Little Miss Murder

by Michael Avallone

  "Oh."

  I was making small talk. I took my time, getting up and stretching. All about us, the fans were beginning to step from their seats into the aisles, ready to troop homeward. On the field, field cops were forming picket lines, a necessary evil to keep the younger fans, the kids, from running riot on the orderly infield. The groundkeepers had moved out to begin their routine gardening that keeps all baseball diamonds in day-to-day playing shape. Women chattered gaily, their men made disparaging remarks about Manager Gil Hodges' strategy in letting Mets pitcher Seaver bat for himself in the bottom of the seventh when the score was tied 2-2 and a hit would have meant a run. Stuff like that. It's been going on since Abner Doubleday laid out the first crude diamond in Cooperstown in 1839, and I guess it's never going to change. I have no quarrel with it, either. All that was bothering me that five o' clock that hot afternoon was the over-due appearance of the contact man I'd come to Shea specifically to meet. Not that the day hadn't been a ball. It was good to take time off from the chores at the mouse auditorium to go out stepping with Melissa. But that quirk in me that has made me thrive on the fun and games and suspense of being a detective never does let me rest. I was on the qui vive, looking for action. For an answer to the puzzle of Why had the Chief called me in again on another of his headaches? I knew it didn't have anything to do with baseball.

  The answer was forthcoming, in a thoroughly unexpected way.

  I was stalling in the aisle, helping Melissa out of her seat, keeping a weather eye peeled, when I felt somebody brush against me. I turned, my spine taking on that added quiver when the wind is up. I got a surprise. I was staring into the mild blue eyes of a nun.

  She must have been sitting in the next row of box seats, out of my view, because I couldn't recall seeing her before.

  "Excuse me," she said, in that gentle, unhurried voice all nuns seem to have. They all seem to look like Ingrid Bergman whether they are lovely, ugly, or downright homely. You know—that scrubbed, makeup-less pale face that seems to spring from the high, white collar, serene and untroubled beneath those fantastic cowls, no matter what the Order. I smiled into the familiar facade of all-black habit and familiar crucifix of enormous size dangling down a bosom of appealing fullness. This was a very young, very beautiful nun. But a nun, all the same.

  "Sorry, Sister," I said. For once, I wasn't being flip.

  She nodded to me and smiled at Melissa, and even amidst the jostle and commotion of thousands of people all quitting their seats at almost the same time, she plied her calling. The Religion Business.

  "In that case," she said, "if you are truly penitent and wish to atone, accept these brochures and pamphlets from All Hallows Church." So saying, she immediately placed in my hands a packet of papers and booklets, made the sign of the cross, nodded again almost mischievously and started up the aisle. Soon, her occult-like figure was lost in the mob streaming upward. Melissa chuckled. A low chuckle.

  "Wonder if she rooted for the Mets."

  "Come on," I said, keeping my face blank. "I'll get you a cold Coke before we hit the highway home."

  "Mmmm. That would hit the spot," she agreed.

  I had hung on to the pile of literature the young nun had thrust on me. In my business, all things are never always what they seem, and you stay alive a lot longer by keeping that fact foremost in mind.

  Going up the runway with Melissa Mercer, it was perfectly natural for me to glance idly at the pamphlets and brochures. I suppose I knew all the time, somehow. How many times in your life do you bump into a nun? One armed to the teeth with business cards?

  The answer was right on top of the pile. There was a religious pamphlet on what All Hallows aimed for in the way of personal salvation, an envelope imprinted to contain whatever blessings, financial, you wanted to donate for the care and keeping of All Hallows Church, and a catalogue of the coming holidays that should be observed by all proper Catholics. As a back-sliding Catholic, I was familiar with all of that, but more to the point, across the masthead of the pamphlet, lightly typewritten but as plain as Cyrano's nose to the man who was looking for it, was the message I had been waiting for:

  Go to the Diamond Club upstairs. Now. Sit at the table under the portrait of Mel Ott. Order a Beefeater martini and a schpritzer. Nothing else.

  Felicia

  With bells going off quietly in my head and all my nerve ends tingling with alarm and anticipation, I walked Melissa Mercer up the runway of Shea Stadium.

  All of a sudden, the afternoon outing had turned into Old Home Week. And a very old flame was flickering brightly once again.

  Old Home Week for spies, espionage, and Lovers.

