Murder for Madame

by Lawrence Lariar

  I ran out into the rain, headed uptown. I took a bus a few blocks up the line, chafing at its snail-like progress through the slick, wet lane that was Fifth Avenue. Traffic did not hold us. But it was a good twenty minutes before I got off and ran toward the east, searching for his number among the quiet gray homes that lined the street.

  Haskell Moore’s house was a converted mansion. There were five names on the mailboxes in the hall, and I paused only long enough to discover that his flat lay on the top floor. But there was no answer to my insistent pressure on the bell. I stabbed at the name on the third floor. And the door buzzed open.

  The inner hallway was as black as a raven’s tail. The door closed silently behind me and I heard the lock click it shut. A bit of light filtered in through the door glass, enough to allow me to see the subdued shape of a balustrade on my right. I stepped forward, conscious of the deep rug under my feet. I moved quietly and slowly.

  And then there was a soft step on the stairs above.

  And a man came down, stepping in a quickened pace, not running, but descending with a sure-footed tread.

  He came down from the landing without seeing me. I was too late to move aside. He ran head on into me and sent me backward under the impact of his greater size and height. I heard him puff out a sudden oath, buried in the gasp of surprise that came with it. I fell against the balustrade and began to drop off the first step and he was falling with me, his hands grabbing at my throat, finding it and tightening his grip around the outer edges of my collar. We were down on the floor almost at once and he was rolling all over me, in a sweat now, anxious to get up and away. His quick gesture toward my throat stimulated me to a reflex of movement. He must have seen me, silhouetted against the dim patch of brightness that was the door glass. I struck out at him, confident that I was hitting Haskell Moore, stopping him on the way out. I brought my knee up and found his gut and dug in. He gurgled and gasped and slid off me to the floor, a bundle of quickened energy now, a target I could not follow.

  He crawled away from me, headed for the door, and I dove for his legs. He kicked me off, finding my midsection with his toe, hitting me low enough to stagger me and double me up with pain. He had hit the bull’s-eye. I squirmed on the rug, struggling for breath, feeling my stomach muscles go tight and hard.

  Then he was at the door.

  He opened it quickly and started away. I rolled toward him desperately.

  “Come back, you bastard!” I said.

  My feeble monologue froze him, but only for a second. He paused to turn my way. And then I had a good look at him and the sight of him iced my spine. He was a tall silhouette. He was an oversized shadow, long and lean. In the dim light from some distant street lamp, he was a terrifying giant.

  A second is a tick of time. Yet in the pulsating moment, there was enough of him to register against the delicate wall of my intellect, so that the shape of him and the size of him spelled out meaning for me. The wind roared through the door and from behind him came the sound of the flooding rain, splashing against the wall of the house. And the tableau worked against my reflexes, paralyzing me as I squirmed on the floor.

  Because I knew that silhouette!

  He was the man in the chauffeur’s uniform!

  And then I saw his legs move quickly forward, and the door was closing, and his footsteps were running down the wet stone outside. I pushed myself upright and staggered to the door, the pain in my stomach almost forgotten. I wobbled to the top step of the outside landing and shouted at him, a zany profanity. But he was running fast now, too fast for me to follow. His long legs were carrying him toward Madison Avenue. And before I could manage the four steps to the pavement, he was inside a long black car and headed east, two dim and distant tail lights fast disappearing in the rain.

  I returned to the doorbells and pressed the one on the ground floor, Rebecca Carruthers, and Rebecca was at home and willing to receive visitors. She was waiting for me at her door on the right side of the hall, after the latch clicked me inside. She was a middle-aged silhouette against the bright light from her flat, a faceless shape who said:

  “Yes? You wanted me?”

  “Not tonight,” I said, on the stairs.

  “Come back!” she shouted. “I’ll call the police!”

  “A pretty good idea, Rebecca.”

