They’d already tuned in my phone when I got back and I christened it by calling that Tommy Vaillant number. A man’s voice answered. “Tommy there?” I cooed as though I’d known him all my life.
Mr. Vaillant, said the voice, was out for the evening. The “Mr.” part told me it must be his man Friday. And who was this wanted to know?
“Just a little playmate of his. Where can I reach him?”
“The Gay Nineties Club.” Which made it all the easier, because if he had come to the phone himself I would have been in a spot.
It took me an hour to get ready, but if my face was good before I started you should have seen it when I got through. I figured I had plenty of time, because anyone who would go to a club that early must own an interest in it and would stick around until curfew. I nearly got pneumonia going there in that come-and-get-it dress, but it was worth it.
I rocked the rafters when I sat down and wisps of smoke came up through the cracks in the floor. The floor show was a total loss, not even the waiters watched it. I ordered a Pink Lady and sat tight. Then when I took out a cigarette there were suddenly more lighters being offered me from all directions than you could shake a stick at, the air was as full of them as fireflies.
“Put ‘em all down on the table,” I said, “and I’ll pick my own.”
A guy that went in for monogrammed matches wasn’t going to neglect putting his initials on his cigarette-lighter and I wanted to pick the right one. I counted nine of them. His was a little black enamel gadget with the T.V. engraved on it in gold.
“Who goes with this?” I said and pushed the empty chair out. He wasn’t the ratty type I’d been expecting. He looked like he could play a mean game of hockey and went in for cold baths.
“Whew!” I heard someone say under his breath as the other eight oozed away. “There would have been fireworks if she hadn’t picked his!”
Oh, so that was the type he was! Well, maybe that explained what had happened to Bemice.
He sent my Pink Lady back and ordered fizz water. “What’s your name?”
“Angel Face,” I said.
“You’re telling me?” he said.
“Shay come on,” he said three hours later, “we go back my plashe— hup—for a li’l nightcap.”
“No, we’ll make it my place,” I said. “I’d like to get out of this dress and get some clothes on.”
When we got out of the cab I turned back to the driver while the doorman was helping Vaillant pick himself up after he’d tripped over the doorstep going in. “Stick around, I’m coming out again by myself in about half an hour, I’ll need you.”
Vaillant was just plastered enough to vaguely remember the house and too tight to get the full implication of it. “I been here before,” he announced solemnly, going up in the elevator with me.
“Let’s hope you’ll be here some more after this, too.” I let him in and he collapsed into a chair. “I’ll get us our nightcap,” I said, and got the two full glasses I’d left cooking in the fridge before I went out. One was and one wasn’t. “Now if you’ll just excuse me for a minute,” I said after I’d carefully rinsed the two empty glasses out in hot water.
I changed scenery and by the time I came in again he was out like a light. I got his address and his latchkey, went downstairs, got in the cab, and told him where to take me. It was Park Avenue all right and it was a penthouse; but very small—just two rooms.
I’d found out back at the Gay Nineties that his Filipino didn’t sleep there but went home at about ten each night, otherwise it would have been no soap. The elevator was private.
“Expect me?” I froze the elevator-man. “He sent me home ahead of him to punch the pillows together!”
It was three A.M. when I got there and I didn’t quit until seven. I went over the place with a fine-tooth comb. Nothing doing. Not a scrap of paper, a line of writing to show he’d ever known her. He must have been burning lots more than logs in that trick fireplace of his—around the time Bernice was decorating the show window at Campbell’s Funeral Parlor. There was a wall-safe, but the locked desk in the bedroom was a pushover for a hairpin and I found the combination in there in a little memo book.
The safe started in to get worthwhile. Still no dope about Bernice, but he’d hung onto the stubs of a lot of canceled checks that he shouldn’t have. One in particular was made out to a Joe Callahan of Third Avenue, two days after she’d died. Two hundred and some-odd bucks—just about enough to take a man and wife to the other side— third-class.
