by Henry, Kane,
“Arithmetic?”
“The old two and two.”
“Well, you’ve certainly got a crazy way of adding. Couldn’t you add with my suspects wearing shoes?”
“Not if I wanted to produce the murderer of Olga Dino. And now, the murderer of Cedric Ormsby.”
The gasp was like a collective death rattle. None of them knew about Ormsby, none of them — except one. Then the questions crashed, until Parker shouted them down into silence. Then he said, “Mr. Chambers is going to perform, I hope. From the look in his eye, he’s either drunk, or he’s bursting with something. Kindly shut up, everybody. Your floor, Mr. Chambers.”
“May I start from the beginning?”
“You may start from wherever the hell you wish.”
“Thank you, sir. Let’s start with motive.”
“One hundred thousand motives. All green. And all stuffed into a little black bag.”
“Yes, sir. Next, we have a small, select group who could have moved forward on that motive.”
“Granted.” Parker’s lips moved impatiently against his teeth. “And a small group, select or not, is like a large group. We have a presumption of innocence in the jurisprudence of this country, and unless we can pin-point our culprit, we’re utterly helpless. So it makes no difference how large or small the group.”
“Sometimes it does.” I went to the table which held the shoes. I waved my hand. “Dig,” I said, “Lieutenant. The shoes.”
“I dig, I dig.” His voice joked. “I am the coolest, wildest, craziest-man hipster of the entire Police Department. I dig them shoes … the most.”
“Notice. They’re all damp.”
“What the hell did you expect them to be? Dry? It’s been pouring out. Remember?” He passed a hand across his forehead. “Look, Pete, I’m tired …”
“Let’s get back to the beginning, please. Mary Nelson called me on the phone. Purpose. Protection of Olga Dino’s little bag.”
“Okay. Suppose we eliminate Ormsby. So … while Miss Nelson was on the phone, our killer heard her, and had to act fast. He slugged her, then knocked off the opera singer, then clipped the bag … all in the ten minutes before you got here. Now, if you please, what’s all that got to do with damp shoes?”
“This. They all figured to be damp. Except one pair. Mary Nelson’s.”
Now she jumped between Parker and me. “What?” she said. “What the devil is he talking about?”
“You weren’t out of the house, Miss Nelson. That’s what I’m talking about. Remember what she told you, Lieutenant? Wasn’t out of the house. Not for a minute. Not all day.”
Parker was at the table examining the blue satin shoes, the shoes that matched her blue satin lounging pajamas. Now he was touching them, bending them, feeling them, fondling them.
I said, “You weren’t out of the house, Miss Nelson? Were you?”
“What … are … you … trying … to … say?”
“I’m trying to get you to explain, Miss Nelson.”
“Explain what?”
“Why your shoes are wet. Wiped clean — but wet.”
Her breath shot out of her like spray from a seltzer bottle. She raised her hand and slapped at my face. I ducked, and I saw Rocky Green grin in approval. “You,” she said. “You’re not going to push me around with your smart-aleck private-cop parlor tricks. Maybe the shoes are wet. So what? Maybe I have a leaky pipe in the kitchen. Maybe I’ve got a damp floor there.”
“Wouldn’t make them wet from tip to toe, from top to bottom. Your shoes are wet from the rain, Miss Nelson.”
“That’s a lie.”
Parker was smiling now and Parker’s voice was soft. That combination from Parker is like the combination of a drool and a bay from a bloodhound. “Were you,” he purred, “out in the rain?”
“Of course not.”
“Oh yes she was,” I sang. “And poor old Ormsby saw her. He made a little speech here tonight, and he might just as well have committed suicide.”
“Speech?” Parker said softly. “What kind of speech?”
Young Hardwood spoke up. “May I, Lieutenant?”
“What is it, young man?”
“I think I can repeat that speech. I … I have that kind of memory. I’m what is called a quick-study in my profession, but it’s more than that. When I’m really interested, the words just stick to the sides of my mind. May I try, Lieutenant?”
“By all means, Mr. Hardwood.”
