Hadley turned back to me but Lucille had gotten between us. She was staring up at him as if he were a visitor from Mars.
“Are you really a policeman?” she whispered in awe.
His smile was tolerant. “I’ll do until a better one comes along. And who are you?”
“I’m Lucille Prentice,” she piped up proudly. “Have you heard of my Daddy?”
Helen Tucker had composed herself to the extent of asking a very haughty question:
“Don’t you think the child should be taken out of all this? After all, this is hardly the place for her.”
I had to hand it to her. And I couldn’t blame her either. On a high horse, she looked very good.
“Tucker’s right, Hadley,” I said. “Get a matron down here or send her out with one of your boys for an ice cream cone until her old man gets here.”
“Miss Tucker to you.” She gave it to me out of her very own personal deep freeze unit. I showed her my teeth and she jerked her head indignantly.
Hadley frowned. “Everybody shut up. Come over here, Noon. I want to talk with you.”
I followed Hadley over to the other corner of the room. His men were all over the place now. Poking into drawers, spreading fingerprint powder, taking pictures. Hadley’s face was troubled. I fingered a pack of Camels out of my pocket, gave him one and watched his face as I lit it for him. His expression didn’t change.
“Okay, Hadley. I’m a big boy now. What’s eating you?”
His lower lip accused me. “You are. Now I know what Monks means when he says you’re as regular as a bullet in a murder case.”
“Where is Mike? That Captain job isn’t pinning him down to a desk, is it?”
He made a face. “He’s on thirty-day leave. Which means you’re in my hair now. But don’t get me wrong. I gotta lotta respect for you, Ed. You’re on the ball most of the time. So shoot straight with me.”
“Fair enough, Hadley. What do you want me to hit?”
“Start at the beginning.”
I did. I took him with me right out of Benny’s bar, with the kid for company, back to Columbus Circle, up to the murder room. I told him all the ideas I had about soundproof rooms and the balcony trick. Plus that I tossed in all the poop I had on Guy Prentice. The only things I left out were Lucille’s playful hysteria with a .45 and Miss Helen Tucker’s dramatic entrance with a .22. I didn’t know where they fit in yet. But somehow I had the notion that they didn’t concern the Police Department. Not yet anyway.
Two funnels of cigarette smoke ploughed out of his Irish nose. Through the haze, he eyed me closely.
“Let me see your gun,” he said.
Shrugging, I unshouldered my own .45, which he knew I carried, and handed it over, butt first. He took it, released the clip expertly, counted the shells and sniffed down the barrel. He bit his lip and handed it back.
“Hasn’t been fired in a month,” he concluded with embarrassment. “Business must be poor.”
“It is,” I admitted. “I got holes in my shoes and hollows in my stomach. But I don’t want any part of this case. There isn’t a dime in it for me for one thing. For another, it doesn’t concern me. So if you’ll let an honest taxpayer withdraw—”
“No dice, Ed.” His eyes were chips of flint.
“Now look, Hadley—”
“Forget it. And the wisecracks. I just got here. I trust you, sure. But we haven’t anything at all yet. So stick around, Ed. Just for laughs.”
“Just for laughs? You’re killing me already—”
There was an outburst in the outer foyer. A rumble of excited voices that tried to outdo each other. Hadley and I put off our little difference of opinion to turn and see what it was.
It was a tall guy with a mop of black, shiny black hair to drive the hair-treatment people out of business. He was pushing through several of the plainclothes bunch with some good broken field running that just told you he’d played some damn good college football. When he was clear of their struggling arms, he stopped of his own accord. He stared down stupidly at the shawl-covered mess on his living-room floor.
He was quiet now and the dicks let him be. As if he were a maniac who had just cooled down.
I’d seen thousands of photographs of him all over town. In the papers, on billboards and in theatre mags. He had one of those faces and figures you would know anywhere. It was Guy Prentice.
He was in the classic Greek mold. And you somehow knew that this 1956 model was a cry and a hue above anything the old model had to offer. He suggested orgy and romance in one sweep of his burning black eyes. Poet and Peasant in one toss of his sculptured head.
