Martinis and Murder (Prologue Books)

by Henry, Kane,

  “Yeah,” I commiserated.

  “Where’d you get the eye?”

  “Don’t be banal, Matty.”

  Matty handed me a cigarette and took one for himself and lit them with a little gold lighter. “Listen, cutepuss, you and me have got some words to say. Come up to the office. They’ll keep that fat cow on the floor for an hour yet. We can’t talk here.”

  I swallowed some ginger ale. “That’s no fat cow, my connoisseur. That’s all hard beef. Massive, but perfectly proportioned. Beautifully proportioned and a beautiful face. Just large. That hunk of woman is all right.”

  “Now he gives with connoisseur. Petie with the words. You want a fix, pally?”

  I flicked at my mustache. I flicked at mustaches in moments of indecision. I grinned.

  “Too big, I think,” I said.

  “A fine man,” Matty jeered.

  The office was roomy, it was barnlike. It had four wide leather sofas, one at each wall. In the middle was a square bare desk with a green blotter and a photograph of an old woman, and four telephones. I’d been in Matty’s office before, which I demonstrated by walking quickly and accurately to a cabinet and extracting a bottle of rye and a glass and a bottle of seltzer. I settled on one of the sofas and I watched Matty take his dinner jacket off and hang it carefully on the back of the chair behind the desk and then cross his knees on one of the other sofas.

  Matty Pineapple had thick black hair and black eyes and smooth blue-black jaws and many gold teeth. He was thick-set and short-necked, with round powerful shoulders. His face told you nothing, ever. Matty was rich and well connected politically and he had a nature as sweetly simple as one of those simple explanations about atomic bombs and things.

  “I want a little favor, Petie boy.”

  “Sure thing.”

  “You know a guy Andrew Grant?”

  I managed not to drop the bottle.

  Testily I said, “Don’t tell me some punk dropped a bundle in the back room and paid off in notes and you want me to check on him. That’s for a credit bureau.”

  “Look, wise guy. I ask if you know a guy Andrew Grant. That’s all I ask. You know him?”

  “No.”

  Matty sighed. “You hear what happened to my brother?”

  “No,” I said conversationally and I had a drink on the house and another.

  “All right. Joe got bumped a couple of nights ago.”

  I lit a cigarette. “All right, so Joie got his. So he was in the rackets. So what do you expect him to die of? Senility?”

  Matty showed his gold teeth. “No, I didn’t. But Petie, I knew all about that boy. Maybe he figured to get it a long time ago. But he didn’t figure now. He was out of circulation. He was picking it up easy. He was clean as a whistle. Nobody was pointing for him now. That’s what gets me. It don’t figure.”

  “Wrong,” I said. “A guy like Joe always figures. He always leaves someone around that doesn’t like him.”

  He came over and used my glass and went back to his sofa. “Could be, Petie. But I know it don’t figure. I got ways of knowing. He gets it in a taxicab. Then the cab guy gets knocked off too. That don’t figure for no ride. Rides don’t come in taxicabs. I got one little angle. But it’s out of my line. Which is why I got a little job for my friend Petie. See?”

  “No.”

  “Well, damn it, listen, and answer when it makes sense.”

  I said nothing. I smoked.

  Matty said, “You ain’t never heard of Andy Grant?”

  “I didn’t say I never heard of him. I said I didn’t know him.”

  “Well, you ever hear of him?”

  “Sure.”

  Matty opened his collar and tie. “This Grant is a lawyer. Slick. Criminal lawyer for the boys. Well, that night, the night he got it, Joe ate dinner here at about five o’clock. He told me confidential he had to see this guy Grant in his office about seven o’clock. So I ask him if he’s got trouble and he needs a mouthpiece, how come he don’t tell his brother about his trouble, meaning me. So Joe laughs and says no trouble but the guy wants him, Joe, to do him a little favor. ‘Oh,’ I says.”

  “So what?”

  Matty pulled his legs up and crossed them under him on the couch. He shook a finger at me. “I call up this Grant. I ask him. ‘Sure,’ he says. ‘I heard about it. Too bad. Joe was a nice kid.’ So I says, ‘Did you see him that night?’ ‘Sure,’ he says. ‘He was in the office. He came over to talk about some trouble he had with a jane.’ ‘Thanks,’ I says. ‘Good-by.’”

