Death on the Double

by Kane, Henry

  It must have been a short night.

  DEATH TWO:

  BEAUTIFUL DAY

  1

  TIME, as a parade-loving philosopher once declared, marches.

  Time marched! Time marched, double-time! Time flew!

  Indian Summer passed on to golden autumn which passed into gleaming winter which opened into glorious spring—and in all that time—all the way back since the Tamville affair—your ever-loving correspondent had not earned a single solitary dime.

  Happens.

  Happens in all businesses.

  It happened in my business. It is the reason for the wisdom of the laying away of income for the rainy day, but who among us, truly is wise? And my rainy day had been longer and more languishing than the fourth honeymoon of a retired Don Juan. Rainy day? Strictly a figure of speech. It was, as a matter of fact, a beautiful day—crisp as a new wedding gown, clear as a swindler’s eye, and dry as a lush on the wagon—but for me, of course, it was sad, and it had nothing to do with the weather, which had been consistently pleasant: it had to do with the fact that I was a businessman. When business is bad, the businessman is sad, and this businessman was on the very edge of the abyss of abject melancholy. There just had not been a client since Tamville—yet the expenditures remained in status quo and the bills clicked in with conveyer-belt exactitude. It was a beautiful day as I stood by the window looking out at a vast blue sky faintly besmirched by smog. Slants of sun sparkled in soot and a sprightly wind whipped up the joyous filth of the city. The air was balmy, made balmier by the noxious carbon monoxide of thousands of automobile exhausts, and the pretty people pranced the sidewalks, hurrying each to his own special slaughter, tinged-wet with perspiration and clothes flecked with the subtle ingrain of city dust. It was a great big beautiful day in the great big beautiful city …

  A rasp brought me back to the contemplation of my own troubles. The rasp was the buzz of the squawk-box on my desk. I raced for it and flipped the key.

  “Yes?” I said.

  “A lady to see you,” my secretary said. Normally, my secretary’s voice sounded like gravel being grated for sand, but when business is bad for the employer, the mood is reflected in the employee, and the gravel being grated for sand now had sepulchral overtones. “Lady to see you,” she said like a dirge.

  “Send her in,” I said as brightly as I could manage.

  “But don’t you want to know what it’s about?”

  “Frankly, I don’t care what it’s about.”

  “But maybe she wants to sell you something.”

  “Good enough,” I said. “Miranda, just between you and me, I’m hungry for human companionship. Can you understand that? I’m lonely.”

  “You’re the boss,” she said as though it were a crime. “I’ll send her right in.”

  I sat back in the office chair, ruffled down my feathers, and tried to look like a detective.

  The door opened. And closed.

  The lady stood there.

  The lady added beauty to the beautiful day.

  She was small, smooth and svelte, but twitchy as a puppy with fleas. She had black shoe-button eyes and brown wavy hair and a red bunched-up trembling mouth and she was fetchingly attired in an ensemble of black and tan. She wore a tan suit molded to an attractively hippy figure, black shoes, black nylons, black blouse and black gloves. She did not say a word. She stood there in front of me, her red mouth trembling and her hands fumbling at her black patent-leather purse.

  So I said a word.

  Said a few words, all glowingly fresh and original.

  “Beautiful day,” I said. “Isn’t it.”

  “Not for you,” she said. She sounded frightened. “Not for long, anyway …”

  There you have it. All in the classic tradition. The private detective. The pretty lady. The implied threat. The one missing piece to the pattern was the lethal weapon, and the lady quickly supplied that. The fumbling hands produced a pearl-handled pistol, but she held it like a society matron in evening attire would hold a very dead, very slimy, very stinking fish. I scraped out of the chair and came around the desk and marched, with courage, albeit with a slight heave of trepidation, unto my assassination.

  “Stand back,” she said, her red mouth quivering. “Stand back, I tell you.”

  “Lady,” I said, “the way you’re holding the thing, you can hurt yourself.”

  “I know what I’m doing.” The quavering tone crept up a note or two and she was trembling as though she were cold. “Keep away!” she said. “Keep away from me!”

