Pardon My Body

by Dale Bogard

  Urgently, I said, “Is there a place in Falls City called South Franklyn Avenue?”

  Delaney shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been there. But I can tell you this much, if it helps—Falls City was just about the toughest town anywhere east or west of Chicago back in the Roaring Twenties. By all odds, it hasn’t changed so damn much either. The Prohibition gangsters are gone and the madams have to be a little less ostentatious—but they’ve still got the most corrupt civic administration in the Middle West. The place is run by a crooked police department hand-in-glove with every racket in the city. Falls City is one of the places that got passed by in the march of progress, I guess.”

  I shut the folder and buttoned my light autumn topcoat.

  Delaney called as I moved through the swing doors, “If I’ve given you something I’d like to be in on it—for the paper.”

  “I’ll buzz you if anything comes,” I promised.

  I walked on out of the building, my mind leaping about from one speculation to another and not a solid pointer in sight. Suppose Grierson was a shyster lawyer named Schultz twenty-five years ago. Suppose he beat it hotfoot out of Chicago. Suppose he became Arnold Grierson, a big-shot business executive with a feudal castle on Long Island and played kiss-in-the-ring with John D. Rockefeller’s heirs and successors. It didn’t mean a thing. Hey! Wait a minute. You’re losing your grip, Bogard. Suppose he never had quite shaken the past off him? Suppose there was some reason for him to be meeting a hood out in Connecticut. Because there was a reason. There had to be a reason.

  All right, suppose anything you like. Where does it get you?

  I decided to go home, take a shower and eat an early dinner. Maybe a rest-up first. I’m not used to walking around all day. It was 4:45 p.m. and prematurely dark when I stepped into my apartment. It looked good to me. The log fire had been lit, the place dusted off. I switched on the light and it looked better. I switched on the radio and got a load of Guy Lombardo. I was in the mood to take that, too. Hell—if Louis Armstrong can take it, I can.

  I sent my hat sailing on to the big, cushioned davenport and whistled my way into the little bathroom. The phone rang. I walked back and picked up the receiver.

  “Mr. Bogard?”

  “How did you guess?” I said sweetly.

  Bella, the switch girl laughed.

  “No cracks. This is just to pass you a message. Wait a minute—I’ve got it written on a slip. It says for you to ring Skyline 7070 anytime after five and it’s from Mr. Lucius Canting. With his compliments.”

  “But not with his address, eh?”

  “Why—I supposed you knew it.”

  “I don’t, sweetheart. Mr. Lucius Canting has never entered my life at any point yet.”

  “Well, maybe he thought his phone number was an address.”

  “Possibly.”

  “In fact,” said Bella hesitantly. “I…er…looked it up.”

  “You did?”

  “I hope you’re not cross, Mr. Bogard.”

  “I’m delighted. What is it?”

  “It’s a penthouse near Riverside Towers. Name of High Corners.”

  “Thanks a lot.” I replaced the receiver and dialled the Skyline number.

  A feminine voice said, “Mr. Lucius Canting’s suite. Your name, please?”

  I gave it.

  “Your business?”

  “Mr. Canting is just dying to speak to me,” I said. “Suppose you put me through before he passes right out.”

  “There is no necessity to be impertinent,” said the voice. “I am Mr. Canting’s secretary and I am following the normal procedure in dealing with telephone inquiries.”

  “I’m an abnormal caller,” I told her.

  There was a pause. I could hear her speaking on a hookup line but I couldn’t catch the words. Presumably she was having speech with the boss.

  Then she came back. “You’re through, Mr. Bogard.”

  I waited.

  A man’s voice spoke. A middle-register voice with an overlay of warm molasses.

  “Good evening, Mr. Bogard. I would like to see you on a matter of business.”

  “My services aren’t available just now,” I replied.

  “Not even in the pursuit of truth?”

  “Truth has a many-sided face. Which side are we looking at?”

  Mr. Canting sighed. “You must not misquote classical definitions. It offends my aesthetic sensibilities. But, shall we say, the truth about the recent lamented decease of two eminently respectable gentlemen?”

