“Maybe sooner,” I said, and hung up.
PART III
Underworld Merry-go-round
CHAPTER 9
In the cab I struggled for calm. I was moving fast on a big black horse. But the horse ran on a merry-go-round, in a sick circle, at a monotonous pace, a speed calculated to promote dizziness and fatigue and monotony and disillusionment. What can you catch on a merry-go-round? A gold ring? A free ride? You will never pass the racing horse ahead. You will never reach your goal, for the earth spins around in a vague and spotted blur and your mind reaches out for something solid, something important. We slid down the darkened streets and the music of the tires was a hum of despair, a hiss of futility, as flat as the edges of my intellect, as tuneless as the sound of my heart, pounding now in my ears.
Somebody had put me in the middle. Twice tonight I had been told of “the man with the glasses,” the mysterious subject who walked in freedom and laughed at me from the sea of fog beyond the merry-go-round. I could not bring him into focus. He was hidden behind the perfect disguise of anonymity. It would have been easier to make the locate on a fat man, a thin man, a man with a broken nose. But Mrs. Monati had only noticed the glasses. And Ken Sisley and the elevator boy added nothing to the picture.
On the streets a mist hung over the city, clouding the lamp posts with gray halos. The buildings were black-holed cliffs, as high as the walls of my personal maze—the evil framework somebody had built around me. I was alone in the maze, groping blindly for the way out. If I opened the obvious door, I would go to the police. The game, then, would be over. But if I wanted to play, there were high walls around me, dead-end corridors, snares and traps to lead me into endless alleys of confusion. This was no puzzle for the elements were missing. Somewhere, in one of the black buildings, sat a murderer.
It could be that he moved about in a clumsy way. He had leaden feet. He stumbled, perhaps, in an awkward pace. And now he grinned at me behind the fog and his face was a symbol of terror, and abstraction, a mask of cunning, a caricature of all the villains in the world. And I shook him out of my mind because I knew him to be only a dream. My personal villain might not be a menace. His face could be the man in the street. And there were a thousand-thousand men in the street.
The cab slid to the curbing. I got out under the canopy.
“How about hanging around, Monkowitz?”
He grinned at me. It was an old trick, a stunt that Harv had taught me. To make friends and influence hackies, simply learn his name from his license photo.
“There’ll be a slight deposit,” Monkowitz said.
“How slight?”
“A fin?”
I gave him the bill. He fingered it and made small mental calculations about me. He had an open face, wide open. His nose was broken and lumped, but you could trust the eyes. They leveled at me.
“I’ll need you all night, Monkowitz,” I said. “I’ll be doing a hell of a lot of riding.”
“You want a flat rate, boss? You got the wrong guy.”
“Regular rate.”
“I’ll be up at the corner,” he said. “Coffee.”
In the lobby an electric clock told me it was 10:31. The Beveret was an ancient place, resurfaced, but still retaining the smell of wood mold and decay. Some zany decorator had stripped it of its archaic skin and played havoc with the slick fixtures and plastic brightness of the new look. In the far corner, under a mural of abstract nymphs rampant on a field of gilt, sat the night man. He was half asleep at the switchboard.
I said, “Has Mr. Frugi returned yet?”
“Don’t know,” he said. “Mr. Whatchamacallim just came in.”
“Who?”
“The little fellow. Messenger.”
“I’ll go up and wait.”
“Six oh two,” he said, and carefully replaced his chin in his palm. I crossed the hall and took the small elevator to the sixth. I pressed the buzzer. The door opened immediately. A man gaped at me.
I said, “Jake in?”
He had a head full of twitch. I watched him run the gamut from surprise to discomfort to surprise again. He was high enough to reach my elbow. He had a small lump on his back that added an animal quality to the tilt of his head. He held the door half open. He did not budge. He radiated confusion, the sort of hesitation a rat feels in a trap. His eyes didn’t behave. If he had been three feet taller I would have backed away. As it stood, he offered me nothing but his befuddlement. In the gathering silence, he did odd things with his lips.
