Pardon My Body

by Dale Bogard

  Apparently it did. She tossed her near-platinum mane so that I could watch it slope back and let her eyes flicker. They were clear blue eyes. Too clear.

  I said, “I really came to see a friend who lives here, but now that I’ve seen you it doesn’t seem to matter….”

  “Say, I don’t know what you mean, but I’m pleased t’meetcha.” The vowels and consonants were strictly Lower East Side. She used both hands to give a smooth-down to the female contours. They were strictly dynamite in any territory.

  I leaned over the desk top and breathed into her right ear, “Did anyone ever tell you what lovely eyes you’ve got?”

  I don’t think I’d ever said anything so corny even in my collegiate days when I wore a raccoon coat and played a ukulele. But I was beginning to get embarrassed. Thirty-six is too old to start being a wolf. I ought to have a wife and kids and well-worn slippers by the fireside and solidly respectable neighbours instead of a lonely apartment and friends who lived on bourbon and their nerve-ends and kept me awake until seven in the morning talking intellectual moonshine. Just the nice, quiet marrying kind who never got around to it. Some home-loving girl missed a good man.

  The pathos of it would have touched me if Miss Lake II hadn’t done it first. She gave me a coy pat on the cheek. I let my arm slide around her waist. She wasn’t wearing a girdle. At twenty you don’t have to.

  “Maybe,” I said carefully, “maybe we should make a date?”

  She said, “Uh-huh.”

  “Tonight at eight?”

  “Yeah—I guess I could fix it.”

  “Nice long moonlight drive?”

  “Yeah—then what?”

  I gave her the best squeeze I could with a yard of desk between us. She reached up and pulled my head down and let me have it. She had a big slash of a mouth and all of it was open. When I got out of the clinch I had half of her lipstick and the mark of her front canine tooth.

  “Babe, I could go for you kinda big,” she said with the fine detachment of one who says it often.

  I thought I’d sacrificed enough in the pursuit of truth. “Look,” I said hurriedly, “I’d better see this friend before I go.”

  “Which guy d’ya want, sweetie?”

  “Guy named Harry Bule,” I told her.

  She gave me a stare. Maybe I didn’t look the sort to go running around with the Harry Bules of this city. At that stage I wouldn’t know. Though I could guess.

  “He’s a couple rooms on the first floor. Fourteen and fifteen. ’Smatter fact, he went up a half-hour since. He ain’t been down again.”

  I put my handkerchief away. “I’ll go up, baby. I’ll be seeing you.”

  “You can ride in the elevator,” she said.

  I hadn’t supposed they owned one. It had probably been installed to take the lush-heads up Saturday nights. You could operate it yourself by pressing a numbered button. I got out at the first floor. They even had carpet on it. Fourteen and fifteen were almost opposite the elevator shaft. I tried fourteen. No reply. I got the same result from fifteen. Mr. Harry Bule was either giving himself a sleep or…

  The memory of the ash-blond killer brought me up with a jerk and the palms of my hands suddenly went sticky. I turned the door handle and found it wasn’t locked and marched in with only slightly more aplomb than if I had been entering a lion’s cage for the first time.

  The room was surprisingly well furnished. Apparently Mr. Bule had added a few luxuries of his own to the purely formal concessions provided by the hotel. I numbered the radio, bureau and a deep hide-leather armchair among them. The owner was nowhere in sight. I moved silently to the connecting door on my left and pulled it open. The bedroom lay exposed to view. Just a small room with a single bed, a fitted clothes closet, wash-bowl with hot and cold water, and a bedside table carrying a reading lamp. But still no sign of Mr. Bule. Maybe he’d gone out by the fire escape, doubtless for the best of reasons.

  The bedside table also carried a leather-bound notebook, I leafed through half a dozen pages and tossed it back. Just a pencilled list of horses and bets, with various calculations footnoted. The closet contained three suits of the flashier kind and a heavy ulster greatcoat. I wandered back into the sitting room. Maybe the bureau would yield a clue, though I hadn’t much hope. Mr. Bule’s more doubtful transactions were not likely to be set down on paper. Still, it was worth trying. But the bureau was locked. Perhaps he did write things down. I stood there trying to figure out the next move. Breaking open a bureau in a room in which you have no right to be anyway is liable to be frowned upon in police circles.

