Death Dives Deep

by Michael Avallone

  She took one long look at him and then a last look at me. I thanked her with my eyes. She shuddered and I had a moment's contemplation of just how well the mini-skirt can look on a long-legged, busty, smooth-skinned teenager. She hurried out of the office, her long hair flying. The clatter of her flats on the floor sounded like a tattoo on my coffin.

  "Who is the kid?" I asked. "She's all heart."

  "The window," he said calmly. "Raise it."

  "You won't change your mind?"

  "Do it."

  "You'll be sorry."

  "Sure."

  I put my hands on the heavy frame of the window. Before I lifted it, I turned around to face him. He grinned and aimed the .32 right at my mouth. He had tossed my .45 on the desk.

  "I don't want to remember you by anything, Noon. Open that window."

  "Give me one second to say something."

  "One second. Shoot."

  "How do you know you have all the pages of that manuscript? Suppose it's not even half of the whole story? Suppose there are a lot more sheets somewhere and I just happened to have this little batch with me this morning? Does that change your plans in any way?"

  "You bastard," he hissed. The .32 lowered.

  "No names, please. Well?"

  "You dirty sonofabitch . . ." He was wagging his head from side to side, almost in admiration.

  "I spoiled your plans? I hope."

  "You sure did, sweetheart." He stepped back. "Even if you're lying to save your neck, I can't afford to take the chance. Come on. Get away from there. I don't want you falling out and breaking your dummy neck. Not now. I don't know all there is to know about the pages."

  "Thank you," I said and walked back to my desk.

  He followed me, poking the .32 into my spinal column. He poked harder than was necessary. I bit my teeth against the pain.

  "Get your hat," he growled.

  "What now, my love?"

  "We gotta go someplace. Quick. And if you're bluffing, all you bought is some extra time. If you're speaking straight, you got your hands on something that will bring a lot of fresh cash on the open market."

  "Like how much?"

  "Like ten million clams. Now, shut up and get moving. I want my baby in the hall to see what a nice man I am. I didn't kill you, after all, did I?"

  "No, you didn't," I admitted. "For which my secretary, friends and relations thank you. And stop poking me with that gun or I'll make you use it and spoil your plans some more."

  His laugh grated in my ear.

  "Hard guy, huh? Sure. Later on, when I got what you better have, I'll bounce you around all I want. No funny stuff now. No talk, tricks or anything. Get going." He was slipping into the trenchcoat.

  I walked ahead of him out into the quiet corridor where the girl, Arvis, was very glad to see me still alive. Dandy growled at her and she did nothing, joining him as they trooped behind me. I headed for the elevators, trying to make some sense out of the last hour of my life. I couldn't.

  It was too early in the game.

  Too soon to know that Harry Healey's manuscript pages held all the trouble in the universe.

  You could never have guessed that from the air of tranquillity and serenity that clung to the atmosphere of the building that housed my office that morning. I thought I heard the phone ringing as we entered the elevator car. But I couldn't be sure.

  My ears were still throbbing from Dandy's roundhouse right.

  If the President or anybody else had called back, I never would have known. I didn't know if I'd ever get the chance to ring up the Chief and tell him what I thought of Harry Healey's sea story. I'd already formed one opinion about the material. Regardless of its literary merits.

  It was hot stuff.

  As hot as they make them.

  CLIFF HANGER

  THE traffic in the building where I hang my hat has always baffled me. On a clear day, you never run into anybody. I used to fantasize about such an improbability. By actual count there are some twenty-five places of business located in the six-story structure that is part of the metropolitan block which lays between Broadway and Sixth Avenue. It always struck me that I was parked amidst a secret army of robots who came and went, dressed in clothes like anybody else, but oddly remote and alien. I'd hardly said more than Good morning to maybe half a dozen faces in the seven years I'd been there. There was a real-estate firm, a toy manufacturer, a theatrical agent, Indian newspaper of some kind and even an outfit that seemed to deal in cosmetics, but may I be everlastingly damned if I can honestly say I knew anyone in the building on a personal basis. Manhattan is like that, sometimes. There is nothing so private as merely being another gray tenant lost in the army of gray tenants.

