The Corpse in the Cabana Page 3

  “It looks like rain,” said Jake Simon. “I can always tell when my back aches. Good night, Steve. When you come to East Beach, drop in. Not at the office. At my home, I mean. I finally got what I always wanted—a nice place right on the water.”

  “I’ll be seeing you, Jake.”

  I followed Newberry into Chuck’s cabana where he parked himself in the middle of the room and stared around. Everything looked fine and dandy, neat and orderly, just the way we had fixed it. Newberry leaned over the bed, testing the sheets, smelling the bedspread. He walked into the shower and stood there for a while. He came out, flipped open a bureau drawer and favored it with casual scrutiny.

  “The lady said we’d find the body in here, Gant.”

  “The lady is a liar, evidently.”

  “Sure she is. You know who she could be, maybe?”

  “Pazow’s got lots of ladies around this dump. You’ll have to survey the group.”

  “Bird seed,” said Newberry. His eyes made a valiant try at opening my head. “This Bond kid now. Why would anybody try to pin a rap on him?”

  “Hard to say, George. I’ll ask him.”

  “You’ll do a lot of asking, Gant, or I miss my guess. You know something? I got a feeling I can put the lid on this one, pretty easy. You know why? Because I’m hanging around. All night. What the hell, we don’t get many night club shows in East Beach. You tell your friend Pazow I want the best seat in the dump. Ringside. Right away.”

  “Pazow will be delighted.”

  “Pazow can take a flying jump for the moon. Get moving, Gant. I’ll be in there soon as they take the stiff out.”

  “Show time is ten,” I said. “Don’t be late, Newberry.”

  I left him there, rolling his baggy eyes around the room and rocking on his heels. In the main lobby a buzzing crowd of well-dressed customers milled around the captain, waiting to be shown to their tables. The place was heavy with celebrities now, making their fashionable entrances, weighing the big room for the best-known reporters and columnists.

  Behind the main entrance, a short corridor led to the dressing rooms behind the stage. Here all sounds dulled. From somewhere in the guts of the building there was the suggestion of hectic movement, soft noises in the walls, probably the kitchen help grubbing for their trays and orders. Immediately ahead and to the right, a door was marked:

  PERFORMERS ONLY

  All Others Keep Out

  So I walked in and became a performer.

  Some of the dancers were already made up and ready for their opening routine, a cute brace of theatrical quail, well-stacked and pretty in a 49th Street-and-Broadway way. They eyed me with the empty stares all professional chorines give to casual strays, as excited as sloths. They gave me only a split second of their time before returning to the business of varnishing their faces for the show. It would have been a syringe to drop my parcel of news into this group. It would have exploded them into opening their eyes a bit. There were six of them, all the same, as uniform as a row of new development ranch houses. And twice as empty.

  I crossed the room and opened the door marked:

  GLORIA CLARK

  Their curious eyes were on me when I stepped inside. Her dressing room was clean and bright, unusual in this type of dump. Pazow had worked hard to please his performers. His investment shouted at you. The make-up table and the incidental furniture were modern, not crazy-modern, not modernistic, but artfully designed by one of the good furniture makers. Her closet held two costume changes, both garish, both calculated to show enough of her in the right places. An oversized suitcase of the airplane luggage variety sat on the divan, opened. I fingered through the feminine odds and ends. You pick and pluck, you touch and feel, groping for leads. It’s a habit, like zipping your pants or putting sugar in your java. Gloria was not neat. Her intimate garments, stockings, bras, and other silks seemed almost deliberately ruffled and untidy. Or did somebody else run exploratory hands through this mess?

  I backed out of the room and addressed the group.

  “Anybody know where I can find Gloria?”

  “Haven’t seen her for hours,” said a blonde.

  “Since about four,” said her sister.

  “Four-thirty, it was,” said her sister’s sister.

  “Closer to five,” another said.

  “Nearer four.”

  “You’re off your rocker. It was earlier.”

  “Four-fifteen. I remember because I looked at the clock in the lobby. She was on her way out to the patio.”