  The place was as quiet as a morgue. Or I was too preoccupied to hear even the muffled clatter of the routine hotel sounds. But suddenly my back hair began to stand up in the little quivering bristles and I knew that the next move was going to be made for me.

  “Don’t do nothing,” said a man’s voice, “that is, unless you want a slug in your guts.”

  “I’m not doing a thing,” I said.

  His voice came nearer. “If you’re trying to figure out how I got here, I was in the toilet down the corridor. A guy oughta take everything into account before he starts trespassing.”

  Then I felt something hard pressed into the small of my back. The voice went on, “Okay—you can turn round now—I guess I’d better take a gander at you. But keep them hands outa your pockets.”

  I turned slowly and looked into the thin, darkly sallow face of a man about my own age who wore a striped suit from the same no-good family as the lot in the closet. Goddammit, Congress ought to pass a law stopping tailors making suits like that. Mr. Bule eyed me with no show of brotherly love.

  “When a guy busts into my apartment there ain’t nothin’ to stop me committing violence on his person and askin’ for an explanation afterwards,” he began conversationally.

  His eyes flickered from me to the oversize near-gold ring he wore on the middle finger of the hand which held a .32 Smith and Wesson automatic pistol and back again.

  Deliberately I started to put my hand into the pocket of my raincoat.

  “I said to keep them hands outa there,” he snarled.

  “Look,” I said, “in the recent international fuss in Europe half the German Army seemed to be loosing off miscellaneous weapons at me personally for weeks on end. And those boys weren’t scared of pulling their triggers.”

  “Well, I guess you can smoke if you want,” said the intrepid gunman uncertainly. “But, mind, I’ve got this rod just in case…”

  I got my pipe out and stuffed it with tobacco. The operation helped to hide the fact that my hands were in about as bad shape as his. Just then the pair of us would have got a 4F card in any spread-fingers test and no further questions asked.

  I said, “You wouldn’t be Harry Bule, would you?”

  “I would. And you got a helluva nerve bustin’ in like it was your place.”

  “Just a friendly visit.”

  “Yeah? I ain’t never seen you in my life. And that ain’t no loss, either.”

  He groped for a cigarette with his left hand, put it in his mouth, then groped again for matches. I struck one of mine and held it out towards him, and as he bent forward, I knocked the Smith & Wesson spinning from his hand. Then I kicked it under the bureau and took a seat on the arm of the big chair.

  “Now we can face a nice gentlemanly chat,” I said.

  Bule’s rat face was twitching. “You think you’re goddamned smart, dontcha?”

  “Smart enough not to recommend police suspects to Mike Hannigan,” I said evenly.

  The sallow complexion paled another shade. He ran the tip of his tongue round his lips before he spoke.

  “You ain’t no copper or you’d have sprung your badge on me. What the hell are you—a shamus?”

  “I’m a good friend of yours if you had the wit to know it. I’m putting you a jump ahead of the police.”

  “I ain’t done a thing they can put the finger on me for. A guy can recommend another guy to a roo
m, can’t he?”

  “He can—but he should make sure the client isn’t taking it on the lam first.”

  Bule shifted uneasily. “I tell ya I know nothing. I was just doing a friendly turn.”

  I stood up and then yanked him towards me by his scrambled-egg tie. His teeth bit on his tongue.

  “Listen you oily yegg,” I breathed. “When the cops get you down to headquarters they won’t waste time bandying nice cosy words like me. They’ll sit you slap under the lights and you’ll find yourself talking so fast that the shorthand writers will be sending in an official protest. Now—give. Who was the man you sent to Mike Hannigan?”

  “I don’t know.” Bule’s voice cracked in a little scream. “I was told his name was George Clark, thassall…”

  “Did you see him?”

