Death of a Hooker

by Kane, Henry

  And she shivered, crying again, and put the handkerchief to her face. I wanted to go to her, and put my arms around her, and hold her, and comfort her, but the cure and the cause were one and the same, so I did nothing.

  Finally, she stopped crying.

  At arm’s length, she returned my handkerchief.

  “Please,” she said, “get dressed.”

  I went for my jacket.

  “No,” she said. “Your shoes. Please put on your shoes on. It’s sort of indecent, without your shoes.” (And she was barefoot.)

  So I put on my shoes.

  A pretty wild afternoon, no?

  She sat down and we had the rainbow after the squall—she smiled—and my motor started racing again. I scampered to my faraway chair, and sat, and cringed, and my groin began to pain again. “Mickey Bokino,” I said. “Sally told me all about your difficulty.”

  “Sally?”

  “Mr. Avalon.”

  “It’s Salvatore, isn’t it?”

  “We call him Sally.”

  “Oh. That’s cute.”

  Sort of birdshot conversation, but Sally had warned me.

  And then the smile was gone and the blue eyes were very earnest. “Don’t you think we should have called Astrid Lund?”

  “It wouldn’t have done any harm,” I said. “But don’t you worry about it any more. That’s my job now.”

  “I know you’re entitled to a fee and I—”

  “No, no, no fee. This is a very simple matter. Just forget about it. I’ll take care of everything.”

  “How?”

  “Pardon?” I said.

  “How will you take care of it?”

  Mildly I said, “I’ll talk to him.”

  “That’s all? That’ll take care of it?”

  “Let’s say I’m a convincing talker.”

  “But what’ll you say? What’ll you tell him?”

  I had not the faintest notion. “Leave it to me,” I said.

  She sat back and crossed her legs. “But I’d like to know. I mean, he might call me. I mean, I’d have to sound sort of intelligent about the whole thing. I mean, I’ve had no experience with private detectives, but is there any reason why I shouldn’t know?”

  And then an idea exploded like a beautiful Roman candle. “I’ll tell him that we’re engaged.”

  “Who?”

  “You and I. Us. We’re engaged to be married.”

  The head cocked. The eyes meditated. A thoughtful frown put a vertical stripe between the graceful eyebrows. And then the head righted and a smile came brightly. “Yes,” she said. “A good idea.” And then the thoughtful frown returned. She uncrossed her legs and put her hands on her knees. “But if we’re engaged—why did I go out with him?”

  A stumper. But you’re entitled. You’re entitled to all manner of stumpers when you indulge in bird shot conversation.

  “Yes, yes,” I said. “You have a point.” I let it rattle around and I covertly ogled while pretending concentration, and then of course it came to me but she beat me to it.

  “We became engaged,” she said, “today.”

  And Sally had intimated that she was dumb. Sorry, naive.

  “Today,” I said. “Yes, today. I proposed while we were dancing without shoes.”

  That brought a laugh, tinkling melodiously, and a ladylike slap of open palm on bare thigh, which, on my side produced my damp handkerchief and a feeble pat upon feverish brow.

  “When?” she said.

  “Beg pardon?” I said. “What when? I mean, when what?”

  “When will you tell him?” She stood up.

  I put the handkerchief away and stood up. “Now,” I said.

  “And when will you tell me?”

  “I have told you.”

  “What have you told me?”

  “I’ve told you that we’re engaged.”

  “No, no. I mean when will you tell me the result of your conversation with him?”

  Naive? Or naive?

  “Tonight,” I said. “Over dinner.”

  “We having dinner? Tonight?”

  “Of course.”

  “I don’t remember your asking me.”

  “I was too busy proposing. Sorry. Will you have dinner with me this evening?”

  “I can’t.”

  My heart bumped around, hollowly, like a ball falling down a deep well. Gaiety suddenly took a lousy turn. “Please,” I said.

  “Not this evening.”

  “But when?”

  “Tonight.”

  This was a chick who certainly kept me off balance.

  “I don’t quite follow,” I said.

