The Bughouse Affair q-2

by Bill Pronzini

  Midway in the third block, he paused before a plain shuttered building that bore the numerals 244 on its front door. A small, discreet sign on the vestibule wall said FIDDLE DEE DEE in gilt letters.

  A smiling colored maid opened the door in answer to his ring and escorted him into an ornately furnished parlor, where he declined the offer of refreshment and requested an audience with Miss Lettie Carew. When he was alone he perched on a red plush chair, closed his nostrils to the mingled scent of incense and patchouli, and glanced around the room with professional interest.

  Patterned lace curtains and red velvet drapes at the blinded windows. Several red plush chairs and settees, rococo tables, ruby-shaded lamps, gilt-framed mirrors, oil paintings of exotically voluptuous nudes. There was also a handful of framed mottoes, one of which Quincannon could read from where he sat: If every man was as true to his country as he is to his wife … God help the U.S.A. In all, the parlor was similar to Bessie Hall’s, doubtless by design, although it was neither as lavish nor as stylish. None could match “the woman who licked John L. Sullivan” when it came to extravagance.

  At the end of five minutes, Lettie Carew swept into the room. Quincannon blinked and managed not to let his jaw unhinge. Miss Lettie had been described to him on more than one occasion, but this was his first glimpse of her in the flesh. And a great deal of flesh there was. She resembled nothing so much as a giant blond-haired cherub, pink and puffed and painted, dressed in pinkish white silk and trailing rose-colored feather boas and a cloud of sweet perfume that threatened to finish off what oxygen had been left undamaged by the patchouli and incense.

  Even before she reached him she launched her into a practiced spiel: “Welcome, sir, welcome to the Fiddle Dee Dee, home of an array of bountiful beauties from exotic lands. I am the proprietress, Miss Lettie Carew.”

  Quincannon blinked again. The madam’s voice was small and shrill, not much louder than a mouse squeak. The fact that it emanated from such a mountainous woman made it all the more startling.

  “What can I do for you, sir? Don’t be shy … ask and ye shall receive. Every gentleman’s pleasure is my command.”

  “How many Chinese girls are employed here?”

  “Ah, you have a taste for the mysterious East. Only one at present, Ming Toy, from far-off Shanghai. And most popular she is, sir, most popular. However, she is currently engaged.”

  “How long has she been engaged?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Only a short while? Or for a longer period? It is possible to engage the services of one of your ladies by day as well as by hour, I’m sure.”

  “Oh, yes. For as long as a gentleman requires. Ming Toy has been entertaining since yesterday and may continue to do so for the rest of today. Would you like to make a reservation?”

  “What I’d like,” Quincannon said, “is to know if the lad she’s entertaining is young, slight, with thinning brown hair and a fondness for red wine?”

  Lettie Carew raised one artfully plucked eyebrow. “And why would you want to know that?”

  “Answer my question, please.”

  “Our customers are entitled to privacy-”

  “Balderdash.” Quincannon hardened his voice and his expression. “Is Ming Toy’s customer the gent I described?”

  “And if he is? What’s your interest in him?”

  “Professional. The lad’s a wanted felon.”

  Lettie Carew’s subservient pose evaporated. “Oh, lordy, don’t tell me you’re a copper.”

  He allowed his stern expression to convince her that he was. Identifying himself would have served no purpose; parlor house madams were terrified of the police, but not of detectives who had no official standing.

  “Bloody hell!” she said.

  “How long has he been here, Lettie?”

  “Since yesterday afternoon.”

  “But he did leave for a time in the evening?”

  “He may have, I don’t know. Ask him or Ming Toy.”

  “He’s here now, is he?”

  “Upstairs. Will you let me roust him out so you can make your arrest outside? I have other customers. I run a quiet house and I paid my graft this week, same as always.…”

  “No. Which room is Ming Toy’s?”

  The madam muttered a naughty word. “There won’t be any shooting, will there?”

  “Not if it can be avoided.”

  “Well, if there’s any damage, the city will pay for it or I’ll sue. That includes bloodstains on the carpet, bedding, and furniture.”

