I said so.
I said, “This thing stinks, Jorgenson. It smells so bad you’re holding your own nose.”
Jorgenson bristled. “You’re over your head, Conacher. You expect me to believe the stuff you’ve been throwing at me? How do I know you weren’t drunk when you entered her bedroom? How do I know it was her bedroom? You admit you woke up somewhere else.”
“And who dragged me there?”
“If you were stinking drunk, you could have gone there yourself in the first place.” Jorgenson irritated me with his sleepy enjoyment of my discomfort. He had a turtle head, a sharp and hairy nose and the half-dead eyes of a lizard eying a fly. He shifted his weight in the chair and let me hear the squeal in the joints. He rocked back and forth purposely, singing me a serenade of his disbelief, fingering his nose as he twisted. “What are you getting at, Conacher? What’s in this for you, anyhow?”
“She was my client’s wife and she was in trouble when I met her up here. I figured that whatever was bothering her finally got to her. With a knife.”
The silence blossomed in the little room. Jorgenson said nothing, but his cocky grin still creased his face. He winked at Forstenburg.
He said, “Tell him, Paul.”
Paul Forstenburg cleared his throat. “Maybe you should have been told this a long time ago, Steve. Mrs. Lasker’s husband is here.”
They were nibbling on the news and enjoying it, both of them.
I said, “When did Lasker get here?”
“Last night,” Forstenburg said.
“What time?”
“A little after midnight.” Paul leaned forward to show me that he was sincere, that he wanted to spare me further shock. “Mr. Lasker told me only a little while ago that his wife phoned him from here when she arrived, Steve. And it’s true—we checked the switchboard. She put through a call to him as soon as she reached her room.”
“I want to see him.”
“And he wants to see you,” Paul said.
“But I’m not closing my book on this one, Jorgenson,” I said, and waited for him to face me. He favored me with a subtle sneer, as cordial as a dirty word. He hawked and spat close to my right shoe.
“Run along and peddle your fish, Boy Scout,” he said.
“Now, boys, boys, boys,” said Paul Forstenburg.
I pushed Paul away and went back to Jorgenson and stood there until the big bastard decided to move his carcass. Then I leaned over to him and let him see that my blood pressure had passed the boiling point. He was beginning to laugh when I slapped him across the mouth.
“I don’t like hicks who spit,” I said.
He lifted his hand and I caught it and banged it down hard with my fist, slapping it against the desk top so that he got the blow on his wrist, where the bone was. He let out a roar and reached for me, and in that minute I flipped his head back and ducked away. I spat at him, low, on his greasy vest.
He exploded and started for me and thumped Paul Forstenburg so that the manager went spinning back against the wall. Jorgenson lunged my way, his flabby body out of control. I would have enjoyed lousing him up a bit more. He was asking for it. But, behind him, Paul Forstenburg was begging me to slow the pace down. The door was open into the lobby and there were guests out there.
“Please, boys, please,” Paul said. He shoved himself between us and shut the door and then opened it again and prodded me out. “We can’t have this sort of thing at The Montord.”
“Keep that stinker out of my way,” I said. “Or you’ll have to go on another talent hunt for a new constable.”
Jorgenson was behind Paul and I slammed the door in his face, enjoying his grunt of astonishment. It was as corny as a comic opera because Paul Forstenburg had suddenly changed character. We were out in the lobby now and there were guests around us and Paul took my arm and led me toward The Champagne Room, as quietly as though I was a visiting celebrity. He spoke softly and nodded and greeted the visitors as we proceeded. Then we were inside the big and fancy door to the night club and Paul relaxed in a tired heap. He mopped his face diligently and snapped his fingers toward the waiter in the bar.
“Let’s have a shot of something,” he said. “You don’t want to fight with Jorgenson that way, Steve. He means well. In his hick way, he’s trying to do a job.”
“He is,” I said, “in the pig’s valise. Why don’t you admit you’ve bought him off? We’ll go on from there.”
“The Montord can’t afford bad publicity, Steve.”
“That doesn’t mean you can whitewash a murder, Paul.”
“The coroner says she wasn’t murdered.”
“What the coroner means is that he can’t see it. But I saw it. I saw her dead on her bed, stabbed where no broad should ever be stabbed. And before that, when she was talking to me, pleading with me to help her, I saw how badly she needed somebody. She knew that something was going to happen. And she might have had the feeling that it was going to happen to her.”
“You’re all wrong.”
The voice came from behind me and it was loaded with the undertones of a great sadness, a great weariness. The man who sat down beside me was Haskell M. Lasker, but he had aged a couple of quick years since I saw him last. His face seemed to sag and droop in great folds of flesh and his eyes were rubbed and bleak. He had forgotten to shave. Last week, when I visited his office to collect my fee, Lasker radiated the slick and sharp manner of the big business man. Today he, was a bum. Paul Forstenburg slid a hooker of Bourbon under Lasker’s hand. Lasker downed it and coughed until some sign of blood crept into his cheeks.
