by Kane, Henry
“He’s in mourning.”
“Mourning? Something happen?”
“An editor of his got killed. McCormick takes these things to heart. He has donned the sackcloth.”
“Yeah, sackcloth my ashes. You’re always the guy with the funny. You got a sense of humor like a tombstone. Sackcloth my ashes.” He grinned. “I ain’t bad myself. So? What about McCormick?”
“He asked me to bring the canary.”
“Where is she?”
“Outside at a table.”
He rubbed his palm over the side of his face. “Look, pal, maybe you can brush this off for me. The guy’s a customer who has probably got the hots for this chick. He calls me and he asks me so what the hell can I say? But honest, I can’t use no girl singer, and who needs it to ruffle up my show with some broken-down squeaker? So as long as he ain’t here with her, could you kind of pass it for me? Tell her I got a earache or something. Man, I don’t have to tell you what to say. You was born with the gift for gab. Tell her whatever the hell you want. But pass me, huh?”
“I think I can manage it.”
“The drinks is on the house. I’ll tell Alex. So? Move. What the hell are you hanging around for?”
“I’m fascinated by your paperweights.”
“Pardon?”
I pointed. “It’s the first time I’ve ever seen paperweights which require a license.”
“They got a license, bub.”
“And why the silencers? To keep the papers from making sounds if they rustle?”
The wolfish smile lit up the handsome face. “I run a refined club here. A nice club for nice people and some of the nice people are even coppers. I wouldn’t want any of my nice people to get upset by the noise if one of them paperweights ever goes off like by mistake, you know?”
“I know,” I said.
In the taxi being piloted to Pierga’s I explained: “… so why waste energy? Why tire yourself out with a phony audition before a real audition?”
“You know, I’m beginning to wonder about Harvey….”
“Look, the man’s a publisher, not an agent. You can’t fault him on this gig. He couldn’t know that Rio would only be listening as a favor to a customer. Rio’s just not interested right now. Otto’s another story. Otto doesn’t listen to do favors — ”
“Who’s Otto?”
“Mr. Pierga.”
She snuggled. “You’re on a first-name basis with the famous Mr. Pierga?”
“Why not? I’m the famous Mr. Chambers.”
“Infamous.” But she snuggled closer.
And so we arrived at Pierga’s.
Pierga’s was a cellar trap. There was a big stage for the band and the performers, there was a postage-stamp floor for postage-stamp dancing, and then there were the many tables and the nooks and the crooks and the crannies for the faceless customers, lost in the mist of blue smoke, who paid the freight.
Pierga himself was working as maitre d’: Otto Pierga resplendent in black mohair, white dress shirt, black bow tie, and marvelous white silk vest with large gold buttons that gleamed like the eyes of an anxious virgin. Otto was as bald as marble, stumpy and corpulent, with a thick neck and a jowly face, tiny merry fat-buried eyes, and a huge stomach that amply corroborated his vast reputation as a gourmet and epicure.
“Good evening, Mr. Chambers and beautiful lady,” he said. “And a beautiful lady this lady most certainly is.”
Deprecatingly I said, “Ah, that Otto Pierga.”
“I think he’s wonderfully gallant,” said Barbara Hines.
Otto beamed. “You sec?” he said.
“Miss Barbara Hines, Mr. Otto Pierga,” I said.
“Charmed,” he said.
“I’m delighted to know you,” she said.
“How’ve you been, Otto?” I said.
He patted his vest. “Rolling with the paunch,” he said. “Won’t you please come this way?”
He assigned a new maitre d’ to the door, sat down with us at a table, and ordered champagne for all.
“Otto,” I said. “Miss Hines is a performer. She’s a great singer and she has a beautiful act surrounding it.”
“So that’s it,” he said. He folded chubby hands. “Well, I’m always interested. As a matter of fact, I’m quite interested at this point. Carol Keeley, who’s been doing so well for us, starts rehearsal for a musical, Lots Of Luck, on Monday. I’ve been casting and auditioning, and I haven’t quite hit what I’ve wanted.” He looked at her keenly. “You’re beautiful, you’re decorative, and that, like possession, is nine points in your favor. Now, perchance, can you sing?”