“What—” his tongue was thick with low power. “—Paula? Is that Paula? Oh, my God—”
He swept to the floor like a warrior returned to find his loved ones raped and ravaged. A long, beautiful hand plucked at the shawl, exposed the red ruin for a ghastly second. Then the shawl fluttered back in place, and he knelt there, dazed and grief-stricken.
It was so well done, you would have sworn it wasn’t natural. It was too natural. Hadley’s boys were coughing and moving their feet as if they were ashamed of being policemen for the first time in their lives.
And then Helen Tucker flew to him with a low cry and Lucille moved to him through an avalanche of tears. And soon the three of them were rocking and moaning in the center of the room.
“Save me,” I muttered under my breath, grinding my butt out in an ash tray. Yeah, I’m cynical, I’m sarcastic. I was born to be the question mark at the end of the sentence, but the whole scene set the back of my dirty neck tingling with suspicions. It was too good, too well done, too much like the final curtain in a Four Handkerchief drama. I turned away.
Lucille’s tears were for the father, not the murdered mother. Helen Tucker’s sorrow was for the bereaved husband, not the butchered wife whom she had come calling on with a .22 in her handbag. Nuts. I wanted out. Wanted out bad. This was no place for a self-respecting private detective out for a fee.
The cops wouldn’t pay me for finding a murderer. And the whole thing smelled too much of a family affair. Peace, it’s wonderful.
Hadley was intruding on the group quietly. His men had gotten busy again. I sighed and listened because there wasn’t much else to do.
“Mr. Prentice, you identify the dead woman as your wife, Paula Prentice?”
“Yes.” It wasn’t that simple a yes. Greek tragedy rolled over it.
“Did Mrs. Prentice have any enemies?”
Sure, I said to myself. Do you know anybody who’d want to blow your wife’s face off with a .45?
“Mr. Prentice, was there anyone who had it in for your wife?”
“Oh, sorry, Lieutenant. You are a lieutenant, aren’t you?” This too was just right. Just the sort of half aristocrat, half regular-fellow condescension you’d expect from a Guy Prentice. “She was the sweetest, the nicest, most considerate person I have ever known. Everyone loved her. Didn’t they, Helen?”
Wrong there, Buster. Everyone loved her except someone with a .45 at close range.
“Of course they did, Guy. Lieutenant, must you? Can’t you see what this has done to him? Can’t you forget your job for one—”
“Daddy, Daddy—” moaned Lucille.
“Easy, sweetie, easy. Everything is going to be all right—”
That did it. I picked a glass off the table and flung it violently into the fireplace. It crashed into a million pieces, and everything in the room stopped as if that giant ray from another planet that they’re always talking about had been finally turned on. Every head in the room swung in my direction and umpteen sets of eyes registered umpteen sets of emotion.
“Cut!” I swore. “Stop grinding! We’re running out of film! This isn’t a take anymore. The day’s shooting is over!”
Hadley’s face was redder than Pravda. “Noon, are you nuts?”
“Not nuts, Hadley. Just filled up. To here!” I flung an arm out. “This isn’t my show. But I’ll be dam
ned if I listen one more minute to this keening over a grave. Come on, let’s get everything off our chests.”
Guy Prentice had eyes for me for the first time. He gave me the look that kills and took a step forward. An angry step.
“You had better explain this unreasonable outburst, Mr. —”
“Noon.” I gritted it out. “Ed Noon. And don’t you wish it was Brooks Atkinson so I could review your performance for posterity. You’re out of your class, Prentice. Musical comedy isn’t for you. Oedipus Rex would be more up your street.”
“What a foul-minded person you are,” Helen Tucker breathed. Lucille just stared at me like I was a Santa Claus who had taken all the toys back.
“Correction, Miss Tucker,” I hissed back. “Not foul-minded. Or fool-minded. What the hell is all this anyway? The three of you carrying on like this over a dame that you hadn’t any more use for than a parachute in an elevator.”
Hadley had taken my arm.
“Knock it off, Ed. The crazy stuff won’t go this time.” He was mad and breathing heavy.
I flung him off and glared amiably at Guy Prentice whose beautiful hands had knotted into beautiful fists.