  “You’re shaking,” I offered, “like you’re practicing to be a cooch dancer. Simmer down, little lady. That thing’s actually liable to go off.” I kept moving toward her.

  “Keep away! Keep away!” Her tone finally achieved a screech.

  I apologize—but this too is in the tradition.

  I belted her.

  I realize it is disgraceful to admit the propulsion of a lumped fist in the direction of a female mandible, but the lady was in possession of a rather dangerous item. Should the item have detonated, it might have injured her. It might have killed her. It might, even, have killed me. Let us say, however, that the punch (defensive and prophylactic) was, in all truth, a little punch for a little lady, and all it did was sit her down on her round little backside, dazed but conscious. I picked up the gun, picked up the lady, placed her in a chair, pointed the gun, and waited.

  In good time, I got reaction.

  “Oh,” she said.

  “What’s it all about, little lady?”

  “Oh,” she said.

  “So I’ve heard,” I said. “Twice. Now what’s it all about?”

  She was silent.

  “Do you know me?” I said. “Ever met me before? Got a grudge or something?”

  “No.”

  “Well,” I said and I couldn’t help smiling, “now we’re getting somewhere. What’s your name”

  “Elsa. Elsa Corey.”

  “And what’s this business with a gun?”

  She began to cry. Little yelps were sobs.

  “What the hell’s going on?” I said.

  She kept crying.

  I waited until she stopped.

  “What do you do?” I said.

  “Do?”

  “What do you do for a living?”

  “I … I’m an actress.”

  “Working?”

  “Yes … I’m working.” She settled down a bit. She crossed nice legs.

  “Okay,” I said. “You’re working. Where are you working?”

  “I’m rehearsing.”

  “That’s work?”

  “Yes, work.”

  “Okay. Come on. Talk it up. Let’s have it. All in one lump.” “I … I’m rehearsing in The Lady Whirls. It’s a musical. I … I have the second lead.”

  “The Lady Whirls?” I said. “I never heard of it.”

  “It’s produced by Mr. Burke. Mr. Jack Burke.”

  “Where’d you work before that?”

  “I didn’t,” she said. “It’s my first job. I answered a call, I auditioned and Mr. Burke hired me. I’m a dancer and a singer, and an actress. I trained for it.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “13 East Thirty-ninth Street. 2 B.” Suddenly her eyes moved to the gun and she started shaking again. “Please … please don’t point that thing at me.”

  “It’s your thing, remember?” I dropped it into my pocket. “All right,” I said, “we’ve got the preliminaries over with. We’re finished with the small talk. I hope you’re contained enough now to talk sense. Are you?”

  “I hope …”

  “Okay. What’s the jiggle all about?”

  “Jiggle?” Tiredly, I passed a hand over my brow. “Look,” I said, “it’s a beautiful day. I’m standing at the window looking out on the damned beautiful day because I’ve got nothing else to do. So a little lady drops in, wriggling around a roscoe, and the roscoe is blinking its eye at me. The little l
ady doesn’t know me, never met me before, and has no grudge against me. So, if you please—what the hell is this all about?”

  “I … I … I …”

  “Very good. Very coherent. Let’s do it incoherent this time.”

  “I … I came here … to kill you.”

  “Kill me? But you said you didn’t know me, you didn’t—”

  “I was sent.”

  “By whom?”

  “Bruce Burke.”

  “Bruce Burke?”

  “Mr. Burke’s brother. My Mr. Burke. Jack Burke’s brother. He’s—”

  “I know all about Bruce Burke. I never met the brother, your producer-guy, but Brucie-boy I know. Too well. So he sent you, huh?”

  “Yes.”

  “He give you the gun?”

  “Yes.”

  “When and where?”

  “At … at his apartment. He called me up and asked me to come over. We had a few drinks. Then he gave me the gun and told me what to do.”

  “You mean you just go around shooting people just because somebody asks you to?”

