Death of a Dastard (Prologue Books)

by Kane, Henry

  “A check? Not cash?

  “A check, which I deposited yesterday. If I made it, I’d pay him back. If not — well, his judgment was wrong and he didn’t think his judgment was wrong. And now that Mr. Otto Pierga has signed me, I think Mr. McCormick will get his money back even faster than he thought.” She took the book from my hands and put it back into the drawer. “Well?” she said. “Are you ashamed of yourself? Or are you ashamed of yourself?”

  “I’m ashamed of myself,” I said and went to her and gathered her in and for the first time we really kissed and right there in the middle of our first kiss my lips went hard because it came to me, it jelled, it clicked, it meshed, it fell into place like a drunken critic on opening night.

  I let go of her and ran for the phone.

  “Oh no,” she wailed. “What now?”

  “I love you,” I said. “I’m calling a girl.”

  “Boy, you’re really eccentric, aren’t you?”

  I dialed. “I hope you don’t mind. I’m going to ask her to come here.”

  “Why? What for? What do you want her to do — watch?”

  Edwina Strange lifted the phone on the other end. “Hello?”

  “Peter Chambers here,” I said. “Would you like your spool?”

  “No, I’m waiting here for your phone call because you’re going to take me out waltzing at the Palladium.”

  “I want you to come over right now to the Hotel Quilton, suite six-nine teen.”

  “Now?”

  “Right now. If you want your spool of thread.”

  “I want my spool of thread.”

  “Well, if you want your spool of thread, get moving.”

  “Yes, maestro, I’m moving.” Her first move was to hang up on me.

  “Spool of thread?” said Barbara Hines. “What’s this broad going to do? Knit while we spin?”

  “I love you,” I said, went to her, kissed her lightly on the lips, and leaped onto the window sill.

  “Man,” she said, somewhat aghast. “You’re really a flighty lover, aren’t you? Now what are you going to do in your peculiar passion? Throw yourself out of the window?”

  I unhooked the cord of the Venetian blind and threw it to the floor. I moved along the sill, unhooked the cord of another Venetian blind, threw that to the floor, and leaped off somewhat spraddled, but I recovered. “May I have a handkerchief?” I said.

  “Is that the next move,” she said faintly. “Now you blow your nose?”

  “Handkerchief,” I insisted.

  She gave me a handkerchief.

  “Bandana,” I said.

  “What? No scalpel? How about forceps?”

  “Bandana.”

  She opened a drawer and gave me a bandana. I collected cords, kerchief, and bandana, took them to the living room, dropped them on the couch, kissed my beloved lightly on the nose, said, “Her name is Edwina Strange. Tell her I went for her spool.”

  I went home and picked up the tin of film, went to 66th Street, and picked up Harvey McCormick. “Now, fast,” I said, “We’ve got to go. We may be able to help Madeline.”

  “But Phil Kramer’s here.”

  “The hell with Phil Kramer. Come on. Get a move.”

  “Where we going?”

  “Barbara Hines’s place.”

  “Barbara Hines! What the devil does she have to do with this?”

  “Come on, Harvey. We’re wasting time, and we don’t have time to waste.”

  Barbara opened the door of 619. Harvey preceded me. I followed close. Edwina Strange was seated in an easy chair, long legs crossed, smoking a cigarette. She smiled at me. She smiled at Harvey McCormick.

  “Do you know this guy?” I said.

  “I saw him once,” she said.

  “He the guy with Karen at that motel on Staten Island?”

  “He’s the guy.”

  He whirled on me, indignantly. He met my fist coming to meet him. It was a perfect meeting — knuckles to the point of the chin delivered with force and enthusiasm. He toppled like a chopped tree. Lying there, he still looked indignant.

  “Oh, my,” cried Edwina Strange, coming to her feet. “Why did you have to go and do that to the nice man?” She bent to him.

  “Leave him alone,” I said.

  “But he looks so unhappy.”

  “You want your spool?”

  She stood up. “But why did you hit the poor man?”

  “Honey,” I said, “you’ve got your own troubles.” I held up the tin. “Go get rid of your troubles. Take your feature film and burn it. And do a quick, fast, neat job, because pretty soon, I’ve got a hunch, you’re going to be entertaining a lot of cops.”

