Hang by Your Neck

by Kane, Henry

  “No. I’d rather you understood that, too.”

  “Would you like a cigarette?”

  “No. Thank you.”

  Silence. Silence and a strolling detective. Silence and a rugged tycoon tight in an armchair, elbows down, feet flat on the floor, hands clenched over the ends of the armrests. Then he took his hands off and touched open fingers to open fingers. “You weren’t far wrong about me, about a rather avid interest in Nancy Reeves.”

  “That’s none of my business, Mr. Petersen.”

  Fingers tapped fingers. “It has been said, Mr. Chambers, that the triangle of the perfect human being would include intelligence, sensibility, and the will. That would be the perfect triangle. The perfect mathematical triangle may exist; there is no perfect human being. I submit that human beings lean toward two lines of that triangle, and always are sadly deficient in the third. I’ve thought about it. Take yourself. I would say there is intelligence and the will—the man of action. Sensibility, nuances of the sensitive, delicate soul, must suffer. No offense, of course. Take myself. I know myself. I would say my type has intelligence and sensibility, but the will, there I am lacking, oh, I know it. In a sense, then, a weakling; a well-meaning, intelligent, sensitive weakling. Thus, capers at the Courvocco, of which my family know nothing. Thus, nights in New York—on business. Thus, an overwhelming infatuation for Nancy. Thus, and I’m ashamed of it, a similarly overwhelming infatuation for Pamela, once, a long time ago. Yet, there is a love I bear for my wife—and my children, of course …” He stood up and he came near me, facing me. “I know I would never have gone with any of this to the police, no matter. There is more I can tell you about myself, but, honestly, I daren’t. I ask this of you, if you please. That you use the facts that I have given you—you can corroborate them; there are others who know all of this, once you pursue your investigations with knowledge—but I ask you to omit me, as the source. That’s all. I’ve been frank with you. It’s been necessary to include aspects of my friends’ lives—my life, too. But it must be confidential. I shall deny ever having told you, if I am placed in a position where a denial becomes necessary. If it develops that what I have told you has any importance, it shan’t be too difficult, omitting me, to bring the facts to light. And if the facts do not have meaning, I’m sure, in your profession, there is much residue which goes down the drain, forgotten.”

  He took his hat and coat. He shook hands with me, warm, heartfelt from habit, pressure of thumb against my knuckles. “At least,” he said, “I’ve purged myself of it.” He put his coat on, holding his hat. “As for Pamela Reeves, I can tell you from personal observation—Merrill wasn’t wrong. She was a dissolute, unspeakable type. Good-by, then, Mr. Chambers. Please feel free to call upon me at any time.”

  “About Pamela Reeves—”

  “I’d rather not discuss that.”

  “But you knew her well—”

  Grimly he said, “Too well.”

  “Then—”

  “Please, sir.”

  “All right, Mr. Petersen. Thanks. And—you can depend on me.”

  I walked him out to the elevators, and we shook hands again. I went back to the office and I called the Roxbury and I asked for Nottiby. No Nottiby. I called the Nyack number. No answer. I called police headquarters and I asked for Parker. No Parker. I asked for Kelcey. Inspector Kelcey wasn’t there, sir, but he could be reached at Fifty-first, the Fifty-first Street Precinct, he and Lieutenant Parker.

