Don't Call Me Madame

by Kane, Henry

Parker brought him a glass of water and Chambers drank it.

  “Want something stronger?”

  “It’s the heat,” Chambers said.

  “It’s not hot in here.”

  “The heat outside,” Chambers said.

  “Something stronger?”

  “Don’t mind if I do.”

  Parker brought bourbon and a tumbler, poured into the tumbler, a big dose, and, watching Chambers dispose of it, he himself disposed of some, directly from the bottle. Then he sat in the squeaking swivel chair and Chambers sat in the ass-hurting armchair.

  “We all right?” Parker inquired.

  “Thanks. We’re hale, healthy, and dying to hear about Cosa Nostra and Vinnie Two.”

  “You’ve heard of Richard V. Starr?”

  “Heard of him? Know him well. Hell, I’ve worked for him.” (Play it by the old adage, baby. When you’re going to lie, tincture the lie with as much of the truth as possible.) “But, Jesus, I don’t believe it. I mean Richard V. Starr, distinguished, jet-set internationalist, Princeton graduate, Starr Conglomerates, Ltd. What in hell would he have to do with Vinnie Two, with Cosa Nostra, with the likes of Joe Valachi’s criminal syndicate?”

  “Naïve,” Parker said.

  “Mer?”

  “I wouldn’t have believed it. Are you getting old, son?”

  “Young.” Chambers grinned and desired more bourbon but resisted.

  “Cosa Nostra is not what it was. Upstairs in the high seats, not what it used to be. What do you know about Richard V. Starr?”

  “An educated gentleman. An upper-bracket millionaire. Once married to a Goddard, the highest of high society. The president and the brain behind a powerhouse financial colossus — Starr Conglomerates Ltd. Are you putting me on, Lieutenant?”

  “Ever hear of Vincenzo Starantino?”

  “Don Vincenzo.” It was a matter of pride now to recite knowledge. “A boss of bosses with the syndicate. Retired ten years ago. Went back to Italy. Died of natural causes about a year ago. He was ninety-one.”

  Parker flashed strong square teeth.

  “Better,” he said. “You’re beginning to sound like Peter Chambers.” He relit the gnarled cigar. “Well, sir. Richard V. Starr — name shortened — is the son of Vincenzo Starantino. The middle initial, the V, is for Vincent. Vincent is Vinnie. The second Vinnie — the son — is Vinnie Two. Are you with me, kid?”

  “Right there alongside you, man.”

  “The modern Cosa Nostra is not the ancient Cosa Nostra, the old plug-ugly stuff is incidental — today a lot of it is big business and very legitimate big business. The old dons educated their sons in the best of schools — ”

  “Like Princeton.”

  “ — and these educated sons run legitimate business with money that comes like from the skim of Las Vegas and the scum of narcotics. Vinnie Two is the biggest here in the East. He runs Starr Conglomerates, but he was also granted the prostitution rights in New York City.”

  “Jesus, not Starr, a man of refinement, a type that wouldn’t stoop — ”

  “Dont go naïve on me again. Listen and learn from Papa Parker and say thanks. No, don’t say thanks. One hand washes the other. There’ll be a day, on something or other, you’ll educate me.”

  “Thanks anyway.”

  “Of course Starr wouldn’t stoop to it. He’s appointed a man for each borough, and that man takes the cream off the top from the hookers.”

  “I see.” (So Barry Burnett was the Manhattan major domo.)

  “In legitimate circles, he’s Richard V. Starr. In underworld circles he’s Vinnie Two — but even at that he put his keen, educated brain to work. He created a condition of fear around the name Vinnie Two. Most of the underlings don’t even know what it is — what they do know is it’s unmentionable. Shoot your mouth off about Vinnie Two and you’re suddenly very dead.” Parker grinned. “Get it?”

  Brother, do I get it! I now know just how it operates. Barry Burnett opened his mouth and therefore got half his face shot away and I’m the boy that did it to him. I let the cat out of the bag for Vinnie Two who is Number One. Inadvertently, in my conversation with Richard V. Starr, I signed Barry’s death warrant.

  “Lieutenant, this question then. If you guys know so much, how come you’ve never caught up with him?”

