“You said she was scared.” I thought about Coffee. “Looks as if she knew what she was up against.”
Monks made some notes in a worn black memo book.
“Peg Temple—describe her.” I did. He grinned at the Miss America dimensions. “And this redheaded mystery lady—what was her name?”
“Evelyn Hart.” He made a face and put his book away. He stared at me for what seemed like ages. I misunderstood him.
“I’m not kidding, Mike. That’s not double talk. It’s the lady’s name. You must have heard of Hart dolls—”
“Sure, sure,” he interrupted me. “I know all about the richest woman in New York. But Ed—I think your head is bothering you more than you know.”
“I don’t get you, Mike.”
“I don’t get you either, pal.” He took a deep breath. “You couldn’t possibly have been with Evelyn Hart here tonight in the Calypso Room.”
“Why not?”
His smile was ghastly.
“Because Evelyn Hart was murdered this afternoon in her apartment on Riverside Drive. Shot three times through the head with a three fifty-seven Magnum. There wasn’t anything left of her head but the bones.”
“Ouch,” I said. I sat down on the leather couch again. All of a sudden, I was very, very tired.
NINE
I fought back a pounding sense of confusion and looked at Monks as sarcastically as he had looked at me.
“Three times in the head with a Magnum? Now that would be an awfully sensible way to make it look like Evelyn Hart when it really wasn’t.”
Monks wagged his bull head. “Way ahead of you. We’re real scientific these days, believe it or not. The corpse’s teeth tally with the record of Miss Hart’s dentist who happens to live in the same building.”
It didn’t make sense. If the real Evelyn Hart were dead, who was the redhead who had walked into my life earlier in the day? She certainly seemed like a rich redhead, acted like a rich redhead, but—It was no use. It was too soon to figure out any jigsaw puzzles. Besides not having all the pieces, my head hurt.
I tried a smile I didn’t feel on Monks. “What do we do now, Mike?”
He frowned. “What does that mean?”
“You locking me up? Holding me as a material witness? Or can I go home to my Monopoly set?”
He bit a fingernail. “If you’re okay for walking, let’s go out to the alley.”
“What’s so special about the alley? I’ve seen garbage before.”
He winced. He never had cared for my sense of humor. But he could come back in spite of it.
“You don’t have to wait for Christmas. I’ve got your surprise for you right now.”
I wobbled out of Voodoo’s dressing room with Monks leading the way. He hadn’t been kidding about his boys working up a sweat. We ran into about fifty cops, all of them plainclothesmen. Being with Monks paid off. Monks said nothing but everybody made room for us.
We didn’t go far. Just down a long corridor that led to the heart of the club. But before we reached the main area, Monks turned left through a side door. In seconds, we were out of the warm interior of the building and standing on a stairway that looked down into the alley that ran opposite the Calypso Room and paid off on East 59th Street.
The night was dark and chilly. A cold wind fanned across us. A single bulb above our heads threw off the only illumination in the world.
I blinked, adjusting my eyes to the gloom.
Monks grunted and lit a cigarette.
“Okay,” I said. “Here we are. Where’s my surprise?”
“Look down there,” Monks suggested in a funny voice.
I looked down into the alley below us, where he had jerked a sausage thumb in indication.
There were six dead bodies in the alley. Three men and three women. All in evening clothes.
It’s a funny feeling, like I say. I knew almost immediately that they weren’t real. Knew that it wasn’t murdered flesh and blood strewing the dirty ground of the alley. Knew that it was just six more mannequins, six more dummies—somebody’s clever idea of duplicating six other people.
But maybe that’s why it was so frightening. Maybe that’s why standing there on the top steps with the burly Captain of Homicide in the middle of New York in 1957, I felt funny all over. And scared. A giant chill clamped me with icy fingers. The back of my neck suddenly felt clammier than a corpse’s hand after two days. I shivered and laughed, my voice sounding hollow in the acoustics of the alley. The laugh seemed to be thrown back into my face.
Monks suddenly exploded. “Glad you think it’s funny, Ed. When it’s just about the screwiest thing I’ve ever run into.”
