by Kane, Henry
“HENRY KANE IS, BY FAR, THE MOST URBANE, WITTY, CLEVER AND GENUINELY FUNNY MYSTERY WRITER AROUND. HIS PETER CHAMBERS SUSPENSE NOVELS ARE SHEER DELIGHT.”
—SWANK MAGAZINE
You’re a private detective. Why not? It’s interesting work, and if you work for millionaires, the pay is simply great.
Millionaires like Tommy Lyons—worth maybe 800 million in American money. Of course, even millionaires have their problems. Like Tommy Lyons. His wife liked girls.
But you can see her point. You like girls too.
Unfortunately, its the same girl Tommy Lyons likes. So when you take her home, and find another private eye in her kitchen, you get suspicious.
Sure. Suspicion is your business. And the other private eye is, like dead.
A Peter Chambers Thriller
NEVER GIVE A
MILLIONAIRE
AN EVEN
BREAK
HENRY KANE
a division of F+W Media, Inc.
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
My Business is Murder
Also Available
Copyright
One
WHEN YOU toady about with millionaires, the bullfrog starts its croaking. There is a bullfrog in every psyche.
I did not know this. Perhaps you do not know this. Our psychologists and psychiatrists do, of course, know this, but our psychologists and psychiatrists do not ventilate all their knowledge while placidly puffing their pipes and peering, glum but avid, into the palpitating cleavage of the quiz-attacks at the cocktail parties: they must, in order to earn bread, butter, meat and potatoes—for some, kippers and caviar—preserve a portion of their special knowledge for intermittent, but intermittent, dissemination at private seminars, for pay. And pay. Ah, the fifty-minute hour like for fifty bucks a crack if you can afford it; if not, well, for a favor, you can be fit in for twenty-five bucks; and if you cannot afford that, well, fifteen, because business is slack and you are an unusually interesting case; but if not any of that (and you have got to figure at least two visits a week) then the diagnosis has it that you are not one for individual treatment—not for you the solitary couch—and you are resoundingly recommended to the gang-bang of group-therapy at a free clinic.
There is a bullfrog in every psyche. I learned without a gang-bang.
I was toadying about with millionaires and my bullfrog was splashing around in its poor little puddle like it was a rich little puddle, making raucous noises with a big fat mouth, until a lissome little tadpole snapped it on the snout and straightened it out. She was a gorgeous tadpole, and she had an interest in me and in my psyche and in my bullfrog, and when she pulled me out of the miasma of my mirage I just sat there, half-cocked, on the edge of my miasma, pondering how in hell it all got started in the first place.
There were these two millionaires, you see, and there was this gorgeous tadpole named Arlene Anthony, but let us strike this tadpole deal right here and now; Arlene Anthony had not the remotest connection to toads, tadpoles, frogs or polliwogs, except, perhaps for the spring in her legs. Brother, that gal had legs!
Let us start from scratch, and after scratch we shall get to the millionaires.
Arlene Anthony.
She had the longest, loveliest, shapeliest legs in the world, and she earned her living, in part, by displaying her legs. The legs were extraordinary but they were in keeping with the rest of her. On top of the legs was a torso, slender and supple, concave where it should be concave, and so convex in the spots where it should be convex as to render you dizzy just by looking; and on top of the torso was a heart-shaped face with high cheekbones, a full red mouth with the underlip slightly pouting, slanted black eyes, and red hair. Something?
Arlene Anthony—a beauty with brains, talent, and a sense of humor—was the toast of the town as the female lead of the smash musical Holly’s Follies. She was twenty-six years of age, single and assiduously sought after by all the well-honed blades, and so the question naturally arises—how come she was romantically linked with Peter Chambers?
Well.
I had met her in the gusty lusty month of March at an afternoon tea given by a crochety old theatre-lover, one Mrs. Payne Whitehouse. Mrs. Whitehouse, high society and loaded with loot, was a heavy investor in many shows, and when she called upon an actor or actress to grace one of her afternoon teas—at which no tea was served but plenty of booze—that actor or actress was compelled to accept or incur displeasure, and who needs displeasure from an upper-crust when the sacrifice is only a couple of hours in an afternoon? I was also invited, probably to balance out the sexes: the party consisted of eight females and eight males including me. Mine was a last minute invitation, possibly one of the already invited males had attended an earlier afternoon tea and had to beg off on account of a sudden attack of drunkenness. I accepted for the same reason an actor or actress accepted: not to incur displeasure. Mrs. Payne Whitehouse was an occasional but exceedingly well-paying client.
