Never Give a Millionaire an Even Break

by Kane, Henry

  “Don’t you know Mr. Chambers’ voice?”

  “No. We’re new people in the garage—been recently bought by my boss—and we ain’t really acquainted yet with the customers’ voices.”

  “You just heard Mr. Chambers talk?”

  “I did.”

  “Would you say it was the same voice on the phone?”

  “I couldn’t say one way or the other, sir.”

  “May I?” I interrupted.

  “What?” Parker said.

  “I’d like him to hear Mr. Lyons’ voice.”

  “Would you say something, Mr. Lyons, please?” Parker said.

  “Go to hell,” Tommy Lyons said.

  “Would you say that was the voice on the phone, Murray?”

  “I could not say one way or the other.”

  “Now just hold everything here!” Lyons strode up to Parker’s desk. “What’s your name, mister?”

  Parker took his time lighting his cigar. “Lieutenant Louis Parker.”

  “Would you kindly tell me why I’m being held here, Lieutenant?”

  “You are not being held, Mr. Lyons.”

  “Than I am free to go?”

  “No.”

  “But you just said—”

  “You are not being held. Your wife has been murdered—”

  “Murdered? Hit and run—”

  “Your wife has been murdered and we are taking preliminary statements. After a few questions and answers, you will be free to go. Thus, technically, you are not being held. Nobody, thus far, is being held. Does that satisfy you, Mr. Lyons?”

  “It does not.”

  Parker blew cigar smoke. “If you have a complaint to register …”

  Lyons pulled up straight to his full height. “My wife, Monique Lyons, from whom I am legally separated, was killed by a hit-and-run car owned by this man Chambers. That’s all I know. I have made the formal identification at the morgue, and I have nothing to add to this proceeding. I demand that you release me at once.”

  “The hell with you and your demands, and that’s for the record,” Parker said. “Please step aside. You are interfering with police business.”

  “Why, you sniveling—”

  Parker glanced at a cop. The cop hooked a finger within the back of Tommy’s collar and pulled. Tommy retreated from the desk. The cop took his finger out. “Now you stay right here, Buster, and speak when you’re spoken to.”

  “Thank you, Kelsey,” Parker said. Kelsey grinned and resumed his station. “And now, Murray, if you will forgive the interruption …”

  “Yes sir, Lieutenant?”

  “You received this call from somebody who said he was Mr. Chambers …”

  “Yeah. I got it right here in the log-book.” He opened the book to the page. “The call come at one minute after two. Instructions, deliver the car at once to residence and leave it in front even if you have to double-park.”

  “You did that Murray?”

  Murray closed the log-book. “Made the delivery at once.”

  “Just how is that done, Murray?”

  “Well, we take the car out of the garage and attach behind it a three-wheel motor-bike. Then we drive car to destination requested by customer. Sometimes the customer is waiting, sometimes we leave the car like the customer says.”

  “And when it’s like the customer says?”

  “We turn off the ignition but leave the key in. Then we un-attach the motor-bike and drive back to the garage.”

  “And this you did tonight with the Chambers’ car?”

  “Yes sir, this I did tonight.”

  “Left the car as instructed?”

  “Left it as instructed.”

  “And what time was that?”

  “Well, like I said the call come at one minute after two. He lives near, on Central Park South. I would say at five after two the car was sitting there for him.”

  “Thank you, Murray.”

  “Thank you, Lieutenant.”

  A cop took Murray out but the stenographer remained.

  “Mr. Chambers,” Parker said and got rid of his old cigar and took out a new one. “Mr. Chambers, you wish to make a statement?”

  “I damn well do.”

  “This is the time, Mr. Chambers.”

  I walked. I walked near to Tommy Lyons, and then away from him. I said, walking, “Monique Lyons was murdered and somebody tried to put me in the middle. I have a somebody that fits for both. He’s a wise bastard and we won’t be able to prove it, I’m sure, but I’d like my views to be on the record.”