  Matty got off the couch and got a glass of his own and poured and swallowed and sat down beside me.

  “Well?” I said.

  “Well, I wouldn’t swear which one was lying, but I was pretty sure of Joie. Still, I can’t figure it. This Grant is a big shot. Why should he lie? On the other hand, maybe because it’s a dame, Joie was lying. Then I remember something, and I don’t know how to add it up, so it’s time to see my friend Petie. Get it?”

  “No,” I said very mildly. “And what did you remember?”

  Matty took my cigarette and stepped on it and gave me a fresh one. “You remember Little Squirt Cole? Disappeared about six years ago? I saw him that same afternoon he pulled the Houdini. We went to his mother’s funeral. Then we had some drinks. He said he had an appointment with the counsel — that was Grant. I don’t know what for. Nobody ever saw him again.”

  I pinched my chin. I said, “That, friend Matthew, would not be jumping to conclusions. It would be leaping frantically. First, who says Little Squirt is dead. He pulled a powder as far as any of us know. But let’s assume he is. Just because two guys, six years apart, see a lawyer, the same lawyer as it happens, and then get taken care of that night; that, necessarily, doesn’t mean one damn thing.”

  “I didn’t say it did and I didn’t say it didn’t and I ain’t jumping to no conclusions. Conclusions is your department. That’s why I says to myself it’s time to see Petie with the brains. See?”

  “Thanks.”

  He got up and looked down at me and pointed a stubby finger. “It’s your package. This Grant is over my head. Too smart. If he’s got anything to do with it, I want you to find out. If he ain’t, well, so what did we lose?”

  “Time,” I said.

  “Don’t worry about time. I’m paying for that, brains.”

  I stood up and put the bottles back in the cabinet. “You know I don’t take fees from you, Matty. You’re my friend. You do me a favor, I do you a favor.”

  He went to his desk and pulled open a drawer. He counted off some money and brought it to me. “Here’s three G’s.”

  “But Matthew …”

  “It’s no fee. It’s expense money. It’s only you shouldn’t forget to check up a little for your friend for a favor. You’ll check?”

  I added the three bills to the one hundred and forty-two dollars I had in my wallet. “I’ll check.”

  “Swell.”

  “Where did Pal Joie lay up?”

  “Lived with me. Voted from there.”

  I took out the wallet. “Take back your money, sucker. I resign.”

  “Lived with me, I tell you.”

  I stepped on my cigarette. “Not Joie, he didn’t. He liked to spread himself. What’s the matter with you? Do you want me to check on this thing, or don’t you?”

  He buttoned his collar and started making up his tie. “I don’t like to hold out on you, but it’s because I’m the only one who knew where he holed up, and I promised him to clam. But what the hell, you’re right. He’s dead. And he gave me keys in case of emergency.”

  He went back to the desk and he pulled a drawer again and he took out a small key ring with two keys and he tossed it to me. “It’s in Brooklyn. Seven-thirteen Sutton Street, basement apartment.”

  I stuffed the wallet back in my pants and I put the keys in my jacket pocket. “I’ll let you know, Matty.”

  13

  IT WAS half past three o’clock in the mornin
g and I stood on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Eighth Street and flagged a taxi.

  “Sutton Street,” I said.

  “You mean Sutton Place.”

  “No, Sutton Street,” I said and I climbed in. “Sutton Street in Brooklyn.”

  “Sutton Street in Brooklyn?” the cabbie said grittingly. “It’s three thirty in the morning, bud, and I live in Yonkers.”

  “Sutton Street,” I said. “When do we go?”

  “What number Sutton Street?”

  “Seven-thirteen.”

  He turned and he looked at me hard but hopefully. “You got dough, Joe?”

  I took my wallet out and showed it to him and stuck my fingers in and separated some bills.

  “Dough, Joe. And the ones with the circles are G’s.”

  His voice got weedy. “You all right, Joe?”

  “Fine.”

