The Triple Shot Box (Goodey's Last Stand, Not Sleeping Just Dead & Fighting Back): Three Gritty Crime Novels

by Charles Alverson

  “I was Miss D’Oro’s doctor,” he said, making the job sound like a combination of royal physician and grade-A wizard.

  “So?” I said in my most obtuse manner. Nothing brings out the blabbermouth in some people like a dumb, uncomprehending cop. I shifted my position slightly so that I could watch both Irving and the girl at the same time. Her face, not conventionally pretty but handsome in a slightly aquiline way, was calm enough, but she wasn’t missing a thing.

  The doctor cleared his throat portentously. “Mr. Goodey,” he said, “did you ever see Tina D’Oro dance?”

  “Once or twice.”

  “What did you think of her body?” He asked the question casually enough, but there was a lot behind it. Any way you look at it, it was a queer question for a doctor to ask. I didn’t want to rush into an answer which might put him off, so I tried to look as if I were carefully phrasing my reply. He couldn’t wait.

  “I mean,” Irving said, “do you think she had a beautiful body?”

  He couldn’t have given me the answer more plainly without using ventriloquism, so I said: “Of course. She had the most beautiful body I’ve ever seen.” Which was a lie, but a useful one. As far as Dr. Irving was concerned, I’d spoken the magic words. I was in. His face lost a lot of tension and relaxed into what must have been his usual, slightly dopey expression of friendliness. And behind it in his doggy eyes was the gleam of the true believer, the holder of truth. He was going to let me in on something.

  “Mr. Goodey,” he said, “I created Tina D’Oro’s body.”

  I was working overtime trying to get an expression of amazed incredulity on my face when he followed up with: “Of course, Tina was an early effort, in some ways quite a primitive effort—almost crude—but nonetheless I am proud of my creation. As you may have guessed, I am what is popularly called a plastic surgeon.” I had guessed, actually. “I created Tina’s body just as surely as Michelangelo created ‘La Pietà.’ Surely you can understand how I felt this afternoon when Tina was lowered into her grave.”

  I looked understanding, but this was wasted on the mad doctor. He was caught up in his own enthusiasm. He put an urgent hand on my sleeve. “Come,” he said, “would you like me to show you how I made Tina D’Oro what she was?”

  Now there was a question that had only one possible answer. “Yes, please,” I said, like a good boy.

  But Doc Irving had already taken my answer for granted. He signaled the girl to follow and turned to open the door to the inner sanctum. “Follow me,” he said, “and I will show you something truly remarkable.”

  I politely let the girl go first, for which she didn’t show much gratitude, and followed. If I’d been expecting Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory with flashing lights and gurgling test tubes, I’d have been disappointed. Dr. Irving’s wonder factory turned out to be a large, smooth, pastel room like the conference room of a successful advertising agency. It featured a large, round slab-of-marble table surrounded by four bucket chairs on pedestals and a wall lined with brass-handled cabinets and drawers of various sizes. There was no sign of an operating table.

  Irving motioned me and the girl, who hadn’t said a word since we’d had that chat over the intercom, into two of the bucket seats and opened a large cabinet door on the slightly curved wall. A sixteen-millimeter projector slid out on a hinged platform, and the doctor rummaged through a low drawer, full of things which clanked metallically. The recessed lights began to dim, and a patch of white light sprang to a flat, beige wall across from where we were sitting. Movies.

  Irving expertly threaded a reel of film, pushed a button, and a jumble of numbers flickered on the screen. Then the hand-lettered title: “Miss Tina D’Oro—February 1968.” The doc ought to get together with Fat Phil. They could make a fortune. But the Tina who flashed on the screen, looking nervous in front of a dead-white wall, wasn’t the Tina I’d known or the one they’d buried that day. She didn’t look much younger, perhaps even a little older in a strange way. The eyes weren’t exactly dewy with innocence, but there was something softer in them that had since crystallized. The face was vaguer, less formed, and her mouth hung a little slackly in contrast with the lush tautness we all knew. It might have been another girl entirely, but one thing told me it wasn’t. There was a flickering hunger in the face that was unmistakable.

