The Blonde Wore Black

by Peter Chambers

  The worst part was over now, and it was safe for me to speak.

  “You were very lucky to get away like that.” I pointed out.

  “Yes. I started out immediately for the police, but of course I never got there. As soon as I was calm enough to think properly, I could foresee that if I did that, my future in Monkton City was finished. I would always be the woman who went to vice parties, no matter what the circumstances were.”

  “Not at all,” I objected. “Your name would never have been mentioned at any trial. You would have been Mrs. X.”

  I didn’t sound very convincing though, for the reason that I didn’t believe it myself. Even if the decent newspapers decided to give her a break, there’d be some dirt-hunting hack who’d come up with a picture of the “lovely Mrs. X, mysterious orgy witness,” and after that Eve Prince might as well leave town.

  “I’m sure you don’t have any more faith in that than I,” she reproved. “Anyway, I didn’t report it. Next morning I made the acquaintance of this man Brookman. He telephoned the house and told me he was going to call to discuss the party the previous night. I need hardly describe my feelings while I waited for him. I was afraid to have him in the house, so I waited out front. When he came, he had some photographs. They were all of me, and they were all very clear. He said he’d been of great service to me, because the man who took the pictures wanted five hundred dollars for them. Brookman had persuaded him to accept two hundred. I paid of course.”

  “And how often did he turn up after that?”

  “Every two weeks. It’s been going on almost three months now.”

  Three months of blackmail at that cost would probably have begun to put a real strain on her resources, I would guess.

  “And now he’s dead,” I mused. “You realize, Mrs. Prince, that I have to take a special interest in you now?”

  She looked surprised.

  “I don’t see why,” she objected. “I’ve told you the whole thing.”

  “What you have told me,” I explained, “Is a good sound reason for wanting Brookman dead. He is dead, and it would have been an entirely understandable thing if you’d been the one to kill him.”

  “Oh.”

  She made a tight little sound and bit anxiously at her knuckles.

  “Mr. Preston, I had nothing to do with it. When I read the story in the newspaper I could hardly believe it. I went to the mortuary to see for myself whether it was the right man.”

  And that was that, so far as she could see. The world is not that easy to live in.

  “Where were you last night?”

  “I was here at home,” she said icily. “And, oh yes, I can prove it. My son had a couple of his friends in here and they were playing records until quite late.”

  “That’s very good news Mrs. Prince. And I’m very interested in hearing about Brookman’s blackmail activities. If he had any other—er—victims. I ought to have some very profitable enquiries to make. I think a good place to start would be wherever this phoney piano recital was held.”

  I raised my voice at the end to make it a question. She was alarmed at once.

  “But I don’t want any more involvement,” she protested. “It was a filthy incident, a nasty ugly hour in my life that I just want to forget, I won’t testify, you know.”

  She said that bit triumphantly as though it were a trump card.

  “Nobody said anything about testimony,” I pointed out wearily.

  “All I want is to contact these people who obviously-must have known Brookman. This is a very elusive guy so far as his private life is concerned. No family, no friends I can trace. All I’m asking is the address. Your name won’t be mentioned.”

  “If I thought I could rely on that——” she hesitated.

  “You can,” I promised.

  “Very well. It’s a house out at Beach End. I’ve forgotten the name of the house, but it belongs to a man named Hugo Somerset.”

  I should have been able to guess that.

  “You know this Somerset?”

  “No. But he was there, acting as a combined host and master of ceremonies.”

  I paused before asking the next question. But it had to be asked.

  “Eer, this Hugo Somerset. It wasn’t him who er— er——”

  She shook her head hard.

  “No, it wasn’t him. He was the one who put a stop to it.”

  One of the Santa Claus Somersets, I reflected.

  “Well, I guess I can get the address easily enough. Thank you, Mrs. Prince. I’m sorry you’ve been bothered about all this, and I can understand the way you feel. There’s just one last thing.”

  She looked up at me as I stood, and worry or not on her face, she was a very attractive woman.

  “Yes?”

  “Blackmailers sometimes have friends. Either that, or somebody else who finds the blackmail material. Such a person might decide it would be a good idea to carry on where Brookman left off.”

  I wasn’t doing a whole lot to help her lose that worried expression.

  “I had thought of that,” she admitted.

  “Right. Now if any such thing should happen, if anybody else tries to blackmail you, I want you to promise to get in touch with me.”

  I scribbled my apartment phone number on a piece of paper and handed it to her.

  “But if I do that, I’m no better off than before. The whole thing will come out,” she wailed.

  “No, no,” I soothed, and I meant it. “It won’t come out. I’ll just have a private talk with whoever it is, and you’ll hear no more.”

  She was anxious to be convinced but I wasn’t satisfied she’d do as I asked.

  “Remember,” I added solemnly. “Whoever calls you, if anyone does, could be Brookman’s murderer. You wouldn’t want to take a chance with anybody like that.”

  She nodded dejectedly.

  “You’re right of course. And I will telephone.”

  “Thank you.”

