Never Give a Millionaire an Even Break
Page 18
I flicked one key beneath the door and past the threshhold and then the other.
Arlene was done with me and I was done with her.
Were we?
Next stop, Acapulco.
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My Business is Murder
CHAPTER 1
Why blackmail?
I intended to ask exactly that question. Tonight.
It didn’t fit. And blackmail always figures to fit.
It puzzled me, but it didn’t detract from my rapt attention as I watched her take her clothes off. You and I can take our clothes off—we do it every day—and it doesn’t mean a thing, one way or another. But with Anabel Jolly it was special. She took her clothes off with grace and spirit, revealing a lush, long-legged, firm-thighed, narrow-waisted, full-bosomed, dazzling whiteness, and she strutted, proudly and defiantly.
Anabel Jolly had made a good thing of taking off her clothes. It was rumored that she had received as high as $5000 per week for the simple operation, if simple is the word, of removing her clothes under a blue light on a small stage before a select and palpitating public. She had worked all the best clubs in the country from Hollywood to New York, and right now she was performing her specialty in a club of her own appropriately, if mildly, entitled Club Jolly.
Then—once more—why blackmail?
Blackmail is old-fashioned, and there was nothing old-fashioned about Anabel Jolly. Blackmail is dangerous—and although Anabel Jolly was as dangerous a female as ever it has been my pleasure to encounter—the danger involved, piquant and exciting and practically overwhelming, was directed from Anabel Jolly at all comers (provided such comers were male). Futhermore, Anabel Jolly wasn’t looking for trouble—not blackmail trouble. She didn’t need it. Anabel Jolly was loaded. I had put in ten days of intensive spade work before I had met her. I knew all about her. She didn’t have to break the law to obtain money. She had money. She had plenty of money.
So … why the blackmail?
I pondered that, sitting alone at a small round table, an appreciative patron at the Club Jolly. The house was packed and attentive and I applauded with the rest of the boobs and I meant it. Anabel Jolly was a peeler, but she was the best in the business and the best is always something. Anabel Jolly was an artist. There are others who have the equipment: structure, beauty, grace and rhythm. Anabel Jolly had more. She combined a display of sex with an air of contempt, a warmth of movement with a frigid poise, a voluptuous wriggling body with a cold and arrogant mein: her eyes were slits that viewed her viewers with disdain: it was as though she erected an invisible barrier between herself and her audience: she was naked but untouchable, and out of reach. And the suckers loved it.
She did her last bump, her last grind, stood stock-still with her arms outflung, her body in a crouch, her eyes wide open now, the smile of contempt on her mouth—and the curtain closed about her. The lights came on and the hub-bub grew and the waiters stalked the tables. This was the last show and most of the patrons paid their checks and departed. I had another drink and waited. I had a date with Anabel Jolly. This was the fifth night running I’d had a date with Anabel Jolly, and I’d enjoyed every one of them, but tonight I was going to put it to her about the blackmail, and that was a prospect I didn’t enjoy. I looked down at my watch. It was five to four in the morning.
The tables around me were wearing their chairs when she finally joined me. She rubbed a cool finger along the back of my neck and sid, “Hi, Lover.”
Lover grinned upward. “Bar’s closed. You can have a sip of mine, if a sip is needful.”
“More than one sip is needful, Sweetie. Let’s get out of here.”
I paid and we went. It was warm out, a warm night in October, Indian summer hanging over the town like an omen of doom. I waved to a cab and we rolled, windows down, toward Harlem to an after-hours’ joint called Jackson’s. There was dancing in Jackson’s, and heavy black drapes over the windows, and Dixieland music and velvet throated crooners and shouters, and name-brand undiluted whiskey, and Southern fried chicken, and Chinese noodles, and barbecued spareribs with a secret sauce.
We sat opposite one another under pink indirect lights in an intimate booth and I watched her unabashedly tear at spareribs. Her mouth was red and wet, and shiny from the grease of the ribs. Her eyes were green and wide, her nose small and tilted, and her red hair was parted in the middle and cut short in a cap of tight glistening Grecian curls. Her dress matched her eyes, green with puffed sleeves, and a slit down the middle deeper than a pickpocket’s reach. I watched her and hated the fact that she was grist for the mill, part of work, part of business, part of the chase after the ever-elusive buck:
She set down the rib, wiped her mouth with a napkin, sighed, said, “Somehow, Lover, I hate you.”
“Me?”
“You. I’ve been waiting for you to open up. It’s five nights now—and nothing.”
“Open up?” I blinked over Scotch and water.
“Look. Let’s face it. Nobody’s name can be Timothy Tiddle. Not even yours. How’d I ever get to know you?”
