by Henry, Kane,
I buzzed Miss Foxworth.
“You look terrible,” she said.
“Skip it, and listen. I’m in to everybody all day. Whoever calls, tell the girl at the switchboard to put them through. If anybody shows in person, send them in. Especially, I’m in for a guy named Grant.”
I called the bank and talked to Sheepstone. “You know that envelope I left with you to be mailed in thirty days? The deal is off. I’m sending a boy around for it.”
“Very good, Mr. Chambers.”
I said to Miss Foxworth: “Send a boy over to the bank and have him see Sheepstone and pick up an envelope. Do we have a basin around?”
Blankly she said, “Basin?”
“You know, dearie. Like when a midget takes a bath.”
Nothing moves Foxy. “Basin,” she said, “like when a midget takes a bath. Yes we have a basin. I’ll get it.”
She came back with a white enameled basin and she put it squarely in front of me and she watched me hard and expectantly.
“No,” I said. “I will not oblige. I am not going to keck for your pleasure. I am going to burn papers that the boy will bring from the bank. And I think a bonfire in a basin is more appropriate than a bonfire on a businessman’s desk or in the businessman’s men’s room. Don’t you?”
She sniffed. She said, “What businessman?”
I burned papers, and did routine ramblingly, and I had food sent up and ate. I jumped every time the girl at the switchboard tinkled my bell.
Then Foxy came back.
“There’s a man outside.”
A bubble of air spread in my throat and I swallowed. I wriggled my shoulders. I said, “Andrew Grant, Esquire?”
She said, “Al Warmy
“Send him in,” I said. “I suppose.”
23
AL WARMY — splendid in a bright powder-blue zoot suit, gabby as a cabbie in a lovely humor.
“Well,” I said, hearteningly.
“Hi, hero.”
“Well,” I said. “My chum in full regalia.”
“Regalia? That’s about a boat race, or something. No. I come because maybe I can do you a turn. About a guy we talked about the other night. I’m not sure. But if I can do you a turn, I’m anxious.”
“Thanks, pal.”
He sucked breath into his barrel chest. “P. L. Warmy. That’s my brother what did that stretch upstate. Remember?”
“I remember.”
“Remember? They called him Peel because of the initials. P. L.”
“I said I remembered. I’m busy, Al.”
“Natch, but I’m coming to it. He’s night elevator man, now, in a dukey Gramercy Park apartment house.”
“All of this has a point, Al, I hope.”
Al spread five blunt fingers and pushed air. “Natch, but let me do it my way, will you? I’m here to do you a turn, like I said. So the other night, after I’m through with the horse act, I go over to see him. About four in the morning. Who do you think walks in?”
“Give up,” I said.
“Mitch Saffron,” Al said, satisfied. “That is who.”
“What’s this address?”
“Thirty Gramercy Park North, and he didn’t see me. I saw him first and I turned away.”
I got up and pulled a chair over for Al. I admired his red tie and his blue sport shirt with the Barrymore collar and I stroked his suit approvingly. I went back behind the desk and put my feet up.
“So?” I said.
Al sat. “So I asks my brother. Sure enough, Mitch is a regular, got a girl friend there, apartment 5B. So I thought I’d come and tell it to you and if it’s a turn, I’m glad to do you one. That’s all.”
“It’s a turn, Al. Thanks.”
Al got up and we shook hands over the desk and he said, “So long, pal, so long, chum buddy, I’m glad it’s a turn, natch,” and he trundled his zoot suit out of the office.
I called Mitch Saffron’s office. Mr. Saffron was in court and we expect him in about an hour and would you care to leave your name and we’ll have him call you back.
“No,” I said. “Personal. I’ll call later.”
I took my hat and walked through to Foxy’s room. “I’m going out. If a Mr. Grant shows up, have him wait. If it’s a phone call, you expect me any minute.”
Downstairs, I walked until I came to a hardware store and I bought a folding measuring rod and then I took a taxi to Thirty Gramercy Park North and rode up to five and put my finger on the bell of 5B.
