“The other man,” I said. “The one with the blonde. Did you get a good look at him?”
“Not a good look. He took the driver’s seat in the Cadillac. That was all. He drove the woman away.”
“Good work, Fennisong.”
“Is that all you need?”
“I need a prayer.”
Fennisong’s voice hopped with curiosity. “Where are you?”
“At the Concordat. Does that ring a bell?”
“Lisa Varick’s address,” laughed Fennisong. “But she’s moved out, hasn’t she?”
“Not completely.”
“What have you got, West? Don’t be a pig about it. Remember, I’ve been retained by Blackburn to catch a murderer. This could mean a few quid to me, don’t you see? Don’t leave me on the outside, old man.”
“I’m not quite sure I’m on the inside,” I said.
“Where are you going? Break it down, will you?”
“Several places, Fennisong. But I’ll wind up on Sutton Place.”
There was a silence while he sucked in a gasp of surprise. “You don’t mean that the blonde—?!”
“I’m not sure. It’s only a big bold guess.”
“Don’t you think you’d better tell Sam MacGruder?”
“Not yet. Not until I’m sure.”
“You’re wrong, West. Listen—”
But I hung up. I was in no mood for prolonged telephone badinage.
Run! Run! Hurry, my brain told my body, down the dim streets and through the back alleys, behind the shadows of the night, to find the murderer of Jake West. It was an effort to slow down, to pause for any breath of caution. The way was clearly marked for me now. It was happening to me, in the way that I had manufactured tension of this sort in many a story of my own devising. Always, in the final chapters, the hero skittered down the uncertain path of the final chase. How often had I described his red-blooded reactions to this kind of hunt? Always, he moved against the pressure of a great fatigue, the build-up of the physical strain during the last hectic hours. Yet now, as I drove across town, my mind seemed strangely bright and alert. My destination challenged me, buoyed me.
The clock on my dashboard read 3:15 as I parked in the gloom of a side street close to Fifth Avenue, high in the Sixties. I rolled the convertible slowly, scanning the darkened doorways for the right number. The Blackburn mansion was a magnificent relic out of the city’s past. There were a few lights on, the front window aglow and a glimmering in the vestibule. I crossed the street and stood near the entrance. Somebody was stirring in the hall.
He skipped down the steps and began to walk quickly toward the corner. He wore hard heels. He strode with the forceful, deliberate pace of an athlete. When he passed me in the shadows, I knew him at once. He was Larry Seff.
He advanced a few yards from the house when I came up behind him. He was surprised to see me. Ruvulo’s gun felt snug and secure under his heart. He put up his hands and said nothing.
“In here,” I told him.
“Well, if it isn’t the Boy Scout,” Seff said.
In the almost ebony shadows of the alley, I couldn’t see his face at all. Yet, despite the darkness, enough of his surly, frigid personality came through to me. I hated him with a throbbing, nervous hate. I rammed the gun in deeper and felt good when he grunted and stepped backward. It was a pleasure to push him around. I moved him into a section of the alley where the two buildings formed a closetlike space, a tiny arena in which we could disport ourselves. He continued to step away from me until he felt the wall.
“What’s the gag?” he asked. His breathing sounded tight and hard.
“What were you doing in Blackburn’s?”
“Why don’t you ask Nancy?”
“I’m asking you.”
“Nancy invited me in,” Seff said. Behind his words, I could feel the simpering smile.
“You’re a liar,” I said.
“Why don’t you go in and ask the girl?”
“She wouldn’t give you the right time, Seff.”
“Maybe she did already.”
“I’m going to give you another chance,” I said. “Talk fast.”
“You heard me, West.”
“Still want to play the big lover?”
“Nancy likes it that way.”
