In the earnestness of her discourse, Miss Palmer managed to spill the entire contents of her pocketbook on the floor of the cab. Despite her protests, Mr. Redmond got down on the floor in his clean linen suit and gathered up all the component parts. By the time he had presented them to her, the taxi had let them out in front of the Stevens Hotel. He walked away with a thoughtful frown.
The next day, Miss Palmer, carefully following the directions of the head porter, walked across downtown Chicago to the City-County Building. As she crossed the Loop—and why “Loop,” she wondered, then decided it must be the elevated train circling the central business district—she fell prey to an unaccustomed melancholy. So much had changed since 1893—all these hotels and office buildings had been nonexistent then. And State Street, now jammed with cars and buses, had then been packed with horse-drawn wagons, carriages, and foot traffic. Even the City-County Building, which was old enough to show some signs of wear, had not been thought of on her previous visit. And she—she had changed as well, settling into the rut of one of Sir Neville’s well-mannered, interfering pussies.
She fluttered earnestly from one official to another until she was finally able to consult the birth and death registers. She looked under every name she could think of but turned up nothing to the point. Of course, that was not conclusive proof—but something cold clutched around her heart. Why had she not done this years ago? Illness was never an excuse for feebleness of mind or purpose: dear Mother had taught her that by precept as well as example. And she might have spared herself much grief.
4
Race Williams, to himself
I can’t figure the dame and the kid. I spotted him for a mark right from the get-go, and if you’re looking for Red Dog Glazer, the best thing to do is hang out by a mark. Now the dame, she flutters around waving her veils and whatnot, so I do my best to calm her down, get her to take a sightseeing trip or go to church or whatever old English dames do when they’re overseas, and she stares at me with those china-doll eyes and says, “Oh, too kind of you, Mr. Williams, but—now I know you wouldn’t think it to look at me—I’m well able to take care of myself, so please don’t worry about needing to entertain me.” And on she hangs for dear life.
But getting the kid to a speakeasy did the trick. Miss China Doll Palmer may want to hold on to him twenty-four hours a day, but she’s not about to follow him drinking on Rush Street, much less on to the “Streets of Paris” for Sally Rand’s show. Although, peculiarly, I could swear I saw her leaving Miss Rand’s dressing room—or should I say undressing room?—after the performance the other night, when all the sex-starved boys of Chicago were hanging around panting.
Sure enough, two days after I detach the boy from his aunt, we start to draw a crowd for poker. A breezy American with more luck at cards than is good for him, name of Doug Redmond. A large, middle-aged Negro named Sam Leyden who works as a stevedore during the day and has the devil’s own skill at cards. And damn me if who doesn’t turn up but my client Lionel Maitland, gloves, cane, accent, everything just like it was in New York except his name. He’s calling himself Colonel Townsend. I take advantage of young Eric’s excitement at winning a hand to haul Maitland outside.
“What the hell’s your game, Maitland? You hired me to find Red Dog Glazer, and now you’ve blown into town to do the job yourself! You afraid to part with your money?”
“My dear chap! I can scarcely blame you for being distressed, but—can you kindly remove your hands from my weskit?”
“Not until I’ve had a look at your wallet, my friend.” And I pull it out of his vest pocket—or weskit, as he calls it. He wants to grab it back, but I never travel without my gun, and it’s casually pointing at his watch pocket while I flip the contents of his wallet with my left hand. He’s got cards in every name under creation—Colonel Townsend, Lionel Maitland, and three or four more besides. And enough cash to put me up in the Stevens for the rest of the summer. I pull out four fifties and tuck them into my inside jacket pocket before stuffing the wallet into his weskit again.
“I need some walking-around money, Colonel Townsend-Maitland. It’ll help me draw Red Dog to my side. You can hold the rest until I’ve executed my mission. But what the hell are you doing here?”
He looks at my face, doesn’t like what he sees, and transfers his affections to the gun. Father’s helper is still pointing at his chest.
“It just seemed to me, old chap, that this feller Glazer being a master of disguise, it might be handy if I was on the spot, see if I recognize him, what?”
