by Henry, Kane,
I settled the chair back on its four legs with a bang. “And that’s your figure.”
“That’s my figure and it could be a hundred percent. I could be all wet, too, but I don’t think so. Anyway, take it from me, the word gets around and Andy boy has a new-style client. He squeezes the life out of them and nobody squawks on nobody, because it’s murder all around the mulberry bush.”
I said, “Where’s the weakness? You’ve got a head for these matters. What’s your figure there?”
“No figure.”
I got up and walked behind my chair and put my forearms on it and leaned over. “Can you tip me to anything? Is there anyone that may have been connected in any way on any job with this man?”
“Nobody I know of.”
“Is there anyone that might know?”
“Nope. It’s just like I told you. There’s a word around this town, but it’s ghost word. Maybe he’s got his boys scared proper. Maybe he picks his men perfect. Right man here, right man there. Clean setup. Perfect organization. Maybe he hides them out himself. Or maybe he sets them up in business and us guys don’t even know them, only for legits.”
“Yes,” I protested, “yes. But how sure are you about this top of the mountain stuff?”
“I’m sure. I wish I wasn’t so sure. I don’t like magic.” I got my hat. “Okay, Augie. Thanks.”
“Do I get paid?”
“A thousand bucks for information that borders on clairvoyance, and two hundred clams bonus for figuring nothing. Sucker is the word.”
“No one is a sucker what says he’s a sucker, sucker.”
“I’ll mail you a check. Mostly for good will. And look out for me the next time you come around with a matter you want checked.”
“Fine.”
“Bye, Augie.”
“Bye, Petie. And Petie, I wouldn’t cross that guy if I was you. And if I did, then I’d stick with crowds and walk on the outside of the sidewalk and steer clear of dark streets.”
“For how much?”
“For free. We don’t charge for advice. Only for information, with a bonus for figuring.” He grinned slyly.
I said, “So long, Augie.”
“Take care of yourself,” Augie said.
I went down the steps gingerly.
18
I WALKED several blocks and I flagged a cab and the door on the other side opened and Professor Eric Gorin presented himself — with a gun.
“Tell him to take you home,” the Professor said.
“Fifty-ninth Street and Sixth Avenue,” I said to the driver, and to Eric Gorin: “What’s eating you?”
“I’d like to talk with you.”
“Does it have to be with that thing poking into me?”
The Professor said yes.
“What the hell is this?” I inquired.
Eric said, “I’ve been following you all day.”
“Why?” I posed. “Why does a botanist take a day off and tail me? I’m no walking shrub and there are no lichen fungi draped around me.”
“Very funny, Mr. Chambers.”
“I think,” I said, “I’m just not cut out for coming through with timely cracks.”
Hesitatingly he said, “I don’t know exactly why I’ve been following you. I thought perhaps, somehow, you would lead me to something I want.”
“What, such as?”
“My notes.”
“Notes?” I said, pleasantly.
“I am sure you have them. You knew about Xavier. Before the newspapers. And I know that you are a detective, although I cannot understand who hired you. He had no relatives. He had no friends who would give a damn. Nobody could have missed him.”
“Let us be orderly, Professor. You know I’m a detective. How?”
“Very poor, for a detective. You are not an unknown figure in this town. After the night you told your joke, I simply inquired.”
“Need you be quite so vehement, Professor? The point of that pistol hurts.”
The pressure eased.
“And because I’m sensitive,” I said, “I shall, if you please, demonstrate that I’m not so poor a detective. For instance, how would I know that the pistol that you insist upon driving through me is a Luger?”
I heard him gasp.
“Simply, Professor, because a Luger fires a jacketed bullet of small bore at tremendous velocity and it penetrates cleanly and causes only a tiny perforation, with very little bleeding, and generally, if the range is close, it passes right through the tissues of the target.”
I stopped and I let it sink in and then I said: “And I examined Mr. Xavier Hoy Ginsburg and it is my guess that he got it from a Luger, and since you’re a botany professor and not a sharpshooter, you don’t figure to have more than one gun, which should be the one now practically piercing me, and that, then, is a Luger. And I’m not guessing any more, because you’re shaking like a well-heckled master of ceremonies, and the gun is beginning to tickle. Put it away, will you, and how’m I doing for a lousy detective, Professor?”
“Fifty-ninth and Sixth,” the driver said, unimpressed.
I paid, while the Professor stood alongside, his gun hand in the pocket of his blue raglan topcoat.
I withdrew the key and I opened the door wide and I bowed to Professor Gorin’s “Please,” and went in ahead of him, and I spun around.
It was an elementary operation, really; the Professor’s vocation being, after all, botany, not gun-toting. I took hold of one flap of the unbuttoned coat and shoved the opposite shoulder hard and, as the Professor whirled half around, I grasped the other flap of the coat and poked him sharply in the behind with my knee, and turned him around again and holding the flaps together with one hand (while the good Professor’s right hand joggled helplessly albeit spiritedly in the trap of coat and pocket) I smote him one on the chin, not too trenchantly, and carried him to the couch.
