Knife at My Back

by Lawrence Lariar

  “Which others? I want them all.”

  “My partner, Chico.”

  “Is that all?”

  “A man named Funk,” she continued. “Archy Funk, his name was.”

  “No women?”

  “I can’t be sure. Margo came into the bar at the time, but it was only for a quick one. She said something to Buddy Binns and then scrammed. I don’t know whether she heard Repp make the play for me.”

  “But you’re not sure?”

  Darlene yawned in my face. “Who can be sure of anything at this hour? Why don’t you be nice and call it quits until the morning?”

  The morning was upon us when I saw her inside her room and returned to the chilly garden. Far off beyond the ridge of hills, the sky glowed with a dull and pinkish hue. Behind me, as I walked to the parking lot, the first faint sounds of awakening life at The Montord rose and fell to puncture the silence and move me on my way. In the kitchen the lights burned and the good sweet odor of hot breads stabbed at my nose. From far down the valley, a rooster oiled his throat and let fly with his rustic call, an echoing cry that ululated through the hills. I got into my car and wheeled it up toward the gate.

  Jorgenson was there, his eyes bagged and dull from lack of sleep and too much alcoholic refresher. He slouched over to me and told the guard to beat it.

  “Going somewhere, peeper?” he asked.

  “Out,” I said. “Research.”

  “Where would that be?”

  “Taylorvile. Mean anything to you, Jorgenson?”

  “What does it mean to you?” he asked.

  “I’ll let you know when I get back.”

  “Now,” he said. “Tell me now.”

  “You still want to play games? You want me to get out of this crate and go back to sleep, Jorgenson? Because if you stand there and throw your weight at me, that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to go to my room and get the shut-eye I deserve, because I’ve been up all night. But I warn you, if that happens, I’m through. Finished. Washed up. I’m hot now, but I can cool off fast once my head hits the pillow. And then what’ll you do with the Repp case, Jorgenson? Got any bright ideas about it? Well, I have, but you’re blocking me because at heart you’re a mean and stubborn bastard. Now what’ll it be—Taylorville and a prayer? Or my pillow and a million bucks’ worth of lousy publicity for The Montord? Speak up, before I crawl into bed.”

  He rolled his rheumy eyes over me. But he knew that I meant business. And he also knew that he was standing squarely behind the eight ball.

  “When will you be back?” he asked lamely.

  “I thought you’d see it my way,” I said, and revved the motor and slid into gear fast, quick enough to make his mouth open as I moved away from him, in my rear-view mirror, he was a statue of shocked confusion, rubbing his sanded jaw as he watched me start down the road to Kenshaw Lake. He was still gawking at me when the road dipped and closed him away from me for good.

  Taylorville rose up before me inside twenty minutes, because it was early morning and I could burn the roads getting there. It was a tiny hamlet, the usual post office and single general store combination, plus a greasy all-night beanery disguised as. an ancient sleeping car out of an archaic railroad. I pulled up at the coffee dump and found a seat among the stray truck drivers who slurped their java and ate their eggs noisily. I ordered a solid breakfast and engaged the friendly chef in conversation.

  “Armette,” I said. “Know anybody in this town by that name?”

  “Only one Armette in this town,” said the egg fryer. “Old feller down near the creek. Place is lousy with dogs.”

  “What kind of dogs?”

  “All kinds. Used to train them for shows. Makes them do the craziest things you ever did see.”

  “How long has he lived in this neck of the woods?”

  “Not too long. Maybe two years. Maybe a little more.”

  I drank an extra cup of the blackest coffee this side of ink. It was corroded and angry in my stomach, but it scattered the growing cobwebs and did things to my drowsy mind. The road to Armette’s skirted a small lake and wound among a series of beaten-down boarding houses and fast rotting summer resorts. Taylorvile had shone in the sun for a brief period twenty years ago, but the world of vacationers had passed it by when the big hotels like The Montord came into being. Now it was only a quick stopover for the flood of traffic that slammed through its main street every summer, to roll out and away into the richer pastures beyond. But for this reason, the little town had a certain charm, a certain feeling of peace and quiet that couldn’t be bought anywhere else in the Catskills. Taylorville was a perfect place for a man to spend his last gray years. I wondered whether this could be Armette’s reason for living here, as I pulled my crate to the side of the road in front of his cottage. His home was something out of the dream books, a picture place, an old colonial house that seemed painted into the landscape by a master of such academic whimsies.

  A great baying and yelping of dogs greeted me as I passed through Armette’s front gate. The barking came from all around me, and before I reached his door, a half dozen as sorted poodles came galloping my way, not mean or nasty, but yapping greeting in a confusion of tongues. Then the door swung open and Armette himself stood before me.

  “You wish?” he smiled. He was a tiny man, as lean and bony as an adolescent youth with growing pains. He rubbed his hands as he talked, and his smile seemed graven on his leathery face, a rich and honest grin, surrounded by ancient wrinkles. Everything about him spelled old age. Everything but his eyes. They sparkled and shone with a youthful glow, twinkling a greeting at me.

  “Mr. Armette?” I said. “My name is Steve Conacher and I’m a private investigator. I’d like to talk to you.”

