Lover Man: An Artie Deemer Mystery

by Dallas Murphy

  "How do you know mine? You had to know my name to call."

  "May I remove my outerwear?"

  I pointed to the hook behind the door. Keene wore a tiny tweed sport coat over a blue shirt and crumpled pants soaked from the knees down. I sat on the windowsill. Stretch was dwarfed in my Morris chair.

  "Are you a sportsman, Mr. Deemer?"

  "Me? No. Why?"

  He gestured at the shotgun.

  "Oh, that. That's just for casual killing. I've got bazookas in the bedroom. Tell me how you know my name?"

  "I've been following the man Palomino. He led me to you only a short while ago in the park. I followed you back here."

  Everybody was following me. "That doesn't get you my name."

  "That wasn't difficult, merely tedious. I noted the names on the buzzer in the lobby, then I looked up and phoned each party. Inevitably, I came to you. Are you aware that you are being followed by a large Negro man?"

  "I'm a regular mother duck. Why were you following Palomino?"

  "In the hope that he might lead me to Barnett Osley." He said the name with quiet emphasis and stared into my eyes from under his steel-wool eyebrows.

  "Am I supposed to know him?"

  "I hoped you might."

  "I don't. Who is he?"

  "He's my partner."

  "As in business partner?"

  "In every sense of the word. He has disappeared."

  "When?"

  "I last heard from him on the night the Burke woman was killed."

  "There's a connection?"

  "I believe so. But I don't believe he killed her. Dr. Osley saves lives; he doesn't take them."

  "Was someone blackmailing you?"

  "Please, Mr. Deemer, I'm wet and cold, and I've had quite enough of this covert activity. You have appeared too often. At her apartment in disguise and still again at Renaissance Antiques. Casting you as innocent bystander strains credulity."

  "I don't give a rat's ass about your credulity, Doctor. I'm tired, too. You invited yourself over here. If you have something to say, say it now."

  "Very well. There's a war on. You've probably not seen all the combatants, but they've seen you, be sure of that. You've seen the dead, however. I heard you say so to Mr. Palomino, not gently." He paused. "It's difficult to find a sound basis for communication with you. You do not inspire trust. You go about in disguise, you have no furniture, you leave a gun leaning against your wall. However, I will tell you what I want. I want to find Barnett. He was very upset by this business. He is not well. I fear for his mental stability. Perhaps he is dead. If you know anything, I will pay to hear it." His eyes pleaded with me.

  "I don't know anything about Barnett Osley. If I did, I'd tell you for free. I don't want money."

  "Then what?"

  "I want to know about Billie."

  "What do you want to know?"

  "Did she literally come to you and say if you don't pay me money, I'll tell so and so such and such?"

  "No, not to me and not directly. Her go-between spoke to Barnett, and he paid this creep to keep quiet."

  "Go-between? What was his name?"

  "I don't know that."

  "Did Barnett pay him?"

  "Yes, several thousand dollars."

  "That's when Barnett vanished?"

  "Yes."

  "Why was Billie blackmailing Barnett in the first place?" I asked, but Stretch just shook his head. "That's the obvious question, isn't it?"

  "Obvious, yes, but there we confront a problem. I could tell you about our transgression. Perhaps you'd even sympathize with our side of the story, but to what end should I explain? If you don't know already, it would not be in my interest to tell you. Perhaps you are an incipient blackmailer. You're clearly associated with blackmailers."

  "I don't believe that Billie was one."

  "Then I'm sorry to tell you differently. The go-between has been traced directly to her. Besides, didn't she die a blackmailer's death?"

  "Traced by whom?"

  "By my friends."

  "Like who?"

  He shook his head.

  "This conversation's not getting us very far," I said, trying to think.

  He was thinking. I let him do it without interruption. "Barnett Osley is a great healer. Under different circumstances he would be celebrated, not excoriated. I fear for his state of mind. I want to find and protect him. That's my only purpose."

  "I'm not threatening him."

  "If you have the photographs—the ones Palomino asked you about—then you represent a very great threat indeed. To me, as well, and to others far less civilized in their approach to getting what they want."

  "Like who?"

