“And so you did.”
“Right. I looked at her apartment, talked to the old man downstairs. She left a suicide note on her pillow.”
“Huh.” Thinking aloud, Louie-style.
“Some longshoremen fished a body out of the river.”
“No identification on it?”
“A hankie. And a pack of matches from the club where she worked, the Hot Cha Cha.”
“Hmm. I like the sound of that. Hotchacha.”
“Used to be a speak called the Tenderloin. Phony butcher in front.”
“Anything else?”
She straightened up on the chair, looked him in the eye. “No. That’s it.”
Easy as that. Lying was so much easier than telling the truth. Must be the key to its popularity.
He slapped the clean desktop with both hands as he stood up. “Let’s go get a drink, then. I’ll tell you about the weekender a bunch of us took down to Springfield. Landed in a hay field, slept in tents, had a bonfire and a sing-along. Great fun.”
Lennox stared at him. “A sing-along? Jeepers.”
She stood up. The snowball had a better chance in hell than he did on drinks. But she worked for him now. Make it smooth, she told herself. He had her elbow, guiding her to the door. As he reached around as if to open it, he pushed her backward against the wooden panels, pinning her shoulders. Before she could do more than gasp in surprise, he pressed against her, wedged his knee between her legs, kissing her hard on the mouth. When his hands went to her breasts, ripping open her blouse, she raised her arms and shoved him with all her strength.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Aw, come on, toots.” Face red, breathing hard, he stepped forward again, but when he saw what she had in her hand, he stopped.
“You know what this is?” She had the switchblade, closed, in her hand. “You think I walk around this city unarmed, waiting for some palooka like you to dry-gulch me?”
“Listen, I— Forget about it. I was only trying to be friendly. Come on, toots… .” He was sweating now.
“This is my friendly shiv. You should see the unfriendly one.” She had her finger on the button. “Hey, toots. You want to see how it works?”
“You won’t say anything to Vanvleet, will you?” He pushed back his hair and squinted at her. “Not if you want to keep working for the firm, you won’t.”
She let her hand drop. Her breathing was ragged and fast. How was she going to keep working with him? Think. Anything is possible. You can even work with a man like Louie Weston. Could she use this as leverage with Vanvleet? How? No, it just had to stop, and stop now.
“You keep your distance.”
His face twisted into a sneer. “Who are you trying to kid, anyway? You’re just like that little round heels, your friend. And she rolled over for a couple beers.”
The blade sprang open. She lunged toward him and he jumped back with a yelp.
“Don’t you ever say anything about Arlette,” she hissed. “You aren’t fit to shine her shoes. You say one word about her to anybody and you’re ribbons, pal.”
Louie blanched, eyes on the long, shiny blade.
She whispered, “You don’t know Arlette. You don’t know anything. “
Words jammed her throat, words to make him feel the pain Arlette had suffered. But too much time had passed. He would never understand. She watched him sweat. There just wasn’t any goddamn balancing scale to make things right. No matter what she said. Things happen and there’s no going back.
She found the doorknob behind her, her hands shaking by the time she reached the Packard. She took a few deep breaths. The street was quiet, tired. At least she’d kept Weston in the dark. If she’d told him everything about Iris and he’d done what he did, said what he said, she might have used the knife on herself. She felt the blade in her pocket. No, not that.
Having his number now didn’t erase the fact that she had been so very wrong about him in Atchison. Better he had forgotten all that. Being a friend to Arlette was the one thing Dorie had to stand on. Even if her own life had gone to hell in a handbasket after that, she had done what was right, that once.
In the dining room that night, Betty Kimble told another joke. The two shy bachelors slurped their carrot soup. Ilo Gobbs burst into tears and ran upstairs. Mrs. Ferazzi said her boyfriend had run off to Canada to enlist. Winkie Lambert reminded everyone that Boss Pendergast had accepted a medal from Mussolini just last year, and now the wop bastard was siding with Hitler. Mrs. F. shushed her on account of her homeland. The Crybacker twins left early for a polka concert at the Liberty Memorial.
The apple pandowdy was cold.