“She’s only great,” I said.
“You’re only prejudiced,” he said.
“Have I ever bum-steered you, Otto?”
“No, I admit, you haven’t. You are, Miss Hines, I trust, a professional?”
“Oh yes, sir.”
“Where did you work last?”
“I just finished an engagement this past Saturday night at Club Intimo in Chicago.”
“Oh, grand.” He smiled endearingly. “My friend Patsy Kirgo is a terrific judge of talent, I have a great respect for him. Why were you fired?”
“She wasn’t,” I said.
“I assumed — ”
“You assumed wrong, Otto. Like every impressario, your outlook is negative, unless the talent is a choice of your own.”
He smiled at Barbara. “I’m buying the champagne and that’s the way he talks to me.”
“She quit Club Intimo on my insistence,” I said. “She belongs here, in New York. I promised her an audition by the great Pierga himself. She merits it. You’ll flip.”
“Well, I’m most anxious to hear,” he said. “Are you ready this evening, Miss Hines? I mean, are you willing, set for it? It would be dreadful to ask an artist to perform cold — I mean cold in her own mind. I mean it’s bad enough a cold audition like this smack straight in front of an audience, without rehearsal, and with a strange accompanist.”
“I’m ready,” she said.
“Excuse me,” he said, “and I’ll talk to Ray Sturm. He’s the pianist, arranger, and leader of our group here.”
“I know Ray Sturm,” she said. “I worked with him in Las Vegas.”
“Excellent,” said Otto, standing up. “I’ll talk to Ray right now. Let me warn you, though, Miss Hines. If Ray turns thumbs down, I’m not even going to listen. I mean, in a way, that would be kinder.”
“I don’t think Ray will turn thumbs down.”
“I hope he doesn’t.”
Otto went away, and the waiter popped the cork of champagne and poured, and we sipped. “It’s a break, Ray Sturm. He wanted me to come east quite some time ago but I didn’t think I was ready.” Her free hand touched my free hand and my other hand, involuntarily, started shaking up the bubbles in the champagne glass I was holding. “Peter, I want to thank you for everything you’re doing for me….”
“Skip,” I said.
“You know, I think you’re blushing again.”
“It’s the champagne on top of brandy. It makes you see red.”
“It makes me see you — even more clearly.”
She leaned forward. Hastily I gobbled champagne as though it were ginger ale.
Otto returned with a slim, pale, dark young man in a red dinner jacket with black satin lapels.
“Hi, Bobbie,” said the dark young man. “Delighted seeing you. Endsville. Otto, you got your problem solved like Jupiter threw you a bolt.”
“Hi, Ray,” said Barbara.
“Like Jupiter threw you a bolt,” said Ray. “Jupiter Schwartz, in the textile business. Got plenty of bolts.”
“Ray,” said Otto, “it’s a good thing you’re a wild musician. As a comedian, you throw up with one-liners that even Henny Youngman threw away years ago. Miss Hines, Ray’s told me about your act, and it certainly sounds like it’s something.”
“It’ll knock you right on your toochis,” said Ray.
; “Can you sing?” said Otto. “Can you sing, Miss Hines? That’s basic. For the rest, there’s no question, you’re properly assembled. But can you sing?”
“I can sing,” she said.
“And how she can sing,” said Ray.
“All right,” said Otto. “Would you and Ray go away now and talk over some numbers. You’ll announce her, Ray. With the buildup, the shmear, the whole works. Work out three numbers, with two extra for encores, in case she happens to hit our audience.”
“She’ll knock this house dead,” said Ray.
“I hope so,” said Otto.
Barbara rose and went off with Ray Sturm and Otto slid into her seat. “Thank you,” he said, “for whatever may work out here, and according to Ray Sturm something really big may work out and Ray Sturm is far from a slob when it comes to picking talent and I never heard him quite as enthusiastic as this. So, thank you, either way it works out but that of course is not why I called you because, whatever else I may be, clairvoyant I’m not.”
