Stone Cold Blonde

by Lawrence Lariar

  “He did you proud, Gigi. But he should have posed you in the raw—you would have shaped up into a fine picture, I’ll bet.”

  “He will do me, cheri. Leo has done everything. You like the nudities?”

  “I adore the nudities.”

  She pulled me again, this time to a closet at the other end of the big window. Leo stored his finished pictures inside and she plucked them out, one by one, for a private showing. There were an assortment of studies, all of them done with the same slick finish; brilliant bowls of fruit, atmospheric landscapes and all sorts of nudes. She was flipping them fast, but I caught her hand and held it on one picture. It was a larger canvas than the rest. There was a woman asprawl a yellow-draped couch, asleep. Her head lay on the ridge of a fleshy arm and her ebony hair poured over her shoulder and swirled against the canary coverlet in starting contrast. She was completely nude, painted in soft pinks and fleshy highlights, in the manner of Renoir, a French artist who always made a woman’s skin a thing of beauty. She held a red rose in one hand, dropped in a coy position, below the navel and hiding a small section of anatomy. But the real interest lay in the head and torso. This was a big woman, big all over. Yet she was proportioned in the classic measurements. Her breasts were firm and fresh and the little shadows along her rump and thighs were handled with the master’s touch. It was her head that fascinated me, however. I had seen her before. Her face was down-tilted and her attitude seemed to symbolize repose, but something in the cut of her lips and eyes held me and wouldn’t let go. It could be the color of her face, the subdued whiteness of it, in contrast to the delightfully ripe tones of the rest of her body. I had seen such a face not too long ago. I had seen that face twisted with hate and scorn. I had seen that mouth spit.

  It was Lisa Simoneck!

  I turned to Gigi and patted her where it would feel good. “Put them away. I’ve seen enough art for this night. Listen, do you want to do me a real favor?”

  “You want to come to my place?”

  “I want to talk to Leo. Get him for me.”

  “Eees that all you wish?” she pouted. “Perhaps you will be putting his pictures in your magazine instead of Gigi—ees that it?”

  “Listen, sweety, you get me Leo and I promise you a real layout, complete with captions. A deal?”

  “Liar,” she said but started across the room for Leo, anyhow.

  I went back to the closet and pulled out the painting of Lisa. I stood it up against the wall and went through the motions of art appreciation, laying on with the gestures as I saw Leo approaching from across the room. He was clutching Gigi’s arm and making a brave show of walking a straight line. When he arrived, she shifted the load and I gave him my shoulder to lean on.

  “My good old frien’, Jake,” he said. “You happy, Jake?”

  “Like a lark,” I said, and jerked him around so that he faced the picture. “This painting, Leo. Marvelous. Best thing of its kind I’ve ever seen.”

  “Oh, nuts, Jake. Oh, double nuts!”

  “You’re hiding your light under a bushel, Leo. This is a minor masterpiece.”

  “Good old Jake,” he said affectionately. “Stop goosing me, Jake old man.”

  “He means eet,” Gigi said. “Also, his name eet ees not Jake.”

  “Jake,” he said. “Always was a lying dog. Good old Jake.”

  “When are you going to show this stuff?” I asked.

  “Watch for it, Jake. One-man show, coming up. Got the men’s room in Grand Central Station booked for it. I’ll wow ’em, Jake.”

  I said, “I could do you a big favor with this nude, Leo.”

  “Cute, isn’t she, Jake? A really fine piece.”

  “I mean it, Leo. This one could break into print. I can get her into the magazine for you,” I said. “But it’d have to be a story, Leo. If I could snap the model in a couple of poses and build her up a bit, maybe it would fit into a picture deal at Life.”

  “You see, Leo?” Gigi pinched him on the cheek. “Was I making the joke about this man? Answer him. Be nice to him. He can do you the big favors.”

  “My friend Jake,” Leo insisted, slobbering on me affectionately. “God’s answer to the downtrodden artist.”

  “Who is the model?” I asked. “Where can I locate her?”