  She watched me walk down to the car. I gave her a small wave as I drove away but she didn’t respond. It seemed to be my day for walking away from beautiful women.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  MY STOMACH KEPT MUTTERING about people with irregular eating habits, so I stopped over at a small Austrian place and helped myself to a portion of the gefillte fish. Along with this I washed down a glass or two of a special dry white wine they serve in there. I’m a great believer in keeping the eating varied. Sometimes it’s Chinese food, sometimes Italian, now and then I go kosher. But it seems wherever I go I can’t get away from people.

  “Whatever happened to that big fat story I was going to get?”

  I looked up as Shad Steiner pulled out the chair opposite and sat down.

  “Join me,” I suggested.

  “I already did. No story, huh?”

  “I’m working on it. You going to eat?”

  “I finished ten minutes ago. But thanks, I’ll join you in the wine. Hey waiter, another glass here.”

  I watched sadly as he tipped most of the remaining contents of the bottle down his throat.

  “That’s wine you know, not lemonade,” I told him bitterly.

  He shrugged his shoulders and put down the glass.

  “Don’t tell me about wine, please. My father worked in the vineyards all his life in the old country. I forgot more about wine by the time I’m ten years old than you’ll learn in your whole life. And don’t change the subject.”

  “There’s nothing to talk about yet,” I said.

  “There isn’t going to be, if you spend your whole life in wine shops. You ought to be out and around.”

  “Out and around I have been. This is my first food today. Tell me, what’s the dirt on this Hugo Somerset?”

  He thoughtfully shared out the remaining wine between us. One inch in my glass, three in his.

  “Why would there be any?” he demanded.

  “I had a talk with him today. An oddball, to say the least, and as you told me this morning
, he sure knows some funny people. I thought there may be something else you know about him, I mean before this Brookman thing. He seems to have a lot of money, for instance. Where does it come from?”

  Steiner peered at me across the table, the wise old face threaded with lines of suspicion.

  “The guy is somewhat of a mystery,” he admitted grudgingly. “He doesn’t seem to have been born anywhere. He turns up here in Monkton about six years ago, a full-grown man. He sets up at the Beach End and starts living like money. If he has any business interests they’re certainly not in this town.”

  “And he hasn’t been in any police trouble? No dames, no drunk parties?”

  The newspaperman smiled and shook his head.

  “Drunk parties?” he echoed. “People at Beach End don’t have drunk parties. They have a few friends in for cocktails. Or an evening of celebration. How many times do you read in the Globe about the honorable mister who’sit entertaining friends last night? It happens all the time. But drunk parties, uh uh. Such descriptions are not for Beach End wingdings.”

  “How about all this artistic stuff? Did he ever really turn up somebody with talent?”

  Steiner grinned knowingly and tapped at his nose with a bony forefinger.

  “You have an odd habit of coming up with the same questions I do myself. But hours later, naturally.”

  “Naturally. How about the answer?”

  “I asked my Art Editor the same thing this morning. He couldn’t be certain off hand so he had the files checked. The answer, as they say, is in the affirmative. Mr. Somerset has delivered on about four occasions over the years. Unknowns that he seems to have found and promoted, all of them now well settled in their different fields.”

  And that would agree with the way Somerset had talked to me that afternoon. In a way I was disappointed. I’d been hoping vaguely the whole bit was a huge con, nothing more than a cover for an elaborate blackmail network.

  “Do you know whether the police had made any progress today?” I asked.

  “I don’t think so. I’ve had one man spend a little time on it, and he didn’t come up with anything. After all it’s just a two-bit killing, nothing for any of us to get worked up about. When you consider the homicide turnover in this fair city, nobody has too much time to spare on a no-hoper like Brookman. Tonight, or maybe tomorrow, we’ll have a nice love-nest butchery, or something with some meat on it, then we can all forget about Brookman.”

  He was right of course. In a way he was echoing what Jake Martello had said earlier. Neither police nor newspapers had enough time or resources to dig too deeply into a backyard affair like the Brookman killing. And it would look suspicious if I seemed too interested.

  “You’re right Shad. I don’t think I’ll waste a lot more time on it myself. If I don’t come up with anything pretty fast, I’ll have to look for something more profitable.”

  He nodded, but whether to indicate he agreed with me or not, I couldn’t tell. With Steiner, I never could tell.

  We left the restaurant together, and he refused a lift, walking briskly away on the fifteen minute hike back to his home. I got in the Chev and went back to Parkside. After the heat of the day I thought I was entitled to a shower before the night shift. As I got out of the car I noticed a plain police sedan parked just ahead. I walked towards the entrance, and at the same time a man climbed out of the police waggon and headed for me. It was Randall, sergeant from Homicide and Lieutenant Rourke’s right hand man.

  “Lo Preston, been waiting for you.”

  I turned to look at him. Randall is a big man. He’s as tall as me, a little over six feet, and half as wide again. It makes him look heavy and ponderous. He isn’t. He has a large fleshy face, with deep-set eyes threatened with engulfment by the heavy surrounding folds of flesh. These make him look half-asleep. He isn’t. Looking at him, you could easily get the impression of a man lumbering around the world, a man not too strong on intelligence. And you would be getting a very wrong impression indeed.

  “Hi, Gil. Collecting for the Benefit Fund?”

