The February Doll Murders

by Michael Avallone

  I had said that because she was still staring at him in that fixed, mad way. Mel caught my look, nodded, and went over to her, urging her to sit down again.

  Monks did not miss that, either. “You stay put, Miss Langdon. There’ll be no more fireworks around here.” He eyed me, reaching for his own cigarettes. “Shoot. I want what you have so I can explain all this perfectly to my own bosses downtown. There won’t be much fun in putting the finger on a real F.B.I. man.”

  “Let them learn that no one is beyond examination. Maybe that sounds stiff, but it scares me to think that this Red has been sitting at that nice F.B.I. desk maybe for years.”

  “Skip the sermons, Ed. How did you spot him?”

  I lit a Camel and sat down. I was tired. The strain had told on me too. I had guessed up to a point. The flask had been the clincher, possession of the famous dollar bill the crusher.

  “You know about me and Mel last night in Samarko’s place. Well, when they left us and got themselves poisoned, it spelled itself out. I examined the table where their corpses were. It was obvious they had had a drink with a third party. There were three glasses. Their drinks had been poisoned; the third one was untouched. Which meant a couple of things. Right then and there I knew the killer had to be a man.”

  Mel blinked. “You didn’t tell me that.”

  “There wasn’t time,” I apologized. “I was too interested in getting the hell out of that firetrap.”

  Monks sighed patiently. “I’m still waiting — How did you know it had to be a man?”

  “There was no bottle. I looked all around that table for a bottle, a jug, a canteen — anything. It was a curio shop, at that. But no bottle. Now, I ask you. Would someone have come in with one and then taken it away with him? If I had been Samarko and Rollo I would have been mighty skeptical of a drink under those conditions. Besides, I got the impression the third party had been upstairs while Samarko was spieling with us. So, no bottle — What else, then?”

  “A hip flask,” Monks suggested.

  “Exactly. It’s the only object that makes sense. And if a dame had one in her bag or something it would still have made Samarko smell a rat. But, no. A man suddenly says, ‘Let’s have a drink,’ and takes out a flask, and no one is suspicious, right? No, it was a flask.”

  Monks rubbed his nose. “It could have been a pint bottle, too, under the conditions you just mentioned.”

  “Right.” I smiled. “But that makes it more of a man than ever, doesn’t it? So I guessed a flask, and voilà, friend Lynch has one. I’ll bet the poison’s been properly cleaned out of it and it really does hold rye now.”

  “Maybe. You and that dumb bunny luck of yours.”

  I shrugged. “It made me stop thinking about Lola. I had to scout for an interesting party that was a man. Who was left, really? Samarko and Rollo were dead, so were Kyle and Arnoff. And Lynch has been all over this case since the beginning, almost. There was another prover, too.”

  “What?”

  “Last night, when he and Brad and Clyde jumped us, they hadn’t seen anybody suspicious come in or out of the building — they said. That didn’t wash. With a case as important as this, the F.B.I. stakes-out a place, they take movies, the works. They were telling the truth, though. Lynch had left them long enough to go up to my apartment, stab Kyle with that throwing knife, arrange him in the chair and get the dollar, and then come back out again. He could have told his men anything to cover his entering the building. Like he’d been talking to Pete in the lobby, or checking the layout of the building, or something like that. That sort of dodge.”

  “The knife,” Monks rumbled. “What about that?”

  “Two to one you could trace it to Samarko’s place. How many joints would have French throwing knives? See for yourself.”

  Lola Langdon looked at us both. “What will they do to him?”

  Monks grinned humorlessly. “The book, miss. Apart from murder, treason isn’t exactly going to win him time off for good behavior. Forget about wiping him out for your own satisfaction. He’ll get the works as it is. Killing him will only make it worse for you.”

  Her gaze lowered to the floor. “Perhaps you are right,” she said dully. “Kyle is dead, and killing Lynch won’t bring him back.”

  That was more like it. I placed the dollar bill in the breast pocket of my shirt, under my coat.