She was home and she opened the door a very meager crack and I took off my hat and put it over my chest and bowed a little and half lifted my left hand with the yellow folding measuring rod.
“I’ve come for the measurements, Miss.”
“I beg your pardon.”
A nice purr, soft and mellow and throaty.
“I’ve come to take the measurements. I’m from Lambert’s. It’s rugs. Wall to wall.”
“I don’t quite — ”
“Mr. Saffron instructed us. I really don’t know details. Something about changing rugs, or something. I just take measurements. It could be a surprise or something, or maybe I’m talking out of turn.”
She unhooked a chain and opened the door more. “Mister who?”
“Saffron. Call up, if you’d like, lady. The gentleman has an office on Pine Street. I’ll wait out here, if you want.”
She smiled and she moved in from the door. “It won’t be necessary. Come in. That Mitch — I’m sorry if I appeared rude.”
“Not at all, Miss. Lambert’s. Measurements. I don’t know what’s on order, really. I take measurements.”
She was a cherry blonde with thick wavy heavy hair and the nicest large blue eyes and long clean arched eyebrows and a pert wicked smile. She wore a red-and-white checked warm-weather hostess gown that protruded disconcertingly, but pleasantly, fore and aft.
I took off my jacket and put it on a chair with my hat, and I strained my suspenders and got out of breath and worked up a light sweat taking measurements.
You didn’t have to take measurements to work up a sweat in that apartment. It was standard three rooms and bath and that was all that was standard. The living-room walls were black; yes, black, and everything else was white or a combination of ivory and ebony. The furniture was fuzzy white and there were white bear rugs on the floor. There was a white lady’s desk and a white radio and a white telephone and white snow-scene paintings.
The bedroom was pink with a ceiling of looking-glass and a thick wide overstuffed bed with half a canopy, and there were large oil paintings that were expensive and showed, to advantage, undressed females with angelic expressions and undressed males with muscles.
I threw the blonde a couple of come-on glances, just in case, but I’d made about as much of an impression as a fingerprint on an ice cube at a hot party. I was minus zero with a mustache in high pants and short suspenders grappling with a folding ruler, while the lady admired polish on her fingernails, from near and then from far and then in reverse, so I took my measurements fast and jotted down figures and folded my ruler and got my things and said good-by, thank you, and left.
Mitchell Saffron, Esquire, was a counselor at law with a specialty.
His specialty was recovering heisted ice for insurance companies, which sounds vulgar, but which wasn’t, the way Mitch practiced. He was number one boy in his racket in the City of New York. He was smooth and careful and he knew all the legal angles and he talked about priviliged communications and lost jewelry and rewards and unilateral contracts and acceptance by performance and when he was finished he had recovered lost or misplaced jewelry; he had not seen the boys about some heisted ice that was hot.
Mitch was bronze-faced and lean-limbed with wide flat shoulders and narrow hips and his stomach fell in romantically like a silhouette advertisement in top hat and tails. He was tall, with black, vibrant hair parted on a side and leaping up from his forehead. His voice was full and mellow and well controlled and he always smelled fai
ntly of pine trees and woods.
Mitch was as tricky as the jagged end of an open can, and just as noble.
He was married; fittingly hooked to the second daughter of a first family, Mitch, socially, moved in the best circles and had a reputation to keep shined up.
He had fine wide spacious wood-paneled offices high up on Pine Street, and the girl behind the switchboard, so help me, was a chic cherry blonde.
“Well,” I said. “Lovely. And a lovely afternoon too.”
“Whom would you wish to see, sir?”
“I should like to see Mr. Saffron. The name is Peter Chambers.”
She stuck a plug into the switchboard and she whispered and listened.
“Won’t you sit down. You may see him shortly.” “Beautiful,” I said.
She made her face long and pulled her upper lip down over her teeth and looked at the switchboard and looked at me, upward, and looked back at the switchboard.
