“Don’t forget the Vichyssoise, Spencer,” she said.
“It’s in,” Spencer said.
My clerk leaned in over the counter as I indicated a large glass assortment of imported antipasto. He plucked it from the case and faced me for further instructions. I meditated. I hesitated.
“Is this the kind of antipasto Miss Varick buys?” I asked. I winked at him. “I don’t want to make any mistakes.”
“Miss Varick?” he asked himself. Behind me, the little fat man and his girl walked out with their package. The lad who had waited on them came our way, gnawing a piece of Swiss cheese. My clerk said: “You know a Miss Varick, Charlie? You ever wait on her?”
“She’s new in the neighborhood,” the other clerk said. “The big blue place, remember?”
The other man’s face lit with a glow of remembrance. “Oh, sure, sure, sure. Now I remember the lady. She loaded up here the day she moved in.”
“What day was that?” I asked.
“Day before yesterday, matter of fact. I remember the day, because the Giants—”
“She did her own shopping?” I laughed, as though this sort of pastime would be strange for my old friend Lisa Varick. “Alone?”
“There was a man with her, wasn’t there, Charlie?”
“There sure was. Little man.”
“Really?’ I laughed again. “Remember what she called him?”
“She called him doll,” said the other clerk, almost choking on his last morsel of cheese. He was caught between laughter and fear, eyeing me eagerly to see whether he had offended me. “Meaning no harm, mister, but he didn’t look much like a doll.”
“You’ll laugh yourself right out of here someday,” my clerk said nastily.
“Nuts. You almost split a gut yourself when they walked in, didn’t you?”
They were still arguing the ethics of open laughter when I left the store. I drove slowly back to Lisa Varick’s house, letting the early morning air revive me. My head ached with the activity of the past few hours. My innermost thoughts were a confusion of theories and reactions. Yet I was reasoning poorly because every idea brought up out of my mental calculations was colored and flavored by the emotional impact of the characters involved in it. I found myself impatient to get on with the hunt, overanxious to keep moving toward my goal. The clouded images of the cast of characters rose up to annoy me. Throughout the past day or so, my mind had taken on a major chore, the pursuit of too many threads of theory; the summarizing and cataloguing of too many people; the head-achy speculation about each of them in turn: adolescent Nickles Shuba, zany Nancy Blackburn and her lovelorn father, the little man with the undying love for Lisa Varick. I stood in the shadows, across the Street from her dark mansion, steeling myself for the job I knew I must do.
A narrow alley led to the rear of Lisa Varick’s house I got in easily through an open basement window, lowering myself to a wooden floor, dropping into a damp and musty hole, a section of the house reserved for laundry tasks. There was a stairway on the right side of the room in which I stood, exactly seventeen steps up to the kitchen on the ground floor. Here a thread of light filtered in from the yard, enough to make my groping easy, enough to guide me into the main hall.
Now my feet felt the soft and yielding luxury of a deep rug. The stairway on the left led me upstairs and into a broad landing. My hands reached out for direction. Beyond the edge of the grayness, the picture window in the living room was an empty oblong straight ahead of me. My knee bumped against a wooden shape. It was a crate, not yet unpacked. And when my eyes could plumb the vague and ghostly shadows in the big room, I saw other large and cartoned items. Lisa Varick had not yet unpacked completely. I stood there debating my next move. The bedrooms, in this type of layout, would be up one more flight. From some distant corner, a clock chimed delicately, two chimes. From a bedroom timepiece? The little silvery notes hung in the air. Upstairs? I backed out of the living room and started up the stairway.
Lisa Varick’s bedroom faced the rear of the house, a mammoth room nineteen short and tentative steps across from the door to the window; fifteen of the same back to the far wall. Here, again, a few unopened crates stood around. The darkness clawed at my eyes. I groped my way into the adjoining bathroom. It was a luxurious place, equipped with all manner of trappings. I lit the small light over the basin. The glow was dull and vague, but strong enough to show me what was behind me in the bedroom. The room lay bathed in the thin and foggy radiance that seeped through from the bathroom. A large period bed stood at the far side, draped and swirled with fancy cloth, a shiny material that would have looked good in a museum. Here and there around the rug, a few chairs had been uncrated. A tremendous chaise longue squatted a few feet from where I stood. And on the right, incongruous among the feminine detail, was a huge desk of the same period, masterfully carved, but much too bulky for the rest of the décor.
I pulled the drapes shut and went to work. The top drawer of the desk was a confusion of loose papers and memorabilia, the type of collection a woman might neglect forever in a place like this. It would take much time to examine this mass of nonsense. Yet, caution slowed me and held me to my chore. I was operating out of a fictional sense of research. My detectives always moved with care in situations like this. My fantasy heroes would find something here, a minuscule thread; an important item. In the past, out of a welter of plots and sub-plots, my working investigators had always dug up the cliché clues: the matchboxes and the diaries and the little black books of addresses.
