Murder for Madame Read online

  “Not today, Barchy. I’m too busy.”

  “You’re not so busy that you can’t talk. For dough.”

  “I’ve got enough of it.”

  “Nobody ever has enough, I say. And when you work for King Barchy you get the top rates.”

  “Stuff it,” I said.

  “I said I was sorry about Noonan.”

  “Stuff Noonan, too.”

  “I got a grand to start you off with,” Barchy said. He reached slowly into his jacket and made a major production out of counting out ten century notes on my desk. He counted it out in two piles, five bills in each. And then he began to count five more bills into a fresh pile. “An extra five hundred because I’m sorry about Noonan.”

  “You heard what I said, Barchy. No dice.”

  “How tough can you be, Conacher?” He dropped his voice to a more tender level and got out of the chair and sat on the end of the desk, “Listen, I got all kinds of people working for me. I pay my bills and I make plenty of pals because my bills are paid off in cash money. Maybe I never did business with a private eye before, but I say I’m willing to learn. Maybe I made a mistake coming up here with Noonan. Well, so I already apologized. Now you and I can do business together, I say. I need a man like you and I got the dough to pay you off proper. You walk around this burg and ask anybody how about Barchy? They’ll tell you I’m regular and I pay regular. And when I ask a man with talent to come along with me on a job, I say I pay him off top rates.” He pushed the bills across my blotter and watched my face carefully. “Take the dough and let’s play, Conacher. I got plenty more if you find what I want.”

  “Namely?”

  “The book. The little book from Mary Ray’s.”

  “What’s the pitch?”

  “You want it plain and simple? I’ll pay you off five grand if you locate that book. Because inside that book is information that could knock me cold in this town.”

  “What kind of information?”

  “Names. All kinds of names and all kinds of places.”

  “Who would use them?”

  “I can mention the politicians who would pay fifty grand.”

  “And suppose I can’t make the locate on the book?”

  “You’ll do the trick, Conacher,” he said. “Because I’m going to help you, see?”

  “I don’t get it,” I said. “And I also don’t want it.”

  “You’ll want it. For you, it won’t be so much trouble as you think.” He settled back in the chair, as comfortable as a tycoon behind his office desk. “The reason I came up with Noonan is because I figured you were the goniff who had the book, understand?”

  “Why?”

  “Because I got a phone call from a gent who tells me he has the book. He also tells me he’s willing to sell it off, for a price.”

  “When did you get the call?”

  “The way I figure it, it was a little bit after Mary Ray got murdered, last night.”

  “And you thought I made the call?”

  “Who else? You were in the room, the paper said.”

  “I was also as cold as a herring, remember?”

  “So I figured you could have hid the book,” Barchy said. “And I also put two and two together and cased you for the blackmail pitch. That’s why I sent Noonan up to your dump last night, to look it over. That’s why I came up here with Noonan.”

  “That call could have been from Haskell Moore,” I said. “He must have known a lot of your business, because of Mary Ray. They were pretty close. Did you ever stop to think that Moore might have called you?”

  Barchy nodded, deadpan. “Naturally. But when I sent Noonan up to the guy’s studio, the book wasn’t there, see? So that crossed Moore off my list. Especially after he knocked himself off. A guy don’t put the bee on a sucker for twenty-five grand, and then bump himself off, does he?”

  “Hardly. You’re a clear thinker, Barchy. You don’t need me.”

  “Sure I do.”

  “And suppose I don’t want the deal?”

  He waved the idea away. “You’ll do the job. I know all about you. I remember what you did on the Masterson swindle.”

  “That was a man,” I said, “not a book.”

  “I got confidence in you, Conacher.”

  “Where did you get it?”

  “Like I said, I read all about you.”