I hit him before he could laugh. The poor fool couldn’t begin to understand what he was doing to me. I wanted him sane and sensible. I needed him without the byplay, the silly routine about Nancy Blackburn. There was enough heat in me to boil over at the mere sight of this jackal. There was enough impatience generated by the simple feel of him behind the muzzle of Ruvulo’s gun. But his taunting, sneering jibes about Nancy moved me. There might have been a vague stirring of jealousy in me. There might have been a deep and protective emotion tightening my gun hand. Whatever it was, it catapulted me into frenzied action. I slammed Seff with the butt end of the gun. But he didn’t go down the way Luchon had fallen.
Seff came at me.
He was an expert at infighting. He ducked my first quick slap at him. The gun butt caught him, but the blow glanced off his head. In that moment, Seff moved away from me. I hit him again, using my fist this time. He countered and slipped under my hand, connecting with my stomach. The wind sailed out of me. In the gap of discomfort, Seff saw his advantage. He came at me savagely. His first roundhouse swing at me connected. The gun dropped out of my hand. His punch caught me high on the chest, staggering me, unbalancing me. I rolled away drunkenly, fighting for my breath. In my mind’s eye, out of my army past, the first important lessons in scientific mayhem fought for recognition. I had learned the basic movements of butchery not too long ago. And this was an enemy who needed flattening. Quickly, before he would kill me.
Seff was muttering heated curses. He moved in, his body in a crouch, his figure only vaguely outlined against the gray light in the street behind him. He leaped for my throat. In that moment, I brought my knee up. I caught him in the groin. I caught him on the way in. The shock of my defensive move slammed the wind out of him. He doubled up, clawing at his stomach.
In that instant of reflex pain, I kneed him again.
Seff sagged and went down.
I kicked out at his jaw, blinded by my anger. It was a wasted effort. Seff was out cold when his face hit the pavement.
I found Ruvulo’s gun and pocketed it. I ran my hands over Seff and discovered his automatic. There was a cluster of garbage cans at the end of the alley. I dropped his gun in one of them and brushed myself off and started for the Blackburn house.
Nancy answered the bell.
“Dave,” she said, her eyes bright and round. “This is a surprise.”
“I’m a big surprise man.”
“You’ve been hurt. Your face—”
“Never mind my face. Where’s the phone?”
“In here.” She led me into a broad and spacious room behind the hall. She handed me the phone, still giving me her soft and sympathetic eyes. “Who hit you?”
I didn’t answer. I was ringing Sam MacGruder’s office and getting the man at the desk. I was telling him to send a wagon up for Larry Seff, describing the alley in which Seff would be found. MacGruder was out of the office, home in bed. MacGruder would be wanting to know why Seff should be picked up, the desk man argued. I explained that it was routine for police to pick up a man on complaint of assault and battery. Who was assaulted, the desk man wanted to know. I gave him my name and hung up.
Nancy was staring at me. “Dave, let me fix your face.”
“To hell with my face. I want to talk to you.”
“All right, then.” She was holding a highball glass in her hand. She led me into the broad hall again. There was a door into a private den, off to the right of the vestibule. I paused and entered that room. Nancy followed me, slowly and quietly. This was once
a library. Now it served as a domestic spa. I went to the little bar and poured myself a double jigger of Scotch.
“Was that true?” she asked. “What you just phoned in?”
“Take another look at my face,” I said.
“But Larry Seff? Where did he come from?”
“Don’t make me laugh,” I said. On the bar were three glasses. An ash tray held an assortment of cigarette butts, some of them marked with lipstick, others unstained. Two cigar ends lay mangled in the debris. It added up. I ran my eyes over the corny evidence. “Seff was in this room, Nancy. Why?”
“Maybe I was entertaining him.”
“At this hour?”
“Isn’t that to be expected of the F. Scott Fitzgerald type?”
“You’re really not that type.”
“You changed your mind about me?”
“Some time ago,” I said. “You’re a rational gal.”
“Flatterer.”
“You do strange things, but for good reasons.”
“Tell me more, Mr. Psychiatrist.”
“You know what I’m talking about.” I sat beside her on the couch. “You’re a little girl with a great, an overpowering affection for your father.”
“Is that wrong?”
“Sometimes.”