Lisa Varick’s desk had none of these. I found nothing but a fancy bill. It was addressed to Lisa, at the Concordat Arms, on Park Avenue. I thumbed the bill and studied the bill. I memorized the name on the billhead: Gardere Frères—Antiques—an organization that had charged her $564.00 for a French clock of the Louis XV period. Lisa had expensive tastes. Her intricate personality held me staring at the bill for too long. I abandoned it, finally, when my roving fingers found another item. This was a key of the common variety, marked 1616. I pocketed it.
And then I was caught up in the quick tension of the voices I heard from below.
The street door was opening down there. Somebody was coming in. I slid out to the stairway as the foyer light went on, flooding the stair well all the way up to my observation post. A subdued wave of sound rose up to me. It was Lisa Varick.
“I still don’t get it,” she was saying. “I don’t get it at all.”
“He had to go, don’t you see?” The man’s voice was vague. They were coming upstairs. The lush carpeting killed their footsteps. I could measure their progress by the timbre of their voices. They would be below me, on the landing on the second floor, in another moment.
“But the thing is ridiculous,” Lisa said, a touch of worry in her voice.
“Leech is ridiculous,” the man said. Now his voice rang a bell. I recognized the flat, impersonal harshness of Larry Seff. “The point is, Chester Leech is ridiculous about you, Lisa.”
“Is that my fault?”
“I don’t know. Who can tell with a broad like you?”
“You don’t mean that. If you mean that, I’ll slap your filthy mouth.” She was angry now. Her voice trembled and shivered with rage. I wondered vaguely how she would look when stirred this way. “Chester is a damned fool. I told you that a long time ago. Can I help it if he got a fix on me?”
“You helped it,” Seff said quietly. “Because you didn’t kill it.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean that you like the boys to drool about you. I mean that you’re screwy that way. You could have cut Leech off with a word. Did you do it? No, you preferred to have him on your list, handy, in case you had an odd job for him. That’s why Chester went wrong. Because you had him rigged to go wrong for you, the poor slob. He was nuts about you. I suppose you didn’t know that?”
“Maybe I did,” she
said easily. Now her voice slipped and slid into a teasing calm again, “You jealous, doll?”
“Don’t make me laugh. I gave up being jealous about you a long time ago.”
“Did you?”
“You know I did. I got rid of you, remember? I couldn’t keep you happy, could I?”
“You did in some ways, doll.”
“Tell that to your other boys.” Seff laughed dryly. “Tell it to Blackburn and Buffo and even Chester Leech. Tell it to your gang of Boy Scout buddies. But don’t, for God’s sake, ever try to tell it to me, baby. I don’t buy that garbage anymore. There isn’t one man on earth rich enough and healthy enough to keep a broad like you happy. For a while I thought you found one for keeps. But even he slipped up, the poor sucker.”
“You’re upset,” Lisa said with tenderness. “Forget about me, will you? Let’s talk about this house. What do you think of it, Larry?”
“It looks good.”
“You don’t sound excited about it.”
“It’s a nice layout.”
“Just nice?”
“Fancy, all right. But, after all, your joint at the Concordat was no cave either.”
“I can do things here I couldn’t do at the Concordat.”
“So you can.”
“Can you imagine the take in this place? With this address?”
“It has class, of course.”
“Can you think of anything finer?”
“It’ll do.”
“Understatement of the week,” Lisa said. They were moving out of the big hall now. They were standing in the living room. The intervening distances would kill their dialogue. “But you were always the master of understatement, Larry.”
I began a slow crawl down the stairway. Four steps from the top it was possible to regain the full impact of their conversation. I could see the edge of the wall opposite, the spot where the living room began. The colors were violent. The white rug against the powder blue of the hall wall made a startling contrast.
“Turn on the radio, doll.”
“I can live without it,” Seff said. “You still got to have noise around you?”
“Let’s not fight. Let’s not quibble.”
“What’s back there?”
“Room,” she said. “This is the roomiest house on the block.”
“How many rooms?”
“Four back here. The one in the rear is the best.”
“Big enough?”
“Come and see.”
“Never mind,” Seff said. “I have a good idea.”
“Come and see,” she said again. “You never did have much imagination, doll. That was one of your big troubles when we were married. Absolutely no idea of my talents.”
“Not all of them, baby. You have talents I never dreamed you had.”
“Come and see the big back room,” she said.
Their voices drifted away, through the living room and back beyond a few walls. The murmur remained dull and distant for only a few minutes. Then they were back. Seff’s manner was changed now. He spoke with a fresher, livelier rhythm.
“You were right,” he said. “This layout is perfect.”
“Then you’ll come in on the deal?”
“Me and who else?”
“You and Buffo and little Lisa.”
“You don’t need me,” Seff laughed. “Not if Buffo’s in.”
“We need your money, doll.”
“For this place? Don’t make me laugh. You have enough dough yourself. And what you don’t have, you can get from Blackburn.”
There was a pause. “I can’t go too fast with Eustace,” she said quietly. “He gave me this house. But I don’t want him around me permanently, doll.”
“How long do you think you can keep him on the hook? Blackburn’s been around.”