  Apart from everything else, something had obviously gone wrong. Radically and unexpectedly. According to the President and his phone call, I should have met the contact man, received the parcel and been on my merry way back to Manhattan so I could be in the office by six-thirty to get his call-back. If I stopped in the Diamond Club to order a couple of prescribed drinks, I'd never make it on time. It was after five o'clock already.

  The Mets had lost a ball game, all right.

  But it also seemed as if the President and his Security boys had lost a play of some kind, too. When the game is Top Secret and Espionage, you never can be sure of anything.

  There was nothing for me to do but obey the dictum printed on the religious pamphlet. It was easy enough to suggest to Melissa Mercer that we skip the Coke and try a hard drink instead. She went for the notion, hook, line, and sinker. We never socialized publicly that often, as it was. The time had always been out of joint.

  So we took the ground-floor elevator on the outside of the Stadium and rode up to the Diamond Club, where somehow, some way, I knew I was going to meet Felicia Carr again.

  Felicia Carr of U.S. Naval Intelligence.

  Even the baseball world is a small one, sometimes.

  And a ball park can hold a thousand spies.

  2

  Inside-the-Park Homicide

  The Diamond Club, situated somewhere on the upper levels of Shea Stadium—which had been built principally to house the new wunderkind of baseball, the New York Mets—was lush, plush, and serviceable. The decor was a cool, pleasant arrangement of reds, browns, and beiges, and were it not for the immediate vicinity of a playing field, you might have thought you were in any mid-town restaurant of excellent appointment. But the wall motif of sports and baseball heroes took care of that, too. Everybody from Babe Ruth to the latest local celebrity in Mets pinstripes adorned all the space that bordered the room. Excellent portraits and action photos looked down at you no matter where you sat in the big circular area, which fanned out into dining nooks and crannies of a more intimate nature. Melissa Mercer didn't say a word as I steered her past the maitre d' at the velvet-rope entranceway. It seemed my stubs from the sixty-sixth game served as passes for admittance. Something I had not been aware of. Obviously, you couldn't just walk into the Diamond Club willy-nilly. The President and/or his New York security set-up hadn't missed any bets.

  Mel Ott was easy to find, for an old New York Giant fan who had worshipped him in childhood with the adulation that should have been reserved for great scientists, humanitarians, and God. The big, handsome study of him, framed in sturdy brown wood, was set on the back wall of an alcove to the right of the main dining room. There was an empty table beneath it. I guided Melissa toward that, eyeing the picture of Mel Ott in action. The Mighty Mite. It was the old classic, reprinted-in-newspapers-and-sport-magazines-a-thousand-times of the clean-up man breaking from home plate, dropping his bat, eyes on the sky, following the flight of the ball, which he has just sent booming into the right field stands. It was and still is a pip of a baseball shot. Ranking with the great camera studies of Joe Di Maggio's vicious lash on a follow-through at home plate, Babe Ruth's cross-legged wind up of a home-run swing, Lou Gherig's power pose, and Ted Williams' perfectly synchronized connection with a fast ball. I knew it well, and as I pulled out a chair for Meliss
a, my mind was easily persuaded to take the trip down the Memory Lane of nearly thirty years ago. How does that line go? Gone is our Youth and the symbol thereof—

  "Nice," Melissa breathed. "About three cuts above Schrafft's and a hundred percent better than Nedick's."

  I had checked the room from force of habit. Looking for a tall, dark-haired woman with a figure of easy rhythm and a face that cried out for portraiture, too. But I didn't see Felicia Carr among the unfamiliar clientele and fans beginning to fill the big room. Nicely dressed waiters and attractive busboys and busgirls trod softly about the thickly carpeted room. There was a low hum of pleasant table talk and social capers going on all over the club. No drunks, no loudmouths, no characters. Melissa was studying a menu, her fine face relaxed and comfortable.

  A waiter materialized at the table. Dressed in a somber blue suit with starched shirt front and string tie. He was thin and bony-looking with a skin that fit his face like parchment. A wisp of moustache curled under his hook nose, and his eyes were sad with big pouches under them. He looked like a Spanish version of Edgar Allan Poe. A real Nevermore type.

  His eyes asked a question, and I folded my own menu.

  "We're just thirsty, friend. I'll have a martini—Beefeater, and the lady will have a schpritzer."

