Movies at 7:30.
It didn’t need a name, or the neatly added phone number.
Maybe by some miracle there’d be something useful in the footage Ione had shot. I was ready for a miracle. Meanwhile, I set off to find Frances. When I did, I handed her a set of photographs.
“Sorry, I don’t recognize anyone. Should I?”
After considerable sweet talking, the coroner had agreed to let me borrow one of John Doe from the flophouse and one of another stiff, mainly because some sort of muck up had resulted in extra prints which he could afford to lose if I didn’t return them. I’d added one from my files which showed a man sleeping so soundly he could have been dead.
“I was hoping one of them might be the man who disappeared,” I said.
“Oh.” Her worried look eased. “I never saw him. He came and went while I was still under orders to be an invalid, not leave the apartment and that....” Her voice trailed off. “I’ve said I was fuzzy before, haven’t I? I suppose I ought to explain.”
She glanced at me, hoping I’d say she didn’t need to. I didn’t. We were near what proved to be a storeroom heaped with small pedestal tables. She motioned me in and left the door open an inch so she could see out.
“We wanted a family so badly, Joshua and I. A baby. But every time it started to look as though we might, I had a miscarriage. The last time... the last time, I hemorrhaged. They... when I woke up, I’d... they’d given me...”
“A hysterectomy.”
She nodded. “They’d told Joshua I might die if I didn’t. If I became pregnant again. They kept me doped up. Not so much for pain from the surgery, but because I cried all the time. They told me to rest, get my strength back, leaving me with nothing to do except think. Finally Joshua moved me to a – a sanitarium. That was better but—. Anyway. Finally I got back here.
“Joshua’s wonderful, but he smothered me, always telling me to rest, not letting me do things. And the pills I was supposed to take for my nerves made me woozy. When Polly died, I realized Joshua needed me, so I took hold and dumped out the pills, and at least I’m thinking better. But when that man was here, the one who vanished...” She spread her hand helplessly.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “But I haven’t wondered about that half as much as I have about what it is you’ve been holding back about who might have it in for you and your husband.”
She opened her mouth to deny it, then sighed instead.
“I expect you’re better at reading people than I am at a poker face. When I was determined to be a dancer, I ran off with a man in a band. He said he could introduce me to people. He didn’t, and once he’d gotten what he wanted, he dumped me. After Joshua and I were married, the vile snake called one day claiming he had naked pictures of me, and would give them to Joshua unless I sent money to a post office box. Like an idiot I did. I’ve never heard from him since, and a few years later I told Joshua.”
“But you think he might have crawled out of the woodwork.”
I tried to reassure her even as I groaned inwardly at the prospect of another lead to follow. Then I tracked down Tucker in the dining room. We went to his office. I spread the pictures on his desk. He stood staring at them a long moment.
“That’s him. The guy who vanished.” His finger tapped the picture of the man from the flophouse. He looked at me with something approaching awe. “How’d you find him? Is he... uh, these all look like they’re dead.”
“The one with his head on the desk’s asleep on the job. But the man who stayed here — let’s call him JD — yeah, he’s dead. Now that you’ve confirmed it’s him, I’ll start trying to find out how he ended up where he did. Now I have to ask you something. Frances told me about a man who tried to blackmail her over some pictures.”
“Yeah?” The set of his jaw said he didn’t appreciate talking about it.
“What are chances he’s got something to do with the trouble you’re having?”
His round face split in a grin.
“Zero plus zero. Jealous husband shot him dead while he was on stage in front of a room full of people.”
“When?”
He pulled at his chin.
“Four or five months ago. When Frances was in the hospital. It was in a couple of the theater rags I get in the mail.”
Maybe he hadn’t told her. Maybe she’d been too doped up to remember. Either way was one less problem for me.
I slid the photographs I’d shown Tucker back into my purse. If only I had a similar set of pictures with Nick Perry in it to show to Skip and the clerk from Lagarde’s. I was willing to bet Skip, at least, would be able to identify him, which would be exactly the kind of evidence that might light a fire under Freeze.