  I was looking at the screen past the girl’s face, and there was enough light for me to see that what she was seeing was hitting her hard. Some of the control had gone out of her face. She was blinking fast, but couldn’t take her eyes off the screen.

  “This was Tina D’Oro the first day she came to me,” Irving said behind us in a narrator’s voice. The camera zoomed up on Tina until from the waist up she filled the small screen. The color of the image was hard, slightly brighter than reality, and Tina’s crudely applied make-up made her look like a slightly depraved doll. A pointed pink tongue touched the corner of her mouth. There was doubt in her eyes.

  Then, obviously responding to an order from behind the camera, Tina reached down with disembodied hands and began to pull a frilly, green blouse up over her head, revealing a black lace brassiere that was in no danger of overflowing. She shook her short, bleached hair as the blouse came off, and the hand carrying the blouse dropped off the screen. Her eyes responded to another command. She reached up behind her with both pale arms. The black brassiere started to fall, retained only by thin shoulder straps.

  “Stop!” The voice was a pain-filled shriek, and it came from the girl who’d been sitting at the table with me. But now she had jumped up between table and screen, blocking the beam of light from the projector. The mottled image of Tina dropping her brassiere flickered wildly on her face, neck, and blouse. “Stop it!” she repeated. “Turn it off!”

  The image died, the ceiling lights came on, and Doc Irving was revealed standing next to the projector, looking startled and scared.

  “Now, my dear,” he said in a shocked voice, “I’m only—”

  The girl turned on him. “Can’t you just leave her alone?” she demanded. “She’s dead. Isn’t that enough?” She looked ready to brain Irving with his own projector. I’d expected to see tears, but her eyes were as dry as moon dust, with a dull glint that was more painful than tears.

  “Now, Miss Springler,” the doc said, “now—”

  Irma Springler. A piece of the puzzle slipped into place.

  “No,” she said with finality, raising her arms slightly as if to block further attempts at projection. Some of us were going to have to ask for a refund.

  “Leave Tina alone,” she continued. “If you’ve got to show this”—she shot an unloving look at me—“this man your art, show him on me.” She reached up behind her neck, did something to the collar of an apricot-colored, tailored silk blouse, and pulled it smoothly over her head. She wasn’t wearing a brassiere, but the effect wasn’t so much sexy as clinical. She dropped her hands to her sides, wrists turned slightly toward Dr. Irving, and waited passively, looking at nothing.

  Irving cleared his throat of something only slightly smaller than the Boulder Dam and generally got a grip on himself. “Perhaps,” he said, as if it had been his own idea, “that would be a better method. After all, the techniques of today bear no resemblance to those of 1968.” Professionalism was flowing back into his voice and manner. He turned the ceiling lamp up bright and stepped toward Irma Springler, moving to her side like a professor of anatomy. She could have been a mannequin for his purposes.

  “As you can see, Mr. Goodey,” he began, “there is nothing basically wrong with Miss Springler’s breasts.” He put a small, neat hand under one breast and handled it as a good grocer would a ripe avocado. I was watching Irma’s face, but she didn’t know he was there. “They are well-formed, erect, of a size generally consistent with the rest of her body. Many a girl would consider herself blessed to have such a pair of breasts.”

  Or even one. I couldn’t argue with him so far, but I was sure that the nugget was yet to come
. It did.

  “However,” he continued, “they are hardly adequate for the line of endeavor which Miss Springler now intends to undertake. As you may not know, I have been asked to enable her to carry on where Tina left off as the starring topless dancer of The Jungle Club.”

  That I didn’t know. I looked at Irma Springler questioningly, but she was not giving any answers. She was somewhere else.

  “And so,” Irving said, “I am going to use my skills as a surgeon to create for her perfect breasts—no, magnificent breasts. As you may have gathered,” he said, his voice going a bit lumpy again, “I was very proud of what I had done for”—he rolled his soft eyes at Irma, but she didn’t flinch—“Tina D’Oro. But that is past history. As beautiful as Tina’s body was, it was achieved with technology which is now as dated as the piston-powered airplane.”

