Naked and Alone Page 3

  “After that,” I continued, “I heard the buzz of the phone out here. I ran out and found it off the hook, got the operator and asked for the police. She was putting me through to your office when you walked in. That’s the beginning and the middle and the end of it.”

  “Cute,” said McKegnie. “So somebody killed her when you took the other broad out, is that it?”

  “That has to be it.”

  “Cut and dried,” he said to Robley, the broad and beefy lug who stood nearby. Robley was one of his better assistants. Robley nodded grimly and gave me his best fish-eyed stare, as non-committal as a poker player with four aces in the mitt. “You get the picture, Robley?” McKegnie asked quietly. “Our friend Amsterdam gets a call from an old friend, a beautiful piece named Kay Randall. But when Amsterdam arrives here, Kay Randall has rung in a substitute—and Amsterdam plays footie with the substitute. He takes the substitute out for dinner and then comes back to find Kay Randall dead in the bedroom. All of which makes it pretty cozy for Amsterdam because Amsterdam is a private op and not supposed to go around killing women.”

  One of the other cops stepped forward and handed McKegnie a few items, too small for me to see. McKegnie studied them. Then he tucked them away in a pocket. He changed his mind and pulled them out again and held them up for me to examine.

  “You recognize these?” he asked.

  “They look like ladies’ hairpins,” I said. A good guess because that’s what they were.

  “Whose? Kay Randall’s?”

  “Ask me something easy. I’m not the hair stylist type.”

  “Or did they belong to the other dame?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” I said. Jordice had used them, of course. She had worn a small flower ornament in her hair, over her right ear. These pins must have held it in place. I remembered how she had unpinned it just before the fun on the rug.

  McKegnie scowled at me. He waggled a finger at one of his strong arm boys, who minced in alongside me and shoved me into a chair like a package of fluff. I let myself fall. There would be time for games later. I watched the entire Homicide Squad file into the bedroom behind McKegnie. I dug a tired pack of Chesterfields out of my pocket and smoked. The big cop at my side said nothing. From beyond the door, I could hear the gruff guttural of McKegnie’s voice, barking commands at his henchmen. He was giving the room the treatment. He took his time about it, always the careful workman, probably the keenest eye on the force on cases of this kind.

  I began to wonder whether McKegnie would take me in with him, downtown. The way you read it in books, the captain of Homicide is always a pal of the private shamus. Oh, they argue a bit and call each other names, but when the chips are down, the Homicide man always breaks down and lets the private dick run free. This routine was not easy with McKegnie. Only once before, in ten years of private operation, had I crossed the path of the square-jawed stinker. I had a keen and vivid recollection of his snarling puss. He had kept me in the jug downtown for three days, while one of my clients pleaded for my release. He had booked me as a suspect in a murder deal, only because he had no other suspect at the time. McKegnie was always careful to preserve his reputation as a ferret. He had to have an arrest. It had happened before and it would happen again, unless he could pick up somebody else. And soon.

  A cloud of stinking cigar smoke came through the door in advance of McKegnie. He walked over to me and sat down on the couch and let me see that he was bothered.

  “Anything else on your mind, Amsterdam?” he asked. “Any little thing you might have skipped?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like the bedroom.”

  “Stop the double-talk,” I said impatiently. “Give it to me straight, McKegnie.”

  “A good idea.” He leaned into me, showing me the dirty rim of his lower teeth. He was biting the cigar hard enough to make it bleed and a small, thin thread of brown juice ran down the corner of his mouth. He said: “You were in here with a broad for a couple of hours, is that right? You also had maybe a couple of drinks? And then what? It could be you got an urge or two. Something that could take you into the bedroom. Or did you play your routine on the couch here?”

  “You’re killing me with your guessing games,” I said. “If you want to know whether I went into the bedroom, the answer is no.”

  “Interesting. And how about your girl friend?”

  “The same goes for her. She was with me all the time.”

