Knife at My Back

by Lawrence Lariar

  “Not yet, I didn’t.”

  “What held you up?”

  “You,” I said. “I wanted to chew it over with you first. There’s a hick cop downstairs who figures Grace killed herself. The deal is all wrapped up, Archy. Case closed, as they say in the law courts. But I could open it up again if I wanted to. I could open it wide. All I have to do is walk down and slap the dumb hick on the head and tell him I saw you come out of her room last night.”

  “I’ll be damned,” said Archy weakly. “I guess you’re right, Conacher.”

  “But I don’t want to do that, Archy. You know why? Because this crumb cop Jorgenson gives me a pain where I sit down. It’ll give me kicks to wrap this thing up and then throw it at him. But hard. Because I liked Grace Lasker. And I want to grab the character who butchered her. With a knife.”

  Something snapped in Archy’s face and he got up and began to roam the room. He pounded his big fists briskly, making a fiat, smacking noise. He jerked his way to the window, but found nothing out there to soothe him. I saw his big head go down and heard the thick and troubled sound of his sobbing. It was enough to make me look away. The sight of a man breaking down is no tonic for me. And Archy was completely flattened by my revelation. I began to talk, slowly and quietly, telling him how I had found her, hoping to break through his outburst of hysterics, to force him into the quick and revealing patter that sometimes follows sudden sorrow. He only stood there, frozen at the window, banging his futile fist against the wall and saying nothing until I was all finished.

  “The dirty louse, the dirty louse,” he said huskily. “I should have watched her after I left the lake. Jesus, it could be my fault, peeper. It could be my fault, all the way.”

  “Where did you go when you came out of it?” I asked.

  “To the bar,” he said, his brow furrowed. “Then I came up here to my room and bandaged myself up and hit the hay.”

  “What time was that?”

  “Maybe eleven-thirty. Maybe closer to twelve.”

  “And you stayed here?”

  “What else?”

  “Somebody drove Grace out of the lot, in her convertible.”

  “You don’t think I did it?”

  “Why not?” I asked. He reacted to my doubts with something resembling the petulance of a small boy going to bed without supper. He shook his head at me hopelessly, sadly. He coughed and growled, not angrily, but in a jittery, woebegone way.

  Then he began to stroll again, around and around the room, as restless as an expectant father. Was he mumbling feeble threats? Or making up his mind to throttle me where I sat? It took time for him to work out the fury he was in, to let his massive frame sag into a chair. The sorrow was gone from his saucer eyes now. His simmering restlessness began to die. And after a little while he was ready to talk again.

  Slowly and thoughtfully now, he said, “You look like a good guy, Conacher. I’ll level with you. It don’t make sense for you to think I had anything to do with killing Grace. Not me. Not an old friend like me. You got to believe me when I tell you I want to grab that killer as much as you. Maybe more. Maybe there’s a chance I’ll get to him first, and if that happens the bastard will get his neck broken. Because I feel just the same as you do about Grace. You know how long Grace and I have been friends? Get a picture of this, Conacher. It goes back a long ways—back to the days when she was going up in burlesque, when she used to be the best doll in the business at belly rolls and grinds.”

  “You were on the stage?” I asked.

  “A comic,” Archy said quietly. “I was a pratt-fall comic. Not the top banana, Conacher. But I could make them laugh with my falls. You know what they used to call me? You remember a comic named Falling Funk, maybe? That’s me.”

  “Of course I do,” I lied. It was warming him to be remembered, and I wanted him loose and warm and cooperative. “You’re modest, Archy. You were the best in the trade.”

  “Well, some people thought I did better than Sliding Billy Watson.” He rolled his eyes sadly and shook his big head. “Especially Grace.”

  “Tell me about her.”

  “You mean back then? Ah, she was terrific, Conacher. She was the hottest dame on the boards. They used to break their hands clapping for her. And nice? Good? Grace was a dream, not like the other bump dames on the wheel. The others were after the buck, knocking around with any guy who came along with a fast pitch and a promise. Most of the dolls would roll over and play for a free dinner. But not Grace. She didn’t horse around. She had a steady guy—and she would have married him if he didn’t get knocked off in an auto accident. It damn near broke my heart when she had to quit the wheel because of the baby.”