  "Mr. Deemer, I have ten thousand dollars. Not on me, of course, but I can have it in your hands within the hour. That's all I have without selling my assets."

  "Billie used those photographs to blackmail you? Is that what you're saying?"

  "Basically, yes."

  "Then you've already seen them?"

  "No. I merely heard about them. I believe they might bring a ceasefire to the war they have started before Barnett becomes a casualty. If you try to use them in any other way, you will most certainly become one yourself."

  "So Leon told me."

  "Sage advice from an unlikely source."

  "Then why shouldn't I take them to the police? After all, I'm innocent. You're not. When the partners of innocent people disappear, innocent people call the cops."

  "Do you mean you have them?" He leaned forward, eyes glistening; then he covered his obvious excitement and leaned back in my Morris chair. His toes barely touched the ground.

  Jellyroll had been staring into the old man's eyes. Dr. Harvey Keene smiled sadly at him, then began to stroke his head.

  "I have them," I said. My thinking, if that's the word, ran thus: I was going to turn them over to Cobb anyway, maybe tonight, so why not try to learn something from little Dr. Keene before I gave them up? I desperately didn't want Billie to have died a blackmailer. "But I don't want money."

  "So you said."

  "Who's Pine?"

  "Harry Pine is a very old friend of ours, Barnett's and mine. He is like a son to us."

  "Was he part of your transgression?"

  "I've yet to see a single photograph."

  "I don't have them here."

  "What!"

  "Don't you think it's occurred to me that Billie was killed over them? I don't leave things like that lying around."

  "Where are they?"

  "In a safe place. If anything happens to me, they go straight to the police."

  He sighed deeply.

  "Suppose," I continued, "I tell you about them."

  ..."Okay."

  "Renaissance Antiques. They were all photos of the store and its staff. Jones, Ricardo, Frederick and Leon Palomino, and your pal Pine. Then there was you making a phone call from the street."

  "Yes, what else?"

  "Nothing."

  "Nothing? You're lying."

  How did he know?

  "What about the home?" he demanded.

  "What home?"

  "A nursing home, Mr. Deemer!" he snarled.

  "Bright Bay Nursing Home?"

  "Yes!"

  "What do you have to do with—?"

  "I own it. Well, I'm a silent partner with Barnett Osley. There are innocent, helpless people living there, and we are helping them! They should be protected!"

  "I—I don't mean to jeopardize them."

  "But you are! If you don't give me the photographs, you are!"

  "Do you know that Billie's mother lives at Bright Bay?" I asked simply. And I decided to go a step further. "Her real name is Beemon. She was married to a dead pilot named Danny Beemon."

  Stretch responded as if I'd whipped him across the face with a wet towel, but he quickly recovered, and his face went blank. "Danny Beemon? I never heard of him."

  "Come on, Dr. Keene, you about fell out of the chair."


  He stood up. "You're right. I knew Danny Beemon. In fact, we were very close. But he was killed. Mr. Deemer, please don't mention that name to anyone. If you do, innocent people will suffer."

  "I don't understand."

  "I'm going now. Do you intend to stop me?"

  "No, of course not. But what about the photographs?"

  "Yes, the photographs. I'll be back in touch with you about that."

  "Back in touch? Christ, that's why you came!"

  "Good-bye, Mr. Deemer." He headed for the door. Jellyroll followed. He turned and petted Jellyroll on the side. Dr. Keene's face was gray. He stared at me as if he were collecting his thoughts before speaking, but he didn't speak. He gathered his rain gear from the hook and fumbled with the locks. I made no move to help. Jellyroll sniffed his shoes. He finally got the dead bolts synchronized, the door open. He said, "If Barnett Osley should—" But he never finished the sentence. He left, letting my door fall shut. I quickly bolted it.

  Thinking hard, I made myself a mean cup of coffee and sat down at my desk in the tiny maid's quarters adjacent to the kitchen. Jellyroll joined me. He curled up at my feet under the desk as if things were routine. What was Billie involved in? What had she involved me in?

  "Who's this asshole we been seein' in the Con Ed suit, etc.?"

  "Name's Artie Deemer."

  "Got any clout?"

  "He's got a dog."

  "Take him out."

  "The Glacier?"

