My Kingdom for a Hearse

by Craig Rice

  They waited until Joe the Angel had come and gone away again, and then Jake said, “One of the models was missing from this morning’s chummy little get-together. The one who posed for the hands. Then there was this business about your talking to Rico. It goes together, and yet it doesn’t.”

  “It does,” Malone said. He added fervently, “But I wish it didn’t.”

  There was nothing to do but tell Jake the whole story, and Malone immediately did, omitting only the details of Gus Madrid—no point in worrying Jake unnecessarily—and some personal plans regarding Tamia Tabet, the cuddly blond receptionist—that was none of Jake’s business anyway.

  He finished with, “I didn’t tell any of this in front of Helene, because you know how Helene is.”

  Jake said, “Very wise,” nodding at his glass. “Very, very wise. I do know how Helene is.”

  “So don’t you tell her,” Malone warned him. “I have enough problems to cope with, without Helene helping me to solve a possible murder case.”

  Jake nodded again, and said even more solemnly, “But I’ll help you. You helped me, and now I’ll help you. And it certainly does look like murder. Where do we start?”

  “Where she lived,” Malone said. “The missing girl, I mean. That’s where I was going when I ran into you.”

  This time Jake’s nod was positively owlish. “Very, very sound reasoning. Unless I’m drunk.” He looked at his wrist watch. “No, I’m not. Let’s go there before we are.”

  Out in the street, there was still no sign of either Helene or Gus Madrid. Malone hailed a passing taxi, consulted his notebook and gave the driver Eva Lou Strauss’s address.

  “It’s there not being any kidnap message that bothers me,” Malone said. “Because there should have been.”

  Jake agreed that there should. “The usual routine,” he said thoughtfully, “would have been a disappearance. Then a message with a demand for money. And then the little gift of hands.”

  Malone shuddered.

  “Of course, there may have been a message by now.”

  “I doubt it,” Malone said. “Hazel Swackhammer would have called me.”

  They worried in silence for the rest of the brief ride. Malone said, as the cab slowed to a stop, “If I don’t hear from her in the meantime, I’ll go over there in the morning and ask some more questions.” Including, he reminded himself a polite financial demand of his own.

  The Brindle Arms, a seven-story brick apartment building set flush with the sidewalk, boasted a small lobby crowded with bits of imitation medieval art, a desk and a switchboard in front of pigeonholes for mail, an aging potted fern, and a self-service elevator. Jake and Malone strode blithely past the desk with its magazine-reading occupant, carelessly tossed ashes at the potted fern and reached the elevator.

  “So far, so good,” Jake said in a congratulatory tone.

  Neither of them had noticed the sleek black sedan that had slid to a quiet stop just across the street.

  Chapter Seven

  A cart full of linens stood at the open door of apartment 312, and the sound of a lazily pushed vacuum cleaner came down the hall. Malone and Jake walked up to the door and peered in at a furnished apartment that was like practically every other furnished apartment in its price range in the city of Chicago. It was just a little too elaborate and just a little too shabby, but it was comfortable. The pictures on the wall obviously went with the apartment, the television set just as obviously didn’t. There was a faint and not at all disagreeable aroma of tobacco smoke, long years of coffee-making and cooking, perfume, gin, and human habitation.

  A large-bosomed, red-faced cleaning woman switched off the vacuum, took a limp cigarette from her mouth, and gave them a well-what-do-you-want? look.

  “I’m John J. Malone,” he said. He waved vaguely. “This is Mr. Justus.”

  The broad red face blossomed into a smile like summer sunrise. “I’ve heard of you, Malone. If you’re looking for Eva Lou Strauss, she’s not in. But come in and sit down just the same.” She abandoned the vacuum cleaner. “My name’s Geragthy, Mary Geragthy.”

  They said they were pleased to meet her, came in and sat down.

  “I know she’s not in,” the little lawyer said. “I wonder where she’s gone.”

  “No knowing,” Mary Geragthy said. She shrugged her shoulders. “Here, there and everywhere she goes. Gone on a trip most likely, this time. She left yesterday.”