FIFTEEN
HUNCHED ON THE HARD COT, Amos coughed into his dirty handkerchief. The pain in his chest was familiar, an old friend. He felt warm, damp all over, even though the cell was all cold cement. But that didn’t matter. He was struggling to remember every detail that was in Eugenia’s notebook. He couldn’t believe the two notebooks were missing. But they were. Gone with whoever had doped him and set him up. He couldn’t think about that. He had to remember Eugenia. Vanvleet had brought him a sheaf of paper and a pencil, and he was on his third page of notes.
The lawyer had been cross with him about not paying attention to the case. He kept talking about Reggie, the old panty-waist. Amos had worked dozens of cases over the years, and now he was the case. It would be funny if he wasn’t holed up here, bruises on his shoulders and neck where the coppers had taken their billy clubs to him before Herbert got word in. Oh, Amos expected the treatment; he knew how they operated here, no different from any other police department.
How could he confess? He didn’t even know the bloke’s name, for Chrissakes. Good thing he’d gotten that letter off to his mother in hospital; now she wouldn’t worry when he didn’t write for a while. He couldn’t very well write that he was in stir. He wondered if they’d started bombing London yet. The papers didn’t have anything about it, but their news seemed a trifle stale. He chewed on his pencil, thinking, with a shiver about his mother, bombs raining down all around her. And him miles and miles away, locked up, sick, and suspect.
And what about Beryl? His sister, living with that bloody farmer in Normandy. Beryl had better get out of there, come over here. He would write to her. Maybe she’d gone home to be with Mum. That little Frenchie probably had her milking goats. He would use simple, earnest Beryl for milking, but he wouldn’t marry her.
“Skin like fresh cream,” he wrote. “With strawberries. Dove gray eyes; long, expressive fingers with pearl white half-moons on the nails.” He wasn’t exactly sure if he’d ever written this about Eugenia in the notebook, wasn’t really sure if he remembered her fingernails at all. He tried to concentrate. He had held her hands many times. Why couldn’t he remember?
He coughed again, a long, exhaustive bout, and when it was done, he saw Lennox standing outside the cell bars. She was trying to smile, and only getting half the job done. Well, what was there to smile about? He struggled to his feet, smoothing his pants. They’d taken his suit jacket—for evidence, they said—and he stood in his shirt and braces to receive her in his new parlor.
“Good evenin’, my dear,” he said.
The matron opened the door, gave Amos a withering look. He gave her a slight bow, to show her he had no ill intentions. The people who worked here had the most suspicious minds.
Lennox sat on the edge of the cot. Amos leaned against the sink that hung from the wall.
“Nice joint,” she said. “Is the food good?”
“A notch below the hospital, if you must know. Quite a large notch.”
“I’ll bring you something tomorrow; oranges are in at Steiner’s.” She glanced at the papers on the bed.
He bowed, hoping he looked elegantly cynical.
“We can get a doctor up here, get you transferred back to City Hospital, where you should have stayed.”
“Higher priorities.”
She sigh
ed. “I was supposed to talk to Davy Esterly. He was the last person who saw Iris Jackson. That was the dive she went into just before the bridge. The Chatterbox. And there’s more to it.”
Amos wasn’t following her very well. He was looking at her hands, wondering if she had half-moons on her nails. She was going on about this Davy character, and that bar girl. Had Eugenia varnished her nails? No, he would have remembered that. He was thinking about how her hands sometimes smelled piney, like turpentine, from her paints.
Lennox frowned at him. “What were you doing here yesterday, at police headquarters?”
“Checking out this gee, Palmer Eustace. Vanvleet set me on him, about the racetrack, then turned around and told me to forget it.” Amos shook his head. “I need to talk to Eustace.”
“You want me to call him?”
“I don’t have a number. Did it all through Vanvleet. Might be I was running up a blind alley, but something seemed queer about the deal.”
Lennox went on, jabbering about this Iris dame. Then she stopped talking and looked at him as if he was loopy. He was a little irritated with her, because he wanted to write down the bit about the turpentine before he forgot it.
