by Craig Rice
But then Zalek spoke to the hop seated next to him, got up, and left the lobby by a back entrance. Malone was not panicked. The kid hadn’t seen him. He was probably going to the john. So Malone saw no reason why he shouldn’t finish his other business first, because Zalek probably had a comic book in his pocket and would no doubt take a nice long vacation in the john where he would have an affinity for his surroundings.
Malone pondered a few moments longer and then went back to the elevator. But when he got off on the ninth floor, he took one step forward and then three quick ones backward. Zalek was coming along the high-ceilinged, thickly carpeted hallway from the other end.
Zalek evidently wasn’t expecting to be spied on, so he wasn’t alert. Thus, Malone was able to watch him, thankful that the Craymore had more potted palms than anybody. Zalek tapped on a door about halfway down and then turned the knob and entered.
He was probably going to sack the joint, Malone decided, hoping he was right. Maybe Zalek had knocked to see if anyone was there. Even now, he might be tearing the place apart.
Malone realized his thoughts were subjective—mere wishful thinking. But they gave him comfort as he moved along the hallway toward the door in question.
But when he got there, he stopped suddenly. The number, 942, was the one that had been given him as that of Vivian Conover’s room.
Malone retreated instantly—back behind the friendly palm tree to ponder this new development. Was it the merest coincidence that Zalek had entered Vivian Conover’s room? Malone was inclined to think otherwise. So if it wasn’t coincidence, it was something else; and he wanted to know what. Should he walk in and confront them both?
He had not had enough time to decide when the door opened again and Zalek left as he had come, probably using a service elevator in the back.
Malone hesitated no longer, except for a moment at Vivian Conover’s door, where he paused to map his strategy. He ususally relied on the direct attack. Of course, in the direct attack, he would have to assume a few things as being true. But if there were no witnesses, libel could not be proved and he could always apologize. He knocked on the door. A voice called, “Come in.”
Vivian Conover was a smooth chick. Malone decided this instantly. A brunette with everything a brunette needed. She wore a pajama outfit with red pants and a green top, and she looked as though she’d just come from a makeup man prior to going on a movie set.
Vivian Conover stared blankly. “What do you want?” Malone decided she must have expected Zalek again.
“My name is John J. Malone,” he said, “and the whole thing has blown up in your face. They’re scooping up your boyfriend downstairs right now, and the others will be pulled in by sunset. I’m just giving you a chance to do yourself some good.”
Vivian Conover fainted. But she did it so gracefully, falling back on the bed rather than hitting the floor, that Malone was suspicious. He approached and studied her clinically, finally reaching down and pinching a most prominent part of her anatomy—the nipple of her right breast. Vivian’s eyes flew open and she yipped.
“A technique I learned as a hustler in a burlesque show,” he said. “Great for the faints. Now let’s get to it. Whose idea was it to involve Helene Justus in your caper?”
The faint may have been synthetic, but Vivian Conover’s terror was genuine. “Not mine! Not mine, honestly! I was against it. I fought it. Poor Helene—”
“Wrong name, sister. Poor you. Was it Zalek’s idea?”
She looked blank. “Zalek?”
Malone reacted quickly. “Or whatever he’s calling himself now. How does the bellhop act fit into the picture?”
“I—I think he took the job because he didn’t trust me. He wanted to watch me all the time. He’s—he’s a terrible man, Mr. Malone. He’s kept me a prisoner in this room—a virtual prisoner. He beats me!”
“Sure,” Malone said. He was doing so well that he decided to branch out. “It’ll all come out, but, as I said, you’re Helene’s friend and I told her I’d try to do something for you—”
Vivian Conover’s eyes widened. “Then the whole hypnotism thing fell through?”
“Did it ever! But what about the others? Fargo. Barnhall.”
“Fargo doesn’t know anything. But I’m not sure about Barnhall. André didn’t tell me everything.”
“André?”
“DuBois.”