“Bad for a girl to love her dad?” She made a face at me to show me her confusion. “Since when?”
“Your dad’s a big boy. He can take care of himself.”
“You’ll have to explain,” she said. She came closer to me on the couch. She was dressed in a simple set of lounging pajamas, the sort of garments that featured her charms in a way that earned haut-monde designers huge fees. The simplicity was geared perfectly to her lissome figure. The simplicity allowed for a low neckline, cut with a seductive swoop that would trap a man’s eyes. When I thought of Seff in this room with her, my head throbbed. When she touched my hand with hers, it was a stab at me. “You’re mad at me, Dave,” she said quietly. “Why?”
“Seff. What was he doing here?”
“You’re jealous?”
“All right, I’m jealous.”
She gave me an impish smile. “Honest, Dave?”
I grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her gently. There was nothing I could do to kill the soft and warming light in her eyes.
“Larry Seff didn’t come here to see you, Nancy.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Even a two-bit detective story writer like me could guess it. Your dad was in this room. He smoked two cigars. He was quite nervous. He didn’t finish either of the stogies. Seff’s visit disturbed your dad—and I can understand why.”
“You’re very clever.”
“And Dave is right.”
The voice came from behind me. Eustace Blackburn stood in the doorway to the hall. He was dressed as I had seen him last at The Famous Door. His eyes were rimmed and heavy with fatigue. His spare frame seemed suddenly old and sad. He had aged much during the past few hours. He stood dazedly staring at Nancy. He came in and sat beside her wearily. He stroked her head and she buried it against his chest.
“Poor Nancy,” he sighed. “I’ve put you through the wringer, haven’t I, girl? I’ve done some pretty stupid things during the past forty-eight hours.” He turned his sad eyes my way. “You want to know why Seff was here, Dave?”
“I think I know,” I said. “He came here to blackmail you.”
“How could you know that?”
“Larry Seff doesn’t make early morning visits unless money is involved. Blackmail, for a man like Seff, is a commercial venture.”
“You don’t have to talk, Dad,” Nancy said. She came alive suddenly, a little girl frightened because her father was in trouble. “Dave isn’t interested in what went on here. Not really. Dave is only after the man who murdered his uncle.”
“Your father is going to help me find the murderer,” I told her. “If he tells me the truth.”
“I’m ready to tell you the truth, Dave.”
“All of it, beginning from the last moment you saw Jake West alive,” said. “You picked him up at the Sulky Inn, didn’t you?”
“We met there,” Blackburn began quietly. “How did you know?”
“I didn’t. But I know you, and I know my Uncle Jake. You’re both honorable men. Jake West was in love with Lisa Varick. He kept her in high style for years. Then you came along and she smelled richer game. You, too, fell in love with her. She has the ability to make men tumble around her.”
“Please,” Blackburn held up an urgent hand. “I’m still in love with her, Dave.”
“I’m not insulting her,” I said. “I’m simply explaining her. She’s a rare type of woman, Lisa is. You’re not going to like what I tell you next. You’re not going to believe that she’s preparing to fleece you, in much the same way that she went through Jake West’s fortune.”
“I warn you, Dave. Don’t talk that way about Lisa.”
“Let him talk,” Nancy said, brightening. “I’m beginning to fall in love with him all over again.”
“You met my uncle at the Sulky Inn,” I went on, “so that you and he could talk it out on a friendly basis. Jake knew that you were dead gone on Lisa. It would be like him to ask for a meeting. You drove him into town. Where did you hold the gab fest?”
“In this room,” Blackburn said. “Everything went well, Dave, believe me.”
“My uncle was upset?”
“Jake was almost sick about it. He couldn’t understand why Lisa was dropping him.”
“He warned you about her?”
