by Henry, Kane,
He said yes dejectedly.
I said, “Come on into the bedroom with me and listen.”
The phone was in the bedroom and he sat on the big bed and listened while I called Frank Higgins and got Frank out of sweet sleep and into his pants and told him to get his car and collect Alice Hilliad and to come out here and be an escort for a little guy Wesley Gorin, and that he and Alice were to stay with him from there on in.
I said good night to a very frazzled Mr. Gorin and wished him luck in his snooping and I got the hell out of there.
14
WHEN YOU can’t sleep, you can’t sleep.
I got up off the bed and took my clothes off and took a hot shower and a cold shower and got into pajamas and I was hungry. I made coffee and had it with American cheese and stale pumpernickel and salt butter. I cleaned up those dishes and some that were still in the sink and I went into the living room.
I was reaching for a magazine, dizzily, when I remembered Curtis’ suitcase. I got it and lugged it to the desk.
I had several hundreds of letters and policies and pamphlets and poetry and eleven diaries (all begun and none finished) and four snapshot albums.
I gave the letters a fast job and poked through the policies and the pamphlets and the poetry and I riffled through the albums and I stopped now and then at some arresting bathing suit study and then I threw all the stuff back into the bag and made a note for a boy to pick it up and deliver it and I went to bed again.
Now I was sleepy, but I couldn’t sleep.
I got out and went to the kitchen and checked the jets. Off. I tried the door. Locked. I looked at the shower. No drip. I looked in the bowl. Flushed.
I went back to bed — and I ripped the covers off and tore out of there faster than a two-bit Romeo in a bawdy house who thinks he hears the screech of his wife downstairs. Barefooted, I got to my desk and grabbed a magnifying glass from the bottom drawer. I got to work on the lock of the suitcase and threw back the cover and dug in for one of the albums and got it. I sat on the floor and opened it and ran through it until I got to a large photograph of a very shapely stranger in a white bathing suit that looked like no bathing suit, and next to this lovely, who looked as nude as false teeth in a clean glass of water, was a picture of Mrs. Rochelle Pratt Curtis and a man.
There, scowling up at me and looking like he’d much rather be at the other end of the picture by the side of the lush tomato in white, was Mr. Andrew Grant.
I crept out of the bed that I had hardly warmed and my head felt large and numb. I wrapped it in a cold towel and I swallowed two aspirin tablets and I called the office and the severe tones of Miss Foxworth did me no good at all.
“Foxy, if you please, I want none of your lip. I want no conversation. I want Mike Maine. I want him to come over to my place and I want him right away. And send a boy over too. Good-by.”
The numbness began to throb and the throbbing brought heavy shooting pains and I changed my turban for a wetter, colder one. I sat down in a hard chair in the kitchen. I looked at the wallpaper.
Finally the bell rang. My visitors looked at me sadly.
“Come in,” I croaked. “Stop standing there.”
They came in and I let the door close with a bang and I jumped. Mike Maine took his big grin and sat down with it. The boy shifted feet nervously. The boy said, “It’s warm out.”
“Quite,” I said. “I got bells in my head.”
The boy looked like he wanted to cry and I was sorry and I said it. “I’m sorry, son. The boss ain’t crazy like a Turk, despite the helmet. Only drunk and disorderly and this is tomorrow morning. Object lesson.
“Son, close that satchel, please. I can’t bend down.” I pointed to it. “Deliver it to Mr. Blair Curtis at Curtis Wilde on Fifth Avenue and Fifty-seventh.” I tossed the album to Mike. “You look at pictures.”
I folded up on the couch and stuck my head in a corner where it was dark and deep.
The boy said, “Bye, sir,” and closed the door carefully.
Mike Maine said, “How about some coffee?”
I turned around. “I don’t think I could hold anything yet. Thanks, Mike.”
“Can you talk?”
“My head’s down.”
“Fine.”
“Stop being sympathetic. You have your breakfast yet?”
“Juice and coffee.”
“Well, you go ahead and knock up a couple of eggs. I’ll doze.”
