"Yeah?" The question was challenging, almost angry. His midget face winced as if he had tasted a very sour lemon. "Then where did I strike out? When? Bet you were in her sheets last night. Not me. Never me, any more. But the army, the navy and the marines, goddamnit!"
"Jellybean, I—"
I couldn't complete the remark for two reasons. I didn't know what to say to him and Ada Ven came stretching and yawning out of her boudoir. Looking like five mornings after ten nights before.
She was the spitting image of a woman who had had a wonderful night having her jollies. She was fairly blooming. Her hair looked redder than ever, her skin tawnier than Elsa the Lioness, and what she was wearing would have got us all arrested somewhere else. A Baby Doll with white fur trimming and slippers with matching pompons—and nothing else. Everything she owned wiggled as she came sweeping into the room. The smile on her face was the biggest hello anyone will ever get. Jellybean Jackson's eyes lit up at sight of her and he chuckled happily, as if we had been discussing the Mets or the weather. Anything but killers named Gingerbread. And corpses.
"Morning, hon," he almost sang. "Good night's sleep?"
"For number forty," Ada Ven said in a low, husky voice, looking at me but answering him, "I'd say I had a great night's sleep. Terrif. What would you say, Ed, baby?"
It was then that I hit her with my plan for the day and night.
The one about her going back to the Del Rio and doing her own thing. The scheme that could get her killed as easily as anything else.
Maybe I wanted to wipe the leering smile off her face, maybe not.
Whatever it was, she took it exactly the way Jellybean Jackson said she would. He knew her better than anybody, I guess.
She lost all the bloom in her face and kept saying no deal over and over again. And then I finally had to tell her about poor Satana, whoever she was, and that really knocked the wheels out from under her. In fact, it stopped all her clocks, shook all the dice she owned, and turned that room upside down. I don't think even Jellybean Jackson expected what happened next. Even the people closest to you can be fooled.
Ada Ven fainted.
Passed out right before our eyes, before either of us could move fast enough to keep her from hitting the red deck of the fancy room.
We saw the whites of her eyes, her mouth closed on what she was trying to say, and down she went—her great, statuesque figure toppling in a dead crash to the carpet. Her long arms were lifeless.
After that, nothing was easy.
And Frankie started to bark and yip all over again from the little box room off the main one. Like he had to go out for a walk.
There are days when it is much better to have stayed in bed.
This was shaping up as one of them.
I finally managed to depart from Suite C about two hours later. It took that long to revive Ada Ven, calm her redheaded hysteria, and convince her of all the wisdom of what I had told Jellybean Jackson. The midget really helped by backing me up and adding his own reassurance that my way was the only sensible course to take if Ada didn't want to go through her New York life cooped up in a hotel room forever. At last, she settled down, braced with more of her favorite tranquilizer, Chivas Regal, and I made my goodbyes, telling both stripper and manager I'd be back. I had a lot to do to ready my program for that evening. I couldn't tell them everything. So they locked the door behind me, promising to stay put, and I went down to the lobby to see if the field was clear. The Alamo lobby was faring very well. Incoming and outgoing guests on the move, bellboys hopping, the same air of wealth and good living rampant, and though I didn't know what Lasky, the new shift headquarters man looked like, I was sure I spotted him. When I crossed the lobby floor, leaving by the front doors on Seventh Avenue, a tall, thinnish character in a plain blue suit gave me a real goingover. Flatek was the only one I was talking to, so I didn't stop to chat.
There was nothing else I had to say to policemen.
I had a lot to do that morning. Too much, maybe.
With the mouse auditorium only five minutes' walking distance from the Alamo, I headed straight there. I needed privacy, a free phone, and time to think things over without a terrified, redheaded wanton who was willing to go at it any hour of the day climbing all over me. I felt damn peculiar, as many times as I'd been to the well with women. Ada Ven had merely been sensational, insatiable, and very female for all her boldness and drive. Still, like the guy who is not so interested in food after he has had a full meal, I was having second thoughts.