“Sure, it’s screwy,” I said. “But I’ll bet it’s screwy with a reason.”
Monks subsided and dug out his flashlight. “Come on. You’re missing the best part.” He bulled down the stairs purposefully and I followed.
He played his flash on each corpse. There in the alley, we were like a graves-registration team on Omaha Beach after all the shooting, walking through the dead and turning them over for dog tag identification. But somehow this was worse than that, because this was mockery, and completely weird.
Monks’s flashlight didn’t made me feel any better. The three men and the three women were no strangers. The only thing they had in common were the long knives sticking out of their backs. But I knew every one of them. Knew them by their faces, their clothes, their bodies.
The three men were Coffee, Benny—and me again. Coffee was the way I’d seen him, Benny was all aproned up like the bartender he was. The Ed Noon dummy was trench-coated as usual.
The three women were Voodoo, Peg Temple and the redhead who had said she was Evelyn Hart, the way I’d seen them. The way I’d remembered them. The Temple doll was dressed in the outfit she’d worn into Benny’s place, Evelyn Hart was in the beige outfit she’d had on in my office. The Voodoo doll was rigged up in her working clothes. The gay, nothing costume of loin cloth, bra and feathers.
It was absurd, ridiculous. And uncanny. A crazy, frightening devil’s trick of some kind. Warning bells started to ring inside my head. I felt myself slipping. I cursed.
Monks flicked the flashlight off. Darkness descended on the alley again. “Well?” his voice prodded at me. “You mentioned these people inside. I didn’t tell you about this because I’ve got no proof they exist.”
“Mike, there’s something working here—something crazy, all right, and I don’t know what it is.”
“I’ll say there is,” he growled. “But if this is just an elaborate joke of yours, I won’t sit still for it. One of those dummies is you. I recognize Benny. Coffee, too. You described a blonde and a, redhead, and from the sick look on your handsome kisser, I guess these two match. And the other one is the missing Voodoo. But for Christ’s sake—this is kid stuff, Ed!”
“Isn’t it?” I asked sarcastically, fighting to hang onto one sensible train of thought. But I couldn’t. Too much had happened too fast. And my head was still on fire. I started to say something, caught myself and bit my lips. There was nothing to say when your head was topsy-turvy.
Suddenly the door behind us and over our heads opened and new light spilled out into the alley. One of Monks’s men called to him. Monks turned and blinked up into the light questioningly.
The dick on the stairs coughed apologetically. “Sorry, Cap. But we found a body in the icebox in the kitchen. A man’s body. Better come take a look.” Monks swore and barreled past me up the stairs again. I followed.
We got to the kitchen in five seconds flat.
A dozen headquarters men were grouped around a body lying on the floor. The refrigerator behind them yawned open wide. I saw shelves, lights and an army of cold cuts, and a turkey as big as a steer.
But the corpse was the most important thing in the room. It was Benny.
TEN
Benny was dead. My Benny. The fat bartender with the heart of gold. The guy who always worried about me. The guy
whose bar had been a second home to me for seven years. And now he was all huddled up and indescribable. Jammed and twisted in the vast interior of a Frigidaire in the Calypso Club.
It was nuts. Nuttier than anything else in the world. And it was frightening. I’d left him only a couple of hours ago in his bar. Dry, fat and safe. He was still fat. But he wasn’t dry and safe any more.
“Know this guy?” A detective on my left was poking me in the ribs.
“Yeah, I know him,” I said. His name was Benny. He wasn’t married and he didn’t have any kids.
“What was he to you?” the detective’s voice droned in my ear.
“He ran the bar across the street from my office. His name was Benny Marinelli,” I heard myself say. He was sweeter than Christmas and the nicest bartender I’ve ever known.
The dick wouldn’t let up. “Ever see this knife before?”
I looked at the knife balanced against a handkerchief in somebody’s hand. It was long and ugly. Another machete. One half the blade was soaked with drying blood. Benny’s blood. It was red, like anybody else’s blood. I’m sorry, Benny.
“Let up, Henderson,” I heard Monks growl. “Leave Noon to me. Benny was like a brother to him.”
