Knife at My Back

by Lawrence Lariar

  “Oh, answer him then,” she said. “If my husband ever finds out about me staying up so late, he’ll murder me, Wally.”

  “Well, if you say so, Doris.”

  “Fine and dandy,” I said. “Now let’s start all over again. You two been sitting here long?”

  “Maybe a half hour.”

  “Oh, longer,” the girl said.

  “All right, longer,” Wally said. “So what?”

  “Did you see anybody come out of The Branton in the last half hour?”

  “Are you kidding?” he guffawed. His companion threw her head back and aimed her hard laughter at the stars. “What did we miss?”

  “You didn’t see a woman come out?”

  “Nothing,” Wally said. “We just weren’t looking that way.”

  “Anybody I know?” the girl asked.

  The clever patter was getting me nowhere. I ran up the path and into the lobby and beyond the lobby into The Champagne Room. The rhumba band was beating out a mamba, loud and shrill and lumpy with drumbeats. A bevy of mamba addicts jerked their hips and threw their stomachs into the hot rhythm, oblivious of anything and everything on earth but the wriggling gymnastics. of their partners. Off to the right, the tables still buzzed and brayed with late drinkers, the city night clubbers who would never leave the place until the last heaving thud of the drums died out. I counted the house, carefully studying each table for a sign of Grace Lasker. I drew a blank and got out of there.

  At the desk, a tall and pimpled youth was nibbling at a comic book. He didn’t look up when I arrived.

  “Where’s Lili?” I asked.

  “A good question,” the boy said.

  “How about a good answer?”

  “Who knows? Lili could be anywhere.”

  “When did you come on duty?” I put it to him boldly, taking the comic book from under his long nose and flipping it across the lobby. He brought up his sunburned fizz and sneered at me. So I had to grab him and pull him my way and ask him again. “Don’t ask any more silly questions, or I’ll have to give you a short massage. I’m in a hurry. Did you check anybody out of this place in the last half hour?”

  “At this hour?” he asked himself. “Of course not.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “Maybe about a half hour, at that.”

  “Now I’ll play the old record. Where’s Lili?”

  “Probably out under a tree. But she could he in her room, over across the lawn—in the staff building. Room Sixty-six—but you better knock, or you might walk in on a ball.”

  I ran across the lawn and through the corridor and knocked on the door of Sixty-six. From somewhere inside there was a short and high-pitched giggle, followed by silence and a deeper voice, muffled and hoarse. So I knocked again, hard and heavy.

  And Lili came to the door. She was wearing a transparent ensemble of nothing at all, silkish gauze on top and slacks of pale yellow. She struggled with the zipper as she beamed at me. She was suffering from confusion plus the undertones of alcohol, her heavy lips quivering, in a smile.

  “Darling,” she cooed, blocking the doorway with her figure. She pushed against me with her hips, telling me that this was as far as the trolley went. “Stevie, of all people.”

  “I want talk,” I said.

  “Oh, not now, for heaven’s sake.” She jerked her head in a loose gesture, calculated to make me understand that I might embarrass somebody behind her. “Not just now, darling. Please.”

  “Tell him to scram, Lili. You and I want to be alone.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Then I’ll do it.”

  She struggled to hold me where I was, twining her arms around me and giving me the bumps, backward and into the corridor, where she grabbed out at me. She was rapidly regaining her sobriety, gnawing on her lower lip and muttering frantic blandishments to me. “I’m asking you real nice, Stevie, darling. Real nice. Don’t go in there. We can talk right here. Or outside, maybe?”

  From inside her room, I heard a window open and caught the figure of a man passing beyond the vertical line of the door. He was heavy and clumsy and slow-moving, but he got through the window in a burst of energy. After that, the only noise I heard was the sound of Lili breathing in my ear. Whoever it was had dropped to the bushes under her window and beat it into the night. Lili was unaware of his departure.

  I slapped her fanny and said, “Relax. Casanova just jumped out of your window.”

