Death on the Double

by Kane, Henry

  “Yeah, Mac?” he said. “What can I do for you?”

  “I’m looking for Jack Burke,” I said.

  “I’m Jack Burke.” He stood up from the piano-stool, a very fashionable type: white hair, slender figure, custom-made shirt, two-hundred-dollar suit with puffed shoulders. His brown eyes were soft as a plea for a loan, but his tone was taut, hard, mean and precise. ‘What is it, young man? What do you want here?”

  “I—I thought a rehearsal was going on?”

  ‘“It’s off. Temporarily.” He smiled. Sadly. “You got any money?”

  “Pardon?” I said.

  “That’s why the rehearsal is off, fella. Money. Loot. Gelt. Gold. We’ve run smack up against it. Dug ourselves a hole and jumped in. You got any loot, fella? You an investor-type, or are you an actor?”

  “I’m not an actor.”

  “You in the market, maybe, to angel a hunk of show?”

  “No.”

  “Then what the hell do you want here?”

  “A little information, if you please.”

  “Information?” The narrow face creased as he squinted. “Information? Who’re you?”

  “Chambers,” I said. “My name is Peter Chambers.”

  “So?”

  “I’m a private detective.”

  “Oh, brother.” He groaned. “One of them jokers! That’s all I need. That puts the final touch. Don’t tell me you’re trying to collect money for somebody?”

  “Only information.”

  “Look. Do me a favor, huh? Go away. I’ve got troubles. I’ve also got a headache. Get the hell out of here.”

  “I’m inquiring about a young lady,” I said. “Elsa Corey.”

  “And who the hell are you to inquire?”

  “I’m nobody.”

  “Who let you in here?”

  “I let myself in.”

  “Well, let yourself out, will you, fella? Go away.”

  “It’s just a little information, Mr. Burke. About this young lady—”

  “I’ve got no time now.”

  “It won’t take long, Mr. Burke.”

  “Look …” he began. Then his voice softened. “Look, fella, you’re in business, and I can understand a guy who’s in business. You’ve got things to do in your business, like ask questions—but I got things to do in my own business. Right now, I’m a little mixed up. Full right up to here with my own troubles. I don’t want to answer questions, I don’t want to talk to strangers, all I want, right now, is to be left alone.” He sighed. “Some other time. Okay? Some other time. Please go away now, fella.”

  “But it’s kind of important, Mr. Burke.”

  “Important to you, maybe. Not important to me. Some other time, huh, fella?”

  “What other time?”

  “Look,” he said. “See me in the evening, huh? I’ve got nothing against you, a guy’s got to work at his business. But you’re bothering me now, fella. See me in the evening, huh? Okay?”

  “Where, in the evening?” “Look, I got a brother owns a nightclub. The Flame. Real nice little shithouse. I’m there every night, I relax there. Drop in there, huh? Okay? Spend a little money. Buy me a drink. Least, like that, I’d have some reason to talk to you. Okay, fella? Now do me a little favor, huh? Powder. Get the hell out of here. You’re bothering me.”

  Private detective. Classic tradition. They just don’t let you play it nice. Play it nice, they think you’re a fraud. I stopped playing it nice. I played it like they’re accustomed to having it played. I reached a hand out for his expensive lapel, shook him up a little, and drew him close. “Look, prick,” I said. “You’ve got your troubles, and I’ve got mine. I can’t help you with yours, but you may be able to help me with mine. Now, all I’m asking is for five, ten minutes …”

  “Willie!” he screamed, pulling out of my grasp. “Willie!”

  A muscle-bound monster came ambling out of the wings. The guy was six-foot-four and practically as wide as he was long. He had a face that was half moron, half pig, and part of the pig dangled in a couple of ham-like hands. But I was not overly worried about Willie. I had seen the likes of Willie before and I had tangled with the likes of Willie before, and the likes of Willie make no move until ordered. I threw him a fast glance and I turned back to my producer-man.

  “Now let’s get straight, Mr. Burke,” I said. “It’s important to me …”

  But I had underestimated Willie. Willie was either not quite the dray-horse he looked or Willie had got a sign without obviously reacting to it. Willie suddenly let loose and I absorbed a hit in the head like a stroke of paralysis.

