Seven Steps East

by Ben Benson

  I trudged up to the house. Now that I was closer, I could see that the paint was old and peeling. I knocked at the front door. There was no response. The window shades were halfdrawn. I crouched and looked inside. I could see a sparsely furnished living room. It had the old musty-type furniture bought at second-hand stores and country auctions.

  Leaving the front, I moved around in the sand to the back of the bungalow. There was a tank of bottled gas fastened against the wall. With the exception of two aluminum-framed chairs with blue woven plastic seats, and some drifted sand, the screened porch was empty.

  At the front I paused again. Across the road to the right was a small gray cottage. I walked over. The house had a screened porch in front. Inside, a girl was sitting on a glider reading a magazine.

  She stood up when she saw me. She was young, not more than seventeen. She wore a red, short-sleeved, V-neck jersey and white shorts. She put the magazine down and opened the screen door.

  I stood there. She said, “Were you looking for somebody across the street?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Is anyone around?”

  “There’s nobody home,” she said. “There hasn’t been anyone around in a couple of days.”

  “Do you know the people who are staying there?”

  The tip of a pink tongue came out and touched her lips thoughtfully. “No. Two men, I think. But they’re not around very much.”

  “Could you describe them?”

  “One’s small and dark and wears glasses. He’s the one who’s there most of the time. The other is taller and he doesn’t wear glasses. I wish I could tell you more about him. But I’ve only seen him twice and that was at a distance. I’ve never seen any of them on the beach.”

  “Do you know their names?”

  “No.” She looked at me, puzzled. “Who are you?”

  I showed my badge. “I’m a state trooper.”

  “Oh, so that’s it.”

  “It’s nothing,” I said. “I’m just making an inquiry. What’s your name?”

  “Georgina. Georgina Oshry.”

  “Do you know if that’s a rented cottage, Georgina?”

  “Oh, yes, it is.”

  “Who does the renting of cottages around here?”

  “Mrs. Vancour.” She pointed in the direction of the pier. “At the beginning of the street, next to the store. It’s a brown cottage. You can’t miss it. There’s a sign out front. She rents most of the cottages around here. I mean the ones the owners don’t rent or use themselves.”

  I thanked her and left.

  Mrs. Vancour was an old, stout, perspiring woman with obviously dyed black hair. She sat on her front porch fanning herself. She wore a flowered housedress over her huge frame. On her feet were canvas shoes. They were cut so that her small toes stuck out.

  She said, “Yes, I rented that cottage. I’ve got it rented until Labor Day. But I’ve got another lovely place that’ll be available next week. Perfectly lovely.”

  “No, Mrs. Vancour,” I said. “You didn’t understand. I’m only interested in who’s living in that bungalow now.”

  She sniffed and her well-larded face hardened. “Why?”

  I took out my I.D. folder and showed it to her. “State Police, Mrs. Vancour. My name is Trooper Lindsey.”

  She looked at the folder, then back at me. There was an air of disbelief about her. She put down her fan, picked up a big handkerchief from her almost non-existent lap and wiped her neck. In a way I didn’t blame her skepticism. I was wearing a plaid sports shirt and pale gray slacks and a white golfing cap. She studied my picture under its plastic cover again. Then she grunted noncommittally. “Very well. Now exactly what do you want, Mr. Lindsey?”

  “The name of the man who rents the blue-and-white bungalow down there on Beachplum Road. The one overlooking the dunes.”

  “The name is Nassim. Arthur Nassim.”

  “From where, please?”

  “Fall River.”

  “What does he look like?”

  “A young fellow, twenty-six or so. Short and skinny and dark complected. What else do you want to know?”

  “Does he wear glasses?”

  “Yes.”

  “Any mole, scar or other marks on his face?”

  “I didn’t notice any marks on his face.”

  “What about the color of his eyes?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “Was there anything peculiar about them in any way?”

  “You mean his eyes?”

  “Yes.”

  “I didn’t notice.”

  “His hair?”

  “Dark and kind of oily.” She sniffed asthmatically. “What do you want him for?”

