Death of a Hooker

by Kane, Henry

  The racing charts showed topside of the folded newspaper.

  “King Fleet is running Friday,” I said.

  “Shoo-in,” he said.

  “You going to bet him?”

  “He’ll be twenny cents to the dollar, tops. That’s for the rich ones.”

  I smiled. “And that rich you’re not.”

  “Wish I wuz. I’d lay down ten thousand and go right to the Cashier’s window to pick up my two gees profit. Money in the bank.”

  “Well, not quite,” I said.

  “Beg to differ. Quite, quite. That race, quite. Four-horse race with no competition. Money in the bank.” The elevator stopped, doors flew open. “Penthouse floor,” he said.

  There were but two penthouse apartments, one to the rear and one to the front. The Lund apartment was to the front and I went to it and pressed the buzzer. The butler, sleepy-eyed, greeted me.

  “Oh, good evening, Mr. Chambers.”

  “Good evening,” I said. “Mrs. Lund in? The younger?”

  “Oh, yes sir. She’s expecting you, sir. In the east drawing room. This way, please.”

  He led me to the east drawing room, opened the door, permitted me to enter, and closed the door. Astrid Lund, in lavender lounging pajamas topped by a short black brocaded house jacket, was seated, legs crossed, in an easy chair, a magazine in her lap. As I entered, she stood up, tossed the magazine to the chair she vacated, took three one-hundred dollar bills from a table and handed them to me. “Thanks,” she said.

  “You’re welcome,” I said. “But how do you know?”

  “Mr. Veneto and I had a conference.”

  “Oh,” I said. I put her money into my pocket.

  “Good night,” she said.

  I looked at her. “You sore or something?”

  “I’m sleepy.”

  “But even more discourteous than ever. What’s biting you? Twenty thousand extra teeth?”

  “That smooth son of a bitch doesn’t stop squeezing, does he?”

  “That’s his business.”

  “The blood sucker.”

  “Did you think that when he bailed you out of hock?”

  “Made me sign a note, the bastard, for the extra twenty.”

  “What did you expect—a handshake deal?”

  “Twenty thousand bucks for a lousy couple of months.”

  “You yourself authorized six.”

  “Maybe even less than a lousy couple of months.”

  “Now, what makes you so sure of that?”

  She opened her mouth, closed her mouth. She said, “Have you been paid?”

  “Yes.”

  “Anything further?”

  “No.”

  “Then kindly get the hell out of here.”

  “A pleasure.”

  I went out of the room and did not slam the door only because there were others sleeping somewhere in the apartment. The butler picked me up in my march to the exit. He was a stooped old fellow with pouched eyes and flabby cheeks.

  “Long day you’re having,” I said.

  “I’m waiting up for Mrs. Lund the elder,” he said. “She’s due at any moment.”

  He let me out and I pushed for the elevator and the tall young man had just begun “Money in the bank” when we heard the reports, three rapid shots echoing up the elevator shaft.

  “Did you hear that?” I said.

  “Backfire,” he said.

  “Gunfire,” I said. “Keep this thing running as fast as it can go. No stops. Express.” He pushed his lever all the way and we whizzed downward. “Anytime it’s anything in a big city,” I mumbled, “it’s backfire and nothing else and nobody wants to take notice.”

  “I still think it’s backfire and there’s my buzzer going for floor eight which we just passed and I don’t know why I—”

  But as he opened his doors he choked on the balance of his sentence and pounded after me as I ran forward. Mrs. Barbara Lund and Juan Fernandez lay on the lobby floor almost dead center. Mrs. Lund, in a cocky little black hat and a short sealskin jacket, was lying on her side, tiny and crumpled, like a puppet dropped from strings, a thin stream of blood oozing from her exposed ear. Juan was crawling to his feet, his left arm dangling, a widening red-brown stain damaging the sleeve of his light-blue uniform at the vicinity of the bicep.

  “What happened?” I yelled.

  “A man with a gun,” Juan croaked. “How’s the old lady?”

  “Call cops,” I flung at the elevator man and I could see him scoot, feet pumping, as I bent to Mrs. Lund.

