Win, Place, and Die!

by Lawrence Lariar

  “Don’t be silly,” Lisa purred. “I wouldn’t blackmail you, darling.”

  “What do you call it?”

  “Let’s call it protection. Just protection. Nobody will ever know so long as you’re a good little girl.”

  “But you can see that’s impossible. I’m not the type.”

  “You can learn.”

  “Not at my age,” Nancy said. She pressed the gun against the smooth and shapely shoulder of her future stepmother. “And I’m also not the type to exist with the threat of blackmail hanging over me. That’s why I must have those IOU’s, Lisa. Right now.”

  “They’re expensive pieces of paper.”

  “I’ve got the money to redeem them.”

  “You’re willing to pay?” Lisa Varick showed her amazement with a lift of her eyes that betrayed her. She would hop and hustle forever at the sight or sound or smell of money. Her manner changed. She became eager, almost manic at the prospect of collecting loot. “Those little things add up.”

  “I know how much I owe.”

  “You actually have the money?”

  Nancy whipped a bundle of greenbacks out of her bag. She waved the money before Lisa. “Can’t you smell it, Lisa? Doesn’t it stir you? Five thousand dollars. I can hear your heart pump faster at the sight of it. You’re a little devil about money, aren’t you? You’re practically a hophead about it.”

  “I know what to do with it,” Lisa said angrily. “I can hold it and make it work for me because it’s important to me. People like you could learn important lessons front people like me, you little idiot. Money is meant to be used, to be harnessed; to be built into enterprise. Money is security. Money is safety.” She paused in her monologue, long enough to eye her young adversary with a fresh, sly appraisal. “But in a case like this, maybe I don’t want your money. Maybe I want to keep those interesting scraps of paper.”

  “Get me those IOU’s, Lisa.”

  “You’re wasting your time, darling. I’m keeping them.”

  “You could be right,” Nancy said icily. “Maybe I have been wasting my time.”

  Nancy struck suddenly. She moved under the stimulus of a deep and penetrating fury. She stepped closer to Lisa Varick. Before the figure on the couch could move, Nancy whipped out at her with the butt of her gun. She caught Lisa up high on the cheek, a blow that sent her reeling back on the couch. The move was savage and brutal.

  “You little bitch,” screamed Lisa.

  “Get me the IOU’s.”

  “I’ll see you in hell first.”

  Nancy struck again. This time the gun connected with bone and flesh. There was a dull flat sound, the sickening splat of mayhem. Lisa recoiled with a muffled cry of astonishment and pain, her well-manicured hands up to her face. The gun had bruised her cheek. There was a thin stain of blood; the terror in Lisa’s eyes verged on hysteria as she tested her face for gore. She lay in a pose of unfeigned horror. She gawked and gasped at the figure of her tormentor. But something was happening to Lisa now. Slowly, slowly, she seemed to adjust herself to the full weight of the threat above her. She had met an antagonist to respect. Before this moment, she might have been laughing at the little girl with the gun. Now Lisa Varick was on guard. Now she prepared herself for the showdown with her unsmiling adversary.

  “You play very very rough, darling,” she said.

  “I warned you, Lisa. I want those IOU’s.”

  “What do you hope to do with them?”

  “I’m going to destroy them.” She brandished the gun again. “And your clever histrionics leave me cold, ice cold. Let’s get on with the business at hand. I want those IOU’s. Now. Get up and lead me to them.”

  Lisa shrugged and stood up. For a quick moment of panic it seemed to me that she would lead Nancy through the room in which I hid. She hesitated, still measuring Nancy for an undiscovered weakness. She found none. Nancy had stepped back. Nancy held the gun firmly now, aiming it at Lisa’s eyes.

  “Where are they, Lisa?”

  “I’ll get them,” Lisa said quietly. “I’ll bring them down.”

  “Don’t be funny. I’m going with you.”

  “Just as you say, darling.”

  “And don’t call me darling.”

