Jade Venus

by George Harmon Coxe

  The wall opposite the door had been finished with composition board and when he saw there was enough space between the window and the sink to take any canvas up to three feet or so, he got a box of thumb tacks out of his plate-case, picked up the first canvas, and stretched it as best he could against the wall, fastening it with his tacks.

  Once he started he lost track of time. When he had finished with a canvas he rolled it again and put it on the floor and he had a pile of five or six of these when he heard the door open behind him. He was just stretching a picture against the wall, tacking one corner down and holding the other tacks in his mouth, and he did not bother to turn or try to say hello to the plain-clothes man.

  He pinned down another corner and started to stretch the next side. He heard the door close and he tacked down the next corner and then he stopped and suddenly some latent instinct stirred inside him. He had the peculiar feeling that there was something different about the room or the air or the street noises outside.

  He had heard the door close and though it was no more than five seconds since it opened he felt a tautness in his nerves where none had been before and his perceptions were alert and grasping for something more. He listened. Then he realized there had been no footsteps. He turned quickly. Beyond the camera the door was closed and there was no one in the room.

  For another second or two he stood staring, neck twisted as he clung to the canvas. Then he let go. He turned, scowling, the intuitive tension that had touched him still more dominant than his bewilderment.

  He stepped round the camera and started for the door and then checked himself and swerved toward the nearest front window. He snapped off the lock, lifted, and glanced out. There were a half-dozen pedestrians on the walk below but only two were close enough to the doorway to have just come from there. One of these was a heavy-set man in rough working clothes; the other was a slender fellow in a blue coat, with a lot of thick black hair and no hat.

  This one was walking fast and Murdock watched as he started diagonally across the street. He reached the sidewalk, moved along behind the parked cars, and after fifty feet gave one quick backward, upward glance.

  Murdock closed the window. The fellow had seen him looking out but that wasn’t important. What was important was that the face in that one brief glance was familiar. “Tony,” he said softly and groped for the last name.

  He walked slowly back to the picture he was tacking to the wall. Tony was a guitar player—or had been when Murdock went into the Army. He had played around town for several years, sometimes with orchestras and sometimes with swing trios.

  “Lorello,” he said finally. “Tony Lorello.”

  And then, as he repeated the name, an odd excitement spread among his thoughts. Someone had mentioned that name since he had been in town. He could not remember who or under what circumstances. He continued with his work, thinking hard and prodding at his memory.

  Chapter Six

  DOUBLE-BARRELED MISSION

  WHEN KENT MURDOCK returned to the Courier-Herald studio he found a note on his desk saying that T. A. Wyman, the managing editor, wanted to see him. He left the note there and went into one of the darkroom cubicles with his film-holders.

  It had taken him an hour and a half at Roger Carroll’s place to get pictures and it took him another half hour to develop his films; when he had finished, what he had was what his hunch had told him to expect: a lot of infra-red negatives that were reproductions of what he had already seen on canvas.

  He carried them into the printing-room and let them wash and when he went into the anteroom, Tom Grady was there. Grady was one of the old-timers that the draft had not affected. He wanted to talk and Murdock was as friendly as he could be for three or four minutes and then he told Grady he had some films washing and would Grady please make prints, not that he expected anything to show on the paper that was not on the film but simply because he had to follow through and take no chances.

  He had not been in the big city room before and when he climbed the flight of stairs and slapped his way through the swinging gate someone spotted him and let out a yell and then he was going through the old routine with those members of the staff who were on duty at the time. He shook hands a dozen times and grinned and had his back slapped and sat on the edge of a desk and talked for five minutes. When he could he said he had to see Wyman and they let him continue to the private office in the corner.

  T. A. Wyman was a beefy, heavy-jowled man, not fat but solid and competent-looking. He was leaning back in his chair and holding a paper in front of his face when Murdock knocked and entered, and he kept the paper there for a few more seconds.

