Murder for Madame Read online

  He said, “Take it easy, Buster.”

  “Out of the bed.”

  “What the hell for? I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Out!”

  “Go to hell!”

  I hit him again. He was unprepared for the second shot and the force of it jerked his head back and sent him over on his side. I had caught him low on the jaw and he was reaching up for his big chin when I slapped his hand down with the gun. He groaned, and when his head dropped I grabbed his pajama at the neck and yanked. Hard. There was a thin rivulet of blood on his jaw and my fist hurt from hitting him. I jerked him my way, so that his legs slid over the side of the bed.

  “Stop fluffing around,” I said. “I’m in no mood for horse play. Where’s the girl?”

  “What girl?”

  “You want the gun again? Either you talk fast or I’ll slap you around some more with it. I’m talking about the cute girll you tailed into Tim Coogan’s bar the other night. The night I first saw your fancy puss.”

  “I don’t know where she is,” he said.

  “When did you see her last?”

  “This afternoon. Late.”

  “Where?”

  “The boss had me watching his son’s apartment,” he said. “I saw her come out and go back to the cat house.”

  “Mary Ray’s?”

  “Does she work any of the others?”

  He brought out the impatience in me. He was sneering again and I didn’t relish his attitude. So I hit him once again, so hard that something snapped in my hand. He went down like a bag of wet rags. It hurt me as much as it did him. My fist was tired. But there was enough anger in me to keep me at him, especially since I didn’t like to hear him mention Joy Marsh with suggestive innuendoes. I stood over him, but he was out. I ran to the sink in the corner of the room and filled a glass and emptied it in his face, awakening him quickly. But something had gone out of his eyes. The scornful bite of them was dead. And in its place, fear showed as plainly as the blood along the ridge of his nose.

  “From now on you’ll keep it clean when you mention her name,” I warned him. “So you followed her to Mary Ray’s. What happened after that?”

  “Jesus, don’t hit me again, Buster. I’ll tell you what I know. She didn’t come out of there. Or if she came out, I wasn’t around to see it. I phoned the boss and he asked me to come down here right away. After that, I drove him to the police station. He had a conference with a lawyer there. About Sailor Schenk, I think.”

  “Then you came home with him?”

  “That’s it. That’s all of it.”

  “That’s only the end of it. Start at the beginning. Why were you tailing her?”

  “Listen, Buster, I got a job of work to do,” he said. “I get my check for following orders. So when my boss tells me to tail anyone like that, I do what he says and I don’t ask questions. The boss said I should tail her and see whether she still played around. He was sure the girl was a whore. But he wanted proof.”

  “But you didn’t get any?”

  He shook his head. “I got to hand it to her. She’s clean.”

  “What were you doing in Haskell Moore’s studio?”

  “I thought she’d be up there.”

  “You’re lying!” I said, and moved in close again to show him the gun. “I don’t want any more lies.”

  “I’m leveling, Buster. I followed her to his studio. I waited in the street and she came running out. She looked scared as hell. So I went up there to find out why she was running, I figured—” He eyed me nervously before he continued. “Listen, I had to go up to ask the artist whether he had a piece of her. I had to know why she went up to him.”

  “He couldn’t have done anything to her. You said she came out fast!”

  He shrugged hopelessly. “You don’t follow me, Buster. My boss offered me a grand for proof that she was still a whore. I had to find out all the angles. I could use a grand these days. Maybe I wasn’t using my head when I went up there, but that was the reason.”

  “I’ll buy it,” I said. “So you went up and found the stiff hanging from the rafters?”

  “That’s it. And then I ran into you.”

  “How about your boss? He changed his mind about the girl?”

  “He don’t want me chasing her anymore.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since I drove him down to the police to see Sailor Schenk.”

  “He figures it’s okay for Larry to marry her?”

  “That could be it.”

  “Or did the fat boy pay her off and tell her to leave town?” I asked.

  “I tell you I lost her,” the chauffeur said. “The boss never saw her, not since the night Larry brought her down here to meet him. The deal is off. I heard him talking to Larry tonight. The old man’s licked. He told Larry he was licked.”

  I was getting nowhere and not liking it. I had expected more from him, much more. And now the wall of the dead-end stared at me, that flat and distasteful disappointment of a bad lead, followed with too much optimism. My brain sagged with the weight of my frustration, so that everything fell out of focus once again. I suffered the paralysis of a delayed shock, the nerve end weariness that hits you hard when your physical fatigue matches the strain of roundabout thinking. I was on a remote corner, waiting for a trolley car. But somebody had removed the tracks.

  I moved away from the corner.

  Because I knew that the car would never come.

  CHAPTER 25

  My bed was soft and my mind was unhinged from my body, so that I sank into a deep and heavy sleep from the moment my head dropped to the pillow, and there were no dreams in me, only the flat and empty wasteland of complete exhaustion. Then a small bird hovered on the distant horizon of the great desert of my subconscious. The bird came closer and began to chirp, at first from a long mile away and after that sharper and more clearly defined, like an approaching plane zooming overhead. But the noise was the noise of a bird, a tinkling song becoming louder and sharper and more insistent as it flew my way. At last the notes leveled off into a monotonous clanging ring, a high-pitched shriek, monotonous and demanding.