“He’s much more likely to recognize you and spoil your game.” I let go of his lapels and shove him backward, not gently, toward the alley. “Leave the detecting to me. If you can’t trust me to do the job right, why did you hire the best investigator in New York?”
“No offense, old man, but what have you been doing besides tagging along with that milk-fed youth?”
“If you haven’t seen me at work, that means I’m doing a good job,” I snarl.
And I hadn’t been idle. My first stop in town had been the Chicago American, where I met a reporter named Reuben Levine, who was interested in the Dog. I got what pix there were of him and a basketful of tales of his doings. Around the time of the Great War, Red Dog had posed as a wealthy German looking for Americans to invest in land devalued by the war. He found plenty of suckers, all right, just as he had for running a shady betting scheme on some horses he controlled. His main gig lately, though, has been the one Maitland says he got caught on. Seems Glazer likes to pretend he’s a bumbling idiot with a booze factory he can’t handle, finds a mark who wants to make a fast buck on the shady side. He rents a warehouse, fills it for twenty-four hours with actors pretending to be bootleggers, gets a still, bottles, the works, and sells the lot, including the distribution routes. When the mug shows up the next day to take over, he finds an empty warehouse!
And I’d found the speakos Glazer liked to hang at when he was home—one of them being the very place I’d just pulled Colonel Townsend-Maitland from. But it’s not my policy to let the client know what I’m up to. Keep an air of mystery and they think you’re all-powerful. Let them in on your secrets and they always think you haven’t done enough.
“I’ve done some digging,” was all I told Maitland-Townsend. “And I’ve found out more than you realize.”
He gives me a skeptical look, but he heads up the alley and away from me. I go back into the speako.
Young Eric, after his big victory ten minutes ago, is managing to lose a few bills, but he keeps joking around in his usual good-natured way. He may be a fool, but at least he’s a well-behaved fool. Redmond is dealing, which kind of makes me wonder.
Redmond looks mighty uncomfortable when I come back in, which has me even more curious about his system for marking cards. But he asks after Townsend-Maitland, and when I say the limey’s taken a hike, he relaxes and orders a round for everyone at the table.
Meanwhile, I take advantage of the lull to exchange my own deck for the one Redmond was using. The big Negro gives me a long, hard look and demands a fresh deck from the houseman. We all take a turn inspecting the cards and play begins again. Pretty soon the luck has evened out, and Redmond is looking peevish. He breaks up the party a little after two and saunters into the night.
Now anyone who knows Race Williams will tell you he’s not a sap, so don’t think I’d turned into a soft touch when I took young Eric by the hand to lead him back to his auntie and his hotel. The old lady drives me crazy, but there’s something about how she looks at me with those china-doll eyes that makes me think the way to minimize trouble is bring her little boy home and tuck him into bed, that’s all.
On the way I try to pry into how Maitland-Townsend and Redmond act around each other—what kind of clues are they dropping about their past relationship. Of course the kid’s never noticed anything. But just as I’m about to give up on him, Eric adds, in that accent I can hardly make out, “Now the funny thing is, Williams
, I think I know Townsend myself from someplace. It’s how he deals cards that makes me think it, but when I asked him if we’d ever met, he got quite huffy. He says he’s spending his time working night and day for the Empire. Although I can’t see how playing poker in speakeasies does the Empire much good.”
Which just shows that even an innocent like young Eric isn’t totally stupid. I deliver him into the care of the night man at the Stevens and hoof it back to my own flop. He calls after me to pick him up in time for Sally’s entrance tomorrow night.
5
7 June 1933
Cable from Miss Charlotte Palmer, Stevens Hotel, Chicago
To Chlotilde Milder, The Vicarage, St Clement-sur-Mare
See no point in your crossing Atlantic. Will arrange for Eric’s body to be sent home for funeral as soon as police complete investigation. Letter follows.
