Knife at My Back

by Lawrence Lariar

  “He saw her in a small club down in Greenwich Village—The Fan Club, I think it was. She was dancing there with her pansy partner, Chico. Next thing I knew, Manny had her at our table and was throwing her a terrific line about how good she’d do up at The Montord. She ate it up. Manny signed both of them and they came up here two weeks later.”

  “This season?”

  “That’s it. Their deal runs out after Labor Day.”

  “Many didn’t renew them?” I asked.

  “You’d better ask Manny that one.” Lili went to work on her hair now, brushing at it violently, pulling and jerking it, tugging and trouncing it until it was ready for the final few pats and adjustments. She paused to stare at me in the mirror, her face a mask. of open anger. “Because if Manny holds her up here, he’d better tell Paul Forstenburg to start looking around for another room clerk. I’ll quit the minute I hear Darlene’s renewed.”

  “She won’t be held over,” I said.

  “How in hell do you know?”

  “I can arrange it.”

  “You and what army?”

  “I can arrange it,” I said again. “Suppose I tell you that I know Darlene’s in deep up here?”

  “In deep?” The hate in her eyes blossomed into something purely feminine now, something light and airy. Lili was beginning to enjoy herself, losing herself in the plight of her rival. Her face cleared and her smile was sweet and clean and she leaned forward in her chair and tapped me on the knee playfully. “You mean Darlene’s mixed up in the Repp business?”

  “Up to her pretty little ears.”

  “Tell me more, darling.”

  “I’d better not,” I said. “Not until I follow through on her, Lili. I’ve got to know more about her.”

  “More about what?”

  “Repp, for instance. Any idea whether she might have known Repp well?”

  “I wouldn’t put it past her. She’s hot enough for the stag reel business. Maybe she was a star in his productions, Steve.”

  “Or maybe only a saleslady,” I suggested.

  “That would be a new pitch.”

  “Maybe it wasn’t—for Darlene. She was up in Repp’s room when I walked in on them.”

  I dropped it for what it was worth. And Lili picked it up and nibbled at it, enjoying it thoroughly. She laughed suddenly and got out of her chair and began to put on her costume jewelry, laughing all the while, as though each bracelet tickled her, as though the application of earrings closed the connection between her ear and her funny bone. In the mirror, her face showed me the depth of her amusement. It was all on the skin, like the little waves that skitter on the surface of a deep pond when you drop a pebble into it. Deep, deep beneath her laughter, something was stirring, an idea that bothered her. She was lousing herself up with her favorite doubt. She was trying to hide it in laughter, but I knew her too well to be fooled by her.

  And that was why I said, “You know what all this could mean, Lili?”

  “I can guess,” she said breezily. “You think she maybe murdered Repp?”

  “Not quite. I was thinking of Manny.”

  She froze at the mirror. “Manny? Where does he fit?”

  “Manny’s been pretty close to her, hasn’t he?”

  “What does that prove?”

  “Nothing, yet. But it gives me something to work on, something that might make sense. Manny’s been grubbing around for quick dough—to finance a Broadway show. Repp had plenty of money in his satchel. Did you know that Manny promised Darlene a fat part in that show?”

  “Who told you that?” Lili asked with fresh hostility. “If that broad Darlene said it, she’s lying.”’

  “She said it.”

  “And you believe her?” She glared at me, out of control now, her body tight and tense, her hands clutching the chair end. All of her recent frustrations with Manny Erlich shone through her eyes in this electric moment. “You don’t think that Manny—?”

  “Shot Repp?” I asked.

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Steve. Manny wouldn’t hurt a fly. He isn’t the type. I was thinking of the dough that was stolen from Repp’s room. You’re not trying to say that Manny took it?”

  “I know Manny didn’t take it,” I said. “But Darlene did.”

  “You can prove it?”

  “I already have proved it, Lili.”

  “I’ll be damned.” Lili laughed. “That’s the best news I’ve heard since they handed me my first swimming cup.”