  Malone sighed. “If I knew what clothes she’d taken with her, I might be able to figure out where she’s gone. I don’t suppose you’d know?”

  She flung open a closet, glanced through dresser drawers. Malone and Jake glanced with her. Not a great assortment of clothes, gaudy for the most part, fairly good, but none expensive. There was lingerie in exuberant hues and lavish with lace. And a lot of cheap but elaborately seductive house gowns and negligees.

  “Funny, it’s her summer suit that’s gone.” Mrs. Geragthy said, “and in weather like this, too.” She shook her head and clucked her tongue.

  “Florida?” Jake suggested hopefully.

  “Most like,” she said. “Or California, or Cuba.”

  Another verse from that song popped nonsensically into Malone’s mind, ending with:

  But she ran away to Cuba,

  The weather was to blame…

  “She sure didn’t take much with her,” the jovial woman said. “Suit, blouse, and some underwear. Most like she’ll be back before too long.”

  Malone winced, said nothing, and kept his eyes away from Jake.

  Mary Geragthy paused suddenly in the act of opening another bureau drawer. “Well! She didn’t take her gloves!”

  The two men peered with a kind of fascinated horror at the satin-lined drawer the cleaning woman had just opened. It was full of gloves: suede gloves, kid gloves, silk gloves, all kinds of gloves, embroidered, spangled, and even jeweled. And all of them very obviously, to Malone’s practiced eye, of a cost way out of proportion to the rest of Eva Lou Strauss’s wardrobe.

  “Not one pair of them did she take!” Mrs. Geragthy said. “Not one! And her fair wild about gloves, she was. Always buying new ones, never throwing the old ones away. Queer, she’d not take at least one pair. Wouldn’t you think she’d need them, even with a summer suit?”

  This time, Malone not only winced, but shuddered.

  “It is cold, at that,” Mrs. Geragthy said. She went into the kitchenette and came back with a bottle of Scotch and three glasses. “Eva Lou won’t mind. Generous as the world is round, that girl.”

  With the drinks downed, she sat down comfortably and rambled on amiably about Eva Lou.

  No, she didn’t know much about what Miss Strauss did for a living, but she didn’t make much, poor dear. Lovely girl, and always friendly and more than good-hearted.

  “Men friends?” Jake asked.

  Oh yes indeed, she had men friends. Two of them, and both well-fixed. She could have lived a lot better than this, she could. But she didn’t like to take presents from them, except little things.

  No, it was seldom if ever that she went out with them, no indeed. Most always she and one of her friends spent the evening here with the television and a good bottle of Scotch.

  Yes, she might have gone away on a trip with one of them, but she never had before. In fact, she’d never gone away on any kind of a trip before. Funny thing that she would, and not leave one word for anyone.

  No, Mrs. Geragthy didn’t know who either of the men friends were, except that one of them looked tough.

  There wasn’t much else to be learned about Eva Lou Strauss, and after a while the two men went away. Malone still felt unhappy and vaguely purposeless. Eva Lou Strauss’s Scotch hadn’t really helped much. The snow was coming down a little faster now, beginning to cake crisply on the sidewalks, but Eva Lou had gone away in her summer suit, leaving all her cherished gloves behind.

  They walked up to Division Street and hailed a passing taxi.

  “The offic
e?” Jake asked.

  Malone shook his head. “No. Not yet. I want to stay away from there for a while.”

  Jake frowned. “I really mean it,” he said. “If it’s a matter of a creditor, you might as well borrow some of your own dough back.”

  “It isn’t,” Malone said laconically.

  “Von Flanagan?”

  “Now why on earth,” Malone said, with a faint show of irritation, “would I be dodging von Flanagan?”

  “Why indeed,” Jake said blithely, “except that the rest of Eva Lou Strauss may have turned up, and he just might have stumbled on the fact that her boss called you in this morning.”

  Malone said, “Shut up,” and added, “anyway, that isn’t it.”

  Jake sighed. “Somebody’s boyfriend?”

  Malone nodded and let it go at that. He said a quiet thanksgiving that Jake didn’t know anything about Gus Madrid. And, even more important, that he didn’t know what Helene was up to right now.