When he came to, the Professor sat up and rubbed his chin.
I said, “Drink?”
Eric Gorin said, “Please.”
I brought him rye and he took it in a gulp and I took the glass back. I said, “It’s much more chummy this way. I took the liberty of removing your hat and coat and gun. Luger, all right, isn’t it? A pretty fair piece of work, my speech in the cab, if you should ask me.”
“May I have my notes? Please?”
I joined him on the sofa. “Professor, you’re getting monotonous. No. You may not have your notes.”
“Why, for heaven’s sake?”
“Because an accessory after the fact is one who aids or abets or climbs into bed with the perpetrator of a felony after he’s gone and perpetrated it. It’s a crime, serious and punishable. I don’t go for that.”
“Were you retained in this matter?”
“No. I stumbled in on Xavier in the course of an entirely independent investigation.”
He got up and marched up and back on the carpet with little steps. Then he sat down in a love seat opposite me and rested the nape of his neck and rolled his eyes up to the ceiling.
“And my notes?” he whispered.
“I gave you a break. They’re in my bank in an anonymous envelope addressed to Police Headquarters, with instructions that it be mailed thirty days from today. I’ve stuck my chin out as is, for no reason. Holding out evidence for thirty days is not exactly what my friend Lieutenant Parker would call cricket.”
The Professor let loose a rattling sigh that was half wail, half rasp.
I said, “Frankly, it’s none of my business. It’s your headache, strictly. You gambled, you went overboard, you went into hock to Xavier for thirty-two thousand, and then you went gunning for him to get your notes back.”
“Not exactly — ”
“I don’t care. He outfoxed you. He had them in a strongbox and he dropped it out of the window before your Luger dropped him. That’s why you turned the house upside down and couldn’t find them. You’ve got a problem, Professor. You’ve also got thirty days.”
I brought him his hat and coat.
The Professor with the problem stood up, hesitated, put his things on, and, reluctantly, he went away.
I cleaned up after Eric Gorin.
I took his gun and put it in the dresser drawer beside Holly’s Colt and holster.
I showered and I crawled into a yellow silk lounging robe. I fixed a short highball and I sprawled on the couch and I tried to rest and I wondered if low tide was the result of last night’s champagne or today’s talks with Rafferty and Piazza and the Professor. I got up and I put some records on, nice soft symphonies, and they were as restful as a leaky faucet and I switched it off and the phone rang.
I looked at my wrist watch, it was five thirty. I lifted the receiver.
“Hello?”
“Guess who?”
“Oh,” I said soggily.
“Dorothy Brewster.”
“OH!”
“You’re fun,” she said. “And I’m in the midst of an adventure. I’d been expecting to hear from you. You could have called me. Silly me, thinking of you.”
“I’d been meaning to. What’s the adventure?”
“I talked the girls into a week end in the country. The girls and Edith Wilde. Then, when we got into the train, I changed my mind and I gave them the slip. For you. I’m calling from the station.”
“Do we have a date?” I blithered.
“Of course. In half an hour. Or less. Wherever you say.”
“Dinner?”
“Divine.”
“Good. Suppose we meet in the lobby of the Berkshire?”
“Half an hour?”
“Yep.”
“You’re sweet.”
We had cocktails in the Barberry Room and then we went to the Nevada for dinner.
I took a quick look around for Grant, who wasn’t there, and then I forgot him along with the brothers Gorin and Rafferty and Piazza and pale young men in pearl-gray hats. Dorothy was zestful and sparkling and exciting. She swept me out of the mopes, obliterating the vague melancholy that was in me.
She giggled: “… so I got off the train for a wee bit of shopping. Then I wired to them at the Maple House at Tarrytown and I had a message left that when I’d returned, the train had already left. There’s another at eleven o’clock tonight and no more until tomorrow morning. Just a wee bit of necessary shopping.”
The band played “The Beautiful Blue Danube” and we waltzed. I held her tightly.
“Do you think we can contrive, somehow, to have you miss that eleven o’clock special?” I asked.
She squeezed my hand.
Dinner was gay. We danced all through it, comfortably and close. We drank brandy from big Napoleon glasses. The music got hot. The place filled up, got warm and noisy.
“Peter,” she said, inhaling smoke through a long holder with a finger loop, “I’m beginning not to like it here. Can’t we go somewhere else where it is quieter?”
“Do you like Sibelius?”
“I adore Sibelius.”
“I have Sibelius in quantities on wax disks and I have a lovely fireplace and I have oil paintings that cost me mucho dinero and I have a book of pornographic studies dating back to the fifteenth century. No etchings. But I have Pernod.”
“Sibelius and Pernod. You are a wicked man.”
The phone shrilled in the blackness.
I got a bathrobe and I padded into the living room.
“Yes?”
“Pete?”
“Yes.”
“Parker. Can you come downtown?”
“Why?”
Parker said quickly, nervously, “I’ve got lousy news.”
