Murder for Madame Read online

  Murder for Madame

  A PI Steve Conacher Mystery

  Lawrence Lariar

  CHAPTER 1

  It was a little after eight and I was glued to my usual stool in Tim Coogan’s bar, an establishment located only a few short steps from my office on Forty-fifth Street. It was too hot to move. I moved only my elbow, sipping my whiskey sour as I watched Tim Coogan’s television screen. A horse-faced detective was sweating through a corn opus involving a heavily bosomed blonde, a dope peddler, a maniac, a flat-nosed hood and an ingénue out of the comic book school of acting. The characters operated against a waterfront background, created out of the whimsical imagination of some schoolboy script writer. A few of Tim Coogan’s regulars sat around me watching the drama unfold and making interesting comments about the blonde. She was aiming a small automatic at the detective’s midriff and promising to kill him, while he stood his ground, grinning at her pleasantly and mouthing snappy banter before slapping the nasty gun out of her hand. I turned away from the visual stew and signaled Tim to refill my glass.

  He was working over it at the other end of the bar when the girl walked in. She came in tentatively, taking delicate steps, like a small girl about to enter a roomful of strange adults. She approached Tim and asked him a question. He looked up at her and then slid his eyes my way, giving me his usual dead-eye wink, as meaningful as a slap in the face. He jerked his thumb my way and she followed it. She moved gracefully, stepping forward with the easy poise of a show girl.

  She slid alongside me and sat on the next stool and studied my face in the mirror opposite.

  “You’re Steve Conacher?” she asked the mirror.

  I nodded at the glass. “Who wants to know?”

  She turned her pretty face my way and showed me her clean white teeth. “My name is Joy Marsh. Mary Ray said I’d find you here.”

  “Mary has a good memory.”

  “She sent me over for you.”

  “Not tonight, lady. Tell Mary I appreciate her thoughtfulness, but I’m not in the mood for it.”

  I was lying like hell. The girl at my side was a picture book girl, a calendar girl, a girl of infinite beauty. Her blonde hair was cut short and the roots were as clean as the ends—a natural tint, a combination of yellow and silver that sparkled even in the dusty interior of Tim Coogan’s. It was a Scandinavian hue, as honest as the color of her eyes. She had a soft, round face, delicately rouged, so that the crystal blue of her eyes shone out at you. The effect was dazzling. The effect was startling. She would not be easy to forget.

  “You don’t understand,” she said. “Mary wants to see you.”

  “And I want to see Mary. But I also want to finish my drink. It’s a great night for finishing drinks.” I leaned into her and let her feel the pressure of my shoulder. “What sort of drink would you like to finish, Joy?”

  “You’re very nice, but I really don’t want anything.”

  “Don’t let Tim hear you say it. He considers it a personal affront if you walk out of here without sampling his Tom Collins.”

  “I’ll have some ginger ale, if you insist.”

  “On the wagon?”

  “Call it that.”

  She said it to the bar, in the manner of a bashful co-ed, nervous and worried because she was afraid that mamma might smell the liquor on her breath when she got home. The way she said it was unbecoming to any gal from Mary Ray’s establishment. She mouthed it with a naïve smile, hesitant and ingrown; and loaded with a personal worry. She was avoiding my eyes, staring up at the video screen at some distant picture she alone could see. Her nervousness came through to her fingers, tapping gently on the bar. She had long red nails and wore a small ruby ring on her left hand, as girlish as a graduation present. She was wearing a peasant outfit, a full black skirt and a low-cut silk blouse. She didn’t look hard. She looked as if she had been around, but not in the right places and not with the right people.

  “How is Mary?” I asked. “I haven’t seen her in quite some time.”

  “Mary is all right.”

  “You’re a friend of hers?”

  “I know her well,” she said.

  “What does she want to see me about?”

  Joy sipped her ginger ale, attacking it as though it were a large dose of cod liver oil. “I really don’t know.”