  Melissa's eyebrows arched in surprise, and her mouth dimpled in a smile. "I like that. I don't even get a choice?"

  The waiter frowned and his sad eyes showed more animation than was probably customary for them.

  "A schpr——" He shook his head. I grinned.

  "Your bartender will know what it is. Rhine wine and seltzer water. Any kind of Rhine wine."

  The waiter, looking more like Poe than ever, shrugged and moved off. I stared up at the picture of Ott and remembered a lot of days and nights when all of my happiness equaled what he did in Giant games that particular day. It's a crazy world, all right, and growing up has its penalties. Somehow, it had never seemed foolish to me. Not at all. It was a helluva lot better than admiring Dutch Schultz, Al Capone, or Leo Durocher. Nice guys do not finish last in the memory books.

  "Why do I want a schpritzer, Massa Ed?" Melissa asked with snappy heat. "I never heard of it, either."

  "Because you're working for me and it's orders. Okay?"

  She managed a soft salute and grinned. "I don't mind, but you didn't tell me when we left the office that we were in reality working on something."

  "Maybe yes, maybe no," I hedged. "In any case, I have to play something by ear. Do you mind?"

  "What do you think?" she asked softly. "Anything to do with that pretty nun who bumped into you?"

  "You," I said, still keeping my eyes facing front toward the entranceway of the Diamond Club, "stop being so clever and behave or I'll send you back to the office to type letters."

  "You do, and one of them will be my letter of resignation."

  "Say it isn't so, Joe," I laughed. In spite of the levity, I was bothered. The only Felicia I knew was the Felicia Carr of Washington, D.C., who wrote a column for the Washington Post, who was in reality an agent for Navy Intelligence, and was also the sweetheart who had in turn loved me and helped me find the President's bagman, who had disappeared last year and almost upset the thermonuclear balance. We had split and gone back to our own lives again, but somehow I'd known our paths would cross again. I'd never told Melissa Mercer about her, because one thing one great dame doesn't want to hear about is another great dame. Still, this had to be the same Felicia. Anybody else would have identified themselves more fully in the cryptic message sending me up here to the Diamond Club.

  I was really in the dark all the way, knowing only that somehow the Chief's plans for me at Shea had suddenly gone awry. It bothered me. The play had taken off in a new direction, and I wasn't sure what was next. But ordering the specific drinks had been the ticket, and something had to come after that. But all I could do was wait and try to forget about Mel Ott's picture. After all, I am a detective first. Anything else, after that, has to come second.

  The drinks arrived, and Poe's Latin double set them down with a flourish before once more disappearing. The Beefeater, amber and delicious, was strong. Melissa sipped her schpritzer and smiled in surprise.

  "Hey, this is good—"

  "Sure it is. There was a girl once named Fran Winsocki. Now the Fran Tulip of stage, screen, and small TV sets. She introduced them to me—and—oh, well. Skip it. You don't want to hear about her."

  "You," she sighed. "Next thing you'll be telling me about your one wild night with Kim Novak again. Honestly, Ed, you are a bug."

  I put my forefingers up to my forehead like antennae, and she laughed and I laughed, and while we were laughing we were interrupted. A tall, wavy-haired, manicured type who had "Manager" written all over him had suddenly loomed behind Melissa's chair. His smooth face was wreathed in a wide smile and he came around the chair, bowed and held out his hands. They were closed around a small white box, no bigger than a carton for a crystal ball maybe, and the box was all done up with pink ribbon and pom-poms.

  "Pardon me," he said in an easy, accustomed-as-I-am to-public-speaking voice. "May I introduce myself? Seymour Joy, manager of the Diamond Club. And may I say congratulations?"

  "Say anything you want," I said, again instantly on the alert. "But what's it all about, Alfie?"

  "Seymour," he chided me. "Mr.—ah——"

  "Noon. Ed Noon. This is Melissa Mercer."

  He bowed again, and his keen eyes swept over Melissa with undue appreciation, but he remembered why he had come and extended the small, gift carton in my direction once more. He was radiant with good will.

  "This is a small token of the Diamond Club's regard for its patrons. It turns out that you are the one-millionth customer to sit at this table. So you have won our Door Prize. Again, congratulations, and also your bill is on the management. Please be our guests and come again."

  Melissa smirked but hid it behind her schpritzer.

