by Larry Kent
“Olive or onion?” I asked.
“Olive, please.”
I dropped an olive into a deep martini glass, poured. “If it isn’t just right,” I said, “you can feed me to Charlie.”
“Rita,” she said, then she sipped at the martini, bowed her head slightly. “I think I’ll keep you for a while, Larry. This is just right. What are you having?”
“Teacher’s on the rocks.”
“Make it a good one. I don’t want to get ahead of you.” I poured a double shot of Teacher’s over ice cubes, went around the bar, sat on the stool beside her. She touched her glass to mine.
“Here’s hoping you find out who killed Eve,” she said. Then she touched her glass to mine again. “And here’s hoping it’s Earl.”
We drank. Anne didn’t waste much time. Within a few minutes she was biting into the olive at the bottom of the empty glass. She insisted that I finish my scotch before refilling her glass.
“At this rate,” I said, “we’re going to get looped.”
She smiled. “Anything wrong with that?”
“Yes. I’m supposed to be investigating a murder. You paid me a dollar, remember?”
Her voice went low. “I think I’ll get my dollar’s worth ... one way or another.” She became serious. “Do you have any plans beyond seeing Earl?”
“No,” I had to admit.
“Then why not relax a while?”
“I keep thinking of Jack, in that cell.”
“You’re certain he didn’t kill Eve, aren’t you?”
“Even more certain than you are that Earl killed her.”
She sipped at the martini. “Take your pick, Larry. They each had a motive.”
“But there are other people with motives.”
“Who, for instance?”
“Peller, the hotel detective at the Sunshine Garden. He tried to shake Jack down for twenty thousand.”
“Did you tell the police?”
“Yes, but it’s my word against Peller’s.”
“What did this Peller fellow offer in exchange for the twenty thousand?”
“He made two separate offers. The first came before Eve was killed. He said he had information that would enable Jack to get a quick divorce. After her murder, he was trying to sell a statement that he saw Jack leave Eve’s suite before he heard the gunshot.”
“Does that mean he was prepared to lie?”
“I don’t think so. Not that Peller wouldn’t lie; for money he’d do just about anything. I believe he saw Jack leave the suite—before the shot was fired. Jack swears she was alive when he left. Peller claims he was checking out a disturbance a few hundred yards away from Eve’s suite when the shot was fired. By the time he got to Eve, she was dead. And there was no sign of anyone. According to Peller, a rear window was open and the killer would have had plenty of time to get away without being seen.”
“I wonder ...” Anne said.
“Hm?”
“That telephone call Earl received at the club. Do you think it could have been Peller?”
“Blackmail again?”
“Why not? I know Earl left Eve’s suite when you arrived, but he could have returned.”
“Not likely. You told me he was back in the apartment here in New York a little before eleven-thirty.”
“It was about twenty-eight minutes after eleven. The news was almost over, but the commercials hadn’t come on yet. The commercials last about two minutes.”
“Let’s say twenty-seven after eleven. How long would it take him to reach the apartment after parking his car?”
“Not long. All tenants park their cars in the garage beneath the building. There’s always plenty of room. There’s an elevator in the parking lot. Most of the time it’s there, waiting. Usually it doesn’t take more than a minute or so to get from the parking lot to the apartment.”
“Let’s say twenty-six after eleven. The shot was fired at ten to eleven. It would have taken your husband at least two minutes to get out of the suite and to his car. This means he left Oceanview no earlier than eight minutes to eleven—assuming of course that he killed Eve. All right. Eight plus twenty-six is thirty-four. Thirty-four minutes to drive forty miles. What kind of car did he use?”
“An XKE. It’ll do a hundred and twenty miles an hour.”
“He might’ve got away with a hundred on the turnpike for about twenty minutes. Let’s say he did. Twenty miles at a hundred miles an hour.”
“About twelve minutes,” Anne said. “That would give him twenty-two minutes to drive the other twenty miles.”
“It’s not likely,” I said.
“Who estimated the time of the shot?” Anne asked.
“Peller.”
“He may have been wrong. It could have been twelve minutes before eleven, even thirteen or fourteen.”
“Sure, but he could also have been wrong the other way.”
“Let’s assume he wasn’t, Larry.”
“All right, let’s.”
“Give Earl another three or four minutes and he could have done it. Do you agree?”
“It’s possible.”
“Isn’t it also possible that Peller saw Earl leave the suite after the shot was fired?”
“Yes.”
“Then it may have been Peller who phoned my husband at the club tonight. Naturally, Peller would have wanted money from Earl.”
“It doesn’t quite ring true, Anne.”
“Why not?”
“Peller was working on Jack.”
“Perhaps he intended to get money from both of them. Or perhaps he was afraid of Earl and only decided to get in touch with him after he failed to get any money out of Jack Delmar.”
“Well, if that’s the way it was, we’ll find out in a day or so. I don’t think your husband put out a call for Joe Greg and the other fellow because he needed someone to help him carry the money.”
Anne bit at her lower lip, her face thoughtful. “If I’m right ...”
I finished it for her: “The Sunshine Garden Hotel will soon be looking for a new house detective.”
“Shouldn’t we do something, Larry?”