  She relaxed in a big way. She threw her head back and laughed so loud that it frightened her. She put a hand to her mouth and giggled foolishly and led me inside. I had seen Lili stewed before, and often. In her callow youth, when she was on the make for a big Broadway career, Lili mixed with the stay-outs and was well known for her alcoholic amours. Lili was giving me a sample of her histrionic ability. She was on the stage in some dream drama of her own scheming, play-acting at being the drunken queen in a fancy bordello. On the small table near the window there was a bottle of Haig and Haig and two hookers. A few lipsticked cigarette butts decorated the ashtray. And the mangled stub of a cigar. I noted the brand: La Cuchellero. I flied it away and sat down and allowed myself a short drink. Lili joined me, downing hers as naturally as a vegetarian swigging carrot juice. Then she disappeared into her bathroom and gave me a chance to look her nest over. The bed was smooth and unruffled. There had been no gymnastics on the coverlet. I dropped down on it and began to organize my ideas.

  Lili came back fluffing her hair and making small noises in her throat, a rendition of a pop tune, hummed in an off-key. She stood over me and grinned and giggled like a teen-age chippie caught on the porch with her britches down.

  “You made yourself right at home, darling,” she said.

  “I’m staying awhile, Lili.”

  “You’re full of surprises,” she snickered.

  “And so are you.”

  Lili poured some Scotch again and dropped herself on the bed alongside me and leaned over me. She worked smoothly and efficiently to prove that her robe was adjustable to her moods. The flared collar fell away and there was no sash binding it around her waist, and when she came closer she twisted slowly so that I could get the full treatment. She was a masterpiece of organized sunbathing, a silken brown all the way down to her bare toes. Only her small and predatory teeth were white, an arc of flashing brightness in her dusky face. She adjusted her nakedness so that she resembled a model on a cushion, her head tilted coyly. Then she rolled over and lay alongside me, letting me feel the softness of her shoulder. She stared up at the ceiling and bit her lip.

  “If I knew you were coming, I could have taken you out on the lake, darling. There’s a little hut on the other side. Out in the open, and—”

  “I didn’t come for games, Lili.”

  “Stop with the gags. Don’t you remember the old days, Stevie?”

  “How could I ever forget?” I said. “But not tonight, baby. Tonight we play something new. Questions.”

  “What does that mean?” She turned and slipped closer and showed me her confusion, a line of dainty corrugations above her penciled brows. “Do you know what time it is? You’re not going to bother me about nonsense, darling? You’re not going to make me talk about that woman you’re chasing?”

  “You’re on the ball, Lili.”

  “Maybe you’d better forget her.”

  I took her hand off me. “Meaning what?”

  “Maybe she left, darling.”

  She was teasing me and my head began to pound and thump the way it always does when the mixture becomes lean in my mental carburetor. I pulled Lilt upright and jerked her around and showed her my impatience. She was laughing at me, sleepy-eyed but sincere.

  I said, “She checked out?”

  “Don’t be silly, Stevie. She just rolled out.”

  “You saw her
leave?”

  “I saw her car leave.”

  “How long ago?”

  “Maybe an hour ago.”

  “And she was alone?” I asked.

  “What the hell am I supposed to be?” Lili asked. “It was pretty dark outside an hour ago, remember? All I saw was her damned yellow convertible.”

  “Through which gate?”

  “The west gate,” Lili said, and sank-back against the pillow again. She snaked her hand my way and began to talk to me with her fingers. “She must be miles away from here now, darling. Why don’t you forget about her?”

  “The road from the west gate leads down to Monticello, doesn’t it?” I asked.

  “More or less. But it also leads up to Indian Cliff. It sort of wanders around through the woods. You can’t make Monticello easily on that road. Unless you know it well.”

  “She didn’t know that road.”

  “Maybe she did,” Lili giggled. “It isn’t tough to figure it out—if you want to be alone up on Indian Cliff. A lot of people go up there for privacy.”

  “She couldn’t have gone up alone.”

  “How do you know? How come you’re so excited about this one, darling? She’ll come back. She didn’t check out of the hotel.”

  “Maybe she won’t come back. Maybe she can’t.”