“We were introduced, remember? By Phil Webster, the usual mutual acquaintance. You thought I was cute and I think you’re lovely. What’s the problem?”
“Timothy Tiddle, Texas oil millionaire. Brother, how corny can you get?”
I smiled around the rim of the glass. “What’s corny?”
“You, pal. You’re no visiting fireman. I’ll say this for you. You spend like a Texas millionaire. You’re a real welcome customer in my joint. Even the waiters like you, and my waiters are tough to please. But you’re no fireman, pal. You’re hip, real hip.”
Demurely I said, “Little ole me?”
“Why, there ain’t a joint in town, real joint, not the square joints, that you don’t know and where you’re not known. And just between you and me and a gnawed sparerib bone, you’re not even on the make. I can tell. Your’re just being polite, that’s all, and gentlemanly, and squirelike. Now why in all hell are you squiring me around, kid? Break down and tell little Anabel.”
The music was smooth now and there were couples tooling toward the dance floor. I put down my drink and pointed a finger over my shoulder. “Shall we?” I said. Gallantly.
She smiled with all the teeth. “The way you dance, I’d love it.”
The floor was small, the lights dim, the music schmaltzy, and all of Anabel Jolly nestled beside me as we swayed on a dime, her mouth at my ear, and vice versa. She whispered, “What’s your name, Lover?”
“Peter Chambers.”
“You ready?”
There was a moment of silence. Then I said, “Yeah?”
“I knew it all the time.”
“Knew what?”
“What your name was. Peter Chambers. I’m glad you finally told me.”
I moved my head and looked at her. For the first time her eyes were pleased. She winked once, kissed me on the mouth lightly, and put her cheek against mine. Softly she said, “You’re a figure around this town, pal. I played out the reel, waiting for action. You’re a cop. A private dick, eye, richard—whatever the hell they call them. What’s the promotion, pal? You looking to put a padlock on my joint?”
“No.”
“I worked hard and I worked a long time to get where I am. I pay plenty ice. If I got to hist the ice, okay with me, you’re on the payroll. Happens you’re cute too. Happens I like you. You’re liable to earn your fee, if you know what I mean.” Her body pressed closer. “I’m not too hard to take, am I?”
“No.”
“We got a deal?”
“No.”
Her body went rigid. “Let’s break it up, Lover.”
We went back to our table. I said, “Anabel—”
“Don’t Anabel me. You’re looking to play it high and mighty, okay, then you’re looking to have it catch up with you. I’ve handled tougher babies then you’ll ever be.”
“Maybe. Bu
t I’ve got nothing against your joint.”
“Say that again, huh? Say it slow.”
“Nothing against your joint. Period.”
“Then what’s the play?”
“Let me ask a few questions first. May I?”
“Shoot, Lover. I’m beginning to like you all over again.”
“You’re fixed pretty good for dough, aren’t you?”
“The best.”
“Like how?”
“Like I own the Club Jolly outright. Like I’ve got a hundred and fifty gees banked, in cash. Like I got a load of government bonds. Like I own a couple of apartment houses in L.A. Like I’m coining dough, every day, hand over fist. It wasn’t this good always, but it’s good now. I’m Number One in the strip racket. There’s always a Number One. There is a Dempsey, a Ruth, a Tilden, a Valentino, a Garbo, a Pavlova—me, I’m Anabel Jolly. I’m doing a little bit of all right.”
“Then what’s with blackmail?”
The lids of the green eyes came down like purple shades. One corner of the mouth fought for a smile but it lost against the other corner: tight, and strained, and tense, and unhappy.
“Roger Aldridge,” I said. “Six lousy letters. Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”
“So that’s it,” she said.
“That’s it.”
“You working for him?”
“I’m trying.”
The smile came, finally, bitter as though she’d bit into a worm. “A fine romance,” she said.
“You and me?”
“That’s the way I had it figured. You and me. That’s the way I was born. I either go or I don’t. With you I could go. I figured we could ring a couple bells together. Okay, so I figured wrong. G’bye, Lover.”
“Roger Aldridge?”
“Go pick another doll to be a detective with. G’bye, Lover.”
She stood up fast, tilting the table. I wrestled with it, righted it, and got out of the booth—but I was stopped by a waiter with the check. By the time I paid, she was gone. I came out of the warmth of pink dimness into the sad grey of sunless morning. A few early-go-to-workers straggled by. Traffic was sparse. City noise was muted. I whistled down a cab and I went home.
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Text Copyright © 1963 by Henry Kane
Cover Art, Design, and Layout Copyright © 2012 by F+W Media, Inc.
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Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.
eISBN 10: 1-4405-4141-8
eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-4141-4