“Like what? You don’t know where your husband went with Greg and the other fellow.”
“Perhaps you could get Peller on the telephone,” she suggested.
“What good would that do?”
“Well, if you’re able to reach him it will mean that Peller didn’t make the phone call to Earl.”
“Not necessarily. If Peller’s afraid of your husband he could have sent someone else to keep the appointment. And if Peller’s not on the hotel grounds to accept my call, that doesn’t mean anything either; he could be playing parchesi with one of the maids. No, Anne, there isn’t a thing we can do—there wouldn’t be even if we knew for a fact that Peller did make the call to your husband.”
“We could tell the police.”
“Where would we send them? What could we tell them?”
“I don’t know. I thought you might have some ideas.”
“Not on something as far-fetched as that. As I said before, that call to your husband may not have had any connection at all with Eve’s death.”
“In other words, there’s nothing at all to be done.”
“Nothing at all—except wait.”
She smiled. “Then there’s no reason why you shouldn’t relax, is there? Later on, I’ll go to the club. If Earl is there, I can phone and let you know.”
I swirled the ice cubes around in my glass.
“In the meantime ...” She pushed a scotch on the rocks at me.
“This is a pretty hefty drink,” I said.
“The better to relax, my dear.” She poured her martini into a water glass. “As you can see, mine is also rather hefty.”
“If you finish that, you’ll have had seven martinis.”
She waved a finger in the air, nodded solemnly. “Your arithmetic is beyond—er—something or other. Two doubles and a triple make seven.”
“Your
tongue is a little thick.”
“Four martinis always give me a fat tongue. Five martinis make me stop worrying about my fat tongue.”
“And, six?”
“Before tonight five was always my limit.” She winked an eye. “But I’m very, very hopeful. Shall we find out?”
“It’s your tongue.”
“Here’s to fat tongues.”
We drank. She held up her glass, gauged the level by closing one eye.
“In my opinion,” I said, “you’ve gone a trifle past your fifth martini.”
“Only a trifle?” She drank a little more. “There. Now I’m in Never-Never Land. Do I look any different?”
“Not much.”
“I feel a little different.” She leaned on the bar, moved her face close to mine. “Take a good look at me, Larry. Are you sure I’m still the same girl?”
Her bust was on her arms. The neck of her black cocktail dress wasn’t cut exceptionally low. but her weight against her arms gave her more than enough uplift to create deep cleavage and a delightfully swollen look.
“I’m sure I’m someone else,” she said.
“I’ll take your word for it,” I said.
“I even have another name. I’m Anna Gordon. With an ‘a’ at the end. Anna Gordon was my name before I got married.” She made a face. “I hate that word.”
“Married?”
“Yes. Let’s not say it again, eh? Let’s pretend I’m Anna Gordon, shall we?”
“Anna—”
“That’s better.”
“I think you’ve had enough to drink.”
She held up the glass. “I haven’t had quite six yet.”
“Don’t you like it where you are now?”
“Oh, yes. But it’s been improving all the time. I’m a different girl. You admit I’m a different girl. Who’s to say what’ll happen if I finish this glass?”
“You could pass out.”
“Would you pick me up and put me to bed?”
“Being a gentleman, yes.”
“Must you be a gentleman?—and must I pass out?”
I laughed. “You have gone over your limit.”
She sighed. “It looks as though I’ll have to be the aggressor.” She drank half of what remained in her glass. Then she set the glass down, raised her right hand in the air, snapped her fingers crisply, “inhibitions, begone!” She brought her hand over her eyes as though to shade them from the sun. “There they go, Larry, every last ugly one of them.”
“They’ll come back,” I said quietly.
“They’d better not. I’ll feed them to the piranha. Larry, did I tell you what I did for a living before I met Earl?”
“No.”
“I was a dancer.”
“That’s not hard to believe. You have a dancer’s legs.”
“Ah, but I didn’t dance with just my legs. In some cities I was called an exotic dancer. In other cities—the cruder ones—I was called a belly dancer. Would you like to see my routine?”
“Well—”
“I thought you would.” She walked from around the bar. “I’d put a record on Louise’s hi-fi, but all she has is classical stuff. So you’ll have to use your imagination.”
“What sort of music should I imagine?”
“Tom-toms. Low.”
“All right.”
She lifted her arms to the horizontal, fluttered her hands, looked down at herself—and frowned. “Who ever heard of a belly dancer who didn’t show her—er—tummy? I’ll be back in a minute.”
She crossed the room, opened a door, disappeared behind it. I took a long pull of my scotch on the rocks, lit a cigarette. A minute passed.
“I won’t be much longer,” Anne—or Anna—called out.
I took a few more drags on the cigarette. The spark was long and pointed, the kind of spark a nervous man makes. The door opened.
“Tom-toms, low,” she reminded me. And then she appeared. I almost put the wrong end of the cigarette in my mouth. She wore the tiniest of black bras and a towel—a rather small towel.
“Don’t forget the tom-toms,” she said, rolling her stomach.
I didn’t have to think of tom-toms. The sight of her made a pulse in my temple beat out a rhythm that matched the roll of her torso.