  “Me? Cops? You’re wacked.”

  “Go home.”

  She took the tin, said goodbye, and sailed out.

  Barbara Hines, eyes like cups and saucers, finally spoke. “What the hell is going on here?”

  “It’s my passion, baby. I’m eccentric. I make crazy love.”

  I used the cords from the Venetian blinds to truss him up so that he could not move, could not wriggle, could not bump, could not thump. I shoved the balled-up handkerchief into his mouth. I made a bandage of the bandana and laid it across his mouth and tied it in back of his head. I carried him into the bedroom and put him to bed.

  “Get a wrap,” I said to Barbara. “We’re in a hurry.”

  “What’s our hurry?” But she got out a short coat.

  “We’re on our way to save a man’s life.”

  “What man? What life? What in all hell is going on here?”

  “Save a man’s life,” I said, “so that the State can kill him.”

  “Oh, brother, I sure picked myself a nut.”

  “Eccentric,” I said, “is a much more genteel term. Come on. Move that gorgeous ass. Let’s get out of here.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  AT CHEZ RIO I said to Alex the maitre d: “Johnny wants to see this lady. Business. Important.” It may have been her frightened tentative still-bewildered smile, or her extravagant beauty, but Alex the maitre d’ bowed and did his little jig of welcome and let us pass. I had a ten-spot ready in my hand in case of resistance, and when I returned it to my pocket I felt as we all feel when we save a tip — I felt as though I had just earned ten dollars. I took Barbara’s wrist and we hurried along the corridor to the office in the rear. I let go of Barbara and looked at my watch. It was ten minutes to nine. I tried the knob, the door was locked, and I was about to knock when I heard the sound — phuieee! — the sibilant throttled-up noise of muffled ejection. I did not knock. I bounced my shoulder against the door, full force, and broke through. I did not see Johnny Rio.

  I saw Karen Touraine.

  She was sleek in a white off-the-shoulder gown and white elbow-length gloves, every inch the lady, except for the appurtenance in her right hand, which appurtenance was one of Mr. Rio’s .38 Colt Cobras with silencer. I hacked at her right forearm and knocked the Cobra kicking, and then I applied a bouquet of fist upon her jaw, not too hard, just enough, and she swooned, gracefully, like a fainted bride.

  Then I sought Mr. Rio.

  I found Mr. Rio laid out behind his desk profusely bleeding from a round hole at the left side of his neck. What in hell do you do? A tourniquet about the neck will stop the bleeding but strangle your patient. That sort of first aid is second rate. I stuck my thumb in the hole as though his neck were a dike, and as blood bubbled merrily up my wrist, I spoke to my beloved.

  “Call,” I said. “Dial O. Tell them you want police. Emergency. Ask to be connected with Detective Lieutenant Louis Parker. Tell him Peter Chambers. Tell him Johnny Rio’s been shot at Johnny Rio’s Chez Rio. Call! And if that chick on the floor starts stirring, tap her on her pretty skull with the butt end of the Cobra.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  THEY TOOK the silent sullen Karen Touraine downtown to the clink. They took the silent spurting Johnny Rio to the hospital. Some of the cops went with Karen Touraine. Parker
, assorted cops, Barbara, and I accompanied Johnny Rio. At the hospital the doctors took charge of Johnny Rio while we waited. They returned him to a private room — the most damned private room in the entire hospital — wearing a bandage around his throat like a Victorian collar. In the corridor outside his room, Parker asked the doctor: “May we talk to him?”

  “Sure. He’s fine. He’s got a little sedation in him but that’s about the size of it. Clean hole through the neck, but nothing serious.”

  “Can he talk?”

  “Sure he can talk. He’s a little dopey, but he can talk.”

  “Dopey enough to thing he’s dying?” I said.

  “I beg your pardon?” said the doctor.

  “I want you to tell him he’s dying,” I said.

  “You do, do you, sir, whatever your name is. Well, I’m sorry, but that would be downright unethical.”

  “But this is a criminal matter, doctor.”

  “And it would be criminal to tell a patient he’s dying when there’s nothing wrong with him except a clean uncomplicated perforation.”

  “Thank you very much, doctor,” said Parker.