Joe Callahan had been the name of that day doorman at 225 East 54th that Westman had tried so hard to locate, only to find he’d quit and gone home to Ireland. I slipped it under my garter just for luck. If he’d also greased the night doorman to forget that he’d been a caller at Bernice’s, he’d had sense enough to do it in cash. There was no evidence of it. Ditto the driver of the car that had smacked down her maid up in Harlem.
So, all in all, the inventory was a flop.
It was broad daylight out and I was afraid the Filipino would check in any minute, so I quit. In ten minutes time I had the place looking just like it had been when I first came in, everything in order.
When Vaillant came to in the chair he’d passed out in, I was sitting there looking at him all dressed and rosy as though I’d just got up feeling swell. His latchkey was back in his pocket but it had only taken a locksmith twenty minutes to make me a duplicate to it. The check stub I’d left at a photographer’s to have photostatic copies made of it,
“You’re a nice one,” I crooned when he opened his eyes, “folding up on me like that. Come on, get under the shower, I’ll fix you some coffee.”
When he’d finished his second cup he looked around. “There’s something familiar about this room,” he said. He got up and looked out the window and I saw his face turn white. “My God, it’s the same apartment,” he muttered, “let me out of here!”
“Grot the jitters?” I said sweetly.
“I’m not yellow, but I’ve got a hangover,” he said. “Don’t ask me to tell you about it now, this ain’t the time. I’ve got to get some air.”
He grabbed his hat and I grabbed his sleeve. “Is that a promise?” I said. “Will you tell me later on? Tonight for instance?”
“There’s nothing to tell,” he said and slammed the door.
I’d been close that time! I picked up his empty cup and smashed it against the wall opposite me.
“I gotta have more than that!” barked Westman when I passed him the photostat of the check stub. “What am I, a magician? This don’t prove his connection with her. All this shows is he paid some guy named Joe Callahan two hundred bucks. There’s scads of’em in New York. How you going to identify this ‘J.C with the one that worked as doorman at her house? And, even if you do, that still don’t prove the payor had anything to do with her death. It may point to it—but that ain’t enough.”
“Wait,” I said, “who said this was all? I’m not through yet. Always remember the old saying, ‘Every little bit, added to what you’ve got, makes a little bit more.’ I only brought you this to put away in a safe place, put it in your oflfice vault. There’s more coming, I hope, and this will tie up nicely with the rest when we get it. Meanwhile I’ll be needing more jack for what I have in mind.”
Tm a lawyer, not a banker.”
“I sat through your last case,” I reminded him, “you’re a banker, all right. Give—it’ll be a good investment from your point of view.” I got it.
I went to the biggest music specialty shop in town and had a talk with the head man. “I’m trying out for the stage,” I said. “I want to make some records of my own voice—at home. Can it be done? Not singing, just speaking. But it’s got to come out clear as a bell, no matter where I’m standing.”
They had nothing like that on the market, he told me, only some of those little tin platters that you have to stand right up close to and yell at. But when I told him that expense was no object, he suggested I
let him send a couple of his experts up and condition my phonograph with a sort of pick-up and string some wiring around the room. Then with some wax “master” records—blanks—and a special sort of needle I could get the same effect as the phonograph companies did at their studios.
I told him go ahead, I’d try it out. “See, there’s a famous producer coming to call on me and my whole career depends on this.”
He had to order the needle and dummy records from the factory. He didn’t carry things like that. “Make it two dozen, just to be on the safe side,” I said. “He might ask me to do Hamlet’s Soliloquy.” I could tell he thought I was a nut, but he said: “I’ll get you a trade discount on em.
“Oh, and don’t forget the phonograph itself,” I said on my way out. “I forgot to mention I haven’t got one.”
They were all through by five that afternoon. There really wasn’t as much to it as I thought there’d be. It looked like just another agony box. The only difference was you couldn’t play anything on it like the real ones, it recorded sounds instead of giving them out.