  “What happened to the baby?”

  “Adopted. She had to let the kid go. How in hell can you drag a baby around in burlesque? It broke her heart, but it had to be done. Couple by the name of Armette adopted it.”

  “Armette?” The name was setting off a shower of mental sparks, backing me through the recent past. “Funny name.”

  “Unusual.”

  “I’ve heard it recently.” The name was a challenge. Where had I heard it last? I put myself on a one-way route into the events leading to The Montord, skimming quickly to my desk in New York and beginning the trek from there. Armette? The name rang no bell against the background of my mouse nest on Forty-fifth Street. My list of clients contained nothing resembling a French type of name, nor did any of my friends and acquaintances own such a title. You skim the cream off memory’s glass and after that you’re down below in the subtle depths of incident and coincident. Armette? I might have read the name on a box of cheese, or a store front, or a bottle of liquor. A movie star? A celebrity? The name of my tailor? I shook them all off and dipped deeper into my storehouse of recollection. I began all over again the trip to H. M. Lasker’s office and relived the interview with him and accepted the assignment to tail his wife. And then I was in my car, riding behind her to Philadelphia and beyond Philadelphia into the hills of the Catskills.

  And then I had it, suddenly! The farmhouse where she stopped to spend the night. I stood once again alongside my car, looking down the road at the little colonial dwelling, my eyes alert and alive to the landscape. There was a mailbox at the gate.

  And the name on the tin box was Armette, of course!

  I said, “There’s an Armette over in Taylorville.”

  “Is that so?” said Archy.

  “You didn’t know about it?”

  “I know from nothing.”

  “Grace didn’t mention it?”

  “Why should she?”

  “Let me ask the questions, Archy,” I said. “Just what did you and Grace talk about last night?”

  “Old times. Mostly old times.”

  “How did she seem to you?”

  “Terrific. Grace always hit me as a hell of a woman.”

  “I mean the way she sounded. Worried? Upset? Sad?”

  “Sad, maybe—a little.”

  “And why was she up here?”

  “Who’d ask her a question like that?” Archy said, with a shrug. “Do I mind her business?”

  “You took a crack at it. She asked you to take me for a ride?”

  “That she did. She wanted you out of the way, but she didn’t give me any reasons. A couple of hours, she said.”

  “It doesn’t make sense.”

  “I agree,” Archy said. “But it’s the truth. Don’t forget, I want to help you clean this thing up, Conacher. You got to believe me, all the way. I’m leveling.”

  “Then start straining,” I told him. “Let your hair down and tell me what you came up here for.”

  “Up here?” Archy examined me with the incredulous look of an elephant viewing a mouse. “For a week-end, naturally. But I’ve been here before. You can check me down at the desk. Ask Lili about me. Jesus, I’m
an old customer up here. It just so happens I bump into Grace Borden last night, after maybe nineteen years. So I give her a big hello and she asks me to come to see her in her room. She says she needs my help. And I go to see her. You know the rest. It’s as corny as that, Conacher. You think I’m maybe lying to you?”

  “I’ll buy it, all the way,” I lied. There was nothing to be gained by fighting him. Not now. If he was putting on an act, he was a greater thespian than John Barrymore. He fairly oozed sincerity and honesty.

  “I’m glad,” Archy said, and grabbed my hand and pumped it. He had a grip as tender as a steel clamp. “I figure I can help you a lot, peeper.”

  “You’ll be around?”

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Good idea,” I said. “Because if you try to leave, I’ll have a big slob named Jorgenson after you on his horse.”

  “Aw, cut it, Conacher. I’m with you.”

  I paused to look back at him from the doorway. He gave me his limpid eyes now, loading them with the deep and trusting focus of a faithful dog eyeing his master. He waited for me to grin at him before he waved his hand. I returned the friendly gesture.

