by Kane, Henry
“Ought I?” I extracted a wrinkled mad-money blank check and made it out for five hundred to cash and presented it to Herb.
Herb said, “Come with me.”
I trailed him through many corridors to a cashier’s cage where he okayed my check and I obtained my cash. Somebody buttonholed him and he said, “All right, Pete. Keep me informed, eh?”
I said, “How do I find my way out of here?”
His grin was the grin of an imp. “You’re a detective.”
“No no-pants guide for Peter?”
“Peter’ll manage.”
Herb Wiley and his macabre sense of humor.
Casey wasn’t home but there was a message for me in Joe Vincent’s box. Casey had written: “Big spring traffic. Tough as all blazes. I’m going down to attend to it personally.”
Upstairs, I kicked off my shoes, hit the bed and dozed, and by the time Casey returned, it was late afternoon. He knocked and I called, “Who?” and he said, “Casey,” and I roused up and opened the door. He grinned and he said, “How’s tomorrow morning?”
“Fine. What time?”
“We leave La Guardia at ten.”
“Ten,” I said. “Wow. I’m a reformed guy. I’m an early morning prowler.”
Casey said, “I’m hungry. How about chow?”
“What else we got to do?”
We ate and we walked across to the park, and we loafed and we chatted and I learned more about his father, and about his early life, and about Auntie, and then we strolled back and picked up the evening papers, and it was seven-thirty in Joe Vincent’s room when I went to shave.
“What’s with shaving?” Casey said. “Going somewhere?”
“Nowhere. Force of habit.”
“You’ve got to be up early tomorrow.”
“Wanna make a movie with me or something?”
“Nope. I’m going to hit the sack early.”
I shaved and bathed and dressed to the teeth; navy blue suit, sparkling white shirt, shiny black shoes, navy socks and a righteous deep maroon tie. Casey said, “Where to?”
“Honest, I haven’t the faintest notion.”
He grinned. “You look right handsome, man.”
“Then I know where I’m going.”
“Where?”
“To interview a lady. If she’s home.”
“Lady?”
“I hope.”
The elevator took me down and I walked out into the night. I had time to kill and there was no reason why I couldn’t kill it and try to pick up information at the same time. Rawlings was in Miami, but the daughter was here, and so was I with nothing to do. What could I lose? Nothing.
I went to the car, plucked off another ticket, moved it to another parking spot, waved at a cab, and said “666 Park Avenue” which turned out to be a tall, slender, red brick building with a triangular-type canopy and a doorman with enough braid to warrent a salute. I saluted, and he grinned and saluted in return and I entered a plush lobby, soft-lit with amber lights, and in the charge of another uniformed gentleman without a hat but with a starched dickey.
I said, “Jane Rawlings?”
He smiled and said, “7 A.”
A silent elevator took me up to 7 and I wandered about the geometric angles of a meticulously clean modern corridor until I discovered A. I dabbed at the button of 7 A, and a voice called, “Come in,” and I twisted the knob and pushed into a lavish apartment.
I was in a square foyer. Three steps down was an expansive living room, French doors opening upon a terrace, skyline of New York framed like a picture in the background. A thick coral carpet ran wall to wall, all the way from the door by which I had entered to the wide French doors at the far end. There was enough furniture to fill a warehouse, but it all fitted into the hugh room, neat and comfortable and modern (but not too modern), the wood a deep-grained blond, the decor a blend of coral, black, grey and gold, in perfect taste, perfectly balanced.
I saw the lady in profile. And there was enough of the lady to see. She wore a shimmering rose-red cocktail gown and she had one foot up on a high hassock, adjusting the strap of a rose-red shoe, and incidentally, affording me a view of as shapely a limb as ever it had been my pleasure to observe. I observed but she didn’t even look toward me. Impatiently, she said, “Come in, come in.”
I went down the three carpeted steps and I stood there like a mummy waiting to be wrapped. The lady completed Operation Shoe, lifted her dress and adjusted a garter belt (as though I were a lady caller … and maybe she thought I was … she hadn’t even glanced my way). Then she straightened up and turned toward me.
