Dead on the Level

by Nielsen, Helen

  It was dark; then, gradually, the lights came on again. Casey felt the pain first, the hot poker of pain boring into his right side, and then he became aware of a ceiling, a few walls, and, finally, a man with a pair of sharp blue eyes peering from under the brim of his blue fedora.

  “Hi, Casimir,” Lieutenant Johnson said. “I see you stopped one.”

  Casey tried to move his right arm and the poker plunged deeper. He swore under his breath and took another look. It was Johnson, all right. He was flat on his back on Phyllis’s bed, and the lieutenant was standing over him.

  “Since when,” Casey muttered, “are you a county sheriff?”

  “I’m not,” Johnson answered. “I had a special invitation to this party. A woman by the name of Maggie Doone called up headquarters and said some damn fool was going to get himself into a lot of trouble if I didn’t get out here and stop him. Know her?”

  For an answer, Casey swore again. The lieutenant grinned. “You shouldn’t have run out on me last night,” he added. “I could have saved you a lot of trouble.”

  “I’ll bet!”

  “Sure. All I wanted was to ask a few questions about this love letter.”

  It wasn’t a love letter. It was the leaf from Carter Groot’s ledger that Casey had mailed to headquarters. “For a private eye,” Johnson added, “you sure leave a helluva wide trail.”

  It was peculiar how different the lieutenant’s blue eyes looked when they smiled. Maybe I’m dying, Casey thought, so he’s acting friendly. And then all that had happened in this room began to swing back into focus and he tried to look around the room. Johnson’s big hand pushed him back against the pillows, but not before he had seen the one thing he wanted to see.

  “Just take it easy until the ambulance gets here,” Johnson admonished. “I know it’s almost impossible to kill off a Polack, but you don’t have to try so hard. We’ve had enough corpses on this case.”

  “Mrs. Brunner?” Casey began.

  “Is in good hands, where she would have been a long time ago if you hadn’t had to play Dick Tracy. Oh, sure, I know you think I’m just a dumb cop, but there’s a thing or two even you don’t know. You don’t know, maybe, that we fished Carter Groot’s body out of Fox Lake yesterday. He was kind of heavy filled with all those .38 slugs.”

  Casey thought back. It wasn’t easy, but he could think if he tried. “I know where there’s a .38 to fit the slugs,” he guessed aloud. “Find yourself a guy named Victor Vanno and I’ll tell you all about it.”

  “I’m still way ahead of you.”

  Johnson wasn’t bluffing. Casey stared right into those blue eyes and they stared right back. “Another thing you don’t know,” Johnson said, “was what kind of cases Groot handled. Only one kind. Divorce cases.”

  Casey knew that his mouth was hanging open, but he couldn’t seem to close it. The significance of what Johnson was saying took a little time to soak in. “Gorden?” he managed at last.

  “Who else? All right, so Mrs. Brunner is old enough to have been his mother. What of it? She needed him to help swing those fake charities and he needed her to pay his rent. Somewhere along the line Darius Brunner got wise to what was going on and decided to get shed of both of them. The rest is yesterday’s headlines.”

  Yesterday’s—and tomorrow’s. The light danced on an object Johnson now rolled about in his hands. It made Casey a little giddy to look at it, stained as it still was with blood. His own blood from the place he had jabbed in his arm. The lieutenant seemed to read his mind.

  “This is the cutest trick of all,” he said. “A fake murder staged to trap a killer. You might have got both yourself and the girl killed.”

  “But I didn’t,” Casey protested. “And it worked.”

  The lieutenant pocketed the crystal stopper with a grimace of disgust. “Play acting,” he snorted. “Why don’t you go back to Hollywood?”

  Casey closed his eyes. He didn’t want to talk about it any more. He wanted to start at the beginning, the very beginning, and run it all out smooth in his mind until all of the pieces fitted with nothing left over. Mrs. Brunner and Gorden; Gorden and Mrs. Brunner. That was the story; that was the truth. And that meant that Phyllis didn’t figure in this at all. She was just scared and running, which could happen to anybody and probably would. But it was Gorden and Mrs. Brunner; and it had never been Gorden and Phyllis at all.

