Never Give a Millionaire an Even Break

by Kane, Henry

  “Sounds fair. Let’s have the tale.”

  I told her the tale, all I knew.

  “Lovely people you truck around with,” she said.

  “Ours not to question, ours but to do.”

  “I can’t top that,” she said and took out a pad and scrawled in pencil: Earl Stanhope, Monique Lyons, Ingrid Holly. She looked up from the pad, pencil poised, and said: “Addresses. Telephone numbers. Pictures, if any.”

  “Nothing,” I said.

  Witheringly she said, “And you’re a richard?”

  “I’ll get the vital statistics from Holly tonight at the party. Pictures you won’t need, because you’ll see the characters in person.”

  “You’re taking me to the party, Peter?”

  “You bet your little ass I am.”

  “Formal, I’m sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “I’m going to get a bang out of that. I don’t get to many millionaires’ parties. How will you like me in lavender?”

  “Honey, you I would like in skin-tights with crimson stripes.”

  “Peter, you’re a bastard from way back. But I love you dearly. This whole town thinks you’re the hippest of bastards but I know you better than this whole town. You’re a little boy with large chips on either shoulder. You’re an idealist in the most cockeyed sense of the word. I’ve know you for twenty years and in twenty years I haven’t found a real flaw and, baby, I’ve looked. To me you’re a doll. So how about the lavender?”

  “What’s with the lavender, Sadie?”

  “The only decent evening gown I’ve got is lavender, and with the lavender I’ve got all the accessories.”

  “Lavender is great.”

  “There will also be a large lavender handbag, but huge.”

  “Sadie, stop picking on me.”

  “The large handbag is for purpose. I’ve got a crazy little camera that I can focus through the handbag and it can deliver pictures practically in the dark. Also the handbag is large because then I can carry away with me little items that bear the fingerprints of the people I’m interested in. Of course I slip up here and there but I’m Sadie Flanagan and I’m thorough and I believe in starting from scratch. It’ll be up to you to get me the addresses and the phone numbers because that my magic handbag can’t do for me. What time do we go?”

  “Oh, I’d say twelve-thirty. These are theatre people. After show-time.”

  “Out now, hero.”

  “Do I pick you up, or do you pick me up?”

  “I’ll pick you up. Twelve-thirty at your apartment. Now out, hero.”

  “What’s with the rush job?”

  “With the rush job it’s like this. For twenty-eight hundred bucks, in cash, spang on the desktop, I can afford the full treatment at Elizabeth Arden. So you blow, and I’ll make the appointment. And kindly remember—no comments when Sadie shows up a glistening brunette without a hint of gray in the head.”

  “Sadie, I love you.”

  “I love you, Peter.”

  Thirteen

  THE PARTY was in an immense room, vast as an arena, the floor polished for dancing. The party was comprised of at least thirty people and they were all pretty under dim, soft, pink lights. On a dais, sixteen fiddles played sweet jazz accompanied by the percussion of one piano; they were spelled by sixteen additional fiddlers and one additional piano player. The music was rhythmic, unobtrusive, and ceaseless.

  Along one wall ran a busy bar tended by five red-jacketed bartenders, and another wall had the hot buffet and another the cold buffet, both supervised by white-aproned stalwarts in high chef’s bonnets. The hot buffet was something: roast beef, roast pork, roast turkey, baked ham, corned beef, smoked tongue, veal, lamb, chicken, and eight different types of bread. And the cold buffet was something: lobster, shrimp, crabmeat, sardines, anchovies, smoked salmon, sturgeon, salami, caviar, liver pate, smoked eel, fish of every description, cheese of every description, and myriad devious designed hors d’oeuvres.

  It was a notable bash, a ball with all the trimmings, and the belle of the ball was my own Sadie Flanagan wrapped within a sheen of lavender that had no top. But it was not my lady’s topless gown—nor was it the mammoth handbag which she swung about with all the ease of a small acrobat swinging a large acrobat—that raised my Sadie to the point of pinnacle as belle of the bash: it was my Sadie’s armpits.

