Murder for Madame Read online

  “How about Haskell Moore?”

  “I wouldn’t put it past that crumb,” she said savagely. “I wouldn’t put anything past him. He was nuts. He didn’t have all his marbles.”

  “King Barchy?”

  “You’re kidding now,” she said with a light laugh. “King was crazy about Mary. Or didn’t you know? Listen, they were partners. Listen, I’d even pick my pal Rose over King Barchy. That’s how much I think of him.”

  “That’s all I wanted to hear,” I said. “You’ve been a great help, Anita. But you’d help me even more if you could steer me to Joy.”

  “No dice, detective. I just don’t know.”

  “Did she have any friends?”

  “Listen, why should she? When she was on call, Joy was all mixed up. She was ashamed of it, you see? So she didn’t go around making pals. She stuck pretty much by herself.”

  “Do you think she might have gone home?” I asked.

  “Never!” Anita shook her head violently. “Joy could never stand to face her folks. Not after what she went through in this town. She told me she’d never go back until she straightened herself out.”

  Anita showed me the door politely.

  I said, “Thanks for the info, lady. Maybe I can do something for you sometime.”

  “You know where I live,” she said.

  CHAPTER 20

  Slip Keddy downed a fresh beaker of beer. He was having his midnight breakfast in my small kitchen, slurping himself awake in easy stages.

  “What do you know about Noonan?” I asked.

  “He’s Barchy’s gunsel,” Slip said sleepily. “He’s been Barchy’s gun for a long time, but it’s a business of prestige with Barchy, really. He’s not the Hollywood type of racketeer boss. Barchy’s just an overgrown kid with a good head for illicit business. And Noonan is kept alive on the payroll just for following the King around, like one of those pilot fishes that swim in the shadow of the sharks.”

  “He’s a pilot fish with healthy fists,” I said.

  “He’s a vicious lad, Steve. But Barchy gives him few opportunities to display his muscles.”

  “How is he in the head?”

  “Noonan is no fool. He collects for the King.”

  I had the painting propped up on the window sill, and Slip stared at it with the heavy-lidded eye of a connoisseur who is testing a masterpiece for authenticity.

  “She’s a pretty girl, isn’t she?” I asked.

  “Terrific,” he said.

  “You finished with the beer?” I asked. “I’ve got some black coffee on the fire, with brandy.”

  “I’ll take the beer.”

  I needed the brandy. It would be many hours before I could cross my living room and dump my weary bones into the mattress for sleep. I spiked my cup with a stiff hooker of Armagnac. I downed it and gulped another.

  “A really sensational girl,” Slip said again. “But the painting looks as if somebody out of a reform school might have done it. A dirty slob, perhaps?”

  “He was a slob.”

  “And the girl?”

  “Joy Marsh,” I said. “The lady of mystery.”

  “She’s no lady.”

  “You’re capitulating to the way Haskell Moore handled her, Slip. He could make a whore out of a madonna simply by painting her face and adding his own posture for the important segments of the torso, legs and hip section.”

  “He did it with all the other pictures?”

  “He had a one-track brain in the art world. He would have made a fortune decorating latrines.”

  “And Joy Marsh didn’t know what he was doing?”

  I broke it down for him. I explained how a model could strike a pose and leave when her part of the picture was finished. How could she know what the artist would do with her after she had walked out? How could she know that she would appear as an actress in a dirty role, devised and contrived by the dirty brain of a dirty artist? There was only one picture by Haskell Moore that violated his basic principles of design. This was the painting of Mary Ray, in her own living room. Moore had played Mary straight. He had left out the grimy additions he included in all his other works of art. He had painted Mary in a classic pose, an imitation of the celebrated Goya rendition of the nude duchess. There were no leering wooers in the Mary Ray picture. Mary was clean. Mary was decent, though nude. There would be no reason for Joy Marsh to suspect that Moore might paint her in another way.

  “You sound as if you’ve bought some stock in this Marsh girl,” Slip said. “You’re for her, all the way.”