  He was off and running now, a stereotypical mad scientist itching to get down to the nitty-gritty of his black art but wary of giving away his holy secrets.

  “Of course,” Irving carried on, his left hand still holding Irma’s right breast as if it were a laboratory beaker, “I can’t expect you to understand the fine points of reconstructive surgery. But basically I will begin just as I did on Tina.” He was free and easy with the name now. Irving was the complete pro, as if he were describing past triumphs with a few of the boys at the Surgeons’ Club.

  “I shall begin”—his right forefinger became a scalpel—“with an incision here.” He traced a semicircular line along the lower edge of Irma’s nipple. Her face didn’t show a thing, but I could feel the blade bite. “This, of course, will enable me to insert the implant which will result in augmentation of the breast. Not just augmentation, but a result so totally lifelike that the patrons of The Jungle, you, or even Miss Springler will not be conscious that her breasts are not totally her own.”

  Doc Irving was really getting into it. He was going to dazzle me with science. “You see, Mr. Goodey,” he continued, confident of my unswerving attention, “the crucial element of such an operation is the character and consistency of the implant used. In the past a number of substances have been used with mixed results, among them silastic sponge, saline solution, gel sacs, microporous sponge. One of the earliest methods was to use excess subcutaneous fat from the patient’s own body.” He smiled winningly. “But I can’t see that Miss Springler has much excess body fat, can you?” I shook my head gravely, trying not to feel too much like a peeping Tom or a cattle inspector.

  “A recent trend,” he went on, “has been to use liquid silicone. This has produced some spectacular results, but it is extremely doubtful medically. Silicone in that form has an unfortunate tendency to travel and can be absorbed into certain organs with serious results, including carcinoma.” At that word Irma grimaced involuntarily, and I didn’t feel so well myself.

  “I myself have never used silicone,” Irving said. “And in recent months I have perfected a completely new type of implant which I will employ in my work on Miss Springler.” He tried to look wise and secretive. “Of course, I can’t reveal the exact nature of this implant, but I can assure you that the technique and material I will use is far in advance of anything the field has yet seen. Confidentially, I have every hope of getting into the textbooks with this one. I—”

  “That’s great,” I interrupted, “but it doesn’t really help me much with what I’ve come to see you about. I’m not a measurable distance closer to finding out who killed Tina D’Oro.”

  The mad doctor looked sheepish, but Irma Springler came out of her trance and snapped, “Who asked you to find out who killed Tina?” She was getting back into the tailored blouse, and quite gracefully too.

  “That’s none of your business,” I said politely, “but if you’re just about finished here, I’ve got some questions for you about Tina D’Oro.”

  We locked eyes for a moment. Then something softened in her hard gaze, and she said, “I’m through here right now, and if you’re driving toward North Beach, we can talk.” She turned to Irving. “Are you all set to begin on Monday morning, Doctor?”

  “All set, Miss Springler,” he said, smoothly professional, “if you are. I’ll see you here at ten in the morning.”

  “I’ll be here.” She was headed out of the laboratory, and I couldn’t think of any reason not to follow her. The doc tagged along too.

  “You’ll be around, Doctor,” I asked him, “in case I can think of any intelligent questions to ask you?”

  “I’ll be around, Mr. Goodey,” he said. “I live at the top of this building. I’ll try very hard to think of something to help you in your inquiries, but my relationship with Miss D’Oro was strictly professional.”

  “You do that,” I said. “I’d like to come around sometime and see the rest of that film.”

  He gave me a warning frown, but Irma Springler was heading out of his office door, and I didn’t have much time to feel gauche. She was quick on the stairs, and outside near the brass plate I caught up with her, looking slightly impatient. The big door closed behind us.

  “Let’s get out of here,” she said, a bit more friendly. “That place gives me the creeps.”

  I walked over to the Morris parked at the curb, and Irma drifted along at my side. She slid quite willingly into the cracked leather passenger seat. I got in behind the steering wheel and waited for an opening in the flow of Saturday evening traffic.

