by Ann Aptaker
Now that pleasure haunts me.
Chapter Seven
The Collier Hotel on East Thirty-Eighth Street off First Avenue is several cuts below the Waldorf but a reasonable number of cuts above shabby. It’s the kind of hostelry where you can be fairly sure the sheets are clean, but the stain on the rug might keep you guessing. In the last light of the afternoon and the creeping arrival of evening, the exterior of the place, fifteen stories of brick with limestone trim, speaks of the building’s once grand past but is now content to be merely useful.
The lobby, a red and brown dowager with chandeliers dimmed by dust, is busy with budget tourists with fussy children, and traveling salesmen lugging sample cases. Here and there, a tourist or a salesman gives me the side-eye. A harried mother in last year’s hat and dull plaid coat quickly pushes her apple-cheeked little girl of about twelve years old behind her, protecting her, I guess, from the dangers of seeing the likes of me. The girl doesn’t seem afraid of me, though. Just curious. When she pokes her head out from behind her mother for a better look, I give her a friendly wave. She waves back. Give the kid ten years and I won’t be surprised to see her at the Green Door Club.
The newsstand near the elevators has copies of the late-afternoon editions, and sure enough the story about Eve Garraway’s killing is front page news. POLITICAL PRINCESS MURDERED! shouts the Post’s banner headline with photos underneath of the Garraway house and the murder scene complete with a chalk outline of Eve’s body. GARRAWAY HEIRESS KILLED is the Journal-American’s less flamboyant one-column headline, the story nudged aside by a prominent photograph of Marilyn Monroe with current husband Joe DiMaggio.
I pick up copies of both papers, scan their stories about the Garraway murder while I ride up the elevator. Huber was mentioned as the detective on the case, but I was glad to see that Vivienne and I were left out of it. Huber’s playing his cards close.
Neither paper has anything on Lorraine Quinn. I guess compared to the killing of a New York nabob like Eve Garraway, a dead secretary doesn’t rate.
I get out at the tenth floor, drop the papers on the hall table, and head to room 1016.
It’s been almost five years since I last saw Alice. She was one of the showgirls at the Copa at the time, decorating the floor show in gold lamé and plenty of leg. We’d meet after the last show, grab a two a.m. cold supper at Toffenetti’s or one of the other all-night show biz hangouts on Broadway, then go back to my place, where I’d enjoy more parts of Alice than the Copa audience did. Our fling was sizzling but short, barely a couple of months. She’d figured out quick that she was just another bandage on my unhealed wound. I can’t blame her for tossing me over. But I’d never have guessed she’d jump into the more conventional arrangement of putting dinner on the table for a husband, even a husband as unconventional as Johnny Tapioca Tenzi. Of all the men she could have had— if that’s really the new thrill she wants in her bed— why a lowlife like Tenzi?
I knock on the door to room 1016.
A few seconds later, the door opens with a smiling Alice saying, “You’re early,” before she realizes I’m not the early bird she’s expecting.
She’s in a black negligee that exposes more than it covers, and what it exposes could get a person arrested just for having an imagination. Her baby doll smile is a cross between a simper and a kiss. Her short, wavy auburn hair dares you to run your fingers through it, and her dark brown eyes hint at stories she’ll never tell you.
“You’re the last person I’d expect to see,” she says. In the years since I last heard it, the come-hither lilt in Alice’s voice has added a darker tone under it, a sultrier tone that slides around in her throat like warm booze. “What are you doing here, Cantor? And how did you find me? Tell me fast, and then get lost.”
“You used to invite me in when I knocked on your door.”
“I have other plans tonight.”
“C’mon, Alice, it’s cocktail hour. Invite me in for a drink.”
“You’ll want more than a drink. You always did.”
“I still do. Only now what I want is just conversation. Tell me what I need to know and I’ll be out of your way before your evening plans arrive.”
She steps away from the door to let me in, not because she’s agreeable, but because I’ve got my hand on the door, making it clear that I’m not leaving until I get what I came for.
When we’re inside, Alice takes a sheer black chiffon robe from the bed and slips it on. It doesn’t do much to hide what the negligee exposes, but blurs things just enough to cool the urge to reach out and touch all the round places inside it.