I said, “I had a date with Jake Frugi,” and leaned into the door. He let me in.
He said, “Listen, mister. I just this minute came up here to deliver, you follow me? I didn’t have nothing to do with this—”
He tried to coax me away from the living room. He used only his voice. It was high and cracked, as queer as his body. It was no effort to look beyond him, into the next room.
I whistled. Jake Frugi’s living room had been turned upside down. And after that, somebody added to the confusion by scattering the havoc, sprinkling the havoc; a desk unstuffed, a cabinet agape, the pictures on the wall awry. This had been a modern room, neat and efficient, simple and unadorned. And against the colorful walls, against the flat greens of the rug, the thousand and one scraps of paper seemed as out of place as the little man at my side.
“I didn’t do it,” he was pleading. “This is the way I walked into it, mister, so help me. I came up from Jersey, you understand? I’m Louie Sliger, one of Jake’s leg men. I’d never—”
I continued to whistle, staring at him as though he were Jack the Ripper. He wilted under my gaze. I felt him cool off. And a little tic appeared under his left eye. I had him and he knew it. I let him simmer for a bit.
I said, “Jake will love this, Louie. Jake will kiss somebody off for this.”
“I tell you you’re wrong,” he pleaded. “This is my bad day. I should have known it. I should have let Mack come over. My old lady warned me about today. Look—I didn’t do it, mister.” He ran into the hall. He returned with a small black bag. “I’m delivering, you understand? The way I always do? I just open the door and lay the bag on the desk when he ain’t here. Then I lock up and go back. That’s what it was today—a minute ago—just before you came. I seen this and I’m about to call Mark Wagner. Maybe he’ll know—”
“Relax,” I said, easing him back to the one chair left standing. “I’m going to see Wagner in a little while. I know who did this job.”
He let me light a cigarette for him. His hands were jittery on it. He sucked at it for confidence. But his eyes were out of focus. He was a little man in a big situation. Suddenly I felt sorry for him. He and I were blood brothers. He had been traveling the same path for years. Routine had pushed him into a certain line of action, into expected events. And now he faced a new situation. His world had cracked. He was a rat in a maze. We were brother rats.
I said, “Take a look at this dame, Louie,” and showed him Gwen’s picture.
“No!” he said, his mouth agape, his lower lip quivering in surprise.
“You recognize her?”
He nodded violently. “Jake will tear her apart for this. Jake will slap her pretty puss in.”
“That’s my job,” I said. “That’s what Jake’s paying me for.”
“The dirty little tramp,” he said. “I figured her for a plain pushover. Who would have thought that dame could pull a gag like this?”
“Jake thought so.”
“What was she after?”
“Maybe she wanted that little black bag. Maybe she had it timed wrong.” I began to think out loud. “Jake told me she had a key to his place. He expected her up here tonight. Jake’s crazy like a fox. We had it planned for her. But she came up too early.”
“You’re a dick?”
“Private.”
“Terrific
,” he said, and slapped his knees and laughed until the tears came, enjoying the sudden relief from his private worry, exploiting his little joke until he couldn’t laugh any longer, then coughing into his handkerchief in a choking, dry sort of way. “Jake hires a private eye to catch her. Wait’ll I tell the boys back in Jersey.”
“You don’t want to do that, Louie.”
“I don’t?” His slapping ended as abruptly as it began.
“You want to keep your mouth shut.”
“Whatever you say.”
“You’re going to sit here until Wagner comes.”
“Sure. Of course. I sit here and wait. I get it.”
“Read a paper,” I said. “Relax. And stay the hell away from the telephone. Jake doesn’t want this spread around. Jake would be sensitive about a thing like this. I haven’t got her yet. I’ve got to get her for Jake.”
“Where is he?”
“In Westchester,” I said. “At the new place.”
He swallowed it, open-mouthed. “I didn’t know about the new place.”
“You’re supposed to be dumb, Louie. You just sit here and wait. You hold the bag on your lap and play nursey.”