  “The apartment then,” Jake said. He gave the address and the taxi started through the snow. The black sedan moved out from the curb and followed, discreetly and unnoticed, at a distance.

  For once, Malone didn’t feel the immediate comfort and security that usually enveloped him when he stepped inside the apartment Jake and Helene had lived in since the eventful, and in some ways, terrible, day of their wedding. Instead, he found himself wondering if the rent were paid. He glanced around unhappily. Everything looked exactly the same, and yet the feeling of everything was different. A lot had happened here, not all of it pleasant, but all of it exciting, and he had an uncomfortable feeling that a lot more was just about to happen.

  Jake came back from the kitchenette with a tray of drinks and said, “Helene’ll be along any minute now and make dinner. She’s taken up cooking for a hobby.”

  “Very domestic of her,” the little lawyer said. He began worrying not only about the rent, but about how long the groceries would be paid for.

  Something would work out. Something had to.

  Finally he said, “Better call my office. Maggie might just be worried.”

  Or that check from Hazel Swackhammer might have come in.

  No, nothing in the mail. But von Flanagan had called. And a Miss Myrdell Harris wanted him to call her back. Said it was important.

  Malone mentally told von Flanagan to go to hell, and dialed Myrdell Harris’ number.

  The voice that came over the wire with, “Yes, this is Myrdell Harris,” was soft, flutelike, and almost alluring.

  “You are not Myrdell Harris,” Malone said accusingly.

  There was a laugh. Then she said, “Would you really rather I sounded this way, Mr. Malone?” in the yipping twang he’d heard first thing that morning.

  Malone stared stupidly at the telephone and said, “I beg your pardon?”

  “Or perhaps you’d rather I sounded like this, Mr. Malone?” It was a more than passable imitation of the famous and well-nigh golden voice of Delora Deanne.

  “I’ll be damned,” Malone said. “I mean—I’ll save the questions till later.”

  “A little later this evening?” she said, in what he decided—and hoped—was her own voice. “At my apartment?” She gave him the address, a famous one on Lake Shore Drive.

  Malone promised he’d be there, and hung up.

  Jake raised eyebrows like question marks.

  “Bad enough,” the little lawyer growled, “that Delora Deanne turns out to be five girls, one of them missing. Now Myrdell Harris turns out to be one girl with at least three voices.” He paused and drew a long slow breath. “I just hope the comparison ends there!”

  Chapter Eight

  Malone repeated it glumly. “Five girls with one name. One girl with three voices. One guy with two names. One guy with one name who’s two guys.”

  Helene kicked the door shut, put down a shopping bag, and asked the little lawyer very solicitously if he’d like to lie down for a while before dinner.

  Jake sighed. “I peg the one guy with two names. Dennis Dennis. But the other, no.”

  “Otis Furlong,” Malone explained patiently. “Furlong and Furlong, only there’s only one Furlong.”

  Jake said, “Oh, that,” and scowled.

  “All at one time,” Helene said blithely, “we’ve got quintuple, triple, and two sets of double schizophrenia. And if you count Maggie’s brother’s camera with all the eyes—”

  She vanished into the kitchenette before Malone had a chance to suggest that she might like to lie down before dinner.

  Dinner was not an outstanding success. Not that Helene didn’t, surprisingly, turn out to be a more than adequate cook, but the effort of avoiding the mention of Delora Deanne, composites, murder, disappearances and hands got heavier and heavier. It was disconcerting, Malone felt. Or better, disconcentrating. Lovely word. He brightened up at having thought of it, muttered it out loud, and received two startled looks and utter silence for a while.

  Then too, Helene worried him. She seemed anxious, and at the same time, secretly pleased with herself. He’d seen similar looks before on her exquisite face, and knew he had occasion for worry. Then too, there was her smile. Usually whenever Helene smiled, the effect was as though someone had just turned on all the electric lights in a room, but this time it seemed a little too smug to suit him.

  Finally he finished his coffee, said good night, added that he was going to see a girl about three voices, and went away moodily, hoping that Jake and Helene would mind their own business for the evening. Though, he remembered with a slight wince, this was their business too.