  Lights blazed and whirled.

  And then there was no more light.

  Then there was blackness.

  Whirling, spinning, black, black, Blackness …

  4

  When I opened my eyes I was sitting on concrete, sprawled like a stringless puppet. I was outside, in the alley, backed against the stage door. I pushed up to my feet and shook loose from the remnants of blackness. I tried to open the heavy stage door but of course the heavy stage door was locked. I beat the meat of a fist against it but all I got back for that was pain in the meat of the fist. I backed off and stumbled out of the alley. I had a bill to collect with a pig named Willie, and a larger bill with his boss, but it seems you cannot spirit yourself through a heavy stage door no matter how urgent the impetus nor how miraculous you consider the effects of the banging of the meat end of a closed fist. So I hied off to a nearby beanery, communed with coffee and cigarettes, and let my head come down to size. Soon enough, thoughts began to simmer through. I let them joggle until they hardened into shape, and the shape was Loretta Burke, and it was a very nice shape. Loretta Burke was the wife of Bruce Burke and Loretta Burke inhabited a lush little cave of her own on Central Park South near the Hampshire House. I paid for my coffee, bought fresh cigarettes, and made tracks for the lair of Loretta Burke, a lady with a beautiful head on her shoulders, and a good head—good enough to be manager-in-charge and brain-behind a going enterprise titled The Flame.

  When I rang, she opened the door without preliminary inquiry and she was cordial, if you can call a cool, contained indifference cordial. “Well,” she said, “Mr. Chambers. Hello, and to what do I owe the pleasure? Do come in.”

  I did come in.

  Loretta Burke. A plush blonde, thirty years younger, at least, than her late departed husband. Loretta Burke, a tall page-boy blonde, a deep one, more intricate than protocol at Monaco. Loretta Burke, with shining blonde hair and shining green eyes and a figure with enough flare to bring you up to a full stop and salute. Loretta Burke, in white silk lounging pajamas, and white high-heeled shoes, and a white tight belt around her middle. Brucie-boy used to keep her around like a pet, but pets have been known to slip their leashes.

  “Always nice to see you,” she said. “Always nice.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “Nice to see you,” she said, “despite the fact that you’re the son of a bitch that was responsible for closing up my place of business once.”

  “That was work, Mrs. Burke. I was hired on a job.”

  “I know that, which is why I don’t hold it against you.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “When a man’s hired,” she said, “he’s hired. It’s nothing personal.”

  “I wish Bruce would have thought of it that way.”

  “Didn’t he?”

  “Bruce took it personally. Bruce shouldn’t have.”

  “We all react differently to different situations. Yes,” she said, “Bruce took it personally, and you two had real hate boiling between you.” “Correction, Loretta. He may have had hate. I had nothing. I did a job which I was hired to do, period.”

  “Sure,” she said, “when a man’s hired, he’s hired.” Her green eyes shone with a peculiar sheen and there was a pale tightness around the nostrils of her wonderfully small nose. Loretta Burke was playing it cool, but Loretta Burke was as taut as the ski
n of a tom-tom. “May I offer,” she said, “a drink?”

  “You may, and it shall be gratefully accepted.”

  “Real de rigueur we are today, aren’t we?”

  “But real,” I said.

  But the drink was momentarily postponed.

  She stood in front of me, breathing deeply, and I enjoyed watching her breathe. “I forgot to ask,” she said, “to what I owe the pleasure.”

  “Pleasure?”

  “What brings you acalling, Mr. Chambers? Something bothering you?”

  “Matter of fact, there is something bothering me.”

  “Like what?” “Like a thing that, right now, is sticking up out of my head. A bile, we used to call it when I was a kid.” “A bile?” “A lump.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Skip it,” I said.

  “Cryptic today, aren’t we?”

  “Yep,” I said. “Cryptic and de rigueur. This is my day.”

  “You know,” she said. “In a way, you’re cute. I always thought you were cute.” And she looked at me with hatred in her shining green eyes.

