Strange Embrace

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by Block, Lawrence


  “One thing still seem Chinese puzzle,” Ito said. “Not see—”

  Johnny sighed. “Ito, cut the comedy.”

  “Sorry,” Ito said. “It was that damn Charlie Chan movie. It was funny enough but those things can soak into your system.”

  Johnny said, “The Chinese puzzle, Ito?”

  “Yes. You told me the doorman said Tracy didn’t have any visitors. How did he get killed?”

  “By a visitor.” Johnny finished the bourbon, put the glass down. “One who got past the doorman. That’s all.”

  “Without a key to the penthouse?”

  Johnny nodded. “The building has an open staircase,” he said. “Every building has. Fire regulations. The stairs reach the penthouse. Tracy’s visitor walked right past the doorman, took the elevator to the floor below Tracy’s, say, and walked up a flight of stairs. Simple enough?”

  “Sure. Same thing going down?”

  “Maybe, maybe not. It doesn’t really matter. To get down from the penthouse you don’t need a key. You ring and the elevator comes up. Then you press the one button and down you go. Puzzle all cleared up now?”

  “All clear.” Ito turned away slightly. “Uh…do you want me to stick around tonight?”

  “Oh. You got that date with Miss Tokyo?”

  “She’s not from Tokyo. But her home town is a filthy word in English. She isn’t aware of this. Which can be embarrassing. Yes, I have a date with her.”

  “Then keep it.”

  “You don’t need me?”

  “Hell, no,” Johnny told him. “If the phone rings I’ll answer it myself. If you can fake a Japanese accent so can I.”

  He waited until Ito had left before he called Jan. When the servant was gone he went into the kitchen and poured himself a cup of hot black coffee, carried the coffee back to the living room and lit a cigarette to keep it company. He didn’t want to call Jan until he knew what he was going to do next. And he didn’t know what he was going to do next.

  He knew what he was supposed to do next. He was supposed to sit on his behind and wait for something to happen. Nothing would happen, which meant he would have a hell of a long wait. The killer—the son of a bloody bitch whose middle name was Razor—didn’t have to make a move. He had already gotten what he wanted. Two killings and one beating had turned the trick. A Touch of Squalor was not going to be on the boards that season.

  But what in hell was Johnny Lane supposed to do? The killer would get away. He did not have to stick out his neck anymore and he hadn’t left any trail behind him. No matter how you figured it, there was no reason for anyone to want the show ruined, no reason for anyone to kill Elaine and then Tracy. Hell, there was a reason—there had to be a reason. But there was no way to figure it out.

  He picked up the phone, and dialed.

  “Hi, Jan. This is Johnny,” he told her. “Anybody call you?”

  “Ernie Buell. I heard about Tracy. I thought—”

  “That’s what we all thought,” he said. “I found out something else today. Elaine was blackmailing him, had him over a barrel. That must have been why he was so scared he’d be fingered for her murder. I went over with Haig to pick him up, but somebody got there first.”

  “And killed him,” she said.

  “Same as Elaine—a razor slash across the neck. We’re closing the show, Jan. We’re shutting down while we still have a few people left.”

  She made no reply for a second or two. Then: “I guess we have to, Johnny.”

  He nodded. Then he remembered that nods didn’t register through a telephone. “Yeah,” he said. “Our hand is forced.”

  “That’s the way it looks, Johnny. I suppose the police will get the killer, but—”

  “How?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “How will they get the killer?” he demanded. “Haig is up against six different stone walls. He hasn’t got a single angle to work. I know damn well what he’s going to do. He’ll let the case move along the regular procedural lines until it gets lost in the files. He’ll let it bury itself. You can’t solve every murder, Jan. They’ll work on this one until it stops turning up in the newspapers. Then they’ll forget about it.”

  “They might get a break.”

  “Sure they will,” he said. “Somebody will get a guilty conscience and turn himself in. Or they’ll get an anonymous tip from a disgruntled mistress. But don’t hold your breath.”