  It must have something to do with statistics and the law of averages, I suppose, but on the morning that a big gorilla with the fake name of Jesus Killy, alias Dandy, with a lovely frightened girl named Arvis in tow, ushered me out of my office at the point of a gun, we did run into somebody.

  The elevator is self-service and I made no trouble in the car as it dropped because Dandy had his arm around Arvis way over on the other side of the car while the bunched mass of gun and hand in his right coat pocket let me know how to behave. I behaved. Close confines is no place to start a rodeo. Besides, I wanted to go with him anyway. Otherwise, I'd never learn anything about what was going on.

  But as the car door slid back on the street level, somebody was waiting for the elevator.

  And for us, it turned out.

  There was a small, nervous-looking man with a pulled-down fedora, a stained white suit and a black turtleneck shirt that made his neck look even scrawnier. When he saw Dandy and the girl, his face exploded and both his hands came up out of the gloom of the hallway. Each hand held a snub-nosed automatic. Arvis let out a low shriek, Dandy cursed. And I was on my own.

  With no place to hide.

  The little guy screamed something in Spanish. Dandy fired right through his coat pocket. Three times, the .32 blasted at close range. Before the impact of the slugs could hammer the little guy back against the foyer wall, both of the man-killers in his fists went off. The metal interior of the elevator car rang like a dinner gong in the wilderness. I had flattened myself to the floor trying not to think about caroms and ricochets. For a full second there was no other sound in the world except that clanging, spanging whine of lead on the loose.

  Arvis was screaming now. Dandy was pulling her forward, out of the car, tugging her over the blasted body of the little man who was still kicking. Before Dandy could get back to me, I had batted the panel board. The door started to slide shut. Dandy's angry face twisted in a snarl and his gun came out of his pocket. The body of the little man was between him and the door. He aimed right at my head and Arvis did her bit again. She knocked his hand to one side, crying out his name. Then the door closed and I really flattened on the floor. Just in time. Dandy opened up from the other side. Bullet holes were gouged but now the car was slowly rising upward. My plans had changed drastically now that Dandy had confirmed his ability to kill and a corpse had been added to the scene. I made up my mind. I wasn't going to go anyplace with that monster. Not until I knew a little more about the ball game.

  I hit the STOP button on the panel board when the car was between the second and third floors. I couldn't be sure Dandy wouldn't race up the stairs to meet me with a hail of lead. Maybe he had had to change his mind, too. I also knew he'd have to vamoose from the vicinity in a hurry. The fusillade of gunshots in the foyer would have alerted half of Times Square. Maybe the building was no man's land but West Forty-sixth Street isn't. Something like one hundred thousand people walk down that block every day.

  I gave Dandy a full ten minutes to clear out. Then I moved the car back to the third floor, hurried out and walked down the hall to a back staircase which led out to the alley between the buildings. It took me another five minutes to cut through the parking lot on West Forty-seventh and then I doubled back to Broadway and stood on the cor
ner of Forty-sixth to see what was going on in front of my building. I didn't know what to expect

  Bad news travels fast, though. West Forty-sixth was jumping.

  It looked like a scene from a De Mille extravaganza. Only without bibles and robes. A mob had gathered, choking the entrance. The rotating red bubble of light of a police car could be seen winking above the heads of the crowd. A white ambulance was already sirening up the block, trying to clear a pathway. Behind me, the Times Square traffic hummed, life going on its merry insane orbit. Only on this side street in Manhattan had anyone paused in the day's occupation to see what was happening with his fellow man.

  I leaned against the doorway of the nearest store and wondered where Dandy and Arvis had gone. It was a cinch they weren't standing around reading Harry Healey's fatal manuscript.

  I didn't have to wonder about the corpse, though. Five would get me ten the little sucker would answer to the name of Jesus Killy. The white suit and no coat in December indicated a recent arrival from sunnier climes. Like Mexico or Florida or Cuba or—Puerto Rico. The Spanish oath wasn't a coincidence. You see, I am a detective, sometimes. Like Captain Michael Monks of Homicide likes to tell me when he's feeling charitable.

