Hang by Your Neck

by Kane, Henry

  I heaved a short sigh. “I knew the guy a long time. I knew him when he was waiting on table in an old Rumanian joint on the lower East Side.”

  “Mikvah?”

  “The illustrious Mikvah.”

  She went away from me, mushing through the thick carpet, the housecoat swaying. Her tone mused. “At that, of course, I’m not saying he didn’t, Mr. Chambers. The police are convinced that he did. They ought to know. I’ll admit that he had no reason to, that I know of, and I’ll admit that he wasn’t the type.” She turned, and from the distance of the room, she said, “We’re interested in who murdered my sister. Is that it?”

  “That’s it.”

  “And if it was Mr. Mikvah.”

  “Then it was. Then the police are correct. Then that’s it, and we’re all convinced. I want you to understand—the great possibility is that it was he. The cops have it that way, and you can take it from me, I ought to know, cops aren’t frequently wrong. But the cops didn’t know Johnny Mikvah. Like I knew him. We hope that Johnny didn’t do it; we feel that he couldn’t. But the facts say he did.”

  “Then—”

  “If he did, he did. Then we’ll know it, absolutely. But if he didn’t—”

  “But how?”

  “I’ll dig around.”

  “But the police—”

  “It’s closed as far as they’re concerned, that part of it. The evidence is in. They’ll tie in a few reports, and the file is closed. Will you help?”

  She came to me then. She stood over me and looked down on me and her dark eyebrows were pulled to a V over her nose. I played with my hat.

  “I’ll help,” she said.

  “Swell.”

  She didn’t go away. Her face beneath the frown of her eyebrows was as uncompromising as the profile of a hatchet, but a beautiful hatchet. “I will help you find the murderer of my sister.”

  “Swell,” I said. “How you fixed for money?”

  2

  I crawled out from beneath her stare. I stood up and took off my topcoat and held my hat and looked vague. She said, “Oh.” She took my things. She walked with them, out of the room, and I watched her, not too tall in the tight-bodiced housecoat: good carriage, and probably nothing on under the housecoat, maybe panties. I thought about the dark intense look of her. I wished she wasn’t quite so much of a lady.

  She came back and she said, “Money, Mr. Chambers?”

  “No, no. Don’t let’s start wrong. I don’t want your money.”

  “But you asked—”

  “Let’s get to the core. Let’s begin at the beginning. How you fixed for money?”

  “That’s still—none of your business.”

  “I don’t mean it that way. I mean all of you. Nottiby, for instance.”

  “Yes?”

  “Her husband?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, a guy like that. I mean, I don’t get it. That’s what I mean about money. Let’s start with you.”

  She said, “Tea?”

  “No. Money.”

  She smiled. Her teeth were white and regular and her mouth was curved and full and wide when she smiled, and I wondered just how much of a lady she was, or could be, in an emergency, a real emergency. She said, “There’s a kettle boiling in the kitchen. I was preparing tea when you rang. Will you?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “A drink, then?”

  “A small one.”

  “Scotch?”

  “Perfect.”

  She went out one door, and I peeked through another. It led along a wide hall. There was a bedroom with all the fixings on one side, and along a little way, another bedroom on the other side, and then it widened into a big room with a fireplace and a cone-shaped chandelier and a figured rug and books: a library, or a musing room, or an extra room when the sisters were entertaining boy friends the same evening, but not bedroom boy friends. I came back and I crossed my legs in the modern chair.

  It figured for a five-room apartment. Off the foyer, there was this big living room, three steps down and furnished with all the trappings right up to a made-to-order cornice for the drapings, and then the kitchen where she was dunking the tea ball, and the two bedrooms, and the big room with the fireplace and the books. And all of it sumptuous as an old maid’s dream. That cost money. Large money.

  She came back pushing a chrome-adorned serving table with tea and a bottle of Scotch and a pitcher of ice water and a bottle of soda and a cup for her and a tall glass for me. “Water,” she said, “or soda?”

  “Water, please.”

  “Help yourself, won’t you?”

  I helped myself. She drank tea. I said, “A joint like this In this neighborhood. That’s quite a nut.”

  “Nut?”

  “Expensive.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Who pays for it?”

  “Just a minute. Please.”

  “Sure.”

  She sipped tea. I sipped Scotch. A lot of joy had gone out of Scotch. I felt like a wise District Attorney cross-examining a clear-eyed ten-year-old about the sounds of heavy breathing she might have heard in her mother’s bedroom. I said, “Look, the hell with this. I told you before. We can skip it. All of it. I don’t have to work on this thing. I’ve pulled out of cases before.”

  I thought about Miami Moonbeam.

  The hell with Miami Moonbeam.

  That wasn’t nice. Maybe I was tired.

  “I’ve got to have it all,” I said. “People work the way they know how to work. The way I work, I start with you. I could do it the hard way. I could start other places. But you said you wanted to help.”

  “I earn about a hundred dollars a week.”

  “Doing what?”

  “I model.”

  “For what?”

  “I’m connected with the Arnold Petersen Agency. Some weeks I earn more, some weeks I earn less. I average about a hundred dollars.”

