The Case of the Murdered Madame (Prologue Books)

by Henry, Kane,

  “So?”

  She slid her arms under my arms and slid her hands over my shoulders. She drew me close and opened her red mouth on mine. Oh, you Aunt Ethel. She smelled of brandy but she smelled too of a vague and attractive perfume. She moved her mouth away and I made one last small attempt at trying to keep the track clear. I said, “You people could have gone to the cops. There are ways. Who advised her? You? Uncle Harry?”

  At my ear she said, “Nobody advises Florence. She supports us, just as she supports her husband, not too liberal with any of us … so … nobody advises Florence … except Florence. You’re sweet.” The hands on my shoulders tightened and her warm body clung hungrily. “I’m drunk, but that’s only an excuse. I’m doing this because I want to do it.”

  Then her mouth was back on mine.

  IV

  It was late, but I tried the Club Trippa anyway. There was a bar in front and a cocktail lounge in the rear. It was done in maroon and silver and its glow was warmer than a bachelor-girl at a vacation resort. The bar was crowded three deep and the inside room was jumping. The bartender winked, waved, said, “Hi.”

  “Nick around? Or Johnny Hays?”

  “Don’ know myself, Mr. Chambers. Try upstairs.”

  Upstairs, up a maroon-carpeted flight of stairs, was the floor show, the band, the dance floor, and the heavy spenders. Upstairs, too, were a couple of choice back rooms, one of which was Nick Darrow’s office, if a studio fitted out like a sultan’s reception room can be termed “office.” The merry-makers were engaged in watching a stripper called Oonda Hazen, so I strolled along the periphery of dimness and opened the office door without knocking.

  Nick Darrow wasn’t there.

  But Johnny Hays was.

  He unfurled off a couch, black-eyed and contemptuous, and lounged toward me. “Still looking for trouble, my dear half-ass shamus?”

  “Where’s Nickie?”

  “None of your business. Any message?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll take it.”

  I gave it. High and hard with a lot of shoulder behind it. It splattered blood from his mouth and sat him down with his toes pointing at the ceiling. I didn’t wait for him to get up. I went downstairs and had a Scotch highball and my palms were wet with expectancy but nothing happened. Johnny Hays didn’t show nor did Nickie Darrow. Johnny was still sitting there, or he didn’t want to come down, or he’d gone down the back exit and was waiting for me out front. I paid and went out. Nobody was there. I walked along a couple of quiet streets but nobody sprang at me. So I gave it up and went back to the lights. I had ham and eggs in a cafeteria, with coffee, ketchup and well-buttered English muffins. Then I went home.

  I showered, dried down, slipped into a pair of shorts. I bought myself a Scotch and chased it with more Scotch and I was ready to wrap this day up and put it to bed. I thought about Florence Reed and I felt sorry for her if you can feel sorry for a dame with title to a hundred million bucks, and then I thought about Aunt Ethel and I got a belt out of that. I was climbing for the bed … and my door-buzzer buzzed.

  In the middle of the night, the door-buzzer buzzes. Happens all the time. Each to his own. Poets sleep in the daytime. Whores work at night. Novelists go to bed at dawn. Bakers wake up in the evening. Editors read through the night. Procurers awake at the crack of noon. Doctors are always on call. And a private richard … there is no reason why business should not be rasping at the door-buzzer in the dead of night. Private richard … he has about as much privacy as a parakeet in a kindergarten.

  I opened the door to darkness. Somebody had switched off the corridor lights. When lights are out that should be on, you drop, you learn that early when you’re in my business. But I didn’t drop in time. Blazes of light punctuated the blackness, and when I dropped, it wasn’t because I wanted to drop, it was because I was knocked down by the force of the bullets. I heard the pound of feet in the corridor, but right then I wasn’t interested. I felt the ooze of blood on my naked body and I heard the labor of my breathing. My one interest was reaching the phone. I tried to get up but I couldn’t make it. So I crawled, and I lifted the receiver, and dialed O, and heard my whisper: “Operator … hospital … hospital … emergency …”

  V

  I was under sedatives for a day while they probed for bullets and then I was sitting up in the hospital bed ready to go but they told me five days, five days before they would let me out of there, and then I got a caller, amiable but worried-looking, my good friend Louis Parker. “Hi, Detective,” he said. “I hear you’re coming around real good. The bad ones they just don’t want in heaven, huh?”

