I kept waiting for word from Kimbra but it didn’t come. I went into the City to snag the Detroit and Chicago papers and scoured them for news of her. I even scanned the obits and police bulletins, but nothing. Jack Daniels and I had a few late night chats, each one wasting me a little more. I didn’t give a damn about dredging new business, or following up old business. Haley finally gave up on me dropping by and flew out to Oregon to spend the summer with a sister.
Then old man winter dumped us right into the humid slop of summer, with suffocating Jersey nights that make you want to sit in a tub of cold water until you don’t recognize your own feet. Your pants glue to your backside, your nerves jangle, and you hate breathing. On those kinds of nights more murders happen. Anyone can snap.
The change in the weather seemed to bring me out of my daze. If bank statements could scream, mine would have raised goose bumps. The tank was bone dry. If I wanted to keep my permit I’d need to work. Maybe the despair oozed out of me with sweat, or maybe the eviction notice on my door kicked me in the nuts, but I poured my friend Jack down the sink and promised myself to make the rounds of the insurance houses the next day. But as luck tumbles, late that night I got a phone call from an old client’s wife rewarding my sobriety.
It was one a.m. but still eighty degrees outside. My apartment felt like the back of a bus stuffed with fat tourists who hadn’t showered in days. Julia Holden was calm for a woman who’d just found her husband with a bullet in his temple. She might as well have been ordering take out. But then, dames in Julia’s social circle never sweat, even when a body falls in their laps.
I owed a favor—she reminded—to her old man, Zachary Holden, so, would I come to the tower office and check the scene before she called the cops?
I pay my debts, given enough time, but this was too much like a tea party invitation, except the lady didn’t care what I wore. I didn’t much care what she wore either. Julia majored in cold-hearted poise at Vassar, and later graduated to manipulating peons in Zach’s indemnity company. Next to Julia, Haley Bergstrom was Miss Goody Two Shoes.
I thought of Julia’s husky voice and icy stare as the elevator glided to the Eagleton Insurance Building’s 42nd floor. High places make me dizzy and so do females like Julia—they’re always finagling behind some sexy outfit—hot over cold—but way down deep they’re lukewarm. After Kimbra, all dames would be tepid—or so it seemed. But sitting around feeling helpless about Kimbra wasn’t leading anywhere; keeping busy on a new case until I heard from her might at least be a productive distraction. Or so I hoped.
They say you can find a new itch by scratching an old one. Zack must have had plenty of prickles after he married Miss Julia, what with her lust for money and power. Oh, she wasn’t hard to take—just hard. She used to be one of those Amazon models for that secret underwear outfit, used to being the center of attention. Her trademark was her frown. Of course it wasn’t her lips that were on exhibit. She had a few other attractions.
I went through mahogany doors wide enough to build a small house, wondering what sort of itch got Zack killed. My opinion of Julia said another dame was probably in the mix—I wouldn’t blame Zack for cheating on Miss Julia on their wedding day.
Julia’s eyes were clear and empty, like she hadn’t been crying or worrying about anything; as if the scene was a B-movie she’d seen before. She looked quite bored. She met me like I was the bothersome brother-in-law, and led me straight into the corner office.
A pale blue check for two thousand got my attention. A first installment she called it.
“I want you to find out who did this. We haven’t touched anything—except this ridiculous note, which I don’t want the police to see.” She handed me what looked like a rough draft of a suicide note. But then, who revises a suicide note? The widow stood near the entrance as if she were afraid that walking toward the stiff would somehow wake him.
For a high-rise corporate office Zack’s control center was decorated in frilly whorehouse style. It had everything but a rose trellis and a picket fence. A lounge and bar area ate up half the space, all done, no doubt, in Julia’s taste. Dominating the wall of windows was a desk the size of an aircraft carrier. I thought of Haley and the naked fat kids tripping around the border of her ceiling—stuffed-shirts trying to impress other stuffed-shirts. Nabobs like the Holdens and the Bergmans seem to think bigger and gaudier is better. They don’t get it—all the overdone frou-frou just comes across as cheap. Too much money; too much of their taste resides in their mouths.
