Murder Is My Dish

by Stephen Marlowe

  “You see what I’m up against?” Frances asked me. “A drunkard.”

  Eulalia leered at her. Maybe the bourbon had done something after all. I hadn’t seen her leer like that before. “I just don’t want to see the money Rafael worked so hard for go up in smoke.”

  If she lit a match, I thought, she might go up in smoke. But I didn’t say that. If Rafael Caballero ever needed help, he needed it now. So his wife got migraine headaches and his girl Friday postponed the need for making decisions by downing more bourbon than Carry Nation had ever put an ax to.

  “All I want to do is save his life,” Frances whined.

  I said, “There’s the police.”

  “What?” Eulalia gasped.

  The plump blonde looked at me as if I’d grown a second head.

  “The police. You know, the buttons? You can call them.”

  “Will you help us, or won’t you help us?” Frances demanded.

  “You’re getting the money?”

  “I’m going to the bank for it right now. Yes.”

  “They’ll kill him,” Eulalia said.

  “Chances are they’ll get in touch with you by phone, telling you where to deliver the money. Then what? Where do I come in?”

  “You deliver it,” said Frances.

  I said, “They wouldn’t go for that.”

  Eulalia lurched toward me. If motor responses meant anything, she was very drunk now. “Frances will draw out the money,” she said, leering. “They’ll tell her where to deliver it. She’ll get a migraine. She’ll ask me, if Rafael means anything to me, would I please? Then she’ll ask you to go with me or follow me to see I don’t keep the money or put it back in the bank where it belongs. Then I’ll ask you to come along and follow them after I give them the money. Then—”

  “You’re drunk,” Frances said.

  If I stayed there much longer, I would get down on my hands and knees and gnaw a table leg. I headed for the door. “Call me,” I said. “When they call you. I’m at the Commodore.”

  “But what are you going to do?” Eulalia cried.

  I closed the door softly behind me. I didn’t want to jar anything. There was a lot in there that could be jarred. I didn’t answer Eulalia’s question. Out loud I didn’t, not right away. I went down the hall and rang for the elevator.

  In a few seconds Eulalia opened the apartment door and peered out into the hall. “Well?” she said.

  She was drunk. What she’d said sounded cockeyed, unless you saw her, and Frances Caballero, and a ransom note pasted on brown wrapping paper by people who knew all about the Fund for Parana Independence.

  “Well?” she said again as the elevator arrived.

  “You and Nostradamus,” I groaned.

  Chapter Four

  I TOOK the subway downtown and walked a couple of blocks over to Bellevue and found my way to the morgue. The attendant on duty was a plump little fellow whose bald head was almost hidden behind the cover of an exposé magazine. The cover showed a close-up of a nationally prominent TV and movie personality and promised to tell you things about him you couldn’t discuss with mother or the kids or man’s best friend, the dog.

  “Yes sir?” the plump man said without looking up.

  “A man named Dineen died here last night,” I said. “I’m sorry I couldn’t get here to make arrangements sooner, but I don’t want him given a pauper’s burial. What steps do I take?”

  His nose sank back toward the pages of the exposé magazine after coming up maybe half an inch for air. He droned, “Prove you got a claim to the body, then authorize a mortuary to … did you say Dineen?”

  “Yeah. Dineen.”

  The nationally prominent TV and movie personality went face down on the desk. The bald pate swung up and I was staring at beady little eyes and a small nose and fat pale cheeks and a puckered prune of a mouth. “Just a minute,” he said, and dialed a phone, and grunted, “He’s here.”

  I was waved to a chair and sat down and stared at a pair of swinging doors with portholes in them. Pretty soon they swung in and a guy came through reluctantly, as if he’d been shoved. He wore a gray ready-made suit that did not quite hide a potbelly and shoulders a bit narrower than the double swinging doors. He was tall too and had a sad and unsurprisable face with a long nose, a stubborn jaw and meanly alert wide-spaced eyes. I didn’t like him on sight and knew he would confirm that snap judgment for me.