  “Stoneface. Best goddam model in the Village, Jake old son. Holds a pose like a slice of granite. Never moves. Even when you make a pass at her, she doesn’t. Queer girl.”

  “Her name?”

  “Lisa Somethingorother.”

  “Simoneck?”

  “On the nose, Jake. On the old nose.”

  “You know her?” Gigi asked.

  “I’ve heard of her,” I said. “Where does she live, Leo?”

  “Ask me the easy ones, old friend. Last time I heard, she was using Chet Cutler’s place while he was out of town. Chet’s diggings are downstairs.”

  “I’m going down to get her,” I said, urgently now, putting on a show of business drive. “This could make me a big man up at the office.”

  “You must go?” Gigi asked. She stayed with me to the doorway, working hard to break my arm. “You will come back?”

  “Sure, baby, sure. Now you just sit here and wait for me.”

  “Gigi ees fond of you. Gigi will be most jealous.”

  “Lisa isn’t my type, sugar. Too big to handle. You’re my dish. You and I can knock out beautiful cadenzas together. I’ll be back in two shakes.”

  “Save the shakes for Gigi,” she said, and waved me goodbye on the stair landing.

  I climbed down and turned right and I was under the shadow of the stairway, standing in front of a door marked CHET CUTLER, Ceramics. There was no point in knocking or ringing. I slid the knob around in my fingers and it moved easily. I pushed the door open and I was inside.

  CHAPTER 13

  Two o’clock.

  A melodic timepiece from somewhere inside Chet Cutler’s flat chimed the hour as I closed the door behind me. The small hallway in which I stood was illuminated by the thin flame from my cigarette lighter as I searched for the wall switch. I lit the lights and the place came into focus. There was a large room straight ahead of me, cluttered with a hundred samples of the ceramic art, a show-place for the handiwork of Cutler. A long table sat against the wall, on which a galaxy of ashtrays, pots, vases, plaques and gewgaws was displayed, the bright colors startling against the background of dull gray wall. On the floor, in odd places, other samples of his talent spread around as though the moving men had set them down only a little while ago.

  There was a wall full of good pictures at the other end of the studio, some of them distinctive abstractions, signed with a spidery signature: C. Cutler. To the rear, against the studio window, there was an oversized easel and the added equipment of the working artist: tabouret and large vases for brushes. The smell of turpentine, not fresh, but cloying, mingled with the dank odor of neglect. I walked to the tabouret and lifted the palette, fingering the paint and finding it crusted and ancient. The paint rag, too, had not been used for many a week. Chet Cutler would be a sloppy artist, the type with temperament. There was a charcoal sketch of a girl’s head on the canvas, but Cutler had rendered it worthless by running hard black lines, in a crazy-quilt pattern, over the original sketch, so that the original drawing was hidden forever under the welter of scrawls and scratches.

  The apartment was a duplicate of Leo’s, upstairs. I walked through the bathroom and into the kitchen. Here was chaos. The sink was loaded with dishes, pots, pans and cutlery, all unwashed and setting up a dank and putrid stench. Along the wooden work-shelf an array of glasses and cups added to the confusion, surrounded by fizz bottles and a half dozen dead soldiers from the liquor battalions. Under the sink I searched and groped for something of importance, any small lead, a crumb of direction amid the debris. I found nothing. I opened the garbage
can and held my breath against the upsurge of stink that tore into my nostrils.

  I plucked the cans out and examined them, one by one. Somebody had eaten well, recently. The labels told me a story of their own. Whoever emptied these cans had the taste of a gourmet, had dined on an assortment of delicate concoctions—the sort of food usually found in the specialty shops: mushroomed spaghetti, truffles, trout, and a variety of Italian antipasto and spiced niceties. I kicked the garbage can over and studied the mess, observing the abundance of cigarette butts, all of them reddened with lipstick. I poked deeper into the filth, turning up the unsavory litter. There were a few mangled cigar ends, with bands that sported two bit brand names. There were several candy wrappers: Babe Ruth and Mounds and Hershey bars. There were steak bones and chicken legs.