  "Yeah, send in the Glacier. Might as well take out the dog, too."

  The coffee was making me half bilious. I had an idea, but it was utterly baseless. The phone interrupted me. It was Shelly, Jellyroll's agent.

  "What, Artie, what? You don't return your phone messages now days? I been talking to your machine since noon. What, you looking for a new agent behind my back?"

  "I've been...busy."

  "Busy?"

  "Yeah, Shelly, sometimes I'm busy."

  "Okay, okay, so you're busy. It's good to keep occupied. Listen, Artie, they want him!"

  "Who?"

  "Who? Those Dracula idiots. It's all set. You sitting down? I got twenty thousand for three weeks, ten thousand a week each week thereafter, plus all expenses in fucking Samoa! I told him you wouldn't allow Jellyroll in the baggage compartment, you know what he says? He says, hell, we'll charter a plane. Ha! We got them by the short hairs."

  "When?"

  "Your phone must be on the fritz. I tell you we're gonna make maybe forty grand in Samoa and you say when like I just said you got a court date on a bigamy rap. When? Saturday. Monday at the latest."

  "Can we put them off awhile?"

  "Are you nuts? Look, let me speak to Jellyroll. Get some rational response here."

  "I can't leave just now, Shelly."

  "Artie, this is a bad career move. Ba-ad. They're gonna start saying the dog's a genius, but the handler's unstable. Look, is it the woman?"

  "Yeah. The woman."

  "Okay. I can understand that. Grief. Grief's a terrible thing. But think of this: Samoa is the best place in the whole world to recover from emotional grief. Why do you think Gauguin went there? And Artie, do you know what they wear under those grass skirts?"

  For a long time I sat and stared dully into what appeared to be an oil slick undulating over the surface of my coffee. Then the phone rang again. This time it was Sybel. I started to tell her about Leon, Stretch, and the Glacier, but she interrupted me before I could even say the word blackmail.

  "Can you meet me? It's very important."

  "Where are you? Why don't you come over here?"

  "No, meet me. Please."

  "What's wrong?"

  "Nothing. Can you meet me?"

  "Where?"

  "Columbus Circle. In front of the old Coliseum."

  THIRTEEN

  THAT, CLEARLY, WAS the voice of a woman in trouble, tight and husky, with panic in the upper register, as if a gun were pressed to her larynx. So what was I to do? Join her? Stand like a chump in the rain until whoever had her got me, too? Even if I wanted to go, which I did not, I couldn't stride blithely out the front door as if off to meet Billie for a Buster Keaton movie at the Metro, not while a glacier encroached on the neighborhood. Maybe this was the setup, force Sybel to call me out and let the Glacier pulverize us both at once, along with the Coliseum if it got in the way.

  About a year ago, after an unusually sordid incident, the tenants kicked in to hire a night guard for the lobby. Knowing I had nothing else to do, they badgered me to head the hiring committee. I hired Blue. Blue wants to be black. He's a young white sax player who longs to have been raised in a New Orleans ghetto. "That would of enhanced my chops," as he'd put it.

  "Hey, Blue," I called in a loud whisper from the first landing on the back stairs. Blue cautiously stuck his head around the corner.

  "Whatchu doin' up there, Artie?" Blue wore a rumpled tan uniform with a cap several sizes too small, and he carried a nightstick that I occasionally caught him "playing" as if it were a soprano sax. "They pay me to nose out suspicious persons. You about the most suspicious person I seen since the pimp in 8E. Remember that dude?"

  "Transitional neighborhood."

  "Don't I know it, me bein' on the cutting edge of law enforcement."

  I tossed him a tape cassette. "Julius Hemphill," I said.

  "Thanks. Hey, this ain't a bribe? I'm clean. I'm Elliot Ness. I'm—"

  "I'm expecting a cab. It should stop right in front. When it does, tap on the wall so I'll know, then go out and open the door for me."

  "Gracious living, huh?"

  "Right."