  The doctor sniffed at me and went away.

  “He’s got to think he’s dying,” I said to Parker.

  “Oh, you’re so terribly unorthodox,” said Parker and took hold of one of his older-type cops and whispered to him and the older-type cop went away and when he came back he was clad as a man in white and he looked more like a doctor than a doctor.

  “I hope you know what you’re doing,” said Parker to me.

  “He’s dying,” I said to the man in white. “Let’s go inside.”

  Inside there was the smell of ether and there was Johnny Rio propped on pillows, his eyes half-closed, his breathing as raspy as a file on steel. We gathered in a cozy clot of three far away from him — Parker, Peter, and the man in white.

  “What’s the prognosis, Doc?” said Parker loud enough to wake the dead.

  “I don’t like to talk in front of the patient,” said the man in white in a whisper that shook the walls.

  “He’s asleep,” said Parker. “You can talk.”

  “Probably his last sleep. Actually, a coma.”

  “That serious, doctor?” said Parker.

  “Critical. The man’s dying. He has an hour. Perhaps less. There’s nothing further medical science can do. Excuse me, Lieutenant. I have patients who can use my services. This man … there’s nothing further we can do….”

  The rasp from the bed grew louder, startlingly.

  The man in white tiptoed out.

  “Not only did she kill him,” I said to Parker, “she first played him for a patsy. A smart guy like Johnny Rio — played for a patsy by a chick from the sticks. Go figure the world.”

  “Yeah,” said Parker grimacing uncomprehendingly. “Go figure.”

  I went to the bed and sat beside the patient. I took his hand. “How do you feel?” I said.

  “Lousy,” he said.

  “It’s talking time, Johnny. That chick put the gliders under you, and she may get away with it. She claims you tried to rape her so she shot you. A classy chick like that — it’s a defense.”

  “The hell you say,” he croaked.

  “You’re dead, pal. I hate to say it, but you’re dead.” It was dirty pool but this was a dirty business. “I saw you kill Benny Benson, and I know why you killed Benny Benson, but I kept it clammed because I like to play it bright. But now you’re dead, Johnny-boy, and if you want to even it up, you better talk to the lieutenant. Otherwise, you’re dead for nothing, Johnny-boy. The chick slides out and catches up with the guy for whom you played patsy. It’s talking time, pal.”

  “I always said you was a bright guy, peeper. I still say.”

  “You’re wasting your breath, Johnny, and you don’t have much breath left. It’s talking time and while the lieutenant is here it can do you good. Talk.”

  He talked.

  Madeline McCormick was exonerated.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  TWO CARS pierced the New York night. The car in front held cops, exclusively. The car in back held a cop in front, driving, and in the rear, Barbara Hines wedged between Detective Lieutenant Louis Parker and me. I was enjoying the thigh-close proximity and I hoped Parker was enjoying. A Homicide cop has a hell of a life.

  “Let’s have it from the top,” he said.

  “You heard the man,” I said.

  “I want to hear it from you. More coherent, I’d expect.”

  “Well,” I said, “as Bernie Pearl, one of my favorite bartenders has it — ’when it’s love, it’s trouble.’”

  “Okay,” said Parker. “You’ve had your prologue. Now let me have my story.”

  “Harvey McCormick, a smart guy from way back, now married to millions ten years his senior, finally falls in love with a very slick chick named Karen Touraine. They make it afternoons, they make it Monday nights when they’re both free. They’re in love. They want to get married. But it happens they’re both married to someone else: she to a very shrewd apple, he to a clinging vine.”

  “Very poetically put,” said Parker dryly.

  “Johnny Rio is stuck on her and she lets that yarn unravel — Johnny Rio can be useful to her.”

  “Yeah, man,” said Parker.

  “Harvey McCormick is a sly bird, ivy-league, who plays it cool, but a wise and experienced bird. He married millions, which is what he wanted, but he knows that Mrs. Millions has hot pants and plays around, but he stays cool and pretends to be dumb — what does he have to lose? But then he falls in love and as Bernie Pearl would say — ’Love, I hate it.’”