  “I’ve seen her. And talked to her.”

  “And?”

  “Nothing. She was straight.”

  “How can you be sure? Did you make a pass at her?”

  “Not with dough.”

  “That could be the answer,” Slip said. “For the sight of a fin, she might have rolled your way.”

  “Nuts!” I snapped. He was leading me down the wrong road, the path to confusion. I was in no mood for discussing the right and wrong of Joy Marsh. I burned with the ambition to find her and let her tell me why she came after me in Tim Coogan’s. She would have some of the missing pieces. She would deliver me from the roundabout groping for leads and tips. She would tell me. “Forget about her, Slip. Unless you’ve got a few gems of thought on how I can reach her.”

  “You’ve got yourself a problem,” he muttered. “The tart and the bracelet. You’ll pick up the bracelet one of these days in a hock shop, because big items like that can sometimes be spotted. But the girl? Who the hell knows where she lammed? She doesn’t sound like the ordinary pinhead from the houses. According to you, she’s intelligent, and if she’s got half a brain, she’ll be holing up until the stink of this mess clears away. She reads the papers, doesn’t she? She knows all about what happened at Mary Ray’s, and if she’s at all scared, she’ll be hiding in some out of the way place. Maybe Plummer knows where she is.”

  “Plummer drew a blank with her.”

  “That’s what Plummer says.”

  “Her landlady confirms it,” I said. “The old biddy told me that Plummer returned for another crack at Joy, after she had left the rooming house.”

  “And Fanchon?”

  “Fanchon is away. I’ve been on the prowl for him ever since I left his old man in a sweat. I went up to his roost on Park Avenue and played footie with the doorman just about an hour ago.”

  “Nothing?”

  “The doorman said Larry Fanchon has been out of town for the last week.”

  “He could have been lying.”

  “I thought of that,” I said. “I went into the lobby and dropped another fin to the elevator boy. I got the same answer.”

  “Stop playing coy,” Slip said. “Larry Fanchon could have out-bribed you, twenty to one. He could have paid off every employee in his apartment house to sing a certain song for him to nosy guys like you. Larry Fanchon could have shut their mouths, all of them.”

  “It’s an angle.”

  “Why don’t you check it?” Slip pulled himself away from the table, slipped his dirty old felt on his balding pate and paused to have a final squint at the painting. He shrugged at it wearily and headed for the door. “You want me to keep worming around on the bracelet deal?”

  “It would help if I found it.”

  “I’m going downtown to see a fancy fence who has a long and sensitive nose for items like that bracelet. Maybe I’ll get something. Maybe I won’t.”

  “Keep digging,” I said.

  I propped the picture up in my bedroom closet, and covered it with some of my dirty wash. I took a fast shower and changed my clothes completely, substituting dry apparel for the stuff I had been standing around in all day. I was shaving down my jaw when the phone rang.

  It was Tiny.

  “I’ve been trying
you all night,” she said. Her telephone voice was low and sultry, as inviting as the memory of her past performance. “You’re a busy little man.”

  “And how are you?”

  “I’m down in your lobby.”

  “You’re a gal of purpose.”

  “How does it hit you? The purpose, I mean?”

  “I never turned a lady away.”

  “But I’m no lady.”

  “Come on up and prove it.”

  “I’m practically there.”

  She came in when I was knotting my tie. She walked straight into the john and put her arms around me, from behind.

  “You going somewhere, little man?” she asked.

  “I had ideas.”

  “Change them.”

  “It isn’t easy.”

  “Turn around. I’ll make it easy.”

  “Go inside and pour yourself a snort, Tiny. I’ll be right with you.”

  She had her shoes off when I finished with my tie. She was sprawled on the couch, fingering a tall glass of Scotch and soda. Something had happened to her since I last saw her. Her face seemed fresher, brighter, alive with a new vitality. She was made up to the ears, aglow with a chorine’s treatment on the cheeks and eyebrows, her lips as red and shiny as a polished apple. She had darkened her eyebrows somewhat, so that you noticed the lift of them when she smiled. Her dress was of yellow silk, cut in a respectable swirl around her breasts.