  “This evening I must be at Mr. Avalon’s. Six-thirty to nine. He needs these photographs for some kind of hurry-up advertising campaign.” Her smile was a grin, sort of impudent, and an impudent grin from Marilyn Windsor was utterly shattering. I pieced myself together and listened. “I’m going to be wearing a black evening gown, but slinky, so tight I can hardly breathe in it. Mr. Avalon himself got it for me. Six-thirty to nine. After that, I’m free. Now, if you would want to have dinner that late….”

  “I’d love it.”

  “You can call for me at Mr. Avalon’s. I’ll bring a change.”

  “Don’t.”

  “But that evening gown….”

  “I’ll wear dinner clothes. We’ll do it up gala. We’ll hit some of the top places. We have a lot of talking to do, you and I, a lot of getting acquainted, plus, after all, we’ll be celebrating our engagement.”

  Her eyes were brilliant, her smile half-sad, and her kiss was a peck at my cheek, as we floated toward the door.

  “Goodbye,” I said. “See you later.”

  “You forgot your jacket.”

  That’s love for you.

  I got my jacket, got into it, did the goodbye all over again, and reached for her, but she resisted; sweetly but determinedly, she resisted; and I departed, frustrated but floating.

  EIGHT

  I floated into a taxicab. The taxicab and I floated all the way to 500 Fifth Avenue where I floated up to the fourth floor and floatingly inquired for Mr. Bokino. I was informed that Mr. Bokino was in conference with a client and I was requested, warmly enough, to cool my heels. I floated into a bloated waiting room armchair where, corkingly, I bobbed about, ecstatically love-inspired, generating firepower for the imminent assault upon the citadel of General Manager.

  Of course I had him and I knew it and if he did not know it, he would know it soon enough. Mickey Bokino, in executive capacity, earned an excellent salary, if five hundred smackers per week may, apologetically, be considered an excellent salary in these days of preposterous inflation when the price of a steak is as the price of a pearl and every assistant chef, consistently, each now and then, deserts his skillet, while the beef burns, to make nonculinary query as to the bullish condition of the ballooning (and balloon is the word) stock market.

  Mickey Bokino earned five hundred dollars a week but he was a junkie and his habit cost him $40 a day which was cheap but Mickey had good connections, was a good customer, and got his heroin wholesale, at 25 percent off. That left two hundred and ninety bananas but from that we must strike legitimate taxes because his was a legitimate salary. The balance was barely sufficient to keep Mickey in clothes and crumpets in the style to which he fancied himself accustomed. Astrid Lund helped but she did not help enough and she had become more of a burden than an advantage. No doubt Mickey had dipped into the till of Vinnie Veneto in order to furnish $30,000 to Beverly Crystal, and no doubt he would be hard put to refill that void unless Bevvie coughed up as promised on Friday, but until she did (if she did) the club I could wield over Mickey was a puissant one.

  “Mr. Bokino will see you now,” said the receptionist.

  “Thank you,” I said and floated to his office and deposited myself in the customer’s chair as he smiled at me from behind his desk.

  “So, shamus?” he said. “What brings you?”

 
; “You’re interfering in my love life.”

  “Me?” he said pleasantly but the smile dissipated. “Like how I’m interfering?”

  “Marilyn Windsor is how you’re interfering.”

  “Marilyn Windsor? What’s you with Marilyn Windsor?”

  “We’re engaged.”

  “Who?”

  “Marilyn Windsor and I. To be married.”

  “You’re full of crap.”

  I lit a cigarette. I took my time. I let him fidget. He was quite handsome in a blue suit, white silk shirt, and narrow maroon tie. I said, “You’ve got a nasty mouth, but no matter. That girl and I became engaged—”

  “When?”

  “Today. From here on in she goes out with nobody except me, and I’m giving notice to those of her erstwhile boy friends that I know about and—”

  “How do you know about me?”

  “She told me.”

  His tongue flicked at a corner of his mouth. “She’s a real pretty kid.”

  “Thank you,” I said proprietorily. “And that closes the subject.”

  “Does it?”

  “Unless you’d like me to open thirty thousand dollars worth of subject with my friend Vinnie Veneto.”