You could have knocked me over without a feather.
You could have blown at me and I would have toppled.
I knew the lady. Everybody knew the lady. If you were a student of the rotogravure sections of the Sunday papers (and how many of us are who are students of nothing else)—then you had seen her riding a horse to hounds, or climbing an Alp, or watching them do the cancan in the gayest spot in Paris, or looking at a ruin by moonlight in Rome. If you by-passed the rotogravures—then you had seen her in motion pictures. She had perpetrated three sensational movies before she had become bored with histrionics, and had retreated from the menacing contracts dripping gold.
Jane Rawlings. The biggest thing in pictures. Literally.
I simply had not associated the name.
She was the tallest, fullest, truly shapely lady I had ever seen. There was about five feet, eleven inches of her perfectly proportioned, and most of it a delicious throng within the shimmering rose-red gown, but not all of it. The dress was of satin, strapless and simple, descending in entrancing curves. Her arms and shoulders were smooth warm-glowing cocoa-olive. Her hair was long and black and thick and curly, swept across the back of her head and bulk-massed and smoothly glinting over one shoulder, a little ear exposed, burdened by a heavy dangling earring. Her eyes were black and enormous in an oval-shaped silk-smooth face, the high point of which was a pouting bold-curved mouth, shining deep red. She said, “Where’s the tuxedo?”
“Tuxedo?”
“People just don’t do thing right any more, do they?”
Blankly I said, “Don’t they?”
“Seems they do not.” Her eyes whisked over me in quick inspection. “At least you’re tall.”
“Six foot two, sometimes three, depends how I stand.”
“That meant to be funny?”
“Am I supposed to be funny, too?”
“You’re only supposed to be good-looking and that, I am pleased to observe, you are.”
I was getting worried. How small can small talk get, how uninhibited, and how crazy? Maybe our lady had ridden one horse-to-hounds too many or maybe she’d climbed one extra Alp. I did my most pompous cough, twice, straightened up tall and in my severest tone I said, “Miss Rawlings, I came to talk to you about your father.”
“You … what?” She actually looked frightened.
“Talk. About your father.”
Now she did a double-take, slowly and her eyes puckered. She said, “Are you drunk?”
“No. Are you?”
“Now, really …” She went to a corner of the room where there was a black patent leather bar with five tall black patent leather stools. She twitched a finger at me. “Come here. You say you’re not drunk. Maybe you ought to have a drink.” I approached and she pointed behind the bar. “Anything you wish. And there’s a refrigerated compartment for ice.” Her eyes slid over me and there was an amused cast to her mouth. “Maybe you’d better pour one for me too. Scotch and soda, good stiff.”
I tended bar and brought her a drink. I said, “Skoal,” and we sipped. The door buzzer sounded and she said, “Get that, will you?”
I set down my glass and went up the three steps and opened the door to a tall dark young man wearing a tuxedo and a black Homburg. He didn’t click his heels but if he had, it would have been appropriate. The whole look of him—it was something like an unclicked heel.
With a flourish, he wisked off the Homburg, exposing sleek, black polished hair, and, enunciating carefully, and looking directly at me, he said, “Miss Jane Rawlings?”
I can get into the spirit of things. Profoundly, I said, “No.”
Miss Rawlings came up behind me. The young man glanced a glance at me that was meant to be withering, looked over my shoulder, smiled with all the teeth, said, “Ah, Miss Rawlings. I am from Mr. Landon.”
Laughter came behind me. Laughter gushed, deep and howling. I turned to find her almost doubled up, slapping at her thigh, laughing until her eyes brimmed over. She waved a hand weakly. “Go away. Away, lad.”
“The lady,” I said to the unclicked heel, “means you.”
“But Miss Rawlings …”
“The lady says go away.”
“Away,” he said blankly, “says the lady?”
“Away … away …” she said between paroxyms.
“Away we go,” I said and I hustled him out and closed the door on his expression of complete bewilderment.
I let her laugh.
I left her in the foyer roaring, and I went back into the living room, and I gathered up my drink, and I sat down on a soft chair and I waited, and I didn’t have long to wait. She came to me, composing herself. She said, “Somewhere along the line, somebody owes someone an apology.”