  “Double talk,” Lili said lazily. She swung her arm out and around my neck. “I should consider this an insult, Stevie. Can’t I make you forget about her?”

  I began to wish that Lili was more sensible. My head clanged and clattered with ideas. Sometimes it helps to unload your theories into a sympathetic ear. How in hell would Grace Lasker get up and roll out of The Montord alone? Was I dreaming when I stared down at her figure on the bed? Was she really dead then, butchered by a quick and certain hand? Or was she using me for a patsy, in some way that I couldn’t understand? The quick memory of my last few moments with her on the lawn, the flash of her worried face just before she ran from me, these were the pictures I couldn’t wipe out. And memory sweated me to action.

  I said, “I can’t afford to lose her, Lili. Not now. It’ll cost me heavy dough if she gets away.”

  “What makes you think she won’t come back?”

  “I can’t take the chance. Get dressed. You and I are going for a little ride.”

  “Oh, God, not now,” she moaned. She was working hard to tell me that it was nicer in here. She rolled over toward the wall and the robe came away and she was as naked as an undiapered baby. But I was in no mood for bedroom bundling now. I pulled her out of bed and stood her up. She made it tough for me to hustle her toward the closet, where she pouted and puffed as she slipped into a dress and adjusted herself for the night air. She was heading for the john and I stopped her.

  “No make-up,” I told her. “We’re not going to be seen, Lili.”

  She shrugged and came with me, throwing a light raincoat over her and stumbling after me down the hall and across the parking lot to my car. Suddenly, she was no longer drunk. Suddenly, she was quiet and thoughtful. Sitting alongside me in the car, she lapsed into a long and meditative silence, huddling against the far door in a tight knot of sullen anger. Or was she only frightened? She came alive when I asked her the first important question.

  “How long would it take her to get through the woods and out the other side to Monticello?”

  “Maybe twenty minutes,” Lili said. “If she knew the road.”

  “And if she didn’t?”

  “I’ve seen people go down the west road and come back maybe a half hour later, because they couldn’t find their way and wound up on Indian Cliff.”

  She wasn’t kidding. The story of the west road and Indian Cliff was part of the legend of The Montord. When Schenk made his first purchase, he bought only enough land for the original nine-hole golf course, a tricky little layout that spread itself down among the rolling hills to the lakeside. But a few years ago, Schenk decided to enlarge the domain of his great hotel. He purchased a huge tract of land and began to make plans for the best eighteen-hole golf course in the East. The New York papers were full of his daring ambition. Schenk had bought the whole of Indian Cliff, a lump of acreage that included a mountain and a virgin forest preserve big enough to add a ski trail and the new golf course to the sprawling properties of The Montord. Already the ski experts had begun to hack away at the high trees, clearing the ground for a group of runs that would rival Lake Placid and thus lure the winter customers away from the northern part of the state to the more accessible reaches of The Montord.

  We crossed the entrance and started on the upgrade, a winding dirt road that led along the rim of the great hill and skirted a small stream. A mile ahead there was a crossroad, marked by a rough post. But somebody had thrown up a barricade on the right. I killed the motor and got out. Beyond the barricade, the rutted road was full of machinery, tractors and cranes and a bevy of covered mechanisms they must have been using on the big trees.

  There was a watchman’s shack on the hill, squatting under the big pines. I honked my horn, but nobody came out. Then we heard the sound of a distant motor and two big white eyes flashed around the hill up there, and a jeep came rattling down the pass. A man leaped out and ran across the road. He mopped his brow with a feverish hand. He was sweating and blowing.

  “Chet Fowler,” Lile said. “The watchman. Ask him if he saw her go up.”

  But Chet gave me no time for questions. He skipped to the side of the car and squinted at Lili. He began to talk in a high and cracked voice.

  “Up on Indian Cliff,” he wheezed. “Nasty accident. Car just went over the side. Down into the gully. Saw the fire from my shack and went up to check on it. Bad. Real bad.”

  “What kind of a car?” I asked.