  Blue went off to watch the door. My stomach snarled belligerently. I had forgotten to eat. Nothing but coffee and the rum from Dibbs. I was beginning to feel dizzy, but when Blue tapped on the wall, I walked briskly out the door and straight into the cab. "Thanks, Blue." If I never come back, please walk Jellyroll every now and then. I told the driver south on Eleventh, then east on Fifty-eighth. I would approach from the rear, where I'd have a decent view of the sidewalk in front of the Coliseum. If things looked nasty, I could then retreat the same way I came. As we pulled away, I looked for the Glacier, but he was either well concealed behind a building—anything smaller would have left elbows sticking out—or he was waiting for me at Columbus Circle.

  Though the big marquee still stood, the Coliseum was dark and doomed. Soon it would come down, and another smoked-glass tower, a giant oil filter, would ascend over Columbus Circle, further enriching Donald Trump. I got out a block west of the Circle as a loose crowd emerged from the subway. I melted into it, fooling killers in the jam-up way I fooled them in my Con Ed suit. The International Bath & Hot Tub Expo had been the Coliseum's swan song. Big red letters on the marquee claimed it would run through January 15. I hung back, searching for a killer in a black leather raincoat, a silenced .22 in his gloved hand. A bag lady sang the national anthem with her hand over her heart. Another explored the rubbish for returnables, the trickle-down theory at work.

  Looking under umbrellas for Sybel, I walked across the front of the hulking building under the Bath & Hot Tub sign and looked under other umbrellas. Just keep going north, I told myself, to Vermont. I started back the other way.

  "You Deemer?"

  I spun.

  "Deemer or not?" He was a chesty man, mid-forties, with a round face and stiff, curly hair. He wore a sharp leather cowboy jacket and pointed snakeskin boots.

  "Who's asking?"

  "Just get in the car. It's raining. I don't wanna ruin the jacket." He pointed at a big black limo with deeply tinted windows, the kind of car hoods and stars travel in, the same kind of car Billie photographed from her studio window. Before she was murdered.

  "Forget it. I'm not getting in any cars." I backed away. Pedestrians, happy couples, flowed around us. "I'm here to meet Sybel, and if I don't start seeing her, I'm gonna start yelling cop."

  "Artie—"

  I spun toward the voice and took a couple o
f side steps to keep Tex in view. The back window of the car was down, Sybel's face was framed in it. Her expression was grim. "Please, Artie. Get in."

  The back door opened. No light came on. Sybel slid over, and I got in. Something was wrong with her, something in the way she moved.

  "Have they hurt you?" I asked.

  She shook her head. Then I saw what caused her awkwardness. Her ankles were chained together. A length of chain was wrapped tightly twice around her ankles, cinched in between and padlocked.

  "Hey," I demanded, "take these chains off her."

  Tex got in the front, shut the door, and didn't even turn to look at his cargo in the back. The driver merged with the Columbus Circle traffic and headed east on Central Park South. The windows were so dark I could barely see the lights outside.

  I shoved the brown leather shoulder in front and said, "Hey, why have you got her chained?"

  "Just sit back, shut up, and enjoy the ride. This is a Lincoln Town Car." He still didn't turn around.

  I shoved his shoulder again and repeated my question.

  "She's chained so she can't run away, at least not real fast. You can run away, but if you do, she winds up in a lotta different cans of cat food." The driver giggled at that line.

  Sybel took my hand and squeezed it. To say shut up? Her hand burned, and there were tears, or the traces of them, on her cheeks. She seemed to be breathing heavily. I was having some trouble breathing myself.

  Was this it? Was this the last ride you learn about from gangster movies? It had all the earmarks of the genre. Then why was I going quietly? Sybel, too; she sat there. Because we didn't believe it? Maybe the bogs of North Jersey were fertilized by moldering disbelievers. Well, damn it, I would fight like a wounded wolverine. Tinted hotels and dressy tourists passed on the right. I had an ice pick in my jacket pocket, a Zinfandel cork guarding the point. I put my hand in there with it, and for future reference I picked a spot two inches up from Tex's collar.

  "They made me call you," Sybel whispered hoarsely.

  "I know," I said, thinking of other ways to kill Tex.

  "Hey, shut up back there," he said.

  "I don't think so, Tex."

  He turned to face me over the seat back.

  I said, "If you plan to kill us, it won't make any difference if we talk, and if you don't, you're not likely to change your mind because we do."