  “We could say that if we’re in the mood for platitudinous hedging. Then what?”

  Mr. Canting was chiding. “I scarcely think it would be fitting to discuss what I have to say over the public telephone. After all, we haven’t met.”

  “Some people might think there isn’t any reason why we should.”

  “There is, of course.”

  “It’s a possibility…”

  “I place it higher than that. You will come for cocktails at six-thirty.” It didn’t sound like a question. Yet it didn’t sound like a command, either.

  “I’ll come,” I heard myself saying.

  “Admirable.” He was almost purring now.

  I hung up and peeled off my tie and shirt. I studied my face for a moment in the little bathroom mirror and decided not to give myself a second shave. Not for Mr. Lucius Canting. I stripped, showered and put on my clothes again and warmed my backside against the fire while I filled my pipe. I was doing a lot of overtime thinking and getting nowhere. Too many things seemed to be happening and nothing seemed to make sense. I put on my overcoat and hat and a navy blue silk scarf and walked downstairs.

  Bella was still at the little switchboard at the back of the reception desk. I leaned against the counter.

  “Yes, Mr. Bogard?”

  “Bella,” I said, “I am visiting Mr. Lucius Canting and if I don’t buzz you by eight o’clock I want you to put in a call to Detective-lieutenant O’Cassidy at police headquarters and tell him where I am and that I need his help. Got that?”

  Bella’s grey eyes opened wide. She nodded.

  “You…you aren’t running into trouble, are you Mr. Bogard?”

  “I think the chances are about even,” I said. “Don’t forget that message. The health of your favourite paying guest may hang on it.”

  I could feel her stare boring into the back of my neck as I went out to get the car.

  CHAPTER SIX

  HIGH CORNERS WAS THE newest thing in architecture in the Riverside Drive country. It appeared to combine in fairly equal proportions the more striking phenomena of phoney Tudor, crypto-Chinese and American functional design. The final result of the marriage was strictly illegitimate—although the word that sprang to mind began earlier in the alphabet.

  There was a paved driveway. I pulled into it and parked outside the main entrance. A whiskered commissionaire dressed in the uniform of an admiral of the fleet held open the door while I stepped out under a long striped awning. I could feel carpet under my feet—and I wasn’t inside the place yet.

  I hesitated. Something seemed to be missing. Then I knew what it was. They hadn’t got a band playing.

  “Mr. Lucius Canting’s suite,” I said.

  “Mr. Canting,” said the aged bell-hop, “has a top-floor penthouse covering the entire area of the premises. The express elevator will take you there direct. Please follow me.”

  He tucked me into the elevator and sped me skywards with a look in which it was hard to tell whether contempt or pity predominated. Either way it put me among the lesser breeds.

  The sliding doors of the elevator parted automatically at the ninth storey and I stepped straight out on to an inch-deep pile. I seemed to be walking up to my knees in carpet and all of it was jet black. It was the first hint I got that Mr. Canting might be an unusual character.

  I was in a wide hall with doors leading off on either side and there wasn’t a handle on one of them. The elevator had gone d
own and the shaft doors merged and vanished in the rose-colored panelling. The silence was like a clamor. A curious sickly scent hung heavily in the artificially-heated air. For a moment I couldn’t identify it. Then I got it. Incense. A tiny alarm bell started jangling way down in my subconscious. I shoved off the panic and walked boldly up to the biggest of the double-doors. I was about a foot away when it slid noiselessly inwards and I found myself walking into a massive room with a domed glass roof under which was strung tiny lights to resemble starlight. This time the carpet was deep purple. The walls had been painted cream and at intervals were hung with jade green drapes.

  The interior lighting came from fixtures of Lalique glass and the furniture was built entirely of glass: red glass sideboards, a blue glass cocktail cabinet, a glass bookcase in shimmering amber, occasional chairs of shining steel and dull, black glass—and at the far end of the room the biggest table in the world, carved in a single massive piece from pure transparent glass.

