“An interesting idea,” I said. “And what would she promote?”
“Anything. I wouldn’t put mayhem past her.”
“And robbery?”
“Routine.”
“She would even rob Jake Frugi?”
He shook his head on that one. He enjoyed it. “Delightful. Has she tried?”
“Maybe.”
“I can believe it.”
“Can you believe she’d rifle his apartment?”
“Don’t make me laugh,” he said. “Gwen isn’t active enough for actual movement of that type. But her boyfriend might try it. She would have the keys to Jake Frugi’s place, wouldn’t she?”
“And what would her boyfriend take?”
“That depends. Jake Frugi runs a gambling casino. There must be buckets full of cash at Jake Frugi’s.”
“And suppose her boyfriend wasn’t interested in cash?”
“An interesting speculation,” Wagner said, and toyed with his drink. “The prospect of imagining her intrigues fascinates me. Did you ever think of the business of I.O.U.’s? She might have brought her partner into the casino, after hooking Jake. She might have tried for a big win out there.” He smiled at his fingers. “And her man might have failed, you know.”
“So what?”
“Jake Frugi is a funny man. He is particularly fussy about gambling debts, haven’t you heard?”
“I’ve heard,” I said. “Have you ever owed him money?”
“Often. But I’ve paid off. I wouldn’t want to antagonize him. He plays too rough.”
“You don’t owe him any now?”
“Ask Jake,” he said calmly. “And then catch Gwen Hibbs and ask her whether her boyfriend, her invisible mental partner, owes Jake Frugi anything.”
“I’m going to catch him. You wouldn’t know where I’d find him?”
“If I did, I’d tell you.”
“But you’re sure she has another playmate?”
“Be sensible, man. You’re supposed to be doing a job for Jake. But you’ll never get anywhere thinking as slowly as you do. There must have been someone before she got to Jake and me. Jake knew it. I knew it. It was obvious that she had some sucker on her hook. How else could she keep the Seventy-eighth Street place?”
I toyed with the answer for that one. I had assumed that Jake Frugi paid the freight on Seventy-eighth Street. I fought down the nausea that crept through me. Gwen had betrayed me long ago. How deep did the roots go? There was so little time to dig, so little time to explore, and the maze was broader now, more confused.
“That’s the question Jake Frugi’s asking,” I said. “And I’m getting paid to answer it. She’s hit him for plenty and he wants the bright boy who guides her. Bright boy got bolder today, Wagner. He showed his hand. He’s been playing burglar—at Jake’s place.”
I watched him for reaction. I got nothing but perplexity. He waited for me to go on. I let him wait.
“He got the casino money?”
“He wasn’t interested in money.”
He slapped his fist in his palm. “This is one for the books. Gwen would want only the money. I don’t begin to understand it. Does Jake?”
“Not yet,” I said. “It’s my job to make it all fit, to find her and ask her.”
“You’ll never get her, McGrath. You’ll have to catch her boyfriend first. He must be a clever chap.”
“I can’t wait to meet him.”
“He’ll be interesting,” Wagner said. “But Gwen Hibbs—you’ll enjoy her, if you ever find her.”
“This man,” I said. “I think I’ve got a line on him.”
I put it to him straight, watching his eyes for a sign. I saw only sudden interest. No amusement. No confusion. No guilt. He said, “You have?”
“A jerk named Barker. George Barker.”
“Oh, please.” He laughed delicately. “Not Barker.”
“You know him?”
“I’ve met him. Barker is almost a moron. Let me tell you about him, McGrath. I may save you some time. George Barker is a slick adolescent, the school-boy painter type. He has a certain facility with nudes and makes his living painting one restaurant after another. You can see his genius on the walls of The Club Blue, on Fifty-second Street. Consuelo picked him up after Jake left her, mostly because he has the type of virile good looks that certain women burn to love. But even Consuelo laughs at him sometimes. He has the charm of a simpleton, and flits from woman to woman with careless abandon. He came to the city from Hackensack, where he made quite a name for himself as a pug, a boxer. You would have to be hungry for a victim to pick George Barker as your man. Gwen could stuff him away in a small corner of her intellect.”
He seemed to be enjoying himself now. He had settled back in his modern chair behind the desk and folded his hands across his slim torso while delivering himself of his fruity phrases. He had a capacity for dialogue rich with his personality, and somebody must have told him that he was a devil with his tongue. But beyond the surface skill of his easy conversation, he projected an honesty, a natural earnestness that came through to me as genuine. I had afforded him a chance for relaxation from the hurly-burly of his party on the other side of the door and he was hell-bent for entertaining me with his easy wit and metropolitan charm. I gave him another chance to talk.
I said. “I have another—a certain Bert McPhail.”
He opened his eyes at Bert and leaned toward the desk. “The musical Bert McPhail?”
“You’ve guessed him.”
He studied the pen holder on his desk. He took the pen and turned it in his hand and tapped it on the blotter slowly. When he looked my way, his attitude had changed. He was serious now.
“I know Bert pretty well,” he said. “A handsome youth.”
“How is he in the brain department?”
“Bert’s a clever lad,” said Wagner. “How do you know he had anything to do with her?”
