“Yes. I am all right,” Lisa said in a dead voice, her back to all of us. “What you want me to do, Mr. Noon? I am so tired, so upset by all this shooting and killing.”
“Aren’t we all?” I agreed. “Look, go to the phone, wherever it is, and call Police Headquarters. The operator will connect you. Ask for Captain Monks. Tell him where we are and tell him to send a detail. He’ll know what to do.”
Lisa turned slowly and looked at me. There was utter defeat in her eyes. She was right; she did look shriveled, dead tired. Tremont threw back his bull head and laughed.
“What are you up to now, Noon?”
I raised the .45 three inches higher.
“The smartest thing there is to do. I’d like to blow your stupid head off, but I’m turning you and your young goon squad over to the cops. You’re always either having people beat up or attempting murder. And I can’t figure out why. The cooler should do you fine, and your two punks on the floor are growing up badly. Anyhow, I’m sick of you being in my hair.”
Tremont’s smile faded.
“Use your head. I’ll forget everything if you will. Cops aren’t going to help things.”
“You might try convincing me otherwise,” I suggested.
He was lowering his boxing gloves when I poked the .45 at him warningly. The gloves shot up again. His eyes narrowed.
“You’re an angle guy, Noon. Let’s deal.”
“Hit me.”
He tried to grin again.
“Look, me and Lisa are in this together. We got a fifty-grand investment in Roses in the Rain. Only Marcus Manton don’t know that. He thinks the dough was put up by a Texas millionaire that Lisa knew. Most of it is my dough, a little hers. Manton wouldn’t let me buy in otherwise, and you know why, I guess. So what’s that got to do with me murdering anybody? My grudge with you is just a grudge.”
I looked at him skeptically. “So you got out of small investments like Bartolomeo’s Bike Shop. So what’s that got to do with sending two kids to my place to work me over? Or was it really planned for Marcus all the time? And please tell me why Darlene Donegan was found murdered in Lisa’s apartment?”
He didn’t like my Missouri tone. “How the hell do I know how Donegan wound up at Lisa’s? Somebody’s working a frame on us, that’s all. As for the kids—I was busy with the cops but I still got some connections. I thought Marcus was working something with you, you being hired by him and all that. So I wanted to put some pressure on you. With you outta commission, Marcus’d be easier to handle. Get it? I can use my hands but I don’t want to go up against a hired gun. I didn’t find out about Artie and Tip making a mistake until I got to Marcus’ office and he called me down about you getting worked over in your place.”
It fit, but other things were still bothering me.
“Why did you and Lisa show up in Marcus’ office this morning, anyhow? And don’t tell me it was a social call or I’ll spit in your eye.”
Tremont growled. “Ask her, why don’t you? It was her silly idea.”
I looked at Lisa. Fran was just watching and listening, still the rapt young thing lost in a new, fresh, ugly world she hadn’t expected. It might have scared her all right, but it was obviously as fascinating as hell. And everything did seem to have some connection with Roses in the Rain.
Lisa shrugged her lovely shoulders.
“Annalee,” she said simply. “I still want with all my heart to play her. I think Marcus will change his mind. I knew Karl Leader would be there. Maybe he could persuade Marcus. Leader was kind to me once when I first came to America. But Marcus laugh and ask us to leave.” She looked at Bud Tremont wistfully. “Also, Bud anxious to beat Marcus up himself. He was very mad about Miss Donegan and the treatment the police give him. He think it all Marcus’ fault.”
“Damn right.” Tremont cursed again. “He’s always making trouble. Mr. Show Business. I hate his guts. I was glad the kids beat me to it.”
I chuckled. “And you arranged this party tonight because you wanted to go a few rounds and get a confession out of me?”
“So help me,” he admitted. “Now I’m not so sure you killed Donegan. But dammit, you’re Manton’s gun; You must be mixed up with him in all this.”
Fran was still playing lookout. “Ed, the Bobsey Twins are coming to.”
They were. Artie and Tip were groaning and coming awake and rubbing their heads and trying to collect what was left of their senses. My woodshed treatment had sadly upset their thinking. I flung the boxing glove off my right hand. My arm ached but felt good in spite of a long, jagged scratch.
