Hard Case Crime: Blackmailer

by George Axelrod

  It all added up to nothing. Gossip.

  Nothing.

  I was on the point of making a fourth phone call when Miss Dennison buzzed me.

  I could tell by her voice that something terribly exciting had just happened.

  “Mr. Sherman,” she said, gasping a little, “there’s a lady to see you.”

  “Tell her to go away,” I said. “I can’t talk to authors’ wives today.”

  “This isn’t an author’s wife!” Miss Dennison said. “This is Janis Whitney.”

  I was genuinely startled.

  “Who?”

  “Janis Whitney.” Miss Dennison lowered her voice discreetly. “You know—the movie star.”

  “Oh,” I said. “That Janis Whitney. Tell her I’ll be right out.”

  I tried to be very calm. I was so cool and poised and collected that I knocked over my chair getting up. I picked up the chair, poured myself a drink, gulped it down, and, slowing myself down to a dignified walk, went out to the reception room.

  Janis smiled, stood up and raised her forehead to be kissed. I kissed it. Miss Dennison’s eyes bulged.

  “Dick, darling,” Janis said in her movie voice. “I hope you’re not too terribly busy.”

  “Busy?” I said. “How could I possibly be too busy?”

  “Grand,” Janis said. “Then you can take me to lunch.”

  “All right,” I said.

  I turned to Miss Dennison. “If anybody calls I’m having lunch at—” I turned to Janis. “Where will we eat?”

  “Twenty One?”

  I shook my head. I wanted to talk to Janis. I wanted very much to have a long talk with her. And it would be so noisy in Twenty One—when they were throwing Lorraine Carstairs and Pat out.

  “Voisin?” I said.

  “All right.”

  “We’ll be at Voisin,” I told Miss Dennison. Then I took Janis’ arm and steered her toward the elevators. We did not talk going down in the elevator. In the cab I lit our cigarettes and Janis said, “I’m so sorry about last night, Dick.”

  “That’s all right. I take it this is pretty much a business lunch?”

  Janis raised her eyebrows.

  “I assume you want to sell me the book Charles Anstruther finished before he died. Everybody else does.”

  “I’d like to have you publish it, Dick. It’s the least I can do. After all, we were pretty good friends once.”

  “You don’t have to do me any favors.”

  “Please, Dick.”

  We were quiet for a minute or two, then, suddenly, I reached over and took her hand. “Darling, what are you doing?” I said. “What are you getting mixed up in? Walter’s a crook. I don’t know anything about your friend Max, but he doesn’t sound like such good company for a little girl. What are you trying to prove? Why don’t you just make movies?”

  “I’m not mixed up in anything, Dick. I bought a piece of the Anstruther book on the advice of my manager. It’s a sound investment and it works out very well tax-wise. What makes you think I’m mixed up in anything?”

  We got out of the cab at the corner of Park.

  “We both know a girl was killed at Walter’s last night,” I said as we crossed the street. “Something’s going on. And it has something to do with the book.”

  “I don’t know, Dick,” Janis said. “Sometimes I don’t know.”

  At Voisin we were rushed to a table.

  We ordered drinks, and sat in silence until the waiter returned. Then I said, “Tell me about Max. It’s very important, darling.”

  “What about him?”

  “Don’t fence with me, Janis. Who is he? Where did he come from? Was he really a gangster? How does he happen to be your manager or agent or whatever he is? And how come you’re going to marry him?”

  “I’m going to marry him because I love him,” Janis said. “He’s my manager and agent because he was the only person in Hollywood who believed in me. You can’t possibly know what he did for me. Got me parts. Loaned me money. Introduced me to important people. I get sixty thousand dollars a picture now, darling. And Max did it. He did it all.”

  “You’re out of your mind,” I said. “You did it. You’re beautiful and talented. You’d be making whatever it is you make a picture without him.”

  I was interrupted by the captain, who appeared with a telephone which he plugged in at the table.

  “Excuse me, darling,” Janis said.