  I was on the first floor landing when I threw it back to her. The upstairs hallways were lit by feeble bulbs of insignificant voltage, small candles in the gloom. It was a long way to the top floor, five flights of steep stairs, uncarpeted and ancient, so that my shoes clattered and echoed up the stair well, telegraphing my arrival to whoever might be up there waiting for me.

  Haskell Moore had the only flat on the fifth, a door at the end of a narrow corridor, a painted door of bright vermilion that looked blood red under the fogged bulb. I did not bother to knock. The door opened under my pressure and I stepped into a square vestibule. There was a grinning African mask on the opposite wall, a sculpture done in ebony, with painted eyeballs and teeth, a symbol of everything evil on earth. I pushed to the left and stood there listening to the sound of my breathing in the quiet, as motionless as a lizard on a rock and twice as tremulous.

  Somewhere the wind howled through an open window. Ahead of me lay the giant studio, a long and spacious room that occupied almost half of the floor space up here. There was a great window on the street side, as tall as the wall, as broad as the wall, a gray patch of light through which a few yellow blobs of brilliance gleamed: the apartment house windows across the street. The rain swished and dripped against the window in a monotonous rush and patter. I groped my way among the furniture, banging my shins against the unexpected chairs and tables. My hand touched the edge of an upright canvas—it was his easel and I pulled away from it, feeling the wet paint under my fingers. There was the odor of turpentine and pigments around me. I advanced toward the window, struggling to avoid the hidden furniture, moving to the right and ahead with a crablike motion, groping for the light switch on the wall ahead of me.

  But I never made the wall.

  I bumped into a man. Hard. I shivered and stepped backward in a reflex of shock and surprise.

  Because I was touching his shoes, off the floor, at the level of my knees, where no man’s shoes should ever be. Unless he could walk on air!

  I pulled away from him and swung my body around so that he was between me and the window. And then I saw his silhouette. There was a rope hanging down from the single beam that spanned the width of the room. It was a stunt rope and it hung stiff and starched under the strain of the load it carried. And it was looped and knotted under the chin of a dangling man. He was swinging up there, in a gentle rhythm, stirred by the impact of my delicate push.

  He was as dead as a lox.

  CHAPTER 10

  I went over to the window and looked down at the street while Doughty finished his routine check with the men from Homicide. The buzz of activity had died down long ago. Now they were whispering over in the corner, near the bedroom door. Doughty had taken the place apart, unearthing a mass of debris from out of Haskell Moore’s personal fixtures; papers and bills, sketches and manuscripts, all of which were on their way downtown at this moment, for further perusal by the scientific Sherlocks. He had instructed the photographers to make extra shots of the studio room, holding them overtime with their flash bulbs. Doughty was slow, but Doughty was thorough. He would plod through the filthy mess, as determined as a terrier sniffing for rats. He would make up his mind with great care, and having reached a decision, he would broadcast it, grunting and growling as he gave the news to the press boys. There were three of them in the room now, and I heard Doughty’s unhealthy basso roaring his conclusions at them.

  “Suicide,” he said. “It’s open and shut, boys. Take a look around this joint, especially at the furniture. You see that chair over there? He was standing on that chair when he ti
ed the rope to the beam above. He fixed the knot around his neck and then kicked the chair away, just underneath where he was hanging. We have ’em like this all the time. You remember the case of Albert Rinn, about a month ago? The guy who knocked himself off in the john, over on West End Avenue? Same thing, with variations. Rinn used the john and hung himself from the shower fixture.”

  “Then you think Moore was the guy who killed Mary Ray?” one of the reporters asked.

  “It adds up,” Doughty said. “He was hot about her. He had a fight with her and butchered her. We found his knife at the scene of the crime. Then he began to feel sorry for himself and decided to join his girl friend. We had another lead to Moore, all the way to Mary Ray’s this afternoon, about six o’clock or so. He was seen entering the place by a delivery boy, across the street—a kid who had seen Moore over there often. I’ll tell you another thing: we had him pegged, all the way. One of the girls down at Mary Ray’s knew his name.”

