Never Give a Millionaire an Even Break

by Kane, Henry

  “I see.” He stood up. “I thank you.”

  “Are you going to the police, Mr. Croyden?”

  “Not yet.” He sighed. “A certain amount of money has already been turned over. I am hoping that that will end it.”

  “And if it doesn’t …?”

  “Then I’m determined that I’ll convince my wife that we do go to the police. Thank you, sir, for your advice. Your fee?”

  “No fee, Mr. Croyden.”

  “I insist, Mr. Chambers.” He brought out a slim checkbook. “I’ve taken up your time and I’ve received some excellent advice. How much, sir?”

  I shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

  He wrote the check and laid it on my desk. Then we shook hands. His hand was firm and strong. “Thank you again,” he said and went away, and then I looked at the check. It was for five hundred dollars. It is nice to deal with millionaires.

  Seventeen

  I ARRIVED AT Toots Shor’s at ten minutes to midnight and Ingrid Strindberg Holly arrived at exactly midnight. I left the bar and greeted her and we were taken to a table and we ordered cocktails and Yankee Pot Roast and the cocktails were stimulating and the Yankee Pot Roast lived up to reputation.

  She was in severe black, but her mood was gay. We talked of the play she had seen and we chattered of trivia all the way to the coffee and brandy and then I released some of the information I had picked up from Sadie Flanagan’s leads. Hell, I had earned five hundred dollars this day and I had done no work at all: there had been time for social spadework.

  “Your mother is dead,” I said. “Your brother, Sven, is a physician in Gothenberg. Your father, Gustav Strindberg, is a member of the Swedish Parliament. You came to this country when you were twenty and you were already then a college graduate.”

  The mouth made a moué but the blue eyes showed amusement.

  “What I don’t understand,” I said, “are the circumstances of your coming here.”

  “What do you not understand?” she said and smiled.

  “A beauty prize winner.”

  Her eyebrows contracted in a mock frown. “You do not believe I was qualified?”

  “Oh no no. I mean—you were of a rather conservative family. Your father, even then, was a member of Parliament.”

  “Ah, true. It was difficult.” She laughed, remembering. “It was the year I was graduated from college. Some of my college chums sent in my picture, and I was chosen in the early preliminaries. I went—even my family did not know—for fun. I was sure, sooner or later, I would be eliminated. But I was not, and then my father learned, and was angry. But my mother—she was alive then—insisted that I be permitted to continue: she too, of course, believed that as the ranks thinned in the competition, I would be eliminated. So it went, up and up, until, to all our surprise, I was declared Miss Sweden and was to represent my country in America in the Miss Universe contest. By then, my father was won over.”

  “And how did you make out, here?”

  “First I must explain. I had, in my youth, wanted to be an actress. In college, if I must say so myself, I was an excellent amateur. It was my plan, after college, to enroll in a Dramatic School, but the silly beauty contest intervened. But then, as Miss Sweden, I believed I had a chance to jump over many of the initial obstacles to become an actress. So I came here for the big contest, accompanied, of course, by my mother.”

  “And …?”

  “I did not even achieve runner-up, but I did attract much attention once I had let it be known it was my desire to go on the stage. I met many producers—David Holly was one of them, and, well”—she moved her shoulders—”he was in love with me. He was thirty years old then.”

  “And …?”

  “We remained here, my mother and I. She lived with me here in America for almost a year. I had many small stage parts, but I was nothing; compared to professional actors, I was nothing. Also my English was bad; it is not good even now.”

  “It’s fine.”

  “Gradually, David convinced me I was not to be an actress. By then I was in love with him and when he asked me to marry him, I accepted.”

  “I don’t want to pry …” I began.

  She touched a napkin to her lips. “We will talk further when we get home.”

  At her apartment, she did not change, did not get into anything daring, comfortable; she remained in the severe black dress and I figured it for a hint and I took the hint: I played it casual, mostly behind the leather bar.

  “At the beginning the marriage was good,” she said. “Or so I believed it to be—I was very young. After three years, after the children came, then I knew, but I would not divorce, because of the children.”

  “You have children? I didn’t know. I—”

  She was seated in one of the purple chairs. She had a goblet of brandy and a cigarette. Her voice did not change, or her expression. “I had children,” she said. “Twin girls. They were seven years old when they were drowned, with other children, in an accident at summer camp.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.”

  She said nothing. She drank brandy, smoked, set away the brandy, killed the cigarette. “Then there was nothing to hold me to him any more.”

  “Actually, what kind of a guy?”

  “A bad one, thoroughly; sick-bad; without scruple or conscience; mad from the ego; self, self, always self. I must warn you again, Peter. He has sucked you in to do you harm, and you must be aware of this.”

  “Okay. I’m aware.”

  “You are employed by him?”

  “Yes.”

  “It is a sham employ. It is to keep you near him, so that he may know when and how to strike.”

  “It is not sham employment. As to the other facets, you may be right.”

  “I know I am right.”

  “I can take care of myself.”

  Suddenly she hit the gong. “Are you employed to spy on me? Is that why you are here, Peter?” She stood up, stood very straight. “Is that why you are here, Peter?”