I sat in a leather chair trimmed with brass nailheads and looked at Life magazine.
Soon she said, singsong, “Mr. Saffron will see you now. Through the corridor, first door to your left.”
In an immense room with five windows and a free-for-nothing view (not often) of New York harbor, Mitch said: “Well, well — Chambers.”
He put his hand out and I shook it and it was like grabbing a hearty handful of tapioca pudding.
“Sit down. Sit down.”
I sat down.
“Nice,” I said.
“What?”
“Nice, outside. You pick them nice, all right.”
“My God,” he said. “This man and his idle eye. You don’t change.”
I got my pack out. “Cigarette?”
“No, thanks.”
I lit up and inhaled and puffed again and blew a smoke ring, successfully.
“Yes, Chambers?” he inquired, sharply.
“Well, sir, you can tell me about how business was about ten years ago.”
“I beg your pardon?” he said from way down, enunciating very clearly.
“Business. How was business about ten years ago? About the time of that Belton affair?”
He drummed impatient buffed fingernails on his glass-top desk. “State your business, if you please, Chambers. I just don’t have the time for this type of conversation, much as I’d like a chat.”
“That’s my business. About the time of that Belton thing; you know, the time you almost had me jugged.”
He got up and came around and stood in front of me and his well-controlled voice slipped a cog. “Now look here. If you’re serious and that’s why you came here — just forget it. What’s the matter with you?”
“It’s very important to me, Mitch. It’s a case I’m working on.”
He was calm again. His voice was round and tender. “It’s your case. Work on it. But don’t work here. I’m sorry, you’ll have to excuse me. Our interview is over.”
“The hell it is.”
His nostrils flickered delicately and his eyebrows came down. “I don’t like insolence, and I don’t have to take it. And it happens I never did like you, Chambers. I’m afraid I’ll have to put you out.”
“You and how many assistants, Mitch?” I asked.
“Two very proficient assistants,” he said. “Not I.”
He went back to the desk and picked up the phone. “Send Farnsworth in, and Bernie.”
I slid my cigarette into a tubular chrome ash tray and it hissed when it met the water.
“Cute,” I said, “that cherry blonde.”
He stood at the window and looked at the harbor.
“And I don’t mean outside. She’s cute, too. I mean Thirty Gramercy Park North with black walls and white bear rugs and a television set in the bedroom and a purple toilet.”
Two men walked in without knocking; the bull-necked type with ham hands and expensive sport shirts and mean little rat eyes, and reading from left to right, one had his hair clipped close and looked like a professional wrestler ought to look, and the other was taller and cleaner and made it a point to present that side of his face that had a red scar from ear to corner of mouth.
The smaller one said, “What, Mitch?”
“Nothing,” Mitch said. “Wrong number.”
“But, Mitch. The girl said — ”
“That’s all, gentlemen. Please.”
“Okay. Okay.”
They looked at me bitterly, went out.
“You were saying, Chambers …”
“About the time of that Belton jam. Would you like to check some records?”
He sat down behind the desk. He took out a flat gold cigarette case and lit a cigarette. I lit my own.
“There is no need to check records. I know precisely the period you refer to There was a tremendous amount of activity, but business was terrible.”
I smoked. “Would you expand that, please?”
“I’d be glad to,” Mitch said smoothly. “For a period of about a year and a half, until the time of the arrest of Al Warmy for that Belton job, there was a great deal of activity, much more than the usual, and I had a great many retainers, but I produced no results. Retainers without results earn a net fee of nothing, and detract from one’s reputation. What makes you interested, at this late date?”
“What did you make of all of that, Mitch?” I asked. “What sort of explanation were you giving your people?”
He took a graceful drag at the cigarette. “I had a theory and it is still my theory. Warmy was part of a mob that was working the hot spots. A great deal of ice disappeared. A great deal of ice. I had hooks out constantly. A smart mob. A lot of it didn’t even get to the cops. Men out with other men’s wives, etcetera. No publicity, please, but we want our insurance coverage, and the people were big enough to have the insurance companies play ball with them. The companies took a severe beating.”