  I could hear the voice at the other end. It was a harsh, guttural, nasty voice. It was the same voice that had called me on the phone the night before.

  They talked for a moment and then Janis laughed at something he said.

  I felt sick.

  I stood up, reached into my pocket for my wallet. All I had were two singles and two twenty-dollar bills. I dropped one of the twenties on the table.

  “The hell with it,” I said. “I’m not interested now.”

  “Excuse me,” Janis said into the phone. “I’ll talk to you later.” She replaced the receiver. “What’s the matter, Dick?”

  “The hell with it,” I said. “Tell Walter and Max they can take their big deal somewhere else. I’m not interested. And all of a sudden I don’t feel like having lunch.”

  I started out of the restaurant.

  Janis followed me. In the lobby she caught my arm.

  “Wait a minute, Dick.”

  The doorman approached. “Miss Whitney, Mr. Shriber sent his car. It’s waiting for you.”

  “Good,” I said. “At least you won’t have to walk home.”

  Janis was a step or two behind me when we reached the sidewalk.

  There was a black Cadillac parked by the curb. The chauffeur was standing next to it. He saw us and began moving toward us.

  It must have been the uniform because it took me a second or two to recognize him.

  He recognized me an instant after I recognized him. But that instant was enough. He wasn’t ready when I hit him.

  I’m no fighter. The punch was wild, and from the floor. If he had been expecting it, he could have blocked it easily. But he hadn’t been expecting it.

  I’d aimed for his chin, but I caught him a little lower, in the side of his neck.

  He staggered and I caught him again, this time in the stomach. Then I kicked him in the shin as hard as I could. When he bent over I hit him on the back of the neck with the side of my hand, and brought my knee up into his face.

  I could see the doorman and a couple of waiters moving in. I didn’t stay around to find out what happened next.

  A second later I was moving fast up Park Avenue toward the hack stand. There was a cab with a driver inside reading a newspaper.

  “Uptown, baby,” I said, “and step on it.”

  I didn’t look back. Not even out of the back window after the cab started.

  I was suddenly aware that my right hand hurt. But I didn’t care. I felt wonderful. A kind of wild, crazy exultation.

  “Where did you want to go, Mister?”

  A few minutes before I had told Janis I was through with the whole thing. Now I was back in it again.

  I gave the driver Walter Heinemann’s address.

  A lot of things seemed to fit together. I didn’t know exactly how. But I was going to find out.

  And it had certainly been interesting to discover that the big thug who had helped wreck my apartment was also Max Shriber’s chauffeur.

  Chapter Nine

  The butler who opened the door conducted me up in the elevator to Walter’s sitting room. Walter was lunching from a tray. A modest little lunch: eggs Benedict and champagne. He looked up with a bland smile as I closed the door behind me.

  “Richard,” he said, “I hardly dared to hope that I would hear from you so quickly.”

  Slowly, carefully, making sure that it would not get stuck the way it had the night before, I reached into my pocket and withdrew Jean Dahl’s gun.

  I got it out and pointed it in the general direction of Walter’s
abdomen.

  “Walter,” I said in a friendly conversational tone, “I’m going to shoot you in the belly.”

  “Richard!” he said coldly. “What is this? What did you say?”

  “Come on, Edison the Boy,” I said. “Turn on your recording machine. Play it back for yourself. I said, quote, ‘Walter, I’m going to shoot you in the belly.’ Unquote.”

  “Richard,” Walter said, “have you gone mad? Put away that gun.”

  “I’ve had enough of this, Walter,” I said. “I’m going to do something desperate. I already did something desperate. I just beat up one of the men who wrecked my apartment. And guess who he turned out to be? Your friend Max’s chauffeur. Isn’t that interesting?”

  Behind me, I heard the door quietly opening.

  “Oh, Jimmie,” Walter said. “Come in.”

  “Oh, Jimmie,” I said, without turning around, “beat it.”

  “Jimmie,” Walter said, “would you be kind enough to take away my luncheon tray? I’m finished. You may leave the champagne, however.”