  Mr. Lucius Canting sat behind it wearing a suit of sky-blue linen, a beige silk shirt, a bloodred tie and glass sandals. His beautiful oval toenails bore a high-gloss silver lacquer, and a beaten-gold bracelet graced his left ankle.

  “Good evening, Mr. Bogard—so glad you were able to come.” It was the same warm, sticky voice. At first hand even warmer and sticker.

  I sat on the edge of the glass wasteland and studied Mr. Lucius Canting. He wore a Palm Beach tan which was so nearly genuine you had to admire its artistry. He was maybe fifty years old and graying but he still had plenty of hair. The face was heavy, with a million little lines spreading out to his temples from the puffy skin which lidded two of the coldest eyes I had seen since Dillinger.

  The beautifully-shaven mouth was wide and the lips were too thick and not all the artifice of a skilled masseuse could hide the little telltale sagging under the once-square chin. I thought Mr. Lucius Canting was not the kind of man who would be invited to address a meeting of the Women’s Purity League.

  He lit a long flat cigarette clothed in rose-pink rice paper. The aroma started warring with the incense and I relit my pipe in self-defense. I continued to say nothing. The ball, I thought, could properly be left at Mr. Canting’s pedicured feet.

  “Mr. Bogard,” he said at length, “you have answered my invitation because we are both interested in a certain subject.”

  “I didn’t say so,” I told him.

  He sighed. “Let us not bandy empty words. I am aware that since your coincidental presence at the Golden Peacock Inn last night you have interested yourself in the circumstances surrounding the deaths of Mr. Grierson and Mr. Banningham—both of whom, I may say, are old acquaintances of mine.”

  “You mean you’ve put a tail on me?”

  “I have, shall we say, reliable sources of information? I assure you they are impeccably accurate.” He leaned forward slightly over the glass ocean. “I would like you, Mr. Bogard, to cease taking such an interest in affairs which cannot remotely be said to concern you.”

  “You would?”

  Mr. Canting sighed again. “You are being absurdly difficult, my friend. Or is it supposed to be astuteness on your part—such as waiting for the appropriate offer?”

  “It could be that,” I said.

  “In that case…”

  “—but it isn’t,” I finished. “Look, Mr. Canting, I didn’t ask to come here, I don’t like it now I am here, and I don’t like you personally. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Painfully.”

  I went on, “I don’t pretend to know what your connection is with the deaths of Banningham and Grierson, but…”

  Mr. Canting cut in on me. “My dear Mr. Bogard, I have explained that these gentlemen were both well known to me. I have the well-being of their families very much at heart and I do not wish to see anything done which may wound them. Because your peculiar interest in the matter seems to have led to some rather unorthodox inquiries I decided to ask you to bear with me and not to proceed further.”

  “You mean you think I may have uncovered something you’d prefer to see left decently interred?”

  “How admirably you express it! That is the general idea.” He leaned back, getting ready to purr again. “I should naturally wish to reimburse you generously for any trouble you have taken so far. But, first, let me offer you a cocktail.”

  He touched one of a small battery of colored brass knobs on the table immediately in front of him.

  “I don’t want a drink,” I said shortly.

  “Oh come—let us not be churlish.”

  “How much?” I asked bluntly.

  “I think we can sign an expenses and ex gratia chit for five thousand dollars,” said Canting levelly.

  The thing was becoming fabulous. All I had to do was to go home, forget the whole business and winter in Florida on five grand while I looked around for a new plot. And I like money. But not on those kind of terms. I could have laid off jobs for a cash deal when I was a reporter but I never did. I like to earn my bucks the hard way. Which is probably why I never have many to toss around. But that’s how it’s always been. And if ever I fell, Mr. Lucius Canting wouldn’t be the successful tempter.

  Just the same, it would be an idea to string Mr. Canting along for a little way.

  “How do I know I get out of here with…” I broke off because another sliding door opened and I was getting a fresh line on Mr. Canting. A girl was bringing in a tray of drinks. She was about twenty years old and as near beautiful as makes no difference, and barely dressed. She set the drinks on the table while Mr. Canting stroked her bottom. Then she gave a little curtsy with the scrap of fabric acting as her skirt and was gone.