  “No.”

  She sensed the truth. She was an emotional woman. Tears glistened but her voice held. “Are you employed to spy on me?”

  “That’s not why I’m here.”

  And she was an intuitive woman. “Do you know about Earl Stanhope?”

  I grabbed at my drink and avoided her eyes.

  “It is an example of David Holly,” she said accepting my silence, and rightfully, as an affirmation. “He cannot stoop too low, and he will use any method, any device. As any evil genius, he can even be ridiculous, but that does not make him any less dangerous.”

  “I know about Earl Stanhope,” I said. “And I know that you have drawn those claws.”

  I did not breach a confidence. I did not say that David Holly also knew, but at that moment I had chucked him as a client; I would instruct Sadie Flanagan to get off the wires; I was finished with one of my millionaires—but was he finished with me?

  “You can help me,” she said. “Whether it is a sham employ or not, you are close enough and in a position to help me.”

  “How can I help you?”

  She sat again in her purple chair. I quit the bar but took my glass and I sat in a purple chair near her.

  “Mr. Chambers …” she said.

  “Peter.”

  “Peter,” she said. “I want to end it with him. Finished. Cut. Over and done with, once and for all. I want to be free of him and quit of him and away from him forever. You may be able to help. I want you to help. I will pay you.”

  Up to the last, I liked it. I liked the last too, but not from her. But she couldn’t be sure, quite, how I felt about her, so she had to put it somehow on a business basis, and hell, I was in business, so I put my mouth to my glass and said nothing.

  “I receive fifteen thousand dollars a month as alimony,” she said.

  “I know,” I said and put my mouth back on the rim of the glass.

  “For five years now,” she said, “and he resents it, each month, every
month, for five long years now.”

  I nodded.

  “I have done investments and good investments and I would be willing to accept a lump setlement, once and for all, and end it.”

  I put away the glass. “So why don’t your lawyers talk to him?”

  She smiled finally, small. “You do not know David Holly. Every phase of his life, every moment of his life, is a contest. If he receives a proposition, immediately he is against it, fighting. My release from him must come through him: he must believe it is of his own making: he must believe that he has turned a trick, that he has conquered, that he has won the battle, and everything to him is a battle. Can you understand that?”

  “I certainly can.”

  I must have said it with the right intonation.

  She brightened and her smile grew wide, and beautiful.

  “How much?” I said.

  Promptly she said, “Five hundred thousand dollars, tax free.”

  I did some rapid calculation. “Actually, that isn’t much.”

  “It cannot be much, or he would not feel that he has conquered. But it would be enough for me, with what I have, for the rest of my life, and I would be, once and for all, cut off from him, finished, quits, finally done.”

  I drank.

  She drank.

  I smoked.

  She smoked.

  She said, “Will you accept this assignment, Peter?”

  I would shift clients, so it would not be unethical.

  I would be rid of him, and I would take her on.

  And I would be on the right side of the deal, morally.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Five percent will be your fee.”

  I stood up and went to her and lifted her out of her seat and held her and said croakily from somewhere in the chest, “With you as a bonus.”

  “Yes,” she said and her body trembled against my body, trembling.

  “Down payment, now,” I said.

  And I got the elbows and she broke away and the pattern shifted: she went behind the bar and I was left leaning against the back of a purple chair. She took her time pouring brandy into a new glass while she got collected, and I slid down into the purple chair and took my time lighting a cigarette while I got collected.

  “Peter,” she said, “I know a great deal about you.”

  “Dear old Sadie Flanagan,” I said.

  “I know that you enjoy women, many women.”

  “Me?” I said.

  “You attract me, terribly.”

  “You me too, terribly.”

  “I will not have you for a second, a moment, a bout or two and over.”

  “Never. Not us.”

  “We will have a honeymoon.”

  “We will have—a what?” I got tangled in cigarette smoke and coughed.

  “I have a villa in Acapulco.”

  “Ah, Acapulco.”

  “Thirty days, one month.”

  “Thirty days one month, what?”

  “Honeymoon. When this is over and complete, we will go away, together, for a month in Acapulco. We will have one month together. After that … we will see.”

  “Great,” I said.

  “But until then, please, I beg of you, friends.”

  “Platonic Chambers,” I said.

  “You must promise me, Peter. I am not a cheap woman. There must be nothing … until then … and then it must be sweet and beautiful. We will see much of one another until then. There must be nothing—”

  “Nothing! You and me …?”

  “We must think of it as a period of courtship, a man and a woman getting acquainted, learning one another, even yearning for one another, but knowing that they have for the future a date together, knowing that they await a … a honeymoon. You must promise me, Peter. I respect you, and I respect your promise.”

  Yes, why not? This was a fine woman and, precisely as she had said, not a cheap woman, and not one to become cheaply involved with. It would be right to have a courtship, and right to end it before it began if deep hurt could happen—to either of us. Yes, why not? The courtship itself, the getting acquainted, the sexual resistance—because once the promise was made it would have to be kept, else the hell with the promise—would, of itself, be a titillating experience: and there was still the problem of getting untangled, gracefully, from Arlene Anthony with whom, Holly and Tommy notwithstanding, I was entangled.

