Girl Running

by Lawrence Lariar

  “Up until Peggy’s lobby. You queered yourself when I spotted the lipstick. And you queered Peggy, too. Her little act almost had me sold. But when I caught you after wrestling with her, it was a jolt. It didn’t fit. She had worked too hard to convince me she detested you.”

  He played with the knife, rubbing it affectionately. The flashlight skittered and bobbed around the room. He would be enjoying my sweat now. This was the beginning of the big climax for him, the important chain of little gestures leading to the kill. He would continue to torture me so long as I held his mind captive. “You were the strong boy who slapped me around in Folger’s hotel room,” I said.

  “Why me?” he smiled.

  “The way you hit me. It was a Judo crack that leveled me. Behind the ears.”

  “Maybe I made a mistake then. Maybe I should have eased you out of this sad, sad world.”

  “You came back to Folger’s to level me?”

  “Guess again.”

  “You were checking up,” I said. “You came back to find out whether Judy’s address might be somewhere in his rooms. You couldn’t get it from Folger. You tortured him to make him talk. But he was too tough for you, so you killed him for nothing at all, really.”

  “Oh, you’re the clever one,” he laughed.

  “Only one thing puzzles me.”

  “Only one, clever boy?”

  “Peggy,” I said.

  “She loves you madly.”

  “But she loves you more, Larry. Did she give you the okay to kill her sister once I’d found her?”

  “What a nasty thing to say.”

  “Nasty, but true.”

  “You’ll never know, genius.”

  His voice tightened on the line. I knew what his mind would tell him now. The little light bobbled a bit in his hand. He would be jumping in a minute. I moved in fast, slapping the light out of his big fist. It skipped away, hitting the wall. It was out.

  Larry began to laugh again.

  “I hate to do this,” he told me.

  In his first move, he showed bad sense. It would have been easier for him with the room lights on. He was a maniac infighter, a madman once his hands found their target. Quick memories of his army fights rose to brighten my brain. He always began a fight the same way. He would buck and dump an opponent. He would level him first. Then he would move in for the kill.

  I blessed the darkness. My advantage lay in the memory of this room, a feeling for the layout of the furniture. To the left, against the wall, there would be a little French occasional chair. I moved that way.

  He must have guessed my move. He made his first lunge, passing so close to me that I could hear his breath boiling. He was talking to himself now, another symptom of his lunatic yen for torture. His big body hit the wall in a heap and he cursed me and laughed his husky idiot’s laugh. The laughter gave me a target. I slapped out at the sound of him with the little French chair. I slapped hard, measuring my swing to hit the dead center of the sound. The wood splintered and cracked. I had found him. He choked and spluttered, backing until his head hit the wall. Was he down now?

  I moved in for a test run, kicking low. My foot caught him, deep in a soft lard of his torso. I had made my first mistake. He grabbed my foot and pulled me down to his level. He rolled me around, trying for my throat. But the chair had dulled him. My fist found his face. I crossed a roundhouse right to his jaw.

  It hit him up high, near the ear. My hand felt the hot sticky flow of blood on his forehead.

  I was loose for a moment, crawling away toward Judy’s easel. But the moment wouldn’t last. He would be on fire now, really burning to butcher me. The first wound had always converted him into an animal, a lunging, clawing bear. In the quick minute of freedom, the memory of his fight with Bowker came back to me. He would try to combine torture with mayhem. He would settle for nothing less than sadistic joy. I backed away from him, moving toward the small tabouret where Judy stored her paints. But he cut short my plan. He threw his body at me, clipping me chest high. I fell back, taking the tabouret with me.

  He was on me and all over me, his big hands groping for my throat. I rolled in a sea of debris, the upchucked contents of the tabouret, brushes and bottles and tubes of paint. He lashed out at my face, skimming a big fist across my jaw. I let him come in, groping for one of the bottles. We rolled against the drapes, under the big window. He was grinding the breath out of me. He was muttering and cursing and breathing his hate at me, his fists alive now. I closed my eyes against the first shock of pain. I tried to roll with his punches, busying myself with the bottle in my right hand. It was opening now, slowly.