  The news stirred her up again and she went off into a riot of good humor. The sound of her laughter worked against the nerves behind my ears. I opened the window and let some fresh air into the room. It was hot in here. Something had happened to the weather, a persnickety shift of the air currents over the Catskills that was loading the valley with an intemperate heat. And the weather suited the sweaty mood in Lili’s room. I mopped at my head and tried to rid myself of the discomfort of the moment. But something more than the pressure of the weather made me squirm in my chair. The stickiness bit deep in me. And it was doing the same to my companion. She gave up her histrionic laughter and mopped at her brow with a delicate handkerchief. She was disturbed and annoyed by my presence here. She was afraid of what I had to say about Manny Erlich. She went to her liquor closet and opened a bottle and poured two shots, downing hers with a thirsty swallow that would have made a veteran bar fly cough and splutter. Not so with Lili. She had herself a second and a third before renewing our little dialogue.

  “You have the money?” she asked.

  “I have more than the money, Lili.”

  I got up and headed for the door, aware that she was cutting into me with her eyes. She put down her glass and followed me and caught me before I could get through to the hall. The liquor had done its usual job on her and she leaned into me and showed me that she didn’t want me to leave. What burned in her eyes now? Alcoholic undertones of her gnawing instability? She had an athletic grip on my arm, tight enough to hold me at her side and face up to her. And when I gave her my eyes and hesitated to hear her next speech, something seemed to snap and come loose inside her. The great worry about Manny? She spoke softly and slowly and her eyes were batting at me in the quick flick of an inner disturbance that might soon dampen them and bring the tears.

  “What about Manny?” she asked. “You didn’t tell me anything, really?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said.

  “When will you be?”

  “I’ll let you know.”

  “Is that a promise, darling? You know how I feel about him.”

  “It’s a promise,” I lied.

  And then I got out of there.

  Quickly. Because Lili was crying.

  CHAPTER 19

  I grabbed a sandwich and passed up the ritual evening meal in the dining room. Eating in style would take time, and I needed every minute I could muster. There were things to do. The big lobby was empty of customers when I began to interview the collection of bellhops near the main door. I questioned them all, trying for a crack at the mysterious character who had made the phone call to Margo’s room early this morning. The boys could tell me nothing at all. Ask questions about something that happened a few hours back, and you get a variety of answers, all of which are meaningless and born of man’s short memory and violent imagination. Nobody seemed to recall any users of the two wall phones at the front of the lobby. And I got less from the man who had the stationery concession at the rear. His booth faced the phone against the back wall, but he had seen nobody, out there, of course.

  I wandered into The Champagne Room, now a huge cavern of emptiness and silences. The chairs were being taken off the tabletops and a few casual menials mopped at the floor in slow motion. Back on the stage, nothing remained to remind the future audiences or performers that oily recently a fire had licked away at the proscenium. There was a t
hin and tickling smell of burned dry goods, but even this was only a thread of odor, since most of the stench had been rubbed away by the use of powerful disinfectants and commercial room perfumes. Behind the big drape on the right side of the stage, I browsed and brooded among the odds and ends of theatrical equipment. The metal basket that had started the fire was now pushed back into the shadows, away from the draperies. I brought it around and examined it carefully. The inside was scorched and scarred by the flames, enough to blacken the metal and give the thing a feeling of great age. I hauled it back to its original position. I stared at it and studied it opening my mind to anything it might say to me. On the stage, along the wooden siding behind the drapes, the fire had licked and tasted the wood, briefly. I closed my eyes and projected the fire scene through the retina of my personal camera, the imaginary lens that could restage the entire production for me. I saw the fire begin and the flames bite the draperies and roil up the wall and fill the room with the black and biting smoke. It was all very dramatic.

