The Woman Who Knew Too Much

by Thomas Gifford

  The young, very pretty receptionist looked up from her empty desk. “This is Pegasus Books,” she said, past a tight imitation smile. “The horse is not Mr. Ed—”

  “Yeah, Mr. Ed.” Greco looked pleased. “He talked. Had his own TV show. Right, Blandings?”

  “This horse is Pegasus, the mythological winged horse. You might try reading rather than watching television.” The receptionist’s smile never wavered. “How may I help you?”

  Celia spoke up quickly, anticipating just what Greco might have to say. “We’d like to see Susan Carling, please. Charlie Cunningham’s office sent us.”

  The receptionist rang through, and a few moments later a short, round black woman with huge glasses perched at the very tip of a pointy nose appeared. She couldn’t stop smiling, as if she were on the verge of real hilarity.

  “Charlie’s office sent you? Come on in, can’t keep Charlie’s office waiting.”

  Her office was a kind of Rube Goldberg diagram of confusion. Everywhere, including the seats of the visitors’ chairs, there were books, file folders, stacks of author bios and photos, newsletters, press releases, dust jacket mock-ups, empty coffee cups. The window on the thirtieth floor looked up toward Columbus Circle and downtown to Times Square, Chelsea, the World Trade Center, and the Statue of Liberty. The sign on her door, which she closed, said she was Senior Publicist.

  “Now come on, you guys,” she said, picking a glowing cigarette from the ashtray where she’d left it, “what’s this gig all about? Charlie Cunningham has an office? Who are you guys anyway?”

  “Humane Society,” Greco said, getting in ahead of Celia. “We’re taking the horse away, lady—”

  “No horse jokes allowed,” Susan Carling said. “We know all the old ones, and there are no new ones. “Did you really come from Charlie?”

  “Not exactly,” Celia said. “We’re looking for him—”

  “And you come to me? Me? What do I know from Charlie? Why me?”

  “Because Charlie gets Pegasus review copies. Miles Warriner’s books, for instance. We thought you might know how we could get in touch with Charlie or Warriner, or both.”

  “Lotta nuts running around out there,” she said with a wave of her hand at the outstretched city. “Are you two of them?”

  “My name’s Celia Blandings—”

  “The cough-candy fairy,” Greco said.

  “—and I’ve got something of Charlie’s. I’d like to return it to him.”

  “Warriner is a pseudonym,” Susan Carling said, “and I don’t know who the writer is. And Charlie? I’m not allowed to give you his address. But I can send whatever it is to him. Is it smaller than a breadbox?”

  “Much,” Celia said. “But I’ve got to deliver this by hand.”

  “Sorry then.” She cocked her head and shrugged helplessly. “I’m out of suggestions.”

  Greco nodded. “Understood. Perfectly sound security. But maybe you could just tell us who Charlie Cunningham is? Why does he get review copies?”

  “Oh, that Charlie!” Her laughter was rich and warm and sexy. “Charlie Cunningham is the last of the independents. He’s written a couple of books, I guess, but who is he really? Charlie Cunningham is none other than Mr. Mystery himself.” She waited for the nods of recognition. “You don’t know about Mr. Mystery?”

  “In a word,” Celia said, “no.”

  “Last of the independent what?” Greco asked.

  “Oh, Charlie’s always got an angle, any way he can keep from working—I’m quoting Charlie there, by the way. He came up with the idea for a syndicated column devoted to mysteries—books, TV, movies, any kind of mysteries. He writes about all of it, sells his column to little newspapers, shopping guides, Sunday supplements—they all need filler. He calls himself, the column I mean, Mr. Mystery. I call him the last of the independents.”

  “Cute,” Greco said, “but a guy named Charlie Varrick was the last of the independents, Miss Carling. Don’t ever forget it.”

  Susan Carling looked momentarily alarmed. “Right,” she said, giving the word about four syllables.

  Waiting for the elevator, standing in the shadow of a life-size statue of Pegasus, Peter Greco grinned wickedly at Celia, then waved to the receptionist as the elevator opened in front of them.

  “Walter Matthau played Charlie Varrick. Love that Matthau. Man’s a gambler. Life is a risk, Blandings. Matthau knows it, I know it, but do you know it?”

