Still, I couldn't be sure. Nobody can ever be.
I closed the door, snapped a latch-lock, and went back into the parlor. Ada, filmy costume and all, was practically spoon-feeding her midget manager with a full belt of Scotch. No ice. The French poodle had found a nice, stuffed ottoman and curled up on it, looking at everybody except me. Frankie surprised me. Most dogs will sniff at a stranger until they get him fixed and placed in their memory.
It wasn't the usual canine scheme of things.
I forgot about Frankie and stared down at Ada Ven and Jellybean Jackson. What a combination. Her with her mammoth feminine body and extraordinary voluptuousness and him with his candy-striped coat, sky-blue pants, and boy-man face. He had very black hair with just a streak of gray at each temple. But beyond that, I could see he had had a walloping scare of some kind. His little eyes were still in a glassy kind of daze and he was shuddering and trying to hold it back. Ada was really mothering him. I don't think I would have been surprised if she had sat him on her lap and breastfed him. Together they were the A and Z of everything. Daylight and moonlight. Big Mama and Tom Thumb. What did the man say? It takes all kinds of people to make a world. Counting me, Suite C could have been a freak show. Easy, man.
When Ada finally stopped making noises like a mother hen and Jellybean Jackson suddenly looked half-normal again, I rowed right back into their lives. I was standing off from them, trying to make sense out of things. It was getting harder by the second.
"Okay for talk now, Jellybean?" I asked, not unkindly. "What gives—I don't believe in ghosts so don't tell me you saw one."
"Oh, knock it off, Ed," Ada Ven tossed her red hair at me in a sudden and newer side of her nature. "Can't you see he's still as jumpy as a kitten? He'll tell us when he can."
Jellybean Jackson wagged his head and a slow, wan smile came over his face. He looked up at me, still wagging, and his little hands came up to straighten the tie looped about his throat. A pale blue tie.
"No sweat now, Ada," he piped up in that whining voice of his. "I'm okay now. Whew, that was close, I can tell you. . . ."
"What was?" I pressed him, watching every nuance of his face.
Jellybean Jackson's eyes shone, as if he was one of those religious crackpots who claim they can talk with God.
"I saw him—right out there—plain as I'm seeing you—and boys and girls, he ain't no picture postcard! Golleee! Jeezus, I don't know what made me try to jump him." He let out a deep gasp.
"Saw who?" I kept after him, hammering.
"The Gingerbread Man—that's who! Me and Frankie come out of the elevator and there he was. Right in front of the door, Ada—" His face rotated toward her, his jaws pumping as he spoke, the ridged lines and wrinkles of his true age suddenly showing. "God, honey, he was trying to get in and me and Frankie went right for him. And he come around and there he was! I'm telling you—I ain't never seen any man that looked like him!"
Ada Ven had put both slender hands up to her red lips, shoulders shaking, eyes incredulously fixed on her little manager, trying not to scream herself. But Jellybean Jackson, somehow heedless of the effect he was having on her, stumbled on, like a Western Union singing telegram.
"He's a big one! Maybe a few inches bigger than Noon here. And he's got a face like a pirate. You know, that drooping mustache, and eyes like a nut, all right. Great big hooked beak and his skin is all red like he's been under a sunlamp too long. You know?"
"I know," I said quietly, "and you jumped him. You and Frankie. Did he have a knife?"
"Gee, I don't know—it all happened so fast. When he saw us, he just ran by me, knocking me down, and I guess I must have screamed then and Frankie started to bark! I'm telling you—when I realized who he must have been, I started to shiver like Frankie does when I bathe him. Jeezus—I'll never forget him. He's a monster!"
I took a couple of beats while he collected some more Scotch to steady his nerves and Ada controlled her shakes. She still wasn't able to do more than just sit there on her knees, watching Jellybean and listening to him with her great green eyes twin pools of disbelief and horror. I felt a little sorry for her, but I was still more interested in Jellybean Jackson and the story of the hallway. A tall story.
"Jellybean," I cut back at last, "listen to me."
