“I’ll go,” I said. “What else?”
“Give me a minute, Steve. Don’t rush me. I’ve got to worry this thing a bit. It’s all new to me.”
“I’m sorry, Harv. I guess I’m scared. I’m afraid of a police visit here.”
“Relax,” he said. “They’ve got a long way to go. They won’t get Linda’s address until they’ve been through our office. They’re not quite as quick as you think, Steve. In the meantime, let’s concentrate on finding George Barker. And this Bert McPhail, I like him, too. Does Abe think he can get him?”
“He didn’t know. He’s sitting down there, waiting for him.”
“Tell him to stay where he is. McPhail has everything we need, especially motive and time. If he was on your block this morning, he had a pretty damned good reason for being there. We’ve got to pin him down and beat it out of him, Steve. Don’t let Abe loose until he’s made the locate on McPhail.”
“I don’t see him at all,” I said. “It’s all Barker for my money.”
“It could be Barker, too. That’s why you’ve got to keep moving in your direction. You’ve started on the path through Frugi, and yours may lead to the bull’s eye. I want you to finish with every small lead into Frugi. This Wagner person, for instance. We don’t know a thing about him. You’d better attend his party, Steve.”
“That won’t be easy.”
“You weren’t wise, fighting with Barker that way, Steve. He’ll smarten up plenty now. When you finish talking to Mark Wagner, I want you to go back to Consuelo’s. If you see Barker, hold on to him. Tie him up if you can—he’s important.” He was talking fast now, thinking it through, adding it up for us. I had seen him work this way in the office, many times. He built it slowly, working the odd pieces around in his ledger mind. When the parts began to mesh, his enthusiasm caught you, his eyes lit up, and he led you, over-brimming with boyish zeal, down the path to the solution. “One thing more—and a damned important little item, Steve. Ken Sisley. You say he’s with you?”
“He’s on ice until tomorrow.”
“Good. Tell Linda to get started for the Seventy-eighth Street place.”
“What is she looking for?”
“Anything and everything. Gwen must have plenty up there, Steve. Everything clear?”
“Where will we meet you?”
“When you’ve finished, go back to Linda’s. I’ll be there. I’ll give you the sign if everything’s clear. Drive by in a cab. Let Linda come up alone. Tell her to put a sign on the door before you leave there. Make it simple, a handwritten sign saying, ‘Away until Monday’—as though she’s gone for the weekend. That’ll be a good brush-off for the police: She can leave her key in an empty mailbox downstairs. I’ll find it. Check?”
Linda wrote the sign and tacked it to the door. We ran down the stairs together. It was a relief to get out in the open again. We ran fast. I held her hand, listening to the clack of our heels echoing up the silent street, feeling suddenly alive again, suddenly hopeful.
Monkowitz said nothing. He shot into gear as soon as we entered the cab. I told Linda what Harvey had directed.
She said, “Did he reach any conclusion about who the man with the glasses could be?”
“How could he? Some of my best friends wear glasses. How about you?”
“True. But the business of the glasses seems to stick with me,” she said. “I suppose it’s too obvious, though, is that it?”
“I’ve been tabulating them,” I said. “And not getting anywhere. I’ve been toying with eyeglasses ever since I spoke to Mrs. Monati. The point is that any amateur murderer might wear glasses as a simple disguise—for identification purposes only. I’ve been fighting with myself to forget that clue. It’s worthless because it’s obvious.”
“I don’t think it’s worthless.”
“Why not?”
“You sometimes wear glasses,” Linda said.
“What of it?”
“It could be that the subject might want to be identified as you. We’ve got to give him credit for craftiness, Steve.”
I could have kissed her for her effort. But this was no time for love making. I squeezed her hand. I said, “Tell me more.”
“The apartment,” she said. “Your apartment. Was it riffled, too?”