  “Yeah?” he said and tipped the paper so he could look over the top; then he dropped it and sat up straight. “Well, all right,” he said and stuck out a big hand.

  “Hello,” Murdock said. “I got your note.”

  “Sit down.” Wyman waved at a chair. “You been in town since last night and I have to write you a note to get you to stop in and say hello. Who’re you sore at?”

  Murdock grinned. He liked Wyman and always had. He liked his blunt directness, his honesty and fairness, and the way he went to bat for every man on his staff.

  “I’ve been busy,” he said.

  “Sure. Barry Gould told me. We sent him up to Andrada’s place this morning and I didn’t know until then that you were in town.” Wyman took a half-smoked cigar from one corner of his mouth. It was out and one end was badly chewed. He put it back in the other side and worried it some more.

  “It looks like the Army hasn’t changed your luck any. Things still happen whenever you’re around. And boy, how I could use you in this office these days.” He shook his head. “I don’t know what it is, but you blow in town and call on a guy about something and before morning somebody knocked him off. And us with no pictures.”

  He went on quickly before Murdock could interrupt: “I know, I know. You’re working for the Army now and taking different pictures these days. I was just thinking out loud.” Wyman leaned back and let his lids come down a little. After a moment he said, “I guess you couldn’t tell me what this is all about.”

  Murdock gave Wyman a brief and carefully expurgated story and the managing editor listened and studied Murdock with one eye. When he saw the smooth, faultless spread of the uniform across the shoulders he remembered the careless perfection that had always marked Murdock’s civilian clothes. He remembered the Murdock who not so long ago had worked for him; remembered the things he had done and the sort of man he was.

  He liked the solid, angular shape of the photographer’s jaw and the way his head was fastened to his neck. He liked the way he talked and did things; for though Murdock was well-mannered, intelligent, and well educated, he could talk the language of cops and bookies and gamblers and circulation hustlers as though he understood them. He could go anywhere and hold his own, whether it was a dowager’s drawing-room or a South Boston bar, and though he got mussed up sometimes—and most photographers did—it never seemed to bother him. Now, as Murdock finished, Wyman nodded and spoke dryly.

  “I didn’t think you’d tell me.”

  Murdock started to argue and then, remembering other arguments with Wyman, the grin came back in the depths of his eyes and he remained pointedly silent.

  “I guess this is one murder you aren’t interested in,” Wyman said, and sighed.

  Murdock’s grin went away and his voice got quiet. “I’m interested. I haven’t been able to do much but—Andrada was a friend of mine. He was a hot-headed, emotional, loyal little guy and he gave me a hand once when I needed it.” He paused, his gaze somber and remote. “Maybe if I hadn’t come along, he might be alive.”

  Wyman waited and ten seconds ticked by and he did not move.

  “I came here to get that picture,” Murdock said. “I have to get it—if I can. Now I’ve got to know about Andrada. I have to know, to find out if I could have stopped it.… I guess I have to do both now.”

 
; “If they’re hooked up—” Wyman began.

  “I think they are.”

  “Well, what I mean is—I don’t expect you to go around lugging a plate-case for me like you used to, but couldn’t you carry a Leica in your pocket? Just in case?”

  Murdock shook his head, his gaze still somber and a great earnestness in his voice. “This time I’ll not be looking for the kind of pictures you want.”

  Wyman removed his cigar. He brushed ashes from the end and lit it. He did not pretend to understand photographers. To him they remained a strange breed, clannish, close-mouthed, and mysterious about their methods and pipelines of information. But he had paid Murdock more money than any city photographer had ever made. He knew Murdock liked him, he was a pretty shrewd judge of men, and he knew the best methods of approach. Now he looked abused—in a mild sort of way.

  “All right, Kent,” he said. “I shouldn’t have bothered you with it. I just thought if you ran into something we could use before you got through you could sort of get me the word so I could send a camera out.”