  Back on Sixth Avenue Celia led the way to a Sabrett’s hot-dog stand. “Be my guest,” she said. “Lunch is on me.”

  “This is a very cheap move,” he said.

  “Precisely my point.”

  He was halfway through his second dog when he said: “Well, now we know that Charlie Cunningham is a man who’s in the middle of the murder of the Director.” He finished the dog in two bites and polished off his orange drink.

  “Now that’s what I call a three-rail shot. What do you mean?”

  “Hey, you play pool?”

  “Yeah, I’m pretty fair actually—”

  “Sounds like we got a game, then. A one-eyed guy and a … a—”

  “Woman is the word you’re groping for, and what do you mean Charlie Cunningham’s in on the murder?”

  “Elementary, my dear Blandings. Mr. Mystery. M.M.”

  Chapter Eight

  CHARLIE CUNNINGHAM WASN’T FEELING so good.

  As the day itself approached, she had become increasingly insistent that he reassure her about knowing his instructions, letter perfect. And the more she insisted, the more nervous he became. The mere ringing of the telephone in his tiny apartment caused a chemical change in his body. His mouth would dry, his limbs would weaken, his voice would quaver. The symptoms sounded like love. It wasn’t love. It was awful.

  But nothing nearly so awful as this last call. She’d wanted to run over all of it again, and as she repeated for the umpteenth time how he must be absolutely sure of himself, his actions, most importantly his nerve, he began looking for the last sheet of boiled-down instructions she had left with him. He knew he’d put it somewhere. He cradled the phone between shoulder and jaw, staring dumbly at the room and its scattered, piled, and flung contents. He’d been so careful, putting it where he couldn’t possibly forget it. But where, for God’s sake?

  He’d had too much on his mind, that was the problem. Double-crossing someone was a complicated business, more so than he’d dreamed possible. The thing was, she was apparently cut out for murder. She seemed to enjoy the plotting, the details, the research, the game aspect. As if you weren’t going to have a guy covered in blood when you got done. Well, not for Charlie Cunningham, he thought, no damn way, as he threw underwear and towels and papers and books onto the bed. He found a pair of her sunglasses that had been given up for lost weeks ago and a shriveled piece of pizza in the dust balls under the bed, but not her list of the murder-day arrangements.

  He fumbled with the answers to her questions, made a mess of the timetable. Her voice fell to a low, venomous whisper, a hiss, which he’d come to know so well. He’d better pull himself together, she warned; the consequences of his failing to do so made him break out in a cold sweat. The things a man will do, he lamented to himself, for a great piece of ass.

  Once he’d gotten off the phone he slumped into a chair and tried to make himself remember. Miraculously it came to him: Littlechild Takes Aim! He’d tucked her letter into the pages of the novel for safekeeping. He smiled smugly. Old Charlie hadn’t lost the touch yet. And it wasn’t easy, keeping her plan clear in his mind while working out a plan of his own simultaneously. Now, to find the book.

  It took less than fifteen minutes for a new, infinitely more dreadful panic to assert itself. It was a small apartment. There were only so many places a book could be. And the Miles Warriner novel didn’t seem to be in any of them.

  Christ, he was dripping wet again. He did all the logical things, then hastened on to the illogical. Like looking behind the refrigerator a
nd under the bathmat. He was looking in the fridge, between a slab of long forgotten pâté that needed a shave and a cellophane bag of carrots that had taken on the consistency of overcooked linguini, when he remembered the stack of books that had fallen over, which he had impatiently righted and grabbed at the last minute, in a spasm of uncharacteristic efficiency, to sell at the Strand…

  Oh, Jesus H. fucking Christ! Had it been among them?

  It must have.

  It wasn’t anywhere else.

  This was bad. Worse than bad, of course. The merely bad was part of his everyday life. Catastrophic was more like it. Really bad. If someone found the plans …

  Why on earth did she have to bombard him with written instructions and reminders? He took a beer from the fridge door and sucked on it desperately, wondering how much sense her note would make to anyone finding it. What exactly had she written?

  He wondered if what he was having might be a nervous breakdown.