“Okay,” I said, moving toward the stairway behind us, “we’ll leave it at that. Come on, Fran. Let’s get out of here.” She squealed with delight and skipped ahead of me. Bud Tremont lowered his hands and glowered again, very, very suspiciously.
“Now what are you trying to pull, Noon?”
I smiled my dead smile.
“We’re kissing you all good-bye. I don’t want cops either. I’ll leave you to cut your own throat. And also to set the kids straight. A life of crime isn’t much good for them. But it’s a lousy night to play reformer and I’m tired. So, so long, Tremont, and farewell, Lisa. Keep your noses clean and maybe that fifty-grand investment will pay off sooner or later. But please, stay away from my office and don’t try to muscle me any more, or I’ll get mad. That’s my advice for now, believe me.”
That started him talking to himself, but he was too pleased at not being turned over to the law to quarrel with me. I didn’t wait for thanks, just hustled up the stairway after Fran Tulip’s beautiful figure. We were through the gloomy bike store and out on the sidewalk in nothing flat. After we left, Lisa and Bud began to yell at each other furiously. But I didn’t care any more.
I ushered Fran down the block rapidly. I wanted out of Avenue B in a hurry. Better luck with cabs on Second Avenue.
“Was that a good idea, letting them go?” Fran wanted to know.
“Only idea I had right then. Cops confuse things sometimes. Bud Tremont’s next move will cook his goose with me. Whatever it is.”
Somebody else had a next move. And it wasn’t Bud Tremont.
There was a splat of sound like a cough and the glass of a store front behind us shattered with a frenzied crash of glass. I grabbed Fran and bore her with me to the pavement. Somebody started yelling.
It looked like it was still open season on fast-moving, nosey private detectives.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“Golly.” Fran Tulip panted beneath me on the sidewalk. “Things sure do pop when a gal’s got you for a date.”
“Ssh,” I said. “Let me listen.”
There wasn’t much to listen to. Just a car motor roaring away. Then Avenue B was silent again. The car motor was low, powerful and in a hurry. I helped Fran to her feet and measured distances with my eyes. It figured. Somebody driving by had let go once with a gun having a silencer, and had missed us, though they shouldn’t have. We were tall targets, alone on the sidewalk. Maybe the deserted streets had helped. It was early enough for the crashing glass to cause some excitement in the neighborhood, but I’d had enough. I hurried Fran over to Second Avenue, where I hailed a cab. I didn’t relax until we were settled back against the cushions, heading to her place. I didn’t know what Mike Monks was up to, but I had a feeling I’d better stay away from the office.
Fran didn’t say much during the ride. Scrapes with trouble and sudden death always do that to people. Especially rookies. I’m used to it, but I still get that same reaction. Tensed nerves and bunched muscles all let go and a paralyzing weariness claims you. So we just smoked during the long ride and said nothing. It was a mutual silence.
I could see the pattern of the Marcus Manton case now. It made more sense, even if it was a goofy kind of sense. I knew where some of the people fit. Lisa de Milo, who had been Marcus’ mistress and had then taken up with Bud Tremont, still wanted to play Annalee in Roses in the Rain. Bud Tremont wanted to protect his f
ifty-grand investment in Marcus’ show and would do anything to safeguard that investment. The whole caper was right up Von Arnheim’s alley because the baron was a necrophile who loved corpses all over the place, together with his goofy charts and figures. Artie and Tip were just a pair of Tremont’s throw-ins to reinforce his investment. Darlene Donegan had got in somebody’s way and been choked out of existence. And Marcus Manton with his tarantula and bad ear could mean only one thing. The four kids in the bad elevator began to make a terrible kind of sense. The worst kind.
And Fran Tulip, the beautiful new leading lady of Roses in the Rain, sanctioned even by the great Karl Leader—a curiosity piece in himself—was serenely in the middle. Waiting for her big show. Waiting to be the toast of Broadway. People have even killed for a chance like that.
