Hard Case Crime: Blackmailer

by George Axelrod

  In fact, there was only one thing in the whole business that I was sure of.

  Before joining Pat to form Conrad, Sherman, Inc., I had worked as an editor at the large, successful publishing house which had, in the past, published Anstruther’s books. I had had the privilege of working on two Anstruther manuscripts. I knew the way he typed, I knew his handwriting, I knew the quality and weight of the yellow paper he generally used. I knew (and this was something few people did know) exactly which words he invariably misspelled. You would have to have worked on his original manuscripts to believe that Charles Anstruther, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, had gone to his grave under the impression that immediately was spelled with one m.

  What I was getting at is this: I was prepared to swear that the page Jean Dahl had showed me had actually been written by Charles Anstruther.

  This did not prove that she had the other three hundred and forty-six pages that would go to make up the rest of a novel. But the possibility did exist.

  It was certainly true that Anstruther had had time to write a new book. He had published nothing during the six years before his accident, and during that time he had periodically announced (from Cuba, from Paris, from Korea, from the dozens of places where he was always turning up) that he was at work on a new novel.

  However, his drinking, which had always been a problem, was so far out of hand during the last years of his life that no one was greatly surprised when no new manuscript was found among his effects.

  The end had been both tragic and a little foolish. Anstruther had accidentally shot himself while cleaning a hunting rifle. He had been, it was later revealed, in an advanced alcoholic stage at the time of the accident.

  I picked up the phone and told Miss Dennison to get me Max Shriber’s office at the Carlyle Hotel.

  The operator said that Mr. Shriber was out. She said she had no information as to when he would be back. I asked if there were any place where I could reach him. She said that he’d left no message.

  “Fine,” I said. “That’s helpful. That’s real helpful.”

  I hung up the phone. Then, for the third time, I started to call Pat. And for the third time I decided not to call.

  Chapter Two

  I was still sitting at my desk at one-thirty when Miss Dennison buzzed me to say that Lorraine Carstairs was outside. “In case you’ve forgotten,” she added spitefully, “you’re taking her to lunch.”

  “Oh, my God,” I said. I had forgotten. It is very easy for a man to forget that he’s taking Lorraine Carstairs to lunch. “Tell her I’ll be right out.”

  Lorraine Carstairs is the middle-aged alcoholic who is the author, or inventor, or whatever you call it, of the Triple-Cross-O-Gram. Triple-Cross-O-Grams are a combination crossword puzzle and twenty-question game. I have never been able to solve one. I have never desired to be able to solve one.

  But we had published six volumes of them and they had never sold less than forty thousand copies. The most recent volume had reached eighty thousand and would probably go on to one hundred.

  The first time Lorraine and I had had lunch together I had modestly suggested Schrafft’s. Lorraine had said a short, unprintable word and expressed a preference for Twenty One.

  At first I used to take a tablespoonful of olive oil before I went to lunch with her. But it didn’t work. It did no good whatever and only gave me a mildly sickish feeling for the rest of the day. Now I just drink lunch with Lorraine, and assume that the rest of the day will be a total loss.

  “See what you can do about getting us a table downstairs,” I told Miss Dennison. “I forgot all about it again.”

  Then I went out to meet Lorraine.

  None of this is very important or has very much to do with anything. What is important and does have to do with something is the fact that I was at Twenty One that day and saw Janis Whitney having lunch. With a friend.

  Lorraine had had five martinis before we got around to ordering food.

  Then she ordered a sixth drink and began to get a little noisy.

  I looked nervously around the room. People at neighboring tables were beginning to turn and stare at us. Two captains were hovering nearby, waiting.

  “You’re not paying attention to what I’m saying,” Lorraine said. “I can’t talk to people when they don’t look at me.”

  “I’m listening to you, Lorraine. I’m hearing everything you say.”

  Lorraine’s voice droned on in my ear. I looked surreptitiously around the room.

  When I first noticed her sitting at the table against the wall my only thought was, What a pretty girl. It took a second or two to realize who she was.

  “What are you staring at now, Dick?”

  “That girl—the dark-haired one in the corner—do you know who she is?”

  Lorraine did not know who she was. Nor did she care a damn.

  “That’s Janis Whitney,” I said. “You must have seen her in pictures.”

  Suddenly I was completely sober.

  She hadn’t changed much in ten years. She was more beautiful now, if anything. She was talking in a very animated way to a dark, heavyset man with thin black hair plastered to his bullet-shaped head.

  “I used to know her,” I said to Lorraine. “We used to be very good friends. Would you mind if I just went over to say hello?”

  Lorraine minded strenuously.

  I looked across the room again and saw that Janis Whitney and the dark-haired man were getting up to leave.

  “I just want to talk to her for a minute. Find out where she’s staying. Please excuse me. I’ll be right back.”

  I pushed my way past the crowd at the bar.

  Janis and the dark-haired man were in the doorway, and the doorman was signaling for a car.

  “Janis!” I called. “Janis Whitney!”

  She apparently didn’t hear me.

  A Cadillac limousine with a uniformed chauffeur pulled up and Janis and the dark-haired man got in.

