Stone Cold Blonde Read online

  “It was Gus Bryant. He threatened me. He told me that unless I gave him Frank’s address immediately, he’d have Frank killed when he found him.”

  “You mean your husband was in on the deal with Gus Bryant?”

  “I assume so. That’s why I’m here, don’t you see? Unless I find Frank before Bryant does, he’ll be murdered!”

  She held my arm. The pressure of both hands bit into me and softened me. I couldn’t help but react to her play for sympathy. Suddenly Frank Masterson was the fall guy, the stooge, the little man on a string, running for his life from the man with the whip. I went to the window and looked down at the city, searching for an answer in the dull shadows and the brightening windows. The buildings were silhouetted against the sky now, agleam with a thousand lights, yellow squares in the black caverns, and below the higher peaks were the endless rooftops of the brownstones and the tenements and the apartments and, the flitting headlights of the cars, trapped in traffic or moving slowly down the canyoned side-streets.

  New York!

  A man could hide behind a thousand doors in a thousand offices, or hole himself away in one of a thousand smaller dwellings or in a little room in’ a little hotel or creep away beyond the ridge of the city line, into the suburbs, Westchester or Connecticut or Long Island or Jersey. One small soul. Among ten million. And catch me, if you can.

  I said, “No. This is out of my line. Private detectives don’t stay in business long when they mix in police affairs. This is one for the squads. I’d suggest you take it downtown to a man named Biberman and tell it to him just the way you told it to me. Biberman will find your husband for you.”

  She was alongside me at the window. I couldn’t see her because my eyes were aimed over the rooftops, but I could feel her there, and smell her breath coming fitfully and the odor of her personal perfume around her and the slightest touch of her arm against mine and then her hand, tentative and light on my elbow.

  “I can’t do that, Steve. I want to save Frank.”

  “No dice. He can’t be saved.”

  “Listen, suppose I tell you he’ll return those jewels?”

  “How do you know?”

  “He’ll do it for me.”

  “Did he steal for you?”

  “I’m sure he did. He must have.”

  I turned her way and we were too close for conversation, on the broad seat near the window, knee to knee. And she was, talking out of her desperation, coaxing me with her eyes and her body and the note of pleading in her voice.

  “You must help me,” she said. “I’ll pay you well. Don’t give me your final decision. Think about it a bit and let me know.”

  “I’ll think about it,” I said.

  She shook my hand with a purposeful pressure and showed me with her smile that there was something between us now, a common secret that bound me to her. She did not move. In the split second of leave-taking, I resisted the urge to grab her and make another type of deal. But it could wait.

  “Let me know soon?” she asked.

  “Where are you staying?”

  “The Maisonette. Room seven-oh-five.”

  “You’ll be in tonight?”

  “I’ll be waiting for you.”

  “I’ll be there, early,” I said.

  CHAPTER 6

  John Biberman put down his great pipe when I walked in. He kicked the chair into place for me and waved me into it pleasantly.

  “Killer Conacher,” he said. “The man with the dead blonde.”

  “The knife fiend,” I added. “Anything new on my victim?”

  “Very little, Steve. The knife wound was beautiful, the sort of stab only a maniac or a seasoned blade man would make. She was killed the way Doctor Millett figured it—around five or six last night.”

  “Rape?”

  “She wasn’t touched,” John said. “Not last night, at any rate.”

  “Before that?”

  “Plenty. She was no lily.”

  “Anything on her background?”

  “We’ve got a general search going, Steve. But you know how much time they take.”

  “Nothing on her body at all?”

  “You saw her first.” John smiled softly. “Ring mark, on the fourth finger, left hand. White patches from sunbathing. Naturally blonde hair. We’ll follow through on her teeth, of course, but we won’t get far. She had molars like you see in the toothpaste ads—perfect.” He shrugged and tucked the record away in a file envelope. “Your guess is as good as ours—if not better.”

  A big cop came in and put some more papers on Biberman’s desk. He apologized to me with his eyes and gave himself up to their perusal. Putting his horn-rimmed glasses on, so that he looked like a pudgy, studious professor checking a student’s homework. The cop waited patiently, blowing a tuneless whistle between his teeth, self-conscious in the presence of one of the greatest brains on the force. Biberman sighed and handed back the papers and the cop went out.

  “It was probably one of the mobs,” he said, “or an idiot murder, Steve. I can’t begin to figure it any other way, nor should you. I was talking to Sam Doughty and he went over it with me. He agrees. Somebody simply used your office for a slaughterhouse.”

  “I’m going to find him, John.”

  “Possibly, possibly. But why get your glands in an uproar?”

  “Because it stinks. I want to grab the man who thought of it.”

  “You should have been a cop, Steve,” he said. He leaned back in his swivel chair and clamped his pipe in his mouth and blew smoke at the dirty ceiling. “How did you do with Alice V. Christie?”

  “Jesus, you know everything!”

  “She called me this morning. She’s a pretty clever lawyer, you know. Wanted to check up on you, your reputation and your skill. Said she had a difficult case for you. Did you get it? I gave you a big build-up.”

  “I have it. If I want it.”

