Death of a Dastard (Prologue Books)

by Kane, Henry

  “Yes,” said Parker.

  “The rest played itself out. Harvey came in on Tuesday with the dumb broad to whom he’d given his check for ten thousand dollars. He had no interest in Karen Touraine — he had a deep interest in Barbara Hines, and, man, what better camouflage is there than Barbara Hines? And Karen, keeping out of any connection with Harvey McCormick, put the private eye onto Edwina Strange who would put the eye onto Jason Touraine’s tapes.”

  “Who,” demanded Parker, “in hell is Edwina Strange?”

  I told him.

  “The plot had cooked up perfect. Jason was dead, Madeline was hooked, and Harvey and Karen were as far apart as the poles. The one flaw was Johnny Rio and that flaw could be expunged by Karen. Johnny was in trouble with his bosses. He kept a couple of silent paperweights on his desk. If he was done in by the paperweights it would be attributed to internecine conflict. Karen wasn’t at Chez Rio Tuesday night — respect for the dead — but she was there tonight and she shot him with a paperweight. She would have finished him off, only I fell through the door.”

  “Beautiful,” said Parker.

  “Oh. One other angle. Karen and Harvey were very far apart except for one point of contact. Out on Staten Island.” I told him about that. “Tonight, once I got that clear, I was on my way.”

  “Just beautiful,” said Parker. “But also just two questions.”

  “Fire,” I said.

  “One — what about Benny Benson? Two — how did you fit all this together?”

  The car stopped at a curb.

  We were at the Quilton.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  THEY UNWRAPPED Harvey McCormick and took him away.

  Only Parker remained with us, and Barbara, still wearing her short coat, rushed about playing hostess and serving drinks. Parker and I tapped glasses, ice clinking, and then Barbara Hines removed her coat and as Parker eye-popped that blue satin body the ice in his glass started clinking again without any tapping.

  “You see what I mean?” I said.

  The ice kept clinking. “I see. But I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I’m about to answer your two unanswered questions.”

  He stopped the clinking by drinking but his eyes, over the rim of the glass, strained at their sockets in an unabashed leer of appreciation.

  I said, “Some camouflage, eh?”

  “Camouflage!” He finally set his glass away. “You’re crazy. If every bit of this girl isn’t real, I’ll eat it.”

  “Thank you,” she said.

  I said, “I’m talking about Harvey McCormick’s camouflage.”

  “Peter,” he said, “you’re losing me.”

  “Lieutenant,” I said, “I shall try to win you back.”

  “Two questions …”

  “Let me answer them together. I was doing a lot of running around, I was collecting a lot of little facts, but none of the little facts made any sense until tonight. Tonight, they all fell into place.”

  “What happened tonight?”

  “Tonight this little lady convinced me that there wasn’t a thing going on between Harvey McCormick and her. She was, then, camouflage! So, as everything tumbled, I tumbled to everything.”

  “Please do it right side up, old friend,” said Parker.

  “Fine. Let’s start with Karen Touraine. The alleged facts had it that she was in love with Johnny Rio and wanted to divorce her husband in order to marry Rio. As you had said — ridiculous. You figured the snow job was to extend her employment at Chez Rio. My figures added to that. Maybe mine is a more cynical mind, or a dirtier mind, than yours. For me — she was setting him up for some kind of angle job she needed done, or using him as a cover-up for an affair with another, or a combination of all.”

  “Any basis for any of that?”

  “Actually, no basis. I just didn’t think your sweetly simple reason warranted all that pretense. Now, please, let’s shift to McCormick and me in Chicago with him. He was supposed to be interested in a dame — as he told you when you questioned him. He was going to hook her out of Club Intimo and bring her back to New York. Club Intimo is owned by a certain hard-nose named Patsy Kirgo who could be trouble. McCormick was paying me seven hundred and fifty dollars to keep him out of that kind of trouble. Fine. All in line. Understood, when a guy is making out with a chick. But tonight I learn he is not making out with the chick, he’s not even interested in the chick that way — nor is she in him — and he has laid out ten thousand dollars in her career. That put the thing into different focus — far different focus.”

