The Murder Megapack

by Talmage Powell

  “I don’t know what time Bunny’ll be in,” she said. “She’s rehearsing with the new show at the St. Regis.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “Sometimes she meets her boyfriend when she gets through. You know, Joey Andra. He dances at the Silver Drum. Personally, I can’t figure what Bunny sees in him. I know when he was running around with me—”

  She went on, and on. About Joey Andra. About the uneven course of true love. About the two-timing proclivities of the Broadway male. I listened, thinking.

  I had more than a deep-seated hunch that Bunny Dunlap knew something about Gus Gusman’s murder. And I had a feeling that the letter she had so hastily asked me to safeguard for her had something to do with the shyster’s pass-out. What? The more I thought of it, the more confused and complex it became.

  But one thing was sure. I had to see Bunny and before too long.

  Della suddenly remembered her manners and went to open a couple of cans of beer. She found an old box of pretzels somewhere, blew the dust off and got real chummy.

  We were toasting each other in foam when the doorbell hummed. The yellow-top pursed her red lipsticked mouth.

  “That isn’t Bunny—unless she’s lost her key. Wait’ll I go see.”

  Her heels clicked on the hall floor boards. The lock snapped back and from where I sat on the disconsolate couch I had a triangular view of two callers at the door. Both men.

  “No, she hasn’t got in yet,” Della Roberts was saying. “You friends of hers?”

  “Known her for years,” one of the pair said. “Mind if we come in and take a look around?”

  He followed that up with a push past Della. I set my tankard down as they drifted in. They didn’t look good, either of them.

  The one who had spoken was a lanky, red-haired man. He puffed on a pipe, curved like a bathing beauty. He had a blank, composed face, deep-set eyes without warmth or light and a creased, protruding chin.

  He wore a pale tan gabardine suit that fit without a wrinkle. He looked at me and at about that time I began to register. I’d seen him somewhere before. I had a feeling that he was familiar. I couldn’t rest a finger on it, but intuition told me he was somebody who had been in the public eye at a time not too far distant.

  His companion was slim and dark, a young man slight as a girl. I noticed his small, delicate hands, velvety eyes and hard little mouth. His black hair was brushed up in a series of tight waves and he smelled of lilac. He was in blue, a red carnation in his lapel.

  He looked unhealthy, stealthy and sinister despite his build and smallness.

  “My name’s Fain,” the red-haired man said. “My pal’s Eddie Beam. We had a date with Miss Dunlap that she didn’t keep. We thought maybe she’d come home.”

  “Isn’t that funny?” Della said it to them but kept looking at me. “This gentleman’s waiting for her, too. I wonder where she went.”

  “Who’s ‘this gentleman?’” Fain cut in.

  “Oh, I forgot to introduce you.” Della laughed, a trifle nervously. There was something in Fain’s voice like a sudden frostbite. “This is Mr. Castle. He’s a newspaper man. He’s on the Orbit.”

  Fain’s cold eyes rested on me. “A reporter?” He turned his head and spoke to the little guy. “Coincidence, Eddie.”

  “Yeah,” Eddie said, out of his hard little mouth.”

  Fain frowned. He took the pipe from between his teeth, stirred its hot ashes with a toothpick and focused his gaze on Della.

  It was obvious he had thought she might have been stalling about Bunny not being home. Finding me there, waiting, had apparently reassured him. But not with any degree of pleasure. The frown bit deeper into his forehead and mouth.

  “Where can we locate her?”

  “Well,” Della said, “as I was telling Mr. Castle, she probably met Joey Andra somewhere. She didn’t say anything to me.”

  “Andra?” Eddie Beam interrupted softly. “Isn’t he the luggie who hoofs at the Silver Drum?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Okay, Len,” Beam interrupted again. “Let’s shove. I know where Andra stops off. Let’s talk to him.”

  The red-headed man hesitated. For a couple of seconds I didn’t think he was going to take Beam’s advice. I had an idea he was going to sit down and wait, too. He puffed on his pipe, stared at Della, then at me.

