Death of a Flack

by Kane, Henry

  “Very little,” I said.

  “He was on a mission for me, and a dangerous one,” she said. “Therefore I was Blanche Davis at the Waldorf. I was to wait three months, and I did, as Blanche Davis. When he did not appear within the three months, I feared the mission had been unsuccessful—and there was further danger to me. I left the Waldorf and assumed the name Sophia Patri. It is the maiden name of my father’s mother.”

  The downstairs buzzer sounded.

  She buzzed back, paced nervously.

  The upstairs doorbell rang. I opened the door.

  Aristotle Skahnos entered with a fistful of enormous mauser.

  “Hi,” I said. “No need for the artillery. No need for protection. No strangers. Everybody present accounted for. No enemies.”

  “I am afraid I must disagree,” he said.

  I smiled toward the lady and the smile got stuck. Her mouth hung open, her eyes held the fierce glare of fear, and her right hand convulsively pulled at the neck of her sweater as though it were choking her.

  “What the hell?” I said. “Skahnos. Aristotle Skahnos. You know Mr. Skahnos.”

  For the first time since the first moment I met her, the beautiful sigh-whisper voice turned shrill.

  “It is … it is not Skahnos,” she said.

  “Now stop it. Don’t be crazy. Of course it is. Who else?”

  “It is George Demetrios!”

  I whirled to him. He smiled sweetly, bowed a slight courteous bow of acknowledgment, raised the gun, and shot her twice. The first bullet ripped away part of her forehead. She stiffened, went to her toes, and as she began to fall, the second bullet pierced an eye. She fell in a splatter of blood. She was dead before she hit the floor, as I verified when I bent to her. When I got up, the mauser was pointing at me.

  “If you please, Mr. Chambers,” he said, “place the tiara in my zipper case.”

  Naturally, I complied with the request.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “You’re welcome,” I said.

  “Mr. Chambers,” he said, “you are entitled to an explanation.”

  “I am?” I said.

  “Mr. Chambers,” he said, “I am George Demetrios. I am a diplomat, not a murderer. I am a normal human being, an ex-diplomat, to be factual. I am a normal human being caught up in a swirl of abnormal events.”

  “But abnormal, man,” I said.

  “Mr. Aristotle Skahnos came to kill me. I thwarted him. In the agony of fear of reprisal, he confessed to me. I could have spared his life, but that would have meant the dispersal of the knowledge that I was in possession of this awesome object of art. Thus, actually as a matter of survival, I was compelled to … to liquidate him. For the public, it was a killing in self-defense. A marauder had come to rob me and I had killed him. There was a trial and, of course, I was acquitted. That, rather than my severance from the diplomatic service, was the reason for the delay in my coming to this country. Do you follow, Mr. Chambers?”

  “Follow like mad,” I said.

  “The lady’s death, I am certain you can understand, was a matter of honor—or dishonor. And now you, Mr. Chambers, unfortunately, have become my third problem.”

  “Problem? I can’t kick,” I said. “Victim? Let’s like talk it over.”

  “I am a normal human being, Mr. Chambers. I am not a murderer. But the swirl of events has now caused me to commit murder twice. I intend to leave this country as quickly as I can. I have plane reservations for exactly that purpose. But how can I go away, leaving behind a witness to murder? You are a charming man, Mr. Chambers, a man whom I like very much, very much indeed, but you are a threat—a threat to my very existence, to my life.”

  “Suppose I promise not to talk?”

  “You are a man of the world, sir. How can I possibly accept that promise? Were the tables turned, would you?”

  Morosely I said, “No.”

  “I am a normal human being. I meant no harm to anyone.” He delivered himself of a huge sigh. “A normal human being,” he said, “who has twice been driven to murder, and now, once again, may the good Lord have mercy on my soul, I am placed in the impossible untenable position …”

  The good Lord had mercy on my soul for He chose this moment for the intervention of Cobb Gilmore. Mr. Gilmore did not ring the bell. Mr. Gilmore had a key. The door suddenly swung open and Mr. Gilmore was there. Even a professional murderer would have been knocked off stance by such abrupt and unexpected intromission, and Mr. Skahnos—pardon, Demetrios—was, by his own admission, an inexperienced, unprofessional, and somewhat reluctant murderer. He turned, and his term of office was terminated. My left hand did a judo hack to the wrist which pertained to the mauser, and my right hand did a swift and fright-inspired fist to the pepper-and-salt beard. Mr. Skahnos-Demetrios fell like a slaughtered steer whilst Mr. Cobb Gilmore simultaneously uttered the appropriate query: “Now what in all hell is going on here?”