Hardwood cleared his throat and squinted his eyes as though he were sighting along an elephant gun. “He began by saying, ‘My dear ladies and gentlemen.’ Then he said something about going to bed, but going to bed with a certain modicum of satisfaction. I remember the rest verbatim, because I repeated it to myself, wondering where he got it. May I, Lieutenant?”
“Don’t stop, Mr. Hardwood.”
“Here goes, then. ‘Much as I regret the death of Madame Dino.’ He threw in the Madame Dino, if you know what I mean. I felt that he merely substituted the name of Madame Dino for the name of the character in the play.”
“I understand, Mr. Hardwood. Please don’t interrupt yourself.”
“Yes, Lieutenant. Now, once more. He said, ‘Much as I regret the death of Madame Dino, I must confess that it holds an element of macabre good fortune for me. I entered here this evening a poor and broken man. I go to my pallet broken, perhaps, but no longer poor. I shall awaken to an embarrassment of riches. A hearty good night to all.’ That’s what he said, Lieutenant.”
“The swan song of Sir Cedric Ormsby,” I said. “All of us heard him. Most of us thought it was an old man’s drunken prattle. Mr. Hardwood thought he was quoting from some old play. But two of us had him right. Miss Nelson and myself, and I only had a glimmer.”
Mary Nelson said, “He’s a damn liar.”
“Please don’t interrupt him,” Parker said softly.
I lit a cigarette and gave smoke to my lungs. I said, “If you recollect, Lieutenant, he was present when she told us she hadn’t gone out all day. Right there, he knew who killed Olga, and who clipped that little black bag. Because he was sitting in that saloon across the street. And he had seen her coming out.“
“And even before that,” Parker said, “he wouldn’t commit himself. He was lying back, figuring the angles for himself. The thing was done and he was hoping that, somehow, he could profit by it. When she said she wasn’t out all day — he had it, snug in his pocket. Which is what he meant by ‘awakening to an embarrassment of riches.’ A gentlemanly case of blackmail.”
“Right. As he himself admitted, he was not particularly a man of conventional morals. Dino was dead, and that was over. He knew who had done it and who had captured the little black bag. In his own eloquent manner — he was declaring himself in. So she declared him out, period.”
“Any further proof that she was out in the rain, Pete, now that our witness is dead?”
“But of course, my dear Lieutenant.”
Parker played straight-man. “But she’s the one who called you … the one most worried about Madame Dino and her dough … the one who talked about it all day.”
“Sure, sure,” Miss Nelson said. “Sure.”
“Strictly,” I said, “a cover-up. You had your sequences slightly mixed, Lieutenant, in your version of the events. Let me do it right side up. First, with Monte’s gun, which she had taken from his suitcase much earlier — first she bumped Olga Dino. Probably wore gloves — they all do. Probably burnt them in the incinerator — they all do. Anyway, then, leaving the gun there, so that Monte would be implicated, she beat it downstairs and called me. Bumped her first in a sound-proofed room with the door closed.”
“Lie, lie, lie,” Mary Nelson screamed.
Parker was courteous. “Either you be good, Madame, or I shall have to put you under restraint.” The two uniformed cops were on either side of her. Parker said, “Now let me get you straight, Pete. According to you, she sort of conked herself on the head … after she�
�d knocked off Dino … and you found her like that … supposed to be unconscious.”
I waved my chin up and down. “Yes, sir. And she made sure to leave that outside door open, so I could get in. She had a very busy ten minutes. From the time she groaned on that phone and let that receiver hang, to the time I got here. And lucky for her, none of the people from upstairs came down during that time. She had to work real fast … the call to me had to be chronologically close to her conversation with Dino and Hardwood.”
“And that’s when,” Parker said, “she lit out with the satchel.”
“And that’s when she got her shoesies all wet. Threw on a raincoat, beat it out with the bag, beat it back, got rid of the raincoat, wiped the shoes quick, and back to that phone, sprawled out like she was still unconscious.”
