This was Port Authority’s back door. With a street scene reminiscent of 1920. There were pushcarts and peddlers and old women and young with shopping bags to carry the day’s groceries. They were only a few blocks ahead and they’d never have time to get out of the way. I pumped and hammered the horn, setting up a hideous din, but the choice was mine. I took it. Heads whirled and frightened faces came apart with terror and people screamed. I didn’t see anything else. I cut the wheel and hollered for Lisa to brace herself. The convertible took the sidewalk on the uptown side with a noisy grind of wheels and metal. The wheel wrenched in my fingers, but I hung on. The speedometer was down, but not enough. I gritted my teeth. The left wheels were on the sidewalk, right wheels in the gutter. People scattered like newspapers in a windstorm. I butted a fire hydrant heavily and we lost a lot of forward speed. Behind us, the fire hydrant broke into sections and water geysered skyward. But the convertible lurched onward, still a mass of rolling dead weight. There was nothing else for it. No more zigging and zagging and split-second misses. A telegraph pole loomed in the window, dead ahead. I flung myself to the far door, went limp and pulled Lisa out from behind the wheel and in toward my twisted body. I threw my arms around her beautiful head. I’d done all I could.
We hit the pole. Head-on. There was one maddening wrench of sound and torn metal. One flip-flop of time in which the car and a lifetime turned over and over. A mighty roar of sound cannonaded in the Manhattan air. Then everything settled down. The crazy illusion of being upside down and turning was gone. Steam hissed from a smashed fixture and a deadly stillness lasted for an eternity before the yelling voices and anxious cries got home to me.
The car door fell open and I sagged through it to the pavement, Lisa de Milo’s curved body half with me, half with the car. I batted my eyes. It was weird. The telegraph pole was leaning into the avenue at a forty-five degree angle and the convertible was nosed into its base forever, radiator crumpled around it like a pretzel. I was dazed, but still on my feet and aware of what was going on. I hauled Lisa to her lovely feet and smiled at her. The feather on her hat was bent comically like the telegraph pole, but aside from the scare and a rash of red where my coat sleeves had burned her ivory skin, she looked all right. The sound of citizens’ feet came pounding down to us now. That and a police whistle again and Von Arnheim’s motor purring alongside. There wasn’t time for cops and a million questions. Or solicitous citizens. Or angry ones. I moved fast.
“Mr. Noon. Can I help you? Are you all right, my friend?”
The baron was solicitous, too. Monocled, smooth-faced, concerned. Baron on the spot, as usual. But there was no time for talk. I helped Lisa into the softer back seat of his car. About ten thousand rubberneckers had forgotten their shopping bags and were clamoring to be heard. Lisa fell back onto the seat and closed her eyes. I heard a cop yelling for me to stop and wait but there wasn’t a co-operative bone in my body right then.
“Slide over, Baron,” I said. He smiled and edged over on the front seat. I climbed in next to him and drove a mad, angry fist into his foolish face, just where his heavy chin hung over his impeccable collar. I had the Jaguar in gear and was off to the races before he even folded up in the corner, out like a light.
The Jag shot ahead, away from the citizens, the cops and the convertible with the bad brakes. I lost myself in the maze of traffic on Thirty-fourth and cut back uptown for the Manton Building.
To hell with Von Arnheim, to hell with Lisa de Milo. To hell with everybody. The baron was getting paid off for his messing around with car brakes. The good old Baron Leopold Kurtz Von Arnheim who loved dead people.
Dead people and murderers.
My mood wasn’t good as I rocketed toward the two-o’clock appointment in Marcus Manton’s office.
CHAPTER THIRTY
It was nearing one o’clock when we reached the Manton Building. Von Arnheim was groaning and coming awake and Lisa de Milo was shooting about a million and a half questions. But I wasn’t stopping to draw flies. I shook her off, climbed out of the Jaguar, dropped a dime in the parking meter and headed into the building, knowing she’d follow, knowing she couldn’t do anything else.