  “The doctor inside,” McKegnie jerked his thumb in the direction of the bedroom, “he says that Kay Randall was killed maybe a couple of hours ago, from the way the blood looks on her chest.”

  “No.” The word hung on my tongue, more like a gasp than a syllable. What else could I say? The shock of his news took the starch out of me. While I made passes at Jordice all evening, Kay might have been lying butchered only a few yards away. I had been playing around while the bastard who killed Kay got a head start into hiding. I felt sick and hollow all over again.

  “She was brought back to her apartment after she was killed,” I said. “And whoever brought her in waited until I left, McKegnie.”

  “Clever,” McKegnie said to the end of his cigar. “You private operators sure are quick with the fancy theories. Are you trying to tell me that somebody knew you were here—and waited for you to beat it before delivering the corpse?”

  “It must have been that way.”

  “And how did they bring her in?”

  “Take a look out at that alley.” I pointed to the windows on the court, the obvious entrance. McKegnie got up wearily and studied the layout in the dim alley. He stood there for a long time, weighing my idea and finding it appropriate.

  Then he came back to his seat and said, “More than one man would be needed for the operation. The fire escape ladder would have to be lowered. That means one character came in and did that job through the window. Then he went down the ladder and helped the other guy with the body.”

  “He could have done it himself,” I said.

  “He?” McKegnie frowned at me. “What makes you think it was a man, Amsterdam? A good strong woman could have done it, Right?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “A woman like the one who played games with you here?”

  “I doubt it. She wasn’t built for hauling freight.”

  “What was she built for?”

  “You’ve got a dirty mind, McKegnie.”

  He came to his feet and lunged my way. He grabbed me hard by the lapels. He had the strength of a pair of bulls on the loose. I let him enjoy his muscles, allowing him to jerk me around a bit. He was like a small boy who wants to show off before his chums, and it would do no good to deny him the privilege of demonstrating his manhood to his assistants. “I want you to level with me, Amsterdam. All the way. No more small talk and no more wisecracks.” He released me and stepped back to enjoy the show of awe I put on for him. “Describe the girl, and make it accurate.”

  So I described her for him, I painted a picture of an average broad, making her age about twenty-five, and giving her the usual pretty face and pretty hair and a suggestion of how she talked and how she was dressed. Enough to fill a thimble. I added a few innovations of my own, because I didn’t want him to pin down Jordice in this deal. There was no reason to bring her any trouble because she couldn’t have done the job—unless she had killed Kay Randall and put on a dramatic tour de force for me with her friend’s dead body in the next room. It didn’t make sense, so I built Jordice Gray into a vague and ambiguous image for McKegnie.

  But he knew what I was doing.

  “My aching back,” he said, turning to Robley with a sick and tired show of distaste. “The way you describe this dame, she could be any woman in New York with a pair of legs and a willing back.”

  “I’m not good at remembering,” I apologized.

  “Since when? Ton
ight?”

  “I’ve given you all I can, McKegnie.”

  “Squeeze a little more. Force yourself.”

  “There isn’t any more,” I said.

  “Nothing distinctive about the dame?” he asked. “No moles? No scars? No birthmarks?”

  “I didn’t get that far with her,” I lied.

  “You’re a dirty liar,” McKegnie spat.

  He came at me and shook me up again. McKegnie was in no mood for games any more. He had me where he wanted me. He had me where he could slap the nose off me and laugh. The way you read it in the detective novels, the private op usually rises up and hits back and comes out looking like a big bold hero. That’s strictly for the birds. I had no desire to wind up minus my teeth. If I tried to fight back, McKegnie’s boys could mess me up plenty, and legally. They would claim that I was resisting arrest, and they would drag me down to headquarters a bloody pulp.

  “The name of that girl?” McKegnie asked, after the rattle had died out of my teeth.

  “Jordice,” I said.

  “Her last name?”

  “I don’t know it.”