  She was no longer breathing. Her knees were drawn up as a child’s in sleep and I could not help noticing the gleaming jeweled heels of the tiny going-to-theatre black pumps. She was a thin small woman, seeming thinner and smaller in death. Gently, I lifted her head. There was a bullet hole at the right side of her neck and a bullet hole at the right side of the base of her skull. Gently, I laid back the head. Blood oozed from the exposed left ear.

  I stood up. “She’s dead,” I said.

  Silently Juan Fernandez crossed himself.

  “Let’s look to you,” I said. I moved him away from the body. I opened his jacket and stripped it from him as carefully as I could but he groaned through teeth bitten into his lower lip. The left sleeve of his shirt was a soaking mass of blood. I dug my nails in at the shoulder and ripped off the sleeve. A bullet had pierced the arm, probably cracking bone, but it had struck a major vessel and blood was spouting in a thick spray about two inches high. I shoved him at an armchair and he fell into it weakly. As I was tearing off the other sleeve of his shirt, the elevator-man returned.

  “The lobby next door’s got a phone and I called….” And then, as I moved, his gaze fell on Juan and his speech stuttered. “Oh, God … I … I can’t take that.” I flashed a glance at him. His face had gone grey and there were sudden black rings beneath his eyes. “Don’t look,” I said. “Get away.”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  “Is there any whiskey?”

  “Yeah. In the locker.”

  “Bring it.”

  He clattered away. I twisted Juan’s bloodless sleeve to a plait and used it as a tight tourniquet just beneath the shoulder. I wiped the perspiration from his face with my handkerchief, and watched the wound. The geyser of blood diminished to an ugly, sticky leak. The arm turned deathly white. I looked away, as bad as the elevator-man, but affected differently. He could not take the crimson of blood; I could not take the plaster-white of impaired circulation. I hung Juan’s jacket over his left shoulder, covering the arm. Somehow, he looked gallant; he looked like a wounded matador.

  “Are you all right?” I said.

  “Okay,” he said. He smiled. It was ghastly.

  The elevator-man came with a bottle of bourbon.

  “Would you like a drink?” I asked Juan.

  “Yes,” he said.

  I uncorked the bottle. “Can you take it straight? From the bottle?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  I put the bottle in his right hand. He tilted it to his lips, gulped deeply, shuddered. He held the bottle away and looked at me, blinkingly. I nodded encouragement. He lifted the bottle again, swallowed again, shuddered again, and returned the bottle to me. I drank and did not shudder. I gave the bottle and the cork to the elevator-man but he did not cork the bottle. He sat, limply, in a low chair, knees up, and sucked intermittently. His color improved.

  “What happened?” I said to Juan.

  “The old lady came home with the car with the chauffeur.”

  “Yes?” I said.

  “Like always, when it’s late, she said for the chauffeur to take in the car, and for him to go home. Like always, I took her under the arm and helped her in, not that she really needed help, she was a proud old lady, but I always did it, and she never minded, she seemed to like it, and I liked it. We was coming here to the elevator when I hear the outside door open and I hear these footsteps, running. Before I can turn around there’s these two shots and the o
ld lady goes heavy in my hands, and I turn around, and the guy pings one at me, and I keel. Me and the old lady, like we fall down together. And the guy is running out.”

  “Did you get a look at him?”

  “Fast look.”

  “Did you recognize him?”

  “No.”

  “Can you describe him?”

  “Tall and dark. Nice-looking. That’s all.”

  “Can you describe what he was wearing?”

  “Nope. A suit.”

  “What color?”

  “I got no idea. Like I said, it was a fast look.”

  “Hat? Topcoat?”

  “No. No hat. No topcoat.”

  “Would you know him if you saw him again?”

  “Yes. Yes, I think so.”

  And then there was the wail of the police car siren.

  There were cops and then there were detectives and they were quick and efficient. They asked their questions and they got their answers. The elevator-man and I nullified each other because our separate statements declared neither of us an actual witness. We were in the elevator when we heard the shots; we could not even set the exact time because we had not looked at our watches. They wrote down our names and addresses and then they removed Mrs. Lund and Juan Fernandez. Two cops remained to notify relatives and the elevator-man took them into his car, all stern and silent now, for the journey to the penthouse. He had retained the bottle of bourbon and I had an idea that for the rest of the night his patrons would be having a rocky ride.

