A very sobering thought for even the most pleasant of sunny mornings. My half wasn't doing me much good, either. That silver dollar hadn't exactly been a golden horseshoe for Giovanni Ricco or myself. The rain on my own parade had already started to fall. Heavily.
And it could turn into a deluge that night at The Blue Lady.
With or without police escort.
So far the silver dollar made no sense at all.
But somehow it was tied into John Junkyard's trip to the graveyard. It had to be. Somehow it still spelled aspirin time. All the way.
And the sort of headache no prescribed medicine can ever cure.
I turned the half-moon-shaped token over and over in my fingers, as if the solution would come up as a heads-or-tails decision.
The coin felt exactly like the hot potato it really was.
Hot potato? Or a dollar's worth of TNT?
CROOK
Night had darkened Manhattan like a spinster drawing the blinds, when the cab deposited me on the sidewalk in front of The Blue Lady. Not even a block full of neon nor the glitter of glassplate windows from adjacent building fronts could quite illuminate the underworld aspect of the neighborhood. The Blue Lady gleamed like a Christmas decoration on a sparsely decked tree. Frankie Conroy's questionable money had put a new face on what I remembered as a dingy dive on West Fifty-Second in the long-ago times. His club front was what you'd expect of a two-bit hoodlum. The overhead canopy was scalloped and horrendously purple and the doorman wore a matching lavender uniform that couldn't conceal about two hundred pounds of all-muscle, no-brains battering ram. The gaudy show-cards and glassed glossies of half-naked showgirls and exotic-type entertainers, were made for the sucker trade. The Blue Lady still looked like a strip club and why it had a purple canopy was one of those mysteries no one ever wants the answer to. Somebody was simply colour-blind or name-blank. It didn't matter. As my cab shot off to find another fare, I faked a loose shoelace and knelt to tie it. I wanted to give Mike Monks' tail plenty of time to see just where I was headed. He'd picked me up about two blocks away from home and there was no mistaking the dark, plain Plymouth that kept pace with my cab all the way to the club. The cabbie had been heedless of pursuit. It wasn't his trade.
The gigantic doorman leered, held back the wide, gold-framed door with its concealing dark drape and waved me on in. I leered back, fulfilling my role of thirsty tourist and walked in. There was an instant assault on the senses. Full, throbbing music seemed to hum from the walls all around me, and a steady, constant sound of nightclub animation fairly oozed from the decor which was very early James Cagney.
I'd seen it all before. In the movies and out of them.
Dim, smoky lighting, with vicariously-sexed males ogling the floor show from rings and perimeters of round tables. Checkered tablecloths and imitation-candle bottles that were really electric lights made up the atmosphere. Some of the gawking men stood at a long, high, curved bar at the back of the room. Cigarette smoke rose like a cloud over a battlefield. Hostesses in gilded dresses, looking like walking dolls, bobbed and weaved among the patrons, dispensing artificial smiles and thin, shrill talk that could have come from old gramophone records. The decor was the most awful assortment of reds, greens and yellows ever visited upon a club anywhere. There was not a lick of blue in evidence. It was easy to imagine that the interior decorator had been smoking grass or riding an LSD cloud when commissioned to upholster Frankie Conroy's dive. For dive it was. The supper club label that Monks had given it over the telephone was strictly libel. The Blue Lady was a prehistoric throwback to Prohibition days, which might have been the main idea in the first place. But this was not camp at all; just out-and-out bad taste and atrocious judgment.
The floor show was a half-naked Chinese girl still peeling it off.
It was while I was drifting, measuring the room, watching for anything that dovetailed with my sudden visit, that the burly guy in the tuxedo spotted me. The way he floated over, suddenly looming before me like a lost balloon, told me a lot about him. He was a pro, no matter how stupid he looked. His face was bullish, with slits for eyes and a wide, pugnacious chin that needed a razor all the time, but he knew his stuff. He had already understood that I was packing a heater. His eyes lingered at my shoulder-holster level even as his big, hairy paws came up in what passed for a gentle reproof. The tuxedo fit him like a tight glove and made walls of his shoulders and stanchions of his legs. He made the doorman look anemic. Maybe a glorified bouncer, maybe not.
