Gentle Murderer

by Dorothy Salisbury Davis

  “You wouldn’t believe it,” she said then, “I’ve been playing that hole for a week and there wasn’t a bastard in the place offered to buy me a drink.”

  “I’m buying you a drink,” Goldsmith said, motioning the waiter to serve them again.

  “Did I say you were a bastard?”

  “No. But I’m expecting it.”

  She stroked her flaxen hair. The drunk had been right. She was wearing all the makeup she could take.

  “You a cop?”

  “Yes.”

  “I figured that.” She picked up the fresh drink. “Here’s to the taxpayers. I hope they’re buying.”

  “So do I,” Goldsmith said. “When was the last time you saw Dolly Gebhardt, Miss Tracy?”

  There was not even an extra flutter to her eyelashes. “How’d you find me?”

  “It wasn’t easy.”

  “What did you do, find my old number in her place?”

  “A very old one.”

  “I move a lot. Restless.”

  He nodded. “You were the only woman in her book except a masseuse.”

  “A masseuse,” she repeated, turning the empty glass around in her fingers. A masseuse was not the kind of luxury she could afford. Goldsmith figured she was weighing Dolly’s career against her own.

  “When did you get to know her?” he tried gently.

  “We were both in the line in one of the Scandals,” she said then. “That was the end of the ’20s. 1930 maybe. She was fresh from the sticks. Isn’t her old man a son-of-a-bitch?”

  “Her father? Maybe it’s harder on him this way.”

  “Like hell. With the crust he’s got he could sit on a hot stove. I’ll tell you one thing, mister—there was none of him in Dolly. She had a heart the size of a battleship.” She pointed a green fingernail at him. “And don’t ever let ’em tell you she made her money easy. She made it hard and spent it easy.”

  “I’ve just about reached that conclusion myself,” Goldsmith prompted.

  Miss Tracy nodded, her mouth bitter.

  “I imagine a lot of kids down on their luck got a lift from her,” he tried again.

  “A lot more than showed up for her funeral. Looking for an angle on one of them?”

  “Maybe.” Goldsmith offered her a cigarette and lit it for her. “But not necessarily. You see, Miss Tracy …”

  “Liza,” she interrupted. “Tracy’s not my own name anyway.”

  “You see, Liza, when it comes to murder, or any other crime for that matter, there are two people involved: the murderer and his victim. In a way, the victim has to co-operate with the murderer …”

  “I get you,” Liza said. “You want to get out of me who she was co-operating with.”

  Goldsmith smiled. “Well, I’d listen to any ideas you have. But what I thought we might talk about is Dolly. I’d like to know something about her—the kind of stuff a friend could tell me.”

  “I didn’t see her much. We weren’t the visiting kind. She wasn’t, anyway. The truth is I didn’t see her for maybe fifteen years after the Scandals closed that year. I got out to Hollywood myself. Remember the Follies of 1932? I guess you wouldn’t. How old were you then?”

  “Second year of high school. I remember them.”

  “I was in that. Not much, but it got me seen. I was in the Broadway Review of 1936, too. In the picture, that is. Broadway wasn’t reviewing nothing then, unless breadlines maybe.”

  “Where was Dolly then?”

  “I don’t know. Trying to make a buck. We wrote letters for a while, kidding one another. In the big time. The letters petered out when we lost our starch. During the war I got into a camp show. I pulled a dirty trick. I got so homesick when I saw New York, I cut the show. I got some work then. I took up singing. At that date, I took up singing. The way I come up since—Eighth Avenue. I’ll be back there. You don’t come up that way. You go down there. Easy and down. I’ll be home for Christmas, like they say. A drunken agent thought up this stunt. Not bad. But you got stones in your head if you think you’re going uptown with what I got. There’s a lot of things wrong with me, but stones in my head I don’t have. Can the city stand another drink?”

  “I think so.” He emptied his own glass and reordered. “Where did you meet up with Dolly again?”

  “In front of the Astor Hotel. Just walking by like that. We did a double-take and fell all over each other. You know, long lost buddies.”

  “I know.”

