by Henry, Kane,
She let it pass. She said, “You’ve been wonderful. I owe you a lot. I really do.”
“I’ll collect,” I said.
“Says you. When do we eat?”
“Don’t get brash, babe. I don’t want to spoil your appetite, but I wouldn’t say definitely that your divorce from Grant is final. He’s not exactly the type to be scared off quite that easily. So don’t get uppity with Big Brother. Not yet.”
I saw what it did to her face. I said, “I’m kidding. I’ll make it stick, my dove, my black dove.”
I smiled. “Order your lunch. I’m working.”
I opened the paper and found what I wanted. Over the rim of a cup of coffee I read it.
“CENTRAL PARK SCENE OF SECOND KILLING. Another murder was brought to light this morning in Central Park, not far from where the body of Michael Maine, private investigator, was discovered last night. Police early today found the body of a man shot through the heart, as yet, unidentified….”
“Unidentified,” I said. “Nuts. That guy must have had identification on him. What’s smart about the cops giving the newspaper boys no information for no reason?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Lolita said politely.
Two boys found the body, thought it was a drunk, called a policeman. The man was dead. That’s all there was.
About Mike Maine, there was more. There was a description and a short biography.
I got up. It was time to go.
Lolita put the bun down forcefully and looked up and shook her head. “I’ll never get to love this man,” she said. “Too darn jumping-jack.”
“Another time,” I said absently and I went away.
I forgot to pay the check.
Archibald Alexander’s finger was firmly fixed on the bell when I got home. Archie looked ashamed.
“I thought you were sleeping,” he admitted.
Archie was very tall and thin and soft-spoken with a tinge of southern accent. Archie was handsome in a loose slouching way and he had a beautiful blonde wife and he was a skillful snooper for Scoffol and Chambers.
Archie placed several newspapers on the desk.
“See the papers?” he questioned calmly.
“Yes.”
“I’m very angry about Mike. We’ve got to work on that right now.”
“Yes.”
“The early mo’ning papers had it. The Missus cried like hell. I cried too. God damn it — why Mike?”
Archie sat by the desk. He said, “The other guy in Central Park was Eric Gorin, spouse of one of the ladies you had me check on.”
“Now how do you know that? The papers said unidentified man.”
“I was down to Headquarters. For dope on Mike.” He wriggled a thin aggressive index finger. “They happened to mention this Eric Gorin and I happened to listen. Lieutenant Lyons was assigned to it. I got a theory.”
I liked it that it was Lyons. Lyons was brusque and tough and an indelicate inquisitor, but he was a stickler for law. He didn’t make arrests unless arrests were warranted. At least Gorin and Brewster wouldn’t wind up in the pokey.
“Theory?” I solicited.
“Gorin’s sudden take-off occurred last night, near ten o’clock. I got it from Lyons who got it from the medical examiner.”
“So?”
“So in the course of my checkin’,” — Archie almost sounded excited, — ”I have learned that one of the ladies, Mrs. Brewster, did not take the train with the other ladies to Tarrytown. She arrived there durin’ the night. I talked long distance with the hotel manager. He told me about how she had been on the train with the other ladies, but had managed not to come to Tarrytown with them, somehow. There was one other train, which she took, at eleven o’clock. That, suh, is oppo’tunity.”
“My, my,” I said.
“My, my; my eye,” Archie said. “I’m not done. I went down to Headquarters about Mike. Then I learn about Gorin. So I did me some real checkin’ at Headquarters on this Brewster lady who gets off trains. And she’s the Dorothy Brewster who killed a chap in a Chicago hotel back about six years. She married this Brewster a few months later. The guy’s old enough to be her father. She must have had her reasons. Anyway, about the Chicago business, she claimed the guy was an intruder. Chap turned out to be a society chap, liquored up. Rappaport in Chicago defended her. Was he intruder or invitee? Only Madame can truly profess. She was acquitted. That’s disposition.”
“My,” I said.