  They moved out of my line of vision, across the rug and toward the landing. I waited until I heard the shuffling noise of their feet, going up the carpeted stairs. When they were up on the third-floor landing, I ran down the stairs to the street.

  Nancy’s little Minx was parked on the other side. She had cut into the curbing only a few dozen yards ahead of Jake West’s convertible. I wondered whether she had recognized it.

  CHAPTER 20

  The Concordat Arms was class.

  Even at this early hour, when the neighboring hostels slumbered and snored, the Concordat still shone with life; the canopy over the street bright and sharp against the surrounding gloom. A costumed doorman stood stiffly near the entrance, his eyes alerted for arriving residents or guests. At two in the morning, the great apartment still throbbed with life, occasional wanderers still filtering through the lobby, or entering in gay and festive groups.

  I studied the Concordat from my seat in the car, parked across the street from the gilded façade. I meditated my next move. In fiction, the detective is a man of great energy and action. In fiction, the private investigator runs as he researches, slamming at all who stand in his way, bouncing and bumping along the continuity of the story, a sage and a stevedore at one and the same time. The mechanics of such energetic enterprise are usually tailor-made to fit the plot of the mystery; the author adjusts and acclimates his hero to each fresh situation. In a case like this, the search for a way into the Concordat would be simple and straightforward. The hero would enter by way of the service entrance, through the basement and up the fire stairs to the proper floor. There would be lurking shadows and the appropriate sound effects to frighten him on the way up. He would, however, gain his destination. He would sweat mightily, but reach his objective.

  Such a course of action did not thrill me.

  I sat and meditated some more. The Concordat was a monster apartment. Up there, behind the brick walls, hundreds of families lived and loved and died. This was a small city. This was a cliff dwelling of the elite, a fabulous residence for the rich, the famous, and the notorious. My eyes counted the floors. My eyes traveled the distance to the sixteenth. There were lights aglow up there, on the broad front of the hotel, but only on the left side. Then, a series of darkened windows; five six, seven, eight. This would be Lisa Varick’s empty apartment. This would be my goal.

  The sound of high hilarity across the street under the canopy jerked me out of my contemplative mood. A cab had arrived, jam-packed with roisterers. They stood now, out on the pavement, a small knot of alcoholic high jinks. The doorman grinned at them with good nature.

  “Are we going right for Sparkman’s?” somebody shouted. His voice echoed in the quiet street. “Good old Sammy Sparkman?”

  “Sammy Sparkman is no good, chop him up for firewood.”

  “You’re tickling me, Arthur.”

  “Wait’ll you meet Sam,” Arthur shouted. “Sam’ll love your little horse’s tail.”

  “Sammy, Sammy, is a whammy,” sang a blonde girl.

  “Let’s go, George, I’m famished.”

  “Sammy has the best food in New York at his parties.”

  The doorman bowed them inside. When they had disappeared into the lobby, I ran across the street. I waved my arms. I gesticulated madly.

  “Wait for me, you lugs!” I shouted, loosening my larynx to simulate their drunken revelry. “Fine bunch of two-bit friends you are!”

  “Apartment six nineteen,” the doorman said, bowing me in. “Elevator on your right.”

  “Fine bunch of jerks,” I burbled.

  The lobby of the Concorda
t was something out of an architect’s dream book, a model of modernity and good taste. Here the rents would be fabulous. Here the tenants paid huge sums for the privilege of the address and the prestige of living among the moneyed bigwigs. Out of the great mass of publicity this place had earned during its early years, I recalled the stories of its destiny. The great and the famous had reserved space in this concrete castle for their permanent homes. The roster boasted giant figures in all of the upper reaches of moneyed success; fabulous people from the worlds of show business and radio and television and society. To live at the Concordat was the last gasp in the battle for social supremacy. I wondered vaguely who Sam Sparkman was as I avoided the elevator and started up the stairway.

