So Nude, So Dead

by Ed McBain

  He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a handkerchief. Quickly, he wiped his face, watching the white handkerchief turn black. With sudden clarity, he realized that his hair was probably half blond and half black now. That was great! All he needed was more attention than he was already getting.

  He ran the handkerchief over his head until the cloth was completely black. He noticed the upturned cover of a garbage can, full of water. He stepped down, cupped his hands, shoveled water from the lid to his hair. His hands ran black, and he kept scooping water until the blackness turned milky gray, and then vanished completely. He took his tie from his pocket, wet the edge, and daubed at his eyebrows.

  Standing up again, the knees of his trousers muddy and wet, he walked out of the alley and onto the main street again. He paused in front of the first store window he came to. Even in the semidarkness, he could see that his hair was blond again.

  Ray shrugged. Was that good or bad? he wondered.

  The knife twisted into his gut again, and he stopped wondering about everything. Overhead, the thunder had become muted, the lightning flashes spasmodic and halfhearted.

  The street was covered with shining puddles of water now, and the light shimmered in them. The only sound was the sullen drip of a drainpipe.

  Ray was tired, but he knew he wouldn’t sleep that night.

  He dug his hands deep into his pockets, and started walking again….

  At five-thirty, he stole a newspaper from a stack lying bundled in front of a candy store.

  His picture was no longer on the front page. In its place were the words: KRAMER’S DRUMMER SLAIN. Rapidly, he turned to page four. The police were just speculating, of course, but they believed this new development to be linked with the earlier death of Eileen Chalmers. There was a rehash of the first murder, and a new description of Ray, correcting the previous description of his hair coloring. Good old Dale Kramer, Ray thought. There wasn’t much else, except the address of Peter Chalmers, Eileen’s father, who refused to comment on either slaying.

  Ray stared at the address for a long time.

  Then he threw the newspaper into the gutter.

  * * *

  The house was on East 217th Street in the Bronx. It rose like a tall, stucco crackerbox, its many windows reflecting the orange light of the dawn. Ray stood across the street, leaning against the iron fence surrounding the junior high school. It was a quiet street, none of the houses higher than three stories. Large shade trees crowded the sidewalks, giving the street the appearance of a shaded lane somewhere in the country.

  A large brown-and-white dog trotted by on the other side of the street, glanced briefly at Ray, and then continued its solitary stroll. From one of the houses, Ray heard the strident shriek of an alarm clock, followed immediately by a low grumbling.

  Another alarm clock burst into clamoring life, and Ray smiled. He fished a crumpled package from his pocket, dug into it for his one remaining cigarette. The cigarette was brown, stained from the drenching he’d received during the night, and he had to strike five soggy matches before he got one to light.

  He had finished the cigarette and was grinding it out under his heel when he saw the man start down the driveway alongside the stucco house.

  The man was tall, and he held his shoulders erect as he hurried down the rutted driveway. Ray pushed himself off the iron fence and crossed the street. The man carried a small green lunch pail, and he wore overalls.

  As he neared the sidewalk, he saw Ray crossing the street.

  Ray raised his head, ran up onto the sidewalk. “Mr. Chalmers?” he asked.

  The shoulders pulled back a fraction of an inch, and the posture grew more erect. White brows pulled together into a defiant frown. The man’s lips were tight when he answered.

  “Yes?” His eyes were deep brown, so brown against the white of his brows that they looked black.

  “I wonder if I can ask you a few questions, Mr. Chalmers?”

  Chalmers studied Ray’s face. “You’re the addict,” he said softly.

  The words startled Ray. He wanted to turn and run, but his feet were glued to the pavement. “Yes,” he answered.

  “Did you kill her?” Chalmers’s voice was steady.

  “No.”

  Chalmers blinked, the lids closing rapidly over his eyes, then snapping upward to reveal the intense brown again.

  “You should have.” He turned his back on Ray, and his head high, started walking toward a ’41 Oldsmobile parking at the curb.

  “Mr. Chalmers. Wait—”

  Chalmers leaned over, put a key into the door of the car. “Do you know who killed her?” he asked.

