Knife at My Back

by Lawrence Lariar

  Parrish, Patterson, Paxton, Pensando, Petch, Plandome, Platt, Prackerman, Prissonde, Proutty, Prynster.

  The side-streets of New York are frequented by a strange crew of hustlers in the trade of merchandising sinful properties. You can find them in the moth-eaten hotels off Broadway, in dirty rooms, leased as combination bedrooms and contact joints for the purveyors of filth. Running a bachelor party? Arranging the last hectic night for a young groom-to-be? A knock on a special door brings special arrangements, including the bump and grind girls, the dancing whores and the actresses in staged sexhibitions of perversity and catch-as-catch-can tableaus.

  Rainer, Rainord, Raskin, Ravenhall, Repp, Resnick.

  Saddler, Sansone, Satterman, Segrette, Service, Silver.

  Taberly, Taft, Tarnell, Tedlington, Thomas, Torse.

  Valdone, Varick, Voshin.

  Walsh, Wannott.

  Yardley...

  Back through the past, beyond the little cubicle in which labored, through the walls around me and down a dirty street, I wandered. Somewhere in that dusty maze of memory, a light was flickering in my dulled brain. There was a certain street in New York, in the midtown area, beyond the clustered theaters in the Forties, and I strolled the street, following a man. There was an alley leading down into a cellar, past the assorted debris that lined the rear exit to a stinking eatery, and under the restaurant into the damp and moldy smell of dry rot. Deep under the rotting façade of an ancient hotel, I tailed a man. His name was Harry Bogash, a little crud who had abandoned his wife and three sprouts for a fling at life in the dark and ulcerated world of cheap sex and sensation.

  Bogash had signed in at The Crayton, using the name Hal Black, the usual habit of all who run and ride and usually salvage their former initials in the new name. I made the locate on him and watched him for a day or so. Harry Bogash floated. He made the rounds of all the clubs. He attended all the sporting events. He drank much, and often. And then, one day, in the lobby, he made contact with the man who would lead him into the bawdy world of the easy women.

  I followed Harry Bogash to the rendezvous and paid my way into the group gathered in the cellar under the old hotel. The show was on when I arrived. A few dozen men made up the audience, seated at broken-down tables, where they sipped beer straight out of the bottle, and stared with bedazzled eyes at the performance going on before them. The scene was something out of a nightmare. From somewhere buried in the cobwebbed shadows, a cheap phonograph played a metallic bump tune, squealing the rhythm in an off-key bounce. In the cleared space dead ahead, a girl minced into view and began her dance, weaving and bumping, grinding and thumping, her eyes closed, her mouth half open in the sensuous expression of the trained tease artist. She wore nothing but high-heeled shoes and black silk stockings, pulled high on her gleaming shanks and held there by a trick garter. The boys applauded her lustily. But she was only the hors-d’ouevre for the big deal coming. And when it came, when the star performers appeared for the orgiastic tableaus and uninhibited dramas, I stepped forward and tapped Harry Bogash on the shoulder.

  He came willingly. He was a timid crud who had lost much money and more weight in his brief expedition away from home. He had left his wife to do the things he always dreamed of doing. And now he was finished. He told me all over a cup of coffee, before I escorted him home to his suburban nest in the town of Merrick, on Long Island. Who was the man who sold him the ticket to the orgy? Bogash remembered, and the name was familiar to me.

  But that was five years ago, and now the name was gone again. I had seen it in the files. I had passed it in my research and it was reacting on me, stirring up the buried memories. An odd name.

  I went back to the file and thumbed through the last few cards. How long ago had I seen the name? An hour? A half hour? I backtracked beyond the Yardleys and the Valdones, the Taberlys and the Saddlers. And then I paused.

  The name was with me, in my fingers, on the card I held in my hand.

  Hugo Repp!