  “That brain wasn’t polished in Princeton for nothing. Starr’s worked out a procedure which, so far, we haven’t been able to crack. We know about the procedure from confidential informers, but not us nor the Federal people have been able to do a fucking thing about it. Ever hear of the six-man system?”

  Chambers shook his head. “This is my day for education.”

  “It’s Starr’s invention, and in its way it’s goddamn brilliant. For each operation, a six-man system — six men under Vinnie Two. A capo, a lieutenant, and then four soldiers. Now here’s the way it works. Suppose the word is out that you’re to be hit — Peter Chambers is to be killed.”

  “God forbid.” He laughed but it came out a cackle.

  “Starr gives the word to his capo, the only one in the six-man system who knows Starr. The capo passes the word to a lieutenant who does not know about Starr. The lieutenant passes the word to soldier A who does not know about the capo. Soldier A passes the word to soldier B who does not know about the lieutenant. Soldier B passes the word to soldier C who does not know about soldier A. Soldier C passes the word to soldier D who does not know about soldier B — and soldier D, the last one down the line, does the hit If all goes well, that’s the way it stays, period. But let’s say we catch up with the guy that made the hit, soldier D. The best that we can ever get out of him is the name of soldier C — the man who gave him the contract — because that’s all soldier D knows. And if we get C, he can give us B — because that’s all that he knows. But by then another six-man system has knocked off C or B — and we’re finished. Sounds complicated, but it’s really very simple. The moment they have any trouble, they eliminate a link in the chain and that cuts us off forever from Starr.”

  The phone rang. Parker picked it up and listened.

  He put it down. “That’s it for the lesson for today. State what you came for.” He looked at his watch. “Fifteen minutes. Then I’ve got to get out of here.”

  “You’ve got an open file. I think I can close it for you.”

  “What file.”

  “Dorothy Steel.”

  Parker smoked his cigar. It was an open file and Chambers was not a shit merchant. Cooperation is the mother of solution. One hand washes the other. Over the years they had worked together to excellent mutual advantage and neither had ever shitted the other.

  “What do you want in return?”

  “Whatever you’ve got on that loony-bird with the knife.”

  “Which loony-bird?”

  “Lois Maxwell, Peggy Flanagan, and now Miss Elizabeth Bristol.”

  The swivel chair creaked.

  “Who stuck your nose into that?”

  “A client, naturally.”

  “Who?”

  “I couldn’t break that kind of confidence, could I, Louie?”

  “Senator J. Abner Bristol. That son of a bitch has been eating our ass out. Swinging the big political stick and getting the brass to eat our ass out. Now he’s got himself an eye, has he?”

  Chambers looked wise, made a smirk, turned it down to a fishmouth, shrugged. (I didn’t say it — he did. If that’s what he wants to think, let him.)

  Parker said, “Could be a bad trade for you, kid. We’ve got a lot of nothing.”

  “Want to hear on the Dorothy Steel?”

  “Let’s have it.”

  Chambers smiled. He had a deal.

  “Barry Burnett. How’s your line on him?”

  “A pimp-type hood living off a string of girls.”

  (No line at all, Lieutenant. That Starr must be good. You’ve no idea at all that Barry Burnett was his man in Manhattan.)

  “And,” Parker added, “he’s very de
ad.”

  “I know. Read it in the papers. That’s why I can give you the bit on the Steel.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I can tell you what he told me — and it can’t hurt him now. He told me because he trusted me and wanted me to pass the word around where it could do him good — with prowl girls, pickup girls, call girls. Steel was an airline stewardess, and a part time humper for money, and also Burnett’s personal piece of ass. When he found out she was hooking on a side, he wanted a piece of the action. He couldn’t get a piece of the action — so, while she was sitting in an easy chair in her apartment, he shot her with a small-bore gun right in the middle of her pretty little forehead.” (He knew he sounded coarsely casual but it had purpose. Parker had facts which were not public facts and Chambers, coarsely casual, was reciting facts that only the murderer and the police knew: the easy chair, the small-bore bullet, the tiny wound in the middle of the forehead.) “You can close your file on the Steel, Louie. I just gave you gospel.”

  “But I’m going to need your statement inside that file to close it.”