  “No. That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

  Chalmers nodded, pulled open the car door. “I don’t feel a damn bit sorry for her,” he said, his mouth still tight. “But whoever did it should pay.”

  “If you can just answer a few questions,” Ray said.

  Chalmers reached into his jacket pocket, extracted a gold watch. He snapped open the lid, looked at the time, then clicked the lid shut again. “I’ll be late for work,” he said. He put the watch back into his pocket.

  “Where do you work?”

  “Rogers-Mailer. Aircraft parts. Over the Whitestone Bridge. Know it?”

  “No, But can I ride with you? I mean, we’ll talk on the way over.”

  Chalmers looked steadily at Ray again. “Can’t see any harm,” he said. “Can’t drive you back, though.”

  “I know. I just—”

  “Well, get in, then.”

  Ray walked around to the other side of the car, waited for Chalmers to unlock the door, and then slid onto the front seat. Chalmers turned on the ignition, and started the motor. He let it idle for a few moments, then pulled away from the curb. He stopped at the corner, looked in both directions, then made a right turn toward Gun Hill Road.

  They rode in silence for a while. Then Ray said, “It seems you didn’t like your daughter.”

  Chalmers kept looking at the road, his hands tight on the wheel. “Ain’t a man alive who doesn’t like his own daughter. Wouldn’t be human if he felt that way. Only sometimes a daughter’s better off dead.”

  “And you feel that way about Eileen?”

  Chalmers nodded. “I knew it would turn out this way. I knew it from the very beginning. What can an old man say, though? A girl like Eileen needed a mother.” He shifted his shoulders in a helpless gesture. “Ain’t nothing an old man can tell her.”

  “Did you know Dale Kramer?”

  “I knew him. I knew Tony Sanders, too. One worse than the other.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Didn’t like Sanders from the first time I met him. What would a rich man like him want with my daughter, I asked myself. Wasn’t hard to get an answer, either. I told Eileen to drop him, but you know how girls are. Stupid old man, she called me.” He paused, turned onto the parkway, and was silent for a long time. Then, as if he’d never stopped speaking, he said, “Maybe she was right.”

  “But she did drop Sanders,” Ray said.

  “Sure. Of her own accord. Nothing I said ever helped her decide.” A look of extreme contempt crossed his face. “Music! Musicians! I know all about musicians, young man. I know all about their breed. So she married one. Wanted to sing, she said. Well, she’s singing now, all right. She’s singing with the angels.” He laughed a short, hard, brittle laugh. “Knew it all, she did. Knew all about musicians. Sure, she knew.”

  “When was the last time you saw her?” Ray asked.

  “About two months ago. She told me all about it then. And about this other terrible thing. I threw her out. There’s only so much a father can take. I told her I never wanted to see her again, told her to forget she had a father.”

  The toll gate for the bridge was directly ahead now, and Chalmers dug into his pocket for some change. He slowed the car, pulled up to the booth. Ray turned his head away from the policeman as Chalmers handed him the quarter. Far below
him, the fog was lifting from the river.

  “That was the last time I saw her,” Chalmers said.

  Ray nodded. That was how it always worked. That was the same reaction his own parents had had. He remembered telling them, his father first. He’d told them because he needed money, and there was no other place he could get it. That had been before he learned there were other ways to get money.

  His father had threatened to kill him first. He’d ordered him out of the house. Ray had gone, of course. If his father wouldn’t give him money, there was no point in hanging around. His father had come after him, tracing him through his musician friends, offering to help. That was later, of course. The immediate reaction was always rejection.

  Until they felt sorry.

  Then they always tried to help until they realized there was no way to help. Except with money. And how much money can you give a parasite? The cure came next. They offered the cure on a silver platter, and when that didn’t work, they cut you off again, threatening to have you put away.

  Ray’s father was unique in that he’d actually called the police—but he had waited until he thought his son had committed murder.

  Peter Chalmers. Ray shrugged. He’d have gone through the same up-and-down, on-and-off process, too, given time. Unfortunately, his daughter had been killed before he’d had a chance to overcome his first indignation.

