Death on the Double

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Death on the Double Page 16

by Kane, Henry

“Beverly Crystal.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  Beverly Crystal was a prostitute. Prostitutes are people. There are gradations in people. Beverly Crystal was Grade A. I am not referring to her skill of performance. I would not know. I am constitutionally incapable of engaging in love by purchase. Beverly Crystal was a call girl. Her minimum price was one hundred dollars per engagement. She would not venture out for less, even if it meant shoplifting for a living, and that made her Grade A. She was a beautiful girl. She was probably bright. She was hip, wise, sophisticated. She had a veneer of culture, she had poise, she knew how to dress, and her customers were of the highest calibre. At a minimum of a hundred bucks a throw, her customers, naturally, figured to be. Beverly Crystal was a client of mine: a private detective does not screen his clients in matters of moral turpitude (or he would be out of business). The sex, color, creed, politics, religion, profession, or ethics of his clients are no concern of his; only his own ethics do, or should concern him.

  “So?” I said into the telephone.

  “I want to see you,” said Beverly Crystal.

  “For how much?”

  “Oh, now, you’re always talking money.”

  “Aren’t you?” I said.

  “Ha, ha. Funny fella. It’s a favor, Peter. Please.”

  “I have a client now, Miss Crystal.”

  “Oh, it’s with the Miss Crystal, is it? Fancy client?”

  “No more fancy than you.”

  “That’s fancy.”

  “Okay. Fancy.”

  “Look,” she said. “Please. I want to talk to you. You’ll be doing me a real favor. I’ve done favors for you, haven’t I?”

  “Like what?”

  “Entertained friends of yours from out of town. Recommended clients. Plenty of favors.”

  “Oh. I thought you meant personal.”

  “Personal, you can have it any time you ask, man. For you, it’s for free.”

  “Thanks. I pass.”

  “Look. I’m home. Will you come over?”

  “When?”

  “The sooner the better. As soon as you’re finished with your fancy client. Okay?”

  “Okay,” I said. I hung up. I lit a cigarette. I sighed and said to my client, “So?”

  “Where were we?” said Astrid Lund.

  “Nowhere. Just talking around.”

  She opened her bag and took a cigarette from a silver case. I made no move to light it for her. She lit it herself and blew smoke at my face. “You don’t approve of me,” she said. “Do you?”

  “Neither approve nor disapprove.”

  “You think I live too high, spend too much, burn the candle at too many goddamn ends, don’t you?”

  “Maybe I do, and if I do, it’s none of my business, is it; so why are you bugging me, Astrid?”

  “I hate the way you look at me.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Maybe I deserve it.” She shrugged. She sucked on her cigarette and blew smoke at my face again. “What do you expect? I’m an unhappy bitch. I live with that old lady like a paid companion—limited to an allowance.”

  “Limited?” I said. “Like at three thousand bucks a month—I’d like to be limited.”

  “Three thousand bucks a month—hell. People in my station of life find it hard to get along at three thousand dollars a week.”

  “Ah, come on.”

  “I was a beautiful young girl who married a very rich young man—only I didn’t know that he didn’t have a sou; that he lived with, and on, his sickeningly rich mother. He died, and he left me nothing, because he had nothing to leave. And I moved in with that old bitch, and I’ve lived with her since—like a glorified paid companion.”

  I stubbed out my cigarette. “She has a paid companion—her personal maid. She also has a cook, a butler, and a chauffeur. You’re her daughter-in-law, she has a great regard for you—she seems to love you dearly—and you’re far from a paid companion because you’re hardly ever home. So what’s the beef?”

  “She won’t die,” she said bitterly. “That’s the beef. She’s seventy-eight, if she’s a day—and she won’t die.”

  “She’s a sick woman,” I said. “She’s dying.”

  “How long can I wait?” She broke her cigarette in an ashtray. “Twenty years I’m waiting, like a vulture, like a scavenger. Growing old, getting old, I’m waiting, waiting. Two years ago the doctors told me she wouldn’t last six months. But she’s still around, stronger than I am, strong as a horse. She’s still around, isn’t she?” But she took her eyes from mine. She looked away, as though in shame.

  I said, “Why are you here, Astrid?”

  The cold grey eyes returned to mine. There was no shame in the eyes. There was fury. “Bored with my chitchat, aren’t you? Bored with my complaints, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “You don’t like me, do you?”

  “I don’t,” I said.

  “But you take my money.”

  “That’s business,” I said.

  “And you’ve attended my parties, haven’t you?”

  “Maybe I like your guests.”

  “You can go and drop dead.”

  “Is that all?” I said. I stood up and came around my desk. I went to the window and looked out. “You just want to get rid of some venom? Is that it?”

  “No, that’s not it.”

  “Well, come to the point, please. Or get the hell out of here.”