“Point it up, Mitch.”
“The companies kept calling me in for salvage, and nothing doing. The hooks were out. But no bites. Business was not good. This mob was not kidnaping ice. It was stealing it. They wanted no part of trading it in, for peanuts comparatively, plus safety and no questions asked, which is unusual.”
“You had nothing to do with it personally, did you, Mitch?”
He said, “Don’t be naughty, Peter. Of course not. You’ve been around, and you know a good deal about me. What with Gramercy Park, you’re beginning to know too much. Candidly, in my time, on occasion, when business was very bad, I may have engineered a little something. Not for profit, really. Mostly for the prestige of turning it up. But the sort of thing we’re talking about — don’t be silly.”
“Well, add it up for me, then. You’re the expert.”
He pulled at his cigarette and put it out. “They couldn’t eat it and it didn’t go through any of the usual fences. Nothing turned up. One answer to that, in my opinion. They were smuggling the stuff out of the country. I could be wrong.”
“One mob?”
“Oh, definitely. The same technique. Prominent people, hot spots, late stayers, people who came by car, generally somebody with somebody with whom he shouldn’t be — then on an appropriate street, a car cuts in and bango. The cops tried decoys. It never worked. This mob spotted their people; no strangers, no out-of-towners, no cops dressed for suckers.”
“Then how come you let Warmy cop a plea? With what you could have told them they’d have thrown the book at him so hard, it would have bounced.”
He smiled demurely. “Because it wasn’t my affair. Why should I want a mob like that to break up? Sooner or later, they’d come to me. Something goes wrong with the racket, the insurance companies have their tongues hanging out, they raise the ante — and sooner or later they come to me and no questions asked. I had to put the bee on somebody, just for prestige, and it turned out to be Warmy, but I wasn’t pressing. Why should I intrude on police business?”
“What happened?”
“Something happened. It may be that Warmy’s
arrest frightened them, or maybe they had enough. They stopped operations. After that, things came back to normal.”
“Well,” I said.
“Business was bad, all right. I got nothing from this bunch of fast operators and because of the stink, the other boys weren’t playing, or working out of town. But after this died down, there was a lull, and then things shaped back to normal.”
“That’s all,” I said and I got up and slid my cigarette into the ash tray. “I’ll be running along now. Much obliged.”
“Did I help?”
“Yes.”
“Any time, Peter. Don’t hesitate.”
“Nice of you, Mitch. Thanks.”
We shook hands.
24
EVERYTHING FIT.
The thing was all wrapped up, except for the trimmings.
I hoped the trimmings wouldn’t be too gory.
I called the office from a downtown phone booth.
“Anything, Foxy?”
“Yes, your Mr. Grant. He’ll call back at about four thirty.”
“Swell,” I said and I slapped the receiver back and bought a package of gum and I stuck all five slabs into my mouth.
I took a taxi to Lockheed’s. I asked the cabbie to keep the stick down, I’d be out in a minute. I went in and bought a box of .45 caliber cartridges. Then we rode home.
I paid my respects to Alice Hilliad. I paid my respects to Frank Higgins. I paid my respects to Wesley Gorin. I put the box of cartridges on the desk.
I said to Gorin: “When are you going to give me the story? Not that it matters.”
He said, “There is no story. How long before I may leave this very pleasant jail? Are you doing anything?”
“I’m working on it. It won’t be long now.”
No more conversation. I didn’t feel like conversation. I felt like chewing gum.
I changed to tan slacks and a yellow sport shirt and a dark blue tie and a brown baggy sports coat.
“Very chic,” Alice said. “Why, suddenly?”
“Watch.”
I went to the bedroom and I came back with Ed Holly’s shoulder holster and the police .45 and reloaded it from the box I had bought. I took off my jacket and strapped on Holly’s holster and adjusted it and slid the gun in tight and put my jacket on again and buttoned the middle button.