  And it was the phone, jangling near my bed.

  The girl at the switchboard begged my pardon.

  “There’s someone to see you,” she said. “I didn’t want to disturb you, but she insists it’s urgent.”

  “She? Who?”

  There was a pause and I heard the distant sounds of her dialogue with the visitor, but the other voice was too far away to come through to me.

  The switchboard girl said, “Her name is Joy Marsh.”

  It was a bucket of ice water in my face. It was as startling as a gross of elephants marching through my room. I shouted, “Send her right up, sister.” And leaped out of bed, fumbling the robe around me, and doused my head alive under the faucet in the john before the sound of her knock at my door.

  She came in apologetically. Her pretty face was tired and wan.

  “I’m sorry I had to wake you, Steve,” she said.

  “Sorry? Lady, this is something I’ve been waiting for!” She was wearing a light raincoat, of the variety that showed her dress underneath. She was wearing a simple business ensemble, as plain as my hat. I led her to the comfortable chair near the window. “How about a drink? You look as though you could use one.”

  “I could use one.”

  I got her a brandy and she rallied a bit after she downed it. I said, “You’ve been driving a couple of people nuts, Joy.”

  “I couldn’t avoid it.”

  “Larry Fanchon, for instance. He’s slowly going mad.”

  “When did you see him?” she asked anxiously.

  “Not too long ago. Does he know you’re here?”

  “I haven’t told him. I haven’t seen him.”

  “Do
you know what you’re doing? He’s pretty gone on you.”

  “He told you that?”

  “He didn’t have to tell me,” I said. “It’s as plain as his father’s fat gut.”

  She shivered a bit and put down her glass. “His father is a hateful man, Steve.”

  “I’ve met him, Joy. But your troubles are over. The old man’s pulled a switch. He’s approved of you.”

  “I don’t believe it. I can’t believe it,” she said, and got up to look out of the window. The rain had finally run itself out and the sun was high and hot in the sky. But Joy Marsh didn’t seem to come alive to it. Her eyes were aimed into some distant and personal horizon, as sad and dim as yesterday’s weather. “How can a man like Eric Fanchon change? He’s put me through the wringer, Steve. I’ve been frightened from the first moment he met me down in his Village place.”

  “You can forget him, starting from now, Joy. Your troubles are over. All of them.”

  “You sound as though you know my troubles intimately.”

  “I know why you came up here.”

  “How could you possibly know?”

  “I’ve been up to Haskell Moore’s studio,” I said. “And I’ve examined his collection of pornography, all of it.”

  “Then you’ve seen the picture?” she asked anxiously.

  “I have the picture.”

  “Here?”

  “In my bedroom closet.”

  Now her face shone with excitement and a hint of color crept into her cheeks. She was ready to smile again. She was a new girl, animated and alive, as though her intimate worries had vanished suddenly.

  “You don’t know what that awful picture means to me, Steve.”

  “I have a few ideas. You wanted it out of the way before you married Larry? Well, it’s out of the way. Forever.”

  “May I see it?”

  “I’m trading it, Joy. The picture is yours, but you’ve got to pay me off with information. Is it a deal?”

  She smiled at me eagerly. “Of course it’s a deal. What can I tell you?”

  “You can clear up a few things about Mary Ray. Why did she send for me the other night? Why did she want me?”

  “Mary and I were good friends,” Joy began: “It was Mary who sent me to Haskell Moore, when I decided to work at something. But she didn’t know what Moore was doing.”

  “Did she send any of the other girls to Moore?”

  “They all posed for him, Steve. But maybe they didn’t know the way he was painting them, or maybe they didn’t care. Haskell Moore was an evil man. When I saw how he had painted me, it bothered me. I asked him to give me the painting, or sell it to me, but he only laughed at me.”

  “When did he paint it?”

  “Just after I quit Mary’s. I only posed for one of his paintings, and I soon forgot about it. But he reminded me of it, quite forcibly, when he met me down at Eric Fanchon’s. He threatened to show it to Larry’s father. He wanted me to buy it from him, but the price of the painting was blackmail. He asked five thousand dollars!”

  “The lousy crumb,” I said. “So you went to Mary and asked her to intercede for you?”

  “That’s exactly what happened.”

  “And Haskell refused?”

  “He told Mary that he needed it for an exhibition he was planning, down in the Village. Of course that drove me frantic, because I didn’t want the horrible thing exhibited. I wanted to destroy it, so that Larry would never hear of it. That was why I begged Mary to get it for me. She promised she would, that night. And she sent me to Tim Coogan’s for you.”

  “She wanted me to get the painting for you?”

  “She had lots of confidence in you, Steve.”

  “How long were you with her that night?”

  “About a half hour.”

  “But nobody knew you were in the house?”

  “I came in through the alley. I saw Anita and Rose and Tiny in the front rooms. But they didn’t see me.”

  “Where did you talk to her?”

  “In her bedroom.”

