Killer's Payoff

by McBain, Ed

  “What kind of cheesecake is that?”

  “It’s got to have a story with it. A beautiful doll ain’t enough for Kramer. He needs a story, too. He thinks this way he fools his readers into thinking they ain’t looking at a beautiful doll, they’re reading maybe War and Peace, instead. Man, what a comedown this Lucy Mitchell was today. Why’s she wearing that old circus tent? Is she afraid somebody’s gonna whistle at her?”

  “Maybe she is,” Hawes said thoughtfully.

  “In the old days…” Blier paused, lost in his reminiscence. Then, very softly, almost reverently, he said, “Mister.”

  7.

  THE MAGAZINE HAD A very virile name.

  It occurred to Hawes as he stepped into the office that there was not a single virile word in the dictionary that had not been affixed to the front cover of some men’s magazine. He wondered when they would begin choosing titles like:

  COWARD, the magazine for you and me.

  SLOB, for men who don’t care.

  HE-HE, the magazine of togetherness.

  He smiled and entered the reception room. The room was lined with oil paintings of bare-chested men doing various dangerous things, paintings that had undoubtedly been used for magazine covers and then framed and hung. There was a painting of a bare-chested man fighting a shark with a homemade dirk; another of a bare-chested man loading the breech of a cannon; another of a bare-chested man scalping an Indian; another of a bare-chested man in a whip duel with another bare-chested man.

  A girl who was almost bare-chested sat behind a desk tucked into one corner of the reception room. Hawes almost fell in love with her, but he controlled himself admirably. The girl looked up from her typing as he approached the desk.

  “I’d like to see Dean Kramer,” he said. “Police business.” He flashed the tin. The girl looked at the shield uninterestedly, and then lazily buzzed Kramer. Hawes was glad he had not fallen in love with her.

  “You can go right in, sir. Room Ten in the middle of the hall.”

  “Thank you,” Hawes said. He opened the door leading to the inner offices and started down the hall. The corridor was lined with photographs of old guns, sports cars, and girls in bathing suits—staple items without which any men’s magazine would fold instantly. Every men’s magazine editor instinctively knew that every man in America was interested in old guns, sports cars, and girls in bathing suits. Hardly an afternoon went by on patios across the nation when men did not discuss old guns, or sports cars, or girls in bathing suits. Hawes could understand the girls. But the only gun in which he was interested was the one tucked into his shoulder holster. And his concern for the automotive industry centered in the old Ford that took him to work every day.

  There was no door on Room Ten. Neither were there true walls to the office. There were, instead, shoulder-high partitions that divided one office from the next. A wide opening in the partition which served as the front wall formed the entrance to the office. Hawes knocked gently on the partition, to the right of the opening. A man inside turned in a swivel chair to face Hawes.

  “Mr. Kramer?”

  “Yes?”

  “Detective Hawes.”

  “Come in, please,” Kramer said. He was an intense little man with bright brown eyes and a sweeping nose. His hair was black and unruly, and he sported a thick black mustache under his nose. The mustache, Hawes figured, had been grown in an attempt to add years to the face. It succeeded only partially; Kramer looked no older than twenty-five. “Sit down, sit down,” he said.

  Hawes sat in a chair next to his desk. The desk was covered with illustrations for stories, pin-up photos, literary agents’ submissions in the variously colored folders that identified their agencies.

  Kramer caught Hawes’s glance. “A magazine office,” he said. “They’re all the same. Only the product is different.”

  Hawes speculated for a moment on the differences between the various products. He remained silent.

  “At least,” Kramer said, “we try to make our book a little different. It has to be different, or it’ll get nosed right off the stands.”

  “I see,” Hawes said.

  “What can I do for you, Mr. Hawes? You’re not from the postal authorities, are you?”

  “No.”

  “We had a little trouble with one issue we sent through the mails. We thought our permission to mail the book would be lifted. Thank God, it wasn’t. And thank God, you’re not from the Post Office.”

  “I’m from the city police,” Hawes said.

  “What can I do for you, Mr. Hawes?”

  “Did a woman named Lucy Mitchell come to see you today?”

  Kramer looked surprised. “Why, yes. Yes, she did. How did—?”

  “What did she want?”

  “She thought I might have some pictures belonging to her. I assured her I did not. She also thought I was related to someone she knew.”

  “Sy Kramer?”

  “Yes, that was the name.”

  “Are you related?”

  “No.”

  “Have you ever seen these pictures of Lucy Mitchell?”

  “I see cheesecake all day long, Mr. Hawes. I couldn’t know Lucy Mitchell from Margaret Mitchell.” He paused, frowned momentarily, and then said, “‘Scarlett O’Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were.’”