The thought halted me. I had a camera. A nice little Kodak. All I had to do was run get it. And hope unlikely lovebirds Lena and Nick showed up for lunch.
* * *
“What exactly is it you want me to do?” Frances asked as we walked toward the dining room where lunch was now in full swing.
“Unfold the measure about four feet and hold it up where I tell you to, like I’m taking pictures to analyze later. Don’t worry whether you’re doing it right. We’re just setting it up so no one in there thinks anything of it if I ask them to hold something later.”
“Oh. All right. It’s just that I look awfully frumpy to be in a picture.”
“You can burn them yourself, if you want. I’m not going to use them.”
Perry and his girlfriend hadn’t been anywhere in evidence when I rushed to my office to get the camera. They now shared a table for two by the wall. Menus beside them suggested they hadn’t yet ordered. Each had a martini. Liquor hadn’t sparked amorous displays, or even conviviality.
“Now, if you’ll just stand right there at the end, it will give me a base measure,” I ordered Frances. I opened the front of the Kodak and pulled the pleated leather bellows out on its track. “Unfold the ruler four feet up and down and hold it snug to the wall — one hand only. Good.”
I pressed the shutter release. The flashbulb flared. A film roll for my camera gave me eight shots, so I took two more with Frances and one at another table. Then I approached Lena and Nick.
“Would you mind awfully each taking an end of this while I take two fast pictures?” I asked Lena. “I’m measuring service angles.”
“Oh, I suppose not.” She sounded out of sorts as she took the folded ruler from my hand. I’d left two sections open.
“For God’s sake, Lena. Why should we?” Perry grabbed the ruler and thrust it back at me so forcefully the tip nearly hit his companion’s glasses. “If you need an assistant, hire one. We’re here to have lunch. Quit bothering us.”
“Don’t be such an ass, Nick. We haven’t even ordered yet. Maybe you’re in a hurry to get back to that narrow-minded old woman. I’m not.” She snatched back the ruler.
“Goodness. I’ve never seen anyone make such a fuss over having their picture taken.” I spoke to Perry as if he were a child or less than bright. “I can’t ask any of the Hollywood people. The risk of recognition might skew the research. I need someone whose appearance won’t attract a second look.”
Dislike flooded Perry’s eyes. Lena’s mouth pursed with enjoyment.
“Oh, dear. That’s a problem. You see, Nick fancies himself quite handsome—”
“Shut up.” He caught the other end of the folding ruler. “Take your picture.”
“Oh, thank you! If you’ll both lean back with one arm on your chair, and hold your end of the measure in line with your ear....”
Snap and snap. I took one picture in her direction and one in his, making sure to include both of them in each shot.
FORTY-ONE
Usually it took three or four days between dropping off film and getting back pictures. Fortunately, I had an arrangement with Ernie.
“Ah, the lovely Miss Sullivan.” He slid photos and negatives from one of the stacks before him into an envelope, which then went into a baske
t of orders awaiting pickup. “And with that look that tells me you’re here to put extra change in my pocket.”
In the front of his place, Ernie had a perfectly respectable business for printing folks’ snapshots. In a back room he took pictures of women whose only attire was a gauzy scarf or a couple of ostrich plumes. Our arrangement was that so long as I didn’t rat on his illicit enterprise, he’d turn out pictures for me in a day when I needed it. The second part of the arrangement was paying twice his usual fee.
“Don’t you think you should wear a mask when you hold people up?” I gave him my film.
“Late as it is, I can’t get these to you today. Midmorning tomorrow?”
“Yeah, okay. Nine-thirty? Make me two sets.”
* * *
The flophouse, when I found the address Connelly had given me, was still telling itself it was a hotel. The single word clung to the front in fading paint without a name to accompany it. The street in front made Polly Bunten’s neighborhood seem stylish in comparison. The has-been hotel was as far removed from The Canterbury as the war in Europe was from Dayton.