  “You Drum?”

  “Yes, Officer.”

  “Oh, expecting trouble, was you?”

  “No.”

  “Then you one of those guys thinks he can smell a cop?”

  I let that one blow over. The bald morgue attendant caught it and grinned.

  “Nice of you to show up. We only been combing every hotel in the city for you.”

  “I’m registered over at the Commodore.”

  His voice went sweet all of a sudden. “Say now, it’s all right with you if we plan on holding an inquest, isn’t it? With some facts? Such as why you sent Dineen to New York?”

  “Who says I sent him?”

  “Quit stalling, damn you. Miss McGuire over at Receiving says so. I got a good mind to lock you up as a material witness and swallow the key.”

  “Material witness to what?” I asked.

  “When I want some of your lip, I’ll let you know,” he snarled.

  Of all the cops in New York, I thought, they had to send this one. But it helped me make a decision which had been bothering me. Tell a cop like him about Rafael Caballero and the kidnapers would be halfway to Tasmania before you could tie a string around the ransom money.

  “All right. I sent him.”

  “You sent him to do what?”

  “I’m not sure it would be in the best interests of my client if I told you that.”

  “Mister, you’re looking for it. Don’t you know police departments were made to smash snotty shamuses like you?”

  “Have it your way,” I said. “Go ahead and smash me.”

  The morgue attendant was staring, goggle-eyed. The cop’s face came close and he snarled, “We could snap up your license before you had time to read your signature.”

  “You could, if I was licensed in New York.”

  “One of those wise detectives, huh?”

  “No. But I wouldn’t be a detective at all if I didn’t realize that my first responsibility—”

  “Ah, shut your yap!” he roared. “Wait here.”

  I waited. The swinging doors swung shut behind him. “You’re in for it, chief,” the morgue attendant predicted happily. “And I mean in for it.”

  I waited. I didn’t think I was in for it, but I wasn’t the Manhattan Homicide Squad. I smoked a couple of cigarettes, and went on waiting. They had nothing to go on. Just a murder on their hands, like all the unsolved murders in cities like New York and Washington that you never got to read about. And a private detective who, possibly, knew something. They weren’t going to lock me up. They weren’t going to tar and feather me and run me out of town. They were going to let me sit here and stew for a while, during which time their man would get on the phone and arrange for a tail to pick me up outside the Bellevue morgue.

  It was the better part of an hour before the Homicide cop came back through the swinging doors and deposited his sullen scowl about six inches from my face. “You ask me,” he said, “the captain’s got rocks in his head.”

  “Maybe he’s thinking of going into business for himself,” I suggested.

  “That supposed to be a crack?”

  “It missed the mark. Forget it.”

  “Captain says to let you go. For now. But you stay right here in town, Drum. We’ll want you for the inquest. That clear? That God-damn clear?”

  “Yes. And you tell the captain something for me. Tell him I like a man with rocks in his head.”

  “Go on. Get out a here.”

  “Tsk, tsk. You’re not even telling me to keep my big nose out of the case.”

  “You’
ll push me too far, Drum.”

  Maybe he had something there. I lit a cigarette and offered him one. He surprised me by taking it. He got out of there before I did. I went over to the desk and tapped the magazine and told the attendant, “Don’t believe a word of it.”

  The tail was pretty good, as tails go. He was as unobtrusive as a freckle on a redheaded Irishman’s face, unless you were looking for him. I was looking for him. He was a smallish, hatless, nondescript man in a gray overcoat. He picked me up outside Bellevue and tagged along about a block behind me on First Avenue. He was a gray man, the kind whose face you never remember, the kind that helps fill up a crowd on any city street. I got into a cab. When I looked out the rear window, he was gone. But another cab was following mine.

  I called the F.B.I. field office from my room at the Commodore, wondering how long it would take the tail to convince the folks downstairs he could plug into my phone conversations. It was Pappy Piersall himself who answered the call.