  Elizabeth Arden had done a yeoman job; Sadie was smooth and sparkling and an incontrovertible brunette, but somebody had forgotten to apply the depilatory and Sadie did not give one hoot in hell about it. She was, of course, unique: no other woman had hair in the armpits, and since Sadie’s attitude was entirely insouciant, her hirsute design was flaunted with abandon to great attention from grey-haired men and similar attention from all the ladies who are never quite sure they are not at the periphery of the newest fashion. The fluff of hair is considered an adornment in the Far East: why not at Holly’s party on Central Park West? Sadie Flanagan, tiny and feminine, had ample opportunity to wave her magic handbag and snap her surreptitious pictures, and she knew at whom to focus because David Holly, as has been previously recorded, was no dope.

  No sooner had Izzy ushered us in, than Holly pressed a slip of paper upon me.

  “Names, addresses, phone numbers,” he said.

  “Thank you,” I said as though this were the precise procedure I had planned. “Now which is which and who is who?”

  He pointed them out to me but he did not do it with a finger; he did it with his nose, his eyes, the direction of his voice: first Earl Stanhope, then Monique Lyons—then he threw in Barney Croyden and Nora Croyden because they were just passing before us—and then Ingrid Holly, and when he did Ingrid Holly, I was dead; at once Arlene Anthony was of the past.

  I had given the slip of paper to Sadie and I had briefed her on the subjects from afar.

  First, Earl Stanhope. He was tall, slim, silver-templed, and a gorgeous hunk of mature man. His attentions were divided between Miss Monique Lyons (make that Mrs.) and Mr. Barney Croyden.

  Then, Monique Lyons. She was pale, black-haired, dark-eyed, thin, sinuous, somehow serpent-like, haughty, dramatic, quite beautiful and quite young but thoroughly in charge of herself.

  The next two were not on the list: Arlene Anthony and Tommy Lyons. “He’s a shmuck,” I said, “but very rich.”

  “Mind your tongue, Peter.”

  “Excuse me.”

  “I happen to be acquainted with Tommy Lyons.”

  “So what do you think of him?”

  “He’s a rich shmuck,”. she said.

  The next two were also not on the list: Barney Croyden and Nora Croyden, husband and wife. Barney was a big one, tall and wide-shouldered with a beautiful blue-white Van Dyke and thick hair on his head of the same beautiful blue-white tone. He seemed a happy chap, hearty, ebullient, with a broad smile that showed his gums and showed that the gums were not his own but part of an upper and lower plate of bright-white dentures; the guy had no teeth of his own; and the guy struck a chord of reluctant memory in my brain that spoiled the evening for me, as though Ingrid Holly weren’t enough. I knew him but I could not place him; I knew him from somewhere or I knew someone like him from somewhere which is just as bad; but I did not know where in hell I knew him from or the someone like him and that became as progressively aggravating as a burr up the anus. The guy looked to be about fifty, the wife looked to be about ten years older, sixty, and she had class written all over her. Nora Croyden stood as straight as though she had steel in her spine, a slender woman with a strong jaw and a healthy skin and smoke-lensed glasses with jeweled frames and soft-curved blue-white hair, glowing identical in color with her husband’s: whoever was doing her hair was doing his, beard included.

  The next one was on the list, and on my own private list she had become indelibly inscribed: Ingrid Holly.

  Oh Mother!—and think that as a low slow moan or do not think it at all!

  I was dead, I was flipped, I was poppe
d, I was over the hill.

  It happens. I was overboard without an anchor. It happens.

  It happens and you damned well know it, whoever you are.

  It is improper, impossible, unlikely, stupid, idiotic, but it happens: you fall in love with a total stranger. If you are a rock-ribbed stoic, you can brush it off and forget it quite as soon as it happens; if you are a logical middle-of-the-roader, you can comb it out of your brain and put it down to sexual chemistry and linger for a short time about what-might-have-been-if; if you are a romantic, you hope and hope and even try and if it doesn’t work out you have an affair in fantasy and an affair-in-fantasy is far more devastating, tenuous, long-lived and semi-permanent than an affair-in-bed. I believe I am a romantic. Do I hear derisive cheers? Okay, bring on the medal of ashes and place it on my forehead.

