“No, he’s goin’.”
I walked away and got into my car. My head hurt. Mrs. Fenton and Berl were staring at me and I was staring at them, trying to figure out what the hell was going on up here in New Kingston. Aunt Rose said something to Berl and he shouted, “No. No touch,” stamped his feet and plodded back to the house, shaking his head heavily from side to side. I turned the key and the Buick gratefully took me away, first to tell the gang at Christian’s that Mrs. Fenton was definitely a peculiar kind of broad and then to chew on a couple of poached eggs with potatoes, Canadian bacon, and four cups of coffee at a place outside Margaretville. It was nearing eleven and Rubine had walked in at three: eight hours that seemed like eight weeks. Country road workers were having an early lunch, while I finished breakfast at the end of my day, on my own clock in my own world, an alien visitor carrying out assignments on earth.
Four hours later, I was lazily floating in a Sunnyside bathtub filled with darkening water, a Blatz loyally standing next to the tub. Mel Allen’s honeyed tones wafted from the Philco, my phone was off its hook, and the Yanks were up 3–0 on the Athletics, scoring their runs off an eighteen-year-old 4-F southpaw who had two glass eyes and a mechanical leg. God was in his heaven. LeVine felt like a person for the first time in three days. After an hour of soaking, I arose, streaming, to shave and talcum myself, then called Kitty Seymour to explain my recent whereabouts and shyly ask if she would tolerate having dinner with me.
“Your place or mine?” she asked.
“I thought I’d spring for it.”
“You pay for it? Must be some case, Jack.”
“It’s rotting my mind. How about it?”
“Fact is I’m having some people over tonight and I made enough stew for the Russian front. Why not grace our table?”
“What kind of people?”
“Couple of War Information guys, very bright, one failed-nightclub-chanteuse-turned-dress-shop-owner, a housewife or two. A higher grade of person than you usually run into.”
“That’s inconceivable, but I’ll come anyhow. What time?”
“Seven-thirty. They’re not a late crowd so the place will be ours by midnight.”
“I’ll probably be pretty tired but I could stay awake with encouragement.”
“You’ll get so much encouragement you won’t know where to hide. See you.”
I dressed slowly, as Mel Allen’s voice grew cranky, less buoyant. In the bottom of the eighth, a four-fingered left fielder for the A’s hit a grand slammer off a palsied Yank reliever. The A’s, in turn, wheeled out a seventy-year-old southpaw who put the Yanks away nice and easy in the top of the ninth, and what sounded like two hundred people filed peacefully out of Shibe Park.
So when does DiMaggio get home already? Where he’s needed.
The stew was delicious, the company stimulating, but I couldn’t keep my eyes open and was happy when the last bye-byes went sailing past the closing doors. Kitty turned and smiled, her back to the door.
“Now, they weren’t that boring!”
“Not in the least. I’ve just been up since three o’clock this morning, drove up and down from the country—five hours each way, got slugged twice, once with a sap, had a traveling companion killed, and was threatened myself.”
“So you’re tired.”
“So I’m tired.”
Kitty stepped toward me. Her lipstick was very red and her brown hair was pulled back. She looked very beautiful, like Ann Sheridan, for whom I was keeping myself. Kitty put her hands on my rosy cheeks and stretched her long fingers so that they smoothed my scalp.
“I love running my fingers through your hair,” she said.
“Last dame made a crack about my dome went to bed with a T-bone pressed to her eye.”
“Tough guy.” Kitty stepped even closer so that all I could see was her. It made the world a very pretty place. I softly kissed her eyes and her nose, then landed on her warm and fragrant mouth.
“Kitty, you’re all right,” I told her ear.
It was a fine, sweet night, the nicest since my divorce, maybe the nicest since the middle of my marriage. There was energy, softness, grace, and laughter. I even took my socks off. In my circle, that means class.