Non sequitur was in order. “I think you’re very,” I said, “lovely.”
“Who are you?”
“My name is Peter Chambers.”
“Chambers?”
“I’m a private detective.”
“Detective? What are you doing here?”
“I came to—”
“I know, I know. To talk about my father.” She got her drink, raised it high in the air, bowed, said, “Mr. Chambers, I believe I owe you an apology and an explanation. But upon one point I remain adamant. I think you’re absolutely beautiful.” Her eyes ran down my legs and her murmur was an amused purr. “And so tall, too. Tall, sitting, that’s really tall.”
“Miss Rawlings …”
“Ever hear of Ted Landon?”
“No.”
“You wouldn’t. It’s an escort service.”
“Escort service? I thought those things were outlawed. Licenses revoked, or something.”
“True. But when anything, even a service, is arbitrarily revoked … and there is a genuine need for same … bootleg operations spring up.”
I poohed. I poohed the best pooh I could manage vis-a-vis so beautiful a lady. “Bootleg escort service. Sister, how crazy can you get?”
“Brother, tonight you’re my escort or I commit murder.”
“Me?”
“I just dismissed my swain for the evening. Or didn’t you hear?”
“I heard. And I offer myself as substitute swain.”
“Good. But you’ve got to get into your tuxedo.”
“That,” I said, “is home.”
“Then go home.”
“I can’t go home.”
“Look, let’s not go into crazy dialogue again. Let me explain this thing first, eh?”
“I’m all ears, Miss Rawlings. And eyes.”
“Perfect,” she said. “I’m going to love this evening.” She moved into a chair near me. “You know me, I take it.”
“I’ve been a lifelong admirer.”
She made a long face and blinked her eyes. “Well, lifelong admirer, late this afternoon, I got a phone call from a press agent friend that I’m invited to a nighttime cocktail party at Toots’ upstairs room given in honor of our newest screwball-type bombshell, Marilyn Mullaney. Marilyn is an old friend of mine. I knew her when she was sprawling background for calendar ads, and I’m dying to go to this party. Except.”
“Except what?” I said, docile as a straight-man.
“Except, who’s going to take me? This is a problem, dear sir, a thoroughly female problem, of which too many men simply are not cognizant. Who will take me?”
“Rough guess, I’d say—utterly conservative—about fifteen million able-bodied males throught these United States would gasp as the opportunity.”
She wrinkled the pertest of noses. “Thank you. But remember, I’m a large one and my man must be over six feet tall. Tie that to the fact that, at the moment, I’m fresh out of boy friends. I mean people who interest me. And remember again, that the phone call came in only a few hours ago.”
“I’m remembering all of it.”
“That’s where Ted Landon’s bootleg escort service comes into wonderful usage, and you’d be surprised at how many of the best ladies of our fair city thank their high and low heavens for good old Ted.”
“Me too, I think, in an oblique sort of way.”
“You make your phone call to Ted, you state your exact specifications, and you are provided with an innocuous but perfectly proper escort that fills the vacuum beside you. The dictates of our culture are appeased. You have the arm of a man. You do not attend a party alone. Also, you are footloose and fancy-free.”
“And you mistook me for one of Ted Landon’s boys?”
“And a fine compliment you were to Mr. Landon’s selectivity.” Her smile dissolved to a serene expression of mock severity. “Now look, you’re not going to let me down. I’d planned dinner and then the party.”
“Sold. With one proviso.”
“What’s that?”
“That you don’t regard me as one of Landon’s innocuous young men. No footloose and fancy-free. Very possessive type, me.”
“You think I’m crazy. Very candid type, me. I think you’re a godsend, and I’m going to cling to you until you holler. Now what’s the deal about not being able to go home? You married?”
“No.”
“Skip the rest of it. If you can’t go home, you can’t go home.” She stood up. “You’ll do without a tuxedo. What are we waiting for?”
“Now, about your father …”
“Uh uh. No business. For now, fun. Let’s save that. Let’s you and I get acquainted. Not a word of business. Let’s get out of here.”