  “That’s fine and dandy,” I said. “I was hoping it wasn’t urgent. How would you like to take a ride with me, out to Jones Beach? It’s a great night for counting the sea gulls. Did you ever count sea gulls?”

  “Not recently.”

  I went to work on her, challenged by her quiet sadness, trying to build something with her because she appealed to me. I had met the type before at Mary’s, sweetly provocative, with the big wet eyes and the subdued girlishness. But the others were always deliberately mysterious, so that you could recognize the pitch and chalk it up to good acting. Joy Marsh projected warmth and intelligence along with her gentle beauty. She was making me jump the gun to date her.

  I said, “What are we waiting for?”

  She came alive at my question. “I couldn’t, Steve. Not tonight.”

  “Why not tonight?”

  “Because you must go over to Mary’s right away. It’s urgent, believe me.”

  “Urgent serious, or urgent happy?”

  “Right away. She wants you right away.”

  “I’ll call her and postpone it.”

  “Please don’t,” she said. She put a hand on my arm and told me by her gentle pressure that she was serious. “Even if she didn’t want you to come over now, I couldn’t see you tonight. Not tonight.”

  She was on her feet, saying goodbye to me with her eyes. Over her shoulder, the street door opened and a man walked in. He was a mammoth character dressed in a monkey suit, the all-black variety sported by fancy chauffeurs. He was a stony-faced lug with little pig eyes and a square chin. He moved slowly toward the seat near the wall and said something to Tim. Tim brought him a beer and he took a long swallow from his glass and wiped his lips with the back of his hand, taking his time about it. He pulled a folded Racing Form from his inside pocket and lit a cigarette and made a big thing out of figuring the latest dope at Belmont. He held the paper at eye level, but his eyes weren’t on it. He was drilling his optics into Joy’s back, casing her with the impersonal coldness of an undertaker over a corpse. I resisted the urge to march his way and lay one on his lantern jaw.

  And then Joy saw him. She froze, stiffening as she took a step my way. She gave him her back and fumbled with her bag. She kept her eyes down on the bag and talked to it. It was a secret she had for the bag, a personal item spoken loud enough so only the bag and I could hear it.

  “Please,” she whispered. “Mary wants you now. Will you promise to go over there at once?”

  “Let’s go back together.”

  “Oh, no. I’ve got to run.”

  “Uptown?” I asked. “I’ll drop you off.”

  “I’m not going that way, Steve.”

  Wherever she was going, she was in a hurry to get there. She took the side door out of Coogan’s, on the run. She went out so fast that she left the door wide open behind her. I watched her legs scooting away, and after that the upper part of her body outside the window, headed west. She was chewing her lower lip, as scared as a rabbit running before the beagles.

  When I turned back to the bar to finish my drink, the chauffeur was on his feet and moving for the street door. I stepped up to him and stood in his way, fumbling for the doorknob, so that he bumped me. Hard.

  I said, “Stop pushing, chum.”

  “O
ut of my way,” he said. He put a big lean hand on my elbow and pulled me back. He had a hot arm, as strong as a steel cable. I followed the arm, but when I came his way I managed to kick him, just below the knee. He jerked me around, holding me upright by the lapels. The ease of his movements irritated me, pushing the sweat to my collar. Big men bring out the bile in me.

  I kicked him in the groin.

  “You big guys always play too rough,” I said.

  He folded, but his right arm caught me on the way down. He hit me on the side of the face and snapped my head back.

  “You little bastard,” he said, addressing me in the tone of voice a man uses to ask the time of day. “Get the hell away from me before I murder you.”

  I fell against the table in the corner, but he didn’t bother to finish me. He stood there for an extra second, making up his mind about me. He spat down at me. His aim was good. I swore and dove for his legs, but the door was open now and I caught nothing but the back of his heel, going away, through the door.

  Tim Coogan helped me up and dusted me off.

  “Why don’t you pick on a guy your size, Steve?” he asked. “Us little characters don’t ever make the grade when we’re outweighed.”

