I wasn’t clowning. I never felt less like a clown in my life. “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know what you’re looking for.”
“Don’t give me that. The Chinaman must have given it to you.”
“What’s he got to do with this? He’s just a poor slob with a family shot to pieces.”
She laughed. “He had it coming. He could have handed it over with no muss, no fuss. So he got smart. Now he’s got one kid dead and another one who’d be better off dead.”
“Wait a minute.” I was getting crazy ideas all of a sudden. “You trying to tell me that machine gun was intended for those two kids? Not me? Why, that’s screwy. I wouldn’t believe that if I heard it from the Angel Gabriel.”
Her eyes were real ugly now.
“I’m telling you that’s the way it was, Noon.”
“Okay. Now I heard it. What do we do next?”
“Strip,” she said.
“Huh?”
“Strip, I said. Peel out of those clothes and shake it up. I’m way past my patience, buster.”
“Now wait a minute –”
I stopped talking because the look in her eyes didn’t go away. And the nose of the .45 was a Rock of Gibraltar. She was right. She was no First of May and her eyes were telling me I’d be a sap to consider her one. The blue in them was Arctic.
Wordlessly, I eased my jacket off. I started to put it on the desk. Then I sighed and dropped it on the floor. I unstrapped my shoulder holster and put it down gently, the proximity of my own gun making my fingers itch to close around its butt. But the blonde was targeting in on me like radar.
My shirt and tie were next. Then my T shirt. I let her get a good look at the yards of bandage on my side but she just shook her head. I wasn’t going to get any sympathy from this dame. I loosened the buckle of my belt and then stopped. There are limits.
“Aren’t you going to turn around, sister? This isn’t easy.”
“Keep going.” Her voice was rasping steel. “I’m running this. You won’t be the first naked man in my life.”
“You know something? I didn’t doubt it for a second.” I didn’t give her time to get mad. Sore and disgusted, I stepped out of my trousers. My unmentionables followed in rapid order. Now my clothes were a heaping pile at my feet. I kicked them away angrily. I felt ridiculous. I still had my size-nine shoes on but the rest of me was September Morn. And I never felt more defenceless in my life.
“I ought to charge you for this,” I gritted it out. “With or without the fan.”
“Shoes,” she said.
Shoes it was. I unlaced them and eased them off. I looked at her questioningly. Of course. The socks too. That made it complete. I had just come into the world. As naked as the day I was spanked into life. Except for the bandages.
“Okay,” I said. “Now you’ve got a rummage sale. So what? Can’t I at least sit down behind the desk. I’m cold.”
“Shut up. Stop the cracks. Just move back and don’t try anything.”
I shut up. I stopped the cracks. I moved back until I came up against the desk. I winced. It was cold.
The blonde went down to one knee, her eyes never leaving my face, the .45 centred about a foot above my navel. Her dress pulled back above her knees. But I was in no mood to appreciate the finer things in life. Her strong white fingers were exploring my clothes expertly.
One by one, she frisked each garment thoroughly. Pockets in and pockets out. When she didn’t find what she was looking for, she flung each piece of my wardrobe away scornfully. And a small pile of my personal junk started to accumulate on the floor. Keys, pocket change, wallet, handkerchief, old theatre stubs. It was a funny feeling watching her scatter my private life all around the room like that. Pretty soon, the office floor looked like a bargain basement for Bowery bums.
The blonde got to her feet, disappointment making her lush features tight and cruel. She had my .45 in her other hand, so now she was a two-gun girl. And until a dazzling blonde in a fur coat comes at you with a big .45 in each hand, you’ve never been come at.
I smiled. It was a silly situation no matter how you looked at it. Me being naked made it something right out of the comics.
“Button, button, who’s got the button? Now it’s your turn. You strip. I’m dying to see if those things that move on you are really real.”
Her tight smile didn’t make me feel good. She showed her teeth and kept on coming at me. But I had no place to go. The lip of the desk was biting into my thighs.
I waited. But the .45 was still looking me in the eye. I knew what was coming because I’d been down to Customs once or twice, and the police station and I aren’t exactly strangers.