  What if she found out he’d sold the goddamn thing to the Strand? She might spontaneously combust.

  No. She’d have his guts on a plate, is what she’d do.

  But no one could possibly trace it back to her. And that left him. Could it be traced back to him?

  Murphy’s Law, which had always seemed to govern his life, said yes, of course, why not, it’s a certainty, you twit! It wasn’t important how. It could happen, and if it could, it sure as hell would.

  He had to get it back. There was no other way.

  Chapter Nine

  CELIA LED THE WAY up Sixth Avenue to Fifty-sixth Street, where she hung a left and kept walking. Somehow it wasn’t quite so scary with Peter Greco grousing along about the cheap lunch and acknowledging that he’d stick with it for a few hours longer, since they’d actually made some headway. He’d also gotten an ego boost out of putting Mr. Mystery and M.M. together before she had. And the point was well taken: Z had written the murder instructions to Charlie Cunningham.

  Otto Penzler’s Mysterious Bookshop was located directly behind Carnegie Hall, just before you came to the Carnegie Tavern. They took a couple of steps down into the first floor, which was lined floor to ceiling with new paperbacks devoted solely to the mystery novel. In the center of the room was a large table devoted to games, stationery, jigsaw puzzles, and a variety of other paraphernalia related to the great mystery writers, like Black copies of The Maltese Falcon, baseball caps with Nero Wolfe and Spenser and Nick Charles written on the fronts. Next to the table a tight circular iron staircase led to the second floor, which was also book-lined, but here it was all hardbacks arranged alphabetically by author, primarily hard-to-locate used copies as well as the latest titles. The room had the look of a comfortable study appointed with mystery memorabilia ranging from a stained-glass window depicting Sherlock Holmes to a colorful movie poster featuring Edward Arnold as Nero Wolfe and Lionel Stander as Archie Goodwin.

  Behind the desk sat a compact, gray-haired but youthful man screaming into a telephone. “All right, Gifford, this time you’ve gone too far! Westlake never treats me like this … yes, I know he has seventeen pseudonyms … Garfield never treats me like this, no one has ever treated me like this…” He broke into a cackle of delight. “Yes, yes, I know I love abuse … but that’s our little secret, okay?”

  The conversation ended and the proprietor looked up. “Celia, don’t tell me you’ve come to pay your bill, my heart couldn’t stand the shock. Or did my threatening letter work?”

  “Otto, we need help—”

  “That’s the trouble with all you bleeding-heart liberals, always coming around looking for handouts, asking favors.” He got up and kissed her cheek. “What is this … this person you’ve dragged in? A Yankee fan?” Penzler regarded Greco with vague curiosity. He had once in the long, long ago been a sportswriter.

  “Greco’s the name, pool’s the game.” He looked around the elegant room. “You really make a living outa this? Maybe it’s a front—”

  “Whether or not I make a living is beside the point, my good man. I have both eyes and a good deal more hair than some of us—Celia, is this man bothering you? If so, I’ll summon someone and we’ll catch him in a crossfire of withering sarcasm—”

  “Oddly enough, he’s one of the good guys,” she said. “Otto, we’re looking for someone, two someones, actually, and if you don’t know where they can be found, I’m going to lie down right here and cry. Greco here is one of New York’s finest, by the way—”

  “Finest whats?” Penzler said dubiously. “Pool hustlers?”

  “Right the first time,” Greco remarked, stunned.

  “No,” Celia said. “Cops.”

  “My God, they’ve come to that, have they? Well, I’m not surprised they’ve finally caught up with you, Celia. It was bound to happen. You’ve owed me fifty-six dollars since Christmas two years ago—”

  “Otto, please, this is serious—”

  “You’re telling me. Next I send the pay-or-die letter. But enough of that. Who’re you looking for?”

  “Charles Cunningham and Miles Warriner,” she said.

  “Charlie? Haven’t seen him since the last Edgar party here at the shop. But I know where he lives. Down in your part of town, sort of.” He leaned back against a bookshelf and tweezed his lower lip between his thumb and forefinger. “Miles Warriner I’ve never actually met. Don’t know anyone who has. He’s on our mailing list, of course … but a real mystery man, you should pardon the expression. Pegasus is his publisher, of course, but what the hell? They’d never give you his address. What’s this all about?”