  Jimmie began to make small, nervous sounds.

  “Oh, it’s quite all right,” Walter said. “Take the tray and go. Richard is a wild one, but perfectly harmless. Run along now, like a dear boy. I’ll ring you if I should need anything.”

  Jimmie picked up the tray and left.

  I heard the door close again.

  I brandished the revolver wildly under his nose. “I’m going to find out who killed Jean Dahl. And I’m going to find out why she was killed and I’m going to find out right now. Personally, I think your friend Maxie did it.”

  “I refuse even to discuss the matter with you until you put down that gun. As you obviously know nothing whatever about the use of firearms, you are quite likely, in your present hysterical condition, to pull the trigger accidentally.”

  He was, of course, absolutely right.

  I lowered the gun.

  “That’s better,” Walter said. “Now then, if you are prepared to continue this discussion in a reasonable fashion, I will tell you this much. Your surmise, however wild, was shared by someone else. An hour or two before her untimely demise, Jean Dahl was under the impression that Max Shriber was planning to murder her.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “She told me,” Walter said simply.

  I exploded. I roared, “She told you! First you said you didn’t even know her. You told me you didn’t know who she was, and had never seen her before in your life. Damn it, Walter, if you don’t stop lying to me I’m going to kill you right now.”

  Walter giggled.

  Very deliberately he took a cigarette from the box, tapped it and finally lighted it. “Well,” he said finally. “Since we are going to be partners, Richard, I suppose we might as well know the worst about each other.”

  “Tell me the worst about you, Walter.” I stared at him coldly.

  Walter sighed. “If my sordid confessions are distasteful to you,” he said, “I ask you to remember that you brought them on yourself.”

  I did not say anything. I continued to stare.

  “As you may have suspected,” Walter said, “I neither maintain this lavish establishment nor give my extravagant parties solely out of a desire to bring pleasure and entertainment to my fellow man. I find that by running what might in another day have been called a salon, I am in a position to discover a great deal about what goes on in the world. In short, my guests supply me with inside information, and I in turn supply them with entertainment.

  “I provide my guests with food, drink, and stimulating, intellectual companionship. With certain guests, it is sometimes necessary that I provide other kinds of companionship. Therefore it is sometimes necessary to have on tap a number of professional companions. Let us say Jean Dahl was a professional companion. Of the one-hundred-dollars-a-night variety.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “Let me get this straight.”

  “Now really, Richard, I don’t know how I can make it more plain. Jean Dahl was a call girl whom I frequently hired for the entertainment of one of my more special guests. As I was the source of a substantial portion of her income, she quite naturally regarded me as her benefactor. You may not believe this, but I thought of that girl as my daughter. Nevertheless, when she suggested that poor Max wanted to murder her, I could hardly credit such a thing. Poor Max wouldn’t harm a fly.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “What made her think Max Shriber wanted to murder her? What motive could he have had?”

  Walter looked thoughtful. “Well, for one thing,” he said, “she was blackmailing him.”

  I walked slowly across the room to the bar and mixed myself a drink. “Jean Dahl was blackmailing Max Shriber?” I said. “How? With what?”

  “It is a long, rather unpleasant story,” Walter said. “It goes back to poor Charles Anstruther’s accident. As you know, the poor soul blew his brains out with a gun. He was absolutely stinking at the time, of course.”

  “So,” I said. “What does that have to do with Jean Dahl?”

  “The night of the accident,” Walter said, “Anstruther was not alone. He had a young lady in his hotel room. Jean Dahl.”

  My head was beginning to spin.

  “You must try to see the whole picture,” Walter said. “If you want to understand this you must take the broad view. As I have told you, a small corporation with myself at the head had just purchased outright all title to Anstruther’s new book. Anstruther had been given a check for one hundred thousand dollars as payment in full.”

  I was trying desperately to follow Walter’s story, but something jarred in my mind. “Wait a minute,” I said. “I thought you said you paid one hundred fifty thousand dollars. I thought you said the three of you each put up fifty thousand.”