  It was dramatic enough to stab me somewhere deep inside my brain, where the whirling thoughts sometimes solidify into theories. It was dramatic enough to take me out of The Champagne Room, into the open air and beyond the entrance to The Montord, where my car was parked. I drove quickly up to Indian Cliff and got out and stood at the edge of the cliff. The darkness made me mutter an indecent few words at my own stupidity. I should have come up here during the daylight hours. Now I was forced to make use of my flashlight, beaming it at the earth on the rim of the canyon, where Grace Lasker’s car had gone over to its doom. I examined the barrier through which the convertible had crashed. Two of the crossbeams were still dangling on the uprights, hanging over the rim of the cliff at a crazy angle. There was a skirt of grass extending from the edge of the road to the fence, a broad patch of which had browned and died recently.

  I got down on my hands and knees and searched the brown grass, my nose down low above the turf and tussocks. All around me the black circle of woods held its breath as I scanned the earth, the sticky quiet hammering at me. There was a thin moon, a glimmering disc that might have been a big help, if it hadn’t hidden behind a miasma of fleece and fluff. It was only a pale and lemony circle up there. The night boiled around me, hot and dank, so hot that my collar burned and my head bubbled with sweat. But the expedition began to pay off after I had crawled a few yards hither and thither. There was a section of grass that was singed black. I stared at it and smiled at it and let it play a tune for me, against the wall of information I had tucked away in my mental storehouse. And out of the backwash of the past few days, out of the incredible welter of characters and events, a small light clicked on in my head.

  I hopped back into my car and started down the long hill to The Montord. I had been away for almost two hours. When I wheeled my crate into the parking lot, the customers were already starting their mid-evening prowl. The preliminary skirmish outdoors before returning to the big lobby and the show in The Champagne Room. I skirted the terrace and entered The Champagne Room by way of the bar.

  The musicians were onstage, gassing and grumbling because Buddy Binns had not yet arrived for his rehearsal. Don Trask grabbed me and tugged me toward the bar and insisted that I allow him to buy me a fast one. He was loaded again, the alcohol clouding his eyes and converting him into a pushing, uncoordinated lump of nothing, already only able to blubber at me.

  “Where’s Buddy?” I asked.

  “Hell with him,” Don gurgled. “Have another drink, pal.”

  “And Manny Erlich?”

  “Went outside. Out looking for Buddy.”

  I brushed him off and ran into the night, down the path and around the garden, past the pool and through the surrounding area of tables and gin rummy players. They had abandoned the indoor card area for this retreat, forced into the air because of the stifling heat, the unseasonable pressure of damp stickiness that would not lift until the early morning winds blew over the mountain behind The Montord. Buddy Binns was not playing cards. I crossed the garden and began a systematic check of the outbuildings, beginning with the one that housed Buddy. Buddy Binns was not in his room. I returned to the pebbled paths and backtracked around the main building, entering through a rear door and examining the Coffee Shoppe, the Ladies’ Lounge, the Music Room and even the Kiddy Korner. Buddy Binns was not in any of these cozy retreats. My running scrutiny of The Montord built the heat in me, converted my collar into a damp and dewy itch of annoyance, so that I yearned for a change of shirting and started back across the garden and into my personal nest.

  And that was where I found Buddy Binns.

  He was leaning over my mattress when I walked in, probing the underside with nimble fingers. He straightened up when I flipped the light switch. He stared at me brazenly and showed me he had a gun in his hand. He enjoyed the star role in this little drama, laying on with the heavy histrionics, smiling through his teeth and casting himself as a comic Alan Ladd.

  “Where is it?” he inquired, adjusting himself to suit the character he was playing. He waved me to the right, toward the little chair at my window. His hand was loose and, light on the gun, as muscular as a nance gripping a daisy. A hot scowl darkened his face. “Sit down and answer my question.”

  “They’re looking for you over in The Champagne Room,” I reminded him. “You go on in about an hour, Buddy.”