  “This is just part of an investigation, Mrs. Vancour. How long ago did he take the cottage?”

  “Oh, about May 15th. Wait a minute.” She got up with considerable difficulty and waddled inside. I waited. A car went by in the street. A dog barked. A child called. A screen door slammed. Mrs. Vancour came back with a big ledger.

  She sat down again, opened the ledger and turned pages. “Let me see. That’s the Sea Haven. Nassim. Arthur Nassim.”

  “Do you have his Fall River address?”

  “Yes.” She gave it to me. I wrote it in my notebook. Then she said, “He rented the cottage on May 15th. Deposit was one hundred dollars. The balance was paid when he moved in on July first.”

  “That’s two weeks ago. Do you remember him moving in?”

  “Yes, I remember.”

  “Who was with him?”

  “He was alone.”

  “How big a cottage is it?”

  “Two bedrooms, bath, kitchen and living room.”

  “Isn’t it kind of strange for one man to rent a cottage that large?”

  “We don’t have any smaller ones.”

  “Weren’t you curious?”

  She shrugged her old shoulders. “He paid his rent. I told him no wild parties and he said he was a quiet person and he’d behave. And he has. No heavy drinking or anything. He’s been very quiet. In fact, hardly anyone ever sees him.”

  “Maybe he isn’t there most of the time.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Have you seen any girls around there?”

  “There’s been a girl or two around there during the daytime. I don’t know but if they were relatives of a sort.”

  “Could you describe the girls?”

  “Could you if they wore a beach robe, a bandanna and sunglasses?”

  “What about the evenings?”

  “I don’t stay up very late, so I don’t know. But from what the neighbors say Mr. Nassim is very quiet and there’s been no wild parties.”

  “And the other man, Mrs. Vancour?”

  “What other man?”

  “I’ve been told another man has been staying there occasionally. A taller man.”

  “I don’t know about that. I have to keep track of quite a few cottages, Mr. Lindsey.”

  “I understand,” I said. “Thank you, Mrs. Vancour.”

  I left her and went back to my car. For the first time in the case, we had a definite pattern.

  Chapter 19

  I was sitting with Detective-Lieutenant Sam Gahagan in the office of Chester Raynham at the Hotel Mount Puritan. It was dark outside. The light on the desk came from a green-shaded globe. Raynham looked at me as though I was the bane of his existence.

  Gahagan was saying to him, “And you’ve never heard of Arthur Nassim?”

  “I told you no,” Raynham said.

  “A small grifter, that one,” Gahagan said. “Worked small, cheap cons. The Fall River Police tell me that he’s served a little time. I thought maybe you’d know him.”

  “You riding me, Sam?”

  “No, I’m not riding you.”

  “You ought to know I’ve always traveled in better company than that. What kind of grifts was he working?”

  “Gambling stuff,” Gahagan said. “You should know the type. They hang aroun
d the horse or dog tracks and do a little touting. They pick up discarded tickets and try to change them to the winning numbers. He’s been caught a few times with tricky dice. You ought to know that type well, Raynham.”

  I noticed Gahagan was no longer calling Raynham by his first name. There had been a change in their relationship. I also noticed that Raynham was very angry and he had trouble keeping his voice even and in control.

  “I haven’t known that type for years,” Raynham said. “I know a few people in Fall River. But not this one. How was he with cards?”

  “Not much,” Gahagan said.

  “How was he with the muscle?”

  “Strictly the non-violent type,” Gahagan said. “No record of any heavy stuff. Not the type who’d do any killing. Would he be a guest here?”

  “You saw my guest log,” Raynham said. “He was never a guest here. A guy like him—” Raynham snorted—“he’d stink up my place. I’d smell him out in a minute.”

  “You’ve got quite a smeller, Raynham.”

  “A cheap little grifter like that, he’d never get into my lobby. Jack Bellanca would spot him a mile away.”

  “I’ve sent to Fall River for his pictures and a copy of his file,” Gahagan said. “When they come I’ll want you to look at them and make sure.”