The tea turned out to be a boring crush, and I am tall, and Arlene Anthony is tall, and everybody else was polite and over sixty. It is a law of life that tall people smile at one another by reason of the fact that they stick up over the heads of the others, and so Arlene and I smiled upon one another. It is also a law of life that there is a line of demarcation at sixty: people over sixty congregate together, as do people under sixty. Since only Arlene and I were under sixty, our congregation was the smallest of all possible congregations: two. We congregated real great. I didn’t know who she was—who catches a name in a mumbled introduction?—and so I wasn’t knocked off stance by the initial fright that every celebrity generates. This was a gorgeous red-head and a most unusual red-head—black eyes and red hair don’t often go together—and I pitched like mad: a few curves, an occasional knuckleball, but mostly straight down the middle. Whatever, it worked. Of course, there was no competition. And when she learned I was a private detective, the slanted black eyes crinkled with new interest and the sultry underlip glinted wetter because of a flick of the tongue (and I straightened erect and taller). Television has been a boon to the private detective. It has made us glamorous.
We left the tea together and had more of the same in one of the swanky saloons. There she was recognized, and there I learned who she really was, but I was over the hump and already well-sauced, and so I never got pulled to a stop by the brake of embarrassment. I regaled her with private detective yarns—all untrue, sterling lies I had picked up from the TV—and then we ate, and then she invited me to see the show that night, and I saw the show that night, and I took her to supper after the show that night, and I took her home after the supper after the show that night …
That was in the gusty lusty month of March, and it was now the merry merry month of May, and I was still gusty lusty about Arlene Anthony although, a bit, worried. Arlene was single and I am single and marriage is not for me if I can avoid it. I am f
lighty, fickle, whatever: my affection does not take root, it has no permanence, and although I was still nuts about Arlene Anthony, I was beginning to worry, just a bit. She did not mention marriage or even hint: but March went to April and April went to May and girls are girls and love is love and stuff like that can get real sticky and there was always Tommy Lyons to stir the fudge and keep the heat going.
I had met my millionaires by virtue of my inamorata: she had introduced me to the graceful, languid, handsome Tommy Lyons who was my most persistent rival and who hated my guts, and she had introduced me to the strong, shrewd, sturdy David Holly who was to become my client. They were both now my friends in the thinnest sense of the word: I moved in their circles, I visited with them and they visited with me, I went out with them and they went out with me, I talked their talk and listened to their chatter and they listened to mine, I clapped their shoulders and was clapped by them.
This night of the bullfrog, a placid windless Saturday night in May, my chauffeured Cadillac limousine—(that is correct, my chauffeured Cadillac limousine)—picked up, with me in it, the leading lady of Holly’s Follies, and purred to East 52nd Street and deposited us at The Harwyn and we entered in style to a bow and a smile from the august maitre d’ and were escorted to our secluded booth and I said to the smiling hovering maitre d’—“Rob Roy, two, with Ambassador Twenty, sweet Vermouth but just a touch, and bring a little shot-glass of lemon peels.”
“Yes, of course,” he said, “and is there something special you wish for supper so that I can alert the chef?”
“Not yet,” said Arlene Anthony and smiled with her beautifully crooked large white teeth.
“Not yet?” I said to her.
“Not yet,” she said to me.
“Not yet,” I said to the maitre d’.
“Ah, of course, not yet,” said the maitre d’ and went away.
“What’s with you tonight?” I said and laid a palm on her thigh but lightly.
“It’s time,” she said, “for a heart-to-heart talk, you and me. Tonight. Now.”
Ah, here it comes, I thought, and took my palm away. The marriage bit.
“Peter,” she said.
I swallowed. “Yes, my love?”
“Now what is it with the chauffeur and the Caddy and all the rest of the similar nonsense?”
I swallowed again, part relief, and part got stuck. I coughed. My palm fluttered for the thigh but it got tangled with the tablecloth and we almost had utensils in our laps. Hastily I pulled back, hastily I produced cigarettes, hastily I offered one to her and took one for myself. Hastily I made flame, and we smoked, and the Rob Roys came. “What?” I said.
“Like Ambassador Twenty,” she said.
“Beg pardon?” I said.
“Ambassador Twenty is a brand name for a Scotch that’s twenty years old. Price, two and a half bucks per cocktail in a class joint, and this is a class joint. Why?”
I sipped of my expensive cocktail. I smoked.
“Because you are Arlene Anthony,” I explained.
“But you are Peter Chambers,” she countered.
I bridled, spurred by the first sip of Twenty.
“Now what kind of a knock is that?” I said.
“No knock.”
“Peter Chambers. That’s a rap?”
“No rap.”
“So what’s wrong with Ambassador Twenty if I’m Peter Chambers?”
“Do you own a car?”
Oh I could tell—this was bitch-night.
“Do I what?” I said.
“Own a car?”
“Sure. So?”
“Do you own that car?”
“What car?”
“That car outside.”
“What car outside?”
“The car, the Caddy, the limousine, the chauffeur. Do you?”
“No.”
“So why?”
“You’re Arlene Anthony.”
“So I’m Arlene Anthony.”
“This is New York. Arlene Anthony is top role in Holly’s Follies. What fits, fits. A beat-up Chevvy convertible does not fit. That’s what I own, a beat-up Chevvie convertible. There are people outside the theatre—kids who want autographs, grownups who want to look. The leading lady of Holly’s Follies doesn’t fit with the beat-up Chevvie convertible. She fits in the Caddy limousine with the chauffeur. Furthermore this is Saturday night, and Saturday night we go to Monticello. Also, furthermore, if your date was with Tommy Lyons, the car would be a Caddy limousine with chauffeur. Also also, furthermore further-more, if David Holly were picking you up, it would also be a Caddy limousine with chauffeur.”
