by Kane, Henry
“Why not?”
“Same reason as before. I’m not in love with you. I want you clinically, sexually, period.”
“You’ll have to earn me, brother.”
“I’ll earn you, sister. It’s one of the reasons I’m here.”
“Why are you here? You said ‘important.’ “
“I’ll come to that. First, you want to hear about the client you recommended?”
“Not particularly.”
“Aristotle Skahnos.”
“Crazy monicker, no?”
“I’ve got a date with him for three o’clock.”
“You’re going to be late,” she said. “Date for what?”
“I don’t know.”
“And you’re supposed to be a private eye?”
“He’s supposed to be, too,” I said.
“Come again?” she said.
“Aristotle Skahnos. That’s his racket. The guy’s a private detective. A European private detective. Cute, huh?”
“Why?”
“I mean—”
“The U.S. doesn’t have a monopoly. They’ve got them in Europe, plenty of them. They go by different names, though—private operator, confidential agent, assassin, soldier of fortune… .” She poured more brandy into the graceful convex glass.
I reached for her again. She ducked.
“Cut it out,” she said.
“I’m earning you,” I said.
“Like how?” she said.
“Where were you early afternoon?” I said.
“Shopping,” she said.
“So I heard,” I said. “Can you prove it?”
She smiled with small glistening teeth. “Shopping is unprovable.”
“What did you buy?”
“I didn’t buy a goddamned thing. But I looked. I looked like hell.”
“That’s a lousy alibi.”
“Lousy alibi—for what?”
“Did you drop in on Martell?”
“Martell? That’s what I’m drinking—Martell.”
“Henry Martell.”
“Why should I drop in on Henry Martell?”
“Because somebody shot him. You?”
“Martell!”
“Finished—Henry Martell.”
“What?”
“Dead—Henry Martell.”
The green eyes narrowed. The hand holding the snifter-glass trembled. She tilted the glass, drank, threw the glass away. The brandy spilled but the glass did not break. She stood motionless, breathing hard, which was a prick to prurience. I went to her and held her and she was soft and limp. I kissed her. Her lips opened and covered my mouth. Her tongue was like a wet lash. I released her, turned my back on her. “I’m earning you,” I said.
“Martell is dead?” she said.
I turned to her. “Soon you’ll be flooded by cops.”
“Me? Why?”
“He was killed by a gun that belongs to Jeff Clayton. You took that gun from Jeff last night. When he came for it early today, you told him it was gone. He reported the loss to the cops. Did you use it on Martell?”
“Why should I?”
“Oh,” I said, “there are reasons, lots of them. Once upon a time you slept with Henry. Maybe you were piqued that he gave you the air.”
“Nobody gives me the air.”
“Also Henry was pushing you around on a blackmail deal.”
“How do you know?”
“Part of my process of earning you, sweetie.”
“Why do you want me?”
“I’m curious as to how you perform—when you have to. Every libido has its quirks. A Lesbo ought to understand that.”
“Why will I get cops?”
“Because the gun has been reported to have been lost here last night. You could have tucked it away and then used it on Martell. Two birds with one stone—the stone being a cute little Smith and Wesson. Bird one—Martell, whom you need around your neck like a laveliere of millstone. Bird two—Clayton, with whom you’ve become cranky of late. You knock off Martell with Clayton’s gun—you’re rid of one and you’ve implicated the other.”
“You think that?”
“I don’t think. I’m dumb. I’m a private Richard. I’m on the make for you. For you, I could get dumb as hell. Take off the leotard.”
“Not yet,” she said.
“What are you waiting for, you red bastard? You want me on your side?”
“Yes.”
“Take off the leotard.”
“Not yet.”
“The hell with you. I’m leaving.”
She kissed me. It kept me.
“To begin,” she said, “I don’t know that Martell is dead. You’ve said it but that may be part of your pitch. About the gun that Jeff reported lost—he may have picked it up himself and then reported it lost and then used it himself on Martell if Martell is dead.”