  “Now, there are other things to do. We’ll have to talk to Lynch when he comes to. There’s that third doll, the talking one. There’s a message on the recorder that has to do with some nasty plot about the U. N. We have to get that doll, Mike. It may be the single most important thing about this whole business.”

  “What about your famous bill? Wasn’t there something about that?”

  “Tell you all that later. Right now, it doesn’t mean a thing to this case. Just Kyle Crosby’s way of saying he wanted to come back home.”

  He didn’t understand that, so he did what he always did. He grunted. “The day I first met you I lost whatever common sense I had. Okay, tell me about this doll.”

  “No need for that. When we get it from Lynch, it will explain itself.” I checked the door. “Maybe you’d better see about Brad and Clyde. If they are in on this with him, they could be a headache.”

  He nodded and moved toward the door. “Okay. Stay put. I’ll handle them. And no monkey business now, I’m warning you. That Lola tries anything with Lynch, I’m holding you personally responsible.”

  “Fair enough.”

  When he had gone, I knelt over Lynch and raced through his pockets. I had hit him plenty hard. He was out cold. Lola and Melissa watched me.

  I found a handkerchief, a pack of cigarettes, some loose change. And a key. I recognized it immediately. It was one of those Grand Central locker keys. You pay a quarter, place anything you want in the locker compartment, turn the key, remove it, and your valuables are safe until you come back. I had used them many times myself. The most innocuous storage places in the world.

  “Something, Ed?” Melissa wanted to know.

  “I think so. What would an F.B.I. man use a locker for in Grand Central? Two to one, Chatty Cathy is sitting in solitary right now.”

  “I hope so. For all our sakes. I don’t like this spy stuff with bombs and things like that.”

  “Roger, Mel.”

  The three of us sat down on the couch to wait for Monks to come back and Lynch to wake up. Lola Langdon was dry-eyed and speechless. Her figure had gone as lifeless as a plaster statue. No color or life showed in her face.

  I felt like an arsenal. I had my .45 and Rollo’s Luger, which I had shifted to the front of my waistband. And I was still holding Lola’s .32. I wanted to make sure that she behaved herself. For my sake as well as her own. Mike would never talk to me again if she somehow got her claws on Lynch.

  From outside came the hooting of car horns and a roar of traffic. Just like that the world came back. The one outside where people still went to work for a living, traveled to and from places, and lived without spies, sudden death, and plots to take over the world.

  “Well, Ed,” Melissa said with a yawn. “That about wraps this one up, doesn’t it?”

  “Maybe. We still have to find out about our doll friend.”

  “She’ll be there. Where you said she’d be. You’re always right about things like that.”

  “Loyalty. I like that.”

  “Brains. You’ve got those, too.”

  I was embarrassed by that because I was so conscious of Lola sitting there. Lola had lost love, country, everything. It couldn’t have been fun for her listening to any kind of boy-girl talk. But perhaps she wasn’t even tuned in on our wavelength.

  The minutes went by. Soon they became fifteen, a quarter of an hour. Monks should have been back by now. I got off the couch and went to the windows to look. You could see down to the sidewalk. There was no sign of him or Brad and Clyde. I wondered about that and started for the door.

  The doorbell rang. I hurried to
let them in.

  Brad and Clyde looked shocked and grim. With Monks behind them they marched into the living room, at once taking up positions around Lynch.

  “They told me a few things, Ed,” Monks rumbled. “Seems they been wondering about Lynch’s behavior too. For one thing, he hadn’t written his formal report yet on the Crosby kill, and that usually is done right away.”

  Brad looked at me. “We want to talk to him ourselves. If it wasn’t for the captain here, I’d still have my doubts. Clyde and I feel he deserves to have us hear whatever defense he might make.”

  “Fair enough. He should be coming out of it soon.”

  “I’ll get some water,” Melissa said. She started for the kitchenette again.

  “Don’t bother,” Lola Langdon said softly, without moving from the couch. We all looked at her.

  “Now, Miss Langdon —” Monks began. “Sit still and shut up. I’m handling this.”