  “Hey—wait a minute!”

  But I was too late.

  I looked foolishly after them as the car headed up Fifty-second Street toward Fifth Avenue.

  “That was Janis Whitney, wasn’t it?” I said to the doorman.

  He nodded.

  “Do you happen to know who was the man with her?”

  “He’s a big agent,” the doorman said. “Name’s Max Shriber.”

  I stood there in the sunlight blinking for a moment. A big agent—named Max Shriber!

  Then one of the captains touched my arm.

  “Mr. Sherman,” he said, in his discreet headwaiter’s voice. “The lady with you. I think perhaps she has had too much—to—ah—drink. She is beginning to create a disturbance. I wonder if you would...”

  “Oh, sure,” I said. “I’m sorry. I’ll take care of it immediately.”

  I went back in, paid the check, got my coat, and piloted Lorraine to the street. I got her into a cab and finally poured her, protesting all the while, aboard a train bound for Westport.

  Then I took a cab back to my apartment.

  I lay down on the bed with all my clothes on.

  The room spun a little when I lay down. I propped my head up with a folded pillow and after that it was all right.

  When I woke up again it was dark.

  I felt terrible.

  I tried to move but it didn’t seem possible.

  Six martinis and no lunch. I got up and went into the bathroom.

  When I came back out again I was weaker but feeling better.

  In a little while I had a glass of milk. It stayed down and I decided I might possibly live.

  I looked at my watch. It was after nine. It seemed a little late to call the office and tell them I wouldn’t be in. But Pat knew I had been lunching with Lorraine. So that was all right.

  I washed my face, combed my hair, made some coffee and sat in a comfortable chair sipping it slowly.

  I had been too sick to think about Janis Whitney before. But
now I was beginning to feel better.

  I had been the first man Janis knew when she came to New York. This is a delicate way of saying that I was the first man in Janis’ life.

  That was in 1940 and Janis was twenty-one. She’d had a season of summer stock at Provincetown and had come to New York that fall. She was living at one of those clubs for stagestruck girls on the upper west side.

  The thing we had in common was the theatre. The only difference was that Janis had talent. I had absolutely none. I had held two jobs, assistant stage manager for a successful Wiman show, and stage manager for a straight play that ran three nights.

  At the time I was laboring under the misapprehension that I was a writer. I had written a play.

  Janis and I were convinced that it would be produced and that she would play the female lead. After I met Janis I rewrote it to make the heroine twenty-one instead of thirty. And I made her a brunette instead of a blonde.

  Unfortunately it was not a very good play. I was suffering from a severe case of Philip Barry and the leading characters, Duncan and Phyllis (I think that’s what they were called—I had the good judgment to burn the only existing copy a few years ago) said things to each other like: “...fun, Dunc?” “Oh, very fun!”

  However, the play did have a number of very tender love scenes and we rehearsed these almost nightly in my apartment on Tenth Street.

  You did not have to be particularly astute to know that Janis Whitney was going to be a big star. She was a beautiful girl with soft, dark hair, greenish eyes and a wide exciting mouth. Her face was animated and she smiled easily. She knew instinctively how to dress and, most important of all, you could feel the impact of her personality when she entered a room.

  And of course she had the one other thing.

  The ambition.

  The driving, compelling ambition. I do not pretend to have psychiatric training. I have only a superficial knowledge of the inner drives and conflicts that shape peoples’ lives. But in Janis the need for success was stronger than in anyone I had ever met.

  And I know this: I was desperately in love with her. But at no time did it ever occur to me that we might possibly get married. We both accepted, without ever actually discussing it, that there was no place for marriage in Janis’ life.

  Janis was going to be a star.

  We both knew this. It was an accepted fact.

  After Janis left for California I lost interest in the theatre.

  I was twenty-five years old and had worked exactly six months during the three and a half years I’d been out of college.

  That was when a friend of my family got me a job in one of the larger publishing houses.

  I was surprisingly good at my work, and when I got out of the army I stepped into a fairly responsible editorial position. In 1950 I left to join Pat Conrad in establishing our own company.

  I really thought that I had forgotten Janis. But I hadn’t.

  I was sitting in the chair smoking a cigarette when the truth suddenly dawned on me. I was still in love with Janis Whitney and always had been.

  I got out the phone book and looked up the number of the Carlyle Hotel. I called Max Shriber’s office. Mr. Shriber was not in. The operator did not know where he could be reached.

  “Do you happen to know where I could reach a client of Mr. Shriber’s—Janis Whitney? She’s in from Hollywood.”

  The girl was sorry but she did not have that information.

  I hung up.

  I went into the kitchen and made myself a sandwich. I had some more coffee and another cigarette.

  I remembered once, when we were walking through the park, Janis had said, “When I’m a big star and I come to New York on a personal appearance tour, I’m going to stay at the Plaza.”

  We used to talk quite a lot about what we would do when she was a big star and I was a successful playwright.

  Just on a hunch I dialed the Plaza.

  “Is Miss Janis Whitney staying there?”

  It was a lousy hunch. Miss Whitney was not registered there.

