Stone Cold Blonde

by Lawrence Lariar

  She shook my hand with a meaningful pressure and prepared to leave. “Sorry I can’t stay. There’ll be a check for an advance on this thing, Steve, out at the switchboard. I’ll write it out for two-fifty. Enough?”

  “Enough for a starter,” I said, and watched her walk away. She turned once, just before I closed the door. She looked back at me and she was grinning again. And winking.

  When I faced back into the library, Grace Masterson was bending over the bar, mixing two tall drinks.

  CHAPTER 5

  “Is it strong enough?” Grace Masterson asked.

  “I’m not fussy.”

  “It’s funny, the ideas you get about detectives,” she said. She had seated herself on the small couch against the long wall, crossed her long legs and adjusted her body for our conference. She was making an obvious play for conversation that would open the subject easily for her. “I always thought you fellows were big, husky men.”

  “Movies,” I said. “Detectives are type cast.”

  I stood at the window, looking down at her, a good spot for me because I could watch her closely, while she could see nothing of what went on with me because my head was in shadow. I told her a few educational items about my business and then swung back on a quick detour to Alice V. and the case at hand. I have a clean and orderly mind in conversational bouts of this kind and arranged my brief lecture so that it ended where she began it.

  “The big, strong, gut bucket detectives are a dime a dozen,” I said. “And sometimes they have an advantage when fisticuffs are in order. You don’t think your husband will get violent when and if I locate him?”

  “Oh, no. Frank will come willingly, I’m sure. You see, I don’t think he knows that I want the divorce.”

  “You’d better break it down. Start from the beginning.”

  She spelled it out for me. She outlined her husband’s history with a fine show of control, but her efforts to remain calm and unemotional about her past soon began to show. The plot was of the standard brand. Her husband, Frank Masterson, had walked out of their Miami nest about a week ago. And for the usual reason—another woman. He had been consorting with women in the past and flitted from one to the other with no conscience. Grace had warned him that she would divorce him if he continued playing Casanova, but he disregarded her threat and began to pursue a young lady singer. Grace accused him of infidelity and there was a bad fight and his next move was to leave home. But Grace had prepared herself for his expected exit. She had assigned a private detective to follow him. The trail led north. But the young flame that Frank had wooed still sang in Miami. This element baffled Grace for a time, but after talking to the gal, she assumed that there was still another enamorata in Frank’s life—somebody in New York. The detective trailed Frank to a backstreet hotel on the east side of town—The DeGraw. And there the trail died.

  Her story was simple and straightforward and she seemed glad to have told it coherently. Her gestures of nervousness faded and by the time she had finished her monologue had the feeling that she was at her ease. She had started her yarn with all the obvious signs of the jitters. She had held the usual handkerchief and mangled it in her fingers in the usual way. She had chain-smoked. She had contrived to use her eyebrows at dramatic intervals.

  But it was all gone now. And it had been cut off too casually, so that the origin of her emotional upset seemed strained. And somehow phony.

  I said, “Have you got a picture of your husband?”

  She fumbled with her bag and produced a small snapshot. “It’s not very good of him,” she said. “Frank is much better looking than that.”

  Frank Masterson had a dull face, maybe forty, maybe older. He had tired eyes, well bagged and heavy-lidded, the eyes of a turtle on a log. His mouth was surly and his smile cracked and forced. He wore a bow tie, an obvious bid for the youthful touch, but on him it looked incongruous. He had all his hair, parted on the right side and slicked back so that the highlights shone in the little photo. His nose was long and sharp, and underneath it there was a thin line of mustache, of the common, or Broadway Snake, variety. His face reflected a certain tightness, an eagerness or nervousness or tension found commonly on personalities who worried themselves into ulcers. He had weak eyes. I couldn’t warm up to Frank Masterson.

  “How tall is he?” I asked.

  “Just average.”

  “Average like me?”

  “Oh, no. Taller.”