  I unpacked the zipper case, returned the tiara to the velvet, and rendered complete explanation as Gilmore nodded intelligently.

  “Um,” he said when I was finished, a satisfactorily monosyllabic grunt of total comprehension.

  I went to the phone and stuck my finger into the hole of Operator.

  “What are you doing?” he said.

  “Calling the cops,” I said. “What else?”

  “Hang up.”

  I hung.

  “Dear Peter,” he said. “You are stupid, aren’t you?”

  “Sure,” I said. “But why, this time?”

  He pointed a pudgy index finger to the tiara glowing on black velvet like the fellow before-mentioned glowing on White Label. “There lies,” he said, “eight hundred thousand berries, and you are calling the cops. Stupid, or not?”

  Sophia Patri lay dead. Skahnos-Demetrios lay snoring.

  “How do you make it?” I said.

  “Absurdly simple,” he said.

  “How do you make it, Sir Gilmore?”

  The eyes of Skahnos-Demetrios fluttered. He stirred and commenced a soft babble in Greek. Cobb Gilmore went to him and adroitly kicked him in the head. Skahnos-Demetrios sighed, ceased his babble and returned to his snoring realm of unconsciousness.

  “Dear Peter,” said Gilmore, “the balance weighs so heavily in our favor, it should even be obvious to you; the modus operandi so preposterously simple, I have already begun to lose respect that you yourself have not suggested it.” He pulled a brown silk handkerchief from his breast pocket, used it to lift the mauser, placed the gun in Skahnos-Demetrios’s right hand, and placed the muzzle against Skahnos-Demetrios’s right temple. “I pull the trigger,” he said, “and what have we?”

  “What have we?” I croaked. I licked my lips. I wanted to hear. It was as though I were under a compulsion of hypnosis.

  “Murder and suicide, that’s what we have. The usual crime of passion, that’s what we have. An elderly, passionate foreigner is deserted by his young and passionate sweetheart. He broods to the point of madness—quite usual, you know. He comes to America, finds her, kills her, and commits suicide. Hardly even a one-day sensation on page three of the tabloids. Are you following me, dear Peter?”

  “I’m ahead of you, dear Cobb.”

  “You and I walk out of here with that tiara. Later, perhaps an hour or two from now, I come to call upon the young woman whom I am keeping, and I find … this. I call the police, their investigation unfolds the usual story… .”

  “No!”

  “Murder and suicide—without any possibility of our involvement.”

  “No!”

  He rose, leaving the gun in the snoring man’s hand. “Peter, I beg of you—think! Please, I beg of you, don’t be an utter fool. We have eight hundred thousand dollars to divide between us. It would be a shame and a pity to let it go to waste. If you are worrying about me, that I might deceive you, swindle you—please don’t! I wouldn’t trick you—I couldn’t—I couldn’t run the risk of any possible blabbing on your part. You ar
e rich, man, right now! Don’t you understand?

  I guarantee you four hundred thousand dollars in cash.”

  “No!”

  “If you are queasy, squeamish, jittery—then get out of here. I’ll handle it all myself. And still you will have four hundred thousand dollars in cash.”

  “No!”

  He passed his hands over his white halo of hair. “I’ll try once more, and then I quit. Peter, this man lying here is dead. Don’t you realize that? He’s dead. He’s committed cold-blooded, premeditated murder. The State must execute him. He’s dead, already as good as dead. It is not as though he were some poor innocent. He’s dead. The State must execute him. All right. I do it before they do it, without any risk on my part or your part whatsoever. And each of us is richer by four … hundred … thousand … dollars.”

  I do admit that for the first time in my life I was tempted to be an accomplice in murder.

  “No!” I said.