  “Hi, Lieutenant. What brings you?”

  He sounded affronted. “Well, when a friend is sick …”

  “What else brings you?”

  His chuckle escaped through his nostrils. “That Abner Reed shindig, as long as you insist on being realistic. I hear tell you were an innocent bystander. In a cemetery, yet. You well enough to chat?”

  “I’m well enough to get the hell out of here. Did they return that bird?”

  “Yah.” He sighed and sat down. Detective-lieutenant Louis Parker, squat and thick and ruddy and black-haired, stump of an unlit cigar in his mouth. “Yah,” he said. “And none the worse for his experience. They hit him in the throat a couple of times, done damage to the windpipe, can’t barely talk. We did the questions and answers by writing, but that windpipe condition figures to clear up quick enough.”

  “Has it broken in the newspapers?”

  “Nope. Not a word. We’re trying to work it through before it gets any publicity. They called us in after he got back and we had him down for a look at the mug-file with no results. But it’s a quiet one and we can work on it without newspaper pressure. Now let’s hear your story, kiddo.”

  I gave him the story without frill or furbelow.

  When I was finished he said, “Any ideas, kiddo?”

  “About the snatch?”

  “About you.”

  “Meaning?”

  “About why you’ve suddenly become a shooting gallery target?”

  “Yeah, Lieutenant, I’ve got a couple of ideas, but I’d rather not talk about them.”

  “And why not?”

  “Because they’re personal. And I’d like to give them some personal attention. As soon as they let me out of here.”

  “Okay, Peter Pan, if that’s the way you want it.” The cigar rolled around in his mouth and stopped. “How about ideas on the snatch?”

  “Haven’t got a one. You, Lieutenant?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Now there’s a fine basis for an intelligent discussion. Let’s begin with whatever you do have, you know, the little facts.”

  “Haven’t got much more than you have, I’m afraid. The guy showed up at his house at about seven o’clock yesterday morning, period. Tired, a little banged up, his throat on the blink. Had a doctor in, but there’s nothing really wrong says the doc. Usual treatment. Cold compresses, don’t talk, and rest.”

  “Get his story?”

  “Got it the best possible way. Complete statement in writing. Then questions and answers in writing. Sum total … a big fat nothing.”

  “Let’s hear, anyway.”

  “Went out of his house for a paper. Got jumped in the dark and figured it for a mugging. Didn’t fight back but got sapped anyway. When he came to, he was in a car, bound and gagged and under a blanket. Also blindfolded. There was a stop, where he was put on the phone to that Uncle Harry — then he was riding again. Then there was another stop, where they roughed him up a little, then the call to the wife in the morning for the ransom dough. You were suggested as go-between and he transmitted the suggestion to the wife. You know what happened in between. Then, after they roughed him up some more and warned him about keeping his nose very clean, they dropped him off, yesterday morning about six o’clock near the bridge on First Avenue and a Hundred and Twenty Fifth, dropped him off out of a car, and the car shot a
way. He wandered around a little dazed till he got a cab and he went home. That’s the story, sum and total.”

  “License plate of the car?”

  “Couldn’t get it. He was plenty dizzy, they went off fast, it was still dark, plus they had their lights out. Nice, huh? A lot to work on.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Pete, how many guys that you know would want to use you as go-between on a man-heist?”

  “That’s a funny question.” I thought about it, then I shook my head. “Impossible to say, Lieutenant. There’s no lead on that whatsoever. I think anybody who knows me, including you, knows that I wouldn’t steal and that in a real pinch, well … I could be trusted. Furthermore, my name is known to practically every would-be goon in this town … so there’s just no lead on that at all, Lieutenant.”

  “Yeah. Sure.”

