Come Hell or Highball

by Maia Chance

  30

  Berta, Ralph, and I discussed our next moves over a fresh pot of coffee.

  I’d decided to stay quiet on the question of why Ralph was still hanging around. After all, he had just saved my life.

  “You say Luciano’s past is a bundle of lies?” Ralph said. He was putting away his third cinnamon roll. “It might be worthwhile to check up on his background a little more, then. I could go down to Mulberry Street and see if I can learn anything else about him. See if I can dig up some kind of motive for murder.”

  He was muscling in on my investigation. Again. “We’ll go to Mulberry Street,” I said.

  “No way, kid. I saw the papers this morning. One false step, and it’s into the slammer for you.”

  “I’m going to Mulberry Street,” I said. “Why would you go? I’m the one whose life could be on the line.”

  But I knew why Ralph wanted to go to Mulberry Street, and it wasn’t out of the kindness of his heart. He was a private investigator. In an infamous case like this one, plastered across all the newspapers, fame and fortune were at stake. Berta had been right.

  “Do you know how to get to Mulberry Street, Mrs. Woodby?” Berta asked.

  “Of course,” I lied.

  “She doesn’t know,” Berta said to Ralph.

  Ralph grinned.

  I glared.

  “You’ll need a disguise,” Ralph said. “A good one.”

  * * *

  Fifteen minutes later, I was disguised, in brief, as Berta: I wore her dumpy Edwardian hat, no makeup, my low-heeled spectator shoes, woolen stockings, and one of Berta’s floral-print dresses under her rubberized raincoat.

  “Well, now,” Berta said, “you do cut quite the figure of a lady, Mrs. Woodby.”

  Secretly, I was depressed. I was filling out Berta’s clothes far better than I’d anticipated. And, although Berta somehow pulled off the calico-and-dimity look with aplomb, on me it was just plain dowdy.

  Ralph looked me up and down. “Nice,” he said, and winked.

  I treated him to the Double-O.

  Berta stayed behind, in order to telephone household staffing agencies and attempt to track down the Japanese butler the Arbuckles had fired. Ralph and I walked the several blocks to Mulberry.

  Mulberry Street was the thumping heart of Little Italy. Brick buildings jutted with balconies, fluttering awnings, and fire escapes. Shabby men pushed carts piled high with rainbow-hued fruits and vegetables. Women chattered in Italian, wicker baskets on their arms. Children darted about at their games. Horse carts outnumbered motorcars, and I smelled garlic, incense, toasting nuts, and sweat.

  “Never been down here?” Ralph asked as we walked along, searching for the tobacconist’s shop. “You look a little dazed.”

  “It’s Berta’s raincoat,” I said. “It’s hot. Besides, why would I come here? People say it’s dangerous.” It didn’t actually feel dangerous. Only a little motley. But then, many gangsters were Italian.

  “Immigrant neighborhoods can be dangerous,” Ralph said. “Lots of desperate people. I grew up in one myself.”

  He’d never mentioned his childhood before. “Where?” I asked.

  “South Boston. Irish. My dad worked in the shipyards.”

  He clammed up again.

  Halfway down the second block, we found a tobacconist’s with a door flanked by cigar-store Indians. The shop’s display windows were stacked high with Italian newspapers and colorful boxes of cigarettes, cigars, and sweets.

  “This must be it,” I said.

  We went inside. A scowling, leather-faced man puffed a cigarette on a stool behind the counter.

  “Mr. Luciano?” I said. “I am Lola Woodby.”

  Ralph gave me an Are you off your rocker? glance.

  Right. I supposed private investigators didn’t give out their names willy-nilly.

  “Eh?” the old man said.

  “Are you Mr. Luciano?” I asked.

  “Luciano? No. Signora Luciano gone.” The old man made shooing motions. “I buy shop. This my shop. You wanta cigarette? Cigar?” He made a sweeping gesture along the display counter.

  The counter held packets of different kinds of gaspers, and some bright candies in little glassine bags. I pointed at those.

  “Business expense,” I whispered to Ralph. “We’ve got to sweeten him up.”

  Ralph dug out three pennies from his baggy pocket. “More like sweeten you up.” He plopped the pennies on the counter. “I’m keeping track, you know.”

  “Sure,” I said. I winked.

  Ralph scratched his temple.