I didn’t hear the rest of it. My head was splitting, the chorus of voices muffling in my eardrums, the interior of the kitchen starting to swim. I leaned against a chopping block for support. The row upon row of shining cooking utensils dangling from the head board over the counter gleamed and winked at me like a million miniature moons. My eyes watered. My knees rubbered under me. Sorry, Benny. Sorry about the icebox. Sorry about everything.
“Grab him,” somebody shouted. Strong hands kept me from sliding to a sitting position.
“Hang on, Ed,” Monks rumbled.
“Here,” another voice followed up. Suddenly I could feel alcohol burning my mouth. It was strong. It was bitter. But it sent the blood running around in my body again. I straightened with an effort.
I never did know how much time we spent in that kitchen. I heard the door to the icebox bang shut and I got the terrible feeling that Benny was still inside. I started to yell and fight about that. People started pushing me, but I wouldn’t let them leave Benny in that cold, awful place. I brought my arms up swinging. Voices-rose up all around me like a Greek chorus. Arms pinned me from behind. But I cursed and yelled. And that was all I remembered.
I came to in my office a lifetime later. The room was bursting with fresh daylight. Sunbeams were washing through the dirty window picking up all the old glory of the floor and exposing it to the world. My eyes hurt when I blinked them open.
But the world around me was bright and familiar. I saw my clothes closet, the tiny sink, the four-drawer file, the battered old desk and the two deep leather chairs. My eyes roved. The mouse auditorium. The smallest office in the universe. Complete with run-down equipment and Marilyn Monroe calendar. It was wonderful being home again.
But something wasn’t right. I was undressed and lying on the couch by the window. I was between clean sheets and in pajamas. And I couldn’t remember how I got that way. It started to bother me but before I lost my mind altogether, I saw the white sheet of paper jutting from my pajama breast pocket.
I fumbled it open with slow, halting fingers. When I saw who it was from, my heart stopped jumping rope.
Ed,
Brought you home this morning. Gave you a sedative. Your head is worse than you thought. When you’re feeling better give me a call. We’ll do all we can about this case. Take a long rest and forget it.
Mike Monks.
Forget it, the man said. Forget the crazy things. Forget the redhead, forget Voodoo, forget Coffee. Those dolls with the knives sticking in them don’t mean a thing. Your stomach is fine and your head hurts a little but you’ll live. Forget that Peg Temple character and her advice. Better still, take her advice. Stay away from Voodoo and black magic. And above all, forget Benny.
Somebody’s just playing games. Murder games, sure, but the hell with it.
With a feeling that I might be three other guys, I got out of bed wearily and made myself some breakfast. After that, I shaved and dressed slowly and carefully. I holstered my .45. I tied my shoe laces methodically. The ritual of every Ed Noon morning. But I felt more like Alice in Wonderland. Everything was lopsided, off base and tilted. Nothing seemed ordinary any more. The time was out of joint.
But my watch told me it was ten minutes to three. And that meant twenty-one hours had passed since a bogus redhead named Evelyn Hart had twisted into my office on the heels of a weird telegram. Nineteen hours to turn the world upside down and kill Benny. Kill a giant bongo player named Coffee. Make an exotic dancer called Voodoo vanish. I was pretty nearly going nuts with the violent hammering upheaval in my think-box. I needed a drink.
I emptied half the bottle in the lower drawer of the desk before I put it away again.
And then the phone rang.
I must have expected it. Either that or my nerves were completely frayed. And jangled. I had the phone off the hook faster than Jackie Robinson ever stole second base.
“Noon,” I said. “Who’s calling?” All the bullfrogs in Michigan had settled in my throat.
A voice crackled at the other end of the wire. And the voice was slow. Very slow. Feminine and controlled. And all the voice said was:
“Listen very carefully and do not interrupt. Come to twelve-twelve Gettysburg Street. Apartment Seventeen. As soon as possible.”
She hung up on me before I could sputter, fume or make an argument. Twelve-twelve Gettysburg Street. Apartment Seventeen. She’d gotten what she wanted, whoever she was. I knew this address as well as I knew Lincoln’s.