“Now, here’s one very important thing,” I said. “I want to be able to start and stop this thing without going over to it each time.”
But that, it turned out, was a cinch. All they did was to attach a long taped cable with a plunger on the end of it, which had been featured commercially with certain types of phonos for years. You sat across the room from it, pushed the plunger and it started, released it and it stopped. It was plugged in of course, didn’t need winding.
“Move it up closer against the daybed,” I said. “As close as you can get it, that’s where I want it to go.”
When it was all set, we put a record on and I tried it out. I stood off across the room from it and said: “Hello, how are you? You’re looking well,” and a lot of other junk, anything that came into my head. Then I sat down on the daybed and did it from there.
They took the record off and played it for me on a little portable machine they’d brought with them—it couldn’t be played on the original machine, of course—and with a softer needle, fibre or bamboo, so as not to spoil it. The part it had picked up from across the room was blurred a little, but the part it had picked up from the daybed came out like crystal and so natural it almost made me jump.
“We’ll let it go at that,” I said. “Just so long as I know where I’m at, that satisfies me. By the way, how am I going to tell when a record’s used up and it’s time to put a new one on?”
“It’s got an automatic stop, the plunger’ll come back in your hand.”
After they’d gone I made a couple of minor improvements of my own. I hung an openwork lace scarf over the cabinet so you couldn’t tell what it was and I paid out the cable with the plunger under the daybed, where it was out of sight. But it could be picked up easily by just dropping your hand down to the floor, no matter which end you were sitting on.
He was completely sold on me when we got back from the Gay Nineties the next night. I’d purposely left there with him earlier than the night before and kept him from drinking too much. It’s easier to get anyone to talk when they’re cockeyed, but it doesn’t carry much weight in court.
He came in eating out of my hand but grumbling just the same. “Why couldn’t we have gone to my place? I tell you I don’t like it here, it gives me the heebies.”
This time I mixed the nightcaps right in front of him. He took the glass I passed him and then he smiled and said: “Is this another Micky Finn?”
I nearly stopped breathing. Then I did the only thing there was to do. I took the glass back from him and drank it myself. “You say some pretty careless things,” I answered coldly. “Can you back that up?”
“I suppose you did it to keep me from making a pass at you,” he said. I got my breath back again. Then he said: “How you going to stop me tonight?”
I hadn’t exactly thought of that. Just because my mind was strictly on business, I’d forgotten that his might be on monkey business.
“Make yourself comfortable,” I said quietly, “while I get off the warpaint,” and I went inside. I was halfway through when I suddenly heard him say, “Where’s the radio? Let’s have a little music.”
My God, I thought, if he finds that thing! I ran back to the doorway and stuck my head out and it must have been pretty white. “I—I haven’t got any,” I said.
“What’s this thing?” he said, and reached over to lift up the lace scarf covering it.
“That’s an electric sewing-machine,” I said quickly. “I make my own clothes. Tommy, come here a minute, I want to show you something.” He came over and my lungs went back to work for me again. “Isn’t this a keen little dressing room?” He misunderstood and made a reach. “Oh, no, no, put on the brakes!” I said. “Come on, let’s go in and sit down and talk quietly.”
We sat down side by side and I parked my drink on the floor, an inch or two away from the cable connecting with the machine. “Why do you keep saying you don’t like this place?” I remarked cagily. “Why do you get so shivery each time you come here? This morning you got all white when you looked out of the window—”
“Let’s talk about you,” he said.
“But I want to know. You promised you’d give me the lowdown.”
But it wasn’t going to be as easy as all that. “God, you’re a sweet number, you’re tops, kid,” he said soft and low, “you’ve got me off my base, this isn’t just a one-night stand, I want to marry you.” He slipped his arm around me and leaned his head against me, so I knew I had him branded. I was on the inside track with him now. My hand dipped down toward the floor in the dark and felt the corded cable lying there. “You’ll marry in hell, you punk!” I thought savagely.
