The Case of the Murdered Madame (Prologue Books)

by Henry, Kane,

  “What’s the matter with you? What are you talking about? Where you calling from?”

  “Send the boys, Lieutenant. I’ll be in touch.”

  I hung up and went back to my peep show.

  All the films were in duplicate. All the films, but one. That one —

  Now my bell rang. I was looking forward to my company.

  But the company turned out to be company I was not looking forward to. Company was Tommy Huk with a little twenty-two in his hand. For a twenty-two, you had to be a crack shot, and Tommy was a crack shot, but he didn’t have time to get squared away at a target, because my left fist hit the gun and my right fist hit his mouth before either of us had the opportunity to voice a howdy-do. The gun bounced and Tommy bounced and I came up with the gun and Tommy came up with a fat lip. “Tommy,” I said. “Be quiet and let me talk. You’re in trouble and I can help. And I’m hurt that you come calling on me with a pea-shooter in your hand.”

  “Beg for trouble, don’t you?” He stood up, closed the door and applied a neatly folded handkerchief to his lip. He patted, said, “Begging, for you, is going to work. You’re going to get it, pal.”

  “Not me,” I said. “You.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “You. And the spot you’re in. And the tomato that tightened you into that spot. And cops — who are awfully anxious to see you.”

  “What tomato, pal?”

  “Ruth Rollins.”

  “You’re a liar.”

  “Not me, Tommy.”

  “I only talked to her this afternoon. She told me how you came to call on her — ”

  “I don’t care what she told you. I’m telling you. And I know from the cops.”

  “Know what?”

  “That she fingered you out of the mug-file down at Headquarters. She kept her own skirts clean, by fingering you. That she told them she knew you out on the West Coast. That you were sweet on her, even called her here in New York, at her office, after she got here. Tommy boy, I don’t know what else she told them to keep herself in line — I had to dig easy — but if you can straighten me out, I think I can straighten you out with the coppers.”

  “Bitch,” he said. Red came up into his face. “Dames,” he said. “All the same.” He put his handkerchief away. “So why should you be fronting for me, anyway? Why, pal?”

  “Because I know you didn’t freeze Max Keith.”

  “Cops think so?”

  “Think you might have.”

  “Then why don’t you, pal?”

  I brought his gun to him and handed it to him gently, butt first. He looked at it, looked at me, took it, shifted it from hand to hand, and put it away. “Okay,” he said. “So how-come you don’t think I put the freeze on Maxie?”

  “Because you’re not that crude. You’re a clean guy. You’re a bullet guy, not a squasher with candlesticks.”

  He smiled. He had a small mouth with thin lips. “No squasher, not me.” When he talked, not much of his mouth moved, and he kept his voice low.

  I said, “Straighten me out, Tommy. Then leave it to me. I’ll be happy to front for you. You’re a big man now, Tommy. You don’t need cops looking for you.”

  “Dames.” Sadly he said, “Never fails, does it?”

  “Let’s have it, Tommy.”

  “Dames. This one got to me. Class. I like dames with class. It got to me, maybe the high-hat stuff she handed me. It went, me and her, but it didn’t go for long. Went for a while, but then it didn’t go. Sam Murray lifted her. Good customer of mine, Sammy. Sammy lifts her, and I don’t hold it against Sammy, don’t even hold it against her. But this is one bitch stays with me, inside, if you know what I mean.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  “Then maybe Sammy got tired of her. He sent her East here. But Sammy had something on this guy Keith, and Sammy tells this something to her, and this puts her in a spot to put the squeeze on Keith. A class dame, she does a class squeeze. Gets herself engaged to the guy, gets put into his will for half, then she works on me for one little job. If I cool the guy, she sits pretty. That’s why I’m in town, only got here a couple of days ago.” He shrugged. “I can tell it, because it never came off.”

  “Did it come close, Tommy?”