"So?" he chided in a very smooth voice. "You got plans?"
"Ed Noon to see Mr. Conroy," I said, holding my arms out as if I was about to walk a tightrope. "I want to sell him some life insurance."
His smile became thinner than mine and he didn't budge an inch.
"You don't need a gun to sell Frankie insurance, friend."
"I don't," I admitted, "and I'll turn it over on the way to his office. I'm a private detective. I have to carry a gun."
The slitted eyes got even tinier. The squint was steely.
"Beat it, friend. You're off limits."
A sudden musical blare from the hardly visible bandstand almost drowned out the threat. A Spanish guitar began to boom into a fast rendition of "Granada." What a place. Even the musical selections were vintage stuff. My sense of déja vu was working overtime. So I held my hands up, away from my sides, where he could see them plain even in the smoky lighting, and above the din of the guitar now joined by a pulsating drum and a bad piano I managed to get my message across without laughing.
"Frankie will want to see me. I can help him on the John Junkyard kill. Does that ring a bell in your ears or should I go tell the police my troubles? You got five seconds to make up your mind."
Suddenly, the monster bouncer, or whatever he was, cared a lot. He let a wily expression close his eyes, a tight grin tugged at his mouth and then he gently stepped back and angled his body, gesturing with one huge arm. I saw an entranceway of some kind, no more than fifteen feet away from where we had been jawing. Another purple curtain glowed with almost grisly overstatement. The draped entranceway was only about ten yards to the rear of the long, curved bar. But no one had been paying any attention to us. We could have been old friends reunited in a common interest.
"After you, sucker. And no tricks. We'll see what you have to sell. Just remember I can break you in half if you don't play it nice and easy. Even if you got by me, there's a half-dozen guns in this club, ready to pick up where we leave off. Understood?"
"Loud and clear." His threat was lightning and drums.
I went and he followed, so close behind me I could sense the lumbering enormity of his weight and size. We swept through the purple curtain and The Blue Lady disappeared—the music, the smokiness, the glaring and turbulent sights and sounds. We were in a narrow hallway, all unpainted plaster and uncarpeted corridor. There was a door as badly ancient and uncared for as the rest of the passageway. It was exactly like backstage in a Broadway theater. Only there was no name, no star on the door.
"Granada" still seemed to linger in my ears, as abruptly and with deft, practiced hands, the man behind me relieved me of the .45, without hardly wrinkling my Brooks Brothers blue suit. His breath washed over me and it was sweet and untainted by alcohol or anything else. Then he sort of reached over my shoulder and thudded a hairy fist into the door. One brief, exploding knock of sound. Signal or not, it was an unmistakable style of announcing yourself. Whoever was behind the door recognized the thump and called out something in a high, thin voice. A nervous voice.
Then the door was opening and the man behind me was piloting me in ahead of him. None too tenderly, either. I had to pull up short to keep from skipping and hopping to a stop. And, at my back, he was saying in an altogether different kind of tone, "Guy named Ed Noon. Private fish. Says he wants to talk to you about John Junkyard."
There was a lot to see on such very short notice. Too much, really.
I had a flash of walnut furnitu
re. (Still, nothing blue.) A low ceiling, curtained windows, and about four men lounging in various wooden chairs as if in some kind of conclave with the man behind the desk—who was looking up at me with annoyance mingled with interest showing out of his lean, hungry face. The desk was of plain wood too, but big enough to ice-skate on because there was not a thing on it: not so much as a fountain pen or an eraser. In fact, the entire room was strictly functional. Chairs for sitting, nothing on the walls, no rug for the floor, no nothing. Just a nice, barren place of emptiness, but for all the people in it, who might have come for a crap game. Or poker.
Frankie Conroy still looked more like a lawyer than a criminal.
No, that's not it either. He looked like a criminal lawyer.
Striped suit, pencil moustache a la Errol Flynn, hawk's face and very carefully plastered-down black hair that should have had some gray in it, considering Mr. Conroy was close to sixty. He had managed to stay as slim as a ruler with a steel-tipped side. It was either clean living, the dye bottle, vanity or just plain nature but Frankie Conroy was as youthfully slender and fit as a man trying out for the first team at St. Petersburg. Hardly a crow's foot showed at the corners of each bold and birdlike eye swiftly running over me now.