“Let’s keep talking about Bert.”
“I haven’t seen him for some time,” Wagner said. “He was a big success in a show called Hats Off—a musical that ran for a while about two years ago. But something happened to Bert after that. He couldn’t get placed in another Broadway opus. He faded, and nobody in show business could understand why. He has looks, he’s a damned good-looking boy—and he sings a fine tenor. Bert was the type of juvenile that Hollywood usually grabs and promotes. I know many people in the theater who still think he was one of the handsomest young men to hit Broadway since the days of Barrymore. Oh, that might sound like an exaggeration, but you’d have to see Bert to understand his appeal.”
“I’ve seen him,” I said. “He’s real cute. How would he work with Gwen?”
“He’s possible. He’s certainly a lot more possible than Barker. Bert McPhail has intelligence, he’s clever and brainy, a hell of a lot smarter than Gwen.”
“He could fit,” I said. “If he was down on his luck she might have grabbed him and begun to promote with him.”
Wagner thought about it and agreed with me. But he knew very little about the Bert McPhail of today. His memory of Bert reached back to the days when the tenor was a popular youth, a matinee idol, the sort of person Wagner met in his nightly round of parties and clubs where celebrities gather.
“Bert may be your man,” he said. “I can see him working with her because he’s far beyond her mentally, but soft and weak emotionally. She would hold him to her with her body, but Bert would be boss in the planning department.”
“Quite a combine,” I said.
“Quite a woman,” said Wagner, and stood up suddenly, slapping his fist in his palm with a decisive smack. “Quite a woman, indeed. You’ll enjoy her no end when you find her.”
“When and if.”
“I wish you luck,” he said, and, came away from the desk. I started for the d
oor. When I turned to face him he was still punching his palm in a regular beat. “One more item, Wagner. Were you in your store all afternoon? Jake would want to know, just for the record.”
He began to laugh quietly. “Jake thinks I went prowling?”
“He’s asking you.”
“Tell him for me that he’s going crazy, McGrath. I have dozens of witnesses to prove where I was all day.” He approached me sadly. “I’m a little disappointed in Jake Frugi. I thought we were friends.”
“You can’t blame him, can you? That dame was no tonic for him.”
“I’d like to see him again. Tell him that. We were always good friends, Jake and I. It was only after he met her that he went sour, completely sour. Maybe he’ll go back to Consuelo now. He should never have left her. If I can do anything to get them together again—”
“I’ll tell him what you said.”
He took me through the living room. The party was manic now. He steered me past the groups of merry-makers, bowing and smiling as he walked.
In the hall he said, “I wish you luck, McGrath.”
“I’ll need it,” I said. “That Hibbs doll is a queer one.”
“You’ll never know how queer she is until you meet her.”
I shook his hand and went down the hall to the elevator. He stood in his doorway staring at me as I stepped into the car. Then I pressed the button and the door shut him away from me. But I couldn’t forget his face or his dialogue. What he had said about the robbery at Jake Frugi’s interested me. I wondered now whether the man who robbed Frugi and Consuelo was one and the same. Had he entered both places on the prowl for something that belonged to Jake Frugi—something Jake Frugi prized? Was he the same man who killed Frugi and emptied his pockets of his personal belongings?
The automatic door slid open on the main floor. I was jerked out of my reverie. I caught a glimpse of the front entrance. There were two men talking to the doorman. One of them wore a uniform. They had their backs to me. In the electric moment, I reached for the button and pressed. The door slid back, tortuously slow. I was moving down. I dropped to the basement and then I was out in the dimly lit catacombs of the giant cellar.
I was running, stumbling over crates, picking my way around wooden partitions, cursing aloud the stupidity of apartment house construction, aiming my steps in the general direction of the side street exit that I knew must exist. Ahead in the gloom a small red bulb glowed over a steel door. This was the exit. I opened the door tentatively, staring down the gray corridor of the alley. They had missed seeing me upstairs, or they would be out there. I heard no sound. The police had gone upstairs. The sick dizziness of sudden relief from danger clawed at my head. I was free of them for the moment. But the danger was still ripe. Why had they come to Wagner’s? This could mean that they had already discovered the identity of Jake Frugi and were rounding up a list of suspects from among his friends.
I did not go directly to the street. There would be a squad car out there. Instead, I climbed a fence and crept through the next alley and emerged on the side street.
I ran desperately when I hit the pavement.
CHAPTER 11
I was approaching Madison Avenue when the yellow cab slid up alongside me and I saw that it was Monkowitz. Linda had the door open. Monkowitz only slowed and I hopped in as he roared away, making the light on Madison and heading downtown at an even pace.
“We figured you for the side street, boss,” he said. “It was her idea, after we saw the squad car pull up.”
In the half-light, Linda’s eyes told me their worry, her great concern for me. I sat there, bent forward, sucking air, breathing deep. I had run far. And running was new to me. Four years at a desk had softened me in the thighs. Now the strain pulled at my legs and cramped them. My throat was dust-dry. The heat of my exertions boiled over in me, burned the edges of my nerves, adding physical pain to the numbness around my eyes and the quick fear that panicked me. I sat there, weak and worn, until my breathing adjusted itself.
