Dead of Night

by Stewart Sterling

  “I’d rather die.” She drew a long, shuddering breath, opened her eyes. “If you take me back, I’ll kill myself first chance I get.”

  “Now, now—” Couples began to slow their strides to observe us. I couldn’t watch her and keep an eye out for a man who looked like Roy Yaker at the same time. “No need to talk wild.”

  “Mean every word of it. I’ll jump out the window—anything—”

  “Okay. All right. Tone it down.”

  Someone in the clustering crowd inquired loudly, “Hey, isn’t she Tildy Millett?” I wanted to get away from there, on the double.

  “I couldn’t bear to see Dow—like that.” She let me lead her along the sidewalk, away from the onlookers. “I want to remember him as he was.” Her teeth chattered as if it were eight below instead of eighty above. “I’m not going, that’s all.”

  “Well, hell. I can’t let you go back to Brooklyn.” I quickened our pace. “That sharpshooter may still be hanging around the Narians’. He might not miss next time. I can’t leave you here on the street—”

  “No!” She moaned in terror. “Don’t leave me—please don’t leave me. I couldn’t stand being alone.” Half a block away, a marquee necklaced with yellow bulbs shone dimly over the entrance to the Hotel Brulard. I hurried her toward it before any more pedestrians collected around us.

  She glanced dully up at the marquee. “What’s this?”

  “Hotel. You have to spend the night somewhere.”

  She hung back. “I won’t go ’less you promise not to leave me.” Hers was a loud plaintive voice for that street, that late!

  If the back of my neck wasn’t red at some of the comments made by busybodies within earshot, it’s only because I long ago forgot how to blush.

  But I said, “Kayo. Okay. I promise. Let’s go.”

  We went in.

  Chapter Twenty-Two: THE THIRD CORPSE

  THE ONLY KNOWN SPECIES of plain-clothes operative which doesn’t try to conceal the fact it is engaged in detective work is the sort of security men employed by hotels like the Brulard. Instead of mingling with the guests, these house officers advertise their calling in an attempt to intimidate the evildoer, warn him off the premises, show him he’s under surveillance. Pat Ashmore, at the Brulard, would stand in the lobby, feet planted wide, arms folded on chest, cigar between teeth, glaring at some citizen trying to make an impression on a strange pair of nylons. That’s the way Pat worked. Only way he knew how to.

  Pat was by the newsstand when we went in. He spotted us right away, but didn’t recognize me until we’d crossed almost to the registration desk. Then he laid the cigar on the edge of the closed magazine counter, sauntered over, about as subtly as if he’d been blowing a whistle.

  Pat knew me from our Protective Men’s Association; was a time when they risked solvency by making me treasurer. But of course he couldn’t understand what I was doing in the Brulard. Especially with a girl!

  I parked Tildy in a big chair with her back to the main desk, went over to Pat.

  “Hi, Junior.” He weighed two-thirty without his mustache.

  “H’are ya, y’old yentzer.” He shook hands. “What is that you got there, th’ most beautiful floatin’ rib in captivity, huh?” He admired Tildy’s legs discreetly.

  “We want a big double or a suite if you have any.”

  “Ah, now, Gilbert—not in the Brulard.” He pursed his lips in disappointment.

  “No time to go into details,” I said, “but nothing lecherous, ’pon honor.”

  “Honest, Gil, if it was the Ma-ha-ra-ja of Kablootz, I couldn’t.”

  “You can. You will. Not for me. For the girl. She’s in a bad jam. Matter of life and death. No kidding at all. She has a suite with us. But it’s not safe there for her.”

  His eyes grew round. “But you said—‘We.’”

  “’Sright. You feex. But quick. I’ll put cards on the table with you tomorrow. This is serious, Pat.”

  “I dunno—no luggage.” He pondered. “You want to register?”

  “Sure. But you get the key and the card. Take us up. I’ll sign there.”

  He did it. In three minutes we went through the “ill-fitting door to the empty room that smells like a fairly empty tomb” as Ogden Nash once described it. Musty brocade by the windows, musty plush on the overstuffed chairs. Standing lamp that had seen better days and a lot of ’em. A vintage bed. A bathroom that made me look to see if they’d taken out the gaslight fixtures.