She was quick. Real quick. She did two things with the speed of a jet take-off. First, she tucked the .45 in her right hand under her left armpit. Second, her hand flashed back at me and pulled viciously. The adhesive on the bandages ripped and tore with a tearing sound. I tried to move with her to ease the pain but it was like hanging on to something that isn’t there. A thousand hornets of red-hot agony knifed their needles into my stitched side. I cursed hard, biting my teeth to hold the pain back. But my eyes filled with water. I cursed again, my arms falling like dead weights as my side throbbed like an overworked organ.
She was turning the bloody interior of my dressings inside out, still looking for whatever the hell was worth beating a guy up for. She was paying about as much attention to my misery as a juvenile delinquent does to a social worker. Now she cursed and ground the bandages beneath her foot with a pointed heel.
She was real mad. Her body was alive with anger. She didn’t look sexy any more. She looked like a hound from hell. Correction – a bitch. And sex was as far from my mind as grand opera is from Elvis Presley.
“You son of a bitch,” she snarled. “Where is it? It wasn’t in the office. We been turning this place inside out for days while you were away. And now I know it wasn’t anywhere on you. What did you do with it? Tell me, or I’ll blow you into the cemetery!”
“I’ll bet you could. Look. Don’t get hysterical. Don’t faint. Just tell me what you’re looking for. I’m not stalling you. I honestly don’t know.”
I could see she didn’t believe me. What was worse, she was through humouring me about it. I was wasting her time. I could see I was wasting her time. And I was about two seconds away from being slaughtered – slaughtered by a sexy blonde in a fur coat with a .45 looking for something that she knew I had. That I knew I didn’t have. I was up the biggest tree of my life. And there was only one way down. One way out.
I took it. I bunched my stiff muscles, getting ready to spring, getting ready to do something, anything, to bail myself out. Another tick of the clock would decide it one way or the other.
And then it happened. The little thing that changes your whole life. The single point that decides which way the wind will blow or whether it is your day to die or not.
It happened on her face. Her eyes got funny. And then I could see it had happened in her head first. She had thought of something. The gleam of her eyes was almost insane.
“Dirty clothes,” she whispered fiercely. “Geez – we never did find any dirty clothes here … Noon!” She jabbed the .45 out and I jumped. “You live here. That couch is a bed. There’s an icebox with food. But your dirty laundry – where’s your dirty laundry?”
I ought to have laughed. But I couldn’t. You can’t laugh at a reprieve from sudden death no matter what ludicrous form it takes.
“Downstairs,” I said. “In Tom Long’s. The Chinaman who seems to interest you so much.”
“Damn it,” she snarled. “I should have known. It figures, it figures.”
I didn’t know what she was talking about. And I was still naked, still in pain, still in the dark.
“Lady,” I said, “please make some sense. What is this all about?”
“Talk’s over, Noon. Hand it over. And I’ll get out of your life for ever.”
I was still going around in circles.
“Hand what over? You’ve got everything I own already.”
“The laundry ticket,” she said. “One Chinese laundry ticket. All of a sudden I want to see Tom Long again.”
SIX
Laundry tickets, dead Chinese, machine-gunned blind men. A naked private eye and a .45 toting fur-coated blonde. I was sick and fed up. If I didn’t get a chance to sit down and think real soon I’d lose all my marbles.
But one thing filled my head. One big thing. The blonde hadn’t been looking for a laundry ticket originally. That’s for sure. She’d thought of it now only because she’d been doing her own brand of personal arithmetic and the answer had come out even for her. Not for me, though.
“Where is it?” she shrilled at me. “I want it now.”
“Medicine cabinet,” I said. “Hanging on a hook. I always put it there so I’ll see it in the morning and remind myself when I need a clean shirt.” That satisfied her. I watched her back away to the corner where the small sink was by the window. She half turned, still keeping the .45 looking at me, swung the mirrored door back and probed. Her white hand came away clutching a bright orange scrap of paper. Orange. This month’s laundry ticket was bright green. I suddenly realized I’d dropped off my soiled linen the day before I got the Tommy gun treatment. I never did have the chance to get it out. Now I really appreciated just how much time I’d spent in the hospital.