  “Which room, Lettie?”

  She impaled him with a long smoky glare before she squeaked, “Nine,” and turned and flounced out of the room.

  In the front hallway, a long carpeted staircase led to the second floor. Quincannon mounted it with his hand on the Navy Colt under his coat. The odd-numbered rooms were to the left of the stairs; in front of the door bearing a gilt-edged 9, he stopped to listen. No discernible sounds issued from within. He drew his revolver, depressed the latch, and stepped into a room decorated in an ostentatious Chinese-dragon style, dimly lighted by rice-paper lanterns and choked with incense and wine vapors.

  He had no need for the Navy. Dodger Brown was sprawled supine on the near side of the four-poster bed, dressed in a pair of soiled long johns, flatulent snoring sounds emanating from his open mouth.

  The girl who sat beside him was no more than twenty, delicate-featured, her comeliness marred by dark eyes already as old as Eve in the garden. She hopped off the bed, pulling a loose silk wrapper around her thin body, and hurried to where Quincannon stood. If she were aware of his weapon, it made no apparent impression on her.

  “Busy,” she said in a singsong voice, “busy, busy.”

  “Not anymore, Ming Toy. It’s the lad there I’m after, not you.”

  “So?” The young-old eyes blinked several times. “Finished?” she asked hopefully.

  “Finished,” he agreed. “He’ll spend this night in jail.”

  She bobbed her head as if the prospect pleased her, then aimed a disgusted look at the snoring Dodger. “Wine,” she said.

  “He won’t be drinking anything but water from now on.”

  “Good-bye, Ming Toy?”

  “Not until you answer my questions. What time did he leave last night?”

  “Leave?”

  “Yes, and what time did he return?”

  “Not leave. Here all day, all night.”

  “He never left at all? You’re sure he didn’t slip out while you were asleep?”

  “I not sleep, he sleep. Drink, hump, sleep, snore. Drink, hump, sleep, snore. All day, all night.” Ming Toy wrinkled her nose. “Phooey,” she said.

  “All right. Good-bye now.”

  She went, vanishing as swiftly and silently as a wraith.

  Quincannon padded to the bedside. Four rough shakes, and Dodger Brown stopped snoring and his eyes popped open. For several seconds he lay inert, peering up blearily at the face looming above him. Recognition came an instant before he levered himself off the bed in a single convulsive lunge.

  The movement was so sudden, so swift, Quincannon had no time to straighten or set himself. Or to avoid the lowered head that thudded into his midsection and sent him staggering backward into a bamboo screen. The screen folded up with a clatter and he went down on top of it. Before he could untangle himself, Dodger Brown had the door open and was stumbling out into the hallway.

  Quincannon shoved furiously to his feet. The damned scruff had gotten away from him once, but not this time. No, by Godfrey, not this time! He unholstered the Navy again as he charged into the hallway.

  Brown was running for the stairs, and when Quincannon spied him he loosed a bellow that shook the walls, brought startled noises from behind closed doors. The little burglar’s head jerked around and his stride faltered, which caused one bare foot to slide and bind up in a carpet fold, which in turn caused him to stumble past the staircase into the newel post on its far side. He s
pun off with arms flailing, lurched sideways across the hallway, and thumped into the wall with such force that he bounced backward, somehow managing to remain upright as he did so. He threw a terrified glance at his fire-breathing pursuer, who was now almost to the stairs, and commenced a splay-footed run toward the end of the hall.

  There was a street-front window there, but it was closed and covered with a red shade; the yegg’s only chance for escape, or so he thought, was through one of the rooms. He clawed at the latch on the nearest one, yanked it open, and plunged inside to the sound of alarmed cries from the occupants.

  Quincannon got there in time to prevent the back-flung door from slamming in his face. He shouldered it wide and barreled through. A naked fat man and an equally naked, equally fat Mexican girl were in the process of scrambling off a rumpled bed in a confusion of arms and legs, while Dodger Brown sprinted past to an airshaft window on the opposite side. He was frantically trying to open the window far enough to squeeze his scrawny body through when Quincannon reached him, caught hold of the collar of his long johns, lifted him off his feet, and yanked him around.