  “Really, Captain? How very interesting!” She sat back against the sofa, her long arms extended like wings across the back rest. “Fine. I should like to see how you will perform the miracle of making Mr. Lynch talk.”

  Her attitude held us. We had all frozen, as if robbed of the power to move. And she wasn’t aiming a gun at our heads, either. It was the cold implacability of her beautiful face and the jeering satisfaction in her voice.

  I should have guessed.

  I looked down at Lynch. His face, turned up to the ceiling, told me what I wanted to know.

  “Yes, Ed. Lynch is dead. The old coup de grace of the L-pill. He managed to get at it even with the handcuffs on. Why not? He could not escape his fate. As an agent, he had no other choice. He was ruined, no matter how merciful your country might have been to him.”

  Monks cursed, and there was a concerted bleat of sound from Brad and Clyde. All three bent swiftly over Lynch’s outstretched form. The rigid contraction of his face, the limpness of his limbs, were telltale and true. Monks worked his clenched right hand open. A faint smear of gelatinous substance clung to the heel of the dead man’s palm. Melissa turned away, face to the wall.

  I stared at Lola Langdon. “You saw him, didn’t you? You watched while my back was turned and let him kill himself. That was your pleasure, wasn’t it? To let him die before your eyes.”

  “Yes!” she shrilled at me, her breasts rising in the wool-knit dress, her eyes flashing insanely. “Goddamn you, I did! I would let him kill himself a hundred times before I would lift a finger to stop him. For what he did to Kyle, may he rot in Hell!”

  She started to laugh. She kept on laughing. A rising, teetering scale of insane mirth that knew no bounds. No walls could contain such a laugh. It went on for a long time, with all of us looking the other way, until Mike Monks could stand no more of it.

  He reached her in a dart of movement and smacked her, open-palmed, across the face. She fell back against the couch, her head striking the back rest.

  “That’s enough,” Monks said quietly enough. “No matter what he was, he’s dead now. And I won’t have you keening like a banshee. Shut up and don’t say another word.”

  I didn’t either. Monks had said it all.

  17

  Farewell, My Lovely Dollar Bill

  The next day most of it was all over. The gory parts, anyway. But before the case could be officially signed, sealed, and delivered, there were a few distractions.

  Like Grand Central Station. That should have been a lead-pipe cinch, but it wasn’t. What Kyle Crosby had begun with his little exercise in patriotism reborn turned into a three-ring circus, complete with the F.B.I., U.N., and the C.I.A.

  There had been more to everything than even met this eye.

  The afternoon that Mr. Lynch did the Dutch act, which failing spies do every now and then, we headed for Grand Central. Not the girls. Melissa Mercer went on to the office, and Lola Langdon was escorted by Clyde down to the F.B.I. Center, where she would be held in custody until some details got straightened out. I watched Clyde take her without pity. For all her good looks and desire to recant, she was one cold tomato. I could maybe understand why she had sat there and watched Lynch commit suicide. After all, he had killed the one person in the world she had loved and trusted. But it was harder to figure the end-justifies-the-means philosophy that enabled her to blow up an apartment full of people just because she felt sentimental about her lover’s body and because the place might contain evidence. I didn’t understand that philosophy, and I didn’t want to. And in not understanding, I lost a lot of interest in Miss Langdon.

  Meanwhile, back at Grand Central Station —

  Monks, Brad, and I drove in the F.B.I. car and parked on Vanderbilt Avenue. I had the locker key. It was still early in the afternoon, but the depot was jammed as usual. Arrivals and departures go on all day long in that busy little beehive. It’s hustle and bustle in large technological letters.

  I had a pretty good idea of the location of the battery of lockers, having used them often enough. They were on the lower level, behind the scenes, where all the pharmacies, bookshops, and candystore stands are. Brad was wearing a long face. It must have been tough for him, knowing about Lynch. It is always tough when one of your own kind goes over to the other side.

  We used the escalator and descended into the heart of the station. The gigantic cavern of hollow marble and stone rose like an umbrella of beauty high above the throngs beneath. The information stand was thronged with questioners. A harried man with glinting spectacles was doing his polite utmost to accommodate his tormentors. From far off came the muted roar of trains. A whistle sounded somewhere. Monks scratched the back of his neck. Brad was chewing a stick of gum.