  Oh. I’d nearly forgotten. I was disguised as a rubberized chintz ottoman.

  The old man pulled out one of the glassine bags and slid it to me over the counter.

  “When did you buy this shop?” Ralph asked the man.

  “Che?”

  “Which month?”

  “Ah, month. Sì. Agosto.”

  I almost choked on a cherry lozenge. “August?”

  Ralph gave me a slap on the back.

  “August is when Arbuckle started writing those big checks,” I whispered.

  Ralph gave me a shut your trap look, and turned back to the man. “You purchased the shop from Signora Luciano?”

  “Sì.” The old man gusted smoke from hairy nostrils. “She sold to me for very good price. She old lady. She said her son take care of her now, she needa not work no more.”

  “Where does Signora Luciano live?” Ralph asked.

  “In fancy house now, my wife say. Mia moglie—my wife—say Signora Luciano wear fur coat to Mass! Say she too—” He waved his cigarette. “—how you say, too big for britches now. Rich lady now.”

  “Because you purchased her shop,” Ralph said.

  “No, no, I not pay her that much. No, the money from her son. Big film star now.” He poked his cigarette between his lips and used both hands to make a kind of theatrical master of ceremonies gesture. Rolling the r, he cried, “Bruno Luciano!” He waited for our reactions.

  “You don’t say,” Ralph said. He tipped his fedora. “Thanks, signor.”

  We went back out onto the noisy sidewalk.

  “You’ve got to learn to keep your cool, Mrs. Woodby,” Ralph said. “Don’t give the game away. You’ve just got to keep people talking.”

  I sucked my cherry lozenge. “You’re a know-it-all, aren’t you?”

  “If by that you mean that I know everything, then, yeah, I am.”

  I beaned his temple with a spice gumdrop. It bounced onto the sidewalk and was promptly gobbled up by a dog lounging in a shop doorway.

  Cedric didn’t know how good he had it.

  I glanced up from the dog. A face was watching me from inside the shop window. Two dried-currant eyes in a blank face, peeping out between towers of red-and-white cans.

  Fear slashed through me.

  Mr. Highpants.

  He shifted away, out of sight behind the tower. I was left staring at the red-and-white cans. DA PONTE TOMATO PASTE, the labels repeated again and again and again.

  “Lola,” Ralph was saying. “What’s the matter?”

  “I saw him.” My throat was dry. “Mr. Highpants.”

  “Where?”

  “In this shop.”

  Ralph sprang through the doorway. I forced myself to follow.

  But inside the shop, no Mr. Highpants. Only a handful of crabby-looking old ladies in black dresses. Silence fell; the old ladies glowered.

  Ralph and I legged it out of there before one of them put a hex on us.

  * * *

  Back at the love nest, Berta was bursting with news.

  “I telephoned around to every household staffing agency in the city,” she said. “I strong-armed the secretary at the Mrs. Hartwicke Household Staffing Agency into admitting that a gentleman of Japanese extraction had passed through their doors a few weeks ago.”

  Berta, strong-arming? Okay, it made sense.

  “But,” she said, “I could not get a
nything else out of the secretary. Even a bribe was not going to work.”

  “I could visit the agency in person,” I said. “I could throw my name about and force Mrs. Hartwicke to tell me where the butler has found his new position.”

  “Throw your name about?” Ralph said.

  I’d nearly forgotten; my name was mud.

  “I’ll go anyway,” I said. “Maybe Mrs. Hartwicke hasn’t seen today’s newspapers yet. And even if she has, well, I’m still Lola Woodby, aren’t I?”

  “Sure,” Ralph said.

  Berta wrapped her fingers around her locket.

  * * *

  Before we went to the staffing agency, I needed to see if I could get ahold of Bruno Luciano at Dune House. I wished to pry into his sudden influx of cash last August. Sure, probably all that dough had come from his film contracts. But maybe, just maybe, it had come from secret checks written by Horace Arbuckle.

  “Just don’t make any of your direct accusations,” Ralph said.

  “Quite,” Berta said. “Or, if Mr. Luciano is a blackmailer and a murderer, he might shoot you, too.”

  What a soothing pair Ralph and Berta made.