  I came away from the window.

  “Which girl was that, Doughty?” I asked.

  “The juicy one—the one they call Anita.”

  “She saw him today?”

  “I didn’t say that, Conacher. I said she knew him from other dates he had with Mary Ray. He was a steady customer.”

  “Not a customer,” I said. “Mary was in love with him.”

  “Oh, nuts.” Doughty laughed, waving his hand at me as though I were a bad smell. “You still sentimental about her? Why don’t you grow up, Conacher.”

  “Talking to city dicks stunted my growth a long time ago.”

  The reporters laughed it up for me and Doughty wheeled on them and bellowed them out into the hall, sweeping them before him effortlessly. I joined the outgoing group, but Doughty held me back at the door.

  “Not yet, Conacher. We didn’t finish talking.”

  “I’m in no hurry. What did we forget?”

  “You never did tell me what you came up here for in the first place.”

  “You have a short memory. I told you back at Mary’s that I was going to get the crud who killed her.”

  “Who tipped you off to Moore?”

  “I didn’t need any tip-off, Doughty. I knew that Mary and he were good friends. I met him at one of her parties a little while ago.”

  “Don’t tell me he was the only guy she went with.”

  “Who am I to tell you anything, Doughty?”

  He was trying for another rise out of me. But the thrust was too obvious to annoy me. Sometimes there is enjoyment in letting the knife sink in and taking the sting of it without reacting. Sometimes the man who stabs with words suffers when his barbs fall short of the mark. The way Doughty was suffering now. It was a pleasure to watch his beefy face cloud up with the overtones of suppressed spleen. It was a joy to see him swallow and stutter before trying again.

  “I don’t get you, Conacher,” he said. “You got some kind of a weakness for the two-bit whores?”

  “Some of my best friends are two-bit characters.”

  “Or was she maybe some kind of a relative of yours?”

  “She was my mother, my dear old mother.”

  “You know something? I think maybe she was. So your old lady died because of one of her hot boy friends.” Doughty laughed. “So now you can go home and get ready for her funeral.”

  “Not now, Doughty. Not yet.”

  “You still knocking yourself out on account of the chauffeur?”

  “He played me rough. I want to know why.”

  “Why not? Suppose you were coming out of a flat in this building, the way he was? Suppose you just had yourself a hot time with a babe in this place? And then a little jerk steps out of the dark and tries to grab you. What would you think? You’d think the little guy is maybe the husband of the doll you had on the mattress, now wouldn’t you?”

  “What makes you so sure he visited a girl?” I asked. “Maybe he was up here with Moore.”

  “Forget it. He might have walked out of any one of the apartments in this dump. And how are we going to check on him? Suppose he had a date? You think the dame he was with is going to admit she had some mattress fun with a chauffeur? She’d have to be nuts to own up to it—especially if she’s married.”

  “Did you check the house yet?”

  “Take your time. We’ll check the house.”

  “When?”

  “Tonight,” Doughty said. “Does that make you happy?”

  “Not quite. I want to be around when he’s grabbed.”

  “Give up, Conacher,” he said. “You’re knocking yourself out. Stop playing the tough eye and go home and forget about the chauffeur.”

  I neither gave up nor went home, nor forgot about the man in the monkey suit. Instead I took a cab over to Max’s, a sawdust and spittoon establishment on Second Avenue. There were people I might meet at Max’s. And there were ideas that needed working out, in a quiet corner, over one of Max’s sizzling tenderloins, complete with fried onions and the special home fries on the side.

  Max showed me to my favorite table and I sat there nursing a hooker of Akvavit, the dose I needed to sharpen my appetite and my sensibilities. I felt good when the steak was in me. And I felt even better when the front door opened and Slip Keddy walked in. He saw me immediately and drifted to my table, giving me his sourball smile as he advanced.

