Win, Place, and Die!

by Lawrence Lariar

  Her lips were on mine and we were kissing again. She was hell-bent for my complete trust, a bundle of womanly affection. It was a real effort to remind myself that there were things to do, that this new day might bring me closer to Jake West’s murderer. We clung to each other for a last, long good night.

  Then I drove quickly back to Buffo’s parking lot and she got into her Hillman Minx and headed down the gray highway toward New York City.

  CHAPTER 10

  I gulped the coffee Sam MacGruder gave me. It worked hard to wake me out of my lethargy. But even black coffee lost the battle. I needed a few more hours of sleep to become human again. MacGruder had roused me at half past eight. I said: “If I look foggy, it’s because I’m asleep, Sam. Why the early visit?”

  “Finish that coffee, Dave. You’re going to need it. I’ve got some pretty fancy news for you. Pretty shocking stuff.”

  I finished the black coffee in great gulps. The clock over MacGruder’s head stood at 8.34. He had roused me by way of the telephone at my room in the Hotel Farmington, in New York. He had ordered me to drive out to Mineola at once. On the way out, my sleepy speculations got me nowhere. Right now, blinking myself awake and smoking a cigarette that tasted like cinders and paste, I awaited his first important words eagerly.

  They came at last. And MacGruder was right. I almost fell off the chair when he said: “It’s about Nickles Shuba, Dave. We found him early this morning. He was lying in a ditch alongside the Mill Road, near an isolated section of woods. He was dead. Somebody shot him through the face. A bloody mess.

  “You’re sure it was Nickles?”

  “As sure as we can be,” MacGruder sighed. “Whoever killed him wanted no identification left on him. He had no wallet and no labels on his clothing, of course. But that kind of thing is routine for us. We got him by way of laundry marks and teeth. It wasn’t too tough.”

  “I can use another container of coffee, Sam.”

  MacGruder grinned and sent one of his men out for fresh coffee. Then he turned to me and said: “You got a gun, Dave?”

  “Not yet.”

  “I’m glad. For God’s sake, don’t ever think of yourself as an officer of the law, will you?”

  “I haven’t tried yet, have I?”

  “I guess not,” he smiled. “But you hit me as the emotional type. Whenever you get the urge to do things on your own, it’s a good idea to remember that the cops are thorough and accurate.”

  “I’ll do my best,” I said. “But you didn’t call me in here to moralize with me, Sam.”

  “Of course not. I wanted to ask you a few questions.”

  “Ask away.”

  “About Buffo’s, Dave. You were there last night?”

  “A good guess. I was there with Nancy Blackburn.”

  “I didn’t know you were a gambling man.”

  “I’m not, really, except at trotting races.”

  “Care to tell me why you visited Buffo’s?”

  “Why not?” And I told him the truth, all the way through the events leading to my visit to Buffo’s, including the interlude with Nancy and her confession. I left out only a few of the personal highlights I thought unimportant. I told him nothing about my session with Lisa Varick. I told him less about the interval of wrestling with Nancy in the car. When I was finished, MacGruder was on his feet again, on the prowl for facts.

  “We figure Nickles visited Buffo’s, too,” he said.

  “If he did last night, I didn’t see him.”

  “Of course you didn’t, Dave. But he was there.” The cop came in with fresh coffee. MacGruder waited for me to sweeten my cup, sip it and savor it. “Funny thing about Shuba,” MacGruder went on. “He had little blue pebbles in his shoes. He was wearing crepe sole loafers, you see. The pebbles he picked up match the stones in Buffo’s driveway.”

  “Shuba went there to visit somebody?”

  MacGruder snorted. “He might have come there to visit you, Dave.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Offhand? Somebody didn’t want Shuba to see you.”

  “Somebody? Who?”

  “We have a houseful of suspects.” MacGruder sniffed at his cigar end and tossed it away. “Not at all like fiction, is it? We can’t do much in a case like this. What the hell—over two dozen customers at Buffo’s last night, according to information from his help. Nickles might have been knocked off by any one of them.”