  And I said, “I’m with you, too, Archy. Don’t forget that.”

  CHAPTER 7

  After dinner, my stomach felt as light as a basket of lead. The Montord fed its guests well, offering such foods as one orders at the top bistros in New York, an assortment of plain and fancy culinary delights calculated to tickle the palate and deaden the diner for the rest of the day. So I walked toward the west road, passing up my car in favor of the prospect of fresh air and exercise. Around the lawn and under the trees, the sated guests took their ease in a variety of activities involving nothing more muscular than card lifting and tongue wagging.

  Beyond the entrance to the west road, the caretaker met me and held me with rural badinage.

  “Funny how people get all excited about a thing like this,” he said. “Like animals they are, sniffing around a dead body to find out what they can bite at. Don’t understand it.”

  “Lots of them went up this morning?” I asked.

  “Could have made me a fortune at two bits a head, mister.”

  “Remember seeing a man with bandaged hands, maybe? Stocky man? He had a bandage on his forehead, too, up over his right eye.”

  “Can’t say I saw him,” said the caretaker. “And I’d remember him, too, son, because I got that kind of mind. Any special reason?”

  “Friend of mine,” I said. “Just wondered whether he went up.”

  “Not past me, he didn’t.”

  The road climbed sharply after a dip beyond the shack. Along the rim of the mountain, the earth was soft and rocky so that a shower of loose pebbles and silt scattered with every footstep. On the right, as I moved upward, the full beauty of the little valley under Indian Cliff fell beneath my eyes. Down there they would be building the new golf course and next year the big trees would be cut down and long fairways hewn out of the virgin woods. But right now the valley was a shadowed wilderness abounding in towering pines and oaks and occasional giant poplars, their leafy heights forming a canopy of soft and velvety green over the lowlands. Beyond the first steep rise, the road leveled out and the ruts were deeper and trickier. It would take a master driver to negotiate this narrow canyon. How could they believe that Grace Lasker had steered her convertible up here in the darkness? Even now, in the fast gathering dusk, the lumpy road challenged me at every step, forcing me away from the edge in a reflex of caution. I made use of the flashlight I had brought along, running the beam ahead of me against the rocky crust of the mountain. Up a few hundred yards there was a steep grade before the small plateau that was the parking lot. Only an expert driver, a person who had driven this last dangerous slope often could wheel a car up this ridge with confidence. Somebody had escorted Grace Lasker to her second death. And that somebody knew his way around these hills. I muttered a few obscenities when I thought of the big country cop, Jorgenson. He had acquitted all of them back at the hotel.

  On the crest of the rise, the earth seemed softer, deeply grooved by the few cars that had come up here earlier in the day. I studied the ground for tire marks, hoping for a quick crumb, some sign of the tires on her convertible. But it was a losing game. The road was cut up and in disorder, as though a few tractors had deliberately plowed here. And then I was up over the last crest and standing on the rim of Indian Cliff.

  Around me, the landscape was a sight of overpowering beauty. In the pocket of the valley, a swirl of lazy mist oozed and flowed over the treetops, filling the canyon with an eerie gray glow. Now the deepening shadows hugged the other side of the hill and the dome of sky sent off a hazy radiance that added mystery and loneliness to the scene. The sun had abandoned the crest of the opposite mountain a long time ago. Silence screamed at me, a hushed and deathly stillness, punctured once in a while by the muted call of a bird from far away. Poetic? The place was built for soft words and limpid phrases. Yet, in this spot horror clawed at my stomach. Because Grace Lasker’s car had dropped to doom from here.

  There was a temporary barrier along the rim of the makeshift parking space, a few uprights and crossbars made of rough timber, cut and sawed from the big trees behind. But the crossbars in the center of the fence were cracked and broken, hanging crazily over the edge. I leaned over and stared into the pit of gloom.