  After the broken-down old bellman departed with the registration card, Tildy slumped forlornly in one of the upholstered monstrosities. “You must think I’m a worthless little slut.”

  “No. I think you’re too scared to know what you’re doing.”

  She examined me searchingly then for the first time. “Yes, I am, that’s true. I shouldn’t have expected you to come up here with me. I have no justification for dragging you into this hideous business.”

  “You didn’t drag me up here. I came willingly.” I wasn’t surprised to find the telephone one of the old-fashioned sort with the receiver hanging on a hook. I picked it up, waited for the operator.

  “They must have thought it queer, downstairs. How did you register? John J. Jones and wife?” She made an attempt at a smile.

  “Maybe I should just have written Mister and Missus Lx.” I jiggled the hook.

  She stood in front of the gay-nineties bureau, taking off the kerchief; she froze with both hands up to her head.

  “Lx. What do you mean?”

  I took the note out of my pocket. “This was stuck in your mail pigeonhole after you left the suite tonight.”

  She came, reached for it as if it were a scorpion. Her expression was wooden; she didn’t seem puzzled at all.

  The operator came on. I gave the P-R number. Asked for Fran Lane.

  “Fran? Mister V.”

  “Yes, sir. We weaned that playboy away from his fair charmers. They’re out.”

  “Swell.” I appreciated her choice of words. “That’s not what I’m calling about. I’m at the Brulard. Know it?”

  “Why, certainly.”

  “Hike over. Room four-one-six. Bring a nightgown or pajamas or whatever you wear.”

  “Sir?” She must have thought I was completely off my rocker.

  “This is not Lothario Vine speaking.”

  “Oh?”

  “And, Fran. Do you happen to have any Rip Van Winkles?”

  “I can get some.”

  “Do so. Make it quick-like. And if anyone wants to know where I am, I’m at the automat trying to find the place to put my nickels for crepes suzette.”

  Tildy came right up close to me, lifted her face to mine. “You’re getting your girl friend to come over here, to stay with me.”

  “My assistant. She doesn’t know you’re here. She mistrusts my intentions, I fear.”

  “I could have called Nikky.”

  “So the gent with the boom-boom could trail her right over here? No, thanks. Fran’s dependable. If there’s anything else you want, she can get it for you.”

  “You’re just real nice, Mister Vine.”

  “Awarding of prizes later. What’s with the note?”

  “I don’t know.” She hesitated. “Dow—” She stopped. “What are you waiting for? Another victim?”

  I never thought the time would come when I’d be alone in a bedroom with a girl as pretty as that, and have my only emotional reaction anger. That’s the way I felt. I was beginning to be leery of her. “Roffis dead. Lanerd dead. Few minutes ago you said you’re to blame. Why are you?”

  “Because if I’d kept my mouth shut right at the beginning, down in that wretched café, none of it would have happened.”

  “Don’t give me that. You said it was because you were a coward. That wasn’t cowardly, identifying Gowriss.”

  “Oh—by being a coward—” she was flustered, “I only meant I’d been afraid somebody’d be killed trying to protect me; if I’d just run away from
the hotel before—and let Gowriss or his gang shoot me—the others would have lived.”

  It was thin as wet tissue, but I couldn’t bully her around to get the truth out of her. If Lanerd’s death wouldn’t make her talk, I didn’t know what would.

  “What about that ‘had to do it’ business MacGregory mentioned?”

  She’d had time to think up an answer. “I meant that if eloping with him was the only way for me to be with Dow, I had to do it; I couldn’t give him up.”

  It clicked into place all right, but I couldn’t tell when to believe her any more. “You know Edie Eberlein?”

  “I used to. Years ago. On the Coast.” She didn’t ask why I wanted to know.

  “Seen her lately? Give her the key to your Plaza Royale suite?”

  “No—to both.”

  Right then Fran knocked; I let her in.

  She had a bag with her, a train box I believe they call those things that are too small for a suitcase and too big for a handbag. She and Tildy liked each other; Fran didn’t seem to mind when I told her she was in for the night.

  “Bring those sleeping-pills?”

