Stone Cold Blonde Read online

  “What do you think?”

  “You want the truth?”

  “You’re getting awfully serious,” she said. She dropped it with a thin smile and I wondered how much the liquor was eating into her sensibilities. “When you frown that way, you’re a little bit frightening, Steve.”

  “Who was here before me?” I asked. “The cigar smoker.”

  She put down her glass and worked me over with her eyes.

  “You sound almost jealous, Steve.”

  “We’re not supposed to have secrets,” I said. “I wasn’t aware that you knew any men in New York.”

  “You didn’t ask me. Suppose I know a man or two?”

  “Maybe that man would be a friend of your husband’s?”

  “Oh, no. Guess again.”

  “I told you I don’t play guessing games.”

  “You are angry,” she said. She let the silence build for a long moment, teasing me with her smile. “And you’re right, Steve. We shouldn’t hold secrets from each other. I did see a man up here—about a half hour before you came. It was Mr. Ashforth. Feel better now?”

  “Ashforth smokes cigars? He looked more like the reefer type to me.”

  “Mr. Ashforth smokes good cigars,” she said. “Really manly cigars.”

  “Incredible. And what was he doing up here?”

  “Not what you think he was,” she laughed. “Or do you have any special theories about Ashforth?”

  “Ashforth isn’t man enough to do what I suspected. But why did he come up?”

  “My lipstick and cigarette case,” she said. “I had left them in Alice V.’s office. Ashforth was nice enough to bring them here. Any more questions?”

  She had her eyes closed now. She put her arms up and clasped her hands behind her head, a gesture that pulled the blouse tight in the right places. She was mysterious and all-knowing now, smiling at some small idea that seemed to amuse her.

  And then she said, “You must have some more questions, Steve.”

  “You,” I said. “You’re a good question.”

  “Am I? What’s bothering you?”

  “I’ll break it down for you,” I said. “You’ve thrown a lot of stuff at me but some of it doesn’t make sense. You’re a beautiful woman with a nice disposition. Why did your husband beat it away from you?”

  “You’ll have to ask Frank that question when you find him.”

  “Maybe he won’t know the answer. What was wrong with him?”

  “Wrong? I haven’t said there was anything wrong.”

  “Then he must be out of his mind,” I said. “No man with all his buttons would walk away from a dish like you.”

  She smiled and closed her eyes.

  And when she opened them again, I watched for a sign from her. It came almost at once, a long and well-modulated sigh. I crossed from my chair and went to the couch but she didn’t open her eyes nor did she stir when I sat down beside her, close enough to count her eyelashes. She moved her head only in my direction so that it was easy to kiss her. Her mouth was soft and she had an experienced tongue. There was a strong odor of liquor around and about her, but I didn’t mind it at all. She might have had a couple before I arrived. She must have had a couple with Ashforth. Poor Ashforth. I was almost inspired to sudden laughter but the pressure of her lips gave me no chance for a change of plans. She rolled her long body into mine and then her arms were around me and her nails bit deep into my shoulders and my last flickering thought was about her husband and what a damn fool he must be. Only an idiot would have run away from Grace Masterson.

  I didn’t run.

  CHAPTER 8

  I phoned Abe Feldman later, and told him to meet me at The DeGraw.

  It was a crumbling dump, sporting an ancient outdoor sign, loose and narrow, with a black background that was no longer black, but dirty gray and rust-flecked by the assaults of wind and rain. The rococo architecture now lay here buried in the heavy shadows of the ill-smelling street, locked in by the towering factories and office buildings. The steel canopy threw a feeble-glow on the pavement, and around the entrance a variety of characters stood in various poses of idleness or oral activity. There was a delicatessen on the left side of the entrance, a dull and lifeless window adorned by a galaxy of beer bottles and suspended salamis, swaying slowly in the gust of air from a small fan, hidden among the rolls and bagels. Two men leaned against the glass, their mouths moving in animated discourse. There was a third man in the shadows.

