The Spitting Image

by Michael Avallone

  She smirked. “I’ve had dozens of men. I’ll have dozens more. Right now I happen to like you.”

  “When did you find out about Randy Crandy?”

  “Then you know too?” She sat back and put one leg up in front of her. “I went for him like a ton. I nearly died laughing how much I scared him when I put it to him. That jerk! Know what I wrote when you gave his name in the test?”

  “Let me guess,” I said. “Did you also know that April was head-over-heels in love with him?”

  “I tried to tell her. But how can you tell somebody like April a thing like that? April’s still wet behind the ears.”

  “Well, she found out one way or the other. It was just a little too much for her. It’ll be some time before she’ll be falling for anybody else.”

  “How does a guy get like that, Ed?”

  “You better check on your biology lessons.”

  It sounds like a good thing, doesn’t it? A beautiful young babe running around loose, up for grabs. But it’s not. With that kind of woman, you’re never safe. Because it’s anybody and everybody. The milkman, the iceman—the chauffeur.

  “Pretty convenient, wasn’t it, June?”

  “What was?” She was as lazy as a cat now.

  “Anton getting it in the neck. Just when you had had enough of him.”

  “That’s not funny, Ed.”

  “No, it’s not. You’re hard on your boy friends, June. So I’m taking my exit voluntarily.”

  “Ed!” She was annoyed now. She jumped off the divan and came over to me. She ringed my neck with her arms. “Don’t be mean, honey. This is going to be different.”

  “Oh, this is.”

  “Honest, you’re tops with me. I’m sticking with you to the end. Soon as you clear up this mess, we’ll go away—”

  “Sure we will.”

  “Ed, you don’t believe me.”

  “I certainly do not. This case has taken on new aspects. I’m still working for you, June. But I’m also working for myself.”

  She got mad fast, “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning that you bear just as much watching as April does. You’re not as simple as you pretend, kid. I should have known better. No dame that relies on her looks the way you do could be simple.”

  “Ed, I was beginning to go for you very large. You’re so big and tough and funny. Why don’t you relax?”

  I reached for my hat.

  “I think I will by leaving.”

  “How about one for the road?” She wasn’t talking about drinking.

  “No, thanks. It was fun, you understand. And it wasn’t a total loss. Because I did learn something.”

  She pushed her red lips out at me.

  “Give me a for-instance.”

  “Like that birthmark you have in such a cute little place. At least that will tell you and April apart.” I moved toward the hall.

  She sat down and laughed. She laughed so hard the halter almost came undone. She looked up at me, her blue eyes glistening with tears from laughing so hard.

  Between gasps of laughter, she let me know that April had the same birthmark in the same place.

  I ought to go on the radio. Because my comeback was solid Jackson.

  “In that case, I’m afraid I’ll have to find out for myself. And there’s only one way to do that. Just to be sure.”

  I got the outside door shut just as one of her low-heeled shoes thudded off the wood behind me.

  THIRTEEN

  I took another bus down to Headquarters. I was really beginning to miss the jalopy. If you’ve never owned your own car you won’t know what I’m talking about. There’s something about climbing into your own heap and taking off in whatever direction you want to go that beats any other kind of transportation hands down.

  Headquarters was in what the lower-priced gazettes like to call a “turmoil.” Not about the Wexler case either. Just cops crawling all over the place and about four or five police reporters hammering at the desk sergeant with a lot of questions. Most of them silly, nearly all of them unnecessary. I felt sorry for Millican. That was the desk sarge’s name. He was a pretty decent guy who put up with an awful lot.

  The way the police reporters were yapping away it had to be another homicide. It turned out it was. A big one. Swayne Radkin, the local social Mr. Big and heir to a fortune in coal mines had been bumped by the usual “person or persons unknown.” Every paper in town was on it.

  Millican looked hello at me over the roaring mob and pointed a big finger toward the rear. Monks’ office. I made a gun with my fingers and plugged him at ten feet. He grinned, then exasperation wiped it away as the newsies came roaring back.