  In spite of himself, Murdock had to grin. “The same old routine,” he said. “I know. You’re hurt. I’ve let you down, and that’s gratitude for you. Well, quit crying. If I run into anything you’ll get it first and you know it, and if I have any pictures the Courier will get them.”

  Wyman looked happy again. He rubbed his hands. “You’re my boy,” he said. “That’s what I want to hear. Anything you need, any expense accounts, come right to me. I don’t know how you feel about taking a bonus but if you don’t want it personally we’ll make it out to the Red Cross or whoever you say.”

  Murdock said that was fine but not to count on it. He stood up and opened the door and then he stepped back and closed it. “I might want to hire Jack Fenner a couple of days.”

  “The private detective? Sure. Anything you want.”

  Wyman waited. Murdock still stood by the door, his glance fixed beyond Wyman and clouded with thought.

  “Who covers night clubs for you now?”

  “Charley Jepson.”

  Charley Jepson was playing gin rummy with a youngster Murdock did not know. They held up the game when Murdock stopped beside them and Jepson said to meet Eddie Sloan. Murdock shook hands.

  “You’re covering the night spots, Charley,” he said. “Do you know a guitar player by the name of Tony Lorello?”

  “Lorello?” Jepson thought it over. “Oh, yeah. Sure. Tony Lorello. A nice-looking Italian kid. He’s got a trio that alternates with the regular band down at the Silver Door. Guitar, piano, and bass. Good, too.”

  “He was in Italy with a U.S.O. unit, wasn’t he?”

  “That’s the guy. Not the trio. He went along with some comedian from New York and a couple of canaries. They like to have a guitar because you can lug it along and play accompaniments in places where there’s no piano. Did you run into him over there? He was in Sicily too.”

  Murdock said he hadn’t run into Lorello but had heard he’d been in Naples. “The Silver Door?” he said. “That’s on—”

  “Westland.”

  “Is that the place where a fellow named Roger Carroll does sketches of the customers?”

  “There is a guy there,” Jepson said. “I don’t know his name and he hasn’t been there long. He’s not there every night either, but I’ve seen him a couple of times.”

  Murdock nodded. There was a slight rift in the disappointment that had crowded him all afternoon and it felt good. He even began to start hoping again. He thanked Jepson, found a telephone directory, and looked up a number. Then he went into a phone booth and called Jack Fenner.

  “Hello,” he said, when he heard the private detective’s voice. “I was afraid maybe the Army had you.”

  After Fenner had expressed his amazement and delight at hearing Murdock’s voice he expressed himself on the Army, with some profanity and considerable disgust.

  He said it was all right to take some broken-down grocery clerk with bad eyes and a gimpy leg but because he, Fenner, had something wrong with his sinuses and a couple of vertebrae out of line they classified him as 4-F.

  “How do you like that?” he demanded. “Me, a crock, who can outwalk and outshoot any two of ’em. What’s on your mind?”

  “I’ve got a job for you.”

  “Who pays for it?”

  “Do you care?”

  “No. It’s just a routine question.”

  “This is just a routine job.”

  “That would be a novelty, coming from you,” Fenner said. “Most jobs of yours wind up with people throwing rocks at me.”

  “All you have to do is follow a woman named Louise Andrada.”

  “Andrada.” Fenner said the name slowly. “Any relation to the guy they found today with a slug in his chest?”

  “A niece, niece-in-law, really.”

  “Umm,” Fenner said. “Now it starts.”

  It was just part of Fenner’s act but Murdock’s patience wasn’t as good as it might have been.

  “There’s a fellow in town in your line that I’ve heard quite a lot about,” he said. “Name of Carlos Black. I understand he’s just as good as you are and doesn’t talk so much.”

  “You don’t have to sulk, do you? What kind of a dame is she?”

  “She’s blond, beautiful, and built.”

  “Oh,” Fenner said. “My type, hunh? Well, why didn’t you say so? Where do I pick her up?”

