Murder for Madame Read online

  Tiny was nowhere.

  The man behind the bar was alert to me. He recalled me with a friendly grin and slid down to my end of the bar.

  I said, “See my girl friend?”

  “Which one was that?”

  “The best—Tiny.”

  He went deadpan, fiddling with my hooker of Bourbon. His face froze and his act was good, but it wasn’t good enough. He was telegraphing, his ignorance. I pulled a fin out of my pants and slid it along the edge of the bar until it touched his fingers. He looked down at it with the befuddled curiosity of a scientist who observes a strange but interesting maggot squirming into view. He shook his head at it, and his face clouded with something resembling caution. Or it could have been fear.

  “You’ve got a bad memory,” I said. “I’m the guy from Scranton.”

  He grinned and dropped me a pleasant lie. “I forgot you for a minute. The detective?”

  “The same. Now you remember Tiny?”

  The bill slid forward under my hand. He put his palm over it.

  “She came in about ten minutes ago,” I said. “But she isn’t around now. Did she go to the powder room?”

  “You’re off the beam, detective.”

  “There are private chambers upstairs?”

  “Not chambers. Rooms.”

  “Where a gal could get herself put?”

  He shook his head gently. “No. This place ain’t a house, if that’s where you’re stabbing. The second floor is a private dining room, for banquets,” the bartender added. “But the third floor is different.”

  “The boss is on the third?”

  “He lives on the third and the fourth.”

  “So Tiny went to the third?”

  “He wouldn’t want Tiny on a desk, would he?”

  “So she’s up playing games with the boss,” I said. “And he owns the Rebus?”

  “Slide for it. You’re almost in.”

  “Barchy? King Barchy?”

  “I’ve heard the name,” the bartender said to the glass he was polishing. He slipped the bill over his edge of the bar where it disappeared into a mysterious space reserved for such paper tokens. “You’re a good guesser, mister. I got to hand it to you.”

  “You’re handing it,’ I said. I showed him another five. “And I like it.”

  “The customer is always right,” he said, flicking the bill to join its brother in the darkness beneath the bar.

  “What’s the sixty-four dollar question?” he asked.

  “Barchy.”

  “Everybody knows the King,” he shrugged. “Maybe you know him better than me.”

  “And maybe I don’t. Is Tiny something special with him, or does he play the field?”

  “Barchy is a one-at-a-time guy.”

  “When did he take up with Tiny?”

  “Recently, recently. A couple of weeks maybe.”

  “How high is she priced?”

  “Don’t you know?” he chuckled. “You were there last night, weren’t you?”

  “I don’t pay retail prices,” I said. “They like me for free, sometimes.”

  “You little guys have it, I guess.”

  “Barchy is little.”

  “But Barchy has a face like a bear trap. He pays. I know he pays. From what Noonan says, Barchy would give her a grand a throw. Maybe it’s love.”

  “And Noonan, where would he be?”

  “Sitting up there in his room,” said the bartender. “Noonan’s a good watchdog. He’d sit on a cake of ice and wait for Barchy. He’d sit on pins.”

  “How could I get Noonan down?”

  “You’d have to blast.” He leaned confidentially close to me and showed me his sudden alarm. “But, Jesus, you wouldn’t do that, would you? Barchy wouldn’t like it, chum.”

  “Relax. I won’t disturb my friend Barchy.”

  “That’s better. It don’t pay to get steamed up over a girl, brother.”

  “Tiny’s worth steaming for.”

  “I see what you mean,” he said, grinning and winking his appreciation of my appreciation.

  “With his money, Barchy could have his pick of any girl. Who was his last?”

  “Flora. You ever met her?”

  I shook my head. “And before Flora?”

  “Flora lasted, from what I hear. But Barchy finally kicked her upstairs. She runs her own house now, over in Brooklyn. Barchy paid off when he dumped Flora. She operates a classy dump over in Flatbush.”

  “How about Joy Marsh?” I asked. “Did Barchy ever go for her?”