  “You like them that way?” I asked.

  “I find it wholly agreeable.” A flicker passed over his face. “That was Marie. She is on duty this evening. But I have a number of other amenable nymphs. Perhaps you…”

  “Let’s talk about money,” I said brutally.

  “Ah, yes. You are interested?”

  “I’m interested in the implications which arise when men start bidding at five grand.”

  The cold eyes snapped. “I did not make you a bid, Mr. Bogard. It was an offer. What exactly have you in mind as an appropriate sum?”

  I tapped the dottle from my pipe onto a magnificent cut-glass and solid silver letter tray. I had had just about too much of Mr. Lucius Canting.

  “You could make it a half-million dollars,” I said genially. “Or maybe you could make it a million. I wouldn’t know and I wouldn’t give a damn.”

  Canting eyed me in silence for a moment. When he spoke his voice was as gentle as a maiden’s whisper. But not so pleasant.

  “There are others ways open to me. I hope you will not force me to adopt them.”

  “Such as?”

  “I could have you beaten up. A distressingly vulgar procedure. I do not care for the uncouth and illiterate men you would compel me to employ. But they would be efficient. It would be very difficult for you to identify your face for a considerable time and walking would be quite impossible for at least six weeks.”

  I stood up. “Mr. Canting,” I said, “as a plotter of violence you could take a correspondence course. You will not have me beaten up because I could have a nice long chat with Detective-lieutenant O’Cassidy at homicide about your curious proposition. O’ Cassidy is a very persistent policeman indeed and if he came along here he would be likely to arrest you just on general principles. He doesn’t like your kind. To take care of me you would have to get someone to bump me off—and I don’t think you want a murder on your hands.”

  Suddenly, his face was livid. “Don’t try me too far,” were the words he managed to grate out.

  I went on, easily, “And even if you got a loogan to squib me off you couldn’t be sure I hadn’t left a letter about you in my safety deposit. No, Mr. Canting, you will just sit tight in your obscene little private world and do nothing.”

  “And you?” By an effort he had wiped the
hate and the fear from his face.

  I thrust my hat on the back of my head and picked up my gloves. “I don’t ordinarily make pacts with your sort—but as long as you don’t try to get out of line it will suit me not to have that talk with O’Cassidy. Now you can press one of those comic-opera buttons and let me out of here.”

  He reached out a heavily-ringed hand.

  “Goodbye, Mr. Canting,” I said. Then a thought struck me. “I think I will give myself a little vacation. Maybe a little trip to the Adirondacks—or, could it be, to Falls City…”

  There was a silence as I walked out of that long disgusting room.

  I was going through the big doors when I caught a whisper. “I wouldn’t go there, Mr. Bogard, if I were you….”

  Then the doors swung soundlessly to behind me and I was knee-deep in carpet again.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  I WANTED TO DRIVE HARD and fast when I got back to the Buick, but most of the way it was a slow drag with the pile-up getting steadily worse at every intersection. Finally, I detoured to a little saloon off lower Broadway. I felt like a long cold lager after Mr. Canting’s hothouse eroticisms—though maybe I should have settled for a pint of mouthwash.

  The barkeep, a wiry little half-Italian who lived in the Bronx, slid a bottle and a tall glass over the polished counter. I think he picked the trick up through too many William S. Hart Westerns when he was a kid. I drank three-quarters of the measure without stopping for breath. Then I noticed the hands of the clock and I moved into the telephone booth at the far end of the little bar. I didn’t want O’Cassidy to get any messages about me—yet.

  I dropped a coin in the slot and said, “It’s okay, Bella—it’s me. You can throw that note away.”

  She sounded relieved. “I was just starting to worry about you. As a matter of fact, Mr. O’Cassidy is here now….”

  I caught my breath. “Did you tell him?” I tried to make my voice sound offhand.

  “No—it’s not quite the deadline. I won’t need to, now…”