  Brown fought him with body twists, fisted hands, and a shin kick, but this time Quincannon was ready for his sly tricks. He slammed the burglar backward into the wall next to the window, deftly avoiding another attempted shin kick. Held him there with a cocked hip and poked the bore of the Navy squarely between his bloodshot eyeballs.

  “You’re pinched, lad,” he panted. “Resign yourself to it if you want to keep on breathing.”

  The Dodger, staring cross-eyed at the Colt, was neither brave nor stupid; he knew the game was up. All the struggle and sand left him at once and he sagged quiescently in Quincannon’s grip.

  “Here … what’s the meaning of this … this outrage!”

  The spluttering voice came from the fat man, who was crouched on the far side of the bed with some, though not all, of his nakedness now swaddled in bedclothes. He seemed to be trying to hide his face as well, but enough of it remained visible for Quincannon to recognize him. There was no sign of the Mexican girl; she was either cowering under the bed or had managed to flee during the skirmish.

  Quincannon holstered his revolver as he hauled Dodger Brown toward the door. On the way he used his free hand to doff his derby, which had miraculously managed to remain in place, at the fat man.

  “Apologies for the interruption, Senator,” he said. “Carry on as you were.”

  The last sound he heard before shutting the door behind himself and the Dodger was a mournful quacking cry like that of a ruptured duck.

  Eyes followed the two of them back down the hallway, two of the brightest belonging to Lettie Carew, who had climbed puffing to the top of the stairs. When Quincannon assured her in passing that there would no more commotion, she said, “Well, at least there wasn’t any shooting,” sighed heavily, and headed back down to her lair.

  In Ming Toy’s room, Quincannon dumped Dodger Brown on the mussed bed and used the handcuffs he carried to circle both thin wrists. The little housebreaker offered no resistance; his vulpine features were now arranged in an expression of painful self-recrimination.

  “It’s my own fault,” he said in tones almost as mournful as the state senator’s. “After you near nabbed me the other night, I knew I should’ve staightaway hopped a rattler in the Oakland yards. Gone on the lammas instead of comin’ over here.”

  “Aye, and let it be a lesson to you.” Quincannon grinned and added sagely, “The best-laid plans aren’t always the best-planned lays.”

  “Murder? Me?” Dodger Brown looked and sounded appalled at the notion. He squirmed on the rumpled bed, his manacled hands clutched together behind his scrawny back. “I never killed nobody in my life. Never! It wasn’t me who broke into the Costain joint and bumped him off. I was here last night, all night-I never left for a minute. Ask Ming Toy, she’ll tell you.”

  “I already asked her.”

  “Well, then? You know I done the other burglaries, okay, I admit it. But no more after you almost nabbed me at the banker’s. I ain’t been near the Costain place, not even to tab it up.”

  “What make of pistol do you carry these days, Dodger?”

  “None. I give that up-too dangerous, even unloaded like I always carried mine. Look in my clothes over there, you won’t even find a Barlow knife.”

  “We both know that’s because Lettie Carew doesn’t allow customers to bring their weapons upstairs,” Quincannon said. “Will I find one downstairs in the lockbox with your name on it?”

  The little burglar opened his mouth to lie again, changed his mind, and sighed instead. “Pocket pistol. Twenty-five caliber. But it’s empty and you won’t find any cartridges for it. I ain’t loaded it once since I bought it and that’s the plain truth.”

  “I thought your preference was a larger-caliber weapon. A Forehand and Wadsworth thirty-eight, for instance.”

  “Is that what plugged the lawyer? Well, I never owned a piece like that. Never. You can’t put the frame on me for no killing.”

  “Clara Wilds,” Quincannon said.

  “Huh?” Dodger Brown blinked at the sudden shift of subjects. “What about Clara?”

  “Still keeping company with her?”

  “No. Not anymore. We busted up awhile back.”

  “Why?”

  “She was two-timing me.”