For the second time that day, we reached Seventy-first Street off Central Park. Fran suddenly folded her hand around mine and made a movement with her lips. There was no mistaking the look in her eyes.
“Please come in,” she whispered, low. “I don’t want you to go back to the office unless you have to.”
I smiled through my fatigue. “Who’s going home?”
She waited on the sidewalk, tall and lovely in the beige toggle coat, while I paid off the driver. The block was nice and quiet, the sky deep and painter’s blue as I walked her up the front steps. But I was still checking holes and doorways and nooks for snipers and trouble makers. A dog barked somewhere behind a wall and I tensed. I was jumpy all right. Even with a loaded .45 under my left armpit. The bean treatment was beginning to make my head throb a little harder.
Inside, Fran put the same key in the same lock.
“You need looking after, Eddie. Your head and arm need fixing and maybe I could sew your coat and—”
“How about your script, Fran? You should be reading and boning up on your beautiful Annalee, shouldn’t you?”
She smacked her forehead in sudden worry, the door to her apartment half open. “Ye Gods! I haven’t thought of it once and I—” She burrowed frantically in the folds of the toggle coat, tugged a rolled-up folio half out of the pocket and heaved a sigh of relief. “Whew! Safe and sound all the time. I must have aged ten years today.”
“You look great,” I said, urging her inside. She stroked a wall switch. The apartment flooded with light, magically. There was a latch-and-chain lock on the front door. I put them both to the use they were made for.
There was a sea-green chair parked under a hooded lamp before a long, low bookcase. I flopped down on it wearily before my eyes even took in the details of the place.
Place? It was a palace. Whatever else her qualifications were, Miss Fran Tulip knew that modern design made the big difference. As she hung up the toggle coat in a hall closet and pattered off to her kitchen, I looked around. She had taken a day bed, three deep chairs, a bookcase, several five-foot high lamps and one television set and converted them into one terrific, matching apartment. There was even a bearskin rug by the phony fireplace. Huge green drapes closed off the rear of the apartment. Miss Tulip seemed to like China, too. There were statuettes and figurines of Chinese gods, warlords and peasants, advantageously placed. The guts of the bookcase were jammed with gaudy dust jackets and rich, thickly bound volumes. I was too tired to see what the books were. The wall over the day bed held three prints of Chinese pastoral scenes. Symbolic stuff. It was a nice apartment. Entirely in keeping with the tall, lovely gal coming over to me with a basin of water and Florence Nightingale equipment.
She looked great. As up-to-date as Todd A-O in a beige sheath dress. She had rolled the long sleeves up past her rounded elbows. Her arms were strong and white and looked soft.
“Crazy, isn’t it, Ed?” She smiled at me as she helped me ease out of my coat. She took a pair of scissors and cut the lower half of my shirtsleeve away.
“What is, beautiful?”
Her fingers were busy dabbing away at Artie’s homework with hot water and absorbent cotton. “Yesterday we were strangers. Now I’ve got you home with me and I’m taking care of you.” She stopped suddenly and her nose wrinkled. “You married or spoken for?”
I laughed. “Nobody’s ever taken me that seriously and, believe me, I do all my own talking.”
She pressed hard with a wad of cotton. “That’s your story, but I don’t have to believe it. That hurt? It’s more of a scratch than anything else, really. The coatsleeve and shirt took most of the damage.”
“You’re doing fine,” I said. She was. The water felt good, her hands felt great. In nothing flat she had dressed my wound, smeared it with tincture of something and wrapped a nice clean bandage around the whole works. My shirt was ruined forever, but you can’t have everything.
Her eyes were still earnest. “How’s your head? Maybe I could pack some ice in a towel and—”
“Nix. My head’s okay. My hat cushioned most of the blow. I have a goose egg all right, but it’ll go down without help.” I changed the subject. “You’re a nice lady, Brooklyn. Real nice. Don’t let Broadway get you by the fingernails and ruin you.”
She curled up at my feet on the bearskin rug and leaned her arms and head on my knees. “I won’t, and that’s a promise. Want some coffee or something? Cigarette? Want to talk about the case?”
