And when we finally hit the next landing, halfway between floors, he crawled off me and was scrambling to make a getaway; I was a bug on its back but I somehow managed to catch him by an ankle and yank his leg out from under him and dropped him hard on his side onto the landing floor.
I was on my feet maybe half a second before he got to his, and socked him in the scarf, or maybe the nose under the scarf, and he reeled back but in a flash responded with a forearm aimed for my throat that I blocked with a forearm of my own. He swung a hard fist into my side, and I clenched in response, inadvertently giving him time to bring up a knee whose precious target I twisted to protect, getting caught in the hip bone instead. My balance already in question, he shoved me into the wall and my back caught just the edge of the railing and it felt like a knife had been jammed into me. I winced and he was flying down the stairs again, topcoat flapping.
That was when I spotted the .45 against the wall three steps below. I retrieved it and clamored after him, yelling, “Stop or I’ll shoot!” Not original, but you do better under the circumstances. . . .
He jumped from two-thirds down the flight onto the second-floor landing and, in midair, in a move worthy of his Shadow-like appearance, pulled the silenced automatic from his waistband and pointed it up toward me and fired.
With no grace at all, I ducked, as the bullet chewed up wood on the step just above me, and I returned fire.
The bullet caught him in the left shoulder, just as he was alighting, and slammed him against the railing and the wall; but as I came charging down at him like the wrath of God, he swung his gun-in-hand my way, and when I dove out of the slug’s path, the cough-like report followed by more splintering of wood, I lost my balance and went bumping down the stairs on my butt as he disappeared down the half flight to where a door onto the alley awaited.
Blood drops on the stairs to that door and then trailing down the alley toward the street were unintentional breadcrumbs he was leaving along his path, but they did me no good out on the sidewalk, Broadway bustling, my quarry just another hat and topcoat lost in the busy parade.
Maybe I would have run along after him, but two factors worked against me. First, I looked like a wild-eyed, disheveled maniac who’d emerged from an alley with a .45 in his hand. And second, I felt like some poor bastard who had just fallen down a bunch of steps, the hard way, although I’m not convinced there’s an easy way. Both were apt descriptions of me on that late afternoon.
That was the exciting part.
I’m going to spare you the rest of that day, except in condensed form. I called Captain Chandler, who came over personally with crime scene boys and assorted other plainclothes men, and it only took till about eight P.M. for them to ask their questions, walk me through what I’d seen and done, and take a formal statement. Thankfully I was not taken into custody, although my .45 was. One guy with a clipboard was doing diagrams so elaborate, I thought about signing him to the Starr Syndicate for a strip.
Captain Chandler and I were out front of the Brill in the cool, crisp evening air sharing the unwarmth of the neon glow when he asked, “Say, you need a doctor or anything?”
“Thanks for asking. It’s only been, what? Four hours since some thug threw me down a couple flights of stairs and used me as a punching bag. But I appreciate the thought.”
He was lighting up a cigarette, its orange blush illuminating his face under the brim of the fedora. “I can drive you over to Bellevue if you like. On the city’s dime.”
“Right. I let you take me to Bellevue and the next thing I know, I’ll be fitted for a jacket that buttons up in the back. You want to do something for me, buy me a chunk of cheesecake.”
I lied before, when I said you wouldn’t be going to the Turf. Because that’s exactly where Captain Chandler and I shared a booth as we each enjoyed a piece of the famous cheesecake invented by Arnold Reuben, owner of the joint. I was having another of my rare cups of coffee, because Coca-Cola and cheesecake don’t mix.
Chandler, his fedora on a hook alongside our booth, was saying, “I don’t think your description of the guy’s going to do much good.”
I forked some cheesecake. “Can’t you put an all points bulletin out on black topcoats and red-and-black plaid scarfs? Then call me in for the lineup?”
The Homicide captain ignored my sarcasm; he was so distracted, he’d already abandoned his cheesecake halfway through—best in New York, best in the world.
“We’ll find the guy,” he said. “I’ve already put word out to all the hospital emergency wards.”