  Parker was quick. “Plus,” he said.

  “You bet,” I said. “His very own gun involved in this murder. His cleaning it on Friday and leaving it for his wife to put away so that her prints could be on it — ”

  “In that framework,” said Parker, “he had taken you out to Chicago to have a witness to the fact that he was there at the period of the murder, and that if he had an interest in any gal, it was a beautiful blonde in Chicago, not a beautiful brunette in New York. Question. How did you link him to our Karen?”

  “She was an awful little liar and now her awul little lies made the kind of sense her awful little lies should make. I dug.”

  “Let me hear, kid.”

  “Jason had got his job at Harvest House through her. She had met McCormick at Chez Rio and she had talked with him about a job for her husband. Yesterday, when I interviewed her I asked her if she had ever gone out socially with McCormick — purely in the interest of getting a job for her husband. She said that for that purpose she had seen McCormick twice in one week — that, twice, at noon, he had taken her to the Oak Room at the Plaza for lunch. She is not a New Yorker — only here four months — and she didn’t know what many New Yorkers do not know — no woman is allowed at the Oak Room of the Plaza during lunch except on weekends. Weekdays it is limited strictly to men.”

  “Gosh, I didn’t know that,” said Barbara Hines.

  “So,” I said, “she was shooting off her mouth and shooting blanks. Once the camouflage was stripped away, other items fell into place. She had called me yesterday to come see her — so that she could steer me on to those tapes through Edwina Strange — but she told me, that even before she had met me — which was at McCormick’s party Friday night — Mr. McCormick had mentioned that I was a ‘discreet and experienced person.’ Now she was supposed to have met McCormick a couple of times about a job for her husband. Where in hell would this discreet and experienced person come into their conversations? Also, that very morning, when I talked with Harvey McCormick at his office, he asked me to take Barbara for an audition at Chez Rio that evening. He knew that Mrs. Touraine was not going to be there, not go on. He said, ‘Karen informs me she won’t work this evening.’ Now that was a real pisseroo of a slip. Maybe referring to the lady whom he had seen casually months ago as ‘Karen,’ her first name, is not too significant in itself, but she had informed him she wasn’t going to work that evening. So if anybody was the hidden boy friend that was being blanketed by the use of Johnny Rio — Sir McCormick was our man. Edwina Strange clinched it for me, and I clobbered him, and filed him in Miss Hines’s bed for future reference, while I ran off in all directions to prevent the shooting of Johnny Rio by a paperweight. Which brings me to the note.”

  “What note?” said Parker.

  “You know damned well what note.”

  Sheepishly he said, “I’m afraid I do.”

  “The note you’ve avoided talking about.”

  “Avoided?” he said ingenuously.

  “Avoided like the dentist is avoided when the toothache stops.”

  He sighed. “I’m afraid I have to admit — ”

  “Sure. Why should Jason Touraine have a note on him with the address of the McCormicks? He’d been there many times before, he knew the house, he knew the address. Also, the time was wrong….”

  Meekly Parker said, “Detective, do you have a note for me on the note?”

  “
Not because I’m smart,” I said, “but because I was there, and when things begin to fall into place, everything falls. I remembered, at McCormick’s party, Jason Touraine saying to his wife: ‘But I told you this thing went off at eight o’clock. I wrote the whole damned thing out for you….’ Do you remember the wording of that note, Lieutenant? It gave the name McCormick and the address and it said eight o’clock. In his own handwriting. Sounds great — but why should he have it? And his date with Madeline was for nine o’clock, not eight. So it figures that Karen hung on to the note he’d given her on Friday, and slipped it into his dinner clothes Monday night, so that when the corpse was found there would be a direct lead to the house of McCormick. I think we’ve tied up all the loose ends, Louie.”