Archie ignored me. “I don’t have two and two for four square, but I’ve got one and a half and one and a half for a lopsided three. She could have slipped the train, kept a rendezvous, delivered lead, and made the train at eleven o’clock.”
“Your fanny’s out,” I contended, dispassionately.
Archie looked demurely down his nose. “Why, daddy?”
“Because the dainty Dorothy can furnish an alibi. She was in bed.”
“The dainty Dorothy was in bed,” Archie mimicked. “That’s a fine alibi. It’s a fine alibi for a bedbug. How would you know? Were you there?”
“Uh huh.”
Archie managed to look admiringly at his boss and demurely down his nose at the same time.
“Well,” he said. “Well, well.”
The bell rang.
Lieutenant Parker said, “Hi.”
“Hi,” I said.
I got off the couch. I looked at Archie. “That’s not all waste. That information about disposition is very interesting. Maybe there are angles. And from a personal viewpoint, I don’t like close friendships with trigger-fingered ladies. So stop looking like a lopsided three, and buck up, little pal.”
Archie brightened.
Parker took his hat and coat off. “What’s the double talk?”
“How about the rest of them, Archie?”
“Everyone clears, including the guy in Atlantic City.”
I went to the bar. I came back. “You may don your vestments, Lieutenant. We’re getting out of here.”
“I just came,” Parker said.
“I’m out of stuff. I’d like to buy you a drink.”
Parker looked at his watch, shrugged, and put his hat and coat on, and we went to the Game Cock and sat around a table in the back and Archie took Scotch and Parker and I took rye.
I turned to the Lieutenant. I said, “What about Mike?”
“Denis Gaffney stumbled over him. He put the light on and it was Mike. Bullet through the back of the head.”
“What else?”
“Nothing. Read about the other guy we found?”
“I’m not interested in the other guy.”
“Oh,” Parker said, “about Mike. There is something else. No clue, only funny. He was shot in the back but when Denis found him he was stretched out face up. His fresh cigar was sticking up out of his mouth, intact and unlit.”
“What cigar?” Archie said. “Mike didn’t smoke cigars.”
Parker looked at me. “That right?” he said softly.
“It’s right.”
“We found a pipe on him, and tobacco, all right. But I figured …” Parker ran his hand down the side of his face. “What the hell? Why do I get the crazy ones?”
Parker looked from Archie to me. “Who,” he demanded, “would want to give a free smoke to a stiff? Pardon me, I mean Mike. Why would anyone want to stick a smoke into a deceased? I mean Mike.”
“Cut it out,” Archie said. “Go do your homework somewhere else. And how about more stimulant, boss?”
Parker said, “You guys go too fast for me.”
I held up one finger to the waiter and pointed to Archie.
Parker got up. “Thanks for the drink. We didn’t get anywhere. You and I never do, Pete.”
“Don’t be silly,” I said. “What about that cigar?”
“What about it?”
“You know anything?”
“Sure. We check. Like everything else.”
“Was it long and flat and black? Imported kind?”
“Yeah. Hey!” — Parker sat down fast — ”Talk!”
I said, “Stop playing copper, Louis, like when I found Mrs. Curtis for you. It gets tiresome and I don’t feel well and there’s nobody here you’ve got to show off for. And when does my gun get back from Headquarters?”
“Any day now. What about that cigar, pally chum?”
“Nothing. I was guessing.”
“No one guesses that good. Talk, pally chum, or I take you in, and I goddamn mean it. I don’t fiddle around when it’s business.”
I said, “Look, Louis, pally chum, relax. It’s just another case to you. You know damn well what it means to me. I want to get whoever did that and I will, with or without the help of the Police Department. But there wouldn’t be any sense holding out if I knew anything that would really help.”
“Okay, Pete.” He put a tight hand on my shoulder. “But don’t let’s cross. Let’s team up on it.”
“Right.”
He got up again and he said, “So long, thanks,” and he went away.
Archie’s face showed a contracted lump on each side of his jaw. “What about that cigar?”
I gulped what was left of my rye.
“Well?” Archie demanded.