  “No—I was asked to fix him up by a…a client.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know.” The frightened eyes stared up at me. “Please…don’t beat me up. I’m giving it to you straight. It was a telephone message from someone who didn’t give a name—a man. He said for me to find a quiet, out-of-the-way place for a friend to rest up in and there’d be a couple Cs in it for me. I got the first one by mail the next day and the other the day after.”

  I let him go and he sank down on a hard chair.

  “Why should a man you don’t even know pick on you?” I said. Then I got it. “You and Mike Hannigan run a nice little side business fixing up guys who don’t want to be seen around—at a price. But why couldn’t this one come to you direct?”

  Bule shifted about like he was in the hot seat. “It ain’t done that way,” he muttered. “I never see the customer. I make it a rule to keep outa trouble.”

  “Who’s being smart now?” I jeered. “But you weren’t smart enough to make it a rule not to tangle with killers on the run.”

  His eyes widened in panic. “I don’t know a thing about no killing,” he screamed.

  “You will,” I said grimly. “How does this go-between come to know you?”

  Bule wetted his lips again. “I’ve had this arrangement with Mike Hannigan for three or four years. I guess it kinda gets around I can fix things. It don’t happen often—maybe a half dozen times in a year. If anybody calls me up with a proposition I’m willing to listen if the guy’s okay….”

  “You mean if he’s got two hundred bucks to kick in,” I said.

  Bule flared for a second. “All right, so that’s the way it is. So what the hell does it matter to you? There ain’t nothing illegal in getting a room for a guy.”

  “It depends on the guy,” I said. “The way you go about it you could be an accessory after the fact.”

  I eyed him over. You never can be sure, but I had the idea that Mr. Harry Bule had told me the truth about the unknown intermediary who asked him to accommodate Mr. George Clark—as if that was his name. There was still a chance he might have a clue, though. Without knowing it.

  “What kind of voice had the caller got?” I asked.

  “Kinda high-toned—though he was trying to talk like he might be next door to a muckheel,” answered Bule shrewdly.

  “Was it long-distance?”

  “I wouldn’t know. I didn’t check with the phone girl, I never do—it ain’t good business.”

  I thought of something else. “Know where 2469 South Franklyn Avenue is?”

  He stared uncomprehendingly. I gave up.

  “All right, Bule. But if I were you I’d be getting a statement ready for the police.”

  He gave me a steady look for the first time. “Mister—I don’t know who you are or what your racket is and I ain’t asking. But if what you’ve told me is on the level I guess I can use it…”

  “It gives you a little time to frame something that’ll hold,” I conceded.

  “You can get the hell outa here,” he tossed back.

  “Because,” I said, as I picked up my hat, “at this very minute Mr. George Clark is lying on one of Mr. Mike Hannigan’s beds with a dagger sticking out of his chest, and I never saw a man looking so dead.”

  It was the second time in an hour that I’d had the last word. Mr. Bule didn’t take it silently. I could just hear the muttered terror of his monosyllabic profanity as I stepped out.

  The elevator was at the top floor so I walked down, trying to think of something that would fit the jigsaw together. As I reached street level I remembered the girl at the reception desk.

  “See your buddy?” she said brightly.

  “Yeah. We had quite a chat. Look, baby, I can’t make that date after all. Unexpected business.” I pulled out my billfold and passed over a ten. “Go buy yourself a nice new hat or anything you fancy.” I started thinking: a ten—Bogard, you’re crazy, you can’t afford that kind of money.

  Then I quit nagging myself because the kid had picked up the note, turned it slowly over and was passing it back with just about the clearest level look I ever stopped.

  “Mister,” she said simply, “I don’t want your bucks. I don’t pick up guys to get money. I just figured you might be a good guy to play around with and maybe we’d have some fun together, but if you got new ideas I guess that’s all right, too.”

  I started to say something. Then found I hadn’t got anything to say. I didn’t even look at her. I just couldn’t take another of those searing, worldly-wise stares. I moved out on to the crummy sidewalk with hot blood in my face and a cold sagging in my stomach. Then I saw I still had the ten clutched in my fingers.