She was fire and dynamite, somehow, and a man could get scorched or blown up going near her. And Jellybean Jackson was an outraged man. As small as he was, even a midget could shoot a man's head off.
These thoughts filled my mind as well as the whole Gingerbread Man mess as I entered my building, rode up to my sixth-floor Shangri-La, unlocked the quiet door, and went on in. Melissa Mercer's absent ghost mocked me from the empty secretarial desk. I strode into my lair, left the connecting door open, and tried to get organized. There had been no morning mail under my door and everything was churchlike. I didn't turn any lights on. The day was bright enough. Only my thoughts were dark. I had to wonder just how close Monks and his men were to a tangible solution to the case. They couldn't be very close at all if a fifth woman had been killed. A fifth stripper named Satana.
It also occurred to me that I had collected none of the five thousand dollars which Ada Ven had been playing with the night before.
What a detective. He got laid, but he didn't get paid.
What a case. Case? It was a catastrophe.
Ruefully, I rocked back in the swivel chair, turned away from all those busy secretaries typing their brains out in the offices just across from my building, at the same floor level, and reached for the phone. The regular Ameche. The other one, the red-white-and-blue number, was still sitting quietly on the other desk in the corner. It hadn't rung in months. The new man in the White House hadn't needed me yet the way the old one had. I didn't mind at all, somehow.
Washington could run the country without me.
I phoned a contact of mine. One Les Leffington who was connected with all the show-biz media. A great PR man, Les knew more about the world of variety and entertainment than anyone then alive. He owed me a few favors, but beyond that I knew he had his fingers on what I needed to know. I got a break. He was in and a smooth-voiced secretary plugged me into him. A guy like Les is always on the run and seldom at his desk. The celebrity universe of stars and their public relations always kept Les Leffington hopping. But he liked the dough, the glamour, and the dolls it brought him within the proximity of. He was a swinging bachelor though well into his late fifties. Maybe we had a lot in common.
"Noon, baby!" he roared into the phone and I winced a little. Not just for the show-biz patois, but for the fact that it reminded me of Ada Ven and many other things. "Who you working for these days?"
"Same old three parties—me, myself, and I. Les, I'd like to pump you for some information. And it is important."
"Pump away. And I'll give you just three minutes. I got a client coming and for her I want to be at my best."
"I'll make it fast, then. It's about these stripper murders—"
Les Leffington's voice took on an almost spiritual fervor.
"My God, if it wasn't for those dames dying, what a PR campaign that would be. A flack's dream, Noon. Every strip joint and club in town that has a peeler or an exotic dancer is packing them in like sardines. You know the marks. Give them sensation or a scandal and down they plunk their money. Okay—" he drew a deep breath—"so what can I do for you? Remember, you got just three minutes."
"You know the five dames that bought it? Their names, I mean."
"Sure." He ticked them off in a singsong. "Heavenly Blue, the O'Shaughnessy doll, Cleo Patra, Gardena Eden, and Satana. Everybody knows that by now. You putting me on?"
I ignored that. "If you were rating them, as attractions I mean, in box-office terms, how
would they stack up? For strippers, of course."
His laugh was a bombshell in my eardrum.
"Noon, strip is big business. Big, big business. Some of those ladies knock down as much as ten grand a week, if they're big enough and work the right spots. But back to your question. Let's see. Well, I'd have to say that all those girls were big leaguers. And Dimples O., for instance, was moving up fast. Of course, Ada Ven is still number one in this town. She comes in and they have to move the walls back."
"Can you rate them," I persisted, "say by the numbers?"
He laughed again. "You want me to pin place positions on them? No can do. But let's lay it on the line this way. They'd all be in the top ten one way or another. One order or another. That help you?"
"That's just fine. Saves me looking up a lot of old newspapers. Now, if you have time for one more question?" I wondered why Ada had lied.
"I got time. Shoot."
"Do any of them have anything in common at all? Besides being exotic dancers. Including Ada Ven. Think a second before you answer."