  “While you remained faithful except for your regular parlor house visits. Who was her new lover?”

  “Some no-account named Pope.”

  “Her fenceman, Victor Pope?”

  “Yeah. How’d you know that?”

  “When did you see Clara last?”

  “Four, five months ago. Why all these questions about her?”

  “She’s dead. Murdered.”

  The Dodger’s eyes bulged. “Clara? Bumped off? When? Where?”

  “In her rooms yesterday afternoon.”

  “Who done it?”

  Quincannon cocked an eyebrow.

  “Say! You ain’t tryin’ to make out it was me?” Outrage replaced the scruff’s real or feigned shock. The handcuffs rattled again noisily. “I told you, I never carried a loaded weapon and I never shot nobody-”

  “Clara wasn’t shot.”

  “Then how-?”

  “Stabbed with her own hatpin. And her rooms ransacked afterward.”

  “Hatpin. Jesus.”

  “You knew about her new dodge, I’ll wager.”

  “Doin’ the dip? Yeah, she learned the game from old Sal Tatum. She must’ve made a big score and some bastard found out about it and was after the swag.”

  Quincannon cocked his eyebrow again.

  “Not me! I got plenty from my own scores. Listen, you got to believe me, I never-”

  “Scoot around and lie facedown on the bed.”

  “… What?”

  “You heard me.”

  Dodger Brown stared at him for three or four seconds, licked his lips, then twisted and flung himself flat across the bed. He squawked and began struggling when Quincannon caught hold of the collar of his unbuttoned long johns and dragged the top down over his shoulders. “Hey! What’s the idea? What you gonna do?”

  “Nothing, if you keep quiet and hold still.”

  No gouge or scratch marks had been visible on the yegg’s face and neck; there were none on the upper back, shoulders, or upper arms. Quincannon rolled him over and pulled up first one sleeve, then the other. More unbroken skin. The Dodger made another squawking protest when Quincannon yanked the drawers down over his scrawny flanks long enough to determine that his belly and thighs were likewise free of injury.

  The little housebreaker called him several colorful names, which Quincannon chose to ignore. He’d been feeling rather pleased with himself when he snapped the cuffs on Dodger Brown, for it had seemed then that one if not two cases of theft and foul play were nearing their conclusion. Now his mood had soured somewhat. Part of the burglary investigation for Great Western Insurance had been satis
factorily resolved, but as for the rest of it …

  Dodger Brown was clearly not guilty of either his former paramour’s murder nor Costain’s. So who the devil was? Clara Wilds’s new paramour or one of her victims? A copycat burglar who had adopted the Dodger’s modus operandi? Two separate cases, or were they somehow intertwined? Two murderers-or one?

  Hell and damn! What had seemed a simple and easily resolved matter had turned out to be anything but. It was annoying and frustrating enough, though he hated to admit it, to tie the brain of even the most wily detective into temporary knots.

  24

  SABINA

  Sabina seemed to be spending much of her time lately prowling about residential carriageways. Just one of the many exciting and glamorous aspects of detective work. Another being afternoon tea with a candidate for a mental institution.

  The carriageway that bisected the block behind the Costain home was completely deserted. This genteel South Park neighborhood had seemed almost slumbrous as she made her way back to it from the tea shop. None of the few people abroad had paid any attention to her, and no one had been about when she entered the carriageway. Trees and shrubbery flanked the passage, making it unlikely that prying eyes such as those of Clara Wilds’s neighbor, Mrs. Marcus, would follow her progress along its grassy expanse. Nonetheless she made her way slowly, as if she were a resident out for a casual late-afternoon stroll.

  When she neared the halfway point in the block, the rear fence and outbuildings of the Costain property took shape ahead. Vegetation was her ally here, too, a pair of gnarled old walnut trees screening the roadbed from the house. John had mentioned the carriage barn at the rear, which meant the Costains owned equipage and an animal to draw it. It seemed probable that Penelope Costain had driven herself to the funeral parlor, and since there’d been no sign of a rig on the street after her return home, it was also probable that she’d put it and the horse away.