I thought back. My memory told me that I had detected confusion only in Gwen’s dresser. I had taken that confusion for granted, only because I expected Gwen to be careless with her clothes. But I remembered nothing like the mess at Consuelo’s or Frugi’s. “He might have searched through Gwen’s stuff,” I said. “But it wasn’t frantic. Or maybe he had found what he wanted by the time he reached Gwen. He might have found what he was looking for at Frugi’s or Consuelo’s.”
“If he went there first,” Linda said thoughtfully. “But he didn’t go to Consuelo’s first: The elevator boy testified that she was in her apartment all afternoon, isn’t that so?”
“She left late.”
“We’ll assume, then, that the murderer visited her apartment after he killed Frugi and Gwen. We’ve got to, unless Consuelo did the job herself.”
“Or Barker.”
“Why Barker?”
“Harvey seems to think he’s an important link.”
She gave Barker some thought. “I’m trying to agree with him, Steve, but it doesn’t jell. I see Barker in a simpler role. He was Consuelo’s boyfriend, that’s all.”
“He was fishy when he walked in on me up at her flat.”
“Why wouldn’t he be? Put yourself in his place.”
“I mean the business of pretending not to see the upheaval.”
“That might have been your imagination.”
“Harv doesn’t think so,” I said. “I’m going back there, after Wagner’s.”
“Be careful,” she said. “What else did Harvey say?”
“You’re on your way to Seventy-eighth Street—Gwen’s apartment. It might give us a lead to another man.”
She pressed my hand again. “Where will I meet you?”
“Come back to Wagner’s. Wait for me. We’ll go over to Consuelo’s for a minute—and then back to your place.”
I got out at the darkened end of the huge apartment house where Wagner lived. I said. “Take good care of her, Monkowitz. She’s my right arm.”
“I thought you said I was your right arm?” He grinned.
“I’ll need three of them tonight.”
“You’ve got three of them,” he said, and slid off down Park Avenue.
CHAPTER 10
Nobody saw me enter Mark Wagner’s party. But that was because nobody saw much of anything at Wagner’s. His cocktail affair had reached brawl proportions. He had a penthouse, but the noise was bottled up within its walls. When I opened the hall door it hit me, a wave of sound; a mixture of cacophonic overtones and the genial buzz of the steady drinkers. A man and a girl looked up at me blearily from a couch. Then they lost themselves in each other. The hall was large and square, done in the modern manner, with ochre walls and enough lighting to guide you into the huge living room.
Here confusion buzzed and bellowed. Somebody pounded a grand piano at the far end of the turquoise rug. Around and about the pianist sang an assortment of revelers, the women bright-eyed and wide-mouthed, the men in advance stages of drunken disorder. It was an effort to see into the room, to encompass the room. Your eye was caught by the small highlights of activity, the loudly intense drunks, the somber, serious drunks, the lovers, the dancers, the weaving onlookers. You looked for everything and nothing. My objectivity was painful, because it isolated me. I stood there for a short moment. .
A tall redhead bounced up to me and grabbed my arm. She was dressed in a yellow gown, cut low enough for embarrassment. She tugged me toward the side of the room and pressed a small liquor glass into my hand.
“Cut
cha’ face,” she said. “Putsomelikka on it, big boy. Antiseptic.”
We were in a corner, behind a modern cluster of furniture, high enough to screen us.
I said, “Which one is Wagner?”
“Cutcha’ face,” she said, and touched me with her scarlet-tipped fingers. “Hurtchaself, big boy?”
A flat-footed butler passed, carrying a tray of canapés. I snapped my fingers and he turned and came over. He offered me food.
“Mr. Wagner,” I said. “Haven’t seen him. Where is he?”
He looked down at me as though I had come in by way of the servant’s entrance.
“You can see him, if you stand up, sir. At the piano, of course.”
The blowzy redhead stayed with me, hanging on to my arm as I crossed to the far end of the room. I stood away from the piano and watched Mark Wagner. At first he was only two hands, long and lean and skittering up and down the keyboard in a professional boogie-woogie. He had the light touch. The left hand moved as quickly as the right. A pair of singers left to replenish their glasses. Then Mark Wagner came into complete focus.
