by Kane, Henry
“If I mean well, if I’m doing good, if I’m saving innocent people from awful scandal and horrible publicity and terrible heartbreak, it can’t be wrong, can it?”
“If they’re innocent people.”
“Well, I’m not closing the door if they’re not, am I? I’m passing it along to you. You have the experience and the judgment. You may follow it on your own if you wish or you may go to the police if you deem it proper. I’m a woman, and I’m more deeply sensitive to certain problems than a man. All I’m asking of you is this. If, when you check, you find that the people involved are truly innocent, that they had nothing to do with Jason’s death — then you must protect them. If they are not innocent, if they’re in any way connected with his murder, no matter how remotely, then of course you must go to the police and both Edwina and I will go with you. You’ll understand when you talk with Edwina and when you hear some of the terrible proof. Now will you jot down her address, please?”
Promptly I produced a pencil and notebook like a real investigator and wrote down the name and the address she gave me. “That’s her home address, her apartment.” Karen Touraine said. She’s a model. She works at Gil Wade Formals. That’s a wholesale house on Seventh Avenue in the garment district.”
“I know Gil Wade Formals, and I know Gil Wade.”
“Oh, you do? A very interesting man, Mr. Wade, isn’t he?”
“How do you know Gil Wade, Mrs. Touraine?”
“I met him through Edwina. I attended a party his firm gave early in June at the Waldorf….”
“Jason too?”
“Yes. Jason attended.”
The phone, in the other room, rang, and she hastened to answer it. She came back wearing a quizzical expression.
“It’s for you,” she said.
“Me?”
“A woman — wants to know if Mr. Chambers is here.”
“He’s here,” I said.
“In there,” she said and pointed to the room whence she had come, and I followed the point, and it turned out to be a bedroom with twin beds set widely apart, one each at an opposite wall, with the phone on a night table near one of the beds. I picked up the receiver and said, “Yes?”
It was Miranda. “You just got a phone call hurry-up-important,” she said, “and since I work for a detective, and it’s contagious, I figured out where you might be. Are you there?”
“I just left.”
“Well, tell me where you’ll be, and I’ll call you back sometime.”
“Cut,” I said. “Your sense of humor is too far out, even for me. Who wants me?”
“A man named Gil Wade. Wants to see you as soon as possible. At his place of business. He says you know where.”
“No!”
“Yes.”
“Miranda, are you kidding?”
“What’s the matter with you?”
“Miranda, did somebody put you on to this? This a rib?”
“Boss, are you out of your ever-living mind?”
“Miranda — ”
“Dearest boss, have you got the message?”
“I have.”
“Then go back to playing games with Karen Touraine and stop playing games with me.” And she hung up with a snap that almost knocked my ear off.
Chapter Nine
I CAME back into the living room with a quizzical face to match the quizzical face of my hostess. “You sure you’re not pulling something?” I said.
“I beg your pardon?” She was seated again, working on her gin and tonic.
“That was my secretary.”
“I don’t understand what that has to do with me.”
“Did you call Edwina Strange at Gil Wade Formals?”
“I did.”
“Did you talk to her, or did you talk to Mr. Wade?”
Annoyance put a grimace upon her mouth. “To her. Of course. Why should I talk with — ”
“My secretary tells me that Mr. Wade called just now and that he wants to see me.”
Perplexity replaced annoyance. “Wade? Our Mr. Wade?”
“He’s the one.”
“That is peculiar, isn’t it?”
I sighed. “Maybe it isn’t. Maybe it’ll explain itself when I get to it. I just wanted to be certain you weren’t pulling some kind of trick.”
“No tricks, Mr. Chambers.”
I drew up a chair and sat near her. “Mrs. Touraine,” I said, “I’d like to ask some questions, none of them impertinent I assure you, about you and your late husband.”
“Why?” she said.
