The Spitting Image

by Michael Avallone

  “As you can see by all this, Gus Wexler was a self-made man, an unusual man. A man with no particular God. It is consistent therefore, I think, that his will was an unusual one. It is a monument, in fact, to the man’s undoubted peculiarity.”

  Monks laughed. “I guess you could call two million dollars peculiar.”

  “You can, Lieutenant,” Randall Crandall agreed. “The will provides that on the occasion of their twenty-first birthday, April or June Wexler will come into an estate that totals slightly more than two million dollars.”

  That woke me up. “Wait a minute. Come again. Slower this time.”

  A low moan escaped from somebody before she could stop it. I couldn’t swear for sure whether April or June had let it go.

  “Yes, Mr. Noon. Slower, if you like. Gus Wexler’s will has a curious codicil in it. One that I have never been able to bring myself to disclose to the girls because of the awful temptations in it. The normal arrangement is that both girls would share the estate on their twenty-first birthday. But that isn’t so in this case.”

  “Wait a minute,” Monks’ eyes were black, shiny marbles. “You mean—”

  “I mean that one of the girls gets two million dollars if there is only one surviving twin on the day of judgment. If both are alive, neither gets so much as a penny.”

  “But that’s crazy,” Monks blared. “Where does all that dough go then?”

  Randall Crandall bit his perfectly shaped lips.

  “To a special charity for cancer research set aside by Gus Wexler.”

  I had heard enough. I got to my feet. I pinned both my eyes on the handsome portrait study of a lawyer.

  “You are one perfectly sweet son of a bitch,” I said evenly. I spaced it so he couldn’t ever say he hadn’t heard it.

  He blushed like a woman. His face was on fire. He stepped toward me.

  “If I hear you correctly, Mr. Noon, I demand an explanation.”

  I took a step toward him.

  “Look who calls himself a lawyer. Why even a chump off the street could call this one for you.”

  “You still haven’t explained—”

  “Oh hell, you creep. You’ve just put April on the hot patch that’s all. Set her down real good. Brother, when you do it, you do it right! What do you think the cops are going to think when they find out about this little clause in a will you just happened to have up your legal sleeve—”

  I never did get to find out what he thought. Because it was April’s turn to steal the show.

  She let out a long, loud, hysterical laugh.

  And fainted.

  SEVEN

  When I finally got back downtown to the office, it was closer to five than four-thirty. As small as it was, I was glad to get my feet back into the mouse auditorium. There’s something about home that only a lot of running around can spell out for you.

  I’d had plenty of bombshells for one day. Anton murdered up close, beautiful twins worth two million dollars to each other (the catch was one of them had to be dead for the other one to collect), a screwy will with a screwier codicil, a handsome lawyer who sounded as phony as alcoholic pledges, and, just for extra icing, payoff day was breathing down everybody’s neck.

  Nothing like a little pressure every now and then. It either keeps you on your toes or gives you ulcers, depending on what sort of animal you are.

  I closed the office door, flicked on the overheads, and scaled my hat across the room where it always went steady with the tall clothing tree. Some mail had gathered on the inside of the door. I grinned, remembering how I meant to get some letters written when I could get around to it. Like everybody else, I usually never got around to it.

  I scooped them up and took them to the desk with me, unknotting my tie as I went. I hate ties but when you wear a suit you have to hang yourself with one or you’re a social disgrace. Sometimes I think a private detective would never be able to impress a client without one. It’s a screwy old world.

  Flopping down on the worn leather of the swivel, I kicked up my heels on the desk and settled back.

  It had been one hell of a day. April Wexler’s fainting spell had more or less capped off the whole thing. Poor Monks. He couldn’t grill a dame and he couldn’t revive one either. There was one cop who must have been glad to get back to nasty old Headquarters. I made a note on the desk calendar to call him in the morning.