We knew each other. Not well, but positively. I had wandered into the gunfight with his two goons accidentally, but from that day forward, though he never had done a thing about it, I was a marked man in his book. Fortunately, our trails hadn't crossed until now.
"Okay, Noon. You got in. Past the front door. So talk and make it quick. You horned in on a business conference. An important one."
I looked at him and tried not to think about the deadly once-overs with which his small squad of guns were favoring me from all sides of the room. The big guy behind me hadn't moved. He could have been blocking the door for all I knew. It would seem like the logical move to make, considering.
"Sure," I said lightly. "You will all have to frame good alibis for the night John Junkyard got his. Better get your stories straight."
Frankie Conroy shook his head, and the rumble of anger rising up all around me was stilled as fast as it had begun. There was no love in Conroy's eyes, but for some reason he chose not to be offended.
"You're too smart for that kind of dumb lip, Noon. Even the cops can't tie Ricco to my tail. I know you. I know that noodle of yours. You came here for a better reason than to just insult my friends and myself and risk a bouncing around. Come on, now. We've been through all this before. Or is it so long ago you don't remember, shamus?"
I managed a shrug to get the stiffness out of my muscles. It wasn't exactly cheerful to be boxed in by a bunch who earned their coffee and cake being gangsters.
Whether Monks' man was out there in the club somewhere or not, there was a limit.
"Okay, Frankie. I did mix it with two of your errand boys way back when Lindsay was still in the Maybe League. I got lucky and your boys bought it. The cops marked it down as a personal beef and didn't involve you at all. Okay. But I lost something of value during the excitement. And it turned up in the strangest place. Only yesterday, would you believe it? And after all those years! Some surprise for me——"
Frankie Conroy let me see the full caramel-brownness of his eyes. Even the mob squad surrounding me tightened with new interest. Nothing like talking over old rub-out times, for their money. It was shop talk.
"Get to the point, Noon. You're boring me already. So you lost something. Big deal. Lost what, for the love of Mike?"
I kept looking at him because his eyes had told me differently.
"I had half a lucky silver dollar that John Junkyard gave me. Which wouldn't drag you in at all except for the fact that I lost that coin when I tangled with your two boys and the extra fact that you've always wanted to cut in on Junkyard's salvage business. So suddenly, he's dead. Suddenly, my half of the coin turns up in the vicinity of John's body. You're an intelligent man, Frankie. I've always thought so. What would it make you think of? If you were me, say, or a dick on the Homicide Squad?"
The answer, if there was going to be one, didn't come right away.
Suddenly, like a magic act or something, because I'd never heard the door behind me open, a low, husky feminine voice crooned, "I got ten minutes, Frankie. How about buying Bella a little drink?"
Before I could turn, Frankie Conroy's entire demeanor altered, like a man suddenly seeing himself in a full-length mirror. He coughed, ran thin, spatulate fingers through his young black hair, half-rose from his chair behind the desk, and a nervous smile flitted across his hawk face. "Come on in, angel. I'm almost through. Clear out, you guys. Call you if I need you. Stay put, Noon, and say hello to the star of The Blue Lady. Bella Baldwin, the one and only."
As chairs squeaked, bodies moved and low voices murmured, a tall, overweight brunette sashayed past me, tossing me a bold and challenging glare of appraisal. Frankie's boys filed out of the room but it was the big man who had ushered me into the Boss's sanctum who was the last to go. He closed the door with a lidded-eye, almost icy stare. Frankie Conroy did not miss that look. He chortled, "Don't even look at Fargo sideways, Noon. I can see he's primed to tear an arm off you.
"Well, Bella—"
Frankie Conroy produced a bottle and a glass from somewhere behind the desk and dutifully began to pour the requested drink. And that wasn't going to be easy. Bella Baldwin had gone around behind his chair, reached down and draped fleshy, gleamingly sun-tanned arms about Conroy's neck. Frankie tried to squirm away, not to spill any of the Scotch he was doling out but the brunette hugged him like a bear, rolling her eyes at me while she planted a moist, noisy kiss on Conroy's cheek. I remained where I was, looking on and Bella Baldwin literally leered up at me, past Conroy's fashionably tailored shoulders and stuck her pink tongue out hard. There are women and there are women. Bella Baldwin belonged to a very distinct class.