  “How was she dressed?” I asked.

  The blonde giggled. “That bikini was terrific. You could stuff it in your left ear.”

  “Was she alone?” I asked.

  “With Chuck Bond,” she said.

  “Just strolling around in her bikini?”

  “Her nose was pointed toward the cabanas.”

  “I wonder why?” her sister dead-panned.

  “I’ll draw you a diagram,” said her other sister.

  The exhibition of wit and humor was fracturing the girls. They were on a snappy patter merry-go-round and the brakes were off and nothing short of a small atom blast would stop them.

  And just then the small atom blast walked in.

  When she crossed the room, six blonde heads turned as one, the mouths sagged, the patter died. The atom blast eased along, a bundle of poise, her hips rolling in the casual stride of a trained actress. She wore a simple black dress, simply designed to display her simple charms. Her face was an oval of sharp beauty. She had big black marble eyes, deep and intelligent. She smiled at me, showing her bright, white theatrical smile.

  It was the smile that set her up for me. A trap door in my memory opened. I was standing in front of the Gilmore Theatre studying the posters for “Cash and Carry.” She was up there, the leading lady in the garment district play that died before it was born.

  “You’re Mari Beranville,” I said. “Gloria’s roommate.”

  “Go to the head of the class.”

  “And you came back to wish her luck.”

  “And you, little man?” She dropped the line with the studied carelessness of the pro. She had a sultry voice, a little like Tallulah Bankhead. “Who are you?”

  “My name,” I said. “Is John Foster Dulles.”

  “A wit, too. Excruciating. And now, you’re blocking my way, Milton Berle. If you will move your repulsive carcass I’m going in to say a kind word to friend Gloria.”

  “A waste of time. Gloria isn’t here.”

  “But, you’re joking.” The eyes clouded with honest concern. This dame did it without pushing. She was no ham. In the intimate close-up she was selling me drama with a lift of her eyebrows. She was natural and basic, the Actors Studio type. “Where could she be?” Mari asked. “She’ll be on in a little while.”

  “Not tonight, she won’t.”

  “Please, no guessing games. What’s happened to her?”

  “She took a powder,” I said. “Nobody knows where she is. She’s been missing since four-thirty. Any ideas?”

  “Fantastic. It just doesn’t sound like Gloria.”

  “It’s Gloria, all right. You and she eat out of the same plate. Where would she go?”

  “That could be her business.” She fixed me with her sharp eyes. It was a look rigged to cut me down. “And why should her business be yours, little man?”

  “Pazow wants to know. He’s got an investment in her. And I’m his boy—hired to find the answers. Pazow figures she’s stinking up his opening. He laid heavy money on the line to get her here. A lot of the fancy Johns out there were conned into coming because of her whiskey baritone. You can’t blame Pazow. And there’s no reason to knock yourself out blaming me.”

  I watched her in the pause. God save me from Actors Studio. Her adding machine was working again.
The gears were clicking, the sultry eyes worried, confused, alive with concern.

  “You’re what? A friend of Pazow’s?”

  “I’m an eye,” I said. “I’m a private investigator. My name is Steve Gant, and I earn my living chasing girls with foolish ideas. And finding them. My guess is that Gloria chickened out for some reason. My first guess was that we’d reach her back in your apartment. My first guess was wrong. My second guess is that she’s loused herself up in some way with one of her wolfish lovers. Which one? The last big heart in her life is sitting out there at a ringside table. Max Orlik. Any other prospects?”

  “Impossible.” She crossed in front of me and entered the dressing room and sank into the easy chair, using the formula gestures of the stage, limp and oh-so-tired, oh-so-worried. “But, what can I tell you? The last I heard Gloria was up for grabs. She talked about Chuck Bond.”

  “Out. Chuck’s around.”

  “Ziggi?”

  “On the band stand.”

  “And Pazow.”

  “Sweating it out inside,” I said. “When did it start with Pazow?”

  “It’s a pretty old thing. Pazow made his pitch a long time ago—before he hired her.”

