by Kane, Henry
“And how,” I said. “Beautiful analysis.”
“All of which gets us nowhere in a hurry, of course. But it shaves away externals which might add further complication. Do you know about the old lady’s will?”
“Yes,” I said.
“The chief beneficiary is the daughter-in-law, which, in an ordinary case, would, possibly, feature her as a chief suspect, but this isn’t an ordinary case.”
“Why not?” I said.
“I don’t know whether or not you know this—but the old lady was terminally ill of cancer. Of course, the daughter-in-law knew this. It would be ridiculous to have her murdered, with all the consequent possible penalties, when very soon she was going to die anyway. Understand?”
“Yes,” I said and looked away.
“But Juan Fernandez did not know this.”
“What the hell?” I said.
Louis Parker rose up and paced on short legs. The cigar had gone dead again. He held the stump in his fingers. “Do you know all of the terms of the will?”
“Yes.”
“Fernandez gets twenty-five thousand dollars.”
“So?”
“To a man like Fernandez, twenty-five thousand dollars is an awful lot of motive for murder.”
“But, Louie, the guy himself was shot.”
“In the arm, my friend, one bullet in the arm.”
“You mean you think …?”
“I’m only admitting to the possibility. An accomplice could bump the old lady, ping Mr. Fernandez, and it would look just great all around the mulberry bush.”
“But did Fernandez know about Mrs. Lund’s will?”
“I don’t know.”
“Haven’t you told him?”
“No. And I’m pumping gently to find out whether or not he did know. So, when you see him, please don’t mention it.”
“I’m going to see him?”
“It’s one of the reasons I dropped in here. He likes you, he’s been asking about you, and we’ve been catering to all his whims.”
“I’m a whim?”
“In a grotesque sort of way.” Parker chuckled. “Another thing about Fernandez, he’s not been quite cooperative.”
“Like how not cooperative?”
“The description of the assassin is vague and keeps getting vaguer.”
“Well, now, that’s naturally the way, Louie, and you know it. A guy gets a glimpse, and it’s always vague, if he’s telling the truth.”
“If he’s telling the truth. I don’t know if he is. We show him Rogue’s Gallery pictures—nothing. We ask for details—nothing. That presents three possibilites.”
“Go, man.”
“One. He’s telling the truth.”
“Yessir.”
“Two. He is criminally involved.”
“Yessir.”
“The third possibility—he’s afraid. Afraid to talk up with a full description. Afraid to attempt even a tentative identification from the mug file.” Parker sighed. “Hate to admit it, but I can understand that kind of fear, you know. I mean, can’t you?”
“Sure,” I said.
“We’ve been going sweet and easy on him, softening him up, working on all the possibilities.”
“In the hospital? In serious condition?”
“He’s not in the hospital, and not in serious condition. We put that out for the newspapers, period. But we’re hanging on to him in protective custody as a material witness.”
“Does he have a lawyer?”
“He hasn’t requested a lawyer.”
“Has he been told that he’s entitled to a lawyer?”
“Do you think I’d skirt the law, Peter? Shame on you. As I said—he hasn’t requested a lawyer.”
“You’re not keeping him in the can, are you?”
“Nope. The best. The St. Moritz, where you’re going to visit him now. You can talk about anything you like, Pete, but I’d appreciate it if you didn’t mention the old lady’s will. Okay?”
“Sure.”
“Come on.”
He had a luxury suite on the 19th floor: sitting room, living room, two bedrooms, two toilets. There were two cops sitting in the sitting room, and one cop lolling in each bedroom; the living room was bestowed for private powwow between Juan and myself while Parker sat with the other sitting bulls in the sitting room.
“I would wish to thank you very much, Mr. Chambers,” said Juan.
“What for?” I said.
“For the first aid you did. The doctor said you made a wonderful tourniquet and that it could have been a lot of trouble from the loss of blood if you did not.”
He was wearing rust-colored pants and a buttoned-down shirt without a tie. His left arm was in a sling. He was pale and his eyes were frightened but he smiled doggedly.