  “Then I was up there at her place a few times, every day almost for a couple of weeks, and we cooled off again. Some dump she had. Steps down into the living room, a marble bathroom …”

  “I’ve gotten to know it pretty well,” Goldsmith said.

  She looked at him as though she realized for the first time who he was. “You would, wouldn’t you? I mean, her getting killed like that.” She shuddered.

  “I would. Did you ever happen to meet any of her friends during your visits?”

  “A couple. Nice guys. I don’t remember them much. I haven’t been near there in maybe a year.”

  “Young fellows, weren’t they?”

  “Kind of. Not kids if that’s what you’re getting at. Dolly wasn’t taking …”

  “I didn’t mean that,” he interrupted. “You wouldn’t remember their names?”

  “No. I got no memory at all for names.”

  “Would you remember their faces again if you saw them?”

  “Maybe. No guarantees.”

  “Did she tell you about any of them?”

  “Why should she?”

  Goldsmith shrugged. “You had to talk about something. They’d be natural enough. Say one of them was a quiet little guy, big sad eyes. Say he was having a tough time, a writer maybe. She might have let him come up there when he had no place else to go. Possible?”

  Liza looked at him. “Yeah. Possible and then some. Where’d you pick him up?”

  “I haven’t even met him. I’d like to. I don’t even know his name.”

  “Sad Sack. That’s what I called him.”

  “What did Dolly call him?”

  “I’m telling you the truth. I don’t know. Jim, or some easy name like that. Could be Tom, Dick or Harry. A hard name I’d remember maybe. He was sitting there one day when I went up. Shivering like a wet pup. She sent him out to the kitchen to make himself some coffee. ‘You think we’re in a tough racket,’ she says to me … meaning show business. ‘That kid’s trying to sell poetry.’ He didn’t look like no kid to me, but he sure acted one. ‘Poetry,’ I says to her. ‘I thought that went out with Shakespeare.’ ‘It sounds real pretty,’ she says. ‘I don’t know what it means half the time, but I figure it won’t do me a bit of harm to know some poetry. It’s like knowing French.’ Dolly was going around with some mighty elegant people. She was always trying to improve herself, poor kid.”

  “Did you talk with the man at all, Liza?”

  “Nope. The funny thing, he didn’t come back in the room. I remember smelling the coffee after a while. I said I wouldn’t mind if he’d bring us in a cup. ‘Oh,’ she says, ‘he’s gone. Comes and goes like a rainy day.’”

  “And you never saw him again?”

  “Never. I asked her about him a couple of times. ‘He’s around,’ she says.”

  “How long ago was it that you met him, Liza?”

  “A couple of years. More. It was when that silly song about Nature Boy was popular.”

  “Liza, have you got any idea just what the relationship was between them?”

  She looked at him a moment. “How do you mean?”

  “Was he in love with her—attracted to her?”

  She gave a vulgar laugh. “I get you. Lord, no. As far as I can figure it out, he was Dolly’s pet charity. Maybe he read poetry at some fancy shindig. She went to the damnedest things.”

  Goldsmith pocketed his cigarettes. “Do you think he knew the business she was in?”

  Liza thought about that. “I don’t know. I’ll te
ll you this, it wouldn’t surprise me to find out that he didn’t. I remember her saying once, ‘That screwy kid wants me to go out with him listening to bird calls—at five in the morning.’ Imagine. Five a.m. in Central Park. That’s where I got the Nature Boy notion.”

  Goldsmith laid a bill on the table and the waiter came for it immediately. “I’d offer you a nightcap, Liza …”

  “I know,” she said, sliding out of the booth. “I got another show and Simon Legree tipped you off. That buzzard. He pinches my cheeks. ‘You little tippler, you,’ he says. Like it would make a difference in that flea trap. I’m going to be almost glad to get back where I belong. The smell of perfume in that place turns my stomach.”

  “I’m much obliged to you, Liza,” Goldsmith said, collecting his change.

  He walked her to the door of the club. “You were kind of down on your own luck when you met Dolly again, weren’t you, Liza?”