“You’re welcome for the thank you. Now what’s your problem, Pappy?”
“Actually it’s not my problem.”
“Otto, you sound like the lady in the drugstore who’s asking for pills because her girl friend got knocked up. Always it’s the girl friend. Now, where is it tight with you, friend?”
Fat in a frown creased about his eyes until there were no eyes, just slits in flesh. His voice was low. “The man that was killed, the guy in the newspapers — ”
“What man?”
“Touraine. Jason Touraine.”
“You know him?”
“I’ve seen him. He’s been here a few times. I was never actually introduced.”
“What about him, Otto?”
“He was here last night.”
I sat up straight. “Until what time?”
“Twelve-thirty.”
“Have you told this to the police?”
“I’m telling it to you.”
“Have you told it to the cops?”
“No.”
“Why not, Otto?”
“Because he wasn’t here alone.”
I sat back. He sat back. Some of the frown went away and the eyes reappeared. They were serious, concerned. He poured champagne for both of us. I sipped mine, set it away. He used his to wet his lips. “He was here with a customer of mine,” he said. “He’d been here before with this customer of mine. They always got a corner table, far away, discreet and quiet. Now I can’t give this to the police because I could be causing trouble and I’m not in business to cause trouble for my customers. There are experts in every field, and you’re an expert in yours. Also you’re not some stupid kid who’ll mow anybody down in his rush to be a hero. So far so good?”
“So far,” I said.
“You’re the expert, it’s up to you. Naturally, there’s a catharsis in my telling you. I’m relieved of a problem and in a sense it becomes your problem. But I urge you, most earnestly, to weigh the values carefully before you take any precipitous step. When I saw the guy’s picture in the papers, I realized …” He sighed. “Anyway, he and my customer were here last night. They were seated at their usual, discreet out-of-the-way table. They ate, they drank, and they left at about twelve-thirty. Period.”
“Who’s your customer, Otto?”
“Mrs. Madeline McCormick.”
Barbara Hines sang her songs and knocked a tough New York audience on its collective ear. She took the house by storm, gale, cyclone, tornado. She socked them, rocked them, locked them up in her palm, and they were still banging the tables for more when Ray Sturm took her off after the second encore. Otto Pierga was fairly vibrating with excitement.
“Look,” he said. “When it’s talent, it’s always like the first time for me. Maybe it’s a case of arrested development or something. Maybe I’m naive, but perpetually naive. But always it’s new, fresh, wonderful, thrilling. Miss Hines, you’re ready, you’re there, you need no seasoning. You are, right now, Otto Pierga’s latest discovery.”
“How about Peter Chambers’ latest discovery?” I said.
“You stick to your field, Mr. Detective, and leave me to mine. Who’s your agent, Miss Hines?”
“I am,” I said.
“Great, great, huh, but great?” said Ray Sturm, drinking the champagne from my glass. “But great? I told you.”
“I want thirteen weeks exclusive,” said Otto, “with an option for thirteen more. As a singer you start at two hundred per; if I take up the option, which I’m sure I will, then it’ll be three hundred per. If the rest of the act is what Ray says it is — and I damned well believe him now — then you start at three fifty per, plus feature billing, and if I take up the option it’s at five hundred per. How does that sound, Miss Hines?”
She could not talk. She took his small plump hand in hers, kissed it, nodded, and cried.
“We’ll have the lawyers work out the contracts,” he said. “You’ll come to work this Monday. Tomorrow I want you here at five oclock, with costumes, material, everything. You too, Ray. We’ll do a complete dry run of the act, and I’ll add whatever touches I think right. Then you’ll rehearse the rest of the week.” He took his hand out of hers and poured champagne and lifted his glass. “All right, everybody, let’s drink to Otto Pierga’s latest discovery — Miss Barbara Hines!”
We came home to the Quilton bubbling on Scotch, brandy, champagne, success, and enthusiasm. Her eyes were two blue burning invitations.
“Come in and have a nightcap,” she said.