“She won’t come back?” he asked in a whisper. “That babe isn’t coming back, is she?”
“You’re afraid of her?”
“I don’t want any part of her,” he said. “She’s a terrific bitch, that dame. I saw her in action once. It was down at her apartment—”
I found myself turning away from him. It hit me again. The tremors. The anxiety. The beating of my pulse in my ears, loud and heavy, like the tick of time, the moments that were slipping away. I diddled with a piece of paper on the desk top. The story he told sickened me. He painted a lurid picture of Gwen. It was not pretty.
I said, “Which apartment was that? The one in the Village?”
“The Village? How many apartments did Jake keep for her?”
“You know Jake. He spreads the dough around. He had her set up in the Village, but that might have been her old dump. Where’s the new one?”
I had thrown it at him too soon. His little eyes changed, suddenly. There was a spark of distrust glowing in them. He was gaining confidence. Too much confidence. I began to estimate his age, worrying myself about him, wondering whether he had a gun, speculating about my next move with him. And he let me wonder. He let the silence grow, puffing at his cigarette and giving me the side of his eyes until I couldn’t wait any longer.
“You should know, mister,” he said. “You should know.”
I went over to him and caught him high around the collar, both fists gripping him, pulling him close to me so that I could hear him wheeze. He did not blink an eye now. And his voice was under control.
He said, “I thought you said you were a private eye?”
“You’re working on a nervous breakdown, Louie,” I told him. “If I don’t get that dame for Jake, I lose money. Where’s the other apartment? Jake forgot to tell me about it.”
“You could have done this job yourself,” he said slyly. “You could have come back to make it look legal. I know you boys. Some of my best friends are private dicks.”
“You’re wasting your time. And time is dough to me.”
“I never heard of another apartment.”
Impatience heated me. This was no time for question games. I hit him. He went down fast. He rolled over and came up with a gun. But he was slow with the gun. I slapped his wrist hard and he dropped it and dove for it, as agile as a cat. Then I kicked him, high in the stomach. He stiffened as suddenly as a clubbed rabbit. He reached for his stomach and bundled himself into a ball and began to moan, low and throaty and with a sick monotony. I sat him up and slapped him. He fell away from me and the white of his eyes rolled up. I put his gun in my pocket and waited. It did not take long. He came around in a few minutes, out of his coma with fresh groans and wheezes. Up close, his face was scarred and heavily wrinkled. His skin had no color. I slapped some color into the skin, gently now.
“Enough,” he said.
“The apartment—where is it?”
“West Seventy-eighth—1956. Top floor.”
“Phone?”
“I don’t know.”
“I can hit you harder, Louie.”
“I tell you I don’t know.”
“When were you there last?”
He rubbed at his head, vaguely. He was hurt. “Few weeks ago.”
“With Jake?”
“With Jake.”
“You never saw her alone?”
He wilted again. His hands came up desperately, but weakly. “Jesus, mister, you don’t think that I was in with her on this, do you? Ask Jake, ask any of the boys. They know Louie Sliger wouldn’t do a thing like this.”
“Who else? Which one of Jake’s pals would try it with her?”
“I don’t know. Maybe Wagner—”
“Wagner liked her?”
“Ask him. I don’t know.”
“Did Wagner know her place on Seventy-eighth Street?”
“So help me, I don’t know, mister.”
I kept talking to him, but my questions were meaningless. I stalled. I didn’t know what to do with him. If I let him go, he would run for Jersey, screaming. And if I kept him here?
I said, “I don’t get this at all. If she came up here for the dough in your little black bag, why did she wreck Jake’s place? No dame louses up the furniture like this just for spite. She was looking for something. What was she looking for, Louie?”
“I tell you I don’t know her at all. She’s crazy enough to do anything, from what I saw of her. Maybe Jake kept some of the dough up here. Maybe he kept jewelry. Jake has a lot of fancy stuff he gets from the trade over in Jersey. She might have found it and scrammed.”
