Knife at My Back

by Lawrence Lariar

  “What gave you the idea?”

  “He was pointed out to me. They’re always pointed out to me.”

  “Through the office?”

  “Sometimes Paul Forstenburg, sometimes some other member of the staff.”

  “And who told you about Repp?”

  “I can’t remember.”

  “Squeeze,” I said. “It may be important to me.”

  She made an effort. “It might have been Manny.”

  “You’re not sure?”

  “I guess it was Manny.”

  “He knew Repp?”

  “He knew his reputation in New York,” Darlene said quietly. “Manny’s a good guy, Steve. He always tries to help me. You know how I feel about him?”

  “We’ve been through it before,” I said, and released her. She didn’t move when I got off the damp and sticky grass. She said nothing at all. The little handkerchief was flicking across her face, wiping away the added moisture my talk had inspired. She shook her head sadly and held her hands up to me and I lifted her to her feet. Without her shoes on, she was geared to my size, suddenly and deceptively in the right proportion for me. She might have guessed what was bubbling in my mind, because she stood close to me and continued to hold my hand, rubbing my wrist and letting her fingers speak for her.

  “I’ve got the mixings in my room,” she suggested. “And I can get some ice, Steve. How about a drink with me? A nightcap?”

  “I’ll take a raincheck, Darlene. Too much to do.”

  “In this heat? It’s almost midnight.”

  “I’ve got to see a man,” I said. “Character named Jorgenson. Any idea where I can find him?”

  “Why don’t you forget him, Steve?”

  “I can’t. I’ve got to tell him who murdered Repp and Grace Lasker.”

  She stiffened again as she pulled away from me, but only for a tick of time, only for a heartbeat, a sigh, a breath. Then she was back, easing herself close to me.

  “You really know, Steve?”

  “The person who killed Repp murdered Grace Lasker.”

  She reacted again, but this time I didn’t pause to watch her emotional heave-ho. I turned on my heel and walked away from her, taking the easy way up the hill, around the base of the little hillock and toward The Branton. But I watched her as I rounded the turn and faded into the sweaty night. She paused only long enough to put on her shoes. Then she ran haltingly up the hill. She continued her graceless climb until she reached the summit of the hill and after that she moved with more measured strides. She was walking fast, almost running, a silhouette aimed at the main entrance, threading her way through the clots of people who had just emerged from Buddy Binns’ performance. They were still laughing and sparking from the after effects of his comedy. They were pausing in groups to retell some of his gags, and in these small congestions, through the crawling knots of humanity, Darlene struggled toward The Montord. I skirted the garden and came up behind the row of hedges adjoining the bar. She avoided the lobby and wheeled to the right, running down the pathway toward the bar terrace.

  Here she paused, deliberating her next move. I was angled in a position to see the doorway to the bar itself. The place was crowding up with activity, the usual mob of alcoholic revelers who hang near the hot bottles after a performance. I could see them all clearly, and among the heated group a few familiar faces. Buddy Binns sat on a stool, shaking hands in his bored way with a fair sprinkling of enthusiastic fans. Margo Lewis stood near him, her theatrical smile spread wide for the surrounding public. In the milling throng I saw Lili and Paul Forstenburg and Archy Funk. And in the middle distance, Don Trask, already well on the way into an alcoholic stupor, weaving and gesticulating at Darlene. But she paid him no mind.

  She did not move until Manny Erlich appeared in the doorway.

  Then Darlene rushed across the terrace and almost fell into his arms.

  CHAPTER 21

  Sweat!

  The heat of the night was a living thing, a gnawing, itching, prickling, stabbing annoyance that added anger to each movement and irritation to every wasted step. I had been over the circuit once again, down the halls and through the gardens and inside the important rooms, searching vainly for Jorgenson. I had explored the office again and re-questioned his man, drawing another blank from the flat-faced cop behind Jorgenson’s desk. Jorgenson was not here, nor was he there, nor anywhere. For the past few hours, he had disappeared into some secret hole of his own devising and it bothered me to think that the rustic louse had outfoxed me.