  I went home and went directly to bed but could not sleep. I got out of bed and took a pill and went back to bed. I tried hard, for the sake of my dreams, to concentrate solely upon Marilyn Windsor, but when I drifted off, I lived in swirling nightmares all concerned with a tiny lady in a cocky hat, lying on her side, knees up like a sleeping doll, blood bubbling, never ceasing, from one ear.

  SEVEN

  I slept late. I had breakfast at noon. I dressed carefully because of my two o’clock date with Marilyn Windsor. I called her first and I was surprised at the timbre of her voice. It was soft, slow-paced, throaty, sexual; somehow I had imagined it high-pitched and nasal. I verified my appointment, and at two o’clock of a hell of a hot Wednesday afternoon, I presented myself at 203 East 37th Street, where she lived. Her apartment was on the third floor, to which I was transported by a creaking self-service elevator. I pushed her button and she opened the door and I almost fell in on her.

  It was hot and she was dressed for heat in every sense of the word. She wore tiny yellow shorty pants and a tiny yellow bandana and that was it. She stood barelegged and smiling. Her hair was drawn back in a pony tail and there was no make-up on her face. She was so damned beautiful, it was stupifying. I just stood there, eyes popped out, rigid as though my underwear were starched.

  She said, “Gosh, are you Mr. Chambers?”

  I misunderstood. To me it had the ring of accusation. I blinked. I said, “What’s wrong with my being Mr. Chambers?”

  “Oh, nothing, nothing at all, of course not. Won’t you come in, please?”

  She led me into a small, hot, badly-furnished living room.

  “Darned hot,” she said, “isn’t it?”

  “Darned,” I said.

  “You may remove your jacket if you wish.”

  “I wish,” I said. I wished to remove more than my jacket but all I removed was my jacket. I also loosened my tie and opened my collar.

  “This place is temporary,” she said. “Pretty awful, isn’t it?”

  “Not when you’re in it,” I said.

  A blue glint came into the blue eyes, making them bluer, and she smiled with a restrained impishness which somehow belied the characterization of utter unsophistication accorded her by Sally. “Well, thank you,” she said. “That’s a very pretty compliment.”

  “Doesn’t measure up,” I said. “You’re a most beautiful girl.” I wound up to pitch. “You are absolutely—”

  “Gosh,” she said. “So you’re Mr. Chambers?”

  “Now what the hell?” I said.

  “Please don’t swear,” she said.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Would you like a drink?” she said.

  “I could use a drink,” I said.

  “Excuse me.”

  She moved and I devoured her, bug-eyed. Maybe Sally was right. Maybe she was unsophisticated. Certainly, for a girl with her astonishing architecture she did not seem to be conscious of the inordinate stimulus of her lack of clothing. Well, undiapered babies are not conscious of their nakedness. But, damn, she was a woman, not a baby. Well, perhaps she considered herself clothed; that in itself could be a form of innocence; certainly her vital parts were covered, though frugally. She turned and went toward a door and going away she was as perfect as coming forward; the sum total of her was about as becalming as a double dose of tincture of cantharides. She quit the room and I shuddered, heaved a deep sigh, and tried to think other than the naughty thoughts I was thinking. I prowled, inspecting. In a corner, there was a portable record player. I found a dreamy-tuned record and stuck the hole on the prong. I was about to click on the music when she returned. I was grateful. Not for her, although, of course, I was grateful for her too. I was grateful that she was bringing a drink. I needed the counterbalance of a good strong shot of whiskey; but what she brought was not whiskey. On a tray were two open bottles of Coca Cola. I made a face. She said, “Don’t you like Coke?”

  “Love it,” I said.

  “But you seemed—unhappy.”

  “No, no, not at all,” I said.

  She set down the tray, brought a bottle for me, kept a bottle for herself. “Ice-cold,” she said. “You’ll love it.”

