

  “Oh, Mickey-boy made sure all right, didn’t he?”

  Veneto seated himself in an easy chair, crossed his knees delicately. “Is this what you came to talk about, that poor boy’s suicide? Or did you come to collect a bonus?”

  “Neither, actually.”

  “I beg pardon? Come again?”

  “I didn’t come to talk about his suicide because”—I shrugged—“you wouldn’t know a thing about that, would you?”

  Capped teeth were exposed in a bland, expressionless smile. “Naturally, I would not.”

  “But you were awfully anxious to catch up with him, weren’t you? You paid me six thousand bucks to bring him in.”

  Mildly he said, “I wanted to talk with the boy. He was panicky about something. A General Manager don’t run out when the auditors come unless he’s got all kinds of troubles on his mind. He needed, maybe, a little fatherly advice; maybe I could straighten him out.”

  “And I bet you did.”

  “Yes. Thanks to you.”

  “Thanks to me?”

  “You delivered him.”

  “Me!”

  “That’s the reason for the bonus. That’s why you’re here, no?”

  “No. I’m here to know why the bonus.”

  “I just told you. You delivered him. You’re a wack but you’re the greatest. I suppose every artist is a wack and you’re entitled. You’re a wack, but you’re an artist. And you’re entitled to the bonus.”

  “But I—”

  “You took my six gees and you went to work. But you don’t send out a pointer without some very good hunters behind him. Dig?”

  “Not quite.”

  “I sent you out but I put some real good men behind you—McCarthy and a couple of my best boys. Look, you don’t think Vinnie Veneto is stupid, do you? I paid you six gees but always, you know, you got to protect the investment.”

  “So you put a tail on me.”

  “More than one tail, dear boy.” He closed his eyes and recited slowly. “From here you went to Sixty-nine East Sixty-ninth Street. You come out of there and you go to Eleven East Forty-second Street. You come out of there and you go to the St. Moritz Hotel. You come out of there and you go to Two Hundred Three East Thirty-seventh Street. You come out of there and you go to Twelve East Seventy-second Street. And then you don’t come out of there.” He opened his eyes. “Mickey Bokino comes out of there, carrying a suitcase, and my boys gather him in. To me, you’re a magician. You’re out of this world. You run around like a wack, but you produce. I can’t complain, can I? Just the opposite. I give you a bonus.”

  He stood up, dug into the pocket of the bathrobe, and laid four crisp one-thousand dollar bills on a table.

  I got rid of my cigarette, stood up, dug in, and laid many bills, none of them crisp, upon the same table. I counted as I laid and my count totalled six thousand bucks.

  For once Veneto showed expression. It was bewilderment.

  “What is it with you?” he said.

  “Like a bonus, in reverse.”

  “What the hell?” he said.

  “Your four and my six, that’s ten. Let’s donate it like insurance to Mickey’s nearest relative.”

  “He don’t have no relative.”

  “Then let’s see to it that he has lots of flowers for his funeral. Let’s make his funeral pretty, in contrast to his suicide which was quite messy, don’t you agree? I mean first a guy shoots himself four times in the back of his head, then he ties himself up, then he throws himself into the river—”

  “Man, you are a wack, you sure are.”

  “So you’ve said. Several times. Good night now, Mr. Veneto, and before I go, I’ll make you a promise. When your suicide happens—and it’ll happen, you know how things go—I’ll chip in for flowers for you, too. Stinkweeds.”

  I turned and marched out and all the way on my march I was braced for a thump, more than one thump, but no thump happened. Maybe in his own weird way, the guy did like me. You cannot select your admirers.

  I came out into the humid stifling night. I was tired and I was hot and I was not going where I expected to be cool. I was going to Marilyn Windsor and I fervently hoped she was home.

  She was and she greeted me gravely in winsome attire that had me more steamy than the weather. She was wearing the top of what I imagined to be lounging pajamas, but no bottom. It was cream-white, gauzy, diaphanous, just sufficiently transparent to raise goose pimples on me the size of hobnails. It was a jacket held together by a cream-white tassel-dangling sash, and it began, softly cloven-necked, at her shoulders, and descended to the top of her marvelous thighs, deftly secreting all intimate parts, but revealing just enough to set the mind afire. The smooth, long-curved, tawny legs were proudly nude, and the slim ankles appeared even slimmer in spire-heeled cream-white sandals. The shimmering golden hair was back in the pony-tail held together by a tiny bow of cream-white silk. She wore no make-up except lustrous carmine on the pouting lips and the blue eyes smouldered in a strange intensity.

  “I’ve been waiting,” she said, in a whisper.

  “I’ve been b
usy,” I said.

  “I know,” she said. Then directly she pointed at a table on which lay a newspaper proclaiming ANOTHER GANGLAND KILLING. She came to me, her body quivering, placed a cool hand on my hot cheek, said, “You … you did this … for me …?”

  Brother, I am not one not to respond to cue.

  I lifted a hand and made it tremble.

  There was enough choke in my voice for a garrote.

  I bleated, “Please … not now … I … I’d rather not talk about it….”

  I stalked off, moodily grim. I strutted about more scratchingly than an alumnus of Actors Studio bedeviled by eczema. Dramatically, I whisked off my jacket and flung it away. Lugubriously, I undid my tie and tossed it after my jacket. Wearily, I unbuttoned the top button of my shirt, rubbed a tremulous hand at my throat, fetched up a wretched bone-tired sigh. Mournfully, I sank to the couch (an ancient fringe-bottomed day bed affair, but the most comfortable item of furniture in the apartment, only because it was hard and wide and it did not creak).

  “Please,” I intoned in a voice that I hoped bore the proper trill of melancholy, “please … if you please … would you be so good … may I have a drink …?”

  She fairly flew, as I ogled unashamedly, and she returned with two drinks, neither of which was Coca Cola. I sipped and she sipped, her eyes enormous over the rim. Tremblingly, I handed her my glass and she brought it to the table and placed it squarely upon ANOTHER GANGLAND KILLING. She took a long deep quaff of hers, then placed her glass beside mine. I fetched up another sigh, loud and sonorous, stretched out on the day bed-couch, tucked a pillow beneath my head, and shaded my eyes against the glare of the full overhead light. She came to me and sat on the edge of the couch, although I had thoughtfully provided plenty of room for her to lie down. She touched a hand to my hair.

  “You poor dear boy,” she whispered.

  I closed my eyes. I groaned as wistfully as I could manage.

  “What happened?” she said and her hand practically tore at my hair.

  “No … please … not now … not yet….”

  I opened one eye and peeked. Her bosom was heaving deliciously and there were bubbles of anticipation on her mouth. But she contained herself. She licked a quick tongue about her lips, making the bubbles disappear. She comforted me. Her hand slid from my hair to my cheek to my neck inside my shirt. “I understand,” she breathed. “It’s wicked of me to ask right now. Later. Later you’ll tell me, you’ll tell me everything, you’ll tell me everything that happened, all of it.”