  “I thought Alice V. was a big spender?”

  “The money is fine, John. It’s the pitch I don’t care for. I came in to talk to you about it.”

  “Talk away.”

  I summed it up for Biberman, giving him the whole deal, just as I had heard it from Grace Masterson’s fruity lips. I played it straight and included every angle. I showed no eagerness for the chore. John Biberman heard me out without any interruptions, and when it was all over he sighed and clasped his hands on the blotter.

  “You’re making it tough for me, Steve. The return of the Vree pendant is strictly for the police.”

  “That’s what I told the lady.”

  “At the same time, the hunt for Masterson could be interpreted as a missing persons deal—between you and a private client.”

  “I figured that, too.”

  “And suppose you make the locate on Masterson? What then?”

  “My client insists that she will convince her husband to relinquish the loot. All I promised to do was make the locate. If it’s possible.”

  “You’re modest. Her odds go down with you on the case.” He smacked the dead ashes from his pipe in the knubbly ashtray. “Then you’re after a deal with me?”

  “I don’t take her on unless you say so.”

  “What’s in it for us?”

  “That’s the question I was about to ask you,” I said.

  Biberman thought about it for a while. “If I tell you to go ahead I should have a guarantee that the Vree cluster will be returned to me.”

  “Is that your only worry?”

  “That’s part of my worry,” he said. “I can satisfy my flat-foot conscience that I’ve recovered the stolen property and fulfilled my duty to the commissioner, the trusting public and the Florida brethren in the police.”

  “And how about Masterson?” I asked.

  “That’s the rest of the problem. Should you let hi
m go, people in high places would be out to slice me in small pieces.”

  “You’re making it tough for me,” I said. “You want the works.”

  Biberman nodded regretfully. “That’s about it, Steve, the works.”

  “My client won’t buy it,” I said.

  “I’m not in business down here to make bargains,” said Biberman. “I’m a cop.”

  “But you can take gifts,” I said. “Suppose I walked in here with the Vree stones, only the stones?”

  “That would be very nice for you. Did you know there’s a reward for their return? Flaubert’s is offering five grand.”

  He showed me a printed circular issued in Miami. I whistled at it. I said, “That’s a lot of money.”

  “You’ll have to work fast to earn it. It’s my theory that you won’t find the pendant at the end of the line. It was stolen to be broken up. The only chance for picking it up in one piece comes out of the fact that Masterson is an amateur. He has no standing in the field of larceny. It’s possible that he’s hiding in some dark corner, paralyzed with fright and too scared to make a move outside for a middleman.”

  “He has no record?”

  “We’ve checked him pretty carefully. He’s a brand new boy in the heist business.” Biberman shuffled through his papers. He pulled out a yellow sheet and studied it casually. “They sent two crack men up here from Florida. The best in the state for this sort of thing. They got as far as The DeGraw Hotel. They came down here to chew the fat about their progress with me. They reported they were stuck, but bad.”

  “How long ago was this?”

  “Within the last few days.”

  “Are you going to stay with it?” I asked.

  “In a city this size you can’t spread your staff too thin, Steve. We’re loaded down with stuff in this office and I need every man I can muster for routine jobs. Why should I knock my boys out when there are two Florida men on the case?” He looked half asleep now, puffing lazily again, the pipe setting up an asthmatic wheeze as he sucked and blew. The big clock on the wall near the window said seven-two and the ticking sounded loud and clear in the silence.

  “So you’re willing to let it die with the Florida boys?”

  Biberman smiled up at me. “It won’t die now that you’re on it.”

  “What are you trying to do, make me a deputy?”

  “Deputy, shmeputy,” said Biberman. “Did I ever tell you about Dan McQueen?”

  “I’ve read the name in the public prints, but not lately.”

  “Let me tell you about him then. McQueen was a private investigator in Brooklyn, oh, maybe ten years ago. He was a great lad, clever and with a strong conscience. Do you know that McQueen used to handle his stuff with the same point of view as any of the local badges? It was wonderful the way his mind worked. He made his own decisions and lit out in his own way, but when the chips were down you could depend on McQueen to come through with a legalistic ritual of behavior. I’d venture to say that this McQueen never did an unlawful thing in his entire career. Matter of fact, he died on a roof under the Williamsburg Bridge where he had tailed two gunmen for reasons of his own. But he died in the line of duty, just like a good cop would have done. It was too bad that he had to go, but he did so much for us that the City of New York voted special money for his widow. A great character, McQueen. You remind me of him in many ways, Steve.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “I’ll try to keep off the rooftops.”

  “Maybe you’re even a little smarter than McQueen,” said Biberman.

  There was no need for further chit-chat. There was a knock on the door and two plainclothesmen came in and squatted in the far corner, eyeing me out of the room. John Biberman got up and reached his hand across for me to grab.

  I shook it firmly and walked out of there.

  CHAPTER 7

  The Maisonette was an incongruous hostel, wedged between two giant apartment houses along the quiet reaches of Central Park West. It was a few steps in from the busy traffic on the road that rimmed the park, a gray and dusky street abounding in brownstones and ancient mansions, long since given over to the boarding-house trade.