  Repp, the stage manager, the promoter, the stag reel salesman, the bachelor party expert, the grind gal tycoon, the filthy picture vendor, the undisputed czar of vice in the flesh-pot area of New York City. Repp! What had happened to him during the five years since my business with Harry Bogash? At that time, Repp was a cheap operator, a man with an office under his hat, a slimy contact to the big boys in the sex game, a pimp for a price. But Repp had blossomed and bloomed over the years. Repp now diffused his talents and dipped deeper into the gold-lined coffers of organized vice. Repp had graduated into the wholesale business, with his own staff of agents who made the dates for the dancing girls and the performing perverts. Repp had cemented his arrangements with the police, a man of cunning and conniving. Repp hauled in the shekels from a variety of enterprises and his take was rumored to reach five figures a week. Repp was fabulous. Repp was fantastic.

  And Hugo Repp had a room in The Montord!

  “Hugo Repp!” I said aloud, overcome by the mental hot-foot I had given myself.

  And somebody answered, “Hello, sucker.”

  The sound of his voice jerked me around as though pulled by a sudden string. It was Jorgenson. He stood in the doorway, a big man with a bigger purpose, his hard face suddenly sober, his mouth a dirty line of evil. He had a gun in his hand and was showing me that it could do me damage, the bad end aimed at a point between my eyes. His entrance had been carefully staged, and I hated him for his crafty cunning. He must have known that I’d be heading here. He must have watched me after I passed him in the hall and then waited until I walked down the alley and climbed in the window. After that, he took his time about coming in after me, more concerned with the bottle under Dan Coates’ chair, maybe.

  But his liquored air had dissolved.

  He stepped forward and nudged me with the gun. “I’ve been waiting for this, Conacher.”

  “You’ve got it,” I said. “Now what?”

  “I can kill you if I like.”

  “So you can.”

  “And maybe I will,” he said briskly. “I never forget an insult.” He laughed quietly, snaking his eyes beyond me at the open filing cabinet, adding me up and finding the total confusing and irritating. “What were you doing in here?”

  “Browsing,” I said. “One of my hobbies—reading index cards.”

  “You said a name before. What was it?”

  “Herbert Hoover.”

  “What was the name, Conacher?” He put his body behind the gun and it bit into me, deep under the heart, so that he forced me back against the wall. Then he brought up his left hand and gave me a quick massage, across the jaw. Twice. And hard. He shook the headache out of my brain and made me see small and colored fantasies, the quick and hectic confusion that comes when the head is out of rhythm with the body.

  “I never was good at remembering names,” I said.

  He slapped me aside and bent over the filing cabinet. He ran his dirty thumb down the cards and found nothing to interest him. He leaned against the drawer and slammed it shut. “Petty larceny,” he said, with an artificial sigh. “But enough for me to take a shot at you, Conacher. Maybe that’s the best idea, after all. Maybe I ought to let you have just one bullet, but where it’ll put you away permanently. Hell, what have I got to lose? It’s a perfect set-up for knocking you off. And nobody’d even question me. Done in the line of duty, they’d say.”

  “You haven’t got guts enough, Jorgenson.”

  “Jesus, but you’re cocky,” he laughed. “You don’t think I’d do it?”

  “I think you’ve got soup in your blood.”

  “Clever talk,” he said, and hit me again. This time he managed to connect with a nerve center, a slap that caught me off balance because he found the tip of my jaw.

  The pain cut deep and wobbled my head and skittered down my spine.

  I was on the floor at the base of the cabinet, my he
ad on a loose hinge after it bumped and dented the files. Up there, he loomed as small as the good ship Queen Mary to a passing tug. A hand came down and found my collar and snapped me up to lean against the wall and puff and cough at him.

  “The name?” he said. “You said a name.”

  “Dwight D. Eisenhower.”

  “You want more?”

  “Soup,” I insisted. “Weak consommé in your blood, Jorgenson.”

  “Why, you little bastard,” he yapped.

  And raised his hand to hit me again. But I ducked this time and his muscled fist crashed into the metal file and his mouth opened in a roar of pain. His gun hand didn’t waver, however. He stepped back and away from me and began to laugh at me, waving the gun in a small arc and letting me feel the full weight of his nasty ambition. He treated me to a close-up of his trigger finger, twitching on the gun. He showed me that this time he would not curb his vicious temper. He lifted the gun slightly.