  I put the wallet away and took out the little leather case with the buzzer and flashed it, quick.

  His voice got big again and flat.

  “Oh,” he said. “Bull.”

  Sutton Street at four thirty in the morning was as lonely and drab a street of dark double rows of short chunky cheerless twin houses as ever I had to peer at to see in all of my life.

  I paid the driver and gave him a big tip and he pulled away fast and there I stood alone on Sutton Street.

  I struck some matches and found number Seven-thirty-three on the fourth step of seven steps up. I walked along and counted off ten seven-step stairways and struck another match. No number. I went down three basement steps to the left of the stairway and turned right and ran flush up against an iron-door gate. I struck some more matches and poked around with the keys Matty had given me. No soap. No nothing. Wrong door.

  I went up the three steps and turned in the other direction and counted off twenty more identical seven-step stairways and struck a match. No number. I went down the three basement steps to the left of the stairway and turned right and did not run flush up against an iron-door gate. I put my hand out until I touched it. I went into my match routine, with keys. Soap.

  The door creaked.

  I was in a tomblike slanted enclosure underneath the seven-step stairway, with the iron-door gate behind me and a clean varnished door to my left. I shut the creaking gate and locked it and opened the varnished door and felt for a light switch and found one.

  Mr. Joe Pineapple had certainly done much more than a little bit of all right by himself.

  I was in as sweet a hideaway as you can imagine, cozy as an igloo. It was strictly interior decorator and one of the boys in the heavy goggles had done himself proud in this little slot in Brooklyn. It was mostly yellow; deep, rich, canary yellow and the carpet was coral and you could very comfortably curl up and go to sleep on it. The easy chairs were easy and many, and yellow got well married to faint blue in two smooth-skinned commodious sofas facing each other in front of a fireplace with all of the trimmings.

  Next was a toilet, in red and gold, and next was a bedroom that looked like it had been hacked out of a harem. Lavender. All lavender and no lace but plenty of swish stuff and a bed that could hold six animal trainers crossways, and a chest in dark walnut and a female dressing table, ditto.

  The toilet squared off on a small foyer and the door opposite was a kitchen, white, with all the equipment.

  I got some cold water in a glass out of the kitchen and went back to the living room and sat on the edge of a chair and drank it all, not too fast, and then I put the glass and my hat and coat on a table, and pulled down my tie and opened the top button of my shirt and I felt sharp and keen and important.

  I worked both rooms and the kitchen and the toilet, and I worked them thoroughly. Joe had thirty-two suits, in all, some old, some new, and six pairs of slacks and five odd jackets and three overcoats and four topcoats and he had handkerchiefs and linens and pajamas and underwear and shirts and ties and shoes and socks, but he just kind of didn’t have much else. In an old suit I found an unsigned letter dated nine years back which said, “I have been trying to get in touch with you for a week. Are you dead?” in a bold peculiar abnormally slanted backhand, but, by and large, Mr. Pineapple’s rooms delivered themselves of practically nothing that was interesting.

  I pocketed the letter, got dressed, and I stole a gorgeous hammered-silver cigarette lighter that I simply could not resist (nobody’d miss it) and I put the lights out, and I was about to open the door — when I heard the iron-door gate creak.

  My stomach lumped like I’d swallowed a blob of chew tobacco.

  I stood in the dark room in the angle behind the door and I waited, watching the beam of a flash visit in the room. I waited some more while the door closed slowly. Then I stopped waiting and I drew a deep breath and as the beam of light came up to me, I dove. I hit him full and he went over like an Indian club and the light went out and I lay all over him, but he didn’t move.

  I slid off him and felt for the flashlight and found it and used it and there, nice as you please and out like an errant husband, was Mr. Wesley Gorin.

  I felt him for artillery and he had none. I got up, put the lights back on, went to the kitchen and wet a dish towel with cold water and came back and dabbed at him until he opened his eyes. He looked at me with the blank and happy expression of a child awakening to a new day, and then his eyes fixed on me and started to focus and understanding came into them and anger, and he pushed himself up, first to one knee and then to the other, and finally he stood up and glared at me and trembled, and he looked about as sturdy as a strong blade of grass.