  I said, “What are you drinking for breakfast, Slip?”

  “I can’t afford tonic anymore,” Slip said.

  “On me.”

  “I’ll gladly accept the libation you’re guzzling.”

  “This is Akvavit. On an empty stomach?”

  “Why not?” Slip held the glass up and admired it lengthily. “The Swedes do it, and look at the state of their national health. If Congress would pass a bill requiring every adult to start the day with Akvavit, people would live longer and pay more taxes. Make mine a double, so long as I’ve caught you in a generous mood. I just rolled out of bed.”

  He wasn’t fooling. Slip Keddy was a caricature of the professional night hawk, the seasoned grifter, the man-of-all-gimmicks, the ageless con, the Broadway buck, the seasoned habitué of the niteries. He was built along negligent lines. He must have been a stalwart youth, but time had worked the sharp edges off his shoulders, so that he walked with a perpetual droop, a physical fatigue that matched the lackluster expression of his face. But you couldn’t sell Slip Keddy short. Unless you missed the sharp blue gleam in his eyes, almost buried under the beetling brows. He had a lifeless face, built to complement the irregularity of his existence, heavy-boned and thick in the nose and mouth. His slothful mien was deceptive. He was as slow as a bullet. Slip Keddy moved through the wiseacre area of Broadway with a reputation for wit, sagacity and a certain talent for digging up information in unexpected places. I had used him before, on skip-trace cases, and once when I needed help in ferreting out a homicidal maniac over in the backwoods of Brooklyn.

  Slip swallowed the Akvavit and made a face at it. “You’ll ruin your boyish complexion eating steak and onions this late, Steve. A little bird tells me you’re knocking yourself out on the Mary Ray deal.”

  “What little bird?”

  “A little bird with a big, fat, loose mouth—Fider, the demon dick.”

  “The little bird is right.”

  “Who’s paying off for your soft cuts of meat?”

  “Nobody,” I said. “Mary was a special love of mine.”

  “I’ve heard tales about her in the past,” Slip said. “But according to Fider, the sly fox who killed her committed suicide.”

  “According to Fider,” I said.

  “You don’t believe it?”

  “Not all the way.”

  “Talk me out of it, Steve.”

  I told him the yarn from the very beginning, including Joy Marsh and the zombie chauffeur, and after
that, Tiny and the excitement at Mary Ray’s house. I brought him up to date on the entire deal, taking him all the way down the line, through another Akvavit and the beginnings of his kidney stew. He listened patiently, giving me my head down to the wire, nodding at me sleepily.

  “The chauffeur bothers me,” I said. “He bothered me from the minute he walked into Tim Coogan’s. Maybe it’s because a crud his size has two strikes against him in my book before he looks at me. I admit I’m as sensitive as hell about the oversized muscle boys, Slip. But he bothers me for other reasons. He was on the tail of a beautiful ex-tart from Mary Ray’s when I first saw him. And after that, he was close to Haskell Moore’s studio.”

  “Coincidence?”

  “Not in my book. There’s a fit somewhere. I want to find it.”

  Slip leaned back and blew unhealthy fumes from his cigar at the ceiling fixtures. He had his eyes closed and was running down some personal speculations.

  He said, “Chauffeurs? Jesus, there are thousands of chauffeurs in and around this town.”

  “Not his size.”

  “What about Joy Marsh?”

  “I’ll get her.”

  “On one lead?” Slip whistled. “Suppose she fades after Plummer, the guy who hired her?”

  “She isn’t the type to fade easily. She’s a prime piece.”

  “You may grab her if she drifts back to a house.”

  “This one didn’t drift,” I said.

  “You’re building her,” Slip said. “What makes you think she’ll fight her way through? Most of them give up after a quick try at a dignified buck.”

  “Most of them, maybe.”

  “You’re slopping her up, Steve. What makes you so sure of her?”