  “So? Will you come in, please?”

  He led me into the sitting room that looked like something out of House and Garden for January, 1918. There was a horseshoe sofa and a Morris chair and a variety of stiff and velveted items that sang of a charm no longer popular. In one corner, a tall and severe grandfather clock beat out the seconds with a rasping gasp. Across the room an old roll-top desk sat near the big window through which the garden beyond shone with a riot of fall foliage. There were cabinets filled with aged bric-a-brac, collections of spoons and decorated cups and porcelain figurines from a variety of places in this country and abroad. There was a door to the garden on the right side of the window. The old man walked to it and opened it and said a few words to the howling canines outside. The noise died as though cut from the air with a sharp knife.

  Armette smiled at his friends out there and closed the door and took the Morris chair near the window.

  “They are like people, the animals,” he said softly. “In this place they get lonely. That is why they speak to you so loud, to say welcome.” He produced a meerschaum pipe and lit it and ate the smoke for a small moment. “You said you were a private investigator, no? And you come to see Paul Armette? Why?”

  “It’s about Mrs. Lasker. Grace Borden.”

  “So?” The mention of her name alerted him and he leaned forward stiffly in the chair and blinked his old eyes at me. “She sent you here, perhaps?”

  “Not quite. She’s dead, Mr. Armette.”

  “Dead?” Something seemed to snap, and his body sagged and eased back into the chair and he shook his head at me in the confused, hopeless way old people suffer shock. “This seems impossible, Mr. Conacher. Only a few days ago, she came here to talk to me. A young woman. A woman much too young to die.”

  “Exactly my sentiments,” I said.

  “Ah? You knew her?”

  “I knew her well. She was about to hire me, to do a certain job for her.”

  “So?” Armette considered me carefully, the smile lost now, all the humor gone from his face. But above and beyond all his upset, he was still a friendly man. He got up slowly
and filled two glasses with brandy from a cut-glass bottle. His hand did not tremble, as he passed one to me. “I am sad to hear about Grace, my friend. She was good to me. Much too good to me.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “She did not tell you herself?”

  “She didn’t get the chance,” I said. “She was murdered, Mr. Armette.”

  “Murdered? But this is unbelievable. Who would murder so fine a woman?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m trying to find out.”

  “And you come to me for this?” he asked himself. “What can I do to help you? What can I tell you? Did I know this woman the way others knew her? I do not think so, Mr. Conacher.”

  It made me feel sick inside to whip the old boy this way. He was obviously too ancient for the shock treatment, his lips trembling as he spoke, his gnarled hands clenched and tight under the strain. It would be better to explode him in one fell swoop, to let him feel the weight of my feeble deductions, so that he might calm himself and lead me where I wanted to go.

  So I got up and put a hand on his shoulder and waited for him to aim his hurt eyes my way. Then I said, “I know all about the job you did for her, Mr. Armette. You brought up her daughter for her, didn’t you?”

  “She told you?” he asked. “She explained about Mary?”

  “Partly,” I said. “But I want all of it from you now. It’s important, don’t you see? It may lead me to the louse who murdered her.”

  “I understand.” Armette sighed. “I will tell you what I know of her. It is a long, long story, of course.”

  “I want all of it. From the time Grace came to you with her baby. From the time you adopted it.”

  “It began, of course, with my wife, Enid, the good Lord rest her soul. Enid, you must remember, had a position in the old Olympic Theatre as a seamstress. All this was almost twenty years ago, Mr. Conacher. At that time my career in show business was finished, done, over with. I am an old man now, almost seventy-five. This means that my days were numbered when Enid came to me with the story about Grace. How did Enid know Grace? You must understand that Enid sewed her costumes and stayed with her during rehearsals. My wife was motherly and kind. So, when Grace got herself into trouble, it was quite natural for her to come to Enid, to weep on Enid’s shoulder. Grace stayed with us until the baby came. For us, after that, it would have been good for both of them to stay forever. But fate changed the course of our lives. I was offered a job in Hollywood, a fine job for the dogs, with a sufficiency of money. So Enid and I left New York, and took the child with us, but naturally. We adopted the girl and brought her up as our very own. For fifteen years Enid and I remained on the Coast. The job in the movies? It did not last forever, of course. But Grace soon began to send us small sums, and as Mary grew up, these amounts increased. Many times I told Grace she was much too generous with me. But money did not seem to worry Grace. Her heart was soft and good. She loved her daughter, naturally. Yet, she could not ever come to see her, since she married and began a new life for herself. And then, one day, the worst occurred. Mary left us.”

  “How old was Mary when that happened?”

  “Old? She was a little girl. She was but fifteen or so.” The old man stood up and went to the door for a pause. He stared out at his dogs and waggled a finger at them and returned to the window. He was a man reliving a bad dream. He shook his head sadly at the rush of memories. “It was right for Mary to want a career in show-business. You understand we helped her in every way. She learned soon that she had a good voice, and after that, Mary changed. Her friends were the wild ones in school. She got a job soon as a part-time singer in a small club in the valley. There she met the boy who took her from us.”