  The height dizzied me. Directly beneath me, the cliff fell away on a straight line for about fifty feet. At that point, a huge boulder must have broken her fall and rolled the car in its mad flight until it came to rest against the lesser rocks like a child’s toy, crumpled and crippled and bright with sudden flame. My light barely reached the car, but I could make out the rear mudguard, a pale yellow glow against the rusty color of the surrounding landscape.

  There was a winding path going down on the left side of the barrier, a rough footpath that led perilously to the bottom of the first drop. I slid over the barrier and started down. Stumps of dead trees jutted into the narrow pass at crazy angles, but they were a thankful help in the descent. Under my feet, the earth was a carpet of boulders that skittered and ran with every step, bouncing ahead of me and hitting the hard rock below with an odd noise. It was easy to slip and slide down to the first level. But coming back would be a sweating strain. I let myself go for the last few yards and jumped. Then I was down, the thin mists swirling around me. I lit my light and started for the wreck ahead.

  The car lay on its side, as though pushed over by a giant hand. The chassis no longer had the trim, sleek lines of a convertible, and the entire hood was ripped off, exposing the motor. Motor? The guts of the convertible looked like something out of a junkman’s nightmare. The steering rod had twisted and snapped and the wheel itself lay off and away from the car. I examined the gas tank and found a gaping hole on the underside. Fire had eaten all of the interior of the car and the dashboard no longer glistened with slick finish. I stood there making faces at the driver’s seat, calculating the extent of damage this accident might have wrought to Grace Lasker’s svelte body. If she had burned, she had burned brightly, because the mass of metal would have trapped her and kept her in one place, the hottest spot of all. I flipped the flashlight over the dashboard. There was a small clock on the right side. The glass was cracked. The clock had died, too, at the same moment when the car smacked against the ridge of rock. The hands stood at 1:24.

  The mangled mass of wreckage fascinated me. But nothing flared in my mind to hold me there any longer. My brain burned with the rich and frightened colors of the death of Grace Lasker. It hurt to stand and think. Because the memory of her set off a chain reaction behind my ears, complete with all the overtones of her sad and questioning eyes. It made me mad to think of her. Somebody, some clever bastard back at The Montord had engineered her death. There was work to be done, and the sweat and fury of my anger turned me back to the cliff and started me cla
wing at the rocks and trees to get up to the road and on my way to the hunt.

  But somebody up there had other ideas!

  Suddenly, out of nowhere, I heard the clacking noise of falling rocks, faintly at first, but building in intensity. And then they were rolling and grumbling around and about me. A boulder cracked against my hand and loosened it from the tree stump I had been clutching. A thousand pebbles spattered and bounced on all sides. But the pebbles only bounced. It was the big rocks that hurt, the giant boulders that followed in the wake of the lesser stones, tumbling and thudding as they screamed down the narrow pass. An avalanche of as sorted rocks struck on every side of me. I began to drop back, slipping and sliding without direction, protecting my head with my hands as I fell. There was an overhanging ledge down there and I struggled to slide underneath it. And just in time, my final dive brought me panting and cursing beneath its shelter.

  Because bigger ones were dropping now.

  A crowbar must have been used to dislodge them. They were tremendous. They were massive stones, tons of them, pounding down and then rolling and tumbling like giant bowling balls to crash beyond me into the wreck, where they set off a horrible jangle. The noise echoed in the valley. And after a while, the silence came again.

  He was finished up there.

  I crept out and slid along the ground on my stomach, blessing the semi-darkness that screened me from the cliff above. Was there a man up there? It seemed to me that something stirred against the sky a vague and fleeting silhouette. And then it was gone.

  I listened. But the acoustics of the valley were bad for any noises from above. Whoever it was must be on his way now, back through the road and down to The Montord. Or would he be waiting for me up there?

  I slid beyond the wreck and started slowly through the forest. It would take more time to reach the road this way, but I was in no mood for sweating up that cliff. The trees were thick here. The ground smelled sweetly wet and fragrant, the effect of much dampness on the heavy carpet of ancient leaves. I walked only a few feet and then sat on a boulder and lit a cigarette and mopped my hot head.