  “The bigger they come, the harder I fall,” I said, massaging my aching shank. “Maybe I’m ripe for a few sessions on a psychiatrist’s couch, Tim, but the big and dirty ones always work on my blood pressure. I would have given my right arm to slap him down.”

  “He would have taken your right arm.” Tim laughed. “He was solid. That ape would have butchered you if he hadn’t been in a hurry.”

  “Maybe I’ll slow him down next time with a quick fist in his gut. Who was he?”

  “Nobody I’ve seen before—and nobody I want to know. What started the brawl?”

  “I did. I had an idea he was after the cute girl who was sipping ginger ale.”

  “You and your ideas,” Tim said. “Who was she?”

  “She was one of Mary Ray’s girls,” I said. “Or maybe she wasn’t.”

  “That makes sense. Don’t tell me you were making a play for one of Mary Ray’s hustlers?”

  “You bartenders are all alike,” I said. “You see a girl at the bar and automatically file her away in your own index system. Were you ever wrong?”

  “Girls who come into bars by themselves ask for a quick opinion,” Tim said. “She looked like a chippy to me.”

  “You’ve got astigmatism.”

  Tim shrugged and went back to his customers. I left his place and wandered around Forty-fifth Street for a while, hoping to get another chance at the big chauffeur. There were plenty of cars on the block, but none of them ritzy enough for a man in uniform.

  I took a cab uptown, into the brownstone belt on the East Side, in the middle Fifties.

  New York City has thousands of brownstone houses, relics of the first great building boom in the metropolis, when the century was young and architects masters of monotonous design. You can find them in all sections of town, some of them quietly rotting away in the slum areas, others remodeled and modern, featuring clean and bright fronts. The house of Mary Ray was of the latter variety, a quiet domicile on a quiet street in the high rent area just west of Sutton Place.

  Mary Ray’s brownstone still had its original façade, a smooth stone wall, recently painted a dull shade of gray, with windows clean and shining, as prim as they might have been in the Victorian era. There was a small oblong of neglected lawn, a tiny patch on which a dwarfed but struggling maple had been planted a few years ago. The doorway was done in a middling blue, and the door itself sported an antique brass knocker that gleamed and glistened in the dim light. The upstairs windows were tall and graceful, decorated with a good lace that added a note of ancient charm.

  All in all, the house of Mary Ray sang with the muted notes of honorable respectability.

  And that was the aim and purpose of Mary Ray. Because it was Mary’s business to run a house of refinement. And this was a dignified house, the most elegant of its type in the city.

  But it was a brothel, nevertheless.

  CHAPTER 2

  I crossed the street, wondering why a respectable madame like Mary Ray would have need of me again. I stood in the doorway, studying the neat silver plate above the knocker. It was engraved in fine italics:

  Mary Ray—Interiors

  The man in the street would observe the flowery script and believe that this was the abode of an uptown decorator, a specialist in feminine interiors. But this was a sop to Mary’s sense of humor. She always had an eye for a good gag and was well known for her witty patter in the days when she was doing her bumps and grinds at the old Olympic Burlesque, down near Fourteenth Street.

  She made a big name for herself then as a perfectionist in the art of shimmy and shake, until an overemotional member of the bald pate brigade pulled her over the runway one night in an affectionate embrace. He broke her right leg. This was a serious blow to Mary.

  Mary Ray brooded over her accident, but not for long. She had learned frugality by way of her Irish and French ancestry. She had saved most of her money during the days when she was shaking her delectable frame up the ladder of success. She invested her boodle in a dress shop, one of the fancier varieties hard by Fifty-Seventh Street, where she tried for a long time to crack the upper-class trade with her exotic designs. But she became weary of the strain of catering to a mess of women for whom she had no real respect. She had always preferred the company of men. And when the right man came along, Mary stayed with the old bird until she had wheedled this very brownstone out of him.

  He was a rich and old member of the New York café set, but he died before he could make Mary his wife. Rumor had it that it was his death that sent Mary into the arms of the first pursuing male to come along. She married Sam Hestie after that. And when Sam ran off with most of her dough, she opened her house to harlotry, wooed by the promise of protection from King Barchy, the tycoon of the vice business in New York City. She had opened for business seven years before, skillfully screened from the prying eyes of the Vice Squad—a hostess who catered only to select callers. An uncrowned queen of the Bagnios.