  “What I have to do, I’ll do,” Raynham said. “But you’re wasting time.”

  “It’s my time,” Gahagan said.

  “Okay, so it’s your time. What else?”

  “Quite a bit else.”

  “What the hell have you been acting so sore about, Sam? Because I fired that chippy?”

  “No, I wouldn’t have expected different,” Gahagan said. “I’m talking about some decks of cards that Sergeant Uhlberg picked up at your cigar stand. You remember them?”

  “Sure. So what?”

  “They were marked.”

  Raynham sucked his breath in. “You’re crazy.”

  “Two of those decks were marked. We bought some more. Some of those were marked.”

  “Now you’re giving me some kind of crazy pitch,” Raynham said, waving his hands. “Not my cards.”

  “Our photo lab called me on them. They’re sending over a report. The cards were marked with luminous daub. Your code was on the outside of every cellophane wrapper at the tear-off slip.”

  “This is some kind of gag,” Raynham said hoarsely. He opened a desk drawer and took out a small white pill. He poured water from a vacuum carafe into a glass and swallowed the pill. “I can’t take this kind of thing. I don’t make mistakes.”

  Gahagan was silent.

  Raynham looked at him, then at me, then back to Gahagan. He put the glass down. “It’s true, huh?” he croaked.

  “Yes,” Gahagan said.

  “With daub you’d need red-lensed glasses,” Raynham said hopefully. “And how’s the guy going to get the cards in the game?”

  “By buying them at your cigar stand, Raynham.”

  “Impossible. How would they get there?”

  “That’s what we want to know. Where’d you buy them?”

  “Why, from my regular wholesaler. For years—” Raynham cracked his knuckles nervously. “Wait a minute. I’m wrong. This year we got a special deal.”

  “What kind of deal?”

  “We saved a lot of money. Wait.” He pressed a button and spoke into the intercom. “Mrs. Whitcombe, come in here.” He shut off the intercom. “I forgot. She’s gone home. My manager, Orsini. I’ll get him. Is this his night at the Playhouse? No, not tonight. I’ll get him.”

  Raynham’s assuredness had been disintegrating rapidly. I glanced at Gahagan. Gahagan sat there with stoic impassiveness.

  Mr. Orsini was a tall, black-haired man with striking white hair at the temples, well barbered and immaculately clothed. He had an air of elegance and patient understanding about him. But as I looked at him closer I could see that his eyes were pouched. There was a tiny tic in one eye and a slight tremble at the lower lip. I put him down as a drinker, but I could have been wrong. Standing beside Mr. Orsini was Miss Cora Simpson, one of the two sisters who presided over the cigar stand. She was wearing her coat of red with the nameplate over the left breast pocket.

  Orsini said smoothly, “Of course, Chet. You remember how we saved money. This salesman came around and sold us cartons of playing cards at fifty per cent off the regular wholesale price. We got a tremendous discount. Bridge score pads, rule books, pencils. Everything in the line. We saved lots of dollars on this purchase.”

  “I remember,” Raynham said. “I opened a couple of decks of cards and ran them through. They weren’t defective. All clean stock with the government stamp on them.”

  “They were an excellent buy,” Orsini said.

  Lieutenant Gahagan turned to Miss Simpson, who stood there with a frightened, awesome look on her gray face. “Did anybody ever buy a deck of cards from the stand and return them?”

  “No, no, sir,” she said hurriedly. “We don’t allow that. And we keep them in a glass case that’s locked all the time. Mr. Raynham is very strict about those things.”

  “Mr. Orsini,” Gahagan said. “You were the one who bought the cards?”

  “Yes, Lieutenant.”

  “Who was the man you bought them from?”

  “A chap named Hassim or something.”

  “Nassim,” Raynham said harshly. “Nassim.”

  “Might be Nassim,” Orsini said equably. “I can look back at the check voucher.”

  “Don’t bother, you goddam fool,” Raynham shouted. “It was Nassim, all right.”

  Lieutenant Gahagan said, “A small, dark young man with glasses?”