  “Maybe I done wrong,” Chalmers said. They were on the span now, the strong silver cables arching overhead like the spires of a cathedral. “Maybe I should have been more understanding. But it was a terrible thing, and I’m only a human being.”

  “The heroin, you mean?” Ray asked.

  “Heroin?” Chalmers’s eyebrows shot up onto his forehead, and then he began to chuckle softly, a bitter chuckle that was hollow and ghostly in the automobile. “Heroin? I’m not talking about that. I mean the baby. My daughter was pregnant.”

  “Are you sure?” Ray asked, surprised.

  “Yes, I’m sure.” Chalmers’s voice was tired. “She was a month gone when I saw her, three months gone when she was killed.”

  “I don’t understand,” Ray said. “What’s so terrible about that? I mean, she was married and all.”

  Chalmers laughed, and the sound died in the car before he spoke again.

  “My daughter left her husband’s band six months ago,” he said. “And she and he were legally separated at the same time.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Look at it like a sheet of music, a complicated score with difficult fingering.

  Start a beautiful melody called Eileen, play it light, allegro, for twenty-two bars. Then kill it.

  Bring in your subordinate theme, label it Charlie Massine, start it softly, with reminiscent snatches of the main theme, bring it to a climax. Kill it.

  Then pull in your beautiful melody again, and this time weave it through with snatches of underlying currents: Babs, Tony Sanders, Dale Kramer, Peter Chalmers.

  Sustain a heavy bass with the Peter Chalmers motif, sprinkled with a Dale Kramer pecking at the upper register.

  Start a fast-traveling, frantic boogie, label it Tony Sanders. Pull in a handful of harmonious chords, full, throbbing, lingering, and call them Barbara Cole.

  Then play them all together in a violent, sombre dance of death touched lightly with sixteen ounces of heroin. Move your fingers furiously, and try to find the key.

  If you’re the police, add a single note, and keep pounding at it with one finger. The note is Ray Stone, hophead. That’s the key.

  If you’re not the police, then try, just try to pin down the elusive key among the jumbled counterpoints, the erratic rhythms, the subtle melodies. Especially when you’re playing a tune called “Cold Turkey,” or “A Variation on Desire.”

  Ray sat in the back of the speeding bus, the spires of Manhattan scratching at the sky in the distance. He’d be off the bridge soon, back in the Bronx, and Peter Chalmers would be nothing more than a memory.

  A memory and a new melody for the intricate composition. Eileen pregnant! Who shoots pregnant women? Cuckolds: Dale Kramer? Irate parents: Peter Chalmers?

  No, the symphony was unfinished. There were notes missing. Without those important notes… Ray shrugged, wondering if there were time before the police played the last bar.

  * * *

  “You’ll find him at the Stockton Baths,” the voice on the phone had said. “Scat goes there every day about this time.”

  Ray stood downstairs, looked up at the big sign across the second floor of the hotel.

  STOCKTON BATHS

  Turkish Steam—Whirlpool—Galvanic—Cabinet

  Separate Physiotherapy Depts. for Men and Women

  He walked up the long flight of steps, stopped at the desk in the lobby. A clerk, his face a bloom of livid acne, glanced up from a cheesecake magazine.

  “Yes?” His voice twanged out through his long nose.

  “I’m looking for Mr. Lewis. They said I would find him here.”

  “Mr. Lewis?” The clerk’s pale-blue eyes settled on Ray’s face, rested there for a moment. Apprehension clutched Ray again. He took in a deep breath now and waited.

  “Yes,” the clerk went on, “Mr. Lewis is in Four. Down at the end of the hall.”

  Ray nodded.

  “You’ll need a towel,” the clerk said. “Three dollars, please.”

  Ray fished into his wallet, grimaced as he handed over the three bills. His money was going too fast. At this rate, he’d have nothing left when and if he could get a fix.

  The clerk passed him a large towel. “Want to check your valuables?”

  “Yes, I guess so. Just the wallet.”

  The clerk glanced at his stubble. “You can rent a razor in the shower room,” he said. He yanked an envelope from a nest of cubbyholes, shoved it across the counter. “Just fill this out.”