“That’s what I mean.”
“What, in hell, precisely, my love, do you mean?”
“I mean, because of Tommy, because of David, because of these new friends, new people; I mean, I think … I think I mean you’re losing your head.”
She did not know how right she was, but on the nose! She had pierced right through to the bullfrog in the psyche. When you toady about with millionaires—or whatever your new associations if they are new—that old bullfrog that you never even knew existed rises up out of the swamp of your psyche, swells its throat, and starts croaking like crazy. I had begun to talk big, act big, think big. I had begun to give people—like taxi drivers—advice on the stock market, and I had gotten myself a new tailor, at two hundred bucks per suit. I had become poisoned by the easy affluence of my new friends: once a month the antidote arrived in the shape of my bank statement and for about an hour, very grim checking vouchers, I was cured. But then I was off again, clinging to Cloud Sixty-nine. Although I was spending far more than I was earning, I knew, for sure, that one tip from my new-found friends—on a horse, on real estate, on the market—would, with ease, recoup the difference. Of course I wouldn’t have enough initial capital to invest for a real big gain, but the stuff of day-dreams has nothing to do with such crass items as initial capital, or are you not one for day-dreams?
Right then, on that Saturday night in May, thanks to Arlene Anthony, my bullfrog pulled in its horns, dwindled and disappeared into the dark recesses whence it had swelled: my dragon was slain.
“Thank you,” I said.
Now she stirred. “For what?”
“For popping my bullfrog.”
She giggled. “That sounds dirty. A joke?”
“No joke.”
“How much does it cost?”
“What coasts?”
“Not coasts. Costs.”
“What? How much does what cost?”
“The car outside. Rented, no?”
“Rented yes.”
“So how much?”
“For overnight, two hundred clams, for where we’re going.”
“Get rid of it.”
“What about Monticello?”
Arlene Anthony had been born Angelina Antoninni on a farm on the outskirts of Monticello, a town in the Catskill Mountains in New York State. She was an only child and she went up to visit her parents every Saturday night: there was no show on Sunday. It was known that she went to Monticello every Saturday night; her fellow actors knew, and the musicians in the pit, and the dancers, and the stage-manager, and the director, and the producer; everybody knew that on Saturday night Arlene Anthony went up to her people in Monticello and stayed until Monday afternoon.
In the middle of April, I had begun to take her there, chauffeur-driven. The chauffeur stayed at a nearby motel and I stayed on the farm with Arlene and I loved it, and her. I loved the sweet smell of the air, the warm sun, the trees, the grass, the flowers, the food—home-smoked bacon, fresh-picked eggs, creamy milk, succulent vegetables, roasted pig, home-made hot bread, home-made chunky ice-cream. I loved the walks on Sunday, the winding roads sometimes blocked by a herd of cows, sometimes an unfrightened deer, sometimes even a bumbling brown bear; and I loved the fishing in her father’s thigh-boots in a rocky stream with trout; and I loved the cool starry perfumed nights with Arlene.
“So what
about Monticello?” I said.
“Not tonight,” she said.
“But tonight’s Saturday.”
“Tonight we’re in the throes of our moment of truth. Get rid of the car and get rid of the chauffeur. And don’t order any food.”
“But you’re hungry.”
“Sure I’m hungry.”
“So we eat.”
“Not here, because here a dinner for two is like forty bucks. We’ll skip that, lover. We’ll have one more drink and go.”
“Where?”
“Home, by cab.”
“What’ll we do—order up delicatessen?”
“Delicatessen, nuts. I’ve got steak in the freezer, and I’ll tear up a real wild tossed salad with olive oil and tarragon vinegar, and I’ll make you French fries with garlic in the fat like you’ve never had before. We’ll have us a home picnic.”
“I love you,” I said.
“Like hell you do.”
I paid off the chauffeur and we went home by cab. Home was the first floor of a four-story whitestone on East 62nd Street. There was no doorman, so I kissed her hard in the downstairs vestibule; and I kissed her again in her little cubicle of a self-service elevator.
The apartment was five rooms, well-furnished because she could well afford it: a living room, a dining room, a den-and-drinking room, a bedroom, and a kitchen. I kissed her in the living room, skipped the dining room, and since we did not go into the bedroom, kissed her again in the den-and-drinking room. I stacked records on the record-player and we had soft music; then I worked behind the long bar establishing drinks. She sipped, we kissed, I sipped, we kissed, then she broke it up.
“I’ll go make food,” she said.
“Want help?”
“You just stay where you are.”
She went away and I drank. I sat and smoked and sipped and listened to music, and she did not scream.
She came back, quietly, but the scream was on her face.
She said, a plea, harsh, deep from the throat: “Peter!”
“What? What the hell?” I got rid of my cigarette and got to my feet. “What’s the matter?”