Mike was big and handsome and smiling and fifty years old. His eyes were blue and pleasant and had that benign, slightly faded look of the hard drinking man and his hair was sandy and his clothes were tweed and baggy and his face was square. Everybody liked Mike.
I dozed and I awoke and I shuddered and I went to the kitchen.
“Make enough coffee, Mike?”
“Sure thing.”
“I feel much better.”
“Sure thing. I’ll scramble you an egg. And have some toast and coffee, lots of coffee, and that’s all. You start loading heavy, and you’ll unload just as fast. Ask me. I’ve been drunk in every state in the Union except Utah, and I’ve never been in Utah.”
“Thanks, Mike.”
He went out and came back with the album. “I’ve looked at pictures.” He gave me the album. “Now you look at pictures.” He went to work at the gas range. He asked: “What’s with pictures?”
“Know a guy named Andrew Grant?”
“Yep.”
“Know him personally?”
“Nope. Just seen him around.”
“I was going to show you his picture. You sure you know him?”
Mike turned around and showed me his mild blue eyes. “I said it, didn’t I?”
“All right, all right, you said it. He’s your bird. I want you on him tight and I want you on him all the way. He gets your full attention. It’s important. No drinking. No nothing. Just Grant. You’re not going to get much sleep. You’ll be his tail all his waking hours and only when he goes to sleep and you know he goes to sleep, you can knock off for shut-eye. And then your Missus goes on our payroll again because when you sleep she stays with it, just in case, and you’re not far away, and when he’s out again, you’re after him. It’ll be a sixteen-hour grind, regular. I can depend on you.”
Mike scrambled eggs. “Special treatment for a special guy. Anything special I’m looking for?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know what I want myself. Just get as close as you can and stay with it. But be smart. This guy’s smart.”
“He’ll never know I’m alive. When?”
“Now. Make your arrangements. Locate him. And stay with him.”
Mike served the egg and the toast and the coffee. “Here’s breakfast, buddy, and so long.”
Mike banged the door, and the phone began to ring. It was Blair Curtis.
“The phone call is to acknowledge receipt of the valise,” he said.
“Thank you.”
“Did it help any?”
“I think it did.”
“You think it did?”
“Yes, sir. I think so.”
“That all?” “That’s right.”
“You’re a reticent man, Mr. Chambers.”
“I work that way, sir. By the way, I should have mentioned it to you last night, we can cross Xavier Hoy Ginsburg off our list.”
“Yes?”
“He’s dead. I found him at that 6 Boughage Road place. Shot. Dead a couple of months.”
“Xavier, too,” he said slowly. His voice dribbled off.
“Thanks for calling,” I said. “I’ll be in touch with you.”
I showered and I shaved and I had my pants on and my shoes and my socks when the bell rang again; and my visitor was Ed Holly with his face as white as a lily cup and his lips sucked in like grandpa without his store teeth and his eyes were frightfully carefree. Ed Holly had taken the day off from his nice job and he had a big fist full of nasty black gun which he shoved into my belly and his eyes got happier
and I was scared blue and I jammed both hands down on the gun with all my strength just as it went off. I got a slightly burnt finger and my foyer floor got shot and what happened to Grandma Ed Holly shouldn’t happen to an obscene traffic cop with scribbler’s itch.
I blasted my knee into his groin. He screamed and bent over and writhed and I borrowed his gun and I hammered him with the flat of it across the side of the face and I kept at it. Part of his ear ripped down and his left eye split open and blood was over the gun and over my hand and I kept at it, with my left hand stuck inside his shirt collar holding him up, until that side of his face was open and purple and pulpy and white bone of the cheek was exposed. He fainted and I let go and he shriveled down to the floor.
I stood over him with tears biting at my eyes and I tried to keep my mouth from squirming and I was shaking like a well-tapped tuning fork.