  And she was alive. That was the wonder of it, that he had remembered in time that only one person could have known about that Luger. He shuddered and reopened his eyes.

  The lieutenant was gone, and Phyllis, pale and dry-eyed, stood beside the bed folding a cold towel for Casey’s head. It didn’t make much sense because a headache was about the only trouble he didn’t have at the moment, but she had to be doing something. When the bottom fell out of Phyllis’s world she would always have to do something, dance or cook spaghetti or fold cold towels. Casey was proud of that much understanding. In time—and the return of the wedding ring on her left hand said there would be time—he might even get to know this woman he had married. This much he already knew—she wouldn’t give in. She wouldn’t crack, break, or bend under strain. She wouldn’t go feminine and resort to tears.

  And so naturally she chose that instant to throw away the towel and drop down, sobbing, against his shoulder. It was, Casey concluded, a hell of a time to be caught with only one arm.

  If you liked Dead on the Level check out:

  Dead in a Bed

  ONE

  AT NINE o’clock in the morning, on Friday June fifteenth, the telephone pealed and if ever a peal was unappealing that pitiless peal at nine A.M. was it. I had set my alarm for eleven which was bad enough—I had crumpled into bed at five—and I was tosspot-jealous of every tossing moment of slumber I had allotted to me. At first I thought it was the alarm but when the pried-open eyes finally focused and I saw the time, I knew it was the phone. The damned contrivance kept ringing like a toxic tocsin with a venomous clapper, but unremitting, and there was only one way to stop it. With a feeble curse at the shade of Alexander Graham Bell, I lurched across the bed and lifted the receiver. “Now what the hell?” I said to the mouthpiece.

  An excited voice said: “Mr. Chambers! Mr. Chambers!”

  “Yes, Mr. Chambers?” I mumbled. “What can I do for you?”

  “No, no, I’m not Mr. Chambers. Are you?”

  “Of course I’m Mr. Chambers. I hope I’m Mr. Chambers, Who’s this?”

  “Mr. Chambers?” he said.

  “Christ, I thought we’d settled that. I’m Chambers, Peter Chambers. Now who’re you and what do you want?”

  “Gosh, I thought I’d got a wrong number or something. This is Jack Medford here.”

  “Oh no.” My groan was brief but abysmal. “You got the right number, Jack, but you got the right number at the wrong time. Go back to sleep. Good-bye. Call later at a godly hour.”

  “Please! Please, Mr. Chambers! It’s important!”

  “Nothing is important at the crack of dawn—except sleep.”

  “Not the crack of dawn, sir. It’s nine o’clock.”

  “To me, today, it’s the crack of dawn, and if to me, today, the crack of dawn is at nine o’clock …” But rancor had recessed. Maybe it was the “sir” that had done it. Maybe it was the urgency in his voice. Maybe it was because he was a nice kid who had had some rough going and with whom I sympathized. Or maybe it was because willy-nilly sleep was shattered and I was awake. I said, “What’s the matter, Jack?”

  “Trouble, Mr. Chambers.”

  “Oh no not again.”

  “Not me, Mr. Chambers.”

  “Who?”

  “My father.”

  “Your father?”

  “I’ll be right over, Mr. Chambers. I’ll be there in ten minutes,” And he hung up.

  What are you going to do? Youth is impetuous and Jack Medford was an impetuous youth of twenty-three. He was also the son of an old and dear friend, Charles R. Medford, a w
idower since the boy was five, and Charles and I had bucked some stormy gales on behalf of young Jack during his turbulent surge through adolescence. Jack was out of college now, he was a sculptor, avant-garde and rather good, and, of course, selling nothing; he was supported but not spoiled, accurately and stringently, by his father. Jack had a studio at Fifty-seventh Street and Seventh Avenue and my apartment is on Central Park South near Sixth Avenue and Jack had said ten minutes and it would not be more, perhaps less. I clambered out of bed, lugubrious and hung, wondering what sort of fracas the boy and the father had got into this time.