  She looked at him coldly. “Not that far down. See you around.”

  He watched her through the door and waited a few minutes on the street. Then he went down to the club again himself. The drunk was gone but the master of ceremonies was at the bar.

  “Brought little Liza back on time, I see,” he remarked. “She’s a sweet kid.”

  “Yeah. Who’s her agent, chum? I like her act.”

  The m.c. looked at him. Obviously he was trying to figure out who he was and whether or not he was on the level.

  “I mean it,” Goldsmith said. “Who’s her agent?”

  “Dave Albright. Ever hear of him?”

  “Maybe. I’ll find him. Thanks.”

  “Try right here after the midnight show tomorrow. That’s when she gets paid off.”

  21

  “AND JUST LIKE THAT, Mama, I got the job.”

  Katie Galli was happy. It was in her every movement that evening, her quick smile, her eyes, her sudden huggings of her mother.

  “How much money?” Mrs. Galli asked.

  She hesitated only an instant. “Fifteen dollars a week. That’s to start.”

  “And that’s what you couldn’t wait all evening to tell me about. I thought it was fifty. I don’t know, Katerina. I thought you were going to the city college?”

  Katie realized her need for caution. “It can wait a year, Mama. I’m young.”

  “Young. When I was your age I was with the first child, your brother that died when he was month old. What do you do for this fifteen dollars a week?”

  “Answer the telephone. Typing. Just office work. It’s a paint store.”

  “And what am I to do here? I can’t hire somebody for fifteen dollars a week.”

  “I’ll do my housework, Mama. I’ll just do it at another time.”

  “Oh sure. You’ll make the beds when the boarders are asleep in them. All right. Go to an office. The young ones don’t want to stay home any more. They don’t want family business. Your brother, he can’t live at home. He’s gt to have the room near his work. Four blocks he can’t walk in the morning. And now he wants to give up the bakery. Your father killed himself paying for it. But not your brother. Your uncle will manage it by himself. Very well he will manage it. He’ll make it big. But not Johnny. He wants to play in a band. Never a day’s peace with him since he got the accordion.”

  “I thought you’d be pleased,” Katie said.

  “Pleased. Sorry. What’s it matter? Did you ask me before you looked for the job?”

  “I mightn’t have gotten it. I wanted to see if I could first.”

  “Then be happy. You know how to get the job. When another one comes you can snap it. You’re my little girl. I want good things for you.”

  That line of persuasion was more than Katie could resist for long. “Please, Mama, I’ll need the experience to get a better one.”

  Mrs. Galli looked at her. “How much money will you give me?”

  “How much do you think I should, Mama?”

  “I’ll buy your clothes. You keep a dollar to spend.”

  “A dollar isn’t much.”

  “Fifteen dollars isn’t much. When you make more, then you keep more. When do you start?”

  “Monday.”

  “Oh?” Mrs. Galli turned from the clothes she was dampening and wiped her arms in her apron. “He knows when to pick an apple before it falls. Is he young or old, this owner of a paint store?”

  “In-between.”

  “The in-between ones are the worst. Do you know how to take care of yourself, Katerina?”

  “Of course, Mama. I’ll finish the clothes if you’re going to the movie.”

  Yes, of course she knew, Mrs. Galli thought. A girl didn’t reach seventeen in their neighborhood without knowing that. She glanced at the clock.

  “Don’t you want to come with me, Katerina?”

  “Not tonight. I’ll take the fifty cents, though, Mama. Maybe I’ll get some paper and go over to Nina’s and practice typing.”

  “You don’t have to be that good for fifteen dollars a week. If you’re going to dampen those things, use lots of water. I don’t want them dried out before morning.”

  She combed her hair then, and took her purse from a cupboard drawer. Opening it, she counted her change. “You can take your fifty cents from the coffee can, Katerina. Maybe I won’t stay for the double feature. It’s so hot when you come out.”

  “Thanks, Mama.”