  And he would have shot me.

  If Lili hadn’t wandered in.

  “What’s happening?” she asked, frightened by the tableau.

  “Your friend Jorgenson was just planning to shoot me,” I said.

  “He’s off his rocker,” Jorgenson said. “I caught the little bastard flat-footed, robbing your office, Lili.”

  “Robbing?” Lili asked, still jittery. “Robbing what, for God’s sake?”

  “Just browsing, Lili,” I said.

  “Steve isn’t a thief,” she told Jorgenson, and stepped up to me and let me feel her cold hand on the side of my jaw. I jerked away from it. My face was as sensitive as a baby’s fanny. But Lili was hell-bent on mothering me. She stayed close, so close that I could catch the alcoholic aura that rolled around her. She faced Jorgenson angrily. “If Steve came in here, he had a damned good reason, Jorgenson. Aside from all that, we have a house dick who’s supposed to take care of patrolling this place. You’re over your head here.”

  “So is Dan Coates,” Jorgenson said apologetically. “You’ll find him on the lawn, stewed under a tree. Only thought I’d help out, Lili.”

  “You thought wrong,” Lili said.

  “You gave this little peeper the privilege of examining your files?” he asked.

  “What I give Steve is my business.”

  “Sorry again. I didn’t think you cared.”

  “Shake your fat can out of here,” Lili screamed. “Before I scratch your eyes out.”

  “I can take a hint,” Jorgenson said slyly, tucking away his automatic and showing me that he still thought I was fruit for the garbage can. “Nighty night, little man. Whatever you’ve got, you must have it in spades.”

  I let him have the last word and he lumbered out, not bothering to look back at us. Lili got some cold water and a soft sponge and insisted on massaging my face until it felt better. Her impulse might have been genuine, but I couldn’t help catching the alcoholic overtones of her sympathy. What had happened to her? Was she a permanent dipso? She stayed with me until she thought I felt better and then treated me to a quick drink from her hidden bottle in the outer office.

  “That Jorgenson is a bad boy,” she said. “I’ll have to report this to Paul.”

  “I don’t understand Jorgenson,” I said. “What’s he hanging around The Montord for? The Lasker case is closed.”

  “Is it?”

  “Officially, it was wrapped up the minute the coroner called it suicide. But Jorgenson seems to enjoy it here.”

  “I suppose he does, Steve. After all, he always hung around on weekends. It’s sort of expected, I guess.”

  “He has a room?”

  “Over in the service wing.”

  “Why does Paul have him here?”

  Lili shrugged, making an intemperate face at the discussion. “That’s Paul’s business, so I don’t ask questions, Steve. A hotel this size needs a lot of help on the outside. The management gives plenty of moola to both political parties, just in case.”

  “In case of something like the Lasker case?”

  “It could be.”

  “Stop being a politician yourself,” I said. “You know damned well that Paul buttered Jorgenson up to the ears. I’ll lay ten to one he even pays the big hick regularly, in hard cash, for emergencies like this.”

  “Forget about Jorgenson, darling.” She leaned my way across the desk and refilled my glass and let her eyes talk to me. “Did you get what you wanted from the files? Can I help you?”

  “I got what I wanted, Lili.”

  “You were checking on somebody?”

  “Everybody.”

  “Still think the Lasker woman was murdered?”

  “I’m sure of it,” I said.

  “Paul wouldn’t like to hear that.”

  “You won’t tell Paul.”

  “Coax me.”

  “No time now,” I said. “Listen, Lili—you’re the only real friend I have up here. I want you to keep your pretty little lip buttoned.”

  “Manny,” she said, out of a deep cloud. “Isn’t Manny a friend of yours, too?”

  “Of course he is. But not as close as you.”