  “He might have been killed somewhere else, too,” I said.

  “On the road, maybe? Or in a car, outside Buffo’s? Or in New York? He might have come out of Buffo’s under his own steam and then been shot.”

  “That made sense up until a few minutes ago,” MacGruder said patiently. “Up until the time you told me about Shuba’s phone call to Nancy Blackburn. Fact is, the bullet found in Shuba’s head came from the same gun that killed your Uncle Jake.”

  “I’m beginning to see what you mean, Sam.”

  “I thought you would. Any idea who’d like to kill Shuba before he got to you?”

  “Silly question. Of course not.”

  “Thought I’d ask it anyhow.” MacGruder shrugged. He adjusted a fresh cigar in his face. He sat down and seemed to search the wall for a good beginning. “Let’s just consider the predicament of Nickles Shuba, Dave. There’s a chance he could have been an innocent bystander. Let’s say he happened to be in the neighborhood of the stables the night Jake West was killed. He sees the killing. Now, his first impulse might have been to run and tell the police what he saw. Then again, he could have waited and thought of angles.”

  “Angles? You mean blackmail?”

  “You think like an author, all right.”

  “I don’t quite see him as a blackmailer, Sam.”

  “Why not? Shuba was a betting man. He might have been in hock and in need of money.”

  “But he had plenty of money,” I said. “At least enough to play the wheel at Buffo’s the night Jake West was killed.”

  One of MacGruder’s plain-clothes men came in and whispered with his chief for a while. MacGruder muttered an oath and bit savagely at his cigar.

  “Nothing at all?” he asked his man.

  “We drew a blank, Chief,” said the detective. “We had Buffo and Seff under the lights for two hours. We figured we’d give ’em an extra dose, each of them separate, of course. But the way they tell it, each one has an alibi for the other one. Buffo was with Seff all night. Seff was with Buffo all night. Business talk. And they got witnesses, naturally.”

  “Naturally,” groaned MacGruder. “You get the low-down on who owns that joint?”

  “They both own it.”

  “Partners?”

  “That’s the way each of them told it.”

  “Nothing else?” MacGruder asked.

  “Nothing but the guest list.” The detective produced a piece of yellow paper and handed it to his boss. MacGruder looked at it and whistled. The detective scratched his head and made faces at the paper. “Twenty-eight guests” he said. “Fifteen in help. It’s going to take a long time.”

  “Get started,” said MacGruder. “I want everybody at that place last night questioned. Carefully.”

  The detective went out. MacGruder looked at me wearily.

  “Routine,” he said. “Sometimes this job can be a goddamned bore, Dave.”

  “You all finished with me, Sam?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Mind if I ask you a favor? I want permission to use my uncle’s convertible.”

  MacGruder studied me curiously. “Any particular reason?”

  “Call it sentiment.”

  “I would, indeed,” he smiled, “if I didn’t know the way your mind works, Dave. You’re a writer. The car fascinates you because you think maybe you can find something in it we missed.” He paused to catch my laugh. He
knew he had picked the lock to my brain. “Sure you can have the car. What the hell, it belongs to you. The police have no further use for it.”

  “Thanks. I appreciate this.”

  “Now can I ask you a small favor, too? Stay away from Buffo and Seff,” he said earnestly. “They’re both trouble. Real trouble. I don’t want you getting hurt, Dave.”

  CHAPTER 11

  “You’re quite right, West,” Fennisong said. “I’m not a man to turn away a fat fee. But I warned Blackburn that he couldn’t expect too much of me. I’m a skip-trace expert, not a murder specialist.”

  “How did you get to Blackburn?” I asked.

  “Get to him? I was called to him.”

  “By Blackburn himself?”

  “By his daughter,” Fennisong said, eyeing me with the cocky gesture of an observant bird. He nibbled at his doughnut, examined it briefly, examined me briefly, and then dunked the doughnut into his container of breakfast coffee. “Forgive me if I keep eating away, my boy—but I must have my breakfast before I can go to work. Can’t think on an empty stomach.”

