Hang by Your Neck

by Kane, Henry

  That caught me with my mouth open, and I had trouble closing it. “That’s right. An inspector, too.”

  “Why do you look so surprised? That’s what I mean about underestimating cops. Cops know a lot of things. For instance, to me you’re a little-timer who thinks he’s a big shot, because he’s been in a couple of big cases in this town. To me that’s nothing. Cops—cops are in all the big cases. Cops know everything, that’s why they’re cops. I’m not talking about those punk young badge wavers that ought to be sewer cleaners—you get that in every profession. I’m talking about cops. I know you’re a guy called Peter Chambers that’s had a pretty good run in this town, and I know you stand in good with the department because you’ve been of real help on occasion. I know you had a partner once that brought the firm a lot of business, ex-Inspector Philip Scoffol, and a fine man. See what I mean about cops knowing things? It doesn’t mean a thing to me, but I know it, if I ever wanted to reach for it. The department is full of guys like that.”

  “What are you getting at, Inspector?”

  “Nothing. Except, don’t ever underestimate cops. For instance, down there in that artist’s studio, that Reeves piece, I mean the one that’s still alive—she tells us about how you’re a good and old friend of hers. Remember? That’s a goddamn lie. But we don’t care. We just know you’ve still got your nose in the case.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “You want to know how we know she’s a liar?”

  “Yes.”

  “Because we’re cops. Because we’re methodical. Parker goes up there—just like he went now—to interview the relatives of the deceased. He was up there right after we had identified her as Pamela Reeves. Why? Routine. It never hurts. Sometimes it helps. Parker’s a good man. People think he’s just asking questions, but he’s asking pertinent questions. He asked her about you.”

  “Me? Why me?”

  “Because you were one of the cast of characters. Because Parker’s a good man. Because you were the one that discovered the body. So Parker drops your name in when he asks her the questions and she don’t know you from a hole in the ground. But it’s just a casual question asked just after her learning about her sister’s been killed, so she don’t even remember it. We do. You want to know how we remember it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Because we’re cops. Because we’re methodical. You think you’re a big shot because you were successfully mixed up with a few big deals. We’re mixed up in all of them, and we learn from all of them. So, under initial examination, directly after the discovery of a crime, there is always a stenographer. You never know what they’ll drop before they’ve had a chance to get used to what has happened, and whatever they drop, it’s hot, and we like to have a record of that. So there’s always a stenographer. The person forgets, but those hieroglyphics, they never forget. And those hieroglyphics turn out to be reports which we study carefully, and remember. See what I mean?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said respectfully.

  “So we know she’s a goddamn liar, and we know you’re still messing around in that Reeves thing, and we don’t like it, but we don’t do anything about it, at least, not yet, because, although we don’t like you messing around in police matters, so far you haven’t gone out of line. But right now I’m telling you again. You guys got your function. Turning up evidence in divorce matters, skip-tracing for the commercials, private shadowing where a guy wants to know what his wife is doing, matters pertaining to wills, running down heirs … I mean, there’s a million legitimate functions a private operator has, but there’s one function he hasn’t, and that’s messing in police affairs. That’s where you guys are going to run into trouble, sooner or later. Private investigation in private matters is the function of the private investigator. Crimes against the State are crimes against the public and that’s the function of cops, whom the public pays, and for which the cops are very well equipped, and they don’t need the assistance of every wise-acre, money-loving, lop-headed, phony private eye. Do I make myself clear?”

  He was beginning to get worked up.

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “All right, I’ve spoken my piece. I don’t want to have to speak it again.” He opened the door and climbed in his car. “Can I take you downtown?”

  “No, sir. I’m going uptown.”

  “So long, peeper.”

  “Bye, Inspector.”

  2

  Uptown wasn’t far. Uptown was four blocks north on Third Avenue. Uptown was the Anchors Away, a corner saloon on Third and Fifty-fifth, and I wasn’t looking forward to uptown. In fact, I had been ducking it because if anyone knows bartenders, I know bartenders, and I wasn’t looking forward to the hapless entertainment of attempting to elicit information from a bartender. Eliciting information from a bartender is approximately akin to eliciting homogenized milk from a rock. A bartender is tighter than a fat man in a T shirt. Except for chatter.