  It was Abe Feldman, on schedule.

  I said, “Did you dig up anything back at the office?”

  “Just twenty minutes ago,” Abe said. “I waited around for the cleaning women to report on your floor. There was a big cop up with me, for the same reason. Anyhow, we talked to both the old ladies who were one flight down when the job was done in your office. One of them reported seeing a man come running down the fire stairs, at just about the time when that blonde was killed.”

  “What kind of a man?”

  “That’s just it.” Abe threw out his hands hopelessly. “No description.”

  “None at all?”

  “They heard him more than they saw him. You know the stair landing, Steve. It’s dark as the inside of your hat, even at night when they turn on the little lights. The ladies said that they heard this man come running down the stairs. They saw him only for a split second when he made the turn into the corridor. But it wasn’t enough time for any identifying deal. Besides, they are pretty old, the two women. The only thing we got was the fact that he had hard heels on. They said he made a pretty loud noise coming down stairs.”

  “That’s just peachy. There must be at least two million men in town who wear hard heels.”

  “And a hat,” Abe laughed. “They were both sure he was wearing a hat.” He looked briefly inside the lobby of The DeGraw. “You have a lead to this dump?”

  I shook my head and told him about the Alice V. Christie case, bringing him up to date on my recent visit to Mrs. Masterson’s flat, with only a few details missing.

  “Mrs. Masterson turned out all right?” he asked.

  “Mrs. Masterson is well turned out.”

  “So I see. Wipe the lipstick off your chin, Steve.”

  “I left in a hurry.”

  “You certainly give your clients the complete service.”

  “Only when they ask for it.”

  “But it doesn’t make sense,” Abe said, serious now. “If she’s so anxious to find her husband, if she loves him so much, how does it happen that you can make time with her?”

  “You’d have to see her to understand, Abe.”

  “She must be something special.”

  “She’s quite a bundle. She’s the sort of package that would hold any normal man to his soft chair and carpet slippers at the fireside. I can’t understand why her husband grabbed the boodle and ran away from her.”

  “A good-looking body doesn’t mean a good-looking brain,” Abe said. “Didn’t she prove I’m right when she let you play games with her?”

  “I wouldn’t say that. Sometimes a dame like Grace Masterson has to have what she needs for purely physiological reasons. Like eating enough.”

  Abe shook his head sadly. “I’ve heard of such women, of course.”

  “You’ll agree that I’m right when you meet her,” I said.

  “Shall we go inside?”

  “Not yet. I want to tell you something about this place.”

  “The delicatessen?”

  “The delicatessen I could tell you a lot about,” Abe smiled. “It is run by a friend of mine, Herman Gurian, and he serves a fine hot pastrami sandwich, but I was referring to The DeGraw Hotel. I got here a bit early and went inside for a package of cigarettes. The man at the desk inside—I know him.”

  “Will he talk?”

 
“He isn’t going to be easy. I met him when he used to work over at The Linton Hotel on the other side of town. Once I happened to need some information from him on a skip trace when the subject was housed at his particular place but he turned out to be a twenty-dollar type character.”

  “We’ll cut him down,” I said.

  We crossed the lobby, a musty cavern smelling of stale coffee and badly rotted wood. The DeGraw had fallen on evil days long ago when vaudeville was the rage and the cheap hoofers and grind gals made this place their rendezvous. Now it was frequented by an assortment of pimps and tarts, bookies and minor gangland boys, all of whom added nothing to its fading prestige.

  The clerk at the desk was a pimply youth with a shock of reddish hair and a sleepy eye, wide and sneaky and as appraising as an insurance investigator after a two-alarm fire. He was thumbing a dirty finger over a racing journal, gnawing a pencil and making vague faces at the list of nags. He almost raised his eyes as we approached, but not quite.

  Abe said, “Aha—we meet again, sonny.”

  “Do we?” asked sonny.

