Stone Cold Blonde

by Lawrence Lariar

“The police won’t touch her if she hasn’t stuck her neck out.”

  “But you—you are not from the police,” he said, clutching my sleeve in a fit of desperation. “You can, perhaps, save her for me? I would pay you. I would pay you well.”

  “I’m sorry, Simoneck. There’s nothing I can do for her unless she’s got a clean nose. But I’m afraid that she’ll get some sort of sentence if they catch her. She’s been helping a fleeing criminal and there are rules for citizens about that.”

  “Ach, but can’t you warn her?” He was about to cry again.

  I said, “Maybe. If you can get me to her in time. Where did she take Masterson from here?”

  “But I do not know. I wish I did.”

  “What about Coney Island? Does she know anybody there?”

  He shook his head at it. “Lisa has never mentioned knowing friends in Coney Island.”

  “A restaurant? Gino’s?”

  He did not know Gino’s. “I do not understand, who is Gino? A friend of hers, perhaps?”

  Paul Simoneck was coming into focus for me. He was nothing more than a tired old man playing a game that was way out of his league. He sat down on the couch and tried to light a cigarette, shaking so violently that his trembling fingers could not start the spark in his lighter. I sat down beside him and helped him. He inhaled hungrily only once and then snuffed out the butt and put his hands over his face and began to sob hysterically.

  I said, “Why don’t you stop worrying about Lisa? She’s a big girl now and she knows what she is doing. Maybe it’s all for the best that she beat it with Masterson, because they’re going to catch her and when the police get a good gander at her, it won’t take them long to understand what they must do with her. Lisa is sick, Mr. Simoneck. She’s sick in the brain department.”

  “What will they do with her?”

  “They’ll help her in a way that you never could. They’ll send her away to an institution and the doctors will examine her and prescribe treatment for her. After a while they’ll get her to talk, they’ll get her to remember what started the unrest in her mind. It should be easy for them after that. She’ll have to serve some time, but she’s young enough to afford it and when she comes out she’ll be a healthier girl. Take my word for it.”

  “Why do you tell me this?” he asked.

  “Because I’m a damn fool,” I said. “Because it breaks me up when I see a man cry.”

  “You are very kind.”

  “I’m going to be a bit kinder,” I said. I waited for him to lift his head and stare at me. The sadness was gone now and in its place I saw the rekindling of the original spark of shrewdness I had first observed when I met him. “Maybe it’s time you started worrying about yourself, Mr. Simoneck. You’ve been in this country for a long time and I have no memory of a police file on you, but this Masterson thing could be the beginning of the end for you. You’ve been playing around with some pretty bad boys. You’ve been visited by Gus Bryant and Hands Vincetti, two characters who can’t possibly do you any good. Because they’re fruit for the police department, both of them.”

  “I do not know what you mean,” he said. “Is it my fault that they came to bother me?”

  “I’m not going to argue that point with you. I’ll let the city dicks do the arguing. They’re going to show up in your living room one of these days and ask you a lot of annoying questions, but I can sidetrack them if you cooperate. I have the feeling that you’re just an outsider on this deal. Am I right?”

  “You are absolutely right.”

  “Then you want me to assume that you never handled the Vree pendant? You want me to deduce that Masterson still has it, wherever he is?”

  “That is exactly correct,” said Simoneck. “What I have told you about Lisa is the truth. I know the Vree pendant only by reputation. I have never seen it. You must believe me.”

  “I believe you,” I said. “Now I’m going to give you some free advice. Forget about Lisa. I know it isn’t going to be easy, but you must go home now and put her out of your mind completely. I have connections with the police department. I promise to let you know when she is found, and if I find her first, I also promise that no harm will come to her. But I want a promise from you in exchange for these guarantees. I want you to promise me that you’ll go home and do as I say. Is it a deal?”

  He gave me his lean and bony hand. We left the studio and I watched him walk slowly off into the shadows. I had done my good deed for the day. I could look forward now to a merit badge for my Boy Scout conscience. Or a good stiff kick in the pants from Paul Simoneck if I was wrong about him.