  Apartment 1616 stood at the end of the broad corridor. If my calculations were correct, this would be the series of darkened windows I had seen from the street. Testing the key was a finicky business. My hand trembled on the lock. But the key worked smoothly and efficiently. The door swung open and I found myself in a pocket of blackness.

  I lit a match. Immediately the light slammed back at me. There was a small mirror on the opposite wall, a French piece with a frame of curlicues and swirls. The glass showed me my face. I stared at myself, surprised by my own panic. The strain and tension had left its marks on me. I’m no hero type. My eyes were overbright and loaded with the dim and distant fogginess that always attacked me in prolonged gaps of worriment. The suppressed anger had boiled over on my forehead. I found myself frowning mightily, the corrugations above my eyebrows that always came when too much concentration clouded my brain. I realized, suddenly, that I had been tensening with a steady, burning frustration. The death of Uncle Jake had started the internal upheaval. And now there was no way of banking the fires. The pent-up anxiety in me would only find outlet when I discovered Jake West’s murderer. And now, even as I thought about that moment, my bands knotted into fists and my mouth scowled back at me in the mirror.

  I lit a cigarette to try for relaxation.

  I wandered through the small foyer and into a larger room, lit now by the thin light from outside, not bright, not keen, but enough to show me the dim outlines of shapes and patterns. Here was an apartment built for wealth and dignity! This living room was certainly more spacious than the one on Sutton Place. Here and there around the, room, occasional pieces of furniture had been left where they stood; a small love seat, two or three leather chairs, a variety of tables, a giant couch. Had Lisa Varick abandoned these pieces for an entirely new layout on Sutton Place? Or would she keep this apartment while using the other mansion for her projected gambling den?

  I crossed the room and set my course for her bedroom, through a generous hall and off to the left, at the corner of the suite. Here, again, a good amount of furniture still remained. I counted three more occasional chairs and a chaise longue. The light from the four large windows helped me. There was a small escritoire near the chaise. I pulled out the top drawer and retreated into the lavish bathroom, where I lit a light and settled down for a perusal of the contents.

  The collection of papers in this desk was as disorganized as the other. I thumbed through more bills, all of them addressed to Lisa Varick, and each of them asking for sizeable amounts of money. Lisa was adept at spending. Her casual bills included such items as:

  $576—for an evening gown (from the Shoppe of Minna Harkavy, the designer to the haut monde of Paris, London and New York);

  $265—for a hat (from Peter Dorleigh, the effeminate lad who created the most talked-about chapeaux in the world!);

  $426—for some shoes (from Laboivan, master shoe designer).

  I stuffed these away, fascinated by the obvious frauds involved here. Lisa Varick dressed well, but her taste was severely commonplace, not high style, not over chic, but belonging to the world of women whose clothes reflected their own personalities and not the expensive point of view of a leader in style. Lisa Varick dressed in the manner of a graduate theatrical lady. Her dresses were a bit too flashy, too garish for Minna Harkavy. Why, then, had she collected these bills? Who was the unfortunate male in this swindle? My fingers plumbed the accumulated paper debris in the drawer, groping and grasping for the answer.

  And suddenly, I had it!

  Because I was holding a photograph of a man.

  It was a snapshot of Jake West!

  I sat there, feeling a fresh and overpowering wave of sickness and surprise tighten me. It was a fairly recent picture of my uncle, taken in a strange pose. He wore a simple summer suit, of the white linen type. He stood in a cool, tropical garden, against lush foliage. Florida? Cuba? He had his arm around a woman, a shapely and smiling siren. She posed affectionately, her lips arched in a familiar smile. She had the figure of a young woman, full-busted and delightfully curved. She was the type who would hold her youthful grace and firmness until middle age won out in the fight against perpetual girlishness. Her figure was provocative. But it was her face that gripped me.

  The face was Lisa Varick’s!

