by Brad Latham
Raff looked, then glanced away, disinterested. “Oh, that’s just Stephanie, Muffy’s maid and general assistant. Look, if you don’t mind,” he apologized, “for just a moment, there are these dreary people I absolutely have to pay some feigned interest to—”
“That’s all right,” Lockwood answered, “there are a few people here I’d like to see.”
Raff nodded, made a slight, mocking bow, and headed toward a doddering quintet of seventy-year-olds. Stephanie being nearest, Lockwood made his way to her. She was still standing in the same spot, seemingly oblivious to everyone around her. Everyone but him.
“Excuse me,” he said. “If I may, I’d like to speak with you for a few minutes. My name is Bill Lockwood. I represent the company that insured Miss Dearborn’s jewels.”
“I know,” she responded, her eyes never leaving him. No warmth there, just stone. “Mr. Jacoby told me.” She stopped for a moment, then added, “I thought you were a friend of Mr. Spencer.”
“I’d like to ask you a few questions if I may, Miss—”
“Meilleux. Stephanie Meilleux.”
“Miss Meilleux, where were you when the jewels were stolen?”
“With Miss Dearborn. First, we were with the band for the rehearsal. Afterward, we went shopping: Bendel’s, Saks’, some of the smaller shops.” Her voice was uninflected, cold, her expression grave.
“So you saw nothing that made you suspicious?”
“No.”
“Anything before that? You know, people snooping around, what have you?”
“I know nothing. Nothing at all.” It was as if a switch had been flicked in her, cutting off all humanity.
“You’re a suspect, you know,” he told her, studying her, watching for a reaction.
The gray of her eyes hinted of thunderstorms, cyclones, cataclysmic acts of nature. Otherwise, she was stolid, imperturbable. “That I cannot help.”
“I see. Well, it’s late, and I have a few other people to meet.” There seemed to be no guilt about her, no fear for herself, and yet… there was something… “Good night.”
Still she did not blink. “Good night,” she said, her unwavering gaze implacable.
Lockwood turned, and made his way to Cracks Henderson. The pianist was over by the hors d’oeuvres, a drink in one hand, the other dipping down into the food, shooting up to his mouth, and then back down again to gather up another few morsels. It was done mechanically, without relish, as if his body was automatically caring for itself, while his mind was elsewhere. His mind was with his eyes, probably. Cracks, too, appeared to be fixated, but in his case, it was Muffy Dearborn who had his rapt attention. There seemed to be a hunger in his gaze as he watched her.
“Mr. Henderson, I’m Mr. Lockwood, investigating the theft of Miss Dearborn’s jewels.”
Cracks’ head snapped to, eyes wide, mouth dropping.
When he said nothing, Lockwood continued. “It’s in connection with the insurance claim.”
“Oh?” Cracks’ pale eyes had gone opaque. There was a slight tremble to his head that could have been nerves, or could have been something else.
“I understand that Muffy’s diamonds disappeared sometime during the period when she was rehearsing with you and the time she spent shopping.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“You wouldn’t know?”
“That’s not my bag. I don’t think about stuff like that.”
“What do you think about?”
“Music.”
“That’s all?”
“You got it.”
“I’d say that wasn’t all.”
An hors d’oeuvre paused on its way to Cracks’ mouth. “What?”
“Every time I’ve looked at you, you seemed to be displaying an unusually healthy interest in Miss Dearborn.”
Cracks flushed, and his face contorted. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, angrily.
“Where did you go after rehearsal?”
“Which rehearsal?”
“The opening night rehearsal.”
“There were three opening night rehearsals.”
“I don’t follow you.”
“Okay, Mr. Insurance Guy, let me explain to you. First, the band and I rehearsed for two hours. Then Muffy and the band and I rehearsed for an hour. Then the band and I rehearsed for almost three hours.”
“A lot of rehearsal.”
“They needed it. Tired old men. Dogs. And Muffy paid for it.”
“According to my information, that would give you a pretty good alibi.”
Cracks was back to popping hors d’oeuvres again, fighting a losing battle to keep his eyes from zeroing in on Muffy Dearborn. He didn’t answer.