  And that was why I called him a dirty name as I crossed the garden for another trip around the outbuildings. And that was why I almost screamed at myself as I slid down the small bill and remembered the Rhumba Hut!

  Before I rounded the corner and headed for the rear window, before I approached the sill and reached for the screen—I knew that Jorgenson would be inside. I had forgotten this place and this place alone, in all my wanderings. The screen was loose. Somebody had been here before me. I climbed inside as though reliving a dream.

  A wave of heated air struck me as I entered the room. The place stank of the heat, a dry, flat stench that made breathing tough and sent fresh prickles of sweat stabbing along the short hairs behind my neck. Darkness in here was a deep and ebony wall of nothingness. My eyes popped and stared until the weak and glimmering light from one of the distant pathway lamps found my optics and brought part of the room into grayish blobs of shape and substance. Along the wall, around the floorboards, from window to window, I plumbed the murkiness, moving slowly and groping and grabbing and letting my fingers guide me on my tour.

  Then, from the right side, a sound filtered through the silence. A muffled gulp? A groan? A half-swallowed cry of pain? It was coming through the wall back there and I snaked over and tugged at the pine boards of the cupboard and heaved against the weak lock until the door sprang open.

  And Jorgenson dropped out!

  He rolled over on his face and lay there, gasping and grunting. I lit the light and almost upchucked when I saw him in the close-up. Somebody had massaged his big head with a convenient weapon, heavy enough and blunt enough to break his skull above the ear. The blood had poured down over his brow. It was beginning to cake now, converting his larded face into a mask of horror, the thin threads of crimson riding his jaws and crawling down over his collar to mat his shirt. He was hurt and hurt badly. I ran to the sink and fed him some water and watched him claw at the glass feebly and suck the liquid down, as weak as an injured babe.

  “Bitch,” he mumbled.

  “Who hit you, Jorgenson?”

  “Dirty bitch,” he said again. He managed to roll his eyes up at me and stare at me until my head came into focus for him. Then a sour smile creased his bloody jaw and he licked at his lips and spat the blood away. “The peeper,” he said. “Can’t you guess, smart boy?”

  “Darlene?”

  “Who else?”

  “You saw her?”

  “Bitch,” said Jorgenson. “I came in here to check up on her, Conacher.”

  He was spilling his guts to me, lost in a dreamy reverie, stalking Darlene in his world of the recent past. He spoke to me in the manner of a confessional, not really feeling my presence at all but anxious only to spit out the words that would incriminate his lady confederate. He began to babble about his scheme, beginning all the way back at the moment when he had found Darlene outside Repp’s room, backtracking into the minute details of his meeting with her. He had grabbed her and pinned her down, suspecting that she might have killed Repp. After that, he had found the money in Repp’s suitcase and developed the plot that would earn them the loot.

  “Thought she was pulling a fast one,” he burbled. “Came back here to check up on her. Bitch. She slugged me.”

  “Are you sure it was Darlene?”

  “Get her, Conacher. Killer. She kil
led Repp.”

  “How?”

  “Get her,” he whispered. “She did it.”

  “She has a gun?”

  “Hell with the gun. She got one.”

  “Where?” I asked. “Did she say where?”

  “Nothing, Conacher. She said nothing.”

  “But you found her gun?”

  “Questions,” he moaned. “Lousy, stinking questions.”

  I tugged him gently. He was on the way out and I needed him now. I wanted more from him, more about Darlene.

  “The gun,” I said again. “You saw it?”

  “The reel,” Jorgenson said.

  “You found the stag reel?”

  “In her room, Conacher. Last night, when she was out.”

  “Where is it now?” I was almost yelping at him, my head down at his ear, hoarsing the words at him in a loaded whisper, sanded and stiff with my anxiety. “What did you do with that stag reel?”

  “She took it from me,” Jorgenson moaned. “Part of the deal, meeting her here tonight. Part of the deal with the bitch. Figured her wrong, Conacher. Figured she was on the level with me. But I was smart. I stole the reel from her room when I saw she took the dough from here. Told her I’d split with her if she brought that dough back. Dirty bitch double-crossed me. Slugged me and took the reel.”

  “What time was that?”