  The lady was in magical white. The lady was tall with golden hair. The lady was a majestic woman in flowing gown with white skin and blue eyes and full mouth of red lips. She stood out like a feudal queen among feuding serfs. She was placid—peaceful is a better word—because fire showed in every move. She was graceful, imperious, calm, contained, and blonde. She was blonde through and through, from the texture of her skin to the luminous quality of the huge blue eyes to the pale gold of the gown was white and full to the floor but upstairs the deep cleavage revealed full white large shapely breasts and her arms were round and firm and exquisitely turned.

  “That one is Ingrid Holly,” I said to Sadie Flanagan.

  “You sound like you’re dying, hero,” said Sadie Flanagan.

  “Christ, she’s gorgeous,” I said.

  “Are you struck, Peter?”

  “Like by lightning.”

  “So why don’t you go and talk with her?”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “I … I’m bashful.”

  “You?”

  “Sometimes it happens.”

  “I know,” said Sadie in a blissfully understanding voice. “Would you like me to play Cyrano for you, Peter?”

  “Cut with the funnies,” I said.

  “I’ll talk to her for you.”

  “What in hell would you talk about?”

  “I’ll talk about your taking her home.”

  “She’ll go home with whoever brung her.”

  “Nobody brung her, hero.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I know. Now leave me, hero, and let me circulate so that I can snap my pictures and pick up some glasses.”

  “Glasses?”

  “Glasses have prints and prints can tell stories. I have names, addresses, phone numbers. Soon I’ll have pictures and prints and then I’ll blow this shindig. I’m working on a case, remember?”

  Sadie circulated and I went to the bar where now Barney Croyden and Earl Stanhope were now standing together, drinking and chatting. I could see Sadie eyeing their glasses and moving near. I talked, quick.

  “Peter Chambers,” I said in party-type amiable self-introduction.

  “Earl Stanhope,” said Stanhope, cheerfully.

  “Barney Croyden,” said Croyden.

  “I know you from somewhere,” I said to Croyden.

  “Do you, sir?” He did not sound like a chauffeur. He sounded like an educated man. Strike that because not only is it wrong, it is snotty. Who in hell has laid down the law that a chauffeur cannot be an educated man? “Do you, sir?” he said. “What name did you say?”

  “Peter Chambers.”

  “I don’t believe I’ve ever had the pleasure.”

  “Perhaps before the beard? It is a beautiful beard, if I may say so.”

  “Oh, I’ve had that for many years.”

  “Well, I’ve been around for many years.”

  “I’m certain I don’t know you, sir.”

  “I’d swear I know you, Mr. Croyden.” I let that roll around for a moment. “Croyden. Barney Croyden. No, not the name. Have you ever used another name?”

  “I beg your pardon!”

  Stanhope smiled. All his teeth were his own, and they were beautiful. “Perhaps … have you ever been to England, Mr. Chambers?”

  “Many times.”

  “Well, I haven’t been in England for ten years,” Croyden said.

  “Perhaps some businesss in passing,” Stanhope said. “What is your business, Mr. Chambers?”

  “I’m a detective.”

  “Well, how damn jolly interesting. With the New York Police Department?”

  “No, private detective.”

  Croyden said, “I’m sure we’ve had no business.”

  “Mr. Croyden,” I said, “I know you, from somewhere. It may have been utterly unimportant, a passing something, but it’ll come to me. I’ve got that kind of mind.”

  “Well, when it does, please do let me know,” Croyden said. “You’ve excited my interest now, and I’m trying to joggle my memory, but”—he shrugged—”nothing.”

  Sadie was near the bar now, near the glasses from which they had been drinking.

  And now the lady with the blue-white hair approached, clean-jawed, firm-faced, and ramrod-straight.

  “Nora,” Barney Croyden said. “This is Peter Chambers.”

  “Chambers?”

  “A private detective who insists he knows me, somehow, from somewhere. Mrs. Croyden, my wife—Peter Chambers.”

  “Private—what?” The “what” had a great deal of blow in it; her voice, like her carriage, was haughty, tense, distant; and her accent, despite her many years in America, was very British.

  “Detective,” I said.

  A sniff silently passed her nostrils. “I do not believe my husband has ever had any dealings with private detectives. Or have you been diddling behind my back, beloved?”

  He laughed, roaring, heartily, the uppers and the lowers, expensive jobs, gleaming all the way to the pink plastic gums. “No diddling for Daddy, my dear.”