I said, “I’m wrong about what, Mr. Lasker?”
“About Grace,” he said. “My wife was a disturbed woman, Conacher.”
“Disturbed?”
“Mentally disturbed. I know it for a fact.”
“I don’t believe it,” I said.
Lasker shrugged and stared at me blearily. “I assume you got to know Grace then? You met and spoke to her? And she told you that she needed your help? Is that it, Conacher?”
“That’s exactly it.”
Lasker smiled weakly. “And suppose I told you that all this has happened before?”
“I’m listening.”
“My wife has talked confidentially to at least one other private detective, Conacher.”
“What has she talked about?”
“Everything and nothing.” Lasker folded his pale hands on the tabletop. There was a big diamond ring on the fourth finger of his right hand, a couple of grands’ worth of sparkle and glitter. The lights from the bar lit up the gem as Lasker addressed his remarks to it. “My wife tried the same trick on Gus Ruback, the private investigator I hired before you, Conacher. The same sort of thing, in the same way. The difference was, of course, that Ruback had a chance to follow through. And when he finally spoke to her, she admitted that she was only fooling, that she had nothing to tell him, that she wasn’t really afraid at all.”
“How long ago did this happen?” I asked.
“Not too long ago.” Lasker closed his eyes for a long pause, to backtrack into his private life and find an answer. “I’d say about three weeks ago, when she began to make her crazy weekend trips. After she reached Ruback, I discharged him, naturally. There’s no sense hiring a private detective when the woman he’s following knows him. Right, Conacher?”
“I wonder.”
“Stop wondering, my friend. After all, I hired you to watch Grace only because I was afraid she might do something crazy. I didn’t know what to expect from her anymore.”
“And you still don’t know why she ran away from you on weekends?”
“Oh, well, I can guess,” Lasker sighed. “Grace loved life. She enjoyed places like this, where every moment is taken up with something to do something to entertain a person.” He spoke slowly, the words coming hesitant
ly out of the deep pit of his sadness. When he looked up across the table, the aura of age crept into his eyes and opened the door to his inner man, so that we could see the hopelessness beyond. He cracked his knuckles and said, “Maybe I was a little too old, too settled for Grace.”
“She phoned you to come up here,” I said. “How do you figure it, Mr. Lasker?”
“She said she needed me. She said she wanted me to take her home.”
“And that was all?”
“It was enough,” Lasker said.
“You got here a little after midnight?”
“Twelve-twenty.”
“And what then? Did you go right to her room?”
“Are you cross-examining me?” Lasker asked with a soft petulance. “Are you suggesting, perhaps, that I murdered my wife?”
“You’re suggesting that, not I,” I said. “I’m only curious about what went on last night.”
“Of course I went to her room immediately,” said Lasker. “Grace was not there. I looked around for her. I went to the bar, and walked out along the road, but I couldn’t find her. Later on, I returned to her room again, but she was still out. I decided to wait in the lobby for a while and sat there for quite some time. Then I went to bed.”
“Just like that?”
“What else?”
“You weren’t curious about seeing her?” I asked. “You didn’t want to find out what was bothering her?”
“Conacher,” smiled Lasker, “you must use more understanding when you question an old man like me. At my time of life, curiosity sometimes dies when the hour grows late. At my age, a man begins to yawn and feel for his pillow after a certain time. When Grace didn’t put in an appearance, I did what all other men of my years would do. I went to bed. I went to my room and told myself that tomorrow was another day.”
“And now that tomorrow’s here?”
“I’m going away,” Lasker said wearily. “This has been a great shock to me, Conacher. My heart isn’t what it used to be.”
“You’re convinced your wife was a suicide, then?”
“I’m not convinced, my boy. I’m tired. Tired in the head and tired in the bones. What can I say? Can I tell you anything with certainty? It could be that there were people up here who knew my wife well—that she even had enemies in this place.”
“She knew quite a few people,” I said.
“She did?” asked Paul Forstenburg, startled. “It was my impression that she had never been up here before. We checked our lists—and she wasn’t on any of them.”
“She wouldn’t be, Paul,” I told him. “The people she knew up here weren’t the guests. They were the members of entertainment group.”
“She knew them personally?” Paul said.
“I saw her talking to Buddy Binns and Don Trask.”
Lasker put a cold hand on mine. “Say those names again,” he said.
“Buddy Binns,” I said. “Don Trask.”
“Familiar,” said Lasker, closing his eyes on them, letting them play a tune on his memory. He was getting somewhere with them but fatigue dulled his face and slowed his reflexes. He gave up. “I must think back, Conacher. It seems to me I remember these names.”
“Maybe you’ll remember their faces,” Paul Forstenburg suggested. “I’ll introduce you to them if you like, Mr. Lasker.”
“Not now, not now. I must get some rest.”
“It may pay off if you remember names or faces,” I said.
“Of course. Much of Grace’s life was a mystery to me. I suppose it must be that way when youth marries age. Still, we were happy in our own way.” His empty eyes came alive with a sudden spark and a certain grim, purpose hardened the line of his lips. “I’m going to remember everything I can, Conacher.”