  He laughed skittishly at his great joke. Fennisong was made to order for his business. He was an anemic type of office mole, the sort of man who would prefer doing everything in doors. His tiny cubicle reflected the state of his career. He was living the life of all skip-trace experts, a penny-pinching, grubbing sort of existence. He would be munching soggy doughnuts and drinking container coffee for the rest of his life. I could understand his enthusiasm for the sudden windfall offered by Blackburn. It would amount to a goodly retainer, plus a better than average expense account.

  “Nancy Blackburn is one of your fans,” I said.

  “A really fine girl.”

  “She thinks you’re going to do something on the murder case.”

  “But of course,” Fennisong agreed, examining the doughnut again and smiling at it. “I’ll do my best.”

  “And what have you done up to now?”

  “Well, I must admit progress has been slow.”

  “You have something? Anything?”

  Fennisong smiled at me in his sly and tentative way. He finished his coffee in a gulp. He leaned back in his chair and treated his mouth to a small, thin cigar. He puffed it mightily. “It’s my guess,” he said carefully, “that Jake West was murdered by a madman. All the signs point toward that conclusion.”

  “All what signs?”

  “The method of murder, my boy.” I had given him a chance to play at being an expert. He was off now, in a routine he relished, the down-the-nose attitude of any professional expert when performing before the laity. “You see, Jake West was shot at close range. I examined the body in the morgue. The police agree, of course.”

  “Why does that mean a maniac killed him?”

  “Gruesome way to kill a man. Only a madman would attempt it. Too bad we know so little about your uncle’s private life, my boy. It’s my guess that you could use the services of a good research man on this job. Once the past has been sufficiently dug up, the rest will follow naturally.”

  He rambled on. Despite the puffy, inane way he delivered his ideas, I had to admit that some of them made good sense. Behind the vague cloud of Fennisong’s personality, he would be a thinking man, a man with a good brain. Certainly, his conclusions about my uncle’s private world were logical. It would help if we could know Jake West’s enemies. It would help if we could locate one of his casual lady friends.

  “I’d say your uncle was killed in the heat of a violent emotion,” Fennisong said. “The fact that he died near the Long Island Raceway places the crime in an area of his business, the area of his background. Find his past and you have your murderer.”

  “And how does Nickles Shuba fit into the picture?”

  “Blackmail perhaps? A man who happened to be around at the time of the murder? It could have happened that way.”

  “You’re working on Nickles Shuba, too?”

  “I’ll get around to it.” Fennisong bestowed an affectionate grin in the direction of his cigar. His manner told me that he would enjoy loafing on Blackburn’s retainer for as long as his client would pay. “Mr. Blackburn seems to be in no great hurry. I have a contract for three months of exploration.”

  “You did some work for Nancy Blackburn in the past?” I asked.

  “The recent past, to be sure.”

  “She hired you to do a background job on a woman named Lisa Varick, isn’t that right?”

  Fennisong’s eyebrows flipped with gaiety. “You and Nancy Blackburn must be—ah—good friends, my boy.” He folded his bony hands on the worn blotter. He was having the time of his life playing detective with me. “You know, we investigators are not supposed to divulge a client’s business.”

  “The business has already been divulged,” I said.

  “Miss Blackburn told you what I discovered?”

  “Lisa Varick got her early start in burlesque,” I began. “She was a dancer, but not a very good one. Then she quit to marry a man named George Lattimer. She went through his money—but fast. After that, she played with Marcuti, and Larry Seff. Have I remembered the continuity?”

  “More or less,” said Fennisong. “Miss Blackburn probably forgot to mention the fact that Lisa Varick was more or less of a—ah—a tart, during her burlesque days. She did a striptease number for quite some time, you know.”

  “I didn’t know. Is that as far back as you went?”

  “That was as much as Miss Blackburn wanted.”

  “I want more.”

