Murder is Not an Odd Job

by Ralph Dennis

  “You there, Roger?”

  “No. I heard about it from the driver. He’s a friend.”

  I leaned back and blew smoke at the ceiling. “Maybe Foster doesn’t know. You sure he knows?”

  “Not for sure. But it would be the first time he didn’t know about something going on at the Templetons’. He keeps it under his thumb.”

  “Besides the money, what’s his interest?”

  “Mr. Foster got divorced about six months ago,” Roger said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “I’ve got a feeling he wants to be Mrs. Fanzia’s next husband.”

  “That wouldn’t be hard work.”

  He grinned. “You too?”

  “Just a passing interest,” I said. “I don’t want to buy the whole horse.”

  “The job’s not done yet.”

  “What do you think I ought to do? I’ve been paid off and thanked and shown the door.”

  “There’s Mrs. Fanzia.”

  “You think I ought to talk to her?”

  He nodded. “That’s what I’m thinking.”

  “She might not want to talk to me.”

  He said, “I know where she’s going to be this afternoon.”

  “Where?”

  “Lunch at that French restaurant on Luckie Street.”

  “Augustine’s?”

  “That’s the place. She’s going there at one o’clock.”

  “How long a lunch?”

  “Usually an hour and a half.”

  I poured back the rest of my coffee and stood. “It’s worth a try.”

  At the corner of 14th Street he crossed to Colony Square, heading for the underground parking. I waved at him and headed for 15th, where I’d left my car.

  By two, I’d done a number of errands. I deposited the check and I went by Hump’s and laid a couple of hundred on him, with the promise of more to come after the check cleared. And I’d stopped by Davison’s and bought a replacement for the light topcoat that was in the trash now.

  At two, I took up a position down the street from Augustine’s. It was forty minutes later by my watch when the black Caddy turned off Forsyth and pulled to the curb in front of the restaurant. The driver, white, wearing the uniform and the cap, got out and walked around and stood with his hand on the passenger door handle. About five minutes later the door to Augustine’s opened and three women came out. One of them was Beth Fanzia. The chauffeur removed his cap and swung the door open and I said, “Oh, shit,” and started toward them at a fast walk. Only two of the women got into the Caddy and the one left on the walk was Beth. I slowed then and waited until the Caddy moved away from the curb.

  She was dressed all in black, the mourning colors for her father. When I reached her, she was looking in the other direction, away from me. I said, “Beth.”

  I startled her. For an instant I thought she might faint.

  “Jim.”

  When she turned to face me, I took her arm. “You have time for another drink?”

  “Have you been following me?”

  “Of course not,” I said.

  The bar had hardly opened. There were a couple of businessmen drinking their lunch and a tired hooker looking them over and trying to decide if they might be up for an afternoon roll. I got us J&B on the rocks at the bar and carried it over to the booth Beth had picked out.

  She sipped hers and said, “How have you been, Jim?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t think we need to do any small talk.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I heard about the try on Edward yesterday.”

  “How did …?

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “I must be a vain old woman. I thought you’d gone out of your way to find me, just to find me.”

  It was an act. I was fairly certain of that. Maybe she’d been bothered by the interruption that night in the library the same way I had. But she didn’t care a bit for me. It was a once-in-a-lifetime kind of magic and there wasn’t any way to bring it back. “That’s a lot of crap, Beth, and you know it.”

  “As my father said and I said …”

  “Why didn’t you call me?”

  “I didn’t want to.”

  “Do better than that,” I said. I reached across the table and caught her wrist. “Why?”

  “I’m not supposed to tell you. He made me promise.”

  “Foster?”

  “No, you fool, not Foster.”

  “Edward then?”

  She nodded. She pulled her wrist away from me. “Yesterday, after it happened, I told him to call you. He said he wouldn’t. I kept at him until he told me why. He said he wouldn’t call you because he remembered your face, the way it was that night.”

  “When?”

  “After you killed those three men.”

  “How did he say it was?”

  “Empty, sick, bled down to the bone.”

  “Edward said that?”

  “Exactly,” she said.

  “I’d have felt worse if he’d been killed.”

  “Edward’s strange. I don’t really understand him anymore. He doesn’t think his life is worth all this death.”

  I said, “He didn’t start this.”

  “That doesn’t matter to him.”

  I finished my Scotch and swirled the ice around in the glass. “He up in the Tower?”

  “Yes.”

  “You still have some of that good Glenlivet up there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Invite me for a drink.”

  “Now?”

  “Now,” I said.

  Having money hadn’t changed him much. He wore the same kind of clothing except that he’d discarded his heavy work shoes for a pair of desert boots. They were still clean and new and he kept looking down at them as if he hoped they’d get dirty soon.

  “I don’t want this, Jim.”

  “I’d like for it to be over, too.” I really didn’t need the drink but I’d fixed Beth and me Glenlivets over ice. “So I want to make you a proposition, if you’ll hear me out.”

  “I’ll listen but I won’t promise anything.”

  “Who’s doing security for you now?”

  “Cleland,” he said.

