“Throwing me out won’t change things,” I said. “Even if I let you. If it turns out your wife is Grace Rehak, as you seem to think she might be, the sooner we find out the better.”
He stood over me, breathing hard enough for me to hear it. Muscles crawled on the underside of his jaw. “Keep on talking,” he said in a strangled voice. “Get it out while you’ve still got a tongue to wag.”
“Two words will do it,” I said. “Mary Conrad.”
He kept on scowling but it was suddenly a puzzled scowl. “Mary Conrad?” he repeated.‘ “Who? . . . Wait a minute. You mean that black-haired little hoofer in the show downstairs?”
“Uh-hunh.”
“What about her? How does she figure in this?”
“She was murdered about three o’clock this afternoon.”
He backed away from me sharply, his hip striking hard against the table. He stood there for a long moment, not saying anything, his mouth open slightly, a muscle twitching lightly in one cheek. Then he turned and moved carefully around behind the table and sat down and picked up his pipe.
When I saw his eyes again it was as though a curtain had been drawn across them. “I’m sorry to hear that, Pine. Mary had been with us for quite a while. The police know about it?” '
“Yeah.”
“How did it happen?”
“A woman’s stocking was twisted around her neck in her apartment. A woman did the job. At least that’s the police theory. They found a hunk of lace torn from a woman’s underthings in one of her hands.”
“How come you know about it? From the papers?”
“If it’s in the papers I didn’t see it. No. I was there.”
“Ahead of the cops?”
I nodded. “I’m the lucky guy who found her.”
He didn’t say anything. I took out a cigarette and lighted it with an airy gesture and a match. I said, “You haven’t asked me why she was murdered, Mr. O’Flynn, but I’ll tell you my theory if you like.”
“And if I don’t like,” he said sourly, “I’ll hear it anyway. Go ahead.”
I blew out some smoke and watched it drift toward the ceiling. “In one way or another word has got around that I’m looking for the former Grace Rehak. There are some people who know her under two names—or there were. One was Mary Conrad. I told you what happened to her. Maybe another was a girl named Ellen Purcell. A third is still another dame: Laura Fremont, alias Louise Fairchild. Number four, for a change, is a man—a man who calls himself Smith. Any of those names strike a familiar chord? Other than Mary Conrad, that is?”
“Not that I know of,” he said quickly. Too quickly.
“Sure you do,” I said. “Ellen Purcell. She worked here. But the cops never came around on that one, did they? That was because she wasn’t a girl to do a lot of gabbing about herself. But I think she knew Gracie Rehak—and she died. Mary Conrad worked for you and knew Gracie Rehak—and she died. The coincidences, as you can see, are piling up.”
In the silence the wind went past the fluted-glass windows with a sound like the Hoboken Express. The man across the table sat with his head cocked slightly to one side as though listening to the tiny voices of leprechauns.
He said, almost with an effort: “Let’s have the rest of it, shamus.”
“You already know the rest of it. Today the mysterious Mr. Smith drops in to buy the reason for my interest in Grace Rehak. Not that you care, but what he got you could put in a microbe’s left ventricle. So he stalks out of my office and climbs in a black Cadillac sedan piloted by a black-haired woman—a woman who answers Grace Rehak’s description. That, Mr. O’Flynn, is one coincidence too many.”
I stopped and took a long deep drag from my cigarette and watched him hate me. He said savagely, “Well, what are you waiting for—applause?”
I said, “I’d like a few words with your wife.”
His lip curled in a tight, tough-Irish sneer. “What for? You going to sit there and tell me she’s this Rehak babe, just because she happens to have the same color hair and knows a friend of Rehak’s? You haven’t any idea how much I know about my wife.”
“If you knew she couldn’t be Grace Rehak,” I said, “I’d have been out of here on my ear ten minutes ago. But there’s always the chance that she’s not. Why don’t we find out, one way or the other, before the cops come around and find out for us?”