  “I’m beginning to believe you,” I said. The little bales of loot were beginning to talk for him. You don’t just look down your nose at fifteen hundred bucks on your desk blotter. Nor do you turn your brain off at the prospect of five thousand more for a book the size of a vest pocket. You don’t sneer at cabbage when you’re in business, any kind of business, from plumbing to skip-tracing. But a plumber works with tools and pipes and rarely has use of his imagination. I could do nothing to stem the flood of doubts that crawled through my head. I stood at the window and searched for a few of the answers in the misted rain that fell outside. I found nothing but added miasma.

  I said, “How do I know one of your boys wasn’t playing potsy in Mary Ray’s last night? How do I know you didn’t send a gorilla like Noonan up there to butcher her? If you want the book now, it could be that you wanted it last night.”

  “What ideas you got,” whispered Barchy. “What kind of talk is that?” He came over to me at the window and put his head between me and the skyline. And his face was clouded with a mixture of anger and frustration. He was moved, for the first time. “What kind of a heel do you take me for, Conacher? Would I murder my own partner?”

  “Your what?”

  “Listen, Mary Ray was my partner.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since away back, Conacher.”

  If he was telling a lie, he was a skillful actor. He had a flat, hard face, as unemotional as a store dummy. But a change had crept over it now. He hurled his cigar stub to the floor and stamped it out viciously. He showed me his sincerity by grabbing my arm and turning me around his way.

  “Mary Ray and me were partners since about five years ago,” he whispered. “When I opened up the call house business, it was Mary who set up all the details, I say. It was a pleasure to split with her, because she was a dame you could trust. But I found out she was killed, I had to get her book, Conacher. Can you blame me? In the beginning I figured maybe she was butchered for that little book. But later on, when the crazy artist bumped himself off, it changed the picture. But it didn’t answer the big question: Who took Mary’s book?’

  “And you still think I can locate it?” I laughed.

  “If you can’t, nobody can.”

  “How much time have I?”

  “Jesus, not much. Whoever has it is going to sell it.”

  “Any ideas who might have it?”

  “Only one. And it isn’t mine.”

  “Who sold it to you?”

  “Anita.”

  “Anita spreads herself around, doesn’t she? Who does she suspect?”

  “A kid named Joy Marsh.”

  “Break it down for me, Barchy.”

  “Anita figured it this way,” Barchy said. “This girl Joy Marsh quit the call business some time ago. She started to go straight, but she didn’t do so good at it, maybe. Anita says the girl is brainy. Anita says a brainy girl like this Joy Marsh maybe got an idea. She was palsy with Mary. She maybe could have bumped Mary off to get her hands on that book, Anita says. Does it add up for you?”

  “It adds up to so much crap,” I said.

  “You could be right. But you better check it.”

  “I’ll check it.”

  “You know where to reach me? You call this number and ask for Rudy and I’ll be there, on the phone.”

  He handed me a phone number, the same number I had called in the morning, at Slip Keddy’s bedside. He lit a fresh cigar slowly
, pushing himself easily into his former slothful behavior, puffing the smoke in great gusts, on his way to the door. He stepped through the doorway without looking back. I heard him cross the outer office and go out into the hall.

  I walked over to the sink and doused my head. The spot where Barchy had hit me hummed and buzzed with a painful rhythm. I washed my face and looked at myself doubtfully. The mirror smiled at me.

  “Remember, Conacher,” I told myself, “the customer is always right.”

  And then I left the office to prove him wrong.

  CHAPTER 16

  There were six names and six places alive in my mental mousetrap, like six towns on a crossroads signpost, all of them clearly defined, but pointing in different directions. And the roads were of assorted qualities: the straight-line avenue back to Joy Marsh’s old address; the dead-end street to Mary Ray’s; the winding lane through Greenwich Village to Eric Fanchon’s; the steep climb back to Averill Plummer’s retreat; the inviting detour to Tiny’s, or the untested bypath to the commercial haunt of Lawrence Fanchon.

  I stood in the lobby of my building, meditating my choice. I toyed with the idea of visiting Lawrence Fanchon in his office, only a few blocks away on Madison Avenue. But the prospect of an interview in a business atmosphere irritated me. It would be easier seeing him at his home, away from the receptionists and the secretaries and the rigmarole of officiousness encouraged in upper-class offices.