  “That’s his description,” Orsini said warily. His face was pale and his eye twitched more.

  “I think we’ve been taken,” Chester Raynham said.

  Orsini swallowed hard. “I don’t understand.”

  “You don’t understand,” Chester Raynham said, mocking him. “Why do you think you got such a bargain, you damn clothing-store dummy? The guy was peddling marked cards. Later he came back, played with those cards and cleaned up on our guests.”

  “Hold it,” Lieutenant Gahagan said. “You told me Nassim wasn’t a guest here.”

  “He wasn’t. He must have had somebody fronting for him.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, we won’t know until we talk to your card-playing guests.”

  “Now wait a minute, Sam—”

  “I’m not interested in any of your private card games,” Gahagan said. “I’m looking for a murderer.”

  The man was elderly, small, wiry, dapper-appearing. He had thinning white hair, a clipped little white mustache and a pink complexion. He sat in Chester Raynham’s office and inspected the toes of his shiny, moccasin-type shoes.

  “We only play for fun, Lieutenant,” he said to Gahagan. “We like an interesting game so we don’t play poker for small stakes. The thrill is in winning a sizable sum. Not only that, but in a small game players will bluff and play recklessly, because it means nothing to them if they lose. It spoils the game. Poker has a certain skill to it. I hope I make myself clear.”

  “You do, Mr. Burnes,” Gahagan said. “Now I’d like to know who you play with.”

  “We have rules here,” Burnes said. “We play only with hotel guests. Only with cards bought at the stand in the lobby. And, most important, only with our friends—people we know.”

  “Why are you so careful, Mr. Burnes?”

  “As I said, we don’t play for marbles. And we can’t compete against a professional gambler. We know a skilled professional can manipulate the cards on the deal and cut. If you have two of them playing against you in a game they can signal to each other what they have. In that way one can bid up the game for the other. We all know that.”

  “I’m glad you do,” Gahagan said. “In spite of that, some of you got hurt last week.”

  “A streak of luck,” Burnes said.
“It happens. And very skillful card playing.”

  “That all?”

  “Lieutenant, the cards were examined after the game. They were perfectly all right.”

  “Then I take it there was a stranger among you.”

  “Well, yes. But he was one of the guests.”

  “One person?”

  “And a gentleman. He himself insisted we keep changing the cards. He was young, well mannered and unobtrusive.”

  “What was his name?”

  “He isn’t here any more,” Burnes said.

  “I might know him,” Gahagan said.

  “His name was Wendell Starrett.” Burnes’ eyes twinkled. “Now don’t tell me you know him.”

  “We do.”

  “Do you? Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll be damned.”

  “How much did Mr. Starrett win?”

  “Quite a bit,” Burnes said. “I’m sorry, I’d rather not divulge any figures at the moment.”

  “Did he wear any glasses in the game?”

  “No,” Burnes said. “He couldn’t have cheated. He had no partner in the game. He won when others dealt or cut the cards. At times he lost.”

  “But when the game was over he had all the money?”

  “Yes,” Burnes said.

  “What games did you play?”

  “Stud poker and a little blackjack. Lieutenant, he was a personable young man. He wasn’t pushy. He had terrific card sense. He knew exactly when to play and when not.”

  Chester Raynham interrupted. “On account of the big losses, I examined those cards later. Each card. I riffled them. No trims, no shading, no linework or blockouts on the designs.”

  “Where are the cards now?” Gahagan said.

  “We threw them out,” Raynham said. “This happened last week.”

  “You threw out any evidence we might have had,” Gahagan said.

  “You think we’ve been taken?” Burnes asked.

  “You’ve been taken, all right.”

  “How did he do it?” Burnes asked.

  “We’re not exactly sure yet,” Gahagan said.

  “Well, I can’t believe it,” Burnes said. “The way he handled those cards you could see he didn’t have much skill. He was no sharper.”

  “That’s why he took you,” Gahagan said. “A rank amateur can sometimes pull a better job than an old pro. You wouldn’t be expecting him to cheat. How much did you lose, Mr. Burnes?”