  Monks was expecting me. He was alone in his office but as soon as I ambled in, the way he dropped a paper he was holding and looked me over sarcastically showed he was ready for me.

  “Well, if it isn’t our hero. Awfully nice of you stop by. Where the hell have you been?”

  I sat on the corner of his desk, the way he knew I would.

  “Please don’t play Number six tonight, Mike. I’m tired.”

  His eyes showed mock surprise.

  “You have a perfectly good reason to be tired from what I hear. Had an accident, I understand. You also had a little fracas with an uptown lawyer, I understand. You’ve also been holding hands with the Wexler girls, I understand. One or both of them. How you do get around! A guy like you—”

  “Mike, listen a minute—”

  “You listen!” He got to his big feet and leaned over the desk. “After practically begging you to lay off, you go right on over to Crandall’s office and push his face in. This on top of getting mixed up in a three-way smashup that’s tied up traffic for half the day. Both complaints are right here on my desk if you care to read them. And with me busting my fanny straightening out both messes all afternoon, you’re smooching in the Wexler living room with a dame that may be a cold-blooded killer. How the hell do you live anyway? Haven’t you got any good common sense? And this kid Murdock who got turned in for the smashup, what the hell was I supposed to do till you got here—play two-handed poker with him or something?”

  “Lieutenant,” I kept a straight face. “Who peeked into the Wexler living room? You won’t believe this but I was working on the case.”

  “My foot you were!” He came around the desk and measured me, eye to eye. “Ed, I’m mad. Good and mad! So skip the banter and listen. Swayne Radkin’s been shot deader’n a doornail and Inspector Drum’s just dumped the whole thing in my lap. Know what that means?”

  I studied a fingernail that needed paring. When he had the floor, you had to let him run down like a clock.

  “It means I can’t put in half the time on this Wexler beef that I ought to. It means that you’ve got to give me everything you’ve got, and give it to me now. No stalling, no funny stuff.”

  “I intend to cooperate to the fullest extent.”

  His face soured. “Christ, how I wish you were an ordinary beat cop sometimes so I could send you out to the sticks to pound your brains out.”

  “Okay, Mike. You bawled me out fine. You were in excellent voice. Better than I’ve ever heard you. Now do we talk?”

  He went back to his desk. He lit a cigarette and fumed over it for a full minute. He scratched something on a desk memo pad and tossed the pencil down. He leaned back in his swivel chair and smiled tightly.

  “We talk. Tell me about that accident.”

  I did. He picked up his pencil again and made some notes. When I finished, he punched a buzzer on his intercom. In three seconds flat, a cop led in Bill Murdock. He was handcuffed, belligerent, and younger-looking than ever.

  He made a face when he saw me and something like a faint raspberry came out of his mouth. The cop set him down in a chair none too gently. He didn’t go away either. Stationed himself at the door, one hand bent into his hip close to the butt of his service revolver.

  “Hi, Danny,” I said. “How they been treating you?”


  “Stop calling me Danny,” he snarled sullenly. “My name’s Murdock. Bill Murdock.”

  “Okay, Murdock it is,” Monks snapped. “Here look at this. That the girl that hired you?”

  I passed a photograph of April Wexler to the kid. I was closer to him than Monks was. The only way I could tell it was April was the fact that her name and specifications were neatly typewritten on a label across the back of the picture.

  Murdock took it, threw a careless glance at it. He grunted. “That’s her okay. Some doll, huh?”

  Monks laughed. “Since you like her so much, Murdock—maybe you’d like to see another picture of her?”

  Murdock looked puzzled. I passed him a picture that Monks took off a pile of photos on his desk. It was June Wexler, of course, but only the same kind of label told me that.

  The kid looked at it and whistled.

  “Yeah, that’s her. Say—who is this dame? A red spy or something?”

  “You should have thought of that long before she flashed her five-hundred-dollar wand,” I said.