  “Never. I told you last night that the Marsh dame went straight, remember?”

  “We weren’t playing games last night,” I said, offering him a chance to view another bill. “How about Joy?”

  “Game’s over,” he said. He waved the bill back at me, refusing it. “Fun is fun, but that fin would be wasted. I know from nothing about this Joy Marsh. I’m leveling, chum, you can take my word for it.”

  I took his word, finished my drink and got out of there. I crossed the street and strolled under a protective awning, sucking in the drizzle until my lungs felt freshened and relieved. I watched the upper windows of the Rebus building. It was a four-story affair, but the second and third floors were as black as doom. On the top floor, a small light glowed from behind Venetian blinds. Tiny would be up there, entertaining the King. He would not release her before she had earned her fee, a session that might take her into the small hours of the morning.

  But I was in the mood for waiting. I settled myself inside the perimeter of gloom under the awning and close to the store door. I chain-smoked a half a deck of cigarettes, soldering my eyes on the alley entrance to the Rebus.

  And eleven cigarettes later, they came out.

  CHAPTER 22

  Noonan came out first, rolling his shoulders in the swagger of a punchy thug. He walked to a parked car near the alley and opened the door and got in. Tiny was right behind him and I heard her husky laugh as she swung her hips inside and bumped up and down once or twice to make herself comfortable. The car window was open and her laughter bubbled out, almost echoing in the street, but drowned suddenly by the throb and cough of the motor. It was a long, sleek Caddy, a convertible. Noonan snaked it out into the street and shot away, headed west and in a hurry to get somewhere.

  I watched him go, not shifting my position from the store.

  A few minutes later King Barchy came out with two men. They walked leisurely away and entered a big black sedan. They were talking in muffled tones. The buzz and hum of their conversation faded as the car started away. And after that, silence on the street.

  I galloped across and slowed to a careful walk when I reached the alley. It was the usual path to the side door, a narrow corridor that opened in a small concrete square, in which the restaurant department of the Rebus upchucked its garbage. The place stank with yesterday’s ancient food. I pulled open the first door and slid inside.

  A stairway led upstairs. The small red light barely showed me the way to the landing, but once above the first floor level, the aspect of the floor and stairway changed. There was a rug here now, a soft and cushiony carpet that completely covered the hallway. The paint was fresh and the colors were good. The ensemble might have been a corridor in an upper class apartment, save for the thin trickle of smell that seemed to seep up through the floors and flood the air. It was the pale and faraway stench of cooking down there, the food and drink smell of the restaurant business. But it was fading fast as I moved away from the stairwell.

  There were three rooms on this floor. The first door would not come open under my hand. The legend K. BARCHY was lettered in gold on the glass, and the door itself was polished mahogany, imported from the world of business. The second and third doors bore no names, and they, too, were locked tight.

  I
went up a floor. Here the hall had been cut away. The place was sliced into a suite of rooms, opening off a small vestibule, as nicely decorated as your mother’s place. I strolled through the living room and into the kitchen. Somebody had opened the refrigerator not too long ago. There were two glasses on the work table, and an ice tray. Small slabs of ice still swam around in the puddles.

  I lifted one of the glasses. There were lipstick marks around the edge, heavy and red. On the ashtray, two cigarette butts sported the same sultry color. I backed through the living room and went up the stairs, three at a time.

  Up above, the floor had been cut up. A giant bedroom lay behind the first door, a masculine trap done in maple and pine, the walls lined with it. It was Barchy’s room. A great K.B. was featured on the bedspread. Musk assailed my nostrils; the odor of Tiny. She was here, too, on the night table—three more cigarette stubs with red ends. And she was most certainly on Barchy’s bed. I closed the door and backed into the hall and across the corridor to the back bedroom.

  I lit the light and browsed. This would be Noonan’s chamber, close enough to the King for perpetual watchdogging. I started in the closet, ferreting behind the hanging wardrobe. My hands came up against something against the far wall, inside. I dragged out a group of paintings. I stared at them, as shocked as a clergyman at a nudist camp.