  “You’ve got the floor, Mr. Chambers.” Parker played it flat and casual but I knew Parker and I knew he was dying of curiosity.

  “Monique Lyons was married to Tommy Lyons and Tommy Lyons wanted out from the marriage but Monique was making it tough and Tommy was losing patience.”

  “Shut up,” said Tommy Lyons.

  “You shut up,” said Louis Parker.

  “Tommy Lyons is in love with a girl named Arlene Anthony, Arlene Anthony is a girl friend of mine. Tommy is a guy filthy with money and Tommy is accustomed to getting his way.”

  “Shut up, bastard,” Tommy said.

  “Mr. Lyons,” Parker admonished.

  “These are private matters,” Tommy said.

  “I’m making them public,” I said. “I’m liable to get killed one of these days, just like Monique got killed, and I think I’m protecting myself by making these private matters public.”

  “Please go on,” said Parker and the stenographer thumped the machine.

  “Tommy Lyons ordered me to stop seeing Arlene Anthony. I told Tommy Lyons to go and frig himself, and I also flattened him when he tried to use his muscles on me, and Tommy is a spoiled bastard, and Tommy was aching to get it evened up. He wanted to marry Arlene Anthony, and he could not marry Arlene Anthony while he was still married to Monique Lyons, and Monique was procrastinating by raising the ante into the millions, so Tommy shot his stone at two birds. I’m giving you motive all around the mulberry bush, Lieutenant.”

  “He’s a son of a bitch of a liar,” said Tommy Lyons.

  “I’m telling the truth and he knows it,” I said.

  “Please go on,” said Parker and lit his cigar.

  Tommy said, “There’s been a party at my home since ten o’clock this evening and I haven’t left once. There are sixty guests and I have sixty alibi witnesses. This shitty little crumb shooting off his mouth is a dirty lying—”

  “Mr. Lyons has a battalion of hooligans in his employ,” I said. “Sure he has sixty alibis. But any one of his experts could have pulled off this trick. If it weren’t that I was able to prove my whereabouts at two-thirty-five tonight, Mr. Adonis could have done a ten-strike—wife finished and dead, and me right square smack in the middle of a vehicular homicide. Now if this dirty lousy bastard wants to deny—”

  “Now look, you mongrel.” He stuck out his finger and came at me. “You smell bad, airing dirty linen.” A sharp fingernail dug at the bridge of my nose. “You’re a stinking little mutt—”

  I hauled off and let him have it. I hit him squash in the eye and he went down and I went after him but the cops pulled me off. I think they did let me get my one shot in, just for the hell of it, for his attitude toward the lieutenant, but they could not justify a brawl on the floor, so they pulled me off and held him back.

  On his feet he said, “Oh brother are you going to get it …”

  “Do you wish to make a statement?” said Parker.

  “I wish to get the hell out of here,” said Tommy Lyons.

  “You are free to go,” said Parker, smiling around his cigar.

  Twenty-One

  MY OWN sworn statement finally completing the file, they released me to Ingrid. They also released my car to me, the experts being done with it. I drove through the night slowly, suppressing fury. I was still in the middle: there is no more slender alibi than the uncorroborated statement of a lady friend. I was certain that Parker believed me
but Parker had his superiors and this was an open case of murder and for the files I was Number One and I could not blame them. There would be conference after conference within the Department and further conferences and I would be Number One and if they could not pin it on me then certainly some classical son of a bitch would recommend that at least my license be lifted and like that somebody’s conscience would be assuaged but I would be without bread and butter. It was now my job to fight my way clear. “Stanhope,” I said.

  “What?” said Ingrid.

  “We’re going to Earl Stanhope.”

  First Stanhope and then Sadie and then total confession to Ingrid Holly. I had to sort out the friends from the enemies and firm up treaties with any allies.

  We rang the Stanhope bell at 24 East 36th and we had to wait a considerable time until he answered. When he opened the door his eyes popped like corks.

  “Ingrid …? Mr. Chambers …?”

  He took us to the living room.