I had no idea who the voice might be. It’s hard enough to recognize a female’s voice on the telephone even when you’ve heard it before. And I’d never talked to Evelyn Hart or Peg Temple on a phone.
But it was an opening, a lead. Something to do without sitting around the office twiddling my thoughts and losing my mind. I slipped my coat and hat on like a guy going to a fire or the pay off window at Yonkers Raceway.
I stepped through the office door, moving fast. Then I stopped. I knew more was coming. I hadn’t known just where or how.
A long knife was sticking in the wooden frame alongside the glazed glass that bore my name. A machete again. Somebody had an awful lot of them. This one was buried three inches in the frame. I pulled it out easily and separated it from the note tied to the handle with a piece of dirty brown string. Before I read the note, I tossed the long machete on the office floor.
Then I flipped the yellow sheet of paper open.
Everybody was writing letters these days. And sending telegrams. And sticking knives in things.
The letter was another lulu, first class.
Noon,
Man who bother Calypso Great
Wind up lying in six-foot crate.
Count Calypso
For some reason, it made me madder than scared this time. I cursed in two languages, French and Italian, and made for the elevator, heading for 1212 Gettysburg Street in a hurry.
ELEVEN
The Gettysburg address was a new one on me. It was a part of town I seldom got to visit. A tall tower just off Park Avenue with a swell view of Radio City and the U.N. Building. The doorman outside the joint looked as if he was used to seeing movie stars, saying hello to generals and putting rajahs into taxis. He definitely sniffed when I walked past him through the revolving glass doors in all my blue-serge glory.
I didn’t much care. I was feeling the hair of the dog that bit me. My head ached under my fedora, my stomach was queasy and all of me was a solid mass of tangled reflexes. My brain was in a turmoil. Apartment Seventeen was all I cared about—that and the owner of that slow, feminine voice.
The elevator was an air-conditioned masterpiece. Plush, lush and shrieking with modern design. The cables almost made chimes as the car rose soulfully to my destination. The uniformed eleva
tor operator, a handsome stripling with wavy black hair, was just as good a sniffer as the older doorman. Without even trying, they had both made me feel like a bum at a lawn party.
I exited from the car, let the doors close behind me and took a look around. The floor was vast and padded with knee-deep rugs. For a lousy little corridor between apartments, it was more like a suite in Buckingham Palace. I held back a grin, took a bearing with my pocket compass, and wandered around. It took me three doors and lots of walking to find Apartment Seventeen.
There was a neat white enamel button set into the wall. Underneath it was a neat white card. There was no name on the card. I fingered the buzzer and held it down. Behind the door, the buzzer sounded. But it didn’t buzz. It chimed in Calypso tempo, so help me.
I heard movement behind the door and took my finger off the button. Suddenly, a dark slot opened up in the wood at eye level. Eyes gleamed out at me for an instant. Then the slot vanished into the color of the door frame again. I heard bolts and a chain lock sliding out of their grooves. The door swung back.
My .45 was in my hand as soon as the slot vanished. But when I saw who had answered the door, I put my gun away.
She had looked terrific on the dance floor of the Calypso Room in next to nothing. She was even darker than she had been under the lights. She had more clothes on. But she was almost twice as stupifying, because she was scared and her eyes were rolling and her breasts were straining at the confines of a red evening gown.
It was Voodoo.
“Come in, come in,” she rattled in crisp, perfect English. “Don’t stand in the hall. A closed door is what we need.”
This wasn’t that telephone voice. Not slow. Now she was as urgent as a bitch in heat.
I nodded and moved into the darkened hallway. She closed the door behind us and locked it noisily. Then she hurried past me without even asking for my hat, and descended a short flight of steps into one of those living rooms you always see in Better Homes and Gardens but can’t afford. But I hadn’t come to admire furniture or the paintings of Van Gogh that decorated the walls. I skipped the plush surroundings and followed her. She thumbed a light switch and her living room came alive with color and perfect design. It was quite a layout—maybe half a million down and one million a year thereafter. Talk about lust for life!
The Voodoo Murders Page 5