But I didn’t have to worry about taking my laundry out now. The blonde was sure as hell going to do it for me.
She hastily stuffed the ticket into the folds of her fur coat and started for the door.
“Good-bye,” I said. “It’s been a real pleasure. And you never even told me your name.”
“Just say thanks you’re alive, stupid,” she hissed. “You came real close. That stunt talk of yours will bury you for good some day.”
“Tell me something, Blondie. What’s so wonderful about my dirty clothes? You won’t find anything in them but laundry tags –”
“Shut up,” she said. “And thanks for reminding me. I have to keep you on ice for a while.”
She was one tough female. I stood by twiddling my thumbs as she scooped all my duds off the floor, walked to the rear window and tossed them out. She didn’t forget my shoes either. I could just see my wardrobe scattered over the garbage pails in the alley three flights down. I bit my lips and waited. But there weren’t any breaks in the wall of her logic. She cleaned out the closet too. My two other suits bit the dust of the alley in less time than it takes to write my name on a cheque.
I was really had now. Bare-nude-naked and not a stitch of clothes in the house. And I had to stand by and watch as she blithely went out my door and took off down the hall. With her .45 and mine, the laundry ticket in her hot coat, and a mad light shining in her cold blue eyes.
The sound of the elevator going down was all I needed. I might have been naked, but I haven’t been in the business this many years without picking up a few tricks along the way.
I flew to the phone and dialled like a maniac.
Tom Long didn’t have a telephone. But Kelly did. And Kelly was the owner and sole proprietor of the bar right across the street. Kelly had become almost as good a friend as old Benny had been – Benny, the former owner, who was dead now.
He was in. He had to be. His gruff voice spilling over the wire hit me like a welcome rain in the desert.
“Kelly. This is Ed.” I talked faster than I ever had in my life. “A blonde Venus in furs is coming out of my building. She’s going into Tom Long’s to get my laundry. She’s no friend of mine. When she leaves, follow her. Close the bar if you have to. It’s important, Kelly. I’ll explain later.” I hung up before he could ask a dozen questions and waste time. I ran to the window and stared down at the glass front of his place. I could see him at the counter, his bulk huddled by the phone, staring in the direction of Tom Long’s, then up at my window. I semaphored violently and when he started moving I heaved a sigh of relief.
Then I remembered my nakedness and the throbbing agony in my side. Cursing, I went to the medicine cabinet. Time was a-wasting. In a few flying seconds, I’d fashioned a crude bandage for my side with some absorbent cotton and a dozen Band-aids. The one she’d ripped off my body and trampled on was too unsanitary now to be of much use.
Next, I thought of some clothes. How the hell was I going to operate without duds? I hadn’t had time to ask Kelly. Putting a tail on the blonde was top priority. But now the issue was squarely before me. You just can’t operate without clothes. New York is not a nudist colony yet.
I thought of the rest of the offices on my floor. Alec St. Peter was out. My watch repair pal had gone up to Maine for fishing and a long vacation. Which left old Mr. Nakoomian, the rug dealer. Mr. Nakoomian, the bent old man who thought I was a gangster and a no-goodnik who shouldn’t be allowed to have an office in a pleasant building like this one, Mr. Nakoomian who was about five feet tall and a skinny one hundred and twenty pounds. I could just see squeezing six feet of me into a pair of his pants.
But I had to get going. And fast. I didn’t think the blonde would kill Tom Long. All she wanted was the laundry. But you can never be too sure when a person’s life is at stake.
There was only one out. One sensible one. The clothes in the alley. Better to nude my way down three flights of stairs and get my own duds than anything else I could think of.
I didn’t waste another minute. Propriety be damned.
I slipped out of the office, made sure the hall was empty, put my head down and ran. It was silly all right. One of the silliest things I’ve ever had to do.