“You’re a chaser,” I stalled. I groped along the cable, gathering it up in my fingers until I got to the end and felt the plunger in my hand. “You used to know someone in this very apartment, you said the same thing to her I bet.”
“That rat,” he said sourly, “she was no good.”
“Who was she anyway?” I waited.
“You musta read about it in the papers,” he said. “That Pascal woman that got bumped.”
I reared up on my elbow and pushed the plunger. I raised my voice a little, spaced each word. “Why, Tommy Vaillant,” I said, and I went double on it for purposes of identification. “Tommy Vaillant, did you know her, Bemice Pascal, that girl that was found dead right here in this very building?”
“Did I know her? We were like this!” He held up two fingers to show me. The record would muff that, so I quickly put in: “As thick as all that? How’d you feel when she got it in the neck?”
“I gave three cheers.”
“Why, what’d you have against her?”
“She was a mutt,” he said. “Her racket was blackmail. She accidentally found out something about me that wouldn’t have looked good on the books. It was good for a Federal stretch. A shooting back in Detroit, in the old Prohibition days. I warned her, if she ever opened her trap, her number was up. I had her colored maid fixed and she tipped me off Pascal was all set to blow to Montreal with this Reardon guy. I knew what that meant. The first time she ran short of cash, off would come the lid—up there where I couldn’t stop her!”
“What’d you do about it?”
“I came over here to the apartment to stop her. And with a dame like her, there was only one way to do that.”
“You came here intending to kill her?”
“Yeah,” he said, “she had it coming to her.”
I suddenly cut the motor. My hand seemed to act without my telling it to. Don’t ask me how I knew what he was going to say next, I wasn’t taking any chances.
“She was dead when I found her,” he said. “Somebody beat me to it. She was lying on the floor, cold already. First I thought she was just drunk. Then when I saw different I tipped my hat to whoever done it and closed the door again. I got out of there in a hurry.”
I turned it on again between �
��again” and “I.” “What’s that whirring noise?” he said. “Is there a mosquito in here?”
“That’s the frigidaire,” I said. “The motor goes on and off.” West-man would know enough to erase this before he had the wax record copied in hard rubber.
“I shouldn’t be telling you all this,” he said. “But you’re not like her.” I nestled a little closer to him to give him confidence, but not enough to start the fireworks up again. “What was the first thing you did after that?” I purred.
“I threw the key to her place down the sewer. Then I got a taxi on the next corner and drove over to the club and fixed myself a good alibi. Next day I went around to where the day doorman lived and paid his way back to Ireland—just to be on the safe side. He’d seen me with her too much for my own good.”
“What about the night doorman?”
“He was new on the job, didn’t know me by sight, didn’t know which apartment I’d come into or gone out of.” So he hadn’t been greased, was just dumb.
“What about the colored maid, didn’t she worry you?”
“That was taken care of,” he said, “she had an accident.” I could tell by the tone of his voice that it must have been really an accident, that he hadn’t had anything to do with it, but I fixed that. I gave a loud boisterous laugh as though he’d meant it in a different way. “You think of everj^hing!” I said, and switched the thing off.
It was a risky thing to say, but he wasn’t noticing, let me get away with it. “What’s funny about it?” he droned sleepily.
The phone rang all of a sudden. It was for him. They wanted him at the club on account of a raid was coming up. He’d left word where they could reach him. Just when I wanted him out of the way, too. Who said there was no Santa Claus?
“See you tomorrow night, Angel Face.”
He grabbed his hat, grabbed a kiss, and breezed.
It was getting light out, and I was all in. Some night’s work. And all on one record. I let the cord that had done all the dirty work slip out of my hand. I looked at it and shook my head and thought, “That poor slob.” I guess I was too tired by then, myself, to feel joyful about it. Maybe that was why I didn’t.
Darkness at dawn : early suspense classics Page 10