  “I’m sorry I was so snappy in there,” she said as I got the car out into the street. “The last few days have been hell for me.”

  “Don’t apologize. I have a tendency to wade in, stomping all over people’s sensibilities. I’m cursed with a one-track mind. I should apologize to you. Do you feel up to answering a few questions while we drive, or would you rather wait?”

  “Go ahead,” she said, letting her head rest against the seat back and nearly closing her eyes. “I want to help you all I can.”

  By then I was past City College, and we joined the early dinner crowd on the freeway headed downtown. I pulled into the slow lane and drifted gently with the big trucks and old crocks like my own. “You were Tina’s best friend?” I asked.

  “I think so,” she said. “Tina didn’t have many friends. I met her last autumn when a girl friend of mine brought her around, and Tina asked me if I’d do her hair.”

  “You’re a hairdresser?”

  “Not really. It’s a hobby of mine, and Tina claimed she’d never before found anybody who could do her hair just right. I didn’t believe her at first, but Tina had a way of getting what she wanted.”

  “If you’re not a hairdresser, what do you do for a living?”

  “Nothing,” she said, “right now, but until the end of May I was teaching at Marin Junior College.”

  “Teaching what?”

  “Basic English, history, a bit of sociology. Mostly to freshmen.”

  “It’s a long way from Basic English to the stage of The Jungle,” I said, trying not to sound too scornful about it.

  “Yes,” she said, and I thought she sounded rueful. Irma was silent for about half a dozen of those tall, arc-lighted poles along the James Lick Memorial Freeway. Then she spoke, and the light was so dim that I could barely catch her features out of the corner of my eye. “Look,” she said seriously, “can I trust you?”

  Now, there was a good question. Could Irma Springler, teacher turned go-go dancer, trust Joe Goodey, ex-cop and would-be private detective? I hoped I hadn’t waited too long before I said: “I think so. All I want from you is information that might help me find out who murdered Tina.” That sounded altruistic, but it was true.

  “That’s good,” she said, “because that’s all I want from you too. If you’re working for Phil Franks, I’m in trouble, because I have no intention of ever dancing for him at The Jungle. I want to find out who killed Tina, and I figure that the best way is from the inside.”

  “You’ll even let Doc Irving try his magic formula on you?” I asked. That seemed to me to be going a bi
t far, even for a best friend.

  “If I have to,” she said in a neutral tone. “But I think I can stall Irving for a while. Phil will be harder to handle, so I’ve got to work fast. We both want the same thing, Joe. Do you think we could work together?”

  That was the best offer I’d had all day, which gives you an idea of the quality of the offers I’d been getting. Unless Irma killed Tina herself, she probably knew as much about the murder as I did. Which wasn’t very much. But I didn’t have much to lose.

  “I don’t see why not,” I said. “I can’t tell you who I’m working for, and other than that I don’t know a hell of a lot more than you do. Probably less. But maybe we can do something together. Why don’t you start by telling me something I don’t know?”

  “All right,” she said in a voice full of hidden aces, “I will. I know that Tina was having an affair with Mayor Kolchik.”

  This hot tidbit was supposed to make me fall out of the car and swallow my tongue. In order not to disappoint Irma too much, I managed a long, low whistle meant to convey the impression of surprise.

  It didn’t.

  “You knew that already,” she said accusingly, like a child whose riddle had flopped.

  “You’re right,” I said. “But all the same it’s very interesting that you know it. How is that?”

  “Tina had no secrets from me,” Irma said positively.

  “She must have had at least one,” I said. “And that’s who was mad enough at her to stab her to death.”

  “That’s what I can’t figure out,” Irma said, “unless…”

  “Unless Tina did have some secrets from you,” I said. “Do you think it’s possible that she could have been running an entirely different game that you knew nothing about? How good an actress was Tina? For instance, could there have been another lover besides Kolchik? One she didn’t tell you about?”

  The high beams of an oncoming car illuminated her face enough for me to see that Irma didn’t like the idea. Her face went rigid, and the high cheekbones stood out in relief. Then the car’s light was gone.