I parked the car at the far corner and walked to Lisa Varick’s alley. Down the narrow concrete corridor I crept, lowering myself through the same window I had used before. Then, up the steps to the first-floor landing. Into the big broad hall.
Listening. Silence sang around me, a vacuum of quiet and darkness. From somewhere in a distant room a clock ticked, the sound of it strangely loud and metallic in the gloom. The little French clock in her bedroom? I started up the stairs. No noise followed me. My feet sank deep into the cushiony carpet.
On the second-floor landing I paused again. The ticking came through louder here. And what else? The sound of breathing up there? Snoring? My hand snaked into my jacket to feel Ruvulo’s gun. The metallic touch of it comforted me. She must be caught off guard. It would be best to advance to the bedroom door, to waken her with this gun.
The living room lay to my left. The big picture window was already rich with the oncoming dawn, graying the apartment with dim light, so that the furniture came into focus for me; here the couch where she had received Nancy a few hours ago; there the little table that held the telephone; across the room the two tastefully designed period chairs.
My ears caught the sound of gentle movement, suddenly. On this floor? I slipped to the wall and flattened myself against it. Here I would wait, until my mind returned to normalcy. Here I would stand until my ears told me that they had erred. But there was a sound.
I backtracked into the living room. Here, the familiar layout afforded me a variety of temporary hiding places. I chose the couch on the far side of the room. I crouched behind it.
Then a light went on.
It was the small fixture in the hall, a hanging bracket that lit up the place with a bright glare. Into this box of brilliance walked Lisa Varick.
She held a glass in her hand. She had evidently returned to this floor from her bedroom in search of a sedative, an aspirin, or a quick nightcap. She hesitated at the stairway, turning to face the living room. In the pause, she was a figure of fantastic charm. She wore a silken nightgown, of the clutch and claw variety, a garment that accented her fulsome figure. Around the waist the tight sash displayed the girlish girth of her torso; full-breasted and unencumbered by any fat in the shoulders and arms. From where I stood she could have been twenty-five, a youthful insomniac who paused doubtfully at the stair landing. She stared into the living room. She turned her head and looked up the carpeted stairway. She was making up her mind about something.
But I gave her no room for further thought.
“Better stay where you are,” I said, reaching up for the wall switch on my right side. “I don’t want to talk in your bedroom, Lisa.”
She almost dropped the glass. She fell back a step and gawked at me, overcome by my startling presence. She was looking at Ruvulo’s automatic in my hand. She was reacting to it, horrified by it, tantalized by it, but respecting it and coming my way, the glass till held in her right hand.
“What on earth are you doing here?” she asked. Now she had arrived at the little French phone table. The glass was down. She moved with more poise. But she could not hold her eyes on me. In the pause, she was stealing a quick look at the stairs. “Please, get out of here before you find yourself in trouble.”
“Thanks, I’ll stay. Sit down.”
“I’d prefer to stand.”
“Sit,” I said, waving the gun at her. She reacted with something resembling futility. “We’ve got things to talk about.”
“Things?”
“Murder.”
“Oh, come now,” she said softly and earnestly. “This is absolutely nonsensical. Why don’t you leave the murders for the police to solve?”
“Because this one concerns me.”
“You don’t mean you think that I—?” She appeared genuinely upset by my accusation. Standing over her, watching her carefully, it wasn’t easy to believe that this woman could kill wantonly. She showed me her worried eyes. She shook her head at me sadly. And once again, I caught her flickering uneasy glances at the stairway. “Why don’t you do as I tell you, Dave? You’re wrong. I didn’t kill your uncle. You must believe me. Why would I kill him?”
“To get him out of the way.”
“But he left me of his own accord.”
“That’s your story. I say you murdered him. I say you lured him here and killed him. Just to get rid of him, so he couldn’t interfere with your plans. You shot him and took him back to the track. You were desperate because he was going to queer you. He must have had a fight with you after he spoke to Blackburn. It had to be you who killed him, Lisa. Because you were the last person to see him alive. It checks. It fits.”
“But you’re wrong, I tell you.”
“He came here, didn’t he?”
“Yes, he came here,” she said wearily, struggling to understand me. Her face still shone and sparkled, despite the lack of make-up. She had the quiet charm of the expert actress. “But that was because he wanted to say goodbye.”
“And he said goodbye and left?”
“That was all.”
“Or did he want a refund?” I asked.
“What do you mean by that?”
“I’m talking about his money. You took him for every dime he had. You invested his money in all kinds of ventures: The Famous Cellar, Buffo’s, and God knows how many other deals of that kind. Wasn’t poor old Jake entitled to a refund? Or was he supposed to walk out of here completely broke?”
Lisa fidgeted in her chair. Her eyes snaked to the right, toward the darkened room where I had hidden during her talk with Nancy. Her nervousness came through more strongly now, more obviously. She stood to get a cigarette, not bothering to ask my permission. Her hands were tense. They fumbled the lighter.
“You’re wrong, Dave,” she said quietly. “I loved Jake West. Jake was a good man, maybe a little too good for me.”