  He shrugged. His jowls shook. His mouth went slack. “You’re young,” he murmured. “That’s all. Young. The stupid scruples of youth still cling. Some day you’ll be sorry. You’re a fool, a young fool, and I cannot fight that.” He seated himself, heavily. “All right. Do as you wish. Remember they’ll request statements from us. What’ll you tell them?”

  “I’ll tell them the truth.”

  “That may involve me as intermediary for the sale of the damned thing.”

  “When I swear a statement, I don’t lie, Cobb. I’ll tell the truth.”

  “Tell. The hell with you. I’ll deny. Whatever you may say about me is hearsay. Whose word will they take? Cobb Gilmore’s, or a cheap little private detective’s, dreaming up his fantastic little fairy tales?”

  “I don’t care whose word they take. Stop blowing yourself up. You’re only a side issue in this. The basic issue is murder, to which I was an eye witness. That’ll be the point of my statement. That, essentially, is all they’ll be interested in.”

  “You’re a fool.”

  “Am I, Cobb?”

  “Fool!”

  “I shall try to convince you otherwise,” I said and I made my phone call.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Sophia was removed, the tiara was confiscated, Skahnos-Demetrios was arrested and held without bail, and Cobb Gilmore and I were taken downtown where we sang our separate versions to the tune of the notary public who swore us and countersigned our signatures, and then we were free to go. The officer in charge was Detective-Lieutenant Timothy Fleagle and when I inquired as to Detective-Lieutenant Louis Parker, Fleagle smiled at Gilmore and said, “He’s at your house.”

  “My house?” said Gilmore, a rim of white appearing about his lips.

  “Figure of speech,” said Fleagle. “Your apartment, of course.”

  “What the hell … the devil … is he doing at my apartment?”

  “Talking to your daughter, I believe,” said Fleagle.

  Gilmore’s jowls fairly rattled and the color of his face clouded to the hue of butter. What a man! He could denounce me as a young fool with stupid scruples for resisting his invitation to a tidy bit of murder but when he heard that his daughter was in conference with a cop, he bristled, perspired, eye-popped, and turned in the pink of his natural complexion for a sickly, yellowish pallor. Paternal instinct? Fear? Knowledge of her culpability? Or would our estimable analysts, lay or otherwise, label it with one of their glib phrases, such as unconscious incestuous protectiveness? He pulled upon the points of his gold waistcoat, mopped at his face with his brown silk handkerchief. “May we go now?” he demanded.

  “Of course,” said Lieutenant Fleagle.

  “Mr. Chambers too?”

  “Of course,” said Lieutenant Fleagle.

  Outside, as he desperately waved at a taxi, he said, “You’re coming with me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I want you. Please.”

  Young fool with stupid scruples or no, I was accustomed to dealing with cops, and I knew the ins and outs of law, and he knew that I knew all of that.

  “You take the cab,” I said. “I have a stop or two to make. I’ll join you in five or ten minutes.”

  I assisted in wedging his bulk into a small cab, flagged another, and stopped first at the Colony Music Shop where I purchased a long-playing record of seductive Turkish music. Outside my apartment house I looked toward the fire hydrant for my car. My car was not there. I told the cab to wait, flag down and ticking, and at my door I inquired of my doorman, “Did you see my car?”

  “It was flashing like three tickets.”

  “But it isn’t there.”

  “Sure ain’t. Like they towed it away.”

  Go put one over on City Hall.

  “They towed it away?” I said.

  “Go fight City Hall,” he said. “A car you need in New York like you need a hole in the head.”

  “A golden cliché, dear fellow,” I mused, “but truth is all a golden cliché, is it not?”

  “Yeah, man,” he said.

  Upstairs I laid away my Turkish record, assaulted my safe, drew out Barry Miller’s envelope, and hastened back to my ticking cab the meter of which had flowered out of all proportion.