“Oh, that’s the name Zalek’s using now?”
Vivian Conover’s eyes suddenly gleamed with suspicion. A terrible possibility dawned. Was she being given the business? André had just left her room, and everything had been all right then.
Malone observed the suspicion. It had to be eliminated. He eyed her sternly and said, “I’m curious about one point. Who thought up the hypnotic code words? Confetti. Yellow ribbon.” What the hell was the other one?
He didn’t need it. Such intimate knowledge convinced Vivian beyond all doubt. Retribution had arrived in the form of this little monster with the big cigar.
“Marcus, at Walden, suggested it. André said he thought it was cute. Marcus is a terrible man. Have you found out who he is yet?”
Malone gave no indication that she was giving him more questions to answer. “Sure,” he said, “but I’ve got an obligation to Helene. I promised I’d do something for you.”
“Helene is a wonderful girl,” Vivian whimpered.
Trying to plan as you go when you don’t know where you’re going or who’s on first is difficult. Malone was aware of that, but a man had to try. He was one giant step ahead; he seemed to have Vivian Conover where he wanted her.
“Okay,” he said. “Your only chance is to get out of circulation for a while. They sent me up after you, but I’ll stick my neck out and tell them you beat it.”
“But I have no place to go.”
He’d hoped she would say that. “I know a place. A friend of mine. Get into some clothes quick. We can get out the back way if you hurry.”
Sobbing softly, Vivian Conover grabbed a dress from the closet and headed for the bathroom….
Malone had a friend—a very good friend—he’d kept over the years. Her name was Ma Blodgett and she lived in an old frame house near the Loop that had up to this time escaped the wrecking crews of progress. Ma was solid gold on two counts. She never asked questions and she could be relied upon never to answer them.
Malone got Vivian Conover out of the hotel, hailed a cab, and gave Ma’s address. “You stay where I’m taking you ’til you hear from me,” Malone told Vivian. “I promise you I’ll work in your interest for Helene’s sake. But I can’t promise any more than that.”
It was enough at the moment. Vivian Conover looked as though she wanted to kiss Malone, which would have been fine under other circumstances. But as things were, he sacrificed this reward. They pulled up in front of Ma’s house.
He knocked on the big worn door, and Ma opened it. She looked the same as she had always looked—so far as Malone knew—both night and day; gray flannel wrapper, cold cream shining on her face, her thin, dyed, black hair pinned up hastily.
“Another one, huh?” Ma said.
“Hi, Ma. This is Vivian Conover. Can you put her up ’til I call for her?”
“This one’s older and prettier. Doubt if you’ll leave her here long.”
“Ma’ll take care of you,” he told Vivian, and hurried down the steps before either woman changed her mind. He was happy when he heard the big door close. He had accomplished something. Now he had to scurry around and find out exactly what.
His coup had been gratifying, but still he hadn’t smashed out at anything. That earlier need now came back to haunt him and may have been responsible for a quick, gratifying thought.
Kent Fargo. Helene had visited him after their talk at the Casino, and Malone had mourned the fact that he hadn’t gotten Fargo’s address. Thus he’d acted like a man who’d been born before the existence of telephones and the big books that listed subscribers’ addresses.
“Idiot!” Malone muttered in self-condemnation, and headed for the nearest telephone booth. Then he hailed a cab….
It was in the luxury building class; the kind few people could afford. A silent elevator carried Malone to the third floor, where he rang 321. He waited. The knob turned. The door opened. Malone looked at Kent Fargo, resplendent in a blue silk robe with a red cravat tucked in at the lapels. But he was more interested in the change in Fargo’s expression. It had started as a look of warm welcome. But then it reversed itself into a disappointed frown.
“She isn’t here, then,” Malone said, making it a statement rather than a question.
Fargo’s first problem was to find out which husband, or uncle, or guardian, this was; and which wife, or neice, or ward, he expected to find.
“Who isn’t here?”