“Did you hear me?” she said. “She’s not dead.”
“Eugenia?” A vision of her came to him, waiting at the bottom of a long flight of steps. Older, her hair different. It must have been a dream. He shook his head, trying to clear it.
“Iris Jackson.” Lennox stood up, laid a hand on his arm. “Who’s Eugenia?” She looked in his eyes. No doubt a frightening sight, Amos thought, remembering his sagging red sockets. “Are you all right?” she asked.
“Everyone knows she wouldn’t jump,” he said quietly.
She took his arm and led him back to the cot, straightened the sheets of paper. She made him lie down, took off his shoes, and covered him up. It felt good to be looked after.
Lennox patted his shoulder. “Listen now. Iris is still alive, and I’m going to find her. She killed the other girl, the one in the morgue. She found a girl who looked like her, then fed the girl some line to get her up on the bridge.” She paused, bit her lip. “She knew I was there, Amos. That was part of it. She knew I was watching. She made me early on. She wanted me to see Sylvia go over. To make it look liked she jumped.”
“Eugenia didn’t jump. She wouldn’t.”
Lennox frowned. “Iris. She’s cut her hair, and dyed it black. I’ll find her, make her pay for killing that girl. And for Davy Esterly, too.”
Amos blinked at her. “Esterly?”
“She must have killed him because he saw her at the Chatterbox that night. Knew she’d switched clothes and lured Sylvia out to the bridge. How she got your car and your gun, I don’t know. But I know she’s dressed as a man before.”
Amos shut his eyes. There was Eugenia again, with the short black hair. “Yes,” he said, “she cut her hair.”
“Did you see her?”
“At the bottom of the stairs. Waiting. Like I waited for her.”
“Here? At police headquarters?”
Amos mumbled something he wasn’t sure of himself. He didn’t want to be here, now; he wanted to go back to the world before the war, when he and Eugenia walked by the sea at Margate. They had kissed only once, but he remembered it all. Lovely warm evening, stars in a velvet sky, mustering out in the morning, orange scent in her hair. She wouldn’t have jumped off a ship, killing herself for one kiss. No, it had been a terrible accident, hit her head or something.
“You hit your head?”
His eyelids fluttered open. Lennox still sat there. Couldn’t she see he was busy?
“Turn that way.” She pushed his skull to one side. “Jeepers, you’ve got a lump the size of a baseball. Did the doctor look at you?”
“Damn coppers.”
“They don’t hit over the head like that. That must be from falling on the stairs. Who took you home, Amos? When you collapsed?”
Lennox stood up at last. Maybe she’d let him sleep now.
“Christ. It was her.”
He closed his eyes again. “Eugenia,” he whispered.
“Iris. She took you home, slipped you a Mickey, took your car and your gun.” She bent down over him. “Who the hell is Eugenia?”
Lennox had the matron call the doctor about Amos’s head. The way he was muttering and sweating, something had to be done. Whether it was from his lungs or falling on the granite steps or Iris slipping him a Mickey, she didn’t know. Hell, it might even have been something this Eugenia did, whoever she was.
For his own sake, she considered reading his scribblings. She had glanced at the sheets and saw the name Eugenia. But she didn’t seem to have any significance to anyone but Amos Haddam. Maybe she was someone who existed only in his mind.
The matron returned to tell her the doctor would come as soon as he could. Which could be hours, or tomorrow. Lennox decided to write him a note about Amos’s condition, in case the old soldier was too groggy to answer questions. The matron offered her an impossibly small piece of paper and she numbered his ailments, wrote her telephone number at work and at home, and Uncle Herb’s for good measure, then shoved the paper back across the counter.
Amos had to get better—and get out of here. There was no other way. And finding Iris was the key.
“Georgie Terraciano. I need to know everything you know about him.”
Lennox sat across the kitchen table from Herb Warren, her fingers wrapped around a cup of coffee her aunt had foisted on her. Seeing her aunt Maureen was hard without remembering how much Verna had hated her for her elegant bearing and simple goodness. But then Verna had hated anyone who didn’t appreciate her smart mouth.