  Silence. Of the heavy type. The kind of silence you can only get in a hospital room. Then I said, “What about the guy himself?”

  “Abner Reed? Nice enough young fella. Tall, rangy, young, good-looking. Used to be a dancing instructor. That’s how he met the lady with the bucks. She came for lessons and fell for the teacher.” He touched his cigar. “Can I smoke here?”

  “Sure. How’d they get along, Abner and Florence?”

  He lit up. “Swell, from what they tell me.”

  “How long married?”

  “Going on seven months.”

  “She been liberal with him?”

  “Liberal as can be expected. Rich, but plenty tightwad, that one.”

  “What about his background?”

  “Nothing special. Usual thing for good-looking kid alone in New York. Ran around a lot. Night club stuff and things. Handsome kid, picked the best-lookers in gals.”

  “Any hard guy friends?”

  He smiled. “You think the way I think. You mean if he was playing around with the tough boys before he was married, they’d know, after he was married, what a good subject he was for a snatch. Well, no soap on that. According to him, he met a few here in town, through his gal friends, but no friendships, no palsy-walsy stuff, and he dropped all that after he was married.”

  “Nice selection of zeros we’re coming up with, aren’t we, Lieutenant? What about that aunt and uncle?”

  “Harry Fleetwood was the brother of Florence’s father, pappy with all the bucks. Pappy supported him and Ethel. When Pappy died, he left his all to lady Florence. Florence continued the support but was somewhat more firm on the purse-strings. You met that Aunt Ethel, huh?”

  “Sho did, Lieutenant.”

  “Something, huh?”

  “But something.”

  “Twenty years younger than Uncle Harry. Harry’s kind of beaten up, but he’s only fifty-seven.”

  “You mean that old dame is thirty-seven? She sure looks older.”

  “It’s the white hair.”

  “Yeah, maybe it is.”

  “You know, Pete, she dyes her hair that color. Switch, isn’t it? I’ve heard of them go from grey to blonde, they all do, but this one’s a natural blonde who goes to grey. Crazy? Quite a dame, Aunt Ethel.”

  “You telling me?”

  “Used to be married to one of them British peers. Gave that up because she thought Harry had the kind of dough the Fleetwood name conjured up. Wound up being a ward of Pappy’s. Nice family.”

  I lay back and I said, “Yeah.” Then I said, “I’m in it, Louie.”

  “So?”

  “Mind if I stay in it?”

  “Real polite. As if I could keep you out.”

  “And a small favor for a sick friend?”

  “Shoot, sick friend.”

  “There’s a girl …”

  “Ain’t there always?”

  “Trina Greco. Lives on Christopher Street.”

  “So?”

  “Would you get in touch with her — don’t scare her — just get in touch. Tell her where I am, and that I’d like a visitor. Okay?”

  “Okay, kiddo. You’ll get your visitor.”

  And the next afternoon I got her, Trina Greco, tall in a green suit shaped to her figure and tight to her thighs, black hair a shining short-cut whirl on her head, black eyes enormous and a little frightened.

  “Easy does it,” I told her. “A little virus. All better now. I’ll be out in a few days.”

  “Real modest. All you bravado guys, real modest down inside.”

  “There she goes again, my Greek philosopher.”

  “It’s bullets not virus. I inquired and I was told. I wasn’t told how but I was told what. Anything I can do, Peter?”

  “Lots of things you can do, Trina, but for now we’ll settle with your sitting down and crossing those heavenly legs and prattling.”

  She prattled and I loved it. She told me about ballet rehearsals and she told me about how much she liked me and she told me that she was in the process of moving to a new apartment and how excited she was about that. I lay back and I looked at her and I knew I was sick because looking at her was soothing and Trina Greco was not one to inspire placidity in a man, at least not this man. Once I asked her to kiss me which was taking advantage because anybody will kiss a sick man, and she did, lightly, on the forehead, which was further proof that I was sick because I enjoyed it, and then, the next thing I knew, I was asleep. When I woke up, she was gone.