  “Except Benny Benson.”

  “Poor Benny Benson was a sacrifice bunt on behalf of Karen Touraine. As you intimated when you were trying to convince me about Madeline McCormick — these people are not professional killers, they crack in the most unexpected places.”

  “Who cracked in what place and what did it have to do with Benny?”

  “When you questioned Karen Touraine about Monday night, she told you she had stayed at home. But she didn’t stay at home, did she?”

  “Damned right she didn’t.”

  “She went out right after Jason, and she was brought back late, about five A.M., by Johnny Rio. All of that would have been fine — they were supposed to be sweethearts — but she had slipped when she had told you that she had stayed at home.”

  “What’s this got to do with Benny Benson?”

  “Benny was killed up in the Bronx, out of your bailiwick, Lieutenant, so you may not know this.”

  “Know what?”

  “Benny Benson was the night doorman at the Touraines’ apartment house.”

  Parker grinned. “You’re coming to me, pal. And, of course, we would have come to Benny Benson.”

  “Exactly. Once Karen flipped her slip to Johnny Rio, Benny was dead — before you could come to him. Benny had seen her go out and Benny had seen Johnny bring her home. Sooner or later the cops would question Benny and suddenly there would be a new and different interest in Karen. So Benny got run over. I was up there in the Bronx, on this very matter, and I saw it happen.”

  “And you didn’t report it?”

  “No. It would have been my word against Rio’s and it would have tipped the hand right up to the elbow. Remember that Rio is not one of our lady nonprofessionals. At first I thought it had to do with a personal matter between Rio’s sister and Benny. That petered. So I saved it and, as it worked out, I saved it for a purpose. When the going is good, even if you pull a rock, it works out you’re a hero. Any more loose ends, Lieutenant?”

  He produced his inevitable cigar, bit into it, smiled around it, sighed and said, “All my loose ends are downtown now.” He took his time lighting up. He said, “I think you did a beautiful job, Peter.” He looked at the blue satin body of Barbara Hines. “A real beautiful job.”

  “Oh thank you, Lieutenant,” said Barbara Hines.

  “A real performer,” I said. “Always ready to take a bow.”

  “And why not? I think Miss Hines is one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen in all my life.”

  “Oh thank you, Lieutenant,” said Barbara Hines and I in duet.

  “You’re both welcome,” he said, “and it’s now time for the sweet sorrow of parting. I’ve got knots to untie, apologies to make, and new knots to tie up. Goodbye, you beautiful people.”

  We were alone.

  At last we were alone, uncomplicated.

  I held her, faithful to her, and faithless to no one.

  “Sweetie,” she whispered, “you were just wonderful.”

  “I meant to be. For you.”

  “For me? For eeny-weeny-bitsy me?”

  “For every inch of eeny-weeny-bitsy you.”

  “But why?” said eeny-weeny-bitsy she.

  “I wanted to be a big man with you. I wanted to impress you.”

  “You did. Oh, you did. Sweetie, did you impress me.”

  “I’d like to impress you further.”

  “Further? How?”

  “Let me show you.”

  “Show me.”

  “Let me try.”

  “Try.”

  I tried, but what mortal man, willing and eager, can impress what mortal woman, willing and eager, and, if so, for how long?

  If you liked Death of a Dastard check out:

  The Case of the Murdered Madame

  THE CASE OF THE MURDERED MADAME

  I

  The red-head said: “You’re asking for murder!”

  The dark woman said: “Who says so?”

  The red-head said: “Nobody says. But with your stubbornness — the possibility exists. So why be so stubborn? Why?”

  The blue-eyed young man said nothing.

  They were alone, the two ladies and the gentleman, in a room that was large and peculiarly furnished. One corner held a handsome concert piano, top tilted up, a metronome rising majestically from the highly-burnished mahogany edge. Diametrically opposite was a huge canopied antique bed. The remainder of the high-ceilinged room was motley: a wispy, faintly-yellow Persian rug; a fireplace with a splintered marble mantel; an old-fashioned roll-top desk; a frayed Elizabethan sofa; and four briskly modern easy chairs.