  The Maisonette had a weathered front, sadly in need of a sand massage, but the stonework still had a certain charm and the entrance hall reflected a dignity that had once been splendor when the city was young. Nobody had bothered to modernize the lobby, and the ancient trappings still spelled out upper-bracket refinement and easy living. A few assorted people sat around on velvet chairs, old and stiff and curious about me over the edges of their newspapers. The desk man was as aged as the rugs, a wizened clerk who directed me to the nearest elevator with a polite gesture.

  The elevator took me to the seventh floor and I walked down the hall to seven-oh-five, at the far end of the red carpet, a buff door in a wall of buff. Mrs. Masterson was at the door a long minute after I pressed the buzzer.

  She appeared breathless as she showed me in, through a small doorway and into the archaic little sitting room.

  “I’m so glad you came, Steve,” she said.

  Glad? She was on fire. Her costume, against the conservative décor of the room, was a little more than startling. It had the effect of making me pause and fumble my purpose. She wore yellow silk slacks, topped by a red blouse that left little to the imagination.

  She exchanged pleasantries as she mixed our drinks, allowing me enough time to work her over in my imagination. Her costume would have been more appropriate in a modern flat, on a gay settee or a squarish chair, surrounded by the trappings of up-to-date living. Frank Masterson must have kept her in fine style. She was built for the creature comforts, and decorated to raise the blood pressure of any man, of any type. She had piled her hair on the top of her head and added a small flower, low over her left ear, a rose as red as her blouse. She sat tensely on the small couch, her posture tentative, as though she would spring my way if I pressed the right button. She was nervous. She was jumpy. And I wondered why.

  “You’ve made up your mind?” she asked hopefully.

  “Not quite.”

  The rug was dark green. There was a small white oak coffee table, on which two ashtrays sat. They were chrome, yet unpolished. Somebody had been using them recently. Somebody had emptied them.

  “I don’t understand. I assumed that if you came up—”

  “You’re half right. I didn’t come up to reject the job. Still, I can’t take it on the terms we talked this afternoon.”

  “Terms?”

  “The wind-up. The finish.”

  There, was a book on the coffee table, Troubled Spring, by John Brick, featuring a tall and busty female calculated to convince all purchasers that this was an historical novel. She hadn’t gotten very far into it. On the floor, near her feet, a small piece of cellophane, with the thin red ribbon still attached. Her foot was moving on the rug, backward and forward. There was a long ash, only a fraction of an inch to the left of where she rubbed. It was a cigar ash.

  “I’ll have to turn your husband over to the police. If I find him.”

  “Oh? Must you?”

  “I can’t fight the police.”

  “But if Frank gives back the jewels?”

  “They want Frank, too. He’s a bad boy.”

  The foot moved out to the left and it was still rubbing the rug. The cigar ash, now under the sole, disintegrated. She kept moving the foot easily, as though it were only a casual and habitual business. But she was rubbing away the man who had dropped that ash.

  “I don’t know what to say to you,” she sighed. When she bit her lower lip, the effort at a decision began to show. She put down her glass and walked to the window, fingering the drapes with hard hands. “I must think this thing through. I must make the right decision, do the right thing for Frank.”

  “If he gives himself up, he might get a light sentence.”


  “There’s no other way?”

  “Not with this boy. If I can find him, can’t you convince him to take the rap and come out clean?”

  “I’m sure I can.” She looked hopeful now. “It’s the only way, after all. It’s the only honest, good way.”

  The decision seemed to quiet her nerves. She mixed me another one, stiffer this time, and took a hooker for herself, neat. She wanted to talk about Frank, and I gave her her head. What kind of a man was Frank? She broke him down for me; a quiet chap, a sensible husband of regular habits and good tastes. He enjoyed good food. Which type? Any type, but especially Italian, of the northern flavor, highly spiced and seasoned. He loved sports, favoring the betting varieties, horse racing, hound racing, and trotting. He dressed conservatively. He was in good health. He had been troubled with bad teeth, but now wore false uppers. He had a nice voice, revealing his breeding and good education. He was mild and quiet. He smoked cigars, always of the two-bit variety. He was generous. He was sober. People liked him. Especially women.

  The stockpile of odds and ends mounted, and slowly Frank Masterson emerged as a personality. There was a definite pattern taking shape out of her quick description, a character and temperament that gave me pause. She was resting on the sofa in a languorous pose, talking on and on about her husband. But my eyes were wide open. I saw her in her full dimensions, as seductive a babe as I could ever hope to nuzzle. I imagined her on the street with Frank Masterson, or in a restaurant, or at home in their apartment. He would be incongruous alongside her. She was too young, too fresh, too ripe, too much alive for a forty-five-year-old jewelry manager. She would be fun at night or at a beach or in a casino or on a soft bed, the type of woman who could pick and choose from among the muscled wolves along the Miami beaches. She was physical.

  I said, “I suppose you miss your husband a lot?”

  “Terribly,” she said. “I can’t begin to tell you.”

  “Tell me.”

  She looked at me from over her glass. “We were very happy.”

  “The stuff you gave me about his chasing the dames. It wasn’t true? You got along all right that way?”