  I didn’t think I had ever bought an experience so cheaply…until I realized that if self-respect is the clothing of the soul, I was as near naked as makes no difference.

  Just then I was feeling the biggest kind of heel….

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE NEWSPAPER’S MORGUE FILES on Banningham were straightforward—and unrevealing. Prim Boston family, private tutor, Yale, a short spell practising at the New York Bar, then an executive post with Textiles Inc.—which he later bought out and reformed as United Textile Distributors Inc. That was when Grierson appeared. Apparently from nowhere. The file began with his partnership with Banningham and there wasn’t a line of background that counted. He must have been born and raised somewhere, but it had missed the recording angels of the newspaper’s library.

  Of Grierson’s more contemporary activities there was plenty. It was strictly more or less what you’d expect to find. He didn’t run with the Long Island sporting set. He lived in the Sands Point neighbourhood, pretty well slap in the middle of that sober cluster of wealth represented by the financial tycoons who have built their humble mansions along the North Shore. The only mild eyebrow-raiser was that Grierson had a summer home at Seal Harbour, Maine—though that didn’t prove he ever got even a passing nod from the Rockefeller dynasty.

  I was about to close the folder when I heard Wes Delaney speak over my shoulder.

  He was looking down at a fairly recent cut of Grierson—the only one they had. He said, “Funny thing about that guy—I’m nearly sure I knew him once in Chicago.”

  Twenty-two years back Delaney was a Hearst reporter in the Windy City. He blew into New York in time to see paper millionaires jumping from thirty-sixth storey windows in the Great Depression and had stuck ever since. He knew Manhattan inside-out and if you didn’t see it coming and duck he’d spend the next twenty minutes telling you it had nothing on Chicago, which he hadn’t been back to in a decade.

  But for once I wanted to hear about Chicago.

  “How d’you mean—nearly sure?”

  Delaney rubbed his crisp gray hair. He stared down at the filed picture. “I never even heard of the guy all the time I’ve been in New York. I guess he must have lived pretty quietly with his moneybags. The first time I saw his picture was when someone got it out of the morgue as soon as we got a message about the murder. I could swear it’s the same…”

  I said, “Who did you think it was?”

  Delaney lit a cigarette. “He looked to me the spit
of a shyster lawyer I knew in Chicago when Capone was calling up judges and instructing them in the dereliction of their duties. Character by the name of Arthur Schultz. He was about thirty at the time and had dark hair—but the features are identical. That cut looks like one of Schultz grown older and softened-up with good living.”

  He paused and shrugged. “But twenty-odd years is a long time. Could be I’m wrong. Only…”

  “Only you don’t think so?”

  “I can’t get rid of the feeling it’s the same guy—but, supposing I’m right, it doesn’t add up to anything. Schultz never got on the wrong side of the fence, and maybe he got to be a reformed character and figured a new name would go well with respectability.”

  “It’s funny,” I said, “because the file has nothing on his life before he turned up as a partner with Banningham.”

  Delaney let his bushy eyebrows rise a little. About a yard.

  “Uh-huh!”

  “What year did he leave Chicago?”

  “I think around the same time I did.” Delaney looked at me curiously. “What’s your interest, Dale?”

  “I was there when whoever it was stuck a dagger into Grierson and I’m trying to fit one or two ends together.”

  Delaney grinned sardonically. “Yeah? O’Cassidy will love it. You’re trying something, aren’t you?”

  “I’m not so sure what I’m trying,” I said carefully. “Let’s say that just at the moment we’re trying to figure out the social background of an old Chicagoan and let it go at that.”

  “Okay, if that’s the way you want it.” Delaney thought for a second. “Curious you should say that—because, really, Schultz wasn’t a Chicagoan.”

  “No?”

  “No—he practised first in an up-State place. Falls City….”

  He stopped, staring. Something had clicked into place in my memory. I could see the fragment of an address on a charred piece of notepaper in a shabby little room of death.