  “Questions,” he gurgled. “Lousy, stinking questions. You wouldn’t believe your own mother, Conacher.”

  He sagged suddenly, stabbed by a deep and biting pain. He was fading fast, sobbing and crying now, his face frozen in a caricature of pain and torment. I grabbed him as he rolled away. I tried him with some more water. But he could only lap at it feebly, his tongue short-circuited from his brain. He was gone. He was moving into a coma, as weak as an injured animal.

  “Bitch,” he moaned, out of a deep delirium.

  Then Jorgenson collapsed and went limp in my hands. I let him down slowly, resting his head against one of the pillows from the wicker couch.

  Then I called the hotel doctor.

  CHAPTER 22

  The Champagne Room was singing itself a lullaby. At half past three in the morning, only the brave and the strong remain awake in such a place as this. On the dance floor, a few addicts still heaved their tired hips in the sexy rhythms of the rhumba. An old man tugged a sliding blonde around the floor, struggling to regain his lost youth while his feminine companion watched his blood pressure rise with a sly smile. Two youthful herky jerks eased themselves in a slow circle, grinding and bumping as they danced, their eyes closed and their conversation limited to fumbling fingers. A fatted matron followed Chico into a dim corner, raping him with her eyes. Two sleepy waiters hid behind a post, arguing the merits of a horse named Calling Katie, due to run in the fall meet at Belmont. On the band stand, the Latin musicians bounced and bumped in a lazy beat, dreaming of the cooler parts of Brooklyn and the Bronx. The last dying strains of their music blared into the almost empty room, giving the place an air of fantasy. They were playing only for the diehards, playing to a roomful of empty tables and stale smoke. I scanned the corners for familiar faces. I found none.

  The cacophony of honest revelry rose up out of the bar. Inside, the oval-shaped room still crawled and squirmed with the more serious stay-outs. The liquor set chattered and romanced in earnest. And most of my friends were here, in various stages of alcoholic laxity. I edged my way along the bar toward the rear, where Archy Funk sat over a tall drink. He yanked me in and bade me join him, flipping his hand at the bartender, who produced my brand in the flick of a second. The room danced and swirled with the edgy excitement always found in spots like this. People around and about me were lost in the miasma of sweaty activity generated by too many bodies brought together in too small a room for too many drinks. Buddy Binns sat with Margo at a table near the terrace door. Were they both drunk? Margo tossed me a seductive wink and made passes at me with an uplifted finger, beckoning me her way for my second drink.

  The Scotch was cool and I downed another with them. Somebody came up behind me and tapped me on the shoulder and said a kind word. It was Paul Forstenburg. He looked fresher and gayer than I had ever seen him. For a brief and bumbling moment I was tempted to tell him about Jorgenson. But the sight of his anxious smile zippered my lip. Paul Forstenburg would be worrying plenty tomorrow. Or maybe later tonight. I gave him a friendly few words and watched him snake through the crowd toward Don Trask.

  Don was enjoying himself with a strange and tremulous young thrush who seemed lost as she listened to his fancy talk. He had entered the stage of his drunken madness that involved a loose tongue and a gentleman’s demeanor. He was making good time with the young doll, his hand snaking over hers, his eyes gnawing at her delectable young torso through the thin barrier of her evening gown. And she was liking it.

  Through the door, the terrace held other parties and other projects, pursuing their zany festivities with as much sweat and strain as the mob inside. It was just as hot out there. At a table near the hedge, Manny Erlich and Darlene sat together and alone, lost in each other. She turned and saw me and waved to me and pointed me out to Manny, who did the same with a bandaged hand. I retreated to the bar and skimmed and slid back to Archy and another drink.

  “Easy, peeper,” said Archy. “It’s a bad night for a load. Too hot.”

  “I need it,” I said.

  “Where’ve you been? You look like something out of a Turkish bath. Another drink?”

  “A double.”

  “On me,” said Archy, and snapped his fingers for the barman and leaned into me eagerly, his wide-open face punching home his friendly curiosity. “How are you doing on the dirty business, Steve? You getting anywhere?”