  The little refrigerator held a slab of butter and a container of cream, stale and sour. There was a raw veal cutlet on a plate, flattened thin and ready for cooking. Somebody had meant to eat this meat. A week ago. I slammed the door shut and went out of there.

  The studio couch was covered with a gray throw, decorated with a fancy needlework design. I pulled it off and examined the sheets and pillowcases underneath. The bedclothes were well wrinkled and ruffled, and on the pillow I caught the faint smell of pomade, a masculine varnish used by the flat-top variety of male who favored a polish and shine for his hair.

  I turned to the closet across the room. Chet Cutler’s meager wardrobe hung on the rack: a tweedy suit, a pair of old jeans well stained with paint. But there was a topcoat behind these things, hung on a nail. It was a blue trench coat, much too large for a man of Cutler’s size. This was a coat built for a big person. A big girl, perhaps.

  A girl like Lisa Simoneck?

  I stood there, holding the coat away from me and staring at it, as studiously as the men’s wear buyer at Macy’s. I waited for it to talk to me. It was mute. I reached into the pockets and ferreted through them eagerly. I discovered a few toothpicks, a mangled package of Chesterfields, a small comb—and a matchbox.

  The mind of a detective is a sieve, a trap, a filter through which the odds and ends of information must flow to be sifted. You look and stare and wonder. You smell the package of cigarettes. Fresh and good. You light one and puff one to check on the age of the weed. Fresh and good. A day old, maybe two. You stare at a comb and picture the woman who used it. You examine a book of matches and slowly it becomes a fire that burns through your head. It is a small lead that ripens into an itch, a hunch, an area of probability that can lead you up the high road to success, or down the dead-end alley of despair. But everything and anything becomes important when the strain of the hunt begins to tell. And now my hands were hot on the matchbox.

  My eyes were eating the advertising message:

  GINO’S FOR SPAGHETTI

  The Best Italian

  Cooking in Coney Island

  The matchbox was singing to me. I picked up the phone and called Gino’s. I told the man at the other end that I had a big crowd of spaghetti slurpers who wanted to pay him a call. Was he open at this late hour? He was open much later. Would he have some fresh pizza on hand? His pizza factory was still producing. All night? Gino’s was open day and night, all year around. The Best Italian Cooking in Coney Island, the man said, sounding off like an Italian-American commercial on the radio.

  Why would Lisa go to Gino’s? The inner gears of my factual foundry whirred and hummed, backtracking into the odds and ends of information that Grace Masterson had given me. Frank Masterson was a lover of exotic foods, especially the Italian. Lisa had brought him to Cutler’s place and fed him on canned antipasto and other delicacies. If she had moved him to Coney Island, he might be near Gino’s. It was worth the trip.

  I phoned the office, listening to the buzz on the other end. Abe would still be in Max Erlock’s place, exploring the files for something on the blonde.

  I phoned Biberman, but he was out. His assistant had no news for me, and he was pessimistic about the immediate future. There would be one dead end after another, tracking her down through the routine system for identifying unmarked corpses.

  “Nothing at all on her body?” I asked.

  “Nothing but skin.”

  “The teeth?”

  “Not yet,” he said, yawning loud enough to discourage me. “Why don’t you call back in a couple of days, Conacher? You’re rushing us.”

  “Was Erlock downtown?”

  “You’re damned right he was. But he didn’t know her.”

  “How about the other bookers?”

  “Relax. We’ll get to them.”

  I slapped the phone down and called it a dirty name, frustrated by the office louse at the other end. It was an effort to forget about the blonde completely, to shut her out of my mind so that I could concentrate my limited mental energy on the case at hand. She would continue to bother me for a long time. She would bother me forever, until I could track down the reason for her body in my office, the bothersome image of the madman who had killed her there.