  “All right,” he said then, abruptly. The door closed behind them. Somehow I felt quick relief. Their type was familiar. The kind that gunned without asking too many questions.

  What did they want with Bunny Dunlap? And where had I seen the one who called himself Fain? The two inquiries merged into one large interrogation point when Della came back from the front door.

  “Say,” she said, a bit huskily, “how did you like that pair? The way the big one looked at me gave me shivers. Where does Bunny pick up these characters?”

  “I think,” I told her, “I’ll be running along.”

  Della’s lipsticked mouth opened. “You’re not powdering, Mr. Castle? Just when we’re getting acquainted. There’s plenty more beer and, like I said, I haven’t a thing to do tonight.”

  “Unfortunately,” I said, “I have. When Bunny comes in tell her to call me at the office. This is important.”

  Downstairs I grabbed a taxi and headed for the paper. All the way along Broadway my brain buzzed. I couldn’t get Fain’s face out of my mind. The cab was almost even with the Winter Garden when recollection hit me—suddenly and all at once.

  I felt my nerves crawl. For a minute I wondered if I were wrong. I hoped I was wrong—but I wasn’t.

  Fifteen minutes after I was in the Orbit’s morgue, and had the file I wanted open before me, I began to understand why Augustus Gusman had been permanently removed from the Rialto scene. Fain’s true identity came up with that understanding. Two and two made a perfect four, but it ended there.

  What Bunny Dunlap had to do with the late Mr. Gusman’s demise and why the red-haired, lanky man and his miniature companion were so anxious to see her, were still matters for a crystal ball gazer to angle out. Either way, Fain’s interest in the little chorine wasn’t good.

  I put the file away and got back to my desk in time to hear the phone on it ringing.

  “For you, Mr. Castle,” Beth Wheaton said. “A lady. At least she sounds like one.”

  “Put her on.”

  For an instant I thought it might be Libby Hart. Libby boiling because I had walked out on her at the theater. Libby in flames because I was messing around with murder again.

  Instead, the somewhat strained voice of Bunny Dunlap came over the wire: “Mr. Castle? Della says you were up here and that you want to see me. I want to see you, too, as soon as possible. Can you come right up?”

  “Wait a minute.” I thought I’d play it smart. “How about you meeting me—at Chester Ward’s place, on the Square? In twenty minutes.”

  She said she would and rang off.

  The idea of Captain Mullin flashed through my mind. I toyed with it, then shrugged it aside. Mullin would fit in later, after I heard what Bunny had to say.

  At least, that was the way I figured it.

  Ward’s place was a block and half north of the Capitol on Longacre Square.

  Ostensibly an eatery specializing in seafood, the second floor of the place was laid out in a series of private rooms. Folks with lost-week-end ideas could coax any number of bottles along up there in the strictest privacy. People who wanted to stage dice games or revel in romance had a green light and no interference. Business deals were often consummated in the little tuckaways.

  The last time I’d been on the second floor was to sit in on a session where the manager of a certain promising welterweight haggled with the promoter of a Newark auditorium concerning the gate cut he’d receive if his boy went to war with some local set-up. The thing had finally been arranged to everyone’s satisfaction except that of the socker himself. Sitting there, the leather pusher had watched his profits go down like the
mercury in a Minnesota winter.

  There was no sign of Bunny Dunlap in the big square foyer-waiting room. The clock told me I was five minutes early. I got hold of Chester, a hard-bitten man with a tight, worried face. He needed his usual shave and listened.

  “Private room? Meeting a doll? I should send her right up when she comes?” Ward grinned crookedly. “You’re leaving yourself wide open, kid.”

  “You mean Miss Hart?”

  “What else?”

  “It isn’t what you think,” I told him. “This concerns the law.”

  “Sure, sure.” Ward winked and turned me over to one of his plug-ugly waiters. “Fix Mr. Castle up with some privacy and tell me the number of the room.”

  Both private supper rooms on either side of the cubicle I was ushered into were as empty as a beggar’s palm. The waiter turned on lights.

  “Scotch or rye?” he asked, and eased himself away.

  I lighted a cigarette and sat down.