I straightened my tie and collar and pulled myself together on the ride up to the sixteenth floor. I was a car ahead of Lisa, whom I wasn’t waiting for. I’d done enough managing for two days. From this point on, I was on my own. Everybody in the lobby left me alone. I must have looked as mad as I felt. When the car doors opened on the sixteenth floor, I bounced out in a hurry. I was showing my teeth and I knew it. I let Miss Carmody know it, too, as I bowled on past her without so much as a by your leave. But she flew to her buzz box and flashed a dozen warnings to the inner sanctum.
I didn’t care. My head hurt, my arm hurt and my whole body was tingling with aches from the telegraph-pole routine in Lisa’s convertible.
I waded through the thick rug of the connecting corridor toward Marcus Manton’s door. The quiet and awesomeness of the place didn’t have time to settle in on me. I was a locomotive running wild. I kicked Marcus’ door in. It swept back and flew off the wall like a bongo drum. And I stopped moving fast. I stood in the doorway and some of the sand ran out of my glass.
Karl Leader was sitting patiently and calmly at Marcus’ big desk. The precise, lean Karl Leader. Gone were yesterday’s sloppy joe and Wild One clothes. He was dressed in faultless gray, a neat pendulum of blue foulard tie enfolding his nice white collar and matching the cold twinkle in his frosty, amused eyes. He was poring over a massive set of blueprints and sheets and as he stared at me over his manicured fingertips, I could see he wasn’t pleased with my noisy interruption. Behind him, through the French windows, I could also see the powerful figure of Marcus pacing up and down, stoking his cigar.
“You aren’t exactly a formal man, are you, Mr. Noon?” His cold-as-gunmetal voice refused to hide his contempt for me.
I laughed, moved into the room, closed the door and put my back to it.
“No, I’m not, Leader. You can’t be Emily Post and survive in my field. Call Marcus. I want to talk to you both.”
Leader laid his sheets down. They crinkled like new money. He shook his head.
“Ever the boor with the right answer, eh? I ought to throw you out on your illiterate posterior.”
It was like music to my ears. “Any time you’re ready, genius. But you’d better stick to directing plays. This is a man’s job.”
That puzzled him for some reason. He didn’t get offended. As I was moving past the desk toward the terrace, he swiveled in Marcus’ chair to keep up with me.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to explain that last remark, Noon.”
“I will?” I stopped and looked down at him. We were four feet apart. Our eyes met like two bulls in the same farmer’s field.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll tell you. No play in the world is worth the lives of people. Not now or ever. That’s what I mean. And for your sake I hope you were concerned only with the directing of Roses in the Rain and nothing else. I’ve run into ballyhoo before, but this is the limit.”
I ran down because Marcus had caught sight of me through the windows, or had heard me talking. Either way, he waltzed in from the terrace like a happy orangutan, the cigar smoking from his mouth. His face was wreathed in smiles, his eyes were laughing and the bandage on his ear was smaller and neater. He looked well-fed, relaxed and superbly successful, like the Marcus Manton of old.
“Ed, Ed,” he roared, his hands outstretched. “You’re early, but the hell with it. I want to talk to you first, before those cops get here.” He waved me to a chair, the one just in front of his big desk. Leader got up from the Great Man’s chair and went over to the bar to mix himself a drink. I kept one eye on him, the other on Marcus.
Marcus scowled suddenly. “Now what’s this about the killer? You turn him over and I’ll slap a ten-grand bonus on you.”
I sat down in the suggested chair and stretched my legs. I smiled at him. Same old
Marcus. The grand-daddy of them all.
“Lisa de Milo is early, too,” I said. “She was with me and should be here any old minute now. The baron is right behind her. With his charts and figures. You see, Von Arnheim expected a few more deaths this morning. Two at least.”
Marcus rammed his cigar into the twelve-by-twelve ash tray. I had him worried all over again with my crazy patter.
“Talk sense, boy. What’s Lisa got to do with it?”
I could hear Karl Leader mixing himself a very noisy martini.
“Everything,” I said. “She came to my office of her own volition and confessed to the murder of Darlene Donegan.”
Marcus’ face went thataway and even Leader stopped mixing his drink.
“What?” Marcus thundered. “Don’t be a sap, Ed. Lisa couldn’t swat a fly without talking about it for hours. Have you gone nuts? You can’t possibly believe her story.”