We had dinner at the Big Club with violins. We went to Mullaney’s party and I wasn’t the only man without a tuxedo. I fell in love with Jane Rawlings but I fall in love easily, though as concerns Jane Rawlings, I challenge you not to fall in love, no matter how invulnerable you are. We quit Toots’ upstairs room at two o’clock in the morning but I didn’t take her home directly. I asked the cabman to drive along Central Park South, slowly. He did, and there across from the entrance to my apartment house two swarthy gentlemen paced the asphalt, avidly nonchalant. A cruise around the corner disclosed two more gentlemen at the back entrance, these more furtive, hallways operators as it were.
Eddie Adams had his boys out looking.
For me.
“Okay,” I said, “Now we go home.”
The cab let us out at 666 Park Avenue and outside the door at 7 A, Jane said: “You’ve been a darling. Come in now, and we can talk about business … whatever you like …”
“Thanks. But I think we can skip it.”
“But—”
“It’s late and I’ve got a plane to make early tomorrow. For Miami. That’s what I mean about skipping it.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Well, I can talk to the boss direct, can’t I, down there. Miami. That’s where your dad lives, doesn’t he?”
She shoved the key into the door, roughly. She opened the door and when she turned, I saw she was crying. I said, “What the hell? Did I say something out of the way?”
“No.”
“What’s the matter?”
“My fault. I thought you knew.”
“What?”
“My father. He’s dead.”
Silence. Silence for a long and miserable minute. Then I said, “Look, honey …”
“No. I want to go in now. Thank you for a lovely, lovely evening. You’ve been wonderful. And please call me when you get back.”
And that was that.
Four hours in the heavens and you’re in Paradise. Miami Beach in the springtime is Paradise on the best day Paradise ever had. There was a dry sweet breeze and swaying trees and a blue-green ocean and sumptuous hotels rising up to unflecked azure. We checked in at the Empress and though spring is the off-season and the rates are down, the down rates were stiffer than the posture of an embarrassed Englishman. We took a double room, payment in advance, and upstairs, four hours out of New York and at two o’clock in the afternoon, we looked out on tropical foliage and a brillant cobalt sky and the bright plumage of the deep South. We looked out also on a spacious swimming pool and the prancing adornments of the browned people. I said, “I’ve got to grab off a little of that sun. How about a swim?”
Casey’s swift glance went to his empty sleeve and returned to me. “No swimming for Casey. I just haven’t got used to being a one-armed guy. Not yet.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. And if you’ve been trying to be a diplomat, let me tell you you’ve been highly successful.”
“I haven’t been trying, Case. What the—”
“Forget it. You go have a swim. I’ll shower, and stick around here.”
I called downstairs about swim trunks. I wanted someone to buy me a pair of blue boxer trunks, thirty waist, and I was told the boy would have them up shortly. When the boy arrived, I was sprawled nude on the bed and Casey was taking his shower. The boy was about sixty-five years old with a brown-red face and white hair and the strangest white eyelashes which gave him the look of a secretive father owl. I paid for the trunks and tipped him and asked him how long he’d been working at the Empress?
“Fifteen years,” he said.
I pulled into the trunks and looked myself over in the mirror. I said, “Ever hear of a guy around here by the name of Jack Rawlings?”
“Sure. Used to live here.”
“Dead?” I said.
“Yeah. Keeled over about three months ago. Heart attack. He weren’t a young guy, you know. Had a lot of dough and—”
“Thanks, pal.”
“Don’t mention it.”
I went swimming in a tiled pool with cool green water tapped fresh from the ocean. I lay out and soaked up Florida sun. Then back in the room, I shaved, showered, slipped into shorts and a pair of socks, and went to work on the phone book. Casey was sleeping. I found what I was looking for: David Powers Protective Agency, Inc. Dave Powers, New York detective and old friend, had retired on a pension, moved to Miami and opened a small private agency. I called and I got through to him and we did chatter for a few moments and I told him I was not on vacation in Miami and finally it got around to: “What can I do for you, Pete?”