“How they treating you?” I said.
“Oh, okay, perfect, very nice. My relatives come to see me; whatever I want.”
“Juan,” I said. “Is there anything you’d like to tell me?”
“Tell you about what?”
“About … anything.”
“What can I tell you, Mr. Chambers?”
A fair enough question, properly put.
“Anything,” I said, “that could help us find out who killed Mrs. Lund.”
“I wish I could,” he said.
A fair enough reply, succinctly put.
“Juan,” I said, “are you scared?”
“Sure,” he said.
“Why?” I said.
He smiled his dogged smile and the frightened eyes blinked in the pale face. “The police, they hold me here. They say they hold me in protective custody. To protect is to keep you from harm, from hurt. If the cops themselves think there can be harm to me, hurt to me—why shouldn’t I be scared?”
When the logic is incontrovertible, there can be no argument. I did not argue. I chatted, told him to ask for me whenever he wished, promised to come see him again, said goodbye to him, said goodbye to Parker, and departed. I called my office from the lobby downstairs and told Miranda I would not be back. I went home for rest, slumber, beard-scraping, blackhead-squeezing, hair-primping, lengthy ablutions, and the most discriminatory selection of male adornment, from the frilliest of dress shirts to the jockiest of jockey shorts. I prettified with all the concentration of a gigolo on a hot scent for cool lucre. My date for the evening was pregnant with possibilities. Pregnant?—peculiar choice of word, nay? Ah, dear Doctor Freud!
ELEVEN
Promptly at nine o’clock, in full evening-wear regalia, bathed, smooth-scraped, after-shave-doused, under-arm-rolled, tooth-brushed, throat-gargled, and faintly smelling of heady masculine perfume, I presented myself at Avalon Studios to be greeted by Sally himself in fastidiously-tailored off-purple tuxedo with plaid-purple cummerbund, lacey-front dress shirt, and plaid-purple tie.
“Wow,” I said. “But wow.”
“Thank you,” he said.
“Are you my date for tonight?”
“No, but I’m going to join you, if you have no objection.”
Only because Sally was as gay as lavender confetti did I have no objection. “Of course not,” I said. “Love to have you.”
His leer was cute. “Just how do you mean that?—and I accept.”
“I’d love to have your company in the company of Miss Marilyn Windsor—if she’s somewhere about.”
“She’s in the can; though how she can possibly wee-wee in the dress she’s wearing is positively the miracle of miracles. Want a drink?”
He poured a Scotch and water for me, and one for himself, and we clinked glasses, and he drank, but I never got to the first gulp. My elbow was bent, my glass was up, my mouth was open—when Marilyn made her entrance. The glass stayed up and the mouth stayed open but I did not drink. Finally, sloppily, I got rid of the glass, but I simply could not work the hinges of my jaw and my mouth hung open like a drooling idiot’s as I observed my lady of the evening. Ah, me, she was something to observe!
She was sheathed in shining black sequins seemingly glued to her body. The dress began an inch above the nipples and descended like shimmering rain. It had no top and it was backless and the soft-curved tawny body rising out of it was like a tower of incentive for criminal assault. Even her face seemed different, the make-up dark and somewhat exaggerated: magenta glistening upon the lips, dark mascara giving a brooding hooded sensuous look to the cobalt-brilliant eyes, and the golden hair up off her neck in a complicated breath-taking sophisticated coiffure. She wore no jewelry, not even earrings. She was stark. Stark is the word. If your hormones were in shape, she could drive you stark raving mad.
“Good evening,” she said.
“Ah, ee, er, blah,” I said in my most courteous man-of-the-world fashion.
Dear Sally, in pity, rushed to the rescue. “My creation,” he said and giggled. “How do you like her? The sophisticated beauty. New York lady by night, big-city temptress, lure of perfume high upon the terrace of a skyscraper penthouse. I bet you didn’t think that our Marilyn could appear the blasé lady, the bored cosmopolite, the svelte and enchanting seductress. My own, my creation—from the dress, to the spike-heeled sequinned pumps, to the make-up, to the hair-do, to the very expression on that wonderfully malleable puss. But after all, it’s for an ad in a world-wide campaign selling some lousy perfume at three hundred dollars an ounce. This kid is great, a marvelous model, marvelous, just marvelous. How do you like her, Peter? Do you like?”
