Death on the Double

by Kane, Henry

  “All gone,” Falkner said.

  I sat up all the way. I looked from Hart to Falkner. “I don’t get it,” I said. “What’s with Homicide? I thought this guy had a heart attack.”

  “That’s what he had,” Falkner said.

  “Then what’s with Homicide?”

  “Somebody ran for Dr. Waterman here, but somebody else got panicky and called police. I was in the car, and I was nearby, and I got it on the two-way, and I happen to be acquainted with Hart’s partner—so I told them I’d come up here for a look-see. How’re you feeling?”

  “Feel just wonderful.” I shook my head. Every shake ached.

  Falkner came near and helped me up. He smiled, said easily, “I’ve explained me. Now you explain you.”

  “Pardon?” I said.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Having an abominable headache.”

  “Want a drink?”

  “Guess.”

  He brought me a large hooker and I disposed of it.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “What are you doing here, Peter?”

  “How’s my good friend Louis Parker?”

  “He’s fine. He’s on vacation.”

  “Give him my love when he gets back.”

  “I’ll do that. Now what are you doing here, Peter?”

  “Had a date with Mr. Hart.”

  “About what?”

  “About—personal.”

  “How’d you acquire the headache?”

  “How’s my good friend Louis Parker?”

  Now his voice held more grit than a tight wet bathing suit on a sandy beach. “Who slugged you, Peter? And why?”

  “Sorry, Falkner. I’d rather not discuss that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’d like to attend to it myself. And I’m going to.” I gestured toward Hart. “Are you going to do an autopsy, Sergeant?”

  “What for?” Dr. Waterman said. He was small, fat and bald, with a bushy grey mustache.

  “Oh, Falkner said. “Dr. Waterman—Peter Chambers. Mr. Chambers is a private detective.”

  “How do you do?” Dr. Waterman said. “I mean about an autopsy—why? Hart was a cardiac case, a patient of mine. He had an attack this very day. I treated him, told him to go home. He didn’t go home, continued his business. Then he had this second attack, and it was fatal. Happens often. Too often. Perfect cardiac pattern.”

  “Any objection,” I said, “to an autopsy?”

  “I have no objection.” Dr. Waterman stroked his mustache. “Of course not. But his family may have. They may not like the idea of his being cut up.”

  “There’s no family to give any consent at this moment.”

  “How do you know?” Falkner said.

  “No family except his wife. And his wife is away, and no one knows exactly where she’s gone.”

  Falkner frowned. “How do you know?”

  “Hart told me.”

  “Why an autopsy?” Falkner said. “I mean, it didn’t even enter my mind. But if there’s something you know, some basis—”

  “Is there anything further you wish of me, Sergeant?” Dr. Waterman said.

  “No, thanks, Doctor. Your office is here in the building, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, sir. On the twelfth floor.”

  “Would you please arrange to have a statement typed up? Mr. Hart’s medical history, as far as you know it, your prior treatment, and the events of today. Please sign that, and I’ll be down to pick it up later. Thank you very much, Doctor.”

  Waterman bowed and left. When he opened the door I could see part of the office staff grouped around the door. They looked scared. Behind them were a couple of bluecoats. Then the door slammed and Falkner said, “Now what’s with an autopsy, Peter?”

  “The guy was having income tax trouble.”

  “So?”

  “It was, I heard, big trouble. Sometimes, when trouble gets too big, you want to pull way from it, kind of go to sleep. Sometimes lots of sleeping pills provide a long and comfortable sleep.”

  “You think he might have committed suicide?” Falkner’s mouth was tight.

  “I’m not thinking anything. I’m offering ideas.”

  “There are no sleeping pills around here. There was a vial on his person but that was stuff for his heart. Dr. Waterman told us. We’ll check the vial anyway. But sleeping pills—there’s just no other pill-bottle in the joint.”

  “You don’t die the minute you take the stuff.”

  “That’s cryptic.”

  “No, I mean, you have time to chuck the bottle out of the window, if you have a mind to.”

  “Why should he?”

  “I don’t know. But it could happen. And then you wouldn’t have to have a pill-bottle left up here.”

  He took long strides to the door, opened it, called, “Miss Rollins! Would you come in here, please?”

  She came in and my headache began to dissipate. “Miss Rollins,” Falkner said, “you were the last one to see Mr. Hart alive?”

  “Yes, sir. That’s right.”

  “Just when was that?”

  Her red mouth pursed. “Oh, I’d say about three, perhaps a bit later.”

  “That was after the first heart attack?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Now, what happened then, please?”

  “Well, after Dr. Waterman had treated him, Mr. Hart called me in for dictation.”

  “Then?”

  “When he was through dictating, he told me to type the stuff up, told me he was going to rest here in the office, and that he didn’t want to be disturbed with phone calls or callers. I asked him why he didn’t go home, as the doctor had ordered. He told me to mind my business, and that was that. I’ve since learned that the reason he remained here—that is, the reason he presumably remained here—was because he had a four o’clock appointment with Mr. Chambers.”

  “Now, when I spoke with you before, you mentioned his having had an argument with Mr. Tamville. That was before the first heart attack.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “It was a violent argument?”