  “I promise,” I said.

  “I love you,” she said.

  “I love you,” I said.

  “Go now,” she said.

  “What?” I said.

  “Please go home now. Now. Do not come near me. Just go home now. Please.”

  I looked at my watch. It was three o’clock.

  I did not say goodbye. I said nothing. I stood up and went out and went down and took a cab and rode home. I intended to call Sadie right then in the middle of the night and get her instruments off the tapped wires. Hell, I was going to do David Holly a favor. I was going to save him money. Sadie was finished, Holly’s need of me and my services was finished: he was going to get out from under at a bargain rate but the approach would have to be subtle.

  It would be subtle and it would not be too tough: Holly would win the battle and Ingrid would get five hundred thousand and I would get twenty-five thousand and a month’s honeymoon in Acapulco and everybody would be happy, including me.

  Euphoria was pleasant in a taxicab and I paid with pleasure and tipped with pleasure and sailed serenely with pleasure into my lobby and was taken in hand by four uniformed policemen one of whom was huge.

  “Peter Chambers?” inquired the huge man.

  “There’ve been changes made,” I said, still euphoric. “You the new elevator man?”

  “I’m a cop,” he said.

  “Oh, moonlighting,” I said.

  “You’re under arrest,” he said and that was the end of euphoria.

  Eighteen

  THEY HUSTLED me out to a squad car and we screeched through the streets, sirens wailing wide-open. The two-way radio chattered with gossip but I could not piece it together. I knew that questions would get me no answers but one time I said, “Now what the hell?”

  “Shut up,” was the answer.

  We stopped in front of 300 West 55th Street and I was in the middle of the phalanx that shoved through to the lobby. The lobby was a little one but it was packed with excitement, cigarette smoke, sweat, and noise. I recognized two individuals. One was Detective-lieutenant Louis Parker, Homicide. He was busy and upright. The other was Monique Lyons. She was dead and horizontal.

  Parker came to me quickly. He pointed to Monique cracked up and still bleeding on the tile floor. The man working over her—Medical Examiner: the small black bag was open beside him—could, obviously, do nothing further except clean her up for the trip to the morgue.

  “Know her?” Parker said.

  I said, “Yes.”

  “What name?”

  “Monique Lyons. Why? Didn’t she have identification?”

  “She did. I’m asking the questions. Know her husband?”

  “Yes.”

  “Roommate says the husband is Tommy Lyons. That’s the Tommy Lyons, isn’t it?”

  “It is.”

  “My people are picking him up and taking him down to the ice-house where he’ll make the identification.”

  “You better hold on to him after that.”

  “Why?” Parker said.

  “Why’ve I been yanked down here?”

  “Why should we hold on to Tommy Lyons?”

  I stayed stuck with my question. “Why am I here, please?”

  Detective-lieutenant Louis Parker was an old friend and an honored friend. He was a distinguished cop, a devoted cop, an honest cop, an intelligent cop, and a cop who knew his way around and back. He was short and thick and barrel-chested with a square jaw and crinkled eyes and hair cropped like a mowed lawn.

  “Come with me,” he said.

  He took m
e outside and walked me up the street and pointed to a car, double-parked, with a policeman single-parked alongside it.

  It was my car.

  “You own the heap?” Parker said.

  “I own it. So?”

  “So now you know why you’re here.”

  “I don’t know anything of the kind.”

  He ran his lower teeth over his upper lip. “This car struck her and this car killed her. Check of license plate disclosed you as registered owner. Now you know why you’re here.”

  I felt my face crease. “Yes, my car …”

  “You hit her, Pete?”

  “You hold on to that Tommy Lyons, man.”

  “Did you hit her, Pete?”

  “Would I hit and run, Louis?”

  “You’ve got the smell of booze on you.”

  “That against the law?”

  “Booze can make panic. Booze can make a hit-and-runner.”

  “What time did this happen? Do you know?”

  “We know exactly.”

  “What time?”

  “Two-thirty-five.”

  I squeezed on that and then I said, “At two-thirty-five I was visiting at 870 Park Avenue.”

  “You can prove that, I hope.”

  “I was visiting a lady at her apartment.”

  “I’m going to have to check that out right away. You and me.”

  “Just don’t forget to hang on to that Tommy Lyons.”

  We went back to the lobby and Parker gave instructions: “The body goes down to the ice-house and the husband will make the formal identification. Then I want him taken to the station house and kept for me. I also want Miss Madison, the cab driver, and the guy from the garage. All right, Pete, let’s go.”

  The squad car took us uptown and on the way I told him with whom and how I had spent the evening. At 870 Park, we went up unannounced after Parker flashed his potsy at the doorman. Upstairs, he rang the bell, and rang, and rang.

  Finally the peephole moved and a voice said, “Yes? What is it?”

  The voice was not Ingrid’s voice.

  “Police. Open up,” Parker said.

  “Police?”

  Parker flashed the badge again.

  “Just a minute,” the voice said.

  We waited. Three minutes.