“I like, I like,” I said, the lockjaw finally beginning to ameliorate.
“Gosh,” said Marilyn, “I look at myself and I hardly recognize myself.”
“Is that what you were doing in the can, dearie?” said Sally. “Looking at yourself? Because I know you couldn’t possibly pee or anything else without removing that whole damned dress in its entirety.”
“I was fixing my make-up for Mr. Chambers. I wanted total effect for surprise. Were you surprised, Mr. Chambers?”
“Surprised, surprised,” I said, adding brilliant banter to the penthouse persiflage. “Let’s get the hell out of here, yes?”
“Yes, yes,” said Sally. “I’m starved. How about you, little Marilyn?”
“Hungry as a horse,” said the sophisticated lady.
Sally affixed a sable stole about Marilyn’s shoulders, placed a little black evening bag in her hand, said, “Okay, let’s go, my wonderful Cinderella.”
“Gosh,” said Cinderella, “how I’d like to be able to keep these darned clothes.”
“I may work it out for you, dearie,” said Sally. “I may be able to work out some wholesale deal, like you’ll get them for nothing. Wait until the ad boys see my photos. They’ll flip, fold, pant, and lick. They’ll throw in the clothes, believe me.”
“Oh, thank you, Mr. Avalon,” said Marilyn.
“I wish I had it for you,” said Sally, ruefully.
“I have,” I said.
“What are you boys talking about?” said Marilyn.
“Let’s go eat,” said Sally.
“Second the motion,” said I.
“Doesn’t she look ravishing?” said Sally.
“Amen,” said I.
We ate, like pigs, at Twenty One. Men craned their necks at our Sophisticated Lady, and women leered spitefully, and then over dessert and Drambuie, Sally said, “Let’s go to Cafe Tottila, eh? I think it would be most appropriate.”
I had been planning upon that suggestion and I wordlessly thanked Sally. “Would you like that?” I said to Marilyn. “Cafe Tottila?”
“Love it,” said Sally. “I think that Miss Kalmer does a bewitching dance.”
“Bewitching,” I said.
“We’re sure to run into Paxton,” said Sally.
“I have no objection to that,” I said. “Do you?”
“Why should I?” said Sally. “Only that he’s somewhat of a bore because of his unrestrained lust for that Kiki. Do you think she kicks in?”
“Kicking in for Kiki is no big deal.”
“I just thought she might hold out, for spite. You know how a chicken can be when a rooster gets too roosterish.”
“They’re all roosterish for Kiki.”
“Have you ever been there, Peter?”
“She’s not my cup of broth. Let’s get out of here.”
I paid and we blew and a cab carried us to Beatsville. Cafe Tottila was on Third Street, a four-step-down joint with a low ceiling, a lot of smoke, small tables, big prices, good jazz, and a fairly lousy set of strippers, one of whom was Kiki Kalmar.
Kiki Kalmar was a tall redhead of bold construction with green eyes. Kiki Kalmar had long legs, a lasciviously rounded rump, and a pair of gorgeous boobs with more stickout than a cow’s udder. Kiki Kalmar was a smart dame, a wise dame, a far-out dame, a way-gone dame, a no-holds-barred dame, and a lousy dancer, although she danced for a living. Kiki Kalmar was a stripper but she was no Gypsy Rose Lee, no Lili St. Cyr, no Georgia Southern, no Sherry Britton, but she had developed an act that kept her earning $200 a week regularly. She came out in ordinary street clothes which she quickly discarded as the music thumped, and then, in a weird undergarment, she did the bumps, grinds, and wriggles that are the strippers’ customary contortions, but Kiki’s act was more prurient than most because her shrewdly designed undergarment presented her as totally naked. Kiki had been arrested many times and just as many times acquitted and always the undergarment was the deciding factor in such acquittal. It was a nylon leotard, beige in color, and fishnet in weave. It was a skin-fitting leotard that covered her from the tips of her toenails to the top of her neck and it even included sleeves that covered her hands like gloves. At the point of the breasts were sewn round red-velvet patches; at the genital region, an inverted deltoid patch of black velvet.