I’M CRAZY FOR DICK TRACY. I think he’s a hell of a guy who does his job the way I’ve always wanted to do mine: square-jawed and full steam ahead, undeterred by extraneous difficulties. I’m not like that. In 1938, for instance, I was following a pretty important guy around, an actor (you’d know the name) whose wife was trying to nail him pants down for a divorce suit. I ate some bad potato salad for lunch, got the runs, and repeatedly lost the guy. No sooner would he turn into an apartment building, push a buzzer, and go inside than a familiar pang would shiver through my kishkas and I’d be streaking into a luncheonette or a barbershop, racing toward the back. I’ve never, ever, seen that happen to Tracy, or to B.O. and Sparkle Plenty, who also do their bits. As for Tracy’s sidekick, Pat Patton, I wish he worked with me; I could use a tough Irishman on my side. And his eyes seem to twinkle. Especially on Sundays, in color.
Especially this Sunday. Kitty and I enjoyed a sleepy, giggly kind of breakfast, poring over the News and Mirror. She made breakfast; I insisted on doing the dishes. She came up behind me as I faced the sink, and wrapped her arms around me and held me very tight. I dried my hands and we went off to the bedroom once again. At about noon, I left.
“Now that you’ve compromised me yet again, Jack, I expect you’ll call,” Kitty told me at the door.
I pinched her cheek, a happy guy.
“You’ll get flowers and candy by the carload.”
It was a drizzly Sunday and the streets were empty. I splurged and took a cab to Sunnyside, studying the closed stores, the gray East River, and my contented visage as reflected in driver Meyer Domoff’s rear-view mirror.
A peaceful Sunday afternoon. Lots of time to peruse the papers, sip more coffee and enjoy the easy warmth of my limbs, the post-lovemaking glow. An item in the News caught my eye, if not my fancy.
BODY FOUND
Olive, N.Y. June 23 (AP)—Police here report the discovery of an unidentified body late this afternoon, near Esopus Creek in Olive. Sheriff Walter Runstead said the body of a forty-year-old white male was discovered jammed into a wide section of drainpipe northwest of the creek. “We’ve ascertained that death occurred within the past twenty-four hours,” Runstead reported. Cause of death was not disclosed. The Kingston Police Department promised later details.
So long, Al.
I turned my radio on and let some Mozart into the morning. Which is when I got my first treat of the day. The phone rang and I answered with a mouth full of toast.
“Hello?”
“LeVine?”
“Uh-hmm.”
“Get the hell off this case or you’ll join your friend Rubine. It wasn’t nice what they did to him. Be smart.” The voice was a hoarse rasp.
“It wasn’t nice what they did to me. My head still aches.”
“They was nice to you, LeVine. Believe me.”
The connection wasn’t too good—there was a lot of crackle over the wire. “You calling long-distance?”
“Get off the case, buster. Or it’ll hurt.” He hung up.
I leafed through the Entertainment section of the News. There was a new Betty Grable film, Pin-Up Girl. Maybe I’d go see it for a couple of months. They have bathrooms in theaters. I decided to call Butler at home. If they wanted me off the case, chances were he’d been told the same thing. Or would be, so I could warn him. A young man answered.
“You can be a star, good morning.”
“Let me talk to Butler, sweetie.”
“The master is indisposed. Who shall I say?”
“Say Jack LeVine.”
“The dick?” he asked. His hand was either on his hip or sweeping across his bangs. He sounded adorable.
“The dick.”
I heard him calling Butler: “Warren, your dick is on the phone.�
� The young man covered the mouthpiece, and I heard dulled shouts; then he spoke again.
“He’s been a perfect bitch all morning.”
“Happens in the best of marriages.”
“How very true.”
Butler grabbed the phone, sounding upset. “Jack, I’m glad you called.”
“I like your friend.”
“Jack, I’ve been threatened and it was damn ugly. This morning.”
“By phone?”
“Yes.”
“They’ve really been cranking out the calls this morning. My life was declared worthless just a few minutes ago.”
“God, they called you, too?”
“Told me to get off the case or I’d be cross-ventilated. What did they tell you.”
“To take you off the case.”
“Or?”
“Or they’d make it rough on me.”
“How, physically?”
He faltered. “I assume so. They just said, ‘Well make it rough on you.’”
“A man with a raspy kind of voice.”