"Yeah?" He was almost calm as he piped up again.
"You saw a man at the door. A bad-looking character. Okay. Any chance he might have been just anybody? You know, a would-be burglar or maybe just somebody who knew a gorgeous girl lives in this suite and maybe has wondered about her? Or even just a simple man who wanted to do a little keyhole-peeping? Now, please think about it. If I were that man and suddenly a midget with a dog jumped me out of nowhere, I think I might have pushed and run, too. You aren't exactly an ordinary-looking man, Jellybean. You could startle an altogether innocent man. I want you to think about that before you answer me."
The midget smirked at me. A real contemptuous smirk.
"Oh, yeah? Up yours, Noon. You don't believe me. That's your hard luck. But I saw what I saw. If that wasn't old Gingerbread then I'm an elephant's jockey. Or maybe you need some better proof than this?"
With that, he jerked a thumb at his candy-striped jacket. For a full second I didn't understand what he meant. And then I saw the white corner of something sticking from his breast pocket. It wasn't the usual handkerchief, either. Jellybean Jackson twisted his own head so that he was staring as if he was watching a fly settle on his chest.
"Plain forgot about that," the little man trumpeted exultantly. "Go ahead! Take it out. That jasper shoved it in my pocket just as he took off down the hall like a big-assed bird. Two to one it's one of them little notes the screwball's been sending to the cops."
Ada Ven dropped her hands at last and moaned. An incredulous moan.
"Oh, no, Jellybean, it can't be—not here in the hotel!"
But it was. It seemed it could happen anywhere.
I reached down, extracted the bit of white, and it turned into one of those ordinary, blank, 3x5 index cards, the kind you can buy in any stationery store. There was writing on only one side of the thing, but it was enough. Someone had, in big, black printed block letters, done with a marking pen, framed an unlovely valentine for the mistress of Suite C, the Alamo Hotel. Miss Ada Ven, stripper.
It was a lulu of a message and a shocker, considering who had sent it. I read it silently and then passed it over to Ada Ven. She almost didn't want to read it but she took it finally and the bad news hit her like a sledge-hammer. As tanned as she was, she seemed to lose color even in the red-tinted lights of the room. Jellybean Jackson saw the answer in both our faces and nodded to himself with grim satisfaction. "Innocent character, huh? It was the Gingerbread Man. You know it!"
There didn't seem to be room for doubt, any more.
FOR ADA VEN:
RUN, RUN, AS FAST AS YOU CAN
YOU CAN'T CATCH ME I'M—
THE GINGERBREAD MAN
"Ed, Baby," Ada Ven moaned again, reaching up, tugging at my arm, her semi-naked body shimmering like Jello under the filmy garment. "You can't split on me, now. Stay. Please, Ed. I'd go out of my skull cooped up here waiting for him to come back again!"
I nodded, feeling something sinking inside of me.
"No, I won't go now," I agreed, sadly. "Not on top of that. Build me another drink, will you? I feel like I need one."
We all did.
Especially Ada Ven who had suddenly gone from the top of the thermometer all the way down to freezing. Even as she touched my arm, her red-painted nails digging into my skin, I could feel the difference in her temperature. Her fingers were icy.
As cold as death.
I couldn't blame her, exactly.
It certainly looked like open season on strippers.
About nine-thirty, I rode the elevator down to the lobby and looked for Flatek, Monks' plainclothesman. Ada Ven and Jellybean Jackson were consoling each other with more Scotch and mutual partnership in every
thing, including fear and threats of murder. The midget manager had specific instructions not to open the door for anyone except me and to hold the fort until I got back. To convince Ada I wasn't taking a run-out powder on her, I left my forty-five with them both. I was sure neither of them would know how to use it, but what the hell? The gun served its purpose. Ada must have figured my forty-five was like my right arm and I sure wouldn't leave it behind unless I was coming back. I let her think that because it helped me get out of Suite C. She wasn't all that wrong, anyway. Me and that forty-five have been through a lot together. Plenty of slugs under the bridge. I was attached to it as Jellybean Jackson must have been to Frankie the dog. Puck was right. We're all nuts.