  Ray signed the name “Ray Davis,” stuffed his wallet into the envelope, then thought about the razor. It mightn’t be a bad idea at that. “How much for the razor?” he asked.

  “Fifty cents.” Ray took a dollar from the wallet, then sealed the envelope.

  “Lockers are on your right,” the clerk said.

  “Thanks.”

  Ray took the closest locker, undressed quickly, and draped the towel around his waist. He started off down the hall then, the subtle hiss of steam reaching his ears. On either side of the hallway, yawning tile doorways belched great clouds of steam. He stopped outside the first open doorway, wiped the moisture from the numeral set in the tile. Two.

  He shrugged and kept walking. The heat was beginning to get him. He wiped the back of his hand over his forehead, pleased when he saw the numeral four outside the last door in the hall. Quickly, he stepped inside.

  It was hotter here. The steam shifted about the room, swirling over the tile floor, sweeping up over the walls, hanging from the ceiling. He was beginning to sweat profusely. He felt his pores open, felt the moisture break out all over his body. Christ, it was hot!

  “Mr. Lewis?” he called.

  From somewhere beyond the shifting screen of steam, he heard a voice answer, “Yeah?” The voice was low, rasping.

  He pushed his way through the steam, which was closing in on him like a powerful physical force now. The sweat ran down his neck, flowed from under his armpits, streaked his arms. His beard felt itchy.

  Seated in the corner formed by the two tile walls, one leg stretched out on the tile bench, the other resting on the floor, was what appeared to be a large white statue at first. Ray squinted through the steam, cleared his throat.

  “Mr. Lewis?”

  “That’s me, man.”

  He seemed utterly exhausted, almost limp. His head rested against the tiles. His hands were folded across the layers of fat on his enormous stomach. The fat hung down from his arms, skin that must have been muscle once. A towel rested across his middle, and two chunky legs jutted out from its fuzzy edge.

  He blinked his eyes, let his mouth fall op
en. The sweat streamed down his face, putting a high sheen on the flat nose and the full, flabby lips.

  “They told me I’d find you here,” Ray said. He felt hotter now, too hot, too damned hot. He coughed, wiped a hand over the back of his neck.

  “I’m listening, man,” Lewis said. He closed his eyes, and the steam swirled up around his head.

  “What do you know about Eileen Chalmers?” Ray said.

  Lewis didn’t change his position. “Nice chick,” he said. “Shame.”

  “Any idea who killed her?”

  Lewis cleared his throat, and his lips flapped outward. “They say the junkie.” His eyes blinked and he asked, “Who are you anyway, man?”

  “Reporter,” Ray said.

  “What brings you here?”

  “She sang for you, didn’t she?”

  “Sure, sure.”

  “Any good?”

  “Not bad,” Lewis said. “Not a Babs Cole, but not a crow, either. She could warble when the spirit moved her.”

  “Did you know she was an addict?”

  Lewis blinked, shifted his position, the layers of fat vibrating. He pulled his towel higher, folded his hands again.

  “Sure,” he said. “Horse, you know.” He shook his head, and his chins flapped with the motion. “Never touch the stuff, myself. A little tea every now and then—but never the big stuff. Gives me a nice sound, marijuana I mean. Makes the horn mellow.” He grinned, exposing yellowed teeth.

  “Tried to talk Eileen out of it,” he went on. “Nice young kid like her. Hell, that stuff ain’t no good, man. I think she was trying to quit, too.”

  “How long had she been on the band?” Ray asked.

  “My band?”

  “Yes.” Ray was getting impatient. He rubbed at his nose, tried to blink the sweat out of his eyes. The steam folded over them, covered them like a heavy, wet blanket.

  “Five, six months. Don’t remember exactly. Babs came to me with the switcheroo. Says she had a chance for the Kramer outfit, says she had a singer to replace her.” Lewis stopped, blinked twice rapidly. “Hey, man, you won’t print what I said about the tea, will you?”

  “No, no, of course not.”

  “Well, I said I’d have to hear the other chick first. So Babs brings her down, and she’s okay, and the switch went through. Hell, I couldn’t hold Babs back anyway.”