  “Let’s keep Bernie Pearl’s pearls of wisdom out of this. I’ll settle for Peter Chambers’ pearls.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “As love set in, Harvey started looking sharper. His junior editor and his senior wife were palsy-walsy and a wise old bird like Harvey McCormick, ivy-league, can smell out that kind of palsy-walsy a mile away. Harvey didn’t give a damn — Harvey had his own problems. In the meantime, for safety’s sake, he started cultivating a broad in Chicago — kind of to throw off any scent of his interest in Karen Touraine.”

  “What broad in Chicago?”

  “She’s sitting between us right now, Lieutenant, giving Homicide, I hope, a homicidal thrill.”

  Parker squeezed his knees together. “What about Harvey’s problems?”

  “On the one side, if he pulled loose from Madeline, he’d pull loose without a sou, and Harvey is a guy who respects a buck, which is why he married Madeline in the first place. On the other side, Jason Touraine wanted fifty gees to cut out in favor of Johnny Rio — you can imagine what he’d want if he knew the object of Karen’s affections was his very own boss, Harvey Everest McCormick.”

  “I can imagine,” said Parker.

  “As you know, Mr. Homicide, when the strictures get that tight, murder rears its unlovely head. Here it was a twi-night game. To accomplish their purpose they’d have to accomplish two murders. These were intelligent people. The idea simmered, but they put it on low-cook — and then Jason Touraine, innocent bastard of a dastard, played his tapes for his wife and right then he was dead.”

  “Who played what for whom?”

  Without mentioning the where, the what, and the when, I gave him the story of Jason Touraine’s tape-recorded concert at the apartment of Edwina Strange.

  “Now,” I said, “the simmering thickened into plot. They could croak Jason, lay the fleece of guilt on Madeline, and be rid of both their spouses — or is it spice?”

  “It’s spicy spouses. Please go on.”

  “They set it up for Monday night. They made sure to get Harvey out of town. They made sure that he showed an interest in a very innocent pigeon way out in Chicago — like ten thousand dollars’ worth of interest, by provable check.”

  “Who,” said Parker. “What pigeon?”

  I gave him current events on the innocent pigeon while the innocent pigeon
wriggled unhappily, if provocatively, between us.

  “That would keep Harvey out of the way and in the clear. But first, on Friday morning, he did the bit with his custom-made gun. He wiped it clean and then saw to it that she handled it putting it away, leaving her prints on it. Later that evening, at the party Friday night, he got that leather case containing the gun to Karen.”

  “And what did she do with it?” said Barbara, suddenly interposing.

  “Quiet,” I said. “Your turn comes later.”

  “What did she do with it?” said Parker.

  “Took it home and hung on to it and, as Johnny Rio told us, put it to good purpose afterward. All right. It’s set for Monday night. With Harvey out of town, they figure Jason will see Madeline. Harvey leaves town on Saturday — with me tagging along — and on Saturday Karen goes to work on Johnny Rio, probably throwing in a lay for emphasis.”

  “Never mind the emphasis,” said Parker. “Let’s stick to essentials.”

  “She tells Johnny she loves him, wants to marry him, but they’ve got to get rid of Jason. She can’t handle murder, but Johnny can. She tells him about Jason’s affair with Madeline, tells him — as Johnny told us — that Madeline had made a present of her gun to Jason, and that the use of that very gun would really complicate his murder. Johnny digs that kind of switch and they’ve got a deal.”

  “So?” said Parker. “Monday night.”

  “Johnny’s parked in his car outside of the Touraine apartment on Fifth Avenue. Jason blows out and Karen blows out right after him. They tail Jason all through his night with Madeline. They’re going to bump him when he gets out, Johnny wearing gloves, with Madeline’s gun. But Jason gets dragged out, under weird circumstances. As Johnny told us, as Madeline walked away, he put the bullet into Jason, put the gun back into that leather case, and drove along watching what the hell Madeline was doing. She went into that Heavenly Kingburger and made her call. When she started walking back, Karen figured out the cream of the jest. She took the leather case into Heavenly Kingburger and planted it behind the steam pipe in the ladies’ room. Then, driving Johnny’s car, she trailed Johnny driving Jason’s car, to One hundred and sixteenth Street and East River Drive. There, Johnny left Jason, went back to his own car, and drove Karen home. Period. Beautiful, no?”