  He must have smelled the turpentine. He straightened me up, pulling me close to the window. Then he slammed out at my face for the killer punch.

  And in that second, I threw the turpentine at him.

  The smell of it filled my lungs. He must have caught the stuff. His hands came loose. He began to fall my way, still gurgling his insane anger and frustration. The drapes came loose under his weight. He was pulling them down, rubbing them into his eyes, struggling to wipe away the turpentine.

  He fell against the window and his head went through and the glass smashed and tinkled around us. He was falling to the floor now, his big frame no longer menacing, his hands strangely limp. He caught me around the knees and pulled me down with him. Now a thin light filled the room, the glow from the street lamp. In the close-up, I saw his face. He was a bloody mess. I rolled away from him as he fell to the side. His hands still clutched and clawed for me. But he would get nowhere now. He could see nothing. He couldn’t see the damage he had done me. He couldn’t see the way I sucked for air.

  Nor could he see Peggy Martin standing above us.

  In the half light, her face boiled with hate. She was holding a small automatic. She aimed it at my head, her hand steady on the trigger. Her eyes were glazed and distant. But there was more than an alcoholic fire in her now.

  “Where is she?” Peggy whispered.

  “Gone,” I mumbled. “You’re too late, baby.”

  “You’re lying. Larry phoned me. He said she was here.”

  She backed off, her eyes searching for the bedroom door. She found it. She began to laugh, giddy and uncontrolled. Her brittle mind was making plans now. She had found herself an easy setup. It was as obvious as her next move.

  “You’re making a mistake,” I said. “You’ll never get away with it, Peggy.”

  She stared at me, laughing gently. The tableau filled with overtones of lunacy. She was mad, her eyes burning with an indefinable glow, the wide-open glare of the psychopath. She would be hell-bent for finishing her job, her mind alive with the sick hatred for her sister.

  “Judy loves you,” I said quietly.

  “Don’t make me laugh.”

  “Why should she hate you?”

  “We hate each other,” she said. She bit the words, liking the taste of them. “We’ve always hated each other.”

  “Not Judy. She’ll tell you. Give her the chance to tell you.”

  “Never.”

  “You don’t know anything about her,” I said. “You haven’t seen her for years. I tell you she’s different now. You’ll like her.”

  “You’re wasting your time. I’m going to kill Judy. I’m going to kill you, too.”

  She babbled on, enjoying the sound of her voice. She was caught up in the heat of her sickness now and only an expert could stall her. She stood there spilling her hate, relishing the moment she had created. Yet, in the pause, something ate at her. Some part of her saner self struggled against the murders to come. It was as though two women stood here. She was battling her alter ego, convincing herself that her motives were sound. She would continue to mutter her convictions until her tortured mind took the bait. Then she would move. Then she would kill easily.

  “You’re sick
,” I said. “This will pass, Peggy. You can be helped.”

  “No help wanted.”

  “What happens to Larry?”

  “Happens?” She flicked her eyes at him, not lilting the sight of his lacerated face. He lay on his back, the blood bubbling from his mouth. She shuddered and considered him for a deep breath of time. But she found nothing to change her mood. Her face hardened. “Happens? The blundering idiot. You’ll both die. Then I’ll put the gun in your hands.”

  “Why?” I asked. “Have you figured it out?”

  Something bit at her now. Her eyes softened, dulled by my foolish question. A skilful psychologist might have caught her now, might have changed her mind for a while. But my head allowed me no room for smart remarks. Larry had knocked me around too much. It was an effort to get ready for the next move. Now.

  I dove for her in the pause.