  I rapped discreetly on the brass knocker, and after a while the door opened a crack and a girl appraised me with a sharp and seasoned eye. She wore an evening gown cut low in the right places. A big white flower blossomed in her red hair. Her eyes were as soft as flint. She wore her make-up with the aplomb of a model, but the cigarette she puffed made her blink too often.

  “Yes?” she inquired, as though I were a brush salesman working his way through prep school. “What can I do for you?”

  “I have several ideas,” I said, “but they can wait until later… Mary Ray sent for me.”

  “Really?” Her eyebrows shot up, two thin lines of incredulity. “Miss Ray didn’t inform me that she was expecting anyone tonight.”

  “Perhaps Mary forgot.”

  “Miss Ray rarely forgets an appointment.”

  “What gives?” I asked. “Don’t tell me Mary Ray has a private secretary these days? Business must be booming.”

  “I’m usually told of Miss Ray’s appointments,” said the redhead, as calmly as a receptionist in a Radio City office. “All of them—even with book salesmen.”

  I said, “Look, I’m an old friend of Mary’s—not a customer or a salesman. She sent a special messenger over to Tim Coogan’s bar to get me over here. Does that make you any happier?”

  “Frankly, no, blue eyes.” She studied me for a quick second. “I can’t let you in.”

  She was a big girl. She moved her body in against the door and began to press it shut. But I had my shoe in the gap and held it there, as stubborn as an encyclopedia salesman. She was alarmed to find that the door would not shut me out. I pulled my wallet out and extended my business card, holding it flush to her nose. Her eyes popped into i
ncredulous circles.

  “A detective?” she asked herself. “What kind of a gag is this?”

  “You’re raising my blood pressure,” I told her angrily. “Pull the catch off the door before I lean into it and break it. Mary wouldn’t like that, sister. You’ll be back on the street for keeping me out of here.”

  She opened the door. I smiled her back into the hall, and she retreated before me as though I meant to strangle her.

  I grinned up at her and said, “You do your job well. You’re strictly business on that door.”

  She frowned. “You have a big fat mouth for a little guy.”

  “I love you, too. Do you work on the door exclusively, or are you on the payroll?”

  “That’s none of your business, lover boy.”

  “Don’t fight me so hard.” I smiled. “You and I could establish a beautiful friendship from here on out.”

  “Over my dead body.”

  “I wouldn’t care for it that way.”

  “A little joke man,” she grinned. “You don’t look like a Kinsey interviewer to me.”

  “Right now I want to see Mary. Waltz upstairs and tell her I’m here—and stop trying to figure me out. I’m not a city dick. I’m a private investigator, remember?”

  “You’re squeezing my arm like a city dick.”

  “I’m squeezing your arm because it feels good. Whose arm am I squeezing, by the way?”

  “You can call me Tiny.”

  “You’re pretty big for the moniker. You’re the tallest Tiny I’ve ever met.”

  “That makes us even,” she said. “You’re the smallest Steve.”

  She led me into the living room. It was a long, cool room, with the restful air of a place designed for the better things in life. There was a Steinway in the corner near the far wall, a blond mahogany job of the latest vintage. There were modern prints on the wall, well framed and in a variety of techniques. I recognized a couple of them that were reproduced from originals in the Modern Museum: Picasso’s “Three Musicians” and Klee’s “Around the Fish” and a few large and colorful originals by an abstractionist whose work I had never seen before. The furniture was selected to add comfort and extra livability to the place—broad couches made up of sectional slices, large blond coffee tables and occasional chairs molded out of God-knows-what to fit God-knows-who. The large bay was draped in a garish print that sang against the grayish wall. The entire ensemble spelled out charm and refinement—a room built for comfort, a front calculated to welcome the man in the street and woo him into a mood of respectful expectancy.