I don’t like a gun in my stomach and I like it much less in conjunction with happy eyes. I don’t like a hop-head gunning for me. I don’t like an intense idea, smoking hot, whirling in a lopsided brain. That’s strictly killing, and there is no out, and if he’s close enough, you are dead — unless you recognize the happy eyes and you’re very quick and very lucky. If you stop to talk with the guy; practically, if you stop to think, if you just don’t understand it all at once, if you stop to reason — you’re dead, dead, dead.
I turned him over.
I didn’t like the wax-doll look of him and I didn’t like the way he was breathing. I washed my hands and used the phone and called downstairs to the street-floor apartment wihich was the co-operative office for three doctors and I got young Ben Silver.
“Come up right away, Doc,” I said. “It’s an emergency.”
He was up with his little bag within three minutes and he got on one knee over Holly and lifted his eyelids and he looked back up at me and said, “Not good,” and he proceeded to stick needles into his arm and listen to his heart. Then he looked up again and smiled a little and shook his head. Then he started stitching Holly’s face. He had him stretched out flat on the carpet and pretty soon the snorting gurgle was just regular breathing and his face was crazy-quilted with adhesive and he smelled like a hospital.
Doc Silver got up and wiped his face and he said, “You did a job there, Chambers.”
We lifted him onto the couch and he sat loosely and dozed, kind of, and the doc and myself smoked a few cigarettes. Presently, Holly opened his eyes and they weren’t happy any more. I went over and took the shoulder holster off him and put it on the table with the gun. Then I went back and put my left hand under his chin and lifted his face.
“Talk, crumb, and talk fast.”
He shook his head and Doc saw my right hand ball up.
Reflectively Doc drawled, “You’ll kill him. He’s in bad shape, you know.”
“The hell with him,” I said, but I let go his chin and walked away and sat down.
“Does he understand me?” I asked Doc.
“Oh, yes.”
Very distinctly I said, “All right, Grandma, listen. You were sent here and I know who sent you. Don’t let him send you again. Do you understand that?”
He shook his head, this time he shook it yes.
“Next time,” I assured him, “if there ever is a next time, I won’t stop. So help me. I’ll keep at it till you’re finished. Do you understand that too?”
He shook his head again.
“You’re no torpedo. You’re a fancy dan. You got yourself all hopped up because he told you it was important and that you had to act fast and that I was getting wise to a few beans and that I was liable to spill them, and even the few I had collected wouldn’t do you guys any good if I spilled. So you went out to do it, and since it’s not your line, you smoked a few for courage. How am I doing?”
He didn’t even move his head.
Doc said, “Wonderful, wonderful. I hang on your every word. This is better than the movies.”
Then I improvised: “Be a good boy, Holly, and maybe I’ll get you out from under. I don’t want you near me any more. You know there are a couple of things I can talk about to people which would make it lousy for you.”
I talked big and I sounded like a cop and Doc wasn’t the only one on whom I was making an impression, and I knew that I had one leech less to worry about.
“Understand?”
He shook his head yes.
“Now get out of here. Can he make it, Doc?”
“He’ll need help. I’ll see him home.”
“Thanks for everything. Send me the bill.”
Doc got him up and got him out and I put his .45 into the holster and put that away and undressed and took another shower and dressed again and called Wesley Gorin and made an appointment to meet him in an hour.
15
WE HAD spring again that early afternoon, with a fine fresh breeze. I hardly noticed it. I had things to do.
I went to the bank with three thousand dollars, and a packet of green notes sealed in a white envelope and a letter of instructions.
I took a cab to Longchamps to meet Gorin.
I went to the pretty brunette to the left of the door and checked my hat. I stood there and looked across the room at all the tables for Gorin. He wasn’t there. I took a sliver of chopped liver on white bread from a canapé table and went to the bar. I hooked up on a tall thin chromium-legged chair with a red leather top and I ordered a Manhattan and I smiled at the merry bartender and he immediately talked about the beautiful spring day and what about the Giants this year.
I saw Gorin come in and check his hat.
He wore a dark suit and a crisp white shirt and a dark tie with a pearl stickpin. He was a distinguished looking little gent. He had the patch off his eye and the little scar hardly showed. He saw me and he waved, tentatively.