“That’s right. What do you make of this, Jack?”
“It’s nuts. First they want a contact to make a deal. I go to Smithtown, nothing. Now they’re playing tough.”
“It is quite strange. I don’t like it.”
“And you don’t know the half of it. Yesterday morning at 3:00 A.M. our friend Rubine, late of Smithtown and the universe, came to my apartment on the lam. He told me to drive upstate, where I’d find the films in a farmhouse. He was a scared little guy. I drive him up and when we hit Route 28, a patrol car tails us and pulls us over. We get out, put our hands up and then a piano fell on my head. I wake up, Rubine’s gone and there’s blood all over the road.”
“Jack, please.” Butler sounded ill.
“Life isn’t nice, Butler. I’m sorry about it but you hired me to tell you things and I’m telling them to you.”
“I understand, but not so graphic, please.”
“That’s the only ugly part; the rest is low comedy. I keep going, schmuck that I am, and visit the farmhouse where Duke Fenton, Rubine’s ex-partner, stashed the films. I get there and a fifty-year-old woman holds a gun on me and sends over a seven-foot caretaker to play catch with my head. Net result after all the heavy stuff was that she knew nothing from nothing. Another net result is a little item in the News this morning, saying that an unidentified stiff was found doing the Australian crawl in a drainage pipe near where I got sapped. Figures to be Rubine.”
“And this all happened yesterday?”
“Big day.”
“And why didn’t you call me when you got back?” He sounded angry. “I hired you, why the hell do I have to call and pump information from you? I’m buying information, Jack.”
“Hold on. First of all, I would have told you eventually. In fact, I just told you about it, willingly and, I thought, pithily. I remember you telling me to stop at one point. Second of all, it’s a funny story but it doesn’t get us any further; probably takes us back a couple of paces. Third and last, by the time I got home yesterday I hardly knew which end of the phone to use. I’d been hit on the head a few times, like I said.”
“Sorry, Jack, it’s no lack of faith on my part. This has just been …” his voice started to break, “very upsetting.”
“Look, just lay low for a bit. Don’t move around any more than necessary. We’re up against a very rough bunch of people and worse than that, a very unpredictable bunch. You know anybody who packs a gun?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. Keep him with you.”
“And you, Jack?”
“I’m paid to stick my neck out.”
The next step, of course, was to call Kerry and warn her, and I cursed myself for not forcing a phone number out of her. She could be in really terrible danger and her failure to call did little to reassure me. I would have to sweat it out until the next day, when I could at least call the theater and leave a message. For now, I would try and pretend it was just another Sunday in June; nobody had slugged me and I was just a stocky Queens Jew sitting around in his underwear.
SO IT WAS SUNDAY for a while. The Yankees split a pair and LeVine split a half-dozen beers with Irv Rapp from 3D, diagonally across the hall from me. Irv’s in hats. We talked about the old days, wished they were back. Irv’s doing well, got a sub-contract on sailor caps and swears he’ll buy a Packard when the war’s over. Kitty called and we had a giggly, inconclusive talk, like two twenty-year-olds sharing breakfast after their first night in the sack.
Which brought me to Monday.
Monday when the whole Kerry Lane case started to make perfect and incredible sense.
Monday when I wished it hadn’t.
I walked into 1651 Broadway at about 9:30, insulted the elevator jockey, and unlocked my office door a lot more carefully than usual. The outer office was unoccupied and untouched, but I suddenly heard a rattling noise in the inner sanctum. I turned the key as quietly as possible, then leaned against the door with my full weight, drew my Colt and burst inside, yelling, “What the hell …” at the source of the noise. Predictably, there was no reply. The metal piece at the end of the window shade continued to rap against the window pane, blown about by my electric fan, which I had neglected to shut off. I cleared my throat and returned the Colt to my pocket.
It was at least an hour too early to call the theater so I killed time by reading the papers—Tracy was zeroing in on a mastermind killer with a deformed head—and answering some calls. An advertising man from Darien was sure that his wife was taking care of the private school headmaster in the afternoons and wanted his house staked out. I told him no dice and gave him the numbers of a couple of shamuses who were good, needed a buck, and enjoyed that type of work. He told me how much he loved his wife.