  I got around to the mail. It was strictly the usual. A circular from a television repair store which explained how inexpensive it was to fix the set I didn’t have, a letter from an old client with a five-spot in it, and a feeler from some writing school that said that you too can be a selling writer but would you please send two dollars to find out how?

  I tossed the whole load into the wastebasket. Except the five-dollar bill. I may earn my living as a private detective but I haven’t lost that many marbles yet.

  I needed a cigarette. There were none on the desk so I dug into my coat pocket. I brought out a battered pack of Camels, matches. Something fell to the floor without a sound. A flicker of white caught the tail of my eye.

  It was a three-by-five index card, the kind that office help use for filing but someone had used it for something else:

  JUST TO REMIND YOU THAT YOU ARE STILL WORKING FOR ME. IS $100.00 A SATISFACTORY RETAINER?

  June Wexler

  Pinned to the back of the card and neatly arranged under a short strip of Scotch tape was a one-hundred-dollar bill, United States variety.

  I turned the card over in my fingers. Her handwriting was just like her. Wild, undisciplined, and practically unreadable. I put a cigarette in my mouth.

  The cute trick had a whole bag of tricks it seemed. Must have planted it on me at some time or other in the house on Park Avenue. Well, a hundred dollars was a very satisfactory retainer. She didn’t have to go to all that trouble.

  I lit up and thought about April Wexler. Thought some more, that is. She had been on my mind since the first minute I saw her. It was nice thinking even if the background music sounded like murder. April wasn’t the type. If there are types at all. Of course, I had to admit that two million smackers was a head-turner of an amount. But somehow, when a pair of eyes are smolderingly alive and a voice has deep control of itself and something shines in a lovely face…

  Hell, that was drunk talk, I told myself. So I made some steps in that general direction.

  I kicked open the lowest drawer in the desk and brought out a bottle I always kept on ice. Not literally that is.

  I spun around in my chair so that I was facing the window. Outside, Manhattan was dimming and the Chinamen across the street were lighting up their chop suey palace with fancy American neon. A lot of gray clouds that had nothing better to do were chasing themselves across that part of the sky that the area of my window and ninety-dollars-a-month rental allowed.

  I had my drink from the bottle. And another to keep it company. Then with real intestinal fortitude, I put the bottle back to bed in the drawer. I had some thinking to do about my next move.

  What was the next move in a setup like this? See the twins again? Together or one at a time? Go down to the library and check the family history just to make sure handsome Randall Crandall was dishing out straight goods? Or just make the official rounds with the old war horse of the Homicide Department?

  Frankly, I was stymied. I had absolutely no ideas except routine leads. And if there is anything I hate more than checking a routine lead, it’s checking a routine lead.

  I was between deciding on another bottle tonic or dinner downstairs in Benny’s soft drink emporium when the phone jangled to life. I grabbed it like a drowning man.

  “Hello. Ed Noon’s office.” You can never tell when the finance company is calling.

  “Hello-Mr. Noon? Is that you?”

  It was April Wexler. I’d know that voice anywhere.

  “Why, howdy, Miss Wexler. I see you’re quick on the rebound. Feeling better?”

  “Oh, that.” The relief
in her voice at finding me in left me a little unprepared. “I feel like an utter fool about fainting.”

  “You are utter, Miss Wexler. I wouldn’t be able to vouch for the rest of that.”

  She laughed. I had decided hours ago her laugh would be something special. It was. But there was an edge to her voice that no laugh could make disappear.

  “Mr. Noon, I don’t know quite how to say this—”

  “Look, lady. Every time somebody said that today, they followed right up with a bombshell. So don’t be behind the times. What’s your bombshell?”

  The flip treatment was doing her a lot of good. I could tell by the way she came right back:

  “Well, since you want bombshells, Mr. Noon, how’s this? I want to hire you to make some sense out of all this mess I seem to be in.”

  “That’s not a bombshell. That’s a repercussion.”

  “Oh.” She sounded disappointed. “Really, I’ll pay any amount. This has me all up in the air, June thinking all those things—”

  “I take it June doesn’t know about your plan to employ the head of Noon Investigations?”