  “Not even close. Came to the point where she was supposed to finger him. Last night, she went over there, figured he’d be alone — and I was to drop by, fall in by mistake, so I can put the glom on him. Better than the office, where people can see me. Anyway, when I come there, the joint’s crawling with people, so that’s as far as it went. She got her calculations mixed up. Figured him for alone at that time, and there’s practically a party going instead. So I was going to back out of the whole deal. Too many people saw me. Otherwise, I would have done a dame a favor, period. I’d have pulled it for her, somewhere, somehow, but clean, not messy. But once it fizzled, I was finished, I ain’t in that business no more.”

  “That it, Tommy?”

  “That’s it, fink, and thanks for the interest. You can tell it to the cops if you like, but you didn’t get it from me, you just heard it around.”

  Now the bell rang again.

  “I’m leaving,” he said.

  “Okay with me, Tommy.”

  I opened the door for Brad Hartley. Hartley took one look, gasped, said, “That’s the man, Mr. Chambers. The drunk at Keith’s. The man we pointed out downtown.”

  “What’s with him?” Tommy said. He shoved at Hartley’s stomach and Hartley gasped again. Then Tommy winked, went out into the corridor and slammed the door.

  Hartley said, “But that’s the man, Mr. Chambers. You … you should have held him. I told you — ”

  “I’m going to hold you, Mr. Hartley.”

  “Me? What are you talking about?”

  “Murder. Sit down, Mr. Hartley. Please compose yourself. I’m going to do it real fast.”

  He didn’t sit. He stood. He said, “Do what?”

  “Save you a lot of grief, that’s what. Save you a lot of terrible publicity, save your family from a lot of — ”

  “Whatever you’re going to do, please do it quickly.”

  “Yes, sir. Start right now. Max Keith, stinker de luxe. Latched on to clients that could pay, went to work on a small contract, and made that contract grow to a large one. By an angle.”

  “Angle? Angle?”

  “Picked guys that liked to live. Runaround guys, with dough. Fixed them up with the most gorgeous of the gorgeous tootsies in town. Let the boys live it up. Even furnished them with his own apartment for living-it-up purposes. The boys didn’t know it, but he had a camera going on the full proceedings. The boys found out about it, though, at renewal time. He showed them a hot film, and gave them a pen, and the boys fell all over themselves hustling to sign. High class blackmail. He used to worry a little about it too, when it came to renewal time. Liked to have a bodyguard around, just in case somebody lost his head.”

  Beads of perspiration were pearls on his face.

  It was over and he knew it.

  “I’ll do it fast,” I said, “as I promised. For you, it was renewal time. You went to his place last night to discuss it. He used the convincer on you. He didn’t show you sun-bathers in the Swiss Alps. No, sir. He showed you — you with your hair down — and when I say hair down, that’s poetic license. You were convinced, of course, but you didn’t like it. A hundred thousand dollars a year, for life, and maybe the ante would go up. Want to add anything to that?”

  “No.”

  “You’re a fighter, Mr. Hartley, but you had no weapon. He showed you the film and talked contract, and then came a diversion — the sister, bringing a candlestick. You heard the argument between them, and the threats on her part, and the others heard too. Then everybody leaves, you and Miss Rollins being the last to go. You prowl around, thinking, and then you remember — nobody touched that candlestick but the sister. So the big idea hits and you go back there. You’re still wearing your glove
s. He’s alone now and you knock his brains in with that candlestick, steal the hot film in which you’re the male lead, destroy it, and you’re all finished — and so is he.”

  “How …? How …?” A dry tongue flicked at dry lips.

  “He had duplicates of all those films, Mr. Hartley. You weren’t the only one. He had nine big clients — eighteen films, original and duplicate for each. All the duplicates still exist, with the originals. Except yours. We have the duplicate of yours, because the original was the one he showed you, the one you clipped and destroyed, the one for which you murdered. But the duplicate puts you right back in the same position, plus it presents your motive for murder.”

  He opened a handkerchief and wiped his face. He said, “May I … may I have a drink?”

  “Of course.”

  He had one, and I had two. I said, very softly: “Can’t say I can blame you, and can’t say a jury would blame you — can’t even say the D.A. would blame you. There are a lot of circumstances here which can mount to a form of defense, even temporary insanity induced by horrible pressure.”