  Olive answered the telephone. “Oh, hello, darling. I thought you’d run off to Panama with that Swedish cook of yours. The police are simply fuming that you’ve disappeared. I said that I don’t know where you are, and surely you didn’t pop off Horace and Nanny Potter. I mean, why ever would you? Your dreadful brother-in-law, Chisholm, has been stopping by, too. Good heavens, what a scrummy face to be wasted on such a stuffy mind, and so I told him—”

  “Could I speak with Bruno?” I asked.

  She paused. “Bruno is filming.”

  “Filming there, at your house?” I knew this, but I wished to confirm it.

  “Yes, of course. The motion picture people are to be here for days. It’s a good thing, too, because with Billy and Theo gone to Bar Harbor, I’d be absolutely stranded in the house with nobody for company but nasty old Auntie, and she’s gone on a bender. She’s going to run out of bootleg whiskey, and then where will she be?”

  “I thought Eloise Wright was staying to keep you company.”

  “Oh, she is. But she talks of nothing but her dreary divorce, and of her Girdle Queen company. Ladies oughtn’t do business, I think. It makes them so tedious, so—”

  “Would you tell Bruno that I telephoned?”

  “Of course, darling.”

  “Thanks.”

  * * *

  The Mrs. Hartwicke Household Staffing Agency was on the sixth floor of a fashionable Midtown building. I left Ralph and Berta on a sofa in the lobby and took the elevator up.

  Inside the agency, I marched up to the reception desk, where a young secretary sat filing her nails.

  “Have you an appointment, madam?” she asked.

  “I do not need an appointment. I am Mrs. Woodby. Mrs. Alfred Woodby. And I require a new butler. Please inform Mrs. Hartwicke that I must see her at once.”

  “Yes, madam.”

  It was gratifying to so easily command respect. Granted, I’d changed from Berta’s clothes into full Society Matron regalia: mink-collared coat (only slightly crumpled by my suitcase), diamond stud earrings, and a hat that could’ve doubled as a hassock. At the same time, commanding respect from skittering young girls is a sign that oneself is aging. One of life’s tragic trade-offs.

  The secretary returned. “Mrs. Hartwicke will see you.”

  Mrs. Hartwicke was a plump lady in periwinkle, with a white bun and rectangular reading glasses. The gold chains drooping down from the sides of her glasses matched exactly the droop of her cheeks.

  “Mrs. Woodby, what a pleasure!” Her voice was shrill.

  She’d read the newspapers, then.

  “Hello,” I said. I sat, and perched my handbag on my knees. “I require a Japanese butler.”

  “Japanese?”

  “Yes. Is it terribly eccentric of me?”

  “Japanese. Well, I don’t know.” Mrs. Hartwicke fluttered through dossiers on her desk. She also sneaked a few glances at the telephone.

  Did she worry that I, in the capacity of Clinical Hysteric, was going to hurdle over her desk and throttle her? Probably.

  “We had one gentleman of Japanese extraction pass through the agency recently,” Mrs. Hartwicke said. “But he has already found a situation.”

  “Oh dear,” I said. “But I must have him.”

  “Ah. Here we are.” Mrs. Hartwicke spread open a dossier. “Yes. Mr. Takanori Hisakawa. Such a lovely gentleman. He was quite snapped up by one of my clients. He had glowing recommendations, you see, and the most impeccable—”

  “Yes, yes.” I twiddled my fingers. “I must have him for my own household.”

  “I’m afraid that’s—”

  I leaned forward. “Who hired him?”

  “We never disclose our clients’ names, so—”

  “Mrs. Hartwicke, you are perhaps aware that my mother, Mrs. Virgil DuFey, is in the process of restaffing her Park Avenue household?” A complete fabrication.

  “Oh, indeed?”

  “Mother will do her utmost to spread the word about your excellent agency.”

  “Well—”

  “However, if you were not the most helpful agency, well, perhaps Mother would be forced to seek out an alternative.”

  Mrs. Hartwicke pursed her fuchsia lips. I could practically hear her thoughts: On the one hand, I was (reportedly) a murderous cuckoo on the loose. On the other hand, recommendations from the Woodbys and the DuFeys would be priceless.

  Mrs. Hartwicke slid the dossier across the desk toward me.

  I spun it around. I glanced at it long enough to see, printed at the top, MRS. ST. AUBIN.