  “Crowds,” Monks snorted. ‘Where do all these people come from?” He didn’t want an answer. He was just making small talk.

  “The masses.” I laughed. “What the Lynches and the Lolas would call the slaves of capitalism.”

  “Yeah? They’re doing all right.”

  “They sure are. Here, this way.”

  We turned into the long runway arching underground. Before us lay the corridors and passageways leading to all the subway lines. I was reminded of how close I had been to all this only the night before in Samarko’s harem hideaway.

  Long, high tiers of lockers faced us. Two rows of them. They were about ten lockers high and twenty across. Monks squinted at the ones on his side. “Q,” he muttered. “What letter is on the key?”

  “D-seven-nine-five,” I said.

  “This side,” Brad said flatly. “Should be toward the wall.”

  It was. We had the place to ourselves. No one else was looking for a locker or making use of one. That figured, too. Most people left stuff in the lockers overnight to pick up the next morning, or, at the earliest, later in the day.

  I found D795. The key slid in smoothly. Monks had planted his solid bulk at the open space between the lockers leading in. Brad was behind me, checking as far as his eye could see. His right hand was in his coat pocket.

  “Coast is clear,” he murmured. “Go ahead.”

  I went ahead. The short door swung outward. I reached in, my hands closing around the familiar, rubbery outlines of Chatty Cathy. I closed the door, the key staying in the lock now. It would stay like that until someone inserted another quarter and made use of Locker D795.

  Monks peered at my prize. “That it?”

  “Yes. Chatty Cathy, meet Captain Monks.”

  “Clown. Let’s get out of here and go to headquarters. The lab will know what to do with it.”

  Brad closed in behind me. His eyes were bleak beneath the brim of the hat. Monks flung him a look. “You can come with us, Brad. I’m sure you can make arrangements with your own people from there. They’ll want in on this.”

  Suddenly, Brad was staring past our shoulders, his eyes opening wide. He clawed for his gun. Monks cursed, whirling. I didn’t. I flung myself to one side, clutching Chatty Cathy and closing my fingers over the Luger still tucked in my waistband. I was s
taring at Brad. His face had undergone a miraculous change. It had turned crimson, and a snarl contorted his mouth. I could see what he was going to do in his eyes. His gun leaped into view from his coat pocket, and a low curse erupted in his throat. Monks was muttering angrily and turning to see what all the fuss had been about. There had been no one for Brad to see behind us. The areaway was as empty as Brad’s pledge of allegiance to the United States.

  Brad’s curse was in Russian.

  The gun in his hand triggered. But I fired first. Brad’s slug went astray, spanging off the tops of the row of metal lockers. Mine didn’t. He slammed back into the wall, tried to hold himself erect, and couldn’t. I had caught him dead in the center. He collapsed at my feet in a doubled-up heap.

  Monks’ eyes popped incredulously. “For God’s sake, Ed!”

  “Yeah,” I said. “He’s one of them, too. I wasn’t sure until we got down here. Don’t cry over him. He was going to give it to us in the back when we turned around.”

  Screaming shrill voices rose all around us. Someone raced into view, a frightened man with a newspaper rolled in his hand. He took one look at us and ran off, yelling his lungs out. Monks couldn’t stop shaking his head.

  “Proof,” he rumbled. “What the hell proof did you have?”

  “Not much,” admitted, “until we got down here. It struck me that Lynch would have to have had some kind of help with him. A go-between. So I kept my eyes opened. When Brad pulled his stunt and then cursed instinctively in Russky, that was enough.”

  Monks had knelt to examine Brad’s pulse. “Since when do you palaver Russian?”

  I hugged Chatty Cathy, restraining an urge to tug her ring-pull. “My actor pal Karl Redcoff is Russian. I picked up a word or two from him down through the years.”

  A mob was gathering, and Monks was flashing his shield, bellowing for everyone to stay back. Suddenly he whirled to face me.