  The coarsely casual had done it. Parker was a wise old cop.

  “Sure,” Chambers said.

  Parker stood up and paced. “You’re not going to like me.”

  “You, Lieutenant? You I love.”

  “You’re getting the short end of the stick.”

  “Why?”

  “Because on this ripper-bastard we don’t have a thing. He’s like some kind of wraith, the son of a bitch.”

  “Got fingerprints?”

  Parker chuckled. “A plethora. And all his. The same in the hotel with Maxwell, the same in the motel with Flanagan, the same in Elizabeth Bristol’s apartment — all his. But they don’t match anything we have here, or anything in Washington, or anything anywhere. We’ve got the fingerprints — but in order to make the match we’ve got to make the catch.”

  “Beautifully put, Lieutenant.”

  “Let me put something else to you, kid. A pattern, I think. And that’ll cap it because — whatever it is — that’s all we’ve got.”

  “Pattern?”

  Parker halted his pacing over Chambers’s chair.

  “Seems he prefers a certain type. All three girls were the same. Not the same in background, history, personality that we could dig up — but physically the same. All three were blonde, all three tall, all three similarly built. Long legs, a big ass, small tits. When it’s three all the same like that, you’ve got to figure it a pattern. That’s it; that’s all we got. We’ve got his fingerprints, but not a single clue to him. And we think we’ve got a pattern in the girls he goes for — so what? We’re no nearer to him now than we were after his first rip-job, but now we’ve got a politically powerful senator eating our asses out and unless we catch up with him, but right real quick, there’s going to be a lot of changes in the department, with nobody inviolate — not me, not the commissioner himself. And with those happy words” — Parker looked at his watch — ”I take my leave.”

  Chambers started to get up.

  Parker pushed him down.

  “Not you.”

  “Not mer?”

  “On the Dorothy Steel. To lock up the file, I need your statement. A trade is a trade, right, trader? Could be you got the short end. I’ll send in a stenographer.”

  “Yes,” Chambers said. “You do that.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  Parker went away.

  Chambers sat and waited.

  TWENTY

  MONDAY went into Tuesday and Tuesday went into Wednesday and Wednesday to Thursday which was pay-day for Felix Budd, and Chambers wrote the check with stiff fingers and Budd said thanks and went to work outside Epstein’s office building and the days merged, one into the other, and nothing was happening, nobody was cutting throats and ripping bellies. And Chambers had used, to the best of his ability, the information gleaned from Parker by calling all the madames he knew, including Goldie, and instructing them, without undue alarums or excursions, to inform him immediately if a client expressed desire for a long-legged blonde with a big ass and small boobs, a shot in the dark into the call-girl world. And another Thursday arrived and with it Felix Budd, and Chambers made his fourth payment. He was out a thousand bucks now without having earned a single dollar, and on Friday he accompanied Miranda to a play for which she had charity tickets, and on this Friday, in his Kips Bay apartment, Tony Starr bestirred himself.

  Since the night with Liz Bristol (he had learned who she was from the newspapers) he had not touched his drug. He had lived quietly, and very close to home. The storm that had burst after the discovery of the mutilated body of Elizabeth Bristol — the hue and cry, the devastating editorials, the whole damned brouhaha — had produced panic, fright, retreat, introspection.

  He must stop it! It must stop!

  God, it had never been like this — attack upon attack, headlong. Not while his dear mother was alive. There had not been this kind of hellish, concentrated, unstoppable bestial drive. But he was alone; for the first time in his life, he was utterly alone. There was no one to contain him; no one to take him in hand, hold him, soothe him, console him, advise him.

  But he didn’t touch the drug …

  And he thought, in the numbness of fear, about getting out, packing up and returning to England. He hadn’t known it would take this long for the settlement of the damned estate. He would inform the lawyer, and get the hell out. Back to England. And travel from there to other countries, other cities. He would call the lawyer from time to time from overseas, and when he was needed here, he would fly over.

  Didn’t touch the drug …

  And therefore postponed. Without the lift of the drug, the reaction was torpor. Irresolution. Inertia. He would wait. Yes, he would wait. A few weeks. Another month or so. And then if the legal delays did not abate, he would inform the lawyer and take off — but in the meantime he must restrain the animal gnawing within him, he must be good, remain close to home, stay away from the damn drug.