He was not drunk. He sat at the piano as though he were a paid performer, his face a mask of detached calm. He was the esthetic type, high in the forehead and long-nosed. His brittle lips smiled the thin and sensitive smile of secret enjoyment most good pianists wear while at the keyboard. A few beads of sweat sparkled on his brow. He had the gray eyes of an animal, pinpointed with an inner fire, an unconcern, a dreaminess that cut him off from the noise around him. Heavy-lidded and withdrawn, his eyes told you nothing. A very young-looking girl squirmed through the group around him and handed him a drink and whispered something to him. He sipped at the drink, holding the glass in his left hand, still playing, carrying the melody with his right, and then she leaned over him and he kissed her and smiled at her and got up.
Standing, he was a short man. He had an arm around the girl now and the gesture seemed boyish. I tapped his arm as he passed me.
I said, “Mark? Can you give me a minute?”
He stared at me and through me, still smiling vaguely, not sure of himself, not certain that he knew me.
“Sure thing,” he said. “Hang on, Mary, I’ll be right with you.”
Mary hung on. She braced herself against him, incongruous as she clung to him, her eyes batting at me.
“Alone,” I said.
He studied me briefly. He shrugged and took Mary’s hands and patted them gently. “Be right back, chicken,” he said, while she glared at me. He pointed toward another room, smiling now in a tolerant way. He put his hands in his pockets and I followed him. He was very short. From behind he might have been a youth, a teenage genius, slender and willowy and as tall as my sister Ann. His long hair gave him extra height, but it wasn’t enough. He dressed neatly, meticulously, all in blue, including a light blue shirt and tie. He walked with a spry step, on his toes, light and airy. His shoulders were pulled back firmly as he walked.
His library was a decorator’s dream. He sat behind a long desk that followed the curve of the wall and filled half the room. There was a drawing board near the window, and on it a bright sketch of a woman of fashion, done in the angles and symbols of the designer’s craft. His desk top was in perfect order, an opened book; a thin and glittering box of cigarettes. And a pair of eye-glasses, horn-rimmed. In the glasses a highlight glowed, the reflection of the tall lamp behind me. It lit the glasses and put eyes in them, small, sharp eyes.
Mark Wagner half turned in his chair. He reached into a cabinet in the wall. He brought out two hookers. “What were you drinking, chum?”
“I’ve had enough, thanks.”
He shrugged again. It was a delicate gesture. “You don’t mind if I have another?” He poured. “Can’t seem to recall your name. Oh, don’t let it bother you, I can’t keep track of half the people at these shindigs.”
“You don’t know me,” I said. “I’m a friend of Consuelo’s.”
“Oh?” he said, sipping his drink. He put the glass down and I saw his hand slide along the underside of the desk, slowly, casually. My hand was in my pocket, on Louie Sliger’s gun. But he stood, suddenly, and walked away from the desk, frowning a little. “I didn’t see Consuelo tonight. She couldn’t come?”
“She’s indisposed.”
“A good girl, Consuelo.”
“You should know.”
He turned his head. His face clouded with annoyance. But he didn’t let it throw him. He killed it with his ingrown smile.
“I don’t quite follow you.”
“I mean you’re an expert, aren’t you? With women?”
“Get to the point. You didn’t want to talk about fashions, did you?”
“Indirectly. You remember Gwen Hibbs?”
He toyed with it for a moment. “Of course. A striking girl, Gwen.”
“She worked for you?”
I could have smeared his smug little laugh over his delicate face.
“For a while,” he said. “Why do you ask?”
“I’m looking for her.”
“Why?”
I resented his cockiness. He was putting me on the short end of the questions, where he should have been. It was a trick, a personality quirk that he had developed for situations of this kind. His calmness, his quick, easy confidence irritated me. He reminded me in some way of Jonas Tripp. He had the same sly brain, the ability to thrust and parry with words, the skill of the professional executive who has built systems for dealing with underlings.
“Jake Frugi wants her,” I said. “Right away.”
“And Jake Frugi doesn’t know where to find her?”