  Monks.

  I winced.

  He would read me the riot act again. More corpses in the building on the street where I lived. He would put two and two together and get Ed Noon. Same old simple arithmetic. Now that the damn sixty-two pages were out of my hands I had to get back to that red-white-and-blue phone and tell the President. Without letting Monks in on any of it. My association with the White House isn't known to anyone. Not even Melissa Mercer.

  I had to use that particular Ameche because it is electronically rigged to accept only the vocal register of my voice. Nobody else's. An unauthorized person's tone would come out a Donald Duck scramble.

  I smoked another cigarette before I mustered up enough nerve to go back to the office. There was nowhere else to go. I had no leads, no clues, no nothing. Dandy and Arvis were gone. I thought over my story—the one I was going to have to give to the cops. Whatever did happen, I could play it by ear. What the hell. I went out to mail a letter or have a cup of coffee and while I was gone all this shooting happened? Do tell. Tsk-tsk. It didn't sound good but what could they prove? Nobody in the building had seen me with Dandy and his long-legged child labor.

  That's what I was going to do.

  But it was a morning of surprises.

  Santa Claus wasn't due for another twenty-one days, but he had a bag full of treats for me. I had obviously been a good little boy. I hadn't pouted and I hadn't cried. And I was going to get what was coming to me.

  The light rain had stopped. Snow was in the air.

  I was turning the corner, heading up the block, when one of those countless Santa Clauses that confuse kids all over New York came ho-ho-hoing toward me. Ringing a bell, whiskered, red suit with white trim, black polished boots and all the cliches in living color. He was a big St. Nicholas, too. Not one of those skinny starved Bowery bums who has to be padded for the part. I could see that. He didn't look like he was wearing any pillow to produce a jolly bay window.

  Smiling, I side-stepped him and he waggled his bell in my left ear. His face, what I could see of it, wore that wide, sappy grin that makes most Santas look like fugitives from the silly farm. But this was a different kind of Kris Kringle.

  "A lady wants to see you," he mumbled in my ear. His voice was a low boom like Monte Wooley's. As if he were an actor doing the Christmas routine to earn some money.

  I stopped. "That's nice. What lady?"

  "Miss Serena Savage." Something in my brain went Tilt! I stared at the jolly Santa. He ho-ho-hoed some more for a passing kid and rang his bell again. The kid giggled and moved on.

  "Where is she?"

  "Fourteen West Fifty-third. She's waiting for you now."

  "How do you know I'm the right man?"

  He stared down at me. "She pointed you out to me about five minutes ago, slipped me a fin and drove away in a Jaguar. Okay, sport?"

  "Okay." I hadn't seen any Jaguar all the time I was smoking and thinking, but children and I have a lot in common. I still believe in Santa Claus, too.

  I dug out my wallet and extracted another five dollar bill and dropped it into his iron kettle which he had been hiding with his big body. They set them up on tripods and you donate as you walk by.

  "Tell me, Kris. Did you see a big man and a tall great-looking chick on this block about a half hour ago? When all that shooting started?" I described Dandy and Arvis as well as I could.

  His face without a smile on it was sober and intelligent. The eyes were keen and blue and shrewd.

  "Sorry, sport. I just set up here a little while ago. That's when the woman called me over. You should worry. This dame is something special. Class A. I never saw a green-eyed woman like her before."

  "Forget it. Merry Christmas."

  As I turned away, he gave me one parting shot with his bell and roared out a farewell.

  "Merry Christmas to you, my son!"

  I started walking briskly up Broadway toward West Fifty-third. Fourteen West would be just off Fifth, not too far to hoof it. There was a fine tangy frost in the air. My head felt clearer. Free of smashing punches and guns going off and bells clanging in my ears. There was hope in the air, too. As well as tinsel and car horns.

  The Serena of Harry Healey's strangely important manuscript had been green-eyed and unforgettably beautiful. Serena Savage had to be one and the same dame.