“Bands take breaks, though. Do you remember where you went on yours?”
Cracks seemed to speak to him through a haze, as if responding from another time and place. “Maybe. I don’t know. No. I can’t remember.”
Lockwood studied him for a moment, and then shrugged. He’d try another time, perhaps. “Okay. I’ll see you again.”
Cracks didn’t bother to reply, perhaps never even heard what he’d said. He was back to where he’d been when Lockwood had walked up, whiskey in hand, tidbits in mouth, eyes drinking in every last bit of the woman he played piano for.
Lockwood had no trouble locating Jabber-Jabber. The press agent was in front of Muffy, behind her, to the side of her, excitedly directing a photographer, flashbulbs popping as Jacoby arranged one photo grouping after another, guiding Muffy into one composition, then leading her on into the next. Lockwood loomed up over Jacoby. “I’d like to talk to you.”
Jacoby was perspiring, nerve ends quivering, dark patches of fatigue forming under his eyes. “To me? You wanna talk to me? Now? Listen, I’m busy, see, it’s a helluva night, I mean, you know what it’s like to be a press agent on an opening night at a posh, glittering opening like this? All the celebrities I gotta photograph, all the papers I gotta service, all the begging and praying I gotta do….”
Lockwood cut off the flow of verbiage. “About the jewels.”
Jabber-Jabber stopped dead for a moment, his eyes skittering. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“I’d like to find out what you know about the robbery.”
“I don’t know anything. Listen, I’ve got to leave now; get these photos developed and then get ’em to the papers before their deadline.”
“Don’t stall me, Jabber-Jabber.”
“What stalling? I’m telling you, you got me on the wrong night. Do I look like a guy who’d stall you? I’d be happy to talk to you, believe me, what, do you think I’m afraid or something? Do I look like a jewel thief to you? Hah? Am I some sort of Raffles? Big, handsome, a neat little mustache, a dame on each arm—you got the wrong guy, right?” Jabber-Jabber jabbered, arms and hands jerking through variegated patterns. “Look, see me in my office tomorrow, okay, Right after breakfast? Okay, Charlie, that’s it!” and he grabbed his photographer and sped out of the room.
Lockwood shrugged, and took a final pull at his drink before he left the room. As he went through the door, he sensed the continued scrutiny of Stephanie, felt her intent, storm cloud-colored eyes fixed on him unswervingly. He turned, and he was right. She did not drop her lids, but continued to stare at him, her breasts heaving slightly as she and he once more locked eyes. He nodded slightly to her, wheeled around, and left.
CHAPTER
2
For Jabber-Jabber Jacoby, “right after breakfast” meant 2 P.M., as it did for most of Jacoby’s show business cronies. And “my office” had its own unique meaning. Jacoby had no office as such, just a phone booth in the lobby of the Alvin Hotel on West 47th Street. From there, he made all his phone calls to the columnists his living depended upon, and there too, he received calls. The management, such as it was, for it was a hotel of less than salutary standards, tolerated Jacoby; in all likelihood, he’d been there longer than any of its drift-prone staff, breathlessly phoning
in all the news of his tiny, spangled world and meekly accepting the demands and threats of the entertainers and restaurateurs who, at their whim, paid him or stiffed him for his services.
Jabber-Jabber was doing business as usual as Lockwood walked up. “Tony, I can’t believe it. I look in the Journal, and there’s no picture of Muffy or anyone who was at her opening! Are you trying to bury me, Tony? Do you know how I need that picture, Tony? No, no, I’m not trying to push you, Tony, God forbid I’d try anything like that. You’re a great newspaperman, how could I question the judgment of a certified journalist like you. It’s just that I—what? It did make the early edition? You’re sure? Well, you know what I mean, of course I believe you! Listen, I know a newsie, he probably has some of the earlies, I’ll go get it—thanks a million, Tony—listen, what brand of booze do you drink? Right, right, aw, thanks a million!” Jabber-Jabber was sweating as he dropped his hand onto the hook, cutting off the call. “I can’t believe it, what are they doing to me, do they think I’m Christ or something?” he moaned as he considered his next step. Lockwood moved into his line of vision.