  The information I had dug up at the office made headlines in my mind. But I couldn’t turn a wheel until I talked to Bunny. I tried to fit her into the murder picture. I couldn’t get her in focus. And yet—

  Just about then there was a light tap on the door.

  I opened it and the little chorine slithered in. Behind her followed the waiter with a bottle, and a carbonated water set-up. He left his tray on the table and departed after a look at Bunny’s ankles.

  She took off a not-too-bad reefer, fuzzed her hair up with her fingers, took the drink I put together as if she needed it badly, and slumped down in the other chair.

  Chapter IV

  Blue Steel

  Second floor business was picking up. I heard the door of the room on the left side of us open and close, a murmur of voices, but I didn’t pay any attention. I stared hard at Bunny’s piquant face, at her frightened eyes, and noticed the way she clutched her glass. As if it might get away from her.

  “It’s your cue, honey,” I said to her. “What’s it all about?”

  I said it quietly. She made her gaze level with mine. Instead of answering she asked her own question.

  “Where’s the envelope I gave you at the theater, Mr. Castle?”

  “Let’s hear about it before we go into that.” I lit a cigarette for her. “Tell me about Gusman. What happened in Swan Millard’s dressing room during your costume changes?” She shuddered, took a long drag out of the glass and hunched herself together in the chair. I knew that under her make-up she was as white as plaster.

  “It was terrible! I—I’m afraid! He saw me coming out of Swan’s room. The little guy, the one that smelled of lilacs!”

  “Start from the beginning. You were in the star’s dressing room?”

  She nodded. “Right after the New Orleans number. Swan stayed on for the scene that followed. She asked me if I’d get her shawl and bring it down. It was on the back of a chair. I said I would.”

  She stopped and her mouth trembled. There was only ice in her glass. I poured, saying:

  “So you went to her dressing room to get the shawl. Gusman was there—on the floor—dead?”

  “No, he was walking around. He seemed awfully sore about something. He asked me what I wanted. I had just started to tell him when there was a knock on the door. Gusman pushed me into a closet and shut the door. At least, he tried to shut it. But it didn’t close entirely. One of Swan’s costumes was in the way. There was a crack about three inches wide that I could look through.”

  She got a grip on herself, or maybe what I had put in her glass bolstered her, and went on.

  “Two men came in. One was tall. He had red hair. He was smoking a pipe. The other”—Bunny’s eyes widened—“was little. He wore a blue suit and he stood near the closet. That’s when I smelled the lilacs. He—he—”

  I gave her a minute before I said, “What happened?”

  “The red-headed man pulled a gun out from under his coat. Gusman started to talk to him. I heard him say ‘Now, let’s act sensible about this, Nick,’ and the red-headed man said, ‘Sensible? Don’t make me laugh, you crooked rat’!” Gusman want on talking. He was all excited and I couldn’t hear everything he said. But it didn’t make any difference. The red-headed man just stood there, pointing the gun at him and I saw it had a silencer on it. The little one kept saying, ‘Don’t let him box you in, Nick. Wind it up and let’s blow.’”

  “So Nick let Gusman have it?”

  Bunny gulped and nodded. “It was terrible! I saw the whole thing! Right before my eyes! I’ll never be able to forget it! It’s haunted me ever since. I know I won’t get a wink of sleep tonight!”

  “What about the envelope? What’s that got to do with it?”

  She gave me a wild look. “They both went out of the dressing room after they killed Mr. Gusman. I thought I was going to faint. But I didn’t. I guess I was too scared. I waited—it seemed like a hundred years but it must have been only a couple of minutes. Then I grabbed Swan’s shawl and went out on the corridor. The little one who had been in the room was at the head of the stairs. He was standing there, half in the shadows, looking back. He saw me. He took a good look before he ran down the stairs.”

  She broke off again. I started a refill, but she shook her head.

  “And that envelope?”