  “Quietly, of course?”

  “It was quiet, until Haskell Moore came in. He began to fight with Mary. He was mean and vicious about the picture. After a while Mary told me to get you, on the sly, when Haskell wasn’t listening. I left by the alley. No one saw me go out.”

  “But your story doesn’t jell,” I said. “It took you a hell of a long time to travel down to Tim Coogan’s bar. Why?”

  “I’ve forgotten to tell you about Eric Fanchon’s chauffeur,” Joy said. “I was being followed, Steve, but I didn’t want the chauffeur to know that I was contacting you. I tried to lose him. I tried for a long time. But you saw what happened. He was a hard man to lose.”

  “He’s lost now,” I told her. “He won’t bother you anymore.”

  “I feel like a new woman.”

  “Give the new woman a fresh drink, Joy.”

  “Not now, Steve. I must see that picture. I’ll see that Larry pays you well for getting it.”

  “No charge for the daub. You can pay me off by ripping it to bits with my scissors.”

  I ran into the bedroom, as anxious as a hound dog on the last lap of a hot trail. But the phone rang. It pulled me up short before I had rounded my bed. It teased me. It taunted me. This was no moment for exchanging information with Slip Keddy, because my mind concluded that only Slip could call me at this hour. But when I lifted the phone, the voice at the other end shocked me.

  It was Larry Fanchon.

  “I’ve got good news, Conacher,” he laughed. “Everything’s under control now.”

  “Break it down for me.”

  “The picture, remember?”

  “How could I forget it?”

  “Well, I’ve got it. I’m getting it.”

  “You’re off your trolley,” I shouted. “Listen, Fanchon. I’ve had that painting all along—in my closet.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m positive.”

  “That can’t be,” Fanchon said. His voice sagged with the rebirth of his despair. “A man just called me and told me he’ll sell it to me. Not more than ten minutes ago.”

  “Hold the phone.”

  I jumped for the closet and flung open the door. The old clothes I had dropped over the painting now lay on the floor, in a flat heap. I kicked at them savagely. I scrambled through the closet, clawing through my suits and finding nothing but air. Then I began to curse slowly.

  “Who was the man?” I barked into the phone. “Who has the picture?”

  “He didn’t say. But he’s willing to sell.”

  “We’re not buying it.”

  “But why? He only wants ten thousand, Conacher.”

  “Tell him to stuff it!”

  “It’s worth it to me—at any price.”

  “You’ll get it for free,” I said, “or not at all.”

  “When?”

  “Hang on with both hands, Fanchon. I’ll deliver it soon.”

  I hung up and stuck my head through the door and told Joy to sit tight while I dressed. I shaved and showered and put on my lightest suit. When I came out, Joy had put some fresh make-up on, and her face seemed brighter.

  “I couldn’t help hearing your phone talk,” she said sadly. “But if you haven’t got the picture, where is it?”

  “I’ll have it before the day is out—and I’ll deliver it personally, as a wedding present.”

  “You’re sweet,” she said. “Why are you doing all this for me?”

  “Because I like you,” I said. “And also because you were caught in the middle of one of the neatest murder deals I’ve ever seen. Your painting is one of the minor highlights of Mary Ray’s murder, Joy. But it fits. I just discovered the slot for it. Murder for profit is always a weird pitch, because the ch
aracter of the slayer comes through in many small ways. Greed is a stinking vice. Greed is a cancer of the brain, a disease that never stops eating away at the murderer’s intellect.”

  “I don’t quite understand,” she said.

  “I’m going to make it awfully clear to you before the ends of this thing are tied. I need your help, Joy. Let’s have some lunch, and I’ll tell you how you can work with me.”

  CHAPTER 26

  We rolled downtown to visit Oscar V. Krubaker. He holed up in a rat’s corner of one of the oldest buildings in the jewelry district, a walk-up dump as elegant as the entrance to a flophouse. Krubaker could afford better trappings. I knew him well, by reputation. He was a middle-aged merchant in the diamond trade, a vagrant peddler of gems and jewels who had made himself a bundle of loot by passing on hot stuff to the specialists who cut big stones into little ones and sell the little ones easily. Krubaker had been down to my friend Lieutenant Biberman’s office on many occasions, to be sweated gently under the police lights and then released with a grudging apology. Because Krubaker was clever enough to cover his rodent tracks on every deal.

  His office smelled of the ancient odor of neglect that filled the building. A small and muted bell sounded when I pushed the door open. Krubaker himself came out from behind a moldy partition and appraised us before he moved forward to the counter top. He was a flabby-faced crud, a myopic gent, as wormy as a zombie in a Charles Addams cartoon. He took some time making up his mind about me.

  “I know you?” he asked, disregarding Joy.

  “From way back,” I said. “Lieutenant Biberman’s office, remember?”

  His face went black and angry at the mention of Biberman. But he killed his chagrin and drummed his dirty fingernails on the counter top.

  “And the lady?” he asked, trying for a smile to hide his nervousness.

  “The lady is up here for the laughs, Krubaker.”

  “I see. And you, mister, what do you want?”