  This bartender was different.

  I pushed through the antique swinging doors into the quiet hush of afternoon in a Third Avenue saloon. The gentleman behind the stick was a limp little fellow with very respectable black-rimmed glasses.

  He wielded his bar rag, and smiled. “What’ll it be?”

  “Pinch. With water.”

  “That’s the only way to drink it, mister. Water.”

  “Ever hear of Johnny the Mick?”

  “Lemon peel, mister?”

  “Thanks. Ever hear of Johnny?”

  “What’s that, mister?”

  “Johnny the Mick.”

  “Who wants to know?”

  There were four other customers down along the bar. I did a quick trick with the buzzer, with a furtive shoulder hunched. “We’re checking on this thing. You know him, barkeep?”

  “Put that thing away, please. They’ll think it’s a pinch.”

  I put the thing away. “Johnny the Mick got—”

  “Yeah, I been reading about it. How do you like that? A guy like the Mick knocking hisself off. Have another, mister. On the house. Here we are allergic for coppers. Yes, sir.” He smiled with excellent teeth, and he poured the Pinch.

  “According to our information,” I said, “he was here yesterday.”

  “How many guys do you guys have checking on one thing?”

  “That depends, barkeep. Was he here yesterday?”

  “Yep.”

  “What time?”

  “About three thirty-four, I’d say.”

  “Alone?”

  “First he was here alone. And he was really kicking it down. Then a couple of damozels show. Nice. Now from what I read he is supposed to have slammed one of them two. The blond one.”

  “How would you know that?”

  “I seen her picture in the paper. That’s the one was here with him after the other one leaves.”

  “How long did that one stay?”

  “Which one?”

  “The one that stayed. After the other one left.”

  “Maybe a half hour.”

  “They leave together?”

  “Yes, sir. Chummy like the best of pals.”

  “Did you notice any—uh—transactions? I mean—”

  “Transactions?”

  “Did you hear what they were talking about?”

  “No. He was sitting up here, about like where you are, drinking doubles, and not talking, when them two damozels enter. They enter, and one of them says, ‘Hello, Johnny.’ He says, ‘We’ll take service by the booth, Robert.’ Robert, that’s me. They take service by the booth. They beef around in there, I’m not paying much attention, because there’s plenty trade here about four o’clock. That’s when they start coming in. We got a good trade here, mister. Not like now. We got one hell of a good trade in this tavern, I am proud to state.”

  “Proud?”

  “Yes, sir. Proud.”

  “All right. Proud. Why proud?”

  “Because I own the joint, mister. I got a following. Why, if I sell
the joint—”

  “Thanks.”

  I put my nickel in the juke box for “Stardust” and I took my drink and I folded up glum in a booth. If I got nothing from a talkative bartender, what did I expect to get from a banker, plus you can’t hunch a shoulder at a banker and make like cop. That is, of course, you can, just prior to getting thrown the hell out of there. Then I thought about Orson Axelrod in the rarefied atmosphere of the eighty-ninth floor of the Empire State Building. I quit the booth and I looked inquiringly at the bartender.

  “In the back, left,” he said. “And watch yourself. It’s one step up. Everybody misses that step, and blames me.”

  “No. Not that. A telephone.”

  “That’s in there too, mister.”

  The men’s room was small and unventilated with a brown wood flap-door and a urinal with ice in the concave bottom and a dirty sink with a pump for liquid soap and a roller with paper towels and a stick-out pay phone slapped on the wall. I dialed with my fingers crossed. Orson was in. “Orson? Pete Chambers.”

  “How’s the gum-shoe business? Need advice?”

  “I need help.”

  “Any time, for a friend. When?”

  “Right now. You in?”

  “In, but unavailable. How’s a half hour?”