  “Johnny—”

  “You know what? It’s a temptation to write off the whole thing as the work of a nut. A crackpot. Somebody with a cockeyed grudge against the world. Or against the show, I don’t know. Some moron who doesn’t like the title. Hell, we could have changed the title. Called it A Touch of Horse—”

  “Johnny.”

  He took a deep breath.

  “Johnny, why don’t you come over for a while? I’d like to see you, Johnny. You could relax.”

  He heard the syrup in her voice and remembered the night before. It had been good then. It could be good again.

  “My rib cage…”

  “We’ll be gentle.”

  He let it hang there for a minute. “No,” he said finally. “No, not tonight, Jan. I’ve got things to do. I may be able to turn up something. I’m going to give it a try.”

  “What can you do that Haig can’t do? You’re not a cop, Johnny.”

  Daylight dawned.

  “You’re right,” he said slowly. “Sam Haig keeps telling me the same thing. I’m not a cop.”

  “Johnny?”

  “I’ve got work to do,” he told her. “I’ll call you as soon as I get a chance.”

  And he put down the phone.

  Chapter Ten

  THE BAR WAS IN HELL’S KITCHEN, that totally unglamorous section of Manhattan where large four-legged rats devour babies in their cribs and where their two-legged counterparts lend money to dockworkers at rates of interest that would have made Shylock wince. The bar crouched on Tenth Avenue between 35th and 36th Streets. A neon sign with a nervous tic announced that the bar was named Sully’s Place, and the odor that issued forth when the door was open announced that Sully did not believe in washing the floor. The odor was one part spilled beer, one part urine, and two parts vomit.

  The man walked into Sully’s Place a few minutes before ten. There were four people inside plus the bartender. Five heads turned lazily to take a look at the man when the door opened; nine eyes—a tenth had been lost in a fight several months before—focused on the new arrival. They took him in at a glance, saw who he was, and turned away instantly.

  You did not take long looks at a syndicate man. It was unhealthy. It brought visions of six bullet holes grouped in the precise center of a man’s forehead, of cement overcoats and prolonged swims in the Hudson.

  And this man was a syndicate type.

  That much was obvious. It showed in his walk—hands in pockets, head set back on shoulders so that the neck nearly disappeared, shoulders set and legs striding easily, cockily. It showed in his dress—black Italian porkpie hat with a brim a little too short, black overcoat cut a shade too long and bulging ever so slightly over beside the heart where a gun was waiting, black Broadway suit, slim and highly polished black shoes.

  Most of all, it showed in the face. The firm little lines around the mouth. The hawk nose. The slight pouches beneath the eyes. And the eyes themselves—very narrow, half-closed, and staring flatly ahead showing no expression whatsoever.

  The man walked past the four customers without looking at them. He went to the far end of the bar. He did not sit on one of the stools but leaned against the bar itself. He drew the bartender without a gesture. His eyes brought the man over.

  The bartender was fat. He carried his stomach in front of him like a proud, pregnant woman. He hurried.

  “What’ll you have?”

  The man shook his head shortly. When he talked, the words were pitched so that only the bartender heard them. The lips did not move.

  �
�Some muscle,” the man said. “Two boys. Big boys.”

  “Nobody around here,” the bartender whispered. “Just a couple of lushes. You wanta go up the street—”

  The man’s eyes stopped him cold in the middle of the sentence. The bartender looked into those eyes and saw Death staring him in the face. He wanted to look away but he could not.

  “Information,” the man said flatly. “Yesterday two boys did a job.”

  “There’s a lot of muscle jobs.”

  The man’s hand snaked inside his coat and the bartender took an involuntary step backward. The hand came out holding not a gun but a cigar. The man pierced the end of the cigar with a toothpick, then lit up with a gold lighter. The cigar stayed in the corner of his mouth and he talked around it. The bartender almost relaxed, but his hands were still trembling a little.

  He did not want trouble. He did not want any trouble at all. And if this man, this fellow from the syndicate, got annoyed, there would be trouble. The bartender operated with the silent permission of the syndicate. If this permission were lifted, things would happen swiftly. His business would probably disappear. His liquor license could well disappear.