  “I’m almost home, Archy.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Not right now,” I said. “But sooner than you think.”

  I downed my drink and counted the house, checking through the personalities at the bar. Archy watched me with the wet-eyed scrutiny of a well-trained dog. He was guessing along with me.

  “You looking for somebody, peeper?”

  “Lasker.”

  “He hit the hay about a half hour ago. Couldn’t take the noise.”

  “And how about Lili?” I asked. “Don’t tell me she hit the mattress at this early hour?”

  “Crazy broad.” Archy laughed. “You just missed her. She was looking for you, too. What is it you little guys got, anyhow? She sounded like she wanted you real bad.”

  “Where’d she go?”

  “She took a bottle with her and went down to the lake. She left a message for you. She was screaming it to the whole world, Steve. Said she wanted to take a moonlight swim with you.”

  The liquor was biting deep inside me now. The buzz and hum of humanity rose and fell in waves of sound, pounding against my inner ear and adding fresh tension to Archy’s words. And Archy seemed hell-bent for hearing the payoff from me. Of all the customers in the room, only Archy retained his steady, burning purpose, a sobriety that made him stand out in my eyes. He remained at my elbow, peppering me with questions.

  “You look like you could take a poke at somebody, Steve,” he said, his sanded voice low and meaningful. “Anybody in this room?”

  “You’re breaking my arm, Archy. You’re too anxious.”

  “Why shouldn’t I be? Grace was an old friend of mine, remember?”

  “How could I ever forget?”

  “Listen,” he breathed. “I want to be in on the pinch, Steve.”

  “You’ll be the first to know, Archy.”

  “When?”

  I started away from him, but he followed me, still talking fast, still pleading for a box seat at the end of the line.

  “Where you going now, Steve?”

  “I’ve got a date for a moonlight swim, Archy. You w
ouldn’t want to spoil my party, would you?”

  He broke down and laughed at that one. He held me out under the big tree near the terrace, long enough to wish me luck with Lili.

  “You coming back to the bar, Steve?”

  “Don’t lose sleep waiting for me,” I told him. “The last time I took a moonlight swim, I rolled home in time for lunch. With Lili, it might mean a bigger deal than that.”

  I went out to find Lili. The path to the lake was misted and vague, falling away under my feet in easy stages. A dim mist had come out of nowhere to veil the mountainside in smoky stretches of gray fog. Behind me, the noises from the bar faded into distant whispers and random high notes of laughter, lost finally when I dropped toward the shore and down to the boardwalk leading out to the enclosed pool where the kids swam. The heat had generated a greater area of fog and dimness down here. A pall of gray hung over the water, so thick that I breathed it as I walked. My heels made an echoing clack on the boards, the only sound of life in the deep pit of the valley. I crossed to the small diving board over the lakeside of the crib. Somebody had hung some feminine garments on the railing: an evening gown and a silken bra and a pair of step-ins. Two high-heeled evening slippers sat under the clothing. I lifted the underthings. The high voltage smell of Lili’s perfume rose up in an invisible cloud to bite through the damp lake smell. She was out there somewhere.

  I squinted through the gloom. There was a float out in the deep distance, about a hundred yards from the boardwalk. And across the fiat reach of water, I heard the sound of Lili’s voice, low and muted, singing a popular tune.

  “Comeonamyhouse,” she sang.

  “Lili!”

  The sound of my voice was a sharp-edged knife in the still air. From over an invisible ridge of hills the echo rounded the turn of the mountains and came bumping back to me. Lili—Lili—Lili. The moon rose out of a galaxy of small clouds and ridged their fleecy backs with silver. The strong light filtered down through the mist and cut across the fog and showed me the float out there. She was on it, on her back, the smooth rich outlines of her body clearly defined in the sudden glare. She lay for a moment looking up at the sky, and then she turned and seemed to stare my way. The curve of her breasts flickered with dampness, converting her into a fairyland sprite, a lakeland goddess. She moved, shaking the wet from her hair and laughing a high and throaty laugh that echoed and bubbled in the air. She stood. In the brightening glow over the lake, her hips were moving subtly as she held her arms up and laughed again.