“Why not?” I asked. “She wanted Annalee real bad. Bad enough to get mad enough to take a shot at you for it. She said she thought Donegan had the role sewed up. In her simple mind, it was easy. If she got rid of the person standing between her and the job, she’d get the job. Monks would buy that in a minute.”
Marcus got another cigar out of a drawer and testily unwrapped it from the cellophane.
“Well, I don’t buy it. She’s fronting for that bastard Tremont, or something. He’s been all over this mess and I’d like to know what for. He was a bum and he’ll always be a bum.”
Karl Leader stirred and came away from the bar with a tall glass in his hand. His smile was Machiavellian again.
“Possibly it’s news to you, Marcus, but Bud Tremont has fifty thousand dollars invested in Roses in the Rain.”
Marcus didn’t believe it. His eyes told me so. Then he must have remembered something. His smile was triumphant.
“Dammit—of course! Lisa and her anonymous Texas millionaire. She let me believe it was an old flame of hers. Lord knows, she had enough of them. Hell, I never asked my money people for references, but I’d never have let Tremont buy in.”
I nodded. “Exactly. Lisa knew that and so did Bud.”
He waved his hands. “Well, so what? That still wouldn’t make her kill Darlene Donegan, would it?”
“No. But she’s real dramatic. She’d do anything for publicity. The papers have been full of nothing but Roses the last few days. Look at the splash that beautiful face of hers would get. Even though the cops would pull her story apart and release her, she’d probably get the role by default. Maybe. But to her insane way of thinking and measuring values, it might have worked. It’s the only explanation for her behavior, because she didn’t kill Darlene Donegan.”
That took a load off his mind. He relaxed in his big chair.
“For a second you had me there.” His eyes narrowed and he started to say something else when the buzzer on his desk began squawking again. Good old Carmody. But everybody else had my mood that afternoon. Lisa de Milo stalked in, with Von Arnheim in tow. Von Arnheim, trim and military, his walking stick over one arm, his other gloved hand nursing his jaw. But he wasn’t mad. Our glances met and he gave me one of his curt bows.
Lisa rushed toward the desk. “Has Mr. Noon told you, Marcus? I confess everything. I—”
“Save it, Lisa,” Marcus bit the end off his fresh cigar disgustedly. “Tell that to the cops. I don’t buy a word of it.”
Karl Leader laughed and got everybody’s attention.
“Something funny, Leader?” I rasped.
He nodded. “Quite a merry-go-round here. I feel like I’m sitting through a bad version of Room Service.”
“Yeah.” I stood up and showed him my .45. “Well, I’ve got a swell first-act curtain for you. A show stopper.”
He didn’t get mad. Lisa just stared at me, Von Arnheim clucked his approval of my sense of dramatics and Marcus glowered up at me. Karl Leader smiled his satisfaction too.
“Splendid, Mr. Noon. Nice clean movement. But pray what is your curtain line?”
I leveled my eyes at all of them.
“The guy sitting behind that desk is the most god-awful insane murderer it has ever been my job to meet. A murderer for headlines, for ballyhoo, for show business, for profit. For nothing but the satisfaction of his own gigantic ego. A guy who makes payola look like kid stuff.”
In the stillness of the room, Marcus Manton gaped at me. His mouth fanned open and one tremendous word roared out of his wide mouth.
“Me?”
“You, Ace,” I said quietly, covering him with my .45.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Marcus Manton almost swallowed his cigar. Then he scowled at me. The full, mammoth Marcus Manton scowl.
“I knew you were hitting the bottle, Ed, but you’re drunker than usual. Put that water pistol away before I forget who you are and who I am.” His eyes softened suddenly. “Have you gone completely nuts, too?”
I smiled down at him, but I didn’t feel good at all.
“I wish I were, Marcus. But I’m not. I wish you weren’t the greatest showman in the world, with a passion for salesmanship. But you are. And you sold Roses in the Rain the only way you know how. No production ever had such advance publicity. This even tops Gone With the Wind.”
Karl Leader crossed briskly to the desk, ignored me, placed his strong hands on the desk and leaned forward. His deadly eyes targeted in on Marcus.