  “Not this trip. Do I come up?”

  “Why not?”

  We went up in silence. I wondered vaguely what he was after, but I wasn’t too concerned. It was one of those infrequent periods of my life when I wasn’t doing anything I wouldn’t want the police to know about. On the other hand, it was unlikely to be a social visit. Randall wasn’t in the habit of making those. Not to me anyway.

  We went into the apartment, and I flicked on some light. Randall sighed, looking around.

  “This place always irritates me.”

  “Why, what’s wrong with it?”

  His face contorted into a scowl.

  “Nothing’s wrong with it, that’s what’s wrong with it. There isn’t a cop on the force, including the commissioner, can afford anything like this. How do you rate it, if you do honest work?”

  “My clients seem to be more generous than the taxpayers,” I told him.

  “That they do. Maybe we should ask the Bureau to look into your income tax situation.”

  He wasn’t picking on me in particular. It was no more than the normal bitterness of an honest policeman, required to work all hours of the day and night, to be beaten up or shot at in alleyways, all for less pay than the grateful public would pay a waiter.

  “The books are available in my office at all times. You can call in the Bureau, the Treasury men, anybody you like. Those books are in order. And there’s just the one set, incidentally.”

  He snorted and stretched himself out in one of my best chairs.

  “Seems to me in a swank place like this a man could get himself a cold beer,” he grumbled.

  I went and broke out a couple of cans and we sat opposite each other, sipping.

  “Now that we’ve exhausted the income tax position,” I said, “Was there anything else?”

  He shrugged the massive shoulders.

  “Nothing important, I hardly like to bother you.”

  When Randall says it isn’t important, it usually means somebody is in a lot of trouble. And the somebody was going to be me.

  “O.K. Well then let’s forget it,” I suggested. “I have a pretty tight schedule tonight anyway.”

  “Naw, it’ll only take a minute. It’s a little matter of——”

  The phone shrilled, and he broke off in mid-sentence. I looked at him, waiting for him to finish.

  “Aren’t you going to answer that?” he queried. “If I’m lucky it could be something illegal and I could put the arm on you straight away.”

  “Thanks.”

  I went across and picked up the receiver.

  “Preston.”

  “Listen, this is Flower.”

  Her voice was low and anxious, as though afraid someone might overhear.

  “What can I do for you?” I said guardedly.

  “I have to see you, right away, now.”

  “What about?”

  “Please,” she begged, and there was no missing the sincerity in her voice, “Please, you have to come.”

  “I can’t,” I hedged. “I have company.”

  “Well get rid of her,” she whispered. “I’ll see to it that you don’t regret it, whoever she is.”

  “It’s not a she, it’s a he. All right, if it’s so important, I could probably make it, in say half an hour. Where?”

  “Come to Brookman’s apartment. You know where it is?”

  “Yes,” I replied slowly, “I know it. But I don’t get any of this.”

  “You will. Half an hour. You promise?”

  “I promise.”

  I cradled the receiver and went back to my chair. I didn’t want to talk to Randall. I wanted to see Flower, and find out what her connection was with Brookman’s apartment, and what was so important that she had to tell me, and who it was at the other end wasn’t supposed to know about the call.

  “Yup, this is the life,” intoned Randall. “Sitting around in a swell apartment, swilling c
old beer on a warm evening, just waiting for the dames to call up.”

  “This is a slack time,” I assured him. “Normally I have three or four of them sitting around, waiting for me to choose.”

  “Yes,” he sighed. “You’re going to miss all this.”

  “How am I going to miss it?” I demanded. “Am I going somewhere?”

  “Could be.”

  He finished the last of the beer and smacked his lips.

  “Preston, you have been around now how long?”

  “Too long.”

  “Right. I never can make out just what it is you do keeps you living it up this way. But whatever, you been doing it a long time. You know the score, and most of the time you have enough sense to keep out of the department’s hair. In an off-beat kind of way, we practically trust you.”

  The words themselves were scarcely flattering, but coming from Gil Randall they amounted to an illuminated scroll.

  “I try to get along with you guys,” I said carefully.

  “That’s what we like to think down at headquarters. So what makes you pull a bum stunt like this afternoon?”

  A typical Randall manouver. He left it for me to supply the details.

  “I pulled a lot of bum stunts today,” I told him. “You wouldn’t want me to go and admit to one you don’t know about yet.”

  “All right,” he held up a weary hand. “I’ll spell it out for you. You’ve been impersonating a police officer.”

  Eve Prince. I’d bluffed the boy, Harry, by not letting him get a proper look at my sticker. But she couldn’t have complained. After telling me what she had, she’d be too afraid I’d repeat it.

  “Did I do that today? Was that the time I conned this old lady out of her life savings?”

  The deep eyes were little more than slits.

  “You were always fast with the words. There was this telephone call to headquarters. Woman asking for Detective Preston.”

  “So who says that was me? 7 ‘ I asked in an injured tone.

  “She does. So do we. What do you say?”

  “I don’t say anything till I hear more about it. This has all the earmarks of a set-up.”

  It was the wrong word. Angrily, Randall spat.