The phone sat on a small modern table, near the white oak desk. I thumbed the pages of the little red book. There were many names here, written in a neat, almost boyish hand, the numbers done in a square type of letter reminiscent of library cards or pages in an accountant’s ledger. I looked for everything and nothing. I took my time. This was my province, the study of names and addresses and telephone numbers. I had ferreted clues of this sort many times before in the office, sorting and sifting changes of addresses, thumbing through telephone books, city directories, and mailing lists.
I found nothing until the page tabbed “H.” And then I paused, staring at the page as though it were stained with blood, fascinated by it, horrified by it. For Gwen Hibbs was written here. And alongside her name was her phone number. Our phone number! On the line beneath he had written again, another number, an uptown number for her other home—1956 West Seventy-eighth Street. I stood there, fighting off my distrust, trying for intelligent thought, battling the sickness inside me. I turned the pages, but I saw nothing but Gwen and Jake Frugi and their secret home and their life together. The pressure of time faded. I was alone now at my own wailing wall, halted in my movements by the overpowering emptiness of disillusionment. And the hate for her shook the little red book. I felt suddenly sick, weak in the stomach, exhausted by the final proof in my hands.
Louie Sliger woke me. I dropped the little red book.
He hit me with a small lamp. I had forgotten about him. The lamp crashed against my head and there was a flash of pain and then he was on me and over me, hitting me in the face, reaching for my throat and kicking out at me as I fell against the wall. If he had been stronger he might have killed me. As it was, he did me a favor. I let him come for a moment. I let him wake me. His bony hands worked for my neck and struggled to throttle me. But the lamp had not done enough for him. When he fell on me, I reached out and found his wrists and gave him a small lesson in judo, an army lesson. He screamed weakly and pulled away from my throat and rolled back, kicking and kneeing. I bounced his head against the floor, once, twice, three tim
es. He lay quiet after that. I lifted him under the arms and dragged him through the living room and through the hall into the bedroom. There was a small, dark room near the hallway. I set Sliger down at the doorway and reached for the light switch.
The light flooded the room with sudden brilliance, and the throb in my head accelerated as I stepped back in a reflex of horror. The man in the striped shirt lay on the floor. He had fallen in a grotesque pose. One arm was outflung as though reaching for an impossible height. His face was no face. He had been mauled. A stain of blood formed the background for his head. The striped shirt was splattered with it, high up on the collar. His mouth was half open. He had two gold fillings in his upper teeth. His eyes stared into mine. Almost the way he had stared at me a few hours ago. But not quite.
I walked away from him, trying for calm, feeling the muscles in my legs go tight and stiff. In the bathroom I washed the blood from my face. Sliger had scratched me, a short scar above the right eye. I doused my head and brushed my hair. My tie was shredded. I walked into the bedroom and selected a tie from Jake Frugi’s rack. He had several dozen, neatly arranged on the door. I chose a conservative blue from the mass of fancy prints, silks and garish hand-painted originals. Jake Frugi would need these no more.
Down in the street, Monkowitz greeted me like an old friend. I told him to drive to the Village.
At the first red light, he said, “You want to put a hunk of tape over that cut. It’s bleeding bad.”
“It’ll stop,” I said. “Cut myself while shaving.”
He nodded at the road. “Happens to me all the time.”
The horror at the Beveret had dulled me. I sat back in the cab and listened to the noises of the night around my small island of shelter; the turning of wheels, the honking of horns, the thousand and one sounds of life and living, as remote from me now as hope itself. I tried to measure this moment, to take stock of my progress, to add it all up, but the total was always the same—Jake Frugi. And now that Frugi was dead, what next? Barker? McPhail? I forced myself to relive the episode in Frugi’s apartment—to forget about the corpse on the floor, to limit my reasoning to tangible assets—the phone book with Gwen’s name in it. Certainly the truth about Gwen should change my perspective. I fought to keep the problem clear, to convince myself that the girl who lay dead in my apartment was not Gwen at all. The real Gwen existed only in my experience with her.
Friday for Death Page 10