“That cigar represents a hideous indecent gesture of contempt.”
Archie looked blank.
In a peewee voice I said, “Contempt for me. There’s a certain guy and myself understand each other very clearly now. Don’t ask me any more, Archie. Let’s get out of here.”
Archie walked me back to the apartment. Outside, he said, “Take it easy, Pete. You don’t look so good. What with that disappearin’ shiner and a face like chalk, and you’re jumpy like you swallowed an eggbeater.”
“So long, Archie,” I said.
I went to a liquor store and got three fifths of rye and had a few drinks and I went to sleep on the sofa.
When the phone woke me, the room was dark. I took the thing off the hook and said hello.
“Peter? Edith.”
“Hello, beautiful.”
“I’ve been trying you for an hour, off and on.”
“Dead asleep. Can you cook?”
“No.”
“I’m hungry. I’ll pick up some cold cuts and potato salad and we’ll eat at your place. That all right?”
“If you like. But, Peter, get here quickly. I’m terribly upset about that … that…. We’ve only been back a short while. I want awfully to see you.”
“I’m on my way, sister.”
I got to the Broadmoor with a couple of big brown bags that mostly smelled of salami.
Edith took my bundles and took my hat and topcoat and put her arms around me and put a hot cheek against mine. I patted her shoulder.
“Take it easy, Red,” I said.
I went to the kitchen and opened a bottle of beer and filled two glasses and went back to the living room. Edith sat in a low chair, her long legs parallel and high in sheer black stockings, close together.
“Those,” I said, “are gams what are gams. Any whiskey in the house?”
She went to the kitchen and came back with a bottle and two pony glasses and she put them on the cocktail table and sat down again on the low chair. Smooth segments of the back of bare white thighs over black rolled stockings, where the dress fell away, made it harder to keep my mind on business.
I poured Lord Calvert into pony glasses and none of it slopped over. “I thought ladies wore trick garter belts or something.”
She said, “Stop it,” and tugged at her skirt and reached for the glass and swallowed the whiskey in a manly gulp and squeezed her eyes shut. “Oh, Peter. Dashed … frightful … what?”
“Be incoherent,” I said, “in American. Don’t suddenly go English countryside or fancy Park Avenue on me.”
I drank my whiskey and finished my beer and got comfortable, sidewise, on the couch. She sat near me.
She said, “It’s terrible.”
“I know. I’m doing my best to help.”
“Why?”
“Because I knew the gent. Because I don’t like this sort of thing to happen to people I know. It’s bad for business.”
“Is there anything I can do to help?”
I lifted my legs up and around her and got off the couch and brought myself another drink. “There might be. I’ve got a few ideas.”
“First, Peter, I think there’s something I should mention. Tamara, Paula, Dorothy and myself were on a train, yesterday, bound for Tarrytown. Dorothy popped out.”
I lit a couple of cigarettes and gave her one. “I know. She stayed in town during the time Eric was killed and then she caught the eleven o’clock train to Tarrytown.”
I said, “I’ve done a little checking, so I know. What happened when you folks got back from Tarrytown?”
I sat down close to her.
She said, “Paula Gorin is prostrated. The police came and asked all of us many questions.”
I looked important. “Now let’s see,” I said. “That should be Lieutenant Lyons.”
“Yes. None of us said anything about Dorothy leaving the train. She had told us that she had gone off to buy something that she had forgotten and that she had returned too late. We had to believe her. I mean, we did believe her. There was no sense stirring up trouble. We decided not to mention it to the police.”
I kissed the side of her neck. “Then why tell me?”
“You’re different. You’re not the police. I feel … of course … if she did have anything to do with it …”
“Sure. Sure. Women …”
She said, “I was able to contact Alfred and the household, at least, is in running order.”
I said, “You can do this to help with the few ideas I’ve got bobbing around in my head. I’d like you to obtain for me the fingerprints of everybody in that house. Will you help?”
“Of course.”
“Think you can manage it?”
“Certainly.”
“By tomorrow?”