"Important, huh? You said. Ummm. They were all girls, of course. Knockouts, every one of them. Big girls, too. Satana came from Iran, Dimples O. was a Korean, and Cleo Patra was from Brooklyn, natch, even though she poured on the Little Egypt junk in her routine and for the publicity. The Snake Woman, Gardena Eden, was a black chick. And then the Blue kid came up from nowhere with those size forty-fours she owned—Noon, baby, you got me. Hell, they were all still in their twenties except for Blue who was going on—no, I can't think of what you might be driving at. Sorry."
"How old is Ada Ven would you say?"
"Got to be thirty, at least. She broke in way back in '60 or '61 at the old Vegas joints. Why you harping on their ages? You think maybe this Gingerbread Man doesn't like his strippers getting right out of their first long dress into the skin? He ought to do everybody a real favor and knock off some of the old hags who are still shaking it. You know some strippers are over fifty?"
"I heard." I felt I had gotten nowhere in a real hurry, in spite of my professional help, and was about to close it all out with a small farewell when Les Leffington dropped something on me. All unconsciously, which is the way such information usually finds its way to you.
"Hey, cop. There's my client. I just got buzzed. Gotta ring off. You call me, hear? Soon. And we'll hoist a few. And don't wait until the next six-foot stripper is laid out. Okay?"
"Six-foot stripper—?" I echoed, the phrase tingling my ears.
"Didn't I mention that? Every one of those peelers was six foot and over. Bye, Noon. Gotta run now."
"Thanks, Les. Who's your client by the way?"
"Hedy Lamarr," he chortled. "Ring any of your bells?"
"All of them. Ciao, Les, and say hello to Hedy for me."
It took me five minutes before I used the phone again.
And then I used it again. And again. And again.
I called The New York Times Information Bureau.
I called the New York Public Library.
I called the Hotel Alamo to see if everything was still status-quo. It was. Ada Ven was taking a hot tub, Jellybean Jackson was doing the crossword puzzle in the News, and Frankie was sleeping, again.
I also called Captain Michael Monks and apart from what I had to tell him that I knew and suspected, I also relayed to him my great plans for that evening.
I also phoned Mobile to tell Melissa how much I missed her.
Last, but not least, I dialed 936-1212 and got the weather report for the Manhattan day. The forecast was clear skies, balmy winds, and a temperature fit for taking your favorite girl for an evening stroll.
All in all, a beautiful night for everything.
Including, maybe, another murder.
On a night when every stripper and exotic dancer within the confines of skyscrapered Manhattan would all be doing what came naturally to them all—taking it off. Peeling for green cash and whatever else made them do it. Something the Gingerbread Man was very upset about.
The poor maniac.
I wondered if even that terrible bastard knew what made him kill.
With a bloody red knife.
Or what he really meant by fingernail polish that made an "S" on the bared abdomens of his poor victims.
Between the navel and the pit of womanhood.
Nobody knows, I guess.
And all the gingerbread men of the universe would continue along their deadly, awful journeys to their own graves, never knowing. Never meeting anyone who could actually tell them.
Maybe that's why we all end up with a whimper.
And not a bang.
I spent the rest of that afternoon drawing up a chart. A very special chart on which I tabulated all there was to know about the five dead strippers. The key, the old common denominator, was in there somewhere. And I wanted to find it before I checked into the Del Rio to see Ada Ven go into her song and dance to a packed house.
All the phone calls I'd made had been a big help. Every one.
But the rest of it, the solution and the finish, was all up to me. And up to the Gingerbread Man.
Everything depended on what he did that night.
Or did not do.
KILL HER, YOU'LL LIKE IT
Captain Michael Monks was at his desk, too, when they let me walk in on him, announced. They hadn't improved his office much since the last time I visited, but there was a fine patina of shine and polish and a general air of good housekeeping about the same old chairs, desk, dun-colored files, and bonus furnishings. Like a few decent prints on the walls to go along with the diplomas, certificates, and honorary citations. Monks was fast becoming a legend in the department. For a blue-nosed roughneck who'd never gone to college, he'd done real well for himself. Imagine a Borgnine. That's Monks.