  As her mother left the house, Katie began to sing. She flung the water over the clothes and rolled each piece quickly … five shirts for her brother, one for Tim. A silly thing to lose a shirt, she thought, but like Tim. Tim. Even the sound of his name was beautiful. It was like the fading sound of a bell. She laid the dampened clothes in the basket and covered them with a towel, shoving the basket under the table then.

  She got a pencil and a scrap of paper from the drawer and wrote down several figures. Fifteen from twenty-two-fifty was seven-fifty and that times four equaled thirty. In a month she would have held out thirty dollars. The amount was frightening. Only for a moment did she permit herself to contemplate the gravity of her deception. The miracle was that she had gotten away with it. Her mother believed that she would start at fifteen dollars. It was not as though she didn’t know that it was wrong. She intended restitution. Not that it was really stealing, anyway. She would earn the money and she would do her housework the same as ever. And her need for the money was so great.

  Nevertheless the thought of doing it hurt. Something inside had plagued her since she had first conceived and nurtured the idea. She would never be the same again, having done it. The surge of happiness dissipated into depression, and then rose again because the joy of what the deed might bring was stronger. She crumpled the paper and threw it into the cardboard box under the stove.

  Going to the cupboard, she took her fifty cents, and then because there was a great deal of change there, she took two more quarters, making a resolve to replace them some day. She gathered six Cola bottles from the pantry and went out. At the delicatessen she turned them in and added twelve cents to her fund. From there she walked to her brother’s bakery. She went into the back room where he was rolling dough.

  “Johnny, can I have a dollar?”

  “Johnny, can I have a dollar,” he mimicked. “What did you do with the nickel I gave you yesterday?” He grinned and dusted his hands on his apron.

  “It always smells so good in here,” she said.

  “Yeah. Sweat and sour milk.” He gave her the dollar. “What are you going to do with it?”

  “I’m saving up for a permanent.”

  “Give me back my buck. If you ever let them put a curling iron in that hair of yours …”

  “They don’t use curling irons any more, silly.”

  “Mama does.”

  “She’s old-fashioned.”

  “You think so? One of these days she’s going to hook herself a nice fat widower with lots of moola. Then I’m going to kiss Uncle Ped and this whole damn bake oven good-bye. I’m going to buy me
a little car, and if somebody says the word ‘bread’ to me, boy, am I going to let him have it. Right in the puss. Now get out of here, chicken, and let me go to work.”

  “Thanks, Johnny.”

  “Yeah. Count your change when you spend it.”

  She was almost skipping on her way home, a little dance rhythm fitting itself in her mind to her footsteps. At the corner of Twelfth a few boys loitering whistled. Tom Crosetti was among them. Katie hurried.

  “Buy you a Coke, Katie,” one of them called after her.

  “No thanks.”

  “Got a date?”

  “Yes.”

  “You don’t call him a date, do you?” That was Tom, she thought, hating him even more.

  “Why don’t you get a man, little girl?” another called.

  “Why? Just to go to church with?”

  Their laughter curled after her like the hissing of a steam engine. What did they know, she thought, what did they know … She almost collided with one of the boarders on the steps. “Watch it, kid. You’ll get in trouble in a hurry like that.”

  She waited in the living room until she saw him pass the window on his way down the street. Then she went upstairs and knocked on Tim’s door. He opened it almost the instant she knocked.

  “Come down, Tim. There’s no one home and it’s cooler. We can talk and maybe play some records.”

  “Where’s your mother?”

  “She went to the movies. I’ve got something kind of important to tell you, Tim.”

  “And I’ve something to tell you,” he said, permitting her to lead him from the room.

  It was Katie who went back and turned out the light in his room. He looked very tired, she thought, glancing at the stack of papers on the card table, but she had never seen him happier or more at ease. His eyes were brimming with pleasure when she returned to him, and she had to rush ahead of him to conceal the response it quickened in her.

  “What did you want to tell me, Katie?” he asked as soon as they reached the living room.

  “It’s nothing to get excited over. It’s just that I got a job.”

  He seemed disappointed at the news. “You mean you’ll be going away to work every day?”

  His disappointment pleased her. “Yes. But I’ll be home evenings. I never see you through the day, anyway.”