  And he did. Until today. He could no longer resist. Friday.

  He started in the morning and the lift came good and high and clear and with it a return of all the valiant hubris. What in hell was he all so funky about? Jesus, this is Tony Starr here, magna cum laude, genius type, leading the police a pretty chase and they were nowhere of course — despite the cacophonous fury of the fucking newspapers. They had no inkling as to their “ripper.” Like looking for a hen’s tooth in an elephant’s trunk — seeking a ripper with nothing to go on. And they had nothing to go on — no possible connection between Tony Starr and Lois, Peggy, and Liz. Except fingerprints — and that just ain’t no good, fellas.

  He had long ago decided on the risk of fingerprints. He simply could not wear gloves all the time in the presence of his ladies without scaring them off as a crazy kook. And to wear gloves only at the vital time would be pointless: prior fingerprints could not be avoided — they’d be there somewhere on the premises despite his mopping up like a charwoman. Genius type, magna cum laude. He laughed, and sniffed happy powder. Fingerprints had to be compared to fingerprints, and his fingerprints were nowhere on record, and he did not intend that they ever would be. He was Anthony Starr, millionaire gentleman, a paragon of virtue, a patron of the arts, a scholar, and a rather timid young man with a horror of any infraction, however slight, of the legal rules and regulations …

  The gnawing began.

  Deep inside his guts.

  One. Just one, the last. One more, and he’d get out of this damn city. And he sniffed white powder and was happy and clever, energetic, purposeful and brave. One more, the last — and this time without hooker bars or blaring singles joints or smelly little crowded saloons — and then goodbye New York. Christ, this marvelous drug! How it clears the brain, stiffens the ego, props the psyche. He would do what he had to do today, tomorrow he would arrange with the airline for his flight, and on Monday he would fly to England without interfering discussion
with the stupid little lawyer. Hell, the lawyer was working for him, he wasn’t working for the lawyer. He would call him from London, tell him he was off on his travels again, and that he’d keep in touch. Fuck you, lawyer! You are working for me.

  He went out to the bright afternoon sunshine, knowing exactly his purpose. He purchased an expensive, commodious leather suitcase. He purchased a bottle of Scotch, a bottle of bourbon, a bottle of vodka, a bottle of gin, a bottle of brandy, a bottle of sherry — hell, whatever she wanted to drink he would have it, and it would all look good set out on a table. Purchased bottles of tonic and bottles of soda. The bag was beginning to get heavy. (He remembered people filling suitcases with bricks, even telephone books. But where in hell do you buy bricks or telephone books?) He bought cheap clothing, but heavy clothing: work shirts, work pants, work shoes (nothing that could ever be traced back to him). The bag was heavy, and he was satisfied.

  He took it home.

  He went out to eat.

  He napped until ready (having set the alarm) and then got dressed.

  He stuffed his wallet full of money, double-checked that he had his little address book, his snuffbox, his knife, and then carrying the heavy bag he went out to a cab and to the Waldorf Astoria. He arrived there at a quarter to nine, and signed up for an eighty-dollar-a-day suite. He registered as Stephen Stevens, put down a London address, nonchalantly paid cash for the full weekend, two hundred and forty dollars, was beamed at by the desk clerk and by the bellboy to whom in suite 1714 he gave a ten-dollar tip.

  “I’ll want a little keg of ice cubes, a thermos keg, you know?”

  “Don’t even call room service, Mr. Stevens. I will attend to it personally myself.”

  The bellboy came back with three kegs of ice cubes, tightly covered silver kegs. And six tall highball glasses, and six squat old-fashioned glasses. “There, that should do you, Mr. Stevens. Guarantee you’ll have ice till tomorrow morning.”

  “Thank you.” He signed the chit.

  “Thank you.” The bellboy pocketed another ten-dollar tip. “Anything else you may wish, Mr. Stevens, do not call room service, do not call nobody, just call the desk and ask for me, Jimmy Dayton. I’m on the rest of the night.” He made a two-fingered salute, said, “Have a nice weekend, sir,” and went out.