  That was the kind of treatment she liked. I turned to face her. She was smiling now, savagely.

  “You’re scum,” she said.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “But you’re efficient.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “Let’s get to the point.”

  She opened her bag again, and placed two hundred dollars on my desk. “Remember I was in Vegas during May and June?”

  “So?”

  “I went for a bundle.”

  “Naturally.”

  “But a big bundle. Tremendous.”

  “Oh?” I came back to my desk and sat down.

  “I was Mrs. Astrid Kalmar Lund. They took my markers. But then when I wanted to go home—they wouldn’t let me.”

  “How much?” I said.

  “A lot.”

  “How much?”

  “Two hundred thousand.”

  My lips formed in a whistle but no sound came because my breath was intake rather than outgo. “But you came home,” I said.

  “I called Mickey. He bailed me out.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t buy. Sorry. Not Mickey. Mickey can’t handle two hundred thousand.” Mickey was her sweetheart. Mickey was ten years younger than she. Mickey was Mickey Bokino, front man in one of the offices of Gotham Loan Association, (one of many throughout the city) located at 500 Fifth Avenue. Gotham Loan Association was in the business of check cashing, making small legitimate loans, and large illegitimate loans. The power behind the wicker of the Gotham Loan enterprises was Vincent (Vinnie) Veneto, a distinguished don of the Mafia from way back. But not Mickey. Mickey was no power. Mickey was an employee earning an extraordinary salary, but nonetheless a lackey; well-dressed, perfumed, pomaded, and silk-shirted, Mickey Bokino swaggered about with an air of bravado, but Mickey, actually, was a small-time hood affixed to a rather big-time job, a loan shark with stature, but his stature evolved from Vinnie Veneto, and to such as the quiet, polite, dangerous Vinnie Veneto the likes of the showy, boisterous Mickey Bokino compare as the parasitic louse to a full head of hair. Mickey Bokino was tall, dark, strong, handsome, and a junkie in full control of his habit (that is, he could afford the luxury). I suspected that dear Astrid Kalmar Lund was also a full-blown junkie but I could not state for certain because no one had ever told me and I had never asked.

  “Mickey helped to bail me out,” said Astrid Lund.

  “Like how?” I said.

  “He communicated with Veneto. Veneto said okay. Mickey flew out with the loot, I paid off, and
we came home together.”

  “For how much?” I said.

  “It’s costing me two thousand a month. I signed legitimate notes, of course, to Gotham Loan.”

  “So what’s your problem?” I said.

  “You’re a friend of Veneto’s,” she said.

  “Let’s be precise,” I said. “Acquaintance. I choose my friends.”

  “He thinks you’re a terrific guy.”

  “He’s entitled to his opinion.” I was beginning to get impatient. “Now what’s your problem? And what’s with the large stipend of two hundred dollars on my desk?”

  “I want an extension,” she said.

  “What do you mean by extension?” I said.

  “Extension of time. I started paying my interest—for want of a better word—on July first. I missed my payment on August first. And now I can’t make this payment either, the September payment. I want an extension of time.”

  “For how long?”

  “A month. Two months. Then I’ll return the entire principal.”

  “Honey, these babies are not as much interested in the principal as they are in the interest.”

  “If he gives me two months—I’ll return the principal with six month’s interest. Tell him that.”

  “Why me?” I said.

  “What do you mean?” she said.

  “You want a favor from Veneto—why don’t you have Mickey ask him? Why me?”

  “First, because I’ve heard you carry weight with him. And second, I prefer that he doesn’t know that there’s anything personal between Mickey and me.”

  “And when do you want me to do this?”

  “Today. Now. As quickly as possible. That two hundred bucks is your retaining fee. If you swing it, there’s three hundred more for you.”

  “When?”

  “Tonight. I want you to report to me at eleven o’clock at home.”

  “Which home?” I said. She lived with her mother-in-law in a penthouse at 700 Park Avenue, but she had a lavish four-room hideaway in a walkup without a doorman at 12 East 72nd to which no one else had a key but Mickey Bokino.

  Icily she said, “I have only one home. The apartment—that’s for laughs.”

  “But real yaks,” I said. “Belly laughs.”

  She stood up. “Eleven o’clock, then?”

  “Okay. But what about Mrs. Lund? I don’t expect you want to talk about this in front of her.”

  “She’ll be out. Theatre party. Big charity. She won’t be home until about eleven-thirty.” She drew out a new cigarette, snapped her bag shut, held the matches, and talked with the cigarette in her lips. “All right, you have your orders. I’ll see you tonight.”

  I saluted. “Yes ma’am, Your Highness.”

  She lit the cigarette, blew smoke at my face again, and left.

  Read more of Death of a Hooker

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  Copyright © 1957 by Henry Kane, Registration Renewed 1985

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  This is a work of fiction.

  Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.

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  eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-4137-7

 

 

 


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