  “Phenobarbs. Yessir.”

  “Take a couple, Tildy,” I told her. “Whether you want to or not. Understand?”

  “Where you going?”

  “Plaza Royale. See you at breakfast.”

  She threw her arms around me and kissed me; none of that cheek-against-cheek routine, either. Fran made big eyes and a round mouth at me, behind Tildy’s back. I went away.

  Zingy saw me the second I came through the Fifth Avenue door. He touched his index finger to his forehead. The head man, that meant. “They’re all up on the twenty-first, Mister V. Want you right up there.” They were in the 21CC living-room. Tim, Reidy, Hacklin, Schneider, another eager beaver from the Prosecutor’s homicide detail. They were all solemn and brooding; Tim and Reidy because Lanerd’s death meant the worst possible break for the house, the others because an important witness in the Roffis matter had been demised right under their noses. Hacklin, especially, was a very subdued man.

  Tim took me in to see the body. It was in the bathroom opening off the room with the ticket-littered twin beds.

  Lanerd lay on his side beside the bathtub, as if he’d been sitting on the edge of it when the bullet went into his right temple. There was very little blood. The gun wasn’t there. His face was gray and drawn beneath the once-radiant tan; the carved-marble hair looked like wet ashes in the snow. The fingers of his right hand made a claw. He didn’t have that Man of Distinction look, there with his head beneath the wash basin. The resemblance to the Mr. Giveaway on the cover of the magazine was still there, but the contrast with the flood of cars and washing machines and money was pretty pitiful.

  What a stir this man’s death was going to cause! What a stink, to the security office!

  “They’re waitin’ for the camera crew,” Tim said. “They had another job up in Harlem. Be here any minute. The gun went down to the lab.”

  “His own gun?”

  “Yeah. My personal judgment, it was a self-exit, Gil.”

  “That what the others think?”

  “What else can they believe after readin’ th’ note?”

  “He left a suicide note?”

  “No. A farewell note from her. Tildy Millett. It’s out on the table.”

  It was on that same Plaza Royale stationery.

  Dow Beloved—

  I’ve changed my mind. I can’t do it, darling. I simply can’t—the way things stand. I’m dreadfully broken up about it. I never will get over it. Or ever be anything except your own

  T.

  Chapter Twenty-Three: BAIT FOR A SLUGGING

  IF I’D BEEN one of those fictional dicks who deduce a criminal’s entire life history from the manner in which he drops his cigar ashes, it would all have been simple then, I suppose. All I’d have had to do would have been to crawl around with a magnifying glass, retire to my dressing-gown, give myself a shot in the arm, play a solo on my battered fiddle, and zango! Everything clear as a slug of straight gin. Whereas nothing was clear to me except that the prominent corpse in the bathroom wasn’t the doing of one Al Gowriss.

  Reidy informed me, “We compared the note with Miss Marino’s registration card. Same writing, Gil.” I asked if the gun was in Lanerd’s fist or on the floor when they found him.

  “He had it gripped tight,” Hacklin grumbled. “So don’t strain your brain givin’ us suggestions. We had all the amateur advice we want.”

  “From Lanerd’s secretary?” I inquired.

  “No, not from Lanerd’s secretary.” He mocked me, annoyed. “We didn’t get anything from her, thanks to you lettin’ her out of the suite before I had a chance to question her. She skipped—an’ that’s only one of the stumblin’ blocks you’ll have to account for when we haul you over the barrel.”

  “We got a man after her, to bring her in,” Schneider said. “She must’a known about the suicide, an’ concealment of a crime is just as much a felony as helpin’ a suspect escape. Maybe the body was there when you were here in his suite with her?”

  I said if it had been, I hadn’t known it. Any notion of telling them about Tildy or the events over on Atlantic Avenue went out of my head. If they meant to pass the buck to me for the bungling that’d gone on, I might need an ace up my sleeve.

  Schneider waved at a couple of accordion-folded tickets caterpillaring along the top of a fingerprint-equipment case. “This is a wrap-up. Lanerd was nuts about the skater. He planned to go away with her. He had those plane tickets to Rio in his pocket along with her note. We know it wasn’t his wife he planned to take along; we phoned her; she didn’t even know he intended to go to Rio.”