  This time he didn’t miss the black sedan. It was parked conspicuously at the entrance to the building.

  “Get in, chum,” Gus Madrid said, opening the door.

  The little lawyer hesitated a minute, decided that this was a time for wisdom rather than valor, and got in.

  “Good,” the gunman said. “Me, I don’t like trouble. I’m a very peaceable type person. This way you don’t scram down no dark side streets, and you don’t fool me with no blonde.”

  Malone counted to ten very carefully, and then said, “Blonde?” in an innocent but slightly squeaky voice.

  “Never no mind,” Madrid said. “I know all about that blonde.” His attitude made it plain he had no more to say on that subject. He started the car and said, “So where are we going?”

  “I’m going to see a girl,” Malone said cautiously. He gave the Lake Shore Drive address.

  Madrid snorted and drove silently through the softly falling snow. At the impressive apartment building he parked the car, remarked that Malone’s babes had nice, expensive tastes in dwelling places, and got out with Malone.

  “Look here,” Malone said desperately, “you can’t come in with me.”

  “And just who,” the big gunman demanded, “is going to stop me from coming with you?” He glowered down at Malone.

  “It—” Malone paused. “On this particular date, I don’t need a chaperone.”

  Gus Madrid produced another leer. Then, “How do I know it’s not my girl?”

  “Because it isn’t,” Malone said, wishing he had a slightly less inadequate answer.

  “How do I know my girl isn’t hidden wherever you’re going?” He added, “I got a suspicious type mind.”

  After some discussion, they reached a compromise. Gus Madrid would accompany Malone to Myrdell Harris’ apartment, satisfy himself that Eva Lou Strauss was nowhere on the premises, and then wait outside.

  Upstairs, the little lawyer looked appreciatively around. Executive assistants evidently did better for themselves than secretaries. The big living room was not only gracefully but expensively furnished; Malone also knew something about the rents in that particular building. Furthermore, Myrdell’s smoky taupe hostess pajamas, that came close to matching the color of her eyes, had undoubtedly come from one of the shops that had cost him entirely too much in the past.

  She looked inquiringly at Gus Madrid, and Ma
lone hastily introduced them. “My bodyguard,” he explained.

  Myrdell Harris lifted delicate eyebrows and said, “How quaint!”

  The gunman glared at her, announced that he was going to look through the apartment, and did. “I’m just looking for my girl,” he said after he finished. He added, “Eva Lou Strauss,” and Malone’s heart hit bottom.

  “How coincidental!” Myrdell Harris said with a misty smile.

  That one went so far over Gus Madrid’s head that he didn’t even swing at it.

  “Well,” he said, “she ain’t here.” He paused. “Well—” At last he said, “Well, I’ll be waiting downstairs, Malone,” and went out.

  The little lawyer drew a long, relieved breath and sank down in the satin chair Myrdell Harris had indicated with an airy, floating gesture.

  “He isn’t exactly chatty, is he?” she said. “Drink?”

  Malone nodded. A minute later the feel of a tall glass in his hand gave him a little reassurance. He decided that she had been talking in her natural voice at last. It was a pleasant one.

  Evidently she’d guessed what he was thinking about. “Always,” she said, “I’ve been very good at imitating voices,” sounding exactly like Hazel Swackhammer.

  Malone jumped and said, “Don’t do that!”

  She smiled again and relaxed against the blue-gray cushions of her chair. Malone found himself relaxing with her. Here he was, he reflected, with a whole evening to spend, with nothing—well, with very little—on his mind, a drink, a pleasant companion, a charming apartment. If only she had been his type. Delora Deanne, for instance. Or even better, the cuddly little pink-and-white-and-gold darling behind her desk in the blue-and-gold reception room of Delora Deanne.

  “Your bodyguard,” she said dreamily, bringing him right back to nasty reality. “It is coincidental, isn’t it? That Eva Lou Strauss was his girl.” She sighed faintly and said, “Oh, well, she always was the earthy type.”

  Malone noted her choice of tenses and was very quiet, waiting.

  Myrdell Harris shrugged her shoulders and breathed, “She’ll turn up, one way or another.”