Mary Nelson broke out of the framework of policemen and tore at me with all her red-headed vehemence. “You’re going to have to prove that, Mr. Wise Guy.” Her voice was like the screech of chalk on a blackboard. “Because I’m going to sue you. I’m going to drag you into Court and teach you a lesson. It’s about time one of you guys had a lesson.”
“I’ve had all my lessons, lady. I’m a big boy now.”
The uniforms flanked her again. “He’s a liar,” she shouted. “I don’t know why he’s — ”
“Shut up, lady,” Parker said. “Will you please?” Then he spoke at me. “But Pete, about the shoes. She could have changed them, couldn’t she?”
“No sir, she couldn’t. They’re lounging shoes, that go with her outfit. If she changed the shoes, she’d have to change the rest of her outfit, the whole get-up. She simply didn’t have the time. That receiver was dangling and she had to get back to it.”
“So?”
“So she wiped the shoes as best she could which left them plenty damp. Ten minutes later, I was there.” I flattened my cigarette in a tray. “So, once I began to think of it, I began to act on it. That is, after I heard Sir Cedric’s speech. I went out into the rain, figuring angles, and I came up with a subway station.”
“You came up with a … what?”
“Subway station.”
“Now look, pal …”
“There’s a subway station a block from here. It has a bank of those parcel check-boxes …”
“I get it,” Parker said.
“Figured to be the closest drop. Remember, she was in a hurry. So she checked the little old black bag — ”
“That’s a lie,” she screamed. “Check boxes have little keys. I have no key. Search me. There’s no key in the house. Search the house.”
I wanted another cigarette but I didn’t dare break the sequence. “Sure there’s no key here.”
“Backing down,” she said. “Backing down now, aren’t you. Thought I’d go to pieces under your phony third degree.”
I said, “You want to know why?”
“Why … what?” she shouted.
“Why there’s no key here?”
She pushed up her defiance, desperately, like a man jacking up a car on a rainy night. “Yes, I want to know. Why? Tell me why.”
“Because I’ve got it.”
Now she stood back, stunned, the green eyes blinking as though she’d been struck.
I held the check-box key in my hand, the hand raised high. “See? Right here. In my hand.”
Parker said, “What the hell is this all about?”
“The oldest gag in the world, Lieutenant. The gag that all the amateurs think is fresh and new, because they dreamed it up all by their lonesome, and they all do.”
“Which one? Which gag?” Parker grinned. “There’s a couple.”
“The key wasn’t on her person and wasn’t in the house because, rightfully, she knew that that would be far too risky. So she put it into an envelope and mailed it to herself.” My mental fingers were firmly crossed.
Parker played along as only Parker could. Solemnly he said, “Sure enough, the old maileroo …”
My speech was faster now than that of a double-talking politician trying to right a wrong in front of his wrong-guy boss who is mixed up in the wrong. “One mistake — and that she didn’t know. She didn’t know that under certain circumstances, mail can be intercepted, and that is exactly what has been done, what I arranged when I was out in the rain.” I looked at her. She was deathly pale, sunken into the arms of the two young men in uniform who supported her. She was as washed up as a new-born baby’s diaper. I tucked it in for her. “You see this key, Miss Nelson? That’s the key you mailed to yourself. That’s the final bit of evidence that’s going to fasten you into a warm seat, very warm, specially reserved seat for murderers.”
The rest was easy. The rest was all Parker’s and Parker could handle it better than any one else. He prodded her more softly than a doctor prods the belly of an ulcer patient, but Parker knew how, and soon enough she was blubbering, and they carted her away. Parker’s cops punched open that panel of lockers and they found the little black bag and they found Olga Dino’s hundred thousand motives for murder inside the little black bag. Downtown, Mary Nelson, amateur, confronted with the bag, threw up the rest of the facts, admitted that she had mailed the check-key to herself, care of an aunt in Brooklyn. And then, a couple of hours later, with the rain having let up and a soft moon hovering over the terrace of my apartment — and having consumed corned-beef sandwiches and beer with a lady-magician named Joan Bradley and having gone on to more esoteric combinations like gin and cassis and soda — I finished the unfinished business begun four years before. I added a mite of kissing to the unfinished kissing, but the response smacked of the vapid, so I rose up in the usual indignation of frustration.