“You still drinking Chivas?” she says on her way to the two bottles of whiskey on the bureau. “Too bad. I don’t have it. I’ve got a standard scotch and a standard rye. Take your pick.”
“Make it scotch.”
She pours the whiskey into one of the glasses on the bureau, hands it to me, and pours a rye for herself. “Okay, Cantor, make it quick. What do you want?”
“Let’s talk about Lorraine Quinn.”
Her eyes widen a little in surprise, her lips part and pucker as if she wants to say “Who?” but it takes only a second for Alice to think better of the lie. Our affair might have been short but it was fiery enough to burn away any sham. We saw the truth of each other. Looks like we still do.
Alice ditches the idea of giving me a phony story and gives me a savvy smile instead. “You still work fast, don’t you, Cantor? So I guess you already know I married Johnny Tenzi and now I’m divorcing the louse. And yeah, the Quinn girl in Otis Hollander’s office set up the tail on him. Got some juicy photos, too, or so Hollander says.” A sip of rye lubricates her satisfaction at having the goods on her cheating husband. “Was it Otis who told you where to find me?”
I nod my answer.
“What did you do, threaten him? Or does he just have a big mouth? Never mind. I don’t want to know. But why do you want to talk to me about Lorraine Quinn? She’s just an employee. She does what Otis tells her to do.”
“Was an employee. Now she’s dead. Knifed on her way out of my apartment building this morning.”
There’s a couple of chairs in front of the bed. Alice sits down in one of them, the faded pink damask upholstery an eye-catching contrast to her black robe and negligee and the flesh inside them. It takes me a minute to notice the look Alice gives me, an I’ve-got-your-number look. She’s on to what Lorraine was doing at my place, and she’s enjoying throwing it at me. But her expression of cheap pleasure slowly changes as the hard facts of Lorraine Quinn’s murder sink in. Alice Lamarr is no fool. She sees the danger, and it scares the hell out of her. “If it was Johnny . . . if it was Johnny . . . if he was angry at being tailed . . .” It’s a chant of terror.
Good. Let her be scared. It might loosen her tongue. “Listen, Alice, we have to figure this thing if you want to save your neck from Johnny and I save my neck from the cops. A bloodhound of a lieutenant named Huber wants to hang Quinn’s murder on me, and another killing, too. A woman named Eve Garraway, knifed in the back. Ever hear of her?”
“Mm, maybe. Sounds familiar.”
“Daughter of an old-time big deal politician. Look, I need to know Tenzi’s movements. I need to know if he was stalking Quinn and just wound up at my door, or if he’s stalking me, killing women I deal with and putting the frame on me. What’s he got against me, Alice?”
The way she slithers up from the chair would make a snake admit defeat. The sheer robe ripples against her body as she walks toward me, her auburn hair catching light, her dark eyes taking me in as if I’m easy prey. “You, Cantor,” she says and slides her fingertips up the lapels of my coat. “He hates you.”
I grab hold of her wrist before her hand reaches my face. I say nothing, but Alice knows how to read me, and right now she reads that we’ll be locked here together, her wrist in my grip, until she comes across with the goods on Tap Tenzi.
“So many scars,” she says, her voice low as if rolling up
from the gutter. “Your face didn’t have so many, once upon a time. Once upon our time.”
“Tenzi, Alice. What’s the story with Tenzi?” I tighten my grip on her wrist.
She doesn’t wince, holds her pain in check, savoring her little victory over me. But it’s an empty victory. She’s not free of my grip, or my smile, a chilly grin that presses her to tell me what I want to know.
One of the things that made me fall for Alice was her taste for giving as good as she gets. It was sexy five years ago, and it’s sexy now. She’s giving it good, matching my hard smile with her baby doll grin that dares me to hurt her more because she knows I won’t. She knows I don’t hurt women, that I’m merciless on those who do. “Johnny hates you,” she says, almost spitting it. “He hates you because I made him hate you. I told him all about you one night when he came home drunk and made an ass of himself in bed. When I told him to get off me, you know what he did? He slapped my face, that’s what he did. But you know what I did? I laughed. I told him you were a better lover than he could ever be, that all of the women who’d been in my bed were better in the sack than Johnny Tapioca Tenzi.”