Pretty soon, I was pulling the door that closed off the alley back on its hinges. Cold air fanned up at me icily. But there were my clothes – scattered around the backyard like a kid’s toys at suppertime.
I was gratefully easing into my trousers when a shattering explosion boomed, banged and bombarded the stillness of the night. And it came somewhere from the front of the building.
SEVEN
Thunder in the east sounded a heck of a lot better than thunder on West 56th Street. But this wasn’t thunder. It sounded like an air raid. It was just as loud and just as terrifying. And it was a big one.
The glass of the windows facing the backyard was still raining down on me as I clattered up the stairs. I was pulling and tightening my clothes around me but my feet were flying. I raced through the dim hallway towards the street front, my heart hammering, my head pinwheeling with conclusions. The blonde in furs was mean enough to be able to do just about anything.
Just about anything was right.
Smoke – black, ugly smoke – was billowing out of the shattered front of Tom Long’s Hand Laundry. Cars had stopped in the street, and on the opposite sidewalk anxious mothers were hustling their street-playing kids indoors. Long’s was only two doors away and as I pounded up the stone stoop, the proverbial hell broke loose.
People were hollering and yelling and rubberneckers were piled up at the windows of the houses three deep. But there wasn’t time for counting noses. I was thinking of Tom Long and little Tania.
I plunged into the interior of the store. The smoke rushed to meet me. Through the dark, blinding haze, I could see the splintered ruins of the wooden counter, the tangled, ruptured upheaval of the shelves. I stumbled over spilled packages and groped for the rear of the shop, yelling at the top of my lungs for Tom and Tania. Smoke knifed into my throat, gagging, choking. I clammed up and ploughed on. It wouldn’t take too long for the smoke to put me under. I had to work fast.
I found Tom Long first. I fell across him in the dark entrance to the kitchen. He was huddled helplessly on the floor, a tiny rag doll of blackened clothes and smoked face. I slung him over my shoulder and thanked everybody including my guardian angel that he was as light as a bag of feathers. My torn side was throbbing like a bongo. But there was still Tania. Little Tania.
“Tania!” I risked one more yell. It cost me. A ton of smoke filled my mo
uth and nostrils. Tears filled my eyes and I fell against the wall, shaking my head until it felt as if it would snap off. Flames started crackling hungrily.
I heard her crying, low, soft, terribly. That did it. The sound stabbed at me, moved my feet until I reached her. I could barely see her for the smoke. But she buried herself against me, her one good arm encircling my thigh like a steel vice. I remembered what Mike Monks had said about her other arm. The one she might never use again.
Holding my breath, I slipped my free arm around her and balled her under my armpit like a pillow. There wasn’t much more time left for anything. Turning, I staggered back the way I had come, just as the first tongues of flame began to lick at the floor and all of the wooden shelving. I couldn’t see a thing any more. I lurched forward, tumbling, reeling. My lungs were on fire.
I fell once and Tania screamed in pain and Tom Long moaned. Getting to my feet again with the whole Long family on my stiff carcass was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. But I did it.
The light from the street guided me. That and the sound of a thousand voices yelling and talking all at once. I could hear a siren wailing and cars braking to a halt with a whine of tyres. The curious sound of running, stamping feet. The whole damn neighbourhood was in on the uproar. Then I reached the door.
It must have been some sight to remember in your old age. It must have been the stage entrance of my lifetime.
I fell out into the cool, clean air with Tom Long hanging on my shoulder, Tania clutched under my arm and a barrel of smoke surrounding me. A great universal cheer went up like you hear at the Rose Bowl when Notre Dame scores an eighty-yard run.
I’d made an eighty-yard run too. But I wasn’t carrying a football. I was lugging human skin. Not a pigskin. That makes a big difference too.
I pitched down off the stone steps into the arms of about ninety people conscious that Tom and Tania Long were becoming just too heavy for me to tote another yard. I was suddenly interested in lying down. Way down where it was nice and cool. Where there were no such things as private investigations and crippled kids and crazy blondes and sudden death.
The Crazy Mixed-Up Corpse Page 3