  “Convertible. Almost killed myself getting down to it. But there’s nothing left of it. Nothing.” He started frantically for his shack and paused and turned and shook his head slowly and with a hopeless rhythm. “Woman in the car. She was burned to a crisp.”

  Lili managed a muffled scream and buried her head in her hands and began to sob. I revved the motor and headed up the incline, bouncing and bumping along the graveled road. I was in one hell of a hurry to reach the top and examine the ruins of that convertible.

  Because I knew that the woman in it was Grace Lasker.

  And I also knew that she had been murdered.

  But twice!

  CHAPTER 5

  Captain Jorgenson of the local constabulary shifted his fat can in the chair and frowned down at the card he was holding in his hand. He made faces at the card, turning it in his stubby fingers and examining it with the air of a doctor brooding over a contagious disease. He sniffed once or twice and turned his sunburned head to look out of the window at the girls around The Montord pool. A little spark of interest flickered in his flat eyes as he stared at the passing bumps. But it died almost immediately when he swung around my way.

  “So you’re a private detective, is that it?” he said, eying me with the cold and frozen stare of all professional policemen.

  “That’s what the card says,” I said.

  “What did you want to see me about, Conacher?”

  “About the corpse,” I said. “I was hired by her husband, a man named Haskell M. Lasker, of the Park Ronat Apartments, in New York City. I tailed her up here by way of Philadelphia and booked a room here to watch her. I was to report her whereabouts to Mr. Lasker.”

  “What detained you?” he asked. The cigarette hung on his lower lip and bobbled as he talked. The smoke was killing him, drifting up into his right eye and making him squint. But he was too much of a man to let the smoke beat him. Instead he allowed his right eye to drip moisture. “Why didn’t you make your report as soon as you came into The Montord?”

  “I was in no hurry. I didn’t think Mrs. Lasker was going anywhere.”

&nbs
p; “She fooled you, didn’t she?”

  “I’m not so sure,” I said. “She didn’t look like the type of dame who would kill herself, Captain.”

  “Now you’re an expert on suicides?” Captain Jorgenson banged the cigarette out under his heel, making a big production out of it. “How the hell do you know what she’d do?”

  “I met the lady.”

  “So what? What are you—a psychiatrist, or something? The coroner just phoned in that she died of burns. Her body was all banged up. Bones broken. But the coroner didn’t find anything at all that smelled of murder, Conacher.”

  “Maybe he couldn’t, if she was burned badly enough.”

  “Meaning what?” He was giving me only the corner of his attention again, eating the girls out there with his eager eyes. He was deliberately killing me with his disdain, working his body around so that all I could see of his face was the line of wrinkles between his collar and his hair line. He addressed only the swimming pool now. “You sound like something out of the movies, Conacher. You’re knocking yourself out trying to play the big smart private eye.”

  Paul Forstenburg, the manager of the hotel, came in and sat down. He was sweating small bullets, having trouble controlling his face. He always twitched when the ulcers were thumping him. Paul Forstenburg fought hard to retain his poise, giving me the frozen smile he beamed at all the customers in the big lobby of The Montord. It was his job to preserve the dignity and decorum of the great resort. He grinned at Jorgenson with the souped-up affection of a bachelor over a small child. They exchanged the slow and meaningful eyeburn that told me they had reached a perfect understanding a long time ago. Nothing on earth could ever ruffle the quiet calm of The Montord. Neither rape, mayhem, degeneracy nor murder really mattered to either of them. Jorgenson had been reached. His oily palm had been tickled with folding money. His mouth was sealed by way of the quick buck. And Jorgenson liked it. Forstenburg had nothing to worry about. The big rustic flatfoot was playing it the right way. He had spoken to the coroner and the news was extra good for The Montord. Mrs. H. M. Lasker had grown sad and psychopathic. She had hopped into her convertible and wheeled it up the lonely road to Indian Cliff. And there she had paused only long enough to steer the car over the ledge and down into the rocks below where it burned conveniently, so that all that remained of Mrs. H. M. Lasker was a smoldering corpse—and a bad memory. It was a pat case of suicide for Jorgenson. But in my book it was murder.