  “A hot pitch?”

  “Lusty. But I thought everybody knew about Pazow?”

  “It must have been their little secret,” I said. “They managed to keep it out of the columns. Maybe Pazow was playing for keeps?”

  “You’ll have to ask Gloria that question.” She was on her feet again. In the little cabinet near the dressing table she found some liquor. She downed two hookers. She was playing the scene to the hilt, giving me the slob treatment, cutting me out of her emotional high jinks. She returned to the chair, collapsed in it. And then she was crying, bawling so hard that her whole frame shook with it, her head in her hands. “I’m worried,” she sobbed. “I’ve been warning her, pleading with her to settle down. She needs help. Psychiatric help, I mean. And I thought I almost had her ready to go. Only last night, after she came home from Max Orlik’s. You can’t live with a girl like Gloria and not begin to care. Last night she was hell-bent for the sleeping pill gimmick. She frightened me. She scared me so thoroughly that I got rid of the bottle.”

  “She takes the goof pills regularly?”

  “For years. The poor girl can’t sleep without them.”

  “Pills, that is?”

  “Pills.” She caught my message fast. “So far as I know, only pills.”

  “What was the business with Orlik?”

  “Just that she was giving him up. Last night was her swan song with him. You know Max? In the beginning he was the big dream, an older man, rich and soft. It’s a habit with Gloria, trying for the older ones. Probably something psychiatric involved, you know, the search for the kindly father and all that sort of junk. Whatever the reasons, she seemed to like Orlik for what he was, just a good-natured slob of a man, always on his toes trying to please her. Then something happened and all of a sudden she was making plans to heave him.” She paused, mopping her brow daintily with her lace hanky, taking a deep breath and closing her eyes. “I don’t know why I’m telling you all this, Gant. I guess the memory of last night is something I won’t easily forget. She started out for a polite and simple farewell. And she flipped. I’ve never seen her in quite such a state. She’s been through more men than an army drill sergeant since I’ve known her. But Orlik got to her. She came home nervous as a cat, and so tearful that she was out of control. It was her crying that bothered me. A girl like Gloria isn’t a crier.”

  “Maybe it was something else she bawled about?”

  “Something else?”

  “Are you sure she saw Orlik?”

  “I took it for granted.”

  “She mentioned Orlik?” I asked. Confusion stabbed at her. Her face was smooth and even, always controlled. But when doubt rode her something happened with the right eyebrow. It went up a bit and hung there for a tick of time. It was up now.

  “Actually, I’m not sure. You mean that she might have seen somebody else last night?”

  “It’s a thought.”

  “Oh, I doubt it,” Mari said. Sorrow grabbed her and the tears came again. I poured another drink for her and she took it eagerly, downed it with her usual dispatch. She reached for me. Her hand was cold on mine. “I’m scared, Gant. You’ve got to find her. Right away. She may be in trouble.”

  “Any suggestions? Aside from Orlik?”

  “I don’t know. I just don’t know. Orlik is a stranger to me. I met him once, just for drinks with Gloria.”

  “You’ll be meeting him again,” I told her.

  Because Max Orlik was entering the main dressing room. He was walking with stiff purpose, a five-by-five character with a square face, hammered solidly on his shoulders. His lack of neck gave the impression that he was hunched down, bull-like in his natural stance. His little eyes were buried under thick brows, frowning as he walked, his thick-lipped mouth set in a starched line. He was aimed our way, disregarding the questioning stares of the assembled blondes. He stalked into Gloria’s dressing room, jerking his head around as though he expected her to appear out of the wall.

  “Where the hell is Gloria?” he asked. “I had a dinner date with her.”

  “A good question,” I said. “A damned good question.”

  CHAPTER 4

  9:52 P.M.

  Orlik listened impatiently while I explained. He helped himself to liquor, standing over the little cabinet restlessly. Throughout my chit-chat he gave me his full attention. What he gave Mari Beranville was the broad sweep of his tail, a gesture of total disregard. She interrupted a few times with good questions and at those moments Orlik turned his beetle eyes on her, bright with disgust, distaste and uninhibited hate. She took his malice quietly, not bothering to react. She treated him with the disregard a school teacher gives a pouting brat. When I was finished, Mari got up and headed for the door.