“If you’ve done anything underhanded with this production and my reputation suffers, I’ll sue you for everything you’ve got, Marcus. Now I want to hear some facts.” He whirled on me with his coiled-spring body. “What are you charging him with, Noon? I want to hear you out. Then I want to hear Marcus call you an infamous liar.”
I backed away from the desk, keeping Lisa de Milo, Leader, Von Arnheim and Marcus in front of my gun. Lisa was popeyed with bewilderment. Von Arnheim was clucking with his usual quota of enjoyment for everything that went on in life. Everything that led to death.
“Shut up, Leader,” Marcus rumbled. “Ed’s playing Sherlock because he’s a detective. But that doesn’t mean he has to make sense.”
“Pitching to the end, eh, Ace?” My smile must have been ghastly. “You won’t get a dime out of him, Leader. He’s broke. He told me so himself. The show has outside backing. He’s up to his armpits in hock and his whole future depends on Roses in the Rain. He told me so himself and I believe him. It’s the only true thing he’s told me in the last three days.”
Lisa suddenly collected herself. “No, no. I kill Donegan. I do it because I mad. You wrong, Mr. Noon.”
I shook my head but I didn’t lower the .45. Von Arnheim was toying with his walking stick.
“No dice, Lisa. The only thing you did was try to shoot Marcus because you were mad. He lied about that, too, knowing I could figure out bullet holes and it would make him look noble and good. It worked in fine with all the phony attempts on his life he’d set up. More publicity for the show.”
Marcus got mad. He half rose from behind the desk, his big, knotting hands flexing and unflexing.
“By God, Ed. You are nuts. I’m glad now that you invited the cops. We’re going to need help carting you off to the loony bin.”
Von Arnheim chuckled audibly and Karl Leader folded his arms. He was still concerned with what I had to say.
I took a deep breath. “Stop play acting, Marcus. The tarantula in your drawer was a plant, the telephone call that shattered your ear, supposedly, was a colossal error. You had it all figured out. Even the doctor at the hospital was fixed. How simple can you get? If you had been subjected to a loud noise on the phone, you couldn’t have bounced out of a sickbed so fast. You and your doctor got your stories mixed. You got out of bed too soon for a guy with a damaged eardrum. I wondered about that until I asked myself why. I had my answer. You can’t sit still. You have to be moving. Always walking, always out on the terrace and organizing things.”
Marcus shook his head, angry red filling his face.
> “Should I point out the one small fact that it was me who hired you? Me who brought you into this case? Smart killer I am.”
“The smartest. Why shouldn’t you hire me? I’m the most publicized detective in town. I’ve made headlines. I could make more headlines for your show. But you haven’t been listening, have you? You hired me when there wasn’t any idea of murder. You killed Donegan after you hired me. A sudden, violent murder. You’d only planned on big scares and news stories. When you swung off into murder, accidentally, you had me on your hands. So you worked on me through the baron, to rattle me and cloud my thinking. That’s why you jumped me in my office and set up this deaths-and-charts hooey at my expense. How much of the show have you given the baron for his helping hand?”
Von Arnheim stiffened and the walking stick swung to high port, but his smooth, unwrinkled face was still smiling. His monocle gleamed from one eye like a silver dollar.
“Really, Mr. Noon? You have theories and fancies concerning death, hein?”
“Be yourself, Baron. It all adds up even to a blind man, sooner or later. You’re a graveyard ghoul. You talk about death, you spout death, you know where everybody is. You’re the expert who rigged that elevator. If I remember your biography, you have degrees in a lot of things, including physics. You assured Marcus that the girls couldn’t possibly get hurt. But it gave him a bad scare the morning it happened. I was with him. His sweat was real. But the publicity value was enormous. It’s been page-one stuff since it happened. And you worked with Manton last year on a death book. You could be what is known as good press relations for this show, too. I can see it now: ‘Death Expert Analyzes Roses in the Rain Tragedies.’ Oh, this is a circus, all right. Like no other. You’re on the payroll, Baron. Admit it.”
Von Arnheim chuckled.
Meanwhile Back at the Morgue Page 14