The deluxe lobby was half-filled and there was a peaceful sense of luxury and well-being, in direct contrast to the upheaval I'd left behind me upstairs in Suite C. The Manhattan night was dark, considering the hour, but you couldn't have told that from the lobby. Those floor-to-ceiling drapes, or vice versa, hid it all. I found Flatek in a deep green chair close to the elevator bank. He tried to hide behind another newspaper, this time The Daily News, when he saw me coming. It was tomorrow's paper so I knew he was in for a long siege. I took a low backless lounge chair a few feet from him and dug out my Camels. We were alone, the nearest people yards away.
"We have to talk," I said, keeping my voice even and low, "so make it easy on both of us, okay?"
Flatek sighed and folded the paper on one knee and nodded at me. He was one of those quiet-faced guys whom it is always nearly impossible to tell their age because they don't move their features much. That and an excellent control of the eyeballs and the gestures always make them seem like very wise men. Guys who watch the world go by. I knew enough about him to know that he was a very good cop.
"Figured you spotted me coming in. Okay, talk to me."
"Anything unusual down here in the lobby in the last hour or two?"
"Such as?" He was barely moving his lips.
"Big guy. Pirate type. Flowing mustache. Red face. Maybe walking too fast for a hotel lobby."
"Negative. They don't even cough too loud in a layout like this one. What's up, Noon?"
I took the 3x5 index-card message from the Gingerbread Man and balanced it on the palm of my right hand. Flatek didn't so much as blink. It was my talking party. So he waited for me to start.
"Listen, Flatek. Your boss down at headquarters is maybe the only guy on this earth I really care two pins about. I'd call him on the phone right now to tell him what I'm going to tell you, but he's browned off at me and he'd get browner if he knew that I was not taking his friendly advice. Meaning, I'm a hired gun for Ada Ven. I do appreciate the fact that you boys will be on the job, too, but hear me good. I'll be parked in Suite C all night. From the moment I leave you until I get back upstairs. I thought you ought to know."
Flatek nodded, never taking his cool eyes from me. "Go on."
I handed him the 3x5 card and he took it without looking at it right away. It was as if he expected me to pull a gun on him.
"That was delivered to Suite C tonight. About eight o'clock or thereabout. When you stop admiring my brown eyes, you'll see it's from the Gingerbread Man. I don't know what my friend knows that I don't know that he should have a man here on the job and hit the jackpot with Ada Ven. She does seem to be the next target. Anyhow, you keep the card for your lab men so they can match it with the mail you've already gotten from this loony tune. In any case, it's from me to Monks with my compliments. You tell him for me I had to stay and I hope he understands that. Meanwhile, it's important to me that he knows I am cooperating and not trying to make a big deal out of the stand I'm taking. I can't tell him that on the phone because he starts to chew me out and then neither of us get to the point."
Flatek let a slow grin crease his mouth in spite of himself.
"Yeah. I heard. Homicide thinks you've got the Indian sign on him."
"He likes me," I said slowly, "that's his trouble."
Flatek glanced briefly at the card. To anyone in the lobby, it would have seemed he was merely checking an address. Getting a bit more comfortable in the deep chair, he tucked it in his side pocket. Again, he nodded, as if pleased with our little talk.
"Same as all the rest," he said laconically. "Printed. Black ink. Same message. Except for the salutation. The others were all cards, too. Postcards or index cards mailed in envelopes."
He seemed friendly so I pressed my luck.
"Would you sit still for a couple of questions, Flatek?"
"Depends," he said lightly, face expressionless. "Try me."
"That letter 'S' on all the stomachs. Fingernail polish, I heard. The department know what kind?"
"Cheap product. Something called Red Rose. Seems half the women in America use it." He sounded disgusted with that important fact.
"And the letter—you boys have any idea what it might mean?"
For once, Flatek showed me his teeth. It changed his entire facial structure. He looked downright puritanical. Like Cotton Mather.