  All of them were masterpieces from the hand of Haskell Moore! They were of the same size as those I had seen in his place. And of the same type. In each composition, naked womanhood caught your eye and held it in a violent grip. Because this woman was by far the most licentious of all Moore’s subjects. It was as though the model herself might be in the room, going through these rituals of wanton bravura.

  I was face to face with Tiny here!

  Seven times, in seven poses!

  I jerked myself away from the art exhibit and began at the end of the room, giving the night table a quick once over lightly. I returned to the closet and pushed aside Noonan’s extensive wardrobe, fingering his pockets one by one, opening his hat boxes, examining his shoes and his slippers. I pulled back the coverlet and unmade the bed, punching the pillows and overturning the mattress and stooping to squint under the bed itself. There was nothing on the floor but the fluff found under all beds.

  I was on my hands and knees when I heard the voices.

  The noises filtered through the floor, from downstairs, low-pitched and masculine. The words were lost to me, lost somewhere in the plaster and wood between the air below and my ear. I crawled out into the hall and eased my way along the little hall to the stairs. Here the voices came alive.

  Barchy? And who else?

  “Like you said, King,” the other voice said. “He took her home and then went up.”

  “Up where?” Barchy asked, his voice high with petulance.

  “In her dump.”

  “How do you know he’s going to stay there?”

  “I got Manny watching. But he won’t move.”

  “How the hell do you know?” Barchy said. “You maybe read his mind?”

  “That babe don’t let go fast.”

  “You’re telling me? When did he start with her?”

  “He’s been in for a long time.”

  “When?” Barchy shouted. “When? When? When? How long is a long time? I got to know.”

  “A month, maybe.”

  A chair slapped back against the wall with a flat clack, kicked there by Barchy’s tempered toe, no doubt. There came a movement from a more distant room now, the sound of a glass and the subdued gurgle of liquid pouring. And Barchy’s fevered accents floated up to me again, fresher now, sharper; a new and angrier overtone knifing the air. He spat the words out.

  “Noonan, my pal. The son of a bitch pulled a fast one on me. My good right hand, Noonan. Jesus, who can you trust these days, Louie? How do I know I can trust you, even?”

  “Aw, cut it out, King,” Louie said tenderly. “I wouldn’t cross you and you know it.”

  “How do I know it? Jesus, look at Noonan. I should have left him for the birds seven years ago, when Zaroni wanted to put the heat on him in Chicago. But no, I had to be nice to a crumb like that.”

  “You don’t know anything definite, King. Remember that.”

  “I know plenty.”

  “But you’re not sure. You can’t be, yet.”

  “I’m checking it,” Barchy roared. “He’s lying about the little private dick.”

  “Why should he lie about him?”

  “Because he lied about my girl. Don’t trust a liar, Louie. That’s why I can’t trust Noonan.”

  “You checked the private dick?”

  “We checked him six ways to the middle,” Barchy said. “Didn’t we give his dump the once-over? Noonan picked it apart. Nothing. The guy’s clean, I told Noonan. But no, Noonan insists. So we go up to the dick’s office and I let Noonan pin his ears back. Still the dick won’t talk. If the dick took the book from Mary’s, why did he do it? I checked on him and he’s got à good name in the business. You heard of him? You know about Conacher?”

  “I don’t know any private eyes.”

  “This one is clean. Not like Kemper.”

  “Maybe Noonan is right. I don’t trust those jerks.”

  “Noonan is wrong!” Barchy shouted. “I’ll tell you another reason why. Because long ago I heard Mary talk about this guy, see? He was a pal of hers. He found Hestie for her, away back. A guy like him wouldn’t hijack the book and then hold me up for a payoff.”

  “Like I say, King, I don’t know the jerk,” Louie said.

  “Neither does Noonan. That’s what makes me think.”

  “Forget, about Noonan.”