His eyes took on a sleepy look, as eyes do in some circles when it’s time to get tough. “So you’re going to yell copper, hunh? That’s supposed to scare me. Me—with the games I run down the hall. Look, fellow, I got more cops on my payroll than you can count. You think for one goddam minute they’re going to give Steve O’Flynn a bad time just to please some three-for-a-quarter private dick?”
“The boys in your district,” I said, “keep what you pay them. None of it gets into Central Homicide and you know it. When those babies get a lead on a killing they milk it dry —and you won’t mean any more to them than any other grifter.”
I stood up and dropped my cigarette into the ash tray. “Thanks for letting me waste your time, Mr. O’Flynn,” I said and turned and started for the door.
I made about half the distance before his voice reached me. “You forgot to put out that cigarette, Pine.”
He was still chilly, still tough. But I didn’t believe it any more. I turned around and walked slowly back and used a matchstick to extinguish the glowing coal. Then I sat down in the chair again and crossed my legs and kept my face blank.
He was lighting his pipe, taking his time about it. Nobody was going to hurry him. I waited. I could afford to wait, now.
He dropped the match on the floor and spoke around the bit of his pipe, his voice almost gentle. “You’re going to have that talk with my wife. I don’t know what she’ll tell you and I care even less. But if she does give you anything the cops can use and they get it afterward, you’ll come down with a case of lead ulcers, my friend.”
“And I’m so young,” I said sadly.
He turned his back on me and grabbed the phone and pushed a button. “Frank? See if Bonnie’s in the bar. Yeah? Well, pry the glass out of her fist and get her up here. Right now.”
He slammed down the receiver and swung around. Before he could say anything I said, “I’ll want to talk to her alone, Mr. O’Flynn.”
He couldn’t believe his ears. “You must be out of your mind!” he snarled. “You think for a minute I’m going to hand my wife over to you so you can shove her into a murder rap? Bonnie’s not what I thought a wife should be, but she’s still my wife and I’m not going to toss her to the wolves. You’ll talk to her with me five feet away or by God you won’t talk to her at all!”
I said, “You’re getting me mixed up with the homicide boys. All I want is information, not to solve any murders. Head her off and advise her not to confess to any and she’ll be all right. Only I want the information I want and while you’re at it tell her so.”
He went back over it, thinking. “Then all this talk about her being Grace Rehak was for what?”
“You’re getting confused,” I said. “If she’s Grace Rehak that still doesn’t prove she killed anybody. It just proves she might have a reason for it—and that’s different. Any lawyer will tell you as much.”
It took almost a minute for him to make up his mind. Then he stood up heavily and came around the desk and put his face close to mine. “Double-cross me on this and I’ll have you at the bottom of the lake, Pine,” he almost whispered.
“You said almost the same thing a few minutes ago,” I reminded him. “Stop trying to scare me. You succeeded a long time ago.”
He turned on his heel and went over to the door and out.
CHAPTER 15
SHE came in and closed the door harder than necessary and leaned against it, eying me with a mixture of interest and insolence. A cigarette smoldered at the corner of her too-red mouth and she was squinting slightly against the smoke. She had been at the bottle a couple of snorts too long but she carried it
with the ease of long practice. Under a flame-red, very tight evening dress her hips showed with smooth emphasis and she carried her breasts high and insistent, like medals won in combat.
I said, “Nice of you to come up, Mrs. O’Flynn. I expect your husband told you why.” .
“He didn’t say.” Her voice had a brassy ring. “Just that a private cop named Pine had some questions.”
“That mean anything to you?”
She curled a lip at me. She took the cigarette out of her face so the lip could curl even better. “Not a thing. Steve said to see you and I’m seeing you. What’ll it be?”
“Why don’t we sit down, Mrs. O’Flynn?”
She came over to the table and leaned a rounded hip against it. “I left a friend in the bar. Let’s get it over with.”
“Not Stu again?” I said. “What will your husband say?”
I got the full treatment from a pair of brown eyes as round and as blank as a child’s. But that didn’t mean they were the eyes of a child. “Don’t start off with riddles, handsome. You got something to say, say it.”