In a courtroom, in the daytime, after the arresting officer had given his testimony, a sedately clad Kiki in subdued make-up would take the stand and recite answers to the sugar-sweet questions of her attorney (frequently Roy Paxton). It would be developed that she worked for a living, that she was paid for her dancing, that she never mingled with any strange customers, that she was no clip-gal, B-gal, V-gal, or any other kind of gal except a working-type dance-gal. The crux of her testimony, and its crowning point, would be her identification of her undergarment and its introduction into the proceedings as evidence. Often, the testimony of the arresting officer had it that she danced unclothed; sometimes, that she danced in a state of undress that was practically nudity; but the undergarment, evidence in itself, contravened that. In the daytime, examined by the judge, it was a fairly thick leotard of rather tight weave, and the attorney made a special demonstration of pointing out that the velvet patches had been sewn on for the specific purpose of covering any vital parts that might show through the fishnet weave. The judge would smile, handle the undergarment somewhat gingerly, make the usual judge-like joke evoking a titter from the courtroom audience, declare that this type of dancing was not his type of dancing, but that in these “modern” days there seemed to be patrons for this type of “art dancing,” and that certainly a girl so clothed, while not modest, was not indecent. How could he know, in the daylight of his sanitary courtroom, that in a dimly-lit club, under an amber spot, the skin-tight nylon leotard gleamed as an oiled and naked body and that the red patches were as the nipples of the breasts and the black inverted delta as the hair of the pubic mound? The arresting officer would be gently chided as too quick to censure, and the case dismissed.
The law is based upon precedent, and precedent had it, after many acquittals and no convictions, that Kiki Kalmar’s dance was not indecent. Now, upon the infrequent event of an arrest, the trial would be run off quickly and by rote—judges do not disagree with judges, not on trivial matters—and after the lawyer’s rundown of the precedents, the acquittal would be quick and curt and there might even be words of reproval to the arresting officer. The experienced policemen of the vice squad would never arrest The Fishnet Gal; the word had spread and they did n
ot savor the waste of time and the embarrassment; the occasional arrest would be the work of a rank rookie trying to make a reputation, and he would quickly learn the facts of life. And so Kiki Kalmar, billed as The Fishnet Gal, always had a job; the cafe owners knew her to be “safe,” and her act was always a hit with the five categories of which their customers were comprised: (1) bug-eyed youngsters, snickering, solemn, or frankly excited; (2) elder crawlers-out-of-woodwork, silently sitting in tight-kneed onanism; (3) fetishists, male and female; (4) tourists looking for kicks, mostly male, but often female; and (5) drunken sophisticates grouped into slumming parties.
When we arrived at Cafe Tottila, Kiki Kalmar was on, and the maitre d’ would not permit us to be seated during her “performance,” most probably because it was too dark to lead us to a table since the lights were down and the baby spot directed at Miss Fishnet. We had a drink in the outside room which was the bar and there I inquired of the maitre d’ if Mr. Paxton was among those present. Mr. Paxton was, said the maitre d’ and showed his teeth and waxed talkative and we felt important; and then there was applause and the lights, such as they were, came on, and the maitre d’ led us through dimness to Mr. Paxton’s table.
“Hi,” said everybody all around.
“Sit down, sit down,” said Roy Paxton. “And how are you, Miss Windsor?”
“Very well, thank you,” said Miss Windsor.
“What are you drinking?” said Roy Paxton.
We ordered, and then the jazz came on, and we tapped our feet, and made with the small talk. A charming little guy came by, a mince-tread fellow with a blond crew cut, a friend of Sally’s, and he joined our party.