7 June 1933
Miss Charlotte Palmer
c/o Stevens Hotel, Chicago
Letter to Mrs. Ben (Chlotilde) Milder
The Vicarage, St Clement-sur-Mare
England
I cannot tell you how remiss I feel, for how laden with remorse I am over this tragedy. Had I the least notion of his being in danger, I would have overridden his protests about leaving Chicago. And then for his body to be found by the janitors as they cleaned up the “Streets of Paris” venue early yesterday morning!
The police have arrested Samuel Leyden, a Negro who had played cards with Eric at the speakeasy they both frequented. In fact, Mr. Leyden is the uncle of my Negro maid, the one I wrote you about. I went to visit the unfortunate man in prison. I cannot believe him to be the perpetrator of this crime.
Mr. Williams, who brought me the news, seemed to think the murder had to do with a row over cards. Such a sad way to die, if indeed it is true, although how Eric happened to be in Miss Rand’s pavilion without anyone the wiser, I do not know. When they took me to identify the body—
Miss Palmer broke off here. No need to distress poor Chlotilde with details. Or with the matter that had troubled Miss Palmer for the last twenty-four hours: the fact that Eric’s billfold had been rifled. It was a large double-fold, almost too big for his breast pocket. He carried all of his documents in it, and that's what the killer had taken, no money or passport. These past weeks, Miss Palmer had seen Eric surreptitiously inspecting its contents. What had he hidden there all these weeks?
She could not believe the Negro, Mr. Leyden, would have murdered Eric over a dispute at cards and stolen his papers while leaving his money intact. The papers could be of no use to a third party unless there were something in them worth committing blackmail over. Miss Palmer felt suddenly chilly, despite the oppressive humidity of the June day.
Then, too, if the dispute had been over cards, why was Eric’s body found at the pavilion? He had been murdered elsewhere and taken there. Even Captain Oglesby, the arresting officer, who had scarcely been civil enough to take his cigar out of his mouth when speaking to Miss Palmer, could acknowledge that. “Had there been bloodstains at the speakeasy where Eric played cards?” she asked of him.
“The police know what they’re doing, lady. If you’ll take my advice, you’ll mind your own business and leave me to mind mine.”
“But the murder of my nephew must be my own business, Captain, and I cannot believe Mr. Leyden did this deed.”
“Women’s intuition?” Oglesby’s mouth curled in an ugly sneer. “We’ve had our eyes on this Leyden for some time. He’s uppity, a Commie, an agitator, and God knows what else besides. Leave the police work to those who know how to do it.”
She knew when it was futile to argue. But she was certain Eric had not been killed over cards. It had to be about the confidence artist he had come to Chicago to find. For a time, Miss Palmer wondered whether Mr. Redmond was the man. He was certainly American. He was a rogue, but not cruel. Now if it had been Colonel Townsend . . . but the colonel was so very definitely British, and the man who had fleeced Eric in Malaysia was American.
Miss Sally Rand, a keen observer behind her ostrich-feather fans, had taken a fancy to Miss Palmer. Looking into those blue eyes, the dancer had seen a kindred spirit and a soul of steel, and had taken to inviting Miss Palmer into her dressing room after her shows, past the crowds of men who clamored for her attention. So on Monday night, before the murder, Miss Palmer had looked for Eric at his usual seat in the pavilion. When she couldn’t spot him, she had searched the crowd through her opera glasses, without finding him or the men who were usually in his company.
Miss Palmer finished her letter with a brief description of Leyden’s arrest and her own determination to stay in Chicago until all matters relating to Eric’s death had been resolved. She pondered what steps to take. There was no point in telling Captain Oglesby that Sir Neville Burdock at New Scotland Yard would vouch for her. The police captain hated the English with all the usual passion of the Irish in America. Certainly he had no use for Scotland Yard. No, she would have to use her wits.
Eventually she put on a hat with a veil long enough to protect her face from the sun. Swathing her shoulders in voile, she gave the bellman a dime to find her a taxi.
6
Race Williams, to himself
I never should have left New York for this two-bit dump. The mark gets himself bumped off, and Leyden is arrested for the crime. A colored man killing a visiting Brit is bad for business, so he’ll fry before the end of the year.