  “You’re a nervy young man, aren’t you? If I have certain extra information, I expect to be paid for it.”

  “I’ll pay.”

  “Twenty-five dollars,” he said easily. He had the ability to ask for money as smoothly as he sipped his coffee. “Not much money, considering the amount of work I did on that case.”

  “You have the file handy?” The bills I had put on the table mesmerized Fennisong. He had expected more fight from me. Now his mildewed eyes lit up with fresh excitement. He plucked the money off the blotter and folded it away neatly into his wallet. “The complete file,” I added.

  “To be sure,” said Fennisong, springing up from his chair and bouncing to the filing cabinet, where he plucked a folder out and waved it at me. “The entire Lisa Varick file, my boy. What is it you want to know about the lady?”

  “Where did she come from?” I asked. “Before she managed to get into burlesque.”

  “A town called Jackson,” Fennisong said, without opening the file. “Little place in Michigan.”

  “And what was her real name?”

  “I’ll have to get that from the file,” he chuckled. “Those strange foreign names always slip my mind.” He opened the manila folder and thumbed through an assortment of papers, most of them written in longhand. He plucked one from the pack, finally, adjusted his glasses and perused it. “Massonick,” he said at last. “Sounds like a Polish name, doesn’t it?”

  “I wouldn’t know. What was her first name?”

  Fennisong, explored deeper.

  “Esther. Esther Massonick.”

  “Are you sure?” My heart was bouncing. There was fresh excitement in this discovery. There was an almost impossible heightening of the tension inside me, a bubbling renewal of hope. I grabbed the paper from Fennisong’s hand. He stared at me while I read his scrawled bits of information: Esther Massonick—youngest daughter of Peter and Lily Massonick—father deceased when Esther was nine years old. Mother worked as laundress. Esther left home at age of nineteen with unknown man. Later, returned after minor success in burlesque. Abandoned mother and family for good, but still sends occasional money home. Sisters’ names Minna and Rebecca. One brother, Louis Massonick—killed in war.

  “Who was the man?” I asked. “The man she ran away with?”

  Fennisong shrug
ged. “That’s a question for Lisa Varick to answer.”

  “Read me the rest of your stuff on her.”

  Fennisong began to read. The account began with her first appearance on the stage of the Olympic Theatre, one of the most ancient of the New York burlesque dens. Lisa Varick had appeared under the name of Blanche LaVoe, working as a chorine and later as a featured stripper. She played the burlesque wheel for two full years, after which she graduated to a Broadway show and a small solo dance. It was at this point that her lissome figure began to attract the stage-door Johnnies. Lisa selected George Lattimer as her first husband. He was a notorious dipsomaniac of the Long Island society Lattimers, a man of substantial wealth who conveniently died and left his small fortune to his good wife. Lisa did not rest in her widowhood. She immediately set her sails in the direction of Marcuti, an overfed Italian tenor whose singing soon bored the good lady. But not until she had taken him. She then married Larry Seff, the great gambler. Seff lost his gamble with her. They suffered a Reno divorce within four months after their love affair, a settlement that added much to Lisa’s coffers.

  I interrupted Fennisong at this point. “The dates,” I asked. “When did she leave Seff?”

  “I have the accurate date of their divorce. It was July, 1947.”

  “And what happened to her after that?”

  “She established residence at the Concordat. Alone.”

  “But with a list of visitors,” I said. “A long list, probably.”

  Fennisong thumbed through his papers, adjusting his glasses in the manner of a CPA on the prowl for a lost decimal point. He finally found what he was looking for, studied it for a while and then tossed it away. “I haven’t finished with the lobby staff at the Concordat,” he said. “It’s rather tough to get these door lice to remember faces out of a file. Miss Blackburn wanted a complete dossier on the visitors to Lisa Varick’s apartment. You know, of course, that the lady is a very popular figure in the midnight-to-dawn social set?”

  “I’ve heard quite a few rumors about her. Have you a record of her current amours?”

  “Aside from Eustace Blackburn?”