“He’ll keep. But you haven’t answered my question, Larry. Do you want in?”
“I’ll think about it.” There was a growl and a grumble in Seff’s voice now. “A thing like this can’t be rushed. It’s too big. How do I know about protection? How do I know about the street? You don’t just go crazy with an idea, Lisa. You check up first. You make your arrangements.”
“Still the same slowpoke,” she said. “You know something, Larry? That was why I divorced you.”
“Don’t make me laugh.”
“I don’t hear you laughing.”
“You’ll have to give me time, baby,” Seff said.
“I could make up your mind tonight.”
“I’ll bet you could. You haven’t changed a day,” Seff said. “Has Blackburn seen the bedroom yet?’
“Now you’re being nasty.”
“I like you better in living rooms.” His voice approached the edge of the landing, pushing me back up the stairs in a hurry. He was on the way out now. “Let’s keep it that way, baby.”
His voice was lost to me in the lower hall. I went down quickly. Below, at the front door, they were saying their farewells. Then the door shut and Lisa Varick started upstairs again, humming now, a pop tune with a lively bounce. I backed through the living room and into the darkened recess of the next great square chamber. Lisa strolled into the living room and clicked on the radio, the soft strains of a classical sonata tinkling in the silence. She stood for a moment, deliberating her next move. She stared into the room where I kneeled behind the couch. It was almost as though she saw me there. Her face smiled at me, but she was in reality only enjoying some stray thought, looking into the darkness and through the darkness into a bright vista of her own imagining.
She rolled her eyes at the ceiling. She knotted her smooth hands and hummed a tune, as spritely and joyous as a young and moonstruck debutante.
But her mood ended abruptly.
A sound from the stairs pulled her eyes back to reality.
She started for the landing.
But she didn’t quite make it.
“Don’t come any closer,” a woman’s voice said.
Lisa stopped as though somebody had jerked her to a halt. In the next moment I saw the reason for her obedience.
Nancy Blackburn entered the room, walking slowly.
And she had an automatic in her hand.
CHAPTER 19
“Get away from that table,” Nancy said.
Her voice seemed a half tone higher than normal. Yet there was nothing in her movement that suggested nervousness nor did her pretty face reveal any sign of upset. She handled the gun with the delicate gestures of an amateur, however, a weakness that obviously amused Lisa Varick.
“Careful with that gun, darling. It might go off.”
“I said to stay away from the table.”
Lisa retreated slowly.
“Sit on the couch now,” Nancy commanded.
The tableau was tailor-made for my viewing. From where I knelt, they faced each other across the oblong of space that was the doorway, a broad stage for their performance. Lisa worked hard to show her unconcern for her unwanted visitor. She busied herself with the cigarette in her hand. She leaned back against the cushions in the attitude of a house wife waiting for a vacuum cleaner salesman to perform. “What a perfectly delightful place,” Nancy said, looking around.
“Glad you like it, darling.”
“And expensive, too.”
“Quite.”
“My father is a generous man,” Nancy said, fingering and tossing the drapes on the big picture window. “Nothing but the best.”
“Those were his exact words,” Lisa smiled.
“When did all this happen?”
“Ask your father.”
“You intend to live here with him?”
“Maybe we’ll all live here,” Lisa laughed. “You, too, darling.”
“I’d die first.”
“You
won’t die.”
“Maybe you will, Lisa.”
The little duel was tensening now. Nancy advanced a few steps and displayed the gun with a sudden bravado. She was not trembling when she held it close to Lisa’s cheek. The muzzle couldn’t have been two inches away from the older woman’s jaw. Yet, she didn’t stir. Nothing could erase the obvious, persistent suggestion of humor in her face.
“I’d suggest you put that gun away,” Lisa said calmly. “We can talk without it.”
“I didn’t come here to talk.”
“You certainly didn’t come here to shoot me, did you, darling?”
“You can stop calling me darling,” Nancy said angrily. “And you can stop stalling. You know why I came here.”
“You’re drunk, darling. That’s why you’re here.”
“I’m perfectly sober,” Nancy said flatly. “Sober enough to kill you, Lisa.”
The light in her eyes was a steady burning flame, bright with an unswerving purpose. There was nothing alcoholic about her, nothing vague. Determination steadied her hand. The gun no longer wavered. She pressed it closer, and yet closer. Now it lay against Lisa’s cheek. For only a moment the metal touched her. Then she drew back and stiffened against the cushions on the couch.
“I’m beginning to believe you,” Lisa whispered. “For God’s sake, put that gun away.”
“Not quite yet. A gun is the only thing that frightens you, isn’t that so?”
“Put it away. We can talk without firearms.”
“We’ll make more sense with the gun,” Nancy said. “And now, let’s get down to business. I want to wipe out the threat of blackmail. Especially since you seem hell-bent on marrying my father. The entire situation will seem very funny if I let you go on with it. It sounds like something out of a bad movie—the idea of a mother blackmailing her own daughter.” Nancy laughed mirthlessly. “And you do intend to become my mother, don’t you?”
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