  I grabbed a cab and took road number seven, the uncharted course uptown to Haskell Moore’s den, the challenging road, the once-traveled path that had led me to horror, but not to satisfaction.

  The street was already darkening with the gloom of dusk when I arrived. The front door was open, and a cleaning woman mopped the inside hall. I whistled my way past her, as cocky as a paying tenant, and climbed the narrow stairway to the top floor without meeting any wanderers along the way.

  I tested the knob and the door opened under my hand and I walked through the little vestibule and past the grinning African mask, into the studio. The place was gray with shadows and deadly quiet, but my nose picked up the flat, dull stench of smoldering cigarettes, and the odor stabbed me to a halt. I stood in the shelter of the protective mass of the wall near the hall, staring into the great room, as cautious as a trout sniffing a lure.

  Then a noise rose up out of the dismal quiet and pricked at my short hairs and tightened my throat. It was a whispered and throaty wheeze, sucking and blowing somewhere off near the big window up front. It was a sickly sighing, the gasp of an injured animal. It was rising and falling, the sound of breathing. Or dying.

  I picked my way around the furniture, conscious of my repetitive movements. In the sticky silence, I half expected to bump once again into the lifeless legs of Haskell Moore. Instinct drove me off in the opposite direction. Instinct slowed me as I approached the source of the garbled hissing.

  And then I saw the man in the chair.

  He was sitting close to the window, but in the shadows where the wall on the left abutted the giant pane of glass. He was a short man and his body was draped in an armchair, his head nodding as he slept; his chest heaving in the regular pattern of deep sleep. I advanced to his side and bent to study him in the darkness.

  And I laughed out loud.

  It was Fider!

  He came awake with a bounce at the sound of my laughter, as shocked as a goosed debutante. He muttered a startled oath and climbed to his feet and stood there, swinging out at me as though I was part of his personal nightmare: I stepped back to the wall and flipped the switch and the room flooded with light.

  Fider gawked at me, batting his sleepy eyes open.

  I said, “Doughty would give you a hit on the head if he found out you were napping, Fider.”

  “Conacher,” he wheezed. “Jesus, you scared the pants off of me.”

  “You scared yourself. This is a hell of a place for a siesta.”

  “Doughty’s idea,” Fider said, sighing wistfully. “I’ve been up here all afternoon and the place gave me the heaves, I’m telling you. Sometimes I wish I took up plumbing, like my old man advised me.”

  “What did Doughty send you up here for?”

  “To sit, naturally. That’s the kind of job I get all the time. Either I’m tailing somebody in the rain or else I’m shipped to dumps like this just to sit around and wait for the boys down town. I tell you, it’s no life for a man my age anymore.”

  “Who’s coming up from downtown?”

  “You know Doughty’s assistant, Ecker? He was up only an hour ago. Wanted to give the place a going over again. They’re trying to find out more about the idiot who lived here, the artist.”

  “Doughty surprises me,” I said. “Isn’t he happy with the suicide anymore?”

  “The guy was awful drunk,” Fider said. “He was loaded with liquor, they found out. It don’t usually happen a guy so drunk knocks himself off. So Ecker was up to look around in all the closets and go through his desk again.”

  “Did he find anything new?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  “How much longer do you sit?”

  “I got my orders to stay until they move me.”

  “What the hell,” I said, “at least you’re squatting, Fider. You didn’t look half so comfortable when I saw you last night. You were standing under an awning and flattening your arches.”

  “That’s right,” he said, showing me his open smile, as guileless as an infant’s gurgle. He tapped me on the shoulder in a friendly way. “And you, Conacher? You weren’t flattening your arches up in that dame’s apartment, were you?”

  “She doesn’t encourage standing around.”

  “She’s a hot-looking girl, all right. A real worker.”