  Thank you.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The Fifty-first Street Precinct is the glamour precinct of the City of New York. The bizarre murderers of the fashionable districts of Beekman Hill, Sutton Place, Park and Madison Avenues (as well as the screeching mayhem boys of Lexington Avenue), in their inexorable march toward the execution chambers of the prison with the glee-club name of Sing Sing, find their first small refuge in the careful and questioning arms of the law at the Fifty-first Street Precinct. The society lady who has slipped out of and forgotten her diamond tiara in the clutch of amour in the rear of a taxi first brings her complaint to the Fifty-first Street Precinct. The distinguished physician who has fallen afoul of our culture by yielding to the dulcet supplications of the unwed lady in her obdurate excursion toward motherhood first hides his head behind his hat before the cameras of the gum-chewing photographers at the Fifty-first Street Precinct. The young-old roué with the pink massage-fed face, whose granddaughter is to have her coming-out in Newport come Tuesday, who is accused of transposing a lissome seventeen-year-old from a tent show on a back street to a penthouse on the Avenue (a lass who knows more mauve and modern answers than the old boy can ever dream up questions), issues his first and most vehement denials, before shouting lustily for his lawyer and “Take your damn hands off me!” at the Fifty-first Street Precinct. The top-flight actors of the page-three sensations of the New York tabloids commence their pilgrimage to notoriety at the Fifty-first Street Precinct: the playboys of the East Side night clubs, the gamblers with the rigged apartments, the suave gentlemen teetering at the temporary pinnacles of the narcotics rackets, the burglars mining for the richest ore, the madams of the plushest bordellos, from the strident Polly Adlers to the simpering Pollyannas—sooner or later, they all troop up the six worn steps of the Fifty-first Street Precinct.

  The Fifty-first Street Precinct is on Fifty-first Street.

  Near Third Avenue, on the north side of the street.

  The glamour precinct of the City of New York is an old, tired, fuzz-peach brick building, five stories high, with an unenthusiastic flag drooping from its middle. It is bounded on the right by a firehouse, where the bell tolls for succor, and on the left by a laundry, where they sew buttons on your cuffs if you’re a bachelor. You go up the six stone steps and over the threshold and into an old room, painted green, with a huge wooden desk on a dais to the right, protected by a long wooden fencelike railing. The floor is dirt-colored linoleum. The clack of the teletype is constant. Alongside the teletype, you glimpse a paper-bound copy of Love, Love, Love. The uniformed young man, high up behind the desk, grumbles, without interest, “Yes? What is it?”

  “I’d like to see Inspector Kelcey. I was told he was here with Lieutenant Parker.”

  Interest heightens. It appears you’re not here to complain about the negligence of the super in your apartment house who simply will not fire up the boiler, night after night, so that the kids can have a bath before they get tucked off to sleep. The uniformed young man looks less harried, even respectful; you’re tossing up brass at him: inspectors and lieutenants. Maybe you’re F. ?. I. Maybe you’re a politician. Maybe you’re one of those under-cover specialists the police department hints about. He bends down over his elbows and looks at you. “What’s your name, sir?”

  “Peter Chambers.”

  He lifts his head and yells toward a group of jacketless cops in the rear: “Urning! Hey, Urning!”

  Urning breaks out of the group and comes near. Urning is a young, tall, powerful cop who should be out chasing robbers. Urning is a young, tall, powerful cop, with an unpleasant face, who should be stationed in a slum district where stones are flung through merchants’ windows and girls are goosed on the streets and apples are stolen off pushcarts and old men are slapped around by zoot-suit commandos and young married ladies are heckled beside their perambulators and the weasel-faced boys congregate around the corner cafeterias, making book, and stilt-heeled young ladies insist that their boy friends walk them all the way upstairs to their doors, at night, in case a predatory young tough loiters in the hallway, with an eye for a pocketbook, or with, worse yet, a dammed-up and anxious libido.

  Too many broad-chested young Urnings are too frequently in the station houses. Or else you are certain to run up against one of them when you reach the top of the stairway in the subway and, absent-mindedly, you’ve touched fire to a cigarette. You are certain to find a young, tall, powerful cop on this dangerous assignment, frowning in umbrage, and producing his pen for t
he unamiable endorsement of a ticket for you, and try and read his handwriting. Where are the old men of the department?

  Urning said, “Yeah?”

  “This man is asking for Inspector Kelcey. He’s upstairs on that Mayo thing. Ask him if he wants to see a—Mr. Chambers. Or ask Lieutenant Parker. He’s up there too.”

  “Oke,” Urning said.

  He went up a stairway, rear, left, and before he had completely disappeared, a pair of ankles came down, well turned and nylon sheathed.

  I watched with interest.

  The ankles developed to firm long thighs in a tight green skirt, and the rest of it developed to—Nancy Reeves.