  It was going to be a strange experience meeting up with a woman who should have been only a work of fiction. A woman who may or may not have been responsible for the death of a man's partner. Unless Harry Healey's tale was a baloney slice all the way. Come to think of it, I didn't know what the hell Healey's story was. In the final analysis, I was up a mental tree.

  Maybe this Serena could bring me down out of it.

  And putting one little word after another, where in heaven or hell was Harry Healey?

  The author of all my new troubles.

  I got to Fourteen West Fifty-third Street about twenty minutes later. The suspicious frost in the air had given away to lightly falling snowflakes. I turned my coat up against the bite of the wind and missed the familiar feel of the .45 in my shoulder harness. Dandy's quick-kill routine had upset me enough to make me forget to go back to the office to recover it. Don't let anybody kid you. I hate guns, but when you go up against people who love to use them, they are very comfortable things to tote. Other people's violence will ruin you if you don't have any teeth in your arguments. I'd like to settle the difficulties of this cockeyed caravan with wise talk and a peace-loving voice, but it just doesn't work that way. I'd put the National Rifle Association out of business tomorrow if I could because the shooting of furry little animals and winged things doesn't strike me as a sport, but that's the sort of up one-down two logic you run into. Everybody's got their own angle.

  Number Fourteen was a short modern edifice planted between a posh French restaurant and a fashionable boutique. A ritzy neighborhood all in all, just a stone's throw from all those fine Fifth Avenue stores and shops. The small, palatial lobby held only about ten name plates. One said Savage and was marked as 1 E. I pressed the buzzer and put my mouth to the perforated transmitter plate above the bells.

  A low, cool voice said, "Yes?"

  "Santa sent me," I said. "Ed Noon."

  "Oh . . . thank God!"

  There was a low, answering rrrrrrrr of sound and I pushed the door open while the electrical contact was still alive. The interior hall was carpeted wall-to-wall, there was a long low table with a cornucopia bursting with artificial fruit on top of it and a framed reproduction of Van Gogh's famous bridge scene. Short flights of stairs led upward. The atmosphere was warm, subdued and all in good taste. I waited. 1 E had to be pretty close. It was. A latch clicked, a bolt slid back and light spilled from a door at the dim far end of the lobby. I saw
a tall slender figure. A beckoning arm. A flash of long yellow hair. Whoever she was, doorlight became her.

  She let me into her apartment by stepping back out of sight. I moved in sideways, facing the door. I'd had all the surprises I needed for a winter's day.

  Then she swung the door shut and her back was to it. There was a subtle aroma in the narrow entranceway. Like a perfume of some kind, or simply the healthy animal smell of a woman. I couldn't tell which.

  Our faces were no more than a good foot apart for a very brief second. It was all that was necessary. The green eyes, so deep and pure as to seem like glass, stared back at me. The long sweep of golden hair, the utterly tanned flesh. The cheekbones of a Lamarr, the mouth of a Loren and the complete facade that spelled out the woman of Harry Healey's masterpiece.

  "Serena Savage?"

  "Yes." It was more of a nod than a spoken word.

  "And you are alone, I hope. Nobody hiding in the closet."

  She shook her head. Her green eyes were frightened. Like young Arvis's had been.

  "Were you followed here, Mr. Noon?"

  "I don't think so. You expecting any more company?"

  She led me into an apartment interior that was lit by only one lamp which threw seductive shadows over a lounge, chairs and a bricked up fireplace. When she turned in the center of the room, the lamplight indicated that she wasn't wearing very much under one of those Chinese housecoats that are so damned sexy-looking.

  "No, Mr. Noon. I came to New York specifically to see you. You see, I'm the one who sent Harry Healey's manuscript to you. Or rather, I gave it to the Government and they took it from there. I hope you've had a chance to read it because it's true, all of it. And I want you to know that no matter what happens . . . I didn't have anything to do with killing Artie Sothern. They killed him and if we don't stop them they're going to kill everybody else connected with the story. Everybody."

  I sighed.

  "They again. Who the hell are they?"

  Her green eyes frowned, then opened wide and then frowned again. For a moment, her gaze faltered. Then she folded her arms and hit me with her Sunday punch.