She must have read the thinking in my eyes because she straightened up, measuring me with two abnormally large eyes that registered scorn and "up yours"! if anything. With her drink from Frankie balanced on an unsteady palm, she sat down on one corner of the desk and dangled a long, beautifully shaped and white leg and let it pendulum suggestively. There was nothing wrong with her other leg, either. Frankie chuckled, sat back in his chair, wiped a few random drops from his lean hands and for a moment we were both watching Bella Baldwin. Girl-watching, as they say.
There was a lot of her to watch. Too much, in fact. Which was the trouble. I couldn't help comparing her to Terry Ricco. There was just too much of Bella and too little of the sausage skintight gold lamé gown she was wearing. She was literally surging out of her working uniform.
Granted that Bella Baldwin had to be at least ten years older than blond Terry Ricco, and maybe two or three years from looking too fat and too faded, Frankie Conroy's star was still very far from over the hill. She still had what most guys lose their marbles over. Full, rolling, curving, feminine plenty. She was a harvest of rounded surfaces: globular, superbly-formed breasts, arched and statuesque flanks. Bella was all woman and the face that advertised the natural wonders was properly dark-eyed, putty-nosed, lush-lipped and extraordinarily doll-like and vacuous. She was a female beast contrasted to the thin, dapper Conroy—but it was more obvious she had what it took to make him play games.
Bella Baldwin was the epitome of what all gangster types seem to like as a possession and an adornment for their role of Boss. An eye-catching dame who just doesn't have to be one of the smartest women in the world. In fact, it's always much better if she isn't. Strictly for entertainment. Solely for laughter, of the bedroom variety. The more wanton the better.
"Who's the good-looking man?" Bella Baldwin crooned again, making her voice pitched and sufficiently sexy to get a rise out of Frankie Conroy. She was talking to him but looking at me while she sipped slowly at her Scotch and swung that delightful leg back and forth. She was showing me her teeth, too, in a wide Colgate smile. Two white rows.
"Th
at's Ed Noon, angel. What they call a private detective. Now you just hold the phone a sec while I finish up with him. He'll be leaving in a few minutes. We haven't got much to talk about."
"He better leave, honey," she cooed up at me, fluttering her two-inch black lashes. "He's the William Holden type. And that type I could eat alive. From the toes on up——"
Frankie Conroy pyramided his fingers, more annoyed than he wanted to show. "Where the hell were we, Noon?"
I grinned. "I was waiting for your ideas on the subject of coincidences. Lucky and otherwise, Frankie old pal."
"What ideas?" he snarled back at me. "So you lose a silver dollar fighting with the boys and suddenly it turns up near a corpse. So what's that got to do with me? If you're in hot water, get yourself a good lawyer. If you don't know any, I'll recommend one. For old times' sake. He's not cheap, but for me he'll go light on the fee."
"When the cops hear about the coin, it could be your trouble too, Frankie. Doesn't it strike you as a little too pat?"
He wasn't looking at me anymore. He was looking at Bella Baldwin, with a sudden, smoldering passion that would have been laughable if it hadn't been so naked and candid. It was as if I didn't even exist for him anymore and he was going to fling her down on the desk and have at her as soon as I cleared out of the room. The desk would have been big enough for such an orgy, too. For practically anything.
"Beat it, Noon," Conroy said in a low, shaking voice. "You can't blow it into anything worthwhile. I'm legit on the Junkyard kill. The cops are satisfied and that should be enough for anybody. Take off. You know I wouldn't sit still for a blackmail squeeze or anything else you have in mind. So out—and don't get Fargo mad at you. For your own sake. I don't want any disturbances in the club."
I thought fast because the interview was over. Bella Baldwin eased off the desk. So I took a wild, flying, way-out guess into the night. There was nothing to lose.
"What about Terry Ricco, Frankie?"
Famous last words. There came a low, animal snarl from behind me.
The Girl in the Cockpit Page 4