“So said a certain lieutenant of police. He mentioned that very possibility.”
“What lieutenant of police?”
“You’ll find out.” And then an idea rose up and smote me sneak like a rabbit punch. “You on the make,” I said, “for that Lori Gilmore?”
“Mind your goddamned business!”
It was admission. “Additional motive,” I said, “for the decease of lover-boy Martell. Honey, you better start being real nice to me. I’ve begun to earn you like all hell.”
She slithered toward me, naked feet soundless. She smiled and her hands came out toward me like claws. Perhaps I am perverse. I swung, starting over my left shoulder with my right hand, and I belted her across the mouth, back-hand. Tit for tit. Slap for slap. We were even up. She rose to tip-toe, red silhouette of body indescribably attractive, and the green eyes glimmered with hate and respect. Hate and respect, wondrous combination. Hate and respect, perfect second-act curtain. Hate and respect. Leave it like that. Withdraw. It is pregnant with fantastic promise.
The claws reached out for me again, green eyes glimmering.
I swung, half-strength, to the chin, and she toppled.
I withdrew. Withdrawing, I looked forward to pregnant fantastic promise.
FOURTEEN
On my way to Skahnos, I thought about Greco: my reaction to Greco. I had struck her. Twice. I am not a hero who strikes women. I have nothing to prove. I have no special compulsions, obsessions, anxieties, tensions, or phobias. I am fairly square-rigged: I am not fodder for the couch. If the psychiatrists would have to depend upon such as I, they would have to give up their fancy offices and twenty-five-dollar-an-hour fees and return to treating prosaic nuts in prosaic nuthouses, or re-establish themselves as marital advisers or child-guidance counselors at reduced rates. Then why had I struck her—twice? Once, perhaps, to render us even Steven, but even that was not true. I had struck out against her contempt, her arrogance, the evil that had become so clearly manifest. The nakedness of the red leotard was no accident. I had called her. She had known I was coming. Her mode of dress had been part of her contempt: she enjoyed watching the male squirm and pant and grovel. She enjoyed presenting an incentive the reaction to which she could rebuff, as it suited her. When I had made a pass, she had struck me down, but when she knew she was in trouble and thought I could help, she had moved forward in perfect assurance of the power of her wiles. Is that why I had lashed out? Perhaps. I now knew she was evil. Did that lessen my desire of her? No. I was curious and peculiarly inflamed. Is that why I had lashed out, in reverse penance? Striking her, had I been striking at myself? Perhaps. She said I was to earn her. Oh, I would earn her. And then it came to me clearly. I knew why I had hit her. A courting male knows, almost instinctively, the manner of approach to the female of his desire. Some need flowers, some need poems, some need music, some need small attentions, some need surliness, some need silence, some need dominance—Sherry Greco needed a good belt in the jaw. I had struck her as part of my wooing her. I had enhanced her respect for me. I had begun to earn her.
The cab stopped at the Sheraton-Ambassador
. I paid and made my journey to suite 704. A touch at the button produced a two-tone chime and in moments produced a smiling Aristotle Skahnos in a maroon silk smoking jacket with black lapels and a black sash.
“Ah, Mr. Chambers,” he said, “do come in.”
“I’m a little late,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“Not at all, not at all.”
He offered me a drink and I accepted, Scotch and water with one cube of ice. He was nipping on his own solidly amber highball and he seemed pleased and happy, Van Dyke brushed and combed, black eyes regarding me respectfully, strong teeth gleaming in a friendly smile.
“Did I pass muster?” I said.
“Pardon?”
“You were doing a final check on me.”
“But indeed, indeed, Mr. Chambers. You are my man. You are perfect. I could not have created you better. You are the man for the job.”
“What job, if you please?”
“We shall come to that at once.”
“Mr. Skahnos,” I said.
“Yes?”
“Your accent intrigues me. It is almost British.”