“You offering me violence, Mr. Prentice? Tsk, tsk. What will your fans think?”
Hadley motioned to his men. “Get him out of here. He’s drunk. Never thought he hit the stuff that much.”
I smiled. I was beginning to feel good. I hate to carry things around inside of me like most people do. I’d rather get rid of them and let other people worry about them.
“Don’t you want to hear me out, Hadley? I’m not drunk. Just uninhibited.”
Hadley’s quick look stopped his men. He turned back to me wearily.
“I might have known. You were holding out again, you sonofabitch.” He said it without rancor, completely forgetting about the kid being there. “Okay. Spill it.”
Guy Prentice’s eyes flashed. “Yes, Mr. Noon. Spill it. And make it good spilling before I personally throw you out on your loutish ear.”
“When you talk like that to me, I tremble.” I laughed. “Okay. Paula is dead. Your Paula. Her daughter Lucille is so upset about it, she hasn’t shed a tear since it happened. Sure, call it shock if you want. Shock, maybe. Indifference is more like it. You and she were great pals until Paula came along. Paula was your second wife, Prentice. How do I know? Walter Winchell told me. Along with his million other subway readers. The kid resented her. She was the woman who came along after the original mother. You can never replace that one. Not really. Why should Lucille be sorry? Now you’ll have time for her again. You can sing together like before, take long walks—”
Guy Prentice’s face was a mottled mask of fury.
“Why, if you even dare suggest that little Lu would do a thing like this—”
“Hold your cues, Mr. Prentice. I’m not finished yet. Miss Helen Tucker popped in here. She was inconsolable about Paula’s death too. So much so that she brought along a nickel-plated .22 to keep watch over the corpse and make sure the wolves wouldn’t carry it away to eat it.”
Hadley’s whirl was damning. “Is that true, Miss?” he barked at Helen Tucker.
A red face became her. “Why—I don’t know what to say. I—”
I lit a cigarette while she groped for the right thing to say. Guy Prentice took a giant step toward me.
“She has a license for that gun, Mr. Noon. She’s my agent. She’s always carrying large sums of money.”
“Nice try, Prentice. But it won’t wash. The woman on the floor has been murdered. I say Miss Tucker showed up here with some notions about doing the job herself.”
“Okay, Ed.” Hadley grunted. “You spoke your piece as usual. Now step back. I’ll take it from here. I got a million questions to ask these people.”
“Gladly, Hadley. I’m fed up with all this. Let me go back to my ratty little office where things are nice and dirty and honest. None of this subtle underground stuff for me. I’ve had my share.”
Guy Prentice was looking at me as if I was the thing he never wanted to find in his Christmas stocking.
“You dirty, filthy swine,” he murmured. “Who do you think you are—God?”
“Not God,” I said coldly. “Just a guy who doesn’t go around murdering women.”
It just wasn’t my day. I had tried to wriggle off the hook but I couldn’t. And there was more to come.
Because Lucille leaped forward like a little tigress, locked my legs with her wiry, slender arms and sank every tooth that was in her mouth into the fleshy part of my upper thigh. I howled and tried to shake her off, and it took all of my attention off things.
Which cost me. Guy Prentice seemed to bounce off the floor at me like a released spring with a fist at the end of it. I’d never been punched by a famous man before. But speaking for all of the men punched by famous men the world over, mine was a special four-star performance.
His fist whooshed up to my chin, exploded like the A-Bomb, and the detonation roared around my skull.
I went down into a mushrooming darkness with the sound of the doorbell for musical accompaniment.
FIVE
Ever been knocked out before? Well I have and it’s never the same twice. Sometimes it’s all pain and confusion with roaring noises that set your teeth to grinding. Or it’s like a short untroubled sleep. A light nap which leaves you unaware of the passage of time. You have your eyes open one minute. Then they close without your realizing it and then they open again and you say something silly like, “What was that you asked me, Mr. Smith?”
Well, this one was just like nothing. Only difference was when I came to I said: “They fouled me. Fouled me good.”
Somebody grunted near my ear, and Hadley moved around to where I could see him. He put out a hand to help me up but I shook him off, retrieved my hat and brushed it off mechanically.