  VI

  Anger and well-being seem to run hand in hand and as your health improves so your anger mounts. By the time I was out of the hospital I was as tense as a piano-wire and fit to bust wide open. First visit was to the Reed mansion where the maid informed me that Mr. and Mrs. Reed were not at home, that they were downtown, passports, something like that. I asked her for Uncle Harry’s address and she gave it to me and I went to Uncle Harry in his Fifth Avenue apartment, Uncle Harry wearing a monocle this trip, and purple lounging pajamas, purple slippers and a purple dressing gown. I asked about developments and he said there were none. Then he said, “Anything else?” And he said it curtly.

  “How’s Mrs. Reed?”

  “She’s fine, thank you.”

  “How’s she taking the loss of seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars?”

  “She hopes it will be recovered. If it isn’t” — he shrugged purple shoulders — “she puts it down as a loss and it’s over. She has had losses before.”

  “And how’s Aunt Ethel?”

  “Very well. Now … is there anything else?” I tried the prissy approach. “Don’t you like me, Uncle Harry?”

  “I neither like you nor dislike you, Mr. Chambers. You are, I trust, a fine young man. But your calling on me is, in essence, an intrusion. We are not friends and we have nothing in common. You were hired for a purpose and you have served your purpose.”

  “You’ve got a real point there, Uncle Harry.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Chambers. And now, is there anything else?”

  “There is nothing else.”

  “Then good afternoon, Mr. Chambers.”

  I went back to the office and I sat on my hands. I was wearing a gun now and turning to look behind me wherever I went. I sat on my hands and waited for a phone call but no phone call came. It burnt me but there was nothing I could do about it. I had put in a good number of calls to Nickie Darrow but Nickie Darrow didn’t seem to think I was important enough to call back. So I got off my hands and attended to routine but routine was duller than a one-horse race so I kissed that off. Finally, at six o’clock in the evening I was back at Gramercy Park and this time the maid showed me in. The living room was dimly lit and first thing Florence Reed did was raise a finger to her lips and then she pointed. I followed the direction of the point to a long lean lad softly snoozing on a couch.

  “Abner?” I whispered.

  She said, “Yes.” Then she crooked the finger and I followed her into a smaller room. “He’s napping,” she said.

  “How is he?”

  “Very well.”

  “How’s his throat?”

  “Coming alo
ng fine. Now, is there anything special, Mr. Chambers? Maid tells me you were here earlier this afternoon.”

  “No. Nothing special.”

  Her lips grew thinner. “Uncle informs me you called on him too. I don’t quite understand, Mr. Chambers. Is it something about your fee?”

  “No.”

  “Then what is it?”

  She had me there. “I was just wondering,” I said, “if I could be of any help.”

  “Help? Oh, I think I understand. Perhaps you don’t know, but we’ve been to the police, just as you advised us, and just as I told you that night. He was returned to us that morning, and within an hour we were in touch with the police. They say they’re working on it, and we’re doing our utmost to cooperate. So you see there is just no help needed. It’s in official hands.”

  Once more she had me. I gargled like an operatic tenor at his morning ablutions. “Uh …” I said brightly. “Uh …”

  She misunderstood. “I do wish to thank you for not going to the police with your private troubles that night, and if you feel there should be some added recompense …”

  “No, ma’am. No added recompense.”

  Then I was out of there and I knew I wasn’t coming back. And I knew that if I did come back I’d be thrown the hell out of there. And I knew that even that would be eminently correct because I would have no business coming back there. So I had dinner in a quiet restaurant and I longed for Trina Greco but I wouldn’t call her because I was a target for somebody and when you’re a target you don’t run around with company. I called Nickie Darrow again but he wasn’t in. I asked for Johnny Hays but he wasn’t in either. A good deal of hate was being dammed up inside of me and it had no outlet. I went down to Parker and chewed the fat. He had nothing on the Reed snatch and it was beginning to grow stale. New York is a big city and the police are understaffed and there are lots of crimes and they overlap and Parker was a busy man. So, since it was nighttime, I clambered upon my broom and whisked off for the Club Trippa.