For several minutes I stared with distaste at the place I was about to enter. No doorman here. No front steps either. Just a threshold of rotting wood. Strips of tape patched a crack in the wavy front window.
Inside, the smell of disinfectant lost its battle against the odor of seldom washed bodies and other things I didn’t want to identify. Behind the reception desk on my left, a sign informed prospective guests the nightly rate included sheets. An extra two cents got you soap and a towel.
“You selling something?” The man behind the desk eyed me sourly. His open shirt collar showed a beefy neck and florid complexion.
“Buying.” I put a dollar down. “What can you tell me about this man? Died in one of your rooms about a month ago.”
He barely glanced at the morgue picture.
“Don’t remember him.”
“A lot of your guests die, do they?”
“Now and then. ‘Case you haven’t guessed, we don’t get the cream of society.”
A woman clutching an armful of wadded-up sheets made her way down the stairs with a gait suggesting one leg was shorter. Her stained apron was the antithesis of the crisp, starched numbers worn by even the scrub maids at The Canterbury.
“Look, some people want me to find out whatever I can about him. They think he might have had family.”
“I told the cops everything I remembered. Ask them.”
“Trouble is...”
I leaned across the reception desk as though to confide. He leaned in too. I brought the side of my fist up under his chin so hard he bit his tongue.
“...I’m here and I don’t have much patience.”
The beefy clerk howled and pawed his mouth, getting blood on his fingers. He settled on holding his jaws. The maid with the dirty linens had paused. Now she hurried unevenly past, pretending not to notice a thing.
“I don’t like being here any more than you like having me. Answer my questions and show me the room where he stayed and I’ll leave you alone,” I said through my teeth.
The clerk’s eyes were welling with tears.
“You almost cut my tongue in two, you know that?”
“Then you’d better start talking before I finish the job.”
“There’s nothing to tell about him! Nothing different from all the others. Didn’t have to go through all his pockets to see whether he could afford the room like lots do.”
The last few words gurgled. Grabbing wildly for a battered wastebasket, he spit out bloody saliva. It reminded him of his grudge against me. He scowled.
“That’s it. All I remember. That and he got high and mighty about my towels.”
“High and mighty how?”
“Said they didn’t deserve to be used for anything except rags. His sullen tone, along with his words, confirmed my growing feeling he owned the dump.
As I looked at the dull gray stack on a shelf behind him, I agreed with the dead man. What guests here got as towels were paper thin, their hems worn to fringe. Someone who’d just had the use of white ones that were fluffy and thick might resent the contrast.
The clerk took out a handkerchief considerably cleaner than the surroundings and dabbed at his tongue as he led the way up the stairs — no elevators here. The place had two floors of rooms slightly larger than closets. The one where John Doe had stayed was halfway along on the top floor. Like all the others, its only furnishings were an iron bedstead with a stained mattress, a wooden chair and a clothes hook. A bathroom at the end of each hallway served the rooms on that floor.
The unrelenting bareness offered only one place for hiding something. As much as I hated to, I lifted the mattress and looked underneath. All I saw was stains and a dead roach. Any visible scrap left behind by JD would have been thrown out, or snatched up by subsequent occupants of the room.
Maybe JD had simply decided to end his life. Maybe we’d never know why he’d spent a few days at The Canterbury and left an empty envelope in the safe. I started back down with the desk clerk, feeling glum.
“Any women stay here?” Women noticed things. They talked more. They might be moved by my story the dead man had kin, which was probably true.
“Now and then. If they’re paired up with some man. Don’t see one alone more’n once a year, maybe.”
The maid with the short leg was picking her way to the front door as she buttoned her coat. Around her the floor showed streaks of wet from a recent mopping.
“No hookers?”