Jabber didn’t focus in right away, too enwrapped in his problems. “What—oh—oh, I remember! Lockwood! Yeah, listen, I’m a little busy—”
“Sooner or later we’ve got to talk, Jabber-Jabber,” Lockwood said. “It might as well be now.”
“Right, right, right. Well, whattya wanta know?”
“What you know, Jabber-Jabber.”
“Nothing. I don’t know nothing. All I know is what I read in the papers. And, well, what Muffy told me, but she didn’t tell me nothing I didn’t see in the papers. Okay? Is that it?”
“The Winchell item, Jabber-Jabber. How did it get in?”
“How do I know? Do I know all of Walter Winchell’s sources? Do I have some kind of pipeline to Winchell no one else has? How I wish I did!” he groaned.
“Did Muffy take the jewels herself, for the publicity, as Winchell said?”
“Muffy? That angel? My God, with a voice like that, she needs to do something so stupid? Believe me, Mr. Lockwood—”
“Come on,” Lockwood cut in. “You know she’s no Helen Morgan.”
“Helen Morgan? She’s better!” Jabber-Jabber insisted. “She’s a great one, and someday the whole world is gonna know it.”
Lockwood saw no point in pursuing that line of questioning. He’d run up against other press agents in the past. To convince newspapermen that their clients deserved space in print, they first had to convince themselves, and usually after a couple of payments from their new client, they were hopelessly sold on him or her, no matter how dismal the publicity-seeker might actually be.
A sudden movement in the glass of the phone booth caught Lockwood’s eye. It was a reflection, and for an instant, almost mirror-like in its clarity. Its image was of the face of a mobster Lockwood had seen before: Richie Calidone. And he wore an expression on his face that Lockwood had also seen before, but on someone else; twenty years ago on a German soldier leaping into a shell-hole, demonically intent on bayoneting the wounded Hook.
Reflexes trained by the war were undimmed. Immediately Lockwood leapt to one side and downward, as he did so pulling at the Colt .38 Detective Special contained in the spring holster clipped under the waistband of his trousers.
The blasting sound of two shots ripped through the air, filling the small lobby and reverberating through it. “Uh,” came from Jabber-Jabber, and he pitched to the glistening floor, a neat hole between his eyes not yet beginning to ooze blood, the receiver he’d been holding in his hand all through his conversation with Lockwood now swinging lifelessly on its cord.
The gunman was already running, feet clacking on the lobby’s tiles as Lockwood rushed after him, pistol raised, the buzz of violence filling his being, roaring into his ears.
Calidone sprinted toward the exit, never looking back. Two startled tourists drew away from him, but were still too close for Lockwood to chance a shot.
Lockwood sped through the revolving door, and couldn’t believe his luck. Calidone was in a black DeSoto, tearing away from the curb, and no one was near. The .38 went into position, cracked twice, and the DeSoto continued on a few more yards, then went out of control, careening against the sidewalk, then richocheting into a fire hydrant, the water gushing out as the plug clattered to the street, and then into a blank brick wall near a music shop. The initial whomp! of the impact was followed at once by little crashing sounds of metal and glass.
Immediately, Lockwood was there, but it was too late, as far as he could see. Calidone was half out of the windshield, his body a limp rag, his face a pulpy mass. The driver was half man, half steering wheel, the two parts so intermeshed it looked as if he’d grown that way.
Jabber-Jabber was dead; so were these two, or would be in another moment or two. None of them could talk, and yet something had emerged. Calidone and the getaway driver were, Lockwood knew, members of Two-Scar Toomey’s gang.
“Don’t you know there’s a fine for littering?” a big voice boomed into Lockwood’s ear.
Lockwood turned, grateful for the distraction that broke the somberness of his mood. Lt. Jimbo Brannigan of Midtown Precinct was there, towering over him, a caustic grin on his weathered Irish mug, a couple of patrolmen standing respectfully behind him. “Hello, Jimbo,” The Hook said. “I think we’ve got something here.”
“Sure. Something for the trash heap, it looks like,” growled Jimbo, peering at the driver, then Calidone. “Him I recognize,” he said, pointing to the driver, “but who did that used to be?”