I got off the stool and we shook hands.
“Drink?” I asked.
“Yes, please. A Scotch Manhattan. Rob Roy.”
“Let’s get a table.”
“Surely.”
I paid for my drinks and I took my Manhattan with me and we found a quiet booth on the Fifty-ninth Street side. He had a couple of Rob Roys.
“Okay,” I said.
He didn’t say anything. He took out a cigar and bit off one end carefully and lit it carefully.
“Well?” I said.
“What do you want?”
“I want information. I want information on three subjects. All different. Subject one — I’d like to know, at long last, first hand, what happened the night Mrs. Curtis was killed.”
He picked a lump of sugar out of the sugar bowl and looked at it and turned it over and put it back. “Well, that night Larry White brought you over to our table at the Club Nevada, that night, uh, well, I was Mrs. Curtis’ escort. That is, uh, despite the fact that Mr. Curtis — ”
“I know. Skip the footnotes.”
“She was bored. She and I left the Nevada together. We intended to visit a little club in Harlem. When we got outside, the weather had turned cold and damp. She was wearing a fox jacket. She wanted to change to a full-length fur coat. We took a cab to her apartment house. I paid the cabbie and dismissed him.”
“Why?”
“He had taken us to our destination. I dismissed him.”
“Not good, little man. You had a cab. She wanted to change furs. You folks wanted to continue up to Harlem. So you dismiss the cab. Not good.”
He reached over and he pulled the Rob Roy to him and he sipped and smacked his lips and he looked at me with a childlike abashed expression written amongst the many lines of his pale face. “Well, I thought … well, I hoped perhaps the Harlem junket might be abandoned. I thought, perhaps, while we changed coats upstairs, we might have a few drinks. It was not my intention — ”
“That’s all, brother. So you dismissed the cab. You don’t have to draw diagrams for me.”
“Yes. Rochelle, however, was set on Harlem. She took the doorman with her and gave him her jacket and keys
and asked him to make the exchange while she waited in the lobby. Naturally, I began to look about for another taxi. I saw one parked a little way up the block. I waved to it. I didn’t know it was occupied. It pulled up to me. Someone got out. And that was all I knew. That was when I was struck.”
I dug in and picked the cherry out of my Manhattan and ate it. I said, “Yes, that is about when I came along. I saw you go down and I saw her come tearing out. They must have thought that you’d seen her home and wanted a cab for yourself to take you home. She came tearing out and shoved the guy that hit you and he went overboard. That was Joe Pineapple, by the way. Then she must have figured that she’d done enough for the cause and washed her hands of it. Or maybe she became frightened. Anyway, she dives for the cab. She wants to get the hell out of there. Then she yaps out loud when she sees who is still in the cab. She turns to run, and the other guy, Pineapple, reaches an ankle and trips her up, and the big guy gets out of the cab and lets her have it. That completes the story.”
I watched him shudder a couple of times and I said, “Subject two. What about Pineapple?”
He said nothing. His pale face went a few notches paler and it looked like a mask of gutta-percha with eyes and a cigar and seams.
“All right,” I said. “I’m in condition. I’ll tell you. Al Warmy and Joe Pineapple and another guy, a long time back, pulled a nice bunch of after-dark stick-ups, post-night-club affairs, and you were finger man. Pineapple is smart and he sticks his pinky in your ear. You’ve been paying him, not too much, not enough to keep him set up like he was in Brooklyn, but enough to keep you respectable, and he’s respectable and everybody’s respectable. That’s all. Would you like to say something?”
“No.”
“Anyone else paying him?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Want to add anything to my recital?”
“No.”
“Then why in all blazes does Joe Pineapple crack down on the hand that’s shelling out to him? At least, on one of the hands.”
“I don’t know, I tell you. This is the first time I’ve heard that it was Joe Pineapple that struck me. And I don’t know whether you have the correct information or whether you’re just playing with me for reasons of your own.”