  One of the easy chairs contained the lean, brown-faced young man with the blue eyes. He had flat cheeks, a patrician nose and a lantern jaw. His mouth was pursed in an amused expression as he listened to the conversation of the two women on the other side of the room. The women were both about forty years of age, both buxom though well-figured, and both were attired in lounging pajamas. The dark one was standing within the curve of the piano, leaning gracefully, delicate hands clasped in front of her. She had bright black eyes and a full wet mouth. The red-haired woman, smooth-faced and strong featured, was quite near her. She was very earnest, pointing a spatulate index finger and continuing:

  “Olga … Madame Dino … I haven’t owned a rooming house for ten years without learning a little something about human nature …”

  “Is it” — the dark woman had a musical foreign accent — “your wish to frighten me? Is that your wish?”

  “You bet your boots that’s my wish.” Now the index finger was withdrawn and a thumb jerked in the direction of the lantern-jawed young man. “He sits there like this is a lot of fun. He sits there like it’s two crazy women arguing about nothing. You’d think at least that he — he of all people — would be on my side.”

  “Miss Nelson,” the young man said, “I am on your side. Only because I myself have so very few convictions — I am always on the side where there is firm conviction. Frankly, though” — he shrugged languidly — “I am of a passive nature. I detest taking sides almost as much as I detest making decisions. It’s simply that I’m not constituted that way.” The young man had a precise, clipped, British accent.

  Miss Nelson sniffed. The index finger whipped out again and she returned to Olga Dino. “Nobody in the world is that reckless with money. Not even a … uh … uh … an opera singer.”

  Olga smiled with strong white teeth. “Frankly, Miss Nelson, I do not have the understanding of money. There are many in my life who have laughed at Olga.” The fragile hands unclasped and the long fingers waved upward. “Money — poof. I am an artist. I understand of love, of music,” — she gestured toward a rain-splashed window — “of the soft sound of the patter of rain. Do you, Miss Nelson, have the understanding of money?”

  “I understand enough to know that it should be taken care of.” She turned toward the young man again. “Now what’s wrong with a bank? I’m asking you.”

  “You’re asking the wrong individual, Miss Nelson. I’m probably as ignorant in matters of money as Olga. More. At least she knows how to earn a great deal of it.” He stood up, stretched, fumbled at his pocket for cigarettes.

  Olga Dino snorted. “Banks. In my
country, many banks have failed, many times.” She went away from the piano, stooped, lifted a small black bag and held it to her. “I have learned to keep money in a vault, and when that is not possible, close to me.”

  “But a hundred thousand cash bucks … right here in this room … in that little black bag you’re hugging like a pussy-cat … and people knowing about it …”

  “You have no confidence in people, Miss Nelson?”

  “Look, I’m your friend, I’m talking for your benefit.”

  “I know that. But again, do you not have confidence in people?”

  “No. Not with a hundred thousand cash bucks hanging around loose.”

  “Then why do you blame me for not having the confidence in banks? Who are the bankers?” She dropped the little bag, kicked it aside. “Are they not people? And is it not people whom you say you do not trust? People are — are they not — people?”

  The young man interrupted. “Ladies, if you please. Miss Nelson, I do believe you’re on the right side of this discussion, but discussion or no discussion, as you know, I’m to get up quite early tomorrow. I’d like to relax a bit, sit about and read, before going to bed. So, by your leave, my good ladies, I’m going to my room now.” He went to Olga Dino, kissed her on the cheek. “Good night, my dear. See you in the morning. Good night, Miss Nelson.” Then he waved and departed.

  Miss Nelson looked to where he had gone out the door, and shook her head, half-smiling. “He’s as bad as you are.”