  McKegnie stared. “Think, Amsterdam. Fast.”

  “I really don’t know it,” I said, looking honest, working to change his snarl into a smile.

  But, instead, McKegnie slapped out at me. He caught me across the cheek with his fist, a stiff shot that rocked me and rolled me back into the arms of one of the flatfeet, who caught me before I went down. He braced me and McKegnie hit out again. This time my ear buzzed with the pain. I tried to cover up, but the bastard knew the way around my guard. He plastered me with a right cross that buckled my knees and sagged me to the floor. When I could focus on the grinning mask above me, I called it a dirty name.

  So he slapped me again; lighter this time, but hard enough to brush the obscenity off my kisser.

  “The dame’s last name,” he said angrily. “Or do you want more massage?”

  “Fuller,” I lied. There was blood on my wrist when I wiped my mouth. “Jordice Fuller.”

  “So you and Jordice Fuller were alone for over two hours in here?”

  “We’ve been through that before.”

  “And you had yourself a time, is that it?” McKegnie’s eyes lit with a spark of something that could have been envy. “With a dead broad in the next room? That’s a comic bit, Amsterdam. A real comic bit.”

  “Completely spontaneous and unrehearsed,” I said.

  “You need new material,” McKegnie said with disgust. “This is murder, Amsterdam, not something out of a TV serial. I don’t want private operators hoking up my homicides. They’re tough enough without that kind of corn.” He jerked his hand at one of the cops. “Put the hooks on him, Harry. We’re taking lover boy downtown.”

  “You’re making a mistake,” I said.

  “In the pig’s eye I am.”

  “I’ll raise bail and get out, McKegnie. You can’t hold me on what you’ve got. This isn’t like the last time. I was green then. You caught me with my pants down, in the wrong place at the wrong time. But tonight is different and you know it. You’re screaming at a guy who’s been around now, McKegnie. You know what I can do to you, if I have to get tough.”

  McKegnie weighed me. He tossed me around on the scales of his intelligence, looking me over for clues to my threat. He had a trick memory, complete with background material on every man he had ever booked down in his dirty office. He would be trying for an inside track to my past now, measuring me for just what and how much of it I could do to him. The big cop alongside him stepped forward with the hand irons, but McKegnie waved him away with a lazy gesture. He stayed Lost in quiet speculation for another minute.

  “Just what can you do?” he asked slowly.

  “The Daily Standard,” I said. “I have friends up there. I have one friend in particular, a man named Horatio Hart, on the City Desk. Remember?”

  McKegnie didn’t say. He just sat there eating the end of his cigar and finding the juice distasteful. Suddenly, he hawked and spat into a corner of the room. It was one of his nasty habits, a thing he never did unless his stomach juices were being stirred up by an outside irritant. I was getting to him. Horatio Hart would stand behind me on this one, and McKegnie knew it. Horatio and I had palled together in Italy, snoring in the same sewers, slicing the same salamis and sleeping with the same signorinas. Horatio was a wonder boy, a pioneer, a city cleaner. He had been after the police for the last few years, hammering at the Commissioner for a change in staff on the middle level. He had been accusing men like McKegnie of dirty business and was out to prove them unworthy of the taxpayers’ dough. The Kefauver Committee had nothing on Horatio, who started the big ball of filth rolling in his headlines long before the Senate knew you could make book in Times Square. Horatio would like nothing better than a good clean crack at Chris McKegnie again.

  I told McKegnie all about it.

  “All you want is an arrest,” I shouted. “You’d arrest your own mother, just to fill a cell and keep your record clean. You’ve done it once too often, McKegnie. This is the end of the line. You take me downtown and I phone Horatio Hart instead of a lawyer.”

  “The irons,” McKegnie said calmly. “Put them on him.”