It appeared all of O’Flynn's taste was in his mouth. She was an inch or two over five feet but it took spike heels to put her there. She was too thin in the legs, you could knit a sweater with her arms and her waist looked like somebody’s thumb. Her dark hair had a beauty-shop curl and she wore it piled on top where it would look the worst. You see dozens like her around hotel lounges and cocktail bars any afternoon of any week—pretty in a standard way, shrill in the voice, feverish of eye and hard around the mouth.
I said, “How long have you been around the Tropicabana?"
“Year—year ’n a half. Why?”
“How long you been married to O’Flynn?”
“Didn’t he tell you?”
“I didn’t ask him. How long, Mrs. O’Flynn?”
“Four months ago.”
“What was your name before that?”
She narrowed her eyes. “What’re you getting at?”
“All in good time, lady. The name was—”
“Bonnie Field."
I remembered a name plate above an apartment bell. M. Conrad. B. Field. I moved my tongue along my suddenly dry lips and stared hard at her. Her mouth twisted slightly under my stare, whether with annoyance or fear I couldn’t tell.
I said, “Remember Ellen Purcell, Bonnie?"
“What about her?” The words came quickly, as if she had expected the question.
“How well did you know her?”
“She worked here. So do sixteen other women, counting the powder-room maid.”
“The way I hear it, you two were plenty thick.”
“I can’t help what you hear.”
“What do I have to do, knock it out of you?”
She leaned toward me and said swiftly, “Okay. I knew Ellen; sure I knew her. And I know what happened to her. But that's all I know and you’re not mixing me up in no murder!”
I shook my head. “It’s the other way around. I’m trying to keep you out of it. But maybe I’m not going to be able to.”
She said thinly, “I’d love to know how you’re not going to keep me out of it. I really would.”
“The police,” I said, “didn’t make a first down on that job. It wasn’t an important killing to begin with and there was nothing for them to get hold of, no starting point. Why? Because Ellen Purcell and her roommate were Lesbians and, as such, kept strictly to themselves, made no friends in the neighborhood and were careful not to be talked about. Even the landlady didn’t catch on—and she’s a dame that would try.”
I waited for Bonnie O’Flynn to comment. But she had retreated into a shell, and only the sudden flare of color in her cheeks and the stiffness of her fingers on her cigarette hinted at what she was thinking.
“I’ve been hired to find a girl,” I said. “She’s one of four who came together a couple of years ago and who have more or less stuck together since then. That is they stuck together up until January of this year. That was when Ellen Purcell moved into the cemetery.”
The hand holding the cigarette came up slowly and put it between the overripe lips in the thin face. Smoke ballooned out and drifted slowly down the room. Outside, the wind strummed the building eaves and rattled the window frames.
“That left three,” I said.. “Mary Conrad, Grace Rehak, Laura Fremont. Only now, as of today, there are only two. In case your husband didn’t tell you, Mary Conrad died about three this afternoon.”
Except for the sharp flaring of her thin nostrils she might have been cut from a block of granite. After nearly thirty seconds of that, the muscles in her throat moved as she swallowed almost convulsively. “Why tell me all this?” she croaked.
“Why?” I said. “I’ll tell you why. Because Grace Rehak has been told I’m looking for her. Mary Conrad was pushed for fear she’d tell me where I could find Grace Rehak. A smooth lad named Smith came to see me about Grace Rehak. He rode away in a car driven by a woman who answered the description of Grace Rehak. The car was a black Cadillac sedan owned by Steven O’Flynn. Where does that put you, Mrs. O’Flynn?”
“So you think I’m Grace Rehak.” Her voice was flat, emotionless.
“Are you?”
“No.”
“You may have to prove it. The name B. Field is on the bell at Mary Conrad’s apartment.”
“I never lived there. I used it as a mailing address.”
“The cops know the Conrad woman worked here. They’ll want to know who B. Field is. Don’t think they won’t find out—if they try.”
“Let them find out. I've got nothing to hide. I can prove I’m not Grace Rehak. You said she’s the one who killed Mary.”