“Not staying here, if that’s what you’re asking. Can’t control who visits. Myrt.” He raised his voice to the maid. “Did you clean that mess in the second floor toilet up good?”
She turned to face him.
“As good as I could with it overflowing every time you turn around.”
“Bud’s fixed it twice.”
“Maybe you need to get a real plumber in.”
Before he could answer, she wobbled out. I gave the clerk one of my cards.
“If you remember anything useful, there’s another buck in it.”
“Yeah, sure.”
I saw him drop the card in his wastebasket as I left. My best hope now was the pictures I’d get from Ernie tomorrow.
A lungful of clean outside air improved my mood. I took another for good measure.
“Miss?”
Looking around, I located the source of the soft call. It was the maid with the short leg. She stood several doorways down, pressed against a vacant shopfront. She peeked to reassure herself she couldn’t be seen from the flophouse. Her lower lip turned in to scrape her teeth as I walked toward her.
“Are you that lady policeman girls say is nice?”
“I’m not a cop. I’m a private detective. You know what that is?”
She nodded uncertainly.
“It means if you know something about that man I was asking about, I won’t tell the police.”
“Not me. Another girl might. I don’t want to get her in trouble.”
“It won’t. What is it she knows?”
The maid shook her head
“I’m not sure.” She peered nervously over her shoulder.
“Let’s go around the corner.”
She relaxed as we did.
“She saw somebody go to his room, I think. Day or two later, when she heard the man was dead and that the police had been there, she told Wally.”
“The guy I met?”
“Yes. He told her to keep mum about it, that neither one of them needed trouble with the cops.”
I thought a minute. The police would have talked to everyone who worked at the flophouse, meaning this other girl didn’t.
“The girl who saw something, is she a hooker?”
“Yes.” The maid looked awkwardly down.
“Some of the men who come there aren’t so hard up. They just want a place so they don’t have to... you know, in an alley. There’s a few of the girls are
okay. Not hard. Sylvia, a couple of times when I’ve had to work extra and come out late, she’s seen me and walked a ways with me. Even gave me trolley fare once when she saw I was wore out.”
“Well, I think you ought to have trolley fare for a week for sticking around to talk to me,” I said handing her some change.
She hesitated. “I wasn’t hinting.”
“That’s why I’m giving. This Sylvia, where can I find her?”
“Two, three doors the other direction when you leave the hotel. Not till eight-thirty or nine though.”
FORTY-TWO
Rachel entered The Canterbury under full sail. The bouquet of roses filling her arms all but hid her. As she handed it to Smith, who’d stepped forward in anticipation he’d be needed, I saw her attire was subdued: Expensive black suit adorned by a gold lapel pin; a small hat, though she normally eschewed hats. Even the minks still chasing each other around her shoulders seemed to do so sedately.
“There’s no guarantee Count Szarenski will see us,” she said in greeting. “I left calling cards yesterday for him and his wife. I’ve received no reply.”
“Maybe you should have sent the roses then.”
Her lips gave the hint of a smile.
“I sent chocolates.”
“Or perhaps they’d never received a card with ‘construction’ on it before and didn’t know the proper form of address.”
She slanted me a look, then slowly dipped into her pocket and flourished a card between two ruby fingertips.
It wasn’t her business card. The creamy stock was thicker. The engraving on it was finer. Black script announced simply:
Miss Rachel Minsky
“My mother still entertains hope I’ll turn out well,” she said.
We’d reached the elevator. Smith spotted a room service waiter and murmured something which sent him scurrying. The pint-sized old bellman had clout.
“This might go better if I were alone,” said Rachel as the elevator operator closed the folding brass gate.
“I want to watch their reactions.”
“I can report the reactions.”
“Two can watch better.”
She shrugged. Did I detect a faint tension about her? I wondered if she was more in awe of Count Szarenski than she’d let on. Not of his title, perhaps, but of his stature with Poles on both sides of the ocean.
Shamus in a Skirt Page 17