  I knew Mrs. St. Aubin. Doddering battle-axe in oyster fruits and a whalebone corset. Her niece Posy had been in the class below me at Miss Cotton’s Academy for Young Ladies. “Thank you, Mrs. Hartwicke.” I hurried toward the door.

  “You cannot simply march into Mrs. St. Aubin’s home and steal away her butler,” Mrs. Hartwicke called.

  I turned. “Such thefts have been known to happen.”

  Mrs. Hartwicke’s hand was already reaching for her telephone.

  31

  Out in the corridor, I hastened toward the elevators. When I was a dozen paces off, an elevator pinged and someone stepped off.

  I stumbled to a halt.

  Mr. Highpants.

  I took off in the other direction.

  I didn’t know if he was chasing me or not. I didn’t want to know. Without a doubt, he was tailing me, although why I wasn’t sure.

  I ran down the corridor, around a corner, and to the end of the line, where there was a door marked EXIT.

  I pushed through and found myself in a stairwell. I bolted down five flights of stairs and burst out into the lobby.

  Berta and Ralph were still side by side on the sofa, looking bored.

  “Come on!” I whispered, tick-ticking past them. “Hurry!”

  They followed me. Outside, we zigzagged through shoppers and businessmen on the sidewalk.

  I swung one last look over my shoulder before we ducked down the subway stairs at the end of the block. A dark blue paddy wagon roared around the corner, heading toward the building we’d just fled.

  Mrs. Hartwicke had ratted me out.

  * * *

  Thirty minutes later, I was safe at the love nest and cradling a highball.

  “You ought to stay inside for the time being,” Ralph said. He looked through the kitchen window, down into the narrow brick alleyway.

  Berta agreed.

  “But it’ll be so dull,” I said. I stretched out my hand to nab a butter almond cookie from a plate on the table.

  “No!” Berta cried. “The rest of the cookies are for—I am saving them. For someone else.”

  “He’ll adore them,” I said.

  “What makes you think it is a he?”

  The telephone jingled.

  “Ah, t
hat will be the police,” Berta said. She went to answer it.

  I removed the diamond stud earrings and stuffed them in my handbag for safekeeping. “Wouldn’t the police simply break down the door?”

  “Beats me,” Ralph said. “I’ve never been in your position. I never get caught.”

  “It’s for you, Mrs. Woodby,” Berta called.

  Turned out, it wasn’t the police. It was Bruno Luciano.

  “I hear you’ve been checking up on me,” he said.

  My guts twisted. How had he learned about our trip to Mulberry Street? Was he in league with Mr. Highpants? “Um,” I said.

  “Olive told me you called.”

  Oh. That’s what he’d meant.

  “I’m not some dingledangler,” Bruno said. “You did tell me how to telephone you.”

  True. “I wished to speak with you, yes,” I said. “But come to think of it, I’m not so sure we ought to do it over the telephone. Are you still at Dune House?”

  “I am, but you know, I wouldn’t mind a jaunt into the city. We’ve all got cabin fever up here. Olive’s quite the hostess, if you know what I mean. No room to breathe. And that batty old auntie is giving everyone the jitters. Staggers around drunk, won’t stop going on about the goddam pork and beans, talks about burning this place to the ground. Say, how about meeting me for a drink tonight?”

  “Oh. I am, at the moment, somewhat, um, wanted by the police, so—”

  “Okay, how about at my apartment?”

  “Your apartment?”

  I glanced up. Ralph was making a cut gesture across his throat.

  I blurted the first place that came to mind. “Blue Heaven. Have you heard of it?”

  Ralph clapped a palm on his forehead.

  Maybe it was crazy to go back there. On the flip side, if the police showed up at Blue Heaven, I wouldn’t be the only one getting handcuffed.

  “Okay, Blue Heaven,” Bruno said. “Ten o’clock tonight?”

  “Perfect.”

  * * *

  I’ll come clean. I’ve got my pride. And I’d spent the day dressed first in Berta’s housewifely togs and then in my own worst Society Matron armor. So can you blame me if I spent forty-five minutes sprucing myself up for Blue Heaven?

  When Berta, Ralph, and I arrived in Harlem at ten o’clock, I wore my short sable coat, my peach Coco Chanel, gold peep-toes, and triple helpings of mascara, kohl, and poppy-red lipstick. My bob was back in order, shiny and bedecked with one jeweled hairpin.