“Why the hell did you marry him, Alice?”
Her laugh comes out slow, its tone heavy and dark. “You jealous, Cantor? Does it bother you knowing that a man’s hands roamed around where yours once did?”
If I touch that question it could set off the dynamite inside it, explode in my face and rip deep into me. So I toss the stick of dynamite back at Alice. “I don’t care who touches you, Alice. I just never figured you for a wife, and certainly not to two-bit sewer slime like Tap Tenzi. So why him?”
“Because he has money.”
“So did I.”
“Because he promised to give me anything I wanted.”
“So did I.”
“Because I didn’t have to hide in the shadows with Tap. He could take me to nice places and not give a damn who’s looking. Because he’s not you!”
I never saw so much venom in a woman’s eyes, or so much fire. The venom stings me, but the fire lures me. With my hand still on Alice’s wrist, my other arm seems to have a will of its own, wrapping around her, pressing her hard against me. She doesn’t struggle. She kisses me.
We’re locked together as tight as we ever were, our old needs awakened, inflamed now by danger and fear and anger. We’re not kissing, we’re devouring, eating each other alive, trying to sate a lust that can only be satisfied one way.
She doesn’t resist when I slip off her sheer robe, then lift her and carry her to the bed. I take off my cap, fling off my coat, kneel onto the bed and pull Alice to me, press my mouth to her neck. My fingers slide the negligee off her breast.
There’s a knock at the door.
“Your evening plans?” I say through a rough whisper. “Get rid of them.”
A breathy “Yes,” and Alice gets up from the bed, slips her robe on, and goes to the door. She opens it just enough to talk to the “evening plans” in the hall. I wonder if they’re male or female.
The answer comes in response to Alice’s limp story about a headache, and a female voice coos, “Let me soothe it.”
It’s followed by a gruff, gravelly growl, “Go soothe somebody else, girlie. Scram.” Hearing it makes the hair on my neck stand up.
Huber pushes his way through the door.
Seeing me on the bed, his eyebrows slide up and then slide down again in a frown so tight it strains the skin of his bony face. His lips curl into a snarl. It’s not hard to guess he’s angry that I’m a step ahead of him, that I got to Alice Lamarr before he worked his way to her connection to Lorraine Quinn. His annoyance dissolves into a smirk so foul I swear I can smell it oozing around his teeth. “Well, well,” he says, pushing his fedora back on his head as he gives Alice a leering once-over before turning his attention back to me. “Too bad I didn’t get here five minutes sooner. I’d have finally been able to bring you in on the morals charge the city code has for perverts like you. I’d ask what you’re doing here, Gold, but I guess that’s a stupid question.” He gives this a potty-mouth chuckle that makes me want to ram a cake of lye soap down his throat. “But the better question,” he says at the end of the laugh, “is when will you stop lying to me?”
I get up from the bed, say, “What makes you think I’ve lied to you, lieutenant?” I’m not looking at Huber. I’m looking at Alice, who looks back at me. There’s a slight gleam in her eyes, a hint of a smile at the corner of her mouth. Alice Lamarr might be afraid of Johnny Tenzi but she’s not the least bit afraid of Huber. The woman’s got spine. Not many people can smile under the tough glare of the cops, only people like me who don’t give a damn, or people with money or power, or people with powerful connections. People like Vivienne Parkhurst Trent.
And then I remember what Otis said: that Alice has had an interesting life. Maybe it’s that interesting life that gave her the spine to hold her own with cops.
I take out my pack of smokes, offer one to Alice. She takes it. I take a smoke for myself, light both our cigarettes. Smoke rises across our faces, a curtain blurring Huber’s view of a world Alice and I share.
He says, “You lied this morning, Gold, when you said you didn’t know the Quinn woman.”
“You got it wrong, lieutenant. I didn’t say I didn’t know her. I only said I didn’t know she was dead until I got off the elevator and saw her sprawled in the doorway.”