  “You satisfied?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Then we’ll leave it that way for the time.” I poured a trickle of the Scotch onto my tongue and left it there. “And I want you to hire Hump and me. It might take a few days. It might take more than a week.”

  “Hire you to do what?”

  “To go at it from the other end. Not to protect you. Better than that. To find out what this is all about. Who wants you dead and why.”

  He stared past me at Beth. I turned and saw the last part of a nod from her.

  “And when you know?”

  “I find a way to put a stop to it.”

  “No killing,” Edward said.

  “Without killing, if I can.”

  Beth walked past me, for a moment between us, and I think she must have nodded to Edward again. “I think you ought to do it,” she said.

  “All right, Jim, you’re hired.”

  “But it’s between us. You, Beth, Hump and me. Nobody else.”

  “Is that necessary?”

  “I don’t know. I’d like to think it isn’t. It might be and I don’t want anybody a step ahead of me all the way.”

  After we finished our drinks, Beth walked back to the foyer with me. At the elevator she asked, “Can you tell me where you’ll start?”

  “With your ex-husband.”

  She laughed. “Which one?”

  “The Count. He has a motive and he was in New York for a bit over a day last week when he was supposed to be in Rome.”

  “I don’t think he’s capable of hiring a murder.”

  “There’s one way to go about this: my way. I’m going to cull everybody I can. I’m going to narrow it down.”

  “I see.”

  “I might even check y
ou out,” I said.

  “Damn you, Jim.”

  “Of course.”

  That night Hump and I took an Eastern flight to New York.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  After a night’s sleep, I was out on the street early. The man I wanted to see wasn’t in the phone book and I didn’t know where he was living or what he was doing for money now. Still, I thought his schedule might be about the same. So I left messages for him. At a newsstand on Sixth Avenue, at an oyster and clam bar near Eighth Street and at a couple of sandwich shops.

  The messages said I’d be in Herdt’s Bar, the one behind the United Cigar Stand, just off Sheridan Square, from noon on.

  From noon on, from the time Hump met me, we sat in the small bar and drank the Utica porter on tap. For lunch, Hump crossed the street to the deli and brought back huge sandwiches, thick with bloody roast beef.

  It was a bit after two before Frankie showed up. By then we’d drunk so much of the porter that the bartender had just popped for one on the house. I didn’t know him at first. He stood just inside the door, blinking and looking around. I recognized him when he grinned and came over to the booth.

  He’d changed in the years since I’d seen him last. That had been some years before. He’d been a detective second grade then, a sharp dresser, a cop living above his income, liking the girls and good food and gobbling up a lot of both every year.

  After the Knapp Commission, he was off the force and out on the street. As far as I know he hadn’t done any slam time. Whatever had happened to him, a lot had gone down the time drain. He’d grown a beard, full but trimmed, and he’d given up suits for tight-fitting jeans and a faded denim jacket.

  “Frankie.” I pushed out of the booth and met him in the aisle and shook hands. Over my shoulder I nodded at Hump and introduced them. “You drinking?”

  “I’ll have what you are, if it’s draft.”

  I nodded and went to the bar and got him a mug of porter.

  He sat down next to Hump, across from me. “Draft’s not bad for you. It’s that pasteurized crap that hurts your system.”

  “You on nuts and berries now?”

  “I’m giving it a try. You know, I haven’t touched meat in over a year.”

  “It working?”

  “It flushed my system out.”

  “How’s Ellen?” The last time I’d seen Frankie he was into lifting weights. He’d even talked his wife Ellen into it. He was working out three days a week by himself and two days a week with her. I’d been surprised by what it had done to Ellen. I’d seen her in a low-cut blouse. She’d developed hard cords of muscle across her shoulders.

  “Split last year.”

  “For good?”

  “Probably. I don’t even know where she is any more.”

  “What you doing for a living these days, Frankie?”

  “Whatever comes along.”

  “I might have something for you.”

  He put his elbows on the table and leaned forward. “Tell me about it.”

  Hump excused himself and got out of the booth. He played about a dollar in the juke box. It was the old music, not that hard rock crap. I moved under the cover of the music and laid it out for him. When I finished and leaned away, he thought about it for a minute or two.

  “Money in this?”

  “Whatever it takes.”

  “I might have to use informers and that takes cash.”

  I nodded.

  “Let me get this straight. You want to know if this Italian dude took out a contract on some guy down in Atlanta?”

  “That’s part of it. If he didn’t, then who did?”

  “You don’t want much, do you?”

  “Can do?”

  “I can try.” He held out a palm to me and I counted three hundred into it.

  “If it takes more than this, use it and I’ll make it good.”

  “Where can I reach you?” He tossed back the last of his porter.

  “Here,” I said. “Same time.”

  “Here?” He looked around. “You sleep here too?”

  I shrugged. “I’m staying out of the cold wind.”

  “Even to me?”

  I didn’t say anything. Finally he nodded and said, “Better to be careful.”

  He waved at me and at Hump and left. We gave him ten minutes and then set out to see some of the town. Hump knew a girl and we took her along. I got drunk out and we didn’t get to bed until after three in the morning. Rather, I got to bed at three. Hump left with the girl and didn’t return until late breakfast time.