“Certainly.”
“Certainly, she says. All right, Lady Sleuth, if you can do it, be sure you earmark each one. And now, if you please, we drink a little and we eat, and we try to rinse the back of our minds and stop wondering about how the deuce a thing like that could happen to Eric and why. We just forget it for a while.”
“How about that other?” she asked. “That blackmail project Mr. Curtis insists upon taking so seriously. Any progress? And don’t we get involved in all sorts of fantastic goings-on?”
“A little progress. Not enough to talk about. Yet.” I looked at my watch. “How about the victuals? I must leave before twelve.”
She came over and took hold of my lapels. “Why? I wish you’d stay.” She let go and tilted her pony glass and drank whiskey slowly, like wine, and her feet were a little bit apart and her body bent back slightly and she looked at me and blood went to my head and got crowded like Belmont raceway on a sunny Saturday afternoon.
She said, “I’m all wrought up. Can’t you stay? Possibly?”
“I wish I could.”
She said, “Business, I suppose.”
“I’ve got to see a man. It’s important.”
“Peter. Please.”
“Look, honey. I’ve got to see a man. And it’s important. And it’s important because what I’ve got to see the man about is murder, foul dirty meaningless murder, and that can’t be postponed.”
“Oh,” she said.
“Now, beautiful, let’s eat.”
I drank bar rye and ginger ale at the Nevada from twelve ten until a quarter after two. Grant didn’t show up.
21
I WOKE with a lurch and lay very still.
I inched up in the bed, very quietly, until I was in a sitting position with my back rigid against the headboard. I listened hard. Faint, indistinct, tiny muffled sounds came alive in the living room. The hair on my scalp started imitating a toothbrush with a thumb running across it and I reached over and opened the dresser drawer a
nd came up with the Luger. I settled back and waited.
There was no sound.
I slid out of bed and walked carefully across the room.
The damn floor was damn cold. I felt my way to the half-open bathroom door and slipped behind it and the damn floor in the damn bathroom was damn colder.
Then the lights in the bedroom snapped on.
I glided from behind the door, gun first, and I was fourth man behind a group near the bed.
“Good evening, gentlemen,” I ventured, “or is it good middle of the night? You know, I trust, that I could shoot the three of you dead without a penalty. A man’s home is his castle, and all that.”
They whirled and looked respectfully at the poised Luger and listened politely as I lectured and, without being requested, they lifted their hands above their shoulders and two of the six hands pointed guns at the ceiling.
I said, “Hello, Horseface, and you too, dear Mr. Pigeon-blood. You may put up the hardware and go eat. There’s a Virginia ham in the icebox and dill pickles.”
Pigeon-blood, little with a long crooked nose and scrawny as a plucked rooster, flicked his tongue out and swallowed anticipatorily. Horseface, large, long face, popeyes and no neck, murmured, “‘Lo Pete,” and they both looked at Matty Pineapple. Matty tightened his mouth and nodded.
I walked across the room and put the Luger on my heaped-up trousers on a chair. “You don’t mind if I go back to bed, do you? We’ve got a cold night again this crazy spring.”
I climbed into bed and turned my back on Matty and drew the cover up over my head and made a lump of my rump under the blanket.
“Petie,” Matty protested sorrowfully, “I just don’t like you no more.”
I turned around and stuck my head out and glared the best glare I could manage. I was sleepy. I said, “You’re an awful fickle prickle, chum.”
Matty stood in front of the dresser mirror and ran his hand along his dark face which needed a shave. Through the mirror he stared at me steadily and sadly.
“So you give me the cross,” he said. “So you take my three thou for expenses and you give me the cross. Boy, how I don’t like you no more.”
I said, “You’re drunk. Or nuts. Go on home and go to sleep.”
He came over and picked up the Luger and sat down on my rumpled trousers. He held the barrel in one hand and banged the butt against the other palm. “There was a copper got drunk in my joint tonight. He spilled a little guts. You’re the guy that shot up that cab. You croaked Joe.”