  The street was empty when I started away, on the run now toward the busy lanes of traffic on Seventh Avenue. It was a short trip, but my mind buzzed with the old feeling, the queasy suspicion that the man in the gray hat still ran behind me. I fought down the impulse to turn and examine the shadows back there. I pressed forward and when I arrived at Seventh Avenue a convenient cab drifted my way. We roared downtown and through the Battery Tunnel to the broad road that skirts the edges of the Brooklyn and hugs the shoreline to the bright purlieus of Coney Island.

  Gino’s glimmered in the section beyond the amusements, a festive front of neon trimmings, yellow and brilliant blue against the background of the night. I told the cabby to pull up a half block before the entrance. If Lisa was inside, I wanted her to move freely. She could have arrived here over an hour ago if she left at the moment when I entered the studio party above Chet Cutler’s place. She could be inside. Or she could be home in bed.

  I strolled among the shadows across the street from Gino’s, observing the surge of activity around and about the place. Gino’s was a popular night spot. A profusion of private cars lined the streets, and through the open windows I caught the whining strains of an accordion backed up by an inexperienced pianist, banging out the cliché songs of early morning revelry: Santa Lucia, ululating through the misted street, to lose itself in the salted air. I pulled my hat down over my eyes, feeling as stupid as a story-book dick. I crossed the street and minced slowly before the little windows of Gino’s, sneaking a furtive look inside. Lisa was there.

  She was sitting at the bar and I knew her figure in a moment. She leaned on both elbows, examining her drink as though it was a dose of poison. I did not pause to look for long. It was enough that she was here. The rest would come, sooner or later.

  It came much later. Through the side door.

  Lisa emerged carrying a paper bag of the grocery store variety, hugging it close to her breast as she walked off. She was moving quickly, taking great strides, her body bent forward in her haste, her white face tense and tight.

  I gave her headway because she would be easy now. There were a few wanderers along Surf Avenue at this hour. A trio of roisterers barged out of a saloon and swayed crazily as she approached them, shouting pleasant vulgarities at her as she slid to the right and into the street to avoid them. When she crossed the avenue I heard her shout a Germanic oath at them, just before she ducked into an alley that led to the center of the amusement section. Here the narrow corridor between the ancient buildings was as dark as an eight-ball. Her hurrying feet echoed through the lane of crowded buildings and then she was out in the haze again.

  She slowed here and lit a cigarette, a gesture devised for the purpose of examining the corridor down which she had just traveled. I pushed back into a doorway and flattened. She waited a long moment, turning her head this way and that before starting away again. She did not hurry now.

  Up ahead were a variety of amusements, closed a month ago and now asleep for the winter, robed in canvas and boarded against the exploits of juvenile marauders. Lisa entered one of the gates down the line, pausing again to look up, briefly, as though she expected a plane out of the southern sky. Then she was gone, through the gate and into the fenced area beyond.

  I was close enough to see that she
walked directly to a small house, a tiny watchmen’s shack that squatted alongside the giant Ferris wheel. And I watched her open-mouthed, swallowing the laughter generated by my surprise.

  I had come a long way, by a devious route. Was this the end of the line?

  The answer came as I hugged the wall of an adjoining building and listened to a sudden whirring noise, the language of the great gears of the big wheel, turning slowly now in the dark ness, a dull rumble in the night. The little houses began to tremble up there and then they swung and slid gently on the perimeter as the wheel made a slow half revolution. And the motor died and I heard a fresh noise, the opening of a door, a metal door, clanking as it was swung against another metal surface.

  They were talking back there!

  They were lost to me, somewhere in the inky void between the house and the wheel, but I could hear three voices, half whispers, but urgent. There was an exchange, during which the feminine timbre of Lisa’s dialogue rose above the others. And, after that, silence.

  In another minute the sound of the motors came again, and the axle turned slowly and the little houses swayed and slid against the sky, up, up, for only a half turn of the monster wheel. They stopped then. For a small moment each suspended cabin floated on its bearings, squealing gently until all movement ended up there.

