by Kane, Henry
“What time would you say, sir?”
“I don’t know. Seven. Seven-thirty. Maybe later. Maybe even before. Just be sure there’ll be somebody there at the pick-up spot. And someone at your apartment.”
“Yes, sir. And thank you very much.”
“Not at all. Goodbye, Peter.”
“Goodbye, Mr. Mosely.” I hung up.
She was very near to me.
“You heard?” I said.
“Yes,” she said. “Please don’t forget about that spool of film.”
“And don’t you forget to stay right here.”
“Oh, I’m staying,” she said. She was very near and her voice was very soft, a tremolo. The green eyes were weird. Her hands came up and the fish net parted. The hands encircled my neck. “I’m staying,” she said, “and if you want, you can stay with me.”
I thought about Barbara Hines.
A fine time to think about Barbara Hines.
“Some other time,” I croaked. “I’ve got work to do.”
“Who knows about other times?” And now the green eyes smiled. “If I were you, I’d strike while the iron is hot.”
“Regretfully,” I said, “I pass.”
How stubborn can you get?
Correction. Stupid. How stupid can you get?
I was being moon-calf faithful to another guy’s girl.
Chapter Fourteen
I WENT home and soaked up in a warm tub, then rubbed down wearily. I was bone-tired and my date with Barbara Hines was for nine. I pattered out of the bathroom into the living room and looked at my watch. There was time for a short nap.
I set the alarm for eight, and plumped down into the couch. At once, I was asleep.
And almost at once the damned alarm was pealing.
I raised my hand over my head and pushed the little knob. It was not the clock — it was the telephone. I scrambled to the phone. “Yes?” I said menacingly.
“Hello? Peter? Peter Chambers?”
“Yes.”
“Otto, here. Otto Pierga.”
More amenably I said, “Hi, Otto.”
“What’s the matter? You sound foggy. Drunk or something?”
“Sober as a grudge. It’s just I have a foggy apartment.”
“Always with the jokes.”
“What is it, Otto?”
“I want to see you, Peter.”
“Sorry, Otto. No good. I’ve got a date.”
“No hurry. It’s important, but it can wait. Bring your date.”
I leaped as though lifted. “Otto,” I said, “you just had the best idea you ever had.”
“I had an idea …?”
“You’ll thank me till your dying day. I’ll see you later.”
“But in better condition, I hope, than you are now. Get the fog out of your apartment, or the broad, or whatever the hell you’ve got there. Take a cold shower.”
“Till your dying day,” I said. “Goodbye, Pappy.”
“Oh that Peter Chambers …” I heard him mumble as he hung up.
Otto Pierga owned Pierga’s in Greenwich Village. Pierga’s, a far more important club than Chez Rio, had been at the same spot for twenty-five years, and the columnists called it the Cradle of the Stars. Otto Pierga, aside from running an internationally famous supper club, was an impressario in the highest sense of the word: he was eager for talent, he sought out talent, he even developed talent, and he had impeccable taste.
Barbara Hines was not for Johnny Rio because Johnny Rio was not for this world — for long. I had seen him kill a man, and although now I was playing footsie, the footsie would not continue indefinitely. That was one side of the squeeze. The other side was his own people, the owners of the club. Johnny Rio’s reign was almost over: who would dethrone him depended upon propitious moment and ultimate circumstance. Furthermore, Pierga’s had it all over Chez Rio as a tarpaulin has it all over a muddy infield. Why hadn’t I thought of Pierga’s without the help of Pierga himself? I decided it was because I was overtired, and I was just about to go back to the knob of the alarm clock, when an alarm of my own went off in my stomach: a growl. I was hungry.
In the kitchen I whipped up a bachelor’s delight — ham and eggs, toast and coffee — and when I got back to the clock my napping time was considerably narrowed, but I pulled on the knob and plopped on the couch — so the phone rang.
Once more I rolled off the couch and rambled to the telephone.
“Hello? Mr. Chambers?”
“Yes.”
“This is the man from Mosely’s Safe and Vault.”