  I put my chin up and I looked around. “I’d say that wouldn’t even pay the rent for this tepee.”

  “That’s right.”

  My mouth made for a question mark.

  “Please remember, Mr. Chambers, this was my sister’s place, not mine.”

  “I know.”

  “I moved in with her, oh, more than a year ago, after she had broken up with her husband.”

  “How was she fixed?”

  “Not too badly.” She crossed her legs under the housecoat. No swish. Just housecoat. I was beginning to get prickly. That was silly. I held on tight to the Scotch and I listened. “Mr. Nottiby was a rich man. An only son. When his father died, he was all that was left of the family. He inherited a great deal of money. He took care of all of this.” She waved a hand.

  “Of course.”

  “But—it dribbled away, all of it. Oh, it took some time, but it did.”

  “She helped, I take it.”

  She smiled, unsmiling. “She didn’t hinder.”

  “Then?”

  “About a year ago they broke up. Completely.”

  “Divorce?”

  “No.”

  “Would you know why?”

  “Nottiby is a fine old name in this town.”

  “Check,” I said.

  “Oh, she did help him. Even when things were most hopeless, she did what she was able for him. She had a little money. She put him through a cure. You know, an alcoholic.”

  “Did it take?”

  “Well …”

  “Then?”

  “She obtained a job for him.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you see him often?”

  “No. Quite the contrary. I haven’t seen him since they parted.”

  “Did he know about her?”

  “Please?”

  “Her friends?”

  “Please?”

  “Boy friends, you know.”

  She gave me the eyes over the teacup. Black. And deep. “Yes, he knew.”


  “How’d he feel about it?”

  “How would anyone?”

  “But he took it?”

  “Yes, he took it.”

  “That kind of a guy, huh?”

  “A pretty nice guy, Mr. Chambers.”

  “A sucker.”

  “Please don’t say that.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  We looked at each other across the serving table and I don’t know what she was thinking about, but I know what I was thinking about and if it showed in my face, she had every right in the world to take affront. It didn’t show in my face.

  “So much,” she said, “for background.”

  “But since then, Miss Reeves, who’s been paying for all of this?”

  She put her cup away and patted her lips with a small triangle of paper napkin. “She. It was a little difficult for a while. Then it wasn’t.”

  “Will you break that down for me?”

  “Yes, I will. She had invested some money with Mr. Mikvah in the Courvocco. That was early, when she met him. It wasn’t really an investment, as I happen to know, because he didn’t need it. He was humoring her. She had some money that she wanted to invest, twenty-five thousand dollars, and he told her that if she would turn it over to him, he would use it at the club, and he would return notes for thirty-five thousand, one note a month calling for one thousand dollars.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “It made her happy—to be a business woman—and he knew that, and I suppose that’s why he did it. He would come personally to pick up each note and turn over the thousand dollars. In a way, I suppose it tied them together. In another way, he was giving her ten thousand dollars, helping, although, at the beginning, she didn’t need it. At that time, he was crazy about her.”

  “What about marriage?”

  “She wouldn’t marry him. She didn’t want Nottiby, but being Nottiby’s wife carried a great deal of prestige. She wanted her cake and she wanted to eat it. I’d say that best sums up my sister, all her life.”

  I put my glass away, empty. “Listen,” I said, “I don’t even know your name.”

  “Nancy.”

  She pushed the serving table to a corner. She stopped in front of a mirror, grimaced, touched a finger to her hair. She came back with a cigarette box of copper and wood. I had a cigarette that tasted like the copper and smelled like the wood. I watched her put the box away on a coffee table with squat legs. I watched her sit down.

  Smoke hung in the quiet room.

  It was time for shock again, listening while she flounced.

  It was time for knocking her off balance, listening while she righted.

  “One bum,” I said. “That’s how I make it. That sums it. One dirty little fancy bum.”

  She knocked me off balance.

  “Precisely,” she said.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The smoke ring I was posing broke out in more convolutions than a coochie dancer. “Didn’t you like her?”

  “No,” she said. “I didn’t like her.”

  “Well, now. You’re living here. You—”

  “There’s a child, Mr. Chambers.”

  “Now what the hell? Pardon—I mean—”

  “There’s a child, Regina, whom I adore. Her child. A lovely, innocent, six-year-old who—well, who—well, that’s why I live here. I think that best explains—”

  “Yes,” I said. “Yes. Nottiby’s?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where is she?”

  “At school now. Boarding school.”

  “This Nottiby, I bet you’ve had cops in your hair all night.”

  “The same man was back, Lieutenant Parker. He told me what had happened. He asked me whether I knew anywhere that Nottiby could hide out. I didn’t. I knew exactly what he knew, no more—that Nottiby wasn’t living here. That he lived at a hotel. The Roxbury.”

  “The one on Forty-eighth and Seventh?”

  “That one.”

  “Nottiby,” I said. “How’d he feel about Mikvah?”

  “He detested him.”

  “Did you know her new boy friend?” She looked at me sharply, her lips wrapped against her teeth. “You haven’t missed much, I’ll say that.”

  “Did you know him?”

  “No. I knew of him.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “I don’t know his name. I never saw him. It was a big secret. One of those things. Clandestine.”