“But he’ll go to some underworld sawbones, won’t he?”
Chandler shrugged. “Depends. If he’s a mob guy, some Murder Inc. hired hand, he’ll avoid the kind of doctor who reports gunshot wounds. But I don’t think that’s the case here.”
“You don’t?”
He shook his head with certainty. “You’re up to your belt buckle in the Sam Fizer murder; and Tony Carmine was an associate of Fizer’s. I’m not much for coincidences, Jack—this is the second murder in the same case, and it changes everything.”
I didn’t figure he’d thought this through right. And later I would tell Maggie as much, and why I thought so, and she would agree. But I didn’t see any reason to help Chandler at the moment. The cheesecake was a nice gesture, but that went toward the hours of my time he and his crew had burned up in the Brill Building.
Chandler sipped coffee; his brow was furrowed. “The guy in the topcoat and scarf, Jack—who could he have been in this case?”
“I don’t know if I follow.”
“Let me put it this way—based on his general size and shape, could the killer have been any of the Fizer suspects or witnesses you’ve talked to?”
I swallowed cheesecake, thinking the Statue of Liberty should come down and one of Arnold Reuben should go up. “I kind of doubt it was Misty Winters; wrestling with her would’ve been more fun. And I don’t think it was Murray Coe, unless he was standing on somebody’s shoulders under that topcoat. If it was Hal Rapp, he’s gotten damn good with that wooden leg.”
“Be serious.”
I shrugged a single shoulder; that’s all it was worth. “Really could’ve only been one guy in this affair—your favorite TV comedian and mine, Charlie Mazurki.”
“He’s not my favorite. He doesn’t make me laugh.”
“Well, his stuff is really only for the cognoscenti.” From the look on Chandler’s puss, I could just picture him going home and trying to find that in the dictionary, to see if I’d insulted him. “Charlie’s a big man, and could give me a bad time like that guy in the stairwell did.”
“Was it Mazurki?”
“I wouldn’t rule him out. Check on him. See if he’s got an alibi, because that’s what detectives do, I’m told.”
And that was as much help as I was in the mood to give the captain. I had my own ideas about what might be going on, plus I had the rest of my cheesecake to eat.
Ray Alexander, the creator of the phenomenally successful science-fiction strip Crash Landon, resided in a penthouse apartment on upper Fifth Avenue, overlooking Central Park. It was the kind of place where the living-room carpet was a twenty-by-thirty garden-pattern Kashan, the framed paintings on the walls were by Cézanne, Monet and Renoir, and the baby grand was whiter than Pepsodent.
The day after Pd composed my symphony to bruises and bumped bones at the Brill Building, I wrangled an invitation to join Alexander for a meeting I’d been trying to arrange since yesterday morning. Actually, Bryce had been trying to arrange it, but Alexander had been reluctant to give Maggie’s assistant any time for me, saying he was behind deadline and a “syndicate man” like Jack Starr would surely understand.
Late this morning, I’d called the cartoonist myself and made it clear that Maggie and I were working on behalf of Hal Rapp, with his approval and cooperation. This had finally cleared the way.
I was moving slow. I had slept in, having dosed up on over-the-counter sleeping pills. A
nd today my bloodstream was about 90 percent aspirin and 10 percent corpuscles. Nothing seemed broken, but I was getting around with the speed, agility and grace of a Civil War survivor.
Right now Ray Alexander and I were sitting on his sunporch with afternoon rays streaming in the many windows; one corner of this enclosed terrace was taken up by his drafting board and attendant furnishings and materials, and the rest was potted evergreens and bamboo sofas and lounge chairs, appropriately padded.
We were in a couple of wicker chairs, angled to suit conversation, and between us was a glimmering green view of the park and a small wicker table that provided a home for his ashtray and a chilled pitcher of martinis.
Alexander—a big, rangy character in a blue untucked sportshirt with lighter blue collar, chinos and slippers—was sipping a martini. When I’d politely turned down the gin, he provided me with a Coke in a tumbler of ice. (I’ve been asked if the frequent mentions of Coca-Cola in these recorded cases have resulted in my receiving any free product. The answer, thus far, is no. But I can be reached at the Starr Syndicate in New York, if Coke is interested. We’re listed.)
