Dead on the Level
Page 18
“Good enough,” I said. “Then at five-thirty this afternoon you’ll find out the name of the dame. How come you never asked her before?”
“It was none of my business. Penelope mentioned it once or twice and that was that. She may not even know the gal’s name. You know how it is with Penelope’s parties, all sorts of people, a lot of them she hardly knows.”
“For whatever it’s worth, you’ll find out at five-thirty.”
“You bet I will.”
“Fine. Now get the hell out of here so that I can begin taking up the slack.”
“Like how?”
“Like having my breakfast and getting dressed and going down to the bank and finding out what this is all about.”
He grabbed one hand of mine in both of his and squeezed. “Thank you, Mr. Chambers.”
“Cut it out.” I pulled free. “What’s to thank me? Your father’s been a friend of mine since you were a wild schoolboy trying to get your stripes as a juvenile delinquent.”
“That’s all past now.”
“I’m sure it is. Now get out of here, kid. Where’ll you be?”
“At my studio until I hear from you.”
“You’ll hear. Now clear.”
“Thank you again, Mr. Chambers.”
“Good-bye, boy.”
I saw him out and went to the kitchen and ate my breakfast. Hangover had been nipped by news from a tabloid. The dust was out of my brain and slumber was out of my bones. I had been a good boy all week, with plenty of sleep, and five hours is enough for any man with an emergency on his mind. I shook my head over the last cup of coffee as I reread the item on page three. It was wild, it was impossible, it was too far-out. There had to be some logical explanation, or illogical explanation, but whatever the explanation it would have to exonerate Charles R. Medford because Charles R. Medford, simply, was not a thief. The police might not buy that but I bought it because I was a friend and if a friend does not know who the hell does? Charles R. Medford was not a crook but according to page three he was sure in a jam. Well, hell, I wasn’t a private richard for nothing and if I couldn’t unjam a friend then it was time I turned in my license and became a politician or something similarly important such as chicken-flicker. First step was to get to the source and the source was the bank but there were a couple of small but necessary steps prior to that such as a shower and a shave. I went to the bathroom.
I live in an old and stately apartment house with large rooms and high ceilings and no stall showers, built long before I was born. Since I was born more modern apartment house have been erected with stall showers but frequently the only way to differentiate between the rooms for living and the stalls for shower is to look up to the ceiling for the shower-head. My bathroom contains a large tub and the shower is part of the bathtub and there are shower-curtains hung on a bar by curtain-rings and the shower-curtains are closed for decor when the shower is not in use and closed when the shower is in use in order that water does not splash the tiles of the floor. I parted the curtains, after divesting myself of my pajamas, so that I could step into the tub in order to take my shower, but I did not step into the tub because, if I would have, I would have stepped upon the lady who was lying there. The lady did not belong in my tub. Nobody belonged.
She had a good, long-legged, well-rounded figure, all of which I was able to observe because the lady was unencumbered by clothes. She lay nude, supine, inert, smiling wistfully. Both of us were naked but only one of us reacted—me. The lady was beyond reaction. I kneeled and touched her. She was cold and rigid. I did no further examination. I stood up, closed the shower-curtains, and trotted to the living room where I put through a call for Detective-lieutenant Parker of Homicide.
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Copyright © 1951 by Helen Nielsen, Registration Renewed 1979
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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.
eISBN 10: 1-4405-4126-4
eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-4126-1