  Waiting at the bar this time, I slowly sipped the first mug of porter and hoped the hangover would go away. Hump was in worse shape than me because of all that bareback riding.

  The call came in at about 12:30 by the bar clock. I told the bartender yes, I was Jim Hardman and took the call in the pay booth.

  “Jim, Frankie here. I might have something for you. It could cost you a couple of hundred.”

  “I’ve got the cash. Come on over.”

  “I can’t right now,” he said.

  “When?” I looked over my shoulder. Hump was in the booth doorway, blocking it. I leaned toward him and let him put his ear close to the receiver.

  “Tonight at ten.”

  “Where?”

  “My place. You see, I don’t think I ought to be seen with you. I’ve been asking questions and somebody might tag us together.”

  “Ten at your place? What’s the address?”

  He gave me a number on Eighth Avenue. “Ring the bell for apartment 8. The name’s R. N. Snider. It’s on the second floor. Got that?”

  “I’ve got it.”

  “And come alone, Jim.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “You might look like fifty other people in town. But there just aren’t that many nine-foot spades.”

  “Hump needs a night on the town anyway.”

  “Ten then,” he said, “and bring the cash.”

  “Sure.”

  I hung up and we went back to our seats at the bar. I waved at the bartender and he brought over fresh mugs. After I’d paid him and he had moved back down the bar, Hump said, “How well do you know this Frankie dude?”

  “I’m beginning to wonder.”

  “He might be trying to job you.”

  I grinned at him. “You don’t want another night on the town?”

  “Ten’s not late. We finish our business by ten-thirty and we’ve got plenty of the night left.”

  “We could pass up the meet and make him come back to us.”

  “And always wonder about him?” Hump tipped back his head and poured down the whole mug of porter. And shuddered.

  At ten of ten, a light cold rain was falling. It was like an Atlanta drizzle but with a sting to it. I was half a block down the street, in a doorway. We’d tagged the building earlier in the day in a slow-moving cab. It was a narrow shotgun building with a kind of gray shingle front. About fifteen minutes before, Hump had left me to work his way around the block and come in from the other direction. The way I figured it, if we’d been set up, they’d be watching me from a window above the street. If they saw me alone, they’d watch the street behind me to see if I was being followed. When they didn’t see Hump, they’d decide that I’d bought the setup. After I entered Hump, would follow me in.

  At five minutes to ten, I left the doorway and headed for the apartment building. I stayed near the curb, out in the wet splash of light. I acted some, hesitating now and then to read a house number, until I reached the shotgun building and read the number in the half moon of glass above the entranceway. There was a dim light in the small hall and a couple of rows of mailboxes and buzzers to the left. It was just enough light to read the names on the mailboxes. The name on Number 8 was, as Frankie had said it would be, R. N. Snider. I gave the buzzer a long push and moved over to the door. While I gripped the knob with one hand, I reached into my pocket and brought out the pack of book matches. As soon as I heard the buzzer
answered, I swung the door open and stepped through. I turned and lodged the matches between the doorframe and the lock. I pushed the door shut and spun around.

  The only light came from the second landing. It was enough to show me that the stairs were on the left. To the right there was a hall and a row of doors leading to apartments. Dark back there.

  I started up the stairs. I was halfway up when a long shape, tall and narrow, blocked out part of the light by appearing on the landing. “Hardman? Frankie’s up here.”

  “Coming.”

  I was four steps away from him when I heard the squeaking board in the dark hall below. It was reflex and the wrong move: I turned and looked back. That was when the tall man made his move. I felt rather than saw it. I pushed away from the railing toward the wall. Something hard hit the railing where I’d been a split second before. I bounced off the wall and grabbed at him. I got a handful of wet wool topcoat. I pulled the man in closer to me. At the same time I used my other hand to feel for what he’d swung at me. I caught the end of it and tried to hang on. It was a piece of pipe about a foot long. I had the untaped part of it and there were rough knurls, as if the pipe hadn’t been sawed evenly. When the tall man pulled the pipe away from me, I had to let it go or tear up my palm.

  I didn’t let the whole edge go to him. As soon as I released the pipe, I balled the hand into a fist and dropped it low, a short chop aimed for his balls. He’d expected that and he swung his body away from me. The fist landed on the point of his hip. It jammed a couple of knuckles and I couldn’t hold back a gasp of pain. That could have been the whole war, but the blow to his hip had hurt him some too and his breath pumped out at me, garlic and onions and tomatoes overpowering the cologne or aftershave he wore.

  It was all happening fast and I couldn’t forget the squeaking board below. Probably another man was coming up or setting himself to block any possible retreat. I knew I had to cover myself. I was still pulling him close, holding onto the damp topcoat, and he was trying to pull away. He wanted some distance so he could use the length of pipe. At the same time he was stomping for my feet and I was dancing. Then, suddenly, I used all my weight to swing him around. He was lower than me now, with his back to the bottom of the stairs. He was mad now, pulling away as hard as he could and I was pulling back with all my strength, until I released my hold on the topcoat and let him fall away. He lost his balance and stumbled down three or four steps before he caught the railing. He steadied himself and lifted the pipe.