  Reidy said, “Mrs. Lanerd’s on her way here.”

  “Grrr!” I didn’t want to be present at that farewell party. “Better get a nurse from the hospital suite, just in case.”

  Reidy hadn’t thought of that, went to take care of it.

  Hacklin took up where Schneider’d left off.

  “Roffis must have tried to veto this buzzaway to Miami and Rio, and Lanerd fixed him. That’s why Herb hadn’t unholstered his gun; he knew Lanerd and naturally figured he didn’t have anything to fear from the big shot.”

  I said, “Then Lanerd hung around after the killing? Waiting for a streetcar, maybe?”

  “We figure that after the murder, Miss Millett got cold feet, turned Lanerd down, wrote him that note, and decided to beat it all by herself. I know there was some trouble between ’em, because when I got to the suite, she’d been bawling.”

  “Why didn’t Lanerd leave the suite when you did?” I asked.

  “I asked him to stay,” Hacklin answered. “He wanted to come to the studio with us, but I wanted someone there to tell Herb what had happened, if he came back while I was away.”

  Schneider stuck a palm out toward me inquiringly. “What else would a prominent party like him do, faced with ruin an’ exposure? Nothing but put a period to himself.”

  I knew they must have something else; it was too pat.

  “I didn’t know him. But he seems to have enjoyed what the psyko sharps would call a very satisfactory sex life. Two or three of ’em, probably. I never heard of a man who was enjoying life that way committing suicide. Look at it another way, a lad who hunted grizzlies and liked to fight swordfish doesn’t seem like the fella to dig a blade in another man’s back.”

  “The knife.” Tim looked distressed. “The steak knife, Gil. I didn’ want to mention it on the phone—”

  “You found it?”

  Hacklin nodded ponderously. “Wrapped in a bath towel. In the bottom of the towel hamper in his bathroom. Coupla feet from the body.”

  I attempted irony. “Ties the ball of wax up nice and neat. No need to hold Auguste, hah?”

  Schneider came toward me with that same slow, surly approach Hacklin had tried on me earlier. “We figure the murder took place right after dinner. While Auguste was in t
he next room. Until somebody proves different, we’ll put it down Auguste was paid to keep his mouth shut. Paid with that compact. What you got to say about that, Smart Stuff?”

  “Pick a four-letter word,” I answered. “I could use any of ’em. I don’t believe Dow Lanerd committed suicide.”

  “The gun, Gil.” Tim was really suffering, trying to get me to understand how thoroughly they had the case corked up. “They sent the gun down to the lab with the knife. They can compare the bullet an’ give the right mitt of the body a paraffin test; that’ll cinch it.”

  Paraffin! The word socked me straight in the teeth! That might be the answer, or part of it. Wax. Sure.

  “Yair.” I nodded as if he’d finally convinced me. “I guess it would, Tim. Unless you verified that report about Al Gowriss’s being in the house.”

  Schneider laughed scornfully. “They had a teletype, downtown. From Trenton, New Jersey. Gowriss was identified as one of three men who stuck up a filling-station an’ filled the attendant with lead. About six o’clock tonight, the holdup was.”

  Tim added, “In my opinion, Maxie didn’t see this hophead at all. He give me so many details he began contradictin’ himself. I think he just wanted t’ feel important.”

  “Common failing.” I heard loud talk in the corridor. When the door opened to let in half a dozen more of the special assistants, I went into the other bedroom. No one followed me or heard me when I opened the door, stepped out into the corridor.

  Technically I wasn’t under arrest. But they could have held me for balking them on Auguste, on Ruth. Hacklin wouldn’t let me get away without a stance down at Criminal Courts. I had other fish to fry.

  It was long after Mrs. Munster’s quitting-time; the only employee in the housekeeper’s office was Martha Canaday, a spinsterish gal of sixty with thick-lensed eyeglasses.

  “This afternoon one of the maids turned in a soiled bedspread that had spots of wax on it, Martha. I want to know what room it came from.”

  “But Mister Vine,” she complained, “I couldn’t possibly find out until the girls come in tomorrow—I mean this afternoon—it’s Sunday already.”