  I looked at my watch. “A half hour is fine.”

  “A pleasure.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  I paid my bar bill and I went out into the sunshine. I had a half hour to kill and I knew where to kill it. I waved a hand at a taxi and I went to Barrow Street. I climbed up the steep stairs and I knocked on the door. Prairie opened it, and his thick round body stayed in the doorway. “Hi, Transom.”

  “Boy, that’s one hell of a climb.”

  “You ain’t kidding.”

  His thick round body was still in the doorway.

  “Aren’t you going to ask me in?”

  “No.”

  I pointed past his shoulder.

  “Merrill in?”

  “Yup.”

  “I’d like to talk with him.”

  “You got an answer to that before, Transom.”

  “It’s important, Prairie. I want to—”

  “You asked him before, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “You got an answer, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “So?”

  I ducked, and pushed by him. He didn’t expect that. He grunted and slammed the door shut. There was nobody in the studio. It smelled of whiskey and sweat and paint and turpentine. “Wise guy,” Prairie said, and flung himself toward me. I ducked again. I heard the wheeze of the air from his lungs as he went past me. I twisted around and went after him. I rushed a fist at his solar plexus and I heard him grunt again. He turned with a look of surprise on his face, and I pushed a fist into that. He smiled, happily, and dove at me again, and again I ducked. The impetus carried him all the way to the wall and one of Conrad Merrill’s naked ladies fell off the wall and bounced off Prairie to the floor. I lunged after him, and I brought one up all the way from the floor to the back of his ear. It didn’t move him. He stood like wood. He flailed an arm toward me, backward, and my mouth was bleeding. He whirled, and I moved under his arm. Now we were reversed. I had my back to the wall and Prairie was in front of me grinning. “Wise guy,” he said. I smelled the whiskey from him, as he probably did from me. “Wise guy,” he said, with his arms out wide and his neck pulled in and his bald head forward and low. He leaped, bull-rush, head first. I moved, and I got out of it. His head went into the wall with a thud, but one hand caught the sleeve of my topcoat and I spun around to the floor, losing my hat. I got off the floor, quick. He was still crouched against the wall, turning slowly in the crouch. His eyes were creased in a fat grimace and the whites were showing.

  I jumped him.

  I shouldn’t have.

  Wrestling with Prairie O’Neil was foolhardy. Drunk or sober, numb from violent contact with a wall or no—wrestling with Prairie O’Neil was foolhardy. It was like trying to embrace a bronze statue in the park. You couldn’t even get your arms around him, and despite the pudgy look of him, it was all hard and knobby. We floundered, until his educated hands, arms, and legs made contact. Then I felt like a projectile. I squirmed, but it made no difference. I felt like a projectile, ready to take off. I took off.

  I landed against his wall, and his pictures came down on me. He took them off with care. He stacked them neatly, grinning, while I watched him, very tired. He picked me up, much more carefully, almost tenderly, and he threw me against the other wall. More pictures came down. These were the boss’s pictures. These he rehung with infinite care, together with the nude that he had first shaken from her perch. He had time, now. I was displaying a sad, inert lack of interest.

  He slid fingers into the back of my collar and dragged me to the middle of the room. He sat down on me. He was very happy. Both of his lips opened on both sets of teeth in a pulpy, full-gummed smile. I think I smiled back at him.

  Conrad Merrill came in from the other room, extremely tall, from my position. He wore loose gray slacks and soft leather moccasins and nothing else. He carried a highball glass in his hand. He had a few sparse black hairs on his chest, and his torso was surprisingly lean and muscular for an artist. He ran a hand through his thick shining hair and he said casually, “You know, that’s not bad. Hold that a minute.”

  He put a clean canvas on an easel and he sketched us in charcoal. “That’s out of my line,” he said. “That’s one for you to work on, Prairie. Call it ‘Assault,’ or ‘Matter over Mind’—I withdraw that, that’s lousy—or ‘Impetuosity,’ or ‘Astraddle in the Saddle.’ It’s out of my line. Let him up, Prairie, why don’t you?”