  And I gave her a brotherly kiss and started for the door. She came after me, encouraged by my affection. She clung to me before I could turn the knob, rubbing herself against me and working to hold me with her. I couldn’t help but react to her deliberate gestures. I couldn’t help but wonder about her new personality, the forceful and aggressive drive of the seasoned nymphomaniac. Something had happened to Lili Zenda in the recent past. She was going to hell in a hurry, knocking herself out because of her frustrated passion for Manny Erlich, the little man with the fickle heart. It was an effort to pull away from her, and when I worked the door open, finally, she eyed me with a mixture of sadness and futility.

  “When will I see you, Stevie?”

  “Sooner than you expect.”

  “Tonight, maybe?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Be careful,” she said, with a sigh. “And stay away from Jorgenson.”

  “I’ll do my best,” I said, and walked away from her fast.

  She was still standing framed in the doorway, her sleepy eyes riveted on me as I crossed the lobby and headed for the front door. I had only a moment to steal a quick glance back at her, in the split second when I pushed against the chrome handle of the door and felt it give way before me. Lili seemed frozen in the pose, motionless against the frame of the doorway to the inner office. In the pause, she watched me with an eager worry. Her penciled eyebrows were down, scowling across the gap of space that separated us. Her lipsticked mouth seemed suddenly sober and sane, a crimson blot of unsmiling and sympathetic softness. Only her head moved, slowly, from side to side in a woebegone, negative gesture.

  And then she was lost to me as I stepped into the outdoors and headed for The Branton, across the garden.

  CHAPTER 12

  Hugo Repp was having a party.

  It was a private affair, low-pitched and orderly, confined to his lush suite in The Branton. At the end of the main hall, the last door led to Repp’s rooms, a small wing of the main building, recently added to accommodate the fanciest customers only. The big picture windows faced the sixth hole of the golf course and the rooms themselves were the quietest in the hotel. I stood outside the door listening to the silken strains of another rhumba. The Montord was lousy with Spanish music, but the music on the other side of Repp’s door seemed to come through a muffler, filtered and weak, yet carrying all the basic qualities of the instruments involved in the composition. Above the Spanish beat, the sound of a woman’s laugh came occasionally, high and gay and out of control. I couldn’t hear Repp’s voice.

  So I banged his door.

  Repp opened up for me.

  “What?” he asked, a bundle of annoyance, a butterball of arrogance, a little man with
a big drive. His puffed eyes didn’t seem to focus on me. He was looking at something over my right shoulder.

  And I was doing the same, over his. Darlene stood beyond him, her svelte frame wriggling in a solo dance. She paused when she saw me, frozen and suddenly stilt. Then she smiled and came up behind him and put her arms around his neck and squeezed.

  And she said, “It’s the little peeper, Hugo. Steve Conacher.”

  “Peeper?” Repp asked himself. On the small table near the window inside, the record had come to its end. The machine clicked and flipped and another disc dropped on the turn table an another Spanish melody skittered and bounced. Darlene couldn’t control her body under the stress and strain of the music. Behind him, she bumped gently, grinding her hips as she embraced him. Her eyes were as sleepy as two seconds.

  “You want to talk out here in the hall?” I asked.

  “The hell with talk,” Repp said angrily. “Come back in the morning.”

  “Isn’t he cute?” Darlene asked.

  “The morning will be too late,” I said.

  “You heard what I said,” Repp scowled, working to intimidate me with his gold-filled snarl.

  “Stevie’s a nice boy, Hugo. Let’s give him a drink.”

  She slipped away from him and grabbed me and tugged me inside. She got me a glass of liquor, disregarding Repp’s sulky pout. Darlene was geared for intimate pastimes, dressed in a creation of silver and sparkle, a gown that somebody had designed to be poured on her. But she wasn’t built for such confinement and parts of her struggled and strained to come loose from the barrier of silk that held them in check. She wriggled and bounced to the fresh record, making sly eyes at me.

  “We never did finish that rhumba, Stevie,” she cooed, challenging me with her eyes. “How about it? I was just giving Mr. Repp a rhumba lesson when you knocked. Now we can demonstrate.”