  I walked into the kitchen and found a bottle of Scotch, up high on the grocery shelf, where Cutler had hidden it from the foraging eyes of Lisa Simoneck. I toyed with the idea of going back to Paul Simoneck’s. She could have led me up the garden path to this retreat and then doubled back to her uncle’s place. She might be clever enough to go through the motions of innocence for me, knowing that I followed her, knowing that I would be sidetracked in this studio.

  CHAPTER 14

  I was reaching for the phone, about to call my office again, when something happened behind me. I heard the faint click of the door latch. I heard the sound of footsteps. And when I turned toward the door, Paul Simoneck faced me.

  He said, “The detective again. Well, well.”

  He was as nervous as an idler outside a maternity ward. His little face twitched with worry and seemed ten shades lighter than when I last saw it. His eyes were blinking at me, tortured by a personal upset that almost made him a sympathetic character. Almost, but not quite. Because he was holding an automatic in his right hand, carrying it low, but aiming it for a vulnerable spot close to my eyebrows. His old hand trembled as it held the rod.

  I said, “I thought we were friends, Simoneck.”

  “Do not move,” he said. “Stand where you are.”

  “I’m not moving. What’s the gimmick? Were you following me across town? Were you the guy I saw up at the corner?”

  He shook his head slowly. “I did not follow you.” He was making a feeble effort at casing the room. He was bracing himself for some sort of shock, as though he expected Lisa to walk out of the bathroom, naked, at any moment. He said, “What have you done with Lisa?”

  “Are you kidding? You don’t think that I could do anything with your niece?”

  “You followed her here?”

  “So what? Once I was assigned to follow a racehorse. Does that mean that I bedded down with the nag?”

  “You arrested her,” he said. “Is that it?”

  “I told you I was no city dick, Simoneck.”

  “Then where did she go?”

  “A dandy question. I wish I could give you the answer.”

  “You must tell me. At once.”

  His attempt at strength and power was pitiful and I could not hold back the reflex gurgle of amusement. The gun was strange in his hands. These were delicate fingers, accustomed to handling precious stones, but nervous and uneasy on the trigger of an automatic. My burst of laughter made him wince and he fell apart suddenly, lowering the gun and just standing there, awkward and embarrassed by his own histrionics.

  I said, “Put the popgun away, Simoneck. You’ll do better without it.”

  He let himself drop into a chair and the breath went out of him. His shoulders drooped and he gave himself up to sadness.

  “I should apologize. I have made a fool of myself.�
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  “Forget it,” I said. “What’s eating you?”

  “Lisa,” he sighed. “Ach, she is a great worry, that girl.”

  “She’s a big one.”

  “I do not understand her.”

  “What worries you?”

  “Her life, her poor unfortunate life, my friend. It is sad, so sad.”

  “It’s going to be a lot sadder, if she doesn’t behave herself.”

  “You know what she has done?”

  “I’ve been putting the pieces together.”

  “You know,” he said. “You are a clever man.”

  “Any halfwit could have figured it,” I said. “She’s been playing games with Masterson. Why didn’t you stop it?”

  “Stop Lisa?” He shrugged hopelessly. “No one can stop Lisa. I could do nothing to prevent it.”

  “How long has Masterson been seeing her? How did they meet?”

  “It was my fault,” he said. There was a building sadness in him now, coming through to add sudden gasps and gulps of sorrow to his dialogue. “It was I who introduced her to him, when he came to visit me, after he arrived in New York. He seemed to like her at once, and that was all she needed, the poor girl. You can imagine how starved she was for such affection.” He lowered his head and seemed to be telling it all to the rug, sobbing it out in a rush of words. “I did my best to stop it. I warned her about him, but of course she did not listen to me. She is a strange girl, an unfortunate child, really.”

  I said, “Well, she’s flown this little nest with him now.”

  “You are looking for her?”

  “I’m looking for Masterson.”

  “But no harm will come to her?” He was on his feet now, begging me for something that I could not give him. “The police will not arrest poor Lisa? That would be the end of everything for her, Mr. Conacher.”