  That shut his trap but started his jaw muscles working.

  “And now there’s another subject,” I said.

  “You’re full of subjects today, ain’t you?”

  “Only such subjects as pertain to you.”

  “And what subject now?”

  “The subject of Mrs. Barbara Lund.”

  “Yeah.” He opened a shiny-wood box on the desk, extracted a cigar, and lit it. “Now who would want to knock off a nice little old lady like that?”

  “You might,” I said.

  “Me?” The cigar jutted upward. “You’re off your rocker. What reason?”

  “Couple of reasons.”

  “Like what?”

  “Astrid Lund owes like two hundred and twenty gees to your boss who is looking to protect his interest. The old lady gets knocked off and Astrid comes into a tremendous hunk of loot. Like that your boss’s interest gets protected in the best manner possible—he gets paid off.”

  “Look, pal, I’m no gun for Vinnie Veneto. I work in the office, you know? With this big desk here, and my leather swivel chair, and my nice box of cigars. General Manager. Remember me?”

  “I also remember you’re in the hole to Vinnie for thirty big ones.”

  “So what?”

  “So you do him a big favor in return for which you get a big favor—time to pay off. Sweet?”

  “Stinks,” he said. “Vinnie don’t know nothing about that thirty gees.”

  I pressed out my cigarette. I said, “Try this one for size.”

  “Which one?”

  “Let’s stay with that thirty gees.”

  “Stupidest thing I ever did in my life. Man, when I get conned I really get conned.”

  “You gave Beverly Crystal until Friday.”

  “On your say-so.”

  “But you’re not sure you’re going to get paid?”

  “I’m hoping.”

  “But you’re not sure.”

  “Damn right I’m not sure.”

  “So if you put a bullet into the old lady, your sweetheart grabs up big money. As the beneficiary of millions, she can get thirty thousand to you quick like a flash. You get it back into the till, and you’re clear of Vinnie. Then if Beverly pays, you return it to Astrid. If Beverly does not pay—”

  “She gets enough scars on her map to be put in the geography books.”

  I sat back. “See what I mean?”

  “No, I don’t see what you mean.”

  “The cops would see what I mean.”

  “Look, you’re way out wrong on that Astrid pitch. That jazzed-up bitch wouldn’t deliver thirty gees to me even if I promised to piss all the way across from Macy’s to Gimbel’s. Yeah, she’ll hand out little slices of loot to keep me going along, but when it comes to a real respectable hunk of loot, that much she don’t care about me, honest.”

  I stood up and went to the window and looked out upon busy Fifth Avenue. “Maybe not,” I said, “but the cops would figure it different.”

  “What the hell is your interest in this?”

  “I liked that little old lady.” I turned back from the window. “Mick, if I presented my two theories to the cops, plus the information about that little hideaway you share with your lovebird, they’d pick you up and hold you so fast, no lawyer in the world would be able to yank you.”

  He laid his cigar away. “Got me over the barrel, hey?”

  I batted innocent eyes. “Barrel?” I said.

  “Sure. If you spill that story, sure they pick me up. And then it breaks wide open and I’m so far up the creek with Vinnie, I can never get out.” He drew a deep breath and rumbled a sigh. “Okay. You win. I promise I don’t see that broad of yours.”

  “It’s a dilemma,” I said.

  “What’s with dilemmas? I’m making you a promise, no?”

  “You’re making me a promise, yes. And if you weren’t a guy hipped on junk, I’d accept your promise. But you know you, pal of mine. You shoot in a big shot of horse and suddenly the whole world is rosy, and if you happen to be horny, the hell with all promises.”