I looked around. We were all alone except for a uniformed cop on the door. Automatically, I scanned the floor. Tomorrow’s headline corpse was gone too. I began to wonder how long I’d been pounding my ear.
“Parade’s gone by, eh?” I showed Hadley my teeth. “Where is everybody?”
Hadley’s eternal grunt mocked me.
“We’re all cleaned up here. I let the Prentices and the dame go for some coffee. Followed of course. Know how long you been out? Twenty-seven minutes. I’ve been keeping time.”
“I’m flattered. But don’t let me think you enjoyed yourself.” My chin felt hot, bruised and swollen. I rubbed it and winced. “For an actor, he packs a mean wallop.” My thigh ached too. A bite-sized ache.
“I’m glad you noticed that,” Hadley said sarcastically. “You said a lotta things I wouldn’ta taken either if I’d been in his shoes. Ed, you got some mouth. It’s a wonder you still have all your own teeth.”
“Mike Monks may be on vacation. But he’s here in spirit.”
Hadley’s good humor faded.
“Look, Noon. You did your part. You called us in. All well and good. But now that we’ve got your statement, that’s it. Go on back to your office and forget this one. There ain’t a dime in it for you, far as I can see. Whoever did this killing is gonna need a good lawyer. Not a private fish.”
He didn’t know what he was asking me so I shut up for a change. Hadley was right. There wasn’t a fee in sight. But I had forgotten all about loot.
“Can I ask a question, teacher, before you chase me the hell out of here?”
Hadley grinned. “Sure, Ed. Shoot.”
“What did the Medical Examiner have to say about the late Paula Prentice?”
His eyebrows formed a fast V.
“Same old magic again, eh? Well, I don’t know what put you on to it. But you’re right. She caught exactly one slug in the kisser. The rest of them were buried in the wall and the furniture. What do you make out of it?”
“Lots of things,” I said blankly. “Including one terribly swollen jawbone.”
He walked with me to the door. The cop made way for us
. Hadley pumped my shoulder blades with one of his soft, fat hands.
“Relax, Ed. You’ve been mussed up before. You’ll forget about it inside an hour. Prentice was pretty worked up. And you rubbed him in some bad places. Now, leave it to us. Stay away and we’ll be pals, huh?”
“Sure, Ambrose. Pals to the very end.” (I was one of the few people alive who knew his real first name.) “Anything you say. But remember one thing. Don’t come crying to me if it gets to be too much for you. I might be busy.”
“Okay, Ed. It’s a deal.” He seemed relieved to see me go. I really couldn’t blame him. It cramps a lieutenant’s style to have a private detective hanging around.
I took the elevator down in a troubled silence. Something had happened that I didn’t want to happen. I had kissed the Prentice case off as a bad risk with no signs of a fee in sight. I was going to drop it. My mind had been all made up until he dropped me.
By the time the elevator car had arrived at street level, I began to understand just a little bit about the hot feel of vendetta and revenge. It paralyzes your logic.
I tried to walk right on by the downstairs desk but I couldn’t. I found myself stopping and asking the white collar behind the shiny counter where the Prentices and Helen Tucker might have gone for something to eat. Of course I was an old friend. Had known the family for years.
“Right across the Circle, sir.” The white collar named a restaurant. “Do you know the place?”
I knew the place. I tried to get there in a calm, civilized manner without running, but thousand-year-old feuds and hot vendetta blood sped me to the place on wings of speed.
It was a nice restaurant on the downtown side of Columbus Circle. Big sign, nice brown decor and a homey, woody atmosphere that made you feel like you belonged to a club of some kind. I pushed through the glass door, side-stepped a very ancient waiter whose lined face screamed of twenty-five year’s faithful service, and saw them.
Guy Prentice’s eyes were just as good as mine. He had pushed his chair back and was starting to rise, his face flaming, when I reached their table. They had ensconced themselves in a booth close to the dimly lit bar. Lucille was working industriously on a chocolate malted soda, and Helen Tucker was idly stirring the contents of a tall, cool-looking drink. They both stopped when they saw me.
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