“Rain check,” I said.
“Please …” she said, up-tone.
She was delectable but she was another guy’s dish.
“It’s late,” I said. “I have a big day tomorrow.”
It is crazy when you get lucky and your insides are your enemy.
“I won’t coax you,” she said, down-tone. “So? Last call.”
“Rain check,” I said.
Sometimes, my bachelor buckeroos, you sniff around for weeks and you are rejected by every dog at whom you wag your piece of tail, and sometimes you wear out your finger dialing the telephone and nothing wants to happen, and then, sometimes, when it does happen, in plethora, your own insides become your enemy.
I had passed on Edwina Strange because I was being faithful, in my own moronic unilateral fashion, to Barbara Hines.
Now I passed on Barbara Hines because I was being faithful to Harvey McCormick.
I’m not well.
Chapter Sixteen
I HAD a good night’s no sleep. I awoke to the shrill of the alarm at nine, unrefreshed. The pep pill — as is the wont of pep pills — had had a delayed reaction. It had given me pep when I had wanted pause. I had had a twilight night of threshing dreams wherein a constant succession of ravishing beauties had beseeched for my peerless attentions but I had turned them down, one after another, because my insides were my enemy. Finally, I declared war upon my contumelious enemy, and prepared to disembowel. I had just plunged the knife, in the first thrust of hara-kiri, when the alarm screeched and I burst awake soundlessly screeching in unison.
So I needed a pep pill to balance off the havoc wrought by the prior pep pill.
Like this you become an addict.
My first telephone call was to Madeline McCormick. Last night it had been too late. This morning I hoped it was not too early: that Harvey had already gone off to work. He had.
“May I see you?” I said.
“Of course,” she said.
“How about ten o’clock?”
“Fine,” she said.
I called Parker and said, “What’s new?”
“Nothing. Routine, routine, routine. Right now we’re starting a recheck on all the cellars, alleys, sewers, holes, and garbage cans up there in the neighborhood. I’m tripling the men on the assignment looking for that damned gun. And by the way, that’s strictly confidential.”
“That you’re tripling the men on the assignment?” I said somewhat in wond
er.
“No. That the gun was a twenty-two. That’s strictly inside. We prefer that the public and the newspapers keep thinking of it as a mob job. We’ve let slip, sort of unofficially, that the gun was a thirty-eight and the newspapers have been printing that.”
“Got you, Lieutenant.”
“Anything happening on your side of the street?”
“Nope. But I’m hoping. You going to be working all day?”
“All day.”
“See you later.”
After calling Mosely Safe and Vault and leaving a message for Saul Frankel to call Peter Chambers, I climbed over the four-foot barricade to my bathroom, showered and shaved, climbed out, dressed, and went to the McCormick apartment on East 66th Street.
She was wearing black pumps, black slacks, and a black sweater. She had a figure that could properly support slacks and sweater. She protruded engagingly. She was big but she did not slop over. She seemed impatient. There was the stress of unspoken query in the heavy-lidded passionate eyes, a tightness about the corners of the fish-lipped mouth.
“Madeline,” I said, “when one hires a private detective, it is expedient that the private detective sort of gets a full flow of confidence.”
“Peter,” she said, “it’s far too early in the morning for lectures. Certainly one doesn’t hire a private detective for that.” She looked at her watch. “I’ve got a busy day in front of me. I must be at a directors meeting at Harvest House. I have a date with my masseur. A date at the beauty parlor. And I have a great deal of shopping I’d like to catch up with.”
A real tough day, no?
“Madeline,” I said, “you told me that Jason Touraine had come here at about nine o’clock Monday night.”
“Yes, I did.”
“And that he left here almost at once.”
“Yes.”
“Without you?”
“Yes.”
“Left alone?”
“Yes.”
“So how come you and he were at Pierga’s in the Village? How come you ate, drank, enjoyed the show, the music, and left the joint at about twelve-thirty? How come you did all of that and told me none of that?” Aggrieved I said, “What’s the sense to hire an eye if you’re going to hold out on him?”