At eleven I rang backstage at the Booth and asked to leave a message for Kerry Lane. I was asked to hang on and was given over to an assistant stage manager. This time I asked if Kerry was around.
“Not right now, Mac.”
“Can I leave a message?”
“That wouldn’t make much sense.”
I got annoyed. “It makes sense if there’s no other way to reach her.”
“No, it don’t make sense because she left the show.”
I watched a couple of file clerks pick their teeth across the air shaft and was surprised at how hard my heart was beating.
“Hello? You still on, Mac?”
“When did she leave the show?”
“This morning. Called up and said she had to go home—somebody in the family’s sick.”
“So she’s out for good?”
“That’s what I wanted to know. Kerry said she’d try and come back in a few weeks, but she wasn’t sure.”
“How’d she sound, nervous?”
There was a pause and I heard breathing. He was thinking. “Is this the law?”
“Private investigator. Kerry hired me to take care of something.”
“She in trouble?”
“Nothing serious. Look, you have any idea where she might be headed?”
“Not really, but I figured she might be from around Philly. Something she said once. We were on the road in Boston and she asked me a couple of times if there was any chance of us playing Philly.”
“And you got the idea she wasn’t very anxious to go there, that it?”
“That’s it. You’re pretty good. I had the feeling that if I’d told her we were going there, she’d have quit the show flat, no matter how much she needed the dough.”
Someone had turned on all the lights for me. I got excited and I got scared.
“Hey, shamus. What’s going on?”
“I’m not altogether sure, buddy.” I paused. “What’d you think of her?”
“Kerry? She was broke and down and out when she got the part, but I always figured her for class. Am I right?”
“I think so. Thanks a lot.”
“Shamus?”
“Yeah.�
�
“Look out for her. She’s a sweet kid.”
“I’ll try, and thanks again.”
I slammed the phone into its cradle, grabbed my hat off the moose head and locked up shop. I pushed the elevator bell over and over. It crept up to nine and the doors opened as slowly as a bank vault’s.
“Keep your shirt on, Mr. LeVine.”
“I want to catch a train, Eddie.”
He turned and smiled. “A hot one, eh Mr. LeVine?”
“Very hot. A blockbuster.” I was showing off.
He whistled. “Christ, Mr. LeVine. Wish I could go with you, wherever it is. It have anything to do with that doll I took up last week?”
I stared at him and he knew he’d hit the jackpot. Eddie smiled all over.
“Maybe I will take you into the business, Eddie. You’ve got the nose.”
The elevator stopped. “Main floor, Mr. LeVine. First case I take, she’s gotta have big knockers.”
“All my cases have big knockers, Eddie.” LeVine the big shot idol of office boys and messengers. But I was working up a fine head of excitement; this bewildering ball-breaker of a case was becoming comprehensible.
It was still an hour before the lunch traffic, so I grabbed a hack with no trouble and got to Penn Station in five minutes. Cabbie #5322–106–8632, Lou LaMonte, admirably filled the time, first by whistling “Lazy Mary, Will You Get Up?” and then by telling me about two Negroes he’d picked up the night before.
“This one shine had a diamond ring the size of an apple.” He turned around. “Swear to Christ, this big.” He made a circle with his thumb and middle finger and sailed through a red light.
“You ran the light, Lou.”
“Fuck the lights.”
I liked his style, threw him a bill for the fifty-cent ride and ran into big Penn. I knew the schedules cold, raced to Gate 26 and had the 11:40 to Philly, Baltimore, and Washington beat by five minutes. The train was crowded: half soldiers and half businessmen and I could only manage a seat next to a chubby Rotarian. We were right across the aisle from the john and the traffic was murder.
The Rotarian was red-faced Fred Garnett, whose card said “Notions, Dry Goods.” While I was trying to piece together this incredible jigsaw of the Kerry Lane affair, the train started forward with that inevitably surprising and jarring first tug, and Fred was babbling on about the notions business.
The Big Kiss-Off of 1944: A Jack LeVine Mystery Page 8