  He was barefoot in bathrobe and his hair was tousled.

  There was no time for the delicate approach.

  I said, “Monique Lyons was killed tonight.”

  “What?” he said. “What?”

  “Struck down by a car. Looks like murder.”

  His eyes tightened, his mouth quivered, his face went white, and he pitched forward in a dead faint. The guy was out, but good. I rubbed his wrists and slapped his face: nothing. Ingrid found brandy and I pulled back his lips and poured from the bottle but most of it was regurgitated. It took us five minutes to bring him to. It took another five minutes of brandy gulping—from a glass—before he was fit for communication.

  “Christ Almighty,” he said.

  I said, “I’m sorry I had to break it cold like that.”

  “What happened? How did it happen?”

  I told him.

  Then I said, “It figures for Tommy, but there’s an outside chance on Barney Croyden though why in hell he should want to involve me …?”

  “Croyden, no. Why Croyden?”

  “You ought to know, Mr. Stanhope.”

  “I ought to know?”

  I helped myself to some of his brandy. “Mr. Stanhope,” I said, “you and Monique were blackmailing him.”

  “That’s a lie!”

  “Then you were blackmailing Mrs. Croyden.”

  “A lie!”

  Ingrid said, “What’s this, what’s this?”

  “Mr. Stanhope, once upon a time you were a cop at Scotland Yard.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I’m psychic. My point is—you ought to know that blackmailers can get killed. If it’s Croyden that got her; you figure to be next.”

  “Look! Please! We were not engaged in blackmail.”

  “You hit him for fifty thousand dollars, you and Monique.”

  “How in hell do you know this, sir?”

  “I’m going to tell you because I’m the man in the middle in this mess, and I’m going to pull all the stops to get myself out of the middle. And then, pal, you’re going to tell me.”

  Now Ingrid brought brandy for all of us.

  “You were hired by Mr. Holly for a purpose, a specific—”

  Ingrid said, “I would prefer you do not dwell on this.”

  “You were paid twenty thousand dollars by the former Mrs. Holly—for letting her in on the deal. That makes you either a fine gentleman, or a lousy fink, or a guy picking up the loot wherever he can find it.”

  “Please,” Ingrid said. “He told me without asking for anything. I gave him the money—I insisted he take it—because I was grateful.”

  “How do you know?” Stanhope said.

  “Holly also knows,” I said.

  Some of his brandy spilled. He got rid of his glass. He was perspiring. “Holly? How?”

  “Holly’s no dope. He hired you, and then he hired a guy to watch you.”

  “You?”

  “No, another guy. That guy put taps on all sorts of wires; yours, your girl friend Monique’s, Ingrid’s. So Holly knows, and he also knows of the blackmail.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Holly told me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because his guy died of a heart attack, and Holly retained me to continue in his place. I’m resigning, as of tonight. So I’m talking. Now you talk.”

  “No blackmail,” he said.

  “You’re a liar,” I said.

  “I swear.”

  “Holly’s man said it was blackmail.”

  “Holly’s man was wrong.”

  “Well, Barney Croyden thinks it’s blackmail.”

  “He doesn’t.”

  “Now look! He came to my office and talked with me.”

  “About me?”

  “No. About blackmail in general. He wanted advice on the subject.”

  “Maybe it was about somebody else.”

  “Do you really think so, Mr. Stanhope?”

  Stanhope went back to his brandy.

  I said, “Will you admit to the blackmail, pal?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Did you take fifty thousand dollars from him?”

  “Yes.”

  “I think you’d better tell me about that, Mr. Stanhope.”

  Ingrid said, “Please, Earl.”

  Stanhope finished his brandy and got more. “It is not complicated, not at all. Monique was jousting with Tommy Lyons as to the price of a divorce. It might take a long time, and we wanted to be sure we wouldn’t be starved out, that we would have enough money to hold out.”

  “You were getting three hundred a week from Holly, still getting it.”

  “That could end whenever he wished.”

  “You had twenty thousand from Ingrid.”