As he’d ushered me in, past the white piano and through glass doors onto the sunporch, Alexander had noticed I was staggering like Frankenstein’s monster, and I’d told him that in the course of the Fizer investigation I’d recently witnessed a murder and slugged it out, up and down several flights of stairs, with the murderer himself.
At first he thought I was kidding, and somewhere in there I mentioned I hadn’t hurt this bad since the day after a football match back in prep school. Turned out he’d played football and been to prep school, too, and we were suddenly comrades. Well, buddies. With Senator McCarthy around, being a comrade these days was dangerous.
Alexander was yet another of these cigarette-holder-wielding cartoonists; but somehow he didn’t look ridiculous or pretentious doing it. In his early forties, he had those ruggedly handsome good looks you hear so much about but seldom see, deeply tanned, with dark curly hair, sky-blue eyes and, like the late Tony Carmine, a Clark Gable mustache. No one would have mistaken Ray Alexander for a rat, however.
“I have to admit,” Raymond said, his voice deep and mellow, “when the papers said Sam committed suicide, I had no trouble buying it.”
“Really? A guy with an overblown ego like Sam Fizer? Who’s more unlikely to take his own life than a guy like that?”
His expression turned odd, his mouth freezing into a small, stilted smile. “Certainly Sam was a little guy with a big ego. But he was also volatile, overemotional. That’s why suicide seemed a reasonable out for him.”
I sipped my Coke, encouraging the leisurely atmosphere. “I think there’s no question Sam hid a lot of insecurity behind that bombast.”
I gestured to a Crash Landon Sunday-page original that leaned against the wall next to his drawing board—a beautifully rendered page with swooping spaceships and bold men and beautiful women, done in Alexander’s distinctive style known as dry brush and more appealing, to me at least, than the museum’s worth of paintings in his living room.
I said to him, “You’re the best artist in the business, Mr. Alexander. Imagine what it would be like to be as famous a cartoonist as Sam Fizer and know in your heart you’re lousy?”
The smile unfroze and the mustache twitched. “Well, you’re kind to say I’m the best in the business. There’s a guy named Hal Foster who might put up an argument.” He saluted me with his martini. “And make it ‘Ray,’ would you, Jack?”
“Sure.”
He filled his big chest with air and let it out in a matter-of-fact sigh. “Anyway, why are we even discussing suicide? Sam must have been murdered if, as you say, there’s been a second killing. Who’s the new victim? My God, I hope it’s not somebody else I know!”
I dropped the bomb I’d been nurturing: “Actually it is, Ray. A friend of yours. Or at least an acquaintance.”
He frowned. “What the hell?”
“Tony Carmine. It was in the papers this morning, but didn’t get much play. Page seven or deeper.”
“I didn’t see it.” The cartoonist didn’t seem very heartbroken to hear about the loss of Carmine. “Not much press play, you say, Jack? Why not, you suppose?”
“The cops are putting a lid on any connection Carmine’s shooting might have to the Fizer murder . . . which is, remember—as far as the press is concerned—still a suicide.”
The sky-blue eyes were cool. “Understood.”
“Carmine ran with a tough crowd,” I said. “A guy who takes bets on that scale, and who has an army of ex-pugs to collect for him, doesn’t win popularity contests. You can’t expect the press to express much surprise when somebody pumps a couple slugs into his breadbasket.”
Alexander chuckled, then seemed immediately embarrassed. “Sorry,” he said. “Don’t mean to laugh over such a tragic circumstance. But you really do talk that way, don’t you?”
“What way?”
“Like Martin Kane, Private Eye on television, or Mike Hammer in the paperbacks.” He shifted in the wicker chair, and it whined. “You know, I put in my notice with King Features last week. I’m turning Crash over to an assistant.”
That surprised me just a little more than that guy knocking on Carmine’s door and killing him. “Why, Ray? You’re on top of the world with Crash.”