  “I love you.”

  “Beg pardon?”

  “Coke. I love it. Ice-cold. Thank you.”

  Watching her put the mouth of the bottle between her lips rounded to accommodate it did me no good at all. I turned away as I gurgled Coke. I set away my bottle. She had already set away hers. “So you are Peter Chambers,” she said.

  “Oh, God,” I said.

  “Please don’t curse,” she said.

  “Sorry,” I said, “but I don’t get it. What’s with this ‘So you are Peter Chambers’ bit?”

  “You’re the man who was in Mr. Avalon’s waiting room.”

  “So what?” I said.

  She sat down. I sat down in a chair farthest away from her. “Do you believe in an instant attraction?” she said.

  “Like love at first sight?”

  “Something like, but not love of course; one can’t love instantly. Love is one thing. Attraction is another.”

  “I believe,” I said.

  “So do I. It happens to me; not often, but it happens. It happened when I saw you in Mr. Avalon’s waiting room.”

  This chick was stealing my thunder. The shimmering heat in the hot room added to the sense of unreality. These were my lines—but she was reciting them. “The moment I saw you,” she said, “I felt it. It … it was uncanny.”

  “You sure didn’t show it,” I said.

  She drew herself up. Sitting, relaxed, was bad enough; drawing herself up was absolutely aphrodisiacal. I cringed in my chair. It was either one or the other: cringing from her or leaping upon her. I cringed.

  “Show it?” she said. “A person with any breeding doesn’t show anything like that.”

  “I believe,” I said.

  “Pardon?”

  “Instant attraction. I believe. I know. It happened to me. With you. Ask Sally Avalon. I told him. I told him I flipped.”

  “Flipped?”

  “My wig.”

  “Your wig?”

  “It’s an expression. I told Sally I was out of my mind for you, crazy about you, the moment I saw you. Call him. Ask him.” I pointed to the phone.

  “I believe you,” she said. “And I’m glad.”

  Now where do you go from there?

  I went nowhere. I sat, cringed. I was afraid to
make a move. I was afraid to spoil it.

  “I tried to dismiss you from my mind,” she said. “I mean, you see somebody, and there may be that … that instant attraction, but that’s it, I mean, a person, a stranger, you just push it out of your mind, and let it pass. And now you are Peter Chambers. I had imagined an old, wise, cynical, experienced little man with a potbelly.”

  “Skip the potbelly and you’ve practically got a thumbnail description.”

  “Oh, no, not at all,” she said.

  I stopped cringing because I was developing a pain in my groin. I stood up. I went to the record player, shoved the indicator to ON, and the music came. I went to her, took her hand, bowed as best I could manage, and said, “Shall we dance?”

  “You’re crazy,” she said. “I’m not even wearing shoes.”

  “I’ll take mine off,” I said. I kicked out of my shoes.

  “You’re crazy,” she said and she was up and in my arms and we were dancing. At two o’clock in the afternoon, in a hot ugly furnished room, Peter Chambers, cold sober, without shoes and without jacket, was dancing with a barefoot girl in shorts and bandana, and it was more romantic than dress clothes and moonlight on the Riviera. The music ended, and I kissed her, and she kissed me in return, and Sally Avalon or no Sally Avalon, unsophistication or no unsophistication, that girl had a mouth as hot as Vesuvius, and a tongue as lively as an unspayed terrier, and her bodypress would have done credit to the most accomplished wrestler. And then her elbows were digging into my chest, and she broke it up; and Sally Avalon had the victory, because she was crying, undramatically and ungrimaced, but the tears were shedding like a bird in moult.

  Dismayed, I said, “Cut it out. Please.”

  “I … I don’t even know you.”

  That drove me to my Coke bottle which I drained.

  She was still crying. I brought her my handkerchief.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “No. Not you. Don’t be sorry,” she said. “My fault. All my fault. And I don’t even know you.”

  “Peter Chambers,” I said.

  “Marilyn Windsor,” she said smiling amidst tears.

  “We’ll get acquainted,” I said. “You’ll know me.”

  “I like you so much, so much.”