  “F.B.I. Piersall.”

  “Chet, Pappy. He call?”

  “He called all right.”

  “Why so unhappy?”

  “On account of I did some G-twoing for you, Chestah.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Fellow called up, asking for Drum. I said you were out in the field. He wanted to know what the Bureau wanted with the second officer of a banana line freighter. I couldn’t say. You know the routine, obscurely mysterious. He didn’t fluster.”

  “So?”

  “He was cool. Too cool, Chestah. He’ll see you on his boat, any time tomorrow morning you can make it. Then I called a bucko I know over at the U.N. I asked him if he knew anything about Pablo Duarte of the Parana Republic. That was the name he gave. Pablo Duarte.”

  “And?”

  “My friend knew of him, all right. Pablo Duarte isn’t a ship’s second officer, Chestah. He’s a big shot in the Parana Republic Security Forces. That’s Secret Police to you. Better not show up, pal.”

  “Thanks, Pappy. For everything. But I’ll be there.”

  “I knew you’d say that,” he groaned.

  There was a very faint click in the earpiece. I looked at it, and smiled at the black perforations, and said, “Van Rijn was his last name. Rembrandt van Rijn. I’m willing to go as high as two hundred thousand. If you can’t get me any originals, what kind of art dealer are you?”

  “Huh?” Pappy said.

  “That’s what I thought,” I said, and hung up wondering what the gray little man would do with that one.

  The minutes plodded by like weary old war horses headed for the glue factory. I called up Room Service, liquid, and got some club soda to go with the bottle I already had. A couple of slow drinks and half a pack of cigarettes goosed the war horses along. At four-thirty it began to snow, and with the winter solstice only a few days off it was dark before five.

  The phone rang at five minutes after five. I jerked up the receiver on the first ring and Eulalia said, “Mr. Drum?”

  “Yeah. Don’t say a word. I’ll call you back. Phone under his name?”

  “Yes, but—”

  I hung up. I broke open my .357 Magnum and spun the cylinder. It smelled of oil and lack of use. I set the safety and slid a cartridge into the empty chamber under the hammer, giving me six shots to play with. I snorted. Probably I wouldn’t need any, but you never knew. I strapped on the shoulder holster and rammed the Magnum into it, then climbed into my jacket and my shoes and slung the tweed topper over my arm. Portrait of a predator in search of prey. Portrait of a working man trying to grub a buck. Not that I’d been offered any fees for this one.

  I walked across the lobby without looking once for the gray man. He would be there. He was paid to be there.

  Outside the snow came down in wind-whipped swirls and eddies. Men went by leaning into the wind and holding their hatbrims. Women with Christmas packages went by, covered to the ears except for their nyloned calves. I walked over to Grand Central and down to the lower level, letting myself get shoved around for a moment or two by the rush-hour crowds. Then I double-timed it over to the taxi ramp and got into a cab.

  “Penn Station,” I said in a loud voice. Then, as we got under way: “Make that Columbus Circle.”

  I stayed with the cab at Columbus Circle until I saw another one emptying. I switched and told the driver Bloomingdale’s. Ten minutes later I was drifting through the Christmas crowds on the main floor of that big store. I’d gone in the front entrance but came out the side. If the gray man was still sticking, he used adhesive tape.

  I looked up Rafael Caballero’s number in a phone book in a cigar store down the street, and dialed it. “Yes?” Eulalia said.

  “It’s Drum. They called you?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about the money?”

  “We’ve got it.”

  “I’ll be right over. Do me a favor?”

  “Sure. What?”

  “Lay off the bottle at least until I get there.”

  She was frank about it anyway. “I can’t, Mr. Drum,” she said, her voice rising. “I’m scared. Don’t you know what it’s like to be scared? I’m scared out of my wits.”

  I hung up and went outside looking for a taxi.

  It took half an hour to get there through the traffic. The snow was coming down heavily now through the wind and swirling like thick smoke along the street. In half an hour you can write your Congressman or bake a cake or see a new heavyweight champion of the world crowned or kill yourself in a dozen different ways, or get married, or get drunk.