  I was restless. I had nothing better to do. I called the Savoy Plaza. And the Sherry Netherland. And the St. Regis. And the Hampshire House.

  Then I began to feel a little ridiculous.

  But I was still restless.

  I was putting on a clean shirt to go out when the door buzzer sounded. Idiotically, I felt a shock of excitement.

  I pressed the buzzer and called, “Who is it?”

  A girl’s voice said, “Me.”

  I knew it couldn’t possibly be Janis. Still, I was listed in the phone book. If she’d wanted to find me it would have been easy enough.

  “Who is it?” I said again.

  Then I opened the door and saw Jean Dahl running up the flight of stairs from the ground floor.

  Chapter Three

  She was still wearing the same black dress and the beaver coat.

  She smiled a little. “Hello, baby,” she said. “I told you I’d get in touch with you.”

  “Come on in,” I said.

  She came into the living room, dropped her coat onto a chair, and walked straight to the couch. She sat down and took a cigarette out of her purse. I closed the door very gently behind me.

  “Do you have a match?”

  I lit her cigarette.

  “Well,” she said, “have you thought it over?” I hadn’t really thought about it at all. Janis Whitney had put everything else out of my mind.

  “I’m glad you came up,” I said. “I want to know more about this.”

  I was stalling, trying to get my mind back on the track again.

  She smiled. It was just a smile. It didn’t tell me anything.

  “What’s there to know? I have the only copy of a book Charles Anstruther wrote before he died. You publish books. I want to sell it. Now, are you going to offer me a drink?”

  I looked at her.

  She was very cool and very attractive. Suddenly I began to feel angry. “No,” I said, “I don’t think I am.”

  She raised her eyebrows inquiringly.

  “Not right this minute, I’m not.” I walked over to where she was sitting. “Not till I find out what this is all about. Fifteen minutes after you walked out of the office this morning, I had a note from a man named Max Shriber offering me a book he said Charles Anstruther wrote before he died. As far as anyone knows, Anstruther didn’t leave an unpublished book. What’s going on here? What kind of racket is this?”

  “Take it easy, baby,” Jean Dahl said.

  She stood up and very casually walked over to the bar. Very deliberately she poured about two inches of whisky into a glass. She reached into the ice bucket and filled the glass with ice. She stood by the bar for a moment casually swirling the ice and whisky around in her glass.

  “You’re a lousy host, baby,” she said. “I don’t think I like you.”

  She raised the glass. “Cheers,” she said and took a long sip.

  I walked over and stood very close to her.

  “I don’t think I like you either,” I said. “But I’m going to find out.”

  I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to do. But I was going to do something.

  I slapped the glass out of her hand. It broke against the bar and shards scattered over the floor.

  Then I took her by the shoulders and pulled her to me. She slid unresistingly into my arms. She lifted her head with her lips slightly parted. Her eyes were closed.

  I couldn’t decide whether to slap her or kiss her. I kissed her.

  The kiss must have lasted thirty seconds, and when we separated we were both breathing hard.

  She reached into my breast pocket and took out a handkerchief. She wiped my lips with it.

  “That’s better,” she said.

  “O.K.,” I said. “Now I’ll fix us both a drink.”

  I had my hand in the ice bucket when we heard the knock at the door.

  “What the hell?” I said.

  There had been no buzz
er from downstairs. Just a knock at my apartment door.

  I looked at Jean Dahl.

  She was standing very tensely, listening. The color had drained out of her face.

  “I’ll see who it is,” I said.

  “Don’t,” she said. “Please don’t open it.”

  “What are you talking about?” I said. I started for the door. “It’s probably the janitor or somebody...”

  I unlatched the door.

  There were two men standing there, blocking the door.

  A short one and a tall one. They were both heavyset, dark, nondescript-looking men. They both wore dark suits. And terrible neckties. Their faces were completely expressionless.

  “Yes?” I said. “What is it?”

  Neither of them spoke.

  The tall one put his hand on my chest and pushed very hard. I was off balance and fell backward.

  The two men came into the apartment and closed the door behind them.

  “What the hell is this?” I said.

  Jean Dahl had control of herself again. You would not have known that a moment before her eyes had been wide with panic.

  “So there’s going to be rough stuff,” she said. Her voice was very cool.

  “Where is it?” the short one said. “There doesn’t have to be any rough stuff, you know.”

  I picked up a whisky bottle from the bar and threw it at the tall one as hard as I could. It hit him on the shoulder, and bounced off onto the carpet. Oddly enough it did not break. He ignored it completely. I didn’t see the short one swing at me. All I knew was that I was on the floor and my mouth felt crushed.

  I picked myself up.

  The tall one was very casually putting the bottle back on the bar.

  “Sit quietly on the couch,” Shorty said.

  Jean Dahl and I sat quietly on the couch.

  The big one picked up her purse and dumped the contents on the coffee table.

  There was the usual junk. Lipstick, compact, cigarettes, keys, letters, Kleenex. There was one unusual item. A small automatic pistol.

  Very casually the little one poked around in the pile of junk. Without comment he put the gun in his pocket. He didn’t find anything that interested him in the pile. He nodded toward the tall one.