  “Yes.”

  “How do you know?”

  “We could hear them shouting through the closed door.”

  “Do you know what it was about?”

  “No, sir.”

  Falkner sat on a corner of the desk and swung a thin leg. “Do you think, Miss Rollins, that there’s a possibility that he may have committed suicide?”

  “What?”

  “Suicide,” he said mildly.

  “Absolutely not.”

  He came off the desk. “What makes you so positive, Miss Rollins?”

  “Well, Dr. Waterman said—”

  “Any other reason?”

  “Yes.”

  “Would you tell me, please?”

  “Certainly, sir.” She drew a deep breath. One deep breath from Miss Jessica Rollins was more provocative than a Turkish bellyroll in a Broadway musical. “First,” she said, “although Mr. Hart was having some business troubles, he was not in the least depressed. Second, I heard him telling Mr. Tamville, before the big argument, that he had retained Mr. Chambers for some certain work and had paid him a fee in advance. And third, the last letter he dictated to me was to a steamship line inquiring about reservations for a cruise next month.”

  “Very good, Miss Rollins.” With one eyebrow raised expressively he looked toward me, then he turned back to her. “Three points, two of them excellent. Your first point is what is known in the law as a conclusion, which in lay language means an opinion, and opinions can be dismissed. But the second is strong. Man doesn’t hire a man, pay him in advance, and then, a few hours later, kill himself—unless, something stark occurred in between, of course. But your third point is really strong. He wouldn’t write about a cruise for next month, and then, almost immediately afterward, commit suicide. You do have that letter on your book?”

  “I have it typed too. It was ready for
his signature, along with his other letters—but I wasn’t going to disturb him until he called me.”

  “Thank you very much, Miss Rollins. You’ve been of help.”

  She left and I watched every lovely wriggle of her departure.

  “What now, Mr. Peeper?” Faulkner said.

  “A question of integrity.”

  He pleated his brows. “What? What’s that?”

  “You heard the gal.”

  “Heard a good deal. What in particular?”

  “Heard he’d paid me a fee in advance.”

  “So?”

  “So … do I keep the fee? Guy’s dead. What service can I render him?”

  “Interesting point.” He grinned.

  I tapped a fingernail against my teeth. “I’m going to let you in on something, Sergeant. The guy’s dead—so I’m not really breaching a confidence. He hired me to find evidence on his wife, divorce evidence. But I don’t think that’s what he really hired me for.”

  “You’re talking in circles, Peter. How’s your head?”

  “Never mind about my head.”

  “What do you think he did hire you for?”

  “I mentioned before that his wife was away, and no one knows exactly where she went to. I meant that literally. She took a powder on him. It’s been my hunch that he wanted me to find her, and he covered it with the divorce bit.”

  “So?”

  “So … I want to keep that fee.”

  “So … who’s stopping you?”

  “It’s not a who, it’s a what.”

  His forehead wrinkled. “Pardon?”

  “My conscience, that’s what’s stopping me. And I want to square it with my conscience, because I want to keep that fee. So … the service I can render is twofold. One, I’ll try to find that wife anyway. And two, kind of I’d like to make sure that the guy died like this Dr. Waterman says he died.”

  Falkner glanced at the liquor cabinet, hesitated a moment, but only a moment. Then he poured himself a drink, downed it neat, and exhaled audibly. “You really want that autopsy thing,” he said. “Don’t you?”

  “It’ll help with my conscience.”

  “I wish you had a better reason. Got a reason that I can give to a superior if a superior cracks down on me for wasting the taxpayer’s money?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well … let’s hear.”

  “Suppose I make mention of the fact that there was a very nasty character loitering in the corridor just outside that rear-wall door? Two very nasty characters. One of whom created hematoma and concussion in yours truly.”

  “Please do. Please make mention.”

  “Not yet, Mr. Falkner.”

  “Are you going to make mention?”

  “I am, Mr. Falkner.”

  “When?”

  “After the occurrence of one of two events.”

  “Namely.”

  “The return of hematoma and concussion upon the son of a bitch who inflicted same upon me.”

  “And the other event?”

  “The cracking down of a superior upon a most superior inferior.”

  “Meaning?”

  “You, my lovely Sergeant. Anybody cracks down on you—I shoot off my face like it’s a target for a beebee gun. So kindly do this goddamned autopsy if only to present to the world, including your superior, the startling fact that there lurks within the bosom of at least one private peeper, the piquant pangs of a smattering of conscience. Bye, now.”

  And I left him with the somewhat forgotten subject of our conversation: the very dead Mr. Jonathan Hart.

  5

  Downstairs, I called the office of Johnson and Finch. The girl informed me that they were both out but that Mr. Finch was expected to return. The girl was not a girl but an answering service. I said I would like to leave a message. She said yessir what is the message? I said the name is Robby Tamville, the business is urgent, and that I would drop in to see Mr. Finch within the next two hours. She said thank you, she would transmit the message. I hung up and gloated like a juvenile delinquent who had just smitten a cop who was studying to be a school teacher. Small Johnson was the ladies’ man—he was usually on the town, evenings. But big Finch worked late, if only to erase the office evidence of their misadventures.