Maureen had excused herself to escort her elderly mother to bed. The house smelled of peach pie and old times. When Lennox had lived here, all she’d felt were stifling rules and undeserved kindness. Now, in the quiet kitchen, she strained for sounds of cars outside. She was sure she’d been followed on the way over, but nothing had come of it.
Herb sipped his coffee. “You’re working for him?”
“Through Vanvleet. But they won’t tell me a thing.”
“Something happen?”
“I don’t trust him. What’s happened to Amos—I feel like Georgie is behind all this somehow.”
“Don’t jump to conclusions.” Herb got up to pour himself more coffee. “He’s a thug, Dorie. You don’t want to tangle with him.”
Lennox stared at the black liquid in her cup. Could it be Georgie following her? And would it be worth the thrill to take him on? No, she should be practical.
“Look, Herb. Somehow, Georgie’s connected. He says Iris Jackson was his girl. I say it was something else. What’s he mixed up in?”
“Meatpacking. Been in that for years, his uncle’s business. Squeezed out his cousin fifteen years ago.”
“What about horse racing?”
“There’ve been rumors he put old racehorses into his sausage, but we’ve never proved anything. He owns a couple ponies. I heard about that when—”
“The Pony Jump?”
“Right. There was always something floating around about his connection with the Black Hand, being Italian and all. Known for a few dark deeds, they were. The Italians had a shaky truce with Pendergast. All Democrats, but not exactly together on things. And there was more than one Italian cell.”
“Which was Georgie?”
“There was two families, Lusco and Lazia. He was with Lazia, I think. That whole thing broke down after Johnny was killed.”
This name kept coming up. “Tell me about Lazia.”
Herb sat down. Out of uniform, he looked like a laborer, in a chambray shirt and big worker’s pants, neatly pressed by Maureen. His neck was reddened by the sun. He rubbed the back of it now. “Brother John? He cut quite a figure. Old Tom didn’t like him much for that.”
“Pendergast cuts quite the figure in prison stripes, I hear.”
Herb chuckled. “Tom was thick in
to horses himself. Nobody knew how thick until it was too late.”
She fingered her cup. “Lazia,” she prompted.
“Well, Johnny got his first beef for stealing a diamond stickpin. That oughta tell you something. He was like a cat, slinking around in his custom duds. But always the gentleman, polite, a ladies’ man. Hard to pin things on a man like that. He wore little rimless Franklins, made him look serious. But he was a sport. Always at the clubs, gambling. Had a big summer place on Lake Lotawana, where he raced speedboats.”
“He was a racketeer.”
“Oh, sure. Into gambling heavy. Getting rid of gambling is going to make Kansas City right again.”
It wasn’t the time to get Herb kicking on his high moral horse. “So who killed him?”
“Never arrested anybody. We always thought it was them Luscos. They had it out for Lazia because he was more popular than Pendergast then. They all grew up together down there, in your neighborhood, Little Italy. Lotta violence, fights. Wops hated the colored, used to bushwhack ‘em, dynamite their houses. Then somebody’d come down and do the same to the wops.”
“How come so many of them got into gambling and all?”
“No jobs for plain laborers … well, at least no money in it. They were uneducated, most of them. Johnny worked for a lawyer once; he coulda made it straight. But he wanted it all, fast. The usual story.”
Lennox ran her finger around the rim of the coffee cup. “So Georgie was in his gang?”
“If I remember right. Georgie’s kept his nose clean the last couple years. I did hear something about taxes.”
“Is he behind?”
“Could be, if he’s losing racing ponies, or gambling heavy. Or maybe winning big and not reporting it.”
“Is he under investigation for anything at your end?”
“If he is, it’s not my department.” Herb drained his coffee cup. “I’d love to talk about these crooks all night, darlin’, but time flies. And soon morning’ll be flying in my face.”
Lennox looked at the clock, a chicken with wing hands that said 10:30. “Kept you too long. Sorry.” Herb gave her a hug, smothering her in his laundry-fresh shirt. He took her shoulders in his hands.
Swing Town Mysteries Dorie Lennox Box Set Page 15