  He himself might disappear.

  “This job,” the man said. “Over in Gramercy. Last night. Ten or eleven. A Broadway type got a little push-around. A producer named Lane.”

  The bartender nodded slowly.

  The man shifted the cigar from one side of his mouth to the other. “I want to know who,” the man said. His voice somehow hardened without going up or down in volume, without changing tone. His lips still did not move. “I want to know who and I want to know where I can find them. They did good. I might want to hire them.”

  The bartender’s voice dropped from a whisper to a breeze blowing through dry grass. “Lou Rugger is all I know,” he said. “Lou Rugger.”

  “There was two.”

  “All I know is Rugger,” the bartender said. “Big guy with one mitt bandaged. Real big guy.”

  The man said nothing.

  The bartender hesitated. There were some things which you were not supposed to tell anybody, he thought. But there were some people you told whatever they wanted to know. The bartender was in the middle.

  “A bar over on Twenty-eighth,” he murmured. “The Castle. Either he’s there or they know where.”

  “The Castle,” the man said.

  “On Twenty-eighth east of Tenth. You ask for Lou Rugger. Or you see him there.”

  The man did not answer. The cigar moved in his mouth. Then he turned from the bartender and started walking toward the door. No heads turned to follow him.

  The man, of course, was Johnny Lane. He did not resemble Johnny at all, however. A careful application of makeup had changed the face, altering mouth and eyes, building up the nose. He wore appropriate gangland clothes. The walk and the voice and all the mannerisms were carefully stylized, the words and phrases meticulously selected.

  The effect was perfect.

  Sully’s Place had been the fifth he had visited. In the other four his approach had been effective enough but each of the four bartenders had disclaimed any knowledge of the muscle characters who had knocked Johnny around the night before. Sully’s Place had paid off. Now all he had to do was walk through the night to the Castle and find Rugger. The rest would be easy.

  He passed a newsstand at Thirty-fourth and read the headlines on the first editions of the morning tabloids. Tracy’s murder was the lead item, which didn’t particularly astonish him. The News and the Mirror could not ask for a better piece of news. The killing had all the elements of hot copy—a chain murder, related to Elaine’s death and following the pattern perfectly; a sex angle, since Tracy was found nude. And a celebrity gimmick—every show-business personality automatically became a celebrity in newspaper parlance once he died violently, and Tracy was fairly well-known to begin with. He had been a star, albeit a falling one.

  Johnny kept going. He walked down Tenth as he had walked into Sully’s Place, head cocked and shoulders set and hands in pockets. It would have been easier to put on the role when he got to the Castle but he stayed in the part on the way. He did not want anybody to notice him behaving out of character, for one thing. For another, the Method School of acting had a few sound things to say. If you lived a part you played it more effectively.

  He turned on Twenty-eighth and found the Castle. The neighborhood was slightly better south of Thirty-fourth Street and the Castle was correspondingly higher in tone than Sully’s Place had been. The clientele was uppercaste for the Kitchen—minor loan sharks, numbers runners, ten-dollar prostitutes. He stopped in the doorway to straighten his tie, then took a few steps inside and glanced around. The shorter of the two men who had worked him over a night ago was not there, but he saw the big one, the one Sully had called Lou Rugger. Johnny ignored the man and stepped up to the bar.

  Like Sully, the bartender at the Castle came over to him in a hurry.

  “Tell Lou Rugger,” Johnny said, “that I’m outside. Tell him I want to talk to him.”

  He did not wait for an answer. He turned around and walked casually out of the bar. On the outside he puffed at what was left of his cigar and waited for Rugger to get the message.

  Soon Rugger came out, his face puzzled, and walked over to Johnny. There was no recognition in his eyes.

  “You wanted me?”

  Johnny nodded. “You do muscle work,” he said. “You’re for hire.”

  “So?”

  “So maybe I can use you. First we talk. You got a place handy we can talk?”

  Rugger thought about it. “Down the block,” he said. “There’s a building condemned. Nobody there now.”