  “Cagey, huh? With the new one.”

  “There’s another, unimportant, reason. She was down on me that way, I mean about introducing me to her gentlemen friends, since—well, she claimed I stole one of her men, once. But that’s another story, and a dull one.”

  “This big secret. The name wouldn’t be Vaydelle?”

  “I told you I didn’t know the name. Vaydelle? Vaydelle was an old boy friend.”

  “Well …”

  “Mr. Vaydelle was Mr. Mikvah’s predecessor. And I don’t imagine he liked that.”

  “Liked what?”

  “Being a predecessor. Involuntary predecessor.”

  “Well …” I said. “Well, well.”

  (Real sharp shrewd alcohol-logged detective: well, well, well, well. Nary an um, though. Nor an ahem.)

  “There’s something,” she said, “I should add. What I meant about things being difficult for a while, then bettering. For the past year or so, Pamela had an additional income, I don’t know the source. Three hundred dollars. Each week, cash. She giggled about it, but she wouldn’t tell me.”

  “From the new boy friend? The rich Mr. Clandestine?”

  “Probably. That, plus the thousand a month from Mikvah, plus part of my little hundred a week, you can see, we were quite able to get along. Fact is, she helped Mr. Nottiby, time and again. She wouldn’t let him quit his job. As long as he kept out of trouble, as long as he worked and earned a salary, she was willing to add a little to that. They never mentioned just what his work was. I never knew, until tonight, from the police lieutenant, that he was a prison guard.”

  Shrillness from the telephone broke up the ballgame.

  “Excuse me.” She went to a corner of the room to the phone. “Hello? Yes … yes … yes … yes … thank you.”

  What you call an illuminating conversation.

  She came back. “That was my agency reminding me of a modeling appointment. I must go downtown now. A touchup job, mostly. We’re finishing off a painting Conrad Merrill is doing of me.” She smiled. “A bathing-suit poster.”

  I pointed the corners of my mouth down. “Conrad Merrill.”

  Conrad Merrill was an important name in the tight little world of oil and daub and canvas. It came to me that I had heard the name Merrill some time during the night. I didn’t remember who had mentioned it, or where, or when.

  2

  I waited while she dressed. I walked the floor like it was the maternity wing of a hospital. I chewed a few cigarettes and I sneaked a little Scotch and then she came back trig as a new dollar bill and of similar color. She wore spike-heel green shoes and invisible nylons except for the sheen and a smart green shapely suit with a Cossack collar. The green perk on the edge of her head was a hat. She had put color to her cheeks and her lips and her eyes, and this was a doll, ladies and gentlemen, no question. I’d have worked her for a date right then and there if I thought I had a chance. I didn’t. Because I didn’t have a chance. Like that, I’m intuitive. Maybe.

  The faraway look in the eyes, and the moist glance as if your gender is neuter, that means either a love affair, or maybe you don’t work too hard modeling for that hundred a week, or maybe that hundred a week is much more than a hundred a week, or maybe the shock of the unexpected demise of a sister nullifies that sort of thing.

  She gave me my hat and coat.

  She called down for her car, and in the elevator, she said, “His studio is on Barrow Street in the Village. I’d like you to come with me, Mr. Chambers. I’d like you to meet Mr. Merrill.” />
  “What’s special about Merrill?”

  “Nothing, except he was married to my sister once.”

  3

  The car was a sleek long yellow job, convertible. It could have been she had recognized the look in my eye back there in the apartment. Maybe that was the reason we were driving downtown, instead of using the subway. You don’t have a five-thousand-dollar brand-new yellow job sitting around at your disposal on a hundred dollars a week. I can take a hint, especially a low-slung, wide-spread, racy hint.

  Thereafter, she was neuter. Too.

  I smiled at her. She smiled at me. I sat in a small corner of the car right up against the door and I didn’t even look at her knees as she drove.

  “Mikvah,” I said. “When did he see her last?”

  “That’s just what the police wanted to know, too. The first time. That Lieutenant Parker. He asked me a lot of questions, he and the man that scribbled, almost as many as you did.”

  “Did you tell him everything you told me?”

  “No.”

  “Holding out on law?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re not the type.”

  We stopped for a light. She looked at me. “We don’t go around throwing garbage at each other. In my family.”

  “I see what you mean.”

  “I answered his questions, that’s all. They were mostly about Mr. Mikvah and Pamela. The second time, they were restricted to Nottiby. He said that perhaps, later on, they would want more information from me for their reports. What I’ve been telling you is different. You’ve convinced me that at least you believe that there might be something more to all of this, and I’ve really been doing my darndest to co-operate.”

  “Thanks. When did Mikvah see her last, that you know?”

  The gear shifted without noise. We rolled down Fifth to the thin-rich whine of the new tires. “Yesterday. At about four o’clock. He had called, and he had talked to me. He asked that she meet him at a tavern called Anchors Away on Third Avenue and Fifty-fifth. He asked that she bring the note, because he had the money for her. I walked her over there, had a cocktail with them, and left them together.”

  “That the due date?”

  “Due date?”

  “Yesterday. For the note.”