Zachary had done me a big favor three years before by using my services to investigate fraud involving some Cuban arsonists. At the time there’d been unsupported rumors that the Cubans were part of a larger crime ring, an arm of the Mafioso, but it was never more than rumor. I’d needed the work and Zack paid well. I hadn’t seen Mrs. Holden since a messy scene erupted at a benefit dinner right after the Cuban job, where I did double duty as a security man at Zack’s request. Now he was face down in a pool of blood on his desk, a small caliber pistol in his hand. The wound was point blank. Zack wore an expensive tuxedo. I doubted the dry cleaners would be able to save it.
“His gun?”
“Yes, a .25. I bought it for his birthday. He kept it in his desk.”
“Why did he need a gun in an insurance office? To sell more policies?”
She stuck her pretty nose a bit higher. “Hardly. He often worked alone late and felt better carrying it down to the underground parking garage.”
“What time did you find him?”
“Just after eleven. He left the Templeton Charity Auction at nine.”
I reread the note. Julia fiddled with her necklace and looked bored. The note was vague tripe about not being able to handle the pressure any more. Except that the Zack I knew had always craved pressure like a junkie needs heroin. “Uh-huh. Where were you?”
“I stayed at the auction. Zack wanted to leave early to sign some papers. He called at ten and asked me to meet him at the Sahara Club. I waited there an hour or so, then came here just after twelve. That’s when I rang you. Thirty minutes later I called the police like you instructed.”
The note contained two grammar errors, and one misspelled word—“definate.” I held the note under her nose.
“His handwriting?”
She nodded it was. I walked over to the Xerox machine and ran off a copy.
“I’ll put back the original for the cops—it’s best they have it—might confuse them for awhile—don’t blab what we talked about, understand? Tell them you phoned me because you were scared and I’d helped you out of a jam once. Try to look scared instead of bored—think you can play that part? Oh, and don’t eye my crotch like you’re hungry while they’re here.”
Her cornflower blue eyes rested on me like she was waiting for the punch line to a bad gag. Then she did eye my crotch, sarcastically, and returned to her practiced boredom stare. She couldn’t have thrown out a better put down with words.
Julia Holden had the sort of skin old men dream of and young girls envy.
After a big yawn she turned toward the windows.
I said evenly: “It wasn’t suicide—I’ll take on the case. That much I owe Zack.”
She stared vacantly out the windows, sharing her famous frown with the city.
I had an urge to kick her backside to get her full attention. “Any idea who’d want to drill him? Any enemies?”
She turned back. Excitement of a sort flickered in her eyes. At least it beat the bored stare or the frown pose. Now she was with me—she spoke quickly, clearly irritated: “None. But, you’re right—he wouldn’t shoot himself. That’s why I called you. Zachary had everything to live for. He had, well, me, after all.” She liked herself too much, but it went with her former profession.
She opened a silver cigarette case and laid one between her pouty lips. I leaned in and clicked my Zippo, studying her face so close I could have licked her nose. If I had of, I doubt she would have flinched—she was as ca
lm as a closed library.
I walked to the desk and slipped the note back under Zack’s elbow. Then I looked the desk over—it was too neat. He hadn’t been working on anything unless the killer took it. I snooped around the body, then bent and checked the floor under the desk. Reddish mud clung to the arch of one shoe. I scraped some mud into my handkerchief and pocketed it, all out of sight from Julia. I’d have to remember not to blow my nose any time soon.
Julia lounged in a mile-long sectional next to the bar, acting uninterested in what I was doing.
I turned to the curtains behind the desk. A whisper of gardenias clung there. Where the curtains touched the carpet, a fold of black silk peeked out. I bent and pulled out a pair of lace panties. Some geeks get off sniffing such dainties but I didn’t have to—they’d been swimming in cologne. Still, collecting women’s underwear is more stimulating than stamps. I tucked them inside my jacket and moved around the desk. Julia still wasn’t watching.