“You’re a liar. You only wanted him, to bleed him white.”
“I tell you I loved Jake. I don’t expect you to believe me.”
“But you loved money more,” I said. “When you were ready to drop him, Jake made the job easy for you. He never really lived with you at the Concordat. He was a regular visitor there, but never a tenant. Nobody could ever really tie him to you after his death. Nobody but George Bannerman.”
“I never knew a George Bannerman.”
“Jake must have told you about him. He was the only man in New York who knew Jake West intimately. You had to get rid of him because you didn’t know exactly how much Jake West confided in Bannerman.”
“Please, please,” she said in a whisper. Her fretful eyes seemed rimmed with genuine worry now. “You’re wrong, all wrong.”
“You had Bannerman killed.”
“That’s a lie.”
“You couldn’t rest easy with Bannerman alive,” I went on. “Bannerman would go to the police and tell them about you. Bannerman knew all about Jake’s love affair with you. That was why you had Leech push him off the bridge last night. You were in too deep.”
She began to sob now, almost out of control. “This is the first I’ve heard of Bannerman’s death. You’ve got to believe me.”
“You’re still a liar. You killed Nickles Shuba because he drove Jake here the other night. You were afraid of blackmail from Shuba.”
Lisa said nothing now. I let the silence grow. Why was she flicking her eyes beyond me? In the dull light that rimmed the furniture in the next room, I searched for the target. Near the doorway, its back to us, there was a red leather chair of the type used in the fancier libraries. In the vague shadows, something lay on the seat. A small package? An article of clothing? I stepped forward. There would be only a half dozen steps between me and the red leather chair. But in the quick moment of my decision, Lisa Varick tensed where she sat. Her eyes were filling with a fresh emotion now. Her face was coloring with someth
ing resembling horror. She clutched the chair arm and said nothing as I stepped past her toward the doorway. And in the next second, I saw why she had tensed.
The shadow on the leather chair was a hat.
And the hat was a black Homburg.
Buffo!
Buffo was here! In the electric pause, Lisa Varick put a hand to her mouth. She was turning toward the stairway now. She had heard the sound of footsteps behind me.
“Drop the gun, please,” a voice said. “Don’t turn this way until you drop the gun. Or I’ll have to shoot you.”
The voice belonged to Buffo. I dropped the gun. It fell with a stupid clatter against the little French phone table. Lisa Varick got out of her chair and ran to Buffo.
“You shouldn’t have come down,” she said.
“Dave is a loud talker,” Buffo said.
He was almost a comic figure, standing that way with his arm around her. He was dressed in blue pajamas, tied with a broad white sash, an ensemble that gave him a ridiculous, flouncy air. But the sight of him here, in Lisa’s private den, the picture of this bald-domed heel, the sound of his husky voice, all these things didn’t inspire me to laughter. My mind was burning and bursting with a revelation that shattered me. Lisa clung to him with an intense anxiety. This was the big love of her life. This was a man who had mastered her. She said nothing as she waited for his next move. She was his, all the way.
“Sorry I disturbed you, Buffo,” I said.
“You talked so loud, I could hear every word you said.” He smiled a dry and meaningless smile. “Of course, you’re all wrong about Lisa. You know that.”
“I know it now.”
“You didn’t know it before?”
“Not until you walked in,” I said. “You and Lisa have been mattress mates for a long time.”
“Ah?” Buffo patted Lisa and pushed her away from him. He came across the rug, as well-poised as a foreign dignitary. He brought the automatic up to my chest. “You don’t mean to insult the lady, of course?”
He whipped out a hand at me. The blow caught me off guard, a backhanded slap that stung, high on my jaw. He stood there laughing at me contemptuously.
“You amaze me, Buffo,” I said. “But then, you’ve amazed better minds than mine. I forgot your record for a while.”
“This man is very very clever,” Buffo said to Lisa. She was at his side again, unworried, laughing at me, having a big time with her hero. Buffo sat on the couch with her. He didn’t for an instant take the gun off me. “I’ve got to hand it to you,” he said. “You manufactured a sensible theory. I heard every word of it from the upstairs landing.”
“I didn’t reckon with you,” I said. “But you make everything I said a while ago sound like trash now, Buffo.”
“How do you mean?”
“I mean that you’re the murderer. Not Lisa.”
“That,” he laughed, “is what I thought you meant.”
“You were here when Jake West arrived,” I said. “That’s the gimmick I missed. Jake must have seen you here. A sight like that would do remarkable things to an honest man like my Uncle Jake. Jake must have been shocked to his shoes to find his Lisa en déshabille with a crumb like you, Buffo. Jake was cuckolded in one quick blow. When he caught you in pajamas I imagine he put on quite a show for you. He must have tried to save dear Lisa’s honor, wasn’t that it?”
“You see how clever he is, this boy?” Buffo asked Lisa.
“Really smart,” Lisa said.
“Not as smart as Buffo,” I said. “Buffo is wise enough to know his most valuable possession. Buffo would kill his mother to preserve you, Lisa.”
“Careful, careful,” Buffo said, stepping closer. “Or I’ll have to hit you again.”