  “Businessman?”

  Grace Masterson stirred in her chair, enough to recross her legs and show me that she was making an honest effort to recall the elements of her husband’s business. There was a suggestion of befuddlement in her pale eyes as she studied the cigarette holder. The rings on her fingers broke the light into a thousand sparkles, dull orange and white because the sun was hanging low over the ridge of the Palisades.

  Her voice came with a hesitant whisper. “I really know very little about Frank’s business. Is that believable? I don’t suppose so, but it’s true, Mr. Conacher. I married Frank and we lived in comparative luxury down in Miami for two years. He never explained what he did. I only recall asking him once, when he was courting me. He told me that he was retired.”

  “Retired from what?”

  “I don’t know.” She shrugged in discomfort. “I really haven’t the faintest idea.”

  She was as helpful as a longhair violinist at a jam session. I didn’t like it. You can’t ferret out a missing man by using your nose only. It takes brains and thinking and the small, significant signposts to the subject’s background and habits. It would have been different if Frank Masterson were an ordinary deadbeat, a cutie who had tried to skip out on a bill or flee with merchandise. There are systems for tracking down such renegades because you can count on them to repeat their mistakes sooner or later. But a missing person is another problem. He is cunning. He is tricky. He covers his tracks with animal skill. He plans his hideaway with great care, defying the detectives to dig him out. He will root himself in a new neighborhood, under a new name. He will began a new business, earning the respect of his neighbors and townsfolk. He will walk the streets brazenly, challenging the searcher to identify him. He will grow a mustache or a beard or don spectacles or get married to confuse and confound his pursuers.

  The odds against locating such a character pile up in the big towns. In New York they could be eight or nine million to one. Unless you discovered a crumb of information, the one small thread of direction that may lead you to the purposeful wanderer.

  I said, “Who does he know in town?”

  “Nobody at all.”

  “He must have some friends.”

  “Not Frank. Unless he found another one of those—”

  She began to sob gently, in quiet gasps, the dignified blubbering of a woman of good taste.

  “You know of another woman?”

  “Oh, no. I’m just guessing, Mr. Conacher.”

  And more tears. Plus a bit of nose-blowing, heaving and dabbing at the eyes so that she ran the gamut of emotional disquiet, like a ham actress trying out for something out of her league. She just didn’t make the grade with her little act. She was too suddenly soupy, too quickly moved to tears. She was battling to build sympathy, and I went to the bar and refueled her glass. She took it from me with faltering fingers. She sipped it with tentative, uncertain gulps. The sun was gone now, under the vermilion and graying raft of cirrostratus clouds on the horizon, and the library lay in deep shadow. It was getting late and I was impatient, suddenly weary of the conversational badminton we were playing. I lit the parchment lamp and waited for her to look up at me.

  I said, “We’re a long way from first base, Mrs. Masterson. Maybe you’d better think this thing over and call me when you’re in the mood for talk.”

  “It isn’t easy for me.”

  “That makes us even.”

  “I
guess you must think me a little crazy,” she said, “not being able to answer the simplest questions.”

  “I don’t think, you’re crazy at all. I think you’re holding back. I can’t find your husband unless you give me all the information you’ve got.” I loaded it with a fillip of impatience, enough to make her study me and stop her stalling. “I have the feeling you’re playing guessing games with me.”

  “That isn’t so, Mr. Conacher. Please be patient—”

  “Nuts. Did you tell Alice V. this same song and dance?”

  Her eyes lost their befuddlement and now opened wide with surprise. “But of course.”

  “That’s a laugh—Alice V. swallowing this routine.”

  “Routine?”

  Her college girl incredulity made me mad. “You’re lousing up the deal with lies, Mrs. Masterson. I react with nausea to tales spun by the fireside for visiting detectives. It’s like going to your doctor with a gut ache and making him guess where it hurts. I couldn’t find a missing cooch dancer in a masculine Turkish bath without a few clues to guide me. You can skip all the trivia you just gave me and start all over again. It’s either that, or I’ll bid you good day.”