  Prairie said, “Okay, Transom?”

  “If you please,” I said.

  “Take your coat off,” Merrill said. “Come on in here.”

  I took off my coat and I left it in the studio room. I followed Merrill into the kitchen-parlor and I quickly went to the couch.

  “Fix him a drink, Prairie. Scotch, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Here.” He brought me a handkerchief. “Wipe your mouth. What’s the matter with you boys?”

  “He thinks he’s a gate-crasher,” Prairie said at the sink, pouring Scotch. “How do you want it, Transom, straight or high?”

  “One straight, then one high.”

  “I don’t blame you,” Prairie said.

  I drank my straight whiskey. I put the little glass down on the flat arm of the modern couch. Color began to flow back into the room. I turned the highball glass fondly, ice jiggling. “I’d very much like to talk with you, Mr. Merrill.”

  “So I gather.”

  “It’s about that Pamela Reeves thing.”

  “Of course. What else would it be?”

  “May I?”

  “You’re insistent. I’ll say that for you.”

  “A hell of a lot of good that would have done him,” Prairie said. “It’s the infirmaries of old age, that’s what it is. I should have knocked him on his ear in one flip. I should have had him out of there in one flip—one flip.”

  “You did all right,” I said, “in two flips.”

  “One flip. What you call the infirmaries—”

  “… of old age.” Merrill finished it for him. “Infirmaries, my Prairie, are where sick people are.”

  Blithely Prairie said, “That’s where I ought to be. A guy like this gives me trouble, that’s bad. I think I’m going back in training.”

  “First step, of course,” Merrill said, “is off the booze.”

  “I’d like to talk with you, Mr. Merrill.”

  “Training—” Prairie said.

  “Off the booze first,” Merrill said.

  “I’d like to talk with you, Mr. Merrill.”

  “One flip—”

  “No booze—”

  “I’d like to talk to you.”

  Merrill lifted both hands. �
�Order in this—order!”

  Prairie gulped his drink.

  I said, “Mr. Merrill, I’d like to state, here and now, that certain facts have come to light. I mean, I know, for instance, that you and Pamela Reeves were not on good terms. More than that, I know, on positive assertion, that you harbored a deep hatred—”

  “Positive assertion? Harbored a deep hatred? You and Prairie ought to get together. He, too, finds a certain joy in the sound of words.”

  “We got together,” Prairie complained, “and I come out second best. One flip—”

  “Please,” I said. “I have also been told that there was a fight between you two, you and Pamela Reeves, two weeks ago Thursday in El Courvocco. You were heard to threaten to kill her.”

  Suddenly, Prairie stopped grumbling.

  Suddenly, Merrill sounded as though he had heard me.

  “Where did you get this information, Mr. Chambers?”

  “I’m not at liberty to say.”

  “He is not at liberty,” Prairie said. “You want me to try a couple more flips on him?”

  “No.”

  “He is not at liberty to say,” Prairie said. “But I am.”

  “Quiet, Prairie.”

  “Look, Mr. Merrill, you know where he got that information, and so do I. And we both know why.”

  Merrill slumped in an easy chair. “I suppose you’ll keep prying.”

  “As long as I think there’s a chance that the cops are wrong in the matter.”

  “What makes you so positive that they are?”

  “I’m not positive.”

  “Then why?”

  “Call it a hunch. Call it crazy, like everybody else seems to. John Mikvah was pretty much of a right guy, and I knew him pretty well. I don’t like to believe that John Mikvah killed Pamela Reeves. I saw him last night, which was the night of the day he is supposed to have killed her. To me, he didn’t act like a man who had murdered a woman that afternoon. That’s all. I may be wrong, all wrong, but in my own way, I’d like to convince myself. At least, I’d like to eliminate every other possibility.”

  “Do you consider me a possibility?”

  “I don’t know. You certainly had no love for her.”

  “I detested her. But how, man? How would I get in there, into his apartment?”