I walked up behind her and spoke to the back of her head. Her roots were noticeably darker than the rest. “How has he acted lately?” I asked.
“Distracted, quiet,” she said, barely above a whisper, looking down the side window to the street. She could change her mood like spring weather.
“Wives say that kind of thing when there’s another woman.”
She jerked around, glaring up at me. “That’s ridiculous.”
“Oh, maybe not a lover—necessarily—but some woman was here earlier.”
“Miss Bennett perhaps, his secretary, but not tonight.”
My next question risked getting my face slapped, or being shown the door: “Don’t get me wrong, it’s nothing to me. I have good reason to ask—are you wearing panties right now?”
Julia seemed to like the question: she stood and hiked her skirt up like she was in line for a hernia exam. Gold lace on red. Quite attractive. She looked right through me, eyes clear and hard like sapphires in cold porcelain that might have cracked if she smiled. She was the Never Smile Girl with plenty of practice. My question fired something in her expression, though, like she’d hoped I’d ask her that very thing.
“Uh-huh. This Miss Bennett—a long-haired brunette?” I dangled a hair I’d taken off Zack’s shoulder. Julia’s ice blues turned cold. That frost in her eyes signaled a bull’s-eye. It was like a cruiser-hit in that battleship game we played back in PS 102. Then she swayed over to the bar, all the while keeping her skirt up. The rear view wasn’t bad either. She was used to showing it all off and liked me checking her out.
Julia took a bar chair and perched relaxed but formal, like she was posing for the next shot, when Jimmy Freznik from the 18th precinct and another cop half his size I didn’t know trudged in. Both wore rumpled raincoats, the kind the police academy must buy in bulk.
Big Freznik was sweating. He had one of those faces with bloodhound folds, like he’d slept on a grille. His black locks matted from under his hat–it occurred to me that they looked like leeches trying to escape. The sight of me must have made his ulcer burn, because his green puss twisted up like a sea urchin in the Atlantic City Aquarium. The sawed-off flattie with him was a nervous carp—rail thin with a fish face and bulging eyes.
Freznik laid his ham hand on Zack’s neck. The carp just stood there watching like he had training wheels on. Then Freznik grunted a command and the carp lifted the phone and dialed with a shaky hand.
“Three, four hours ago,” Freznik said, hovering over the body like he was a bug collector savoring an impaled shiny-back beetle. “Don’t get many in tuxes. Who found the body?”
Mrs. Holden tipped her glass toward Freznik. She crossed her legs and lazily rocked her foot. Freznik gave her the up-and-down, then aimed his glare to me while carp-boy rifled through Zack’s pockets.
Freznik sneered. “Chasing ambulances again, Angelo? Why don’t you fill the dumb copper in, mister early private bird, mister bright boy?”
I’d run into big Jimmy once or twice before. A plodder with a peptic ulcer. No doubt he still resented me for nabbing the bad guys just ahead of him on that Cuban job. Rick had helped me on the side, something Frezkik knew and resented.
“Name’s Angel—and I just got here myself,” I drawled. I lit a Lucky and took a slow pull. “Besides, clients pay me to fill them in—you can’t afford me.” I thumbed at Julia. “The widow’s first in line. She’s my client.”
Freznik unstuffed a rag from his pocket and snorted into it. “Don’t touch anything, Angelo, more than you have already.” His partner whispered something into his ear. Jimmy’s eyes narrowed; the corners of his mouth turned up, but it wasn’t a smile. He fished a small bottle of pink stuff out of his raincoat pocket, took a swig and made another face. Pepto Bismol. It didn’t seem to help.
After a few more minutes, the place started to fill up with short, bald forensic types.
It was three by the time Freznik and his shadow got done sniffing around Holden’s office and the clammy-handed medical boys hauled the body off. Just to be polite I agreed to be escorted downtown to answer a few questions. Politeness rubbed them the wrong way. In deference to Mrs. Holden they agreed to let her to bring her mouthpiece down the next day. When I left she looked at me like I was wallpaper she intended to paint over.