  I took the box, decided it wasn't heavy enough to be a time bomb, shook it and nothing was ticking. I stared up at Seymour Joy. Around us, everybody was too busy attacking their dinner and drinks to pay much attention to us. Seymour Joy waited patiently, his smile as fixed and constant as Hank Aaron's batting average.

  "Joy to the world, huh?" I said. "Thank you, Seymour. Shall I open it here and now?"

  "Please do," he suggested. That convinced me it was all right, so I worked the ribbon off the white carton, lifted the lid, and reached into the tissue-lined interior. Somehow I expected what I got. Melissa clapped her hands as I produced a round, official major-league baseball from the depths of the box. An honest-to-God baseball.

  I rotated it in my right hand, liking the compact feel of the thing. The red stitching, the white, shining horsehide, the Spalding stamp, all of that was surrounded by a veritable lineup of autographs and signatures. Seaver, Krane-pool, Charles, Shamsky, Jones, Clendennon, Cardwell, Weiss, Swoboda—I had my hands on what any red-blooded American boy would give his roller skates for—a big-league baseball autographed by the entire New York Mets roster.

  Seymour Joy beamed down at us.

  "A small token—but perhaps you have a son you could give it to?" He looked hopefully at Melissa.

  "Yeah," I snapped, "a black-and-white prodigy who loves baseball. Thank you, Seymour. I shall cherish it."

  He bowed again. "Bon appetite," he purred in atrocious French, and left us. Melissa watched him go, sighing, and turned back to me. Her eyes were puzzled.

  "Why were you so nasty to him, Ed? Wasn't it logical for him to think we were married?" She shook her head. "Don't understand you sometimes. You ought to practice what you preach. And love."

  "Sorry. My goof." I studied the baseball, sure now that I had received what I was sent up here for. Even if I didn't know what it was. I don't believe in coincidences in my business. I don't get tickets out of left field to a ball game, get bumped by a nun, and win a baseball all in one afternoon because I'm a lucky
guy. This had to be the parcel I was meant to receive. Time enough back at the office after the President's second call to determine what the baseball meant or what was in it. On the stenciled hide was the legend: the cushioned cork center. In the spy and counterspy trade, that could mean a multitude of things. All of them furtive, underhanded, and very undercover.

  I downed the rest of my Beefeater and tucked the baseball back into its carton, hanging on to the pink ribbon and pom-poms, too. You could never be sure about anything.

  "Finish your drink, Mel. Sorry but our party is over."

  She nodded. "I was wondering when you'd call a halt. This has been too good to be true." She sipped the rest of her schpritzer. "It's a nice drink. Buy me another one, sometime?"

  "You got a date." I stood up, holding the carton with my left hand, and cased the club once more. There was still no sign of Felicia Carr. The message had to be her. They have a dossier on me all the way back to my first security blanket, and Mel Ott is one of the things they know about me. Felicia had known about him, too. Aside from where all your scars are and who was your English teacher in Roosevelt High, they also can tell you the low mark you got on the Italian Regents in 1939. I'm telling you. The FBI, CIA, and Security checkouts on you once you work for any part of the Government can be frightening. Big Brother is not only watching you, he knows where you eat, what you eat, and what all of your hangups and hang-downs are. Only the President really knows how I fit into his scheme of things, but there's an IBM card on Ed Noon somewhere in Washington that would probably stretch from Shea Stadium in Queens to Los Angeles, California.

  We moved away from the Mel Ott table toward the main entrance, where a line of standees were being held at bay by a bright-faced woman in a tailored checked dress. At the tables, heads craned as Melissa swept by ahead of me. There isn't a black woman in show business who has what Mel has. I didn't bust my buttons, but the old feeling of pride and possession filled me. Eartha, Diahann, and Dionne could all take a back seat.

  Outside the velvet rope, by the elevators for a Down ride, I lit her cigarette for her. Her eyes thanked me, and she said nothing. I knew what she was thinking, though. There isn't a second outside the office when she isn't thinking, what's wrong with being Mrs. Noon? Sometimes I never could come up with a decent, sensible answer to that query. But I pushed the idea out of mind once more, thought about the boxed baseball I was holding, and pondered the enigma of Felicia Carr. She had signed the message. Why hadn't she shown up to make it official? I hoped nothing worse had happened to her than a change in plans.