  The drizzle had died and the moon shone vaguely through the thin bank of clouds over the ocean, so that the scene was something out of a stage set, a dramatic silhouette. I stared up at the filigreed steel network of the circle, and gulped hard to swallow the delight that bubbled up in my throat. It was a moment of elation. It was the time for my ego to blossom. For I knew where my man was hiding now.

  Frank Masterson was on the wheel!

  And Lisa Simoneck was up there with him!

  CHAPTER 15

  Eight hours!

  It was all over in eight hours!

  I sat in the cab and laughed myself silly, so that the cabby turned around to measure me with his weary eye.

  “Whatsamatter, bub? You crazy or somethin’?”

  “Keep your eye on the road,” I said. “I’m going home from an opium party and I always laugh out loud after a dose of the weed, see?”

  He shrugged me off and added some pressure to the gas pedal, probably anxious to get me uptown and out of his hack. It was a delicious moment for me, the time of enjoyment; the high spot at the end of the chase. My mind backtracked to the start of the hunt, from the moment I had left Grace Masterson’s hotel room, a little more than eight hours ago. The game was over and the chips were down and I burned with the yen to boast a bit into an appreciative ear. I was on my way back to Abe Feldman so that I could spill my yarn to him, complete with all the deductive stratagems that led me down the long road to Coney Island.

  The pieces fitted neatly now. They were compounded of conjecture but I knew that each theory would hold up under scrutiny. The rest of the deal would be as simple as checking the answers in a crossword puzzle. It was a moment for back-slapping, for honest enjoyment. I sat back and closed my eyes and added it up, all the way down the line.

  Frank Masterson had fled The DeGraw Hotel, probably the second day after his arrival. He had been visited by Lisa Simoneck, who had fallen for him the first time she saw him in her uncle’s house. Frank must have made a few passes at her and bedded down for a while with the big babe, because she was strictly on his team after that. She arranged for him to move into Chet Cutler’s flat, remaining there with him to do his cooking and attend his wants. They must have made a strange couple, the runt who was Masterson, alongside the Amazon, Lisa. He must have explained his fear of Gus Bryant to her, so that she arranged to move him once again, this time to the delightful hideout in Coney Island. I saw him storing the Vree cluster in the toilet trap at The DeGraw Hotel room, before he left for Chet Cutler’s. He could have been a bit worried about Lisa at that time. It might have been that she proved her undying love to him on the studio couch at Cutler’s place. After that, he must have decided to send her up to his room at The DeGraw, to collect those gems.

  Lisa Would have killed a half dozen men to get those jewels for her lover boy. But when she walked in on a lady snake charmer, complete with snakes, Lisa’s womanly instincts weakened her. She must have left in a hurry, watching the hotel for the day when Zelda would depart. But when Lisa came up for the cluster, little Steve Conacher was there, with his head in the medicine cabinet, ripe for the beaning. So she slugged me and reached into the flush box and regained the stones for Frankie.

  That was why she went half mad when she spotted me in her uncle’s living room! That was why she broke up completely under the strain of the dramatic moments that followed. It was all pretty pat and I gurgled over her cleverness and the masterful thinking of Masterson. The wheel was a perfect hiding place for a refugee from the law and the hot guns of Gus Bryant’s henchmen. So long as the old man was paid off, that little cabin could be kept up in the air, away from all scrutiny until the small moment when food and drink were passed to the lone rider in the sky.

  It was after three when I entered the lobby and rang the night bell for our rheumy-eyed building watchman. I pranced around the hall, listening to the corny tap dance my feet were knocking out on the marble floor. I was still dancing when the elevator came up from the basement and the night man swung open the door and showed me the half-moon smile in his good-natured jaw.

  I said, “This is a big night, George. Is Abe Feldman still up in my office?”

  “He surely is, Mister Conacher. I didn’t take nobody down from the ninth yet.”

  “Good. Shoot me upstairs quick. I’ve got hot news for him.”

  “You surely look happy. You just finish up some of that detecting stuff?”