  She patted the couch at her side. I joined her and tried for respectability.

  “I have an art problem,” I said. “A knotty art problem. It concerns a painting of Joy Marsh.”

  “You’re kidding. Who’d paint her?”

  “Haskell Moore did it,” I said. “And I have it. But I’ve got to find Joy, so that I can give it to her. Can’t you help me, Tiny?”

  “I told you I’m no use to you in that department,” Tiny said. “What’s so important about a painting of Joy Marsh?”

  “Somebody could use it against the kid. Somebody could ruin her with a painting like the one I’ve got. It’s evil.”

  “You’re making me jealous of that girl,” Tiny pouted. “What has she got that I can’t arrange for you?”

  “You’re a tonic, baby,” I told her, and chucked her under her soft chin. “You’re enough for me, believe me.”

  “I’m still jealous of her. You act as if you’re nuts about her.”

  “She puzzles me.”

  Tiny was wearying of our banter. She pulled me down to her and allowed me to savor the rich ripeness of her personal perfume. She buried my head in her hair and then kissed me, hard enough to wipe the immediate problems into some temporary closet of my mental storage house.

  “Not now, Tiny,” I said, disentangling myself from her Amazon embrace. “You’re something for more quiet moments.”

  “I don’t hear any fire engines in here,” she said with some petulance. “Why the hard-to-get routine?”

  “You’re a good pal, Tiny. But not now.”

  “Jesus, but you embarrass me.”

  “Skip it. I like to see you sharp and happy.”

  “Maybe it’s because I like your company, Steve.”

  “Is that it?” I asked. “I thought maybe you were gay about Haskell Moore’s death.”

  “Can you blame me?” she asked, grabbing my hand with her usual pressure. “It was a relief, a big relief to me when I read he bumped himself off. A girl doesn’t like to be scared stiff that way.”

  “I’ll bet. You must have been up all night.”

  “I was. And scared to death.”

  “Is that why you took the calls?” I asked. “Because you didn’t want to be alone?”

  She took her hand away. “What calls?”

  “The two customers,” I said. “After I left.”

  “How did you know?”

  “A little bird.”

  She laughed out loud. “I’ll be damned. Just what was it your bird told you?”

  “About Noonan,” I said. “Is he one of your steady accounts?”

  “I have no steadies, Steve. Noonan pays me a visit every once in a while, just the way he visits all of Mary Ray’s girls. Noonan is a collector for King Barchy. Or didn’t you know?”

  “And the other guy? Another collector too?”

  “Jesus, you sound almost jealous! I suppose I’ll have to tell you all,” she said, and reached for my hand and patted it affectionately. “He was a jerk named Plummer. Does that mean anything to you?”

  “It could,” I said. “What did he want?”

  “He was looking for Joy Marsh’s address.”

  “Who sent him to you?”

  “Rose. He’s an old customer of hers. Rose thought that I could help him out.”

  “But you couldn’t give him a thing?”

  “The address I had was much too old,” Tiny said. “Joy moved twice since she left the address I gave him. I knew it and I told him so. That was all. You feel better now, detective? Maybe we’re finished with it now? Maybe you can forget the whole stinking mess?”

  “It isn’t easy, Tiny,” I said.

  I explained how I had bumped into the swaying corpse that was Haskell Moore, hanging from a beam in his darkened studio. She listened in shock and trembling silence, closing her eyes against the sound of my voice.

  “That’s enough,” she said. “I’ll be getting the heaves again unless you stop.”

  “You were right about him, Tiny. He was crazy.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Only crazy folks commit suicide.”

  “Well, then, he was cracked,” Tiny said with a shivering shrug. “I see what you mean, Steve. I remember his corny ways now. He must have been nuts. He certainly wasn’t normal when I saw him.”

  “It came through in his paintings, too.”

