Death of a Hooker
Page 20
I opened both eyes and blinked them against the shine of the overhead light. “Please,” I said. “That light … please….”
She rose from the couch, tripped to the switch, snapped off the light, and made her way back in the darkness. I felt for her hand, found it, drew her to me, and this time she lay out beside me, comforting me. In all of my misspent years I was never more satisfactorily comforted than I was comforted that night by Marilyn Windsor. I could never, you understand, quite bring myself—gallant avenger of outraged virtue—to gush up the lushly longed for details of my lovely murder of Mickey Bokino, but I did manage to teeter for a protracted period on the tantalizing edge of that provocative brink, and so, as you may well imagine, there were many more delightful nights of piquant comfort before she ruefully recognized that I had murdered no one and pre-emptorily gave me the air. But ah, dear reader, before the air, the perfumed ozone was exquisite and unforgettable….
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Death of a Flack
ONE
Oh ho, the private eyeball! Poor, prosaic, wretched eyeball. Alas, alack, woe and whoa! Harder and faster they chain him to the stone of stereotype—more and more he cannot earn his daily bread without conforming to the curious standards so stringently set out for him. Once upon a time he had to talk from out of the side of stiff-lipped mouth in accents clipped and surly, and there was the bleak but sheer necessity of constant sexual acrobatics with each and every lady who entered within earshot of the case, no matter how casually. And if by chance the case were not a “caper,” it was no damned case at all. There was the day he had to punch all people in the belly with the natural follow-through of one perfect, accurate, and final punch to the chin (for some reason called the button, as you may recall), but that was before the advent of judo. After judo (after World War II, that is), our hero merely had to straighten his palm and smite the nape of his vis-à-vis, who would immediately fall prone or supine but obligingly comatose. Once upon the long ago he had to imbibe gallons of whisky hour after hour, all through the day (and night), and nevertheless remain staunch, stalwart, sober, and charmingly disrespectful. And there was the time it was the fashion to shoot the lady villain in the navel, and as blood belched becomingly and she slid to a graceful but awfully sexy posture of death, he was wont to murmur some such threnody as: “This was fairly easy and somewhat essential, but you are the culprit and I am the epitome of irresistible male brawn in whom exists the saucy combination of judge, jury, avenging angel, and executioner, and my quick gun has a bullet and your snowy belly has a navel and the twain must meet or else… .”
That was in the long ago and far away before the eyeball commenced his ubiquitous swim across all the channels of television. Today the eyeball is neat, clean, beautifully tailored, and eloquently baritoned. He never wears a coat no matter how inclement the weather. Some wear a dark and fetching pork-pie lid irrevocably riveted to the pate because it makes them look more handsome and dashing. All flash about the terrain in splendid convertibles. Most of them have no office other than a saloon, but all have an answering service—a voice that is either full of feminine foreign intrigue or sexy, feminine, southern molasses. Frequently there is the surprisingly lesbian overtone of a seductive female voice going by the name of Sam, Jack, Philip, or Morris. Those of the eyeballs who do command an office, command a layout as palatial as a potentate’s front parlor, with rugs, mirrors, couches, a view, and a terrace yet. But imperative to our modern-day stereotype is that he carry an orchestra with him. Jazz! Jazz, man! His invisible orchestra must plunk out a constant accompaniment of jazz. Jazz, man! Far out, far in, progressive, conservative—without his background of jazz, today’s private orb is as anachronistic as yesterday’s private Richard without his background of quick fist, quick gun, and quick reference to caper.
Me? I dig it. Sure I dig it. I go for the jazz, but I can go without it. Remember me? Peter Chambers. I predate this plethora of eyeballs with their invisible orchestras. I was around before all these come-latelies started cluttering up the expensive twenty-one inches of the idiot-boxes. I have a workaday office without a terrace and with a secretary—old and crotchety Miranda Foxworth. My office is not my home. My couches (and my terrace) are in my apartment on Central Park South overlooking the park in New York City. I do my work in my office and I do my homework—some of it very pleasant—at home. I’ve been around … and around, and around, and around. I am thirty-five years of age, which is a lie, but forgive me—a private Richard is as sensitive about age as a public prima donna. I shall be thirty-five as long as I can get away with it. Let us say I look thirty-five, feel thirty-five, and act thirty-five (sometimes twenty-five). I have never been a stereotype—remember? There are many installments of my compulsion to autobiography still in print to prove that. I tried to deliver myself of the King’s English when the boys thought it fashionable to shoot the jargon from a corner of the mouth. In the yesterday when it was popular, I never took the law into my own hands, and I never shot a naked chick in the navel, so help me. Today, I dig the jazz, sure, but I also dig long-hair, and I also dig ballet, and it was at the ballet, as a matter of fact, at the Metropolitan, that this saga, after due prologue, commences.