  “After all,” I said. “You scared me first.”

  He stood there and he shook.

  “What would you have done?” I inquired. “Would you open the door for the guy and bow and bid him welcome?”

  “Well,” he said. “Well, well, well …”

  “Sit down, Gorin. Take a deep breath, hold it, count fifteen and let it out. Do it a few times.”

  “What are you doing here?” he said.

  I yanked out my cigarettes and lit one and Gorin wasn’t the only one shaking. “I don’t belong here,” I said, “and neither do you, so don’t ask me what I’m doing here. Sit down, like I told you. Have a drink.” I pulled out a bottle of rye from my back pocket. “I’ll bring some water.”

  He took the bottle and brought it to the sofa and sat down. I brought water and he drank whiskey and he began to look a lot better.

  “Now, look here. Look here,” he said. “You don’t belong here.”

  “Relax, little man, or I’ll take my bottle away. That’s what I said. I don’t belong here and neither do you.”

  He looked meaningfully at the keys he still had, somehow, in his left hand.

  “It doesn’t mean a thing, Mr. Gorin. I’ve got keys too. Joe Pineapple was a pretty cautious cookie. He wouldn’t be giving any keys away to this joint. I’m not feeling too fit right now, I’m probably drunk, but even a drunk can surmise that you had those made at one time. Sneaked his keys and had copies made. Which brings me to another point. I was wrong about you. You’re fey, all right.”

  He took another bite out of my bottle and I took it away, there wasn’t much left.

  “Fey?” he uttered in a deep voice. “Phew!”

  “I don’t get you, pal.”

  “Nor I you. You’re either too fancy or too slangy. I don’t know what fey means.”

  I dragged at my cigarette and put it out. “There’s a word in our language, brother Gorin, which means marked for sudden violent death, and the word is fey. Check me, sometime, with a dictionary.”

  The shakes came back, just a little.

  “I don’t understand you.”

  I came over and sat next to him. “Look. The other night you got slugged. That could happen. Tonight you’re here on the prowl. That could happen too, but not to you. You and Pineapple are about as congruous as a Bowery bum and a Rolls-Royce. Add it up, and it’s a wrong number.”

  “Why are you here? Real
ly.”

  “Why not. I’m a private detective, in case you don’t know it, and part of my job is what happened to Mrs. Curtis a couple of nights back, and to you too, for that matter, and Joe Pineapple was one of the boys on that job and that’s what I’m doing here. I’m not asking you what you’re doing here. I’ve got ideas, but we’re not going to talk about them tonight. You’ll keep, if you are very careful. I’m worried about you.”

  “Why, for heaven’s sake?”

  “I don’t know why. But it’s more than a hunch. This sort of thing, Mr. Gorin, is my business. It adds up all crooked. Anybody follow you here?”

  “Oh, no. I’m sure of that.”

  “Somebody could be waiting for you when you get home.”

  He tried to sound casual, but he got green around the nostrils. “Why?”

  “Stop asking me that. You ought to know why. All I can do is guess. And if you don’t know why, that makes it even worse. Listen,” I said and I stood up, “I need you around and in good shape. We’ve got a lot of talking to do when I feel better. Suppose I put a couple of my people on you.”

  “People?”

  “Suppose I have a couple of my people keep an eye on you. That all right with you?”

  “Well,” he said, but he did look a little relieved, “I don’t know. I don’t quite understand.”

  I took his hands and pulled him up and glared down at him. “You don’t understand, don’t you? Our friend Pineapple was in the moo, well in the moo.”

  “Moo?” he said.

  “Slangy this time, not fancy. Moo for moolah, moolah for dough, dough for money. And he was getting some of it from you, and that’s what you’re doing here. To see if there’s anything around that connects you with him because you’ve heard or read that he got bumped and there’s bound to be investigation and you don’t want any part of it. All right. That’s for when we really talk. When I’m in condition. For right now, something snapped somewhere, whether you know it or not, and next time you’re going to collect more than a patch over your eye. And I want to prevent it. So have we got ourselves a game of ping-pong? Yes or no?”