  “No, no …”

  “Then why?” “He … he scared me into it. I … I come from a small town in Oregon. My mother, she’s alone, a widow, she’s done everything in the world for me. He said he’d inform her about … about Jack Burke and me … he’d tell her … he’d tell everyone … there’d be an awful scandal … my mother just wouldn’t have lived through it, just wouldn’t have lived through it …”

  “You mean,” I said, “you and this Jack Burke …?”

  She didn’t answer. She looked away. The tears were running again. “I … I …” Fingers at her face smeared her mascara. “I wouldn’t have gone through with it, I know it, I couldn’t have. Please believe me. I’m sorry, I’m dreadfully sorry …” And then she contracted into an inarticulate bundle of hysterics.

  She was either overcome or she was one hell of an actress.

  “You left him there?” I said. “At his apartment?”

  She nodded.

  “Okay,” I said and I went to the door. “Stick around, baby. Papa’ll straighten both of us out. I’ll be back soon.”

  2

  Bruce Burke. A crumb right out of the bread box. A millionaire sharpshooter who amused himself with a nightclub he owned called The Flame. I had put the light out on The Flame—about a year ago—hooked Brucie-boy for watering his stock, but Brucie-boy was back in business now, and there was supposed to be a real vendetta cooking between us, only, as far as I was concerned, I hadn’t even remembered the guy was alive—until now. Bruce Burke, a guy with no family except one brother and one wife. I had never met the brother, this Jack Burke, but I had met the wife, Mrs. Bruce Burke, the lovely Loretta, I had met her more than once.

  Bruce Burke, a crumb whom I had forgotten until now, but now, as I urged my cab driver for more speed in his futile battle against traffic, the guy was stuck in my craw like a twisted fish-bone. Now, I had a dame sobbing herself soggy in my office, a pearl-handled heater lumped in my pocket, and a jumble of pertinent questions I wanted to propound to Mr. Bruce Burke.

  Beautiful day, all right, but for me it was beginning to shape up cloudy.

  Finally I was deposited at a Park Avenue address. I paid my driver, hurried in, stuck my finger on Brace’s downstairs button, and got no answer. So I pushed another button, and somebody ticked back. Somebody was going to be annoyed, but that made two of us. I had pushed 16 A, but I was going to 12 C, which was Bruce Burke’s bivouac, twelve rooms just for Brucie-boy—his wife had her own apartment. I went up in a self-service elevator, got out at 12, went to C, knocked on a gold knocker, got no answer, knocked again, got no answer again, tried the knob, and the door wasn’t locked. That gave me a little bump beneath the ribs, but I disregarded it. I walked in, and I didn’t go far. Brucie-boy was napping, face down, on an ornate couch in the drawing room. I went to him, tapped him, and when he didn’t respond, I turned him over.

  Brucie-boy’s napping days were over.

  He was stiff as a Senator’s dickey, two bullet holes in his face, and his rigid leer was like a spiteful grin. Suddenly the bump beneath my ribs spread to a thumping tingle throughout my body. You can feel it sometimes. You know that you belong out of there and you belong out of there, fast. I did a bee-line for the door and yanked it open.

  I was face to face with Detective-lieutenant Louis Parker, Homicide.

  “Well,” Louis said. “The fabulous shamus. Fancy, as they say, meeting you.”

  Louis Parker was short, dark, brusk, intelligent and an old and good friend.

  “Hi,” I said, “Lieutenant. What brings you?”

  “A jingle on the phone. What they call—anonymous.”

  “I see,” I said. “Please to come in.”

  “Well, thankya, son.” Parker strolled in, glanced at the now turned-up Bruce, said, mildly, without touching him: “And what have we got here, pray?”

  “A corpse.”

  “Corpse, is it?”

  “A body that used to belong to Bruce Burke. Plus.”

  “Plus what, sonny?”

  “Plus, damn it, something that’s as old hat as—an old hat.”

  “Like what, sonny?”

  “Like, I think, a little frame-job.”

  “Frame-job?”