  “Monique liked to live well. It might be a long pull. Millions were involved.”

  “So?”

  “Monique and I went to the Croydens and told them about her marriage situation. I asked Mr. Croyden for a loan—fifty thousand dollars. That would give us a backlog; we would be in a firm position; we would have time; we would have strength at the conference table.”

  “And Croyden gave you the money?”

  “Yes.”

  I thought I had a trump card. “Without a note?”

  “With a note. Signed by both Monique and myself. Three years to pay.”

  “You sure of that, Mr. Stanhope?”

  “Ask Croyden. I give you permission to ask him. He has our note for fifty thousand dollars, payable within three years. She was no risk. There would be real money coming to her from Mr. Lyons. He wanted the divorce.”

  “Mr. Stanhope,” I said, “Do you have knowledge of a past relationship between Monique Lyons and Mrs. Stanhope; her name is Nora, isn’t it?”

  “Christ, how much do you know?”

  “All.”

  A crafty look came on to his face. “I see what you mean,” he said. He sipped brandy. He nodded sagely. “Sure,” he said, his British accent suddenly noticeable. “You believe, and you believe that the Croydens believe, that this was a forced loan; that, because of this knowledge you refer to, they could not refuse us the money we requested, and that, note or no note, we would never return the money.”

  “I believe,” I said. “I believe the Croydens believed. And so did Holly’s private eye believe.”

  “All wrong,” Stanhope said.

  Ingrid said, “What relationship?”

  “We’ll discuss that later,” I said. To Stanhope I said, “Well?”

  “Wrong, all wrong.” But the crafty expression remained on his face and he smiled. “I can understand, however, all of those beliefs, now that you have rendered it in focus—but you are wrong, all of you. We came to rich people, friends of Monique, for a loan; a large sum, true, but not large to them. We did not think of it as a request that could not be refused …”

  “Well, I’d advise you to straighten that out with Mr. Croyden.”

  “I will. I certainly will. I thank yo
u sincerely, Mr. Chambers.”

  Twenty-Two

  RIDING THROUGH the night to 870 Park, I delivered the facts to Ingrid Strindberg Holly: all of the facts. I admit to being slightly disconcerted by the warmth of her thigh against my thigh, but I delivered the facts to the best of my ability. And then, upstairs, I called Sadie Flanagan. It was late but she was in the business and we do not have bankers’ office hours in our business.

  “Sadie,” I said, “take off the taps, now. You’ve earned your fee, the deal is closed, but I want the tapes.”

  “When?”

  “Now.”

  “Where?”

  “Ingrid Strindberg’s apartment. You’ve heard of Ingrid Strindberg?”

  “See you soon,” she said and hung up.

  We stuck to brandy, not too much, because we wanted to stay alert. I tried to kiss her once or twice but a promise is a promise and I did not try too hard. Soon enough Sadie Flanagan came—with a male assistant routed out of bed in the middle of the night and carrying the recording stuff. We played the tapes and the tapes stank. They gave us the words, they gave us the information, but the tonality was nowhere.

  “The equipment stinks,” I said.

  “Not so much it stinks,” Sadie said, “as it has to be bugged in all sorts of screwy places. If it was of the essence that we get clear and gorgeous tones, that too could be worked out—but that was not of the essence, was it?”

  “No,” I admitted.

  “You were interested in information?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Not in bell-like tones?”

  “But these are scratches.”

  “The scratches contain the information clear enough, don’t they?”

  “Okay, okay. On with the tapes.”

  First was Stanhope: all innocuous.

  Then was Ingrid: all innocuous.

  Then was Monique: mostly I was interested in that two o’clock call. Sadie had timing-devices attached and we knew when the calls were made, incoming or outgoing. Monique’s, also, were innocuous, until the two o’clock call. We listened to that, again and again:

  Hello?

  Monique?

  No, Jane Madison.

  Let me talk to Monique.

  She’s sleeping.

  Wake her.

  But …

  It’s important.