  Walter looked annoyed for a moment. “Anstruther was, in effect, paid one hundred fifty thousand dollars. It happens that my fifty thousand dollars was paid not in cash but in services.”

  I laughed out loud.

  “You mean you were getting a free ride,” I said. “Let me guess. Your two partners thought you were putting up an equal share of cash.” I could suddenly see this part of it clearly. “Let me ask you something, Walter. Did Anstruther know you told Max and Janis the price was one hundred fifty thousand? Or did you tell him that the three of you together were putting up one hundred thousand?”

  “You have the mind of a certified public accountant,” Walter said in injured tones.

  “O.K., Walter,” I said, “continue with the broad view. You were double crossing your partners and you were double crossing Anstruther. You told him you could only get one hundred thousand dollars for his book, and you told your partners they would have to pay one hundred fifty thousand. So Janis and Max between them put up one hundred thousand dollars—what they believed was their share—but what was really the whole price. So you were getting a third interest free. O.K. Go on. You gave Anstruther a check for one hundred thousand dollars. And he gave you the book?”

  “Not so fast, Richard. Anstruther was a neurotic man with an ugly suspicious side to his nature. He refused to deliver the book to us till the check had cleared and he had the cash.”

  “That was very wise of him,” I said.

  “And the afternoon the check cleared, Anstruther disappeared with the one hundred thousand dollars in his pocket. He was found by the police three days later with a bullet through his head. The one hundred thousand dollars had vanished and, worst of all, we discovered that we had been duped by this unscrupulous man. There was no new book.”

  I laughed. I laughed uproariously. I laughed till the tears ran down my face. “So he conned you,” I said. “So the three sharp crooks get taken. So he sold you the rights to nothing for one hundred thousand dollars and managed to spend it all before you found him. I think that’s wonderful.”

  “It is not nearly so amusing as you imagine,” Walter said.

  “So that’s why nobody can see the new book,”
I said. “Because there isn’t any new book.”

  Walter smiled. “Now, now, Richard, don’t be naive. Do you seriously imagine that we would allow an investment like that to go up in smoke? You must try to grasp for a moment the basic laws of supply and demand. People everywhere are clamoring for a new novel by Charles Anstruther. Motion picture companies are bidding. Magazines are begging for the rights to serialize. We should be very poor businessmen indeed if we did not at least try to meet that demand.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I ask you to examine the situation. Had we been able to perform a miracle and produce a new Anstruther novel it would be worth, conservatively, including motion pictures, book clubs, magazines, reprints, foreign rights, et cetera, a million dollars. Perhaps a good deal more. Naturally, there was only one course open to us. We performed a miracle.”

  “You what?”

  “We produced a new Anstruther.”

  I had no idea what he was talking about. “What do you mean you produced a new Anstruther?” I said stupidly.

  “My dear boy,” Walter said, “it was not hard at all. Anstruther’s style was widely imitated. It is, when you come right down to it, a matter of using short sentences and having your characters speak tersely about death and the exotic scenery. Oh, it takes a definite talent. It requires a complete understanding of the master’s style and the invention of a story which will appeal to the movies. But then, as I told you before, Jimmie is a very talented boy.”

  “You mean to tell me that Jimmie wrote the new Anstruther?”

  “With my assistance,” Walter said smugly. “With my assistance. Of course he had at his disposal three of Anstruther’s unpublished short stories, which he cleverly interpolated into the text. We had Charles’ notebooks, and then, of course, there were his published works. He cribbed discreetly, here and there, from his earlier books. After all, it is not uncommon for an author to steal from himself. Particularly an author whose powers were generally conceded to be on the wane. And, I must not let false modesty creep in. Jimmie had the benefit of my editorial genius. My ear is flawless. I was able to detect and remove a number of details—words, observations—which might conceivably have given us away. In the end, we produced a perfectly acceptable minor work with a story eminently suitable for the films. If it were possible I do believe we could go on producing spurious Anstruthers for years to come. It is a craft. We could hand it on from father to son.”