“Jake doesn’t know a lot of things.”
“About Gwen?” He pulled at his lip, hiding the smile now. “I don’t quit follow you, Mr.—”
“McGrath,” I said. “I’m working for Jake.”
“You don’t look the type, McGrath.”
“Tell that to Jake when you see him.” I showed him Louie Sliger’s gun.
“I’ll make a note of it,” he said. He was stalling now. I had reached him. I was halfway home, but he needed the shock treatment. He would hold me off this way forever, if he could. He stood rooted at the window, stiff and straight, swaying a little on his heels, meditating over the skyline, adjusting himself for me. “I haven’t seen Gwen Hibbs in a long time, McGrath. Not since the day Jake Frugi met her up here. Jake knows that. Or doesn’t he?”
“You saw her,” I said.
“In the shop, once, but Jake knew she was coming.”
I stabbed. “You saw her after that. Jake knows, because I told him, Wagner. I’ve been tailing you for weeks.”
That did it. He swung around. He came toward me stiffly, his eyes burning, his frozen lips alive with anger. “The dirty dog,” he said. “What was the big idea?”
“You’ll have to ask Jake that one. All I want is the answer to my first question. Otherwise Jake might resent it, Wagner. He might get rough with you. He’s interested in making a locate on Gwen, do you see?”
“The little tramp,” he said. “What has she done now?”
“I couldn’t say.”
“I warned him about her, but he wouldn’t listen,” Wagner said. “She’s a production. She’s the most evil woman I ever knew. I told him to be careful with her. He knew what she tried to pull with me. But that didn’t stop him. Well, it serves him right, whatever happened. They’re two of a kind. They were made for each other.”
“Dandy,” I said. “Where is she now?”
“I tell you I don’t know.”
“Jake thinks you do. She isn’t at Seventy-eighth Street. Jake says maybe you set her up yourself somewhere.”
“I wouldn’t give her the right time.”
“You did once.”
“That was different. I gave her a job. I tried t
o do something for her because of Consuelo. It didn’t last long. Jake knows that. I had Gwen around until she showed her hand. Really, she was quite obvious. After Jake met her, she tried to blackmail me. She invited me up to Seventy-eighth Street, but I didn’t stay long enough to suit her. She wanted to put me in the middle, between her and Jake. But it didn’t work because I was too clever for her. I’ve told Jake all about this. He warned me to stay away from her, and I have, until last week. If you saw me with her it was because she arranged it, I tell you. You must have seen us in the restaurant, eh, McGrath? Well, you saw what happened. You know that I left her after lunch. What can Jake Frugi want from me?”
“Gwen Hibbs.”
“I don’t know where she is.”
“Why did you meet her for lunch?”
“She forced me to see her. She wanted money.” He had broken completely now. He stared at the gun. It bothered him. I held it lightly, muzzle up. “She was blackmailing me, McGrath. You’d have to know her to understand her. She had enough from Jake Frugi—all the money she could use. Yet, she wanted more. I told her that she wouldn’t get it. I walked out on her. That was the last time I saw her, believe me.”
“Sure, sure,” I said. “I believe you, Wagner. Don’t get your guts in a jam. Why don’t you relax? All Jake wants to know now is where in hell she went. He’s through with her, too. He figured maybe you could give him a lead to her. Was she playing anybody else? Did she talk about any other sucker? She might be working this routine with an assistant, a smart apple who’s feeding her the moves.”
“I’ve thought that for a long time,” Wagner said. “Gwen Hibbs has a conniving mind, but she can’t be as smart as we think. I believe that she might have created the ideas, the goals; the swindles. But she must have someone to help her organize. She’s not very intelligent, really. In my business we get to know women because we handle them, we deal with them. Gwen is no mastermind, no builder. She’s a wrecker, an evil woman who’s hell-bent for disaster. She would have gotten her just deserts long, ago on her own. Her craftiness never came through to me as an organized system of thinking. But I can see her getting an idea and sharing it, working it out with another, more intelligent schemer. She’s the lure, really, not the promoter.”
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