  I went back to the bar and filled our glasses again, watching her as I fiddled with the bottle. She was staring at me. Hard. The liquor had loosened her a bit, but her eyes were full of some secret struggle, a decision she had to make. She was doing things with her handkerchief one again, twisting it and stretching it as though there were hidden juices to be squeezed out of it. I could see her clearly in the darkened window, a pale reflection, on her feet now and coming my way.

  And then she was at my side.

  “I don’t want you to leave, Steve.”

  Now it was Steve. I handed her the glass and said, “You’re ready to tell me the truth?”

  “It isn’t going to be easy.”

  “Maybe I can help you.”

  “I’m sure you can,” she said quickly. “But you must promise me that you won’t tell Alice V.”

  “She’s the boss. She hired me.”

  “No! I hired you!” Mrs. Masterson lifted her voice, not in anger, but with a petulant, positive air. “I’m paying the bill, remember?”

  “You have a point there.”

  “Then you promise that whatever I tell you will remain our secret, that you’ll never violate my confidence?”

  “You can talk freely.”

  She began to talk. She got a good head start on her drink and walked back to the couch and started her monologue. I sat down beside her and listened. It was a shocker, from the very, beginning. She introduced me to her problem by a tender description of Frank Masterson, who now came to life as a charming citizen. Frank loved his wife. They had always been happy. He was the manager of a department in Flaubert’s emporium in Miami, one of the swankiest of the old line jewelry joints down there, the Tiffany of the Southland. Frank had worked for them many years. He had a responsible post, the manager of the specialty section, the exclusive bauble bureau that catered to the whims and fancies of millionaires. Frank was usually a quiet, calm, steady sort of man. Frank was serious about his work. He had an open admiration for his boss, Adrian Flaubert, who had pioneered in Miami and raised the prestige of his store from a common, gold watch and engagement ring operation, to the elegant reputation it now enjoyed. Frank had regular habits. He went to work on time and came home when the chops were sizzling in the pan. But, recently, his habits began to change. He would keep her waiting for supper. He would bark and blow at her. His nervousness and irritability grew by leaps and bounds, until it seemed to Grace Masterson that his personality had changed completely.

  “I couldn’t make up my mind what was causing his restlessness,” Grace Masterson said. “I decided, finally, that it might be due to a change of luck at the track, or in the casinos. Frank loved to gamble, and we spent a lot of time at the tables. He didn’t do badly, however, and never seemed to worry about his hobby too much. Yet, his nervousness continued to get worse and worse. Then, one day, it happened. Frank vanished.”

  She took a deep breath, fortifying herself for what had to follow next. Her eyes were shut. Up close, I could see the pulse beat in a smooth spot, low on her neck. Her breasts rose and fell in a quickened rhythm, moved by the drama in her story.

  “I read all about it in the evening papers,” she continued. “Frank had become a jewelry thief. He had taken almost a million dollars’ worth of gems from the Flaubert vaults.” She opened her eyes and studied her fingers on the glass. “You probably have heard of the Vree pendant?”

  I whistled. “That bauble is as famous as Lana Turner.”

  The Vree pendant had gripped the public imagination ever since Simon Gournette told the tale of its discovery in Paris, after the first World War. It was originally one of the stockpile of gems in the Czar’s collection, an item designed by a relatively unknown Italian in the sixteenth century. The Russian Czar, expecting the loss of his head at any moment, shipped the stones out of Moscow by a roundabout route that involved a few slayings and assorted sluggings along the way. After the revolution, the Vree stones were gone—into the void of mystery that engulfed many of the fabulous treasures of the royal family. But, ten years later, a man walked into the office of Simon Gournette in Paris, and let them go for two hundred thousand dollars. After which the little man vanished in a cloud of smoke—never to be seen again. Gournette sold the gems to a Dutchman named Hans Vree. The cluster was designed and put together by Vree, who settled in New York after the last war and sold his treasure to a local millionaire. He had consigned it to Flaubert’s for a special exhibition of diamonds in their small gallery. It was a well-publicized exhibit.