  Peter Greco said: “It’s possible that Cunningham has gotten mixed up in something that could be dangerous, to himself and to others. Miles Warriner may be involved too. We just don’t know, but we need to talk to both of them. You understand I can’t divulge the particulars.”

  Penzler turned to Celia. “He’s a cop?”

  “I’m involved in this,” Greco interjected, “only as a friend of Miss Blandings. Nothing official. Yet. She thought you might help us out.”

  Penzler frowned. “Here’s the deal. I’m going downstairs to check on some shipments I’m expecting. If you come across any addresses in my Rolodex here while I’m gone, that’s your business. And if Celia didn’t owe me money, if I weren’t afraid she might skip town if I got snotty, I wouldn’t dream of leaving you two in this room alone—get it?”

  “You’re a dear,” Celia said.

  “Funny,” Penzler said, descending the spiral staircase, “most people have tended to see me as a kind of great stag.”

  Miles Warriner lived in Sutton Place, which was good to know and certainly very nice for him, but for the moment Charlie Cunningham was more important. He lived on Perry Street in the West Village, not more than a fifteen-minute stroll from Celia’s apartment.

  Greco got a cab at the corner, and when they got out he took Celia’s arm and stopped her.

  “Wait, lady. Now what is it you have in mind here?”

  “Well, I … I guess I don’t really know. Go ask Charlie what he’s up to, something like that.” It occurred to her that she wasn’t using her head a la Linda Thurston.

  Greco, continuing to hold her arm, walked her across Seventh. “Now look,” he said, his voice softening, the pose falling away, turning into what struck her as something like a regular guy, “we’ve just about reached the point of no return on this thing. There’s a chance that what you found may really have something to do with a murder, or at least the planning of one. And now we’re not dealing with a name on a piece of paper. This Cunningham, this Mr. Mystery, is a flesh and blood man. And if he’s thinking about murdering someone—well, hell, figure it out for yourself. You walk up to him and tell him you know what he’s doing, he could get real upset real quick. People planning murders are grouchy. So we’ve gotta be careful.”

  “Okay, so what do we do? After we’re done scaring me out of my wits?” She was back to thinking about it as she had last night. It wasn’t
a lark, after all, even if Greco was sticking with her for the moment. And anyway, she didn’t even know Greco. Linda Thurston was having a love affair with her actor/detective. But then, Greco was a real cop… She wondered what had happened to him, what had taken the eye and scarred the face.

  “Well, I’m thinking.”

  “Time is not on our side—”

  “I know, I know. But neither is this our problem. We’re strictly volunteers.”

  “We can save a man’s life!”

  “Maybe, maybe not. We don’t even know who this Director is—we’re a helluva long way from saving anybody’s life.” He looked up at the house numbers. “Let’s just do a little surveillance, maybe I’ll think of something. You’re safe now, we’re the only ones who know you are, the only ones who know you know. I’d say the last thing we want is to have Cunningham find out you know anything about him.”

  The building where Cunningham lived was a small converted brickfront, probably eight units, that had been fancied up in the not too remote past to take advantage of the high Village rents. The street was quiet and sunny. Two men were leaning on the fender of a nondescript brown Chevy halfway down the block. They seemed to be lost in contemplation of a street map.

  “We’re just going to stand here?”

  “And wait,” Greco said. “That’s what cops do.”

  “Is this a stakeout?”

  “Make you feel better?”

  “A little.”

  “Blandings, you’re what they used to call a fighting gamecock in boxing circles.”

  “Ugh,” she said. She could have kicked herself for being pleased with what may have been a compliment. He was just a broken down, one-eyed cop. Big deal.

  Charlie Cunningham came out the front door and down the steps struggling into a tan corduroy jacket, managing to be out of breath before he started. He was acutely rumpled and wore a disconcerted expression, like a man about to chew his mustache off. He struck briskly off, and Celia and Greco fell in behind him. He crossed Seventh against the light, leaping from the path of an ambulance, hurried on across Sixth, then Fifth.