  I had been sleeping raw. I washed my teeth, combed my hair, and put on pajamas. I collected the clothes I had dropped at bedside and hung them away. I went to the living room for hair of the dog and hair of the dog tasted mangy. My tongue felt as though it were in the wrong mouth and there were cobwebs on my palate. It had been a wet night.

  I had crawled the pubs with Alfred Surf who published books. I had been Alfred’s guest because Alfred was bent upon soliciting my talents, such as they are, but before the night was over he was no longer bent, he was fractured, as was I. Alfred was selling me on the pros of the con. He wanted me to collaborate with one Barry Howard on a book to be titled Confessions Of A Con Man. He did not tell me too much. He sort of whet my appetite as he wet my whistle, wetting his own in the process, and when we had rolled into The Brasserie at four A.M. for scrambled eggs we were both as looped as a sailor’s knot. We had an appointment for noon today at my office in order to discuss the project without benefit of alcoholic stimulus.

  Now I had another shot of booze to straighten me away, shivered it down, and dragged feet to the kitchen for the preparation of coffee. I had just poured it steaming black when the buzzer sounded. Cup clattering on saucer I opened the door for Jack Medford. “Come in, come in,” I murmured sadly and he did and let the door slam which promoted further clattering of cup on saucer.

  He was wearing jeans and a sweat shirt and still he looked like a romantic pirate out of folklore. He was tall and slender and dark with features as chiseled as one of his statues. He had black hair and black eyes, a restless muscular grace, the ease and intensity of a swashbuckler, and a jutting arrogant stubborn chin. He had a rolled-up newspaper wedged under one arm but because he was Jack Medford it appeared as a sword in the sheath of armpit.

  “All right, destroyer of sleep,” I said, “so you had another fight with you father about more money and now you come with your troubles to Uncle Peter.”

  “No. I don’t need money. I’ve got all the money I need.” The voice destroyed the illusion of the pirate. The voice was young and sweet and soft and kind: the voice gave off the flickers of insecurity which I, of all people. knew existed within him.

  “All the money you need,” I said. “How so? Have you got yourself a patron?”

  “Yes I have.”

  “Somebody filthy rich? Somebody like Penelope Arlington?”

  “Somebody exactly like Penelope Arlington.”

  “And who could be exactly like Penelope Arlington?”

  “Penelope Arlington.”

  It figured. Penelope Arlington was easily old enough to be his mother and Penelope Arlington knew him since he was eight years old but he was grown now, young and virile and handsome, and Penelope Arlington had a trenchant penchant for men who were young and virile and handsome, and she could afford their services, or, better, to be serviced.

  “Uncle Peter, at this crack of dawn,” I said, “would be bored to distraction by tales of love no matter how aberrated or, for that matter, tales of tail no matter how aberrated. I’ve got my own love-life to live and I’m living it. Congratulations on the patron and I trust you’re plumping to earn your keep, or should the word be pumping? Now why in hell did you wake me up?”

  He drew his sword but did not point it. He unrolled it, flattened it, and extended it toward me. I gave him the coffee and took the newspaper. It was a morning tabloid opened to page three. He drank my coffee while I read his paper. My eyes were drawn to the

  lead story because it had a picture of Charles R. Medford. The lead story was topped by the headline: BANKER EMBEZZLES $100,000. The opening paragraph stated: “Charles R. Medford, 48, Head of the Loan Department of the New York National Bank, 500 Fifth Avenue, went out to lunch at 12 o’clock noon yesterday carrying an attache case which, it is alleged, contained $100,000 in cash, and vanished. The loss was not ascertained until 3 o’clock yesterday at which time police were called in. The investigation was kept under wraps and the story did not break until 9 o’clock yesterday evening when Donald P. K. Sloan, President of New York National, called in reporters and made the announcement. Medford has disappeared without trace.” The rest of the story was fill, but I read every word of it, learning nothing more pertinent than “police are investigating.” When I was finished, Jack Medford was finished with my coffee.