  “I thought sure they’d mow me down, too. The minute I reached the stage. I—I didn’t know what to do. Then I got an idea. I hurried up to my own dressing room. I got a sheet of paper and an envelope. I wrote down ‘A red-haired man named Nick just killed Gusman. I saw it through a crack in the closet door of Swan Millard’s dressing room. I put that in the envelope and sealed it. I figured they might knock me off with the silenced gun, but they wouldn’t get away with it. I figured that when I didn’t come back and ask you for the envelope, you’d open it and read it.”

  She added more details, but I hardly heard them. So that was what was in the envelope! That was what Miss Hart must have lifted from my right side pocket.

  “What’ll I do?” Bunny asked, her voice tight and unnatural.

  I looked at my watch.

  “I think we’ll both take a ride down to Headquarters. This is a problem for better minds than ours. Captain Mullin can grapple with it. Let’s go.”

  It sounded all right, and the timing was good, but it wasn’t to be as easy as all that.

  While I was talking I heard the door of the adjoining room open and close. Then the knob turned on our door and that opened.

  I swung around. In time to see we had visitors.

  A red-haired man and a small guy in a blue suit who brought in a breath of lilac time.

  Somehow, the little runt didn’t seem very important. Not a quarter as much as the hooded, blue steel gun that shone dully against Nick’s light suit.

  “Shut the door, Eddie,” he said, from a mouth that hardly moved. “I don’t want anybody to hear what goes on! Or,” he added, “off!”

  The noise Bunny made in her throat sounded like water running down a stopped-up drain. I saw her crouch back in her chair, but it was only an impression. Because I couldn’t take my eyes from the sudden death in the red-haired man’s hand.

  A chill began to pack my spine in ice. My scalp tingled. Cold sweat dampened my hands and forehead. I felt an emptiness crawling around the pit of my stomach. And it didn’t come from a lack of food this time.

  At that moment I realized how right Libby had always been. Murder and sports reporting didn’t mix. In the past I’d been lucky. Now, from general appearances, I’d stuck my neck out once too often, and too far!

  If I needed any proof of that, I got it the next instant. “Len,” as Beam called him, or “Nick” as the late Augustus Gusman had labeled him, walked over and planted himself in front of me.

  “Where’s the envelope the babe gave you, Castle?”

  It took another second for the light to filter in. I got it. The pair had tailed Bunny Dunlap down to Ward’s. Then they had walked upstairs, following her and ta
bbing the room she had gone into. They had ducked into the one adjoining—I remembered hearing the door close—and laid ears against the thin partition.

  As easy as that!

  The nose of Nick’s shooter began to press into me. The chill got chillier. He said it again, the quiet note in his voice making it sound doubly menacing:

  “Hand it over!”

  “I haven’t got it.”

  My voice had a tremolo in it that put it an octave higher than usual. Nick’s colorless eyes flickered in Beam’s direction.

  “Give him a frisk, Eddie.”

  The small, delicate hands went over me with expert precision. Eddie didn’t miss an inch. But, as he dumped my personal belongings on the table, and didn’t come across what he was sent after, the velvety eyes narrowed.

  “No envelope, Len.”

  “What did you do with it, Castle?” The gun jarred harder. “Talk!”

  “I lost it.”

  Nick probably expected something better than that. The blunt statement stopped him for a minute. He looked from me to Bunny and over to his partner. Then he laughed.

  “He lost it, Eddie. Just like that! He lost the letter that can put me on sparks! It’s floating around loose.”

  Eddie stood off and took time out to light a cigarette. “Let me hold this lighter under his chin and I’ll get the truth out of him!”

  Nick turned the idea over in his mind. I winked away some sweat. Finally Nick shook his head.

  “I’ve got a better plan. Look, the car’s around the side street. We’ll take these two across town and work ’em out privately. Too many people around here, no elbow room. Besides,” he added. “I’ve got a date in a half-hour.”

  The little lug with the small, hard mouth and the wavy hair, looked disappointed. He shrugged, and exhaled smoke.

  “Down the back way?” he asked.

  “Yes. You handle the dame. I’ll take charge of this party.” Nick addressed his next remark to me. “We’re going downstairs, Castle. Don’t get notions. I’ll be right behind you and this lead spreader works just as good from a pocket.”