I lit a cigarette. “Mrs. Touraine,” I said, “you’ve called me here to render certain favors to you — ”
“Not, actually, to me. To people who, perhaps having nothing to do with his death, may be in for terrible trouble unless somebody — ”
“All right. If you please. We’ve been all through that.”
“Yes, sir, we have.”
“I haven’t inquired about these people because you’ve told me that Miss Strange has the information and what you called the proof and there’s no sense wasting time with two stories, one from you and one from her.”
She nodded. “I understand.”
“Now, you know what my profession is.”
“I do.”
“And you realize that a professional works for a fee.”
“But — ”
“On the other hand, I know certain things about you. I know that you work at Chez Rio as a singer and I can approximate how much you earn. You probably pay the rent for this apartment, aside from buying your own clothes and other — ”
“How can you know anything about that?”
“Let us say I know a bit about Jason Touraine. Let us say I’ve picked up some unpleasant items of gossip but my sources are pure. Let us say that I know he was a rounder, a bad boy, that he was not one to contribute to the support of a wife, and that you two, although living together, were not living as husband and wife. I know for instance that this is only a three-room apartment — ”
“How could you possibly know that?”
“About the apartment?”
“About the apartment — and all the rest.”
“As to all the rest, as I said, gossip, but gossip from pure sources, and since a private detective’s sources are confidential, I cannot discuss that. As to the apartment — I was in the bedroom. The bedroom attests to the gossip — twin beds set as far apart as they can go. Thus, if there were another room — other than bedroom and kitchen and living room — there would be separate bedrooms. Q.E.D. Three-room apartment.”
“Mr. Chambers, if you please, what is the point of all this?”
I took a last puff and killed the cigarette. “The point is this. You have called me in to do some work but you cannot possibly afford to pay me the kind of fee that I would request. I realize that, actually, this isn’t work for you — that you’re making an effort, and a worthy one, to be helpful to people who may be dragged in — ”
“Total strangers. I don’t even know who they are.”
“But I’m a stranger too, although you do know who I am. Yet you’re asking me to help. Out of the goodness of my heart, and for similar reasons to yours, I’m willing to go along, but, if you please, in the absence of a fee, I must insist that you help me.”
“Help? What sort of help?” Dark eyes stared distrustingly.
“Look. If I’m to do this work — for free — I’m going to have to check back on certain individuals to find out whether or not in any way they’re involved in the murder of your late husband. If they’re not — I’m to do my utmost to keep them out of trouble. If they are — then I myself become their chief source of trouble. Okay, but I’d be an awful fool to undertake this — even a bigger fool than undertaking it for free — without some actual knowledge, factual knowledge, other than gossip, about Jason Touraine, and you’re the one, Mrs. Touraine, to supply the facts. That’s the sort of help I’m talking about.”
She finished her drink
, placed the glass away, tapped the tips of her fingers together; then she clasped her hands “All right. What is it you want to know?”
“Let’s start right from the wire. How long have you been in New York?”
“We arrived here on the second day of May.”
“Ever been to New York before, either of you?”
“No.”
“Now, I understand that almost at once you got yourself a job at Chez Rio.”
“Yes, that’s right. For a change, I was lucky.”
“And I also understand that you were instrumental in getting Mr. Touraine his job with Harvest House.”
“Yes, I believe I was. I had become acquainted with Mr. McCormick at Chez Rio. When I learned he was president of Harvest House, I talked with him about Jason. In my opinion Jason was qualified to work in a publishing house. Jason had come to Stanford University on a football scholarship, but he had become the editor of the college newspaper. Later on, before we came to New York, he’d worked on a Los Angeles newspaper. Anyway, I talked with Mr. McCormick and Mr. McCormick talked with Jason and he was hired.”
“Was all this talking — I mean between you and McCormick — done at Chez Rio?”
“I don’t quite understand you, Mr. Chambers.”
“Did you ever go out with Mr. McCormick?”
The dark eyes squinted. “You mean, socially?”
“I mean any way at all.”