  “With me in the middle.” “I’d admire for you to break that up a little, Petie. Like kinda spread it out for me.” “I had a feeling on this from the beginning.” I sighed from way down deep. “This one’s really in the classic tradition.” I dug in for the pistol in my pocket and handed it over. “Have a gander, dear Lieutenant.” “I am gandering a gun,” he said. He handled it gingerly, holding it by the muzzle. “Pearl-handled .38, I would say. Okay, what’s the scoop?”

  “Scoop’s like this,” I said. “I’ve got a vague notion that when you break that revolver, you’re going to find two shells discharged. I’ve got a vague notion, also, that ballistics will show that the two bullets in this bird came from the artillery you’re holding. Also, it so happens that I always have nitrate impregnations in my right palm, because I take target practice frequently, as everybody who knows me knows, and—”

  “Just a minute.” There was an edge to Parker’s voice now. He still paid no attention to the remains of Bruce Burke.

  “Yes, Lieutenant?”

  “Just hold everything, eh, sonny?”

  “Yes, Lieutenant.”

  He took a handkerchief from his pocket, used it to cover the pistol, broke it, moved the handkerchief and peered into the revolving barrel. “Pretty good notions you got,” he said. “Two hunks of lead missing.”

  “Classic tradition.” I sighed.

  “What the hell’s classic,” he growled, “with tradition?”

  “Figure of speech,” I said. “Total nonsense. Forget it.”

  “But what I got here,” he said, snapping the gun shut, “that ain’t nonsense. Or is it?”

  “It ain’t,” I said. “And you’re going to have my fingerprints on that pearl-handled butt which is a damned good base for prints. And you’re going to have my fingerprints on the doorknob there, and I’ve got a hunch that they’ll be the only ones there, because my hunch is that knob was wiped clean before I came. And me and this Bruce Burke supposed to have a real bitch blazing between us.”

  Parker was kind. “I do hope,” he said, “you got a good story for me, kiddo.” The edge was out of his voice. “We’ve been friends a long time.” I was still musing. “And that little dame was wearing gloves, nice black gloves that went so well with her ensemble. I bet the only prints on that gun, are my prints …”

  “I hope it’s a real good story, kiddo.”

  “It’s a real bastard of a humdinger, Lieutenant. Truly a lulu. Lend an ear …”

  I briefed him on recent events, and he listened intently, glancing occasionally in the direction of Bruce Burke (as yet untouched by official hand). When I was finished I said, “Dig what I mean by classic trad
ition?”

  “I dig,” he said. Louis Parker said it commiseratingly. Louis Parker was an old friend, and a dear one, but I knew Louis Parker, and he was a cop who was a cop first and a friend afterward. “I dig,” he said. “And you got trouble. Classic tradition trouble, but that don’t make no difference. It’s trouble. Okay. I take it over from here on in. I suppose you want to blow out of here now?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “You’ll stay available? Be where I want you when I need you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “This gun stays with me.”

  “Of course.”

  “I’m a cop, kid. Remember.”

  “I know, Louie.”

  “Personalities can’t enter in cop business.”

  “I know, Louie.”

  “I’m going to do a real check on this bit.”

  “Fine, Louie.”

  “Where’ll you be, kid?”

  “Around,” I said. “But I’ll come down to see you.”

  “When?”

  “As soon as you’re through with the first check on this. How soon would you say?”

  “An hour, maybe.”

  “Okay. I’ll see you downtown in an hour. I’ll see what I can pick up for you in the meantime.”

  “Good enough, kiddo. Get out of here.”

  3

  The Lady Whirls was rehearsing at the Ascot on Forty-eighth off Broadway. I stopped at the counter of The Turf for a couple of small steak sandwiches and a beer and then I hoofed it for the Ascot. Up the alley, the heavy stage door was unencumbered by attendant which meant there was no actual rehearsal in progress. I pushed through and I was in the usual vast hollow recess that is an empty theatre. One light was garish over the large bare stage. There was one person under that light, seated at a piano, working over a tune. He was a thoughtful-looking chap with a narrow face. His graceful hands dropped from the keyboard as I came up to him.