“Yes, man from Mosely’s?”
“We’re calling up from downstairs. We have to use the service elevator and the super wants to get your okay that it’s okay. Okay?”
“Okay,” I said. “Put him on.”
“Okay?” said the super, on.
“Okay,” I said and hung up.
I opened the door for the safe, unset the alarm knob, and went to the bedroom for an undershirt, slacks, socks, and loafers.
When I came back the open door had produced nothing but a draft. Having a safe delivered is not like having a pumpernickle delivered from the delicatessen. It takes time.
Finally two men, pores pouring perspiration like sprinklers for grass, filled the gap in my gaping doorway with the safe safely between them on a rolling contraption with wheels.
“The bill from Mosely’s will come in the mail,” wheezed one of the men. “Now where do you want this baby?”
It poses a pretty problem, and with men working like these men were working, you do not have much time to think. I have expensive carpeting in my rooms and a safe as heavy as that safe can wreak irreparable dents — but my bathroom floor is of solid tile. I pointed. “The bathroom, if you please.”
“The bathroom! You want a safe in the bathroom?”
I smiled, nodded. They looked at me queerly but they started their contraption rolling while I went to the bedroom for my wallet. We met again in the living room and I presented each with a fin.
They accepted, gingerly. They kept their distances.
“Thank you very much,” I said.
“You’re welcome,” said one.
“Holy cow,” said the other.
I closed the door after them. Napping time being over, it was now shaving time. I went to the bathroom but I could not get in. The safe blocked the entrance completely. I nudged but it would not budge. I shoved but go shove at the Rock of Gibraltar. Nice, huh? Blockage of the bathroom is blockage indeed. I leaned on the thing. It was as cold as the steel it was, about four feet high. I regarded it, I sighed, I backed off, I tensed, and I jumped. It was undignified, but what the hell. I climbed over the safe and I shaved.
How would you like to have to climb over a four-foot safe every time you have to go to the toilet?
I finished shaving, cleaned up, and climbed out of the bathroom.
Before I finally left my apartment — slick and shiny and dinner-jacketed with a cummerbund yet — I had scaled that damned wall four more times: I’d left the water running; I needed my nail clips; I’d forgotten my watch. By then I was really sagging — I’d been tired anyway — and the fourth vault over the vault was to fetch a pep pill. When I was at last set, I hurried out of the house and hearth as though house and hearth were haunted. The last thing I saw, as I closed the door, was that damned safe like a rampart defending my toilet.
Chapter Fifteen
I TOOK a cab to Hotel Quilton. Barbara Hines was in suite 619. As the elevator bore me upward I wondered somberly whether Barbara Hines or any other gal was worth all that trouble.
She was.
She was gorgeous.
When she opened her door the blood started going again in my veins. I don’t know whether it was the pep pill or it was Barbara Hines but suddenly I was alive, revived, bright, cheery.
She was smiling, gay, radiant, as she said, “Come in, come in, I’m so awfully glad to see you, I could kiss you.”
And
she did. Touched her lips to my cheek.
And I flamed up like crêpes suzette in the making.
“You look absolutely dashing in those dinner clothes,” she said.
“I should like to return the compliment but I’m at a loss for words,” I said. “Let’s try these for size admitting they’re woefully inadequate — breath-taking, dazzling, exquisite …”
“Well, thank you,” she said and smiled and did a little bow. It was impossible for her to do a big bow — not in the dress she was wearing. It would either spill over in front or come asunder in the rear. It was red. It gleamed red in satiny sheen, tight as a lush on ether. It fit as casing fits a sausage. It was a simple red sheath, without neck, without shoulders, without straps: it held to the intricate body by a magic of its own or by a magic of the special magnetism of that magical body.