“Richie Calidone. He just plugged Jabber-Jabber Jacoby, the press agent.”
“Jesus. Two-Scar’s at it again, eh? But why Jacoby?”
“My guess is it’s tied into the Dearborn robbery. Could be it was Two-Scar who engineered it. Jabber-Jabber may have known too much, and they decided to put a clamp on his mouth. Permanently.”
“Interesting,” Brannigan commented. “There’s word going around that the jewels have already been laid off. The dope is Stymie the Fence got ’em.”
Lockwood looked repulsed. “Damn. Not Stymie. I was hoping I’d never have to go near that slippery mass of slime again.”
Brannigan roared. “By Jesus, Hookie-boy, you’ve described him right enough! I tell ya, after I heard the rumor, I had my boys check him out, and they didn’t come up with anything, except an intense desire to fumigate themselves after they left him.”
This time The Hook smiled. “I know the feeling. I don’t suppose I’ll find anything your guys didn’t, but I guess I’ll have to check him out.”
“Want a lift?”
“No, I want to see Muffy Dearborn first. Tell her about Jabber-Jabber, see what she has to say. You’ll find Jacoby’s body at the Alvin.”
“Yeah. Guess they’ll be renting out his office now,” Jimbo shrugged, and turned to the cops hovering nearby.
Stephanie answered the doorbell, eyes wide and hard when she saw who it was.
“Hello, Miss Meilleux. I’d like to see your employer.”
She said nothing, just pulled the door back and stepped aside to let him pass through. Her stare never left him.
“Who was that, Stephanie?” Muffy’s voice came from another room. “Please come back and finish my hair, for God’s sake.”
Lockwood followed her voice and in a moment bestrode the bedroom entrance. Muffy was seated in a straight-backed chair, negligee hanging loosely from her shoulders, the line of her ripe breasts visible above the flimsy material. “I beg your pardon!” she shot out as her eye finally left the mirror and she saw him.
“Excuse me, Miss Dearborn, but it’s important. Jacoby is dead.”
“Jacoby?”
“Jabber-Jabber. Your press agent.”
“Dead? Jabber-Jabber dead?” her face went white. “What happened?”
“He was shot.”
“Shot? Jabber-Jabber?” Her hand arched toward her throat. “Oh my God. Who’s going to handle
my publicity now?”
Lockwood was hardly unfamiliar with the rich and the monumental self-concern of some of them, but they still possessed the capacity to disorient him momentarily. A man she’d known, a living, breathing human being she’d been closely involved with, and all she cared about was how his death would discommode her. He took a deep breath. “I’m sure you’ll manage,” he assured her, grimly. “More to the point, I think his death had something to do with your robbery.”
“Jabber-Jabber—you mean he—?”
“Stole the jewels? No, I don’t think so. But I think he may have known too much.”
“I don’t understand.” Her voice turned nasty. “That little creep, who would have suspected—”
“Maybe he had something to do with the theft, maybe he didn’t. What can you tell me about it?”
“Nothing. I left this room for rehearsal, went off shopping, came back here and they were gone. That’s it.”
“Room ransacked?”
“Some.”
“Anything else taken?”
“Nothing, so far as I know.”
“So it appeared as if they knew what they were looking for?”
“How should I know? Crime’s not my business, Mr. Hook, it’s yours. All I am is a creative artist.”
The Hook was angry with himself. Muffy Dearborn was obviously a completely spoiled, self-centered woman, caring about no one but herself. And yet she was also a creature of fair hair and glowing blond skin, of well-shaped, beautifully curving breasts, with perfect features, and lips that invited even as they repelled with the sentiments that issued from them.
“Have you ever heard of Vernon Toomey? Two-Scar Toomey?” he asked.
“Two-Scar—of course, I read the papers,” she said, for the first time a flicker of interest showing in her sky-blue eyes as they did a lightning tour of his body. “You don’t mean—I can hardly believe it—a racketeer I read about in the papers, like Dillinger, and suddenly he’s a part of my life? Is that what you mean? He stole the jewels?”
“It could be. It was one of his men who gunned down Jabber-Jabber.”