  “Crazy?” he said as he laid away cup and saucer.

  “But crazy,” I said. “Your father’s no crook and we both know it.”

  “That’s why I’m here,” he said.

  “Do you know anything about this?’

  “Just what you read in the paper.”

  “Did the cops get to you?”

  “Sure, but you know how I feel about cops.”

  “I don’t give a damn how you feel about cops. They talked to you?”

  “Yes.”

  “When?”

  “Yesterday.”

  “When yesterday?”

  “About eight o’clock.”

  “They waited until eight o’clock?”

  “I didn’t get back to the studio until eight o’clock. During the afternoon I was at the museum. At five o’clock I had a date with a gal for cocktails. I got back at eight and there was a detective waiting for me. He took me downtown and they questioned me till I was blue in the face but there wasn’t a thing I could tell them.”

  “Did they check you out on that gal for cocktails?”

  “What do you think? They even brought her in and gave her the old third degree. A real nice kid too. A poet—poetess I suppose she should be called. Her father’s one of the most famous surgeons in this town.”

  “She corroborated?”

  “Of course she corroborated. We were at the Pierre for cocktails and chatter. After a while, they let her go. After a while, they let me go too.”

  “What time was that?”

  “Eleven o’clock. That’s when I called you, right after I got out of that damned station house. I kept calling you till about four. Then I figured I’d pass it until this morning.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Yeah.” I went to the kitchen, poured more coffee, and came back to him. I found a cigarette, lit up, sipped and smoked. “Do you have any ideas on this?” I said.

  “Nothing, except something must be way out cockeyed.”

  “Your father’s no crook.”

  “We’re unanimous on that, Mr. Chambers.”

  I smoked. I sipped. I said, “When did you see him last?”

  “Wednesday. Wednesday evening. We had a date for dinner. He came over to the studio. We went over to Whytes for a fish dinner. Then we came back to the studio and sat around talking.”

  “Any special subject?”

  He sat down. He crossed his long legs. “Penelope Arlington,” he said. “He had learned about it and he disapproved.”

  “Why?”

  He sighed. His face was very young, and very worried. “According to him, he disapproved of the fact that she was my patron, that she was giving me money.”

  “And according to you?”

  “I think it was much more complex than that. You know as well as I that years ago he had had an affair with Penelope. Sure now, they’re friends, good friends, and all the rest of that crap, but it’s my opinion that he was disturbed by the fact that the son was following the father, you know what I mean.”

  “Yes I think I do. And did you two have one of your famous battles?
”

  “No. It was all man-to-man mature-type talk.” He stirred suddenly, slapped his knees, stood up, paced. “Mr. Chambers, I think you know how I feel about my father. We might fight like hell but I love the old son of a bitch, I’d die for him. This thing has got me worried, it’s got me nuts, I wasn’t able to sleep a wink all night. My father couldn’t steal.”

  “I agree. Absolutely.”

  “This thing is some kind of weird mistake or else—it’s a dame. You know my dad. He’s always been a hot guy for the chicks. You know that as well as I do, maybe better.”

  “Let’s say … as well as you do. Has there been a new one recently?”

  “Yes.”

  “What name?”

  “How the hell would I know? My father doesn’t confide in me.”

  “But it seems that you do know.”

  “Penelope told me. He met her at a party at Penelope’s.”

  “When?”

  “A couple-three months ago or so.”

  “Did you mention any of this to the cops?”

  “You know my opinion of cops. The answer to your question is no.”

  “Did they ask?”

  “Whatever they asked, I answered. I volunteered nothing. They asked me if my father had ever remarried. I said no. They asked me if I knew the names of any of his girl friends and I gave them the names of any girl friends I knew. They did not ask me if I did not know the names of any of his girl friends—and so there was no mention of this latest flame.”

  “Well, that shouldn’t be too hard for us to find out, should it?” I started for the phone but he stopped me.

  “No good,” he said. “Penelope’s out of town, spending a week in the country. She’s due back this afternoon. As a matter of fact. I’ve a date to call on her this afternoon at five-thirty.”