  “What do I do?” He was breathing heavily. “What do I do, sir?”

  “You go down to Headquarters, see Lieutenant Parker, and tell him the whole story. Even that will mitigate in your favor with a jury — a voluntary giving up to the police.”

  “But … but do you think …?”

  “Look. You’ve got a son at West Point, and a daughter that’s engaged to a Governor’s son. I’m sure that all this dirty film business need never get to the newspapers. I think you and your lawyer and the D.A. — I think you can discuss a deal. Perhaps a plea of guilty based on a comparatively light sentence. You squashed a blood-sucker, a leach — I’m pretty sure, in these circumstances, the D.A. would be willing to talk business if you would be willing to cop a plea. You’ve got nothing to lose, Mr. Hartley, and everything to gain.”

  He stood up straight, used the handkerchief again, said, “Thank you, young man, thank you very much.”

  XI

  Two hours later, Parker’s cigar ashes were making small clumps on my carpet. The Lieutenant had been my guest as we had viewed films, stifled giggles and uttered wry comments and suggestions, but then, austerely, the films had been duly confiscated by the law. Glasses were clinking now, and ice was jiggling, and I was making a knot of the loose ends for the good Lieutenant. I told him about Ralph Adams, and I told him about Tommy Huk, and I told him about Ruth Rollins:

  “… Sam Murray had spilled to her about the blackmail Max Keith was pulling on him, and she used that blackmail for blackmail of her own. Max had a real good thing going, and if this dame opened up, he was in trouble. So he did it her way — gave her a job, got engaged, executed that first will and showed it to her — but he lay back waiting for his chance. She had no idea he had changed his will and with Tommy Huk, she was going to beat Maxie to the punch. Real nice people, Lieutenant.”

  “Yeah. And a real nice job you did, son. You’ve got a few favors coming to you, any time you ask. One question though.”

  “Here it comes.”

  He drew on his cigar. “How come?” he said. “How come every time I asked you about that little sister, that Julia, you changed the subject?”

  “Guess,” I said.

  “Was it because you’re stuck on her?”

  “Guess,” I said.

  “You were interested in Rollins, in Adams, in Hartley, in Huk — but whenever it got around to that little sister — ”

  “She couldn’t have done it, Lieutenant.”

  “Why not? And how would you know? Everything certainly pointed in her direction.”

  “Physically impossible.”

  “But why?”

  “Because at the time of the crime — between ten and eleven — she was in bed.”

  “Bed?” Parker roared. “In bed? How could you know that?”

  “Guess,” I said.

  “She wasn’t even in her apartment, let alone in bed. She hasn’t been back to her apartment yet, as a matter of fact. I still got a man staked out there, got to call him off. Bed,” he said dourly. “In bed at the time of the crime. How in hell could you know that?”

  “Guess,” I said.

  Ashes drifted toward my carpet. “Even if you located her while we were looking for her and didn’t inform us; even if that’s what you learned from her and that’s why you pointed your interest in the direction of the others — how in all hell could you know that that was the truth?”

  “Guess,” I said.

  PRECISE MOMENT

  Wherein our man is on the run again. Starting from a fog-enshrouded graveyard and ending at Police Headquarters, he shows up, in rapid order, as a business man in a Gramercy Park mansion, a patron in a goon-run night club, a patient in a hospital, a small-talker in a Fifth Avenue apartment, a seeker on the city streets, and a detective in a Forty-ninth Street flat. He encounters, in just as rapid order, a ballet dancer, a no-brain hoodlum, a big-brain hoodlum, a five-and-dime heiress, a silver-haired parasite, a silver-haired nympho, a hefty bouncer, and a very dead burlesque-wriggler. But at long last he heads for a Greek philosopher with the “longest, shapeliest legs in New York City.” Peter Chambers — in very rapid motion.

  PRECISE MOMENT

  I

  When you’re alone in a graveyard, you have many thoughts.

  When you’re alone in a graveyard, that is, and you’re not dead.