  “Thank you,” I said. “I love you too. And I do love you, Mrs. Burke.”

  She regarded me for a moment, then turned abruptly and went to a liquor cabinet. She poured Scotch in a two-ounce crystal shot-glass, and she poured water into a tall crystal tumbler. She knew what my drink was. She knew a good deal about my appetites, did Loretta Burke. There was very little that Loretta Burke did not know. Loretta had been around. Loretta knew all the answers. Sometimes, Loretta Burke knew the answers before you asked the questions.

  “Here you are,” she said, “Mr. Chambers. Drink hearty. Don’t choke.” She handed me both glasses, and then poured for herself. She was drinking B and B.

  “Thank you,” I said, and when she looked back at me again, the little glass was empty and the big glass was chasing down what had been emptied from the little glass.

  “Not your usual self today,” she said, “are you, Mr. Chambers?”

  “Pardon?” I said.

  “Gulping your drinks. My, my. Pour yourself a re-fill. I hope you don’t mind if I sip mine.”

  “I don’t mind what you do.” I mixed Scotch with the water in the tumbler.

  “Highball, this trip?” she said. “Changeable, aren’t you? Or is it just natural spitefulness.” “Spitefulness, Mrs. Burke. Like as if I said … that I think … for a very recent widow … you’re bearing up real strong.”

  She had trouble pulling the glass away from her teeth, but she held control of her voice. “I didn’t know,” she said, “that you knew.” “Let’s do a reverse on that, sweetie. I didn’t know that you knew. I just threw it in.”

  “Real nice of you.” “Nobody can figure you from the way you act.” I shrugged. “But after all, you are Loretta Burke. You don’t go by rules.”

  “That’s enough of that, Mr. Private Richard, or whatever the hell you’re calling yourself these days.” She set her glass down. “All right. Bruce is dead and it seems that we both know it. Any comment?”

  “Only,” I said, “I think, for so recently a bereaved, you’re wearing your bereavement very well.”

  “Is that a crack?”

  “It’s whatever you like.”

  “Look, tough-boy,” she said. “You’re a hard bastard, but let’s say I’m a hard little bastard myself. Maybe I’ve got to be hard—to get along with me.”

  “Maybe,” I said.

  “I don’t believe in mourning. Period. When you’re dead, you’re dead. It’s over, and it’s final. I don’t wear my heart on my sleeve.”

  “No? Where do you wear it?”

  “Inside, that’s where. Where it belongs. Let me tell you something.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Burke?”

  ‘I’m a gal with a lousy reputation. Okay. I don’t care. Maybe I deserve it. Okay. I still don’t care. Now let’s get to Bruce Burke.”

  “It took us a little time, eh?”

  “Bruce Burke was old enough to be my father.” “You said it, Mrs. Burke, not I.”

  “And maybe I thought of him like that, father, rather than husband—”

  “And acted like a daughter, rather than a wife …?”

  “That’s none of your business.”

  “Agreed.”

  “But maybe in my own peculiar way,” she said, “I loved him.”

  “Maybe you did. In your own peculiar way.”

  She went to a couch, slid down into it, touched the seat beside her. “Sit down,” she said.

  I obliged.

  “Why did you come here?” she said. “I thought perhaps you didn’t know about Bruce. I thought, in my own peculiar way, I’d inform you.”

  “I was informed, Mr. Chambers, by the police.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I repeat, you take it very well.”

  “Let’s skip that,” she said. “Let’s forget about how I take it. Let’s forget about mourning. I’ve said my piece on that. But I’ve another piece to say.” The strain about her nostrils was drawn to a greenish-white and there was more growl now in her voice than purr. “Let’s put it this way,” she said. “I was very, very fond of Bruce Burke. Somebody killed him. Whoever killed him has made himself an enemy. Me. Whoever killed him, sooner or later, is going to face up to me …” Her voice trailed out. She stood up from the couch and paced about the room. “Any comment on that, Mr. Chambers?”

  “No comment, Mrs. Burke.”

  “Well, I have a comment.”

  “Be my guest, Mrs. Burke.”