She was tall, with more complex curves than a Dali painting: fair-skinned and alabaster-smooth. She had round arms and shapely shoulders and crazy kissable hollows at the base of a velvet-white throat. She was all woman and a lot of woman: there was nothing small about her figure except the waist: she was full and firm and pear-shaped upstairs, full and firm and tulip-shaped downstairs, and on top, in the balcony, the face illumined the rest of her like a beacon. Ah, that wondrous puss. It had high cheekbones and enormous China-blue eyes and a nose that was ridiculously tiny, delicate, and tantalizingly uptilted. Her eyebrows were slender, clean, and graceful; her forehead was high, its widow’s peak at center accentuated now by a coiffure that had the shimmering golden hair pulled straight back, drawn across the nape and over one shoulder, and lying like a frothy tassel upon the right breast. The mouth was as crimson as the dress; when she smiled the lips curled about strong white glistening teeth; in repose the mouth was moist, full, somewhat puckered, the lower lip slightly protruberant in a pout that gave a brooding expression to an otherwise lively face.
Each to his own. I had been in the company of some beautiful women this day: Madeline McCormick, burning-eyed, long-legged, vibrant, ripe, smoldering, mature; Karen Touraine, tall, slender, swarthy, remote, contained, aloof; Edwina Strange, lithe, tan-gold, green-eyed, carefree, but simmering and awfully willing — total effect, zero; well, almost zero. But Barbara Hines …
Suddenly, angrily, I wondered how much it had cost Harvey McCormick to persuade the lady to give the breeze to the Windy City.
She smiled again, spread her arms, turned in a full circle, said, “Nice here, isn’t it?”
My eyes were on her. “Very nice.”
“Two lovely rooms and a beautiful little kitchenette. Of course, it’s far too expensive for me.”
But not too expensive for your sponsor, I thought.
“I don’t intend to stay here more than a week or two,” she said. “Just until I can find myself an apartment. What would you like to drink, Mr. Chambers?”
“Peter.”
“What would you like to drink, Peter? Me, I’m on brandy.”
“You’ve got an audition, remember?”
“I like to prime myself before an audition. Just a little bit. It takes the raw edge off the nerves.”
“There’ll be priming time in the saloon, my dear. As a matter of fact, you have two auditions.”
“Two? Where’s the other one?”
“Pierga’s.”
The blue eyes widened. “Pierga’s? In the Village?”
“Where else would Pierga’s be?”
“Oh no! Me? Pierga’s!” Now the long lashes flapped crazily. “Boy, I must say. That Harvey McCormick is really something, isn’t he?”
“Is he?”
“But Pierga’s! Imagine arranging an audition at Pierga’s the very first evening I’m here.”
“Sorry, but Harvey didn’t arrange it.”
“Then who?”
“Me.”
“You?” She came near. “But why? I mean …”
“We’ll talk about it later.”
“May I thank you?”
“You’re welcome.”
She placed her hands on my cheeks. She kissed me, lightly I admit, a peck, on the lips. I flamed like a shashlik sword at the Palmer House, but I got that queasy feeling again — was I in the middle of something? This was Harvey McCormick’s special import. Why had he fixed me with the date in the first place? I wouldn’t have fixed him — or anyone else — if she were my import. And what was this laying on of hands, and lips. What in hell was playing here?
Softly she said, “I like you. Very much.”
“See what an audition at Pierga’s can do for a guy?”
“Now don’t be bad.” Her hands held my face. Her mouth remained near to mine. I could smell the perfume on her lips. Her voice dropped a notch, a whisper of a whisper. “You know damned well that you and I have had eyes right from the start, from the minute I sat down at your table at Club Intimo. But Harvey was there all the time in Chicago. Well, this isn’t Chicago. This is New York.”
Was I in the middle of something? Or was this a dame with tinny morals who banged both sides of the tambourine to produce her own special jazzed-up kind of music? Well, this side of the tambourine was a dud. This side of the tambourine did not respond to a bang; that is, the thumping of fingers on strung skin for special jazz. We all have our idiosyncrasies, call them ethics. I do not cut in on another guy’s gal. It is an ethic, a compunction, a thing of conscience. I do not cut in on another guy’s gal. My tongue can be hanging out of my mouth, but I do not …
Her hands left my face and she said wickedly, “You’re blushing. Wonderful. I love a man who still can blush….”