Malone stepped inside. Fargo took an involuntary step backward. His frown turned into the scowl of an angry householder whose premises were being unlawfully invaded. “Just who the hell are you and what do you want?”
There was a pow, or rather a splat, as Malone’s fist connected with Fargo’s jaw. Fargo back-pedalled and went down. He blinked and shook his head and started struggling to his feet.
Malone stepped forward. He waited until Fargo had half-risen—until his jaw was within range—and splatted again. Fargo reassumed his reclining position.
“The name is Malone—John J.—Attorney at Law. I’m looking for Helene Justus.”
Panic had hit Fargo along with Malone’s fist, but reason remained in control. It appeared from this madman’s actions that he wouldn’t hit a person who was down. It seemed that he preferred his victims to be erect so they would go down when they were hit—the kind of a psycho who liked to see people fall before violence.
But Fargo had no intention of catering to this whim. He remained where he was. “She’s not here.”
“What about André DuBois? Do you know him?”
Fargo wished he had the courage to get up and kick this jerk’s ribs in. But he hadn’t. He’d yearned for that kind of courage before in his career and realized by this time that such ideas were only wishful thinking.
“I know DuBois—sure.”
“Where does he live?”
“I don’t know.”
“Get on your feet.”
“I still wouldn’t know.”
“What about Barnhall?”
“Never heard of him.”
“What’s your connection with DuBois?”
“I haven’t got any.”
“Get up.”
“Go to hell.”
It would have been nice to stay and have a long heart-to-heart talk with Fargo, Malone thought. He would have enjoyed talking to Fargo as long as his fists held out. But he had other things to do.
“Mind if I use your phone?”
“Be my guest.”
Malone dialed with his back to Fargo, hoping the latter would get to his feet so he could be knocked down again. But Fargo chose to stay where he was. Malone dialed Joe the Angel’s bar.
“Any word from anybody?”
Joe said, “Uh-huh. Von Flanagan phoned. Then he came over. He’s here now.”
“Give him a drink.”
“He doesn’t want a drink. He wants you.”
“Tell him to relax.”
“I don’t think he wants to do that, either.”
“Tell him to drop dead.”
Malone hung up. He turned. Fargo was still lying comfortably on his back. Malone said, “Be seeing you.” He left.
Chapter Twelve
To Helene Justus, it was as though she were some other person. That was how the situation impinged on her consciousness in this new world of confusion; as though she herself—Helene Justus, Jake Justus’s wife, a sane, reasonably normal person—stood far back, watching the new Helene Justus flounder in a confusion that engulfed them both.
The place where she stood was huge and dark and forbidding. Nothing about it seemed real. It was like some vast forgotten theater, long abandoned and given over to melancholy shadows and the ghosts of long departed actors who had performed on the huge, now-empty stage.
One question stood foremost in Helene’s mind. Where am I and why am I here? By whose order? What purpose am I serving? She had entered through a boarded-up doorway that had partially collapsed leaving an opening. Inside, the air was dank and musty. A place of flying bats and ghost voices.
She walked up a ramp, unguided by the directives that had been a part of previous experiences of this nature. There must have been a mistake. She moved on. The great stage lay before her. She had come out onto a ramp that led across the orchestra pit. She walked its length and her footsteps were gaunt, hollow sounds on the dusty boards.
Why am I here?
There was no answer, either in the dull, thickened depths of her mind or in the great, dark vastness that stretched around her.
But there was a precarious base of security; a certainty that all was exaggerated. The proportions of this place as they reflected in her mind were a gross exaggeration, as a hobgoblin in a nightmare is a great distortion of nothing—but no less frightening.
Helene walked across the stage, her footsteps muted by years of layered dust. She found a stairway and mounted it. Above was a narrow corridor with rooms giving off. Most of them were dark but at the far end she found one with a window.
The room was small. She looked out of the window and down—far down—to where the people were pigmies walking along the street.