“I am a Greek who lived his boyhood in Greece, was educated as a young man at Oxford, and spent his adult years in Italy and France. I imagine the resultant accent, when I speak English, would be intriguing.” He removed the smoking jacket, went to a closet, and donned matching jacket to the trousers he was wearing, a dark-grey sharkskin.
“You going somewhere?” I said.
“Downstairs to the hotel safe,” he said. “I’ll be back in a few minutes. Please take your ease, Mr. Chambers.”
I took my ease with more Scotch and water, and then he was back carrying a round leather zipper case such as models carry on their way to work. Without a word to me, he placed it on the table and unzipped it. He dipped in and came up with a thing that had more flash than a tout’s bankroll. It looked like a crown, diamond encrusted and glowing with gold—only it was half a crown.
He looked at it, and looked at me.
“Do you know what it is?” he said.
“It looks like a crown for a queen’s head. That is, half of a crown. Or a full crown for a queen with half a head.”
“It is a priceless treasure, Mr. Chambers.”
“Is it a crown?”
“It is a tiara.”
“Half of a tiara, isn’t it?”
“That is correct. Half a tiara. Half of a very famous tiara. It was fashioned in 1550 by Benvenuto Cellini especially for Eleonora, Princess of the House of Medici.”
“Very nice for Eleonora.”
“It may turn out to be very nice for us, Mr. Chambers.”
“Me and you?” I said.
“You and I,” he said. “This tiara, in toto, not half, last rested in the Bargello.”
“What the dickens is the Bargello?”
“A famous museum in old Florence.”
“So what are you doing with it? Or at least half of it?”
“Seeking the other half, Mr. Chambers. It is here, in America.”
“Now just hang on to everything, Mr. Skahnos. I’m a plain old American eye, and I don’t know too much from priceless treasures. Priceless treasures in conjunction with private detectives in conjunction with handsome Greek gentlemen with Van Dyke beards and British accents sort of went out of fashion with Sherlock Holmes. Now what you’re holding in your hand is a half a hunk of tiara with enough diamonds in it to knock your eye out. It ought to be worth an awful lot of loot.”
“About fifty thousand dollars, Mr. Chambers.”
“So why should you be seeking the other half, pal? What are you selfish?”
“Practical, Mr. Chambers.”
“Isn’t fifty thousand dollars in the hand worth a hundred thousand in the bush?”
He chuckled. “But is it worth a half million in the bush? Perhaps more?”
I sat down. I said, “Will you spell that out for me, Mr. Skahnos? Slowly? In words of one syllable?”
He put the thing back into the zippered case. He sat down and lit a long thin cigar. “Priceless treasures did not go out of fashion with Sherlock Holmes. Priceless treasures exist today as they existed in the past. This tiara has been bisected into two halves. Each half, individually, is but half of a tiara—having its actual intrinsic value. But putting both halves together, you have Cellini’s tiara for Eleonora, a priceless object of art, which can bring, easily, from a proper collector, at least a half million dollars.”
“Who bisected it, and why?”
“That, Mr. Chambers, is a long and complicated story.”
“You’re going to tell it to me?”
“Of course I’m going to tell it to you.”
I looked at my watch. “Can it hold?”
He frowned. “Why?”
“Cellini, Eleonora, Medici, Bargello—all very interesting, but I’ve got to earn an ordinary bread-and-butter buck. I’ve got to drive up to Connecticut and I don’t want to get there too late.” I stood up. I said, “It’ll keep, I hope.”
He rose. “Yes, of course. Can you come back this evening?”
“I have a date for this evening.”
“With a lady?”
“Naturally.”
He smiled. “Then by all means it shall have to be postponed. I am not one to interfere in matters of the heart.”
“Mr. Skahnos, you’re my kind of man. It shall be a pleasure to work with you.”
“My pleasure.” He walked me to the door.
I said, “How do we work on this? Recovering the other half?”
“You mean fee?”
“I mean fee.”
“You have contingent fees in this country?”
“We do.”
“We shall work out a contingent fee.”
“We also have retaining fees in this country. A contingent fee amounts to zero if the contingency does not occur. Like that a lot of time and effort can be expended for nothing.”