Chapter 18 – Fun at Police Headquarters; Mike meets Molly
The desk officer sported sweat-circles down his sides. He thumbed me to the second floor where a glass-paneled door said: “Detectives - Private” It hit me how different in meaning the same words were on my office door: “Private Investigator”.
The room was instant nausea—mostly brown stink, full of mostly garbage, sweat and smoke. The trashcans hadn’t been emptied since the Hoover administration, and from the looks of the wrappers, the boys at the 18th weren’t eating balanced meals. The furnishings were the kind of dense, stamped-out stuff that only city governments can buy—desks that would survive even if Kruschev got push-button happy.
Freznik loomed in the midst of a hazed interview room, just off the entrance. I’d seen bigger phone booths. He carved his fingernails with a pocketknife, something Dad never liked me to do. There were burn scars on the back of one hand. He mopped his face with the same rag he’d dug into his nose before. Mister Hygiene.
The big cop dipped his thumb at the molded steel chair next to the molded steel desk. I sat my ass on the molded steel. Carpface swam in behind me and we began draining the Lilliputian steam room of oxygen. I knew I could hold out longer.
Freznik ground his smoke into an ashtray and fumbled with wanted flyers in front of him. “Avery has some questions to start with.”
To start with—It was going to be a long night, so I lit up too. In the blue neon glare, Avery looked like Richard Widmark on a diet. Speed pills was my guess, or a bitchy set of genes. Avery perched behind us on a small table. His foot flopped up on the desk next to me. I wanted to break his toes. It would have been so easy.
“What’s your angle on all this—why’d the lady call you first?” Fishface asked with a tremulous voice.
Maybe he expected me to make bad jokes about Shinola or flat feet, but I looked up through the smoke past his fishhead and said politely: “She’s considerate that way.”
Freznik bent and swept his damp knuckles across my jaw, just hard enough to get my attention, but not enough to get me going. I could tell he hated politeness. I drew out the act of lighting up and added as much smoke as I could to theirs. Then I said roughly, “Maybe you should quiz her. I was paying back a favor. Her old man gave me a job once when I needed it.”
Avery had dead black eyes any snake would have envied. He scowled and flicked his spent butt at my face. I dodged; sparks splashed against the wall.
I turned my expression hard and angry. It was easy. “Knock off the rough crap—people get upset for less,” I said in a growl. “People get busted up for less.”
Freznik took the good cop role and laughed. He offered, tiredly: “All right, all right. Just answer a few qu
estions, mister bright guy, and you’ll be in bed before the sun’s up. We all know it wasn’t suicide. So, who shot him? The old lady? She’s one cold clam of a dish.”
I wasn’t making the little boiler room any cooler, but I acted like it was December and pulled my jacket up around my neck.
“You gentlemen are masters of the obvious. You read the note—someone clumsy wanted to make it look like suicide, that’s easy. What’s not easy is who and why. You’ll know the when without my help when the M.E.’s done.”
Freznik went on: “How long you known the Holdens?”
“Not long. Couple of years back I helped him with a Cuban ring that defrauded Eagleton Insurance. Haven’t seen him since.”
“Or the missus?”
“Or the missus.”
“So, just out of the blue, she calls, invites Angelo to her own private
wake? Bats her lashes?”
“Something like that. I helped her out of a jam, too. Right after the Cuban thing. Some guests were looted at an auction and I recovered the goods. Maybe she’s still grateful. Maybe she didn’t know who else to call that late. Who knows what a dame like that thinks. It’s a shock you know, finding your spouse with a slug in his head. Even for an ice queen.”
“And maybe you’re hiding something?” Avery’s breath was a fish fog. My cat, Sophie, has sweeter.
“Why don’t you ask her then, flattie?”
Sparks kept flickering through Avery’s eyes. Freznik swigged more pink. He made an impatient movement with his burned hand. “You sure you ain’t recently been on a case for either of the Holdens?”
I blew another cloud of smoke, this one under Freznik’s elephant nose. It looked blue under the neon and so did Avery’s complexion. “Positive.”
Dark Quarry: A Mike Angel Private Eye Mystery Page 10