  “Jeff Carroll?”

  “You know him?”

  “I’ve heard his name,” I said. “Mary went East with Carroll and on the way she changed her name?”

  “That’s right,” said Armette. “But we found out about the changed name much later. Only last year, when I saw her—it was an accident—on television. Of course, I went to see her at once, and Mary, or Margo, as she now called herself, was happy to see me. How could she send me away? Enid had died three years ago and I was alone. So I sold out my house and came here, to Taylorville, to live the rest of my days. From time to time, Grace would come to call, to talk about her daughter, to tell me of Margo’s success in show business. It was sad that Grace could not tell the whole world who her daughter was. But it was too late now for this. Grace was happily married and did not want to ruin her husband’s life. And it was the business of the horrible movies that drove Grace crazy.”

  “Is that why she came to see you a few days ago?”

  ‘Partly, yes.”

  “Grace wanted to find out whether you knew anything about the stag reel movies?”

  “Grace wanted everything and anything from me,” Armette said softly. “Mostly, of course, she was in need of someone who would listen, only listen to her. What do I know of this stag reel business? I have been away from Broadway for over twenty years. And even in my active days, did I know these purveyors of filth? No, Conacher, all Grace wanted from me was a listening ear. She came to tell me her worries.”

  “What did she say?” I asked. “What did you talk about?”

  “She asked me if I knew a man named Repp. Hugo Repp.”

  “And you didn’t know him, of course?”

  Armette managed a weak smile. “I have already told you that I know few people in show business.”

  “What about Repp?”

  “Grace thought he would be at The Montord.”

  “Thought? She wasn’t sure?”

  “She was prepared for him.”

  “You mean she had money for him?” I asked. “How much?”

  “Much money,” Armette sighed. “Thirty thousand dollars.”

  “In cash?”

  “She did not say.”

  “Did she know that Margo would be at The Montord?”

  “But of course,” Armette said. “It was this that excited her, my friend. Can you understand it? Can you imagine the picture of a mother who has not seen her daughter since infancy? Can you think what excitement filled Grace’s mind as she approached the big moment in her life? You must remember that Grace knew what Mary, or Margo, looked like. I had been sending Grace pictures of the girl all through. the years. A beautiful creature, is she not? And so much like her poor, lost mother. Yes, Conacher, when Grace came to see me, it was as though something burned inside her. She could not wait to see her daughter. And more than that, she could not stand the idea of Margo’s career being ruined because of that terrible movie. Grace had seen this movie in her husband’s collection. Quite by accident, one afternoon, Grace sampled a few of the awful pictures in the film library. Can you imagine her shock when she saw her daughter in one of them? She began at once to buy every copy in the market. But she never did, for she told me the very last copy on earth would be sold to her at The Montord.”

  “She bought it,” I said. “She paid Repp for it.”

  “So? And this led to her murder?”

  “Maybe. It begins to smell that way.”

  “And you will find out?”

  “I’m going to try,” I said, and got up and started for the door. “I’m going to do my damnedest to find out.”

  Armette opened the front door for me. The noise of the dogs rose up from outside and the canine convention brayed and barked and danced around us. The old man lifted a hand and invited them all to sit and be quiet.

  Then he said, “I would consider it a favor if you will let me know what happens. You will know something soon?”

  “It’s hard to say. My job would be easy if more people had your honesty, Mr. Armette. You’ve been a great help. The way I figure it, you’ve cut my job in half. I appreciate it.”

  “Then perhaps you will do a
n old man a favor?” he asked. “You will tell Margo I am here? You will tell her that I would wish to see her?”

  I gave him my promise and shook his hand and ran across to my chariot. Armette stood at the gate, as picturesque as something out of a Saturday Evening Post cover, his raffish dogs prancing and dancing around him. He was smiling sadly when he waved me good-bye, and I took that picture away with me, through the panel of my rear-view mirror.

  Then I stepped on the gas and started back for The Montord.

  CHAPTER 16

  Margo’s eyes were clear and bright when she opened the door for me. She showed me her clean white smile. She held my hand and tugged me inside gently.

  “Mind reader,” she said. “How did you know I wanted you?”

  “We’re operating on the same wave length.”

  “Seriously, Steve. Did the phone girl give you my message?”

  “I didn’t think you cared.”

  “I called you about a half hour ago,” Margo said. She lit a cigarette and sucked at it hungrily. It wasn’t her first. The ashtray near her elbow had a liberal sprinkling of butts. And the room itself carried the stale, loaded stench of much puffing and blowing. “You weren’t in your room.”

  “I’ve been having fun, Margo. Why did you call?”

  “Because I needed you.”

  “I’m here now.”

  “You’re too late,” she said testily. “I wanted you when the stinker called me.”

  “What stinker?”

  “Whoever it is that has the reel, Steve. The phone rang while I was asleep. It woke me up and I found myself talking to the same louse who contacted me in New York. He was all sweetness and light. He told me that I wouldn’t be able to get that film up here. He said he’d contact me in town, later. I asked him why, but he was in one hell of a hurry to hang up. He said things were getting too hot up here, too hot to pass me that film. Then he hung up.”