  The next few minutes hopped with confusion. I barely made her knees, too weak for a clean shot at her. She kicked out at me, clipping me under the chin, a bull’s-eye. I pulled hard at her and she came down to her knees, clawing and swinging at me with the gun butt. She was strong, too strong for me to handle. She brought the gun up and found my neck with it, a sideswiping blow that made the hammers beat in my ears. She bit my wrist, deep and mean. I yelled and shook her off but she was a mad animal now, a creeping spitting cat, hell-bent on killing me in one way or another.

  I rolled away from her, trying for the couch, struggling to get behind it for a minute.

  She stood up and watched me, her smile stiff and tight. Her arm lifted slowly. She held the gun on me, enjoying my suffering. There was nothing for me to do but watch her move to the right. I was cornered. She sighted the automatic, aiming at my head.

  But she never quite made it.

  Another gun went off behind her, at the stair landing. The shot clipped her hand and the gun dropped and she began to fall, a slow and graceless tumble to the floor. The figure of a man bounced into the room, vague and blurred until he reached the wall and flipped on the lights. He bounced to Peggy’s side and picked up her gun. I saw him for only a small moment as he came my way.

  “Monsieur?” he asked.

  It was Gaston.

  “Vive la France,” I mumbled.

  Then the lights went out for me.

  Turn the page to continue reading from the PI Steve Conacher Mysteries

  CHAPTER 1

  At exactly 4:32 on the afternoon of June 7, 1958, a young woman named Mari Barstow left The Ridge Apartments on the fashionable East Side of New York City.

  The precise time came from the doorman who remembered looking at his watch as Miss Barstow left the building. He was positive about the time of day. He’d been about to phone his bookie a bet on a horse named Kiss Me Quick in a late race. The incident was indelibly stamped on his mind when Kiss Me Quick came in and paid $56.70 for the win.

  The doorman reported that Miss Barstow stood chatting with him for a few minutes. Miss Barstow remarked that it was a hot day. The doorman agreed and ventured that the evening might bring rain. Miss Barstow said that she hoped he was right. The past week had been uncomfortably warm.

  Miss Barstow walked off toward Second Avenue as the doorman rushed into the lobby to phone his bet.

  He was the last person to see Mari Barstow.

  At exactly 7:12 in the evening, two months later, I was entering the apartment of a man named Jan Flato. Mr. Flato was not at home when I got there. I didn’t expect him to be home. I knew Jan Flato’s habits well. For the past week or so I had studied Mr. Flato. Outside the skyscraper headquarters of the Universal Television Network on Sixty-Fifth Street, I had stood on a plant every night at about this hour.

  Standing on a plant does not mean loitering on a rose bush or digging one’s heels into a strawberry patch. It means waiting and watching and possibly following, a trade term used by all skip-tracers. In the business of skip-tracing, the seasoned investigator must use patience and stubbornness in his day-to-day work.

  I can remember a typical long wait a few years ago, a routine case involving a little man named Oscar Blarman who had abandoned his wife and four children and disappeared into the nether reaches of New York’s East Side. I tailed him to a giant tenement off Second Avenue, but could not put the fix on him because he simply didn’t appear for me. Yet, a small clue out of his wife’s description of him finally earned me my locate. Oscar Blarman was very fond of pickled pigs’ feet, an impossible item to purchase in the Hebraic delicatessen belt of that area. But I grabbed my man through a cooperative storekeeper who owned a Scandinavian delicatessen near Fourteenth Street. He reported a middle-aged woman who bought pickled pigs’ feet regularly. And the middle-aged woman was a middle-aged stray named Oscar Blarman.

  In the more dignified areas of police detection, the city dicks consider the art of tailing worthy of special straining so that their sleuths can do their prying without the fear of detection. Standing on a plant is as much an art as checking fingerprints. It can yield valuable information, which is what I wanted about Jan Flato—and it can provide the opportunity to search for still more information, which is why I was standing there now about to break and enter.

  And certainly I was hoping to find out a little more about Flato than he had offered me in his tight-lipped interview at the studio about ten days back.

  “Talk fast,” he had told me, not bothering to look up from the script he was fingering. “This is my busy time of day.”

  “It’s busy for me, too, Mr. Flato,” I said.