  And I was not dead.

  I was, in fact — if one can be said to be — too much alive. Prickles ridged along the back of my neck like the risen hackles of a fighting cock. My nerve ends were more jagged than a broken tooth and every fibre of my body was taut. And why not, at one o’clock in the morning of a fog-wisped night, alone in a stone-infested graveyard, out at the eerie edge of Long Island?

  And what was I doing there?

  Go have yourself a laugh.

  I was there on business.

  I had a flashlight in my left hand and a brown-paper package in my right and I was glued, like a peeping-tom at an inviting aperture, to a night-sweated tombstone enticingly inscribed, in curlicues yet: J. J. J. Tompkins, Rest In Peace.

  Tompkins, I hoped, was resting more peacefully than I.

  I shrugged, scratched, squinted and clicked the flashlight again. It was five after one. I had been there, at Mr. Tompkins’ tombstone — as directed — since twelve-thirty. I stretched, stiffened and returned to the whirligig of random thinking but my unconscious mind must have groped for succor because it presented a picture of Trina Greco.

  Ah, Trina Greco. Tall, dark, lithe and graceful, she had the longest, shapeliest legs in New York, and they were legs that had stood up against the staunchest of competition — Trina was a ballet dancer. This very afternoon — before I had returned to the office and before the call from Mrs. Florence Fleetwood Reed — I had attended a rehearsal with Trina. Legs, legs, legs … legs and leotards … but my Trina had won hands down (or is it legs down?). Afterward, we had sat about sipping peaceful afternoon cocktails in a peaceful afternoon tavern, and she had looked off wistfully — Trina the unusual — with a brain to match the legs — and she had said apropos of nothing:

  “A fragment of time in connection with a fragment of space … creates the precise moment.”

  “Wow,” I had said. “Just like that. In the middle of the afternoon.”

  “It’s from the Greek philosophers.”

  “Trina, my Greek.”

  “I am of Greek extraction. You know that, Pete.”

  “Sure.” I had pondered it. “Fragment of time … fragment of space … precise moment.”

  “And that precise moment … can either be ecstatic or catastrophic.”

  “Wow. Again with the words. Slow down, my lady love. I’m only a detective vacationing for part of an afternoon.”

  “Even here …” Her dark eyes crinkled in a grin. “You and I … this might be … a precise moment.”

  My grin had answered h
ers. “No, ma’am, and that’s for sure. I can think of a better time and a more appropriate space for our precise moment. But I do think I know what you mean, big words or little words.”

  “Do you, Peter?”

  “Sure. Something like this, let’s say. Deciding game of the World Series. Last half of the ninth, home team at bat, one run behind. Bases full, two out. Third baseman moves a little to his left for some reason, just as the batter hits a screaming line drive. Third baseman lifts his glove, practically to protect himself … and he’s made a sensational catch. At the right fragment of time he was in the right fragment of space … and for him, it was the precise moment. Ecstatic for his team, catastrophic for the other. It’s a little bit out of the sphere of the Greek philosophers, maybe …”

  The way she had said it — “Very good, Peter. Very good, indeed” — the way her dark eyes had narrowed down and her face had lit up around the promise of a soft-sweet smile — right here in the fog-tipped graveyard, a pleasant little shiver ran through me. Everything else was momentarily forgotten — even Johnny Hays, small-time hood with big-time ideas, good-looking lad with smooth-blue jaw — Johnny Hays, who had come up to me just after I had put Trina into her cab — Johnny Hays, talking through stiff lips:

  “You just beg for trouble, don’t you, Mr. Chambers?”

  “Like how, little man?”

  “Like making with the pitch for this Trina Greco.”

  “That have any meaning for you, little man?”

  “It figures to have meaning for you, big man.”

  “Like how?”

  “Like Nick Darrow.”

  “Darrow, no less.”

  “Friendly warning, big man. When Nick don’t like, Nick cuts you down to size. Then all of a sudden you’re a little man, very little, and very dead. So smarten up. There’s a million dames. This one you can skip.”