  I sat for many minutes staring at her. Once again, the overpowering elements of her physical charms came through to me. It was as though I saw her afresh. It was as though she had been playing a different role recently. The picture proved her a different personality, a woman who would be dangerous bait for any man approaching forty or drifting beyond it. Her body had seemed attractive enough in evening clothes, her face pretty enough under the hard light of her make-up. Yet, something fresh and appealing came through in this simple snapshot. I could understand a man falling hard for Lisa Varick. I could understand, too, the reason for his inscription on the photo: To Esther—my best girl—with all my love—Jocko.

  Esther!

  Lisa Varick, then, was the Esther he might have phoned that night, years ago, from the booth in The Famous Cellar. How long had he known her before that? It was impossible to picture my uncle in the role of patient lover. Nothing, not a solitary incident in all our years together, not a remembered episode, pointed to his secret passion, the woman he had worshipped. The picture teased me. The picture tantalized me because of its simplicity. Here, photographed together, were two amiable souls, two people who had made some special sort of contract, a relationship that must have lasted a long time. How long? The photograph bore no date. My uncle’s face gave me no clue, for he had the features of a youngish man, the fresh and unwrinkled visage of the hardy athlete. His suit was commonplace. I had seen him in such a loose-fitting model many times during the summer vacations I spent with him. The locale? He must have taken many trips with her. The background showed part of a formal garden, an upper strata type of resort. He would be a generous traveling companion, for he enjoyed good living.

  I was stuffing the picture away in my jacket when I heard the noise from somewhere deep on the other side of the apartment. There was a short and muffled click, followed by a soft and purposeful patter of footsteps. They moved my way. They came quickly and suddenly. I had no time to stumble to my feet and put out the light. I had barely dropped the desk drawer when the steps sounded in the bedroom.

  Then he was framed in the doorway.

  “Well, now,” he said slowly. “I didn’t figure to find you here, Dave.”

  His almost boyish face was out of control. He had difficulty adjusting it to register the proper amount of nonchalance. The role of gunman did not suit him. The gun wavered in his hands, but he would be steeling himself with an alcoholic brashness. The liquor had buoyed him up, in the way that all perversely ingrown men are stimulated by strong drink. He managed a quavering smile, but it was born of a gnawing nervousness.

  “The feeling is mutual, Luchon,” I said.

  CHAPTER 21

  “Better keep your hands up,” Luchon said. He indicated the wall in the bedroom, waving me up against it. “I don’t want to shoot you.”

  “That’s nice of you.”

  “Over there,” Luchon said, pushing me back with hi
s free hand. His gesture was firm and swift. He had great power in his arms, the tightly muscled strength of all harness men. “Maybe you’d better face the wall.”

  “You been seeing too many movies, Luchon.”

  “I don’t want any trouble with you.”

  “You won’t get any,” I said. “But I don’t like talking to the wall.”

  “All right then. But keep your hands up. And better tell me what you’re doing here.”

  “I’m playing detective,” I said. It was an effort to hold myself on an even keel. The sight of Luchon with an automatic sent fresh waves of frustration climbing my shanks. He had upset all my calculations. The little jigsaw puzzle I had solved was scattered again, in a thousand and one small pieces. Luchon had upset my personal apple cart.

  “Up here, for God’s sake?” he asked himself.

  “Here, there, and everywhere my long nose takes me.”

  “You were looking for something?” His damp eyes slid to the desk drawer behind me. For a quick flash, his face clouded with worry. The pile of papers on the floor disturbed him. “Something in her desk?”

  “It could be.”

  “What? What were you after?”

  “Her fountain pen,” I said. “I collect ladies’ fountain pens.”

  “Listen, don’t fool with me,” Luchon said. He was moved by a fresh burst of emotion now, a subdued fury that might force him into drunken hostility. He licked his lip and glared at me and waved the gun provocatively under my nose. “Maybe I’d better call Lisa Varick. Maybe I’d better tell her you came up here.”

  “A good idea.”

  “Or maybe the police.”

  “A better idea,” I said. “What’s holding you back, Luchon?”