  “Really?” He mumbled the word to the manuscript, lost in some creative problem. “And must you louse up my rehearsal, little man?”

  “The name is Conacher,” I said, angry at him. Snide references to my size always make me boil. And the fact that Flato dropped the remark didn’t cool my blood pressure any. He was only inches taller than me when he stood. And he had added the extra height by way of elevated heels. “Steve Conacher,” I continued. “And I’m here on company business.”

  “Company? What company?”

  “The Universal Network.”

  “Come again?”

  “Mr. Silverton,” I said. “Mr. Silverton hired me for this job.”

  “Job?” His eyes sharpened. He had a skinny face, long in the nose and decorated with an oversize moustache. He reminded me of certain types of British soldiery given to cultivating such fantastic facial adornments. But the moustache didn’t detract. There was intelligence in his face. You had the feeling he would never stop thinking, even if he joined you in laughter. “What job, for God’s sake?”

  “I’m assigned to find Mari Barstow.”

  “Find her? Is she lost?”

  “Have you seen her lately?”

  “Whether I’ve seen her or not wouldn’t establish her as missing,” he smiled. “The fact is, I haven’t seen her lately.”

  “Nor has anybody else, Mr. Flato.”

  “Is that peculiar?” He laughed, a short unimportant snort, half amusement, half disgust. “Silverton knows Mari’s reputation. Didn’t he tell you she was a flibbertigibbet?”

  “All Mr. Silverton said was that she’s missing.”

  “Mari’s a funny girl, Conacher. You did say Conacher, didn’t you? Odd name. Well, Mari takes great pride in her individuality, if you get what I mean. Likes to be considered a character. Gets sudden whims and impulses. And follows through on them. She might very well be in Atlantic City, Las Vegas, or Flatbush.”

  “Silverton seems to think she should come back,” I said. “Isn’t she scheduled on your show in two weeks?”

  “She is, indeed. But why the big worry? She’ll make it.”

  “Will she? Silverton says he’s protecting the company’s investment in her. I’m no television fan myself, Flato, but I can understand his point of view. She’s had a pretty lousy press, hasn’t she?
”

  “Mari loves a lousy press. She’s got a publicity fixation. She’s probably the hottest singer in television and yet she seems to be working overtime to kill herself. I’m thinking of the Judy Garland walkout she pulled in Vegas. And for what? The press boys found her taking a moonlight swim with some punk Hollywood juvenile.”

  “She sounds mixed up,” I said:

  “The understatement of the year,” he laughed.

  “Silverton wants to avoid any more bad publicity. If I can’t make a locate on her by rehearsal time, he’s got Sally Tucker ready to come in.”

  “I suppose old Oliver is right,” said Flato. “Mari is the hottest piece of property in the business today. The network signed her to a fabulous deal, and she’s due to make a million bucks if she plays it Silverton’s way which means sweet and pure and no more side-trips into fantasy land. She’s a female flibbertigibbet, Mari is. You know her history? Hell, when Silverton found her she was only a routine girl vocalist with the Tony Granada band. She was so fresh in the business that she had no agent, and that’s pretty green, brother. Silverton signed her and then gave her a spot on the ‘Sunday Shindig.’ You know the rest. His confidence paid off. She has a terrific talent. Ever see her perform?”

  “I’ve never seen her at all.”

  “A walloper, Conacher. She sells a song. Nobody like her.”

  One of his staff men came over and handed him a script and they buzzed and argued about a certain spot in the coming show. Flato handled him with quiet discipline, firm in his opinions but without heat. He would be a hard man to reach. “Bad day at Black Rock,” he said to me. “Can you come back, Conacher?”

  “There are a couple of things you can tell me now, Flato. For instance, how well you knew Mari Barstow.”

  “The past tense?” He screwed up his mouth, sour on the idea. “You don’t think she’s dead, for God’s sake?”

  “I didn’t say she was.”

  “I know her casually, Conacher, to answer your question.”