  Sadie was possessed of one of the glasses and, sipping as though it were her own, she drifted off. She would go to the bathroom, pour out the contents, carefully wrap it in tissue, and carefully lay it within her massive reticule.

  “Were you on the guest-list, Mr. Chambers?” said Mrs. Croyden.

  “Guest-list? I crashed. I’m a friend of Arlene Anthony.”

  Monique Lyons slithered to us and leaned on Earl Stanhope. Both her slim hands were clenched about the stem of a goblet filled with champagne. Her black eyes were filmy with the wine.

  “Who’s your handsome friend?” she said in a husky voice.

  I played it dumb. “My friend is Earl Stanhope. He’s not my friend. I just met him.”

  “Why don’t you speak when you’re spoken to?” she said.

  “Weren’t you speaking to me?”

  “I was speaking to him,” she said and looked up at Stanhope.

  “My friend is Peter Chambers,” Stanhope said.

  “How do you do, Mr. Chambers. I’m Monique. You’re fresh, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Who is he?” she said to Stanhope.

  “A private detective that talks about it, which is a funny sort of private detective.”

  “Why?” She stopped leaning on Stanhope. She gave him her glass and put her hands on her hips. Suddenly I had a champion. “Why shouldn’t he talk about it? You’re an actor, you talk about it. David is a producer, he talks about it. Tommy is filthy-rich, he talks about it. I’m a slut, I talk about it.”

  “You drink too much champagne, Monique my dear,” Mrs. Croyden said.

  “You don’t drink enough, Nora my dear,” Monique said.

  “Excuse me,” I said.

  I saw David Holly. Better I got to him first. Better he knew from me that I had crashed his party, not on the guest-list, because I was acquainted with Arlene Anthony.

  At two o’clock, Sadie went home. At two o’clock, I had not yet spoken with Ingrid Holly. At five minutes after two, Ingrid Holly spoke to me. “Now, if you please,” s
he said, “you will take me home as per arrangement.”

  “Arrangement?”

  “The sweet Sadie Flanagan.”

  “Oh.”

  Fourteen

  SHE LIVED at 870 Park Avenue. We floated home by taxicab. As we had not talked all through the evening at Holly’s party, so we did not talk in the chariot that wafted us home. I don’t know about her. Me, simply I was scared. I just sat and smelled her perfume and was glad to be near her and kept the trap clamped shut for fear I’d say something wrong and spoil it. At 870, I paid the driver and held the door for her and followed her through into the cool lobby and into the elevator and the elevator-man nodded and I nodded at the elevator-man and we were let out at the sixteenth floor and I followed meekly and she put a key into a door and I followed meekly and then there were lights and a plush carpet and a charming living room and then she turned to me and her palms were stiff and cool on my cheeks and she kissed my lips, lightly, as one would kiss a child before tucking him into bed, and then she stood away from me and she said, “You are in terrible trouble.”

  “I am?” I said wittily.

  Hell, if this was trouble …

  She said, “Please make yourself a drink, what you wish. For me, if you please, the B. & B. in an old-fashioned glass with ice, thank you.”

  Her voice was deep, somewhat breathless, like a whisper amplified, and there was a touch of accent, the soft burr of another tongue. Then she smiled with white teeth all her own, and then she turned and went out of the room.

  It was a room with a high ceiling, a room of white and black and gold and purple: white carpet, black leather bar with black leather stools, white leather walls, gold and purple draperies and gold and purple furniture and ebony furniture and marble-topped tables and gold lamps—fifteen thousand dollars a month was one hell of a stipend of alimony but many many months of alimony had to be put together just to furnish this one room, and I did not know how many other rooms there were.

  I went to the black leather bar and played bartender, first for me. I belted down a shot and belted another and then made me a demure drink with ice and water added. Then, into a short wide glass, I laid in ice and poured the monks’ mixture of brandy and benedictine over it. I lit a cigarette and ate the smoke and waited and lit another cigarette and waited and drank of my drink and waited for a long time—seven cigarettes and another highball—and I was stabbing the eighth cigarette at my mouth when she came back into the room and I let go of the cigarette and grabbed at the highball.