  In all truth, at that moment, I was finished with him. I had got what I had come for. I had produced the desired rupture between Bokino and Windsor, although, as I had observed, dependence upon the promise of a junkie is the equivalent of dependence upon the Bible oath of an atheist; yet I had obtained, in the matter of Marilyn Windsor, all that was obtainable from Mickey Bokino. On the other hand, my happenstance ruse had developed a line of reasoning which had begun to appeal to me. I am a private detective and a private detective, like a professional critic, cannot doff his harness; he is always in there pitching, whether or not he is getting paid. Bokino was a very likely candidate for the office of murderer of Barbara Lund for the very reasons I had spuriously spouted. And then, like gout, an old nagging pain suddenly blossomed anew: Astrid Lund had contracted, with a fair degree of certitude, to pay off an enormous loan within the proscribed period of two months. Why the fair degree of certitude, and how come the subtle defiance of definite proscription? Mickey and Astrid slept together, and Mickey and Astrid were main liners together: what secrets did they babble to one another when they were flying on H? Right now, I had him. My random slashings had opened him up: vitals were exposed for surgical probe. I could not resist. I worked at my trade.

  “Why do you think I’m here?” I said.

  “What the hell?” he said.

  “She threw you to me.”

  “Who threw me? What the hell are you talking about?” But a flush, like a taint of guilt, corrupted his dark face.

  “Astrid,” I said. “Astrid threw you to me. You’re expendable, you stupid ape; expendable, if you know what that means.”

  The flush spread like a contagion. The dark face grew mottled. A mustache of sweat sat on his upper lip. The flesh about his cheekbones wrinkled as a tentative frightened squint enmeshed his dark eyes. “Who threw, what, when—what the hell are you talking about, bastard?”

  “You’re the candidate, pal. You were thrown to me. She passed you along to me—like with hints. If I followed it up, I’d find what I was looking for—you! Big Bokino. Floundering, stupid junk-boy. Big Bokino, doing a favor for his sweetie pie. Nobody asked him—certainly, she didn’t—but he went and did it, anyway; because that would make her rich, and her getting rich would be good for her, which would be good for you. He passed a bullet into a sick old lady so that sweetie pie could come up with all her flags waving. She threw you to me, pal—a crumb-bum junkie messing with his betters who thinks he measures up because he’s strong in the hay. Mickey, jerks like you are a dime a dozen, and expendable, like yesterday’s bread.”

  He squirmed. “Oh, the bitch, the bitch….”

  “Not to cops, she threw you, Mickey-pal
. To me, so I could wrap you up and deliver you, and she’s home free. Did she know you were in the hole to Vinnie?”

  “Yeah. I told her. She don’t know nothing about Bev, but I told her I was in the hole to Vinnie, and for how much.”

  “Sure. So with hints she give you to me to wrap for the cops. If I deliver you, they’ll hold you; and in any event your embezzlement of Gotham Loan breaks wide open. So either the cops put you into the chair or Vinnie puts you into the river. Either way, you’re very dead, and the light-of-your-life, she’s home free. Do I give you to the cops, Mickey-boy?”

  He was out of his chair, banging his hands together, raging about the room like a bull in an arena. Death in the afternoon of Ernest. All he needed was horns and a swinging tail. Ah, the brave Bokino, snorting, stamping, raging, thinking, thinking, maneuvering himself into position; but he was ready for the shaft now; he was ready for the thrust at the little hole between the shoulders. Moment of truth.

  “Astrid Lund wanted two months,” I said. “She was sure she could pay off an enormous loan within two months. Why?”

  The bull came into position. He stood very still, glaring at me.

  “The bitch,” said Mickey Bokino. “Oh, that bitch.”

  His hands fumbled in his pocket and came out with a metallic object which he tossed to me. I caught—a key.

  “What is it?” I said.

  “Key,” he said.

  “I figured that out all my myself,” I said. “Key for what?”

  “The flat.”

  “What flat?”

  “The apartment on Seventy-second.”

  “Your key?”

  The stupid eyes narrowed shrewdly. “I got a duplicate.”

  “And what do I do with this key?”

  “It’s a present—from me to you. It gives you an in. It gives you a chance to maybe catch her with her panties at half-mast. It’s like I’m making a contract, like I’m finished with a deal, like I’m handing over the key to the store. That bitch threw me to you; well, I’m throwing her right back to you. Start catching.”

  “Pitch,” I said.

  “Condition,” he said.

  “Talk,” I said.

  “One condition. I give her to you in a bundle on condition that you do nothing about me with coppers until I get clean with Vinnie. After that, do what you like.”