  “I just beat the record on a locate, George. That means I made the nab, put the finger on the pigeon, caught the cuckoo, if you get what I mean.”

  “I surely do, Mister Conacher. Surely do.”

  I bounded down the hall of the ninth floor. The lights were on in the cave and I pushed the door open with a fine show of energy. I yammered: “Shake hands with Mister Quick, Abe!”

  I was talking to myself. Abe wasn’t in the reception room. And the silence pushed in on me as I looked down at the floor and saw his hat in the corner of the room. As though somebody had stepped on it. Or knocked it off his head, because Abe Feldman always wore his hat at this time of night. It was a personal habit, a fixture, a symbol of Abe Feldman at work. I yelled his name again and listened to the dull echo sing back at me from my cubicle, and the sound of the silence was a torture to me and a growing fear.

  And I walked quickly into my private office.

  Abe Feldman was on the floor, his figure half turned toward the window, his head tilted at a zany angle, as though he might be trying to see over the edge of the sill. But he wasn’t looking at anything. His eyes were closed and there was a bad wound over his right ear, a sickening welt of blood that had spread down along his cheek and dripped over his collar and on the rug.

  I ran to him and leaned over him. He was breathing, the rumbling, throaty gasps of pain that spell shock and weakness. Some skulking bastard had slugged him!

  And I could not fight down the rash of anger that tore at my heart and made the sweat boil over me.

  I ran back to the washroom, skidding and slipping on the marble floor out in the hall. I carried back a glass of water and held it to his lips, the sick and pounding torment that made me mutter the violent words. He would not take the water. I climbed off my knees and got him the bottle of Bourbon from my desk drawer, and forced a bit of it into his mouth.

  “Who did it, Abe? Who was the son of a bitch?”

  He opened his eyes, slowly, and something like a smile stole over his face, the hint of it around the faltering mouth. I had his hand in mine and was pressing it, squeezing it, alive with a pressure I could not control. The sig
ht of Abe Feldman was tearing me apart, turning me into an idiot. I should have grabbed a phone and called an ambulance, so that he could be taken away for some help. But something held me at his side. Something warned me that he was going fast, that no hospital on earth could save him now. And it might be too late, soon, for him to tell me what I had to know.

  “Who, Abe?”

  I was shouting now, almost screaming at him, working to pierce the cloud of coma through which he saw me and felt me. I gave his lips the liquor again, but he did not swallow. I began to plead with him, unable to fight back the sobbing sorrow in my voice, unable to control the desperate tears that fogged my eyes.

  Abe went limp in my arms and I put him down gently, not able to look at him anymore, because of the weakening shock of sadness that overcame me.

  Abe Feldman was dead.

  I sat there on the floor alongside him, asking myself a thousand questions, struggling to think the thing through clearly, to kill the confusion brought on by the last few hectic moments. Who had come here? Who had crept behind Abe to surprise him, to throttle him, to maul him, to beat the breath out of the gentlest guy on earth? Had somebody followed him from Erlock’s office? My head pounded with a desperate fury. But no answer came to salve my anger.

  I opened my eyes. I had been sitting in semi-darkness. The lights were out in my little cubicle, because I had never turned them on. I had rushed in to Abe, but the room was lit only by the glow of reflected light in the hall. I got off my knees and stood, feeling the stiffness in my legs, the tension brought on by sudden fatigue, the weariness of frustration. I turned on the light and gawked at my office.

  The room was completely wrecked!

  Somebody had played a lunatic’s game with my belongings. My desk blotter lay on the floor, rumpled and dirtied by a web of footprints, none of which was clear enough for identification. The wastepaper basket sat on its side, my office debris around and about it. My chair was uptilted in the corner, the upholstery ripped and slashed, and the cotton stuffing hanging out. My bookcase lay upended on the rug, my meager library of tomes spewed in several directions, with most of the volumes trampled and ruined. I cursed the marauders as I fumbled among the wreckage. My desk was a masterpiece of confusion, the drawers jerked out, my papers scattered over the office rug, along with my desk-top gimmicks.