“That story stinks more with age, Gold. I didn’t believe you this morning and I don’t believe you now.”
“Believe whatever you like. I don’t care. The only thing I care about is finding whoever killed Lorraine because the real killer is still out there. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it, Huber?”
Alice chimes in, “Listen, lieutenant, you know I’m Johnny Tenzi’s wife, and you also know that I’m divorcing the SOB. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be showing up at my hotel room. And I guess you know that Lorraine Quinn worked for my divorce lawyer, and that it was Quinn who set up the tail to catch Johnny cheating on me. And I bet that made Johnny angry, and I bet you know what Johnny Tenzi does when he’s angry. So instead of barging through the wrong door, why don’t you go find that murdering bastard before he decides to kill me. Because maybe he’s decided already.”
It’s a performance good enough for Broadway, the kind of performance that makes audiences fall in love and throw flowers at curtain call. I don’t have flowers and falling in love isn’t in my cards. Best I can do is give Alice a smile and stand beside her so that we face Huber together.
He leans close to Alice, his face inches from hers. She doesn’t flinch. “Listen, Mrs. Tenzi—”
“Miss Lamarr. I’ve taken back my maiden name, Lamarr.”
“You can call yourself the Queen of Sheba, I wouldn’t believe that either. And I don’t care what kind of showgirl name you call yourself. Yeah, I know all about your Copacabana days. No doubt you were quite a number. Sorry I missed your show. But if you want me to find Mr. Tenzi, you’ll help me. If you clam up, you’re on your own. Don’t blame me if he shows up here to rip you apart.”
I’ve always suspected that Huber has no heart, or that if he ever had one it burned up a long time ago. But right now I can’t find any sympathy for a cop who takes pleasure in telling a woman she’s in danger of being torn to pieces.
Huber doesn’t let up. “You’re easy to find, Miss Lamarr. If I found you, and Gold found you, your hoodlum husband will find you, too.”
That got to her. There’s a slight tremble in her hand when she takes a draw on her smoke.
“Back off, Huber,” I say. “C’mon, Alice. Sit down, have a drink.” I take her elbow, lead her back to a chair. “We could all use a drink. Even you, lieutenant.”
“I wouldn’t drink with you, Gold, even if I wasn’t on duty.”
“That’s a pity,” I say, handing Alice a fresh rye and pouring another scotch for myself. “I bet we’d become pals, trade stories. I bet you have some good ones.”
> “The only story I’m interested in is how two women wind up dead and you’re at the scene of both killings.”
“I thought you were interested in finding Johnny Tenzi.”
“Let me worry about Tenzi,” he says. “But you’ll still have two dead women at your feet. That’s too much for just coincidence.”
“But not enough to fry me, eh, lieutenant? Sorry to disappoint you.”
He answers with pinched lips, then turns his attention to Alice. “You have any idea where I can find Tenzi?”
“No. And believe me, I’d tell you if I knew. I’d like nothing better than to see that louse rot in jail.”
“You have no idea of his hangouts? Where he drinks his booze?”
“He drinks his booze all over town, so unless you want to hit every saloon, I suggest you try a different tack. Maybe ask his mobster buddies, though I doubt they’d talk. They never do.”
Huber’s not happy with her answer. The way he snaps his fedora back down I’m surprised he doesn’t rip the brim off. “That’s all for now, Miss Lamarr, or whatever your name is.” He turns to leave, but not before he gives me a stare so icy his eyeballs might freeze. He slams the door behind him.
“But first he’s got to find you,” I tell Alice when Huber’s gone. “Pack a bag.”
Chapter Eight
Moonlight slices through the back alley and gleams along the fender of Rosie’s cab as she drives up to the service entrance of the hotel.
Alice, shivering in the chill night air, rubs her gloved hands together and turns up the collar of her black wool coat. She leans against me, seeking warmth.
“Rosie knows where to take you,” I say. “You’ll be safe there.”
“Will I see you later?”
“Sure. Now get going while the alley’s still clear of cops. It won’t be for long if Huber thinks you can lead him to Tap and he decides to set a tail on you. He’ll have the alley covered as well as the hotel’s main entrance.”