“Yes, I went out with him twice, but I wouldn’t say socially — each time it was part of our talking about Jason. I had a date with him twice in one week, that first week, each time at noon, when he took me to the Oak Room at the Plaza for lunch, and we talked about Jason. The second time I made an appointment for Jason to see Mr. McCormick at his office and that was that. Jason saw him and he was hired.”
“You and Jason came here to New York — from Los Angeles?”
“That’s right.”
“Why?”
“Well, nothing was happening for us in Los Angeles. My career was going nowhere, and Jason’s — was simply shot to hell.”
“Could you tell me something, as much as you like, about you and Jason, from the beginning — and make it as bad as you dare.”
She looked at me steadfastly for a long moment, then her eyes dropped to her clasped hands, clasped so tightly now that the tips of the fingers were red with compressed blood and the knuckles were white with pressure. “Yes, I will, and it’s so bad it will scare you.”
And so, finally, for the first time and at first-hand. I was lectured on the early history of a contemporary dastard, Jason Touraine, venal rogue and scoundrel de luxe. Born in Mexico of a Spanish mother and an Irish father, he had been brought to Los Angeles by his mother after the father had deserted and had disappeared for all time. The mother had worked as a waitress to support herself and her son, who grew to be an exquisitely handsome boy and a football star at Los Angeles High School. His mother had died three months after his graduation from high school when he was already at Stanford on the football scholarship.
At Stanford he had played halfback on the football team until his junior year, when as a result of an accident on the field he had suffered a fractured skull. Thereafter, on occasion, especially when he drank too much or overate, he was subject to seizures somewhat akin to apoplectic fits which would result in temporary blackouts. In his senior year he wooed and married Karen, then also a student at Stanford.
“Almost from the beginning,” she said, “I knew it was a mistake. He was wild, he drank too much, he stayed out nights, he ran around with girls.”
“And yet you stayed with him?”
“I was young, a year younger than he. He was terribly handsome, and I was very much in love. I felt that he would straighten out, that he was sowing his wild oats, that, because he was young he couldn’t resist the woman who ran after him. He was spoiled by women, he had always been spoiled by women. I felt that in time he would grow up. And when he had those blackouts, he needed me. Then he would be contrite, almost pathetic, and tell me how much he needed me and how much he really loved me. I repeat — I was young and I was terribly in love.”
“These blackouts. Did they persist? I mean, afterward, up to now?”
“Yes. Not as frequent as at the beginning, but often enough. I believe that’s one of the reasons I remained with him. In a way, I was sorry for him. In a way, I was sort of mother to him. He needed me and depended on me and that sort of dependence creates a curious bond between people, quite difficult to break.”
After graduation, they lived in San Francisco which was home town to Karen, she had been born there. Existence was difficult, they struggled for a living: Jason would not take a steady job, he worked the little theaters, he had dreams of being an actor; Karen, ambitious to be a singer, performed in small clubs, but her father became an additional drain upon her unsteady income; the father, an aged widower, became afflicted with Parkinson’s disease, was rendered an invalid, and was assisted in meager support by his daughter, an only child. Edwina Strange, also a native of San Francisco, and a girlhood friend, was sporadically employed as a model, and they were chums, Edwina, Karen, and Jason. He ran about relentlessly, he stayed away frequently; occasionally he turned up with a sizable amount of money which he spent recklessly, mostly upon himself. So four years went by; then Karen’s father died, Edwina went to New York, and Jason was spotted at one of the little theaters by a motion picture producer who invited the Touraines to Hollywood.
In Hollywood, Karen, once again, worked small spots as a singer, beginning to develop a style, and Jason had secondary parts in two motion pictures. He was attractive but he was not a good actor and he was slowly becoming aware of that; then he was summarily fired because he got into trouble with the producer’s wife. Thereafter, on the strength of his football career and newspaper work at Stanford, he obtained a job as sports reporter on a Los Angeles paper. He was discharged from that job not for incompetence but for general lack of interest, constant tardiness, and frequent drunkeness: it was then the Touraines decided to come to New York.