  The cop moved forward again. I stepped aside this time and closed in on McKegnie. He didn’t budge. He stood there looking at me like a bulldog surveying a fire hydrant, daring it to open up first. He was grinning at me, finding me amusing. He held off the cop for a minute. He kept chuckling at me, studying me, sucking the end of his cigar diligently. He made a face at the cigar and tossed it across the room.

  “I’m ready to go,” I said. I was mad enough to take a poke at him now and he knew it “Tell your boy to put the cuffs on me, McKegnie.”

  “You’re too anxious.”

  “I want it this way now. I want the chance to spill your guts all over the front page of the Standard.”

  “Nasty character,” McKegnie said to nobody in particular. The cop with the handcuffs stood in the corner of the room, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. He diddled with the cuffs, making a clinking noise. He froze when McKegnie turned on him and said, “Put those things away, Harry.”

  “Yellow,” I said.

  “Don’t get me mad,” McKegnie barked at me. “I’m letting you go, Buster. But that doesn’t mean I’m done with you. I’ll send out for you when I need you. I got you in my files, complete, from the last time. The way this thing adds up, it won’t do me any good to take you downtown. And that’s why I’m letting you go—not because I’m afraid of your crumb friend Horatio Hart.” He was interrupted by one of his plainclothesmen, who had drifted in from the hall carrying a piece of paper and a knowing smile. The plainclothesman took McKegnie aside and they whispered for a while together. Then McKegnie returned to me and continued his monologue, grinning like a plump cat after swallowing a gross of goldfish.

  “Custer just spoke to the super of the building,” McKegnie said. “It might interest you to know that nobody was paying the freight for your friend Kay Randall. She paid her own rent tabs. That means we’ll clean this one up just as soon as we locate your little playmate, Jordice Fuller.”

  McKegnie signed off. He left it that way. He left me standing flatfooted in the middle of the room, avoiding me now, isolating me; cutting me away from his line of vision. He busied himself with his boys purposely. He wanted to show me that I didn’t matter anymore. He wanted me to stew in my own bile, to prove to me that he was the strong and silent type of cop. It was supposed to throw me off balance, this treatment. But, instead, I played it his way. I stood my ground, lighting a cigarette, looking around the room at the now familiar picture of Kay Randall, still smiling down at me in the oil painting. I used the time to consider the apartment itself, to make a floor plan of the place in my own mind. There was an entrance through this room, and another throug
h the kitchen. From where I stood, I could see through the small hall into the kitchen. The bag of groceries became the center of interest for me. I had the sales tag in my jacket pocket. And I knew a few things about the way to Jordice Gray. I began to perk up a bit with the smell of the hunt.

  I crossed the room and tapped McKegnie on the shoulder.

  “You still here?” he asked without turning. He was making a big production out of some business with one of the fingerprint men. “I thought I said you could go.”

  “So you did, McKegnie. But I couldn’t leave without saying good night.” I waited for him. It took a long time for him to swing his square head around my way. When it made the circuit, he was scowling, his brow corrugated and loaded with a mixture of anger and befuddlement. “I wanted to thank you for you courtesy, too. It’s going to make great reading in the Standard.”

  McKegnie measured me. “I thought we called off the publicity,” he said.

  “Bad deduction,” I said. “You didn’t add it up right!”

  “Get out!” McKegnie roared.

  “I’m on my way. Just one more little thought, McKegnie. I’m staying with this case, on my own. I don’t want any trouble from your strong arm boys. Stuff like that can make really nasty headlines. I’m going to get Kay Randall’s killer. Before you do, understand? If I hit any interference, I break the whole story to Horatio Hart. So tell your plug-uglies to lay off me.”

  McKegnie turned the color of beet juice. He came back my way again and showed me his huff and puff routine. He was making a tough decision about me. He knew that I meant business about Horatio Hart and the Standard. He was out of his depth with me. He floundered and spluttered. But the flame didn’t burn bright. He stared hard at me and then something happened behind his eyes, a furtive spark, an idea that seemed to take control of him and return him to his normal insolence.