And what about my fee? Since the kid’s body surfaced, there’s been no sign of Doug Redmond, although my client, Maitland-Townsend, is hovering around, officious enough. Of course, I’d figured Redmond for Red Dog Glazer even before I saw Reuben Levine’s pix. The name itself tipped me—not much of a disguise, almost as if he was flirting with discovery. But I didn’t unmask him, and now the slicko’s hoofed it. Why didn’t I finger him and at least get my thousand, you want to know? Because I wondered what game he was playing and how much of my client’s story about the booze-factory scam to believe.
And since there’s no fee waiting for me, I might as well get back on the Twentieth Century Limited. I’ve parlayed the Brit’s four fifties into eight hundred cool ones at the poker table, so I can swank it with the rich folks in the sleepers going home.
I’m lying on my bed with only a flask to keep me company when a knock on my door is followed by the arrival of—of all people—Miss China Doll. Of course, I have my gun pointed at the door before the knocking stops. Does this make her jump? About as much as if it had been a silver platter for her to put her visiting card in.
“You come to chew me out for your nephew getting iced? Forget it. You want my condolences, you got them. Now take off. This flop is no place for a lah-ti-dah lady, so you’d better go where they can get you a cup of tea when you come all-over faint.”
“Perhaps you could put the gun away, Mr. Williams. I assure you I am not going to shoot you.”
And with that, seeing the dump doesn’t run to chairs, she sits on the end of the bed. I lower the gun but keep hold of it while I swing my legs past her head and sit up on the side.
She keeps on nattering. “I know there are people, Mr. Williams—and doubtless you like to think you are one of them—who believe human life consists of kill or be killed. But I do have to confess that I doubt very much whether you truly believe that deep down. You remind me too much of a man I knew many years ago, a Mr. Guillaume, who, like you, was a diamond in the rough but a gentle man at heart.
“I would like to know how Eric came to be killed. Where he came to be killed, for that matter. I’m hoping you can tell me whether on Monday night he was at that drinking establishment you and he frequented.”
I feel the blood rush to my head. “Ever since you blocked my path getting off the train two weeks ago, you’ve been slowing me down—you and your nephew between you. Now you want me to hang around this burg to clean up after him?”
She shakes her head. “Eric was an adult, even if not very wise, Mr. William
s. I truly regret his death, but I hold you no more responsible than I hold myself—less, if the truth be known, since his dear grandmother had entrusted him to my care. Of course, between ourselves, Eric had got into trouble in the Far East before returning to England in March. He had been sent there to look after his father’s rubber plantation in Kuala Lumpur—or do I mean Rangoon? So much alike, these Asian places—but instead, he took up with a plausible rogue and lost the entire plantation at cards. I feared the worst when he began going to the speakeasy with you and—”
I interrupt her roughly. “You may be an old lady, but you’re not the innocent you’d like everyone to believe. I’ve seen you hanging out in Sally Rand’s dressing room, and no virtuous maiden aunt carries on like that. And I’ve seen a look in those china-doll eyes of yours that could stop a charging elephant.”
“You are right, Mr. Williams, I am not a total fool. Only”—she makes a helpless, fluttering gesture that sends her scarves flying across the bed—“when the head of New Scotland Yard refers to one as an ‘old pussy,’ even though one has been most helpful in solving several murders, it seems easier to play that role than to make people uncomfortable by acting differently from what they expect.”
I pick her scarves out of my hair and hand them back to her. “So why are you here?”
“I find it impossible to think of Mr. Leyden as a murderer.”
I cut in before she can go on. “You think he’s a general in the Salvation Army, saving the down-and-outs? He’s a Wobbly. Know what that is, lady? A labor agitator who ain’t afraid to beat up someone who gets in his way.”
“But does he cheat at cards, Mr. Williams? Has he murdered anyone in cold blood?”
“Cheating at cards—that’d be more Red Dog’s game.” Then I have to interrupt myself to explain to her about Doug Redmond really being Red Dog Glazer, and all about his phony bootleg warehouses, his fixed horse races, and fuzzing the cards. “A dyed-in-the-wool con man, and the top skinner of all time.”
Love & Other Crimes Page 20