“I’m following Milton’s lead.” He meant Milton Caniff, creator of Terry and the Pirates and, more recently, Steve Canyon.
“Oh. You’re putting together a new strip—something you can own yourself.”
He nodded, sipped his martini. Gestured with the cigarette-in-holder. “King Features owns Crash. I was just a kid, in my twenties, when I signed away the farm to them. Anyway, this space-opera stuff is boring my behind off.”
“Well, if you have a new property, Maggie and I would love to see it. You’d like the terms we’d offer.”
As it happened, we’d just lost our top story-strip man. . . .
“I was considering maybe a western strip,” he mused, “but you’ve got me thinking.”
“In what way?”
“Maybe a detective strip. People like private eyes these days.”
“Sounds good.” Actually, it didn’t. The private-eye fad had never crossed over to comics, and anyway didn’t look like anything that could last. But Starr would take on any strip a star like Ray Alexander wanted to show us.
“Listen,” he said, pouring himself a second martini from the pitcher, “I need to know why you’re so convinced Sam didn’t kill himself. I’m willing to answer any of your questions, but first I want some background.”
So I gave it to him. Frankly, I gave him more than I’d ever given Captain Chandler; I instinctively trusted this guy, who had an urbane, sophisticated nature that merged in an unlikely way with a man’s man quality, possibly due to his serving in the Pacific as a marine captain. Anyway, when Alexander realized his friend Hal Rapp had been framed for Sam’s murder, he got interested, and helpful.
“Hal is no angel,” Alexander said. “He’s a randy SOB and it’ll get him in trouble someday. But he’s basically a good guy, and he sure as hell is no killer.”
I sat forward in the wicker chair and it protested. “You were part of that weekly card game at Fizer’s, Ray. A lot of money was changing hands; a lot of IOUs, too. Could somebody in that game have wanted Sam dead?”
The blue eyes twinkled with amusement. “Do you gamble, Jack?”
“A little. I have a weekly poker game with some friends.”
“High stakes?”
“Dizzying. You can lose five bucks if the stars align against you.”
He shrugged the broad shoulders. “Well, I like to gamble. It’s not a sickness or an obsession with me, but I’ve always liked cards, and I need the stakes to be high enough to give it a little spice. A little risk.”
“Risk, huh? I hear you drive a sports car.”
He grinned. “I own four sports cars. And do you think wh
en I’m out in the country, driving one of them, I obey the speed limit?”
“I would guess that a guy doesn’t buy a sports car to drive the speed limit. . . . I have a little Kaiser Darrin, myself.”
“Those are cute. You’ll have to come for a spin in my Mercedes 300 SL.”
Properly put in my place, I said, “You were saying . . . about gambling?”
“Oh. Well, yes. The kind of money . . . the kind of IOUs . . . that changed hands at Sam’s poker table, no question it could engender hard feelings. Tens of thousands were involved, over time. A man like Tony Carmichael . . . Carmine, as you call him . . . could put the squeeze on, if you didn’t pay up. That may be why Sam invited him, and why I didn’t object—you know, I don’t normally hang out with gangsters, Jack.”
“I’m not following, Ray. Sam invited Carmine to be part of the game because Tony was dangerous?”
He gestured with the cigarette-holder-in-hand and traced an abstract pattern in smoke. “Yes. That was the fun. The risk. The ride. Anyway, Sam Fizer was rolling in dough. He invested well over the years, and in general he was frugal, when he wasn’t throwing money around to impress people. And I don’t have to tell you that the strip paid well.”
“I get all that. But what’s your point?”
“My point is, Carmine or anybody else in that game, who Sam might have owed money to, had a motive to keep him alive, not kill him.”
I agreed with that, but didn’t say so. “This gambling obsession, as you put it—this was new to Sam.”
Alexander nodded. “I believe it was. Last five or six months.”
“He seems to have gone off the deep end, after he and his wife Misty broke up.”
“That could be it.”
“Ray, you’re starting to clam up on me again.”
Strip for Murder Page 17