  “No, no. She mustn’t know.” Something crept into the voice at the other end. “I want to clear everything up—you understand—June might protest such measures.”

  “She might at that,” I said, all the while staring down at a three-by-five card with a one-hundred-dollar bill stuck to its back.

  “Then you’ll do it?” I wished just then that the eagerness in her voice was for me. Personally, not commercially.

  “Sure, I’ll do it. For money you understand. I’ll do nearly anything for money.”

  “I see. I rather thought—”

  “What did you think, Miss Wexler? Charity begins at home, you know. And home is right here.”

  “I didn’t mean—naturally, I’ll pay. I didn’t expect to do otherwise.” The frost that had settled over her tone would have stopped Admiral Byrd. “And just how much do you require?”

  That damn cool air of hers could really set me off. I saw red.

  “One hundred dollars will be adequate,” I said. I could be just as formal as she was. “For a starter.”

  “Very well.” She sounded like a career woman closing a business deal. “Would my personal check be satisfactory?”

  “Most satisfactory, Miss Wexler.”

  “Is that all there is to hiring a private detective, Mr. Noon?” This was a switch for her. She sounded almost playful but I couldn’t be sure. I had to keep remembering she was supposed to be a man-hater.

  “Hiring is easy, Miss Wexler. Unhiring me is something else again.”

  “Whatever do you mean?”

  “Meaning that if I find that you really are trying to do away with gay little June, I won’t stop there. Is that understood?”

  “Perfectly, Mr. Noon. I wouldn’t want it any other way.”

  “That’s what’s bothering me. What way do you want it really?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Skip it, Miss Wexler. Tell me—why do you hate men?”

  I jerked the receiver away from my ear in a hurry. She had hung up like a loaded barrel falling down an empty elevator shaft.

  I grinned at the phone. Nothing much. But progress of a crazy kind.

  I’d make sure of that man-hater business in my own way. You only stay alive in this racket by taking nothing for granted. And there was only one foolproof way of telling whether a woman hates men or not.

  Still grinning, I dug a blank index card out of the metal file box on my desk. I stared at it for a full minute, then picked up a ball-point pen and made some entries for my business file:

  SPITTING IMAGES*** look-alike lovelies, getting ready for the 21st calendar.

  CALENDAR PRIZE cutting the cake in half, but cake can’t be had and eaten too.

  2,000,000 CLAMS what cake will cost, make sure the lovelies show up on Oct. 13.

  It’s a crazy way to keep a record of a case, I know. But you have to keep your references cryptic. Just in case the coppers march in and look over your books. This way the info wouldn’t mean a thing to them but it was pure as rainwater to me. April and June Wexler, if they were alive on their twenty-first birthday, would lose two million dollars of inheritance. But at least they would be alive. And they had given me two hundred bucks’ worth of protection business.

  Some business. June Wexler had hired me. April Wexler had hired me. June had written a note. April was sending along a signed check.

  Now at least I’d have a specimen of their handwritings. The way I had of telling April apart from June wasn’t something you could explain or put into words or make stand up in a court of law.

  But handwriting specimens were something else again.

  EIGHT

  I woke up the next morning to hear rainwater beating the hell out of the office windows. I was a little surprised to find myself still dressed. Not too surprised though. In this mad existence they laughingly call life, I keep strange hours. My chosen profession keeps me from being normal anyway.

  I rolled off the leather couch and groped for a cigarette. No soap. My pack was empty and the one office ashtray was a graveyard of dead Camels.

  The day before all came back in a rush. I’d had a Chinese banquet at the chop suey palace across the street, stumbled back up to the office and fallen asleep on the couch, chain-smoking like a dope addict. The Wexler twins had filled my dreams while my brains had worked overtime for a solution. But everything came out double. Two times two, and six of one and half a dozen of another.