  I grabbed a couple of quick sandwiches at a Hamburger Hell, and took a cab to George Benson’s place which turned out to be a hideaway of svelte bachelordom. Mr. Benson was not a bachelor (he said) but a widower which is generally the same thing only older. The apartment had soft lights, soft divans, soft-toned oil paintings, and there were more objects of art strewn around the place than marijuana butts at the end of a rock-and-roll cellar party. Mr. Benson and I did the amenities, and I accepted a drink which I didn’t drink, and then we got down to business.

  “If you’re good enough for Mr. Tamville,” George Benson said, “you’re good enough for me.”

  “Thank you,” I said, “on behalf of Mr. Tamville. That’s a nice compliment. For him.”

  He stuck a cigarette in a long holder, and I lit it for him. “Please don’t misunderstand,” he said. “It’s just that I’ve never before employed a private detective.”

  “Last fella said that to me, he’s dead.”

  “Dead? I beg your pardon? Did you say dead?”

  “I said dead but I only said it because I’m in a lousy mood. I’m in a bloody business, and I mean that bloody in the British sense. Skip it.”

  He leaned back in his soft divan and he ate his cigarette through the long holder. There are scientists who say that that will postpone the cancer and there are scientists who say that cigarettes have nothing to do with cancer, but whatever the hell the scientists say, it gave me the opportunity to more closely observe Mr. George Benson. I had figured him for fifty, and he was at least that. He had brown wavy hair that looked like he fixed it but the grey came through anyway. The frightened eyes were large, brown, liquid and somewhat feminine, and they contrasted strangely with the flattened nose. The nose was flat because it had been broken; the bump in the middle gave the soft face a peculiarly hard look.

  “Mr. Chambers,” he said, “I’m interested in retaining you.”

  “I gather as much. For what, Mr. Benson?”

  “A couple of things.”

  “If they’re somewhat within the law, Mr. Benson, I’m interested in your interest.”

  He chuckled, and the chuckle was also lady-like. I was beginning to wonder about Mr. Benson. He had mentioned, during the amenities, that he was a widower. Could have been the age-old dodge of throwing sand in the eyes. It was none of my business if good old Benson had a propensity for the masculine, unless that was what he wanted to retain me for. It wasn’t. It was two other things.

  “First,” he said, “despite Mr. Tamville’s confidence in you, I checked. Checked very carefully. As you will shortly learn, I check most things very carefully.”

  “How’d I come out?”

  “First rate. You’re exactly the man I want.”

  “Exactly the man you want, eh? How, exactly, do you mean that?”

  “Exactly the man I want—for the jobs I want done.”

  “What do you want done, Mr. Benson?”

  “Question first, please.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Are you invited to Mr. Tamville’s party tomorrow night? I have the feeling you are.”

  “I am.”

  “Good.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it will fit in with the jobs I want done.”

  “Just what the hell do you want done, Mr. Benson?”

  He dinched his cigarette. He moved near to me. I could smell him. He had on lady-like perfume. “I assume,” he said, “that you will be present at Mr. Tamville’s party as a matter of protection for the stone.”

  “Stone?”

  “Opal.”

  “Yah,” I said. “Watch The Goddamn Jools.”

  “I’m going to want you as my protection when I take it away.”<
br />
  I got up and went away from his lady-like smell. “You’re going to take it away?” I said. “How?”

  “I’m going to buy it.”

  “But there’s this other guy, isn’t there? This Blattner.”

  “I shall make an offer to Mr. Tamville which he will not be able to resist. And I shall close the deal right there.”

  “But suppose the other guy tops your offer?”

  “He cannot. Wait.” He went into another room and he came back flapping a check. “Please look at this, Mr. Chambers.”

  I looked. It was a check drawn to the order of Robby Tamville. It was for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. And it was certified.

  I whistled.

  Mr. Benson appreciated the whistle.

  He smiled, nodded. “I want you,” he said, “as bodyguard.”

  “For the check?”

  “No. You will note the check is made payable to Mr. Tamville. Unless Mr. Tamville endorses it, the check is worthless, despite the fact that it is certified. My bank has been put upon notice to check very carefully, to go so far as to get a personally discussed verification of the endorsement. This is very frequently done in matters of a large sum, and a quarter of a million is a large sum.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” I said. “It is a sum out of my ken.”

  “All the certification means—is that the money is on deposit. It is for the purpose of informing the payee—in this case, Mr. Tamville—that one is not presenting a check that, possibly, is worthless.”

  “I understand.”

  “So, you understand, that no bodyguard is necessary when I carry the check to him. But when I turn that check over—when I close the deal—I want possession of the object, and at that moment, I shall require a protective element. You, if you please, shall be that element. You will accompany me back to town, and remain with me until the proper insurance papers are drawn. Are you prepared to take on that responsibility?”

  “Yes. Now can I ask a few questions?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Why can’t you leave the object with him, and have it delivered to you?”

  “Simply because too often there can be a slip. I’m turning over a quarter of a million, practically the equivalent of cash. I want what I’m buying.”