  Sullenly I said, “Eight-twenty Fifth Avenue.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  The party was in the air-conditioned drawing room, being serviced by the unobtrusive obsequious slipper-footed Miguel. There was a platter of tiny sandwiches on a buffet side-table. Miss Lori Gilmore sat in a high-backed hard chair, her black-nyloned knees tight together. The red-rust jacket of her suit was nowhere in sight. Her black blouse was lacey and challengingly transparent for she wore nothing beneath. Her firm, young, pointed, pear-shaped breasts had nipples that stuck out like the spiteful tongues of spiteful children, but they made no effect as far as I could see upon the tense-faced Lieutenant Parker. Parker was on his feet, pacing, smoking a stogey, and keeping his eyes clear of the lace-poking nipples. Cobb Gilmore, golden vest and all, sat in a soft corner of a large couch, a goblet of brandy on a tender-legged table beside him.

  “Bring Mr. Chambers a drink,” said Gilmore to Miguel.

  “What?” said Miguel to me.

  “Scotch and water,” I said to Miguel.

  Miguel brought the drink and pattered away.

  “How did you make out with Mr. Donovan?” I said to Parker.

  “We are in accord,” said Parker.

  “I’m glad,” I said.

  “Right now,” said Parker, “I’m on the point of taking Miss Gilmore in.”

  “In where?” I said.

  “The pokey,” he said.

  “Miss Gilmore?” I said.

  “You bet your ass,” he said.

  “Now see here, Lieutenant,” said Gilmore.

  “Shut up,” said Parker. He went to the girl. “Let’s get this straight,” he said. “Up to today, you were Number One. We had everything, except motive. You were there in the apartment—”

  “I wasn’t there at your time of death!”

  “You were no place else that you can prove, my dear. We say you were there then, and you lingered there in some sort of state of shock. We found you there with the gun in your hand. We had all of the elements—opportunity, proximity, weapon in hand, gloves which you now say you have given to clean—but we let you go, didn’t we? You know why? Because we lacked one element. Motive. We did not have motive for a girl killing the man to whom she was engaged to be married. Now we have that motive. We have learned that the man was married. If you knew that, baby, you certainly had motive… .”

  “But you can’t prove she knew that,” said Gilmore.

  “I’m asking her to admit it. Now. For her own sake.”

  “Has she?” I said.

  “Shut up,” said Parker.

  “Has she?” I insisted.

  “She has nothing,” he said. “This is a sharp little girl. She’s been doing a boxing-match with me, sparring. We now have a motive, whether or not she admits it. We now h
ave all the elements.”

  “You do not,” said Gilmore. “Motive would presuppose her knowledge of the fact that he was married. I did not know he was married. You now say he was married. She denies any knowledge that he was married.”

  “Sorry, Dad,” said Parker. “You’re putting words in her mouth. She has neither denied nor affirmed. All she’s been doing is playing it cute. And just off the record, Pop, when you come down to visit her in the jail-house maybe you ought to bring her a brassiere.”

  “Why, you oaf!” said Gilmore.

  “Flattery will get you anywhere,” said Parker.

  “May I intercede?” I said.

  “Butt out,” said Parker.

  “I’m about to give you a motive,” I said.

  “Butt in,” said Parker.

  “She knew he was married.”

  “You’re a damned liar,” said Gilmore.

  “Sip your brandy and watch your heart,” I said. And to Parker I said, “Miss Gilmore was at my office this morning. She wanted me to recover a certain letter that Barry Miller had given her Monday night at Miss Sherry Greco’s party.”

  “The party where Clayton’s gun disappeared?”

  “That’s the party,” I said. “I asked Miss Gilmore about the contents of the letter. She told me to mind my business. She had a right to tell me to mind my business.”

  “Damn right,” said Gilmore.

  “Why don’t you start at the start?” said Parker.

  “As Mr. Gilmore could inform you—he once informed me—his daughter is a hard-headed little chick. She had popped her cork for Henry Martell but, I’m certain, she heard rumors about him, stuff like he was a no-good guy, stuff like that there.”

  “So?” said Parker.

  “So the hard-headed little chick retained Barry Miller because Barry Miller was close to Henry Martell.”

  “For what?” said Parker.

  “For dope on Martell, real dope that would make up her mind once and for all. If he were just a naughty guy—she’d manage. But if there was more… .”

  “Was there?” said Parker.

  “She gave Miller a small retaining fee of fifty bucks as a teaser. If he could really dig dirt for her, she promised him a thousand bucks. Well, he dug the dirt, man.”