  “Hello,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

  “Hello, Mr. Chambers. Nothing, really. I just brought—”

  Urning bounced down the stairs.

  “Oke. The Lieutenant will see you. This way, mister. Pardon me, ma’am.”

  “Good luck,” she said.

  “Anything I ought to know? I mean, remember me?”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “This way, mister,” Urning said, “if you want to see the Lieutenant. The Inspector, right now the Inspector’s busy. A murder case, mister—you know, murder.”

  “I know,” I said. “Murder.”

  “Good luck,” Nancy said.

  “See you.”

  I followed the big feet of Urning. He knocked on a door on the second floor. “This way,” he said, opening the door before anybody answered. He closed the door behind me and I could hear his feet going down the stairs.

  It was a big room with no furniture except a long oak table and many oak chairs. Parker was there with three fat officious-looking perspiring men. Parker scraped his chair back, said, “Hi.”

  “Hi,” I said.

  He smiled and he tilted a forefinger and he called me. “Let’s go out in the corridor,” he said. “You and me.”

  In the corridor, he said, “What is it?”

  “On that Pamela Reeves thing—”

  “You still on that?”

  “Well—”

  “Kelcey’ll kill you. That’s all closed up. He’s inside right now with the lover of a young tomato got her head bashed in over on Fifty-eighth Street in a canary-yellow apartment, and she’s got a little black book with more important names …”

  “Catch up with Nottiby yet?”

  “Not yet, but soon. That stewpot. We haven’t exhausted all the saloons yet. Why, a guy’s got to be nuts to try to pull one like that.”

  “You people know Nottiby was Pamela Reeves’ husband?”

  “Sure we know he was her husband.”

  “You people know that Mikvah was his wife’s sweetheart? You people know that he had no use for Mikvah?”

  “Certainly, detective. We people know everything.”

  “Look, Louis, Nottiby hated the guy. The guy took his wife away from him; he had him there cockeyed drunk—”

  “That’s terrible tough titty for Nottiby—that is, if his wife meant anything to him—but the answer stays the same: if the guy was going to do a job on him, he’d have done it right there in the can. What’s the sense to spring him first, and then do it? No, sir. The Mick talked him into a deal. Nottiby wasn’t against the grain, brother—Nottiby was pitching on the Mick’s team. Petie, you’re not only stubborn, you’re dumb.”

  “Lately, I’m dumb to everybody, including the Chinese.”

  “Parker!” It came from inside.

  “That’s Kelcey,” Parker said. “Come on in, if you’re coming.”

  The door to an anteroom was open. Kelcey had his coat off and his white shirt was open at the collar, his tie hanging down. “Book this monkey,” Kelcey said to one of the perspiring fat men. “Take him down and book him on suspicion of murder. This case, we’ll have the whole damn can full of suspicion of murder.”

  The monkey was a slender, well-dressed, pale-faced, bewildered man of about forty-five, with a frightened, twitching mouth. “Look, please,” he said. “I had nothing to do with it. I swear by Christ Almighty I had nothing to do with it. You can’t put me in jail just because—”

  “The hell we can’t,” Kelcey said.

  Suddenly the monkey’s lips stopped twitching and the strained expression on his face dissolved. He began to cry, quietly. “Please. I’ve got—”

  “That’s your goddamn hard luck, whatever you’ve got,” Kelcey said. “You’re supposed to co-operate with the police when someone’s been murdered. You’re supposed to get off the high horse and break down. You’re all alike, even you important guys. You’d think that cops were your natural enemies or something.”

  “Please,” the monkey said. “If you please, Inspector, I’ll tell you whatever you want to know … I’ll tell you the truth … There isn’t much … I had nothing to do with it … I knew her—she was—” He looked around, at all of us looking at him, and he smiled, weakly, through his tears. He stopped crying, and he blew his nose. He smiled at us again, seeking his dignity. He raised his hand toward the open door of the anteroom. “If I may talk to you in confidence, Inspector—”

  “It’s about time,” the Inspector said.

  He hadn’t even seen me.