"Well," he grunted, throwing a ball pen down on the desk and leaning back in his swivel chair, "Noon comes to homicide. We're all downright flattered, we are. This a special occasion?"
"Cut it out," I grinned, taking the chair he hadn't offered me. "I've been doing a lot of homework and I've come to give you the benefit of my labors. Be nice, will you? You know the way I am. I do what I have to do. As you do too, I might add."
He put his hands behind his head in a clasp of irony. He was always much-better dressed lately than he had been in the old days. He'd suddenly tumbled to a good tailor and didn't look so badly in need of pressing. The face that was gnarled, formidably nosed, and as serviceable as an old pair of gloves was set in a tight smile.
"How did you manage to tear yourself away? Flatek tells me La Ven is a genuine nympho. You being so. darling and all, I'd think she wouldn't let you out of her sight."
"You are in a lousy mood," I said, rising from the chair. "I'll go out and come back later when you aren't feeling so much like a cop."
"Sit down!" he barked without losing the smile. "And show me your homework. The only thing that's always pulled your fat out of my fires is that you're the brainiest, luckiest guy I've ever known. And you know it."
"Flattery makes me sit down." I sat down and placed the 9x12 clasp envelope on the desk between us. "Please look at that. Then we talk some more about tonight. It all depends on you, like the song says."
He unlocked his hands, rocked forward in the chair, and picked up the envelope, spanking it open with his enormous thumbs. He withdrew the letter-size piece of cardboard on which I had printed a chart with a ball pen of my own. I print well and the work was neat and legible. Monks grunted, but got caught up in his reading in spite of himself.
I had made the work brief, to the point, and very factual.
Something I knew Monks would appreciate in his GI way.
When he had finished his scrutiny, he put the sheet of cardboard down on his desk and stared at me solemnly. We both could have heard a fly walking across the ceiling, if there had been one. Monks' silences are like nine months in a mother-to-be's life. Pregnant and anticipatory. He can be as ambiguous as hell when he w
ants to. This was going to be one of those sessions. It seemed.
NOTES: All the ladies mentioned above (with the exception of Ada Ven) have never been married, never had any children, and have no known boyfriends or customary affiliations. They were all career-minded independents. No proof or record of any form of Lesbianism but who knows for sure?
P.S.: All the murders seem to have been committed by a psychotic who calls himself the Gingerbread Man and, who sends letters and cards to the police, quoting the famous nursery rhyme. The murder weapon—if the same in all five homicides—has not been found.
"You print real good. You want a B plus or a B?"
"You can read better than that," I said. "Doesn't it give you any ideas at all?"
"Yeah. A couple. Like where did you get all that background information on the losers? If you've got any of my people helping you dig into our files, Ed, I want to know it. And why this chart? We know all this. Answer the first question first, please."
"I'm a big boy now, Mike. I know how to use the library, the bookshops, and old newspaper files and stories. I filled all that in this afternoon when I left the office and did some legwork before I came here. I don't need any finks in your backyard. Why the chart? Because like all proper detectives when dealing with a mass murderer, I'm looking for the common denominator. The pattern. The single thing that makes a connection between all the stiffs."
Monks shook his head and smiled tolerantly.
"Isn't the fact that they were all peelers a common enough denominator? You're grabbing at straws. We know what we have to find. A nut who likes to chop ladies who like to take it off. With that in mind, we have too many leads. A room full of suspects. Such as every psycho that is still roaming loose after a stay in Bellevue and points North, South, East, and West. So stop knocking me out, will you, Ed? It's been a very heavy day. A very heavy day."
"Okay. So you're tired," I agreed. "So don't stop using your brain. You look at that list again. A couple of more times if you have to. Part of the answer to your Gingerbread Man is right there under that nozz of yours. Just look."
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