  “Why do you keep harping?” Murdock wanted to know. “Five hundred bucks is more than I can make in two months sometimes. Nobody got hurt—so what’s the beef? You can’t hold me if nobody got hurt. There’s no rap here. Let me go.”

  “Bill,” I said smoothly, not calling him Danny any more. “You look like a nice kid—”

  “Save it,” he sneered.

  “I said you look like a nice kid. But you’re not. You’re a mean little bastard that ought to be put behind bars for life so you’ll never get a chance to hurt anybody. Ever. Are you off your rocker altogether, or is it that you just can’t see what you bought yourself into? That dame wanted me dead. Good and dead. Did she tell you anything at all that you can remember that might help us?”

  “I don’t get it, pal.” He looked at me, then at Monks, then at the cop on the door, then back to Monks again. “You got her picture, you know who she is. What more do you want?”

  “Please let us do this our way,” Monks begged him with sarcasm dripping off every word. “Now answer the nice man like a good little boy.”

  “Hell, I don’t remember nothing—” his eyes suddenly lit up. “ ’Ceptn’ how she was dressed. She wore a fur coat and slacks and high heels. Yeah, that’s it. And no make-up. Or fingernail polish—”

  “Great,” I said. “Was she wearing anything on her head?”

  He stared at me in wonder. “Sure thing. A red ribbon. I remember that much.”

  “Better still. Now, how did she pick you up?”

  He had the center of the floor now so he started to put it on but good.

  “How about a smoke? They wouldn’t let me smoke—” I looked at Monks disapprovingly for the kid’s benefit and handed him my pack. He lit up like the older boys and leaned back in his chair, crossing one leg with the other.

  “It’s a panic, see? I’m sitting in Joe’s Place having my lunch in one of his booths and she moves right in on me. I figure it’s a pickup because it’s that kind of a neighborhood. But she gets right to the point. She says, ‘You Bill Murdock?’ I say sure, what can I do for you? She tells me about this deal with the car, tells me where your office is—”

  “How could you be sure it was me when I came out?” I asked.

  He looked pained. “She gave me your license number, bright boy. Well, after she peeled out the five hundred, I was through asking questions.”

  “You would be. How about the truck? The trailer job. You didn’t know anything about that?”

  “Honest, I swear I didn’t. I was just supposed to ram your tail when you stopped for a light. But you crossed me up by racing me. When I saw the truck blocking the road, I didn’t stop to ask questions either. It was made to order. Hell, I’m used to banging up heaps in my racket. You should see what we put some of those loads through—”

  “I can imagine,” I said drily. “I’m finished, Mike, unless you’ve got some questions you’d like to ask him.”

  Monks shook his head. “Can him, Andy.” He motioned to the cop. “Book him on every traffic violation in the book. And check his draft status. And everything else there is to check. I’ll prefer the charges.”

  Andy led the kid out who kept on shouting how we couldn’t do this to him. When the door closed behind them, Monks sighed.

  “You check the truck?” I asked.

  “We did,” he admitted tiredly. “It was stolen from some shipping agency down at the warehouse near Port Authority. Looks like Madame X rigged the deal both ways from Sunday.”

  “Fur coat, slacks, high heels, and no make-up. Ribbon in her hair,” I said.

  Monks frowned. “Please don’t start talking to yourself. I got troubles enough.”

  “I was just thinking that no self-respecting dame would be caught dead in that getup. Not even an uninhibited wildcat like June Wexler. Disguise. No doubt about it.”

  “If you’ll pardon my policeman’s nose, I’d say that kind of outfit would draw a lot of attention more than anything else. If what you say is true about dames. I wouldn’t know.”

  That last remark was so pointed I couldn’t ignore it.

  “Look, Mike. I learned plenty doing a Don Juan with the Wexlers. I don’t care what your stake-out man might have told you.”

  “Never mind. Now, what the hell was this with Crandall? What’s your reason for slapping him all over his office?”

  “He say that? I hit him once. Just once with the flat of my hand. So help me.”