  “What?” Hawes asked.

  “The first line of Gone with the Wind. It’s a hobby of mine. I memorize the opening lines of important novels. The opening line of a book is perhaps the most important line in the book. Did you know that?”

  “No, I didn’t know that.”

  “Sure,” Kramer said. “That’s a theory of mine. You’d be surprised how much authors pack into that first line. It’s a very important line.”

  “About those pictures…” Hawes said.

  “ ‘Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stair-head, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed,’” Kramer said. “Do you know what that is?”

  “No, what is it?”

  “Ulysses,” Kramer said. “James Joyce. It’s an example of the naming-the-character school of opening lines. Here’s one for you.” He paused and got it straight in his mind. “‘It was Wang Lung’s wedding day.’”

  “The Good Earth,” Hawes said.

  “Yes,” Kramer answered, surprised. “How about this one?” Again he thought for a moment. Then he quoted, “ ‘Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.’”

  Hawes was silent.

  “It’s an old one,” Kramer said.

  Hawes was still silent.

  “David Copperfield,” Kramer said.

  “Oh, sure,” Hawes answered.

  “I know thousands of them,” Kramer said enthusiastically. “I can reel them—”

  “What about those pictures of Lucy Mitchell?”

  “What about them?”

  “Did she say why she wanted them?”

  “She said only that she was sure someone had them. She thought that person might be me. I told her I was not the least bit interested in her or her pictures. In short, Mr. Hawes, I played Taps for her.” Kramer’s face grew brighter. “Here’s a dozy,” he said. “Listen.”

  “I’d rather—”

  “ ldquo‘When he finished packing, he walked out on to the third-floor porch of the barracks brushing the dust from his hands, a very neat and deceptively slim young man in the summer khakis that were still early morning fresh.’” Kramer beamed. “Know it?”

  “No.”

  “From Here to Eternity. Jones packs a hell of a lot into that first line. He tells you it’s summer, he tells you it’s morning, he tells you you’re on an Army post with a soldier who is obviously leaving for someplace, and he gives you a thumbnail description of his hero. That’s a good opening line.”

  “Can we get back to Lucy Mitchell?” Hawe
s said impatiently.

  “Certainly,” Kramer said, his enthusiasm unabated.

  “What did she say about Sy Kramer?”

  “She said he had once had the pictures, but she was now certain someone else had them.”

  “Did she say why she was certain?”

  “No.”

  “And you’ve never seen these pictures?”

  “Mr. Hawes, I veritably cut my way through a cheesecake jungle every day of th—” Kramer stopped, and his eyes lighted with inner fire. “Here’s one!” he said. “Here’s one I really enjoy.”

  “Mr. Kramer…” Hawes tried, but Kramer was already gathering steam.

  “The building presented a not unpleasant architectural scheme, the banks of wide windows reflecting golden sunlight, the browned weathered brick façade, the ivy clinging to the brick and framing the windows.”

  “Mr. Kramer…”

  “That’s from The Bl—”

  “Mr. Kramer!”

  “Sir?” Kramer said.

  “Is there anything else you can tell me about Lucy Mitchell?”

  “No,” Kramer said, seemingly a little miffed.

  “Or Sy Kramer?”

  “No.”

  “But she did seem certain that someone else now had those pictures?”

  “Yes, she did.”

  “Had you ever met her before today?”

  “Never.”

  “Okay,” Hawes said. “Thank you very much, Mr. Kramer.”

  “Not at all,” Kramer said. He shook hands with Hawes, and Hawes rose. “Come again,” Kramer said.

  And then, as Hawes went through the opening in the partition, Kramer began quoting, “‘Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. It seemed to me I stood by the iron gate…’”

  IT SEEMED TO HAWES that several things were obvious at this stage of the investigation.

  To begin with, there was no doubt—and there had never been any—that Sy Kramer had been extorting five hundred dollars a month from Lucy Mencken. It was obvious, too, that Kramer extorted the money on the threat of releasing the cheesecake photos that had somehow come into his possession. Lucy Mencken had stated that her husband was a politician who would be running for the state senate in November. In the hands of the opposing party, or even in the hands of a newspaper campaigning against Charles Mencken, the photos could be used with deadly results. It was understandable why Lucy Mencken wanted to suppress them. She had come a long way from the farm girl who’d taken off her clothes for Jason Poole the photographer. Somewhere along the line, she’d married Charles Mencken, acquired an exurban estate, and become the mother of two children. Those pictures could threaten her husband’s senatorial chances and—if he, too, did not know about them—could even threaten the smooth fabric of her everyday existence.

  There were thirty-six pictures, Patrick Blier had said.