  “You’re Rickert, aren’t you? I never forget a face. I remember you from The Linton.”

  “I’m Harry S. Truman, bug face.”

  “A funny fellow,” Abe said.

  “Scram, kike,” said Sonny.

  I reached out across the desk for him and he straightened out to his full height, a tall and bony crumb. I caught him by his painted necktie and turned the screws on him, twisting his tie until he clawed out at me. I put my free fist in his navel and his tongue dropped out and his eyes started to follow as he gurgled and spluttered and folded up like a diver with the heaves. There was a fine crimson flush galloping down his jaw, more colorful than the army of purplish pimples gathered on his weak chin. The sweat came and he began to cough.

  “Apologize,” I said.

  “You son of a bitch,” sonny said.

  I yanked the tie and his head came with it. When it was with in hitting distance, I bumped him twice. Hard. Against the counter, nose first, until he screamed with the pain. When I let him up there was a small stream of blood threading its way down his mouth and into the groove in his chin.

  “Apologize, pretty please,” I said.

  He spluttered a garbled apology and I let the tie go and he fell back against the letter slots, pale again and panting. He bunged his eyes at me and muttered a quiet, ingrown curse, and began to mop the blood off his face.

  Abe said, “Thanks, Steve. I’m getting too old for that kind of stuff. Maybe we can get some information from Mr. Rickert now?”

  I flipped the register around face-forward and thumbed down the page. There were only a dozen entries, dating back from the start of the week. My finger paused at the name Fred Morris. I said, “Let’s talk about this Fred Morris character.”

  “I don’t know him,” Rickert said. “He checked out.”

  “You were here when he checked out?”

  “Sure I was here.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “Jesus, am I supposed to remember every customer in this dump? This is a hotel, not a call house.”

  “That’s one man’s opinion,” I said. Abe nudged me and I reached into my pants and produced a fin. I held it up to the light, studying it. I let it slide down to the desk on a small downdraft. Rickert’s hand snaked out to cover it, but I got there first, smacking my palm down on the bill. “What did he look like, Rickert?”

  “A little guy, with glasses.” He had his eye on my hand, admiring the corner of green that showed through my fingers. “A stupid-looking jerk, kind of nervous and jumpy.”

  “He stayed two days?”

  “That’s all.” The bill was loose now and he took it and stuffed it away in his shirt pocket. “And I don’t know where he went.”

  “I didn’t expect you to know. Did he have any visitors?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Give him another bill,” Abe said genially. “Rickert likes to squeeze for money, don’t you, sonny?”

  “It helps,” Rickert said.

  I gave him another fin and most of the antagonism ran out of his face. Sometimes the sight of cabbage will make even a skunk sweet. He licked his lips and smiled a tenuous smile at me, caught up now by the feel of the government paper in his thin hand.

  “He had one visitor, both nights,” Rickert said. “A dame. All I know is she looked like a hot number. She was big and hippy, with black hair and sort of a pasty face. She only said a few words to me, but from the way she talked, I figured her for German maybe, anyhow, somewhere from Europe, but I couldn’t exactly place her.”

  “She stayed with him?”

  “You got me. If he let her go, he must have been loonier than I figured him. But I couldn’t say, on account of I took off both those nights. The trotters out in Westbury. You ever been there? They’re as easy as getting a piece on Sixth Avenue. Not like the flats at all—”

  “You’ve got an eight-track mind,” I said. “To hell with the nags. You’ve had other guys in here asking about Fred Morris, haven’t you?”

  “He’s keeping me in bookie money. You’re the third.”

  “Who were the others?”

  “Coax me again.”

  “The hell you say. I don’t give a goddam who they were.”

  “That suits me fine. Only one of the guys could be worth something to you.” He leaned over the racing manual and ran his finger down the starters at Jamaica, blowing a tuneless whistle through his yellowed teeth. “Now here’s a real funny one—Black Bourbon, in the fifth. How the hell do you suppose they pick the names for these stiffs?”