  “So help me he wants to have you locked up and throw the key away. He swore out a complaint with his male secretary as witness. Claims you walked right in and started pushing him around. He says and I’m quoting from the complaint, you’re a ‘dangerous, uncivilized madman …’”

  I gave it to him straight. Just the way it happened. He wagged his head. I was beginning to feel sorry for him. He really looked tired.

  “What are you trying to prove, Ed?”

  “Mike, I had to find out if Randy Crandy is setting up shop with one of the twins on this inheritance thing. One of them has to go. Right? Or that two million drops into the lap of sweet charity. There’s no connection whatsoever with him and the girls other than his being the family lawyer.”

  “Prove it.”

  “A. June Wexler went for him once. When she tumbled to him, he was dead for her from the word go. Just the way she is, that’s all. B. April Wexler was in love with him. Her first love, the one that’s supposed to happen with flowers and violins beating their brains out. Well, when her eyes were opened, they were really opened. She’s a confirmed man-hater now. She’s afraid of love. Get it?”

  “Are you a private detective or aren’t you? Christ, you sound like the Kinsey Report!”

  “Mike, you can’t shake facts. Those girls could never so much as join him in a phony deal. Human nature is like that. Sure, he’s their lawyer. Why didn’t they fire him? They couldn’t. He’s got a power of attorney that they can’t shake until he executes Gus Wexler’s will.”

  Monks lit another cigarette.

  “So what have we got, Mr. Noon? We’re right back where we started. One of the dolls is still trying to bump off the other doll. And you’ve given Crandall a clean slate.”

  “Hold on. I haven’t done that. He’s still fishy enough to warrant looking after. I’m just scratching the idea that one of the twins is working a switch with him.”

  “That’s fine. Now, we’ve got exactly nothing.” He blew a cloud of smoke ceiling high. “When the hell is their twenty-first birthday, anyway?”

  I looked at the wall calendar. A big, black number 13 stared me in the face.

  “The thirteenth,” I said. “October the thirteenth.”

  “Two days,” he muttered. “Two days to wrap it up. And Swayne Radkin has to go get himself ventilated. That’s life.”

  “That’s murder. Can I go now? Or are you going to lock me up too?”

  “Beat it. And keep in touch. Detective Sergeant Hadl
ey will handle this from now on. Give him a break and cooperate. And don’t be flip with him. He hasn’t got my patience.”

  “Thanks for the tip, Lieutenant. I’ll remember it. Wish you luck on the Radkin thing.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  Outside, the newsies still hadn’t let up on Millican. I made a submachine gun with my arms and mowed them all down for him. He let out an appreciative howl of laughter and that stopped them cold for a minute.

  I took another bus back to the office, missing the jalopy all the way, cursing Bill Murdock from here to eternity, and knocking my brains out thinking about the Wexler twins.

  FOURTEEN

  I remembered Benny and the signal before I went upstairs to the office. I stared at his place, through the big plate-glass window that gave you a swell view of his bottle stock.

  He was on the lookout for me. As soon as he spotted me, he drew a beer for himself and put it away real slow so I couldn’t miss it. I got across the street in a medium-sized hurry.

  It was still pretty early for serious drinking. The bar was empty of everything but Benny, the bottles, and the electric lights.

  He met me at the end of the bar nearest the door.

  “What gives, Benny? I got company?”

  His fat face opened like a fan.

  “I’ll say. A looker, too. Brunette. Nothing wrong with her figure either.”

  June or April? I didn’t know. But it had to be one of them.

  “How could you tell she was looking for me?”

  “The only way.” He grinned. “She come in here. Musta figured you came in here once in a while. I told her you should be turning up pretty soon. She went up to your office. That was about an hour ago.”

  “Anything else?”

  He looked foolish. “Seeing this dame sort of reminded me, Ed. Yesterday, some dame came high-tailing it out of your building in an awful hurry. I meant to tell you this morning but my head’s been all foggy with these new taxes—”

  “What time was that, Benny?” I said quietly.

  “Right around eight forty-five, Ed. I got down early to work on my books and—”