“Very true, Mr. Chambers. Will you set a figure?”
“How’s five hundred bucks for a starter? It sort of binds the deal and shows me you’re not hedge-hopping.”
“Very colorfully stated, but perfectly reasonable. Will you return here tomorrow? We shall then work out the details of our arrangement.”
“What time, tomorrow?”
“Any time at all, Mr. Chambers. I shall be in all day.”
“Swell.” We shook hands. “I’ll be in touch. In between, I’ll try to make a few discreet inquiries. Half of a priceless object of art doesn’t float around too long in America without making a dent or two in the proper circles.”
“But please be certain they are discreet inquiries, Mr. Chambers.”
“Leave it to me.”
“I do. And with the utmost confidence.”
We shook hands again and I left him with his tiara. A cab took me to my garage where I disentombed my car. A New Yorker has about as much use for an automobile in this city of car-crowded curbs and congested traffic as he might have for a chrome-adorned toboggan, but at this point I was going to Connecticut.
FIFTEEN
It was a small white house with green shutters. There was a tiny lawn with spring-green grass and lavender flowers and neat hedges, and there was a smell of lilac. It was a quiet street with high, shady trees. On the lawn near the entrance to the house a spike-metal design of number and name rose from the grass. It was in the shape of a coach drawn by a single horse. From the horse’s neck dangled the metal number: 10. Across the coach were metal letters which spelled out: the maloneys. On the concrete running to the garage stood a pink Plymouth station wagon, two years old.
I parked and went to the door and pushed the button. There was a screen door; the inner door of wood was open. A young lady came to the door, opened it and smiled. She wore brown slacks of corduroy and a brown lightweight sleeveless sweater. Her arms were brown and round and firm and dimpled. She was tall and slender, with an excellent figure. She was sunburned. She had short-cut
light-brown hair, an oval face, huge brown eyes with long curled lashes, a tiny nose, and a full, red, puckered mouth. She was very young.
“Yes?” she said. She had a high, sweet, melodious voice.
“May I speak with Mrs. Hector Maloney?”
“I am Mrs. Hector Maloney.”
“Oh,” I said. “Er,” I said. “My name is Chambers, Peter Chambers. I’ve driven in from New York. It’s … about Mr. Martell.”
A tiny crease appeared between the huge brown eyes, and the nostrils of the tiny nose quivered. She stood motionless for a moment, hesitant, studying me. Then she said, “Won’t you come in, please?”
The living room was compact, furnished in simple, gleaming maple. There was a child’s playpen in a corner. She caught me looking at it, and said, “That’s my baby’s. He’s upstairs, asleep. Won’t you sit down, Mister …”
“Chambers,” I said. I sat.
She said, “May I get you something? Coffee? A drink?”
“No, thank you,” I said. I tried for a smile. I said, “I didn’t think you were Mrs. Maloney. You look so very young.”
She blushed, smiled. “Thank you for the compliment. I’m twenty-four.”
“You sure don’t look it,” I said, wrestling about for time.
She sat near me, a corner of her lower lip caught between her teeth. There was a loud silence, as I squirmed, settling down.
“May I smoke?” I said.
“Yes, of course.” I lit a cigarette, dropped the burned match in an ash tray nearby. She said, “Is there something wrong, Mr. Chambers?”
“I’m afraid there is,” I said.
“Something to do with … Mr. Martell?”
“Yes,” I said, swallowing smoke.
She sat straight and stiff, knees together, hands in her lap. She wore no jewelry except a gold wedding band. “Is … is Mr. Martell in trouble?”
“It’s worse than that, Mrs. Maloney.”
“Is he … hurt?”
“He’s dead.”
She sat straight and stiff, knees together. The hands in her lap became enclasped. She closed her eyes and her throat muscles moved as she swallowed. A peculiar expression came to her face and went away. I could have sworn it was an expression of relief. Then her eyes opened and she said, “Will you tell me about it, please?”