I said, “Another few seconds and I’d be riding downtown in a little black car, between two cops.”
“We should have warned you,” Linda said. “I guess we’re pretty dull, Monkowitz and I. We saw the squad car pull up. But I didn’t think of phoning you at Wagner’s until the two cops began to talk to the doorman. It was too late then. We began to pray for you, Steve. Don’t be impatient with us.”
Monkowitz said, “She wouldn’t let me go in. I could have passed those two monkeys easy.”
“She was right, Monkowitz. They would have grabbed you. They won’t be taking any chances on this one. They’ve got to close their books on it—and fast. It isn’t every day they get a challenge like this. The newspapers will play this forever, on the front pages. It’s made to order for a sensation—the old love nest routine, with plenty of blood and atmosphere. I can’t wait to see the morning papers.”
“Did you get anything from Wagner?” Linda asked.
“Plenty. He’s clean as a new towel. He’s on the outside of all this. But he told me plenty about Jake Frugi and Gwen.”
“I don’t understand how the police got to Wagner so quickly, Steve.”
“They’re smart, Linda. They must have found Frugi. They’ve probably got him in their files. He had a record, Jab did. They could dig plenty of information about his friends and associates from what they’ve got on him. I wish I had one of their bright boys on my side. It’s uncanny the way they ferret out leads and follow them right down the line.”
“It’s more than uncanny,” Linda said soberly. “It’s beyond all reason.”
“What do you mean?”
“It doesn’t make sense. Not at this hour. The police should be off after Frugi’s gangland pals. Why Wagner?”
“He must have been in Frugi’s book.”
“Along with a few hundred other names.”
“But Wagner is no common name. He’s a big man in the fashion business, Linda.”
“And Gwen—is she a big name?” she asked softly. “Was her address in Frugi’s book?”
“I remember seeing it.”
We were driving slowly, circling the park, easing along Fifty-ninth. Outside a thin rain began to fall. The tires hummed on the pavement. Linda stared out the window, her eyes clouded and distant.
“The police were up at Seventy-eighth Street, when we got there, Steve.”
Monkowitz said, “Two squad cars.”
“They were at the curb when we arrived,” Linda said. “If we had gotten there a few minutes earlier, they would have caught us in Gwen’s place. Monkowitz and I would be languishing in a cell.”
She was stabbing for the light touch. But her voice didn’t promote it. She was worried now. She was worried for me. I grabbed her hand and held it. A thin thread of thought began to crystallize.
“Harvey was right, Linda. I’m beginning to see it now. George Barker must have tipped off the police.”
“How would he know?”
“Consuelo told him, of course,” I said. “Either that’s the answer, or we’ve got to assume that the police followed the leads in Frugi’s little red book.”
“How about Bert McPhail. Isn’t he a possibility?”
“We don’t know anything about him.”
“That doesn’t mean anything,” Linda argued. “He may know lots about you, Steve.”
“You could be right, but McPhail doesn’t sell himself to me. I think Abe will agree with me about McPhail, and so will Harvey. What have we got on the bad side for McPhail? He’s a cheap tenor, a male thrush who’s been benched for some theatrical reason or other. His neighbor lady told Abe that the last time Gwen put in an appearance at McPhail’s was long, long ago. She must have known him, I give you that—but he doesn’t seem to rate as a menace as much as Barker. McPhail came to us by a roundabout lead—a memory, a bad memory I h
ad of him. Abe made the locate on him through The Cellar—a dive I haven’t been in for three years or more. If we force ourselves to be logical about the lead, we’ve got to admit that we’re assuming Gwen met him there recently; otherwise, what does the match box mean?”
“McPhail was well known there,” Linda said.
“Of course he was, as well he might be. Look, Linda, the guy’s a warbler—a tenor, a show business fixture. There’s no reason why he shouldn’t be known in The Cellar. But I’ll bet my last buck we could pick up a lead to him in almost any other club in New York. He was a star, remember?”
“And handsome.”
“Cute as hell. You’re thinking that Gwen would go for him because of his looks?”
I felt her stiffen and look away from me. “I’m sorry, Steve. I didn’t mean anything by that.”
“You don’t have to apologize,” I said, pressing her arm to reassure her. “Gwen didn’t favor the male Barrymore type. You should have seen Jake Frugi—a two-bit movie menace, if I ever saw one.”
“And Barker?”
“So-so. He’s a virile specimen.” I massaged the part of my head that had felt his virility. “I pick him from the field, Linda. He had everything, including a studio—and etchings. He’s my boy. He lived close enough in time and distance to be suspect. He attended Romani’s and met Gwen there. He had a convenient rendezvous, right down in the Village, where he could learn the layout of our apartment at first hand. He fits, Linda, right down the line. Do you see it now?”
She didn’t see it. She continued to argue against me, building Barker into a pat suspect, too obvious to be really sinister.
“What did Wagner think of him, Steve?”
“The hell with Wagner,” I said. “I don’t trust him any further than his icy pan. He was promoting McPhail, despite the fact that he only knew him casually. Maybe he has a personal gripe against the glamor boy. It sounded that way to me.”
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