“Not exactly. I said she didn’t want to be found. But let’s say you’re not Grace Rehak. The fact remains that you know her and you’ll never be able to make me believe you don’t. You knew Mary Conrad and Ellen Purcell and you know the man called Smith—and he knows Grace Rehak, who knows Laura Fremont.”
She took a deep drag at her cigarette, letting the smoke trickle out slowly. “I told you I’m not Grace Rehak and I’ll prove it when the time comes to prove it. Now what do you want?” '
“Two girls left,” I said, looking into her eyes. “Grace Rehak and Laura Fremont. One of them is the one I was hired to find. But I’ll take them both, Mrs. O’Flynn. Where do I find them?”
Her eyes were hard and shiny now, like sandstone in a river bed. “You’d like to know, wouldn’t you? You think all you have to do to get me to rat on my friends is come around and ask. Only I might get a little stubborn, so you figure to soften me up first by throwing in some fast talk about murder and the cops!”
She made a quarter-turn and ground out her cigarette with savage jabbing motions of her hand. Then she turned back and gave me the rest of the speech.
“Well, this time you miss out, bright boy. I haven’t seen or heard from Grace Rehak in months. The same goes for Laura Fremont. And even if I had, even if I could tell you and your tongue was hanging out waiting, you’d never get it from me! Not even the right time if you were starving!”
By the time she finished her voice was bouncing off the walls and her hands were fists and her breath quick and shallow. I stood there watching her in a detached, fifth-row center way, not moving, not saying anything, just watching. After a while it began to get under her skin. I should have been yelling back at her or chewing the rug or trying to crawl under the table.
The hands unballed slowly and she took a cigarette from a box on the table. I had a match burning before she knew she needed one. We looked into each other’s eyes across the flame. Mine would never be as hard as hers.
She straightened and took the cigarette from her mouth, holding it cupped in her hand, the way few women hold a cigarette. Her eyes were cold where they had been blazing only a moment before. “Will that be all, Mr. Pine. I really must be getting back.”
“I was just thinking,” I said. “Seeing a picture, sort of. A
room down at Eleventh and State where the boys in blue hang their hats. The homicide boys sitting around in a circle. A few run-of-the-mill plain-clothes men and a sergeant or two, with the lieutenant looking in now and then. You’re in a chair in the center of that circle, Mrs. O’Flynn. It’s a hard chair, an uncomfortable chair, and you’ve been sitting in it for a long time. There’s a light in the room but it’s not too bright and it’s not shining in your eyes. They don’t go in for that much any more. But they’ve asked you what I’ve just finished asking, and you’ve given them the same answer.”
“It would have to be the same answer,” she said sullenly. “There’s no other answer I could give, cops or no cops. Let’s not go over that again.”
“Not for anything,” I said. “Not the way you carry on. You wouldn’t know, but I worked out of the State’s Attorney office awhile back. I remember once they brought in a nance on suspicion of murder. There’s nothing a big muscle-bound hairy-chested cop hates more than a queen. There are books to tell you why, if you don’t know why. Well, that suspect copped a plea, mumbling his few words through puffed lips. Two days later he was a liter at Joliet. The judge would have given a better hearing on a parking violation.
“My point is, that nance never killed anybody, Mrs. O’Flynn. I’d bet on it.”
She was frowning. A thoughtful frown that lay like a shadow across her thin face. “I can’t see what . . . ” She let the words hang there, not finishing, not knowing how to finish.
“You will if you open your eyes,” I said. “Police officers have the habit of thinking that people who hang out with queers are also queer. Let them find out Ellen Purcell and Laura Fremont were Lesbians, just as your other friend Mary Conrad was, and your name on her apartment bell, and the collective mind of those cops is going to be made up mighty quick. They could decide you put that stocking around Ellen Purcell’s neck, because of what they could think you are. An unshakable alibi could save you, but after eight or nine months almost any alibi would be as shaky as the bed in a bridal suite. The motive would be jealousy, and by the time the boys got done with their carpenter work they’d have a frame to fit you.”
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