“Where will it get you?”
“You talk too nasty.”
“It’s the way I react to vermin,” I said. “You killed my uncle because you were afraid Jake would tell Blackburn about what he saw here. Can you imagine Blackburn’s face if he knew Buffo was bedding down with you, Lisa? That would make the old boy hop. He’s still a young buck at heart. Every man on earth squirms at playing the cuckold role. Blackburn would have dropped Lisa like a hot coal. You didn’t want that, Buffo. So you shot Jake West to prevent him from talking. But that was only the beginning, wasn’t it?”
“Tell me more, Mr. Writer.”
“You killed Nickles Shuba, too.”
“Smarter and smarter,” Buffo said. “How do you figure I killed Shuba?”
“It fits,” I said. “And I have a pretty good witness.”
“A witness? Who?”
“Me.”
“You’re a liar, West.”
“Am I? You slugged me when I came into the hall behind the bar last night, Buffo. But you didn’t hit me hard enough. I came out of it fast enough to see you cross the terrace on the way to the parking lot. What’s going to happen when I tell Sam MacGruder that you took a short drive last night? MacGruder might figure you left your place to take the body of Nickles Shuba down the road a piece. MacGruder will be delighted.”
For a moment Buffo’s eyes slid to his lady love. Lisa shook her head at me. “You’re dreaming, Dave. The bartender told me you were cold as a fish when he brought you around.”
“The bartender is a moron,” I said. “And I’m an expert at handling morons.” I turned to Buffo. “That’s why I’m doing so well with you, chum. I’m going to bring you in.”
“This boy will have to go,” Buffo said.
“Definitely,” said Lisa.
“And right away.”
They sat together, laughing at me. And the sight of them rankled me. More and more these two seemed suited to each other. Their minds were locked, attuned to the same devilish music. Upsetting them would be a pleasure. Their quiet confidence in each other sickened me.
“What a cozy picture you two make,” I said. “A couple of fancy lice.”
“Watch your language,” Buffo said.
“A couple of cornball lovers,” I laughed.
“What’s so funny, West?”
“You, Buffo. You’re a boob.”
The change of pace threw them off balance a little. He let go of her hand and came over to me. He scowled belligerently, licking his fat lip. Lisa came to his side.
“Let’s get him out of here, doll,” she said. “He bothers me.”
“In a big hurry, Lisa?” I asked. “She’s in a big hurry to get rid of me, Buffo. And I can tell you why. It’s because you’re such a stupid boob.”
“You said that before, West. I don’t like it.”
“The truth hurts?”
“What truth?” he bellowed.
“Ask the little lady.”
“Ask her what?”
“Ask her about your horns, Buffo.”
“Horns?” He backed off and stared at me, not adjusted to the change of pace. He turned to Lisa. “What the hell is this jerk talking about, Lisa?”
“He’s stalling,” she said. “Let’s get him out of here.”
From where I stood, the nose of Ruvulo’s automatic was visible under the little French phone table. Five steps? Six steps? If I fell that way, I might be able to grab it. I would have to fall to one side, past Buffo’s figure. I would have to roll on the rug and grope for the gun almost as soon as I went down.
“Let him talk,” said Buffo. “I want to hear more about the horn business.”
“Ask the bitch,” I said.
He hit me. This time he used the gun. He aimed it for my face but he missed and caught me low, on the neck, below the ear. The force of his blow stunned me. It almost blacked me out. But he had not intended to level me. His outburst was inspired by my artful innuendo. His face was mottled with rage. He was fighting for his lady love now, a battling warrior who must right a great wrong.
“I don’t like dirty language,” Buffo said. “Apologize to the lady.”
“The lady knows I’m right.”
“Hit him again,” Lisa said. She had stepped up to me and seemed ready to join the physical high jinks. She stood there, arms akimbo, murdering me with her eyes. “This time hit him for real, doll.”
“Ask her about Leech,” I said.
Buffo paused. “What’s that? What about Leech?”
“Ask the little lady.”
“Hit him,” Lisa said again. “He’s stalling for time. Let’s get him out of here. Let’s dump him somewhere and forget about him.”
“What about Leech?” Buffo had my throat now. His pudgy hands would be able to throttle a man. Easily. “What were you saying about Leech?”
“Ask the lady. He’s another of her lovers.”
Lisa slapped me. She would have slapped me again, but he grabbed her and held her. She screamed a long and varied assortment of epithets at me. She struggled to leave Buffo so that she could hit me again. Her reactions made Buffo puff and sweat a bit. She was an animal in his hand, a spitting, screaming cat. I wondered how long she would continue her hysterics. Ruvulo’s gun! If I could fall, if I could bend for a quick leap at it, this scene might be ended. But Buffo’s eyes never left me as he wrestled her back from me. He threw her into a chair and held her there.
“Methinks the lady doth protest too much,” I said.
“Maybe you’d better explain,” said Buffo.
“It’s perfectly simple. Leech is one of her undying loves.”
“Explain,” said Buffo.
Win, Place, and Die! Page 19