  Murdock said he didn’t know. He told Fenner to stay by the telephone after dinner. “I may be able to take her out,” he said. “If I do, I’ll phone you and you can stop in wherever we are and take a look. If not, you’ll have to go out to the Andrada house tomorrow morning and hang around until she comes out. If she does. It may not be anything.”

  “That,” said Fenner, “I’ve heard before too. Okay. I’ll hang around for your call. It’ll be good to see you, Kent.”

  Chapter Seven

  MILLION-DOLLAR SECRET

  BY SEVEN-THIRTY Murdock had finished examining the prints that Grady had made of the Carroll canvases. The result was just what he had expected so he put them in the desk drawer and went up to the city room again to see if Barry Gould was still around. Gould was, and he was ready to eat, and so they went out and turned right, taking a short-cut through now-darkened streets to a place off Winthrop Square where the food was good—especially the sea food—and reasonable, and beer could be had in schooners.

  Murdock had oysters and broiled scrod, the first he’d tasted in a year and a half. He ate three big hunks of hot corn bread and had a green salad and his beer and finally a chocolate eclair and coffee. When he finally lit a cigarette Gould was grinning.

  “You certainly tucked that away,” he said. “Not much like Italy, is it?”

  Murdock said it certainly was not and for a few minutes they talked about the war and what was happening back where they had come from. Gould told a little about his being shot down and his capture and how things had been in concentration camp and what he was trying to do with his book.

  It was all intensely interesting to Murdock because his own experience had been a behind-the-lines business and all he had seen was desolation and destruction, and the bewildered, stricken peasants who had been left behind in their razed towns by the Germans. Gould talked as well as he wrote and finally Murdock told him he ought to try a lecturing tour.

  “There’s money in that business.”

  “Yes,” Gould said. “And also there’s a war on. Can you imagine going around lecturing to club women and luncheons? I mean fellows our age who ought to be doing something that counts? I’m working with Army Public Relations on a series and when I finish that and the book I’m going back—if I can. The lectures can keep.”

  Murdock said he supposed so. He also knew Gould would be good, not only because he talked well, but because he had the presence. He was tall and well built and he wore his clothes with a careless air that reflected not only good taste but the knowledge that
what he wore was correct without being dressy. Also he had the assurance, the front, in a way of speaking, that was needed to impress; and on top of that he knew whereof he spoke.

  It was nine o’clock before Murdock could bring himself to think of other things, and the moment he did the lift he’d had from the dinner and the talk began to sag. He signaled for the check and sighed and it was such a loud sigh that Gould said:

  “Still no picture?… Still not talking either, huh? Where do you go from here?”

  “I think I’ll stop in and see Bacon for a bit. Then I might call up Louise or Gail and go out there awhile. Want to come?”

  “Sure,” Gould said. “I’ve got some work to do but I’d just as soon let it wait for a couple of hours.”

  When Murdock had his change they caught a cab on Summer Street and rode to Police Headquarters. In the lower hall Gould said:

  “I don’t know if what you’ve got to say to Bacon is hush-hush or not but I know Bacon and he’ll probably have more to tell you if you’re alone with him than if I tag along. I’m still the press to him. I’ll see if there’s a penny-ante game on the fire. Stop in the press rooms when you’re ready.”

  Murdock said okay and stepped into the elevator. He wasn’t sure what he was going to talk to Bacon about but he knew what Gould meant and he was appreciative of the insight that prompted the other to let him carry on alone.

  Lieutenant Bacon was tipped back in his chair with his feet on the window sill. He waited until Murdock closed the door before he glanced round; then he said, “Oh, you.”

  Murdock fanned out his coat and sat down. Presently Bacon swiveled his chair. He looked steadily at Murdock a moment and then grunted.

  “All that photographing for nothing, huh?”

  “How do you know?”

  “I can tell by the look on your pan.”

  Murdock pushed back his cap and slid a little lower in the chair. “What about Carroll? Still under glass?”

  Bacon nodded. “I don’t know for how long though. Neil Briscoe moved in. Says he’s representing Carroll.”