“We talked about her,” Blackburn said, uncomfortable with the memory of his conversation with Jake West. “It wasn’t easy, but we managed to settle things fairly well. When I told Jake I was going to marry her, when I told him that Lisa wanted it, he seemed shocked. We shook hands, however, and I took him to the door.” Blackburn got up and paced restlessly to the bar. He deliberated a drink for a moment. But he decided against it. “That was when I got my first big surprise, Dave,” he said slowly, “because I saw Nickles Shuba waiting for Jake in his convertible.”
“Why the surprise? Nickles drove him often.”
“Not to the places he visited that night. You see, Jake planned to see Lisa when he left me.”
Nancy joined her father at the bar. “Why didn’t you tell me about Nickles, Dad?”
“I thought I could handle him if anything came up. Nickles frightened me. He would be all ears for picking up the threads of any mess. I was afraid Jake might tell him something he could use. I was afraid of blackmail. Especially after Jake was killed.”
“But Nickles never contacted you?”
“Never.”
“Yet, Larry Seff did. Does that suggest anything to you?”
Blackburn stood there, stunned by a disturbing thought. Something gnawed at him, an inner distraction that made him slump hopelessly into a chair.
Nancy went to him. “You know who told Larry Seff, Dad?”
“I think so.”
“Tell Dave.”
Blackburn stared at me sadly. “It must have been Lisa. She was the only one who knew I saw Jake before he was murdered. I wanted her to know that I didn’t kill Jake. Jake West and I were old friends.”
“So the bitch relayed the information to Seff,” Nancy said. Her temper flared high. She was on her feet again, a picture of unladylike anger. She started for the hall, but I went after her and held her. “I’m one of the few people who know how to make girls like Lisa talk,” she said. “I’m going to have another little chat with her. Right now.”
“You’re staying here,” I said. I brought her back to her father’s side. “One more item. Mr. Blackburn,” I said. “About last night. Do you remember what happened after you arrived at Buffo’s and went to the terrace bar?”
“Of course, Dave. I sat for a while talking to Mike, the bartender. Then Lisa came in.”
“She came in alone?”
“I’m sure she was alone.”
“And who came in after her?”
Blackburn scowled back into his memory. “Lisa joined me at the bar. If my memory serves me right, Buffo walked through the bar and across the terrace after that.”
“You’re sure it was Buffo?”
“I’m quite positive.”
“Where was he going?”
“He didn’t say,” Blackburn said. “He didn’t talk to us. But it looked to me as though he might be heading for the parking lot.”
“He drove off?”
“It could have been Buffo. I remember a car starting after he crossed the terrace.”
“Good enough,” I said, and shook his hand and thanked him for his information. Nancy came to the door with me. “Good night, Girl Scout,” I said. “See you in the morning.”
“Where are you going, Dave?”
“I’ve got to see a man.”
“Watch your step with her,” Nancy said soberly. “She’s dangerous, Dave. She’s deadly.”
CHAPTER 23
The streets were empty canyons of quiet and darkness, but there was a thin edge of color in the eastern sky. It would be dawn soon. In a few hours the sprawling city would yawn and awaken. Already the humming milk trucks crawled the side streets. Already a few early-bird workers were starting for the subways. But once past the core of the city, once beyond the trafficked lanes, the silence closed in on me again.
I rolled down a familiar street. Only a few nights ago, Jake West had come this way, a saddened man on a strange mission. He had parked this car and walked up to his doom, through the neat door in the blue-fronted façade and up the carpeted steps into Lisa Varick’s living room.
I looked up at the darkened building now, wondering about what I might find up there. My imagination was stunned by the impact of her fantastic personality. Lisa Varick, the queen bee. Lisa Varick, the mantrap, the siren, the seductress with an intellect, the witch who could spin an intricate and impossible web for a man to die in. Out of the catalogue of all my imagined vixens, had I ever dared dream of one so evil as Lisa? Hers was a mysterious power, a combination of physical charms and mental prowess that could ensnare all manner of males, from a sulky driver to a business tycoon, from a cheap gunsel like Chester Leech, to his master, the inscrutable Larry Seff. She would be canny and desperate when I confronted her.
Win, Place, and Die! Page 18