She was acting awfully cute and coy, but I shook my head. Suddenly I was that tired. I let my head fall to the back rest of the chair and closed my eyes.
“No thanks. I’m all right this way and I don’t want to talk about the case. I’m sick of the case. Times like these I want to get out of this business. I think I’d like the slippers-and-fireside bit. Nice treatment like this spoils my appetite for adventure and excitement, so-called. I’m tired of getting shot at and standing over beautiful corpses—”
She shut me up. The best way a woman can. Rainwater smell got in my nostrils and her full, sweet mouth was mashing down on mine, sending electricity running through all my wires. I got my arms around her and meshed her with my arms. We melted like a molten rivet into an I beam.
In the dim light of the room, we pulled apart. But we were still as close as consecutive weekdays.
“Eddie, Eddie …” she crooned. “What have you got that gets me so worked up? I’m warm all over.”
“You’re just grateful.”
“No, no. You hit me right between the eyes. This is crazy.” Her lips rushed at mine again. The room did some more reeling. My head was really throbbing now. I broke the trap first.
“You’ve got the part, Fran. You don’t owe me anything—”
“Shut up,” she snapped. “Don’t make me talk a lot.”
“All right, I won’t make you talk. But let me get this in first. If you have anything at all to do with this crazy case, this won’t change anything. Understand? I’m still a detective. I’m still working to find out who killed who, and why….”
I was yammering and she wasn’t listening. The sheath dress was unsheathing and Fran Tulip just wouldn’t or couldn’t take her eyes off my face. The room danced over the rim of logic and sanity.
“Eddie,” Fran breathed with all the emotion of Annalee standing in the rain with an armful of roses and rapture, “this is the first time in the whole wide world for me….”
She went over the hill to her particular paradise and took me with her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Fran Tulip made me breakfast in the morning, while I showered. I skipped the shave because there was only a lady’s electric razor. Seventy-first Street had turned out to be a regular seventh heaven. Somehow we didn’t talk about the night before. It was one of those mornings when words might have spoiled everything. The coffee tasted as good as it smelled and I never have been able to say no to bacon and eggs. The whole damn scene was so congenial and connubial I could almost feel apron strings pulling at me. But Fran Tulip, radiant and gorgeous in her wrapper, only smiled and said little.
I made a few phone calls while she dawdled over a second cup of tea and wolfed the p
ages of Roses in the Rain. She hadn’t had much time for reading the night before.
My first call was to Mike Monks, who greeted me with his usual sarcasm. No, there was nothing new on the Donegan kill except the facts. Manual strangulation, death occurring between the hours of three and seven. (They never can peg it much nearer than that.) Donegan would be buried next week at the Riverside Chapel where a lot of actors have had funerals, but not for the same reasons. Yes, he’d investigated Bud Tremont and Lisa de Milo, but aside from Lisa’s apartment’s being the scene of the murder, there wasn’t much else to pin on her. Monks had let them go with the usual amount of caution and strong orders. He hadn’t had a satisfactory tail on them because Tremont had lost his pursuers. It had to be that because our little fight in the cellar wouldn’t have gone uninterrupted otherwise. I asked Monks to check on Von Arnheim. He wanted to know why so I filled him in as much as I could and he grudgingly took down some of the necessary information.
Monks was his usual mountain of impatience.
“What are you up to now, lover?”
I made a face at the phone. “How did you guess? Look—meet me in Marcus Manton’s office at two o’clock. And while you’re at it, invite Lisa de Milo and Bud Tremont. Von Arnheim, of course, if you locate him. I think I can throw the customary light on everything.
He never trusted me. He swore. “Are you holding out again, Ed?”
“Do like I tell you, will you? I’ll arrange everything with Marcus. I’m trying to do it your way, according to regulations. Okay?”
There was a pause. Then he sighed. “Two o’clock, you said. We’ll be there.” He hung up defeatedly.
Fran looked at me quizzically but I waved her back to her script and dialed Kelly’s Bar. It was early, but Kelly lived above his gin mill and opened early, as a rule. But I had to keep ringing. He was a very heavy sleeper.
Meanwhile Back at the Morgue Page 12