“You’re changing your mind about your wife?”
“Let us put it this way,” he began slowly. He was fumbling for words. He was fighting off the blossoming doubts that rose in him to make his hands tremble on the table. The sick emptiness built him into a tragic figure. I felt a surge of sympathy for him when he lifted his eyes .and leveled them at me to show me his new-found resolution. “I’m not sure about Grace. Not sure at all, do you understand? I want to retain you to do more research on the case. If she was murdered, I want the killer brought to justice. I like you. I like your honesty. If you can back up your theories with action and results, I’ll pay you five-thousand dollars for my wife’s murderer. Is that satisfactory?”
“It’s better than satisfactory,” I told him. “Because I was going to do the job for free.
CHAPTER 6
First things first.
My mind had charted a rough map of the voyage I would take from here on in. How can you describe the mechanics of detection? Around and about the private investigator lie the wastelands of the chase. You are a lone prospector in a desert, wandering the range with a hope and a prayer, searching willy-nilly for the clues to the lode. You are an earnest sportsman, a fisherman on a lake, casting your line in the deep pools and the shallows, plumbing the water for a clue to the elusive trout. You are alone, always alone with the closetful of doubts and schemes, a thousand, thousand fleeting ideas, theories and plans, thoughts and counter-thoughts. You pluck and sort and cancel out the dross. And after a while, the miasma of fogged calculations clears away and the web is broken and the path leads to the source.
Or you wind up flat on your face.
I canceled out the business of alibis on this one. Jorgenson and his cooperative coroner had iced the death of Grace Lasker. It was wrapped in a neat parcel, ready for the local archives. Grace Lasker had committed suicide. It was as simple as that. But there were strong leads into her past. There were signposts to her restlessness and her fears. There was Archy Funk.
Archy’s room faced the small square garden opposite the swimming pool, on the third floor of the outbuilding known as The Tyler House. I barged in without knocking and found him on his back, in bed. He sat up and gave me the open scowl of an enraged wrestler about to lay his opponent low.
Then he laid me low. He got up fast and swung for my jaw, and before I could backtrack, his great fist hit me. It was an easy crack, a graceful blow that connected as though he had done it many times before. I fell back and crashed against a small table and off the table against the wall. When my eyes swam back into reality, there were three of him standing over me, a dizzying sight because they were all laughing at me.
Archy helped me to my feet.
“That,” he said, “was on account. On account of what you did to me last night.”
“Everybody in this dump is a comedian,” I said. My jaw radiated a fresh and sudden heat.
“Put your tail down, peeper,” Archy said, still friendly as an animal. He jerked his robe string in a reflex of nervousness and annoyance. His hands were bandaged on the knuckles where he had gone down last night, against the rocks, after I had tripped him down the hill. There was a great patch of adhesive tape over his right eye and long scratches near his square jaw. “Jesus, you’re smaller than I figured you last night.”
“How did you know I was a private investigator?” I asked.
“I smelled you,” he said. “I got a good nose for the dicks. Now, do you walk out of here nice? Or do I grab you by your drawers and coax you?”
“Relax, Archy. I’m on your side.”
“Break it into pieces, peeper.”
“I can do you a big favor.”
“Am I asking for favors?” He bounced to his feet and went to the window, as jittery as an amateur waiting for the bell. He had muscled legs, strangely trim for a man of his girth. He rammed a cigarette into his fat mouth and sat down on the bed again, hard enough to make the springs wail. Up close, there was a subtle softness about him. His eyes? He had the wide-open stare of a small boy asking for candy. But something sad and wistful burned there now.
“You may be needing a friend, Archy.”
“Nuts. I’m fussy about my friends. Why don’t you go peddle your latkes somewhere else, chum?”
“No customers,” I said. “For you, I’ve got something special.”
“I’m not buying any.”
“I’m a good salesman,” I said, and sat down in the chair near the window. “I’m so good, I know you’ll buy, Archy. Because you and I have got to make small talk about Grace Lasker.”
The mention of her name tightened him up in knots. It was very strange and very curious, the quick and blinking surge of fear and trembling that swept over him and rendered him limp and weak. It was almost laughable, the way he twitched and trembled, the way his eyes wandered here and there, around the room and through the window and back again to stare down at the pattern in the rug. Was he about to weep? Suddenly I knew the reason for the odd quality of dampness and disquiet in his eyes. The poor slob had been crying before I walked in.
I said, “You heard about Grace?”
“Of course I heard,” he said quietly. “God, it don’t seem possible.”
“You don’t believe she killed herself?”
“Who wants to know?”
“I’ll keep it a secret, Archy. It’s my business to keep secrets. My name is Steve Conacher and I’m a private detective, and I’m working for old man Lasker.”
“Old man Lasker?” he asked himself. The sting was out of his tongue. Something had happened to him since the last quick moment of our meeting last night. “You told Lasker about seeing me come out of her room?”
Knife at My Back Page 6