“Who?” I asked. I felt sweat on my forehead.
“Mike Maine.”
“Oh, Christ. Jesus Christ.”
“I know. I thought I’d better call you myself.”
“What time is it, Louis?”
“About half past nine.”
“What happened?”
“They found him in Central Park. Bullet in the back of the head. He ain’t been — uh — gone more than an hour.”
“I’ll be down right away. Soon as I can. Did you contact his Missus?”
“Yeah. She’s on her way.”
I said, “Mike. Mike Maine.”
“I know how it is,” Parker said. “I’m sorry as hell.”
I hung up and I stood limp in the darkness. Mike. I switched on the lights. Dorothy came into the living room.
“What is it, Peter?”
“I’ve got to go. I’m sorry. You’ll make that eleven o’clock special, after all.”
The phone jangled again. I lifted it.
“Frank, boss. Frank Higgins. I’m calling from Gorin’s place. The little guy got knocked off. Just now.”
I put the receiver down slowly.
I said, “God damn hell.”
I looked at my watch. It was nine thirty-five.
19
IN THE taxicab, I thought: the little guy, what damn little guy? There were two little guys. When Frank called, I’d thought only of Wesley Gorin, Wesley who was fey, Wesley whom I wanted alive, Wesley whom I needed. But Frank Higgins and Alice Hilliad knew their ropes and when Wesley was home, each of them would sentinel one door; one of them would take the front entrance and the other the servants’ entrance outside the garden. Maybe it wasn’t Wesley at all.
The taxi stopped.
The dead man was Eric Gorin, shot through the heart and supine on the thick rug in the drawing room. Wesley Gorin was there, but in pajamas and bathrobe, and Brewster, also in night dress.
Higgins said: “I’m glad you’re here, boss.”
Brewster started to talk. I held my hand up.
I said, “What’s this all about?”
Brewster started again, and I stopped him.
“I’m asking you,” I said to Higgins.
Higgins scraped a hand across his chin. “It’s about half past nine and I’m hanging around the back door and Alice is in front. I hear a shot. First I thought it was backfire or something. But I didn’t like it. I went around front. Alice had heard it too. We talked about it. We decided to go in. We tried the door. The door was open.”
“How long between the shot and when you decided to go in?”
“Couple of minutes.”
“Well?”
“The guy was spread out. Like now. This guy,” he pointed at Brewster, “was down here looking at him.”
“Hear anything else? See anything?”
“No,” Alice put in, “except it’s funny we didn’t have to use the knocker. The door was unlocked, and when we checked the back door, that was unlocked too.”
I looked at Wesley Gorin. “How about that?”
“Impossible. The doors were locked.”
I said to Gorin, “Could anyone have sneaked in here during the day and waited around?”
“Of course not. The doors were locked and no one can get in through the windows without attracting attention.”
“How about this evening?”
“We’ve been home since early this afternoon.”
Higgins said, “That’s right, boss.”
“Now use your bean, Frank. Could anyone have got in here while you two were posted at the doors? While those doors were unlocked? And who the hell unlocked them? Did either of you two leave for anything at any time?”
“No,” Higgins said, “but there’s a possibility. First, naturally, we weren’t parked smack on the doors. Second, toward evening, it gets pretty dark outside. Third, if someone fixed it so they knew the doors were unlocked and they waited for just the right moment and moved fast, there is the possibility they could sneak through. Otherwise, I’d say there was no possibility. No one could fumble around with key and lock and get away with it.”
“And when you went around to the front to talk to Alice,” I said, “anyone in here could have slipped out through that back door.”
I looked at the little Professor who had no more problems. I bent over
him and opened his jacket. Blood had spread on a white shirt.
I stood up. “Let’s go through the house. There’s an off-chance maybe somebody’s still around.”
“We’ve done that, boss,” Higgins said. “Nobody’s here.”
“Where’s the rest of this household?”
Gorin said thickly: “The women are away for the week end. We gave Alfred a week-end vacation at the same time. There was no one here tonight but the three of us. At about nine thirty I took a book and went to bed. Brewster went up with me. Eric stayed down here.”
“Yes,” Brewster said. “I was tired and went to sleep. Eric had a new botany treatise, just published, and expressed gratitude that we two were retiring, so that he could sit here and read it undisturbed.”
Gorin said, “I heard nothing. I didn’t hear the shot. But that isn’t unusual. I’m a very heavy sleeper.”
Brewster bit at a fingernail. “I heard it. I put on my light and went out to check. I looked in on Wesley. He was snoring. I looked in Eric’s room. He wasn’t there. I went downstairs immediately and saw him on the floor,” he put his hands to his face — ”like that. I didn’t have time to touch him before this lady and gentleman burst in and took charge. I awakened Wesley and you know the rest.”
I lit a cigarette. I said, “All right, I’ve got most of it, I guess. Frank and Alice, back outside, please. No one comes in here. Understand? I’ll see you later.”
Higgins and Alice Hilliad went, Higgins through the garden and Alice to the front.