  “You and Bruce had a large hate going. Was that hate large enough for you to have wanted to kill him?”

  “No.”

  “You’d better be pretty sure about that.”

  “You’re frightening me to death, Mrs. Burke.”

  “I mean to, pal.”

  “Just for the record,” I said, “I had no hate going for Brucie-boy. Maybe Brucie-boy had it for me. He didn’t have the fine perspective you have. He took things personally. He didn’t realize that if it wasn’t I who was hired for that job, somebody else would have been. Anyway, I didn’t hate your Bruce, Mrs. Burke, and that’s that, for the record.”

  “For your sake, I hope you’re telling me the truth.”

  “Real riled up, aren’t you, Mrs. Burke? Wouldn’t be, maybe, what my good friend Lieutenant Parker would call ‘the large coverup?’ Now, would it?”

  “The hell with you, Mr. Chambers, and the hell with your friends. I’m interested in who murdered my husband, and I’m going to find out who murdered him. And when I do, nobody’s going to be able to help him, not your good friend Lieutenant Parker, not anybody. And now if you please …”

  I stood up. I sighed. “I dunno,” I said. “This started off as such a beautiful day. There I was, standing around, worrying about business—”

  “Bad?”

  “Awful.”

  “Then perhaps you ought to get out of here and see if you can’t stimulate a little.”

  “Hint, Mrs. Burke?”

  “I have things to do.”

  “May I ask one question before I leave?”

  “Sure.”

  “Happen to know a little lady by name Elsa Corey?”

  “Never heard of her.”

  “Thanks. Bye now. See you around.”

  “You bet you will.”

  5

  Downstairs, I called the office. “Miranda,” I said, “put the chick on.”

  “Which chick?”

  “Elsa Corey. Connect me with her.”

  “She’s gone,” Miranda said.

  “Gone?” I said.

  “Gone,” Miranda said.

  I sat there in silence. Then I said, “When?”

  “She left right after you did.”

  “Did she say where to?”

  “Didn’t say a thing.”

  “No word at all?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Thanks, Miranda.”

  “Bye, boss.�
�

  I hung up and I remained sitting in the phone booth and debated—Corey or Parker—which one first? I had promised the Lieutenant, so Parker was first. I got out, flagged a cab, went to Headquarters, and I was jogging up the steps, when I saw him coming out in a hurry.

  “Hi, Lieutenant,” I called.

  “Well, the private eye,” he said, coming near. “Or is it the public enemy? Coming to give yourself up?”

  Parker was jocular but Parker looked worried. One never likes to see a friend look worried, but, in the circumstances, one liked it even less. We went down the steps together.

  “How’s it shaping?” I said.

  “That was the murder gun, all right.”

  “The one out of my pocket?”

  “Yeah. No question about it.”

  “Any angles?”

  “No angles,” he said, “but I’m working it slow, because of your involvement, to tell you the truth. You got anything?”

  “Got nothing, Lieutenant. How’s the general picture?”

  We stopped at the foot of the stairs.

  “General picture’s like this,” he said. “Bruce Burke, deceased. Worth a couple of million. We opened his will. Splits his estate. One half goes to a brother, Jack. The other half to his wife, Loretta. Plus she gets the nightclub.”

  “You check them?”

  “Sure, I checked them good. They both can use dough. You know Jack Burke?”

  “I’ve heard about him.” “A guy that puts on shows, a producer. Got one going now in rehearsal, The Lady Whirls.”

  “So?”

  “The thing got tied up in a money trap. He’s been scouting the town for dough. And the wife, that Loretta, you know her. You closed up that booby-trap once.”

  “Yeah.”

  “The way she spends, that doll always needs dough.”

  “What’s the point, Lieutenant?”

  “Point?” he said. “Who’s trying to make a point? I’m giving you the picture, the general picture. These are the only two that come into Bruce’s dough. Neither one’s got any kind of a real alibi for the time that Bruce was killed, which, according to the M.E., was approximately about the time I found you there. So, we’ve got three suspects, kind of. Two of them have money motives, one’s got a hate bit going.”