  I said, “Your husband must be a dashing character. He certainly took a crack at the jackpot when he lifted the Vree cluster.”

  “You know about the robbery?”

  “It was a national event. The New York papers didn’t feature it, but news of that kind of heist travels fast. Your hubby made himself a celebrity overnight, Mrs. Masterson. He can’t hope to get away with it, unless he has a background of larceny. Has he ever tried it before?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “He couldn’t have done it alone. Who were his friends?”

  Her face hardened under the impact of a disturbing memory, a brief and flickering reaction to the immediate past. But she managed to bury it quickly. I caught a hint of something resembling stubbornness when she turned her face my way.

  “None of his friends were gangsters, if that’s what you mean.”

  “That’s what I mean, all right. Maybe you’d better think a bit deeper.”

  She thought it through, on her feet now, struggling with the inner questions that were disturbing her. She paused once, to measure me with her eye, weighing me and finding me wanting.

  I said, “Stop fighting me. If he had nasty friends, I want to know about them. Now.”

  “There was only one man who might have been in it with him,” she said at last. “Gus Bryant.”

  “Gus Bryant?” I put down my glass and gagged on my last swallow. “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  She shivered when she said the name. I didn’t blame her.

  “Do you know who Gus Bryant is?” I asked.

  “Only vaguely.

  I told her about him. Gus Bryant was a playboy in the field of organized larceny, a planner, a contriver of schemes, a strategist who created fresh green dollars where none had ever sprouted before; not counterfeiting or murder, but any and every racket, pitch, enterprise and business that lay within the edge of the shadow of the law. Gus Bryant was known to me through his publicity pictures which showed occasionally in the news columns without benefit of any paid press agent. Gus Bryant was his own press agent. He was the pushy type, tall and husky, with a face that was hard and yet mobile, square and ruddy
and a little bit like a hero out of an adventure movie. You knew him in a crowd because you knew his smile, the crisp, broad, all white grin of an eager college boy. You knew him in a crowd because he had developed the personality tags all celebrities use to their own advantage; the perpetually clipped crew cut; the inevitable bow tie; the go-to-hell jackets scientifically sewed to give his shoulders the fashionable droop; the sharp black pins for eyes under a heavy brow and a small aggressive nose and the disarming dimples.

  It all added up to what Gus Bryant reckoned a suitable sum—he was an acceptable figure in all types of gatherings, from beach parties on the Southampton shores to appearances at ringside, or at the track. Gus. Bryant was the bon vivant of the underworld. He was the prettiest crook on earth.

  Legally, he was in the oil business, having bought an interest in a California oil well long ago. You could see Gus Bryant at The Mocambo or La Fourchette’s, always up front where the cameras could find him, with the perpetual glamour babe on his strong right arm. He would be smiling into the lenses with his sly and cocky grin, so that the little eyes were hidden under the flesh and he looked for all the world like the perennial college boy, out for a peachy time with his latest flame. There had been much talk about Gus Bryant over the years, and many legends built up around his source of income. He had gone up and down the social ladder with the skill of an artist. He had the quality of cool detachment that most actors kill themselves to develop. He was at home among stevedores and society swains, beer guzzlers and Bacardi sniffers, cabbages or kings.

  “Did you ever meet Gus Bryant?” I asked.

  “He came to me once,” she said. She shivered again, a tremor that came through to me as sharply as an electric shock. “How can a man be so—attractive—and so cruel? I can’t describe the feeling of loathing I got when I met him.”

  “He’s supposed to be a devil with the girls. Are you sure it was Gus Bryant you met, and not one of his henchmen?”