"A dozen theories. Take your pick. Either a signature for the Man. Or S for stripper, S for slut, S for sin—sex—you name it."
"Right-handed or left-handed?"
His teeth disappeared. "Left-handed. The autopsy was definite in all four cases. You're making like Sherlock Holmes, Noon."
"A habit," I said, "we all get into." I offered him a cigarette, but he shook his head. "One last thing. And I'll stop bothering you. Was any connection established between any of the girls besides the fact that they all stripped for a living?"
"Negative. They all barely knew each other. Not a thing in common. They more likely hated each other, than anything else. Professional jealousy. And before you ask me anything else—we haven't got a real hot lead at all. So go on back upstairs. Maybe we'll both get lucky."
I rose from my chair, exhaling blue smoke, but I kept it out of his helpful face. Suddenly, the entire weight of the whole day made all of my muscles feel like lead. I cranked into a stretch and tried to keep the pressure of New Jersey and the Hotel Alamo from crowding me into a tight corner. Flatek went back to his newspaper, snapping it back open with a noisy flourish. The rustle was like a pistol shot.
"Maybe we will," I agreed. "How'd the Mets do in Chicago?"
"Fine. If you're a Met fan, which I'm not. Staub homered in the ninth with two on. Seaver pitched. Three-nothing shutout."
"You know something, Flatek?"
It must have been something in the tone of my voice. He looked up suddenly and almost frowned. I felt very kindly toward him.
"Yeah?" he growled, almost annoyed now.
"I'll never laugh at a dumb Polish joke again."
I left him with that and went back to the elevator. Time I was getting back to the latest additions to my weird clientele. A giant of a stripper and a midget of a manager. Flatek would never know how highly I thought of him for not making one leering innuendo about Ada Ven or my professed intention to stick around her and make like a bodyguard.
A cop like that couldn't be all bad. And he'd been a fount of information, too. The kind you just can't find in newspapers.
And now I knew the Gingerbread Man was left-handed, used a cheap fingernail polish on his victims, and that Jellybean Jackson's encounter at the door of the suite was more or less legitimate. Flatek had identified the printing on the index card first crack out of the box. And I figured him too smart to make a mistake.
When I took the elevator back upstairs, the operator and I were accompanied by a tall, svelte creation in a clinging mini and stylish boots and a genuine aura of sophistication and classic beauty. But she didn't give me and the operator the time of day, keeping her eyes averted. She whisked off five floors below the top level and the cloud of perfume and don't-touch-me-I'm-too-expensive image she left behind made brothers under the skin of me and the young, uniformed operator.
We exchanged the glances that men do at times like that.
"Oh, boy," the
kid smiled, shaking his head.
"Someday you'll own one of your own," I laughed and he let me out on the top floor, chuckling his appreciation.
I walked down the long silent passageway to Suite C, just wondering what kind of night lay ahead of me. Walpurgis or heavenly.
I'd seen the signs and they were very good or very bad, depending on what sort of guy you were. On what really ran your motor.
Also depending on just what the Gingerbread Man was up to.
Damn his insane brain.
The sleeping arrangements, as I expected, were dangerous.
Little Jellybean Jackson had a small room all to himself, a sort of box in which there was an army-cot type of bed and a basket for Frankie, the French poodle. The Great Ada Ven had a bedroom, all right, and while it wasn't stocked with a water bed, it fulfilled all the prior notions I'd had. The bed she placed that incredible body of hers in was about a foot off the floor, without posters, a huge, round model they call Queen Anne. It had red silk sheets and pillowcases and surrounding its enormous expanse was another wasteland of crimson shag carpet and very little furniture or wall decorations or ornaments. All the light that the room owned came from a small Chinese lantern set on a low stand which was clicked on and off by simply snapping an attachment on an electrical wire lying on the floor like a black thin snake. Ada Ven may have come to the Alamo to live for three months, and done up the parlor to her own prescription and taste, but her bedroom had to be only for two activities. One of them—sleeping. And probably not much of that.
Kill Her- You'll Like It! Page 6