  Johnny gave him a look.

  Rugger hesitated. “We could go to my place. I got a room around the corner. But my broad’s there.”

  “She could move,” Johnny suggested.

  “Yeah, but—”

  She was probably working, Johnny thought. Working flat on her tail with her knees pointing at the stars. A man like Rugger seemed capable of holding two jobs easily enough. Muscle man and pimp.

  “Forget it,” Johnny said. “The building’s fine. Let’s go.” The street was dark. He followed the big man down the block, followed him when he turned at a doorway. The building deserved to be condemned. When they condemn a building in New York they chalk huge white X’s on the windows. But this particular building had few windows left.

  “That’s far enough,” he said. “Now turn around.”

  Rugger turned. He started to say something. Then he saw the gun in Johnny’s hand. Rugger’s mouth fell open and his face went white. Even in the half-light thrown by a street lamp Johnny could see how pale his face was.

  “Hey—”

  “You die now,” Johnny said. “You die, Rugger. How do you want to die? Quick or slow?”

  Rugger tried to answer but no words came out of his mouth. He seemed thoroughly lost. Things were happening too quickly for him to follow them.

  “You did a job last night,” Johnny said. “A muscle job. A guy name of Lane.”

  “We had orders.”

  “From who?”

  Rugger closed his mouth. That was the code, Johnny thought. You didn’t talk. You took whatever they handed you and you didn’t talk. That was why Johnny had to play the role all the way. It would have been a pleasure to drop the part, to tell Rugger who he was and then beat the information out of the big goon. But it wouldn’t work that way. Rugger would talk only to somebody who was more of a mob man than the man who had hired him in the first place. And he would talk only with a gun staring him in the teeth—all the beatings in the world couldn’t open him up. “This Lane,” Johnny said. “He was better connected than you thought. He knows a lot of people.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “You know now. So you get hit in the head, Rugger. You get killed.”

  “Look—”

  Johnny was holding the gun in his right hand. With his
left he took the cigar from his mouth and threw it to the floor. He covered it with his heel and ground it out. “You’d better open up,” he told Rugger. “You better say where the job on Lane came from. You better talk fast.”

  “Look, I—I don’t know who it was.”

  Johnny flicked off the safety catch. “First I shoot off your knee-cap,” he said. “You know how that feels? Then when you fall, I let it go into your gut. Then I give another slug in your…”

  “Take it easy,” the big man begged. Terror gleamed in his eyes. “I’m telling you the truth. I’m not holding out.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I did the job with Marlo. Jackie Marlo—hangs out on Bleecker, around there.”

  “Go on.”

  “Marlo don’t know more than I do. We got this job—work over this Lane, don’t kill him but hit him a little. Enough to put him off doing this show.” Rugger hesitated. His eyes dropped to the gun, then came up again. “Yesterday afternoon,” he said, “a little kid comes in with a note plus half of a hundred-dollar bill. You know—the bill torn in half, right down the middle. There’s a note attached to the bill, says I should stay close to the phone in the Castle. So I do. What the hell—you get half the bill, it’s not worth a thing without the other half. And nobody rips a bill for a joke.”

  “Keep talking.”

  “I stayed near the phone. Maybe five minutes later it rings and I pick it up. This voice asks me if I got the piece of the bill. I say yes.”

  “What was the voice like?”

  “Like nothing,” Lou Rugger said. “A whisper, sort of. A low whisper.”

  “Go on.”

  “This voice says how would I like to make the other half of the bill. I say fine, who do I have to hit? The voice tells me about this Lane. I’m supposed to get a call later that night saying when and where.” He paused, shrugged his shoulders. “I thought it was a solo. Later I get the call, go over and wait for Lane to show. I run into Marlo—he got the same deal. Half a bill to start, the other when the job was over. We waited for Lane and we worked him over. That was all.”

  “Did you get your money?”

  Rugger shook his big head. “Not yet. So I got half a bill. It don’t make any sense. Why should the guy keep the other half? It don’t do him any good.”

 

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