  “Let me know what happens, Gant?”

  “I’ll certainly let you know.”

  “Is there anything I can do?”

  “Not right now.”

  She exited unsmiling, making the moment sing with drama. She slid her eyes to Orlik briefly and there was the smallest trace of a smile on her pretty pan as she cut him down with the look. Then she was gone, smoothly and with poise

  Orlik butchered her with his eyes.

  “A bitch,” he said. “If I ever saw one.”

  “She’s mad about you, too,” I told him. “Sit down, Orlik. Maybe we can figure out where Gloria lammed.”

  “You’ve got a good case. Gloria’s an expert at taking a powder.”

  “You should know.”

  “I know.” Anger made him bang a fat fist on the divan. He had a strange vocal tic, a small, coughing grunt between sentences. It heated his lines, loading each idea with extra importance. “Listen, Gant, you’re a dick. What’s your real angle on this? It can’t be Pazow. I don’t buy Pazow. Hell, after tonight, he’ll fire her. What else can he do? So he hired you to track her down before the show. That much I can take. But after that?” He looked down at his watch. “You’ve got another hour before the show goes on. Suppose you can’t find her? That finishes Pazow and you, doesn’t it?”

  “And if it does?”

  “Then maybe you’re working for me.”

  “I’m available,” I said. “You want me to find her, is that it?”

  “Fast.” He jerked away from the divan, opening his wallet as he stood. He peeled off three C notes. “A down payment. But I want her fast.”

  “Why the haste?”

  “Because it’s important to me.”

  “Tell me more,” I said, holding him at the door. “The last time you saw her, for instance?”

  “How can that help?”

  “Let me ask the questions. A gal
like Gloria could be smart about losing herself. What she said to you when you last saw her could be important, Orlik.”

  “What she said was sweet and simple.” He studied me for a minute, making up his mind about something. What he was thinking came through on his wide-open face, now masked with worry. He dropped it in the next line. “I saw her last night, Gant. She told me she was finished with me.”

  “How? How did she tell you? Upset? Quiet? Dignified?”

  “Ha. You don’t know Gloria. She was deadpan.” He sighed lustily. “Maybe it was me who made her that way, I don’t know. She can be pretty tough in the clutch, real mean. But upset? Not with me, Gant. Never with me.”

  “You make her sound pretty clammy, Orlik. Why the big yen to find her?”

  “A good question,” he said quietly, fighting down something deeper, something stronger. He sucked at his fat lip and shook his head sadly to himself. “Maybe I just want to play it again, the goodbye bit, I mean. Maybe I want another chance with her. Find her, Gant. Don’t ask an old man for crazy reasons. Not about a woman. I couldn’t explain it to you if I hired a writer. Clear?”

  “I’ll try to live with it,” I said.

  I checked with the maître d’. He was an experienced hand, old at the business, an import from the swank Lamartine Room in New York who knew every celebrity from here to the State Department. He assured me that Orlik arrived at four, one of Pazow’s special guests. Orlik had been escorted to his cabana, in the section on the Eastern rim of the club, reserved for the occasion.

  Orlik’s cabana, like all the others, could be entered easily by climbing to the roof and dropping down into the open section of the shower. It was a matter of minutes to get in. His bathing suit hung on the towel rack. Inside, the small room was similar to Chuck’s, neatly modern, slick and clean. Orlik’s suitcase sat on the bed. He had come prepared only for the change into evening attire. I found little of interest in the bag.

  Little but the automatic, hidden under his shirt.

  The light from the concrete walk outside was dim. I wanted a closer look at the gun. It would be brighter in the shower, where a match could be struck. Instinct backed me that way. Instinct also froze me as I started. The little room had been tight and airless a moment ago. Now, my nose caught a faint whiff of the ocean, a cool breeze. The door? Was it open?