There was a dressing table and a mirror and a dusty chair in the room. The mirror was rimmed with light bulbs long unused, but in the thick dust on the mirror, words had been penciled by the tip of someone’s finger.
Caruso sang here.
The thought frightened Helene. It was as though the ghosts of long-gone artists had come to crowd around her in stern disapproval. The fear turned to terror. Helene sobbed—a dry, pleading sound deep in her throat. She ran from the room and back along the corridor. She found the stairs and fled from the place. Out into the street.
But it was a street darkened and lonely—seen through the blurred mirrors of her mind.
There was a place she had to go—and quickly—a place of sanctuary. The only place of sanctuary left in a crazy world….
André DuBois was frantic. And, his nature being what it was, when he became panicky, he got vicious. Skinning out of his bellhop uniform in the locker room of the Craymore, he threw it into a corner with snarling violence, his instincts telling him that he would never need it again.
His instincts told him far more than that. They said everything was goofed up; that a perfect plan had gone bad. This came from having to deal with timid, stupid incompetents. Beginning with Vivian Conover, he’d had the misfortune from the very first of surrounding himself with slobs. So now, here he was, not knowing which way to turn.
He left the Craymore, got on a public phone and dialed viciously. A careful, measured voice answered.
“What’s Marcus’ number?” DuBois demanded. “I’ve got to talk to him.”
“I’m afraid there’s some mistake. What number—”
“Cut out the crap. You know who this is. I want to talk to that cagey bastard and I want to talk to him now.”
Behind DuBois’ façade of rage, there was terror. He was at the mercy of the owner of the voice on the phone at the other end. If the bastard hung up, he was through. If Terminal refused to talk, DuBois could only grab his hat and get the hell out of Chicago and out of the country. Run like a rabbit and never know what happened unless, at some future date, a cop tapped him on the shoulder and said, “Okay, buddy, this is it.”
“I gotta talk to him,” DuBois pleaded.
Terminal did not hang up. He sat there in silence, considering the situation.
“Please …”
Whether or not DuBois’ whining plea tipped the scales, he would never know, but Terminal showed some interest.
“What’s hap
pened?”
“Vivian Conover ran out on me.”
“Tell me about it.”
“What the hell is there to tell? I was at her room and everything was all right. I went back a little later and she was gone. Not a word. Nothing. Gone.”
“Maybe she went for a walk.”
“Cut it out, you stupid jerk. Do you think you’re playing with old women? She packed a bag. Ratted out!”
“You have no proof that anything is wrong.”
“Gimme Marcus’ number! I’ve got to make sure that end is okay!”
“Do you think Marcus is going to cross you?”
DuBois wanted to twist the phone cord around Terminal’s smug neck and strangle him, but he held his temper. “It’s the only direction I can go to find out anything.”
Terminal’s voice became cold. “You certainly understand that I’m not involved. I’m merely a middleman commissioned to accept merchandise and—”
“You’re involved, you son of a bitch! If you think I’m going down alone—think again. I’ve got this phone number and a few other things. I’m no sucker! If—”
“Just a moment.”
There was silence while Terminal analyzed the situation. The phone number meant nothing. It was a tapped-in extension of a subscriber who had been away all summer and would be away a while longer. But the few other things? Was DuBois bluffing? He could conceivably have been clever enough to trace down Terminal’s location. Not likely, but possible. Terminal decided that the smartest thing to do was to keep DuBois busy for a while; to give himself time to move if it became necessary. He had no more obligation to Marcus than he had to DuBois. Let them slice each other’s throats.
“All right,” Terminal said. “You’ll find Marcus at—got a pencil?”
DuBois took down the number, not even trusting his excellent memory in so dangerous a situation. He broke the connection and dialed again.
“Hello—this is DuBois. Vivian Conover’s disappeared. Everything’s blown sky-high! I need money to get out of town!”
“Money? You must have got the wrong number, mister. I haven’t got any money.”