  I flung a glance at the office clock. It was almost twelve. I got moving in a hurry. You can’t let too much grass grow under your feet in this business. You might wind up with it growing over you.

  There was a Special Delivery letter poking out from under the door. It turned out to be April Wexler’s personal check for one hundred dollars. I shoved it into the center drawer of my desk and turned the key on it for safekeeping.

  I made with a razor and toothbrush, squeezed into my fedora, and got out of the building in a hurry. I had a cup of coffee and toast in Benny’s bar. Benny was busy with the local bookie so I just waved to him, got him to change a buck into a fistful of dimes, and buried myself in the one phone booth in the joint.

  I dialed Headquarters and asked for Monks. I got him in such a hurry, I figured he’d been calling me.

  “Where the hell are you, Ed? Don’t you ever stay put in that office of yours? I been ringing you for a half an hour.”

  “You must have just missed me, Monks. I was feeding the inner man. What goes?”

  “Plenty. The picture is beginning to fill out on the Anton character. Last name, Le Grasse. Seems he wasn’t always a chauffeur. His prints and mug have been on file for years. He worked the West Coast since the war. Confidence and bunko rackets. Everything from a phony title to a seance reading. Worked on nothing but rich widows, gay divorcées, and crazy young heiresses.”

  “Bully for him. When did they tag him?”

  “In ’47. One of the rich widows got suspicious or his charm wore off. The Bunko Squad nabbed him as she turned over a check for a proposed temple of some kind. There was no temple or any records of plans for one. But Anton got off with a light rap. First time he showed in the East was this job he had with the Wexlers.”

  “How did he land it?”

  “The chauffeur job? This’ll hand you a laugh. He didn’t have to answer an ad or anything like that. Randall Crandall recommended him.”

  “My, my. Old home week.” My brain started turning over. “On what basis? Or am I moving too fast for you?”

  His laugh nearly ruptured my eardrum.

  “I’ve been up since eight. Not like some people I could name. Crandall claims he met Anton overseas in France during the well-known war. Crandall was in some kind of Strategic Services and Anton was with the French underground.”

  “OSS, probably,” I said. “Well, Mike, just goes to show you what crums some heroes can turn o
ut to be. What else is new?”

  “You’ll like this.” Monks sounded like the villain chuckling over the unpaid mortgage. “I got a court order to see the Wexler will.”

  “Good boy!”

  “It all adds up. Just like Crandall said. The will originally provided for a 50-50 divvy for the two kids. But old man Wexler tacked on this codicil thing. Now, one of them has to be dead on that birthday or all the money goes to—”

  “Sweet charity. I know. Look, Mike, what’s Crandall’s office address?”

  He voiced all his objections in one word. “Why?”

  “He appeals to me. Didn’t you notice that cute mustache?”

  “Cut it out,” he growled. “You’ll only get rough with him. Listen, Ed, he’s big noise in certain parts of town. And all the grief will come bouncing back to me. No dice.”

  “Don’t be a chump, Mike. I don’t care if he gets to be president someday. You don’t have to tell me. He must be in the phone book. Look, I’m only trying to play ball with you like you said. You told me what you’re doing. And I’m telling you what I’m doing. Okay?”

  Monks is a great code-of-honor boy. I had him and he knew it. He gave me the address.

  “No rough stuff,” he warned. “You can learn plenty from him if you play your cards right. So forget your passion for humanity and walk in without a chip on your shoulder for once.”

  I laughed. “You’re showing a helluva lot of concern for a guy that’s a good two inches taller than me.”

  “You kidding? I’m feeding him to the wolf. And that’s you.”

  When people start complimenting me, I change the subject.

  “I hope you got the Wexler home staked out. Somebody wants one of them or maybe both of them very dead in a hurry.”

  “Will you kindly not tell me how to do my job? Christ, you got more brass—”

  “You might check that cancer society or whatever it is. Who knows? If two live Wexlers mean two million bucks for a worthy cause—maybe somebody down there doesn’t want the society to get all that money.”