“Not me,” I said, my face burning like the hot side of a belly-stove. “Not me. I never blush.”
Chez Rio was jumping — café society, show people, well-heeled hooligans, all piled in heavy. Harvey had fixed us up with a reservation, and Alex, the maitre d’, led us to a table in the noisy night-club dusk and we listened to three pieces beating out progressive. A waiter came and hovered.
“Look, about Harvey,” I said. “He wanted me to explain. He couldn’t make it because of that fellow who was killed, the fellow that worked for him — ”
“Honestly,” she said, “I couldn’t care less. I don’t mean about the poor man that was killed. I mean, the way it worked out, perfect. You’re here and I’m here, perfect.” Ah, that tambourine.
The waiter coughed.
“What are you drinking?” I said.
“Stinger. Brandy singer.”
“Brandy stinger for the lady,” I said. “Scotch and water for me.”
“Immediately,” said the waiter and moved off.
“I think I’d better go talk to Mr. Rio,” I said.
She squeezed my hand. “Hurry back.”
The office was in the rear, along a black-tiled corridor, near the dressing rooms. I knocked and he called, “Come in.” He was on the telephone, and his casual glance toward me beetled when he saw who I was. I waited by the door that I’d closed behind me — an ordinary door offering no extraordinary protection. Generally, Johnny Rio did not need protection. But now he was in trouble with his own mob, and something new had been added to his office décor: two paperweights, prominently displayed on his desk. They were .38 Colt Cobras, and each wore a silencer over its muzzle.
He hung up and he said, “After six months, twice in one day? Okay. What is it? You got something on your mind? Talk.”
“That’s the best thing I don’t do, Johnny-boy — talk.”
He put the fingernail of his right thumb between his teeth, bit audibly, spit out the nick of nail, said, “You was in the Bronx today, no?”
“How do you know, John?”
“My sister was delivered a letter. By a mug named Finster.” I knew he had recognized me in the Bronx. He did not know whether I had recognized him. I intended to keep it that way.
“So?” I said.
“The description of Finster was a description of you. You brought the letter?”
“I did.
”
“Why?”
“I was doing a favor for a guy.”
“What guy?”
“Benny Benson.”
“You a mailman?”
“I’m a private detective.”
“A private detective delivers the mail?”
“I told you I was doing a favor for the kid. I’m a great guy for keeping love’s embers burning.”
“Love’s embers burning my ass. That creep got the gate long ago. You read the letter, didn’t you, Mr. Finster? Like how he was pleading with her?”
Score one for the richard. He was digging, but I had learned that he had not killed the guy because of any fancied persistence of advances toward the sister.
“Did you hear what happened to the poor guy?” he said.
“Got run down by some kids joy-riding a stolen car.”
The black eyes narrowed. “You want to discuss it?”
“What’s there to discuss about delinquents joy-riding a stolen car?”
“I figured you being here twice in one day you might want to talk about how it’s rough my sister’s ex-boy-friend gets killed by crazy kids hot-rodding.” Tensely the black eyes stayed on me.
“Johnny, I’ve got better things to do with my time, and I think you know that. I don’t make it a habit of sticking my nose where it doesn’t belong, and I think you know that too.”
“Smart. Nobody never said you wasn’t smart.” The message had gone through. Some of the tension eased out of the eyes. Not all. “So how come all of a sudden you’re such a good customer? Twice in one day?”
“This afternoon I dated a chick who wanted to go to Chez Rio.”
“And this evening?”
“I bring you a girl singer.”
He leaned back in his chair. “Are you kidding?”
“Cross my honest engine with the motor souped up.”
“I need a girl singer like I need a point on my head. I got a girl singer and she’s got practically a permanent job.”
“She’s not here tonight.”
“Off tonight. On again tomorrow. Come in and listen. She goes on sharp at nine.”
“This girl singer’s name is Barbara Hines.”
The chair swung forward. “Harvey McCormick was supposed to bring that.”