“Do you think I could still dance for a living?” she asked.
“Not without getting arrested,” I said.
She laughed, throatily, began to turn. The towel was knotted at the side. The ends of the towel moved about, revealing creamy skin with the texture of marble. She danced with her back to me for a while, her hips swaying seductively. Then, slowly, she began to turn again, holding her position when she was in profile. I sipped at my drink. Sipped? I almost swallowed an ice cube.
Her dancing became more agitated, wilder, the tom-toms in my head banged away, faster and faster. There was an elasticity to her body that was unbelievable. As for the black bra, it simply wasn’t designed for this kind of thing and now it wasn’t doing its job at all.
I shook a cigarette out of my pack, took a match from a box on the bar. I put the match in my mouth and tried to strike the cigarette. Finally I threw match and cigarette away. Anna saw this and was pleased. She brought the tempo down, danced towards me, didn’t stop advancing until she was well within reach. Her gyrating tummy was hypnotic; it was also very, very sexy.
The tom-toms stopped. She stopped. But her tummy quivered for a moment or two.
“No applause?” she asked, wryly.
I said, “I don’t trust my hands, so I’m sitting on them.” Warm, throaty laughter.
“The top of your costume is askew,” I said.
She didn’t seem to move, but all of a sudden she was very close to me. “Does it bother you?” she asked. “The bra?”
“Well, it’s not making me the coolest character in New York City,” I confessed.
“Why don’t you fix it for me? All you have to do is ... lift.” Her voice went low, and crawled all over me. “I’ll show you.”
She took me by the wrists. I let her guide my hands to the twisted little bra.
“Oops,” she said.
Her aim was a little high. So was my blood pressure. She started to dance again, but she didn’t let go of my hands. She swayed from side to side, wriggled. My knees were in the way. Each time she wriggled to her left, my right knee hit against the loose knot in the towel. I was fascinated by that knot. Each hit against my knee loosened it a little more. Finally the inevitable happened and the towel was gone. I lost interest in it at that point.
She pulled at me and I had to get off the stool. “Dance with me,” she said.
“I’m not very good at fertility rites,” I said.
“We’ll make it a waltz. Tom-toms out, violins in.” My right hand slid along the beautiful curve of her back. “One-two-three-four,” she said.
Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers never waltzed the way we did. Around and around we went—closer and closer to the bedroom door.
“Are you always this reserved?” she asked.
“Only when I’m waltzing with a married woman.” She did a few quick little steps, gave a wriggle.
“That’s not a waltz step,” I said.
“We’re now doing the carioca,” she informed me. “And I’m Miss Anna Gordon, remember?”
“Honey, this is definitely not the carioca.”
“Well, I may have added a few moves of my own. For example—”
She moved.
“That does it,” I said.
“I was hoping it might,” she smiled.
I lifted her from the floor. “Now, Miss Gordon—”
“Ah!”
“The mating dance of the Manhattan apartment dweller,” I said.
“Show me,” she said.
Chapter 8 ... too many suspects ...
Anne traced the outline of my cheek with a gentle finger. “He’ll never give me my freedom,” she said. “He won’t give it to me because he knows how badly I wa
nt it.”
“You could run away,” I said.
“I’m not the type that runs.”
“But you can’t continue to live with a man you hate and fear—”
“Fear?” She jumped on the word. “I’m not afraid of—”
She thought about it, nodded. “I am afraid of him. Perhaps that’s the real reason why I don’t run away. He’d send people looking for me. And when he found me ...” She shivered.
I pulled her close to me, held her tightly until she stopped shaking.
“It’s getting late,” I said.
“Yes.”
“Before I do anything else I want to call my answering service.”
“I’ll go out and make coffee.”
I got my answering service on the phone. There had been a lot of calls from reporters. And there had been some calls from Benny Garagiola. He was in the city and wanted to see me. The last time he called, he told the answering service he’d be at Callahan’s Bar and Grill on 42nd Street, between Eighth and Ninth Avenue. He said he’d stay there until midnight. It was ten after eleven.
I went out to the kitchen, told Anne to forget about the coffee. She didn’t ask any questions. Ten minutes later we were in my car, heading downtown. I let Anne out a few blocks from her husband’s club, promised I’d see her there later. Then I drove to Callahan’s.
Benny was seated, alone, in a rear booth. There was a glass of stale beer in front of him. He saw me and his face came to life. He got to his feet, put out his hand.
“Gee, I’m glad to see you, Mr. Kent. I was beginning to think maybe you left town or something.”
“What are you drinking? How about a shot?”
“No thanks, Mr. Kent. I don’t like drinking very much. I used to, but ...” He put a hand to his head. “That was before I got wounded. I don’t just get a hangover anymore; it’s like somebody was hitting me on the head with a hammer.”
“How about some coffee and a hamburger?”
“Sure. That sounds good. But it’s gotta be on me.”
“Okay, Benny. You can be the sport.”
I left my car where it was and took Benny around the corner to the Brandon Cafe, on 42nd. We found a quiet booth, ordered coffee and hamburgers.
“How’d you come up here?” I asked.
“I got a bus in Oceanview.”
“Well, it’s too late for you to go back tonight.”