  “Why did Noonan steer me to Conacher?” Barchy said. “What made him so sure Conacher had the book? Noonan keeps talking, all the time, about getting me the book for a price. Where’ll he get it from? Conacher? He’s trying to sell me a gimmick, Louie. He’s trying to set something up, for dough. And I keep thinking all the time, this Conacher is clean. So how can Noonan get the book from him?”

  “Maybe Noonan wants to use him for a patsy?”

  “Now you’re talking sense, Louie.”

  The words rang in my ears, sending the blood pounding hot and throbbing around my collar. My hand roasted on the bare floor and I felt the sticky tremors of an overpowering horror grabbing at my throat, drying it, forcing my mouth open, so that the business of breathing would come easier. Anger rose in me to replace the fear, and my muscles tightened in the zany posture, kneeling like an idiot on the landing. A sudden impulse to slide downstairs and throw my weight around burgeoned inside me. I bit my lip and killed the urge. I kneeled there, listening and managing to control my breathing. Barchy was still yammering away down there.

  “How can you trust a guy who’s supposed to be a friend and then he grabs your girl? Answer me that one, Louie! He grabbed my girl, didn’t he? Admit it.”

  “Well, that’s no lie, King.”

  “So now what? Where did he get the dough to buy her away from me?”

  “He’s loaded. Manny says he’s loaded.”

  “From where? Noonan never saved a dime of the dough I paid him.”

  “Maybe he learned how to save for her.”

  “I tell you he don’t know how to hold onto a buck!” The glass slapped down on the table top. And Barchy’s voice sank to a new low. “Maybe he’s chiseling on me, too?”

  “How could he do it?”

  “He could be running his own girls.”

  “That he wouldn’t do,” Louie said. “Manny says he tailed Noonan downtown yesterday. He was talking to a fence—Krubaker.”

  A fist banged on the table, loud and hard. Then Barchy’s laughter roared out, an uninhibited flood of mirth.

  “She’ll bleed him dry, the poor sap,” Barchy said, still exploding with amuse
ment. “She’ll have him hocking his drawers before she gets through with the poor crumb.”

  They came out into the hall beneath me, chattering together like two apes on a branch. They clomped downstairs and I heard the alley door bang shut. Through the wall down there, a final burst of laughter hung in the silence and then drifted up and away. I started downstairs at a kangaroo’s pace, making the street level in a short gasp of time. And then I was in the alley, running back behind the Rebus restaurant, where a choice of garbage cans and empty crates offered me a hiding place. I kneeled in the drizzle, holding my breath against the overpowering stench around me.

  Then I hightailed it over the fence behind me and through the alley into the next block.

  CHAPTER 23

  Larry Fanchon’s penthouse was planted on the top of one of the swankiest apartments on Park Avenue, a stately pile in the middle Sixties, complete with a dignified canopy over the sidewalk, and a doorman festooned in the finery of a court attendant from some European dynasty. It was after two when I arrived across the street from the lobby and squinted through the mist at the dimly lit entrance hall. There were few lights alive in the gray façade of the enormous cliff dwelling. It was the time for sleeping and snoring. It was the time for prolonged silences. Around me, the street still hummed with the occasional hiss of a taxi speeding down the canyon, the tires singing along the wet avenue to fade and die in the fogged distances.

  I marched on a zany trek, up one block and then back again, hoping for a moment when the costumed doorman would leave his post behind the glassed door of the lobby. But he did not move. He was probably a fresh guardsman, the night man, who would depart only when somebody relieved him for breakfast.

  I crossed the avenue and advanced along the side of the building. There was a narrow alley beyond the west side of the place, a service entrance that took me behind the apartment and through a concrete yard as large as a handball court. The door itself was marked only by a small blue bulb. I opened it carefully and kept it wide open by standing a refuse can against it. There were a dozen steps down into the catacomb of the cellar. I worked an empty garbage can into the doorway. I sat the can on the edge of the steps and then kicked it down. It rolled and tumbled into the pit of blackness with a metallic clatter that sent the echoes screaming inside the cellar and through the narrow alley outside.