“To coin a phrase,” I said, “what goes? To coin a more fervent phrase, what the hell goes? If you hate me — why’d you come here?”
“Kissing,” she said, “requires concentration.”
“So? Where’s the block?”
“My mind keeps reverting to malarkey. When the mind is on malarkey, it cannot concentrate on kissing.”
“Admitted. What malarkey?”
“The malarkey about intercepting the United States mail.”
“Very good, Miss Bradley. Malarkey is apt.”
“Apt, shmapt, Mr. Chambers. Malarkey.”
“But it worked. The lady was nursing a sick conscience. Parker knew what was doing, even if you didn’t. What I was doing is called, in intellectual circles, a ruse. It’s called a ruse, too, in un-intellectual circles. Whatever it’s called, it is most effective when the conscience is sick. The lady was the spirited type, the shrewd type, the type who couldn’t resist a hundred thousand simoleons sitting around to be taken. This was a lady who had to be convinced, and the sick conscience — call it guilty conscience — that helped, of course. She was fighting every inch. Even if the cops would have produced that bag out of the locker — they’d still have to tie it to her. So I took my awful chance, and dreamed up the ruse for a convincer. It worked, so both Parker and I, we’re happy.”
“But where d you get the key?”
“It wasn’t the key. It was a key. But of exactly the same type, and out of exactly the same group of check-boxes. I went there, paid a dime, checked nothing, and … with my heart in my mouth … I presented … the convincer.”
“But suppose she would have asked to see the number on it?”
“I was fast-talking her. I suppose I’d have talked my way out of that too. She was on the ropes, and we’d probably have used another kind of push to knock her over. Anyway, she didn’t, so I turned out to be a hero, despite the fact that I didn’t earn a fee, and lately I’m doing a hell of a lot of work without earning fees. Unless” — my arms moved about her — “in this case, I can consider you as a form of fee. Do you feel like a fee, Miss Bradley?”
“I don’t know how a fee feels.”
“How do you feel?”
“Feel real good.”
“And how are you fixed for concentration?”
“Fixed,” s
he said, “just perfect.”
THE CANDLESTICK
Wherein Peter Chambers races through New York tangling with, among others, a publicist with a pulpy head, a stockbroker with an appreciative eye, a press agent who wants to be a hero, a sharpshooting hoodlum with scarred eyebrows, a stacked blonde with petulant eyes, and a stacked brunette with no underclothing. In the end, he proves that certain alibis are absolutely impregnable.
THE CANDLESTICK
I
Night was black: a starry oblong framed within the open window. No breeze stirred. It was hot: summer-hot, city-hot — breathless. Night came through the open window: peaceful night, merging with the breathing in the room, soft intermingled breathing, relaxed now, deep and hushed. Motionless, I lay on my back, my hands clasped behind my head, the sweat on my body not uncomfortable, and I viewed the tranquil oblong of night as though it were a picture hung on my bedroom wall. The swirl of conscious thinking was subdued: mine was the twilight phase between wakefulness and dreaming. It was pleasant, summer-hot-pleasant, early nighttime in the city, the room dark but not pitch dark — no room in the middle of the city is ever pitch dark — the lights of the city bunched to a faint luminous cloudiness: it was dim.
The ringing of the phone was a raucous intrusion. I reached for it on the first ring and held a palm over the mouthpiece. There was a disturbed stirring beside me, then there was nothing, no movement, only the gentle rhythmic breathing. I lifted the phone to my mouth and I whispered: “Yes?”
“Pete?”
“That’s right.”
“Parker.”
“Yes, Lieutenant?”
“I want you to come over to Max Keith’s place.”
“Keith?”
“Right away.”
“Why, Lieutenant?”
“Let’s say it’s business.”
“Business? Like what?”
“Like murder.”
I kept the receiver close to my ear. I said, without urgency, “Why you calling me, Lieutenant?”