  Parker motioned me out to the corridor again. He dug a hand into his pocket and brought out a set of jingling keys within a flaccid leather container. Smilingly he said, “Here’s another suspect for you.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Keys.”

  “Oh, keys.”

  “Oh, keys. Miss Nancy Reeves, sister of the deceased, called us downtown about something she forgot in the heat of all the excitement. She was told to come here. She just left, in fact. She brought us this set of keys. They belonged to her sister, Pamela, and they’re supposed to be duplicates of all her keys, which she always kept in a drawer of her dresser home at the apartment. One of these keys, we have already ascertained—good, huh? … ascertained—one of these keys, we have already ascertained, was to Mikvah’s apartment. So in case you’d like the sister murdering the sister, well, you’ve got established the means of her being able to get into that apartment. Cute?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Maybe what?”

  “Maybe she did. I don’t—”

  “Who? The sister?”

  “When I’m guessing, I don’t rule anybody out.”

  Parker took his jaw in his hand, and he pulled it down to a gape, and he gave me the eyes, up, by the eyebrows. “Boy, when you get crazy, you certainly get good and crazy. The sister? Why the sister? What motive?”

  “Listen, I didn’t say she did, did I? But motive—why, there’s more motive loose and around in this case, if you people didn’t have it down so pat—”

  “Parker!” It was Kelcey again.

  This time he saw me.

  “What’s this guy want around here?”

  “He wants to know,” Parker said, “if we people know that Nottiby was Pamela Reeves’ husband.”

  “He does, huh? Listen, you take a stenographer, and go up and see this Mayo dame’s people. Here’s the list. Spring it on them point-blank, don’t beat around, you know.” He took a paper out of his trouser pocket. “This is the bunch. I’ll be downtown.”

  “Check,” Parker said.

  Kelcey turned to one of the fat men. “Get my jacket in there, will you?”

  “Hat and coat, sir?”

  “No. They’re in my car. Just the jacket, please.”

  The monkey came out of the anteroom. “You,” Kelcey said. “You can go home, or any place else you want to go. But be available. You know what it means—’be available’?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Okay. I’m sorry if I was a little rough. But you know how the hell it is, mister—murder. It’s a big city. They keep happening all the time, one on top of another. You run out of time, and you run out of patience.” He looked at me, and he smiled for the first time. “Except him. He’s got all the time in the world.”

  Parker
said, “So long, Pete. Don’t irritate the Inspector. Nobody got too much sleep last night.”

  The Inspector growled.

  Parker brought out a cigar. “See you, Inspector.”

  “Take a stenographer,” the Inspector said.

  Parker said, “I always take a stenographer first crack.”

  Kelcey put on his jacket and drew up his tie. He motioned to one of the fat men, and the fat man went out with the monkey. Kelcey said, “Thanks, fellas,” to the other two, and they went out. He made fists of his hands and stretched his arms and shuddered. He smiled a tired smile. “One helluva life.” He came to me and put an arm around my shoulder. “Still sticking your nose in police business?”

  “Well, sir, not exactly.”

  “Exactly, then, what?”

  “I’d been wondering about that Nottiby. Like Parker told you—”

  “We’ll catch up with that miserable nothing, and when we do … Listen, who’s paying you on this thing? And what for?”

  “Nobody’s paying me, Inspector. And so far, for nothing.”

  “Let’s get out of here, peeper. Let’s get a little air.”

  He made a lot of noise going down the stairs. He was a big man. His shoulders looked even wider on the narrow staircase, with me behind him. He had a thick strong red neck and a well-shaped head with the ears set close and low.

  A couple of the cops saluted him as we went out. He didn’t look at them. Outside the sun was bright. A fireman had a chair backed against the wall of the firehouse, taking the sun. He said, “Hello, Inspector.” “How do you do?” the Inspector said. He led me to his car parked by a hydrant. He put one foot up on the running board and he lit a cigarette and looked at me over the smoke. “Just for the record. We know all about Nottiby. We know all about everything there is to be known about the case. You guys, you privates, you shouldn’t underestimate cops. Cops know their business. Scoffol, your ex-partner, he was a cop once, wasn’t he?”