  “I’ll make the show,” he said. “I’ll get back, in time, peeper. I left The Champagne Room so I’d have time to look around. Clever? I knew they’d all be around the bar or in the lobby. And that’s why I picked this time of day. I’ve been around, Conacher. I’ve been all through this dump, even in Lasker’s room. But I drew a blank until I began to think about you. The more I thought about you, the more I saw daylight. I went down the list of everybody who smelled bad up here. And when I hit you, I realized that everything pointed your way.”

  “Brainy,” I said. “You thought all this up by yourself?”

  “Why not? I’ve been nosing around, peeper. Who was the last person to see Grace Lasker alive? Conacher. Who was the last person to see Repp alive? Conacher. A hungry private eye like you could louse up anybody he picked out of the crowd.”

  “And why did I louse up Grace Lasker?”

  “You killed her to get the stag reel she bought from Repp.”

  “Clever. And then what?”

  “You put her in her car and drove her off Indian Cliff.”

  “Delicious,” I commented. “You’re a hell of a lot smarter than I thought, Buddy. But you’re still a comic. You forgot to figure the element of time. How did I get back down off Indian Cliff and into the bedroom above Grace Lasker’s? It would have taken me almost a half hour to run down the hill and then go through the motions of playacting at the routine I went through. Even if I could fly, it would have been impossible for me to do the job. But I take my hat off to you for clear thinking. The trouble with you is that you’re operating out of personal prejudice. You don’t like me and you’re trying to pin this on me for that reason. If the tables were turned, I’d have accused you of the murders long ago. Because I think you’re a two-bit personality, Buddy. I think you stink. But that doesn’t mean I’d hang a rap on you.”

  “What a mouth,” Buddy said with a stale smile. He was sweating as much as I was, but his heat came from the nerve-end hysteria that had gripped his bowels. He had an itchy trigger finger, a twitch that bothered me, because a small gun in the hands of a small idiot can do big damage. He was aware that I recognized his nervousness, but there was nothing he could do to kill it. He was in deep and would play it through. “You talk nice and smooth, peeper. Now I’ll ask you the question again. Where’s that reel?”

  “If I knew where the reel was, I’d invite you to the burning.”

  “You’d better start talking again, Conacher. This thing could go off.”

  “Fire away. You’re shooting up the wrong al
ley.”

  “I’ll count up to ten.”

  “Movies,” I said. “You’ve been seeing too many movies.”

  “One,” he said, and paused to take a deep breath. “Two.”

  “Buckle my shoe,” I added.

  “Three,” said Buddy. “Four.”

  “Lock the door,” I said.

  “Five, six.” His upper lip was bubbling with sweat as he came in closer to me. He was wearing a silk shirt and I could see the initials on the right side, over his heart: B. B., done in a reddish silk, neatly embroidered, but completely surrounded by the dark stain of perspiration that galloped and dripped over his barrel chest. He was completely off the beam, as determined as a Boy Scout over a fresh merit badge. He licked his lower lip and his mouth ironed out into a hard and purposeful line of antagonism. He began to blink in an off-beat rhythm.

  “Pick up sticks,” I told him.

  And then I jumped.

  I didn’t want to hurt him. He was soft and flabby, a mass of blubber and fat underneath the snappy lines of his Kolmer Marcus special. But he had good legs. And he used them. He brought one of them up into my groin as he sidestepped my right cross. He dropped the gun on the way over to the wall and I kicked it away as I doubled up under his nasty knee. The gun skidded under the bed and against the wall back there where neither of us could get it. He bounced off the dresser and came at me, using the stance that went out with John L Sullivan, a stiff-armed pose that almost made me laugh at him. But he had power behind the corny gesture. He stuck a fist in my gut, over the place where he had marked me with his wicked knee. I sagged again and let him come again. He was quick to try for the advantage, slamming at me with both hands now. But I was waiting for this strong-arm act. I caught him on the downswing, my knee deep in his navel. He almost killed me as he came down in a thundering thud of pain and despair. He was struggling to set his stomach in order, moaning and grumbling over it, his voice high and edged with hurt, as sick and trembling as a woman in labor.