  Eulalia Mistral got drunk.

  She came to the apartment door in stocking feet and the nubby tweed skirt and the cashmere sweater. Her eyes were very big and tried to look very wise and had some difficulty focusing. “Won’t you come right in, Mr. Drum?” she said gravely, and then flashed me a radiant smile.

  “Where’s Mrs. Caballero?” I asked as she closed the door behind me and leaned against it until it clicked shut.

  “I don’t like Mrs. Caballero,” she said. “She’s in the bedroom with a migraine headache. Want a drink?”

  “No thanks. I take it you’re no longer scared?”

  “I don’t like Mrs. Caballero,” she repeated, and led me into the living room.

  She plopped down on the sofa and her skirt rode up her thighs. She had splendid legs. “Please make me a drink,” she said.

  “I’ll make you black coffee.”

  “I don’t like Mrs. Caballero,” she said once more.

  “No? Then what do you like?”

  “Well, I like you. Do I have to call you Mr. Drum all my life? I’m free, white, way past twenty-one and darn dizzy.”

  “Call me Chet,” I said, and went into the kitchen. The door to the bedroom was closed. As I found the coffee pot and the coffee, I heard Eulalia humming. I put up some coffee and went back to the living room.

  “What kind of arrangements did they make?” I asked.

  “They checked to see we had the money. Frances answered the phone.” Eulalia tittered. “She almost fainted. They’re going to call again and tell us where. Right before we have to leave. What are you standing there like that for? That’s what I like about you. You’re so serious.”

  She stood up and straightened her skirt around. She wandered across the room in my direction and took my hand and went wandering back to the sofa with me. We both sat down. She took the pack of cigarettes from the breast pocket of my jacket and shook one loose and stuck it in her mouth. “Light,” she said, and I held a match up for her. She blew it out without getting a light. She took the cigarette out of her mouth and dropped it and smiled dreamily at me. “You’re nice,” she said. “I like you.”

  “You’re drunk.”

  “Frances warned you I was a drunkard.”

  I snorted to show my cool, scornful disdain. You could either snort or dive in, I thought, and the water wouldn’t be cold. But the girl was drunk. Her face swam in front of mine and her tongue dar
ted over her lips, wetting them. She leaned forward and her lips went out of focus and she blew in my ear.

  “Doesn’t it tickle?” she said.

  I sighed. I got up and went into the kitchen. The coffee wasn’t ready yet. I came back into the living room. She had made herself a drink. It looked dark enough to be almost straight and big enough to quench a platoon’s thirst. I reached for it. The liquor sloshed in the glass. She wouldn’t let go of it. She reached up with her other hand to try and push me away. I grabbed her wrist and told her to take it easy.

  “Now I’ve got you,” she said.

  I was holding the liquor glass in one hand and her wrist in the other. She swayed toward me and kissed me. I let go of her wrist. Her arm came up around my neck. She pulled herself close against me. She did not snuggle there. She pressed, desperately. To the eye she looked like soft rounded curves. To the touch she was tight as a drumhead.

  We went back to the sofa. She didn’t have to coax me this time. I sat down and she came down across my lap. Her skirt rode up above the rolled tops of her nylons. She squirmed her torso sideways and flattened her breasts against me. I moved her hair with my hand and kissed the back of her neck.

  There was a hissing sound, as of water boiling over on a hot electric plate. That’s exactly what it was, water boiling over on a hot electric plate.

  “There goes the damn coffee,” I said, getting up. She fell off the sofa.

  I went into the kitchen and came back with what was left of the coffee. She was sitting on the floor against the sofa. She was shaking.

  “I’m cold,” she said. Her lips were trembling. “I’m so cold.”

  I held the coffee to her lips. She sipped it, her teeth chattering. “I always get cold like this when it’s time to stop drinking,” she said.

  “It sure as hell is time to stop drinking.”