  “Meaning what?” I asked, because he wanted me to ask.

  “I don’t get what she was doing at Mary Ray’s, Conacher. She has a good business in her own apartment.”

  “You watched her after I left?”

  “Naturally I watched her. You were in such a hurry to get to Sixth Avenue, you didn’t see me when I moved. You almost bumped into me, did you know that?”

  “How long did you watch her?”

  “I stayed around for a while. I stayed long enough so that I saw two guys go up to visit her.” Fider walked away from me, to the window. He lit a cigar and puffed it slowly, imitating Doughty in the way a small boy imitates Hopalong Cassidy. He had information that I could get from him at wholesale rates, by way of a pat on the back and a gentle flow of flattery.

  I patted his back.

  I said, “I’ve got to hand it to you, Fider. Of all the city dicks I know, you alone have methodical ways. You don’t find many brains on the force. Most of the lugs get to the top spots because they know the Commissioner well. A man like you should have Doughty’s job. You’d wow them.”

  “Well, now, I only see what I see.”

  “But you see it clearly,” I said. “I’ll bet you could draw me a picture of the two Sams who helped themselves to a piece of that big girl last night.”

  “Well, now, I certainly could,” Fider said. “One of the gays was a kind of short one, maybe a little taller than you. He was nervous as hell. He parked his car up near Fifth Avenue and cased the dump pretty good before he went inside. Looked like a college boy, and maybe he was, because he came out fast.”

  “And the other one?”

  “The other one was easier, on account of I know him.”

  “Not Doughty?” I laughed.

  “Doughty wouldn’t know what to do with a dame like her.”

  “Ecker?”

  “You’ll never guess him, so I’ll tell you. It was a hood by the name of Noonan.”

  “Noonan? Barchy’s man? How did you spot him?” I asked, laying on with the incredulity. “He’s a normal-looking jerk, especially on a dark street.”
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br />   “Not Noonan,” said Fider. “You get to case a hood like him by lots of little things. You ever see him?”

  “Once or twice. He’s a tough apple.”

  “And the toughness comes through in him, Conacher. I got him in a minute, just from the way he walks, sort of like a punchy fighter, rolling from side to side.”

  “Clever. Clever as hell, Fider. How long did he stay up there with her?”

  “Oh, Noonan didn’t come down so fast. A guy like him invests dough with a girl, he gets his money’s worth.”

  “You quit after that?”

  “It was two o’clock when I called in my report. A man has to get some sleep, even in my business.” He came close enough to be confidential. “Listen, Conacher, that’s why I was out cold when you walked in here just now. You know something? I only had about four hours sleep last night.”

  I said, “Why don’t you sit down and get some more shuteye, Fider? I’m only going to browse around a bit.”

  “Better than that, I’m hungry,” he said. “Maybe I’ll hop down and get myself a bite right now. You say you’ll be browsing? How long?”

  “I’ll wait until you get back.”

  He skipped out of the place and I heard his big feet clopping downstairs. I lit the big standing lamp and the room filled with a diffused light, the way it was last night, exposing the naked floors and the incongruous positions of the tables and chairs. Haskell Moore had lived his personal life in the almost contrived disorder found in many artists’ ateliers. The area around his easel held two tabourets, neither of them designed for the use of a painter, relics of antiquity that were originally gewgaws in some archaic homestead. His tubes and brushes lay on still another table, this one of heavy oak, probably out of a dining room suite. The easel itself was a Gargantuan item, made up of roughly stained wood and calculated to hold the heaviest of his creative efforts.

  The unfinished portrait on the stand represented the head and shoulders of a girl with a violent mouth, half turned toward the artist in a frightening snarl, a symbol of mocking passion, the eyes glowing with the animal heat of a cornered vixen. She stared out at her audience over an uptilted shoulder, lifted in a position to accent the cut of her bosom, naked and licentious. Moore had reached the point where the shaded values needed the final blending, the final shimmer and sheen of his finished technique.