“All in all,” I said, “the guy doesn’t come out quite so black as I expected. Weak, perhaps …”
“Mr. Chambers, I’ve only given you a very sketchy outline. I’m not one for intimate details.”
“If it was that bad, I can’t understand why this marriage didn’t break up a long time ago. I’m sure he provided sufficient grounds for divorce.”
She stood up, moved about restlessly, gracefully; spoke in a low ruminative tone. “A habit pattern develops, if you know what I mean. We were no longer in love — not for a long time — we did not go near one another, as husband and wife, not for a long long time. On the one hand, I detested him; on the other, in a peculiar maternal way I was fond of him; better put, I was sorry for him. And he needed me, and that very need on his part created an obligation on my part. Habit pattern and obligation; I suppose that was what held us together; plus there was no great overwhelming force to drive us apart.”
“Such as one of you falling in love with someone else?”
She smiled, a small smile. She said nothing.
I pushed up out of my chair and tried again. “There’s been talk about the town that Johnny Rio is simply crazy about his girl-singer.”
“Has there?” she said.
I began my inevitable march toward the door. “There’s been talk about the town that Johnny Rio wanted to marry his girl-singer but that the girl-singer’s husband wanted a big hunk of change to consent to a divorce, too big a hunk of change for Johnny to come through with. That’s been the talk about the town.”
“The talk about the town may have had some basis.”
“What happens now that the girl-singer is unencumbered?”
“It’s going to create a problem, I’m afraid.”
I opened the door. “Any problem with the likes of Johnny Rio, Mrs. Touraine, bring it to me. I am an expert on that type of problem.”
“I may hold y
ou to that.”
“Please do,” I said and saluted my goodbye and closed the door behind me.
Chapter Ten
IT WAS still Tuesday in the fall of the year, a butter-yellow day in September. Seventh Avenue in the textile jungle — the market — was teeming with milling lively people, all except me. It was only ten minutes after two in the afternoon but already I was as limp as the lover of a nympho. It had been a long day. It was going to get longer.
Gil Wade Formals, Inc., had an entire floor of its Seventh Avenue building and a factory in New Jersey that employed more than a thousand people. Gil Wade Formals, Inc., was the leading manufacturer in the United States for ready-to-wear evening gowns. They made them in New Jersey; they designed them, showed them, and sold them in New York. Gil Wade Formals, Inc., was Gilbert Wade, self-made, who had started as a rough-and-tumble shipping clerk and who was now, at forty-three, suave, smart, sophisticated, and, of course, stupendously successful; a pinnacle man, a member of many boards of directors, a golfer in the best golf clubs, a drinker in the best supper clubs, a cheater in the best hideaways; a married man with, I had heard, a lovely wife, a gorgeous home in Riverdale, and two children who were being educated in Switzerland.
In the walnut-walled beige-carpeted reception room, I said to a beige-haired big-bosomed receptionist, “Mr. Wade, please.”
She shook her head and the big bosom quivered discouragingly. “He’s very busy today. Unless you have an appointment …”
“Would you tell him Peter Chambers?”
“I’ll tell him but I’m not promising …”
She shoved in a plug, whispered into a mouthpiece, waited, listened, pulled out her plug, smiled and breathed deeply to display her big boobs because now I was a V.I.P. “He’ll see you, Mr. Uh,” she said. “Please have a seat, won’t you, please. The boy will be out for you like momentarily, sir.”
I chose an innocent beige-upholstered easy chair but was ensnared in its deep-bottomed foam-rubbered trap and sank almost out of sight. Forlornly I gazed out over my stuck-up knees at her stuck-out bosom because that was all that was left to me in my restricted line of vision: bosom, slack red lips, nervous eyes, and beige-colored hair. She kept plumping out her chest and sneaking glances at me: I was a very important person. Obviously, this was a very busy day at Gil Formals, Inc.