  Tiny trembled again and finished her drink in an unladylike gulp. “Let’s forget about him, Steve. To hell with him. He belongs in hell.”

  She was making it easy for me to forget about Haskell Moore, Joy Marsh, the bracelet, the murders, the events of the past forty-eight hours, and also the immediate present. She pulled me to her and kissed me. It would have been good to follow through.

  But I finished the kiss and sat up.

  “You’re a hard man to reach,” she said.

  “I don’t forget easily,” I said. “We were talking about Haskell Moore, and I can’t shake him off—he’s an unforgettable character. Mostly because he stays alive in my mind, like a bad dream, I wish I could shake him out and bury him, but I can’t. From what I’ve heard about him, he doesn’t strike me as the type of man who would commit suicide.”

  “Then you think he was bumped off?” she gasped.

  “I’m toying with the idea that he was hung.”

  “Is that possible?” she asked, showing me her womanly terror. “What a weird idea!”

  “Weird ideas are perpetrated by weird people, Tiny.”

  “Get me another drink, will you? You’re giving me the shakes again.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  I showed her how sorry I was five minutes later. She was upset again. She trembled and tightened in my arms, so that I had to feed her still another glass of liquor to try to calm her. But she rallied only briefly to my sympathetic approaches.

  “I guess I’m a sissy at heart,” she said, getting up. “Will you forgive me?”

  “Until tomorrow night.”

  “I’ll be all right then. I promise. I’ll have a little supper waiting for you.”

  “Keep it nice and hot,” I said. “I’ll be there.”

  I opened the door and escorted her to the elevator, and before it arrived, I kissed her a fond goodbye. She waved to me tremulously and then the elevator door closed her away from me and started
down.

  And I started down after it, by way of the stairs.

  CHAPTER 21

  My apartment was on the third floor of a smallish cliff dwelling in the heart of Chelsea, not too far from the sound of the hoots and whistles of river traffic. It is an area of stillness and quiet late at night, a section of New York that dies early, where the routine traffic consists of an occasional cab, skimming along the dead arteries at an unlawful speed. I ran down the stairs at a moderate clip, measuring my descent by the sound of the elevator, a slow and archaic lift that had seen better days when elevators were first invented. Tiny would make the lobby in about a minute. I arranged my steps so that I would be there before her, safely hidden behind the angle of the wall where the stairs emerged into the tiny entrance hall.

  She arrived on schedule and the door clanked shut behind her; I saw her step toward the street and then stand there readying herself for the rigors of the still falling rain. It was a drizzle now, but from where I stood there was enough moisture in it to fog the air between her almost silhouetted figure and the street lamp, glimmering across the way.

  She stepped out, as though moved by some hidden hand that pressed her ahead with urgency. Her frame bent forward and her heels went up and I heard them clacking along the pavement, headed east, toward the trafficked lane where cabs might cruise.

  I gave her enough headroom, a lead of half a block. I stepped out after her, holding myself to the edges of the buildings, so that I was almost within spitting distance when she reached Eighth Avenue. She passed it up. She crossed it quickly, advancing down the darkened street at a spirited gallop, not running, not walking, but moving in the irregular pace of an anxious female who finds her heels too high for prolonged sprinting. The sound of her heels set up an echo in the dim canyon.

  Seventh Avenue had its usual quota of taxis and she boarded one and headed uptown I followed her through the theatrical section and then east to the shining canopy of the Rebus, where her cab slowed into the small line of taxis waiting to disgorge their freight. I was getting the breaks. The Rebus would be crowded at this hour.

  I gave her a five-minute lead into the bistro and then entered and took a seat at the bar. The place bounced and bumped with the erratic tempo of a three-piece boogie group, set up in the doorway to the main room, a cacophonic combine that featured a drummer who pounded well, but pounded too hard. The dump was stuffed to the seams with customers, most of them in a state of high hilarity, buzzing and humming behind the roar and rumpus of the music. Smoke lay over the entire mess, like sticky fog over a meadow of skunk cabbage.