  The $500 payment came every month, as did the $300 payment from Edward Schlesser, and the $1,100 payment from a person or persons unknown. Whenever Schlesser had delivered his check, Kramer had in turn sent back another photostated copy of the letter. Schlesser had hoped the photostated copies would eventually run out. Perhaps he had not realized that it was possible to make a photostat of a photostat and that Kramer could conceivably have milked him for the rest of his life. Or perhaps he did realize it, and simply didn’t give a damn. According to what he’d said, he considered the extortion a bona fide business expense, like advertising.

  But assuming that Kramer had followed a similar modus operandi with Lucy Mencken, could he not have mailed her a photo and negative each time he received her $500 check? Thirty-six negatives and prints at $500 a throw amounted to $18,000. It was conceivable that Kramer had hit upon this easy payment plan simply because $18,000 in one bite was pretty huge for the average person to swallow. Especially if that person is trying to keep something secret. You don’t just draw $18,000 from the bank and say you bought a few new dresses last week.

  Then, too—in keeping with Kramer’s M.O.—could he not have been planning on a lifetime income? In the same way that he could have had a limitless number of copies of the letter to Schlesser, could he not also have had a limitless number of glossy prints—all capable of being reproduced in a newspaper—of the Mencken photos? And could he not, when the last negative was delivered, then say he had prints to sell at such and such a price per print?

  Had Lucy Mencken realized this?

  Had she killed Sy Kramer?

  Perhaps.

  And now there was a new aspect to the case. Lucy Mencken was certain that someone else had come into possession of the photos. She had undoubtedly learned this during the past few days, and the first thing she’d done was to visit Blier and then Kramer, the magazine editor. Did someone now hold those photos, and had this someone contacted Lucy in an attempt to pick up the extortion where it had ended with Sy Kramer’s death? And who was this someone?

  And—if Lucy had caused the death of Sy Kramer—could not this new extortionist provoke a second murder?

  Hawes nodded reflectively.

  It seemed like the time to put a tap on Lucy Mencken’s phone.

  THE MAN FROM THE telephone company was colored. He showed telephone-company credentials to Lucy Mencken when she opened the door for him. He told her they’d been having some trouble with her line and he might have to make minor repairs.

  The man’s name was Arthur Brown, and he was a detective attached to the 87th Squad.

  He put bugs on the three telephones in the house, carrying his lines across the back of the Mencken property, where they crossed the road and fed into a recorder in a supposed telephone-company shack on the other side of the road. The machine would begin recording automatically whenever any of the phones was lifted from its cradle. The machine would record incoming calls and outgoing calls indiscriminately. Calls to the butcher, calls from relatives and friends, angry calls, personal calls—all would be recorded faithfully and later listened to in the squadroom. None of the recorded information would be admissible as court evidence.

  But some of it might lead to the person or persons who were threatening Lucy Mencken anew.

  8.

  WHEN MARIO TORR stopped by at the squadroom, Bert Kling was on the phone talking to his fiancée. Torr waited outside the railing until Kling was finished talking. He looked at Kling expectantly, and Kling motioned him to enter. As before, Torr was dressed in immaculate mediocrity. He went to the chair beside Kling’s desk and sat in it, carefully preserving the crease in his trousers.

  “I just thought I’d stop by to see how things were going along,” he said.

  “Things are going along fine,” Kling said.

  “Any leads?”

  “A few.”

  “Good,” Torr said. “Sy was my friend. I’d like to see justice done. Do you still think this was a gang rumble?”

  “We’re working on a few possibilities,” Kling said.

  “Good,” Torr answered.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you’d taken a fall, Torr?”

  “Huh?”

  “One-to-two at Castleview for extortion. You did a year’s time and were paroled. How about it, Torr?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Torr said. “It must’ve slipped my mind.”

  “Sure.”

  “I’m straight now,” Torr said. “I got a good job, been at it since I got out.”

  “Sand’s Spit, right?”

  “Right. I’m a laborer. I make about ninety bucks a week. That’s pretty good money.”

  “I’m glad,” Kling said.

  “Sure. There’s no percentage in crime.”

  “Or in bad associates,” Kling said.

  “Huh?”

  “A man going straight shouldn’t have had a friend like Sy Kramer.”

  “That was strictly social. Look, I believe a guy’s business is his own business. I don’t like to mess. He never talked about his business, and I never talked about mine.”

  “But you figured he wa
s working something, right?”

  “Well, he always dressed nice and drove a fancy car. Sure, I figured he was working something.”

  “Did you ever meet his floozy?”

  “Nancy O’Hara? Mr. Kling, that ain’t a floozy. If you ever met her, you wouldn’t call her no floozy. Far from it.”

  “Then you did meet her?”