  I said, “This is your last fin, Rickert. Spill.”

  “Vincetti,” he said, kissing the greenback as though it were a girl’s chin, delicately and fondly. “Hands Vincetti.”

  “Well, what do you know about that?” Abe said. “Don’t tell me that Hands told you his name?”

  “I know him like I know my bookie,” Rickert sneered. “You don’t have to sleep with Hands Vincetti to know who he is around this street.”

  “When was he here last?” I asked.

  “Tonight. Maybe an hour before you got here.”

  “And where can we find him?” Abe asked. “If he hangs around this street, he must have a special spot.”

  “The Fan Club. On the corner.”

  “Get over there, Abe. I’ll meet you there later,” I said, and I watched him start for the street. When he had gone, I turned back to Rickert and pulled the racing journal from under his nose. He reacted with disdain. The lanky louse knew that he had me where he wanted me. And he wanted me in a financial way. His leer combined the twitch of caution with the yen for more loot. I laughed out loud as I remembered Abe Feldman’s estimate of the cost to bribe Rickert. I put down the five-dollar bill that would make his take an even twenty.

  “I want the key to Fred Morris’ room,” I said.

  “You want to rent the room?”

  “I wouldn’t rent a room in this trap if my life depended on it, Rickert. The five is for you. I only want to look around.”

  “That sounds like a deal,” he said, and reached up to pluck the key off the wall and throw it my way. “The elevator is down the hall. You want any more questions answered, mister, I’m your boy.”

  The hall was narrow and dark and papered with a decorative wallpaper that resembled blistered boils on the neck of a corpse. Through the dismal corridor I could catch the faint light from a store window on the next street. A long time ago this had been a popular architectural pastime, arranging hotel passages so that the clients could, approach and enter from either of two avenues. It occurred to me that Fred Morris might have had more visitors than Rickert knew. It would be simple to walk in from the opposite end of the catacomb, board the elevator and go upstairs.


  I laughed lightly at the unskilled subterfuge Frank Masterson had used. It is the habit of the common, untutored dead beat to manufacture a name made up of his original initials. This saves throwing away luggage, personal jewelry, and any other article of personal belonging that might arouse suspicion. Fred Morris had to be Frank Masterson. It was as simple as one and one.

  The elevator lifted me to the fifth floor, where the corridor downstairs was repeated in the all-over scheme of the hotel layout. The key was number 509, and the door to the room lay at the dead end of the hall, on the right side.

  It was a dank and airless cell, with one window facing a court. There was an old iron bed, a chest of drawers, a chair, a night table and a closet door. The closet was empty. I searched the room thoroughly, looking for everything and nothing, trying for a small lead to the man who had left it so suddenly. The light bulb hung from the ceiling, under a green glass shade, so that the edges of the room were in half shadow when I moved out of range. There was another door, leading to a midget john, unventilated and an affront to the nostrils. I fumbled for the light switch, and when I couldn’t find it, I reached back to swing the door open at a wider angle. Enough light entered the cubicle for me to examine the medicine chest over the sink. There were a few rusty blades, one of them of recent vintage. I pocketed it and ran my fingers along the upper shelves, searching for other toilet articles.

  I was on my toes when something hit me.

  It was a vicious swipe, behind my right ear. The pain of it sang in my head and I went down, grabbing the sink as I fell. And then another blow, this one close to my chin, jerking my head to the side with a violence that almost paralyzed me. My eyes opened briefly and I caught the dark shape of a figure, ready to swing again.

  It was a woman. I saw her arm come up. She was a quick silhouette against the light from the bedroom. Her arm swung down and whatever she had in her hand hit me again. The green shade swirled out and up and a thousand pinpoints of pain beat against me and killed the breath in my throat. I fell forward, not knowing it, but moving down in the way a fighter goes down after a good punch, the floor rising to meet me. I reached out at her in a convulsive gesture. But she must have been ten miles away by that time.