We were rather a motely group, but all in formal evening attire. A stockbroker, a poetess, a flack, a kept woman, a jeweler, a belly dancer, and a private Richard constitute, in mildest usage, a motley group. Of course, as in any group, there were areas of homogeneity. The stockbroker, Mr. Jefferson Clayton, and the jeweler, Mr. Cobb Gilmore, though of disparate ages, were both vastly and indecently wealthy. The flack, Mr. Henry Martell, and the Richard, Mr. Peter Chambers, although joyously appreciative of the ballet, were present, essentially, as a matter of business. The flack was in the company of two clients—the belly dancer and the stockbroker. The Richard was in the company of the belly dancer who had promised him a client for that very evening. And the three ladies—the poetess, Miss Lori Gilmore (the jeweler’s daughter), the inamorata, Miss Sophia Patri (the jeweler’s latest sweetheart), the belly dancer, Miss Sherry Greco (my date)—were homogeneous in aspects of beauty: they were all ravishingly attractive women, although each was of an entirely different mien. Lori Gilmore, about twenty-three, was blonde, slender, sinuous, smoky-eyed, intense, reserved, and sullen. Sherry Greco, about twenty-six, was tall, red-haired, green-eyed, glistening-mouthed, and shaped with extravagant, bewitching, and always-exposed curves. Sophia Patri, about twenty-nine, was a European with shiny black hair parted in the middle and worn severely pulled back to a bun, a full ripe figure, tawny skin, and black smoldering eyes. The company, for most of the evening had been jolly, except for the obvious restraint between Henry Martell and Jefferson Clayton for an obvious reason—Lori Gilmore.
At the first intermission break, Martell and Clayton escorted Lori, Gilmore escorted Sophia, and I escorted Sherry Greco to the bar, and for the first time that evening, I had Sherry alone. “Okay,” I said, “so what’s with that prospective client?”
She sucked on her Martini and gave me the up-glance, long-lashed. Then she set the Martini away and smiled, revealing small, white, savage teeth. “Is that the only interest?” she asked. She had a deep, easy, slow voice, consciously sultry.
“I have professed my interest, if you recollect,” I said, “and I kind of got smacked down.”
“You make your passes too fast and too frequent, Mr. Chambers.”
“Maybe I’m impatient. Or maybe it’s you.”
“Me?”
“You present an irresistible incentive.”
The smile was wider. “Well, thank you.” And a sip of the Martini. “You’re a smooth apple, Mr. Chambers; a glib talker.”
“That bad, good, or indifferent?”
“Good, as a matter of fact. I’m no little gal in a gingham gown.”
“You bet!”
“I like my men smooth, sophisticated. I can’t stand them boorish. But—let’s say—not too smooth.”
“You mean three propositions in three weeks, Mr. Chambers?”
It was my turn to smile. “But that’s the extent of our acquaintanceship—three weeks.”
“A proposition a week. Not that I don’t love it—but would you sort of call that par for the course?”
“Remember the incentive, dear Sherry.”
“My dear Mr. Chambers—”
“Three weeks. It’s time I was Pete to you. Or, if you want to be formal, Peter.”
“Peter,” she said, “you’re an attractive man and a persistent man and I admire attractive and persistent men, but please try to get it clear in your mind that I’m no pushover. No Puritan, but no pushover. Also, if and when I go to bed with a man, I go because I want to, rather than because he wants to. So don’t flood your motor, dear fellow. If you wish to persist—so be it. It flatters me and I like it, but don’t dream up any fantasies for yourself because that’s just what they may turn out to be—fantasies. I’m in a peculiar business, and men get ideas. I do admit I enjoy a bit of a flirtation, but I make no promises. That’s it. Period. Now let’s talk about your prospective client.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “I am chastened.”
“I’m a Greek,” she said. “Of Greek extraction.”
“Is it true what they say about how the Greeks make love?”
“This is chastened?” She smiled. “Anyway, that’s a misconception. It’s the Turks.”
“I heard Greeks,” I said.
“Maybe the Greeks learned. They’re neighboring countries.”
“Did you learn?”
“We were talking—or trying to talk—about your prospective client.”
“Yes. What’s that got to do with your being Greek?”
“He’s a Greek.”
“Who?”
“The prospective client.”
“Greek?” I said.
“Aristotle Skahnos,” she said. “He happened in at the club a couple of nights ago.” The club was Club Athena, one of the most successful night operations in New York, and owned by Sherry Greco. “We became acquainted and chatted—in Greek, as a matter of fact. Turns out the man is in need of a private detective. I recommended you. Jeff Clayton has told me that you’re the best.”
“Nice of Jeff.”
“Mr. Skahnos said he would check you. If the check worked out, he’ll drop in at the club tonight. He asked that I have you there. I told him we had a date tonight to go to the ballet. He said he’d come in late, about one o’clock. So, at one o’clock, I hope you’ll meet him.”
“That’s all?”
“Should there be more?”
“Like what it’s all about,” I said.
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” she said.
“Thanks, anyway,” I said.
“Don’t mention it,” she said. “I approve of people making money.”
“You do all right.”
“I try.” She finished the Martini and as she laid the glass away she said softly: “I believe I have a rival.” I turned as casually as I could pretend in the direction of her now narrow-eyed glance.
Through the haze of cigarette smoke, quite nearby, I saw Sophia Patri. Her graceful hand held a long-stemmed sherry glass. Her deep, dark, smoldering eyes were directly upon me, and as my eyes met hers there happened that magic instant of secret understanding, as though a signal from a prior incarnation had passed between us. For that one instant her eyes were bold upon me and her glass moved up and forward almost imperceptibly. Then her eyes lowered and her mouth was upon the rim of the glass and she returned her attentions to the pink-faced Cobb Gilmore.
“Why, that big-assed bitch,” quoth Sherry Greco, in a weird, female, strangely merry whisper.
And the peal of the gong sounded the end of intermission.
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Copyright © 1963 by Henry Kane, Registration Renewed 1991
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This is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.
eISBN 10: 1-4405-4136-1
eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-4136-0